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Do I Need a Plan B for my Business?

May 17/by JC

One thing that I notice that people ask their mentors is this simple question: “should I have a plan B in case my business idea doesn’t pan out?”.

And really, it depends on who you ask and what the meaning behind your question is.

As I was doing the research for this piece, the answers I found were all over the board. Some said, “Yes, it’s irresponsible not to have a Plan B.”. While others suggest that you need to burn your bridges. Their thinking is that, like Aeneas of Roman mythology, that there is no going back. Having a plan B means that you have a back door – an escape plan of doing great things.

While I’m a huge believer in being prepared and planning in general (I mean, I’ve been trained to think like an engineer, right?), I think the bridge burners have some points as well.

So which is it?

When President Kennedy wanted to take us to the moon, as impossible as the goal was, we were able to craft a plan to get it done. With a ton of engineering, we were able to accomplish it – even with the primitive computers they had at the time.

However, because they were engineers, they probably had a plan B, C, AND D.

With this in mind, you can see that even the most responsible amongst us are shooting for the stars. However, it might take multiple tries to actually get you there.

Fire and Adjust

This past weekend, I was listening to a podcast in where the host, Michael O’Neal, was talking about branding. One of the ideas that he suggested for starting a new company is to use a name that your audience would know, but not necessarily other people. In this instance, he was talking about a friend of his (or client) who was wanting to start a military based podcast for success. The phase “Fire and Adjust” seemed to fit the bill of veteran entrepreneurs.

When I heard that phrase, it made me think of this Plan B issue again.

In the military, they have an objective. They have overarching goals. However, the tactics that are used to achieve the big picture goal might change depending on the circumstances.

For example, for the Angles of Lattitude Podcast, I originally wanted to have 3 regular hosts that would be discussing topics in entrepreneurship and having guests on. Those three were Brian, Jonathan, and myself.

However, life happened to both of them about the same time. Jon got sucked up by his senior year at college. Brian had a new kid which he now spends part of his days caring for.

So I had to do something quick.

What did I do? Instead of having the same co-hosts every week, I’d have guest co-hosts who were actually past guests themselves. That way, if someone was interested to know more about a particular co-host, they could go back into the archive and find out more about them.

So far, it seems to be working. Which means, I’m still going to have a co-host based podcast, but now it’s almost as if I have multiple guests at the same time – which is something that I don’t hear many podcasts doing. You never know what you’re going to get!

Great story, JC – but how does that apply to me?

Well, in your particular instance, I’m not sure. But there are 4 takeaways that you can get out of it and apply to your own situation.

Commit

This is where the bridge and boat burners got it right. Say what you’re going to do and do what you said you were going to do. Sure, you might not be literally going to the moon on your own, but if you want to build a business that provides for you and your family that utilizes a passion, then you’re going to have to do some work.

If you’re still working a day job, you might not have full-time commitment. However, I’m not saying to quit your job. (In fact, sometimes, quitting your job might have a negative effect on a new business.) When you do have the time to build your dream (which you’ll more than likely have to prioritize to get the time in), you need to have a steady focus and intensity that tells your subconscious that “this is important to me”.

Take Small Steps

One of the things that I’ve noticed many people that I’ve been working with lately start their dream job is that they’re overloading themselves with all the things that need to be done to have a fully functioning online business.

“I need a logo. I need Mailchimp, I need to learn how to put videos on YouTube. I need to learn how to use Snapchat… and… and…”

This is one reason why I highly recommend Fizzle to everyone who starts their first online business. Before Fizzle, I always thought it’d be cool if there was a ONE place where people could go to to get the education to build an online business for a relatively small monthly fee. That’s what Fizzle is. A community built by entrepreneurs for new entrepreneurs to get their business going. Think of it as inexpensive online mentorship.

Anyway, without being in Fizzle, I’d say that you need to build your own Roadmap starting with the end in mind. Ask yourself, what does success look like? Not just when you have a successful business that’s actually in the black, but on the way to that point. Are there examples of businesses that you can model up to the “end point”?

This applies to all of your business, not just the tactics.

When you start seeing results, and you feel confident that going at it 100% of the time will be as rewarding as the day job that you’re in (monetarily and emotionally), then go for it! Plan and execute a transition. Choose a date for your “Freedom Day” – the day that you’re able to pursue your dream full time. Between then and now, research, learn, and build the foundation of your future business. DON’T try to do it all in one month! Hell, it’s taken me a year to get up to this point!!

Network and Leverage Relationships (Like Mad!)

How do I expand my influence?

Read the following in Gary V.’s voice. (He didn’t actually say this… I just imagine he would!)

Meet. New. People.

Why? Because each person you’ve ever met has had an impact in how you think today. Cause and Effect. Where there’s an action, there’s a reaction.

