Monthly Archives: February 2014

Episode 65: Creating an Online Community with Zeb Welborn

Creating an online community is no easy task. The key ingredient toward building an online community of people who take action is consistency, persistence and greatness.

Bunkers Paradise

I came into contact with Bunker’s Paradise while working for Los Serranos Country Club in Chino Hills, CA. Bunker’s Paradise is an online golfing community where they talk about anything and everything golf. Mostly they focus on reviewing golf clubs and golf equipment, but they’ve created a great golfing community here in Southern California. The key to creating a vibrant golfing community online is creating good, quality content according to Ken Lee, the Editor-in-Chief at Bunker’s Paradise. Ken is a full-time police officer, yet in his free time he’s been able to build this online community of golfers. If you’re a small business, work to build a community like Ken Lee’s Bunker’s Paradise.

Greenskeeper.org

Greenskeeper.org is another great golfing community in Southern California. Greenskeeper.org started as a website to notify golfers when golf courses were performing aeration. The community has expanded substantially since it began more than 10 years ago and is working to make the golfing experience more enjoyable for golfers. The owner, John Hakim said that whenever he invested in his community he’s seen rewards come from it and he works hard to be of service to his GK’ers. By creating a vibrant golfing community which now regularly rates and reviews golf courses he’s been able to create a community of 60,000 golfers here in Southern California. He routinely holds golf outings and gets his golfers involved. In fact, we’ll be having a golf outing this week on March 14 at Los Serranos Country Club in Chino Hills, CA. All are welcome! Contact Zeb Welborn at Zeb@WelbornSocialMedia.com

Scrapbook Expo

Scrapbook Expo is another great company that has been able to build an online community which have helped them increase sales for their business. They started by developing an extremely active Facebook presence, now with more than 120,000 Facebook followers. These followers are very active online and contribute regularly to the Scrapbook Expo Facebook page and in turn, build massive word of mouth exposure for the events Scrapbook Expo holds all over the country. Look to Scrapbook Expo if you’d like to build a strong online community. Creating an online community is no easy task. Many who set out to achieve that goal quickly realize the amount of work it takes to establish and develop an online presence and quit. To develop a strong online community it takes consistency and persistence. Develop a loyal customer base and have those loyal customers promote and build your brand online and you’ll be well on your way to developing a strong social media presence.

Episode 64: Pinterest and SEO | Cynthia Sanchez Host of Oh So Pinteresting Podcast

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In this episode of the Defining Success Podcast, Cynthia Sanchez shares her thoughts on Pinterest and how to optimize your website to take advantage of Pinterest and SEO. She also discusses the importance of including proper descriptions so you can be found in the Pinterest search engines and reach more people.

Cynthia Sanchez

Cynthia Sanchez first started to use Pinterest in 2011, and launched Oh So Pinteresting in February 2012. After a few months she was approached by a company to see if she could help them with Pinterest and manage their social media accounts. In September 2012, she left her job as a full-time radiation oncology nurse to focus on building Oh So Pinteresting and my business. . . . and the rest is history.

Cynthia got involved in Pinterest reluctantly and the first time she got on Pinterest she was hooked. She was seeing pins and images that linked her to these new websites which she never would have encountered using traditional Google searches.

Pinterest is a very visual platform and she thinks that’s the appeal of it because you can quickly browse through images to see what gets your attention to decide which website you’d like to visit. For her, it was eye opening. We relate to images in a more emotional way where we get lost in the pictures, we relax and it causes our brain to react in a different way.

In January of 2012, Cynthia was looking at podcast categories and she came across Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income Podcast. She didn’t realize that she could start a business with her blog and so she listened to all of Pat’s podcasts and it could be something that she could do in her spare time.

She decided to write her blog on her personal experiences using Pinterest. And after starting her blog, she was quickly approached by a business that wanted her to help manage their businesses Pinterest page. She went to Blog World in New York and she created business cards. One of the posts she wrote when she came back was about using Pinterest to get your hair cut. She asked the salon owner if she could leave her cards in the salon. A local business owner visited the salon, saw her cards and approached her.

Cynthia focuses on just doing Pinterest for the majority of the businesses she works for. Last week, they launched a new way for how categories appear and they are constantly changing. Cynthia is now working to stay on top of managing her social media presence.

The biggest piece of advice Cynthia can give to business owners is to come up with a strategic plan. You need to think of your ideal client and how they connect to your business.

The early adopters of Pinterest were women from the midwest and traditional social networks are adopted in a particular geographic region. Women represent the largest population on Pinterest. In Europe, the ratio is closer to 50/50 while in the U.S., there are many more females than males. You can customize the boards you want so you can get and see the topics you want to see on Pinterest.

