Podcasts about personal mba

Today I'm joined by Lars Tiger, a Norwegian music producer who makes $500,000 a year—almost entirely profit—working just two hours a week from his home in the south of France.We dive deep into the experiment that made it possible: releasing thousands of piano tracks with no marketing, using pure volume to generate income and data. Lars shares how he redefined quality, stopped chasing perfectionism, and built a flywheel that creators in any industry can apply.You'll learn how volume creates financial stability, how to think like a fisherman (not a perfectionist), and why quantity—not quality—is the fastest path to mastery.Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 01:26 Lars' $500K/yr, 2-hour workweek model 04:12 Creating 1,000 tracks with zero marketing 08:10 Why 80% quality is enough (and often better) 14:05 The Pottery Class Experiment 17:52 From hits to stability: the math behind his model 20:21 Why Spotify only brings in 15–20% of revenue 22:30 What actually drives plays (hint: not TikTok) 25:42 Helping traditional artists embrace volume 30:38 Can this model scale to $1M+? 34:50 YouTube, repurposing, and platform expansion 39:00 Balancing freedom vs scale 46:04 Faceless creators, pen names, and creative freedom 52:02 What are you optimizing for?If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe, share it with your friends, and leave us a review. We read every single one.Learn more about The Nathan Barry Show: https://nathanbarry.com/showFollow Nathan: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanbarry LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanbarry X: https://twitter.com/nathanbarry YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thenathanbarryshow Website: https://nathanbarry.comFollow Lars: Website: https://www.larstiger.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/larstiger/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larstigerFeatured in this episode: Lars' Free Music Catalog Course: https://www.larstiger.com ConvertKit: https://convertkit.com Flywheels Course: https://nathanbarry.com/flywheels The Personal MBA: https://personalmba.com#musicproducer #entrepreneur #songwriter

If you want a crash course in business without the six-figure MBA price tag, this episode is for you! In this Making Good Book Club episode, we dive into The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman—a powerful guide that distills essential business principles into one book. Charelle and I discuss the five key areas of every business, how to overcome barriers to purchase, 4 ways to increase revenue, and more. MAKING GOOD SHOW NOTES:https://makinggoodpodcast.com/285CONNECT WITH ME ON INSTAGRAM:https://instagram.com/laurentildenGET 100 MARKETING PROMPTS (free!):https://makinggoodpodcast.com/100promptsGet your free training: Marketing 101 Video Training + Workbook.

"Personal MBA" цувралынхаа ээлжит дугаарт бид үнэ цэн гэж чухам юу болох, түүнийг хэрхэн бүтээдэг болон хэрэглэгчдэд хэрхэн хүргэх тухай ярилцлаа. "Personal MBA" буюу "Хувь хүний бизнесийн удирдлагын боловсрол" хөтөлбөрийн хүрээнд өрнөх уг цуврал подкастыг Business.mn подкаст МҮХАҮТ-ын дэргэдэх Бизнес Академитай хамтран хүргэж байна. Зочин: Бизнес Академийн захирал Д.Асралт

"Personal MBA" цувралынхаа ээлжит дугаарт бид санхүүгийн сахилга бат, бизнесийн эздийн гаргадаг түгээмэл алдаа болон ашиг орлогоо нэмэгдүүлэхэд юу нөлөөлдөг тухай ярилцлаа. "Personal MBA" буюу "Хувь хүний бизнесийн удирдлагын боловсрол" хөтөлбөрийн хүрээнд өрнөх уг цуврал подкастыг Business.mn подкаст МҮХАҮТ-ын дэргэдэх Бизнес Академитай хамтран хүргэж байна. Зочин: Көүч Лаб-ийн мэргэшсэн сургагч багш, BPN компанийн Гүйцэтгэх захирал П.Ундармаа

"Personal MBA" цувралынхаа ээлжит дугаарт бид үнэ цэн гэж чухам юу болох, түүнийг хэрхэн бүтээдэг болон хэрэглэгчдэд хэрхэн хүргэх тухай ярилцлаа. "Personal MBA" буюу "Хувь хүний бизнесийн удирдлагын боловсрол" хөтөлбөрийн хүрээнд өрнөх уг цуврал подкастыг Business.mn подкаст МҮХАҮТ-ын дэргэдэх Бизнес Академитай хамтран хүргэж байна. Зочин: Көүч Лаб-ийн мэргэшсэн сургагч багш Э.Чаминцэцэг

Business.mn подкаст МҮХАҮТ-ын дэргэдэх Бизнес Академитай хамтран хүргэж буй "Personal MBA" буюу "Хувь хүний бизнесийн удирдлагын боловсрол" хөтөлбөрийн хүрээнд цуврал подкастын ээлжит дугаарт бид борлуулалтаа өсгөхөд юу чухал болох, худалдааны зөвлхөүүдийн үнэ цэн болон хүн бүрийн эзэмших ур чадваруудын тухай ярилцлаа. Зочин: Смарт Дийл ХХК-ийн Борлуулалт, Үйлчилгээ хариуцсан захирал , Көүч Лаб-ийн сургагч багш Ж.Дэлгэрцэцэг

Josh Kaufman is the bestselling author of books on business, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. His first book, The Personal MBA, is a top-selling business book worldwide, with more than 1 million copies sold. His second book, The First 20 Hours, introduced a universal research-based method of learning fun and useful skills. His third book, How to Fight a Hydra, a "fairy tale for the entrepreneur's journey," debuted at #1 in Modern Philosophy on Amazon. This week, Barrett and Josh cover a wide range of topics from thoughtful entrepreneurship to heartful parenting. They talk about the profound impact of letting go of assumptions, the trap of pursuing status, and how to live with wisdom and intention. Josh shares his experiences with strategic self-publishing, why he thinks about his books like an investment portfolio, and what it looks like to define success on your own terms. They also discuss how to evaluate priorities, why emotional clarity is necessary for breaking down barriers to creativity and action, the importance of playing the long game, and much more.  In this episode: [00:00] - Intro [03:04] - The chocolate quality debate [08:03] - Developing taste and preferences [17:01] - The art of audio and narration [30:53] - The business of books [41:20] - Building a book portfolio [46:27] - Choosing new projects and the paradox of choice [01:02:07] - Status games and trade-offs [01:15:49] - Setting the right priorities and dealing with trade-offs [01:27:44] - The power of questioning assumptions [01:34:30] - Parenting insights and reflections [01:41:24] - Building a home with intentionality [01:47:41] - Josh's beautiful future [01:49:28] - Who Josh is becoming Get full show notes and links at https://GoodWorkShow.com. Watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@barrettabrooks.

WARNING: this episode will teach you everything you would learn in a business degree, saving you $200,000 and 10,000 hours  Josh Kaufman is a renowned business expert and the author of the international best-selling book, ‘The Personal MBA' which has sold over 900,000 copies worldwide. He is also the author of books such as, ‘The First 20 Hours', and ‘How to Fight a Hydra'. In this conversation, Josh and Steven discuss topics such as, the 5 laws of business, how to turn $100 into $10k, the psychological tactics of millionaires, and how to make money in your sleep.  00:00 Intro 02:00 Why Did You Write The Personal MBA 04:32 What Is An MBA? 10:30 Should You Do A MBA? 14:19 How Difficult Is Starting And Running A Business? 16:57 First Steps To Setting Up A Business 19:29 Loads Of Business Are Finding Problems To Solve 27:49 How To Give Value To The End Consumer 35:47 How Do You Find Out If Your Idea Is Good? 39:11 This Is The Wrong Approach When Starting A Business 40:49 Why Should You Start With Value? 42:35 How To Market 44:04 Psychology & Marketing 46:06 Creating A Drive In The Marketing Strategy 48:23 Think Different 50:52 Be Brave To Do Something Completely Different 58:39 How To Become A Good Marketer 01:00:31 The Sales Piece In Any Business 01:04:38 Customer Service Matters 01:06:09 The Sales Framework 01:13:06 How Important Is Hiring? 01:14:50 What Role Does Competition Play? 01:19:09 Let's Talk Money 01:24:17 What Numbers Should I Pay Attention To? 01:26:35 Experimenting 01:34:55 Every Complex System Starts In A Simple Way 01:39:06 Mastering A Job 01:43:54 Ten Major Principles To Learn Anything 01:55:24 Removing Any Friction In The Process 02:01:38 Last Guest Question  Follow Josh:  Twitter - https://g2ul0.app.link/SznbYyhi9Kb  YouTube: You can purchase Josh's book, ‘How to Fight a Hydra', here: https://amzn.to/4f1qJa4  Spotify: You can purchase Josh's book, ‘How to Fight a Hydra', here: https://g2ul0.app.link/igsXEtci9Kb  Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes  My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook  You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb  Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb  Sponsors: Shopify: http://shopify.com/bartlett Colgate - https://www.colgate.com/en-gb/colgate-total Vodafone V-Hub: https://www.vodafone.co.uk/business/sme-business/steven-bartlett-digital-sos?cid=dsp-ent/nprod/Stevenbartlett01/eng/7.24/ntst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Business.mn подкаст МҮХАҮТ-ын дэргэдэх Бизнес Академитай хамтран "Personal MBA" буюу "Хувь хүний бизнесийн удирдлагын боловсрол" хөтөлбөрийн хүрээнд цуврал подкастыг хүргэж байна. Энэ удаад бид маркетингийн ач холбогдлын тухай ярилцлаа. Зочин: МҮХАҮТ-ын гүйцэтгэх захирал Т.Дүүрэн

Business.mn подкаст МҮХАҮТ-ын дэргэдэх Бизнес Академитай хамтран "Personal MBA" буюу "Хувь хүний бизнесийн удирдлагын боловсрол" хөтөлбөрийн хүрээнд цуврал подкастыг хүргэж байна. Энэ удаад бид бизнесийн үнэ цэн гэж чухам юу болох тухай ярилцлаа. Зочин: Бизнес Академийн зөвлөх Д.Ерөө

Hello, CBNation Builders! As we navigate the thrilling yet challenging world of entrepreneurship, there are key lessons and principles that consistently rise to the forefront, shaping the path to success. After doing over 1600 insightful podcasts with industry leaders, innovators, and startup veterans on the I AM CEO Podcast, I've distilled what I believe were 16 themes or that I heard consistently throughout the podcast. I even made a list of 100s of things I've learned that we added to the I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3.  While 16 is my favorite number (see Blue 16 Media), it didn't feel quite complete to have a list of themes. As, I myself start to go through EOS and the Traction Book and start to look more about business foundations and go back to the business plan and really start to evaluate the core part of business. Looking at CEO Hacks like the Personal MBA even and Harvard Business, Entrepreneur Magazine made me realize the best way is to see further is to “stand on the shoulders of giants.” It's at the heart of why I even started CEO Blog Nation's first site Hearprenur to “Hear from Entrepreneurs.” So, could I distill these 16 even more? Yes, of course.  As Steve Jobs said, “That's been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains” I came to 7 which signals completion but even that didn't seem right as I tried to merge “technology” under one of the foundation principles. But as, we've had a monthly theme many times “We are a technology company that does…” It was only right that we changed 7 to 8. While it's more than I expected but think it's accurate. It's half of 16 and if you want to know the symbolism of 8 for fun you can Google it or check it out using Perplexity. These are the core areas every entrepreneur, particularly those in the crucial first five years (the Builders), should master. My journey would have undoubtedly been smoother had I fully grasped these concepts from the start. Now, I'm eager to pass on this blueprint to you, potentially paving the way for an impactful resources designed to elevate Builders to Architects and eventually, to Mogul status. The reality is that these are pillars but they're not silos, the people you have in place will ultimately affect you financial projection. While the products and services won't be nearly as impactful if your operations aren't in place. Do you feel as if you have most of the pillars in place but you ignore technology, it can completely disrupt your indudstry and your buisness. Maybe you don't fully understand business or entrepreneurship and you throw in the towel because you reach one road block. That's the challenge in business. However, if you have the right people in place, it can completely change everything, they can execute on a level that helps support all the other aspects in business. Do you really have great financials, it could help give you more runway than your competitors for mistakes, failures or even disruptions in business. So as I like to say when you are building a media company, things might be simple, but understand it is by no means easy. Sometimes focusing on 1-2 “ingredients” can have the biggest impact, but you just have to figure out what that “one thing” is at the moment. It will test every aspect of who you are as an individual and leader. And the thing is when it's hard and you have challenges, it doesn't mean you are doing it wrong. As I try to highlight on the podcast, it's actually the norm. As much as you build the buisness, you are also build yourself. So what are these business pillars: People Operations Strategy Product and Service Financial Visibility Technology Entrepreneurship As we shift and pivot our sites and resources, you will find more and more content and information “fit” into these pillars to help support you as a Business Builder. Here's a little more about the 8 Business Pillars and there's lots more to come: 1. People First and foremost, your team is your greatest asset. The right mix of talent can innovate, execute, and breathe life into your vision. Invest in hiring individuals who not only have the skills but also share your passion and values. Remember, a strong culture leads to sustained success. Also don't forget that you are also the people you have to maintain so don't forget to “fill up your cup.” 2. Operations Efficient operations are the engine of your business. Streamlining processes, managing resources effectively, and continually improving workflows are crucial. The ability to deliver with consistency and quality underpins your credibility in the market. 3. Strategy Your roadmap must be clear and agile. A sound strategy involves setting achievable goals, understanding your competition, and adapting to market changes. Regularly revisiting and revising your strategy will keep you aligned with your long-term vision. 4. Product and Service The heart of what you offer — ensure that your products or services solve real problems and deliver exceptional value. Innovate and evolve as you gather customer feedback and stay ahead of industry trends. 5. Financial Robust financial management can make or break your venture. Understand your numbers, from cash flow to profit margins. Make informed decisions to fuel growth and ensure sustainability. Remember, financial knowledge empowers you to steer your business with confidence. 6. Visibility In today's digital age, how you manage your brand presence is crucial. Effective marketing, advertising and public relations can greatly enhance your reach and reputation. Build a narrative that resonates with your audience and engage them consistently. 7. Technology Leverage technology to your advantage. From CEO Hacks like productivity tools and CRM systems to e-commerce platforms and data analytics — the right tech stack can drive efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and open new avenues for growth. Also, don't ignore AI and new technological enhancements. 8. Entrepreneurship & Business Last but certainly not least, embody the spirit of entrepreneurship and business. Resilience, innovation, leadership, and a willingness to take calculated risks are the hallmarks of a successful entrepreneur. Stay curious, embrace challenges, and be persistent. As a community of driven and innovative builders, our potential to prosper is boundless, particularly when we support one another and learn together. This distilled wisdom from years of conversations with business leaders could soon evolve into a structured course and other offerings. This educational journey would aim not only to deepen your understanding of these pillars but also to facilitate your transition from working IN your business to working ON your business — moving from a Builder to an Architect and eventually, to a Mogul who shapes the world. Stay tuned, and let's continue to build not just businesses, but legacies. Together, we grow stronger and more resilient. Remember, every challenge is an opportunity, and every misstep a lesson. Let's harness our collective experiences to build a community of successful, impactful leaders driving change across the globe. What do you think? Did we miss anything are there any other pillars that we should add or subtract? Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.  I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!

