Podcast appearances and mentions of Darren Rowse

Ready for a Masterclass in SEO and content creation? Today's guest is Glen Allsopp, founder of Detailed.com, the SEO Blueprint course, and gaps.com. Glen is an absolute beast when it comes to his content output, and his thorough data studies are shared widely in and out of the SEO world when he publishes them. He also does $40 website audits that sell out immediately when they're open to the public. Glen, who is notoriously private, doesn't normally do podcasts and he never speaks at conferences. That's why this episode of Ahrefs Podcast is audio only. But one thing Glen isn't shy about is sharing his vast SEO and business wisdom with the world. In this episode, you'll learn: (0:00) Intro (01:45) Maintaining Privacy (8:49) How does Glen make money (10:41) What he focuses on (17:03) What his team looks like (23:47) Not scaling his agency (28:01) What he gets out of his $40 audits (34:29) Creating the Detailed SEO extension (39:47) What to pay workers (42:10) The evolution of Detailed (47:12) Detailed research (54:12) Promoting Detailed content (1:00:10) How Glen approaches ideas (1:06:07) iPhone link building (1:10:17) Building relationships (1:15:00) Super pixels (1:26:10) How Glen stays organized (1:31:25) The current state of SEO (1:42:56) Gaps (1:50:30) Who Glen looks up to (1:52:56) Media companies _________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! Where to find Glen: X: https://x.com/ViperChill LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glen-allsopp-63084025/ Website: https://detailed.com/ SEO Blueprint: https://seoblueprint.com/ Gaps: https://gaps.com/ Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/ X: @timsoulo Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/ ________________________________________________ Referenced in the episode: $40 website audits: https://detailed.com/audit/ Blog Tyrant: https://www.blogtyrant.com/SEO META in 1 Click: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/seo-meta-in-1-click/bjogjfinolnhfhkbipphpdlldadpnmhcBloggerJet: https://bloggerjet.com/Copyblogger: https://copyblogger.com/ProBlogger: https://problogger.com/Darren Rowse: https://darrenrowse.com/How 16 Companies are Dominating the World's Google Search Results (2024 Edition): https://detailed.com/google-control/ TechRadar: https://www.techradar.com/pro/could-google-be-using-reddit-to-revive-an-ancient-failed-project-60000-redditors-may-well-be-mturking-for-google-answers-20TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/05/amazons-new-rufus-chatbot-isnt-bad-but-it-isnt-great-either/Mark Rofe (@iamrofe): https://x.com/iamrofeSiege Media: https://www.siegemedia.com/ Ross Hudgens: https://x.com/RossHudgensPomodoro technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_TechniqueSeeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/Retro Dodo: https://retrododo.com/Brian Morrissey: https://x.com/bmorrisseyThe Rebooting: https://www.therebooting.com/Neil Vogel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilvogel/Joshua Hardwick: https://x.com/joshuachardwick

#726 Much of the knowledge I acquired when I started blogging is still with me. I have my early inspirations, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, and Seth Godin, to thank for that! In fact, one of Seth Godin's concepts that I often return to is the power of naming it. But what is it? It can be anything you teach or create. When you label something, you make it real. The messy middle, the part of the entrepreneurial journey between early excitement for an idea and when you finally reach your goals, comes to mind. Eric Partaker's 3 Alarms strategy, discussed in Wednesday's episode, is another example. So, how do you coin relevant terms in your business? Join this session to hear me brainstorm new ideas and come up with Fake Flynn-ing. Tune in to find out what that's all about and how to start naming things for your audience! Show notes and more at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session726.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

These tips come from Tim Ferriss, Amy Porterfield, Emily Hirsh, The Authority Hacker Podcast, Darren Rowse, and more--BUT THESE ARE MY FAVORITES.These are the ideas, strategies, and tactics I'm bringing to my own life and business this year.There are gems here. Enjoy!WANT TO LEAVE A VOICEMAIL AND GET FEATURED ON THE PODCAST?Visit https://doyouevenblog.com/voicemail/ and leave me a note! I'll give you a shoutout on the podcast, answer your question, and also link back to your website where appropriate :)FREE RESOURCES:

What limiting beliefs can you do without?  Darren Rowse gives us a simple way to chip away at those and avoid a mid life crisis, or 2, or 3 in the process.   Here's a link to Darren's blog post I'm referring to in this Monday Nugget: How I'm Dealing With My 3rd Mid Life Crisis   As always I'd love it if you head over to soulcrafttribe.com to sign up for our email.  No spammy crap just useful stuff and we'll let you know when the latest episode drops.    Sincerely, Brian Ehrlich   

With podcasting still going strong, newsletters having their moment, and blogging still right there in the thick of it all, it sure feels like the internet is returning to its roots in a good way.As Justin Jackson put it in a tweet: "The classic internet is back in style: mindful, slow pace. Less frenzy. Feels good."We sure agree.So this week on 7-Figure Small, we rounded up Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse, a couple of pioneers of the early internet, to join Brian Clark for a chat about what’s new, what’s different, and what’s the same as it ever was.As always, we begin by kicking around some headlines and end by answering listener questions. In between, during our main topic, Brian, Chris, and Darren go deep on: • Their experience launching Third Tribe• The power of virtual communities• Why email remains so important• Where podcasts fit within an overall content marketing strategy• How curation has evolved And much more.

In dit mooie gesprek met Tamar Weinberg - oprichter van Tamer Scents - hebben we het over tegenslag en wat ik deed om daaroverheen te komen. Ze gaf het de titel "He made the absolute best of his reality" Na haar introductie begin met hoe het voor mij als ondernemer allemaal begon. Darren Rowse van Problogger speelde hierin een belangrijke rol net als mijn blog - enthousiasmeren.nl. Hier schreef ik over alles waar ik enthousiast over was, veel verschillende onderwerpen. Met advertenties probeerde ik om het blog te ontwikkelen als een bron voor mijn inkomen. Door steeds meer te concentreren op niches en de blogs op te splitsen van één blog naar verschillende hele specifieke blogs zoals lukte dat steeds beter. Vanaf het moment dat ik mijn bedrijf begon was ik dit succes van die niches helemaal vergeten. Geen focus, maar ik stelde me voor als freelancer marketing en verkoop, veel te breed. Dus eerst zag ik dat focus goed was en toen ik voor mezelf begon was ik dat uit het oog verloren. Na ongeveer anderhalf jaar en wat hulp had ik eindelijk een duidelijk product. Januari 2009 kreeg ik de kans om naar de CES in Las Vegas te gaan en daar kwam ik in aanraking met WordCamp en Social Media Club. In die week ontmoette ik verschillende bloggers zoals Liz Strauss, Lorelle VanFossen, Brian Solis, Anita Campbell, Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, Rohit Bhargava and many more. Met een paar boeken onder de arm reisde ik terug naar Nederland om te zien of we die in Nederland wilde uitgeven. Het boek van Rohit (Personality not Included) werd geaccepteerd door A.W. Bruna en is in het Nederlands verschenen. Daar kreeg ik ook de kans om mijn boek uit te geven. Eind 2009 kwam mijn boek uit, dat ik in ongeveer 3 maanden schreef op een schema dat vergelijkbaar was met dat wat ik leerde van Rohit, vier dagen werken en de vrijdag volledige focus op het schrijven. De eerste druk was uitverkocht in een paar maanden en ook de tweede druk werd bijna uitverkocht. In totaal zijn er bijna 3.000 boeken verkocht van Laat de klant naar jou komen. Dat lijkt nu mijn hoogtepunt te zijn geweest. ;-) Hee vroeg op een platform of in een markt te zijn hielp enorm zegt Tamar. Dat klopt. In de eerst linie zijn is wel mijn ding. Super gaaf om telkens nieuwe dingen te ontdekken, maar geen goede weg naar enorme omzetten voor je bedrijf. Telkens weer opnieuw een doelgroep opbouwen, dingen uitvinden, content maken over onderwerp waar nog nauwelijks naar gezocht wordt. Op een bepaald moment waren er 15 social media clubs in Nederland en was ik mede-organisator van drie WordCamps, en realiseerde ik me dat dit waardevol werk was maar de bezoekers waren niet mijn doelklant. Er kwamen mooie contacten en relaties uit, maar geen opdrachten voor mijn bedrijf. Een paar jaar later was omgeschakeld neer het Engels, ik wilde internationaal gaan met een engelstalig product. Uiteindelijk had ik één internationale klant. De meeste Nederlandse klanten ging niet mee naar de Engelse versie. Na negen maanden besloot ik weer terug te keren naar het Nederlands. Er was gewoon te weinig omzet om van te leven. Als ik had doorgezet op verschillende momenten, zoals ook met Facebook voor business, dan had ik waarschijnlijk veel meer verdient. Telkens wanneer iets dreigde succesvol te worden, was ik alweer iets nieuws gestart. Ik hou van nieuwe dingen ontdekken. Tamar verteld over hoe zij in haar bedrijf altijd verschillende bronnen van inkomsten had. Dat was veilig en comfortabel, maar het weerhield haar er ook van om zoiets groots als een product Tamar te lanceren zoals ze nu aan het doen is. Al kan het meerdere jaren duren en enkele pivots kosten voordat een product of bedrijf succesvol wordt. Dan ga ik in op het effect van geluk. Wanneer je meer probeert en test, neemt de kans op geluk toe. Wanneer je op je gemak voelt dan neem je minder risico's. Dat betekent ook dat je minder kans op geluk mag verwachten. Ik houd van nieuwe dingen leren,

In dit mooie gesprek met Tamar Weinberg - oprichter van Tamer Scents - hebben we het over tegenslag en wat ik deed om daaroverheen te komen. Ze gaf het de titel "He made the absolute best of his reality" Na haar introductie begin met hoe het voor mij als ondernemer allemaal begon. Darren Rowse van Problogger speelde hierin een belangrijke rol net als mijn blog - enthousiasmeren.nl. Hier schreef ik over alles waar ik enthousiast over was, veel verschillende onderwerpen. Met advertenties probeerde ik om het blog te ontwikkelen als een bron voor mijn inkomen. Door steeds meer te concentreren op niches en de blogs op te splitsen van één blog naar verschillende hele specifieke blogs zoals lukte dat steeds beter. Vanaf het moment dat ik mijn bedrijf begon was ik dit succes van die niches helemaal vergeten. Geen focus, maar ik stelde me voor als freelancer marketing en verkoop, veel te breed. Dus eerst zag ik dat focus goed was en toen ik voor mezelf begon was ik dat uit het oog verloren. Na ongeveer anderhalf jaar en wat hulp had ik eindelijk een duidelijk product. Januari 2009 kreeg ik de kans om naar de CES in Las Vegas te gaan en daar kwam ik in aanraking met WordCamp en Social Media Club. In die week ontmoette ik verschillende bloggers zoals Liz Strauss, Lorelle VanFossen, Brian Solis, Anita Campbell, Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, Rohit Bhargava and many more. Met een paar boeken onder de arm reisde ik terug naar Nederland om te zien of we die in Nederland wilde uitgeven. Het boek van Rohit (Personality not Included) werd geaccepteerd door A.W. Bruna en is in het Nederlands verschenen. Daar kreeg ik ook de kans om mijn boek uit te geven. Eind 2009 kwam mijn boek uit, dat ik in ongeveer 3 maanden schreef op een schema dat vergelijkbaar was met dat wat ik leerde van Rohit, vier dagen werken en de vrijdag volledige focus op het schrijven. De eerste druk was uitverkocht in een paar maanden en ook de tweede druk werd bijna uitverkocht. In totaal zijn er bijna 3.000 boeken verkocht van Laat de klant naar jou komen. Dat lijkt nu mijn hoogtepunt te zijn geweest. ;-) Hee vroeg op een platform of in een markt te zijn hielp enorm zegt Tamar. Dat klopt. In de eerst linie zijn is wel mijn ding. Super gaaf om telkens nieuwe dingen te ontdekken, maar geen goede weg naar enorme omzetten voor je bedrijf. Telkens weer opnieuw een doelgroep opbouwen, dingen uitvinden, content maken over onderwerp waar nog nauwelijks naar gezocht wordt. Op een bepaald moment waren er 15 social media clubs in Nederland en was ik mede-organisator van drie WordCamps, en realiseerde ik me dat dit waardevol werk was maar de bezoekers waren niet mijn doelklant. Er kwamen mooie contacten en relaties uit, maar geen opdrachten voor mijn bedrijf. Een paar jaar later was omgeschakeld neer het Engels, ik wilde internationaal gaan met een engelstalig product. Uiteindelijk had ik één internationale klant. De meeste Nederlandse klanten ging niet mee naar de Engelse versie. Na negen maanden besloot ik weer terug te keren naar het Nederlands. Er was gewoon te weinig omzet om van te leven. Als ik had doorgezet op verschillende momenten, zoals ook met Facebook voor business, dan had ik waarschijnlijk veel meer verdient. Telkens wanneer iets dreigde succesvol te worden, was ik alweer iets nieuws gestart. Ik hou van nieuwe dingen ontdekken. Tamar verteld over hoe zij in haar bedrijf altijd verschillende bronnen van inkomsten had. Dat was veilig en comfortabel, maar het weerhield haar er ook van om zoiets groots als een product Tamar te lanceren zoals ze nu aan het doen is. Al kan het meerdere jaren duren en enkele pivots kosten voordat een product of bedrijf succesvol wordt. Dan ga ik in op het effect van geluk. Wanneer je meer probeert en test, neemt de kans op geluk toe. Wanneer je op je gemak voelt dan neem je minder risico's. Dat betekent ook dat je minder kans op geluk mag verwachten. Ik houd van nieuwe dingen leren,

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there friends, it’s Darren Rowse from ProBlogger here. Welcome to episode 280 of the ProBlogger podcast.  It’s been a while since we chatted and I do apologize for that, I needed a little time to get my headspace right and work on a couple of other projects, but I’m glad to be back. I’m particularly glad to be back at this time that we find ourselves in. We currently find ourselves in a bit of a crazy time with COVID-19, CoronaVirus, and all that it is meaning for us in the world we’re living in. We’re seeing so many people impacted, the economy impacted, and we’re seeing lots of new things, or at least they’re new to some people. We’re seeing a lot of people now having to work at home, something that many of us, as bloggers, have been doing for a while. Today, what I want to talk a little bit about is how we navigate this time as bloggers. How do we, as bloggers, not only keep our businesses going, but how do we actually do something to serve our world where there’s so much need at the moment. I jumped on to Facebook Live earlier today and shared my thoughts on that.  What I want to share with you today is a recording of that Facebook Live. I did a bit of teaching in the middle of that. I talked a little bit about what the world doesn’t need right now, what the world does need right now, and why we, as bloggers, are actually ideally positioned to make a difference. I want to give you some practical thoughts on how to go about that. Some things to keep in mind, some things to avoid, also just tackling that tricky question of how do we actually make it a win-win for our audience and for us without seeming selfish in the midst of that as well, and actually about how not to be selfish in the midst of that as well. There are some of the things I cover in the recording I’m about to play for you. I just want to say though right up front, I hope you’re doing well. I’m doing well, I’ve had a bit of a scare and I’ll talk about that in the recording today, over the last week or so, but I hope you’re doing well. I really do want to emphasize the point that I make numerous times in this recording that I hope you look after yourself in this time.  We need you to look after yourself. If you are going to make a difference, if you’re going to use your blogging, your online profile to make the world a better place, right now we need you to look after yourself as well. I hope you’re doing well and I hope you do take seriously the question I pose of you in this recording: what can we do at ProBlogger to serve you better through this time? Is there something that you are facing right now in your blogging that you’d like some content to be produced to help you to navigate that challenge. If you would like to drop me a line, my team a line, you can send an email to help@problogger.com and that will go to our support team. We’ll put it in front of the person who is best able to help if we can, and hopefully that will inform some content going forward. If you do want to stay in touch with this, head over to our Facebook Page, facebook.com/problogger, and you will get any future Facebook Lives and updates from there. We’ve got our email newsletter which is still going out every week over in ProBlogger that you can sign up for. If you want the show notes today, head over to problogger.com/podcast/280. I’ll come back at the end of this recording and wrap things up. Thanks for listening! Hi there everyone, it’s Darren from ProBlogger here. Welcome to the ProBlogger Podcast, also welcome to those of you who are watching this live. I am going live onto Facebook today while I’m recording. Because I think it is an important topic and it’s one that I do want to get our communities input in as well. Our love viewers may have some thoughts to share that I will include in the podcast as well as if I think...

Darren Rowse - 15 March 2020

Darren Rowse - 15 March 2020

In this episode, you’ll hear the #FinCon17 keynote talk from Darren Rowse. Darren is the founder of ProBlogger.com. With over 8,000 articles, tips, tutorials, podcast episodes and case studies, ProBlogger has become a pivotal resource for all things blogging. In this talk, Darren shares the ins and outs of his journey from zero blogging experience to now having close to 5 million visitors per month. You’ll here specific strategies he uses to find balance in work that is both meaningful and profitable.

Are you a procrastinator? 20% of adults claim to be prone to procrastination, and I suspect that percentage is even higher among creatives and entrepreneurs. What if you could work around your procrastination and get some simple things done that could pay off forever? Welcome to Should I Start A Podcast where each week Ronsley Vaz, with the help of ... The post 182. 7 Things You Can Do Today That Will Pay Off on Your Podcast Forever with Darren Rowse appeared first on We Are Podcast.

Are you a procrastinator? 20% of adults claim to be prone to procrastination, and I suspect that percentage is even higher among creatives and entrepreneurs. What if you could work around your procrastination and get some simple things done that could pay off forever? Welcome to Should I Start A Podcast where each week Ronsley Vaz, with the help of ... The post 182. 7 Things You Can Do Today That Will Pay Off on Your Podcast Forever with Darren Rowse appeared first on We Are Podcast.

