Tag Archives: Success

Episode 112: The Entrepreneurial Work Mode | Pamela Slim

Pamela Slim, the Entrepreneurial Work Mode,

Pamela Slim

Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone according to Pamela Slim.  Entrepreneurs need to be competent in the entrepreneurial work mode.  In Episode 112, Pamela Slim and I will discuss the entrepreneurial work mode and how to become successful as an entrepreneur.

Pamela Slim is an award-winning author, speaker and leader in the new world of work. She spent the first 10 years of her solo practice as a consultant to large corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab and Cisco Systems, where she worked with thousands of employees, managers and executives. In 2005, she started the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog, which is now one of the top career and business sites on the web. She has coached thousands of budding entrepreneurs, in businesses ranging from martial art studios to software start ups.

According to Pamela, not everyone can be an entrepreneur.  There are so many components that have to work together to create a great business.

A lot of people paint the picture that entrepreneurship is wonderful and fantastic, but really it’s hard work.  In reality, it’s just a work mode.

Set up business licenses, a bank account, talk to an accountant and make sure you’re setting up a viable business.

Who is your market?  What is the different ways you can connect with them?

Pamela Slim on the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

Pamela Slim

Success Quotes:

  • Success is to enjoy my life while living it.
  • Hating your job intensely is not a business plan.
  • Define your service, choose a price, set up your payment account and boom you can test something to see if somebody’s willing to pay you for the service.
  • The act of planning is critical for a small business owner.
  • People want to feel like their life has meaning.

Shout Outs:

  • Kyle Duran – Pam’s lawyer
  • Tim Berry – Business Plan Pro
  • Jermaine Griggs – JermaineGriggs.com
  • Dr. Nick Morgan
  • Ramit Sethi – I Will Teach You To Be Rich
The Entrepreneurial Work Mode with Pamela Slim

Pamela Slim

 

 

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Episode 108: From Scarcity to Abundance | Ellory Wells

Ellory Wells From Scarcity to Abundance with Zeb Welborn on the Defining Success Podcast

Ellory Wells

In Episode 108 of the Defining Success Podcast, Ellory Wells shares how he lost his job and took up a career in online marketing.  Learn about his transition and how he’s living in a world that’s  transitioning from scarcity to abundance.

Ellory Wells was born and raised in north Texas. He loves technology, gadgets, cool toys, video games and movies. He often writes his blog posts while sitting on my back porch overlooking nature and the golf course.

In addition to writing and coaching, he enjoys reading, watching TV and movies, playing golf and spending time with his wife.

Ellory Wells has a blog, a podcast – The Empowered Podcast, he provides one-on-one coaching, he organizes a a mastermind group and wrote a best selling ebook titled, How to Start Your Professional Podcast for $200 or Less.

In his one-on-one coaching, Ellory helps his clients get clarity.

Our world is shifting from scarcity to abundance.  Ellory believes the world used to be more cut-throat, but in today’s innovative society, there is room for everyone to grow.

Ellory’s most popular blog post is 7 Types of People Successful People Avoid.

Ellory Wells From Scarcity to Abundance

Ellory Wells

Shout Outs:

  • Flight of the Buffalo
  • Jim Caviezel
  • Chris Cerrone
  • Vernon Ross
  • Christina Canters

Quotes:

  • “If you expose yourself to a new normal, it’ll change you.”
  • “The best, most successful people think in a mindset of abundance.”
  • “If you want to make a million dollars, help a million people.”
  • “If you have ten ideas, see one of them through to completion.”
  • “You don’t have to be across the finish line to help someone else.”
  • “Success is not hating what I do every single day.”

Check Out:

Ellory Wells The Empowered Podcast From Scarcity to Abundance

Ellory Wells The Empowered Podcast

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Episode 102: Passionate Blogging Leads to Success | Ricky Potts

Passionate blogging leads to success. Ricky Potts is an extremely busy guy who has a lot of passions.  He started his personal blog not too long ago and has been able to generate 40,000 – 60,000 unique views on his blog every month.  He’s also leveraged his blog writing to create multiple opportunities for himself and his career including becoming the Digital Communications Manager for Troon Golf, a contributor to DiscountTeeTimes.com, and Relentless Beats.  He’s passionate about craft beers, golf, electronic dance beats, and blogs about them all.  Learn how passionate blogging led to his success.

Ricky Potts is the Digital Communications Director at Troon Golf in Scottsdale, Arizona

Ricky Potts

Ricky Potts is the Digital Communications Manager for Troon, passionate blogger, total beer snob, music fanatic, weekend golfer, runner and an all around opinionated realist.

Troon Golf is the largest golf management company in the world and Ricky got
connected with Troon Golf through a company he previously worked at
called, Imavex.   Troon Golf reached out to him to ask him to become their Digital Communications Manager and he jumped on the opportunity.

Ricky writes for Discount Tee Times, a unique reservation system in its 20th year of business, catering to the needs of the golfing community. They offer discounts of 20-60% off the posted rate for play today, tomorrow and up to 60 days in advance at over 100 championship courses throughout Arizona and Nevada.

He also writes for Relentless Beats which is Arizona’s longest running and most influential global dance music force.

He also created 1,001 bottles of beer where he writes on numerous craft beers he’s tried.

And, he’s the owner of the Google+ golf community and host of the weekly Friday Foursome.

Zeb Welborn, Ricky Potts, John Hakim and The Social Golf Course

Shout Outs:

  • DJ Eric Prydz
  • Kris Strauss
  • DJ Tiesto
  • Paul Oakenfold

Success Quotes:

  • “If I got one person to read one blog post than that entire blog post was worth writing.”
  • “Success is what you make it.”
  • “Go figure out what it’s going to take to make you successful and do that.”
  • “I can’t imagine not being the happiest person on the planet.”
Ricky Potts discusses passionate blogging in Episode 102 of the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

Ricky Potts

 

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To The Listeners of The Defining Success Podcast

listenThank you for listening to the Defining Success Podcast. Today I want to interview you! That’s right you, the listener of the Defining Success Podcast.

This week on The Defining Success Podcast Facebook page I’m going to ask all of you, the listeners, questions that I often ask guests on the show. Take advantage of it this week! It would mean a lot to me. I think it would mean a lot to others, you’d be helping people and exposing them to your thoughts on success, passion, commitment and taking action.

Go to our Facebook page and join in!

More from this Episode of the Defining Success Podcast

When I started this podcast over a year ago I had no idea what to expect. I just sort of jumped right in. One of the questions I wanted to ask people was to define success; ask what does success mean. The very first person I interviewed, although it’s not the first episode (I think it’s episode 7), was Vic Braden. I actually didn’t even know I was going to be doing a podcast. I interviewed him. I recorded it with my cell phone, so if you’ve heard that episode of the Defining Success Podcast it’s pretty poor sound quality. I wasn’t trying to be conversational at all. I was planning on writing it up for a blog, but he told some pretty remarkable stories.

He led an amazing life. He was a tennis coach, world-famous. One of the first people to travel to China after China opened their doors to the western world. He says, ping pong led the way to China and then it was Vic Braden. I wanted to see what he defined as success. Someone that I found to be so successful, you know, what did he think success was. That is why I started the Defining Success Podcast. That is why I ask the last question and always make it the same. Define Success, what is success for you?

Now that I’ve been able to interview so many different people. I feel so blessed and grateful for the fact that, through this process, I’ve been able to meet so many amazing people that I would have never encountered otherwise. I also wanted to make sure it was valuable for the people out there listening. People like you!

Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

In today’s episode I really want to address you and address what it is you would like to get out of the Defining Success Podcast. I think success is defined by people. People that make decisions and take action. I really want to highlight those people, and I want to highlight people in completely different fields. That was the original intention. I could get people that have careers, jobs that they love. Like my dad, he was a journalist for the Orange County Register (He recently retired.) He absolutely loved what he did as a reporter and going to work everyday. He loved talking to people. He just found the career that he loved and knew that he was meant to be in. He did an excellent job as a reporter. I admire him greatly for that.

Then there are other people that I’ve met. Business owners that are going out there and making their own business happen. They’re doing some really amazing remarkable things. By showing business owners, people in careers that they love, by showing this wide array of people– I think there is something there that everyone can latch on to. Each of these individual stories could probably connect with someone out there listening and maybe influence them in a way that is promoting them, making them feel better about themselves, that is making them want to take action on the things being said in these interviews.

When I first started listening to podcasts it kind of felt like my head was exploding… I just had all these different ideas running through my head. I was getting so excited and amped up about the possibilities. From that point, taking action to do things was so much easier. Just because I was so excited about these new ideas and opportunities that I could experiment with and that I could try.

The people that I’m interviewing, I’m trying to bring them in. So they can share their wisdom on things that get them excited and pumped up because that is something that would connect with any one listening to this podcast. Trying to find those tidbits, those little nuggets of information, that make your head explode with all these different ideas. I want to make sure that we’re achieving the mission and the purpose of this podcast.

If you are listening to this podcast today, I want you to pretend that I’m interviewing you. I want you to reach out to me on our Facebook page. The Defining Success Podcast on Facebook. If you’ve been listening regularly, you know that I try to keep the interview light-hearted with a conversational tone. I ask questions in each episode of The Defining Success Podcast. Often the questions are fairly similar, and there are recurring questions that come up in many interviews.

I’d like to give each of you an opportunity to define your success. This week I’m going to post questions that I would normally ask guest on the show, but this time I’m going to be asking you. I’d like for you to go to our Facebook page and answer those questions so that we can generate a discussion about what success means, how we define it, how do we get it, and also to learn a little bit more about you and what you do.

I want the people that listen to this podcast — I want them to be able to connect with each other and share their thoughts.

Here are some of the questions that we might be asking:

What was your life like before you started on the current career path that you’re in?
Get a little background information. Tell us about yourself and what you were doing before you started your current career.

What is one of the biggest mistakes you’ve made and what did you learn from it?
This question gives a great opportunity for you to share a mistake you’ve made, something you’ve learned, and provide value for other people that are checking out that post on the Facebook page.

What is the biggest success you’ve had?
Maybe something that you’ve done that you’d like to share.

What are some personal examples or stories of something that occurred in your business that altered the shape or path of your business?

There are many other questions.

Obviously the last question is to define success. What makes someone successful? Do you consider yourself to be successful.

This week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Friday. I’m going to be posting those questions as if I’m interviewing you for the Defining Success Podcast. Then everyone who is listening, let’s share our thoughts and ideas on what it is that defines our success and we can get a chance to get to know each other. It’s a really great opportunity.

Take advantage of it this week. It would mean a lot to me. I think it would mean a lot to helping other people, exposing other people to your thoughts on success, passion, commitment and taking action.