Read on your terms. Get the PDF, infographic, full ad-free audiobook and animated version of this summary of The Personal MBA and unlimited bestselling book insights on the top-rated StoryShots app: https://www.getstoryshots.com/ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Help us grow to create more amazing content for you! Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the StoryShots podcast now.  What should our next book be? Suggest and vote it up on the StoryShots app. Sponsors: Get the full audiobook for free with a new trial of Audible here. Life gets busy. Has The Personal MBA been on your reading list? Learn the key insights now. We're scratching the surface here. If you don't already have Josh Kaufman's business classic, get the audiobook for free using the link in the description or the StoryShots app to learn the juicy details. Introduction Have you always wondered how you could be successful in business without paying for a college education? Or have you tried and failed in business and feel you could never be financially successful? The Personal MBA aims to provide you with a degree-level understanding of business without getting into huge debt. Josh Kaufman gives an outline of the business basics required to be economically successful. He also dispels the myth that you need a college education to do well in the business world. Business leaders are not made in business schools; they become who they are through their willingness to seek knowledge. The Personal MBA is your opportunity to seek business knowledge on your terms. About Josh Kaufman Josh Kaufman is an independent business teacher, education activist, and author. Kaufman's TEDx talk, “The First 20 Hours,” is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 22 million views on YouTube. His website, joshkaufman.net, was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Entrepreneurs'' by Forbes in 2013. Kaufman's books cover topics such as business, entrepreneurship, productivity, creativity, and applied psychology. Collectively, they have sold over a million copies. Kaufman says his aim is “to help you make more money, get more done, and have more fun in your day-to-day life.” His research has been featured by The New York Times, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Fortune, Forbes, TIME, WIRED, Fast Company, Financial Times, HarvardBusiness.org, and the World Economic Forum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“The biggest breakthroughs came from the random side projects that I had no expectation would turn into anything.” Josh Kaufman is a longtime friendtor (13 years and counting!) who I admire for his streamlined approach to running his business in a way that supports family life and creative solitude. In our last conversation we spoke about releasing the ten-year anniversary edition of his bestselling book, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, that has since surpassed the one million books sold milestone. Today we're diving into the systems behind that success. Check out 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman if you haven't already! More About Josh: Josh Kaufman's research and books focus on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. Josh's unique, multidisciplinary approach to business mastery and rapid skill acquisition has helped millions of readers around the world learn essential concepts and skills on their own terms. Josh's TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 37 million views on YouTube.

On this week's episode of Next Level Minds I had the opportunity to sit down with Josh Kaufman. I am reposting this episode because it is my most downloaded episode and we are blessed to have a lot of new listeners!    He is a best-selling author, researcher, and speaker. Josh's TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 22 million views on YouTube. His research has been featured by The New York Times, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Fortune, Forbes, and many other media outlets. We discuss his first book, Personal MBA, his background, the psychology of business, learning lessons from his time in corporate America, and much more!   For more information on Josh Kaufman click here!

Découvre le classement des cinq meilleurs mentors qui ont influencé Olivier Roland dans son parcours d'entrepreneur ! Dans ce podcast, Olivier partage les enseignements clés qu'il a reçus de Robert Cialdini, Léo Babauta, Steve Pavlina, Jeff Walker et Tim Ferriss. Ces experts ont été une source d'inspiration, de conseils précieux et ont joué un rôle majeur dans le succès d'Olivier. Ressources :

From the basics of products and marketing to the nuances of teamwork and systems, this book distils everything you need to know to take on the MBA graduates and win. 10 Core Principles of MBA 1. Value Creation 2. Marketing 3. Sales 4. Value delivery 5. Finance 6. The Human Mind 7. Working With Yourself 8. Working With Others 9. Understanding & Analyzing Systems 10. Improving Systems. पर्सनल एमबीए आपको हर विषय के लिए सरल मानसिक मॉडल देता है जो व्यावसायिक सफलता की कुंजी है। उत्पादों और विपणन की मूल बातें से लेकर टीम वर्क और सिस्टम की बारीकियों तक, यह पुस्तक एमबीए स्नातकों को लेने और जीतने के लिए आपको जो कुछ जानने की जरूरत है, उसे दूर करती है। Connect with us on: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/readersbook... Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/readersbooks... Telegram : https://telegram.me/readersbooksclub Twitter : https://twitter.com/readerbooksclub  

From the basics of products and marketing to the nuances of teamwork and systems, this book distils everything you need to know to take on the MBA graduates and win. 10 Core Principles of MBA 1. Value Creation 2. Marketing 3. Sales 4. Value delivery 5. Finance 6. The Human Mind 7. Working With Yourself 8. Working With Others 9. Understanding & Analyzing Systems 10. Improving Systems. पर्सनल एमबीए आपको हर विषय के लिए सरल मानसिक मॉडल देता है जो व्यावसायिक सफलता की कुंजी है। उत्पादों और विपणन की मूल बातें से लेकर टीम वर्क और सिस्टम की बारीकियों तक, यह पुस्तक एमबीए स्नातकों को लेने और जीतने के लिए आपको जो कुछ जानने की जरूरत है, उसे दूर करती है। Connect with us on: Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/readersbook... Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/readersbooks... Telegram : https://telegram.me/readersbooksclub Twitter : https://twitter.com/readerbooksclub  

A summary of the highly influential book - The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. Follow me on LinkedIn, YouTube, and all popular Podcast channels - Anshuman Tiwari

Many interviewers report that they make up a big percentage of their mind about applicants during the first few minutes of an interview. This podcast shares a number of very specific suggestions and tips to make yourself stand out during these first interactions. Our host shares his suggestions for something he calls a “personal MBA soundbite” – including how you can create this soundbite, how you can incorporate it into the beginning of your first question, and how you can use this language to provide a framework for your entire interview.  While each is different, the main goals of an personal MBA soundbite are to: summarize who you are in an interesting/memorable/dynamic/compelling way at the start of your interview, create a framework for the first part of your conversation so that the interviewer understands your life and work experiences in the appropriate context given your future goals, and   develop a short *elevator pitch* that can not only be useful as you prep for your interviews… but also in terms of other elements of your admissions journey–from speaking to current students, to alums, to admissions officers, etc.  This podcast is perfect for anyone wanting to start of on the right foot for that all-important MBA admission interview. 

ในฉบับ Friends of ToShare, K'ต้น - พฤกษ์ ชีวะวรนันท์ . EP นี้ขอเป็นการมาสวัสดีปีใหม่ 2023 กับผู้ฟัง ToShare Podcast ด้วยการเริ่มต้น EP แรกของปี 2023 . EP แรกของปี 2023 ขอเริ่มต้นปีด้วย #ToSpecialSeries ที่มาในธีม #ToHNY2023 เพื่อเป็นการสวัสดีปีใหม่ 2023 และเป็นของขวัญปีใหม่ให้กับผู้ฟังทุกคนกันนนน โดยพวกเรา ToShare Podcast เลยเลือกหา Content ที่เหมาะกับปีใหม่ การเริ่มต้นใหม่ๆ เพราะเชื่อว่าหลายคนก็เริ่มตั้งเป้าหมาย เขียน New Year Resolution ของปีนี้กันไว้แล้วแน่ๆ . พอดีกับที่ Friend of ToShare ของเราคนนึง (หนึ่งในเพื่อน Host ต้น) เค้าได้เขียนโพสต์สรุปหนังสือที่เค้าได้อ่านทั้งหมด 12 เล่มในปี 2022 ซึ่งพวกเราเลยเห็นว่าเหยยยย มันไม่ควรอยู่แค่ใน FB ของเพื่อนเราคนนี้ Content ดีๆ แบบนี้มันควรที่จะ Fly ออกไป พวกเราเลยเลือกที่จะชวน Friend of ToShare คนนี้หรือ K'ต้น - พฤกษ์ ชีวะวรนันท์ มาป้ายยาหนังสือที่เค้าได้อ่านไป ซึ่งเราจะเลือกกันมาป้ายยากันทั้งมด 5 เล่ม ซึ่งคือ : (1) Tiny habit (2) When (3) How to avoid climate disaster (4) The Personal MBA (5) The Midnight Library *อีก 7 เล่มที่เหลือสามารถคลิกที่ https://bit.ly/3QZ6mi4 เพื่อไปอ่านโพสต์สรุปหนังสือเต็มๆ กันได้เลย . และนอกจาก K'ต้น, Friend of ToShare ของเราจะมาป้ายยา เล่าให้พวกเราฟังถึงความน่าสนใจของหนังสือแต่ละเล่มจนเชื่อว่าต้องมีคนที่ฟังจบแล้วตามไปซื้อหนังสือกันอย่างแน่นอน เรายังชวน K'ต้น มาแชร์เทคนิค เคล็ดลับต่างๆ ในการอ่าน ที่ทำให้ตัว K'ต้น สามารถอ่านหนังสือจบได้ถึง 12 เล่ม และยังเขียนสรุปออกมาเป็น Key Takeaway พร้อมทั้งสามารถเอาไปปรับใช้ในชีวิตจริงได้อีก . ถ้าพร้อมโดนป้ายยากันแล้ว ไปฟังกันโลด - Note(1): EP นี้ทั้ง Host และ Guest ชื่อเล่นเราเหมือนกันคือ ‘ต้น' ครับ 55555 อาจจะทำให้สับสนได้ระหว่างฟัง ต้องขออภัยด้วย Note(2): EP นี้ Host ที ไม่ได้มาจอยด้วย เพราะเป็น EP ที่เราลัดคิวขึ้นมาอัดและปล่อยก่อน เพื่อมอบให้เป็นของขวัญให้กับทุกคนครับ :) EP ต่อไปพบเจอกับ Host ที ปกติแน่นอนค้าบบบบ - :: ติดตาม Toshare Podcast ได้ทาง https://www.facebook.com/tosharepodcastTH/ . The more we share, the more we experience #TosharePodcastTH