Are you a procrastinator? 20% of adults claim to be prone to procrastination, and I suspect that percentage is even higher among creatives and entrepreneurs. What if you could work around your procrastination and get some simple things done that could pay off forever? Welcome to Should I Start A Podcast where each week Ronsley Vaz, with the help of a star-studded entrepreneurial guest lineup, explores why you should start a podcast; build an audience, and how to keep them hungry for more.  If you have a podcast and are looking for some practical ways to broaden your audience, make your marketing more effective and diversify your streams of income, then this is the episode for you. On this episode of Should I Start a Podcast, we revisit Darren Rowse's amazing talk from We Are Podcast 2016. Darren is the founder of ProBlogger.com, a fantastic resource website for online bloggers, and is one of the first professional bloggers in the world.  Darren has found incredible success with his online blogs and businesses over the last 15+ years despite the fact that he is an admitted procrastinator. In his incredibly useful talk, Darren broke down seven things that he does or has done in the past, that has catapulted his ideas into successful business ventures.  They are simple concepts that anyone, procrastinators and non-procrastinators, can implement in their podcasts and business to see fast results. Also in this episode: Why Darren is a notebook addict Why it took him five years to finally start his podcast Why being a procrastinator leads to a “someday list” What is the natural enemy of the procrastinator Hoe putting off writing one blog post potentially cost him thousands of dollars How inaction breeds doubt and fear How to diversify your income streams Links: ProBlogger.com Darren on LinkedIn Email Darren at darren@problogger.com Darren on Twitter

Are you a procrastinator? 20% of adults claim to be prone to procrastination, and I suspect that percentage is even higher among creatives and entrepreneurs. What if you could work around your procrastination and get some simple things done that could pay off forever? Welcome to Should I Start A Podcast where each week Ronsley Vaz, with the help of ... Read More The post 182. 7 Things You Can Do Today That Will Pay Off on Your Podcast Forever with Darren Rowse appeared first on Amplify Agency.

Darren Rowse - 12 January 2020

Darren Rowse - 12 January 2020

Darren Rowse - 29 December 2019

Darren Rowse - 29 December 2019

Darren Rowse - 8 December 2019

Darren Rowse - 8 December 2019

Darren Rowse - 22 September 2019

Darren Rowse - 22 September 2019

Darren Rowse - 28 July 2019

Darren Rowse - 28 July 2019

How Blogging Led to a Million Dollar Business for Jeff Goins Jeff Goins shares how his blogging business has evolved over the years. What he’s doing now is very different than when he started. Blog 1: Jeff started blogging as an outlet to catalogue his journey across North America while on tour with a band.  “That was my first blog and my first experience with sharing my life and my ideas with the world. Just the thrill of pressing, Publish.” Wake-up Call: While living the dream of playing music for thousands of screaming fans, Jeff’s favorite part was writing blog posts. Blog 2: Jeff moved to Nashville and trained missionaries to blog for a nonprofit. Eventually, Jeff became the Marketing Director and learned about online marketing.  Wake-up Call: Jeff wanted to get back to his own blogging. “I had been helping other people share their stories. I had something to say and wanted to share it with the world.” Blogs 3 to Present: Jeff wanted to make a living as a writer, but didn’t know how.   Wake-up Call: Jeff’s failed blogs had one thing in common: He quit them. Time to get serious and stick to it:  Write every day  Get more subscribers Build email lists Learn from other bloggers Offer to write and accept guest posts Now, Jeff is a full-time blogger, author, speaker, and online entrepreneur.   Top Tips to Achieve Blogging Success Give before you ask; always give more than you take.  Listen to other bloggers’ advice. Connect with influential people. Next Steps in Blogging Evolution Masterminds: Creates relationships, connections, and community Events/Conferences: Tribe Conference Programs: Write a Bestseller  Based on his experiences as a writer and blogger, Jeff will be the keynote speaker at ProBlogger’s upcoming Evolve 2019 in Melbourne. A few tickets are still available! For more information: Problogger.com/events.  Links and Resources for How Jeff Goins Evolved His Blogging Into a Million Dollar Business: Jeff Goins The Jeff Goins Blog Real Artists Don't Starve by Jeff Goins  You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) by Jeff Goins Tribe Writers  Tribe Conference Write a Bestseller Jeff Goins’ Email ProBlogger Evolve Event  Evolve: Training Day Evolve: Mastermind Copyblogger Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk Brian Clarke Seth Godin Platform by Michael Hyatt Xanga MailChimp Zoom Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there friends and welcome to Episode 279 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com; a blog designed to help you to start and to grow a profitable blog.  Today on the podcast, we have a special guest, Jeff Goins. I’ve been wanting to bring Jeff Goins to the podcast for a while now. Many of you know of Jeff, he has a fantastic blog that I do encourage you to check out. We’ll link to it in the show notes today. He writes great advice for people who write. If you want to become a better writer, particularly if you want to write a book, he has some great advice. I wanted to get Jeff on the show today to talk a little bit about how his business or his blogging business has evolved over the years, because he started a number of years ago now. What he’s doing today is very different to the way he started. He really started in a personal record keeping kind of way with his blogging and he’s grown his brand, and his business around that. As he says in this interview, he’s actually had nine blogs over the years and his last one has really built the business. He’s got a lot of great advice today as we talk about this idea of evolving your blog. 

Diane Mulcahy is the author of the bestselling book, The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want. Diane created the first course on the Gig Economy, an MBA class she teaches at Babson College that was named by Forbes as one of the Top 10 most innovative business school classes in the country. Daine consults to companies about the gig economy, is a Forbes contributor, and speaks globally about the future of work. You can learn more about Diane’s work at DianeMulcahycom.   Key Takeaways: [1:37] Marc welcomes you to Episode 136 of the Repurpose Your Career podcast. Career Pivot is the sponsor of this podcast; CareerPivot.com is one of the very few websites dedicated to those of us in the second half of life and our careers. Check out the blog and the other resources delivered to you, free of charge. [2:06] If you are enjoying this podcast, please share it with other like-minded souls. Subscribe on CareerPivot.com, iTunes, or any of the other apps that supply podcasts. Share it on social media or just tell your neighbors and colleagues. The more people Marc reaches, the more people he can help. [2:26] Marc has released five chapters of the next edition of Repurpose Your Career to the Repurpose Your Career review team. Sign up to be part of the review team at CareerPivot.com/RYCTeam. [2:41] You will receive new chapters as they become available. Marc is looking for honest feedback and would love to get an honest review on Amazon.com after the book is released. [2:52] Marc’s plan is to release the book in late September and do both a virtual and a real book tour. He will be in Austin, the NYC Area, and D.C. in late September and in October. Marc would love to meet his readers and listeners. [3:13] Reach out to Marc at Podcasts@CareerPivot.com if you’d be willing to give him some advice on venues or groups who would be interested in hosting an event. [3:23] Next week, Marc will interview Mark Silverman of Amava.com. [3:29] Amava™’s mission statement is, “We want you to live a long, fulfilling life. We focus on social engagement because, according to research, it can be more important to wellness than genes, nutrition or fitness routines. It’s downright scary how dangerous it is to become isolated.” [3:54] This week, Marc is interviewing Diane Mulcahy. Marc shares her bio.to the Repurpose Your Career Podcast. [4:43] Marc welcomes Diane to the Repurpose Your Career podcast. Marc notes that most listeners are over 50, from the corporate world, with an employee mindset. One of the chapters in Diane’s book tells of an opportunity mindset. [5:24] How you work affects how you think about things. The employee mindset is relatively passive and conformative. The mentality is to outsource your professional development and financial stability to an employer, taking whatever benefits somebody gives you; you are reactive. [6:16] When you work independently, in order to be successful, you really have to change to an opportunity mindset or an entrepreneurial mindset; you are proactive. It takes ownership and going out and getting what you want. You have to think about what you want to get out of your professional life, take the reins, and drive toward your goals. [7:25] The opportunity mindset is about choosing the type of work you want to do, the level at which you want to operate, the rates you want to charge, and your revenue targets, then going out and getting them. [7:46] Marc says even employees should drop the employee mindset. It doesn’t make sense today. Employers expect employees to take care of their own training and professional development. [8:19] Diane agrees that even if you are an employee, you can really benefit from thinking about your mindset, and how you approach your work life and your professional life. You can bring an opportunity mindset to your work. If you don’t find the benefits you want at your existing company, you can find a new opportunity at a different company. [9:17] Diane suggests thinking about where you fit on the spectrum between employee mindset and opportunity mindset. Whichever way you are leaning, how does it affect your opportunities and how your career is going? How might you want to move along that continuum in the future? [9:40] Marc had an employee mindset for a long time, and it took something to really shake him up to get him to change. Several people in Marc’s online community now have portfolios of gigs; they would not have thought of that until Marc presented the idea to them that they didn’t have to have a single job. They are all over 60. [10:26] Diane explains the pathway to a portfolio gig. First, take the pressure off. Not every gig has to pay. Gigs that don’t pay can be valuable, too. They are easier to get. Volunteer gigs provide the opportunity to expand your network and develop new skills by doing. When you have finished that term, you have an actual portfolio to talk about. [12:44] It can be hard to figure out what you want to do if you have always had a corporate career. Gigs can be a nice, low-risk, low-commitment way to try things that you’re curious about or interested in and see if they fit. Try an industry new to you. Diane uses the example of film. Volunteer at a film festival. Get involved. [14:00] For gigs that pay, consider whether you can hang up your own shingle and deploy your skills to a new client base. Ask yourself if there is a way to stay involved with past clients or colleagues from the corporate world, for projects, referrals, or consulting gigs. [15:32] There are now online platforms for just about every industry there is. Go online, bid on some projects, and create a portfolio of gigs. Search for platforms in the industry and the sector where you’ve worked. [16:13] Marc recalls the art walk he visited last summer in Mexico. There were 90 artists and most of them were ‘gringos’ over 60. Most of them had not started creating art before moving to Mexico. They almost invariably started learning how to do their paintings by watching YouTube videos. [16:49] Diane notes resources for taking classes on edX.org, mooc.org, coursera.org, LinkedIn Learning, and more. For anything you want to learn, you can find an online class. Some are free, some are low-cost; they are all on-demand from the convenience of wherever you are. It’s an amazing opportunity to develop your knowledge and skills. [17:29] Marc tells everybody to listen to podcasts. “There’s a podcast for everything.” [17:51] To find gigs, first look toward your former employers and colleagues. You are a low-risk, known quantity to them with internal knowledge. Secondly, reach out to the broader network of people you have met over the years in work-related contexts or community situations. Ask for ideas for projects or consulting opportunities. [18:59] Thirdly, there are platforms popping up for every industry, every sector, and every skill set. Some fit small niches. Diane names a few: Upwork for a wide range of projects, Catalant matching consultants with companies, axiom for attorneys, toptal for software coders, and 99designs for graphic designers and marketers. [19:47] Look for a platform that targets our sector, industry and skill experience. [20:00] Diane created and teaches a class on the gig economy in the MBA program at Babson College in Boston. Diane gives her students an assignment to brainstorm a list of 10 potential side gigs that they could do to make money. Almost anyone can come up with a list of three to five. You have to stretch think of 10 gigs. Then they discuss them. [21:10] Talking about this list with someone else may spark new ideas based on what they thought of or they might suggest a gig for you that you hadn’t imagined. Other people see us differently than we see ourselves. They may have a different perspective on our talents that we take for granted. [21:52] This is a really good exercise if you're in transition, or thinking about transitioning. Spend some time in a creative mindset to come up with new ideas. See where that leads. [22:08] Marc talks about MSU (Making Stuff Up) disorder. Marc says it’s a very dark place when you’re inside your own head and you don’t know what you don’t know. Talking to other people can give you new ideas. So much has changed in employment over the last five years. Marc has a friend starting a Fulfillment by Amazon business. [23:44] Technology has really augmented and expanded the opportunities that are available. A lot of people ‘snowbird’ someplace else in the winter. That used to make it challenging to work. Now if you create something online where you can work remotely, you can really take your work wherever you go. [24:33] Diane interviewed people for her book who had jobs as coaches, design consultants, and even a psychologist, all of whom were operating their business online. They interact with their clients through Skype, Zoom, or Webex. It’s very freeing to be able to do that. [25:05] Daine’s book has a chapter on facing fears by reducing risks. She directed the chapter more at people who are considering making the transition from a job to a portfolio career. If you have already transitioned, you have overcome that fear. But all of us have fears about the future. [25:50] Diane recommends taking your fear and “wrestle it to the ground.” Put a name to it. What is the fear? Take that feeling of fear and articulate it for what it is. “I’m worried that I’m going to run out of money,” for example. Then lay out the risks around that and think of specific acts you can take to mitigate the risks. [27:14] One risk is that you’ll outlive your money. So, look at an investment. Another risk might be a big health problem. So, look at Long Term Care insurance. Or maybe change your living situation to a population center, with mass transit, deliveries, and health services close at hand. [28:15] Another risk might be the cost of living. Think about ways to earn additional income to supplement your retirement savings. [28:43] Diane recommends breaking down your big fears into specific actionable risks. Fears become a lot less scary when you break them down on paper. Then you can talk about them with other people who have already been retired for five or more years. Ask them how they dealt with these fears. Ask what else you should be thinking about. [29:51] Do the work yourself, to understand what your own fears and risks are. Then find ways to check and validate those fears and also create opportunities for action by discussing them with other people. It is calming and allows you to take control of your fears and manage them. This is an exercise that Diane’s MBA students say is powerful. [30:37] Marc is a fan of Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.com. Darren did a podcast episode where he asked, “Why don’t you figure out what’s the really worst thing that can happen if you do this?” Usually, you’ll find that the worst thing is not so bad. But if it is really bad, then you know you’ll need to do something about it. [31:06] Diane says that most people do jump to the worst-case scenario when they’re considering a specific action. It is helpful to assign probabilities to the likelihood of the fears coming to pass. Research and take action on reasonably likely scenarios to make sure they don’t happen. Triage the risks. [32:29] Time management as a gig worker is a topic that people leaving a traditional job don’t often think about. It is a real issue. [32:55] Diane talks about hiring a research assistant part-time to help while she was writing her book. The assistant came in at 9:00 and left at 6:00 because that was how she had always worked in her recent corporate job. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could work a different schedule. [33:58] As you transition to working for yourself, think about time differently. Give yourself time to experiment with the structure of your day to see what works. In a full-time job, other people structure your time for you. You may never have learned the skill to structure your own time. Figure out when you do deep, concentration work best. [35:02] Figure out when you are the most energetic and able to interact with the outside world. When is the best time for you to do meetings and phone calls, as opposed to deep work? What breaks should you take during the day? Do you need to go to the gym and reboot for the rest of the day? [35:44] You also need to structure your weeks. Diane tries not to schedule anything after 3:00 on Fridays. She takes a couple of hours to reflect on the week, create a priority list for the next week, and go to a yoga class or do something that allows her to mentally wind down and transition to the weekend. [36:30] Experiment and find your own habits that work for your productivity. Reflect on what it was like to go from a really structured full-time job to having a lot of time and learning how to structure it. It’s a challenge with a learning curve. It requires some compassion and kindness to yourself with a sense of learning and experimentation. [37:09] Marc largely does not work on Fridays. Friday morning, he blocks off for his hiking club. He doesn’t work on Saturdays, but he does work on Sunday afternoons. This is a schedule that works for him. He uses a virtual assistant. She has deadlines, which helps Marc. [37:37] Diane agrees you don’t have to be the hero and do everything yourself. A virtual assistant is a big help. It is good to build a team around you to keep you accountable and on track. Diane works with someone to do her monthly newsletter and keep her social media on track. Working with other people keeps Diane on time with deliverables. [38:29] As you leave your full-time job, consider whether you need that kind of outside accountability to get things done. That works really well for Diane, who is very deadline-oriented. Your team can be very part-time and still help you accomplish the goals that you want. [38:59] Marc is very horizontally-skilled. He knows how to do a lot of stuff. It took him so time to realize he didn’t need to do all of it. He had to be willing to find people to do things he either didn’t like to do or wasn’t very good at doing. [39:27] Diane emphasizes the point and ties it to building a portfolio of gigs. When you are faced with finding your own work to do, how do you start? You can learn all the new media skills yourself, or you can work with someone who is an expert in them. Focus on what you like to do and what you are good at and interested in; outsource the rest. [41:09] Some people run into problems in keeping momentum when they work independently. You have to sustain the motivation and the momentum yourself. If you are working with other people, you have projects underway, you have a plan outlined, you have interim deliverables, with deadlines. It’s a great way to maintain momentum. [42:08] Baby Boomers may not be used to building a team and hiring people to do things. Diane asks her students why shouldn’t they hire someone to free up their time to do the things that they want to do and that they’re good at doing? What is the highest and best use of your time? [42:50] By being a client, you are actually helping somebody else to build up their independent business and validating their skills and expertise and learning from them. Maybe you can refer them to other people you know. [43:26] You can reach Diane at DianeMulcahy.com and sign up for her monthly newsletter there, and for her question of the month to reflect on as you transition to working independently. Diane’s book is available on her website or on Amazon. [44:13] Marc thanks Diane for being on the Repurpose Your Career podcast. [44:23] Marc hopes this episode gave you some things to think about. [44:30] The Career Pivot Membership Community continues to help the approximately 50 members who are participating in the Beta phase of this project to grow and thrive. The community has moved on to the next phase where community members who have experienced success share their successes and teach others. [44:48] This is a community where everyone is there to help everyone else out. Marc is recruiting members for the next cohort.[44:55] If you are interested in the endeavor and would like to be put on the waiting list, please go to CareerPivot.com/Community. When you sign up you’ll receive information about the community as it evolves. [45:09] Those who are in these initial cohorts set the direction. This is a paid membership community with group coaching and special content. More importantly, it’s a community where you can seek help. Please go to CareerPivot.com/Community to learn more.[45:33] Marc invites you to connect with him on LinkedIn.com/in/mrmiller. Just include in the connection request that you listen to this podcast. You can look for Career Pivot on Facebook, LinkedIn, or @CareerPivot on Twitter. [45:53] Please come back next week, when Marc will interview Mark Silverman of Amava.com [45:59] Marc thanks you for listening to the Repurpose Your Career podcast. [46:04] You will find the show notes for this episode at CareerPivot.com/episode-136.  [46:11] Please hop over to CareerPivot.com and subscribe to get updates on this podcast and all the other happenings at Career Pivot. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, the Google Podcasts app, Podbean, the Overcast app, or the Spotify app.

