Career or goals in life. Just have to have faith that it will happen for you!

Will It Fly book summary

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

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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)

Amazon-preorder

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:

JC's Will It Fly Master Spreadsheet

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:

  1. Get in front of an audience.
  2. Hyper-target (Make them self identify that they’re interested.)
  3. Interact and share your solution.
  4. 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.

Amazon-preorder

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!

mind of an entrepreneur

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

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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:

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!

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for The AoL Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.

If you have any questions feel free to email them over via the email mentioned in the show or by our contact form.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, and/or Podbean. It’s absolutely free to do so.

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

Cheers!

Set Yourself Apart From the Competition

Learning How to Set Yourself Apart from the Competition

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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!

business website

AoL 029: How to Make Your Website Work for You! with Jon Thompson

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When doing business in today’s world, one of the basic things that we have to have is a website. It’s the central hub to all of our social media and it’s where we own EVERYTHING that’s on it. It’s not rented space (meaning that if we have content elsewhere, if that company were to ever break ties with us or that they just bellied up, we would lose our business from there). When you have your own site, you protect yourself from these issues.

However, once you have that website up, there’s always going to be all kinds of maintenance that you have to do to keep it relevant. One of the easiest ways to drive Search Engines to your site is to produce content on a regular basis (just like this!). Other things that you can do include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing – if you’ve never heard of SEM, you might have heard of backlinking which is part of it.)

Like many people who do online marketing for a living, I know a thing or two about making websites. Once you do it once or twice and you’re used to running your site, then you can help others get there. However, that’s really just scratching the surface. There’s so much more that goes into having a successful website, it’s not even funny.

This session’s guest has made helping people do all those other things that make a successful website his business. From getting one up from scratch to helping simply with SEO and SEM, Jon has his clients covered. Working in an efficient, transparent, and very communication centric manner, he doesn’t try to sell people and small companies a one size fits all solution. He’s all about customer service. Which in the online world can be somewhat rare – especially since a lot of hosting companies are moving towards easy one size for everyone solution methods.

In this particular chat with Jon, we discuss how he lined himself up for success, why you should be aware of what SEO and SEM are, the importance of knowing keywords when creating your website, and why he believes customer service is so important – today more than ever. We also touch on how he got into the work he does and what kind of clients he likes to have.

Whether you’re looking to get your website noticed in an ocean of websites, or you’re simply thinking about being a freelancer that does similar things, this is a good talk for you.

SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL FIND OUT MORE ABOUT:

  • Why VeerDigital’s service description is somewhat vague.
  • How he lined himself up for success in the field that he eventually started a business in.
  • Why he believes that people need to stick with their strengths with anything that they do.
  • What he got out of his first experience in a startup.
  • How mentors have set him up for success.
  • What SEO and SEM are and why it’s important to know what they are and how they work.
  • Why you should still have your own website.
  • The importance of knowing keywords when creating your website (and maintaining it in the future).
  • Why customer service is so important today.
  • Why it’s important for service providers to be highly transparent and be proactive with their clients.
  • What kind of quality Jon looks for in the clients that he chooses to work with.
  • Where Jon’s drop shipping company came from.
  • Where Jon sees his business being in a few years.
  • …and MUCH more.

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

ITEMS and PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

SHOW NOTE EXTRAS:

Search Engine Optimization Crash Course

SEO Tutorial 2016: A Beginner’s Guide to SEO

How Can Small Sites Become Popular?

How does Google Search Work?

SEO for startups in under 10 minutes

BONUS: Creating Great Content that performs well in Google Search Results

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!

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for The AoL Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.

If you have any questions feel free to email them over via the email mentioned in the show or by our contact form.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, and/or Podbean. It’s absolutely free to do so.

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

Cheers!

Motivate Yourself

Question for You, Reader: How do You Motivate Yourself?

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So let’s try something. I know that comments are dead. Heck, even Michael O’Neal just recently said that he doesn’t get hardly any comments on his shows anymore. But I want to do this just to try and get some engagement with you on here.

You see, I was just talking to a long time friend of mine and we were having a discussion about what motivates people to get up day in and day out. While I usually spring out of bed in the morning, he dreads having to go to work.

And believe me, out of all people, when I say that I know it can be hard to stay motivated. Because it can. At one point in our lives, we’ve all said to ourselves: “I can’t do this”, “it’s just not worth it”, and “I feel like giving up.” (That’s really just the nature of this entrepreneurial beast we find ourselves on.)

However, let me tell you what my friend and I realized. We thought back to our college days and thought about how many people didn’t make it through school. I mean, statistically speaking, from day one certain professors always said, “Look around you. Only half of you in this room are going to graduate. Only half of those people are going to graduate as an electrical engineer.”

And boy, was he right. Freshman year was horrible. My sophomore year wasn’t that much better. I still remember a ton of my college experiences like they were yesterday – and sucking so hard those first couple of years were definitely downers. I went through clinical depression 3 times in those first two years!! Then in my junior year – I readjusted my game. I changed my major from EE to EE Tech. Had I wanted to stay in that field, I would have gotten the same jobs as EE’s.

