by Jason Owens | Apr 15, 2016 | Internet Marketing
It is very common for successful experts to be in business for years, yet not build a considerable email list. The good news is that getting started is easy.
I’m going to show you a strategy for creating your messages and how to put your outreach efforts on autopilot.
1) Make a Plan
When making the transition to using an email list, the simplest things that you can do is to set up a very easy-to-use auto responder.
The trick here is not to write one article per month. Instead, use something called block scheduling and commit to writing several at once.
You can probably come up with 12 ideas off the top of your head.
Simply take out a sheet of paper and put 12 boxes on it.
[shareable text=”These 12 simple boxes can change your email strategy for an entire year. Click to find out how.”]These 12 simple boxes can change your email strategy for an entire year.[/shareable]
Draw to vertical lines on the piece paper, then draw three horizontal lines on the piece paper,
Simply label each one of these boxes with a month and year. See screen capture.
2) Write the Articles
Start something short and easy.
- If you run workshops, give people your lessons learned from an event that you just held.
- Give people your thought for the day, or an inspiring quote.
- If you are an author, simply publish a short excerpt from your book.
There is nothing wrong with having all 12 emails be a two-sentence thought for the day.
You are at the very beginning of your email marketing empire, so don’t make it complicated.
All you have to do is take the first step.
Authors out there have the easiest time of any of us experts. You have already created all of your content.
[shareable text=”Authors are the easiest type of expert to transition to email marketing — they already have loads of content!”]Authors are the easiest type of expert to transition to email marketing — they already have loads of content![/shareable]
I know a very successful author who does nothing but the following approach every single day of the year.
He publishes 1-2 paragraphs from one of his books each week. At the bottom of each email he has a link that says “Hey, if you liked this buy a copy of my book” with a link to his digital store.
Simple. Easy to start. Brilliant!
So here are a few examples. You can do this simply to get started.
3) Turn on the Auto Pilot
No matter which email marketing service you choose (MailChimp, Constant Contact, aWeber, etc.), it will come with the ability to schedule your emails for future delivery.
Just create all 12 of your articles and schedule each to publish to your list, say, on the first Tuesday of each month, or whatever works for your readers.
[shareable]When reaching out to your tribe. Make automation your friend.[/shareable]
The point is you can set up all of these posts at once, and then have your email reminders all lined up for the entire year.
[reminder]How often do you publish? Once a month? Irregular? Weekly? Tell us more![/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Apr 8, 2016 | Case Studies
Several months ago I wrote why I quit blogging, and how that decision was a money-maker for me. However, I kept feeling the pull to give blogging one more try.
I started an experiment in early March to find out once and for all if the hype is true — would blogging on a consistent basis really drive more traffic to my site and grow my email list?
Sure, consistent publishing works for others, but will it really work for me?
What follows are three hypotheses I formed before starting this experiment, the results from a month’s-worth of data gathering, and 3 surprises.
Scope
I intentionally limited the scope of this experiment to my blog. I did not intend to increase my post frequency on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media outlet.
This is simply limited to my blog and its current subscribers.
[shareable cite=”Jason R Owens”]Can I find the right workflow and/or discipline to publish on my blog for 30 days?[/shareable]
Something else that is important to note here is that I am focusing on the act of publishing alone. I’m not paying any particular attention to SEO or any type of optimization techniques whatsoever.
I simply want to see if I can get in the habit of generating 12 blog articles a month.
If I find the experiment is successful over the first 30 days, I’ll work in additional things such as SEO in the future.
Hypothesis 1 – I will lose the majority of my subscribers
I have to admit, I entered this experiment as more of a pessimist than an optimist.
I felt that emailing my existing list multiple times during the week would only alienate people, causing them to complain or unsubscribe.
Reality – I lost only 7 subscribers.
Hypothesis 2 – My open rates will drop to practically nothing
Again, I figured I would be annoying the daylights out of my existing list, so I figured that they would get tired of looking at my emails and not open them.
- The top line (blue-green) shows my open rates. At the very beginning of the month my open rate was just a little above 30% and holds at 25% at the end of the month.
- Red dashed line is what MailChimp reports as being the industry standard (16%) open rate for emails in the education industry.
- The solid blue line on the bottom is my click-through rate, aka CTR.
Reality – Over the course of the month my email open rates only dropped by about 5 percentage points. This was a big surprise to me, and it was very encouraging.
