Entrepreneurs In Training | Fail Your Way To A Freedom Lifestyle | Create Online Businesses

If you've followed our online entrepreneurial journey so far... You know Catherine and I have been working for a year and a half on online businesses. A lot has happened during that time: We went all in developing brbYoga. We went all quiet on Entrepreneurs in Training, eventually (it's been months since our last episode!). We had our 2nd child. We moved into a new house in the suburbs to help financially. For a while were working double: recording EIT episodes and developing brb yoga. But the strain became too much: full-time work, 2 young kids (one was born during all this!), and working on both businesses. It led to a lot of tension in our house, at all times day and night (and I mean all times). I won't bore you with the details, heartache, and suffering... the glorious struggle! And we may not be the perfect model for how to launch an online online business, or how to launch your first online business. So why am I sharing this with you? Because we are one example among many of people who toil and striv

How to use Instagram for business Instagram Demographics/Usage This year, Instagram surpassed twitter in terms of active participants (300 Million Active Monthly Users, 75 Million users/day) 20% of internet users use it and over a quarter of the US population (27.6%) It is a platform that results in high levels of engagement-58 times more engagment per follower than facebook and 120 times more than twitter. Source: By the Numbers: 150+ Interesting Instagram Statistics      Instagram Best Practices Below are three sites that have good, comprehensive lists of ways to make the most of Instagram for business.  26 Tips for Using Instagram for Business - Social Media Examiner 5 Instagram Marketing Best Practices to Build a Massive Following - Search Engine Journal Top 3 Instagram Trends for Marketers - HootSuite In the podcast we mention a few of the more powerful practices, including: Follow your followers and engage with them genuinely. “re-gram”

Show notes: entrepreneursintraining.net/how-to-change-habits-habit-loop How To Change Habits: The Habit Loop Redux Review Habit Loop From Last Week Loop: Cue (trigger) Routine (behavior) Reward (reinforces the loop) Craving or Anticipation (drives the loop) Remember the Pepsodent example? Claude Hopkins got Americans into the habit of brushing their teeth: Cue: Feel the tooth film on your teeth. Routine: Brush your teeth. Reward: Smile and be beautiful. Craving: The tingly fresh gums and mouth How to Form a New Habit Basically, make a cue. A classic example is prepare yourself before you go to bed. For example, put out running clothes for the morning if want to run. Cue: Running clothes laid out. Routine: Run. Reward: Feel great. Craving: When weather’s too bad or you forget to cue yourself, you miss out on the reward (craving). How To Change a Habit Duhigg cites the Golden Rule of habit change: Keep the cue and reward the same. Insert a new routine. Examples in Duhigg's book include how Tony Dung

How to Make Your Product A Habit This whole theme is drawn from Charles Duhigg's book The Power of Habit. What are habits? “The choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day.” The Habit Loop The habit loop is a well-documented loop that underlies our habits: Cue: Something that triggers a behavior (like seeing a candy bar in the checkout line at a store). Routine: The behavior (purchase and engulf said candy bar). Reward (sugar rush, deliciousness, etc.). But a key part of the loop is a craving or anticipation of the reward. Say in the above example you see the candy bar and start to reach for it, but some little kid grabs it and runs off- and it's the last one! We saw the cue, but now we can't enact the routine... and we're left craving that chocolate goodness. So for a habit (loop) to be effective, the cue needs to be strong enough to trigger that anticipation. Marketing based on the habit loop Below are just a few exa

Shownotes: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/60/ Impostor Phenomenon What is it? Impostor phenomenon, often now called impostor syndrome, was first described in 1978 by Clinical Psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. You can read their original paper. It's not an official disorder. They describe high-achieving professional women who believed they were being overrated. They didn’t feel success. Accomplishments are due not to your talent. Instead, they felt they were coasting on personality or charm. Their achievements were due to luck, timing, or some other external factor. Who Has Impostor Syndrome? Everyone. Well, lots of folks in jobs considered to be highly successful or revered. I keep seeing this stat: more than 70% of people experience it at some point. Example careers in which impostor phenomenon is rampant include: Academia Entrepreneurship Computer programming Performance The list just goes on. Some Examples An article by Richard Felder (Chemical Engineer at NCST) wrote to enca