Evolve Your Blog Does it feel like you’re going around in circles with your blog? It's easy to revolve in your blogging. Let’s look back at my keynote presentation titled, Evolve Don't Revolve, from ProBlogger’s Evolve event in 2017.  It highlights my journey as a blogger and areas where you can evolve your own blog and online business. Plus, the 2017 keynote features a Q & A with Pat Flynn, who shares how he achieved success by evolving his blog, Smart Passive Income. https://www.slideshare.net/problogger/evolve-dont-revolve ProBlogger’s Evolve 2019 event in Melbourne is happening soon!   August 10: Training Day (Beginner/Intermediate) Four key areas of building a successful blog August 10-11: Mastermind (Intermediate/Advanced) Spend time with other bloggers, online creators, and entrepreneurs to workshop your blog and business Jeff Goins will present this year’s keynote titled, Finding Your Voice as a Blogger. He’s the author of Real Artists Don't Starve. Fellow expert bloggers, Nicole Avery, James Schramko, Kelly Exeter, and Shayne Tilley, will talk about their knowledge and experience. For more information about Evolve 2019, go to Problogger.com/events. Don’t forget to sign-up by June 30, 2019, to get the Early Bird price.  Links and Resources for Evolve Don't Revolve Your Blogging: ProBlogger Evolve Event  Evolve: Training Day Evolve: Mastermind Jeff Goins Real Artists Don't Starve by Jeff Goins  Nicole Avery of Planning with Kids James Schramko of SuperFastBusiness Kelly Exeter (writer and editor)  Shayne Tilley of 99Designs Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income  Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there, friends. It's Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. Welcome to Episode 278 of the ProBlogger Podcast. The podcast is designed to help you start a blog, to build that blog, and to monetize it.  Today, I've got a special treat for you. It is a keynote that I gave a couple of years ago at our ProBlogger event in Melbourne. It's titled Evolve Don't Revolve. It's all about how as bloggers and online entrepreneurs, it's really easy to revolve in our blogging, to just go around in circles. I don't know if you can relate to that of feeling going around in circles. I certainly can. There's been so many times over my 15 years of blogging where I've realized I'm just treading water, I stopped growing, I stopped evolving. The call of this keynote is to look at seven different areas where you can evolve your blog and online business. Also, a taster of what we do at our Evolve event, at our ProBlogger event, which we've been running it for quite a few years. We've got our new event coming up in August of this year on the 10th and 11th of August, again, in Melbourne. I want to tell you a little bit about that event before we get into the keynote. There's two options for those of you who want to come to our event in Melbourne. On the 10th of August, we've got a training day. This is a one day event for beginners, intermediate level bloggers. It's also probably relevant for other content creators as well.  If you head to problogger.com/events you can actually see a rundown of what we're doing at that particular event. Largely though, it's me. You'll get a full day of me teaching on the four key areas of building a successful blog. I'm going to talk for about an hour about content and crafting great content for your blog. I'll talk about evolving your engagement with your readers, how to build community on your blog, how to find new readers for your blog, and then, how to monetize your blog.  This is perfect if you are a beginner or intermediate level. If you're just starting out,

Darren Rowse - 16 June 2019

Darren Rowse - 16 June 2019

Creating your personal brand will allow you to unearth high revenue opportunities and other professional/social advantages. Fortunately, building a personal brand is easier than ever thanks to all of the valuable resources available. Just follow certain keys to creating a personal brand and you'll set yourself up for success. Here are 4 Ideas for Creating your Personal Brand. 1. Blogging: One of the easiest ways to build a personal brand is to purchase a piece of internet real estate. With today's technology, creating a blog is almost a necessity when creating your own personal brand. Luckily, blogging has proven to be a lucrative personal branding and business venture for those who are willing to commit to regularly updating their blog with fun, fascinating and interesting content. (You can find a freelance blog designer at www.Elance.com or www.Guru.com.) Invest in a domain name and then create a blog; ideally it should be yourname.com or yourname.me. You can also reserve a domain name that represents your slogan or product name. What do bloggers Darren Rowse, Steve Pavlina and Yaro Starak have in common? All three of these men were considered just another small business owner before they built their blog kingdoms. They worked normal jobs (Darren Rowse was juggling two jobs and freelance work) and lived normal lives before they wrote their first blog posts. These men worked hard on carving out their niches in the blogosphere, creating a following for their blogs and building their own personal brands. Because of this, they are now all successful internet entrepreneurs, earning in the range of $10,000 to $30,000 each month through their blogs alone. Not too shabby of a return on a small blogging/personal branding venture, is it? 2. Carve out your Niche: Creating a blog will only be an effective idea for creating your personal branding if you've carefully carved out your niche. Putting together a blog that discusses random topics isn't likely to build a solid following of readers. When you carve out a niche topic, you'll be able to build a loyal following because your readers will be interested in what you have to say - because no one else is saying it. Here's a tip: you're more likely to create blog posts with depth when you have a personal interest in the topics your blog is based on. Analyze your passions and choose your niche carefully. 3. Streamline your branding: Because your blog is where the world will go to read information you have to share, it's important to work on the aesthetic side of branding your blog. Hire a graphic designer to create a logo and blog theme, and then carry that theme into the background of your social networking profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, etc.). Since you're selling your brand, it makes sense to be sure the message is consistent. However, that does not mean be boring. Be as creative as you like, just be sure that your brand accurately represents your niche market. When you are successfully consistent, visitors will automatically know it's a piece of your internet real estate, even if they don't immediately see your name. 4. Build Relationships: One of the best tips for creating your business brand is get involved with social media. Creating a strong web presence - a consistent presence - will help establish you as a frequent web user. This can be done by creating personal profiles at several of the most popular social networking websites (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, etc.). The key here is to be consistently interactive online; building relationships with other web users requires you to do so. It is through your consistent accessibility that potential clients will see and hear you. It takes some time, but using social media to build relationships (and a client base) is an effective method. You may also want to consider creating an account on YouTube where you can post informative “How-To” videos or webinars. Use those social media accounts to link back to your website or product/service landing page. One word of caution: remember that anything you write online has the potential to reach millions of people, so don't say anything you're going to regret. In addition, it's best to leave potentially volatile topics (politics, war, immigration, discrimination) alone, unless your business venture is specifically politically or controversially based. There are many tips for creating your business brand available, but these four ideas for creating your personal brand will help you build a strong web presence and following. The internet is full of opportunity; you don't necessarily have to be an expert in order to build a strong personal brand online. Any business owner has the ability to create a huge internet following with an internet connection, a personable presence, and a commitment to success. If you are getting value from any of The Accountability Minute messages, please take a number to leave me a short rating and review. I would really appreciate it, and love to hear from you and requests for topics you would find of value. Go to https://www.accountabilitycoach.com/Achieve.Your.Goals.Free.Gifts.Now/ and get 3 FREE gifts including a special report on 10 Power Tips for Getting Focused, Organized, and Achieving Your Goals Now. Join the Silver Inner Circle (IT'S FREE) and receive 10% off on all products and services in addition to having access to many assessments and complimentary resources so you can begin achieving your goals in the timeframe you want, so you can have the life you desire. Get started today by going to https://www.accountabilitycoach.com/coaching-store/inner-circle-store/ and Join the FREE Silver Inner Circle. Aim for what you want each and every day! Anne Bachrach The Accountability Coach™ The Results Accelerator™ To help you stay focused and on track to achieving your goals, check out these other high-value resources. - Subscribe to my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/annebachrach) - Subscribe to my Blog (https://www.accountabilitycoach.com/blog/) - Anne's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TheAccountabilityCoach) - Anne's Linked-in page https://www.linkedin.com/in/annebachrach Business professionals and entrepreneurs who utilize my proven business-success systems make more money, work less, and enjoy better work life balance. Author of Excuses Don't Count; Results Rule, Live Life with No Regrets, No Excuses, and the Work Life Balance Emergency Kit, The Roadmap To Success with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard, and more.