Certainly I have a lot of work to do to increase my click-through rates, but the good news is that it looks like people will stick around for the journey.
Hypothesis 3 – Traffic to my blog will not increase
When I published articles in the past, I might get excited about it for a week or two, but my enthusiasm would then fall away because I wasn’t seeing any real results on my blog.
This is what caused me to form this educated guess about my traffic not increasing. I figured I was just going to see more of the same results I’ve seen in the past.
Before I show you the overall results, let me add the caveat about my paid search traffic in the month before my March experiment.
I really enjoy running Facebook ads, and I ran a few in February.
In the graphic below you can see that in February I had 237 people visit my site from Facebook. You can also see that I ran no ads in March, therefore 0 Paid Search traffic.
The question now becomes: did my frequent publication on my blog make up for the lost traffic from Facebook?
In the image below you can see the big metrics — both Sessions and Users — were down, 26% and 40%, respectively.
Interpretation: Rather than buying traffic through ads, I was able to replace 74% of my traffic (100% – 26%) with non-paid means such as:
- Email (additional 23 sessions vs. prior month)
- Organic reach (additional 71 sessions vs. prior month)
- RSS visitors (additional 29 visits vs. prior month)
- People discovering my site through the Disqus commenting system (additional 38 visits vs. prior month)
As one would expect, I saw significant increases (over 650%) in people clicking through to my site from the emails I had sent.
My RSS readers more than doubled! (170% increase)
People clicking to my site from the Disqus commenting system accounted for gains as well.
Reality — While I lost paid traffic by my own choosing, I added gains in organic reach, email traffic, RSS traffic, and traffic from my Disqus commenting system.
[shareable text=”Regularly publishing to your blog really does improve your results! Click to find out more.”]Regularly publishing to your blog really does improve your results! [/shareable]
Unexpected Bonus #1 – I gained new email subscribers
Several weeks ago I subscribed to a product called OptinMonster.
The idea here is that you can create great opt-in forms for use on your website.
The type of opt-in form that attracted me is what is called an “after-post opt-in”. If you scroll down to the bottom of this email you will see an example of an after-post opt-in form.
When I was taking the stats for this blog post I was blown away to find out that my very first after-post form had already collected three conversions!
I know, I know. The purists out there will tell me that a conversion rate of 2.2% is dismal, and that they are able to get a 98% opt-in rate from people who have been dead for 2 years.
Congratulations to them. I’m just happy to be on the board here.
This is my very first step and my very first success in using an after-post opt-in. I can’t wait to do even more of these in the future.
Unexpected Bonus #2 – Organic traffic to my site more than doubled.
This one caught me by complete surprise.
As I said before, in my earlier attempts at blogging I would get very discouraged because I wasn’t seeing any improvement to my blog’s traffic numbers.
What blew me away is that this month my organic traffic more than doubled.
I’ll reiterate what I mentioned earlier. I made little attempt to optimize these articles to be noticed by a search engine.
In the image below you can see my site traffic has increased by 129%!
With the success here, I’m now even more emboldened to try some SEO tactics in the next 30 to 60 days as I continue this experiment.
Unexpected Bonus #3 – I gained new YouTube subscribers
I mentioned before that my schedule called for creating one video each week.
I post these videos out to my YouTube channel so that YouTube can host the videos, and I also publish links to these videos on my blog.
What surprised me here is that my increased activity on YouTube also drew three more subscribers to my YouTube channel.
My YouTube base is minuscule, and I haven’t been focusing on it for years.
I had five subscribers at the beginning of March, and now I have an additional three that I just added in the past 30 days with zero effort whatsoever on my part to grow my YouTube subscribers.
This is just an extra bonus that happened, and I wasn’t even looking for it.
Conclusion
I had a blast publishing the articles and then collecting the data. My key takeaways are:
- Publishing is a lot of work. It pays to have someone help you.
- Your audience will not abandon you. Just be certain to continue providing content they want.
- I now believe that publishing more frequently actually does grow the organic traffic to my site!
- After-post opt-in forms work. Again, just make certain to provide great content.
- I should add Facebook traffic for specific product-based campaigns.
- I realized unintended gains in my YouTube subscribers.