Cynthia thinks that many businesses don’t use Pinterest and SEO (search engine optimization) properly. They don’t take the time to incorporate keywords into their SEO strategies and this is extremely important on Pinterest.

When Cynthia works with clients she is on Pinterest five to six days a week. She tries to get on Pinterest at multiple times every day. She tends to pin a lot about social media, Pinterest, web design and other topics. She tries to spread out her posts throughout the day. Cynthia tries to pin between 5 and 12 times when she plans how often she posts on Pinterest.

One company that did Pinterest very well was a boot sock company, which is a product that has become very popular recently. She doesn’t have an active account, but her picture went viral on Pinterest, and the girl did around a million in sales and was a featured entrepreneur on Shark Tank.

Cynthia’s podcast has been on for a year now and the coolest thing about podcasting is that she’s been given speaking opportunities as a result. She’s given multiple speaking engagements across the country as a result of her podcast.

Cynthia Sanchez

Engaging Discussion Questions:

How do you use Pinterest?
What is your favorite thing about using Pinterest?

Links to Great Stuff:

Oh So Pinteresting – Have you heard of Pinterest? It has become one of the fastest growing sites in history. In a nutshell, it is an online visual bookmaking site but, if approached with a strategy, it can be a very powerful tool. I’m here to teach you all about it.

Success Quotes:

“Success comes in little bits and bites . . . Those little successes all add up to the big success.”
“People don’t think of the SEO of Pinterest.”
“My favorite thing about Pinterest is being to connect with different parts of the internet that I never would have found before.”

Special Requests:

Go out there and find your success.

Cynthia Sanchez

Episode 63: Being Obsessed with Your Business with Zeb Welborn

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To be a success you must be obsessed with being successful. There are hundreds of people out there who do the same things you do and the only way to be better than them is to be obsessed with your business.

Tamika Newhouse is a famous author in her own right. At a young age, Tamika became a single mother and even though her situation was not ideal, she found a way to persevere. She has written numerous books and started her own publishing company. To become a success she needed to be obsessed with her business. Day in and day out she learned to write better and to connect with influential people in the process who helped her along her path to become a successful author.

: Tamika Newhouse

I feel I have become obsessed with my business, Welborn Media. From the time I wake up in the morning until the time I go to bed, I am continually thinking of ways to make my business better. Whether it be learning a new technique, reaching out to new business contacts or doing the work of my business. I’m constantly thinking, “How can I be of service to more people.” And it has become an obsession.

In an interview I had with TJ Hale, host of the Shark Tank Podcast, we talked about our goals. From our conversation, I came to the conclusion that in order to become obsessed with your business that you needed to develop a very clear purpose for your business. It’s easier to become obsessed with your business if you are working to become a person of significance.

The definition of obsession is the domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.

When you think of Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Barrack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and others like them, you’ll understand the sacrifices you must make to become successful. These people are absolutely obsessed with what they do. So, if you want to be successful, think of the career you’re in and think to yourself can you become obsessed with it? Can you work in it day in and day out? If you can answer yes than you’ve found yourself a new business or a new career.

Episode 62: Don’t Get Attached to Outcomes | Creativity Coach & Author Dr. Eric Maisel

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Dr. Maisel shares his thoughts on creativity and how developing a process and sticking to it regardless of outcomes can help you to become creative. The struggle with many creative people is that they expect something to happen when they create something and when the outcome doesn’t match their expectation they get discouraged. Don’t get attached to outcomes. Learn how to explore your creativity in Episode 62 of the Defining Success Podcast.

Dr. Eric Maisel

Dr. Eric Maisel is the author of more than 40 books. His interests include creativity and the creative life, the field of creativity coaching which he founded, and natural psychology, the new psychology of meaning that he has recently been developing.

Eric started out as a novelist early on his career, but it wasn’t paying his bills. He then decided to become a psychotherapist. He recognized that no one was studying creativity and he began studying and learning creativity. He eventually moved out of psychotherapy and became a creativity coach.

Creativity in the business world is meant to be innovation and/or problem-solving. Creativity to artist’s is manifesting potential. Creativity means the results and the desires to manifest ideas so they turn into tangible products. Most creative people are stuck because they don’t know what to do, they are not able to work and they have difficulty in the competitive environment.

Dr. Eric Maisel

Dr. Eric Maisel suggests that creative people start a process where they work early in the morning every day. By creating this habit, creative people can avoid being stuck in a pattern where nothing gets accomplished. Another thing Eric suggests is to continually think of the meaning behind the things you create. Establishing a meaning will help guide the process and make it important to complete.

Eric suggests that creative people start in the morning is because at the end of the night of the night most of your brain cells have already been used. At night, people are thinking and working in the morning will help take advantage of that thought process. Lastly, if you do something in the morning that is creative and has meaning you will be much more positive throughout the day.