One of the misconceptions people have about Quiet Light is that we do more e-commerce than content transactions. Fun fact, our top two transactions ever have been content and SaaS deals. Our guest today, Bruno Bornsztein, is a web entrepreneur who has conquered the content domain via his two websites, Curbly, and Mandmade DIY. Bruno is what we like to call an “old school” entrepreneur, someone who successfully combines his own web development expertise with entrepreneurship. Equal parts content creator, developer, businessman, and design aficionado, Bruno got his start during the wild west days of the influencer platform. Nowadays, he's in the process of launching a new SaaS product to make success more fluid for influencers. Episode Highlights: The starting up of Curbly, the monetization, and the changes the site took on over the years. At what point the site started publishing sponsored posts for large companies and how these companies found him. We delve into the world of influencer marketing and how Bruno built a brand, rather than an individual, that then became the influencer. We discuss how influencers should pull back from the spotlight rather than build that personal brand that cannot operate without their personal daily input. The metrics that exist to measure the influencer impact. Bruno talks about his transition from a content site to building his Influencer Kit Saas tool and the phase the product is in now. The potential challenges in scaling The Influencer Kit quickly to meet market need. The target clients for The Influencer Kit tool. Transcription: Joe: Mark, one of the things that I think is a bit of a misnomer here about Quiet Light is people think that we do much more e-commerce physical product business brokering than we do content. And in fact the largest transaction I've ever done, the top two have been content and SaaS. And I understand you had a friend of yours, Bruno from one of your Mastermind groups on to talk about both that … just both content and a new SaaS business that he's got from his own content site. Can you chat about that? Mark: Yeah of course. Yeah, Bruno … the guy is an old school entrepreneur and I'm doing air quotes right now for old school because in the world of the Internet is there an old school yeah? But in my opinion, he's old school because the guy started out developing his own stuff. When he started his first business Curbly.com which is a home improvement blog. He developed the code himself, designed everything, and then he was writing the blog post as well. And now that he's transitioning into a new SaaS product called InfluenceKit he's once again developing the code on the backend and doing pretty much everything on his own and lives in that world of web development plus entrepreneurialism. A super, super smart guy when it comes to that side of it. So he and I actually … this podcast is really just he and I catching up online and walking down memory lane. But there were a couple of things that came out of this that I thought were fascinating. And one thing that I love about his business Curbly, and there's a couple of other guys that I talked to here local to me in the content world, is they're treating their businesses like influencers and they actually talk about it as influencer marketing. And I don't know about you Joe but I … when I think of an influencer I think of that 21 year old model wearing sneakers and putting them on Instagram and getting paid just to post wearing those sneakers or is just like that right? The personality based influencers. But what these guys are doing is they have their blogs which are completely irrelevant to their personality and I'm not … calling it a blog might be a little bit meaning because it has so much more content than that but these sites are influential. They have lots of followers for what they're doing and large companies are coming to them and paying them to use their products and write about those products through to their sites. So when you look at a content site we often think well how do you monetize that? Well there is AdThrive, there's Google AdSense, and maybe you charge for advertising but these guys are generating quite a bit more money by getting these sponsored posts. So Bruno and I talked a lot about that. We talked about how did he get into this in the first place with these sponsored posts, how did he attract some of these larger advertisers which are obviously paying quite a bit to have these sponsored posts. But then we talked about his next venture which is getting into that SaaS base. He realized that these companies that were paying him to do these sponsored posts, they wanted good metrics. They wanted to know how many people were clicking on the post and viewing them, how many people were sharing these posts. And so he develops offer internally for that reporting, now he's developing a full on SaaS product and we talked about how do you grow a new SaaS business the right way because everyone thinks … and I'm sure you've seen this Joe in the SaaS community, you kind of have this idea of all right you create your product, get the right fit, and then just scale, scale, scale, scale, scale, right? Well, not always right? And he wants to make sure that he scales the right way and has a really good product market fit. Joe: Yeah I think doing it slow and doing it right is much more important than trying to get big … too big too fast because you make mistakes and lose good customers along the way because they'll go somewhere else. I love the sounds of this because as you said most of the content sites that we've brokered are using AdSense and AdThrive and things of that nature. Even the largest one that I did was and there's not a whole lot of sponsored posts that are driving revenue. So I think that's fantastic and I love the off shoot of an entrepreneur telling his story or her story about how they had another business, in this case, the SaaS product to serve those customers that were doing sponsored posts. So I think it's great. Let's go to it. Mark: Hey Bruno thanks for joining me. I really appreciate you taking the time here for a quick conversation. You and I are local to each other. We meet up once every few months with a couple of other guys and just talk shop so it's kind of weird to be talking to you. Bruno: I know we should almost just get together in the same spot, right? Mark: That would have been good planning on my part and you know I don't do necessarily great planning all the time. So we have a little tradition here at the Quiet Light podcast where we have our guest introduce themselves. We like to say it's because you know yourself better than I do but really it's just because I don't do show prep so— Bruno: Sure. Guess what I didn't do any show prep either so I think I could probably introduce you better than me. So my name is … as you know my entrepreneurial, Bornsztein. I'm a local St. Paul guy like you are. And my background is in publishing online and web development. So I'm really a web developer who got into running digital content sites for a long time. So what that looks like is I launched a blog called Curbly.com in 2006 and another blog called ManMade DIY in 2010. I ran those for 10 years or more and in the last couple years I've been focusing on a new project called InfluenceKit which is a Software as a Service product that's targeted at digital influencers, content creators, basically people like who I used to be. Mark: Right now you come from this kind of old school or what I consider to be old school Internet entrepreneur. And I used to fall in this category. The first business that I built online, I built the code and I built it in Pearl if you can believe that and I didn't know a lick of code but I figured it out. You're still doing that to this day though, right? I mean like InfluenceKit it's a SaaS product you're building; we'll talk about that in a minute. You're doing most of the development on that. Bruno: Yeah I'm the lead developer for InfluenceKit. I was also lead technical person for my content sites which was good and bad. There's upsides and downsides to being technical like that. I like you, learned to do a lot of this stuff a long time ago when the way that you were to do web development was usually do source. So a lot of things I learned was just by looking at another site, looking at the source, trying to pick apart how it worked. Fortunately, that process has gotten a lot more easier now so there's a lot more resources out there for people to learn how to become web developers. But yeah I definitely like being involved in the technical side. I think the challenge for me is figuring out when to disengage from that and how much I should be involved and how much I need to try to delegate. So that's definitely something that I'm working on. Mark: Yeah. Alright so I want to start out and I want to break this conversation into two parts, I want to talk about InfluenceKit and what you're building there in the SaaS realm but I want to talk also about Curbly and ManMade DIY is that right? Okay. You and also I know some of the other guys that we know have a model with their content sites. I think a lot of people when they hear content sites are just thinking okay I'm going to put something up. I'm going to put on pass a bad network and just kind of run from there but you guys do quite a bit more. Tell me a little bit about starting up Curbly and maybe the beginning story of that and then what its primary means of monetization has been over the years. Bruno: Yeah it's actually kind of an interesting story because it wasn't really intended to be a blog. The way Curbly came about was this: I was doing freelance web development; I took a contract building a social network, this was in 2005. This was before Facebook was publicly available to everybody.  You still had to have an EDU address to get in. And this network that we built was intended to kind of like compete with that in some sense. After that project was done I had some time on my hands, a little bit of money saved up, so a friend of mine and I decided to build something and being the sort of non-strategic person that I am we just kind of … it was a little bit random; I had bought a house, I was working in my house that was kind of an area that interested me so somehow without a whole lot of forethought we came on this idea of a social network for home improvement. The idea that Curbly was meant to be was a social network UGC site … User Generated Content site that all was focused around the home, design … I'm remodeling my kitchen here's pictures of what I want to do, I'm looking for ideas for my bathroom does anybody have some? It sounds a lot like a site you've probably heard of which is House. House is that. I think we wanted Curbly to be House, we just didn't really know it at that time. So what ended up happening was Curbly sort of organically transitioned into something else. When we started the site we built it really quickly in about six weeks, the MBP of it. And the first thing was well we don't have any content on here how are people going to want to like join this social network when there's nothing there. So we just posted for it; freelance writers on Craigslist and had people start kind of seeing content. And that was not because we wanted to be a publisher or a media company but because we just wanted something on the site. But over the first three or four years it just kind of … I realized that there was a business model there and that was easier actually than trying to become House. And for a variety of reasons turning into House just like didn't happen. But I learned that actually there was a way of generating high quality content for a reasonable price using freelancers and in monetizing that. So yeah over the course we were really lucky with Curbly. I think in our first month we went from zero to 250,000 patrons a month. Mark: Wait, wait halt. What? How did you do that? Was it all organic SEO or were you keying in on other—? Bruno: No it was luck. We got to be lucky, we got on Dig, we got on … remember Dig? Mark: I remember Dig. I got Dig to the front page maybe twice in my life. Bruno: We got on Dig, we got on a few other things; Life Hacker it was a big blog back then and they posted a link to one of our project that somebody posted. Yeah, it was just lucky. I talk about this a lot … like sometimes if you would ask me at the time in November or December 2006 after Curbly had been live for two months like how things were going I would've been … I would think I would have said uhh I don't know, it's okay not great. And I just think I talk to a lot of like younger entrepreneurs about this a lot which is that at the beginning it's really hard to know whether you're succeeding or failing especially if you don't have any experience. So the way I'd phrase that is success or failure look the same a lot of times when you're just starting out. And it's really about experience and context. So at the time, our goal was to build House, right? And so we wanted 250,000 users to sign up to Curbly because that's … active users was the metric we were looking at. And because we didn't have that, because we weren't seeing that it was kind of like what are we doing wrong? It's not working. Not really appreciating that we had actually been really successful in another way that we didn't understand.  So I think for anybody who's … is entrepreneurial but maybe hasn't done a lot of things before just remember that you maybe … it may be very difficult to disentangle whether you're succeeding or failing you just don't … you might not have enough experience to really know the difference. Mark: Yeah I know with Quiet Light it was the same thing. For the first five, six, seven years of Quiet Light I did the same thing and people would ask me like well what are your plans and I'm like I don't know I might just make a boutique and not really do much more with it or I might just kind of wind it down over the next few years. But I just kept kind of going and going and going and it wasn't until I really went to hire Jason on initially, Jason Yellowitz, that I was kind of like there might actually be something here that I wasn't expecting. But you're right, success and failure do look the same. At the beginning at least they can look the same. When did you start taking on these sponsored posts and just to be clear for everyone listening you do have like AdThrive and stuff like that that you monetize through but a big bulk of your revenue is coming from getting sponsored posts from major companies like Home Depot and other large companies that are looking at your traffic, at your audience and saying we want that audience so we're going to pay you to test this product or to be able to feature this product in one of your DIY stuff. When did you start making that transition? Bruno: Yeah 2009 was the very first sponsored thing that we ever did. So that was very early on. It was with a fabric company who I won't name but it was kind of a failure for a variety of different reasons. But it was the first time we got paid just to create content on behalf of a brand. And then it ramped up. So I would say in 2009, 0% of our revenue was sponsored content or influencer marketing [is what it's called now and 100% was … you know the rest about probably 95% was programmatic display ads and the rest was affiliate links. And then back then it was even okay to do text links. That quickly went sour but there was a period where it was okay to have text links on your site. And then probably by 2016, 50% of our revenue became sponsored content. So it did sort of take a little while to ramp up. And it took a while before we started seeing interest from established brands and agencies. But definitely by 2012, 2013 you are starting to get pitches from PR agencies, brands, ad agencies that were interested in partnering with you to talk about their products. Mark: So what changed for those agencies to start recognizing you? Did you have to do outreach for that or was it really just them picking up on the metrics that you guys were supporting at the time? Bruno: You know I think a little of both. I definitely started doing … being proactive once I saw that there was an opportunity to make real money there. And so definitely being proactive, reaching out to people even just replying, you know we always got … as any kind of publisher, you're always going to get a lot of press releases and inquiries and people that want you to talk about their thing. So by proactive, I even mean just replying to those and saying like hey you know we're not necessarily going to cover this product this month but if you're interested in sponsored content we have these opportunities. So just being like a lot more responsive and offering that. I think on their side they didn't really start seeing metrics until much later. Even today a lot of influencer marketing happens with very little metric reporting which is something that InfluenceKit is trying to change. But I don't know that it was that they started seeing big metrics I think it was that the people that were working in those organizations were more digitally native. Like they understood that landscape more. In 2009 I mean I … in 2009 I had people who didn't know what a blog was. There were still people who are like what's a blog, why would I … how do you make money on it, how would you … why would a company pay to have their content on it or whatever? By 2016 that wasn't happening anymore. Everybody knew what a blog was. Everybody knew what social media was. And so the idea that a brand would want to communicate with your audience just made more sense. They understood that like okay blogs are a real thing. They have a real audience. They're communicating … they're able to communicate your message and help you get your branding out there. And so I think it just became a little bit easier to convince them of that. Mark: Yeah it reminds me of … do you remember Darren Rowse from ProBlogger? Bruno: Yeah. Mark: He was kind of the big guy who was making all the push of saying you know what these blogs you can actually make a lot of money with them. Bruno: Yeah. Mark: A bit at the forefront of this movement. We're getting in this weird, wild world of influencer marketing something which I know very, very little about personally. And I think one of the interesting observations here … and I'm sure a lot of people listening are kind of like well yeah, of course, Mark just kind of get with the program but it's the idea that I think influencers I think that Instagram person, right? Up on Instagram on and it's the person themselves and they're making sure that all the pictures have the same colors in them and fit the 3 by 3 matrix that they want to have so it looks all nice. But Curbly itself was the influencer in this in this situation. Bruno: Right. Mark: So you built a brand that was an influencer. Bruno: Yeah. Yes. So Curbly always was … Curbly never had a … it was never a personality driven site and that helped us in some ways and hurt us in some ways. But yes in our case it was much more about the site than any individual person contributing to the site. Because our site was driven by people like freelancers and a few staff people that were creating the content. But in general yeah there is much … you do seem more of like the individual sort of pseudo celebrity influencer although there is a lot more out there than just that. There are a lot of sites out there that aren't so tied to the individual that's running them that's really more about the content that they create and the audience that they are able to pull together. Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:18:39.7] anything about like the other guys who are now over [inaudible 00:18:42.4], right? Totally the same sort of thing where they can do that and be a full blogger pro as well right and all the brands that he and Lindsey have as well which is so influential for what they do. Bruno: I think a lot of bloggers and digital content creators that I talk to this is a topic that comes up because in terms of selling sponsored content it can be easier if you are sort of a known personality. But in terms of actually having that be your business not … first, not everybody wants to do that because it is difficult to have … to be that kind of an influencer you really have to expose so much of your personal life and really be vulnerable and that's not for everybody. Not everybody wants to do that. And then just from a … strictly from a sort of business strategy point of view, it's not always smart to make the business so reliant on you. You may be a huge Instagram influencer bringing down a lot of money through your influencer contracts but what do you do when you want to sell that business? That's a really hard business to get out of. It's a really hard business to cut back because if you want to say like scale back your work or you have a family or a kid who's going to take over that role? So I have talked to a lot of those types of influencers about like how can you sort of start to pull yourself back. How can you supplement your business and make it a little bit more sustainable and not so reliant on you as a person? Mark: Yeah absolutely. That's the same advice that we would give anybody out there is that I totally get the appeal of a building a personal brand. And I think a lot of people start with that in mind. Like I'm going to build a brand around myself, I'm going to be the celebrity. But then you get to the point where like this is a lot of work and I've been growing it for five years and I'm tired of posting my life for the public to see every single day and so how do you convert that over to an actual business? It can be done and I've seen a few cases where people have done it but it's a process. Bruno: It is and I just think it's something that … you know because so many of these businesses do start off as hobbies or side projects it's not something that people think about right away but I think it is important to think about. You need to start thinking about it as a business, building a team that can support you. If you need to be the face of the brand okay that might be fine as long as you are thinking about it and I'm also thinking about how that might affect your ability like you said to sell a business or change your involvement in the business. Mark: Yeah. Alright, let's talk a little bit about the influencer marketing side of it and the metrics and just kind of moves into what you're doing now with InfluenceKit. You said it yourself there's not a lot of metrics that were necessarily expected from the people or even deliverable for the people that were paying for these sponsored posts. What have you done there and maybe through Curbly or that you just kind of learned over the years that's really helpful for somebody paying for a sponsored post to start to key in on in terms of those metrics. Bruno: Yeah I mean really where this came out of was like I said around 2016 we started doing a lot of sponsored content. And the first problem we had was just producing it efficiently. Not even reporting on it but just like honestly making sure that we did everything we promised we would do. I mean I know it sounds kind of silly but when you're doing … I think that we were probably doing three blog posts a day on Curbly, we're doing something like four or five sponsored projects or campaigns a month on Curbly. That's just a lot of moving parts. Like did we … are we supposed to do Instagram for Home Depot and how many pins were we supposed to do and what was the blog post supposed to include and is it cap is it the Home Depot or just Home Depot? I mean these are all little details but it makes of a difference when you start working with those brands because they expect a level of professionalism and you want to deliver that. So that was the first problem it was like okay we just don't have a good system for this. And that's kind of where the precursor to InfluenceKit came. It was just an internal tool that I built to help our team. Just to help everybody keep on the same page, what we have to do, when is it due, did we do it; simple right? And we used that. We used that tool for a long time. We used it both for our sponsor content but also for our editorial planning. It was great. It was really helpful. Then at 2017, 2018 I started thinking like man, we're just not doing a very good job of showing these sponsors their ROI of what we did for them. Like they're paying us money, we're getting good deals, we're getting as much money as we think we should be getting, we're creating this really good content but that's kind of where it stops. And I realized that that was a weakness. And so then I started looking at well how can we report, how can we go back and report on this? Doing it manually sucks and I'm somebody like if I do something twice I never want to have to do it again. Like once I've done something twice I'm like okay I should build something. So that's where InfluenceKit came out of. And it really just lets you automate the reporting piece of that process. So that for us, when we're doing, say four sponsored campaigns a month each of those campaigns might have four or five separate deliverables; things that we have to deliver back to the brand and report on. That's 20 different things. We can just dump those on to InfluenceKit and send the brand a report. So yeah I mean that's kind of where we're at now. The industry as a whole is really kind of still up in the air, people are starting to ask for a lot more metrics but not all. And that's kind of part of my mission with InfluenceKit is. I want to see every blogger doing this. I think it's to their benefit and I think that the biggest benefit is going to be when the industry realizes that there is reporting on this stuff they're going to start opening the floodgates. And by that I mean there's going to be a lot more money coming in and available to do this kind of stuff because they can actually measure the results. Mark: Let's talk about InfluenceKit … and I love the transition here. You've been doing content, sponsored posts, all these and then internally like you said if you do something twice you want to build a tool for it and you started building the tool and it starts evolving and the next thing you know you have on your hands what could easily become a SaaS application which is what you are really focusing on right now. So you just finished an [inaudible 00:25:03.5] you just finished a kind of an introductory like get in the door sort of program with InfluenceKit for a limited number of people and you're in the testing stage with them right now is that right? Bruno: Yeah so we're essentially in a sort of like a pre-launch phase right now we're letting in a very limited number of people. And that's really … that's not because you know we're snooty or anything it's just there's we're a very small team. It's myself and two other co-founders. And I think that we want to get it right. We're trying to figure out and I think all SaaS apps probably deal with this but what's the growth rate that we actually think we can achieve and we actually can support. I think that there might be a little bit of a misconception that you just like want to grow as fast as you can as soon as you can like just grow, grow, grow, grow. I don't know but I don't want to do that you know. I want to grow this business at a rate that is sustainable that we can actually keep up with. I don't want to be working nights and weekends right now. So yeah we are … where we are is we're letting people in. We're kind of testing out the product with them making improvements and changes based on early customer feedback and then figuring out okay now what? Like we think we have product market fit, we spent about six months kind of convincing ourselves that that's the case and now it's like okay well how do we figure out how to grow and like I said at what rate we want to try to grow at. Mark: So a couple of questions that can come to mind here, I'll ask the easier one first and that is you talked about not wanting to necessarily just grow as fast you can, scale as fast as you can. What are some of the restraints that you're seeing that if you were to open it back up and … our of millions of listeners are listening to this podcast and they start knocking on your door and they're like hey we want in Bruno, we want in. What are some of the challenges that you guys would have in scaling quickly? Bruno: Oh man I would say first of all let's just back up and obviously it would be a great problem to have that million and millions of people— Mark: It's a good problem to have millions of listeners as well. Bruno: You know I'm not like that and so I don't want to just make that assumption. Obviously, we need to work really hard still to even have that problem. But what are the scaling problems? I think the first scaling problem would be people. SaaS apps at least ours, I suppose I should speak for everyone but ours are still pretty heavily dependent on people. You really need to support people, you need customer support, you need onboarding. There's still a lot of time that goes into it and so that would be the first problem. Then with that comes a bunch of other problems like scaling an organization so that you're building … yes, you're building a product but you're also building a company. And in some sense, the company is like the more important product because if you can build a good solid organization then you'll do other good things and good products will come out of that. So we're really trying to be conscious of that like okay if we suddenly had to hire three customer support people how would we do that? How would we train them? How would we all stay on task? So I think scaling up people would be a big constraint. From a tech point of view for sure, there are some things we'd run into as well. InfluenceKit, in particular, relies on a lot of API's so … and for the non-technical people that just means we have to go out and grab stats from a bunch of different sources; Facebook, Instagram, Google Analytics. All of that takes server time. All of those API's have rate limits. Whenever you're building software you know doing something at a small scale and then just like growing it to a bigger scale is not as easy as just … it's not like we multiply things linearly. Things get way more complicated, way more difficult to debug. And that's not to say that I'm not excited about solving those problems; I am. But yeah I want to do it in a sane way. I think if we were to suddenly add … if we were suddenly to triple our user base like in a month I would be spending a lot of late nights doing things that I don't want to be doing. Mark: I totally understand that. Building the organization side I think is really important. Whenever you're scaling anything at all having that foundation to be able to scale on is crucial because you will just completely buckle under the weight of growing rapidly. Who's the client for InfluenceKit? Who are you trying to target? Obviously, digital creators would make sense but it's not just mom bloggers. Bruno: So we think of our customer as professional bloggers. I know that when we started out you kind of mentioned when you think of influencers you think Instagram and for sure you know that's legit but as we talked about and we talked about this a lot who we can picture as our customer it's somebody whose primary platform is content creation on a website that they own and their social platforms are supplementary to that. And when I say professional I mean like if they're making their living off of this, like they're supporting their family. They might even have an employee or two. We look at it anywhere from there up to what you might consider more like a small media organization; a site that has five or 10 or 20 employees. Beyond that, you don't think about that really as our market so much because at that scale there are other tools for those people and you don't really want to swim in those waters. So that's really who we think about and the interesting thing is that we've started hearing from a lot of agencies and brands about this. Really not our plan but what's happening is influencers are sending reports to their sponsors; the people that are paying them and then we're hearing from them saying we could use this. A great problem to have, it's a little bit like of an existential mini crisis for us because we're all in front … we come from this background, we're bloggers, we set out really with a mission to build a tool to help empower people like us and we don't want to just like pivot and start serving a completely different market at the same time. I mean when you have people asking to use your thing and who wanted to pay you, you need to listen. So we're trying to navigate that and see how we can do it. Mark: Alright that sounds like a really good problem to have and sounds as well like we maybe pivoting down the road into matching influencers as well. Not to plan your path for you but it just seems like a natural extension that might be happening as well. Cool. Well, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast here talking about some of these things and I think we probably could have broken this up into two because just thinking about all the questions to deal with on the sell side. If I ask another question now we'd go on for 15 more minutes. Bruno: Okay. Mark: So I'm going to stop it now and I'm going to say I want to have you back to check in as you get past that kind of first initial enrollment and talk about how things have all been in this influencer space. I love the idea and just thinking about influencers outside of the Instagram model, thinking about it more in terms of a brand and just kind of this story is … well, it's fantastic so thanks so much for coming on. Bruno: Alright. Yeah thanks for having me. I'd be glad to come back and chat with you here on that episode. Mark: Alright. Looking forward to meet up with you. See you again soon. Bruno: Alright sounds good. Thanks, Mark. Links and Resources: Curbly Mandmade DIY

Darren Rowse - 24 March 2019

Darren Rowse - 24 March 2019

31 Days to Build a Better Blog Today’s the day to sign up for our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course. Why? Well, it’s 50% off for a limited time. And if you register by the end of February you’ll get to be a part of our 31-day guided sprint in March. While the course has evolved, it remains the #1 reason most blogs become successful. But you need to consistently take action to implement what you learn.   The four pillars of blogging are actions and habits you should develop to grow and profit from your blog. Create great content Promote your content Enhance your relationships with your readers Monetize your blog Each day of the course you’ll be taught practical things to do for your blog, including: Setting objectives and goals Creating an editorial calendar Developing social media and email strategies Creating pillar content Optimizing for SEO Identifying and understanding your audience Strengthening reader engagement You don’t have to take the course to become an action-oriented blogger. But if you need help and want to give your blog a burst of love to get it back on track, feel free to join us. Links and Resources for The Secret to Building a Better Blog: Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hey there and welcome to episode 277 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of ProBlogger, which is a site for bloggers and prebloggers designed to help them to start and grow profitable blogs. You can learn more about ProBlogger and all we do over at problogger.com. In today’s episode number 277, we’re going to talk a little bit of our secret of growing your blog. In fact, I think it’s the number one way to grow a blog and this ties into a promotion that we’ve got on at the moment on our 31 Days To Build A Better Blog course. I know many of you have gone through our Start A Blog course over the last couple of months and to continue the good work that you’ve done, we’ve decided to make 31 Days To Build A Better Blog 50% off for the next week or so until the end of February. Also in the month of March, we’re going to sprint through it. We are doing it as a group where we can support you and get bloggers interacting together. I’ll tell you a little bit more about that later in the episode. But if you do want to check out 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and grab it at 50% off, head over at problogger.com/31days. You can also find it through our courses tab over at problogger.com and in today’s show notes. Let’s get into today’s show where I do want to talk about the number one thing that is going to help you to grow your blog. In preparation for our 31 day sprint, I want to talk about why we had so much success with the 31 day program. I want to talk about the reason that they’ve been built into that course that I’ve seen help many bloggers over the years and I’ve seen help me as well. Over the years, I think it was back in 2007, I started 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and it’s been in many forms since then. In fact, I’ve counted seven different ways we’ve presented this program. Originally, it started off as a series of blog posts in I think it was in 2006–2007, and then I did that same series that evolved that every time, three times on the blog. It was completely for free. It was just a series of blog posts. At the end of the third series, I turned it into an ebook and then I updated the ebook into a second version. I think second version came out in 2012. Later on, I did it again on the podcast for free and then more recently, we’ve turned it into a course in the last year or so. There’ve been these seven different versions of 31 Days To Build A Better Blog and every time...