Learn on your terms. Get the PDF, infographic, full ad-free audiobook and animated version of this summary and a lot more on the top-rated StoryShots app: https://www.getstoryshots.com Help us grow to create more amazing content for you! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the StoryShots podcast now.  What should our next book be? Suggest and vote it up on the StoryShots app. StoryShots Book Summary and Review of The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything… Fast by Josh Kaufman  Introduction “Lots of books promise to change your life. This one actually will.” – Seth Godin, bestselling author of Linchpin Have you ever wanted to learn a foreign language, play a musical instrument, or gain another skill but found it too daunting? It can feel like too much hard work. It can feel like you don't have time to learn something new. But if you break the process down into manageable goals and make your learning more efficient, things begin to feel more achievable. You'll be amazed at the skills you can learn through short, focused practice sessions. The First 20 Hours gives you the tools to do exactly that.  The First 20 Hours is about rapid skill acquisition: picking up new skills as quickly as possible. You can go from knowing nothing to performing well in a very short period. It could take 20 hours or less. “A blockbuster in the making, The First 20 Hours breaks down the learning process into simple and effective steps with real-life examples that inspire. After reading this book, you'll be ready to take on any number of skills and make progress on that big project you've been putting off for years.” – Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup About Josh Kaufman Josh Kaufman is an independent business teacher, education activist, and author. His TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date. Kaufman's website, joshkaufman.net, was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Entrepreneurs'' by Forbes in 2013. He is the bestselling author of The Personal MBA, which shares the secrets to business success. Kaufman's books cover topics including business, entrepreneurship, productivity, creativity, and applied psychology. Collectively, they have sold over a million copies. Kaufman says his aim is “to help you make more money, get more done, and have more fun in your day-to-day life”. His research has been featured by The New York Times, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Fortune, Forbes, Time, Wired, Fast Company, Financial Times, HarvardBusiness.org, and The World Economic Forum. StoryShot #1: Use Rapid Skill Acquisition to Learn Within 20 Hours StoryShot #2: Apply the Ten Principles of Skill Acquisition StoryShot #3: Learn Your Chosen Skill by Focusing Your Energy StoryShot #4: Apply the 10 Major Principles of Effective Learning StoryShot #5: Choose Your Skill Level StoryShot #6: Use Smaller Steps Disclaimer: This is an unofficial summary and analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Vishen Lakhiani moved to New York City, he was making $7,500 a month at a company with a difficult, problematic, and even racist culture. After creating multiple streams of passive income and taking baby steps toward his goal of running his own meditation business, he was able to quit his job and eventually scale his company, Mindvalley, to nine figures. Vishen's story is one of many entrepreneurial success stories we've heard on Young and Profiting Podcast, and in this episode, you'll learn about the fundamentals of starting a business from these successes.  Featured in this episode are Vishen Lakhiani, founder and CEO of Mindvalley; Nick Loper, founder of the popular blog and podcast, Side Hustle Nation; Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA; and Alex Hormozi, founder of Acquisition.com and bestselling author of $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No. In this episode, Hala and various guests will discuss: - Calculating your minimal livable income (MLI)  - Do what you love, what you're good at, and what will make you money  - Don't quit your day job until you can afford to  - Generating passive income  - Testing your business idea  - Today's most profitable side hustles  - Finding a viable market  - Five parts of every business  - You can make more money by serving a different audience  - Why you shouldn't focus entirely on generating revenue when you're first starting out  - And other topics… Resources Mentioned: - Vishen Lakhiani: The Law of Attraction is Bunk! The Truth about Intuition and Manifesting for High Performers | E201: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vishen-lakhiani-the-law-of-attraction-is-bunk/id1368888880?i=1000590605986  - Nick Loper: The Art of Side Hustles | E10: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nick-loper-the-art-of-side-hustles-e10/id1368888880?i=1000423665576  - Josh Kaufman: Launching a Business or Side Hustle | E106: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/josh-kaufman-launching-a-business-or-side-hustle-e106/id1368888880?i=1000512998935  - Alex Hormozi: The Value Equation, How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No | E199: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-hormozi-the-value-equation-how-to-make-offers-so/id1368888880?i=1000588801031  - Josh Kaufman's Book, The Personal MBA: https://personalmba.com/  - Napoleon Hill's Book, Think and Grow Rich: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark-Bestseller/dp/1585424331  Sponsored By:  Shopify - Sign up for a free trial at shopify.com/profiting The Jordan Harbinger Show - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Join Hala's LinkedIn Masterclass - yapmedia.io/course

Tudor Tanase is a serial entrepreneur, amazon seller, agency owner and hair growth specialist on a mission to cure hair loss. He started doing e-commerce and social media marketing in his early 20s. He is a 6 figure seller after only 2 years selling primarily in the US, in 2019 he launched his products and brands in Europe with a focus on the UK and Germany.  One of his products gained 5x during the pandemic. Tudor shares many tips and tricks that have gotten him to where he is today.   This Episode is brought to you by 5x.   As a business owner, I'm sure you know how important data layer is. It allows you to make data driven decisions and also get insights on all aspects of your business.  In practice it requires signing up with different vendors, paying for custom integrations, checking multiple dashboards. 5x solves all of that. Think of it as Apple Store for Data Vendors meeting SquareSpace for in-depth analytics. They Save you time, money and workforce. If you want to get 20% off your first year with them, go to https://www.5x.co, schedule a demo and mention 10 million journey podcast.   Recommendations from Tudor: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark-Bestseller/dp/1585424331 The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572 Your Next Five Moes by Patrick Bet-David https://www.amazon.com/Your-Next-Five-Moves-Business/dp/1982154802   Connect with Tudor: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tudor-tanase-7b007b213/?originalSubdomain=ro Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tudor.tude.93   Want to sit down with Anatoly 1 on 1? Even though I keep saying I AM NOT A GURU, many of you ask to sit down and pick my brain. I have decided to do a 1h HELP calls. There are 2 purposes: 1st to support you in your journey and second also to be able to break even on the production of this podcast (each episode editing, marketing, guest research etc takes about $60 - $150 to produce). Now you can schedule 1h with me, and we can talk about launching products, hiring, product research, keywords, mindset, how I did an Ironman or anything at all. Link is here: https://calendly.com/anatolyspektor/anatoly-connsulting-1h?month=2022-08   ANATOLY's TOOLS:   Product Development: Helim10 - I use it for Product Research, Keyword tracking and Listing Optimization . SPECIAL DEAL: Get 50% your first month or 10% every month: http://bit.ly/CORNERSIIH10 Pickfu - I use it for split testing all of my products and for validation ideas . SPECIAL DEAL: First split test 50% 0ff  https://www.pickfu.com/10mj   Trademarking: Trademark Angels - For all my trademarking needs. SPECIAL: Mention Anatoly and 10MJ podcast and get 10% Off your trademark.   Fiverr - I hire my 3dMockup person and images label designer here on Fiverr - http://bit.ly/10mjFIVERR Upwork - I hire people long term on Upwork - upwork.com Loom.com - for creating SOP's, I record everything on Loom and give to my VA's Keepa.com - to track historical data such as prices   ANATOLY's 3 Favorite Business Books: DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson - I think this is a must read for every online entrepreneurs - http://bit.ly/10MJDotCom 4 hours work week by Tim Ferriss - This book changed my life and made me become an entrepreneur - http://bit.ly/10MJ4WW The Greatest Salesman In The World by Og Mandino - Old book but it goes to the core of selling -  http://bit.ly/10MJGREATSM   DISCLAIMER: Some Links are affiliate, it costs you nothing, but helps to keep this podcast on the float   Have questions? Go to https://www.10millionjourney.com   Follow us on: Instagram: @10millionjourney Twitter: @10miljourney

The Commercial Real Estate Academy podcast was created to demystify the commercial real estate industry for the masses. During our weekly episodes, we interview industry experts on a host of different commercial real estate-related topics. Through these interviews, we hope to arm you with the knowledge, references, and tools you'll need to confidently pursue commercial real estate opportunities as a business owner and/or an investor. Raphael Collazo and Jeff Walston are excited to introduce their guest for this week! In today's episode, we hosted Norm Doucet, Head of Americas Flexible Workplace at Cushman & Wakefield, for a lively conversation about what the future of work will look like over the next 5–10 years. ▶️ During our conversation, we explored topics such as: • What is a Flexible Workspace and how has it evolved since COVID, • What initiatives is Cushman taking on to become a leader in the space, • What does the future of work look like over the next 5–10 years, • How has social media affected your brand, • As well as much more... ▶️ If you're interested in learning more about Norm, feel free to reach out to him via the following links: ▶ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/normandoucet/ ▶ Website: http://www.cushmanwakefield.com ▶ Email: Norm.Doucet@cushwake.com Below I've provided links to books that were referenced during the episode: 1. The Future of Innovation - https://www.amazon.com/Future-Innovation-Anna-Trifilova/dp/0566092131 2. The Personal MBA - https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572 If you find value in these episodes, please SUBSCRIBE and don't forget to leave us a 5

We can sort of categorize courses and other educational content into two different categories. The first is a targeted instrumental style, where the learner is taught procedures and technical skills. It's important to learn these skills in whatever subject you are learning but this type of course lacks the greater context and can leave you wondering how everything fits together and where you'd actually apply these skills.The second type operates on a higher level of concepts and patterns. It teaches the learner mental models and forms the context surrounding the skills of the domain. It's necessary to learn from both types but you may notice that there are a lot more of the first type. And part of the reason for that is that it's a much more challenging instructional design problem. Both the delivery method and content of the course have to be different. Which for Josh Kaufman this has meant building a custom platform for his Personal MBA course that he's designing. Some of the challenges have included reducing the cognitive overwhelm that comes with very large courses, structuring the course around a 1to1 asynchronous relationship with the instructor, and designing a system that has the learner revisiting content for spaced repetition. All of that fits together to create an experience that is more likely to keep learners engaged through to completion and better reinforces the concepts being taught.

Do you want to start a business, but aren't sure how? When it comes to launching a business or starting a side hustle, understanding markets, sales, negotiation, operations, and more, is crucial. Bestselling author and speaker, Josh Kaufman, is here to give you a masterclass in the fundamentals of business. Today's business system is complex, but Josh breaks it down so you can get your business running and profiting faster! In this episode, Hala and Josh chat about the ten ways to identify a viable market, the five parts to every business, how to test your idea before launch, how to set pricing, when giving a discount is a good idea, and they share sales tips and tricks.   Topics Include:  - How his college degree helped shaped his career - Why he wrote The Personal MBA  - How to find a viable market - The five parts of every business  - 10 ways to evaluate a market  - Characteristics of good products or services  - Exceptional product or service in the pandemic  - How to test your idea before launch - The steps to decide pricing  - The best way to create high-ticket offers and elements - Objections to anticipate and how to counteract  - When to use discounting - And other topics… Josh Kaufman is the author of three bestselling books: The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything… Fast!, and How to Fight a Hydra: Face Your Fears, Pursue Your Ambitions, and Become the Hero You Are Destined to Be. Josh has been featured as the #1 bestselling author in Business & Money, as ranked by Amazon.com, and his books have sold over a million copies worldwide.  Josh's TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 30 million views on YouTube. Josh's research focuses on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. His multidisciplinary approach to business mastery and rapid skill acquisition has helped millions of people around the world learn essential concepts and skills on their terms. Josh's research has been featured by The New York Times, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Fortune, Forbes, Time, BusinessWeek, and Wired, among many others.  Sponsored By: Jordan Harbinger - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Wise - Join 13 million people and businesses who are already saving, and try Wise for free at Wise.com/yap First Person - Go to getfirstperson.com and use code YAP to get 15% off your first order LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - LinkedIn is offering a $100 credit on your next campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com/YAP to claim your credit ClickUp - Sign up today at ClickUp.com and use codeUse code YAP to get 15% off ClickUp's massive Unlimited Plan for a year! Resources Mentioned: YAP Episode #106: Launching a Business or Side Hustle with Josh Kaufman: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/106-launching-a-business-or-side-hustle-with-josh-kaufman/  YAP Episode #107: How to Learn a New Skill in 20 Hours with Josh Kaufman: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/107-how-to-learn-a-new-skill-in-20-hours-with-josh-kaufman/  Josh's Website: https://joshkaufman.net/  Josh's Books: https://joshkaufman.net/books/ Josh's Tedx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY   Josh's Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshkaufman  Connect with Young and Profiting: Hala's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/     Hala's Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/yapwithhala/     Hala's Twitter: https://twitter.com/yapwithhala  Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/@halataha   Website: https://www.youngandprofiting.com/  Text Hala: https://youngandprofiting.co/TextHala or text “YAP” to 28046 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In questo episodio vedremo:- l'idea principale di "The Personal MBA"- perché questo libro ha avuto un grande impatto sulla mia vita- perché iscriversi ad un MBA non è necessariamente una buona idea- I vantaggi di un MBA- le 11 discipline da padroneggiare per gestire con successo un'azienda- come portare avanti da soli la formazione e conseguire il proprio MBA personaleRISORSE✉️ Raggiungi la lista dei miei contatti personali per ricevere le mie newsletter e tanto materiale gratuito (riassunti, guide...)> https://lucasadurny.com/podcast/

In episode 23 of the in conversation podcast with Andrew Cervantes I discuss my thoughts on this years NBA's all star weekend, the Super Bowl wrap up, going to watch "Uncharted" on opening day, Going to a Justin Bieber concert, Getting back into physical shape, Getting braces soon, reading "The Personal MBA", how grateful I am for the growth of the podcast & to have an official partner of the show, & more!!This episode is to not be missed!!Follow our Instagram! @inconversationpodLeave a 5 star review!

