How to Reduce Risk As An Entrepreneur

Should I start a podcast?

Should I run Facebook ads?

Should I build a website myself?

Should I learn SEO?

Should I write 1 article per day?

Should I use a funnel builder?

Should I be on all social media channels?

Ok, you get the idea – as entrepreneurs, we have a million ideas and things we believe we need to pursue.

The decisions we make define us and our business.

As Jeff Bezos said, “If I can make 3 good decisions in a day, that’s a great day.”

How do we know which ones are bad and which are good?

How do we avoid going into the black hole? This is where we get lost in the startup wild spending time doing all the wrong shit.

It starts with asking better questions.

Asking better questions leads to better decisions.

In my experience, distractions are the enemy of progress.

So, how can you reduce risk with all these new ideas?

Here’s a process that has helped me reduce risk A LOT!

When faced with a big decision, consider these 6 questions first:

  1. What is the outcome or impact I’m looking for that hasn’t been delivered yet?
  2. If the outcome I need is missing or the gap is not closing what are the causes that are missing?
  3. How much time and effort would be needed?
  4. What is the price – other activities that must stop or start to make this happen?
  5. What is the probability of success or failure?
  6. What are the acceptable consequences – is the risk worth the reward

Remember, you only have 100% energy. If you focus on one thing you can give it 100%. If you take on another project yourself you must give something up.

If you’re making $0-$100 or less than $10k per month. Then you have very specific priorities to focus on that will create revenue flow.

When you are making $10k+ per month regularly, you will have different priorities.

When you’re making $50k per month regularly, you will again have different priorities.

Timing is a big part of what I talk about a lot because you can do the right things at the wrong time.

Everything in nature and the evolution of life happens at specific times.

For example, first, a caterpillar is born, then they make a cacoon, then they struggle to break free, then a butterfly capable of flying enters the world. BUT, if you remove the struggle, it won’t be able to fly anymore and the process will fail as it will die.

I literally just got off a Brand Studio Strategy call letting someone know they are NOT ready to work with me.

The timing is off.

Yes, I turn down business and I’m always brutally honest because I want the best for you. I only work with 3-4 people per month, MAX.

I’m so SICK of wannabe experts selling people tactical crap as the answer to their problems. Appealing to their desperation for a possible quick fix.

I recently had another Brand Studio Strategy call with someone last week who wanted to sell more e-commerce merchandise so they hired a Facebook Ad Agency. They had to spend $7k-$10k per month and that agency took their money and sold NOTHING.

They were not near ready and the agency should have told them that. It just breaks my heart.

Where are you in your process as a business?

When I work with people on branding and digital real-estate development (website pages and funnels) I go way beyond that.

I provide 4 months of advisory and strategic input. Weekly calls, and a direct line to me on Slack. Why? Because I know that’s what it takes to help someone get REAL results. Stay on track, make good decisions.

An agency will just build you a site for $10k and walk away. That doesn’t help small businesses and social entrepreneurs who are running solo.

Remember, asking better questions leads to better decisions. Better decisions lead to better results.

Use the six questions I shared as part of your process to reduce risk and you will thank me later.

Personal Growth and Development Starts Here (A Key to Business Success)

One day, I looked in the mirror and finally admitted that I didn’t have the discipline I needed to reach the next stage of my journey as an entrepreneur. This was holding back my personal growth and development which in turn held back my business.

That was a truth that hurt and I hid it for a long while.

I wrestled for 10 years, all year round. I competed at the national level representing Team New Jersey. I learned what it takes to break through to new stages of life.

But that was years ago and I somehow got soft.

I needed to change that.

I picked up a book called “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins. If you don’t know him, he’s a super badass who has done the impossible over and over. He’s the essence of personal growth and development.

He said, “If you have any mental toughness, any fraction of self-discipline; the ability to not want to do it, but still do it; if you can get through to doing things that you hate to do: on the other side is greatness.”

The ability to do what you need to do even when you don’t feel like doing it.

The emotional mind is very powerful. It can easily hold back your own personal growth and development.

It’s the biological side of us that makes us “feel”.

It’s 5am, the alarm goes off and you no longer “feel” like getting up.

But the day before, you decided it had to happen because you needed that extra time in the day. Perfect logical sense. But emotions can easily break logic when we don’t have discipline. Bye Bye, personal growth and development.

One Key to Personal Growth and Development

The difference between living the life we truly want to live and the life that we are willing to put up with can easily boil down to discipline.

Are there other factors, yes, of course, but without discipline, you got nothing.

James Clear wrote the book Atomic Habits. Great read if you haven’t read it yet. He said:

“When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations. Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”

He talks about habits and how to start with the least amount of friction so you can create new flows in your life and not bail out on them because they are too much.

A simple example is a daily planner I share with all the entrepreneurs in my Brand Accelerator.

I made this for myself for 2 reasons and it’s created a huge shift in my results.

Reason #1

There were too many mornings where I sat down at 5am with my coffee to start working and I would either feel like I wasn’t sure what I wanted to work and just start picking away at things, or I just hammered away at stuff I thought was needed. At the end of the day, I crossed a lot off my “to-do” list and felt like I got a lot done.

But then I would look back at the month or year and realize that all the tasks I didn’t add up to real progress. I just did a bunch of shit and painfully learned what not to do.

Reason #2

Two, it’s a simple one-page document that makes it easy to use each morning as a non-negotiable part of my routine. It forces me to work on things that actually matter.

Since using this, my business’s monthly revenue has quadrupled. No exaggeration. But my business revenue would not grow without the personal growth and development I was able to achieve through this process.

If you just sit down and start working you can either feel lost and unsure or you just do things that you like but don’t really matter to the critical path of your business. I see this happen to business owners ALL the time.

I know for a fact that some of you reading this will say, “not me Adam, I always know exactly what I need to do.”

Trust me I said that too. It doesn’t work, not if you’re going to build a real business.

The reality is that success in business and life is a pragmatic formula based on Universal Laws. It’s not just theory and philosophy.

Add up 2 + 2 and you always get 4. It’s a mathematical law.

When you do things a certain way, you WILL get certain results. I talk about this more in this free 30-minute training video I made recently.

Discipline is part of that equation because it drives personal growth and development which drives business growth.

Don’t justify your emotional responses. Don’t make excuses.

I have found through my own experience and others, nothing can ever improve in your life if you are not willing to be brutally honest about where you are now and why. That’s where personal growth and development starts, with the honest truth about yourself.

No matter what you want to do in your life, there is a price you have to pay to get there.

That’s not just money. It’s sacrifice, early mornings, late nights, travel, learning new skills, and doing things you aren’t comfortable with.

Without discipline, you’re inner voice and subconscious influence will rule you like a puppet master. You won’t achieve personal growth and development and your business won’t thrive because of it.

With discipline and self-awareness, you can break through to new versions of yourself which will open the door for your business to thrive.

Professional Website Design: When to Consider it and Why

professional website design

Just like having a great brand is instrumental to your long term success,  professional website design also plays a very important role. 

But don’t jump the gun just yet. 

When to invest in building a professional website and brand are dependent on where you are on your entrepreneurial journey. 

Like anything, timing matters. 

At what stage of our journey should we consider investing in professional branding and website design?

First we have to get clear about where we are as an entrepreneur.

2 Entrepreneurial Stages

It’s important to know where you are on your journey as an entrepreneur because each stage has different needs. 

I know it sounds simple but if that was the case then far more entrepreneurs would succeed.

Alex Charfen does a great job of identifying 9 stages an entrepreneur goes through. We will talk about 2 of them for example purposes that work for this discussion.

The first stage is a “Seeker.”

As Alex explains, “as a Seeker you have an annual sales revenue of approximately $0k to $40k. In the United States there are around 16 million businesses at this level. The challenge so many entrepreneurs on the Seeker level face, is that they try to do everything all at once.”

I see this all the time coaching entrepreneurs. They go in a million directions and lack focus on the critical path. 

The next stage is a “Starter.” 

As Alex explains, “The Starter is classified as businesses with sales of $40k to $100k. There are approximately 6 millions Starters in the United States. 