Learn How to Start a Successful Podcast Do you already have a blog, and want to expand into another medium? Then why not start a podcast? A lot of our Facegroup members have asked questions about starting a podcast, especially about gear, content, engagement, hosting, launching and monetization. And to help me answer all those questions I called on an expert. Craig Hewitt is the founder of Podcast Motor and Castos. When Craig started his own podcast, he quickly discovered that audio editing and producing a podcast was a pain. So he started Podcast Motor to help others. The technicalities of podcasting almost stopped me from starting the ProBlogger podcast. That’s why I turned to Craig and his team to handle them. Craig shares the nuts and bolts of podcasting: Reach existing audience in a different way, or reach an entirely new audience. Establish a dedicated hosting platform to store and distribute your media files. Differentiate yourself to develop a brand and identity (i.e. your accent). Start a podcast with everything you need for less than $100. Be comfortable with speaking, and assemble enough content to talk about. Identify and prepare guests to be on your podcast. Create an intro by recording it yourself or outsourcing it to a voiceover artist. Find a room without flat walls and hard spaces to eliminates echoes. (Try a closet). Edit audio to match your style (buttoned-up, conversational, etc.) Put your podcast on Android and Apple platforms, including Apple Podcast (formerly iTunes), Google Podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and YouTube. Get and grow your audience by getting your podcast listed in search engines. Ask listeners to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and share with others. Record five episodes before launching. Then launch with two episodes, plus or minus an Episode 0 that offers a description of what listeners can expect from your podcast. Engage your listeners by using a call to action through a link in the podcast audio, or continue a podcast discussion and connect with audience via a Facebook group. Metrics don't really matter. Instead, review popularity, downloads and listening duration. We covered a lot in this episode, but to get all the details you need to successfully start a podcast sign up for Craig’s free course, Launch In A Week: Podcasting Microphone and Gear Audio Recording and Editing Your Ideal Listener and Podcast Personas The Perfect Podcast Recipe Media Host and Website Setup Getting Your Show Ready to Launch Launch Planning and Growing Your Audience Links and Resources for How to Start a Successful Podcast: Podcast Motor Launch In A Week Castos Seriously Simple Podcasting Audio-Technica ATR2100 Shure SM7B Focusrite Scarlett Preamp Zoom Skype Call Recorder (Mac only)   Fiverr Audacity International Start a Blog Day Class of 2019 Pat Flynn’s Podcast SiteGround CoSchedule Tim Ferriss's Podcast GarageBand Simplecast Libsyn Gary Vaynerchuk's Podcast RogueStartups Podcast with co-host Dave Rodenbaugh Blue - Yeti Calendly Apple Podcast Google Podcast Google Play Stitcher Spotify Amy Porterfield's Podcast Examples of How to Start a Successful Podcast: CoSchedule’s Blog CoSchedule’s Podcast Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group. Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey hey there, ProBlogger listeners. It’s Darren Rowse here from ProBlogger. Welcome to episode 276 of the show. For those of you who are new to the show, ProBlogger is a site for bloggers and prebloggers designed to help them to start blogs, to grow those blogs, and to monetize those blogs. You can check out more of what we do over at ProBlogger...

How One Blogger Took Action, Left Her Job, and Began a Lifestyle Blog Today marks the end of our series featuring stories from new bloggers. We really hope you've enjoyed them. Jackie Baker recently started a lifestyle blog that celebrates the beauty in everyday life. She considered blogging as a business because she needed a career change that would both challenge her and leave time for a vacation once in a while. But what would she write about? Jackie narrowed her blog's focus to a few topics that bring joy, peace, and happiness to both her readers and herself. Hence the title of her blog: Pretty Things, Yummy Food. What Jackie has learned from blogging: Take action and keep pushing forward when you feel stuck or scared Create a plan to prioritize tasks you need to get done Sign up for courses that show you how to start/launch a blog Connect with other bloggers who understand your excitement and frustration Embrace social media to find readers and build a community Use Canva to design graphics Don’t stress about what others think about you or your blog Want to start a blog? Do it and don’t doubt yourself. Follow your gut, get into a blogging mindset, and find your message to discover you have plenty to offer the world. Sign up for ProBlogger’s free Start a Blog course and participate in its International Start a Blog Day on February 7. Links and Resources for How One Blogger Quit Her Job and Started a Lifestyle Blog: Pretty Things, Yummy Food Blog Canva International Start a Blog Day Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 275 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, which is a site for you as a blogger or someone about to start a blog, that will help you grow that blog, create great content, and monetize it as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger and check out our two courses at problogger.com. Speaking of our courses, today we’re finishing up our series of podcasts from stories who did our free Start A Blog course. We’re going to hear today from Jackie Baker from Pretty Things, Yummy Food, which sounds like the kind of blog I need to check out, particularly the yummy food part of it. This series really is all about hearing from new bloggers, bloggers who haven’t been going for too long yet, to find out what they’ve learnt in their first year of blogging. I have loved the feedback we’ve had on this series. It seems that a lot of you have enjoyed hearing from new voices, people that they’ve never heard of before, rather than just hearing from experts or gurus or people who have been blogging for 10 years. The new bloggers have been sharing some of their journey as well. We’re doing this really to highlight that people are continuing to start blogs these days and that there is a simple way to do it. That’s through our Start A Blog course, which you can find over at problogger.com/startablog. It’s completely free and it’s set out in seven simple steps that will walk you through the process. Today, we’ve got Jackie Baker from Pretty Things, Yummy Food. It’s a lifestyle blog and it’s only been going for six months. Jackie started her blog as a result of going through our course and you’re going to hear her talk a little bit about that in today’s story. She recommends a great tool for those of you who are starting out and want to create some cool social graphics and gives you a few good tips as well. I’ll come back at the end of Jackie’s story to wrap things up and to pull out a few of the things that I love about her story. Jackie: Hi everyone. I’m Jackie, the creator of Pretty Things, Yummy Food.

How a Blogger Found the Right Plan and Business Idea Today our series of stories from new bloggers continues with Stefano Caioni, a web developer and photographer.   Stefano's blog offers guidance on various aspects of photography including focus modes, settings and equipment reviews. Using his tech experience, Stefano wrote all the code for his blog himself. But he soon discovered how fun it was to build and write content for it, even though it had no traffic. Then Stefano decided to migrate his existing content to WordPress to benefit from its SEO and security functionalities. But he was inconsistent with posting content, didn’t have a specific strategy or business idea in mind, and ran out of topics. He almost gave up on it. Then he came across ProBlogger.com. He started writing more consistently, this time with a plan and business idea in place. His blog lets him share his passion for photography by writing useful posts that inspire others and offer them value. He’s met many photographers who’ve inspired him as well. He never dreamed of making money from his blog or building a business around it. But traffic continues to grow, and he monetizes his blog through Amazon affiliate links. Blogging isn’t dead. The number of internet users increases every day. Fresh and updated content is needed to fulfill the growing demand for information. So start a blog. Sign up for our free Start a Blog course and join us for the International Start a Blog Day on February 7. Links and Resources for How Stefano Changed Blogging Platforms and Started Blogging with a Plan: Stefano Caioni’s Photography Stefano Caioni’s Blog Interview: Lauren Bath Olympus Visionary International Start a Blog Day Podcast Motor Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Hey there and welcome to episode 274 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of problogger.com, a site for bloggers and prebloggers, designed to help you to start a great blog, and to monetize that blog. Today, we are continuing our series of podcast with stories from new bloggers, people in their first year of blogging. All these are short stories from participants from our Start A Blog course and we’re sharing them in the hope that they will inspire you or someone you know to start a blog, as part of our International Start A Blog Day on the seventh of February, which is fast approaching. There’s still time to participate if you would like to start a blog, either for that date or afterwards. We have a course that will walk you through exactly how to start a blog using a WordPress platform. That course is completely free to participate in and you can find it at problogger.com/startablog. Today’s story comes from Stefano Caioni from stefanocaioni.com and I’ve got a link to that in the show notes today. He is a photographer. He is a web developer, actually, who is a photographer as well and his blog is about photography, which grabbed my attention. But I also wanted to share this story today because it is a little bit different than some of the others. Stefano actually came to blogging with a bit of a tech background, which is different to many people. We’ve had others in this series who came with no technology kind of background whatsoever. Stefano has created a beautiful-looking blog with that background but he has some interesting reflections upon that journey which I will come back to at the end of his story, too, just pulled apart just a little bit. Here’s Stefano. Enjoy his story. Stefano: Hi. This is Stefano Caioni, a landscape and outdoor photographer, living in Sydney, Australia. My website is called Stefano Caioni Photography and you can find it at www.

How One Blogger Found Encouragement in Difficult Times Our new bloggers series continues with Melissa, who started Living in the Wait. Her blog serves as a resource for those waiting for something in their lives, whether it’s a job, spouse, home or something else. Melissa discovered you can still live life during that time of waiting for something your heart desperately desires. In Melissa’s case, she and her husband were waiting for a family due to infertility. It’s a painful topic to talk about, but Melissa felt like it was her calling to share her story. Blogging about her journey and wait has brought joy to her life. She wants to continue encouraging people going through difficult times.   First-year blogging highlights: Started The Wait List featuring guest posts to connect with others who were also waiting Selected as recipient of ProBlogger scholarship to further the blog's reach Generated cycle of encouragement: live life to the fullest, and give back to others Melissa’s blogging tips: Progress over perfection Celebrate your wins Don’t forget to sign up for our free Start a Blog course and join us for the International Start a Blog Day on February 7. Links and Resources for How One Blog Turned a Painful Situation into a Life-Changing Blog: Living in the Wait Podcast Motor Further Listening 263: How Mim Blogged Vulnerably to Grow a Six-Figure Blog 255: My Mid-Life Crisis and The Power of Being Vulnerable on a Blog Courses Start a Blog ProBlogger Pro – 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Join our Facebook group Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Darren: Welcome to episode 273 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name’s Darren Rowse and I’m the blogger behind problogger.com, a site and a podcast to help you to start an ,amazing blog that’s going to change the lives of your readers in some way, and hopefully will change your life, too both in what it gives you personally but also hopefully some income as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger and find our courses at problogger.com. Speaking of courses, today we do continue our Start A Blog story series where we’re featuring stories from bloggers in their first year of blogging. There are all these bloggers who've been throughout Start A Blog course and many of them participated in our International Start A Blog Day last February. We’ve got the second iteration of that event coming up on the 7th of February this year. We’re running these stories to try and inspire as many people as possible to start a blog and be a part of that process. You can join in the fun of International Start A Blog Day and get a free course to help you set up a blog in that time over at problogger.com/startablog. Today’s story is from Melissa. She has a blog called Living In The Wait. I love the topic of this blog and that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to share her story today. I’m going to link to her blog which is livinginthewait.com on our show notes today. There’s also a full transcript of the show today and some further listening if you do want to be into one of the big themes that she talks about. You can find the show notes today at problogger.com/podcast/273. I’m going to let Melissa talk now and I’ll come back at the end to just pull out a few of the themes that I love in what she shares. Melissa: My name is Melissa. I started the blog called Living In the Wait and the URL is livinginthewait.com. What my blog is about is it’s a resource for those who are basically trying to live in the wait. Whether you’re waiting for a family, job, spouse, we all wait for something in our lives. For my husband and I, that wait happened to be infertility. Why I started my blog was based upon our own personal experience. For over three years,