Whether they were a positive influence, or a negative influence, you’ve thought about them for a least a second. If they were a positive influence, you might have thought “How can I use what they said in my life?” If they were negative, you might have thought “Oh, I don’t want to be like them!” or some other type of reaction.

Lack of meeting new people means not only lack of you getting the right influences in your life, but it also means lack of opportunity.

One thing that’s really been making me scratch my head recently is people who must keep their Facebook account limited to real lifefriends. It’s like they’re trying to play golf and going for the lowest score to… I don’t know what the point is. Minimalism perhaps? Trying to keep “positivity” in their feed? Not quite sure.

Here’s the problem with this. They’re not expanding their influence in either direction. They’re not allowing the doors to be open to new opportunities (and in Facebook’s case, new Groups) and they’re not influencing new people.

Think about this. The friends that they have on their account now, were at one time strangers. Even more, those friends probably also have a particular view of this person who’s trying to radically change their life. Chances are pretty low that those friends are going to be going along on the same journey. So, person, who is building influence online… How are you going to build influence online if you don’t and CAN’T even utilize one of the easiest ways to do that?

Pages? Pages can’t network. They can’t get into Groups. They can’t actually build influence. They can keep it going, sure. But when you’re just starting, you need to be shooting for that 5000 max friend score. By then, you might have enough traction for your “Fan Page” to actually have a following.

But using a Fan Page in 2016 to build a following is going to require investing money for advertisements.

If you’re against using Facebook to build your network, there’s other tools that can do that for you. Instagram, Twitter, and what I highly recommend you figure out: Snapchat.

You keep asking questions, we’ll keep answering them. Gary V. out!

Embrace Your Inner Multipotentialite

Don’t fall into the false belief that you have to do just one thing. There used to be a time when you could take advantage of Google and call your website something that people would search. This is where websites like Smart Passive Income originally came from. From there you’d talk about whatever that topic was. That was (and still is) called building a niche site.

However, Google’s changed since then. You can name your business whatever you want. It’s the actions and your engagement that are going to build it.

If Google and the rest of the world is changing all the time, why shouldn’t you?

Not too long ago I talked about the difference between niche marketing and niche product development. This also applies to your career. Just like you can market your business to multiple audiences, you can also do the same for yourself and the dreams and careers you choose. Maybe go-getter millennials don’t pay attention to you. That doesn’t mean that you can’t focus on other audiences and serve them!

Action Steps

So until next time, let’s think about a couple of things here.

Do you need a Plan B? Not if you’re committed to your goal. At this point, as a beginner, just remember that you want to plan a transition to your next career. If you’ve been laid off and thinking that building an online business is quick money, it’s not. Go get a job that complements what you’re wanting to do in the future with this online business.

Now build a roadmap. Having trouble doing that? Not sure what one is? Subscribe to Fizzle and use theirs. Find some people that are on the path to that destination. Add them on Facebook if possible, get to know them a bit.

From there, start working on one thing at a time. Rome wasn’t built in a day!

If you’re not a beginner, how’s your plan going? Did you have to change things up a bit to get to where you are? Would love to hear what caused your plan to change. Also, I’d love to get your feedback my thoughts above!

UpdraftPlus: A Simple Tool to Backup A WordPress Site

April 26/by JC

One of the things that people struggle with all the time when it comes to hosting their own site is backups. How do you backup a WordPress site? Why do you need to? The simple answer is that for one reason or another, data can be lost or corrupted – even on big hosts.

In New Inceptions’ lifetime (which officially has been since 2010), I’ve had malware installed on the same server as mine before. That malware can affect everything and everyone on the storage space of the server.

I was reminded of this in the past week.

You might have noticed that I didn’t have a blog post last week. However, I did write one. It was 2000 words of awesomeness about the things I’ve been learning and relearning about email marketing.

Obviously, it wasn’t posted – and here’s why: after I made the post, I saved it as a draft. Well, something didn’t go right on my particular install at the time. So just as my screen was coming up from “saving”, I scrolled through to see if there wasn’t anything else that might need changed. As I did this, I realized that two-thirds of my post had disappeared!

Needless to say, I was somewhat furious.

I’ll probably eventually redo the post as I get more results from what I’ve been learning. However, in the meantime I’m just going to tell you that it’s going to become a primary focus of mine in the foreseeable future. Up to my first 10k Subscribers – at least!

Long Story Short

I don’t know if this has anything to do with with it, but the install of one of my clients had been hacked into last weekend. No traffic was getting to their site and that meant no revenue for me. Bad times!

In the meantime, I didn’t realize that this was going on. And the next thing I knew, malware started causing issues on my site as well. I didn’t have any idea that this was possible. I always thought that if it was a different install of WordPress, then we wouldn’t have that issue. Not so.

