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Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/47 Jodi Womack Interview How to become a business coach Check out Jodi's website Get Momentum, an online coaching program. And connect with her on twitter: @JodiWomack. Some of the things we discuss during the interview: Jodi grew up with independence and exposure to business. She accompanied her dad on business trips, and she was allowed to roam a radius in New York City. "If you get lost, just ask a doorman for help," her dad said. Coaching, Jodi, says, is like her young days in NY, making up your own rules and asking where you can provide value. She was employee number one for David Allen's company (yes, THAT David Allen, author of Getting Things Done), before he rose to productivity superstardom. She was essentially lucky to land that job- nobody knew Getting Things Done would be such a success. But Jodi continually was willing to try new things, to say yes when offered new challenges. Jodi and her husband and business partner, Jason Womack, compliment each

Show notes: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/46/ Catherine and I desperately need to come up with a name the yoga business we'll launch soon. Time to get serious, so I researched how to brainstorm in general, and how to brainstorm business names in particular. This isn't a "how to name a business" episode, more of a "how to brainstorm" episode.   How to Brainstorm Business Names What are you doing when you brainstorm? It’s about filling a gap. You know where you are, you envision where you need to be. Between them is the gap. Your mind wants to close that gap. Ways to approach a brainstorming session We discuss a few counterintuitive ways to approach your brainstorming session. These are 3 hand-picked suggestions from a good article about how Tom Kelley of IDEO organizes brainstorming sessions. Start with a well-honed statement of the problem at hand. Number your ideas. Warm up Keys during a brainstorming session Although the following strategies are repeated many places, I took them straig

Full show notes: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/45/ Nick Loper Interview Nick hosts the Side Hustle Show as part of his website sidehustlenation.com, where he also blogs and, like a lot of popular "solopreneur blogs", provides many of his numbers for readers to ponder and admire. We walk through Nick's 8 streams of revenue. Actually, that's an outdated blog post and he has more streams now. That's quite a river he's feeding. Books mentioned: So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath Essentialism by Greg McKeown The One Thing by Gary Keller

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/44 You’re ready to create a website, huh? Where should you start? In this episode we cover how to create wireframes- the overall structure and basic functionality of your future website… and the conversation starter with your web developer. How to create wireframes for your website After we introduce wireframing in general, we chat with our web developer Jay Mutzafi. You may remember Jay from last week's episode. I interviewed him about creating a lucid dreaming device. We’re happy to have him as our web developer, happy to announce it, and dare I say… have him as a new friend. Why create a wireframe? How to create wireframes: what are best practices? Should you skip the wireframe and just create a prototype instead?

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/43 Jay’s Podcast: Lucid Dreaming Podcast Website: http://www.lucidsage.com/ A lucid dream is one in which you are aware you are dreaming. Often, once you realize you’re aware you’re dreaming, you can control the dream. But control isn’t necessary for lucidity. This is a classic case of someone on a quest to solve their own problem, and discovering it is a business opportunity. Jay is interested in how to induce lucid dreaming, and increasing his own rate of lucid dreams, for many reasons. A main reason is simply the exhilaration and fun you can experience when you lucid dream. Besides that, Jay’s dreams affect his experiences and moods when awake. Like our podcast, Jay doesn’t claim to be the end-all expert on lucid dreaming. His podcast is very much about talking listeners along his own journey to learn, and hopefully impart helpful knowledge to his audience along the way. So he started the podcast and website without a product i

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/42 In this episode Paul and I discuss the enneagram personality test. Paul and I took a free version of the test to discover our enneagram personality type. We talk about what we learned and how it could impact the way we work. What Is Your Enneagram Personality Type? Take your own abbreviated enneagram test! What is the enneagram and what is its history? The enneagram itself is "a geometric figure that delineates nine basic personality types of human nature and their complex interrelationships." Each number represents a personality type. From: http://www.enneagraminstitute.com The modern day version was developed around 1950 by Oscar Ichazo, a Bolivian Philosopher. The science of the enneagram is still rather limited but a few recent studies have started to validate the 9 distinct enneagram personality types. Enneagram Personality Types Each personality type is represented by a number. When you are in a healthy state the positive traits of your type are dominant. W