In today's episode, S&J talk about lessons learned from the biggest risk they ever took. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn Sams: Hey, y'all. On today's podcast, we share the lessons we've learned after hosting our first major live event. Shane Sams: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to Flip Your Life? All right. Let's get started. Shane Sams: What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast. It is great to be back with you again this week. We've got a special episode for y'all. We do not have a guest toady. We will not be doing a Q&A. We will be doing a lot of reflecting back on the lessons that we learned from hosting our first major live event. Not long ago, about three weeks ago, from the time that we're recording this actual podcast, Jocelyn and I hosted an event in Nashville, Tennessee, for over 100 members of the Flip Your Life Community. We all came together over a three-day period to build our online businesses, to grow our online businesses, and to take massive action on changing our family's future. Shane Sams: It was an incredible event, and it went off better than we ever could have dreamed. But as with any major undertaking that Jocelyn and I take on, we like to look back and reflect on the things we did right, the things we did wrong, and try to make things better, make things bigger as we go forward in the future. So, that's what we're going to do today. We're going to share all of these lessons and things that happened to us over the last year of planning and executing this event, so that you can take some of those lessons, take some of those strategies, take some of those things that we've learned, and apply them to whatever your next big project is for your online business. Jocelyn Sams: And many of you have probably seen our pictures on our Facebook page, and just some of the things that we've posted about the event. You've seen the glossy exterior, but we're going to dive into some of the not so pretty things that we encountered on the journey to get there. Shane Sams: Let's take you back to where the birthplace of Flip Your Life Live in Nashville came to be. Last December, about a year ago now, Jocelyn, out of nowhere, came to me and said, "We need to host a major live event, like a big one. Like, over 100 people, and we need to do it all by ourselves. We're going to plan it ourselves. We're going to pay for it ourselves. We're going to be on stage the entire time, and we're going to go ahead and do it next fall. It's going to happen." Jocelyn Sams: For those of you all who know me, it wasn't completely out of nowhere. I had been to another event in the fall. I thought it was really cool, and I was like, "Hey, this is a really good sense of community. I really think that we need to bring our people together." And we had sort of been, not really against it for a long time, but just a little bit uncertain about it for a long time. Shane Sams: I'm going to vote that I was scared to death to try. This is a total role reversal in this situation, because usually, I'm the one coming to Jocelyn going, "Okay, here's the airplane. We're going to jump out of it. We'll sew together a parachute on the way down." And this was totally out of nowhere, because Jocelyn came up to me and said, "We're going to do a live event. There's going to be over 100 people there. It's going to be amazing." My first instinct was just to freeze up, and what are we going to do? I can't do this. No way. Jocelyn Sams: We talked about it a little bit, and as we usually do, one of us has some crazy, big idea. The other one's like, I don't know, but okay, I'll go along with it. That's kind of the way that it worked here. Shane Sams: The reason that we really wanted to do this, Jocelyn and I have hosted small live events before, more mastermind intimate settings, where we're us and maybe 15 to 20 people in a room. Those went really, really well, and we saw the people that came to those smaller events achieve massive success, take massive action after they left, and made great things happen in their business and for their family's future. Shane Sams: And we have been to so many live events in our online journey, and every single one of them was a milestone for us that took our business to the next level, that pushed us out of our comfort zone and gave us great results. We wanted to provide that kind of experience and that kind of environment for as many people in the Flip Your Life Community as possible. If we kept having small 12 to 15 person live events for the rest of our career, we wouldn't be able to reach as many people as fast as we wanted to. So, we said, hey, let's jump into the hundreds. Let's see if we can get over 100 people to do this, and then watch what happens to those hundred people after the event. Jocelyn Sams: And the cool thing is, based on our experiences that we've had going into different live events and seeing how other people do things, seeing things we like, seeing things we didn't like, we sort of brought all that together and said, okay, well, let's do it our way, Shane Sams: Actually, what Jocelyn actually said was, "We've been to a lot of events, and I'm pretty sure we can do it better. We can make this happen. We know what was good and bad, and we can take it to the next level. We can give people the experience, not only that we've had, but that we have always wanted to have." And that was kind of the mindset going into the planning for Flip Your Life live. We said, let's dream as big as possible. Let's make this as life-changing as possible. Let's not worry about getting speakers and who is famous that we can put on stage. Let's just get onstage, go eight hours a day both days, and teach people what they actually need to learn to flip their life. Shane Sams: That was kind of the context as we sat down in our first planning meetings with coffee, tea, and a couple of notepads, and some pens, to come up with the biggest, baddest, bestest live event that anybody had ever been to. We really wanted to ruin all other live events for people. We wanted to create an event that was so good and so impacting and so life-changing that, when anyone went to any other event, they would be like, "This is pretty good, but it's not Flip Your Life Live." That's how we started the process. Jocelyn Sams: The next step is that, we have to figure out how to sell the same. Because in typical S&J fashion, we're not going to create anything before we sell it. We're just going to have an idea and throw a sales page out there. But before we could do that, we needed to try to start estimating the cost. And as you know, with any big thing, whether it's building a house, whether it is doing anything that involves a lot of money, you're going to estimate it, and probably you're not going to estimate it correctly. So, we start trying to estimate this thing. We come up with a number that we think is going to work, and then we add like 10% to it. Because you know we'll probably go 10% over at least. Shane Sams: At least. We ended up going like 20% over. And as we start doing this thing, we start writing down all of the figures, we're looking at six figures. This is going to cost nearly $100,000 just to open the doors and get people in. There's so many hidden expenses when you're starting a business or any kind of live event. You don't even realize, you have to pay for AV and microphones and cameras and screens and stages and party favors, and all the way down to the candy that people eat on our table. All that has to be accounted for. And we started looking at it and said, hey, how much are we going to have to charge people a to put this thing on and have a presale for it, to see if we can even do it in the first place? Jocelyn Sams: So, we threw it out there in January of 2018 and just said, okay, guys, if you want to come, put your money where your mouth is. Put down a deposit, pay for it, let us know that you're interested. And people did. Shane Sams: Yeah, this is the first lesson in any online business that we want to give you from just doing this live event. Because the live event, really, if you think about it, is a product. That's what we're really doing here. We kind of created this live event that was the product, and we're sort of building a side business around these live events. It's not even really a part of flipped lifestyle anymore. It's more like, this is our live event company, this is our live event business, this is the product that we're putting out there. Shane Sams: And we always let people vote with their wallet before we create any product. Just like a digital product, where you may charge people 100 bucks to get it, we're going to put that out there and say, hey, it costs, almost a $1,000 to come to this event if we do it. Do you want to buy it? And we were shocked, because the darn thing almost sold out in the first week. We kind of looked at each other and said, well, I guess we're on the hook now. We have to make the product. We have all these people that are waiting for it, so they know what the date is. They know when it's going to happen, they know where it's going to happen. We've got to make it happen now. Jocelyn Sams: And here's a little lesson for you, too. We didn't even sign the contracts with the hotel until people had already paid, which is a little bit scary, because you're kind of putting it out there. We did have it on hold, so the hotel couldn't give it to someone else without letting us know first. But I just said, look, we're not signing any contracts until I know for sure that people are planning on coming. Jocelyn Sams: We had all of the initial stuff drawn up and we gave people a date, we gave people a place, and we just said, you know what, we're going to make it work. So, even if this hotel doesn't work out, we'll find another one and make it work. So ,that's what we did. Because, I've known people in the past who have got in trouble. They've signed all their paperwork before they sold their product, and then, on the back end, they were really, really in trouble, owing a lot of money. So, I didn't want that to happen. My goal was to at least break even on this event. Shane Sams: Yeah. The thing about any product that you create, whether it's a live one or something else, too, as Jocelyn said earlier, there's going to be hidden costs that creep up to you, and you may even have to make some cuts to beat the budget later on, because everything costs more. Everything takes more time than you think it does. This is why a lot of people fail in business, not just online business, business in general, because they don't account ahead of time for that extra cost. They don't build in flexibility in their budgets. They don't build it into their goals to make more money than they actually need, and they try to kind of skate by. Shane Sams: That's what Jocelyn was saying about adding 10%, adding 20% to what you think it's going to cost. That's not just in money. That's in time. What we did not account for as we planned this new product, as we planned this new business venture, was the opportunity costs. We tell our kids all the time, if you choose one thing, you lose another, and we didn't realize how much time we would lose in the planning of this event, in the making decisions, choosing what color the banners are going to be, what words are going to go on the signs, who's going to work the desk, who's going to work the tables, all the experience. Shane Sams: Every minute has to be planned with these people, but then you also have to do things like, plan speeches and plan events and plan contingencies. What if something happens? What if the food runs out? What if X, Y, and Z? We got into a huge task last January, that pretty much took us nine months of dedicated attention to figure out. So, as you're planning for your business, whatever it is, whatever your next product is, whatever next thing is, always think about those opportunity costs, because there definitely were some for having Flip Your Life Live. Jocelyn Sams: And to be fair, we did hire an event planner, and she took a tremendous amount of workload off of us. But, because this was the first time we had ever planned anything of this size, of this magnitude, it did take a lot of our energy. She needed to know, do you want these tablecloths to be black or white? Do you want this color banner to be on the table, or this color napkin to be on the table? What kind of flowers do you want? These are all questions that we had to answer. Jocelyn Sams: And, yes, I could have left it up to her to choose it. But we really wanted the very first time that we did this to be an experience that was really representative of us and what we wanted. So, we had a meeting at least once a month with our event planner and sometimes more often, especially toward the end. We were meeting like once a week. And not only did we meet with our event planner. We would do Skype meetings. We have Voxer meetings, we had a few in-person meetings. We also drove to the hotel two different times, to meet with staff, to try food. This is, four hours there, four hours back, to go and meet with these people. Those were just some of the things that we had to do to get ready for the event, physically. Shane Sams: There's a hidden lesson there, too, for any venture or any business. So many gurus and experts are like, hey, you shouldn't be doing that. Hey, that's not something ... You're the CEO, you're the boss. You shouldn't do those things. But no, it's your company. It's your vision. And sometimes you do have to roll your sleeves up and get in the nitty gritty, and you've got to go make things happen. Especially when you're in a training season, when you're in a vision casting season, when you're in a creation mode. You have to put your stamp on these things so that you get what you want on the back end of it. Shane Sams: It's just like, sometimes the manager at a restaurant ... Manager of the restaurant may have to go out and help serve sometimes, because they want it done a certain way, or they're training a new person. You've got to be willing to step in, especially in the first iteration of something, to make it happen. Shane Sams: Next year, when we do Flip Your Life Live again, we're going to try to make it bigger. We're going to try to make it better. We want more people to come to this event and experience this life changing moment, so that they can build their online business, change their family's future, and get into that sense of community. But we're probably going to be able to turn a lot more over to the live event coordinator and be less involved the second time through, the third time through, the fourth time through, because we got so involved in the beginning. Shane Sams: It's an investment. Anytime you start a new project, anytime you do something new, you've got to invest your time upfront, so that you can save time and magnify, and get a return on that time later. That's why we were so heavily involved in the planning and preparation for this live event the first time. Jocelyn Sams: But it wasn't just the planning for the logistics of the event. There was also a lot of other things that went into this. One of the things that was really important to us to do is that, we had interaction with people who were coming to the event, prior to the event. We did that by having a private Facebook group. Shane Sams: We wanted Flip Your Life Live to be an experience. Not just an experience the day you arrive, or the day you attend, or even the day you go home. We wanted it to be an experience from the moment you bought your ticket over the next six, seven, nine months until you got to the event. So, this Facebook group became this little community where, we did so many things with our people. Every month, we did some kind of training with our attendees to get them ready for the event. That was something that we never had before. Shane Sams: When we showed up to our first live event, we were like a deer in the headlights. We had no clue what was happening. We didn't know what we were supposed to learn, what we were supposed to write down, what was our result. We didn't know how to set goals. We didn't know necessarily how to meet people, and we wanted to fix that for our attendees so- Jocelyn Sams: Sometimes people would have a Facebook group for their event, but they would basically just dump you in there and be like, okay, well, here's where we tell you about logistics. Shane Sams: And we're not even going to show up to do anything worthwhile, and sometimes they don't even do logistics. They just say, "There, you can all talk to each other, and we'll see you at the event. Jocelyn Sams: Our goal for the event was not to bring people in and look good on stage and make lots of money. That was definitely not our goal, because we didn't accomplish that one. But anyway, that wasn't our goal, to make ourselves look good or to make ourselves feel better. We want our people to take action, and because of that, it was really important to us to get this Facebook group going, make sure people understood what they needed to do and what they needed to have accomplished before the event. Shane Sams: So, what we did was, have trainings we called prerequisites. It was exclusive for these Flip Your Life attendees. They showed up every month, and we kind of let people take action on each step along the way, because I knew what I was going to teach the very first session we. We knew what we were going to go through over those two days in an outline format. So, if we could get them to the point right before that, we knew that they would have a great chance of success when they showed up. Shane Sams: Another big problem that we have, and a lot of people have when they go to live events is, you're nervous. You don't know anybody. Kind of awkward those first 24 hours as you meet some people and get to know some people. We wanted to make sure that we introduced as many people to each other as possible before the event. So, we had discussions, polls, things like that, in our community group for Flip Your Life Live. And we ran icebreaker sessions where, we got 40 or 50 people on a Zoom call, and Jocelyn and I went through every single person and let them introduce themselves, tell what their online business was about. And we did these random questions like, what's your favorite food, what's the worst job you've ever had? And some of the answers were absolutely hilarious, and everyone had a great time, and it created this sense of community before we even got to the event. So, when we had the pre-live event party, everybody just kind of came in, and everyone's laughing and having a good time and hugging. It was like they knew each other before they went in. Shane Sams: This was a lot of work leading up to this. We had to plan these things into our calendar. We had to make the time to do them, and that was time we could have been spent doing other things, like selling memberships, doing webinars, creating new products, other than this. But once you commit to doing one thing in your business, you kind of have to lose your focus on other things, because you can't do it all, and we were all in on the live event. Jocelyn Sams: Not only did we have all of the pre-event stuff to do, and all of the decisions to be made on what was actually happening at the event, we also had to play the actual event. And that was kind of a really big deal. We wanted to make sure that the content that we were creating for the event was the type of content that people wanted to see at the event. So, Shane was mostly responsible for that, and I was more responsible for some of the backend things that happened behind the scenes. Shane Sams: The biggest problem that we've always had with live events is, the content is terrible. It's not really actionable. A lot of times you get six to eight speakers on a stage, and their main goal is, at the end of their presentation, to sell you a book, or to get you to opt into their list, and they're really just scratching the surface. And we didn't want this to be a scratch the surface event. We wanted this to be a life changing, a momentum building event, for every single person that attended. Shane Sams: As Jocelyn was handling the logistics and making sure that everything was getting done, I locked myself in my room, in front of the computer, and for weeks and months, just started thinking about this content. What was the journey we wanted to take people on? What did people really need to know, that we could teach them within 48 hours, to get them to be able to take action and grow their business afterwards? Shane Sams: It's one thing to have to create a speech for an event. A lot of people are speakers. They go out and they do their speech. They put a lot of effort into that. Some people are keynote speakers, and they go give the big talk, you know, the 45-minute, big explanation. They get onstage in front of everybody and they do it and they're done. But we basically decided we were going to do eight keynote speeches over two days. We were going to deliver everything. We were going to make every slide, write every word, and then get up and do it. Jocelyn Sams: Which is actually a little crazy in hindsight. Shane Sams: A little crazy. I got some good friends who do public speaking for a living, and they just shook their head and like, "You're nuts. You're crazy. I don't know anybody that would try to pull that off." But that's usually what me and Jocelyn try to do. Jocelyn Sams: When people say we can't do something, that's when we try to do it. Shane Sams: Yeah, we try to do it. Jocelyn Sams: I've been working on things for months. Shane's been working on things for- Shane Sams: Weeks. Jocelyn Sams: ... about a month. Maybe days. Shane Sams: Yeah. I was basically, for the first six months of the event, in charge of running the Facebook group. I was doing Facebook Lives, I was doing polls, I was doing questions, I was doing icebreakers. Jocelyn Sams: Figuring out what people wanted to learn. Shane Sams: Figuring out what people want to learn, polling the audience, getting a feel of where everybody was. And probably about six weeks out, I start really getting serious about starting the skeletons of all these PowerPoints. Jocelyn Sams: Mostly because I was driving him crazy that, if he didn't get started, saying I was going to kill him. Shane Sams: I need the pressure of a deadline, also, let's be realistic here. So, we created all of this content back and forth, talked about it. Then, we practiced in the car while we were driving. That was the only time we actually had to do it, because the closer we got to the event, the more it consumed our life. It got to the point where, about eight weeks out it, was literally the only thing we could work on in our business. We could barely do anything else but member calls and jump into the forums everyday. Customer service suffering. Things started falling apart in other part ... Shane Sams: We would have pages and pictures crash on our website, and we'd be like, "Leave it. We'll deal with it after the live event," because we had to get all this content done. We would drop the kids off at school, and on the way home, I would start going through the PowerPoints on my computer and figure it out. Or, we would go to Knoxville or go to Lexington, the shop or to eat or to do something, and we would read through a PowerPoint on the way there, and we would have these disagreements about what we were going to say, and what we're going to talk, and how we wanted to be. Some of these car practices ended up being me slamming the computer and throwing it in the back seat and being like, I'm done. I can't deal with it anymore. Jocelyn Sams: This totally happened numerous times. Shane Sams: Numerous times. Jocelyn Sams: But let me just say- Shane Sams: Because there was so much pressure to deliver, because we were the only people on stage. Jocelyn Sams: I'm sitting here on the outside kind of looking in, and I know a lot of you are probably thinking, oh, well, you know, you work from home. You had to plan an event, whatever. Well, lest you think this planning process was perfect. So many things happened against us during this time, especially right before the event. We had our event in late September. In early August, Shane got rear ended. This was our brand new car that we had had for approximately four months. Shane Sams: Yeah. A guy crashed right into me. There was a cop chasing a boat. Some guy had stole a boat and a police officer was chasing him, so I pulled over because this guy pulling a boat was going by me at 100 mile an hour. I saw the police car, heard the siren. I pulled over, and the guy behind me was just rubber necking the cop, and the cop saw him hit me and had to break off the hot pursuit of the guy that stole the boat, and come back around, had to be the witness for our event. Jocelyn Sams: You can't make this stuff up, people. Shane Sams: I was sitting in the vehicle, and I wasn't really hurt or anything. It just kind of jarred me, and I sat there and just looked down, because we just bought this brand new Lincoln Navigator. The guy comes up and he goes, "Are you all right?" And I'm like, "Physically, yes. But just, before I go look at the damage on this vehicle," because- Jocelyn Sams: I just need a minute. Shane Sams: I need a minute to kind of take my breath away. So, that happened. Jocelyn Sams: We're trying to come up with all of this stuff for the live event. We're trying to make all the final preparations, and now we're having to deal with the insurance companies. We're having to deal with the car repair, and all these different types of things that you have to deal with. But we're in the midst of planning this huge event at the same time. So, that was one thing. The next thing that happened was that, we had some staff turnover, actually a lot of staff turnover. Shane Sams: Oh my gosh. Jocelyn Sams: We had a couple of staff members who were very unhappy, and we just weren't meeting each other's expectations. So, we kind of moved apart from them. Shane Sams: This was critical. This wasn't just people answering tickets, or easy to replace people. This was our main customer service person and our main podcast editor. We just decided that we had to go part ways. Right in the middle, like two months, three months out from planning this huge, the biggest thing we've ever done ... We've already sold all the tickets. We've already got everything in motion, there's no turning back. We don't have a podcast editor. And for those of you listen to our podcast, we have to have a podcast or we don't even have a business. Shane Sams: That's why all these people are coming to our event. We don't have anybody in customer service. So, I go into full time mode, trying to get somebody to edit this podcast. [crosstalk 00:24:02] Jocelyn Sams: I'm answering customer service tickets. Shane Sams: Jocelyn's answering customer service tickets. We're planning the live event. She's doing logistics. It was just an absolute a mess. Then, like two weeks before- Jocelyn Sams: 14 days. Shane Sams: 14 days before the event, out of nowhere, our sales guy and another customer service person quits out of nowhere. They just totally quit. Jocelyn Sams: No notice. Just, we're out. Shane Sams: Didn't even put in a two-week notice. They just said, "Today's my last day. I'm done." And it just happened all at once. So, now we're just looking up going, okay, well, this is it. We just got to [crosstalk 00:24:34] Jocelyn Sams: We're in. We have no choice. We have to get this done. And a lot of people, I think, at that point, would just go into their shell and say, woe is me. This business thing is not for me. I'm hanging it up. I just can't do it anymore. But we didn't have that option. We have this live event coming. We have a business that has to run. We have no choice. So, I told Shane, I said, when life gives us lemons, we don't make lemonade. We start a lemonade stand. Shane Sams: She literally said that one. I remember when the second people quit, and she said that. I was just like, yeah, we do. Because I was really down at the time. I was like, man, this is totally soul crushing and overwhelming, not just because of all the work that we have to do. But thing that Jocelyn and I really believe is that, this is our mission. This is why God put us on this earth and has had given us all of our life experience, up to the point where we launched our podcast, was to go out and help people, and to help people free themselves and find financial independence and change their family's future. Shane Sams: And we say to ourselves every morning, we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, who needs us today? Those people at that live event aren't coming for entertainment. They're coming because they need us to help them take their next step. You don't listen to our podcast just because we talk funny and say silly things sometimes. Jocelyn Sams: Some of y'all probably do. Shane Sams: Some of y'all probably do, yeah. But you're here because, you have a desire to make a change in your life, and you need help doing that, and that's what we're here for. So, there was no turning back. There was no shutting it down. We just had to suck it up and move forward. We really did go into a huge, stressful grind there for that last month, that started really affecting even our health. Shane Sams: It's probably the most stressed out ever been in my entire life. I don't get stressed really easily, and when I do get stressed, I usually get over it pretty fast. But I started having some health problem, because of the stress coming into this live event and running the business and doing customer service and editing my own podcast, and all these things that hadn't happened in years. Shane Sams: I actually suffered hearing loss a few weeks out from the event. It sounded like I was underwater. I would look at Jocelyn, and I couldn't hear what she was saying, and started getting some medical help, had someone look in my ears, and started researching it. And apparently, if you have too much stress for too long, it can actually affect the hairs in your ears that help you hear. And I started slowly hearing worse and worse and less and less, and I realized that it was from stress. And I had to take a deep breath and take a step back about a week before the event, and start doing some things that would help me not be as stressed. It was crazy. Shane Sams: As soon as the live event was over, two, three days later, Jocelyn and I were on vacation. We took the kids to Jamaica for a week to have some fun and just get away from work and just relax. Two, three days into this trip, it was like I could hear again. It was like I came up from underwater, and it was just because that stress lifted off. And it really made me think like, man, we need more redundancy. We need to protect ourselves better and we need to have better systems in place to manage our stress. Jocelyn Sams: And for me, I had been doing really well. I was on a new eating plan. I had been doing it since like April. But once all this stuff started happening, like in July, my eating started kind of moving a little bit toward not so healthy. And right before the event, I had put on like four or five more pounds that I had lost. That was a little bit frustrating for me, because I was really trying to move toward a goal and I didn't get it. Jocelyn Sams: And at this point, we're just sort of looking at each other thinking, okay, this is hard. This is really hard, and it's frustrating to know that we're doing all this work and we're basically not making any money off this event. This is a break even event at best, and we're doing all this work. Is this even worth it? We started really questioning it. Shane Sams: Then, we started looking, what was happening to the people who are coming to the event. We started looking at their businesses, at their wins. People were posting success stories in the Facebook group that we set up for Flip Your Life Live before the event even happened. People were quitting their job, people were launching their memberships. People were doubling, tripling, selling more and more. Shane Sams: I remember, one of the attendees, we did a quick coaching call with her. She was coming to the event. She wanted to jump on a coaching call with us before the event to get a little bit of advice. She wanted to take action before she got there. We sat down and talked