Click here Defining Success Podcast on Facebook

Thanks for listening! Now go out there and find your success.

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Episode 89: Use a Media Kit to Stand Out | Farnoosh Brock, President of Prolific Living

Farnoosh Brock used a media kit to stand out.Farnoosh Brock is the author of several books. She has two put out by a traditional publisher. They are The Healthy Juicer’s Bible and The Healthy Smoothie Bible. Today she is going to talk to us about a variety of different topics, mostly about getting a book published, how that whole process works and her tips and ideas on how to market books including using a media kit.

Farnoosh spends her time writing and running the Prolific Living blog, as well as Prolific Juicing, Fast Track Promotion for career warriors and Smart Exit Blueprint for entrepreneur-wanna-be spirits. She writes books, talks about empowering your life with your own choices and re-inventing yourself with positivity, enthusiasm and the right guidance.

Zeb’s Take – Create and Use a Media Kit to Stand Out

I had a really good time today talking with Farnoosh. You can really that she’s an enthusiastic person, excited about life, and really knows the direction and purpose, where she wants to take it. She seems very happy to me as well. That’s what I want for all the listeners. I want you all to be happy and excited about the work you’re doing just like I do, just like like Farnoosh does.

One of the things that Farnoosh brought up that I want to focus on is the media kit that she talked about. She created a media kit for her book and sending them out. The reason why I want to talk about it is because, you can apply the concept of a media kit, you don’t have to just do it for books, you can literally do a media kit for anything.

Farnoosh, she reached out to me, she had talked to Jared Easley who does the Starve the Doubts podcast, he introduced her to me. She sent me, basically like a media kit email sharing here’s who I am, here’s what I’m about, Jared says you’d be a great person to talk to and a great show to be on. It really introduced her and myself and it made me feel comfortable with her, especially with the introduction through Jared, to have her on the podcast.

Creating those media kits really helps to open the door to new opportunities. Instead of sending out an email that seems like a mass email or an impersonal email, by sending out a digital media kit you can really start to introduce yourself to different people or different influencers that you want to try to get a hold of.

One of my friends wanted to become a landscape architect. Apparently, typically, to do that you sign on with a firm that does landscape architecture. At the time he graduated college with a degree and could not find a job. I understand that there aren’t really jobs out there, but you need to be proactive about it. My suggestion to him was to create some sort of media kit about himself that would demonstrate his expertise. For him I was thinking more of a physical copy, maybe not so much a digital one. I’m not sure how landscape architecture works, but I’m sure they do some designs and do work projects, maybe he could do a work project and show them a design of his own and hand that off to them. Instead of giving a resume show the actual work that you are willing to do. That’s a form of a media kit that can really open up doors. You can do it for your career. If you are looking for potential clients, you can use a kit to reach out and introduce yourself to businesses as well. There’s just so many different functions and uses that you can use a media kit for that I don’t think a lot of people think of.

One of the books I read was by John Jantsch, The Referral Engine. In the book he says there’s a lot of really cool things you could do to make yourself stand out in front of people. One of the things he did was send a rubik’s cube to a bunch of place with a little note attached to it explaining who he was and his business and there was a reason why he used a rubik’s cube, I don’t remember the example, but it was a very inexpensive way, it was something memorable, that people can look at and say oh yeah I remember that guy he sent me the rubik’s cube. It worked out really well for him and his business. There’s so many other opportunities like that out there if you think about that. I think Farnoosh did a great job with her media kit and sending them out so I wanted to share that with you today.

Thanks for listening. Check us out on Facebook, say hi. I love talking with our listeners, it makes me happy.

Now go out there and find your success!

Find out more about Farnoosh Brock and the Prolific Living Blog

Visit ProlificLiving.com. It connects to all her blogs, see her about page, and there she has a free confidence building course that you can download. Visit Fast Track Promotion. Find Farnoosh on social media usually with ‘Prolific Living’

She encourages you all to connect with her. Let her know that you found her through Zeb at The Defining Success Podcast.

Prolific Living

Quotes

  • “The more I went deeper into my corporate career, and I was making more money, I had more flexibility, more perks… the more unhappy I became. I was forced to start looking outside.”
  • “I started blogging. It started out as a hobby. The more I did it the more I feel in love with writing, with social media, with doing something on my own, with the creativity process […] It was like a magnet Zeb, it kept pulling me.”
  • “It’s been a really wonderful but hard journey.”
  • “I am willing to bet that some of the best decisions you have ever made weren’t logical analytical numbers-driven decisions. Your heart came into play and told you, ‘you are doing this!’”
  • “It didn’t matter how much money I was making. I had to know this unknown or else regret it.”
  • “If you have something to say. If you want to write a book. Start writing today. You have so many options now. It’s so wonderful, we live in this age, so many options to get it out there.”
  • “You don’t know what obstacles will come your way. Life has a unique story for all of us. Not all of it is fair or just, but a successful person will turn those circumstances around.”
  • “I was finally gutsy enough to go past my fears and really take a risk and do something that I wanted to do for a long time. I feel that it has made all the difference in my life.”

farnoosh       farnoosh2

More from the Interview

Farnoosh used to be in engineering. She did a lot of highly technical, highly stressful work. She worked for a start-up then a big fortune 100 technology company, she was doing technical support for huge companies fixing their broken networks. She then moved on to technical writing, project management, process improvement, sales operations, executive communications. She got a lot of wonderful experience working in many different areas in a corporate job.

Today she does something entirely different.

“It wasn’t gradual or over-night. It was a sort of hunger that was growing, or an itch that I just couldn’t scratch.” I had great experience. I worked with great people. There were things in the corporate world that I wasn’t crazy about, but I didn’t understand myself and my own strengths and, more than anything, the possibilities for a career for someone like me, so that I could better fulfill that hunger or scratch that itch. The more I went deeper into my corporate career, and I was making more money, I had more flexibility, more perks… the more unhappy I became. So, I was forced to start looking outside.”

“I started blogging. It started out as a hobby. The more I did it the more I feel in love with writing, with social media, with doing something on my own, with the creativity process […] It was like a magnet Zeb, it kept pulling me in this direction.”

She attended a conference, Blog World. She met amazing people who were doing meaningful work with their lives. She felt inspired. Meanwhile at her job, she was being asked to do a project that she had a moral conflict with. Those two forces made Farnoosh reconsider her path, really look at the future, really think about what she was doing, really take some action. Within 6 months she resigned and started her own company.

“It’s been a really wonderful but hard journey.”

“I am willing to bet that, some of the best decisions you have ever made weren’t logical analytical numbers-driven decisions. Your heart came into play and told you, ‘you are doing this!’”

She’s hired her husband and they have a profitable business. They figured it out.

“It didn’t matter how much money I was making. I had to know this unknown or else regret it later in life.”

Farnoosh Brock's Books, The Healthy Juicer’s Bible and The Healthy Smoothie BibleThe Healthy Juicer’s Bible, Farnoosh’s first traditionally published book, came about because of her self-published book on The Comprehensive Green Juicing Guide. It’s about taking people step-by-step through why and how they can do their own juicing, and several recipes. It was a quick process from putting the content together to being put on shelves. It did well.

Most aspiring authors expect the publisher to do all the publication, marketing, work and they just do the writing. Farnoosh saw her relationship with the publisher as more of a partnership. She collaborated with them and they worked heavily to market the book. The repeated the process for her second book, The Healthy Smoothie Bible.

Her advice: “If you have something to say. If you want to write a book. Start writing today. You have so many options now. It’s so wonderful, we live in this age, so many options to get it out there.”

Build a media kit. It makes it easy for your reviewers to give shout outs for your book. In Farnoosh’s media kit she included phrases and text they could share on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, as well as email templates that they can send to their lists, and pictures that they use where ever they like.

Pick some early reviewers. Farnoosh tapped into her network and found some new people that would be interested in the book. They got a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review, a shout-out to their audience, or maybe even just for them to get use out of it to start a relationship.

A media kit shows you as a professional author who has a good sense of your book and how to communicate your book. It shares a description of the book. The launch date. Include blurbs and email templates, really encourage people to share about the book.

Tools that Farnoosh uses includes Google Docs (you can share a document and set it so that to just view, they can still copy and paste text from it without changing it), Click to Tweet (a website that creates a unique link, people don’t even have to copy and paste), pictures (people love to share pictures) for the viewers to easily share. She even created a book trailer, a video about the book people could share. A media kit is a collection of all of this plus contact information.

“I can get up, come to work, and feel good about the work I am doing, feel like I am making a tangible difference. I am helping someone. I know what I’m doing.”

“You don’t know what obstacles will come your way. Life has a unique story for all of us. Not all of it is fair or just. But a successful person will turn those circumstances around.”

“Using your innate confidence and abilities to make changes and actually using those tools that you have to guide the direction of your life and your career”

“I was finally gutsy enough to go past my fears and really take a risk and do something that I wanted to do for a long time. I feel that it has made all the difference in my life.”

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Episode 87: The Importance of Body Language | Dr. Nick Morgan, Owner of Public Words

Nick Morgan, body language expertIn this interview I want to focus on how important body language is when you’re speaking, and not just in front of a lot of people, but just speaking in general. What your body language tells people. Dr. Nick Morgan is one of the top experts on body language and how to make sure it conveys the message you are trying to convey. Dr. Nick Morgan owns Public Words, a company that is helping to create strategies for people who want to become professional speakers.

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America’s top communication theorists and coaches
A passionate teacher, Nick is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas—and then delivering them with panache.

Zeb’s Take – Importance of Body Language for Public Speaking

It was a real pleasure talking to Dr. Nick Morgan. A body language expert, he just has such a solid background; he’s done so many good things for so many people out there, so many well respected people in the speaking industry, companies, businesses, the advice he was willing to share with us today was phenomenal. I hope all of you out there listening took notes, because he knows what he’s talking about and he gave some excellent tips and advice today.

In this wrap-up I want to focus on the importance of body language. This is one of the things I struggle with. Recently I’ve been giving speaking engagements, and they’re smaller venues maybe 40-50 people. I’m talking about social media and my whole focus is on the content, the stuff that I’m saying. What Dr. Morgan correctly pointed out is that most people aren’t going to remember what you say. They are going to remember your energy, the way you interact, respond and your body language and what that tells them about the experience and what they’re learning.

If you notice professional speakers, they have that charisma. I’ve seen enough people speaking and you can tell, some of these people are charismatic. But, they are charismatic because they’ve acquired that skill. They are very deliberate with what they choose to do with their body language and the way they convey and represent themselves to others.