Full Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/59 How To Use Periscope For Business Periscope is the new live streaming app from twitter. Described as "the closest thing to teleportation" and "consensual voyeurism," it beats out other live streaming apps (like MeerKat) by (1) having almost no lag time and, thus, being true "real-time" video, and (2)  allowing streaming of your video for 24 hours after your "scope. How to Use Periscope: Downoad the periscope app. Follow and be followed by other people (like twitter). Periscope automatically alerts you to when someone you follow starts a broadcast. Open the app, hit the record button and you are streaming.  People watching your stream write comments and give you “hearts” if they like what you are doing. Everyone can see the comments and hearts. People who get the most hearts are included in “Popular people to follow” and “most loved” sections. Why Periscope for Business? People are acting like this is a bi

Shownotes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/58 How To Win Friends And Influence People Summary I suggest an alternate title for this book: How to Treat Other People Well and Thus Be a Better Person Yourself. It's basically a manual for behavior toward other people. If you follow the advice Carnegie gives, you improve your life and the lives of those you interact with. “The principles taught in this book will work only if they come from the heart. I am not advocating a bag of tricks. I am talking about a new way of life.” -Dale Carnegie In the show, we cover the fundamental principles - Part 1 of the book. FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain. Criminals like Al Capone don’t see fault in their actions. The vast majority of us don’t blame ourselves for our actions. Criticism of those actions doesn’t change that. Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism i

Shownotes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/57 T Harv Eker's Secrets of the Millionaire Mind Summary The book basically has 2 parts. In part 1, Eker argues we need to re-program ourselves to create a financial blueprint that will lead to wealth and success. Your financial blueprint: Your Blueprint consists of your thoughts, feelings, and actions about money and success. They determine your results. We all have a blueprint embedded. Harv says he can determine your blueprint within 5 minutes of meeting you. Your Blueprint is formed in your early childhood. Parents and other influences teach us how to think about money and success (subconsciously). You’re either a copy of your parents, or you rebelled against it. Either way you were heavily influenced by it, whether you know it or not. Our blueprint becomes the way we automatically react to money and success. Eker argues you have to have the right mindset to be rich. Not to make money- but to make and keep money. Most people don’t have that capacity.

Essentialism book summary Show Notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/56 Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Download my Essentialism by Greg Mckeown - Google Docs as a reference (at your peril). Below is the first part of my notes: Big Ideas: Relentlessly pursues “Less, but better” The vast majority of our environment is noise (“Trivial Many”) Very few things matter (“Vital Few”) Get rid of most of your actions Spend a lot of time up front thinking about how to limit Decisive and definitive: “If it’s not a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.” Quote from intro: "Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at your highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.” - Essentialism, page 5

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/55   Heather Heuman Interview Heather founded ElizabethtownFamily.com while living in Fort Knox, Kentucky. She shares how she used social media to grow this website and how she recruited local advertisers in the business' early stages. She founded Sweet Tea Social Marketing to help other businesses use social media to grow. Heather consults with businesses to develop and maintain their social media marketing strategies. In the interview she provides social media tips for businesses. Heather talks about how she balances the demands of running her two businesses while raising her 3 children. Her definition of success, which she describes in the show, includes knowing that she is contributing to the experiences and priorities of her family. She describes reaching a point in your business where you begin to believe that goals that once seemed unattainable are now possible. It's a very inspiring sentiment.

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/54 Interview with DeAnne Wingate DeAnne ascended the corporate ladder at a large media company early on in life. Despite having the trappings of success, she felt unfulfilled. She quit her job to find her life's purpose and spent a year in Mexico. She unplugged and reconnected with what mattered to her. After returning from Mexico she traveled to India to work with women and children forced into the sex trade. This experience ignited her passion to begin a nonprofit, Rippled Purpose, which provides education (and love) to children in India. Education is a key factor in preventing trafficking and abuse of children. Rippled Purpose has grown its impact significantly since it was founded (2012) and will impact over 200 children next year. Her grand vision is to provide assistance to change-makers throughout the globe. She founded Blessed Lotus, an apparel company that sells tunics, as a way to creatively fund