The particular issue that this malware was causing me was CRAZY amounts of traffic – at least for my site. This ended up being bot traffic, and to make matters worse, it was causing my site to call for a ton of Cron jobs. These particular kind of jobs eat at the number of how many “processes” that your host provides you. Hostgator usually limits each shared host customer to 25. Not bad – mainly because you can typically keep it under 10 if your site is humming along without any problems.

Well, as soon as I realized how many processes these jobs were taking up and in how slow my site was acting, I figured that it had been corrupted and I needed to take it offline. I did and thought to myself “well, looks like I’ll have to build the website back up from scratch”. Why? Because that’s what I had to do the last time my site got hacked. In fact, that was when I thought it was a great time to buy Enfold as my theme.

If you’ve never had that feeling, it’s a bad feeling to have. Hopefully what I’m about to say next will prevent you from having to feel that too many times yourself!

One Last Shot

It’s funny, but my engineering training always shows up one way or another. Especially when I have problems with technical things. Where many people might start panicking, my brain just flips to a logical step by step troubleshooting mode.

In this particular instance, when I realized I was going to have to shut down the site, I dropped in a maintenance plugin – actually one that collected emails to let people know when it was back up.

As soon as I activated that plugin, I noticed that the Cron Jobs were dropping and I was able to actually navigate around my site. (Even if this wasn’t the case I know that I can manually cancel processes by going into Cpanel and manually stopping each one. (This is why it’s good to have a large monitor or in my case, multiple monitors. You can do multiple things at once. In grad school it was research on one monitor and write on the other. In this case it was stop one process in Cpanel, and then move to another page. Stop a couple more and move to another page.)

Not too long ago, I had to move my site from its previous installation to where it is now on Hostgator. You’d think this would be somewhat easy. Just like people copy videos on YouTube or Facebook – download from one account and upload on another.

It’s not that simple when transferring a WordPress install.

What you have to do is actually download another plugin that will download all the pieces of WordPress. This includes the files that you upload, but it also takes in account the database (that keeps track of your posts and any links you have on them), the theme, AND the plugins.

Well, I knew I didn’t want to backup all that information. I wanted something that could save just the files I wanted. My old plugin put everything into one archive folder. That simply wasn’t going to do.

I wanted something that could separate the files apart. Because more than likely the affected files were going to be in the theme OR in the plugins.

I eventually found a solution that was going to give me this option.

My Solution for Malware

UpdraftPlus was the backup software that allowed me to separate all these files into compartments. Here’s how the restore went down.

Installed UpdraftPlus.
Create New Backups.
Download the parts that I want. In my case it was the Database and Uploads parts. (FYI: Uploads houses the information for Enfold – so technically I’m keeping my theme settings!)
Write down list of plugins being used.
Create a new install of WordPress.
Re-install UpdraftPlus.
Restore (upload) the Database and Uploads which I just downloaded.
Reinstall the theme and each plugin that was on my list.

And there you go.

This process took me a matter of 2+ hours with a site that part of the time was fighting me. However, I’d rather put in that time compared to having to redo the site again.

Action Steps

So that you’re prepared when your site gets hacked, install UpdraftPlus in your site right now. It’s free for what I used it for. You can have it save your backups on a number of remote servers – I’m pretty sure Dropbox and Google Drive are part of that selection. Not sure what the premium version does.

Also, make sure you install the plugin from McAfee so that your site is being scanned on a regular basis for malware. Even though it didn’t show up this particular time with McAfee, the last time I was hacked, McAfee saw it. Having the plugin installed alerts McAfee right away instead of them having to randomly access your site.

Pat Flynn’s Beginner’s Guide: Will It Fly Book Summary

April 12/by JC

Before we get started, I just wanted to say how useful this book has been. I wanted to give it a little bit more justice than what I’ve seen from other reviews. It’s my goal for you, the reader, to get some value from what I got out of the book as well as get an interest in reading it yourself. I hope that this review helps you make that decision! – JC

How does the business idea you have in your head right now fit into your future self, if at all?

The Riches are in the Niches

Products and services we create as entrepreneurs are like elixirs.

Will It Fly? In One Sentence: The true Entrepreneur knows their superpowers, knows more about their client’s pains more than they do, & is not afraid to help. (Click to Tweet)

The Big Ideas:

Start with Where You Want to Go
Know the Kind of Work You Like
Know Your Strengths
Get an Idea of What Your Basic Business Idea Will Look Like
Market Research: Who’s already doing something similar? (Places, People, Products)
Getting into the Head of Your Potential Clients, Customers, and Audience (Customer P.L.A.N.)
Validation of Your Elixirs
Case Studies

Start with Where You Want to Go

Entrepreneurs are notorious for “idea churn” – starting something new, only to abandon it for another idea. Sometimes this churn is fast, and sometimes it’s slow, but our goal here is to reduce the chances of churn happening at all.

One thing I learned in engineering that goes hand in hand with many of the success books that are out there is this simple phrase “Start with the End in Mind”.