I was talking with Adam Whitmer, someone in my mastermind group, he gives speaking engagements all the time. He speaks mostly in the banking industry about regulations, bankers have to go to these events. He wants to become a better speaker, so he’s been going to some training and learning about speaking. He was very clear that a lot of it is your body language and the way you present yourself just like Dr. Nick said. He has seen the difference. Adam said it made a profound difference in the way the audience responded to him once he started applying the rules of body language and using them effectively.

I’ve never applied these things before, because I’m literally just learning. I always knew body language was important, but I never focused on the body language because I always focused on the content. In the future, moving forward, I’m definitely going to be more conscientious about my body language and what that is conveying to the audience that is listening to the message I’m trying to share.

I really appreciate Dr. Nick sharing all his advice today, and not just the body language stuff, but everything he shared. It was extremely eye opening and enlightening.

Connect with us on Facebook, I’d love to hear from all of you. Hear some feedback on the interview and let me know if you have any questions for me or Dr. Nick.

Go out there and find your success!

Find out more about Nick Morgan and Public Words

Visit www.PublicWords.com to get tons of free information about speaking, body language and the business of professional speaking. It’s a real treasure trove of information.

Screen Shot 2014-06-18 at 8.23.47 PMQuotes

    • “We teach them a lot about body language. We make them very cool body language experts and then they can begin to take charge of their own body language and then read it better in others. That makes them smarter interpersonally.”
    • “One of the classic mistakes that business people make when they’re going into a meeting, pitching a client or are giving a speech is they say, well let me start by telling you a little bit about myself or my company. Frankly, nobody cares about you or your company.”
    • “Don’t leave the body language to chance, think about it beforehand. Decide how you are going to show up with your body as well as with your content.”
    • “Most people think charisma is something that is reserved for a few lucky people. […] In fact, we are all charismatic at a few unplanned times in our lives.”
    • “If you are not fully present, if you are not completely focused, then you are not going to be as effective.”
    • “Being able to fully utilize your Voice with a capital V in the world so that you know who you are and people know who you are, that way you can share something unique and that’s powerfully you with the world.”

dr-nick2

dr-nick

More From the Interview

Nick Morgan, Author of Power CuesDr. Nick Morgan was an academic. He taught Shakespeare and public speaking. He trained as an actor, did that for a while. Had some children he had to take care of, so he had to get a paying job. He worked briefly as a speechwriter for a governor. Then he entered the business world via consulting and then started his own business.

Public Words started in 1997. He says, “We help people tell their stories.” They work with essentially three kinds of clients: pofessional speakers who need to be on the top of their game and need to develop successful brands for themselves, executives who need or want to improve their communication skills, and companies who need to tell their stories to the world or to their own employees for motivation.

Zeb was introduced to Dr. Nick Morgan through David Meerman Scott author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Who has worked with Dr. Nick.

Nick gives an example of one of his clients. Someone who is cool under pressure and get’s promoted because that’s exactly what you need in some industries. Once he was promoted to a certain level he was told that his employees think he’s too cold, now he needs to show more emotion. Even though not showing so much emotion may have helped him get to that position in the first place.

“Sometimes it’s for a specific speech, but it’s also often for just in general relating to your employees or your colleagues.”

They do is a combination of coaching: talking over strategies, how to behave in meetings, a certain amount of role play, video tape to show people how they look and what they’re doing. “We teach them a lot about body language. We make them very cool body language experts and then they can begin to take charge of their own body language and then read it better in others. That makes them smarter interpersonally. They know when they are doing well and when they need to adjust.”

Part of their job is figureing out people’s or businesses’s story. They’re about figuring out, what’s the streamlined story.

“You need to figure out how to tell that story economically and in a way that’s powerful and grabs people right from the start.”

The movie Casablanca starts with 7 minutes of opening credits. Nowadays, movies begin with action, once they’ve got you hooked they run the credits along with the action. The world has sped up for us that way. Speakers and business people in general need to do the same.

One of the classic mistakes that business people make when they’re going into a meeting, pitching a client or are giving a speech is they say, well let start by telling you a little bit about myself or my company. Frankly, nobody cares about you or your company. They want to know why. Why am I there, what’s in it for me, why should I care, why is this important. You have to answer that why question first then you can tell them about yourself.

He says he asks people when they are creating a speech how much time they spend thinking about the content of the speech and how much time they think about the body language. An honest answer is usually 100% on the content and 0% on the speech.

“When you are standing up in front of an audience that communication with the audience is actually two conversations. On the one hand it’s the is the content, on the other hand it’s the body language. And when those two are aligned then the audience will get your message. When they are not aligned, what happens is people will believe the body language every time. The body language always trumps the content. [… ]If you don’t think about your body language, or what you’re going to do with that beforehand, you are leaving it up to chance.”

If you do what most business speakers do, you clutch your hands nervously in front of your stomach then your body language sends out the message that you are nervous and your stress levels are high. Studies show that when you do that you actually raise the stress levels of the audience as well. When stress levels are high people don’t learn well, remember well or listen well. You are actually making the communication worse.

“Don’t leave the body language to chance, think about it beforehand. Decide how you are going to show up with your body as well as with your content.”

He says videotaping that is a great tool for the average person wanting to give better speeches. Videotape yourself either in rehearsal or giving a speech, just watch and see those ticks that we all have that do get in the way of communication. They are good to clean up and to get smart about and eliminate.

Dr. Nick can’t help but notice the mistakes people make when he sees someone speaking.

Often times people over prepare and overload their audience with too much information. So people really need to cut down, figure out the one thing you want to get across to your audience and make sure everything you say is in support of that one idea.

“Most people think charisma is something that is reserved for a few lucky people. […] In fact, we are all charismatic at a few unplanned times in our lives.”

Emotional focus is very charismatic, that really is what charisma is.

“If you are not fully present, if you are not completely focused, then you are not going to be as effective.”

We work with people who want a sustained professional speaking career. There are three things you need in general: a great speech (or a few great speeches), a great book (as proof that you’re the expert), and a community – these days that’s the online community.

One of the pieces Public Words often helps with is the book. Help them with the story, the proposal, pitching to agents, selling to publisher, and bring it to market and persuade people to buy it and read it.

“You’re not writing a book to put it away on a shelf and have nobody see it. That’s not the point. You write a book to share your ideas with people because you are passionate about them and you think they will help them. So you gotta have a plan these days, in this world, for distributing and marketing the book”

To develop a community Public Words uses the idea that you are passionate about, that you want to share with the world, that you want to write books about, give speeches about, and debate with the community.

Fifteen years ago there were certain gatekeepers who got to decide what information reached most people. Newspaper editors, tv and radio show producers. Now we have the internet and things have changed. You can create a community online and those gatekeepers are much less important than they used to be. But, now you have to do the work.

We tend to build our relationships based on face to face relationships. In those kind of relationships trust is pretty durable. “Online, trust is very fragile. If people get the sense that you are not honest or that you are not being authentic in some way then they will drop you like a hot potato and they won’t come back.”

“You have to make sure you know exactly who you are, and what you are doing, and that it’s authentic and you are in it for keeps. The internet is very quick to sniff out people who are just trying to sell something.”

Nick shared a failure he had with a client who had a great story, he was an immigrant who built up a huge successful company. He worked with Public Words to put together a big public speech to a really large crowd to talk about his legacy and how he got to where he was. After the speech was written he refused to rehearse. Instead of doing everything he could to get the client to rehearse, he let the client convince him that rehearsal wasn’t necessary.

When it came time to give the speech the client starting doing martial arts moves in front of everyone. He would say a few lines from the speech and then do some more martial arts. Everyone one was staring wondering what was going on. Nick wishes he would have worked harder to convince the client to rehearse.

Nick Morgan says the amount of rehearsing you need to do varies depends on how experienced you are, how comfortable you are, how big the stakes are, how different the speech is compared to what you’re used to. There are a lot of factors involved. What you want to do is stand up there and have it not look like you’re doing this for the first time.

“If the body language is saying oh I’m a little scared I’m doing this for the first time, that undercuts the authority that the speaker is trying to get across.”

How long should you rehearse? Enough to get it into your muscle memory so that you don’t look like you’re giving the speech for the first time because that body language message woefully undercuts the message you’re trying to get across.

When you get into the room, it’s important to have a rehearsal, at least walk and around and check everything out, but ideally a full rehearsal in the actual space you’re going to give a speech in.

“Being able to fully utilize your Voice with a capital V in the world so that you know who you are and people know who you are, that way you can share something unique and that’s powerfully you with the world.”

1904262_10152426866698120_1782783527655435063_nNick has a new book, Power Cues, in which he shares some personal stories some reasons why he cares so much about body language and speaking. “That’s about being authentic and getting my voice out there.” The book also discusses the relationship between neuroscience and how communication actually works. “It’s a big step for me.”

 

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Episode 86: Take Action & Create Your Dots | David Ralph, Host of Join Up Dots Daily Podcast

Take Action Find Your Path with David Ralph from the Join Up Dots PodcastIn this interview I talk with David Ralph about how important it is to take action. David had me on his podcast not to long ago. I really liked what he was doing. I liked the message and the tone of his podcast. So I decided to have him on the Defining Success Podcast. It’s his first time being interviewed himself on a podcast. It’s a great interview.

David Ralph is the host of the Join Up Dots Podcast, The Daily Podcast Talking To The Motivational, Inspirational and Conversational Movers And Shakers Across The Globe Today.

Zeb’s Take – Take Action

It was really great to talk today with David Ralph again. He’s always a pleasure to talk to. He has a great message and mission to share, which is joining up dots. He shared that quote with us from Steve Jobs about joining up dots and what that looks like. You’ll never know, you can’t join up the dots to your future, you can’t say I want to achieve this and this is the path I’m going to take to get there. But, when you start to take action the path sort of opens up before you.

My goal when I started my entrepreneurial career was to start a successful tutoring business and the tutoring business was going to fund my lifestyle. A tutoring business, I realized it wasn’t going to be extremely successful unless I took it nationally or did something like that. I knew it would be a difficult long road. But I took action to get there and as I started down that path I began to learn about internet marketing. I started learning about how to market myself. People started to approach me and said, “You’re really good at this. why don’t you try doing more of this. Go out and try to attract businesses.”

I took action again, I started down the internet marketing route. And as I’m doing my internet marketing work I started to develop niches. I did really great work for golf courses. In that golf course industry I started getting a lot of attention, people saying that I was doing a good job. I decided to take action and write this book on The Social Golf Course. It went from running a tutoring business, to running an internet marketing business, to running social media specifically for golf courses. Which is what I’m focusing on now. I know for sure it is going to change as my path unfolds, but that’s how I’ve joined up the dots.