[reminder]What is your experience with publishing regularly to your blog and/or your email list? Does it work for you? If so, please share![/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Apr 4, 2016 | Uncategorized
[youtube id=”3OafWfhXOCM”]
Showing up for yourself, for your business, and for your family are key ingredients to being a fulfilled entrepreneur.
Today’s video contains one question you need to ask to guarantee your happiness.
[reminder]How can you start showing up for yourself this week?[/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Mar 23, 2016 | Uncategorized
I am a huge fan of Michael Hyatt, his GetNoticed! theme, and Platform University. I really like how he is using the Smart Podcast Player, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work when using RSS with MailChimp.
I really enjoy watching how Michael and his team accomplish what seems to be the impossible each week.
Recently I have considered reviving my podcast, so I turned my attention to how Michael does it.
The User Experience I Want to Emulate
In particular I want to be able to use RSS to feed my blog posts and my podcasts to my reading list.
I really like the look of the audio player that Michael uses. I don’t get around much so I had never seen this player before, and I just assumed that this was one of the custom coded things that Michael does for his site.
Not so.
Turns out the player is the Smart Podcast Player available (for a small fee) by Pat Flynn.
I subscribed to this WordPress plugin to test out the player on my site. I was very surprised to learn that the player does NOT survive the transition through RSS to my MailChimp emails!
Trouble in River City
After installing the plugin and putting the player in a test post on my bl0g, I sent the post to MailChimp.
No Smart Podcast Player appeared in the ensuing email.
At all.
Not even a hint that a player ever existed in the original post.
At first I found this really hard to believe. I thought for certain that the plugin was some HTML5 player that does well in email.
I had tested HTML5 players before, and I did not experience this problem. They survived the same RSS-to-MailChimp test with ease as evidenced in the following screen capture.
What to Do?
I took a second look at Michael’s email that I was using as a baseline. Turns out the “player” that shows in this email is not a player at all.
It is just an image with a built-in link.
This was confirmed after hearing back from the tech support person (Ray) at the Smart Podcast Player Support Team.
So now I have a dilemma.
Why do emails sent through MailChimp via RSS from the website show an image that does not exist in the blog post?
I can’t tell you exactly how long I beat my brains out over this.
I’m not a coder, but I eventually figured out how to do it. At least this method works for me.
Here’s the Answer
There are two parts – 1) the code that you’ll need, and 2) a clickable image that looks like the player
It turns out that you need to use something called a “fallback” image. Again, I’m not a coder, so I had never heard of this.
A fallback is your plan B in the event that something doesn’t load properly. In this case, if the player doesn’t load properly, then resort to plan B — our image that looks like the player.
The Code
I had to comb through the plugin code to learn how to call the plugin without using the shortcode. This is important because I could not figure out how to make the fallback image work while using the shortcode.
In the code snippet below you will notice that I do, however, start with the shortcode. Notice how the url field is empty and no other parameters are listed.
I had to do this to “wake up” the player to let it know I would be passing it some parameters. There must be some javascript here that calls the player to attention.
This is a critical step, so do not leave out this initial shortcode. I could not get the rest of this to work otherwise.
[smart_track_player url=" "]
<object class="smart-track-player" width="300" height="150" data-url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/Your_Podcast_Name/Your_Podcast_Episode.mp3" data-download="true"
data-speedcontrol="true" data-title="Your show title here" data-paid="true" data-social="true" data-social_twitter="true" data-social_facebook="true" data-social_gplus="true">
<a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/Your_Podcast_Name/Your_Podcast_Episode.mp3"><img src="http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/20xx/yy/Your_Fallback_Image.png" alt="Click to hear Jason's Podcast" border="0" /></a>
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/itunes_podcast_name/idXXXXXXXXX">Subscribe in iTunes</a></object>
In the event that you want to look for more parameters to pass in this html, try this:
- Go to WordPress -> Plugins -> Editor
- Select Smart Podcast Player from the dropdown
- Find and double-click on smart-podcast-player/classes/core.php in the right-hand menu
I found all of the parameters I needed by going through this core.php file. Do a search on “<div” (yes, leave out the last “>”) and this should take you to about the middle of the file where the parameters live.
The Image
I created the image by creating an instance of the player and then simply taking a screen capture (on Macs, use command+shift+4).
You might be wondering how to get the player to look like the one that Michael uses. Notice how his player has only the arrow and the circle. The download icon, the speed icon, and the share icon are all missing.