The Crowdfunding Nerds are back with even more books to add to your Kickstarter reading list!  00:04:24 – Sean's First Marketing Lessons 00:08:31 - The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson 00:11:56 - The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman 00:16:41 - The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker 00:18:26 - Board Game Design Advice (2nd Edition) by Gabe Barrett 00:18:58 - Board Game Kickstarter Advice by Gabe Barrett 00:19:24 - A Crowdfunder's Strategy Guide By Jamey Stegmaier 00:20:57 - The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership By by John C. Maxwell, Zig Ziglar (Foreword) 00:21:47 - 5 Day Weekend by Nik Halik 00:22:27 - 6 Months to 6 Figures by Peter Voogd 00:27:08 - The One Thing by Gary Keller Shownotes The Challenger Sale - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11910902-the-challenger-sale  The Personal MBA - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9512985-the-personal-mba  The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/12612706-the-kobold-guide-to-board-game-design  Board Game Design Advice (2nd Edition) - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabebarrett/board-game-design-advice-2nd-edition Board Game Kickstarter Advice - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabebarrett/board-game-kickstarter-advice A Crowdfunder's Strategy Guide - https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter/book/ The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/815716.The_21_Irrefutable_Laws_of_Leadership 5 Day Weekend - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36083623-5-day-weekend 6 Months to 6 Figures - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/23702503-6-months-to-6-figures The One Thing - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16256798-the-one-thing Epic Leather Quest Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01E9HP1SU/

Coach, Consultant and Founder of Mennenia, Maxim Cramer joins Juliet Oury and Philippa Sturt this week on BWB.Maxim's mission with Mennenia is to help women entrepreneurs start, launch, and grow their businesses by making technology as simple as everyday English. She's also worked as a principal design technologist, technical consultant, mobile software engineer and was integral to the team that developed Swiftkey, a keyboard app that saw over a million downloads on its first day and since has been acquired by Microsoft.The conversation takes us through Maxim's journey and experiences being a female technologist in a predominantly male-dominated industry discussing why she started Mennenia, the reality of VC investment in women as well as Maxim's thoughts on the challenges of being a female entrepreneur, her realisations and learnings through hardships plus lots more.Check out Maxim Cramer's book recommendations:"The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman"Profit First" by Mike Michalowicz"Untamed" by Glennon DoyleBWB is powered by Oury Clark.

In today's episode we're talking through the 4th and final aspect of the Ikigai framework - monetization. I also reveal a discovery about what the Ikigai really is and explain how the Westernised version of the Ikigai evolved.Here's some useful links from today's show:1. Find out more about National Reconciliation week here: https://nrw.reconciliation.org.au/2. Become a Free member at Lauren's Laboratory to join discussions about this show and more: https://laurenslaboratory.com3. Read about the real meaning of Ikigai at http://ikigaitribe.com/ikigai/ikigai-misunderstood/4. Check out the 12 types of value from Josh Kaufman's book the Personal MBA here: http://book.personalmba.com/12-standard-forms-of-value/This podcast episode is free, but it isn't cheap. To show your support you can leave a rating, write a review or share this episode with someone who'd like it. You can also buy Lauren a cup of coffee on ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/laurenkress or hire her to speak - to find out about her rates and availability, send her a message on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenkress89/

Josh Kaufman shares the fundamental frameworks that amplify business development success and breaks them down into actionable strategies that you can start implementing today. Learn how to speak the language of business so you can understand your clients on a deeper level, solve their problems more effectively, and determine which opportunities to pursue and which to pass over so you can make the most impact possible.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: What big idea do you have to help business developers be more successful? Regardless of what industry or market you are in, understanding business at a fundamental level is a significant advantage. It will help you deliver more effectively as well as the business development. Having an accurate understanding of what businesses are and how they work will help you do your job better and serve your customers better as well. Organizations are good at teaching a deep understanding of a specific specialty, but they are not necessarily good at teaching the general business language and communicating that to a client. Most employees know their job very well, but they don't know how they or their boss fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Having a comprehensive understanding of the entire business system is where you get to the strategic and practical insight that can really make a difference. The decision-maker in an organization has to think of all five parts of the business, the value creation side, the marketing, the sales, the delivery, and the financial side when deciding what actions to take. Expanding beyond a narrow view of the business helps you understand your client and sell your services, but it also helps operate within your own organization. Thinking into the future and anticipating issues before they arise will make you a better business person and make you more valuable to your organization. As we communicate with clients we should do so with their priorities in mind and in their words. All aspects of business development get meaningfully better if you can talk the language of business. Business development is about trust. Everything you can do to convey that you understand a client at a fundamental level, the more they are going to trust you, the more effectively you are going to be able to work with them, and the more effectively you will be able to close business.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can the ideas of The Personal MBA help people manage their opportunities? Begin with a thought experiment. “What would it look like if…?” Counterfactual questions can be extremely useful for understanding what is true in the given moment, and what could be a way of making things better in the future. Business development is all about the future. Asking this sort of question takes you out of the present situation and gives you clarity on what's possible. All of the most valuable questions in business start with that question. These questions allow you to supply your brain with a destination which is how you start formulating a plan to get there. This is a powerful tool to get unstuck and figure out what your next action should be regarding an opportunity. Most of the breakthroughs in Josh's career have come from posing this thought experiment. As you are planning out the next quarter and figuring out how to reach your financial or personal goals, the way you get your brain in gear to solve the problem is by asking yourself a counterfactual question. Starting from the question allows you to avoid being mired in self-criticism and doubt. You will come up with ideas that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise because you weren't framing the problem in that particular way.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: Great relationships are something we should invest in. How can someone be more effective at managing relationships? When you enter into any new relationship, trust is something that needs to be built over time. Trust is earned by showing up and demonstrating that you understand someone, and what's important to them. Even before someone becomes a prospect, you can keep adding value to a relationship and building that trust. This is known as earned regard, and all business development activities will be more effective as the trust grows. You earn the trust and regard of your team in the same way that you earn the trust of a prospect or client. Keep showing up and providing value, and demonstrating your trustworthiness. There are three methods of building trust known as the Golden Trifecta: essentially, you treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect. The more you interact with people in those three ways the more likely you are to produce a positive result. In a business environment, you layer adding value on top of those three fundamental approaches to interacting with people. The effect of this accumulates, as well as behaving in the opposite. Respect compounds and leads to a trusted and valued relationship, constant disrespect or discourteousness destroys relationships over time. The combination of earned regard and the Golden Trifecta are very effective at deepening relationships in all areas of your life.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can someone hack their own habits and accomplish more when it comes to business development? Most of us imagine a world in the undefined future where all our tasks are completed and there's nothing left to do. Fortunately for us, that's not the way the world works. We live in a finite world of tradeoffs with limited energy and attention. As a consequence of that, we have limited opportunities to get things done. We can make ourselves miserable by not realizing that we live in a world of tradeoffs. We must make choices between competing alternatives. You must be clear on your personal values and priorities to know what choices to pursue. They become the lens that helps you decide which opportunities will make the biggest difference in your life long term. You don't want to spend all your time and energy climbing a ladder, to only discover at the top that it was leaning against the wrong wall. Being clear about what you want helps eliminate some of the existential pressure. You're only responsible for figuring out what you should be doing to get to the end result you desire is instead of doing everything all at once. No is a complete sentence. It's okay to pass on certain opportunities. There is a certain amount of status consciousness that doesn't serve us when it comes to opportunity, but we have to keep our values in mind and use them to choose our direction. Most people try to avoid making a decision until absolutely forced to. When presented with multiple opportunities, most people will say they are all important. We don't need to feel bad about the opportunities we are passing on, because that's a necessary part of the process. It's what allows us to enjoy the benefits of the things we value the most, and the more we can do that the more effective and happy we'll be. We all have an unlimited opportunity, and we all have limited time, so creating a mechanism that allows you to embrace that is crucial. Business developers need to be proactive and make things happen, and that means making the right choices.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Kaufman. Speaking the language of business seems obvious, but most people don't realize how important this is to business development. Specifically speaking with your prospects' words and language and understanding them on a deep level. Get out of the mindset that you speak internally because that can come off as jargon. Talking with the language of a client is a differentiator that will set you apart from other competitors. Adding that to every aspect of the business development process is an incredible advantage. Counterfactual questions like “what would have to be true for X to happen?” are great for opening up your thought process to possibilities. It's also a great tool that you can use with clients in their business. Asking the right question can open the door to making it a reality. Use those kinds of questions to start a conversation that can create incredible results. We have unlimited opportunities as humans, but we have limited time. We need a mechanism that catalogs the opportunities available to us and a system to triage the ones you are going to focus on. It's okay to say no to some ideas so that you can say yes to the ideas that will make a major impact.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net The Personal MBA How to Fight a Hydra

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Kaufman. Speaking the language of business seems obvious, but most people don't realize how important this is to business development. Specifically speaking with your prospects' words and language and understanding them on a deep level. Get out of the mindset that you speak internally because that can come off as jargon. Talking with the language of a client is a differentiator that will set you apart from other competitors. Adding that to every aspect of the business development process is an incredible advantage. Counterfactual questions like “what would have to be true for X to happen?” are great for opening up your thought process to possibilities. It's also a great tool that you can use with clients in their business. Asking the right question can open the door to making it a reality. Use those kinds of questions to start a conversation that can create incredible results. We have unlimited opportunities as humans, but we have limited time. We need a mechanism that catalogs the opportunities available to us and a system to triage the ones you are going to focus on. It's okay to say no to some ideas so that you can say yes to the ideas that will make a major impact.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Mo asks Josh Kaufman: Great relationships are something we should invest in. How can someone be more effective at managing relationships? When you enter into any new relationship, trust is something that needs to be built over time. Trust is earned by showing up and demonstrating that you understand someone, and what's important to them. Even before someone becomes a prospect, you can keep adding value to a relationship and building that trust. This is known as earned regard, and all business development activities will be more effective as the trust grows. You earn the trust and regard of your team in the same way that you earn the trust of a prospect or client. Keep showing up and providing value, and demonstrating your trustworthiness. There are three methods of building trust known as the Golden Trifecta: essentially, you treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect. The more you interact with people in those three ways the more likely you are to produce a positive result. In a business environment, you layer adding value on top of those three fundamental approaches to interacting with people. The effect of this accumulates, as well as behaving in the opposite. Respect compounds and leads to a trusted and valued relationship, constant disrespect or discourteousness destroys relationships over time. The combination of earned regard and the Golden Trifecta are very effective at deepening relationships in all areas of your life.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can the ideas of The Personal MBA help people manage their opportunities? Begin with a thought experiment. “What would it look like if…?” Counterfactual questions can be extremely useful for understanding what is true in the given moment, and what could be a way of making things better in the future. Business development is all about the future. Asking this sort of question takes you out of the present situation and gives you clarity on what's possible. All of the most valuable questions in business start with that question. These questions allow you to supply your brain with a destination which is how you start formulating a plan to get there. This is a powerful tool to get unstuck and figure out what your next action should be regarding an opportunity. Most of the breakthroughs in Josh's career have come from posing this thought experiment. As you are planning out the next quarter and figuring out how to reach your financial or personal goals, the way you get your brain in gear to solve the problem is by asking yourself a counterfactual question. Starting from the question allows you to avoid being mired in self-criticism and doubt. You will come up with ideas that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise because you weren't framing the problem in that particular way.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Mo asks Josh Kaufman: What big idea do you have to help business developers be more successful? Regardless of what industry or market you are in, understanding business at a fundamental level is a significant advantage. It will help you deliver more effectively as well as the business development. Having an accurate understanding of what businesses are and how they work will help you do your job better and serve your customers better as well. Organizations are good at teaching a deep understanding of a specific specialty, but they are not necessarily good at teaching the general business language and communicating that to a client. Most employees know their job very well, but they don't know how they or their boss fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Having a comprehensive understanding of the entire business system is where you get to the strategic and practical insight that can really make a difference. The decision-maker in an organization has to think of all five parts of the business, the value creation side, the marketing, the sales, the delivery, and the financial side when deciding what actions to take. Expanding beyond a narrow view of the business helps you understand your client and sell your services, but it also helps operate within your own organization. Thinking into the future and anticipating issues before they arise will make you a better business person and make you more valuable to your organization. As we communicate with clients we should do so with their priorities in mind and in their words. All aspects of business development get meaningfully better if you can talk the language of business. Business development is about trust. Everything you can do to convey that you understand a client at a fundamental level, the more they are going to trust you, the more effectively you are going to be able to work with them, and the more effectively you will be able to close business.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Bookshelf cleaning, random reading, The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman, decision making, incomplete information, indecisiveness, don't be a victim of circumstances, motion, and changing your state.

Ethan Reeves joins us to discuss why and how he founded and built Extemp Genie, a software that he began building in high school as a solution to the problems he recognized while competing in Speech and Debate. The software is now used by schools and students around the country. He runs the company as a one man team all while completing a degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Alabama.Through the interview we uncover other projects of Ethan's like theatre, fitness, and personal productivity management.Some Facts About Ethan: Was homeschooled. Began Programming at 10 years old. Has performed in 60 musicals. Has discipline equals freedom tattooed on his left bicep. If you would like to reach out to us, the best way to do so is on Twitter or Facebook. Have some feedback you'd like to share? Please leave a note in the comments section below!If you enjoyed this episode please share it with your friends.Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic episode updates for "The Louis and Kyle Show."And, finally, please take a minute to leave us an honest review and rating on iTunes. They really help us out when it comes to the ranking of the show.Thanks for listening! 