Starting a business is no different. You need to have a valid idea of what that looks like. Ask yourself: If I had a successful business, what kind of lifestyle would it afford me? Would you be working it all the time from your computer in your home office (once in awhile on a beach?) or would you be traveling around the country or world, giving speeches? Would you be working one on one with your clients? Or, maybe, just maybe, you’d be in a third world country helping kids and their families build better lives?

Pat Flynn has done all of these things at one point in his business. As an architect, he knows what it’s like to think what the end of his project is going to look like. He then works his way backward from that goal and divides his work up into the pieces that need to be done. Same with an engineer. If weren’t trained that way, many things that we take for granted today would not exist.

In this session, Pat helps us determine what we really want in the future in 4 categories that he helps us choose.

Know The Kind of Work You Like

By creating a chronological roadmap of your past work experience, you’ll be able to discover some very interesting patterns about who you are and what works best for you.

I personally think this goes without saying. If you want be a recognized thought leader, car mechanic, or even a landscape architect, you’re going to need to love doing it. Doesn’t matter whether or not you are an entrepreneur or not – Everyone needs to figure out what kind of work they like to do.

When I first rebooted New Inceptions a year ago, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to focus on. I simply wanted to help millennials get better at life. However, as time moved on, I realized what part of life and what kind of life I wanted to help, not only millennials, but all kinds of people with – doing work that matters to do them that gives them a lifestyle that they want. Most often than not, this is usually working for yourself. Only through your own business can you get the best things from life, and frankly, I ask – why limit yourself to a job when you might have so much more potential than that?

In this section of the book, Pat talks about listing past jobs you’ve had. He helps us list what you like about them, even what you don’t like about them – and give them an overall rating in how well they match you as a person. You’ll be using those experiences to craft a business based on activities you naturally do.

Know Your Strengths

It doesn’t matter whether or not you plan on becoming a public face to your company, we have to learn what it is about you that you will bring and incorporate into your future business.

This is typically where I tend to start with coaching clients of mine in the past. Pat starts with where you’re going, I start with who you are. Both are equally as important.

Why?

Well, imagine that you’re trying to get to someone’s house in your car and you get lost because for whatever reason, the GPS can’t seem to match their address with their actual location. Believe me, it happens. So you call them and say “Hey, how do I get where you’re at? My GPS isn’t working right.”

What do you think is going to be their response?

“Where are you?” “I’m on Lost Avenue. Hold on, let me find out.” and you proceed to talk until you navigate to where you need to get to.

In business, just like in life, we need to know who we are. What our strengths are, or as Pat puts it, our Superpowers.

In the book, Pat has us do an exercise to find out from others what our Superpowers are. However, there are a few books that I’ve mentioned in the past that will help you find out even more about your strengths if you don’t want to learn about your strengths from the people you’ll be asking. Those books are StrengthFinder 2.0 and StandOut. (Make sure you get new copies as they will come with a 1 time use code that you’ll need to use for your assessment.)

However, I will say that you should still do this exercise because it’s good to know how others see you and perhaps why they see you that way.

Get an Idea of What Your Basic Business Idea Will Look Like

I’ve been using mind maps ever since I started my own business. I created one to start my first online product, and then later I started to incorporate mind maps into everything else that I did.

Mind maps are essential to doing anything creatively in my book. Whether you use post it notes like Pat does, or use an application (I use MindNode for Mac), they’re very important in getting your idea together for things you want to create. Much better than lists, in my opinion!

That said, Pat suggests that you work in two ways when you’re making your mind map. The Creative phase – where you’re just brainstorming related subjects. And then the second phase where you play the editor. The editor collects, adds context, and prunes out extra to get things all sorted out.

If you’re unfamiliar with mind maps, Pat has made a great video for you to check out in how he uses them to make books here:

Market Research: Who’s already doing something similar? (Places, People, Products)

If you find that others have already done what you’re planning to do, that’s a great thing! Someone else has already done the heavy lifting for you. They’ve taken the time and have spent the money to serve the audience, or attempt to do so, and by following their lead you can determine what’s working and what’s not, and adjust your business accordingly.

Very simply idea. If there’s already people doing what you’re going to do, that’s actually a good thing. It means that you’re not having to recreate the wheel and build an audience for it. Remember, being creative isn’t about being original, it’s about doing things in a way that has your uniqueness stamped on it.

As you find websites, people, and products that are already in your niche, list them in a spread sheet. In the book, Pat mentions a ton of ways to find resources that might otherwise take several weeks, months, or years to naturally bump into.

Eventually you’ll end up with a spread sheet that looks similar to mine:

Yeah, I know it’s not all filled out! If you’re in my niche, let me know. I’ll share it with you and we can work on it together!

More Market Research: Getting into the Head of Your Potential Clients, Customers, and Audience (Customer P.L.A.N.)