If you want to create a version of this all you need to do is use the code above but strip out the parameters defining social and downloads, etc. Try pasting this code to your site.
<object class="smart-track-player" width="300" height="150" data-url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/YourPodcastShow/Your_Podcast_Episode.mp3" data-paid="true">
Just preview the post and then take a screen capture of the image.
Trim out the left half of the bar with a photo/image editor. Otherwise, you will get a long thin bar (above) instead of a shorter one (below) which looks better on mobile.
Upload this to your WordPress media library and then put the image url in the first code snippet I provided.
The Results
Now I have a podcast post that functions much the way Michael’s does in that I can pass the “player” in an email that is generated through RSS!
[reminder]If I can answer any questions for you, just drop them into the Disqus box below.[/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Mar 21, 2016 | Uncategorized
[youtube id=”UZlsygkWKxU”]
This short video will help you grow more than any single activity you do this year.
This quick exercise that you can do in less than a minute will lay the foundation to more success than you think possible.
Click now to get started.
by Jason Owens | Mar 18, 2016 | Uncategorized
I knew the documentary Blackfish was a powerful story when I first wrote about it two years ago.
What happened yesterday is yet one more reminder that people with a message can change the world.
I believe this world-changing ability is available to each and every one of us!
Blackfish director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, not only created an award winning documentary on the treatment of orcas at SeaWorld. It turns out she added fire to a movement.
While SeaWorld had been under pressure from environmentalists in the past, Blackfish was the spark that ignited the powder keg.
Blackfish caused a public backlash against SeaWorld (causing the company’s stock price to suffer), and the movie even inspired action by PETA.
[shareable cite=”Jason R Owens”]Each of us has the ability to change the world![/shareable]
Due to the relentless public pressure and mounting financial losses, the company had to take decisive action.
Yesterday SeaWorld announced the company is ending its orca breeding program which has drawn great criticism after the film.
SeaWorld has been listening and we’re changing…Society is changing and we’re changing with it. SeaWorld is finding new ways to continue to deliver on our purpose to inspire all our guests to take action to protect wild animals and wild places.
Cowperthwaite praised the announcement and added that she will continue to lobby for changes in the aquatic theme park industry.
Imagine what you can do.
Imagine the impact that your life can have.
[shareable cite=”Jason R Owens”]Who is going to change the world? YOU are![/shareable]
Keep dreaming.
Keep pressing.
Keep chasing.
Your efforts are going to lead somewhere.
Your work is going to change lives. In fact, your work is probably changing lives already!
We need you!
Keep fighting!
[reminder]How do you want to change the world? What cause do you want to champion, or what injustice do you want to see righted?[/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Feb 28, 2016 | Self-Employed Sweet Spot
[featured-image single_newwindow=”false” id=”6374″]
One of the best parts of being a self-employed dad is the flexibility I have with my hours. Just because I work a lot does not mean that I have to skimp on time I spend with my daughter.
This weekend I knew that…
- My wife would need some time away to recharge after a stressful few days at work.
- My kid would want some quality father-daughter time.
- I had not yet reached my goals for the week at work.
[youtube id=”vG1q-UDf3Kg” height=”350″ width=”570″]
Here is how I created space to…
- Provide some breathing room for my wife
- Do some great father-daughter activities
- Fit 3 hours of work into a Saturday.
[shareable cite=”Jason R. Owens”]Being a Self-Employed Dad can be very rewarding![/shareable]
This Weekend’s Self-Employed Dad Schedule
The day begins fairly early for a Saturday…
- 7:00 rise early and surprise my family with fresh Dunkin’ Donuts.
- 7:30 to 8:30 Breakfast as a family.
- 8:30 to 10:30 at Starbucks to do work for my business. Wife is spending time with daughter.
- 10:30 Back home. Put ingredients in the bread machine for homemade pizza dough.
- 11:30 to 12:30 Have lunch with the family, then wife is off to have fun.
- 1:00 to 2:00 I take kid to Defy Gravity (indoor trampoline park)
- 2:20 to 2:50 Take kid Sweet Frog for frozen yogurt after exhausting trampoline workout.
- 3:00 – 4:00 Back at the house. Down time for the kid. Work time for me.
- 4:00 Father-daughter prep home made pizza. Wife returns home. Dinner as a family.