As time went on in that new major, the game got easier and easier. By the time I reached grad school, I was doing victory laps. I was so happy then. It was so simple at that time. I had mastered the game! But then… it was time to graduate.

And I wasn’t ready.

I didn’t have a job waiting for me. What I had was time to think. I started thinking about what was going to be the next game. I knew it had to be something that I could passionately work towards mastering. But what?

The focus of my masters was Entrepreneurship – so maybe I should learn more about that? Get some training wheel experience under my belt. Work for a startup or two?

So I did.

And now it’s  approaching 6 years since I graduated. Do I feel like I’ve mastered the game? Haha. Not quite. HOWEVER I will say that I feel like I make a good TA. Hence, the reason I rebooted New Inceptions this past year.

Thank you for being in my class. 🙂

Negative Feelings

Whatever “it” is that we feel like giving up on, be it a project, a goal we’re trying to achieve, or something else – realize that all of those negative feelings are just a test of the game.

I view it as the Universe’s way of “weeding out” who can do what – just like professors do to young students at college and university. (In engineering we had chemistry and physics classes that were notorious for doing this.)

We get these thoughts in our heads and by only overcoming them can we succeed.

When I got my undergrad degree (after 6 long years) I learned that I can succeed in whatever I want to do, I just had to find out how I could overcome those “anti-success” feelings. The same goes for you. Find out what motivates you, and let that be your way out.

What motivates is different from person to person. Maybe it’s a quotation. Maybe it’s a person. Maybe it’s family.

When I was in school, I knew that there were better things to come. And because of that, I worked hard every day cause I knew the payoff was going to be worth it. Was it? Well, not exactly the way that I expected it to. But hey, it did eventually lead me to my wife and best friend, Maria.

Action Steps

Yeah, I know this is a quick entry. But this one isn’t coming from me. It’s not about what I have to say. I really want to hear from you guys. Comment below in what motivates you.

What have you learned over the years that motivates you? That makes you know that all the work that you’re putting into whatever you’re working on will pay off?

There are no wrong answers. Don’t be embarrassed about anything. You could say that I should feel embarrassed by not finishing in the degree that I started in – that I proved the professor right. But I don’t. He was right.

This is simply an exercise to show that there many ways to deal with those negative feelings in our heads.

I look forward to your responses.

zephan blaxberg interview

Zephan Blaxberg: Re-Scripting Your Life Through a Year of Purpose (AoL 028)

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They say that your life can change by simply meeting one person. That new person can connect you to world that you only dreamed of living in. For some people, it might be landing that awesome job at a Fortune 500 company. For others, it might be finding a coach that will push them to excel and do more in life. Yet for others, it might just be that first client that will not only be a future raving fan but might actually be a mentor for years to come.

I think about that last one quite a bit. Not necessarily because I’m looking to find a mentor. No, I have my own.

Actually, I think about it because I want to help others succeed. So much has been given to me that I want to pass that power on to others.

This session’s guest, Zeph Blaxberg, knows all about this feeling. He, too, had a mentor that broke him out of mental jail. Working at an Apple Store as a fan of Apple’s… sure, that might sound like a great opportunity. However, when approached by his first client, he was quickly transformed to someone that was unemployable.

Like me, he wants to give back to others. He wants to help people break free of their every day lifestyle and live the life they could only dream of. He does this through multiple platforms including, but limited to, his podcast, a book, and an inner city social program that he helps with regularly.

Recently he was a guest on Pat Flynn’s podcast as someone that is indeed going places. So much so, that he inspired Pat to place an image of him on one of his keynote speeches.

In this chat between Laila, JC, and Zeph, we learn about his experience being featured on Pat’s podcast, his book and where the idea of it came from, his thoughts on the “fad of entrepreneurship”, and the success he had after hiring a business coach.

If you ever have felt that you want and deserve a better life, maybe you just haven’t met that one person – or people – yet. We hope our chat today can help you re-script your life.

SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL FIND OUT MORE ABOUT:

  • Where his unusual name comes from.
  • What his high school experience was like and how he received double credit for it.
  • What the SPI podcast meant to Zephan when he first heard it.
  • What he’s realized about Pat after meeting him in person.
  • What it was like to have an impact on Pat.
  • When he felt like he had “arrived”.
  • When he hired his business coach and what that did for him and his success.
  • What his current work is focused on.
  • When he knew it was time for him to write a book.
  • How the launch for the book went and what he learned from the whole experience.
  • What Zephan believes makes his podcast successful.
  • The secret to getting busy guests on your podcast.
  • Why he does the podcast the way he does.
  • His thoughts on the “fad of entrepreneurship”.
  • …and MUCH more.

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

ITEMS and PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

SHOW NOTE EXTRAS:

Zephan’s Filmography Company: ZMBMedia

Zephan’s Podcast Interview with Tara Magalski:

Pat’s Podcast Interview of Zephan (SPI Session 202)

SPI-202-sharing

Zeph Interviewed by Alex Harris:

BONUS: Zeph’s 2014 presentation on Overcoming Your Fear of Being on Camera

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!