When you serve you get paid back in return, but only if you give those you serve a way to pay you back in some way, shape, or form.

Problems:

If you don’t know your target customers problems, how can you ever help them with a solution? You can guess what they are, which might not be the best idea – especially if you’re product is going to cost a lot of time or money to produce! Or you can learn how to ask important questions. (This is where my time in The Foundation has really paid off!)

Essentially you want to get to know their pains so well that when you ask them later, they assume that you already have a product. This is typically done through one on one contact with your target clients, as well as through surveys and, if you don’t know how to get in touch with your target customers, you can use paid traffic to get them to surveys.

Language:

We have a feeling of what kind of problems are out there, but how are the masses describing it? Now it’s time to use Google to search forums and other websites to check for questions that come up again and again. He also uses Google to check related searches to a topic. Ideally going for Questions, Keywords, and Complaints that people have in regards to the problem.

Anecdotes:

Nothing beats a good story! Especially when you’re going to be using said stories to help get your messages to your audience in a better fashion. Not only putting yourself in their seat, but also using these stories later when you’re offering a solution. Again, forums are a great place to search for these stories – but so are interview based podcasts! One of Pat’s most relatable interviews was with Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Check out that conversation here and tell me that that conversation doesn’t make you think you can build a functional online business! (Also, just an FYI on where Shane and Jocelyn are currently at – they’ve recently started a site here.)

Needs:

After going through P, L, and A – here’s N. Fairly simple step. What has the other 3 parts told you about your target customer? What do they really need? Do they need information updated from older websites? Do they need you to get them specifically what they want from all the material that’s out there on the web? Perhaps they have a specific vehicle that you can tell them if they can fix it on their own or not (yeah, that one is a little too descriptive. But it’s an idea for a mechanic wanting to go online!) It’s up to you to figure out what possible solutions might be.

Elixirs:

…the products and services we create as entrepreneurs are like elixirs – remedies or cures for certain “diseases” that are plaguing our target market.

For each need, you might think of one or a couple of ways to fix that issue.

However, you can only focus on one solution at a time. So pick one, sit on it for a day, and think about it.

After that day, Pat suggests to make another mind map about that new idea for a solution.

Personally, I say, if it fits within your original business idea – that’s great! Your business can be a theme of products. Not a problem there – many businesses have that model. However, you want to start with one main project.

Validation of Your Elixirs

…validation is not based on someone telling you they would buy, like, read, consume, watch, or listen to something you create. Validation is based on certain actions they take.

Essentially that validation is whether or not they want it so bad that they purchase it before it’s even made. Think Kickstarter.

For this process to occur, you need to do 4 things:

Get in front of an audience.
Hyper-target (Make them self identify that they’re interested.)
Interact and share your solution.
Ask for the transaction.

There are a ton of points that I’m skipping here that Pat makes in the book about how to go about actually doing this. He talks about strategies in how to do all of these.

Personally I call this a typical launch sequence. So if you’ve been in any webinar, or are going to be in one soon, see if they’re doing these steps.

Case Studies

In each of the case studies below, which range between all different kids of businesses across all different markets, you’ll get a breakdown of how each person moved forward during each phase of the process.

In this particular section, Pat gives an account of several people in his network (Joey Korenman, Bryan Harris, Jennifer Barcelos, Jarrod Robinson, and Noah Kagan) that went through the validation process.

To me, this part right here makes the entire book. However, you have to read the entire book for these to have the effect that they should when you get here.

Closing Thoughts

As we close out my first book summary, I want to say thank you for checking it out. I hope it helps you in a little way in getting your business started. If you’d like to know more, of course order the book (Amazon link). However, you should order the book just so you have a “quick” reference in what you should be doing next if you are already an entrepreneur.

Also, if you’d like me to do future summaries of other books in the future, let me know in the comments below. I did this one partly because I was part of Pat’s launch team and never fully did a “review”. I hope that this provides more value than what I’ve seen around the web constitute as “a review”.

That said, I’d love to do more “summaries” if you’d like of other books and products if you’d think that would add some value.

Also, on a side note – I’m actually very proud of Pat for writing this. You can tell he put a ton of work into it. I think it will continue to get his name out there for years to come. Not only that, but it will validate what many of us new solopreneurs have to put up on a regular basis.

Thanks, Pat, for leading the way!

Action Steps (Didn’t think I’d leave this out, did you?)

Go buy the book. It’s right up there with Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You can get it for free with Audible as a audio version if you need to!

AoL 030: The Importance of Having the Mind of an Entrepreneur with Joe Albano

April 7/by JC

The economy changed as we knew it in 2008 after the recession hit. It made jobs much harder to find. No longer was just a resume going to cut it – especially if you wanted a job that paid more than minimum wage.

2008 was also the year that Pat Flynn lost his job and started his long journey to making SPI what it is today. Personally, I’m glad that he made that decision because without him, there would be one less voice out there promoting entrepreneurship – especially lifestyle entrepreneurship and passive income.