Looking back it’s easy to see and point out the turning points that made those events happen. But let’s say when I started my tutoring business and I was looking into the future, I was never going to know where life was going to take me. I think it’s remarkable that David Ralph is trying to share that message. It’s taking action and taking steps that are going to improve your lifestyle, to do something that you are happy with excited about and want to do, you take action to start doing that and eventually doors are going to open. They are going to guide you down that path that makes sense for you to your purpose, or to what you can genuinely offer to other people to be of service which will make you happier, lead a better life and all that good stuff.

I was great talking with David, he’s a really funny guy. I hope you enjoyed the interview and enjoyed hearing about his journey in creating his daily podcast, Join the Dots. The amount of work and dedication that he’s putting into it is really remarkable and I think he has a lot of advice already even though he is very new into this business adventure. I want to encourage all of you to go out there and find your success.

Find out more about David Ralph and the Join Up Dots Podcast

Find Join Up Dots on iTunes!
Visit www.JoinUpDots.com or email ContactJoinUpDots@gmail.com. David loves getting emails.

Quotes

  • “Some of your darkest moments in your life, when you look back with new eyes, you can actually go, ‘Yeah. Thank god for that. If it wasn’t for that I’d still be in that situation.’”
  • “I believe in what I’m doing. I believe in the content that I’m producing, I believe in the feedback that my guests were giving me. So, I’m just going to keep going with it.”
  • “You don’t have to know something about anything. You just need to have to have a passion and then research it. So that’s what I did.”
  • “I enjoy this more than anything I’ve done before.”
  • “Once you get an email in from a ‘complete stranger’ to say I like your work – thank you very much for putting it out – and you get that validation that is like woah!”
  • “It’s very much about overcoming fears and creating a life that is what you deserve.”
  • “I realized that I couldn’t plan going forward, I could only do things that kind of felt right and hopefully if I meander this way or go that way or whatever they are going to pull together.”
  • “You’ve got to have trust. You’ve got to have faith. You’ve got to be able to push forward and find your path. And it may not be the right path straight away. But if you do enough things and have enough failures, ultimately, fingers crossed, if you believe hard enough, you are going to find your successes.”

david-1

More From the Interview

Zeb was recently on David’s Join Up Dots Podcast. The podcast hadn’t aired a single episode yet, but Zeb was his number 60 or something interview. He had scheduled plenty of these interviews before he launched his daily podcast. Today he started at 9 AM interviewing people all day. It is now 11 PM in London and he is still going strong chatting with us today. It is an impressive schedule that he sets for himself.

Before the Join Up Dots Podcast David was going through emotions. He was in corporate land and for many moons he was a financial trainer. He would stand in front of people doing the same presentations that he had done hundreds of times before. He did 20 years in banking in London and he did a few years in insurance as well. He was a gray suit man.

“It is hard to believe. Now I’m doing this, I kind of wonder whether I had actually done that, although it was such a big part of my life, it’s kind of like waking up from a bad dream. I’ve been in a coma or something.”

He was in a job he knew inside out. He could do it better than anyone because he had so much experience. Everything was going swimmingly until his manager left and someone new came in. He said that lady was the start of the end. He realized that one person in an office could dictate his happiness. She came in and started telling him how to do a job that he could do better than anyone. After several bad days, he felt that his life wasn’t his own anymore and something had to give.

He thought, “This is it. This is the end. And it was. It was the closest thing to an epiphany I’ve ever had. It hit me with such force that this was the end that I actually had to go home. I said to them ‘look, im going to take the rest of the day off.’ I couldn’t physically work. It was like, I was just exhausted from this built up energy that had been taking over me. And that was it.”

He says, looking back on it now, as he tries to emphasize on his show, “Some of your darkest moments in your life, when you look back with new eyes, you can actually go, ‘Yeah. Thank god for that. If it wasn’t for that I’d still be in that situation.’”

David says if you are considering running a podcast, the amount of work that it takes is surprising. The day David launched his podcast he had 45 people listening, then 54, then 20 on the third day. He was concerned. He wondered, why aren’t they listening? But he kept with it. Now he realizes that people were probably just busy.

“I believe in what I’m doing. I believe in the content that I’m producing, I believe in the feedback that my guests were giving me. So, I’m just gonna keep going with it.”

“I lost the fear at that stage.”

Originally, David wasn’t going to do a podcast, he was going to be a web developer. But after a few days of working at home alone without talking to anyone, he felt he made the wrong decision. He started listening to podcasts. He says, “It seemed intoxicating and vibrant and fun.” He thought, I could do this, this is an idea. He sort of batted the idea away because he didn’t know anything about it, but what he realized was: “You don’t have to know something about anything. You just need to have to have a passion and then research it. So that’s what I did.”

It was time to take action. On a budget, he got a little mixer, had his computer, bought a mic, and that was his setup. Then the hard work started, he had to approach people and ask them to be on his podcast. Ask people to come on a show that they haven’t heard of, that they can’t check out because there are no episodes yet, with someone who hasn’t done this before, and has no experience. To get over the fear of asking people, he sent his first email to Elton John, knowing he probably wouldn’t get a response. The next person he sent it to said, “Yup, fine. I’ll be on.”

Then David thought “Oh my god, I’ve got to do this now. I’ve got someone waiting for me.”

“If you are sitting out there and you’ve got that idea that you want to do something and you think you’ve got to be good, well you don’t. Because you listen back to episodes 1, 2, 3 of Join Up Dots and compare to where I am now you can see that you have time to progress.”

You just have to take action, bite size chunks, and good things are going to happen.

“I enjoy this more than anything I’ve done before.”

“Once you get an email in from a ‘complete stranger’ to say I like your work thank you very much for putting it out and you get that validation that is like woah!”

“It makes you feel like, yes there are people out there waiting for you to speak.”

“It’s actually realizing that I have something to say, that is worthwhile and that people want to listen to.”

So far David has done 92 interviews. Some of the coolest interviews were with Clay Herbert (crowdfunding guy) and a man who is traveling around the world without flying, Niall Doherty, he was fascinating. Scott Barlow and Mark Sieverkropp with a website and a podcast called Happen to Your Career. David is proud of that episodes he said it felt like they knew each other for years and years. And, of course, his interview with Zeb Welborn. David just tries to find inspiring people who he wants to talk to.

David tries to keep to a theme, the show title comes from a speech Steve Jobs gave where he said you can’t really see your path in life, it’s only when you look back and connect the dots. He wants to get the kind of conversations that the guests haven’t had before, so David has to ask some bizarre questions. He really tries to keep a balance where they can be light-hearted and have some fun, but the overall show still keeps with the theme and provides value.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
-Steve Jobs

People do want to help, but we don’t like to ask. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

“It’s very much about overcoming fears and creating a life that is what you deserve. I realized that I couldn’t plan going forward, I could only do things that kind of felt right and hopefully if I meander this way or go that way or whatever they are going to pull together.”

“You’ve got to have trust. You’ve got to have faith. You’ve got to be able to push forward and find your path. And it may not be the right path straight away. But if you do enough things and have enough failures, ultimately, fingers crossed, if you believe hard enough, you are going to find your successes.”

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Episode 82: There is No Secret to Success | Sushant Misra, Host of Trep Talks

Sushant Misra explains there is no big secret to success in this episode of The Defining Success PodcastSushant Misra is the owner of Trep Talks, and he and I are in a mastermind together. He actually interviewed me on his show about six months ago. He’s a really bright guy, has a great advice. One thing that he brought up, which I have found to be true with the interviews I’ve done with people for The Defining Success Podcast, is that there is no big secret to success. It’s a great episode, I hope you all enjoy!

Sushant Misra is the host of Trep Talks, a web-based interview show where he interviews some of the most successful digital entrepreneurs on the internet. These entrepreneurs share their stories as well as a few “secrets” – i.e. mindsets, strategies and tactics that worked really well for them in starting and growing their own online businesses. He is also the owner of yogamatstore.com.

Zeb’s Take – There is No Secret to Success

It was a lot of fun for me talking with Sushant. He and I have a conversation every week and talk about our businesses and talk about ways to improve our businesses. It’s always been a good learning experience for me and everyone else that comes and participates in that mastermind group that we’re involved in. He gave so much practical advice, and a lot of great philosophical stuff too. One of the things he said that he learned from doing his Trep Talks show, the video show on his podcast, is that there is no big secret to success.

I think when I started the Defining Success Podcast I was kind of looking for that too. I think a lot of people when they think about using social media or using the internet they think it’s kind of like a gold mine maybe, or that you just jump in and you can make money off of it. But that is absolutely not the case. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication and commitment. So maybe the secret to success is that you need to work hard, you need to be committed, you need to persevere, you need to have all those different tools in place.

I remember being approached by a friend of mine. He had, it was called, The Leather Traveller, he would sell leather goods online. I guess it was a franchise or something. He put up a website to sell his leather goods. He thought, “I’m just going to put this website up there, I’m going to sell other people’s goods, and I’m going to make money. It’s that easy.”

What he came to realize was that he had to find out how to drive traffic to his website, had to make sure his website functioned properly, he had to make sure visitors to the website can find what they want and purchase the leather goods. He just didn’t have that level of commitment and interest to go in there and dive in there and make it happen. He kept telling me about all these dreams he had to use the internet to make money, but he would never do the hard work that was necessary to do that. (If he’s listening, I apologize for bringing that up. I know he’s really active and excited about the work he’s doing now.) I will say that from all the people I’ve interviewed on The Defining Success Podcast is that there is no secret to success. The secret to success is that hard work, perseverance, getting that stuff done, and doing it in a smart efficient way.

Such a great time talking with Sushant today, a lot of great advice in the interview. Adam, Scott, Jolene, Herby, Sushant: thank you all for being a part of that mastermind group.

Go out there and find your success!

Find out more about Sushant Misra and Trep Talks

Trep Talks. Learn. Start. Grow.Go to TrepTalks.com
Trep is short for the word Entrepreneur. It’s a great place for people that are interested in learning about online marketing or online entrepreneurship. Sushant is taking this project in a new direction. He’s working to create a lot of great educational content with really successful people teaching you directly.