to her for a few minutes, and she launched a webinar. I told her, you've got to get this event done in 12 days. You got to plan the webinar and do it, because I want you to launch the Sunday before the event. Shane Sams: She goes out and takes action on everything we had talked about in the Facebook group, everything we'd done, prerequisites, everything we had done on this call, and she had a massive win and created like $9,000 a month. Not at once, but a month, in monthly recurring revenue, before she even got to the event. And we started looking at all these success stories and all this action and all this activity, and we realized that Flip Your Life Live had become their anchor. It became that place, that thing that they were driving toward, that motivated them, that gave them the will to go take action and do things. They didn't want to show up at the event with nothing done. Shane Sams: They wanted to be prepared for the event, because they knew it was going to be epic and change their life, and they wanted to be ready for that. When we started seeing all of these crazy things happening in all these peoples' lives, we realized it was totally worth it. It was totally worth it to give all of these people, over 100 people, from all over the world, 30 US states, five different countries, an opportunity and a goal and a chance to succeed. And really, it was the thing that we had been missing in our business. All this time, we didn't even realize it yet. Jocelyn Sams: That's what kept us going, guys. Those messages that said, hey, I'm doing this because of this event. I'm taking action because of this event. I'm hitting my goals because of this event. That's what keeps us going. And if you ever think to yourself, oh, well, I listened to this podcast, or I subscribed to this blog, or whatever, and I've thought about emailing the person or leaving them or review, but they don't need to hear from me. They do need to hear from you. Shane Sams: Yeah, we need it. Definitely. That's what keeps us going. Jocelyn Sams: We need to hear from you. Other people need to hear from you. They need to know what is working, based on what they're telling you. Because, some days, that is all that you have, is just what other people have to say, just to lift you up. So, I just encourage you. It has nothing to do with this, right this second. But if there's somebody who encourages you, who says something to you, who makes a difference in your life, let them know about it. Shane Sams: Yeah. Send them an email, go just shoot him a Facebook message, leave them a review. Do something and just let them know, because they may be having a really stressful day, and they need you to pick them up. It's kind of circular. We know that a lot of people rely on us for that motivation, that encouragement, that hope, that there is a better life for their future. But we rely on that feedback, as well, from you guys, to let us know that what we're saying is being heard, and people are taking action on it, and that people are out there and changing their life. Jocelyn Sams: Okay, so back to the story. At this point, the preparations are pretty much over. Well, I say that. I'm pretty sure Shane was working on the speaking on the way there, on the way there. Shane Sams: I think I was working in the car, on the way there, because I kept having more ideas, and I was changing things. Literally, two of the presentations, we didn't even have time to practice, because ... We know our content so well, we didn't really need to, and half of what me and ... We're totally ad libbing this podcast right now, by the way. Jocelyn Sams: We have an outline. That's it. Shane Sams: We have an outline, but we're just going back ... That's what we do is, we're just so much better when we're playing off each other. So, we didn't need to rehearse it as much as some people would have to, I think. Jocelyn Sams: All right. We have, at this point, got all of the preparations done, most of the content done, and we're now starting to get ready to go. We've Band-Aided customer service, we've Band-Aided podcast editing, we've put Band-Aids on all these things. We've figured it out, because that's what we do. That's who we are. And at this point, we have to start the real work, which is packing. People, we brought the entire house. One of the things- Shane Sams: Literally, we brought ... All the furniture and stuff people saw when they walked in was from our house. Jocelyn brought all of our pillows, and was putting them in chairs around the hotel, around the check-in areas, that said, hey y'all. It was stuff from our actual, decorations off the walls. Jocelyn Sams: And one of the things that a lot of you who were at the event will notice about our live event coordinator, Amber, she's very good at this type of thing. She really wants people to feel at home and at ease, and she really wants it to be like us. So, one of the things that we decided to do was, to get things from around our house that we could sit around kind of as props. So, you might've seen the little state of Kentucky with a heart on it, and we had little signs that said, welcome, y'all, and a little coffee sign, like, coffee is always a good idea. And all those things actually came from our house. Jocelyn Sams: So we had a huge box of stuff, just packed up, just for decoration. We had all of the items, like the promotional items, the pins, the shirts, the backpacks, all of the little things that you got when you checked in. And that thing was a laptop sticker, by the way. We gave the sticker, and I don't think anybody knew what it was. Shane Sams: People were like, "Sweet, a sticker." We're like, no, it goes on the back of your computer. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah. We need to put one on ours, too. Anyway. Shane Sams: No wonder nobody knows what to do with them. They're not even on our computers yet. Jocelyn Sams: Exactly. So, we brought the entire house. Shane Sams: We're new to the swag. We're new to this stuff. Jocelyn Sams: Not only do we have to pack all of the stuff for the actual event, we had to pack all of our clothing and all that kind of stuff for one trip. But, also had to pack my kids, because they were staying with Shane's mom and dad for a while, and we were also going to Jamaica the next week. I knew that, if I didn't pack everything, then it will be really hard when I got home. So, not only did I pack for one trip, for me and the children, and Shane packed his stuff. Shane Sams: We also had to pack all of it again for Jamaica. Jocelyn Sams: We also had to pack for Jamaica. Shane Sams: For the vacation. Jocelyn Sams: So, this was a lot of work to do in the days leading up to this. Shane Sams: And it's a total first world problem. We know some of this are first world problems first world problems, but first world problems are real problems, y'all. Anything that's adding to taking away from your time, or planning on top of everything else, and you're stressing out, and you're thinking, like, oh, man, I got to be in front of 100 people. We've got to run the show, and there's all these moving parts. So many moving parts. It really takes a toll on you. Shane Sams: You guys know this. We all get up every day and we take our kids to school, and we go to work, and we go to practice, and there's three kids, and they're going every which direction, and then you've got your in laws or your parents or your brothers or your sisters or your friends, and everybody's always pulling on all of our time. There's only so much that anybody can handle when you're doing all of these things. So, it can be really, really stressful in the moment. Jocelyn Sams: And everyone has hundreds of moving parts every day, that you have to manage. Everyone has this, but this is like that times about five, because we're trying to prepare for this event. We're trying to get our kids together. We're trying to make sure customer service is being answered. We're trying to make sure we have enough content to last us while we're gone, all of these little things. Jocelyn Sams: Make sure that we have all of our vacation documents, make sure we can find our passports. It's just all of these little nuts and bolts that have to be turned, that are all coming together in like one or two days. So, it's a lot to have to deal with, especially when you're on stage. You got to make sure you have all your clothes. We had to try on our clothes several times, make sure we didn't clash. All of these little things that you have to do. Shane Sams: Yeah. Most of our date nights for the two months leading this event were, trying on clothes and standing in front of a mirror, so I would know if I matched ... Not matched. What do you call it? Jocelyn Sams: It's coordinated. Shane Sams: It's coordinated. We had to coordinate all of our clothes together. Jocelyn Sams: We had to coordinate all of our clothing, make sure they didn't look bad together. So, we get to the event, and we finally got all this done. We get there and everything is pretty much ready to go. We got there on Tuesday. Everything started on Wednesday. What do we do the first day? I can't even remember. Shane Sams: We got there on Tuesday, and we saw Amber, and we had a little meeting, to make sure that everything was going smooth, and that everybody knew where they were supposed to be and what times they were supposed to be there. And at that point, things just kind of started rolling. We had done the preparation, we had done the work. Everything was ready to go. The first thing that happened on Wednesday was actually a pre-party. We had a big party for everybody. We had a bluegrass band, and we kind of rolled in, and they had surprised us. Shane Sams: The bluegrass band learned the Flipped Lifestyle theme song. So, that was playing live when we walked in. Everybody had a great time, and we went around and just hugged and met everybody, and we all had just a great time at that event. I remember, we went to bed that night, on Wednesday, after the party, and we had so much fun and we saw these people and we kind of looked at each other and realized, we have to be on stage eight, nine hours a day. Because, not only were we doing all of the content in these 30 to 45 minute teaching session, but we did a Q&A with S&J live after every single presentation. Shane Sams: So, we were on our feet eight, nine hours a day, answering a dozens and dozens of live questions about the content we were teaching. That was something that we had never seen any expert do at an event, other than maybe a question or two. But we went deep and answered 10, 11 questions for every single session. We were preparing for that. We were getting ready to be on stage. Shane Sams: I've been up late at night before a lot of big ballgames when I was a football coach, or maybe we had a big thing going on in our lives. And I remember being nervous and remember not being able to sleep. But when we laid down that Wednesday night when we were getting ready go on stage, I think we both just kind of passed out. I slept so well, because I knew that people were already changing their lives. We were going to get on stage and change some peoples' lives. Our content was true and sound and battle tested over hundreds of entrepreneurs that have been through our program before, and that we were going to be able to just really help people move the needle. Shane Sams: We woke up the next day and my most ... The thing I was worried about the most was, it was our first introduction, that they would play the music at the right time. I remember, that was what was stressing me out more than anything was, oh, man. They got to hit our theme song at a certain point, so it looks good on video. Yeah. But other than that, we just got on stage and it just rolled. The content came out of our mouth. The questions were awesome, and we answered a bunch of questions. And I don't ever remember feeling stressed during the actual content of the event or anything like that. Jocelyn Sams: My favorite part probably was the hair and makeup application. One of the things that I did for the event is, I hired someone to actually come to the event. She was dedicated to me, with hair and makeup, and- Shane Sams: She did take a little time to dust me up a little bit. Jocelyn Sams: Shane got a little man glam. Shane Sams: I got a little man glam going, I'm not going to lie. You're under the lights. You don't want the sheen. You don't want the glowing skull blinding everyone in the first row. Jocelyn Sams: I'm now obsessed with hair and makeup. I just want to say that is one of my new goals, is to have someone to do my hair and makeup, at least for my videos and stuff like that. Because it was so amazing to just wake up and let somebody just make you look good. Shane Sams: Yeah. The event just rolled pretty peacefully, because of all the work that we did. And so many people came up to us and they said, oh, we loved the content. We love the Q&As. We did mastermind sessions where people worked on the things that we actually talked about. We didn't just do content and teach you what to do. People also had a workbook that they filled out while we were doing it. Shane Sams: We answered their questions, and then there was like a block of time to sit down and do the thing, like the take action, to take the next step. So, the whole event was just rolling. The first night, we had a working dinner from 7:00 to 11:00, where Jocelyn and I were in the room. All the attendees were in the room, and everybody was just working on their business and taking action and making things happen and getting things done. Shane Sams: Then, the last day of the event, we actually wrapped up with a priority session, where we taught everyone in the room how Jocelyn and I go through our priority list, from a week to week or month to month basis, and figured out and put on the calendar for the next seven days what everyone was going to work on, so that we could leave the event with a great momentum. And it was kind of over before we knew it. We didn't want it to end. Everyone was having such a good time. We were having such a good time, that we kind of wished we had planned it maybe for an extra day or something like that. Jocelyn Sams: And a lot of people ask me, "How did you like it?" Because, I am an introvert. It is hard for me to manage my energy ever those days like that. I thought it was great, actually. The time that we had built in ... We built in time for people to mastermind together, which meant that we got a little break, and could just sit and kind of decompress for a few minutes. That really saved me, I think, just from having to talk the entire time. It was hard, doing all the content. You don't often see people do that, and we really felt it was important for us to do that this year. And my back hurt the end of it. I was like, oh, my back hurts. I'm not used to standing up that much. Shane Sams: For carrying Shane all this time. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, that's right. No, I'm just kidding. But for me, really, the hardest thing about it was that dinner. The dinner was awesome. We got to talk to so many different people about their businesses, got to answer so many questions. But that was a little bit hard for me, when you sit down at a table with like seven other people at it, during a normal conversation, everyone will talk to each other. But during this particular situation, everyone wants to talk to you. So, that was kind of hard for me to manage that. It made me really exhausted at the end of that long day. Shane Sams: That's probably the one thing, logistically, I wish we had done a little differently, just because it was ... Jocelyn and I kind of divided and conquered, and I'm usually Jocelyn's heat shield in situations like that, where I take most of the conversation so it's not draining her energy. But at this event, we kind of separated so we could talk to more people. But it was really hard to talk to everybody and have deep conversations. With 100 people in the room, it's just really hard to get into that. So, that's probably the one thing I think I would change a little bit, just to make it better, not only for the attendees, but for us as well, managing our energy, and being able to keep up with everybody. Jocelyn Sams: But overall, it was amazing. I felt good the entire time. I really think I was less nervous than Shane was. Shane Sams: I was nervous in the very beginning, but it was like a ... It was running out of the tunnel for a football game nerves. That was the exact feeling I used to feel before we came out of the locker room on Friday nights or Saturdays, to have a football game. And I kind of liked it. It was kind of awesome. You know? Jocelyn Sams: But I think what it was for me is that, in this situation, you guys who were there, you already know us, you know our faults, you know our flaws. So, I didn't feel like I needed to hide anything, and I think that was really cool for this type of event, because- Shane Sams: We could be real. Jocelyn Sams: Yeah, and everybody does know us so well, and that was kind of cool. So, the event was awesome. I can't say enough wonderful things about it. Shane Sams: One of my favorite things, too, what we did at the event is, we did kind of an award ceremony where ... One of the things that's different about Flip Your Life and different about Flipped Lifestyle is, we've really built this up on our expertise, on our advice, but also, on the community. That's what we wanted to create when we started Flipped Lifestyle, was a community, a worldwide community of family-focused entrepreneurs, people who really had their priorities in mind. They wanted a better life for their kids. They wanted a better marriage at home. They wanted more control over their life. Shane Sams: Not this superficial, materialistic view of what online business or success should be. But really had their priorities in place, and wanted to go on a mission to help their customers, and change the world, and get their message out there. To see that community form, and to watch our community and how much they help each other. It's not just me and Jocelyn answering every single question. Usually, someone will post a question in the Flip Your Life forums, and there's nine people that have jumped in to help before Jocelyn and I even get to read it. So, it's this real community of people helping each other, and we wanted to kind of reward and give back to the people who were really serving other people in our community. So, we started looking back at the last year, at all the replies. Shane Sams: Like, who had replied to the most forum posts, who had helped the most people, who had encouraged the most people who had answered the most questions, we wanted to give awards for that. So, we brought 10 members onstage, and we gave them a stone that was engraved with Flip Your Life put on it. Because one of our big themes for the event was, throwing your stone, taking action, skipping stone across the water, and watching it ripple out, and that ripple effect changing peoples' lives. That's how Jocelyn and I get up every day, is we're going to throw our stone and hit somebody, and ripple it out and, and really impact as many people as possible. Shane Sams: And who knows, where that ripple is going to go to? So, we gave everybody this engraved stone for the Flip Your Life community, and we got to name our member of the year. It was Kevin Depew. Kevin is an amazing member, and far and away, other than me and Jocelyn, he's replied to the most people in the Flip Your Life community, and helped as many people as possible. And not only is his business growing, but he's helping other people as well. That was kind of my favorite part of the event, was just being able to give back and reward some of those people for being awesome community members, and just being excellent servant leaders inside of Flip Your Life community. Shane Sams: So, that was cool, that we got to do that, and just meet all these people in real life, who we feel like we know, and we know their businesses, and we know their families, and we know what they're all about, and to really be in the same room and give each other a hug. That was just one of the best things for me about the event. Jocelyn Sams: All right, so we told you a little bit about how we felt about the event. So, let's dive into a little bit about how our attendees felt about the event. One of the things that was really important to us is getting feedback as soon as possible ,in order to have the best event for next year. So, we sent out a survey on Monday. The event finished on Friday, and first thing in the morning on Monday, attendees got a survey. Shane Sams: We were blown away by the responses that came back, because 99% of them were absolutely 100% positive. We had a think to kind of rank the event, five, or four, or three, two or one, and nobody ranked it under a four, and almost every single person put it a five. It was life changing, best event that they had ever been to. We got dozens of testimonials in text and on video from the event, of people saying how much it really impacted them. Not only that, but just some confirmation about the things we had done. Shane Sams: So many people commented on the icebreaker sessions to introduce them, and how comfortable they felt when they got to the event. People loved the prerequisites and all the things that we did to get them ready for the event, and how the content was world class, and it really helped them make some epic decisions about what they were going to do next. Then the feedback that we got about the things that we could improve was so constructive. Sometimes people will go in and, there's some negative people that just say bad things to say bad things. But all of the constructive feedback that we got, we really shook our heads and we're like, yeah, that could have been made better. Shane Sams: We could do that next year in a different way. And it was just really amazing to see, not only the outpouring and gratifying to see that we had done a good job for these people that came to the event, but also, that they were really invested and talking about coming next year. Something like 88% of all the people who filled out the survey said they were coming back next year. And that just really made it all worth it and made us realize, hey, we had done a good job, and this was actually something that our community not only needed, but really wanted us to continue. Shane Sams: We always viewed Flip Your Life live as the Flipped Lifestyle family reunion, not as much the business conference for Flip Lifestyle. And that was really the feedback that we were hearing back from all of these people who filled out the survey. Jocelyn Sams: I've got some news for you guys. A lot of you have come to an event for the first time at Flip Your Life Live, and you're pretty much going to be ruined from all other live events in the future. Shane Sams: That was the goal. That was the goal, like, you're going to go ... I bet some people have already signed up for it. It's like, man, that was cool. I'm going to do another one, and they're going to get there and be like, wait, where's the Facebook group? Where's all the people talking to me? Where's all this interaction with the people on stage? What's happening around here? So, yeah, sorry. We apologize in advance for doing that. Jocelyn Sams: And what's funny about surveys is, a lot of times, there's such conflicting feedback. Some people were like, oh, this was really cool. And other people were like, yeah, I didn't really like that. So, it's just funny. You just have to look at all of the different responses and figure out, what are most of the people saying? Shane Sams: Someone said they didn't like the chicken. And we're like, you're in Tennessee. That's Southern fried chicken. What do you want us to put on your plate? I guess because it wasn't grilled or something like that. But those are the kind of comments, you're kind of like, okay, well, next year, we'll have some grilled chicken with the fried chicken. We'll have a couple options. We actually looked at like four or five things we really wanted to improve on, because we didn't do everything perfectly. Shane Sams: One of our goals that we always have is, to be as accessible as possible. That comes from, a guru told us one time, at a conference, yeah, once you start getting enough people listening to your show and doing things like that, you got to make yourself not as accessible for positioning. That's just not who me and Jocelyn want to be. That's not who Jocelyn and I really care to be known as, as the un-accessible experts on stage. So, we tried to make ourselves as accessible as possible. We're really open with talking to everybody. We tried to walk around, hearing masterminds and talked to as many as people as possible. Shane Sams: There was over 100 people at the event, so it was almost nearly impossible for us to talk to every single person individually. I know some people didn't come up to talk to us. We couldn't get over to talk to them. While, that's something we hope that we can do better, I think we're going to do a better job next year of communicating, because we do plan on growing the event. We do plan on selling more tickets. And we don't want anyone to think, hey, there's going to be a line where, you get to come and talk to us for 10 minutes, because if we [crosstalk 00:51:11] Jocelyn Sams: That would be the entire event. Shane Sams: That would be the entire event. It would just be a table where, everyone wrote rotated through. That's not what we're doing. We want to really set up the event more of a one to many approach. Jocelyn Sams: And the people who were at this event are amazing. It's not just about talking to us. We want to talk to as many of you guys as possible. But I think, sometimes, what ends up happening is that, you guys listen to us every week, and you feel like you know us. You feel like we should be best friends, and maybe we should. But it's hard when there are 100 people, 100+ people, who- Shane Sams: Who all paid money to get in the door, and deserve great content, and things like that. Jocelyn Sams: But they also think, hey, let's be besties. And I'm like, uh, just met you. You know? Shane Sams: It's not even that. It's like, we can sit and answer everyone's question. I'll tell you what was really surprising. We probably got there, I think we counted there was 48 different people, I think, asked a question. But that means there was over 50 people that didn't. But we had at one session at the end, where we were like, this is the last Q&A, if anyone wants to ask a question. Shane Sams: When you go to a live event or when you come to Flip Your Life Live, make sure you're taking advantage of every opportunity you have to step up and ask a question. We were at the party for probably about an hour, and there were some people that didn't get to come up ... didn't come up to us and talk to us. So, you got to take some initiative, too, at live events, and make sure that you make things happen, that you want to happen, or they're not going to happen. Shane Sams: If we could do it over again, we would probably position certain events differently, one, to make sure that everybody did have a chance to come by. We did have a picture session at the end, and Jocelyn and I took like 50 pictures in a row with everybody that came, as many people as possible, that came to the event. The Q&As, if we structured them just a hair differently, where we could get through to some more people, or maybe we could offer people an opportunity to write a question and we can answer some of those, because not everyone wants to step up to the mic and be in front of people or on camera. Jocelyn Sams: We're considering maybe adding a VIP option, where you would have more opportunities to spend time with us. So, there are different things that we're considering for the future, to try to address this issue that several people did bring up. Shane Sams: Another thing, no matter how well you think you plan or have the logistics figured out, you're still making estimates and guessing, especially the first couple times you do anything. One of the mistakes that we made, one night, I think we ran out of food, and Amber and Kat were running in the back going, "Make some chicken fingers and french fries. I don't care what you do! Put it on the bar. We got to get some food out there," because we actually ran out of some of the food at one night. So, there's things like that, that we learned, logistically, that we're going to get better at. Shane Sams: That's another lesson for anybody making any kind of product. You can't guess everything. You've just got to do it and see what happens, and then you make it better and better and better, and you let it evolve. So, we're going to get better, we're going to evolve. And we're not going to be satisfied just because we had such an amazing feedback. We want to take it to the next level, as well, next year. Even though this live event is over, we want to always improve everything that we do. Shane Sams: You would think, after the event, that we collapsed. But Jocelyn and I are all about the can't miss moments. We're all about living life. It's not just about changing lives, not just about work. It's all about our family and our future and our fun, and really experiencing this amazing world that God gave us. Most people would look at me like I was crazy, and Jocelyn, like she was crazy, if they knew what happened after the event. We left the event and drove from Nashville back to our home in Kentucky, like five or six hours. Jocelyn Sams: On like 11:00 PM Friday night. This was late, late Friday night. Shane Sams: Yeah. We got home really, really late, and collapsed into our beds. But we had to go to Jamaica, so we had ... We were going on vacation. We went with Kat and her husband and her daughter. Kat is our right-hand woman in the Flip Your Life community, has been forever now. She's one of our best friends in the world, and we had planned this trip together. We were flying out Sunday, but I actually went to the University of Kentucky football game the next day. Jocelyn Sams: This was Saturday. Shane Sams: Saturday. So, I woke up, got in the car, went to the game. Jocelyn drove the kids to Lexington, Kentucky, where we were flying out of the next morning. So, I went to the hotel after that, we got up the next morning, and went on this 24-hour trek. It took us forever to get down there to Jamaica. We took the kids, went on vacation, had an amazing time. The kids got to see another culture. We swam with dolphins. [crosstalk 00:55:34] Jocelyn Sams: We needed it, because the kids were sort of, not really on the back burner, but they were maybe on a side burner for a while, as we were trying to clean up this huge mess. Shane Sams: Oh, yeah. I'd say the last one. We probably didn't hang out with the kids for a week or two. And we were up front with them, and told them, guys, Mommy and Daddy have dreamed big, planned big, and we're going to go do something big, and we're going to make it up to you on the backside of this. But every day can't be eight hours here and eight hours there. We had to pick this. If we want to do this great thing to give you the life that we want to give you, we all have to make sacrifices. So, we planned this trip with them to kind of make it up to them after that. Jocelyn Sams: Jamaica was amazing. I think it was the perfect exclamation point to just an awesome week, and just a nice reward for a lot of hard work. And that's something that we typically don't do a very good job of, is rewarding ourselves. So, I think that this was a great opportunity to say, hey, we put in the work, and we made it happen, and so now we are going to have this awesome vacation. Shane Sams: And as we finish up this podcast, kind of recapping everything that happened at Flip Your Life Live in Nashville, it really got us reflecting back on our online journey and how we got to that point. How did we go from the very beginnings of Flipped Lifestyle, to this point where we're onstage in front of 100 people from all over the world, helping people change their lives? There were a lot of reasons why we did Flip Your Life Live. We talked about those earlier, to help people, to really cement that community that we've created over in the Flip Your Life community online. We wanted to bring that offline and just to help people mo