Choosing the Right Business Idea for Your Future Success

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Last week we came up with a way to make a list of decent ideas for a business. However, these are all ideas and while they might be good ideas, they might not be worth our time in pursuing. So how do we really find out if they’re ideas that we want to pursue and actually pilot? We have to dive a little deeper.

1. Is it Something You’re REALLY Passionate About?

Again, I can’t reiterate enough how important this really is. You must have passion about what it is you’re doing. Recently, the Fizzle crew talked about how doing a business you’re passionate in will be what carries you through the tough times.

See, here’s the thing, if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing (meaning you don’t naturally think or do it), even if you do the following 2 steps, it really doesn’t matter in the end because as soon as a problem comes up, then you’re going to have some issues going forward. The simple truth is if you’re passionate about your idea and you really believe that it will work, then your chances of succeeding increase drastically. You’ll put in the extra effort and extra time to make it all work for you if you have the passion behind it. Plus, you’re more likely to create a better product, which will make your customers happy and more likely to buy from you again in the future.

Think of passion as a necessary part of successful long term business.

2. Is it Something that People are REALLY Actively Looking for or Need?

Just like passion needs to be mentioned again, so does this part. Hopefully you’ve done some market research before just to make sure that your idea is worth keeping. Is there an interest in it? Are people going to use it? Even if you have the best intentions, the worst thing that could happen is that you spend a ton of time and resources building something or things that people aren’t going to utilize.

I’ve seen this way too many times in the tech field. A lot of folks will think “Oh, Idea A is good. So is Idea B. If I put them together to Idea C, I’m sure to win!” This isn’t necessary true. Sometimes it’s possible to make something a little more complex than it needs to be… and that little extra complexity can be a problem for folks.

So how do you test that people want something?

  • Ask! – As I mentioned, in the Foundation and via Ryan Levesque, we find that the best way to figure out if a product is going to be utilized is to simply ask. You can ask 10 to 20 people and get an impression of whether or not something is worth pursuing. Remember that if you know a pain so well, that the people you’re asking will think you already have a solution. That’s the point where you make the presale!
  • Are the similar sites and businesses already out there? – If you can’t tell, this is the method I used in deciding to pursue New Inceptions. While Pat is focused on passive income, and Fizzle is focused strictly on online businesses, New Inceptions is focused primarily on those of us who have stumbled into this world of business as a second career path. A resource for those who feel that their inner needs and desires were not being met in the work that they were previously doing.
  • Do some Keyword research – Similar to the one above, you can check the internet to find out if a given topic is already being used. This is achievable by doing some keyword research. There are tools that are available for this. Google has a free one called the Keyword Planner. One that I’ve been using for years is called Market Samurai.
  • Survey Your Already Existing Audience – Perhaps you already have a platform and you’re wanting to offer something new. Instead of asking random people, ask those who have already bought from you once. In fact, those that have already bought from you might realize that your quality is to their standard, so

Remember that when you’re doing this research, it’s not you that’s on trial – it’s the idea. We’d love to believe that all our ideas can make us money, but in reality, it’s up to other people – the market. The best way to see if an idea will sink or not is to find if people will buy in before we ever do the work to do it.

3. Determine Your Scalability

In the passive income world, this is the big question. You don’t want to start a business that the more success you have with it, the more your position consumes you. (However, if you’re a work-a-holic like Gary V, you might actually enjoy that kind of thing.)

Ideally, if you’re in a real passive income setting, the more sales you have, doesn’t necessarily mean you work more. If a million sales suddenly happened one day, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? If you’re pure passive, it’d be an AWESOME thing. It would mean that you wouldn’t have to do ship anything else (as either they get electronic copies or you have another company sending things out) and/or you don’t have to handle accounts payable and receivable – it’s dealt with electronically.

Even if you’re not focused entirely in generating passive income (which, let’s be honest, who isn’t?), you’ll want to think about scalability too. Just in a different perspective. Once you run your idea past a few folks and you know you’d love doing it, think about whether or not you’ll be able to have other people to do it for you. I’m not talking about paying them. Let’s say that’s taken care of. I’m saying, actually have them doing the part you’re doing. Can you train them to do what you do?

If not, then maybe you’re planning on being an artist or musician that makes it so big you that you have orders coming all the time? If so, you’ll want to hire someone to take care of your marketing, office work, and other things you shouldn’t be dealing with. If you’re giving lessons of some sort (say like Roger Love), you might also want to learn how to take care of all the paperwork and marketing that goes into making something like he does successful at his level.

Conclusion:

So, last week, we were collecting ideas that might be part of your overarching theme. This week, we’re inspecting them a little more thoroughly and sorting out the ideas that don’t quite fit. If you follow the above 3 steps, you’re planting some good seeds for a successful business. If you want further help with this subject of choosing a successful business, feel free to take a look at the course in Fizzle called Choosing a Topic by Corbett Barr. Get your first two weeks here free so you can get in without paying a cent.