Quotes

  • “Entrepreneurship is a process.”
  • “You have to find an idea that is at the intersection of the skills that you have, your own interests and passions, and something that can be monetized. If you have an idea that matches those three criteria, you have an idea that you have a good shot at pursuing.”
  • “Every person has something from their own experiences, from their own knowledge, that they can share with the world.”
  • “I really try to learn from every single guest. In the hopes that by coming from that place of curiosity, I will be able to create content that will be helpful to other people as well.”
  • “One of the big things that I’ve learned is that there is no big secret.”
  • “As an entrepreneur, if you have a small vision or a mediocre vision, you’re going to spend the same amount of time and effort in trying to get that off the ground as you are going to do with a big vision. It’s much better to try to achieve something bigger.”
  • “What really matters is choosing the right idea, the idea that is right for you, and just executing properly and consistently over the long term.”
  • “Business is really about people. You have to be comfortable talking to people, networking with people, and helping people.”
  • “People are very friendly, people are helpful. If you ask them for a meeting or some help, a lot of times they say yes.”
  • “You have to become comfortable making mistakes, learning from them, and not get discouraged from making mistakes. Once you can do that it really helps you take your entrepreneurial journey to the next level. At that point you really start learning at a rapid pace. You’re not getting discouraged by mistakes and you consider that as part of the process.”

sushant-quote1      sushant-quote2

More from the Interview

Sushant had Zeb on his show, Trep Talks, about 6 months ago. He was the first to turn the tables on Zeb and make him an interviewee on a podcast. Zeb had a great experience on Trep Talks and is excited to now have Sushant on The Defining Success Podcast. Zeb and Sushant are part of the same mastermind group.

In 2010, Sushant finished his master’s degree in Health Administration mainly because his parents wanted him to be a doctor, but he wanted to learn about business. He had realized that he was very entrepreneurial. After graduation he had the decision to take the safe life, get a typical 9-to-5 type job, or to really pursue his passion. He took a leap of faith.

“Entrepreneurship involves a lot of uncertainty.”

He didn’t know much about online marketing or online entrepreneurship, but from the little he did know and from his experiences visiting wesites, he knew the internet would continue to grow. He taught himself and created his own online ecommerce store called yogamatstore.com where he sold yoga products. He did that for a few years, but he wanted his own products and lacked the investment to be able to do that. He had to go back in the industry and work for some bigger ecommerce businesses and gain more experience.

Then he found a product that did not require a lot of upfront investment, he started Trep Talks. On Trep Talks he interviews a lot of knowledgeable people in the online world and put out those interviews. Now Sushant is at a point where he wants to take that project and make it something bigger.

Entrepreneurship is a process.

Sushant says there are two kinds of people who become entrepreneurs. One kind is an accidental entrepreneurship, these are people who have worked in the corporate world for 15 – 30 years, they have an acquired set of skills, they know a lot about a certain industry. Now with all that skill and knowledge about an industry they identify an opportunity and start a business. Often they have some capital investment, partners, and things like that.

The other kind of entrepreneur, which Sushant falls into, is someone who has an entrepreneurial personality. It’s innate to them. “For me, entrepreneurship is a process. I realize that it’s something that you do, you learn through the process, then you start something again.”

YogaMatStore is a learning process for Sushant about entrepreneurship, about his own personality, about the online world. He has taken that experience and brought it with him and to new level with Trep Talks.

He hopes to create something that is useful and valuable for people in the world, and that creates a better life for people around the world.

To feed his entrepreneurial personality he says you have to find a sweet spot, “My definition of a sweet spot is you have to find an idea that is at the intersection of the skills that you have, your own interests and passions, and something that can be monetized. If you have an idea that matches those three criteria, I think, you have an idea that you have a good shot at pursuing.”

Entrepreneurship is so difficult that if you are not truly interested or passionate about it, it’s not really something that everyone should pursue.

He says, I realized that I had a passion in learning about the online world. I started approaching people, I approached you, I really started talking to people about how the online world works. I started putting videos on the website just thinking that there are other people out there just like me who want to learn more about online marketing, online entrepreneurship, how to start a business, how to find clients online, and I received a great response from people on different social media sites and people emailing me with great feedback.

It was really a project for me to learn more about online marketing because I was really passionate about it. But, it seemed that it’s something that other people are also interested in learning about. I want to take it and turn it into a big business and really take this idea and take it further.

Fun Fact: Sushant had never used Facebook before 2013.
He realized that he should remedy that, so he created a set of interviews where he interviewed a lot of great Facebook marketing experts. He dug deep and asked them questions from the perspective of a beginner trying to learn how to leverage Facebook marketing, how to leverage Facebook advertising, to find your clients online, to really generate revenue for your business.

Sushant has interviewed 60 to 65 people for Trep Talks. He says it’s already been a great journey. He is appreciative especially of the people who gave him their time and knowledge in the very beginning and who believed in him.

He says one of his best interviews was the one with Zeb, but there are several good ones.

“Every person has something from their own experiences, from their own knowledge, that they can share with the world.”

One of his first interviews was with Tim Ferriss, a very well known online marketer, and it was done in person, an experience Sushant will never forget. Another one was with a blogger named Michelle Shaeffer, she was one of those first people who believed in him. She introduced him to a lot of other people that he was able to interview on Trep Talks.

“I always come from a place of curiosity and learning. I really try to learn from every single guest. In the hopes that by coming from that place of curiosity, I would be able to create content that will be helpful to other people as well.”

“One of the big things that I’ve learned is that there is no big secret.”

“I had this secret hope that they would share something, you know this secret formula, that made them successful, or that made them wealthy. And what I realized was there wasn’t really a big secret, a lot of it was really just perseverance and hard work and having a big vision.”

“As an entrepreneur, if you have a small vision or a mediocre vision, you’re going to spend the same amount of time and effort in trying to get that off the ground as you are going to do with a big vision. It’s much better to try to achieve something bigger rather than smaller.”

He says there is no shortage of ideas or talent. “What really matters is choosing the right idea, the idea that is right for you, and just executing properly and consistently over the long term.”

Advice: Find a big vision. Start. Learn. Refine your idea. After that it’s just about pure perseverance and just not giving up.

He says, 6 or 7 months ago when he started this project, networking and meeting new people was a big challenge for him. One of his mentors pushed him to start networking when he had to go back to working at a bigger business. Sushant had an a-ha moment. Business is really about people. You have to be comfortable talking to people, networking with people, and helping people.

“I could have never, in my wildest dreams, could have imagined that I would met so many wonderful people and have this opportunity to learn from them. It has been a wild ride. For me, it’s really something out of a dream.”

“People are very friendly, people are helpful. If you ask them for a meeting or some help, a lot of times they say yes.”

“You have to become comfortable making mistakes, learning from them, and not get discouraged from making mistakes. Once you can do that it really helps you take your entrepreneurial journey to the next level. At that point you really start learning at a rapid pace. You’re not getting discouraged by mistakes and you consider that as part of the process.”

Example
Sushant was doing Trep Talks as a full time job. At one point he wasn’t getting the revenue he needed, his savings was running out and it took him to a dark place. He clearly remembers thinking, in this dark place, this is where I should start looking for opportunities. A couple weeks later he ran across a funding opportunity from the government in Ontario, Canada. They help new and young business owners with funding and training and things like that. He applied for that opportunity, it took some time, but he finally was very fortunate to receive that and now is able to pursue his dream and take his idea to the next level. He had to stop and tell himself, “this is a dark place, I really need to look for an opportunity” and he found it.

Sushant has been in Canada for about a decade, before that he lived in India. He says he was raised in a very safe environment. He was very comfortable, he never wanted to take a risk. He cared too much about what everyone else thought about him. When he went to Canada, he kinda took that as an opportunity to try a lot of new different things, because he thought, “who cares, no one here knows me.” He wonders what if he would have felt that way sooner at a younger age.

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Episode 80: Networking vs Working a Room with the Mingling Maven | Susan RoAne, Author of How To Work a Room

Author Susan RoAne talks about networing and working a roomThis episode I interview the Mingling Maven, Susan RoAne. She is the author of How to Work a Room. In the interview she gives great ideas on having conversations with people, how to start those conversations, and how to feel comfortable in those scenarios. One of the things she highlighted was the difference between working a room and networking. The real key to networking is in the follow-up.

Susan RoAne, or the Mingling Maven, is the best selling author of How to Work a Room. If you’ve ever walked into a roomful of strangers and felt uncomfortable, you’re not alone. According to research, over 90% feel the same way. Because it’s essential, to building our businesses as well as our personal life, we must be able to comfortably attend gatherings and meet, connect and converse with people we don’t know as well as the ones we do.

Working a room and networking in Susan Roane's book How To Work a Room

Zeb’s Take

What a great interview with Susan. She gave a lot of really great tidbits of information about how you can work a room, how you can feel comfortable in networking situations and meeting new people. I really love the advice she gave.

One of the things she pointed out that I’d like to talk about more is the difference between networking and working a room. Working a room is the initial interactions, initial discussions, and how to make sure your presence is known throughout the room. The networking side of it is through the follow-up. Networking isn’t the mingling and interacting at the location, it’s the follow-up afterwards and that is where the value comes in with networking.

I’ve seen it a lot at networking events. Business owners go wanting to grow their business and they expect outcomes the first time they show up. They walk in, they’re interacting with everybody, they are very outgoing, shaking everyone’s hand and exchange business cards. But they don’t get any business that one day and you’ll never see those people return again. I know from experience with our Chamber of Commerce that my continued presence there, the follow up I did with the people I met at the chamber, that ultimately it led to a lot of sales for me and my business down the road, as people began to trust and know me. Now that I’ve gotten better and gotten more experience at networking I have a good system set in place that encourages follow up, that promotes myself and reaching out to people. Then it’s either getting coffee with them or just connecting through email or social media networks.

The networking at the event is not the goal, it’s about the follow-up afterwards. If you are going to networking events to get the most value out of it make sure you follow up with the people you meet at those events. Because there is always an opportunity. Even if they are not going to be a customer for your business they have the potential to refer your business or connect you with people who can benefit your business. You can also help them in different capacities and build a relationship that way.

Go out there and find your success!

Find out more about Susan Roanne, The Mingling Maven

Go to www.SusanRoane.com or HowToWorkARoom.com
Email Susan at Susan@SusanRoane.com with your questions

Her Book, How To Work a Room
She says, “Please go to your local bookstore, if they don’t have it on the shelf they will order it for you. We have to support our local book stores. But of course it’s in online bookstores. The book is How to Work a Room, the Silver Anniversary Edition.”