- 5:30 Set up our make shift theater for family movie night on the big screen
Some of you may wonder if I bailed on my kid while she was at the trampoline park.
No way.
I didn’t hole-up with the mass of bored parents in the lobby while my kid had fun.
Sure, I had planned on sticking my face in my laptop to steal an hour, but it just didn’t work out. My kid still needed some help navigating some of the obstacles, so I jumped in to encourage her.
[shareable cite=”Jason R. Owens”]With a little creativity self-employed dads can enjoy great relationships with their kids![/shareable]
The 3 Ways that Being a Self-Employed Dad really rocks!
- When I’m not traveling to give a talk, this self-employed dad does most of his work from home. This means I get to put my kid on the bus in the mornings.
- Once a month I schedule a special day with my daughter to go to school to have lunch with her.
- As mentioned above, my schedule is usually pretty flexible, so this allows me to be with my daughter when I need, and to work when I need.
[reminder]What special tips can you share about blending work and family time as a self-employed worker?[/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Feb 16, 2016 | Sales
A few years ago I was listening to a podcast from Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life. This episode was a beginning-of-the-year address, and may have even been his sermon for that Sunday.
He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Your goals are going to take longer than you think, so you might as well get started.”
No truer words could be spoken.
1) This will Take Longer than You Think
I chose to list this one first because the #1 skill I see in short supply in newer entrepreneurs is the skill of handling disappointment.
I’m a huge believer in something called expectancy theory. I’ve seen this at play a number of times in my experience, namely with regard to unmet expectations.
People often feel that they should experience some type of success at certain points in their journey. Namely, success should happen…
- More quickly
- On a larger scale
- With less expense…
However, when this expectation isn’t met (geek term: expectancy disconfirmation), people tend to get frustrated.
What typically happens is the person will take another shot — a very reasonable approach to be sure, but this usually leads to yet another brick wall. Hopes are dashed yet again, and this leads the would-be expert in a quandary.
What to do?
- Try yet another approach?
- Take a break for a few months?
- Just toss the whole mess in the can?
For most of us in the expert business, we are trying to become speakers, we’re trying to become thought leaders, or trying to sell information products.
This isn’t really a franchise approach to business. You don’t get to walk down a path that has been proven to work time and time again.
The problem with what most of us experts are trying to attempt or accomplish is that there are 100 ways to get to where you want to go.
When I was researching how new businesses form, I was shocked to learn that most of what I thought I was doing wrong was actually right all along!
[callout]Article Upgrade ->Here I share my biggest “ah-ha!” moment about how most new businesses really get their start. (Link may not work if you are viewing this in email) Email Readers Get the Upgrade->here[/callout]
It is natural to want to emulate other successful big-name experts.
You may even try to take the same steps that they say they’ve taken in growing their business. It’s not a bad approach, however it often does not work. Your natural gifts and abilities do not match those of the expert you are emulating.
The only way to really learn this is to go out there and try, take the risk, get in the middle, and discover your limitations.
[Tweet “The only way to really learn this is to take the risk and learn your limitations.”]
I wish I could tell you that there’s a better way to do this, a way that would save you some time.
Truth is finding your way often takes a lot of experimentation, and takes a lot of wrong turns, and takes an awful lot of feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing.
[Tweet “When building your business you may feel that you don’t know what you’re doing.”]
You have to get really uncomfortable with not having success for some period.
When I think of people that I’ve studied over the past 4 or 5 years I can name several who have gone down a path, did a great job of exploring it, made some money, and then figured out that they wanted to make a change.
Their existing path was good, but it wasn’t the best. That particular path
- Took too much time away from home.
- Asked them to operate in areas where they were not gifted.
- Required team members that were too expensive.
There are number of reasons why a particular path may not work for you, but you never know that until you travel down the path. And, yes, this takes time.
For those of you who know my story, you know that it’s been a multi-year journey of fits and starts and success and failure. Yet, the business is taking the right trajectory. It’s going in the right direction. I am making more money year after year.
It has been a hard fought battle with most of those battles being internal.
2) Your Faith can Play a Strong a Role
While faith plays such an integral part in the lives of many people, I don’t see experts in the start-up space paying a lot of attention to it, writing about it, or even talking about it much.
When I have asked entrepreneurs about their experiences with where God is leading them in their business or their ministry, it’s fascinating to listen to their stories.