I graduated grad school a year later in 2009. The only jobs I knew at the time were internships and teaching in grad school. That’s why, when I got out, I was sort of lost. I knew I what I didn’t want (to be in a large corporation or a dead end job), but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted.

It eventually occurred to me within a month or so after graduation that I wanted to get my career started with a startup because I had gotten my focus in Entrepreneurship.

That eventually happened (a couple of times) and now I’m finally doing what I went to grad school for! 🙂

However, not everyone can make that transition as easy as many of us millennials can. There are some people that are still struggling with making the transition from the plan they had before the recession. Some lost all their retirement and are forced to do menial jobs to get by. Others have just kept pushing along in a job that might no longer be providing for them at a level they were used to.

Even I questioned what was going through people’s heads when they couldn’t see the writing on the wall when I started networking in late 2009 and early 2010. Why not just start their own thing instead of waiting for someone to give them something better?

That’s also what this session’s guest, Dr. Joe Albano, thought when he started running into people who were trying to run a business with the thought process of an employee. They were waiting for their business to be given to them. Long story short, he ended up switching the focus of working with large businesses to small and medium sized ones just because he knew how much of an impact he and his company could make if he helped from the ground up.

In this discussion, we chat about that passion about working with small businesses, what it takes to make a successful startup, what’s the difference between an employee mindset and entrepreneurial one, and why new entrepreneurs don’t need advice as much as they need support.

If you’re the type of entrepreneur who’s struggling to find success with your business, or just want to know why your peers don’t understand why you’d want to pursue a business in the first place, I think that this chat will help you straighten a few things out.

SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL FIND OUT MORE ABOUT:

How Joe’s older brother played an influence in Joe being interested in starting his own business.
Why he feels that, as a Baby Boomer, it was a good decision to embrace entrepreneurship early in his career.
Why he made the transition from working with big companies to working with small to medium sized businesses.
Why he loves helping people look more at the human side of companies vs the management side.
What Joe’s definition of an entrepreneur really is.
Why he believes that the employee mindset no longer works in today’s world.
What’s the first steps he recommends for your new startup.
What Joe suggests to those who are running out of time to do all the different jobs to get their business started.
Why he believes that many new entrepreneurs need less advice and more support.
What Joe’s capacity is when working with college students.
An update in what happened career-wise to one of our early hosts, Jonathan Ridge.
Why it’s important that you learn to manage your own career.
…and MUCH more.

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

ITEMS and PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Logika International
Career and Coffee Events
16 Personalities
Diana Whitney & Appreciate Inquiry
Success Beyond School with Carol Coots
Will It Fly by Pat Flynn (Amazon Link)
Solopreneur Hour
Unmistakable Creative
Finding Someone to Be – Identity Formation Study
The Founder’s Delimna by Naom Wasserman (Amazon Link)
Audible – Want to hear Pat Flynn read his book? Get Your 30 Day Trial Period FREE + 1 Book Credit today!

SHOW NOTE EXTRAS:

Become an Entrepreneur by a guy that’s new to me by the name of Aleksander Vitkin

How to be an Entrepreneur by The School of Life

A Day in The Life of an Entrepreneur by Aleksander Vitkin

Career Advice on Becoming an Entrepreneur by Richard Branson

The Top 10 Mistakes of Entrepreneurs by Guy Kawasaki:

Thanks for Listening!

Thanks so much for joining us again this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below!

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A huge thank-you to you guys for joining us!

Cheers!

Learning How to Set Yourself Apart from the Competition

April 5/by JC

When you’re starting to a business, whether it’s strictly online, or even if it’s a brick and mortar business, you have to know how to set yourself apart from the competition that’s in your niche.

Not too long ago, I posted a piece about creativity in where I stated that creativity isn’t about being original, it’s about being able to connect your unique experiences in a way that matters to your audience and/or clients. Even if some of your experiences are shared with other people, not all of them will be.

Knowing this and learning how to showcase that collection of experiences helps you separate from the crowd if you know how to take advantage of it.

All you have to do is make sure there’s a reason why people should visit, read or buy from you. Do this, and you’ll get your followers, and beat your competitors.

Example: Tesla Motors

Just this past week, Tesla debuted the Model 3. They are decimating all previously held numbers for plug-in cars. Why is this?

You could say that it’s the first at making electric cars. But that isn’t the case.

You could say they’re the first in making plug-in cars readily available to the market. Close, but not quite there. Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf are relatively easy enough to get your hands on if you wanted them.

So what exactly is it that’s setting them apart from the pack?

It’s the extras:

Superchargers
Wireless Software Updates
No Pressure Sales (Pretty much anyone can get a test drive!)
Performance (not a large golf cart!)
Great range for an all electric car.