Susan RoAne, Best-Selling Author and Keynote Speaker

Quotes

  • “I think that’s part of success, being willing to say yes and stretching ourselves.”
  • ” If you are not re-tweeting, letting someone know you appreciated a tweet, responding, engaging, commenting then you are a lurker, not a worker.”
  • “I found that the people who created their own luck[…], they said yes when they wanted to say no.”
  • “Real networking happens over time, it’s a process. It’s not something that happens once at an event.”
  • “The people who I find with the most success are people that have diverse relationships with people of different ages, different backgrounds, different interests; as well as those who are in their field.”
  • “Some of the best networkers are people who used to be shy, but they realized there was a benefit to meeting interesting people.”
  • “The banquet of banter is a potluck: what are you bringing to the banquet?”
  • “Bring who you are to what you do.”
  • “At a certain point the stuff that we have isn’t as important as the stuff we’re made of.”

susan      susan2

More from the Interview

Susan was a former public school teacher in Chicago and San Francisco. In San Francisco they had massive layoffs, Susan was one of them. She was then able to help former teachers find new career paths. That evolved into Susan writing books including How to Work a Room. She designed a career change workshop for teachers. Made sure it got on radio. When the editor of the San Francisco Examiner contacted her to do a local career series she said, “Yes.” She immediately got a headache because she wasn’t sure what she had gotten herself into.

“I think that’s part of success, being willing to say yes and stretching ourselves.”

Susan’s Book – How To Work A Room

The main premise of her book is to make it easy for any person that has to walk into a room, a meeting, a party, a reunion, a wedding, a conference, a retreat. So that no one stands at the door and feels uncomfortable walking into a room full of people they may not know. Susan’s mission is to take away that discomfort and help people prepare so they can make the most of whatever event they are going to.

In a Room

If Susan is at an event and sees someone standing alone, she’s the one that will seek them out and try to start a conversation with them. Because, she says, one of the top traits of people we really remember are the people who noticed us, came over to us, made us feel included. For the people already in the room, being cognizant of the people who are alone and welcoming them is not only a wonderful trait, it’s a brilliant business strategy.

For the first version of her book, Susan did most of her research at her local chamber. She saw things that people did that were wonderful. She also saw things that made her question how some people were raised.

Being able to work a room is a skill. To be a networker is a different skill. There are people that are wonderful in a room; we’ve all seen them, they are very conversant, they are interesting, fun to be around, but they have no interest in following up and no skill at following up. In her book Susan refers to these people as One-Night-Stands.

There are people out there with phenomenal networking skills. Networking is really the key to success. They have immense follow-up. They do what they say they’re going to do when they say they’re going to do it. They stay in touch. Those same people may feel very uncomfortable when they walk into a room full of strangers.

Those two skills together, working a room and networking, really are dramatic and they contribute to our personal and professional success.

New Rooms

Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, there are new rooms that we need to appropriately work, appropriately be social in, and behave appropriately in. Each one has a different etiquette. If you are not re-tweeting, letting someone know you appreciated a tweet, responding, engaging, commenting then “you are a lurker, not a worker.”

Twitter is the most fascinating time-suck Susan has ever experienced that does not involve the TV.

In video chats for Skype and Google Hangouts, make sure you look great. Make sure you have the right lighting and that it’s not too dark. It’s different on the camera than it is to your eyes. Look at your office and make sure it looks they way you want it to be seen. When you are doing something face to face remember that you are really in that room with them, so you have to remember the same manners you would have in a real room. It’s still about paying attention and listening. Don’t look at your smartphone while you’re in a Google Hangout.

Teaching

Susan still loves speaking at a to universities and colleges. Sharing these techniques to empower a whole new group of people so they can go to places and meet people and get the first job, or the second or third. Even at high schools; giving kids the tools so they can connect with each other and people they need to know. “I think it’s wonderful.”

“I found that the people who created their own luck[…], they said yes when they wanted to say no.”

Advice

For people that feel uncomfortable going to an event, know that if you come prepared you will feel more comfortable. There are some things you can prepare ahead of time. There’s no reason now, with the internet, that you can’t do some research on the event ahead of time so you’re not walking in cold. Prepare your own self introduction, it should be specific to the event. Susan says her introduction at her chamber of commerce meetings is very different than at a friend’s wedding. Tailor your introduction to give people context for how to talk to you. It’s not the 30 second upchucking of an elevator speech; it’s 7-9 seconds, it’s a pleasantry. Give the benefit of what you do set in an interesting fun way that engages people so they get to ask what it means. Then you are invited to speak more. Only go on a little bit. Stop, look at the other person and say, “How about you?” not, “What do you do?” how about you, it allows them to talk about their passion which could be something different than their job.

How are networking and working the room different?

Working a room, you’re really just socializing. You’re mixing, meeting, greeting, you’re having a lot of little conversations and you’re circulating. It’s a social party. Nobody invites you to hog the time of one other guest.

Networking is very specific in that it’s the follow-up. You can’t network a room. Networking is a mutually beneficial process whereby we change ideas, information, ideas, advice, laughter. The real networking happens over time, it’s a process, it’s not something that happens once at an event. When you are developing a network you are developing a group of people where there is a stronger connection and it is the beginning of building relationships.

“The people who I find with the most success are people that have diverse relationships with people of different ages, different backgrounds, different interests; as well as those who are in your field.”

Icebreakers

Just look at the room/the event you’re going to. That’s what’s happening to everyone, it’s something in common. Susan talks about the food, she talks about how long it took to find a parking space. Look for name tags. If you are at a fundraiser, ask how someone came to support the cause. Say something that’s relevant to the event at hand, because that makes sense. It’s easy, it starts the conversation with small talk and then you can move from there.

Complement a tie, a nice scarf, an interesting necklace. It’s okay to compliment someone as long as it’s sincere. Notice things: pins, ties, jewelry; then you are in an easier conversation.

If you want to have something interesting to talk about make sure you know what’s going on in the world. Get it from a newspaper, online, TV, anywhere. Know what’s going on and you can always talk to other people.

For the Shy

In 1980 about 80% of people considered themselves shy, by 2000 it jumped to 93%. If you think you are shy, know that at least 90% of people in that room also feel shy sometimes. Some of the best networkers are people who used to be shy, but they realized there was a benefit to meeting interesting people. So they approach it as, “Oh my goodness, isn’t this great! I’m going to meet interesting people therefore I’m going to learn new things.” and it’s that attitude that gets them over the shyness.

“Some of the best networkers are people who used to be shy. but they realized there was a benefit to meeting interesting people.”

Susan suggests that if you walk into an event with someone that you don’t stay with them for the whole evening. Decide to split up and talk to other people then come back and introduce people to each other. Even for couples. Don’t stand face-to-face talking to each other; stand side-by-side facing room.

Susan’s Top Tips for a Great Conversation

Number one: Listen. Listen. Listen.

Two: “The banquet of banter is a potluck: what are you bringing to the banquet?” Be sure to bring your favorite stores. Listen to other people’s stories. Susan does this thing where she barrows other people’s stories, you can relate to people with kids even if you don’t have any. If you listen and pay attention to their stories that’s another story you can share to someone that has similar interests.

For conversation it’s listen, participate, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and don’t ask only questions. Share something of yourself.

“Bring who you are to what you do.”

On Success

“Can you look in your own mirror and feel comfortable with the person you are, how you treat people, how you’ve walked around this planet; and what your contribution has been?”

“It’s how you treat people.”

“I have a wonderful network of people around the world that I’ve stayed in touch with that has made me have the most wonderful life.”

“I want to know that when you’ve listened to me that you’ve got something that you can do to make your life just a little bit easier, better, and that to me is success.”

“At a certain point the stuff that we have isn’t as important as the stuff we’re made of.”

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Episode 73: Connect with Influential People | John Corcoran, Host of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast

John Corcoran knows how to connect with influential people.  He has worked in the White House, he has met presidents, he has his own law firm, there are so many different things this guy has done. He’s great at networking with very important people, he has lots of tips and information on how we can network better.

John's talent of building business relationships with VIPs including presidents and important decision makers has helped him define success.

John Corcoran shows entrepreneurs and small business owners how to bring in more clients, customers and revenue by building relationships with VIPs and top performers.  He’s also the host of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.

Smart Business Revolution Podcast - Turn Your Relationships Into Income

Zeb’s Take

In this interview I found I had a lot in common with John. Especially, the similar outlook that we both have on life. What stuck out to me was the task that he encourages people to tackle. He said sit down and create a list of people that you want to get to know better in the next few months. Assignment: Today take the time to sit down and write a list of 20 people that you want to get to know better in the next three months. It could be people in your field, politicians, people locally, maybe potential customers. Then, work on ways to introduce yourself to those people. I’ve never done this before, but I already know that this would provide value for my business. It’s something that I kind of do already with this podcast. The Defining Success Podcast is a perfect example of how I used John’s strategies to connect with influential people. It started as a way to build connections. It gave me a reason to reach out to these people. Then I can get to know them better, they get to know me better, and our world’s collide during the interview. Afterwards, this person knows me. We have the potential to connect again down the line to help each other in business. I’ve made some fantastic contacts and met some wonderful and helpful people. I want to connect with all of our listeners and hear what you have to say about this assignment and this idea. Connect with me, go to Facebook.com/DefiningSuccesPodcast and let me know what you think.

Free Ebook from John Corcoran

Download John Corcoran’s ebook at this exclusive link for Defining Success Podcast listeners: SmartBusinessRevolution.com/DefiningSuccess

Quotes

  • “You are what others perceive you to be […] If you act like you belong, you can often belong.”
  • “The key thing is keeping in touch with people who are going to help your career go in the direction that you want it to go.”
  • “Think proactively about the people that you do want to surround yourself with.”
  • “When you have a strength, it’s not you who sees it. It’s others who see it.”
  • “As a business owner nothing tops the satisfaction of a job well done for one of your clients.“
  • “Success is not on anyone else’s terms. It’s your own choice. You define what success is.”

John Corcoran shows entrepreneurs and small business owners how to bring in more income and clients by building real human relationships with influencers, VIPs, and people who matter.