As a Starter, the question you’re probably asking yourself is “What is wrong with me?” You’ve started actually making real money but you can’t figure out how to make it scale, how to make it grow. You can’t figure out how to take it to the next level.”

I usually describe an entrepreneur who is selling but doesn’t have a polished brand and website the carbon stage. This is a rock that is full of proven potential and given the right conditions it will become a diamond. 

The truth is that most entrepreneurs never break free from the carbon phase to become a diamond because of fear, false stories they tell themselves, and getting sucked into the Black Hole.

Lost in The Blackhole (The Fatal Mistake)

The fatal mistake so many entrepreneurs make is that they get sucked into the black hole. Doing the right stuff at the wrong time and many times for the wrong reasons. 

By definition, a black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it.

We start ideas disguised as quick solutions and hope. They suck us in, taking us in all the wrong directions, and we get lost. 

Why Entrepreneurs Get Sucked Into The Blackhole

Entrepreneurs get sucked into the black hole because they are not clear about where they are in their business and don’t know where to focus based on the stage they are in. 

What happens more often than not is, we see other people doing Facebook ads, building incredible sales pages, optimizing every social media platform they can imagine, or starting a podcast, and so we start doing those things too. 

I mean, why not, they are all important parts of the business for us entrepreneurs. right?

Let me put it this way – let’s say you’re trying to get in shape and start going to the gym. Would you follow the same routine and diet a professional bodybuilder uses? Not likely because you’re not ready for that yet. 

So, why would you think following other successful people and doing what they do NOW, would be right for you and your situation? What they do NOW as they make 7 or 8 figures is not what they did when they made 6 figures. 

Doing the right things at the wrong time can be distractions that last months or years and become catastrophic to your success. 

This is why I jump on a call with people before we decide to help them with their business and it’s also why we don’t accept everyone. If you’re not ready, I will be very clear about that with you.

Professional Website Design: Not Ready vs. Ready

Now we know the Seeker and Starter stage of entrepreneurship and why so many entrepreneurs who are in the carbon phase (full of potential) never become a diamond – the black hole.

Now we can talk about when it’s appropriate to invest in professional website design and when it’s not.

You’re Not Ready If…

You’re not ready if you are NOT making money with a proven solution. 

At a minimum, you should have enough sales that give you proof of concept. Once we have proof of concept we know that we can replicate the success. 

This means you’re not even at the “Starter” stage yet. 

You’re still a Seeker. 

Let me share an example that I see many times. Some people start a business and they are 2 years in but all they have done is run a podcast and a blog, but never actually made any money (ie. selling a product, running ads, selling service). 

This is a red flag. 

Your focus should be on coming up with a hypothesis for earning money and proving that idea works, meaning it sells and it gets results.  

That’s it. 

You don’t even need a website to do that. 

Everything else is your black hole at that point in your journey. 

Once you prove your hypothesis, then professional website design will help you sell more but also set you up for long term success.

I talk more about what good website design actually means to you and your business later in this article. 

You’re Ready If…

You’re ready If you have an established business and you HAVE established sales. 

This means you have a product or service you believe a specific group of people want so they can get a specific result AND you have made sales to prove you are correct. 

This goes for e-commerce, people selling courses, memberships and, even agencies. 

I like to say you should be earning at least $5k per month. 

You would at least be at the Starter stage or beyond. 

At this point, you are ready to invest in a professional website design so you can accelerate growth. That’s right, professional website design is not just about looking good, it’s about being set up to sell properly.

A Professional Website’s Two Best Friends That Help You Sell More

Professional website design supporting people with food allergies

Aside from my experience being Director of Strategic Marketing at WebMD and running multiple businesses myself, I have spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs. 

Some are struggling to make 6 figures and others are best in class making 7, 8 or even 9 figures. 

I found that the ones who are really successful have 3 things in place while the others don’t.

Please note, that this is after you have proof of concept with an offer that sells. 

The 3 Brand Pillars that work together include:

  1. A great brand people fall in love with
  2. Professional website design (Trust & Credibility)
  3. Smart sales systems that scales (Path To Purchase)

Let’s dig a little deeper on each one of those 3 pillars to understand why they are important for you and your business. 

A Great Brand People Fall In Love With

I talked about this in my Story Mastery Workshop and even ran a great interview with a branding legend, Bernhard Schroeder who launched Amazon, Vitamin Water, Pura Vida, Yahoo!, and many more. 

Most people today completely misunderstand what a brand actually is. I talk about this in more depth here.

Great brands will win over great products all day long because in the long run products face competition and if people don’t love your brand they go for the best product deal instead. 

“ Brands that focus on the customer and stay relevant as a brand – meaning they continue to create a customer feeling that is uniquely positive –  will thrive and continue to be leaders. 

Companies that focus on building great products but not great brands will face competition over time and ultimately struggle in the marketplace. 

Brands, not products, rule the marketplace.”

~Bernhard Schroeder

When someone loves a great brand, they remain loyal and buy anything from that brand which means you have a long-term superfan.

I remember listening to a book by Pat Flynn called Superfans and he talked about how his fans were so loyal that not only do they buy whatever he offers, but when people talk bad about him or his company online, they defend him in a big way.

People don’t do that just because of a product he sold them. They do it because they have an emotional connection to Pat and his brand. 

You know what else they do? 

They tell everyone about Pat and his products. And word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of marketing there is today, not because it spreads the world, although that helps, but because a referral comes from a trusted source and therefore converts at a very high rate. 

Think about Apple. People LOVE the Apple brand. Android phones do all the same things but you could never convince an Apple fan to switch products. And if Apple releases a dud product, they still won’t lose customers. 

In 2019, the Edelman report found that 81% of people said they need to be able to trust a brand to buy from them. 

Some people say that attention is today’s most valuable resource.

But I would disagree because I believe trust is our most valuable resource today.

Anyone can buy attention. But they can’t buy trust. 

Your brand story plays a big role in connecting with people to build trust since it’s a fundamental part of the brand but it also increases your revenue.

“According to research by Headstream, if people love a brand story, 55% are more likely to buy the product in the future, 44% will share the story, and 15% will buy the product immediately.”

Investing in creating a powerful brand the right way is far more than pretty colors and a logo.

When we work with clients on their branding we dive deep into their business with a brand audit. This is no different than creating the brand strategy, I just look for the gaps. So many entrepreneurs don’t have this critical information which is just a recipe for failure. 

No matter how advanced they are, everytime we strategize information like purpose, mission, vision and positioning their eyes light up as they finally get hit with the clarity they need.

When your brand is created the right way you invoke a feeling from people across all touchpoints. Through your message, visuals and so much more. 

Businesses fire off many signals in different ways and your branding guides all decision making so it’s consistent and effective.

Now, hopefully you can see how important Branding is to creating loyal customers, repeat buyers and long term revenue.

Professional Website Design (Trust & Credability)

“Having a credible-looking website that is well designed was given a rating of 4 out of 5 in the relative importance scale in recent studies by usability.gov.  People rated the design of a website as the most important trust factor because it enhanced the credibility of the company and therefore made them more likely to become a customer.”

usability.gov

The process of creating your brand informs your website design, messaging and sales system.

A big mistake so many entrepreneurs make is creating a website before creating a proper brand – remember, a brand includes the development of a brand strategy that addresses key information around things like mission, category ladders, and market position…etc. 

If you haven’t read the book titled, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini, I recommend you do. 

As Cialidini stated, “Although it is generally acknowledged that good-looking people have an advantage in social interaction, recent findings indicate that we may have sorely underestimated the size and reach of that advantage.”

This reaction happens automatically without forethought.

The response falls into a category called “halo effects.”  That is when one positive characteristic dominates the way that person is viewed by others. Basically, we automatically assign attractive people favorable characteristics such as talent, honesty, and intelligence.

This means they are automatically trusted more.

I recently spoke to somebody who does well with their business. I won’t name names since she’s a client of mine now as I write this.

She was contacted by a site called Social Media Examiner who wanted to connect her to a celebrity based on her niche. 

Guess what happened? 

Not long after, she saw that the celebrity was working with someone else who actually had a sub-par product compared to hers. 