You might notice that the top 3 are customer service related, and the bottom two are product related. Not bad!

BONUS: There are plenty of videos of people’s reactions from taking a test drive of a Tesla Model S. If you’d like to take a test drive of the Model S with myself and my friend Ben, you can do that here:

Here’s a recording of Maria testing it (Note that AMS no longer runs the Noblesville Mini as stated in the video):

Is it any wonder that I have stock in the company? 🙂

My Example:

While New Inceptions is young, I think the success that I have received comes from the podcast side of things. There are many other business podcasts that like to interview big names and give you the details that helped them get to be a successful entrepreneur or leader, I like to believe that mine is different. I want to make the content that I provide completely relatable.

Part of how I do this is by providing quality information that will help you move from being a freshman entrepreneur all the way up to being a senior. I do this by tapping into everyday entrepreneurs who have had just enough success that a new person can see themselves actually achieving the same thing. I want you to feel as if you’re going on this journey with me as a fellow classmate. Currently I’m a sophomore, so the types of people I have on the show right now are sophomores or juniors themselves.

Also, while I’m new at running my own business, I have had the privilege of learning from online business people for 6 years now. So this gives me some good connections in helping those that are completely brand new to the scene.

Have a question, I’ll answer to the best of my ability. If I don’t know the answer, I’m not going to give some random response! Let’s figure it out together!

Just a little heads up. One thing that I’ve been asked about several times over since starting on my path last year is about all the pieces that a person needs to have a successful online business. I’m currently in the process of making a checklist of 5 different steps you’ll need to take care of to give yourself a fighting chance.

You’ll see more details about this later.

Action Steps:

If you’re starting your own online business like me, or even if you’re doing some offline work, I want you to ask yourself a question. What makes you stand out from the crowd? What makes you memorable?

Do you know the answer? Does your audience and/or clients know that answer? Make sure that they do.

If you don’t know the answer, how do you expect your audience to recognize it? Spend some time figuring out what’s going to separate you from other creators out there. Again, you can have the same kind of sauce – but add your own special spice to it!

Quitting Without Regret: A Critical Key to Successful Creativity

February 9/by JC

If you’re like me and many other creatives that I know, your mind never stops coming up with new ideas that you believe could add value to other people.

Chances are, you probably have some sort of journal or list somewhere that you can write down ideas on as they come to you.

Just last night, I was listening to Michael O’Neal’s (host of the Solopreneur Hour) interview with Pat Flynn about Pat’s new book, Will It Fly?, and a question came up for Pat that I’m not sure I ever truly heard him answer before until he answered it here.

Many successful entrepreneurs talk about 90 day sprints in which they focus on learning and doing one new thing. However, what Pat answered was very interesting. He said that instead of cutting up the year into 90 day sprints, he actually focuses on two new things for the entire year.

That honestly blew me away. That seems like such a small amount.

But if I think about it, that’s what he’s done. Just kinda going back through his income reports, I can think about what he was up to during that time. For example, in 2013 he wrote his first big ebook, Let Go. In 2014, he was all about systematizing and hiring “fuller” time help. He even spoke of it several times that year. That enabled him to start making and releasing more stuff including “Ask Pat” and doing more videos on YouTube in a series called SPI TV. And in 2015, he was all about going big and expanding his brand as a whole – becoming a regular speaker and embracing his “CEO” role (even though he’d say he doesn’t like that title too well!).

I’m sure Pat wanted to do all of these things for several years. If you dig, you can see he started things here and there. (For example, there’s evidence on his YouTube channel… his oldest videos are 6 years old.) He didn’t have the capacity to do all the things on a regular basis until recently. He knew how to quit without regret.

Knowing Your Capacity

Let’s face it, unless we have a team, we’re not going to be able to do everything we want to do. Really. And even then, we might not be able to. (That’s why companies continue to grow.)

There’s two reasons for this, one is that you simply have 24 hours in a day. Even if you’re a workaholic like Gary Vee, you’re still only going to be able to do so much. The second is that you come pre-programmed with certain personality traits, and there’s just going to be some things that you’re better at than not.

Even if you’re a workaholic, there’s a good chance you might risk burnout and/or miss out on other aspects of life.

As Angles of Lattitude co-host Laila recently pointed out in a ‘scope of hers, “you have to know what you REALLY want”. While she was able to work herself into working at NASA, a lot of what she did to get there forced her to skip out on other aspects of life. Similarly, while she’s always wanted to be an Professional Engineer and recently had started studying to take the test to be, she realized that it wasn’t for her… at least not right now. She’s currently starting her own brand, working a Fast Track program with Beach Body, helping with the podcast, and on top of that, she’s working part time as well. She simply didn’t have the capacity to add the test on top of all of that.

I think that this was a great choice on her part – even if, for her, it was a really painful decision. She re-realized what her capacity was and she made the decision to not go over that limit.