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/53 Jason Womack Interview Some notes from our interview Jason and Jodi Womack run the Get Momentum online coaching program. Jason travels a lot. He's in a hotel 200-220 nights per year. To keep track, you can always visit Where Is Womack. Jodi Womack co-founded the Womack Company and will co-author their upcoming book Get Momentum: How to Start when You're Stuck. I like how Jason defines "productivity", and that he takes the effort to define it, in his book Your Best Just Got Better?: Productivity: “Doing what I said I would do, within the time that I promised”. Jason outlines the Get Momentum book in the works. They designed a "circle" of methods to get unstuck. Mention: someone has to mention the fact that things could be different. Model: find a model to emulate. Measure what you're currently doing to determine how to alter is. Monitor your activity over time. Modify: make small changes you can track over time. Magnify those small modifications Wa

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/52 We made it a whole year! Our glorious struggle has brought us to our EIT birthday. Celebrate with us as we reflect on what we've experienced and learned. We ask ourselves 8 questions you may (or may not) find useful, about our first year of entrepreneurship and podcasting. Plus, there's champagne involved. A year in from zero: A few milestones If you've listened to the show, you know all this already. But here's a (non-exhaustive) summary of major events over the past year: My dad died, right at the beginning of our journey. We "launched" (i.e. started) a blog about gathering the table around the family meal. It was called Making Meal Time. It lasted a few months. We started to pursue an online yoga business- it's still in the works. Our second child, Wes, was born (now he's 5 months old). Catherine quit her job, deciding to work solely on the entrepreneur facet and be a work-at-home mom. Largely to help with expenses (advancing to financial freedom), we moved f

Complete show notes: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/51 Rob Cubbon Interview Sell courses online to earn passive income. Head to RobCubbon.com to get all sorts of his free stuff and links to all his offers. Rob wrote a great blog post about how to sell courses online. Like many entrepreneurs, he creates courses and sells them on Udemy.com. He has worked on developing memberships sites and moving some courses onto that platform. We talk about how difficult that's been. Rob writes about some of the challenges membership sites pose. Rob stresses how important it is to set up a great funnel. One way he drives people to his courses is to publish short ebooks for Kindle on Amazon. As he explains in the show, the eBooks have free offers toward the beginning. This allows him to collect an email as well. The ebooks also have links to his courses. Often he will offer coupons within the books for the Udemy courses.

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/50 How To Write a Tagline My biggest takeaway from learning about taglines is: There are no rules or formulas for writing the perfect tagline. What is a tagline? A slogan or phrase that visually conveys the most important product attribute or benefit that the advertiser wishes to convey. Should you have a tagline? Some people think you shouldn't even use a tagline. There are many examples of companies that don't (Google, Microsoft, Facebook). Big Principles However, there are some overarching principles to guide you. I repeatedly came across the following in tons of resources on the topic: A great tag line is memorable, enlightens people about your business, and differentiates your company and product from competitors. It is not about you, it’s about the customer. Think about the benefits for the customer. Strive for clarity over cleverness. Types of Taglines The folks at ittybiz.com wrote an insightful post. I recommend reading their full article. They dist

Complete show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/48b This is a follow-up episode to our PreMortem Technique show. Gary Klein came on the show to tell me some of the more interesting stories about PreMortems he's conducted. Plus we chat about his current projects. Gary Klein's PreMortem Technique Improve your business or project before it starts. Gary Klein has developed a lot more than the PreMortem technique. Here's the original research that inspired the PreMortem Klein's Harvard Business Review Article lays out the PreMortem nicely. We followed it for our theme. To keep up with Klein's current work, follow his blog in Psychology Today- a continuation of his most recent work, Seeing What Others Don't. He also mentions his most recent project, Shadow Box Training.

Gary Klein developed the PreMortem technique to improve the odds your business or project won't fail- by projecting ahead and assuming it already has. Catherine and I describe the technique and perform our own. Complete show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/48 Gary Klein's PreMortem Technique Improve your business or project before it starts. Gary Klein has developed a lot more than the PreMortem technique. Here's the original research that inspired the PreMortem Klein's Harvard Business Review Article lays out the PreMortem nicely. We followed it for our theme. To keep up with Klein's current work, follow his blog in Psychology Today- a continuation of his most recent work, Seeing What Others Don't.