Why?

With a little investigating she found out that even though her competitor’s product was sub-par,  her website was polished with great branding, messaging, design, and user experience. 

That first impression won her the partnership and follows the human tendency Cialdini described from his research.

A well designed website earns credibility and trust which increases sales potential.

Just like good design, a good user experience shows the customer you know them and reduces confusion.

When we reduce confusion we gain more sales. 

Smart Sales System That Scales (Path to Purchase)

Now, we have covered what great banding means to your business.

We covered what a well designed website means to your business.

But what will all that mean if you’re not set up to sell with a smart sales system? I like to call a path-to-purchase or cashflow system.

It’s kind of like having a great boat and fishing pole but throwing a line out there without bait.

This is where it all starts to come together. 

There’s no sense in spending money and time to get traffic if you’re not set up to convert sales and scale. 

Would you rather bring 1,000 people to your site and get 10 customers or bring 1,000 people to your site and get 100 customers?

Would you rather earn $100 per customer, or $1,000 per customer?

The point is that a good sales system is designed to…

  1. Increase your sales conversion rate
  2. Increase your average lifetime customer value
  3. Scale with predictable sales

When I have a strategy session with a client to map out the path-to-purchase we cut out a lot of noise and identify any leaks so we can optimize results. This is huge in the long run for scaling sales.

CONCLUSION

Understanding where you are in your journey is important to decide what you need to focus on.

If you’re very early in the process like the Seeker, you have to focus your energy on proof of concept and reaching at least $5k per month. Anything else is a distraction sucking you into the black hole. 

If you’re an entrepreneur who is selling and you have proof of concept then investing in creating the right brand and professional website design becomes important for growth based on all the reasons discussed earlier in this article.

Great Branding + Professional Website Design + Smart Sales System = Long Term Success and Growth

A few ways those things work for you include:

  1. You become crystal clear on your brand strategy and market position
  2. Earn more trust from cold prospects which dramatically increases sales consideration 
  3. You have a sales system that scales
  4. You attract the RIGHT customers who are far more likely to buy 
  5. People who love your brand become loyal recurring buyers increasing total annual revenues
  6. You set yourself up for long term predictable success instead of little spikes here and there

If you’re ready to create a powerful brand with a high-converting website, I’d love to have a quick chat with you to see if you’re a good fit. This would be a call to learn more about your situation and find out if I can help.

Here’s a link to some more info and my calendar to book the call, super simple and it would be fun to connect!

Learn more and set up a time to chat here

– Be a Change Creator!

Uncover the True Meaning of Branding: Personal Brand or Corporate Brand (Avoid Common Pitfalls)

“Your corporate or personal brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints.”

Jonah Sachs

Apple is more than a tech company. TOMS Shoes is more than a shoe brand. Mercedes-Benz is more than an automotive establishment.

Millions of people worldwide tune in to Apple’s WWDC event each year.

For every pair of shoes they sell, TOMS Shoes gives away a free pair to poor kids.

Mercedes-Benz’s global brand value stood at $21.35 billion in 2020.

People love these brands – not just because of their memorable logos or promising slogans. Of course, that’s part of the branding equation, but great brands give off many different signals ranging from messages to visuals to user experience that express their core ethos through the branding experience. In other words, they all work together harmoniously. Consumers love interacting with their products because they trust them to deliver a unique and incredible holistic experience, but they also like what the brand stands for because it makes them feel a certain way.

These days, you can say that customers call the shots. Thousands of your competitors are already trying to catch your audience’s attention. People crave personal and engaging experiences. They are always looking to build long-lasting relationships.

In fact, Walker Consulting found that nearly 86% of consumers have claimed that they don’t mind paying more for a better experience.

Personal Brand vs. Corporate Brand

Some people say personal brand some say business brand and some say corporate brand.

You might be a course creator or influencer.

You might be an ecommerce shop.

You might be an agency or consultant.

Whatever the case may be, branding is going to be an important part of your business.

A personal brand is seen as positioning yourself as the brand and authority.

A corporate brand is positioning the business entity, not a specific person.

However, the development of creating the brand in either situation is the same strategically.

Now, there are some challenges that come with creating a personal brand that are worth serious consideration.

If you build a personal brand based on your name then the business success might rely on you as the face of the brand and if you try to sell the business later it might be more difficult.

In the end, branding is branding, and I’m going to break down what it means to your success and what so many entrepreneurs today misunderstand about it.

A Common Misconception About Branding

If you think that branding, personal brand or corporate brand, is critical, then you are right.

If you believe that you should invest your top dollars in it, then you are right.

But, if you think that solid branding is all about visual identities such as logo and colors, then you are mistaken. This is a common misconception I hear from entrepreneurs I coach or who work with us at our Brand Studio.

Strong branding isn’t as easy as most people believe it to be because it the combination of several important elements that make up the business and express who you are to the world in a way that drives sales in the end.

Building a strong brand isn’t an overnight process.

People all across the globe are under the wrong impression that building a solid corporate or personal brand involves:

  • Logos, Color Schemes & Website Design
  • Brand Mentions, Social Popularity & Links
  • Ad Campaigns, SERPs Visibility & Other Marketing Campaigns

If you think the same, then you are looking at branding completely wrong.

Think of those items as the surface of the ocean.

Authentic branding is much more complex and goes way deeper below the surface.

Brands like Nike, Starbucks, TOMS Shoes aren’t popular just because of their appealing visual identity because that is just a small part of a brand. Combine that with what they stand for, outstanding experiences they deliver, great products, and a culture people want to be part of. It’s like a status symbol.

You’ll see kids decorate their rooms with posters of bands they love because it reflects who they are and people pay $200 for a pair of jeans such as Diesel because it’s a status symbol. The brand means – high-end and being cool. Your business isn’t much different. People love Tom’s for what they stand for. Blake’s story is powerful and the idea of giving back to someone in need is something that people want to be part of.

Let’s dive deep into the realm of corporate or self-branding to uncover its true hidden meaning.

What is Branding?

One way to put it is…

“Branding is the art of becoming likeable, knowable and trustable.”

John Jantsch

Simply put, it’s how you make people feel the space you occupy in their mind.

Let’s say you’ve won a pair of shoes. Now, you are provided with the option to choose between two identical pieces. The only difference is that one pair is manufactured by Nike and the other by a no-name local manufacturer.

Which pair will you choose?

My guess – you choose Nike.

I could say that you didn’t choose Nike because of its logo or slogan. No, not those things in isolation. They are small cogs that are part of making a bigger machine work. You choose it because of the result created by those small cogs when combined with everything else behind the brand working harmoniously together. Nike has done a great job associating itself with high-performing athletes. And people want to feel that. Everything from its logo to products, to its origin story, is consistently expressed through visuals and contextual messages that make people feel a certain way.

For example, paint color isn’t the only reason why a person will fall in love with a car. Without performance, style and key features, the color is meaningless. But, when you combine this paint with the other elements, you’ll be winning hearts. Similarly, people don’t like Nike just because of its logo or slogan. Instead, it’s beloved because of its focus on delivering high-quality products and memorable experiences that make people feel like a high-performer.

When you consistently combine brand values with a smart visual identity, high-quality products, the right audience, and memorable experiences, you start to have a brand that people can’t resist falling in love with.

Sounds easy right? It’s not!

Corporate or Personal Branding is such a vast concept that most don’t know how to share a single sentence that encompasses its true meaning.

However, Branding Mag has done a decent job at defining branding:

“Branding is the perpetual process of identifying, creating plus managing the cumulative assets as well as actions that together shape the brand’s perception in stakeholders’ minds.”

Branding is a perpetual, i.e., a never-ending process. Just because you might be a small personal brand, you can’t just hire a graphic designer to build a logo or a copywriter to write your mission statement and slogan and be done with it. That’s not how it works. Instead, you need to ensure that your brand delivers a great experience to your audience at each stage of their journey. And that’s based on a strong brand strategy. It’s also why we give every client we work with a Brand Book.

Also, you need to identify who your target audience is, create a result-oriented brand strategy and manage everything that influences your brand’s position.