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In this episode, we look at how to uncover what holds us back from being our best and eliminate them.   Finding Giants & Dismantling Goliath: Increase Your Success & Experience More Joy by Taking Down the ‘giants' in your life.  In this episode, we look at how to uncover what holds us back from being our best and eliminate them.   What is a giant? Everyday things you've conditioned yourself to just ‘deal with'; the things that have a huge impact on your life but also seem too vast to improve or get rid of.    Step 1: Doing the Deep Clean - uncovering and assessing the components of your life   Step 2: Taking Notes - How to make key observations, avoiding savior mode & the problem with flight or fight syndrome   Step 3: So now what do you do? How to handle everything you've uncovered while still operating in day to day life   Step 4: Training Day! - Channeling mindfulness and paying attention to your internal and external state to cause emotional balance and increase productivity in your everyday life   Step 5: Remember This! How to embrace your new normal of being in better emotional space and stay on track with eliminating the emotional baggage from your life   Quote: “Being happy is not an achievement it is a state.” The Personal MBA, by John Kaufman   Literature / educational references: RULER method; clinical method of developing emotional intelligence; developed by the Yale Center for Excellence Emotional Agility by Susan David, Phd Success is a State of Mind by Les Brown Emotional Intelligence: The Essential Guide to Improving Your Social Skills The Laws of Human Nature Robert Greene   Link To Free Mindfulness Checklist & Chart: til4ever.org/podtalk-problem-solved   Contact us with any questions  / to share your results after taking action: til4ever.org/podtalk            

52 weeks, 52 books, Making Every Week Count! This week we discuss "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. Getting an MBA is an expensive choice-one almost impossible to justify regardless of the state of the economy. Even the elite schools like Harvard and Wharton offer outdated, assembly-line programs that teach you more about PowerPoint presentations and unnecessary financial models than what it takes to run a real business. You can get better results (and save hundreds of thousands of dollars) by skipping business school altogether.

Episode 28 - My 10 Favourite Business BooksAll of these books have helped me move my business forward. These are not motivational fluff, or "rah-rah, you can do it!" reads, these are some fantastic pieces of personal and professional development that could shape the future of your business. If you do not have an MBA (and aren't thinking of obtaining one anytime soon), then check out "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. In it, Josh covers parts of a business that you may not have discovered yet. "Rocket Fuel" by Gino Wickman talks about those of us who are visionaries in our businesses, and why the need for an integrator may be just the thing to push you forward. "Traction" (also by Gino Wickman) will cover how to map out your vision and systems in your business to help you grow and scale. "Influence" by Dr. Robert Cialdini, you will learn powerful strategies for selling and some basic psychology on how the human brain works, which ultimately leads people to make a buying decision. Are you interested in simplifying, prioritizing and getting clear on what to focus on? Then "The One Thing" by Gary Keller may be your next big read. "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy talks about how going too far too fast will not work in your favour. Instead, Darren will teach you how making small incremental changes will have a massive impact over time. There are four personality types in the world, Gretchen Rubin covers identifying both your own and your client's in her book "The Four Tendencies." "The Big Leap" by Gay Hendricks talks about the emotional side of entrepreneurship and how, as business owners, we often struggle and go through periods of discomfort. Habits, the good ones, of course, have the power to dictate our success. "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg talks about how the things we do daily, weekly and monthly affect our business and the psychology of implementing new habits into our lives. If you are interested in how to better understand your brand and how to conveys to other people, then check out "Building a Story Brand" by Donald Miller. Links mentioned in this episode: Audiblehttps://www.audible.ca The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufmanhttps://personalmba.com Rocket FuelGino Wickman and Mark C. Wintershttps://www.eosworldwide.com/rocket-fuel Traction: Get a Grip on Your BusinessGino Wickmanhttps://www.eosworldwide.com/traction The Compound EffectDarren Hardyhttps://www.darryeenhardy.com The Four TendanciesGretchen Rubinhttps://gretchenrubin.com/book/the-four-tendencies/ The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next LevelGay Hendrickshttps://www.amazon.ca/Big-Leap-Conquer-Hidden-Level/dp/0061735361/ref=asc_df_0061735361/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=292938044607&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=94864538504409748&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1002384&hvtargid=pla-434697743974&psc=1http://bigleapexperience.com The Power of Habit: Why We do What We Do in Life and BusinessCharles Duhigghttps://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/ Building a Story Brand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will ListenDonald Millerhttps://buildingastorybrand.com The One ThingGary Keller https://www.the1thing.comhttps://www.the1thing.com/podcasts/ Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and PersuadeDr. Robert Cialdinihttps://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/ The Business of Thinking BigLianne KimPodcast #6; The Hero's Journey with Salome Schillackhttps://www.liannekim.com/blog/6

No sólo es importante en una empresa el dominar los aspectos principales, como marketing, ventas, finanzas... La clave para equilibrar la producción y los resultados es el dominar completamente tanto la gestión de las personas como la sistematización de los procesos. En este episodio te resumo la segunda y tercera parte (personas y sistemas) de MBA Personal (The Personal MBA, 2010), de Josh Kaufman. Un libro eminentemente práctico, y que te muestra no sólo las ideas básicas, a grandes pinceladas, sino que también te propone un listado de libros para que te formes en todas las áreas de un negocio.   Este libro lo puedes adquirir ahora mismo en Amazon, aquí: MBA Personal, de Josh Kaufman - https://amzn.to/2jhDqTM   Aquí tienes el listado de libros recomendados por el autor: https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/   Y en esta página encuentras las notas del episodio de hoy: https://librosparaemprendedores.net/087  ________ Episodio patrocinado por Instituto de Emprendedores: Conoce el Plan Midas, 5 fases y 10 pasos para pasar de no tener ni siquiera una idea de negocio a tener una empresa de éxito, funcionando, generando ingresos y calidad de vida para ti y los tuyos. Enfócate en conseguir tus metas con una empresa que te proporcione los mejores resultados. El Instituto de Emprendedores te da el plan de ruta para alcanzarlo. Contenidos y coaching grupal con Luis Ramos, de Libros para Emprendedores. Consigue tus metas, ¡AHORA!  ________ ¿Necesitas un hosting de garantías para tu página web? ¿Rápido y con el mejor servicio al cliente? En Libros para Emprendedores utilizamos Siteground, porque nos da flexibilidad, rapidez en el servidor y rapidez en el servicio. Habiendo probado muuuuchas otras opciones, nos quedamos con Siteground, porque por muy poco más, obtienes mucha más calidad y tranquilidad. Haz click aquí para obtener un 60% de descuento al contratar tu servidor Siteground: https://librosparaemprendedores.net/siteground   _______________   Esta es nuestra página oficial de Facebook: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/facebook   Además, recuerda que puedes suscribirte al podcast en: - Nuestra página: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/feed/podcast - iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/mx/podcast/libros-para-emprendedores/id1076142249?l=es - Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/LibrosparaemprendedoresNet - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0qXuVDCYF8HvkEynJwHULb - iVoox: http://www.ivoox.com/ajx-suscribirse_jh_266011_1.html - Spreaker: http://www.spreaker.com/user/8567017/episodes/feed - Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=81214   y seguirnos en Twitter ( https://twitter.com/EmprendeLibros ) y en Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/EmprendeLibros/ ). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Si no quieres invertir 2 años de tu vida y una cantidad de dinero quizás demasiado alta en un MBA, en este libro te dan las guías, los puntos más importantes a tener en cuenta que se enseñan en un máster. En este episodio te resumo la primera parte de  MBA Personal (The Personal MBA, 2010), de Josh Kaufman. Un libro eminentemente práctico, y que te muestra no sólo las ideas básicas, a grandes pinceladas, sino que también te propone un listado de libros para que te formes en todas las áreas de un negocio.   Este libro lo puedes adquirir ahora mismo en Amazon, aquí: MBA Personal, de Josh Kaufman - https://amzn.to/2jhDqTM   Aquí tienes el listado de libros recomendados por el autor: https://personalmba.com/best-business-books/   Y en esta página encuentras las notas del episodio de hoy: https://librosparaemprendedores.net/086  ________ Episodio patrocinado por Instituto de Emprendedores: Conoce el Plan Midas, 5 fases y 10 pasos para pasar de no tener ni siquiera una idea de negocio a tener una empresa de éxito, funcionando, generando ingresos y calidad de vida para ti y los tuyos. Enfócate en conseguir tus metas con una empresa que te proporcione los mejores resultados. El Instituto de Emprendedores te da el plan de ruta para alcanzarlo. Contenidos y coaching grupal con Luis Ramos, de Libros para Emprendedores. Consigue tus metas, ¡AHORA!  ________ ¿Necesitas un hosting de garantías para tu página web? ¿Rápido y con el mejor servicio al cliente? En Libros para Emprendedores utilizamos Siteground, porque nos da flexibilidad, rapidez en el servidor y rapidez en el servicio. Habiendo probado muuuuchas otras opciones, nos quedamos con Siteground, porque por muy poco más, obtienes mucha más calidad y tranquilidad. Haz click aquí para obtener un 60% de descuento al contratar tu servidor Siteground: https://librosparaemprendedores.net/siteground   _______________   Esta es nuestra página oficial de Facebook: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/facebook   Además, recuerda que puedes suscribirte al podcast en: - Nuestra página: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/feed/podcast - iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/mx/podcast/libros-para-emprendedores/id1076142249?l=es - Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/LibrosparaemprendedoresNet - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0qXuVDCYF8HvkEynJwHULb - iVoox: http://www.ivoox.com/ajx-suscribirse_jh_266011_1.html - Spreaker: http://www.spreaker.com/user/8567017/episodes/feed - Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=81214   y seguirnos en Twitter ( https://twitter.com/EmprendeLibros ) y en Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/EmprendeLibros/ ). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tonight I'm talking about risk management and how to know when you're ready to start a business. I cover: - Creating a financial safety net to make sure you're not desperate for work - The importance of bootstrapping (even with funding!) - Some of the signs for being ready or, as the case may be, not ready to make the transition into fully immersing yourself in your business The books I'd recommend reading to help you with this further, are books I've recommended before which are: - The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufmann: https://personalmba.com/ - Small Business, Big Vision by Adam Toren and Matthew Toren : http://smallbusinessbigvision.com/ Ps. Correction - I started my business part way through 2016 - it was at the beginning of the financial year for 2017 (which is July 2016)

Following on from episode 2 on why your "WHY" is so important, I delve into getting to know your audience in order to commercialise your passion. My 3 practical tips for market research will help you get to know your audience - preferably before you even think about starting your business. These are: 1. Find out if there is a market First consider some broad, basic questions. I recommend using Josh Kaufman's market research checklist from the Personal MBA you can access online here2. Blog about it first Experiment with content to start building an audience. I recommend reading Austin Kleon's book Show Your Work to understand more about how sharing what you're doing with the world will help you build an audience and iterate your work.  3. Know what results your audience value What results do your audience want that you can offer?A great book to read to understand the power of a audience + results-driven approach to marketing is Absolute Value by Itamar Simonson & Emanuel Rosen Also...I talk about building personas of your prospective customers that consider their mindset, drivers and motivators. 