Darren Rowse is a globally renowned blogger and speaker. Just as many people know him as the founder of Problogger as for his other business, Digital Photography School. He inspires bloggers every year at the Problogger training event and we grabbed him to pick his brain about writing, routines and being a totes famous introvert. Tune in to learn: How Darren finds the time and inclination to write in his ultra-busy schedule Where he gets his inspiration How he turns negative comments into conversation How an introvert keeps his energy levels topped up after big events How Darren gets through his (enormous) to do list The ONE question you should ask yourself before you start writing.   Share the pod love! If you like what you're hearing on Hot Copy, the best way to support the show is to take just a few seconds to leave a rating and / or comment over on iTunes or Stitcher. Thanks!  About Darren Darren Rowse is a blogger, speaker, consultant and founder of several blogs and blog networks, including b5media, ProBlogger.net and digital-photography-school.com. He lives in Melbourne, Australia. Connect with Darren: Problogger Digital Photography School Problogger podcast  

This week we're revisiting one of our most popular pods: the one about copywriting fees and how much to charge. Why is this topic so popular? Until you have a few copywriting projects under your belt it can feel like you're just making up numbers in your quotes. Not many copywriters share their rates so it's hard to see what the industry standard is. Not us though. In this podcast we explain how we charge for copywriting, how we put together quotes, essentials tips on collecting deposits and why we're not big fans of charging by the word. Tune in to learn: How to work out your hourly rate Different ways to charge for your copywriting work How to use retainer agreements Our copywriting quoting formula Why getting a deposit is so important How to chase up later payers Tell us what you think  Leave your thoughts and ideas on the Hot Copy website. And subscribe on: iTunes | Android | RSS  Share the pod love! If you like what you're hearing on Hot Copy, the best way to support the show is to take just a few seconds to leave a rating and / or comment over on iTunes or Stitcher.  Just like Darren Rowse did - thanks Darren! Useful links Copywriting Pricing – how to charge more and earn passive income How to quote for copywriting: My experience is your shortcut! Recommend rates for Australia Copywriters Copywriter rate card Suggest rates for hiring copywriters (UK) Hourly rate calculator

As founder of the massively popular ProBlogger event, and with well over a decade at the forefront of blogging, there's no one better placed to give us a snapshot of the industry.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Darren Rowse is a full time blogger, author and online entrepreneur. He is the editorial manager and originator of Digital Photography School and SnapnDeals. Rowse started blogging in 2002 on a personal blog ‘LivingRoom'. Out of this blog he launched a Digital Photography Blog in 2003. This quickly became a commercial success and the launching pad for many other blogs in the coming years. He writes about photography, blogging and online networking.

Darren Rowse is a globally renowned blogger and speaker. Just as many people know him as the founder of Problogger as for his other business, Digital Photography School. He inspires bloggers every year at the Problogger training event and we grabbed him to pick his brain about writing, routines and being a totes famous introvert. Tune in to learn: How Darren finds the time and inclination to write in his ultra-busy schedule Where he gets his inspiration How he turns negative comments into conversation How an introvert keeps his energy levels topped up after big events How Darren gets through his (enormous) to do list The ONE question you should ask yourself before you start writing.

Darren Rowse is widely regarded as Australia's top blogger and is one of the most followed and influential Australians on Social Media. In 2002 Darren started his first ever blog – not knowing that what would start as a personal hobby site would grow into a full time profession and million dollar business.   You have to check out his ... Read More The post 7. Blogging, podcast engagement levels, and the power of ProBlogging with Darren Rowse appeared first on We Are Podcast.

We know about the power of content marketing to build audiences, inform what products and services to develop, and ultimately connect the two together. And whether you call it blogging or not, text remains a cornerstone of the online content mix. Darren Rowse is one of my favorite people. He’s been an inspiration, a business... Listen to episode

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS* Welcome to the very first episode of the Boss Girl Creative Podcast!! Have comments or questions? Tweet/IG using the hashtag #BOSSGIRLQA or call in: (707) BOSS-GIRL* Join the BGC Crew!TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE* What it means to be a Boss Girl and a Boss Girl Creative * A short history on Taylor and Lauren* What blogging can do for you * Turning blogging into a source of income* Rewards of blogging * Investing in yourself and your brand TAYLOR SAID"Even though we all may be in a different market, we all are creatives and we all are trying to do our thing and be fellow Boss Girls." Taylor Bradford"I don't want to be pigeon holed into one category because what fun is it to just be one kind of blogger when you can be all kinds of bloggers!" Taylor Bradford"My biggest thing that I have enjoyed is adding my blogging series and being able to provide education to fellow bloggers." Taylor Bradford"No matter what creative field you're in…you can reach your community and your customers through blogging in a way that you really can't through any other platform." Taylor Bradford "I personally want to be as transparent as possible because I want you to know, this is possible, if this is your dream…this is possible and there are women in our field doing that. Taylor Bradford"You have to grow, you have to put yourself out there, you have to think about your brand, your community, you're investing in yourself, investing in time to figure out what can take you to the next level. Taylor Bradford"Invest in yourself, invest in your brand and invest in your business." Taylor Bradford LAUREN SAID"I like being a lifestyle blogger because you can kind of do whatever you want!" Lauren McBride"Getting paid to do something I love, writing about something I love, it doesn't even feel like work." Lauren McBride"When I ever won Maxxinista of the Month last August, that was my dream and I never would have thought I would be able to collaborate with TJ Maxx." Lauren McBride"When you get things [collaboration opportunities] like that and see what doors it opens, it gives you that push to continue and then you are almost hungry for it." Lauren McBride"There isn't a rulebook…we have learned via trial and error but if there is a way to do that easier and more effectively, we want to provide that." Lauren McBride"You have to invest in yourself. You have to put the time in and you have to be continually growing." Lauren McBrideRESOURCES AND LINKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODEB-School: www..marieforleo.com/bschool/Instagram: www.instagram.comPinterest: www.pinterest.comTwitter: www.twitter.comSHOUT-OUTS*Links below may contain Affiliate Links. Purchasing through them help support Boss Girl Creative.*Sits Girls31 Days to Build a Better Blog - Darren Rowse aka PROBLOGGERMatch.comPottery BarnMaxxinista of the Month - TJMaxxThe Breakfast Club MORE FROM TAYLORPink Heels Pink Truck - pinkheelspinktruck.com MORE FROM LAURENLauren McBride Blog - www.laurenmcbrideblog.comCONNECT WITH US ON INSTAGRAMTaylor - @pnkheelspnktrkLauren - @laurmcbrideblog#bossgirlcreative #bossgirlQAHELP SPREAD THE BOSS GIRL LOVE!It would be amazeballs if you shared Boss Girl Creative Podcast with your fellow Boss Girls on twitter. Click here to tweet some love!If you love this podcast, head on over to iTunes and kindly leave a rating, a review and subscribe!FEEDBACK + PROMOTIONYou can ask your questions and leave your comments by either calling (707) BOSS-GIRL, emailing hello@bossgirlcreative.com or go to the Boss Girl Creative Facebook group.

Hi, welcome to the online marketing show, this is Joey Bushnell and welcome to the online marketing news. First off, retargeting platform Perfect Audience announced perfect audience connect this week. This is where you can team up with other marketers and cross promote to each other's visitors, not only can you retarget your own website visitors but now you can show ads to the visitors of your partners websites so now you reach new people not just the same ones over and over again. AOL have released a new native ads for mobile unit. It will be exclusively for mobile sites and apps and the ads will be shown on AOL owned properties, places you probably didn't know AOL even owned like techcrunch and the huffington post. If you're into media buying it could be worth testing out. LinkedIn is launching two new partner programs... Sponsored updates partners and content partners. The sponsored updates program is designed to help you reach a your target audience on LinkedIn better and the content partners program aims to help companies find good original content producers to create content for them. Twitter has rolled out a new web profile which is now available to everyone. It has a new best tweet section, a pinned tweet feature and a filtered tweet feature. Your tweets that attracted the most engagement will appear larger than normal. It also has space for a larger profile picture and cover photo. Twitter has also released a new ad unit called website cards. It shows an image, some text, a call to action and a when users click they will land on a page on your website. This is a good thing for us advertisers, it means more real estate to play with, we aren't limited to boring plain text, 140 characters tweets with this kind of ad. And for UK Twitter advertisers, Twitter have improved their Geo Targeting options adding 9 regions in the UK... North West England, Yorkshire and The Humber, East England, West Midlands, South East England, South West England, North East England and the East Midlands. And they have still kept all the old ones too... London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool-Manchester. Pinterest have announced guided search will help mobile app users find what they are looking for faster by adding relevant sub categories to the search results. This is just another reason for us marketers to make sure our pins and boards are all tagged and formatted correctly or they won't be found. Google have added 3 new features for app advertisers. In-app install ads can now target users on the display network based on previous apps they have installed and their usage of those apps. YouTube trueview companion for apps allows advertisers to show a video with a clickable call to action to download their app directly underneath and app deep linking for both search and display networks allows users of an app to open the app up to most relevant page within the app and start using it, a little bit like retargeting for apps. A few weeks back Leadpages announced the launch of their Marketplace and they officially opened the doors this week with their first template available for sale – The affiliate mini site, where you can pitch affiliates to promote for you and give them their links, banners and swipes. Perhaps the biggest online marketing launch coming up in the near future is Donald Wilsons FB ads cracked reloaded, where he teaches how to get cheap clicks on facebook ads, his last launch was a massive success and no doubt this one will be big too. In events... Copyblogger are hosting Authority Intensive in Denver, Colorado on the 7th – 9th of May. Speakers include Seth Godin, Darren Rowse, Brian eisenberg, Joanna Wiebe and many more. Chris Howard is hosting Wake Up Rich Live Weekend in Los Angeles, California on the 9th-11th of May. The business show 2014 is taking place in London, England on the 15th and 16th of May. This one is a massive event, over 250 seminars taking place, speed networking events, the angels den where you can pitch your business idea to angel investors and much more. American sales summit 2014 is being held in Las Vegas, Nevada on the May 15th – 19th. Speakers include loral langemeier, marshall slyver, Kevin Harrington, Daven Michaels, alex mandossian and Raymond aaron. David Neagle is hosting the breaking free live experience in Las Vegas, Nevada on the 15th -18th of May. O2 are holding a workshop called 11 ways to find new customers on LinkedIn. It's in London, England on the 22nd of May. Dov Gordon is holding a live event “one day jumpstart to a consistent flow of clients” in Washington DC on the 29th of May. James Malinchak is holding the Big Money Speaker Bootcamp in Los Angeles, California on the 29th of May to the 1st of June. The vocus marketing and PR conference called Demand success 2014 is being held in Washington DC on June the 5th and 6th. Speakers include Randi Zuckerberg and Avinash Kaushik, Chris Brogan and Laura Ries. Patrick Powers is holding a live workshop in London, England called the Irresistible Pitch on the 14th of June. Affiliate Summit East, New York, 10-12th of August. Huge line up of speakers and even the rapper Juicy J will be performing during the affiliate's ball, the official party of the affiliate summit.

Welcome to episode #130 of Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast. Back for another week of interesting audio comments, some personal ramblings and a bunch of stuff I promise to be paying more attention to (and you should be too). Enjoy the conversation... Here it is: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #130 - Host: Mitch Joel. Running time: 41:10. Audio comment line - please send in a comment and add your voice to the audio community: +1 206-666-6056. Please send in questions, comments, suggestions - mitch@twistimage.com. Hello from Beautiful Montreal. Subscribe over at iTunes. Please visit and leave comments on the Blog - Six Pixels of Separation. Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook. or you can connect on LinkedIn. ...or on twitter. Facebook Group - Six Pixels of Separation Podcast Society. In a perfect world, connect with me, directly, through Facebook. Check out the other Podcast, Foreword Thinking - The Business And Motivational Book Review Podcast. Foreword Thinking - Episode #11 featuring Michael Gerber - E-Myth Revisited and Awakening The Entrepreneur Within. The Road to Six Pixels of Separation – The Book – coming soon. Books to check out: Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. Content by Cory Doctorow. ProBlogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki. Remix – Lawrence Lessig. Technology Review – a great new magazine by MIT. Audio Comment – Sebastian Kiel – Speaking English Podcast. Audio Comment – Shel Holtz – For Immediate Release Podcast. Audio Comment – Robin Browne – Being Buff. Audio Comment - Chris Goward – Wider Funnel Marketing. Six Points of Separation – Six Tools And Channels To Check Out: 1. FriendFeed. 2. Sphinn. 3. Delicious deep dive. 4. RoboForm. 5. Camtasia or SnagIt (or both). 6. TweetDeck and/or Twhirl. Music as suggested by Sebastian Kiel – Speaking English Podcast: Monkeeman – ‘The Last Ones'. Please join the conversation by sending in questions, feedback and ways to improve Six Pixels Of Separation. Please let me know what you think or leave an audio comment at: +1 206-666-6056. Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast - Episode #130 - Host: Mitch Joel. Tags: advertising awakening the entrepreneur within being buff blog blogging born standing up business camtasia chris garrett chris goward content cory doctorow darren rowse delicious digital marketing emyth revisited facebook facebook group for immediate release foreword thinking friendfeed google guy kawasaki itunes lawrence lessig marketing mass media michael gerber mit monkeeman motivational books online social network podcast podcasting problogger reality check remix robin browne roboform sebastian kiel shel holtz six pixels of separation six pixels of separation book snagit social media marketing speaking english podcast sphinn steve martin technology review magazine tweetdeck twhirl twist image web 20 wider funnel marketing