More from the Interview

John Corcoran’s career path has taken him all over. He’s gone from DC to Silicon Valley and he’s worked with people from DreamWorks and Hollywood to Bill Clinton and his staff. Eventually he founded his own boutique law firm where he works with a lot of startups and small business owners. All these different positions came from the relationships he developed and how he was able to gain opportunities through those relationships when it came to his career path. One of John’s first jobs was at a brand new company at the time, DreamWorks. He was exposed to VIPs and often was around celebrities. There he learned that in Hollywood you are what others perceive you to be. If you act like you belong, you will belong. In college, Corcoran was part of the White House Internship Program where he got to work in the White House speech writing office. As he finished his degree he set his sights on getting a job in that same office. He kept in touch with the people he met during his internship and from one of them heard about a position with the speechwriters and was hired at the White House for first big major job after college. He says, the key thing is keeping in touch with people who are going to help your career go in the direction that you want it to go. And often times people don’t think about these things. Our network often comes more by happenstance rather than by thinking proactively about what direction you want your career to go, who are the people that can help you get to that point, and who are the people that can motivate you to get there. John was unaware of his talent for developing relationships and building his network until it was reiterated to him several times by other members of a mastermind group he participated in. He had written blogs before, but not until he changed direction did he find the reaction he was looking for. John writes about something that comes so naturally to him, nurturing relationships with people. Much of what he shares involves using social media tools to establish and build your network in a positive way. Broaden your circle of influence. Be helpful to the people you reach out to. Don’t wait to be successful in order to implement things right now. Doing it right now, implementing the tools now can help you become successful. Cool Experience: You often see when you’re around someone like the leader of the free world, they have this magnetic charisma and it can be very intimidating. It can be very difficult to approach that person. First, everyone appreciates a sincere compliment. Have a human conversation with someone, that’s a great way to break through and have a really normal connection with someone no matter how successful they are. When meeting President Clinton, John knew that the president was building his DVD collection, so he brought him a few old westerns on DVD. He said, they were able to connect and it was the most normal conversation you could be having with someone, except it was in the Oval Office of the White House with the leader of the free world. Advice: No matter who you are talking to, no matter who you want to meet, find a way to connect with them on something personal and something that they are interested in, and make a connection on that in whatever way possible. That will serve you well. Insight: Working at the white house was a tremendous honor and a privilege, but I was missing that immediate feedback and sense of gratification that you get from a personal job well done. As a business owner nothing tops the satisfaction of just a job well done for one of your clients.

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Episode 71: Overcoming Career Disaster | Melissa Krivachek from Briella Arion

Melissa Krivachek has had lots of ups and downs in her professional career. At a young age she was promoted quickly at the retail store she worked for, but when the recession hit, she lost her job. During that time she became homeless and even spent some time in jail. She rebounded nicely by creating her own business, Briella Arion, which she is running today. Learn how Melissa worked toward overcoming career disaster in episode 71 of the Defining Success Podcast.

Melissa Krivachek Owner of Briella Arion Author of Be Ballsy on the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

Melissa Krivachek

Melissa Krivachek is the President of Briella Arion. She has been captivating, inspiring and motivating entrepreneurs across the globe since her early twenties. Chosen as Evolution Magazines 2013 Top Power Player Under 40, and featured on CNN, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and receiving dozens of other accolades, Melissa’s passion for personal growth resonates with audiences looking for more fulfillment in all aspects of life and business. As the Author of Be Ballsy! How Not To Suck At Love, Success, & Happiness she loves teaching audiences how to break-thru limiting beliefs so they can have it all.

Briella Arion is a coaching company that works with six figure entrepreneurs so they can breakthrough the ceiling of complexity and have it all, all at the same time, love, success and happiness. Melissa has been with a six-figure salary and jobless.

In 2004, Melissa started at Walmart at 16 and the manager mentored her along the way. She exceeded his role in the company and became the store manager and in 2008, she was fired. Melissa bought a brand new car, a new home and eventually they took her car, her came and was $50,000 in debt.

She then began working for Family Dollar and Melissa got bored fairly easily and moved to Chicago where she began managing multiple stores. From 2004 to 2011 Melissa racked up a bunch of speeding tickets and ended up going to jail.

Melissa gravitated towards anything related to professional management. Melissa’s first client was a customer who was trying to get Melissa to sell her Visalis. He was having a really difficult time and she began coaching him. He’s a very passionate person, became a millionaire and is now doing extremely well.

Melissa’s Mastermind is a five-week program that holds people accountable to help you hit your goals. She does the program on Facebook so that you have accountability built into it.

Through her coaching Melissa tries to remove limiting beliefs from people to help them break through to more success.

Be Ballsy, written by Melissa Krivachek, focuses on helping people balance love, success and happiness and she has been able to maintain it.

Matt Lee was the first guest Melissa Krivachek had on her show. He’s actually the coach for Melissa and has helped her achieve phenomenal success.

The best thing Melissa is doing right now is working with lots of successful entrepreneurs and coaching them break through their limiting beliefs.

Melissa Krivachek Be Ballsy Overcoming Career Disaster

Melissa Krivachek

Engaging Discussion Questions:

  • Have you ever had to work at overcoming career disaster?

Success Quotes:

  • “Success is about the impact that you make, the money that you make and how clear your message is to the audience you’re reaching.”
  • “It’s more important to take small consistent action than it is to reach goals.”
  • “If your values and beliefs aren’t aligned with your values and results than you have a problem.”

Links to Great Stuff:

  • Briella Arion – I coach 6 figure entrepreneurs across the globe from my home in Marion, Iowa.
Be a Baller Melissa Krivachek

Be a Baller

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Episode 63: Being Obsessed with Your Business with Zeb Welborn

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.

Being Obsessed with Your Business Tamika Newhouse Zeb Welborn
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.

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Episode 47: Network Like Jesus | Author Dr. Joseph Castleberry

Dr. Joseph Castleberry shares his experience networking and connecting with new people in a variety of locations over his career.  In his new book, The Kingdom Net: Learning to Network Like Jesus, he shares how Jesus was able to network and how you can network like Jesus for your business or career.  Learn to network like Jesus in Episode 47 of the Defining Success Podcast!

Dr. Joseph Castleberry The Kingdom Net: Learning to Network Like Jesus

Dr. Joseph Castleberry

Joseph Castleberry is the president of Northwest University.  He enjoys writing, and his second popular book, The Kingdom Net:  Learning to Network Like Jesus, launches in August, 2013.  A native of Alabama, he came to the Pacific Northwest after a transcultural career that took him and his family to New Jersey, New York City, Texas, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Missouri before his soft landing on the banks of Lake Washington.

Dr. Joseph Castleberry started attending school at a very young age and at five years old, he knew that he had a strong connection with God and religion and he’s always been that way.

When Joseph was 12 years old he attended a camp and one student told everyone that God had called on him to preach and it really got his attention.  Joseph then prayed to God and said that was what he wanted to do and from then on he began preaching.  A few years later he came to his mother and knew that he wanted to preach to intellectual people.

He also had a strong calling to aid in poverty in Latin America and at 15 he traveled to Honduras and experienced the poverty in the area.  Honduras was the poorest country in the hemisphere that year and he saw real human misery up close.  He was amazed at the power of faith to help lift people up out of trouble, misery and poverty and he felt strongly attracted to Latin America.

In college, Dr. Castleberry fell in love with scholarship.  He took Greek and Hebrew and began studying the Bible from a critical perspective and an academic perspective and felt a strong desire to become a professor.

At 21, a family tragedy struck and he was praying to God and he sensed God’s promise to him that he would some day be a college president.  His first full-time job was a chaplain at Princeton University.

He then went to El Salvador as a missionary and taught classes at the University and planted a church in front of the Naitonal University and spent 20 years as a missionary in El Salvador, Ecuador and all over the Latin American region.

He had finished his doctorate from Columbia University during that time and came back as the academic dean in Missouri and five years later he was elected as the president of Northwest University in Washington.

One of my gifts was my ability to make friends and to keep them.  And I had an ability to connect people to be able to help others become better.

Joseph had a strong desire to work with intellectuals and make a difference in the lives of poor people.  He came from a poverty stricken family and he was the first person in his family to go to college and he had a connection with people who were struggling with poverty.

He spent his career in his academy and the other half of his time he spent building churches.  The Latin American professional class is a delightful group of people with a hopeful view of the people.  As a pasteur he was always good at getting them involved in helping poor individuals across Latin America.

As a pasteur in Ecuador, he started a church in a gated community, but the truth is that church had so many different ethnic groups and so many different socio-economic backgrounds.  It was a really interesting mixture of people.

If you build your church around the culture of poor people, you will only reach poor people.  If you build a church for the upper-middle class, you can reach everyone.

Joseph Castleberry came to Northwest University to be the president of the University and he didn’t know a soul when he moved there.  He had no network at all and had to start meeting people really fast.

He joined rotary clubs and local organizations and he made friends and started developing more connections in his community.

If you look at Jesus’ own networking methods the very first people who he called upon were fishermen.  He called upon them because fishermen were great networkers because they knew how to catch the fish, get them inland and then learned how to sell them.  So they had experience at getting a product to market.

People think of networking as if someone is trying to get something from themselves.  All of the networking Jesus did was seeing how he could serve other people.  When people recognize that you have a heart of service, that’s where business is the most elegant.

There is good business and bad business.  The person who does business in order to take advantage of people, they wind up paying the price in other ways because life is more than how much money you have.

Dr. Joseph Castleberry The Kingdom Net: Learning to Network Like Jesus

Dr. Joseph Castleberry

Engaging Discussion Questions:

  • What do you think of business people?
  • What can you do to network like Jesus?
  • What are you doing to serve people?

Links to Great Stuff:

The Kingdom Net – “Jesus came to proclaim the Kingdom of God; he built the Kingdom Net to keep the word and work of God spreading.”

Success Quotes:

  • “Success means achieving the purpose for which you’re in the world.”
  • “The most dignified label a person can wear is employer.”
  • “Human beings need a purpose and a mission. They need something to accomplish and if they don’t have accomplishments, it’s impossible for them to be happy.”
  • “Nothing has ever taken anything from poverty to prosperity except by business.”
  • “If you’re going to be successful, it’s not going to come at the cost of your integrity, conscious and dignity.”
  • “The person who does business like a snake has to pay the penalty of being the snake.”
  • “Life is more than how much money you have.”
  • “Network with people in order to serve them.”
  • “Jesus was a master at working together with other people.”
  • “No one can buy into a message unless it’s marketed.”
  • “Why did Jesus choose fishermen to be their first disciples? They were networkers.”
  • “The greatest commandment is to love the lord your God with all your heart and then your neighbor as yourself.”
  • “Every person who has submitted themselves to the rule of God has entered the Kingdom of God.”
  • “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net that was thrown into the world.”
  • “You currency does not go farther than your set of relationships. Your influence can not go further than your network.”
  • “Networking is connecting people who had something to offer with people who need things.”
  • “Any career is highly dependent on your ability to create connections.”
  • “No career could have been more in tune with who I am as a person.”
  • “I believed that God was leading me the whole way and I was always obedient to God’s purposes for me were.”

Special Requests:

Dr. Joseph Castleberry on the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn Learn to Network Like Jesus

Dr. Joseph Castleberry

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Episode 44: Build a Buffer When Starting a New Business | Bridget Brady from TheVoiceGenius.com

Bridget Brady can help you make money online and can help you improve your voice for presentations. She discusses how to build a buffer when you’re becoming an entrepreneur and finding a realistic way to starting a new business.

Bridget Brady Starting a New Business Defining Success Podcast Zeb Welborn

Bridget Brady

Bridget Brady runs two successful companies, moreonlineincome.com and thevoicegenius.com. She is a speaker, trainer, author, singer, actor, voice expert, and a presentation and sales authority. She has also worked as an actor, singer and project manager in New York and Los Angeles.