Show notes: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/41   Alexa set up a website page specially for EIT listeners: http://www.alexafischer.com/eit/ Following this link, you will receive 76% off her latest course, Be Comfortable And Confident On Camera. Also on that page, Alexa provides a free article: 10 Tips for Being Confident on Camera. Note you need to provide your email. Alexa helps people speak with confidence + calm just about anywhere - at board meetings, to an auditorium, on video, or even at a cocktail party full of strangers. She learned how to do this at The Yale School of Drama and on countless television shows; these days she teaches CEOs, private clients, online students, and huge companies how to connect - with each other and with their own greatness. You can check out her video blogs and online courses at: http://www.alexafischer.com/welcome/ Or find her on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Tip of the show Look at the lens during your video chats with friends. Looking at the lens when you t

Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/40   Failure Quote “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” - Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture Tip of the show When you’re stuck on a decision, ask yourself, “What would I advise my best friend to do if here were in my shoes?” That’s the best advice you can give to yourself, according to Dan and Chip Heath in their book Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. According to one study, recent graduates were asked to choose between two potential job offers- one was a high paying but unsatisfying job, the other was a lower paying but highly satisfying job. When asked to choose for themselves, 66% chose the lower paying but highly satisfying job. Not bad. B

Shownotes at http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/39/ Stay driven toward your business aspirations. Establish a big hairy audacious goal for your company, and a description of how things will look when you get there. This is part 2 in a pair of Company Vision episodes based on Jim Collins and Jerry Porras work. Be sure to visit the show notes to download a company vision template pdf.     Last week we talked about finding your company’s purpose and values- part of what Jim Collins and Jerry Porras call Company Vision in their Harvard Business review article, “Building Your Company’s Vision”. Just to quickly recap, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras found that great companies have great Company Vision- and to have great company vision, you have to do two things well: Maintain some guiding principles about why you’re in business and what you value as a business. Maintain a focus on the future of your business. This week, we focus on the second part. Basically, we&rsquo

Complete Shownotes at http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/38/ Company Vision Part 1: Core Ideology Company vision is about discovering the soul, the heart of your company. We think this is important not because it’s cute or will pull on your heart strings, but because it’s a good business decision. The entirety of our discussion about company vision, and the company vision examples we use, come from the article Building Your Company’s Vision by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in a 1996 Harvard Business Review. It’s jargony but a great read and really useful. That’s why we talk about it on today’s episode. The article content comes from their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Their quest was to understand what makes great companies great. To do that they researched a bunch of companies. Part of what makes great companies, they claim, is great company vision. We talked a few weeks ago in episode 36 about Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. Remember,

For the rest of the show notes: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/17/   Ariana's story is a roadmap for how to become a small business consultant. She started Rosabella Consulting four years ago. She takes a creative, case-by-case approach to help entrepreneurs and organizations achieve sustainable growth. Ariana isn't strictly an online business consultant. Much of her work is aimed to help her local community. But she is doing more and more online business consulting as Rosabella continues to grow. She's also an Entreprenerd. That is, she leads and participates in an entrepreneur community who call themselves entreprenerds. She started Entreprenerds three years ago as a way to fuel her own learning and growth as an entrepreneur- and she credits it as a driving force that shaped the small business internet consultant she is today. Entreprenerds began as meetings at a local coffee shop in Fort Collins, CO, to discuss books on entrepreneurship. It was like a book club with the heart of a mastermind.

Shownotes: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/36/   Simon Sinek's Golden Circle What is the Golden Circle? (note the irony that we are starting with "what" instead of "why") The Golden circle is a framework to communicate your business’s purpose. When Simon Sinek draws the golden circle, he draws 3 concentric circles. The concentric circles stand for the WHY, HOW, and WHAT of your business. Why: The purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to do what you do? How: Values and principles used to bring the "Why" to life. Things like your value proposition or unique selling proposition. What: Products or services you offer. The golden circle was developed in Sinek's book, Start With Why. But the golden circle was made extremely popular by Sinek's TED talk. Sinek says most businesses communicate in the opposite order they should- they start with "What",i.e. their product. For example, a hybrid gas/electric car company might advertise like this: We make cars (What). They get you across the countr

Tons of show notes- definitely visit them for creative brief examples, creative brief templates, and a lot more: http://www.entrepreneursintraining.net/35 It’s called a brief for a reason... not everything can matter. When done well, it is a short (typically less than one page), concise, single-minded document that gets to the heart of the business problem and the motivations of the specific target audience. When done poorly, it’s a lengthy document with tons of information about the company, market research about the audience, and isn’t inspiring at all.   We loved this mini creative brief template from Beloved Brands. It is concise and covers all the relevant bases. Also, in the show I was able to adapt each example creative brief shown below into this mini creative brief template. And I think adapting them into this form actually improved them (listen to see if you agree!). The most important elements: Objective: What do we hope to accomplish, what part of the brand strategy will th