Cumulative assets include your visual identity, products, ads, content, customer support, sales funnel, services, human relationships, and so much more.

Here, your brand’s perception refers to its reputation. You’re not the only one sharing your brand story through all the different touchpoints. Every screen today is a word-of-mouth machine! If you don’t shape your brand right, people will tell your story for you and it might not be so good!

Developing your reputation means you need to create the right perception in people’s minds. That doesn’t mean you become something you’re not. That’s one of the biggest mistakes people make with their brand story. It means you dig deep into your truth to attract the right people. You need to build your brand’s perception in your audience’s minds. Not just your customers. Every single person who interacts with your brand.

This includes your customers, shareholders, employees, as well as business partners. That might be some or all of those depending on your business plan.

Let’s say you pour a cheap wine in one glass and a best-in-class wine in the other. Wine Spectator is a famous brand known for its ratings. So you label the cheap wine as the top-rated one by Wine Spectator and the best-in-class wine as the cheap one. The everyday wine drinker will see the approval of Wine Spectator and say it’s a great wine just because a brand they trust said so. People will buy anything Wine Spectator says is good.

And that’s the super-power of branding. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small personal brand or a massive corporate brand.

People will always prefer Nike over a no-name local shoe manufacturer. No one will pay $500 for local shoes. But just slap the logo of Nike on the local shoes, and it’ll sell like crazy. Branding can literally change how people interact with businesses.

You can’t make your audience purchase your products. But what you can do is deliver an outstanding experience, produce the top-quality product and consistently win their hearts. You need to build trust, authority, and credibility. Most importantly, you need to build a healthy reputation that’ll make your audience crave more.

Seth Godin once said, “A brand is a set of expectations, stories, memories, and relationships that, when combined, account for a customer’s decision to select one product or service over another.”

Right now, you should focus on:

  • Building a strong brand identity (personal brand or big corporate brand)
  • Increasing your brand awareness
  • Consistently delivering a memorable experience.
  • Offering top-notch products that actually solve their problems

That being said, let’s look at the reasons why branding matters.

5 Reasons Branding is the Heart & Soul of Every Business

“A brand for a company is similar to what a reputation is for a person. You can earn it by trying to do hard things well.”

Jeff Bezos

Whether you aim to build a personal brand or one for your business, here’s a list of the five reasons why branding matters:

  1. Represents the promise made to your customers/clients.
  2. Clarifies Focus, i.e. Positioning & What You Stand For
  3. Helps Build Long-Lasting Relationships
  4. Guides Marketing & Advertising Efforts
  5. Engages & Aligns Employees

Let’s touch on each one now with a bit more insight.

1 – Represents the Promise Made to Your Customers/Clients

Let’s look at Amazon. When Jeff Bezos launched it in 1995, he already wanted it to be an everything store.

Initially, the platform only sold books. But just look at it now. Whether you want to purchase the latest iPhone or clothes or groceries, you can hop onto Amazon and add products to your cart.

Jeff Bezos never lost sight of what he wanted Amazon to be. And soon, he built a brand around it.

Jeff Bezos’ vision made its way into the brand’s logo by showing the arrow that sweeps from ‘A’ to ‘Z.’ This is a perfect way of representing that if there’s anything out there in the world, you can purchase it on Amazon.

Jeff Bezos has done an outstanding job of defining his brand. And that’s how he kept his team focused on the things that actually mattered.

Amazon’s Mission Statement:

We aim to be Earth’s most customer centric company. Our mission is to continually raise the bar of the customer experience by using the internet and technology to help consumers find, discover and buy anything, and empower businesses and content creators to maximise their success.

Change Creator founder Adam Force had a great discussion with Bernhard Schroeder, the man who built and launched the Amazon brand. You can listen to that interview here.

Branding isn’t just designing your website, products, or logo. Those are all important parts of a much bigger picture but branding at its core is how you make people feel and the promise you make to your audience.

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Bernhard…

“ Brands that focus on the customer and stay relevant as a brand – meaning they continue to create a customer feeling that is uniquely positive – will thrive and continue to be leaders.

Companies that focus on building great products but not great brands will face competition over time and ultimately struggle in the marketplace.

Brands, not products, rule the marketplace.”

Bernhard Schroeder

And at the end of the day, you need to live up to your words. That’s the secret ingredient to building a strong brand. People today see through the bullshit.

You’ll be known for the promise you fulfill, not the ones you make.

Successful branding allows you to make a promise to your customers and helps you align it with your business goals. And that’s how you can make the real difference.

Clarifies Focus, i.e. Positioning & What You Stand For

By building a brand, you’ll be telling them who you exactly are. At the same time, you’ll be telling your audience who you aren’t.

This will help you build a result-oriented positioning statement that differentiates you in the market. Your promise will help you build a strong purpose statement that helps you align with who you exactly are.

Also, it helps you tell the customers/clients what to expect from you. Finally, you will be able to put in front the things that actually matter.

In short, strong branding clarifies focus and becomes your North Star for everything you do. Not just yours, but of everyone who’s a part of your brand.

Brand positioning is one of the most critical steps we take with clients at our Brand Studio and always becomes an eye-opener.

Helps Build Long-Lasting Relationships

What’s the one thing that people are really afraid of these days? That’s engaging with an all-talk, no-action brand. People hate losing their money, especially to brands that greenwash or just don’t deliver on their promise.

And if you really want to build a successful brand, your focus should be on building long-lasting relationships. Strong branding helps you live up to your promise and focus on your audience’s emotions.

“If you want to sell it, they need to feel it.”

Human beings are emotional creatures. We want to be rational. Most of us even prepare a pros and cons list. But, at the end of the day, we make decisions based on how we feel.

Great marketing wins through emotion and seals the deal with logic.

That’s the reason you should make sure that your brand invokes elicit emotions. This is the power of storytelling and why we must master that craft. Your customers should feel good when they hear your brand’s name or come across your logo.

Strong branding allows you to deliver top-notch products and deliver the best possible experience. And consistently living up to the promise will help you build a loyal customer base. Sooner or later, your customers/clients will feel positive about your brand. They’ll even refer your products or services to their loved ones. Solid word-of-mouth and if you’re lucky maybe some earned media!

And that’s the beauty of it.

Guides Marketing & Advertising Efforts

Strong branding helps you identify what your mission statement is and what kind of person or company you want to be. Most importantly, it helps you identify what problems your prospects or customers face the most.

And based on that, you can create your stories and target your customer/client’s emotions. Not in a manipulative manner, but in an authentic and aligned manner so it really resonates. Delivery is about sharing the right story at the right time with the right people. You can invoke positive emotions, which will help you level up your marketing and advertising campaigns.

Great branding allows you to define your purpose and story clearly. Otherwise, your audience may never know what to expect from you or who you really are. A confused person NEVER buys! And when you run a small personal brand or a growing e-commerce brand, every customer counts!

Most importantly, it helps you align your story with their pain points. When you use these emotions and your stories in your marketing and advertising efforts, you’ll see a higher conversion rate.

That’s the power of branding.

Engages & Aligns Employees

As a business owner who employs a team or if you’re a smaller personal brand you might have virtual assistants and contractors, you need to ensure that everyone contributing to your business have one single goal that aligns with your brand’s purpose. This consistency in the delivery of your brand is essential.

A strong brand doesn’t just focus on its customers or clients. Instead, it also looks after the needs of the employees. Your employees are the brains of your business. They are no different from your customers or clients and should feel good working with you. They should be inspired to work towards something they believe in. That’s when they’ll be most productive.

Successful brands reward their employees. Also, they have a well-defined vision and a clear communication strategy. This helps them focus on your brand’s one true goal. And when they feel good about working for you and know what your brand actually represents, they’ll shed blood, tears, and sweat (that’s just a metaphor) to take your brand to the moon.

Build Your Personal or Corporate Brand Today!

Don’t focus only on your visual identity. Don’t just pop on Sqaurespace and use a template that doesn’t represent your brand and isn’t setup to sell for your strategy.

A corporate or personal brand goes way beyond that.