Bridget was doing a lot of work in Corporate America.  She spent 15 years in Corporate American prison as a software developer and project manage and spent 7 years in Wall Street.  She worked in Wall Street during the day and was a theater girl at night.

Bridget left her job in Corporate America because she never felt fully-fulfilled and from 7 to 10 years it worked out really well and she like it, but after 7 or 10 years she started waking up with a pit of despair thinking about going into her cubicle for 10 hours.  She knew it was something she couldn’t do anymore and she thought to herself there must be a way to make money.

She knew she wanted to make money to live a lifestyle she loved and have the freedom to pursue what it is she wanted to do.  She stumbled upon the idea of starting a new business by owning her own Internet business and it gave her the freedom the way she thought it would.  She works from home, works when she wants to and doesn’t work when she doesn’t want to.

Bridget helps people make online incomes and she actually sets people up with affiliate websites, and helps them develop strategies to make money online.  Bridget meets a lot of people who think they can just jump into the online world and start making money right away, but that’s not the case.  It takes a lot of work to make money online.

If you talk to any of the amazing thought leaders and successful thought leaders in the market.  They will tell you that being an entrepreneur is not easy and it takes a lot of work.  The beauty of an online business is that it’s a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year way to bring in money, but it takes a lot of work.

An online business is just like a brick and mortar business and it requires a lot of work to make it happen.  The difference between an online business and an offline business is there is much more freedom with an online business than a brick and mortar business.

Bridget encourages people who are interested in starting a new business online is to get a mentor.

Bridget Brady on the Defining Success Podcast Starting a New Business

Bridget Brady

Bridget Brady also  has a voice and sales training company.  Her business grew out of a gap she saw in the sales and training business.  She learned to harness her speaking skills and there are many classes and courses that will teach you how to sing and act.  She learned how to help speakers have a more powerful voice and how to use that voice to help sell their product and services.

The biggest mistake people make vocally is speaking and using their voice from their throat and having the voice initiate from their vocal chords as opposed to using their entire body and instrument to help them speak.  She hears a lot of people speaking from their throat.  That is the biggest mistake she sees people make.

The biggest mistake Bridget made was that when she started her entrepreneurial career was that she didn’t set up herself for success as an entrepreneur.  Starting a new business is not easy, when she started her entrepreneurial career she had been let go from her job and she had no buffer to start her entrepreneurial journey.

Bridget went through some difficult years and it was a difficult time for her.  For anyone who is thinking of becoming an entrepreneur, save money so you can have some money set aside to start your entrepreneurial journey.  A lot of the people who Bridget coaches make a substantial amount of money very quickly doing things online.

She is a real life full-time entrepreneur and she’s extremely proud.

Bridget Brady More Online Income the Voice Genius Starting a New Business

Bridget Brady

Engaging Discussion Questions:

  • Have you ever thought about being an entrepreneur?
  • How important do you think having a strong voice is in business?
  • Have you tried to make money online?  What are your thoughts on making money online?

Links to Great Stuff:

  • MoreOnlineIncome.com – She has helped 1000’s of people earn money online, 
    and can teach you to do the same!
  • TheVoiceGenius.com – Bridget Brady ~ aka, “The Voice and Sales Genius” is a Speaker, Trainer, Author, Singer, Actor, Voice Expert, Presentation and Sales Authority. She spent 10 years doing theatre in New York City, 12 years as an actor and singer in Los Angeles, as well as 15 years working as a Project Manager in Corporate America (including 7 years on Wall Street in New York). 

Success Quotes:

  • “My success is based on how many people I’ve helped.”
  • “Success is living a life of my choosing.”
  • “Entrepreneurs are changing the world.”
  • “Your vocal chords are about the size of a standard paper clip.”
  • “Find someone who is making money using the Internet…and have someone who knows how to make money online help you get started.”
  • “The Internet is a golf mine if you know how to extract the gold.”
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Episode 41: Take Action and Adjust Along the Way | Lain Ehmann from Layoutaday.com

Lain Ehmann does a lot of work online in the scrapbooking industry where she does online events, webinars, and has been able to monetize that to make a very successful business for herself.  In Episode 41 of the Defining Success Podcast Lain discusses how she’s been able to build a massive online following and been able to monetize her online efforts through event, webinars, and more.  When Lain first started she had no idea on the direction her business would take her, but she’d advice anyone interested in starting a new business to take action and adjust along the way.

Lain Ehmann Take Action and Adjust Along the Way on the Defining Success Podcast with Zeb Welborn

Lain Ehmann

Lain is a fast-talking, fast-scrapping human dynamo with three kids, tons of ideas, and more books than she could ever read in this lifetime. The author of several books on scrapbooking, including “Snippets: Mostly True Tales from the Lighter Side of Scrapbooking” and “20 Simple Secrets of Happy Scrapbookers” (co-authored with Stacy Julian), Lain loves sharing her philosophy of guilt-free, simple scrapbooking.

Lain Ehmann got involved in scrapbooking shortly after her son was born. Lain was a freelance journalist who mostly wrote on business and finance.  She was invited to a Scrapbooking party where people bought and shared scrapbooking ideas and she fell in love with scrapbooking.  She was also a born story-teller and scrapbooking fit in very well with her passion.  She started working less and less in journalism and she began writing more and more in scrapbooking magazines.  She began teaching classes and then dove headfirst into scrapbooking as her career.

The scrapbooking magazines that Lain were working for were declining and eventually both magazines she was working for folded and so, she was without a job.  She started a blog as a way to keep in touch with the people she was meeting as she was meeting at scrapbooking conventions.  She saw that a lot of knitters were doing webinars and she spent a year learning about Internet marketing, podcasting and hosting and in May 2010 she launched her website layoutaday.com.

The favorite thing Lain enjoys doing is live events which have really become the cornerstone of her online presence.  She does live virtual events and every month she puts on a scrapinar, a free monthly education session that is centered around a video training in a state-of-the-art webroom.  They use Cisco’s webex event center that Cisco uses for its international sales meetings.  It’s very robust and steady and is a great platform for everything they want to do.

They do video trainings once a month where Lain gets on the camera live and either provides some kind of training or announces someone who is going to give the training.  The training session is recorded, there is live chat and people arrange their schedule in order to attend the virtual event live.

In addition to her monthly session, several times a year she puts on larger events with 15 or 16 instructors in two days.  Lain serves as the host, produces the event and features the instructors.  It’s kind of like a Scrapapalooza.

Scrapbooking companies love the event because companies can’t be everywhere and this live event gives them access to scrapbookers all over the world.  These companies are allowed to target their customers like never before during these live events that Lain holds several times a year.

In the chatroom, people will chat and you get immediate feedback that you can not get in any other way and people love it.  The instructors can get the replay again and instructors can see where people were engaged and where they lost momentum.

Lain Ehmann Take Action Defining Success Podcast

Lain Ehmann

If you live in rural Ohio, the idea of traveling to a foreign city to attend an event is a barrier for a lot of people.  Lain realized she could bring instructors to people.  Scrapbookers have a lot of stuff and it becomes difficult to transport.  With these online virtual events, people can enjoy, chat and scrapbook along with others.  It’s really a lot of fun and they enjoy the live virtual events.

When you go to an online event there are no clicks, everyone is talking to everyone and it’s very friendly, open and supportive.

Many people find Lain online through social media.  She does a lot of YouTube videos, search engine optimization, relationship marketing, affiliate marketing, and podcasting.

Lain Ehmann has multiple streams of income:

  • Several big events a year where attendees pay to attend.
  • Monthly scrapinars are free to attend, but after a month, Lain charges her customers to get access to the content.
  • A membership site, scraphappy.org where people pay a monthly fee to have access to the site.
  • Sponsorship opportunities

It seems like Lain does a lot of work, but she’s been really good at establishing repeatable systems.  She’s also been fortunate enough to hire people who have been able to help her manage the workload.

Lain started with one product, the layout a day class that she offered several times a year.  Originally she did it for free and didn’t see it as a big revenue generator and things began to evolve over time.  Things began gradually improving from there in order to get more customers and make more revenue for her business.  Everything grew from the natural progression of the business with people offering suggestions for improvement and Lain seized those opportunities and has been able to grow a successful business as a result.

Lain is most proud of bringing a group of passionate scrapbookers together who are willing to help each other learn and grow.  People know that they are going to come to Lain and get a dose of positivity.

In the future, Lain hopes to take the events she’s doing and model that for companies and manufacturers to reach her audience.  She has a large audience of scrapbookers who listen and follow her and there are companies that want access to that.  She can create these live events for companies and bring it to her audience.

Sometimes there is a tendency to look for the cheapest way to do anything and when I started I wish I didn’t do that.  The first live event I held was the cheapest and she had a problem with it.  But, finding people you trust for advice and investing where they tell you to invest.

A layout is a scrapbook page with the photos on it, also known as a scrapbook page.  A month-long class where she started a layout a day which she’s built on since to incorporate more of her business.

If you’re interested in hosting your own live events, Lain recommends taking a look at your audience and what you’re trying to accomplish to determine the best route to take when starting your live events/webinar.  Write down what you have to have and find the solution for that.  Once you find a handful of solutions, test them out to make sure it works before you do your event.

Lain Ehmann Take Action

Lain Ehmann

Engaging Discussion Questions:

  • Have you ever attended a webinar?
  • What are your thoughts on scrapbooking?
  • Have you been procrastinating to take action?  Why or why not?

Links to Great Stuff:

  • Layout a Day – “Take a helping of Rachael Ray, a sprinkle of Martha Stewart, and a dash of Ellen DeGeneres, shake well until blended, and what do you get? Lain Ehmann, scrapbook lover!”
  • Scrap Happy – “Want to Join the Happiest Group of Scrapbookers on the Interner? Well, We’d Love to Have You!”
  • Layout a Day: The Simple Scrapbooking Podcast – “Professional scrapbooker, author, and instructor Lain Ehmann talks the scrappy talk. Simple scrapbooking advice, fun stuff, updates, and more!”
  • Scrapbook Expo – The Premier Scrapbook Show
  • Weekly Scrapper – For the Everyday Scrapper

Success Quotes:

  • “Success is knowing what your passion is, working hard and helping other people through that.”
  • “Start by finding mentors, experts or coaches and following their advice.”
  • “Life is good, even if it’s not perfect.”
  • “A lot of it was really listening to my audience, hearing what resonated with them and doing more of that.”
  • “My number 1 goals was to make enough money so I didn’t have to go to work in an office.”
  • “These scrapinars allow the instructor or manufacturers to reach customers all over the world.”

Special Requets:

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