[Tweet “I think intersection of our work and our faith simply does not get enough air time.”]
As entrepreneurs, we live lives inherent with risk, often overestimate our capabilities, and find ourselves in the occasional financial bind. It is only natural to think that we would turn to our respective faiths for help.
Sometimes I think God puts these desires – for us to want to share or message, to start a business, to monetize what we know – in order to get us to step out, to have faith that what He has asked us to do is, in fact, possible.
When I find myself in the middle of a wrong turn or having traveled down a path that is apparently leading nowhere, it’s very natural for me to begin asking why God let me down this particular path.
[Tweet “As entrepreneurs, we live lives inherent with risk, often overestimating our abilities.”]
I can think back to this past week where I really felt like my back was up against the wall, and I needed to produce some results. I was really leaning into God in prayer asking for some really specific answers, that He would bless the efforts of my work, and that it would not all turn to sawdust.
I was asking for guidance, for some type of confirmation.
[callout]
Article Upgrade for Blog Readers -> Check out the resources I use when praying for my family and my business.
Article Upgrade for Email Readers -> Or click here if reading this vie email
[/callout]
Rather than getting a direct answer to my prayers I often hear, “Hey, I’ve given you skills and talents. Go figure it out. I am with you.”
Specifically, I don’t hear, “Everything is going to work out” or “You are going to make a ton of money at this”.
So, the good news is…
- I’m not alone in my business pursuits.
- I get to do what I feel is best.
Pretty good deal, eh?
Blaise Pascal called this “The dignity of causality”. We get to be part in God’s creation. We get to work, create, shape, prune, and bring things to life.
God is effectively saying, “It’s your nickel.”
3) You will Lose Your Path Before Finding it Again
If you have the luxury of being tutored by someone who is in the expert business, to go with them to their events, to sell materials from their book table, to be with them as they cold call for speaking engagements, then by all means sit at this person’s feet and absorb everything you can.
Mentoring at someone’s side will lead you to a lot greater clarity about how to make this business work for you.
[Tweet “Mentoring at the side of an established expert will lead you to much greater clarity.”]
For the rest of us however, the ones who don’t have that luxury, it’s simply going to take an awful lot of exploration to find out what’s going to work for you.
You may feel very called to write a book, and let’s say that you do write that book. You put a lot of effort into launching it, and you end up selling some copies!
However, at some point you will discover the string of your successes is only going to be so long.
You are going to reach the boundaries of your competence, and this isn’t a bad thing.
[Tweet “At some point you’re going to reach the boundaries of your competence, and this isn’t a bad thing.”]
Not that this is any deficiency of yours. It’s just simply a matter of experience.
You’ve never been down this road before. You may have never even written a book before, but yet you’ve managed to
- Write a book
- Get it published
- Do a book launch
- Sell some copies
You’ve managed to ring the cash register! You have to understand how many people would’ve never even made it this far.
Yet, I’ve also known many people to miss their bookselling goals considerably.
The numbers here are not important. We all have our own numbers that were aiming towards, but let’s just say that you ended up missing your goal — by a lot.
It is very natural to get discouraged by this, and at that point you may end up running off into a different direction.
Which is totally fine!
As your book is on the shelf for a while, you might get excited about having some type of a membership site. Maybe you’ve grown your email list over the past six or eight months, and you’ve decided that what you know when your book can be supplemented by great membership site.
So you go down the path of making a membership site. Only to find out here, that you don’t really know as much as you thought you needed to know about membership sites, and the whole technical aspect overwhelms you.
You put together a membership site as good as you know how, and then do a trial balloon launch too people on your list.
You get a few takers, and receive only luke-warm feedback.
[Tweet “Building an expert business? There are 100 ways to get there.”]
You have put in a tremendous amount of time only to realize that you won’t really see any return on your investment any time soon.
In summary…
- You have written a book
- You have sold some copies
- You’re able to bring the cash register,
- You tried launching a membership site and that fizzled.
So at the end of six or eight months of work you have put an awful lot of time into this, and are really starting to wonder if this whole expert business is all that it’s cracked up to be.
This is totally normal!
I can’t tell you how many times I run into situations where I talk to people who have put in a ton of work into a product, and sales did not take off the way that they thought it would. This does not mean that you’re doing anything wrong.