Remember, great brands always win over great products. Why? Why because when people love a brand they won’t leave you when another product in the market delivers the same thing they will continue to buy whatever you offer.

And always make sure that you are delivering the best possible experience to your customers.

So, what are you waiting for?

Sow the seeds today.

~Be a Change Creator!

How to Develop a Sense of Self to Live The Life You Want (Expert Interviews)

For years I never developed a real sense of self. But once I finally hit a new low I had nothing else to blame but myself.

Why wasn’t I living the life I wanted? Why couldn’t I figure out the secret that others seemed to have unlocked? Was I lacking a clear sense of self?

Creating the life you want, in my opinion, means that you spend time with your family the way you want, you earn money the way you want, you travel the way you want and so on. This is why I love entrepreneurship, you create money how you want and shape the life you desire.

I knew all the business strategies and tactics, heck, I helped create strategies for some of the biggest brands in the world while working at WebMD as Director of Strategic Marketing. Yet, I was still stuck trying to create the life I wanted.

I tried it all and spent at least $100k before I finally took a hard look in the mirror at myself and realized I was in my way.

It was the last possible roadblock.

Imagine a dog that you bring into your house as a puppy. The dog is domesticated. Meaning it is trained to live by certain rules you teach it.

As children, it’s no different. We are told many stories – what is right, what is wrong, what we are good at, what we are bad at, what is pretty, what is not, how business and life works, how it does not work. The list goes on.

The stories that run through your brain over and over makeup what you believe and can hold you back from doing what you were born to do, forcing you to behave differently on a subconscious level.

For example, let’s say you have a new computer and it’s in perfect condition to do what it was made to do. But then you get a computer virus. Because of that virus, the computer can no longer operate as it was intended.

Despite what the truth is the only thing that matters is what you believe to be true. That is where your energy will go to create that reality.

So, it was time to dig in and develop a sense of self that would allow me to become aware of what stories programmed me and how to change those stories so I developed a new improved sense of self and get new results in my life.

Only when you develop a sense of self and become aware of the stories that dictate your actions can you start to make changes.

I believe that creating the life you want is 80% mental programming and 20% strategy.

At the time of writing this, I have done over 220+ interviews for the Change Creator Podcast. There are many conversations where I talk to experts about creating your dream life, developing a better sense of self, and mastering the mind.

I want to share a collection of favorites to help give you great inputs from other experts who will inspire you with great perspectives so you can begin to develop a sense of self and begin shaping the life you want.

It doesn’t matter where you are in your life, this type of work is required at every stage of success.

These are in no particular order. Take the time to listen carefully and understand the powerful advice they share. This is key to reshaping your world.

In this collection of interviews, we explore the self as part of the journey towards transformation and success in our lives. Each interview offers a different part of the puzzle with each expert sharing their best advice to help listeners shift their perspective so they can become the next version of themselves.

Listen closely and you’ll hear common threads that will start to click and make a difference in your life.

When you start playing any of the interviews it will make a link to the show notes available.

If you find this collection inspirational, pay it forward to someone you know who could benefit too.

Peter Docker: Becoming a Great Leader For Your Business

Listen to our exclusive interview with Peter Docker:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

How do you harness the collective wisdom of teams to generate extraordinary outcomes? We spoke to leadership expert, Peter Docker, to get some insights.

More About Peter:

Peter worked with Simon Sinek for over 7 years and was one of the founding ‘Igniters’ on Simon’s team. He took his years of practical experience to co-author Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team, with Simon and David Mead. Published in September 2017, it has been translated into more than 25 languages and has sold over 380,000 copies.

In December 2019, Peter stepped away from Simon’s team to focus on sharing his wider insights into how organisations thrive. He is now working on his new book entitled Leading From The Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control.

A trained leadership consultant and executive coach, Peter’s commercial and industry experience has been at the most senior levels in sectors including oil & gas, construction, mining, pharmaceuticals, banking, television, film, media, print, hospitality, manufacturing and services – across 92 countries. His clients include Google, GE, Four Seasons Hotels, Accenture, American Express, ASOS, EY, NBC Universal and over 100 more.

Peter served for 25 years as a Royal Air Force senior officer, has been a Force Commander during combat flying operations and has seen service across the globe. His career has spanned from professional pilot, to leading an aviation training and standards organisation, teaching postgraduates at the UK’s Defence College, to flying the British prime minister around the world.

Peter has also led multibillion-dollar international procurement projects and served as a crisis manager and former international negotiator for the UK government. He has been married to his wife Claire for 33 years and has two grown-up children from whom he learns a great deal!

Learn more about Peter and his work at > https://www.whynotunlimited.com/

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host Adam Force co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership, digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and like to go big visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the change credit podcast, this is your host that on force. Hope you guys are all doing amazing today. Just a quick heads up if you missed our last episode was with Jeremy Pollack, we talked about creating a positive work environment to maximize success. There’s lots of great insights in here, guys. And we get into some really interesting conversation about, you know, higher traditional hierarchy structures in a business versus the flat structure that we’re seeing more of is there actually benefits to that or not. And Jeremy has a lot of great insights on that. So definitely check it out if you guys have not already. Today, we have a special guest by the name of Peter Docker. Peter has quite an interesting background. He’s a trained leadership consultant, essentially, and an expert. This is for like C suite executives. So for example, he’s worked with companies like Google, Four Seasons, American Express, NBC Universal, all that kind of stuff. And he works with their leadership team to bring more out of that company and that team, right. So he’s got a really interesting background in the Air Force, actually. So Peter served 25 years as a Royal Air Force senior officer, and he’s been a Force Commander during combat flying operations and has seen service all around the world. His career has really expanded from being a professional pilot, to leading an aviation training to leading an aviation training and Standards Organization teaching postgraduates at the UK Defence College, to flying the British Prime Minister around the world. Right. So I’ve been really interesting stuff. And so the other interesting piece of his background is that he is one of the co authors of the book, find your why with Simon Sinek. Probably a book you’ve heard of before the why became quite famous. So yes, Peter was one of the co authors of that book, he worked with Simon Sinek for about seven years until he went off and did his own thing. And he’s actually writing another book now called leading from the jump seat, how to create extraordinary opportunities. by handing over control, we’re gonna get into some of these leadership insights that he has to share that will help you with your business. All right. All right, guys, if you haven’t followed us on Facebook, follow us over there, you can join our group, I think we’re going to be making some adjustments to the group. It’s called Be a Change Creator. We’re going to narrow that conversation a little bit more into branding and storytelling. How do we convert more sales on our website, just really getting into those conversations, because that’s our wheelhouse. And we’re seeing a lot of people get benefits from from those conversations. So yeah, if you’re into that stuff, you want cash flow systems on your website, you want powerful branding, that’s going to be the place to be we’re gonna start talking more about it in that group. Alright. Alright, guys, you know what, without further ado, why don’t we just get into this? I do want to make mention that on our website, we have a new Insider’s Guide to discover stories that matter. And that’s this discovering stories that matter for your business. Like we don’t want to just make up anything, but we tell stories that actually are meaningful and make connections with people. And we don’t sit there at a screen saying, What do I do for my facebook live? What do I talk about? This will help really stimulate that thought process and be a great first step for you to understand the storytelling process. And we can go deeper we offer a workshop as well to go deeper on how to make them engaging, how to make how to get people to take action and join like what you’re doing with your business. Right. So one step at a time. The first is just how do we discover them make it interesting. And then in the workshop, we go a little deeper, we expand on those ideas. And then we also talk about how we get how we make stories, engaging and inspire people to take action, right. And we give a lot of really cool examples of stuff from our experience and all that good. Good stuff. So Alright, guys, so we’re ready to rock and roll. Let’s get into this conversation with Peter. Okay, show me the heat. Peter, welcome to the Change Creator podcast. How you doing today, man?

Peter Docker 04:35

I’m great. Lovely to be here. Adam. Thanks for inviting me to come on your show.

Adam G. Force 04:39

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And I had a great conversation with your buddy David. He’s a super cool guy. So I appreciate all your connections and stuff. Yeah, and it looks like you’re have a pretty, pretty extensive background. And I like to sometimes just know, before you even give us that snapshot of your background, just…What’s going on these days? Like, what’s the latest? What’s the greatest? And like, what’s your focus right now?