Shawn Blanc is a writer, small-business owner, productivity coach, and creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons. Shawn has been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade, and his online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He wrote about the importance of creating a customer avatar and developing a content strategy to connect with them and help them achieve their goals. I liked the email so much that I emailed him back and asked him to come on my show to talk about his journey to making a living through writing online and what he's learned about growing an audience. Shawn also shares my passion for productivity and deep focus; so much so that he's gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a free 5 day online summit about the power of focused life. In this episode, Shawn shares how he was able to make a full-time living by writing online, and we discuss how you can grow your audience by creating a customer avatar (your ideal listener) and creating content that addresses their needs and desires. Highlights, Takeaways & Quick Wins: Interview your customers to get a real life picture of your audience. Start selling products as early as possible. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. Be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Your niche is going to draw your audience but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. Show up consistently to earn people's trust and create an anticipation of future value. Do guest-based podcasts to grow your audience. Reach people that are far outside of your social circle by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Show Notes Aaron: Shawn Blanc is a writer/small business owner/productivity coach/creative entrepreneur living in Kansas City with his wife and their three sons, and Shawn is a member of our Community. He's been teaching and learning about creativity, diligence, and focus for over a decade now. His online courses have helped thousands of people do their best creative work while learning to thrive in the midst of life's tensions. A while back, Shawn sent an email that caught my attention. He was writing about the importance of creating a customer avatar, that's knowing who you're creating for and what you want to help them achieve, what kind of person you want to help them become. I thought it was really interesting, so I sent him an email right back. I said, “Shawn, do you want to come on the show to talk about this? I think podcasters need to hear about this idea of customer avatars and also content strategy.” Shawn agreed, and he also shares my passion for productivity and focus, so much so that he has gathered 12 incredibly smart people for a five day online summit about the power of a focused life, and that's going to be starting, I believe, as this episode comes out. If you're listening to this in your podcast player, it's starting today, I think. I'll give you that link later. In this episode, I want to talk with Shawn about why you as a podcaster need to create a customer avatar, know who you're creating for, develop a content strategy, and then also the benefits of deep focus, what we call deep work. A few small changes in your daily habits can lead to big improvements in your productivity and creative output. Shawn, that's one of the longer intros I've ever done. Thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Shawn: Thanks, Aaron. I love it. Super excited to be here. Shawn Blanc Aaron: I think of you, Shawn, as a writer and as the creator of an online course called The Focus Course, which is great. You're so much more than that. Do you want to give everyone a quick introduction, how you got here and where you came from? I would also like to hear what your biggest struggles have been over the years of getting to the point where you're at right now. Shawn: Absolutely. I'm in Kansas City. Originally, I'm from Denver. I'm a Colorado guy at heart. I've been married for going on 12 years, and my wife and I have three boys. It's insane at our house. We used to call the first two the Twin Tornadoes, but we just had our third eight or nine weeks ago. Aaron: Congrats! Shawn: It's awesome. Love it. I love being a dad. I used to be a drummer. I know that we have a lot of musicians around here. Sean McCabe plays a little bit of music, I think. Aaron: Yeah, he used to write music, just like he used to do lettering. I still play drums. Shawn: I used to play drums for a large ministry here in Kansas City, and I ended up transitioning out of that. It's a long story, but I ended up becoming a marketing and creative director. I ran a team, an in-house design team, with about 17 people—web developers, print designers, web designers, writers, editors, project managers, whatever. We did a bunch of stuff. One of our huge things was that we would host a conference at the end of the year that I was running. 25,000 people would come out for that. I did that for several years, and then my wife and I got pregnant with our first kid. I was like, “I don't want to do this work as a dad.” Part of it was just super demanding. Anyone who has experienced working in the corporate design scene knows that it's a very demanding spot. Everything is urgent all the time. I was doing like 80 hours a week, and I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun, but I was like, “There's no way. I don't want to do 80 hours a week as a dad.” I had that, plus I had this little blog on the side, where I had been writing about marketing stuff. I felt like, “This would be a good opportunity to quit what I'm doing and take a leap, see if I can take my website full time. Could I blog for a living?” That was the thought. I was doing about $1,000 a month in advertising and some affiliate stuff. I figured that if I could give it 40 hours a week, I could get the revenue up to a spot where it could pay the bills. I figured that it could grow from there. Aaron: How old were you at this point? Shawn: I was just about 30, not quite 30, like 29, when I made that jump. I asked everyone that was reading on the site. I said, “I'm quitting. I'm going to do this thing full time.” I asked people if they would be interested in supporting me to write the site for a living. I was like, “If you like what I'm doing, I'll write more if you want to give me some money to do it.” I did this little membership drive. I was going to charge $3 a month for membership. I was doing a daily podcast as a perk of membership. Aaron: You aren't still doing that, are you? Shawn: It's on hiatus at the moment. We'll see. I'm going to be diving back into the podcast scene starting early 2017. I miss podcasting. It's fun. Aaron: You decided to ask people to support you, give you $3 a month, to go full time with your writing? Shawn: Basically. I figured if I could get 500 people, at $3 a month that's $1,500, plus the other $1,000 I was doing, and that would be $2,500 a month. That's not a ton, but I figured that would be enough to cover the bare necessities. I figured that things could grow from there. People signed up, and I hit the 500 person mark by the end of the month before I had even quit. I started my new job, April 4th 2011, basically fully funded as an independent blogger. Aaron: I bet that was exciting. Shawn: It was really exciting. I felt like I got this permission slip from my audience to go for it. As a creative person, sometimes you need that. Sometimes you want to be like, “Do you guys care? I'm here. I'm making this stuff.” A lot of the work we do as creative entrepreneurs is for your audience. I know that we're going to talk about this in a little bit, the customer avatar profile. It's for these people that you really want to serve. When you hear back from them and they go, “Hey, we like what you're doing. Let's keep the relationship going,” it's like having a DTR with your audience. There's something cool about that kind of permission slip moment. It's like when you sell your first product, or whatever it is. People are interested. You get your first positive review on iTunes or whatever. Obviously, there's going to be the junk that comes later, but whatever. Aaron: Some of the haters that come later? Shawn: You forget about that stuff and you keep moving on. Aaron: That's awesome. Asking for Money Aaron: When you think back, do you remember any big struggles or hurdles that you really had to overcome about that period in your life? Shawn: There were so many. It's hard to say, “If I could do it differently, I would do it this other way,” because who knows? If I had done things differently, maybe it wouldn't have turned out the way I thought it would. One of the biggest struggles for me was asking for money. It was a huge challenge related to the membership drive. I was asking folks to support me on a regular basis to write for a living. I was like, “Who am I? What kind of a dork says, ‘Give me money so I can blog for a living.'” Aaron: Nobody pays for things online anymore. Nobody wants to pay for writing. Shawn: Exactly. That was a huge challenge. It has continued to be a challenge for years. I have been doing this for almost six years now, full time. When I came out with my first book, it's called Delight is in the Details, and it was an eBook package thing. I did some interviews. I charged $29 for my book, and I felt like this huge hypocrite. It was this feeling of, “This is information. Information should be free on the internet. Why would anyone ever buy this?” I felt like there was no value in this thing that people would pay for. I was like, “I have to do it. I'm going to charge for it.” Aaron: Sorry to jump in, but at the time, did you really feel like $30 was a lot of money? Shawn: Oh my gosh. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach the day I was going to launch it. I was like, “I can't believe how much I'm asking for this.” Aaron: What did you think was going to happen? Shawn: I thought that people would buy it because they trusted me, and then they would read it and come and burn my house down because I had ripped them off so bad. I charged so much money for something. Aaron: It was your first time launching a product, right? Shawn: It was. It was my first product launch ever. It ended up bringing in like $5,000 in that first 48 hour launch window. It made $5,000 that first couple of days. In hindsight, it was this huge inflection point for me. I think I spent about 100 hours building the thing, made $5,000 from it in the first week, and I thought, “Woah, that was a great return on my time investment! Now I have this product that I can continue to sell.” Since then, in the last four or five years that I've sold it, I want to say that it's sold $50,000 over the years. That's awesome. There's something great about creating a product, and it changed a lot. Producing and selling a book changed my relationship with my audience. Now I'm creating products for them to buy. That initial hurdle was huge. $29 was so much money. I think that was probably the biggest struggle, of being able to properly identify how much value I'm providing people and to price it correctly. That's just hard. I think that's why you should start selling stuff as early as possible, because you have to learn. There isn't a formula for how much value you're providing and how much you should charge for it. You can't just plug your stuff into a worksheet and get a number back. You have to feel out the market, your market, your audience, your skill level. How much polish are you doing? How much depth of information are you providing? Whatever skill, service, or product it is you're providing, you have to learn how to make money and price your stuff! It's hard to do it when you're starting. The biggest challenging for me at first was becoming comfortable asking for money and learning to accurately price my products. Aaron: The other thing is that once you launched that book and got familiar with all that stuff, that was a stepping stone to your future products, your future books and courses, and everything else that you're doing. I'm sure, at that point, you felt like, “Okay. I've done this once before already. Now it's like riding a bike. I just need to get back on and keep peddling, keep going.” Shawn: Yeah, absolutely. It really was a huge stepping stone. One thing I loved about creating and launching a product was that there was a start and an end date to it. This thing has to ship. I worked on it, and I was done. I put it out there. Boom, now it's there. I'm done. It's out in the world. Obviously, you iterate on it. A year later, I added some new interviews. I added some new chapters. I created some videos. I remastered all of the audio for the audio book. Product Launch Hiccups Shawn: Super random story related to this. It was the relaunch of Delight is in the Details, a year after it had come out, and I put it out there. People are buying it during that relaunch period. I get an email from someone going, “I was just listening to the audio book, and the last chapter sounds like it's not edited correctly. Something is weird about the last chapter. You should check it out.” I recorded the audio book and edited it by myself. I go and I open up the audio book for the last chapter and I'm listening to it, and it is the original take that I did of the book. The way I did the audio book, I'm reading it into my microphone in GarageBand. If I goofed up in the middle of a paragraph, I would just take a pause, say, “Okay, again,” and then I would start talking again. That was my marker. The last chapter of the book was that track, the whole thing. The audio track should have been 10 or 12 minutes for that chapter, and it was 30 minutes because of all my edits, retakes, and pauses. The whole thing. What's worse is, it was there from the very beginning. For a year, I had been selling that thing. I was mortified. For a year, I had been selling my book with the last chapter all messed up, and I was mortified. Aaron: Nobody said anything?? Shawn: They didn't. Either no one listened to it, or when they listened to it, they just assumed… I don't even know. I was so mortified. There you go. What worse thing can happen? Earlier, I had been so concerned about selling something that people weren't going to consider valuable. Here's this huge, huge mistake. What a goof! Aaron: I need to remind everyone that this audiobook is called Delight is in the Details. Shawn: The irony, right? That was one of the selling points of the book, too. I was like, “If you buy this book, it's a case study in sweating the details itself. You'll see all the areas where I've sweated the details in this product.” Whatever. Oh man. I was mortified. Aaron: Thankfully, no one came and burned down your house, and it was over a year before anyone even said anything. A lot of us are so curious about people who do such good work, so when a mistake does happen, it's almost humanizing. It's like, “Now I can relate to this person, because they're not 100% on top of everything all the time, either, like I struggle with. I make a lot of mistakes, so it's kind of nice when you see a really awesome musician on stage mess up a part and then jump back into it. You're like, “Oh, they are humans, too.” That's really cool. Nobody burned your house down, thankfully. Shawn: That's why it's so helpful to ship early. You get stuff out the door and you start learning. I love it. Aaron: I tell people this a lot, too, when it comes to podcasts. If you're thinking about making a podcast, there are so many things you can tweak, improve, or work on forever, but it's so much better to say, “What's the minimum I have to do? I want to try and do a good job, but let's do this, ship it, and iterate and improve on it every single week.” If you don't ship something, you'll just pick at it and tweak it endlessly. Before you know it, it's been a year and a half, and you've got three or five episodes you recorded 18 months ago that you're still working on. In the meantime, nothing has happened. Start Moving Shawn: As well, we have this picture of what we want something to look like and what we want it to be, but we have zero experience. I like the analogy of those lifesize mazes. Especially around Halloween and Thanksgiving, there are those corn mazes. They're these giant things. Imagine someone standing at the entrance of this life size maze, staring at the entrance to it, and in their mind, trying to figure out how to get to the end so they can get straight to the end the fastest way possible without making any mistakes along the way. Impossible! Not going to happen. You have to go in the maze and go left to realize that you should have gone right. Then turn around. You have to go through the thing to make it through. I like the phrase, “Action brings clarity.” Action brings clarity. You're waiting for clarity before taking action, and it's not going to happen—you have to start moving. You just have to get going and you adjust course as you go. You start to realize what you should major on and what you shouldn't. Aaron: That's an incredible analogy. I'm totally going to use that in the future now. It's perfect. You sit there and you imagine yourself being at the end of the maze. That's where you see a bunch of other people. Your friends have gone through the maze and they're at the end, so you're like, “I have to get to the end fast. I can't make any mistakes. I can't take a wrong turn, because that's where all my friends are, and that's where I want to be.” You do have to go through it. That's really incredible. Creating a Customer Avatar Aaron: Shawn, you sent out an email and you were talking about this. I want you to explain how you think about customer avatars, and then if you did something like that for yourself when you were just starting, or if this is something that evolved over time. Customer avatar and content strategy, go! Shawn: This is great. When I first started as a writer, I was doing ShawnBlanc.net. My entire job was publishing articles and links on my website. I didn't have a customer avatar or a customer profile, what I had was an ideal reader. I think, in terms of podcasting, it's very similar. Who's your ideal listener? For me, I actually had a person who was my ideal reader, who's name was Shawn Spurdee. He was a really good friend of mine. He and I had become friends through the blogging Twitter-sphere back in the day. When I wrote articles or links, I had him in mind. I thought, “Is this something he would find interesting? Is there a story in here that he's going to want to read? Is this a link to something he would like?” You had that ideal reader. John Gruber wrote about this for his site, Daring Fireball. He talked about his ideal reader, and he called it “a second version of himself.” He goes, “This person is interested in all the same things I'm interested in, and he cares about what I care about. All the design decisions I make on the site, all the articles I choose to link to, the stories I choose to tell, all of that stuff is with this ideal reader/listener in mind.” It was instrumental for me to have an “ideal reader” for all of the work I was doing. You know who you're trying to target. I'm still the writer for sure, but we've switched a lot more of our focus onto direct sales, building a customer base, and selling products to our audience. I