Shownotes with links and details at www.entrepreneursintraining.net/34 Debbie Sessions has run VintageDancer.com, her affiliate marketing website, for six years now. She dove in as soon as she learned how to make money by affiliate marketing. Hard work, patience, persistence… and now she’s earning good income. Listen to her story, and take her advice- see below for more show notes and details.   Debbie decided she needed to be her own boss. She had a passion for vintage era fashion, but she didn’t know a ton about it. She had also learned about affiliate marketing and the possibility of making money online from it.    She took to heart some advice she heard: create an affiliate marketing site based on something you’re not an expert in, but have a passion to learn. So that’s the business model she chose, and Vintage Dancer was born.   I loved to listen to Debbie’s story during our interview. She paints the whole picture of the roller coaster for us. 

Shownotes with links and details at www.entrepreneursintraining.net/33 Madelyn Blair has a passion to help you grow and learn every day. Her company Pelerei is like a center for lifelong learning… for businesses. She’s helped people and organizations for over 26 years. In this episode we interview Madelyn about her entrepreneurial journey, optimism, confidence, and her twitter strategy among other things Madelyn Blair Interview: 7:50 Here are a few of the topics we covered in the interview. Madelyn is essentially a lifelong learning teacher. She has written a few books; her most recent is Riding the Current: How to Deal with the Daily Deluge of Data. She developed a program of the same name, which she implements through her company Pelerei. Madelyn points to three common traits among successful leaders, which she learned through many many interviews: They know themselves well. They have deep knowledge of something. They are insatiably curious. She defines passion as "doing something with joy".

  Shownotes with links and details at www.entrepreneursintraining.net/apps-for-truckers-tim-spence   Tim Spence is a budding online entrepreneur on a mission to help truckers get up to speed with technology, pun intended. He does this through his website Apps for Truckers (Apps4Truckers.com) and his podcast of the same name. We interview Tim in the episode and learn about how he got here and where he’s headed.

Show notes: Shownotes with links and details at www.entrepreneursintraining.net/31 If you need fantasy football help, Sigmund Bloom of Football Guys is one of the best. He's also one of the best voices in the fantasy football podcast world. If you don't know him already from his podcast or the Football Guys fantasy football website, he might turn you into a fantasy football fan. If not, he will surely inspire you. In our interview he shares his story about becoming an entrepreneur, thoughts on passion, caring for your customers, and much more..  

 Show notes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/33-one-minute-manager In this episode I present a One Minute Manager summary. The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson outlines an effective management strategy. I discuss the three methods in the book and benefits of implementing this management tactic. One Minute Manager Overview It's an allegory about a guy who wants to know how to be a great manager. His problem is that he sees two kinds of managers. “Tough” managers, who care only about getting results. They get those results and the businesses do well. But the employees suffer as a result. “Nice” managers, who care about the people that work for them but somehow don’t get great productivity out of their employees- and thus their businesses suffer. This guy hears people talking about a local manager, a so-called One Minute Manager, whose employees not only love him but produce great results for the business. So he goes to visit this manager to learn. The

Show notes with links and details: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/create-empathy-map-target-market   In this episode we show you how to target an audience by creating an empathy map. The xplane empathy map is a great tool to define and refine your target audience, customer, avatar, ideal customer, whatever you call it. It will increase the value of your product. The empathy map consists of 6 perceptions and experiences. The 6 perceptions and experiences of the empathy map: What does she see? What is her environment, who is in her environment, what kind of offers is she offered? What does she hear? What her friend says, what her spouse says, what media channels reach her? What does she think and feel? What’s important to her privately? What emotions does she have? What keeps her up? Her aspirations? What does she say and do (in public)? What’s her attitude What’s she telling others? What might she say that conflicts with what she might feel? Pain? Her biggest frustrations? What obstac

  Shownotes: www.entrepreneursintraining.net/33-crowdfunding-to-start-a-business   Crowdfunding has recently soared in popularity, and it has many advantages and disadvantages. In this episode, I discuss three pros and cons of a crowdfunding strategy to finance your products or services.