Peter Docker 05:05

Hmm. Well, I’m really, really fortunate because before this lockdown of this COVID thing that everybody talks about, we don’t have to go into, but it has changed our lives quite a lot. And for me, it’s the longest period in my life where I haven’t travelled around the world. And that’s been quite a step change, you know, because I just love meeting people. And I think I’ve been to 92 countries. And it’s fascinating what you learn. So that all starts but the reason I’m very, very lucky is because I’ve had a focus of writing another book. And that is, has been a joy. And it’s, it’s captured all of my attention and taken all my time. So I count myself very fortunate to have those moments of just peace, if you like. Yeah, focus on writing.

Adam G. Force 05:58

Now you’re one of the first people I’ve heard say that writing a book is a joy.

Peter Docker 06:06

Okay, that’s interesting.

Adam G. Force 06:08

Because most entrepreneurs are like, yeah, I want to share my ideas. I want to write this book with Dan. That is, that’s a tough process to go through. So everyone’s different. So I’m curious, just kind of your feelings about writing this book and your process? Like what gets you pumped up about it?

Peter Docker 06:25

Well, first of all, it’s about sharing what I’ve learned over, it feels like 300 years sometimes, but yeah. What am I now 58. So I’ve had quite a extensive few decades of lots of different careers, and finding myself in often some very challenging situations where my life was on the line, or the lines or others were on the line. And also, beyond that some of the work I’ve done working with some great leaders around the world, and so lots of good ones as well. Yeah, it’s really an opportunity to put down everything that I’ve learned the things that I wish I’d known 30 years ago. But having said that, I don’t regret anything that led me to where I am now. Because it’s all those experiences, the ups and the downs, the highs, and the lows, make us who we are. And it’s great to have the option to pull that together, and hopefully a fairly coherent way that I can share with with others, and it will hopefully help people regardless of where they are on their career path as an individual, or leading a company or a team or even a global organization. So yeah, that’s why I’m excited about it. And I’m just writing about my experiences, I guess that makes it relatively straightforward.

Adam G. Force 07:56

I mean, it could make it fun, for sure. And I’ve always, you know, I think about that kind of process. And like, Man, it’s a lot, but I could see kind of the excitement of sharing that stuff, like your personal experiences that could you know, can help other people. So what’s the name of this book that you’re writing? Now? I feel settled. And I know, I got an email from yesterday, and I saw your updates. I know you’re kind of still playing

Peter Docker 08:18

Yes, there we go. Well, no, we you’re hearing it first, it’s settled. It’s called leading from the jump seats. And it’s about how to create extraordinary opportunities by handing over control. Okay. And, obviously, the stories behind that title, but the focus is very much about how to lead intentionally such that we lift others up. So they become people who can take over and lead and we can take a step back. And the extraordinary opportunities that arise when we do that, because it’s going to end up that way at some stage. You know, if you are an entrepreneur just founded your business, you would hope that at some stage, you will have others who can take that dream on for you, when I don’t know you want to retire or you end up on the other side of the grass. We all shuffle off this mortal coil at some stage. And so when you’re working on something that’s really, really important to you. How about creating something that enables that to continue? After you’re no longer there to do it? It’s gonna happen anyway. So this is about being intentional, around creating that environment where people can step up and take forward your dreams.

Adam G. Force 09:39

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, and I hear a lot of talk to a lot of, you know, really great entrepreneurs and stuff. And there’s one of these guys I spoke to, he had 14 different exits, studies sold different companies. And he was talking about always having the exit in mind whether you plan on necessarily selling or not. It creates a frame of mind about how you’re shaping that business. And I’m seeing some alignment Cuz you’re kind of like, well, don’t you want to see it live on see, like, so if you’re not thinking about those things, you’re not going to create systems that do that stuff. You know, maybe you’re not, I don’t know. But I like the thinking of like, knowing where you’re going, in a sense with that vision, right?

Peter Docker 10:15

I totally agree. It shifts the context. You know, there’s there’s only three things in this world. There’s content and there’s context. Content is the stuff that we do, the things that we talk about, the work we’re engaged in. But context is what gives content meaning. Now, it’s like the puzzle jigsaw puzzle, where the context is the picture on the box that gives meaning to all those puzzle pieces. And so to your point, when we have the context of when do we hand over this, this business, who’s going to take it forward for us, it shifts how we view the people that we hire, how we nurture them, the environment we create, and it’s very similar to being a parent, you know, I’m lucky, we have two great kids, they’re grown up now adults. And it’s like, when you’ve got those young children some stage, they got to grow up, and they get to move out. And you invest your time and effort and energy in preparing them to lead their own lives, rather than relying on you to show them the way. And it’s exactly the same in any group of people who work well together. And that’s what jumpseat leadership is about.

Adam G. Force 11:25

Okay, interesting. Now, give us a little background, now that we kind of know where you’re at. And what’s exciting here today. Tell us just a little background on yourself. So we know what your experience looks like and where your real focus is, obviously, you’re writing this book on leadership, which is grounded in your experiences. So tell us a little bit. Like if you were pulling out some of the key things about your life, like let’s hammer on right now and give people

Peter Docker 11:54

rise? Okay, well, I’ve been very lucky, out of the sorts of things I’ve done, I spent 25 years in the British Royal Air Force in the military as an officer as a pilot. And I flew predominantly large aircrafts, either passengers or as a tanker giving away fuel to fighter jets, that sort of thing. And during that time, I was fortunate enough to lead a squadron, which is the main fighting unit of the Air Force. And also I was the British Force Commander during the Iraq War, the second Gulf War, where I had a couple 100 people under my care. Yeah, and we flew around in these big aircraft, these big tankers totally unarmed, getting shot out, which, you know, it was a bit irritating after a while, but thankfully, everybody I took out came home safe with me at the end of that, and that that was, that was a deep experience for me. Where at times, I felt completely out my depth, felt a huge weight and pressure of caring for my team. And trying to create a foundation on which they can do their work, and go home safe. Yeah, so that that was a peak if you like, in, in my life. I went on, I became I did all sorts of things. Also in the military, I was a negotiator for British Government with the American state department actually on business, on export licensing. I ran a $20 billion program, which was, which is quite large, as you can tell, yeah. I was a negotiator with the Russians on cooperation. After the Berlin Wall came down. I’ve worked in oil and gas mining construction after leaving the Air Force. And then, you know, for the past, what, seven or eight years I’ve been a speaker, keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, taking the ideas that I’ve picked up over all these years, around to my most corners of the world. And that has been one of the greatest joy is because quite often in this world, these days, we focus on what divides us. And after visiting 92 countries, I can see there’s so much more that brings us together than which keeps us apart. And that is a great message of hope, I think and possibility. So that’s been a huge privilege.

Adam G. Force 14:31

Interesting. Now you’re talking around the concept of leadership with your book, which is based on your past experiences. I’m surprised you’re not talking about negotiation. Now, is there a tie in there when you talk about leadership but it sounds like you have a lot of negotiation experience which gets into you know, understanding who you’re talking to and you know, the psychology behind you know, people but also kind of selling in a sense, right. So It’s like, I just see some interesting parallels and great leaders are good negotiators. So are there any tie ins, I guess, in some of what you’re putting together with that stuff, that experience

Peter Docker 15:11

I think that’s a really good observation there. I think life because most of us don’t live a solitary life, we’re with other people. Life is about negotiation. It’s about building relationships. Yeah. And relationship is the foundation of everything that we accomplish the relationship, the deeper the stronger relationships we build, the more we accomplish together, you know, just before this podcast, where you and I hadn’t met before, but we just spent a few minutes saying, Hi, I learned that you’re in Miami. I’m over here in England in the UK. And just getting to know a little bit about one another, enables us to interact better, I hope on this, this podcast. Yeah. So just broadening or deepening relationship, a small amount, enables us to accomplish more. So yes, negotiation is very specific, in terms of, you know, two sides often tried to find agreements, but it’s the same. When we’re running a team or a small business, if you’re starting up a business, you’re gonna have to talk to people, you’re gonna have to convey what’s really important for you, and listen, to understand what’s really important to them. And that’s relevant, whether it’s a supply you’re talking to, or whether it’s your internal team that you’re talking to, it’s about sharing your vision of where you’re going, why it’s important, and actually, being prepared to acknowledge when you don’t know how to get there. And that is one of the greatest strengths. In my belief of any leader, when you are taking a team forward into the unknown as entrepreneurs are, you know, we need to become comfortable leading, while not knowing the answer. I mean, care more about that if you like, but that’s really important. Negotiation comes into it. Understanding is key.