In fact, you’re doing a ton of things correctly!
- You are leaning into your problem.
- You are having faith in your skills and abilities.
- You are taking risk in your life to believe in yourself.
All of these are qualities that makes a person good at being in the business of promoting your expertise.
[reminder]What is the biggest blindside that hit you as you are growing your expert business?[/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Aug 30, 2015 | Sales
I know many of you are hard at work breaking through the noise that clamors for the attention of your target audience.
Me too!
If you are like me there are times when you wonder if you are doing the right thing, and if you’ll ever get noticed.
This makes it so special when you do get noticed and someone pays you a compliment.
It is absolutely priceless when you find your voice and people start resonating with your message.
This is what made it so special for me to see that one of my products got reviewed on a new site called smartBusinessPlanet.
This site is put together by Mitch Aunger (of Planet5d.com fame) and Abby Sayers. The sole aim of smartBusinessPlanet is to be a clearing house where solopreneurs can sort through all of the bajillions of resources available in the market.
Think of it as a Rotten Tomatoes for solopreneur education materials.
[Tweet “It is priceless when you find your voice and people start resonating with your message. @JasonROwens”]
I was fortunate enough to pop up on their radar a few weeks ago when they published this article on my Sales Workshop 6 Disc CD series. Check out the review here.
Also, they are doing a free book giveaway as part of launching their site. I was surprised to see the caliber of the books they are giving away — completely free!
[Tweet “Free business books mailed straight to your door! http://upvir.al/2863/lp2863 @smartBizPlanet”]
What I’ve learned since the review was published is that Mitch and Abby are looking to review more products in the upcoming weeks, and it is quite possible that they might review your material as well. Drop Abby a line here to submit your product or service for review.
[reminder]What are the most important things you want to learn this year? Continue the conversation on facebook, twitter, or linkedin.[/reminder]
by Jason Owens | Jul 30, 2015 | Faith and Work
You were made for something more! Down deep most of us know this. We get a sense of it when we go to the movies or we feel our hearts tug as we read a good story. It comes as a haunting voice that we can hear only when we slow down long enough to listen.
We want to be the hero. We want to have adventure in our lives.
The good news is that there is plenty of adventure out here for those who seek it.
An epic story started thousands of years ago, and now you have a vital role to play. We need you.
Your New Identity
For many of us pursuing our best selves means trading in our current jobs in favor of self-employment.
We leave behind the identities we formed during the 5 years we spent in engineering, the 10 years we spent in accounting, or the 20 years we spent in HR.
The “sensible” thing to do would be to continue what we learned at our employer. If you worked in accounting, then become self-employed as an accountant.
But most of us don’t want to do the sensible thing.
When I talk to people who have left corporate America they are not continuing their old roles. Often they shed the accountant or HR title for something like chef, app developer, or even guitarist.
People sometimes choose a path that you might think was for the younger crowd. I’ve known plenty of people who want to go on the road — at age 40+! Some as public speakers, some as workshop leaders. Others want to start their own ministry.
Our hearts don’t always lead us to do what is sensible, but following the heart is often great medicine.
[Tweet “Following your heart is the best thing you can do.”]
We Need You
Please know that without you, our world slows to something less than perfect.
- Apsiring chefs, we need the new dish that you will cook.
- Authors, we long to hear another great story.
- Dancers, we love to watch you.
When you hold in your gifts, when you play small, it does no one any good.
You inspire us to take our own first steps towards greatness.
Let your light shine!
We you realize that living from your gifts and calling enables and inspires others to do the same, it gives you even more encouragement to continue on your path.
Your Adventure Awaits
Over the years I have come to realize that the thrill of being self-employed doesn’t come from being my own boss. The thrill comes from stepping into uncharted waters.
I remember when my wife and I were first married, and she would say, “Let’s go hiking and have some adventures!” Several hiking trips later I realized that “adventure” does not always mean “fun” or “safe”.
Be prepared my fellow traveler — if you seek self-employment, you will have plenty of adventures. I can’t guarantee they will be fun, and most of them are far from safe.
[Tweet “There is plenty of adventure out here for those who seek it.”]
[reminder]What is the larger story that you feel called into? Continue the conversation on facebook, twitter, or linkedin.[/reminder]
In particular I want to be able to use RSS to feed my blog posts and my podcasts to my reading list.
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