There are two kinds of typical creative coaching sessions, the first session gives the client the opportunity to air their concerns so Dr. Maisel can address them and create a plan for subsequent sessions. The regular coaching sessions will be about the issues he identifies in the first meeting.

A woman came to one of Dr. Eric Maisel’s workshop and she created a novel set in World War II and the book that came out of this was called the Puppet Boy of Warsaw. And the pound amount of her two book deal was a phenomenal amount.

The most regular thing that Dr. Eric Maisel encounters in his coaching session are people who have tried to be creative for years without having much success. They are looking for practical advice and emotional support in the process which Eric has been able to offer them.

Natural psychology does a better job explaining what the meaning of life is. It shifts the idea from seeking meaning to the idea of making meaning . . . more specifically, value-based meaning.

Dr. Eric Maisel runs the Life Purpose Bootcamp. Life Purpose Bootcamp is about getting a good handle on your meaning and your life purpose. Eric uses process to help him understand how his life purposes get manifested day in and day out. Don’t get attached to outcomes.

Dr. Eric Maisel

Engaging Discussion Questions:

Have you ever found yourself getting attached to an outcome?
Do you have a process?
How are you creative?

Links to Great Stuff: EricMaisel.com – “Dr. Maisel, widely regarded as America’s foremost creativity coach, maintains a coaching practice, trains creativity coaches, and provides core trainings for the Creativity Coaching Association.” Suggested Reading: For Depression and Sadness: Rethinking Depression and The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression For Creativity: Coaching the Artist Within: Advice for Wrters, Actors, Visual Artists & Musicians from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach and Secrets of a Creativity Coach Success Quotes:

“Success is making yourself proud of your efforts.”
“Most people can’t white knuckle creativity. You have to do it because you love it.”
“Natural psychology focuses on our meaning needs and tries to articulate what meaning really is and how we can have more of it in our lives.”
“Life purposes are not given to us. They’re decisions.”

Episode 61: Develop a Business Mind with Zeb Welborn

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Ashley Majeski

In my discussion with Ashley Majeski from The Ashley’s Reality Roundup, she explained how she first started writing about reality television and how much she enjoyed it. She received encouragement from her family and friends, who loved her writing and suggested she do more of it. She saw that as an opportunity to start her business. She needed to develop a business mind.

Sometimes, doing what you love is not enough. Sometimes, you have to apply business principles to the things you love in order to turn your passion into a career. I love being an entrepreneur because figuring out ways to build a better business, ultimately gives me the opportunity to help more people. If you find yourself doing something you love, but you haven’t made a career out of it, you might need help to develop a business mind.

My wife, Cindy is very talented artistically. She creates great pieces of artwork and truly enjoys the process of creating new art, but she can never do something she loves as often as she would want because she needs to focus on paying the bills. But, if she would develop a business mind, she could do the thing she loves must and have a happy, fulfilling career.

A good friend of mine, Richie absolutely loves music. I’ve never seen someone more passionate about a topic. He even created a CD for a friend of mine for his bachelor party where the entire CD was personalized for his friend. To do something like that . . . you have to love music. He’s also extremely talented, but he hasn’t figured out a way to turn his passion into a career. He is working on it though which I give him props for. He just needs help developing his business mind.

Even if you do something you don’t love, but you’re good at, you can still create passive income from it. My sister Lacey is very talented when it comes to website design, but early on she discovered that she didn’t enjoy it very much. It was great that she discovered website design was not the career for her, but she still could have made more money from her unique website design skill. She could have hired staff and trained them on website design skills and referred business their way, since people have come to respect her website design skills.

My Dad, Larry Welborn is the epitome of success. In junior high school he knew he wanted to become a journalist and worked to get himself involved in a career he loved. For 43 years my Dad worked for the Orange County Register and most of his time was spent in the courthouse as the court reporter for the Register. He loved his job and was great at it. He developed a business mind early on by connecting with the right people who could help him get the career of his dreams. Once he found himself in his career he also began helping others who shared his same passion.

Larry Welborn

I found something I love to do with Welborn Media. Helping small business owners get more business through social media is the most rewarding thing I feel I could be doing with my time. So many opportunities have come about because I developed my business mind to work to sell my goods and services so that I can grow my business and help more businesses thrives. But, it hasn’t been easy. Once I began to develop a business mind I really started to evolve as a business and it’s growing. Even though my business mind isn’t fully developed, I’m working on it every day to try and develop new business and create more opportunities to help others.

Ashley figured out how to make money from something she loved. She knew she couldn’t just keep writing for the fun of it, so she developed her business mind and created opportunities for herself to make a living from her writing. The happiest and most successful entrepreneurs are those who have figured out how to make money from the things they love to do most. Our economic system is geared to give us the opportunity to help people with our passions.

Develop a business mind in order to make a difference.