Adam G. Force 17:14

Yeah, I mean, is there a difference? So thinking as a leader, right, of my own company and making decisions and talking to beneficiaries, whether it’s a customer investor or partner, whatever it might be… What’s the difference between negotiation and selling? Or are they closely related in your perspective?

Peter Docker 17:37

Well, in my perspective, from my perspective, it really comes down to the same thing. And that is, first of all, us as individuals, we need to get clear on what’s really, really important to us, not just in that particular conversation, award negotiation, but in life. And I’ll explain why this is important, when we’re very, very clear on what we stand for. And the stand is something we believe in it goes beyond values, values actually aren’t as fixed as some people might like to think they are, they can shift a little bit on circumstances. But what we stand for, is non negotiable. And when we can tap into that, it drives us forward, regardless. So for example, for many of us family is important. Last year, I received a phone call from my wife, she’d been involved in a car accident. Fortunately, she was okay. But I dropped everything to go and help her there would be nothing that got in my way, right? Because that’s very important to me. And so when we translate that into business, we understand what really, really important which goes beyond you know, dollars. It allows us to be guided by that, particularly, when we’re in the unknown when we’re exploring something new. It gives us the anchor for who we’re being. Now, the reason that’s so important is that when we come then to negotiate or talk to another person, if we’re source ourselves from that stand the belief we come across as someone that can be trusted. We come across as someone who’s transparent, who you want to be around. This goes beyond in my view beyond being authentic. Seth Godin, I know you’ve had on your show, I love how you position it. Our right to be authentic ends when we’re about four or five years old. A five year old is authentic, just sharing exactly the feelings they have in the moments. But as we become an adult. We need to develop integrity. And that’s a filter for our feelings, our authenticity. We need to have that integrity. So link that to being very clear on what you stand for what you believe in, what drives you, and then having the integrity to follow through on that. That then builds relationships, whether it’s with your team, or with business partners that they can rely on that they feel they can trust you. Understanding what you stand for is so important, particularly when the road ahead gets a bit fuzzy.

Adam G. Force 20:30

Yeah, I mean, do you have a process or framework or just an idea of? Like, if someone is running a business, and you know, they’re trying to anchor themselves in what they stand for? Should this be naturally? A simple thing for them to define? Or do you ever find that people might struggle? It’ll be a cool, what’s I stand for a lot of things. So what’s my thing like in this situation, that I should really make the priority of what I stand for, you know, we stand for something very specific at Change Creator. And I see in conversations, a lot of entrepreneurs will feel like they know, I know, my mission, my vision, and what I stand for on things. But a lot of times they have a misunderstanding of how to like, come to the right conclusions of like, what’s most relevant and important for their situation. So just here, I agree and love hearing what you’re saying. Because Yeah, you do have to stand for something. Any thoughts on how people can kind of surface…What is the thing that you stand for? Like, what if you feel confused about figuring that out?

Peter Docker 21:44

Well, being confused about it is fine. It’s not necessarily simple to figure out. Let me talk about Change Creator. Let’s go to a specific here. So something drove you, Adam to drop the life that you have, which is beautifully articulated on your website, that manic life of New York of commuting each day, and you saw the light or however you care to describe it, and your site. Now I’m going to do something very different. And we’re going to create this podcast. So tell me what caused that for you? How did you get to that place?

Adam G. Force 22:31

Yeah, so essentially, it was seeing two things, I asked myself a question, what do I want to be doing 10 years from now? And will I be in the same cycle, the same rut? Digging it deeper in the type of work I was doing that I thought I was burnt out from travel and all that kind of stuff. But really, it was burnout because I was doing something that really wasn’t that meaningful to me. And when I saw the reach of business, in a very unspoiled area, plastic coming up on the beach, right? There’s nobody out there, there is no development. So how is that there? That really impacted me to say, Wow, we got to change the way we do business. And so I was like, how do I take everything I know and lean into that mission. And that is really what spiked it. I didn’t want to be stuck doing what I was doing. And I want it to help solve a problem that actually matter to me.

Peter Docker 23:30

Love it. Okay. So this is a great example, you know, you reached a point in your life where you knew something had to change. And you did that because of the experience that you’ve built up through? What not great experiences through the work, perhaps, that they were doing. And then experience in Costa Rica. This isn’t necessarily about going away and finding oneself, or having a eureka moment. But what it does mean is to experience as much of life as you can. I was talking to a young guy, Ben, who’s 18. And as I said to my children, when they’re growing up, you know, cow there and experience as much as you can. Because the more experiences we can develop of our world of our life, the more we can start to consolidate what’s really important to us. Yeah, whether it’s, you know, my daughter loves the the freedom of mountaineering. So she, she goes climbing a lot, and she’s been out in the Himalayas. And she translates, stands, what’s important to her through through the work that she does, which is about having people feel included and having people fully expressed and be able to be who they are. I was talking to Nick baynton to who is a CEO of a sauce, a multi billion dollar global fashion company. Money. And what he believes is that what a source believes is that everyone should be able to express who they truly are. And they help people figure that out through the very powerful medium of fashion. And they encouraged. Everyone have a look on their website, I saw suit is a brilliant website, they encourage people to go out to young people to go out and explore life, and to experience the excitement that can be out there. And as you go through this process, you will start to figure out what’s really important to you. Now, it might take you two years might take you five years. For some people, it can take a lifetime. Yeah. But if you it needs to be intentional, because if you are willing to just get up each day at seven o’clock, go to work, come back at five. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You might be perfectly content with that. And you might focus the majority of your energy on your family or friends or whatever, when you’re not at work. And that’s okay, that’s what’s important to you. But if you want to make a greater difference in this world, then you need to get to work on it get to work on experiencing as much as you can. So you can really crystallize. What’s important to you, what you stand for, and what you’re willing to give up to pursue that you gave up a lot. You got this? You did? Yeah, no, I can tell. And that’s the thing, when something is really important to us, we will give up. Whatever we need to give up, we will sacrifice time, energy and other things in order to pursue that. And when we take that into the field of entrepreneurs, whether we’re talking someone like Elon Musk, or whoever it was early on, Musk, you know that what he went through what he’s given up, ridicule, sometimes he’s attracted through is the suit of electric vehicles or creating a space company. But he was willing to sacrifice all of that in order to achieve what he’s trying to achieve, because he’s got a strong belief in the future of the human race, and the future of this planet. And he’s gonna use all of his resources in town to perfect that in a positive way.

Adam G. Force 27:13

Yeah, it’s fascinating to see because, you know, I would say 80% of the entrepreneurs, I’m talking to are social entrepreneurs, are people that have inspired their change, like we’re talking about to become a new leader, doing something that aligns closer to who they are, from a travel experience. 80% are coming from a travel experience. Blake Mycoskie, we interviewed from Tom shoes, Argentina, all the kids. Maggie doing Jake Orak.. all these guys had travel experiences that open their eyes, to give them this like energy that said, Wow, like, there’s this whole other world out here, all this stuff happening. I want to be part of this, you know, like, I want to change this, I want to help these people. And if you’re not out there to feel that sensory overload of like, what that feeling is to be out in that environment, watching things on TV, and just going through your routine here at the house, it’s really hard to have that same level of like, inspiration hits you.