still don't have that ideal reader. Who am I writing this for? Who is this product being created for? It has gone beyond just an individual person that I know. We did a customer profiling thing. I have a guy who works for me full time, and his name is Isaac. We took a couple of big, giant sticky pad things, two feet by three feet, they're huge, these giant sticky notes. Aaron: Where do you get those? Can you get those on Amazon? Shawn: You can get a lawnmower on Amazon, so I'm sure you can get sticky notes. We got ours at Office Max, an Office Depot kind of thing. It's weird. You drive to this store, and you can walk in, and they sell products on their shelves. You have to pick it up with your hand and drive it home yourself. Aaron: It seems like a waste of time. Shawn: For this customer profiling session or whatever, basically, we had these four quadrants. What do they think? What do they feel? What do they want? What do they say? Something like that. You're trying to get this picture of this person. Who is this person? What are the things that they say? Like, “I love my family. I like to watch Netflix.” Whatever. Aaron: “I want to learn how to make a podcast.” Shawn: Exactly. It's not just business, it's just life. What are the kind of phrases they might say? If you ask them what they care about, what things would they list? What are their pain points that they're feeling in life? For us, creating this customer avatar, we named him Brian. We found a random picture of somebody and stuck it up there to begin to humanize the person. Your customer avatar is a real person that exists out there. We talked about, “Here's Brian,” and we came up with this stuff. Brian has a job that he kind of likes, but he's got these other creative ideas that he really wants to pursue. Maybe he wants to take it full time. Maybe not. That's not really the most important thing for him. The most important thing for him is getting his best creative work out there and being able to do it and feel like he's making progress on the areas of life that matter to him. He's also a dad and a husband, and he cares about his family quite a bit. He cares about his kids. He still wants to be available for them. When he comes home from work, he's really tired, so the evenings don't feel like a good time to do his creative work, but he's not a morning person either, so he doesn't know when he's going to get the time. These are some of the scenarios, the stories, that begin to emerge as you begin to write stuff about this person. What are the pain points that they feel? When they look around, what do they see? What kind of car does Brian drive? Does he like minivans? Does he have a minivan? How many kids does he actually have? You really kind of start to come up with this stuff, and there's a lot you can do to get to a higher level of doing these customer profiles. You can actually do interviews with your customer base. Aaron: I do this! I try to meet people and talk to them, especially when it comes to podcasting. When you interview your customers, you can actually begin to get a real life picture of your real life audience. Creating an Empathy Map Shawn: There's this thing that we did, an empathy map, and you take the empathy map to create your customer profile. We ran this survey to our email list, and we ran a separate one to our customer list. It was, “When it comes to focus, what's your single greatest challenge?” It was just this open-ended question where people could write stuff down. Some people say, “Time.” Or, “I can't focus. I'm distracted.” Then you get some people who go, “I'm trying to build my photography portfolio website on the side because I love photography and I'm trying to grow it. I'm working this other job, and when I come home in the evenings, family is first. I spend time with family, so by the time the kids are in bed, I've only got about an hour left in the day. I'm so tired, and I don't want to spend time trying to work on my photography website, so I don't know where to get started.” The person who gives an in depth answer to the challenge like that, vs. someone who just says “time”, they're really in touch with their pain point. There's a book called Ask by Ryan Leveque, and you can find it on Amazon. He teases out, “You ask these questions, and you separate the people with the longest answers. You put their answers up at the top.” You cut the list at 20%. The bottom 80%, forget about those people, and look at the top 20%, these “hyper-responders.” What are their challenges? What are their pain points? Aaron, you could do this. You could say, “When it comes to building a podcast, what is your single greatest challenge?” You'll probably have someone who says, “Building my list.” Or, “Building my audience.” Or, “Technical stuff.” But then you might have someone who really gives this heartfelt, in-depth answer. If someone gives you a heartfelt, in-depth answer, they're hungry for a solution. That person is going to pay for a solution. That person is going to digest this, and when you give them something, they're going to check it out. Look for these hyper-responders and cater your response to them. That's what we did. That's how we figured out that our biggest pain points for people who go through the Focus Course are one of four primary buckets, so to speak. It's time management, getting traction on their business or side projects, finding clarity on what's important to them and what they should be doing about it, and a lot of people also feel overwhelmed by all that's already happening in life. Or, they look at the thing that they're trying to make progress on, and they feel overwhelmed. They don't even know where to start. Really, all of these things feed off of each other. When one is in a rough spot, the others start to be in a rough spot as well. We go, “Okay, these are the main challenges we're going to address as part of the Focus Course, in all of our writing. This is it.” The people that fit within these four buckets are the ones who are willing to pay for a solution. Use Your Audience's Language Shawn: Read the actual responses, the answers, and take the language that people are saying and use it in your articles. Answer their actual questions in podcast episodes. You use it in your marketing language. The landing page for your product, or your podcast, or your sign up, or whatever—use the actual language of your hyper-responder customers. Now, not only are you listening to them and you know who that ideal customer is, but you're also even speaking their language. A) it's going to be cool because hopefully you'll do more sales, but B) you'll actually get to connect with the people you want to connect with. That's the whole point. That's why we're here. That's one of the huge benefits of having these customer profiles. It can help you stay focused on who you're trying to talk to and what it is you're trying to talk about, to help them. Aaron: That's mindblowing. That's fantastic. At the core, I kind of know this stuff, but hearing you explain it made it even more clear to me. I love that. I want to take it in this direction. How to Grow Your Audience & Create Deeper Connections Aaron: One of the most common questions I get about podcasting is about growing an audience. It's always, “How do I get more attention? How do I get more listeners? How do I grow an audience?” I love what you said right here. Use the language of your customer avatar in your content to create a deep connection with them. That's where listeners come from. So many people think that they'll magically get 100,000 people to listen to their podcast, and they won't have any idea of who these people are. They're nameless, faceless avatars on the internet. No! Especially in the beginning, you start small. You develop relationships with people who care passionately about the thing that you're talking about. By investing in them, getting to know them, and asking them questions—regardless of whether you're doing some kind of business thing or not—by just talking to them and getting to know their language, that's how you're going to resonate with them and even more people. What methods have you found effective for growing an audience and developing deeper relationships? Shawn: I think that's a great question. Everyone wants to know the answer to this. For me, there are three primary keys to growing an audience: Consistency Honesty and transparency Relationships. 1. Consistency Shawn: Consistency is core. This is a phrase in the seanwes Community, and it's a phrase I like to use, and that's this: show up every day. That's consistency. We're just people of habit. The internet is a thing of habit, so you have to have that consistency where you're in people's regular cycles. Sean McCabe talks about this a lot. You want to be in people's weekly cycle at a minimum. Show up on a regular basis. Also, that's how people know you're going to be there. There's something about that consistency. One of the ways you develop an audience where people are tracking with you and paying attention when you're showing up consistently. When you show up consistently, not only do you earn people's trust, but you create an anticipation of future value. You want to have that. That's huge. People are like, “I want to know what's next. I want to follow this story and be here.” Consistency is huge. 2. Honesty & Transparency Shawn: This comes out in a lot of ways. In some ways, you want to have the transparency like Nathan Barry talks about, to “teach what you know.” Share what you know. Also, there's a human element, passion and persona, who you are as an individual. Humanizing yourself is so helpful. We don't want to connect with brands, we want to connect with people. As indie entrepreneurs or indie creative folks, when you are running your own thing, you are a brand but you're also a person. You've got to keep the person aspect of it, the human aspect of it, you have to keep it there. Allow your mistakes to show through. Allow your passions to show through. For me, at ShawnBlanc.net, I cut my teeth and grew my audience originally by writing about Apple stuff. I wrote tons of product reviews. It was super nerdy, gadgety stuff. I would also write about coffee, camera gear, books I was reading, music, and things like that. Aaron: Stuff you cared about. Shawn: Exactly. Other interests that were related to Apple gear because it was my site, and I can write about whatever I want. That humanized the work that I was doing. So many people came to my site because of the Apple stuff but they stayed because of the coffee stuff. Your focus, your niche, is going to draw your audience, but your ancillary interests will keep people interested. You're a real person with real interests who is not just this robot spinning off the same thing all the time. 3. Relationships Shawn: This is huge. I stink at it, but I'm trying to reply to emails. When people email me, replying back to them. Also, here's a prime example, having me on your show, Aaron. The practicality of it is that when this show goes live, I'm going to tweet about it. I'm going to link to it. I'm going to point the people that track with me over to your stuff. That's a way for you to grow your audience, but it's also a way for me to grow my audience. Your listeners, a lot of people, don't know who I am. Now, hopefully, some of them will come check me out and sign up for our stuff. There's a really cool dynamic here of introducing your group to someone else. Hopefully, that person will also introduce their audience to who you are. Doing guest-based podcasts is an awesome way to grow your audience. I did some back in the day, when I was first starting my site. I did interviews, blog interviews. The whole thing was conducted over email, and it was just this back and forth email. I did one with Daniel Jalkut, who used to work at Apple and then started Red Sweater. He has the best blogging app on the planet for Mac, MarsEdit. It's a super great app. I emailed him and did an interview with him. I did an interview with John Grubar. I did an interview with Brett Simmons, all these people who are super famous Apple people. I'm going back and forth with these guys and posting their interviews. They link to me on my site, and I get this influx of new readers. Or you find software that's awesome. I would do super in-depth reviews about this stuff, and then people would link to those reviews. Honoring other people, connecting with other people, and doing stuff that's worth talking about. Then the word will spread. That consistency, being transparent and honest about who you are, having that passion and that human dynamic to the work that you do, and then just trying to connect with other people. Do things that people are going to want to talk about. Another example is the summit that we're doing, the Focus Summit. I'm punching way above my weight class here with some of these folks, and it's a chance to hopefully get some of their audience to discover the work that we're doing and visa versa. I hope that people who sign up for this summit will get introduced to some new people and that they'll find some incredible resources. It's just fun. We're all just folks trying to do our best work, right? Aaron: Absolutely. I love that. That's one of the best answers for building an audience that I've ever heard. The Importance of Investing One-on-One Time in Your Listeners Aaron: The thing that I'm working on, and I just want to share this, is investing more time in my listeners. It's hard sometimes, because you can spend all the time in the world talking to people on the internet, as I'm sure you know, Shawn. I'm sure people are constantly emailing you, asking for your thoughts, your advice, and your feedback on stuff, and you try to stay really focused. Something I've wanted to do is spend a little bit of time every day, like on Twitter, reaching out and telling people that I appreciate what they do. Or, if somebody emails me, having a conversation. In depth, giving them 15 or 20 minutes of focus time to reply, and even asking them questions. Someone says, “Hey, thanks for doing your show. I really appreciate this thing.” I'll reply and say, “Thank you so much. How is your podcasting journey going? What are you working on right now? What do you want to get better at?” Some great conversations have come out of that. I'm trying to invest a little bit more in my listeners. I'm at the point now where I've started inviting some of them on the show. “Hey, you sound like you'd be a cool person to talk about podcasting with. Would you like to come on the show?” It just spreads. It's the building of community that will eventually attract people to you. When I started, I had 30 or 40 friends, maybe a couple hundred followers. Every new person that finds my show and gets to know me as a person, who respects the work I do, they might have 200 people that follow them, and they share my show with those people. It just spreads out from there. It becomes this big net. You can eventually reach people that are far outside of your social circle just by connecting with the people you can connect with right now. Let them do the work of sharing your stuff with their people, too. Shawn: Yeah, exactly. Focus Summit & Products Aaron: That's fantastic. We're getting close to the end of the episode. We need to wrap it up. I told everyone in the beginning that I would get you to talk about this Focus Summit that you've got coming up. What's the deal with this? Tell us a little bit about that. Shawn: The summit! I'm so excited about this. We have Jocelyn Glei, who just wrote this book called Unsubscribe, which is a fantastic book. It's about email distractions and stuff like that. We've got Josh Kaufman, who wrote The Personal MBA. Anyone who is trying to do anything related to business, you need to read The Personal MBA. It is a bargain. Aaron: So much good advice. Shawn: It's like a $35 book, and that book is so packed. Excellent, excellent stuff. Sean McCabe is on it, and Sean and I talk about how quantity leads to quality, which ties right into this stuff on showing up every day. The summit is going to be really, really cool. When this podcast drops, the summit is going to be kicking off. Here's the link: The Creative Focus Summit. After the summit wraps up, we're opening up registration for our Focus Course. That has become my flagship product. It changed everything for me, in terms of what I was focusing on. I came up with this course as the next product in a series. I had done Delight is in the Details, and I wanted to write a book about diligence and productivity. I wrote the book, and then, long story short, I realized that it needed to be a course. I felt like the way that I wanted to get these ideas across wasn't a book that someone would read, highlight, think was cool, and then puts back on their shelf and returns to life as usual. I want something that's really going to effect change. I knew that a book would probably go farther, broader, and reach a total number of more people. I would rather fewer people go through the course but have a higher number of them really get real impact. For me, the book ended up turning into the Focus Course, and we've had close to 1,300 people go through it. It's basically productivity training for creative people and entrepreneurs and leaders. It's way, way more than that. It's not tips and tricks. It's what I call “meaningful productivity.” It actually gets to the core, the heart, and the foundation. What do you really care about? How are you really spending your time? This is not a “Five Life Hacks That Will Help Me Go Through My Email Inbox Better.” It's hard questions that will make me challenge my assumptions about my family, my work, my down time, and my rest time. Anyone that thinks that taking a nap will improve productivity, the Focus Course is for you. Aaron: That's me! You have to have a healthy life to do your best work. Shawn: You can't sprint this. This is a marathon, so you have to have that breathing room. The Focus Course opens up after the summit is over, and I'm super excited about it. We're going to have a whole group of people cruising through in January. We're doing a winter class for it. We've got some forums, so everyone can share their progress. It's going to be a blast. I'm really excited about it. The summit is free, and the Focus Course itself is going to be something we charge for, obviously. Aaron: You have to charge for things, or else people won't take it seriously. Shawn: It's so true. Aaron: You have to invest. Shawn: That's something else. We didn't get into that earlier when we were talking about the pricing stuff, but that's another reason to charge for your work. Someone is actually going to have skin in the game. They're going to find value for it. Aaron: They have to ask themselves, “Okay. Do I think this is going to help me enough in my life journey to actually put money towards it?” If they answer that question for themselves and then make the choice to give you that money, they are going to say, “I told myself, I believe, that this is worth my time, so I need to invest my time in it.” Shawn: Exactly. Very true. Aaron: Where should people go if they want to follow you, connect with you, or ask you questions? Shawn: Twitter is a great spot. I'm @shawnblanc on Twitter.