The Big Misconception

So, at this point, you might be thinking “Ok, that’s great for Pat and Laila, JC. But honestly, I can’t afford for my startup to fail. That’s why I HAVE to try so many things. I need to play it safe. One of these things will work.”.

Will it? Do you think that will help? To me, that sounds like a recipe for failure.

Pat and Laila are simply two recent examples I can think of in the entrepreneurial arena.

Let’s jump into the sports world for a second. This past Sunday was the Super Bowl. Do you think that Peyton Manning ever tried to become a great golfer in the years that he was becoming a legendary football player? No. He was too busy studying game film and working on his own fundamentals to become another kind of athlete. However, that would have never have crossed his mind as he’s been a pedigree quarterback his entire life.

Here’s another example: do you think that anyone that’s running for Presidency of the US in 2016 has the capacity to become president if they were focused on keeping any other kind of job outside of a political one or a business that ran itself? No way!

I’m simply getting at this simple point: There might have been people who were able to burn the candle on both ends. But if you really want something to be hugely successful, you’ll probably need to put all of your effort into that one thing.

When you start to pile up too many commitments on your plate, you have no choice but to start letting other tasks and ideas fall through the cracks.

Taking the Next Step Without Regrets

So now that I might have twisted your arm into realizing that you might have to let off the gas on some of your current efforts and/or ideas, how are you going to do so? For one, you don’t want to be considered a quitter. Secondly, you don’t want to truly give up those ideas.

I believe that there are a few good ways that you can set your mind at ease.

Declare Victory and Move on. Realize that whatever you were working on was merely a project. If it was merely a project, and you learned something from it, declare it as a victory. Move on. For me, I’ve been pouring some time developing a couple of products since re-launching the site back in May. One was a guide to writing resumes and cover letters. The other was building the ultimate guide to connecting with anyone.After doing some groundwork and some idea bouncing and verifying, I realized that these items weren’t going to be as useful to you guys as I hoped. What I learned is that if I have any future product ideas, I really need to ask you all what would be a good product. (FYI… I do have one in the works now!)
Prioritize Them. You can only do so much. If you need a visual, think of your capacity as being the top of a traditional stove. There are 4 burners. If you cook with a stove, you probably know you use the front two burners the most. They’re the most active. The back two are merely for more passive secondary items.Many times, I think about my efforts like this. I’m going to have two projects that are taking up most of my time. However, there are some things that while I would love to do them now, I’m going to have to make them secondary. Secondary items can not require the focus of a front burner item. If it does, I’m just going to have to remove it all together. (The last thing I need is to burn the house down, right? aka burnout.) Right now, when it comes to building New Inceptions, my front two burners are being used for building weekly content and building real friends and allies in the creative space. The back burners are building the New Inceptions audience and a product for them. I’m not doing anything else that isn’t related to accomplishing these four tasks.
Share the Responsibility. Teams don’t have to be made of employees. You can make a voluntary team of like minded people who are going after the same goals. The main difference is that employees work for an income. Volunteers work for a feeling of purpose and belonging. The co-hosts of the Angles of Lattitude podcast are all volunteers. However, they realize that we’re all going in the same direction: to have our own brand, credibility, etc. As the show continues to gain traction, they’ll be more and more recognized as a contributor. Eventually, the audience will start seeking them as authority figures beyond the show.

This Week’s Challenge:

In today’s world, it might seem like a weakness to give up on something you’ve set out to do. You might have phrases in the back of your mind that are repeating, such as “quitters never win” and “not quitting is half the battle”. But are those things really true? I’d argue that quitters DO win. I believe that the best entrepreneurs – the best professional creators – do know when to quit. In fact, they do it all the time. They know what they should be focusing their time, energy, and money on and they quit the rest.

What should you quit doing? What should you postpone? What should you be spending more time focusing on?

Let us know in the comments below this post.

AoL 021: Behind the Scenes in Making a Now Trending Show with Josh Featherstone

February 4/by JC

Being a creative can be an interesting ride. For many of us to consider doing anything outside of our normal work life, there has to be some sort of reward or reason to do it. For many of us, that reward is extra income. For others, just making things is, itself, rewarding enough.

Many times, that second group is referred to as hobbyists or amateurs. These terms themselves, kind of have a negative connotation to them. “He’s such an amateur.” vs “He’s such a professional.” There’s really no contest, right?

Well, funnily enough, that perception of thinking couldn’t be farther from the truth in a lot of instances.

A good example of this is today’s guest, Josh Featherstone.

During the day, you can find Josh working as a manager in the restaurant world. But at night, he switches hats and becomes host of The Now Trending Show. This particular podcast isn’t his first rodeo, either. He’s been host of other shows as well.

In today’s talk, we chat with Josh about how he got into media, what his show is about, some of the equipment he uses, and even a little about his thoughts on copyright infringement.