Blair Williams is a software engineer and entrepreneur. He is the owner and lead programmer for Caseproof. Caseproof has four products on the market Pretty Link, MemberPress, Affiliate Royale, and Buy Now for Stripe. Pretty Link is a WordPress plugin to manage link redirection on WordPress websites, MemberPress is a product to manage membership sites, Affiliate Royale is a product to manage your affiliates, and Buy Now for Stripe is a product that allows integration with Stripe to sell products on a website without an SSL certificate. Please see Disclosure* (below) concerning affiliate links on this page. Key Segments [0:02:39] After getting a degree in computer science, Blair worked as a programmer, software architect, and CTO at various companies. But while he was working these jobs, he was moonlighting on Caseproof doing freelance web development for clients and then got into WordPress plugins. [0:03:56] His passion was all about the web. He created Caseproof to both learn about the web and get started helping people build websites. When Blair first started building web apps, he thought he needed to use the most bulletproof technology he could find, something that could scale massively and be solid. He chose Java Struts [see Apache Struts] and Enterprise JavaBeans. It took him about a year to create his first web app, which was basically a file browser. After that experience, he switched to PHP. He wasn't sure how PHP would scale but felt that he would be able to get things done in a reasonable amount of time. [0:06:16] While working at Franklin Covey, he started working on larger applications that had been written in PHP and were out of control. He heard about Ruby on Rails. Since Rails uses a Model-View-Controller (MVC) as Struts does, he felt it had the strength of Struts while using a beautiful scripting language. He switched to Rails for several years, even using it after he started working with WordPress, and today still uses some Rails apps to facilitate the sale of MemberPress and other plugins. [0:07:21] He later began to work for a client doing more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Internet marketing work and started fiddling around with WordPress to develop microsites. As part of this, he wanted to start tracking links in pay-per-click campaigns independent from Google to have secondary confirmation. That's when he wrote Pretty Link for WordPress. He also wrote Pretty Link in such a way that he could use his own domain name instead of Bitly, or something like it, to shorten links. He put Pretty Link on the WordPress Plugin Directory and found that other people wanted to track their links too. [0:08:58] After Pretty Link, came Affiliate Royale, MemberPress, and Buy Now for Stripe. Pretty Link is a WordPress plugin. MemberPress is also a WordPress plugin but uses a license server on the backend running a Rails-based service. The backend issues and revokes licenses, and facilitates updates. Upgrades and support for a year come with a license. [0:10:30] “When I first got into this, I thought this was gonna be this primarily programming job. I was gonna just be in my basement coding all the time, and it was all about the software. I was just gonna make the software better, and that is a really important part of the business, but the thing I have found is that it's really not a software business; it's a support business [slightly edited].” MemberPress handles e-commerce, protecting pages, and keeping the life-cycle relationship with the customer intact. People use it to run their businesses. Blair's team takes support seriously, and that costs money. [0:12:36] “We take it just as seriously as you take your business, and we wanna make sure that you're up and running, that you are able to make money. That's our whole goal: to help you make money.” [0:12:51] Most of Caseproof's support team are developers. They can go in and fix things for people. Ron had a very positive support experience with the Caseproof team and, knowing how expensive support is, felt a little guilty for the time they spent fixing the problem [relative to the cost of Pretty Link Pro]. Blair's response was: “But that's what they're there for, and we try to fix as may things as we can.” [0:13:51] Blair attributes part of the strength of MemberPress to WordPress but notes that there are thousands of plugins, themes, and web hosts in the self-hosted WordPress environment. Testing every permutation is impossible. Support in this environment requires masterful troubleshooting skills. [0:16:04] Pretty Link, the free version, will do basic, server-side redirects (301, 302, and 307), which Blair explains. [0:19:15] Pretty Link Pro also allows JavaScript redirects, meta refresh redirects using HTML, cloaking, pixel tracking, Tweet automation, social bars, Tweet counters, keyword replacement, alternate base URLs, and geographic redirects. Cloaking is a technique to hide target URLs from the user. Cloaking is legitimately used to retain branding when redirecting but has also been used for questionable reasons to trick people. Pretty Bar Redirect is a form of cloaking that puts a bar at the top of a linked page with brought-to-you-by branding. Pixel tracking, where a one-pixel image is loaded with a page, is also provided to track page views and hits. Tweet automation tweets to connected Twitter accounts when designated pages are initially published. Keyword replacement will replace occurrences of keywords throughout a site with a predefined link (such as an affiliate link). An alternate base URL can be used to provide a short URL for a long URL, such as SaaSBP.com as a substitute for SaaSBusinessPodcast.com. Geographic redirects will redirect based on a user's location. [0:31:11] With MemberPress, you can control who has access to content by limiting access according to rules established by the admin. Access can be granted or revoked for posts, pages, categories, tags, feeds, communities, digital files, and custom taxonomies. Community access allows integration with BuddyPress or bbPress to limit access based on topics. You can manage subscriptions, manage transactions, and resend welcome emails. MemberPress centralizes the rules for access to all of your content. There are also developer tools to integrate with external systems such as SaaS products. MemberPress can revoke access if payments lapse. Membership levels control price, subscription period, trial period, access to content, and recurring billing. Registration pages can be set up for each level. Customers have account pages to view billing history, edit their information, and can be given the option to cancel subscriptions. The admin can also manage coupons with options to define the frequency of use, expiration, discount levels, applicable products, and trial periods. Members are not restricted to a single subscription level but may have multiple subscriptions defined within the site. MemberPress can calculate proration for membership level upgrades. [0:43:49] If customers require custom MemberPress development work, Caseproof maintains a list of trusted vendors and can provide referrals. These are vendors who are familiar with MemberPress and maintain a relationship with Caseproof to resolve problems. Caseproof does not receive payment from vendors for referrals made. [0:44:43] For payments, MemberPress integrates with PayPal for Business and Stripe(and Authorize.net for the developer version). Caseproof is working on integrating with Braintree and, for Australia, eWay. With Stripe and PayPal, the integration is tight, so you can tell if someone has purchased or canceled, and an admin can manage subscriptions from the membership site without needing to log into the gateway. All three services can notify MemberPress of payments made; MemberPress can then issues receipts to the user. [0:50:17] MemberPress also provides analytics to see how your membership site is doing. It will report by week, month, year, and product allowing you to see who has been buying what and when. You can measure traffic, money coming in, and lifetime average value of users. The data is live and displayed using Google's Visualization API [see Google Charts]. [0:52:28] Affiliate Royale allows you to manage a complete affiliate program. It will track affiliate commissions, and if you refund a transaction, it will automatically calculate the correction. Currently, it only supports payments to affiliates using PayPal. You can have a tiered commissions structure of up to 100 levels. It generates a dashboard allowing affiliates to see how much they have been paid or are currently owed, to see a leaderboard, to get affiliate links, banners, or other assets you have provided, and to enter an SSN or EIN for tax purposes. In addition to MemberPress, it integrates with Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, Shopify, and other e-commerce platforms. And since Affiliate Royale is a WordPress plugin, all this is managed from your site with the same look and feel of the rest of your site. [0:56:00] Blair's software products came about organically. He started by searching for a tool that eventually led to the development of Pretty Link. He tried to find solutions but found none that completely solved his problem. [0:57:07] “Initially with Pretty Link, I didn't even have any idea that it would make money. I just put it out there on the repository thinking: well, this is what you do. You put software back out there into the community and give back a little bit. And there was kind of a big uptake. I think the first day there were almost 200 people who downloaded it. Just the first day! I was pretty excited about that, and over the next few months, I thought: ‘I wonder if there is a way I could make money at this?' [slightly editted]” [0:57:43] “WordPress, in general, does not make it easy to monetize plugins.” Anyone who sells premium plugins that can do automatic updates has to reverse engineer WordPress a little bit and create their own server that the plugin can talk to and get updates from. “It's pretty involved.” Initially, they were using FTP to copy files into WordPress, but over the years, they have gotten better at utilizing the plugin management facilities of WordPress. [0:59:07] Affiliate Royale and MemberPress were also needs that Blair had identified while working with other software or clients in those fields. He found things that were good, but not exactly what he needed, so he decided to build it himself. With the update mechanism from Pretty Link in place, he had an advantage with the other products. For the most part, the products were a “scratch-your-own-itch kind of thing.” [1:00:54] For resources, Blair recommends the book The Personal MBA, getting a good accountant, and GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping. The Personal MBA is his number one from the many business books he has read. “If anybody has one book to read, they should read The Personal MBA.” GoDaddy Bookkeeping integrates with Stripe and PayPal allowing them to track numerous small transactions. With BuyNow for Stripe, Caseproof gets a couple of cents per transaction as a fee. They must have software to track thousands of transactions. He has also heard good things about Xero and Less Accounting. FreshBooks is another great resource. Concerning accountants, Blair feels that you can't replace the in-depth professional knowledge of a good accountant. [1:05:03] Buy Now for Stripe is a plugin that allows users to accept credit card payments from a WordPress website without an SSL certificate. It's the most SaaS-like of their products. The backend is a Ruby-based application. For a credit card payment, it redirects to a secure payment server for the payment and then back to the original site when complete. It is similar to a PayPal flow without a PayPal account. It uses Stripe Connect, so it uses your Stripe account and is connected to the Buy Now for Stripe service. They facilitate the transaction, but the money goes straight into your account minus a small fee. They assess a transaction fee on top of Stripe's fees (for which they have gotten some flak), but if you weigh the transaction fee against the cost of an SSL, it's less expensive in many cases. If you're doing high volume, investigate getting an SSL. Buy Now for Stripe also has some features to facilitate the delivery of products; for example, it will send a receipt to a user with a link to where a product can be downloaded. They have had a lot of requests to integrate with MemberPress to allow transactions from MemberPress without an SSL, so they are looking into that. Resources Mentioned Affiliate Royale – a WordPress plugin that allows you to manage a complete affiliate program. See above or listen at [0:52:28]. Apache Struts – an open-source, Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for creating web applications based on Java. It is extensible using a plugin architecture. It has plugins to support REST, AJAX, and JSON.Java Struts – see Apache Struts. Authorize.net – credit card processing. bbPress – a WordPress plugin to create online forums. Bitly – a link shortening and tracking service. Braintree – online payment processing. BuddyPress – a WordPress plugin to help you build a community website with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more. Buy Now for Stripe – accept payments on your WordPress site without an SSL certificate Caseproof – Blair Williams' company, makers of Pretty Link, Member Press, Affiliate Royale, and Buy Now for Stripe. Easy Digital Downloads – e-commerce web app for digital products. Enterprise JavaBeans – server-side software based on Java to encapsulate business logic. eWay – online payment processing. eWay Australia – online payment processing for Australia. FreshBooks – small business accounting software. GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping – online bookkeeping. Google Charts – interactive charts for use in browser and on mobile devices. Google's Visualization API – API for Google Charts. Java Struts – see Apache Struts. Less Accounting – online accounting software. MemberPress – WordPress plugin to manage membership sites allowing you to accept payments, control access, and sell digital products securely. PayPal – web app to pay for online transactions. PayPal for Business – a service to accept online payments using PayPal or credit cards. PHP – a script-type programming language used by WordPress and widely used on the web embedded in HTML. Pretty Link – Caseproof's WordPress plugin to manage affiliate links on WordPress sites. Pretty Link Pro – the paid version of Pretty Link. See above or listen at [0:19:15]. AddsJavaScript redirects, meta refresh redirects using HTML, cloaking, pixel tracking, Tweet automation, social bars, Tweet counters, keyword replacement, alternate base URLs, and geographic redirects. Ruby – a script-type programming language with an elegant syntax. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, has said that he is “trying to make Ruby natural, not simple.” Ruby on Rails – on open-source Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for creating web apps based on the Ruby programming language. Shopify – e-commerce web app. Stripe – web app to accept credit card payments. Stripe Connect – service to enable payments for sellers, vendors, contractors, etc. The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business – book by Josh Kaufman covering the essentials of business. WooCommerce – e-commerce web app. WordPress – software to create web pages (websites, blogs, and apps). WordPress Plugin Directory – the official WordPress repository for plugins. Xero – online accounting software. *Disclosure: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you purchase through these links. These commissions help to cover the cost of producing the podcast. I am affiliated only with companies I know and trust to deliver what you need. In most cases, affiliate links are to products and services I currently use or have used in the past. I would not recommend these resources if I did not sincerely believe that they would help you. I value you as a visitor/customer far more than any small commission I might earn from recommending a product or service. I recommend many more resources with which I am not affiliated than affiliated. In most cases where there is an affiliation, I will note it, but affiliations come and go, and the notes may not keep up.

Josh Kaufman is a bestselling author (The Personal MBA, The First 20 Hours) who teaches people how to master practical knowledge and skills. In this episode of A Congruent Life, Josh talks about his transition from a Fortune 100 company to his work as a researcher and author, shares his journey toward self-empowered education (rather […] The post ACL 014: Josh Kaufman appeared first on A Congruent Life.