Peter Docker 28:18

I totally agree. And linking back to what I mentioned earlier, I haven’t had the privilege of visiting 92 countries. Yeah, even though my only language I can really speak is English. Nonetheless, the the feeling I can get from different cultures and different people from around the world. It helps you realize that we’re all on this blue dot together. And, you know, what, what brings us together is much more than what keeps us apart. And it shifts our perspective, it gives us a fresh context. And if travel enables people to to land on what’s really, really important to them, what they stand for, they can then turn that as many of your listeners have into a commitment, and a commitment that we declare to others as you have with this podcast. You know, the existence of this podcast is a declarations, your commitment, to shift something to cause something to happen that wouldn’t ordinarily happen by itself. And that’s leadership. And the more we’re able to articulate what we stand for, and the commitments that we make, in relation to that stand, it can then attract others who want to be a part of that commitment. And we might have many commitments during our lifetime, but it’s what we’re focusing on. Right now. That’s important and the people who we attract to help us figure out how we can bring what we imagine into existence.

Adam G. Force 29:49

Absolutely. So you know, before we wrap up and stuff, I want to just talk a little bit about some of the insights that are in the book that you’re putting together around this idea of leadership. You know, here we are talking about taking a stand. And I think this is an important, like, foundation of a great leader is is taking that stand and having your story, right, we’re talking about the experiences and the story, really become the driver for what you’re doing and how you’re connecting now with the world based on that write that experience as leader. So let’s say we’re starting our businesses, and we’re going forward. What are some of the insights in your book, maybe one or two that stand out to you that you can share that are kind of like, really interesting lessons that people can walk away with and have an understanding? Like, yeah, I took a stand, I have this business, I want to be a great leader. What are some of those shiny moments that are written about that you can share?

Peter Docker 30:50

So let me come up with three. The first, and we’ve mentioned standard already. But let me be clear this difference between a standard and position? Okay, yeah, a standard is for something, a position is against. And with a position the existence of a position, while a position can only exist if there’s a counter position. Yeah, yeah. But a stands can exist on its own. A stand is like saying, right, this is my island, I’m going to plant my flag on this island. And you can see from my flag, what I stand for, and any ships going past, you see my flag, if they believe that they can come and join me on this island. but crucially, if they don’t believe that, that’s okay, they can sail on by on why this is really important to focus on a stand rounded position is that a stand for something is much more generative. And it can go on and on a position against something tends not to be so generative, it can be destructive sometimes. So I think that’s a really important distinction for for people to think about, whether it’s in business or in life, a stand for something, rather than a position against, generates so much more. The second is ego.

Adam G. Force 32:17

Big one.

Peter Docker 32:19

Everything that drives us, either comes from fear, or it comes from love. Everything. And it’s natural for us to become fearful on occasion. Yeah, if our life is threatened, then that’s the human reaction. But quite often, our life is not threatened, thankfully. And we live our lives through business, through our friends, family, and we can either be driven by love or fear is our choice. And ego can arise that comes from, from fear, fear of losing our status, reputation, what we’ve built, fear of not knowing the answer for something. And ego can come forward. And we’ve all been around people whose egos perhaps enter the room before they do, yeah. And it tends to make us feel a certain way. And the way it makes us feel is that we take a step back. And in extreme Extremis, we’ll just let them get on with it. Even if we can see that they come up to a full. Yeah. So being aware of your own ego is really important. And what we can use to replace ego is what I refer to as humble confidence. And then there’s where we’re very clear, resolute and focused on what we stand for, where we’re going. But we have a willingness to listen to others and to engage with others too. And create an environment where they feel able to contribute to whatever it is we’re working on. It doesn’t absolve us from making decisions. You know, if we’re the leader of a team or organizing, we still gonna make decisions, but it’s about how we listen how we engage with others. And that leads me on to the last thing, perhaps I’ll share, which is tapping into the collective genius. If we’re clear on what we stand for, if we have humble confidence instead of ego, then it’s helps us create the environment where we can leave in situations where we don’t know the answer, and instead, we can draw on those around us who can help us figure out the answer. Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur he talks about, he focuses on hiring people who are much smarter than he is. He then remains focused on their commitments, the joint commitments of the organization or the projects keeping that alive, bit like the picture on the jigsaw puzzle box I mentioned earlier, and he then invites others who are smarter than him to help him figure it out. And I think that one is probably one of the most challenging, particularly for entrepreneurs, where you’ve got this, you’re you’re the master of your own business, you know where you go, you’ve got this. And we’d like to know the answer to the problems that come up, we like to be the go to person and solving it. But if we’re only going to work within what we know, we become the drag on the process. When we start to become comfortable leading when we don’t know the answer, by having humble confidence, be very clear on where we going and drawing on others to help us figure it out. That’s when we can tap into that collective genius. That’s what’s helps us put people on the moon, helps create breakthrough electric vehicles, etc, etc. And it’s a particular skill to learn that all entrepreneurs need to learn at some stage, if they’re going to progress as fast as they can. Otherwise they become the drag on the system.

Adam G. Force 36:00

Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. And I think they all work together really well. And I remember reading something about NASA, I think it was NASA, where when they’re problem solving, and they can’t find an answer, they have a large network around the world could be teachers of science, like, you know, just all these different people. And I’m talking about just regular school teachers and stuff, you know, and they will send the problem out to this network of all these just everyday people doing their thing. And something that NASA would be stuck on for like a long time. Some teacher from a Podunk town will respond and and have the answer within like, you know, week time and they’re like, holy shit, man, like, and they tapped into the collective genius. Like, they’re not letting their ego get in the way. They’re reaching out saying, we’re going to this destination, we need an answer on this particular thing. And they reach out to the network and if they can’t figure it out, and they solve it faster, so it speeds up the process too.

Peter Docker 36:59

It does. And actually, since you bring up NASA, Adam. 51 years today, the three guys stranded in space on Apollo 13. What for those who don’t know the story, Apollo 13, launched in April 1970. They had an explosion on board the spacecraft as they’re traveling towards the moon, and three astronauts Jim Lovell, jack Swigert, and Fred Hayes were, well, their lives were absolutely on a knife edge. And well, the the short version of the story is they all managed to get back safe. Ron Howard’s produced the film in nice 95, Apollo 13, which I recommend to watch. Yeah, if you want to see how to lead where ego doesn’t get in the way where you have humble confidence, where you clear on where you’re going, which was to get them all home safe. and empower your people to figure out the answer to which Well, nobody knew the answers to be in with the problems that we’re facing. How we’re watching that film, Gene Krantz, who was the mission controller for much of this emergency, he gave an interview in 2019, the Smithsonian. And he said one of the greatest things he had to learn most difficult things he had to learn, during his time as a leader at NASA mission control, was learning how to listen, and how not to jump to an answer because he thought he knew. But instead frame the problem, be the one to ask the important question. Yeah, key question, focus on that. And keep people very much directed towards what the outcome is you’re trying to achieve, and then create the environment where you lift them up, so they can figure out the answers. And the how movie of Apollo 13 is a brilliant representation of how that was done. So if you want to have a look at lean from the jump seat, and how to create extraordinary opportunities by handing over control have a look at that film Apollo 13.

Adam G. Force 39:17

Yeah, that’s a classic one. And, and I’ve always been a fan of the whole concept, because we’re speaking about space and all these things, of the overview effect that people bring back from those experiences. I used to write about that kind of stuff, too, because I found it so powerful, to shape that perspective and how we see the world that humbles you just that like understanding, right? It makes you think differently, and all that kind of stuff. So listen, I want to be respectful of your time. So what we’re going to do is, I want to make sure people know Well, how do I learn more about what Peter’s doing, get the book, check it out? Where can they find some more information?

Peter Docker 39:56

Sure. Well, I have a website whynotunlimited. We’ll put that in the show notes perhaps but you can also Google me and the website will come up. The book you should be coming out in the fall, autumn of this year. And that will cover everything we’ve spoken about and much, much more. And importantly, quite a few things for people to consider and take action on should they choose to help practice these ideas that I’ll be sharing the book. And you can find in the usual places on on social media, LinkedIn, etc. Peter Docker, you’ll find it.

Adam G. Force 40:36

Perfect. Well, I really appreciate your time here today, Peter. It’s awesome.

Peter Docker 40:39

It’s been great talking with you Adam. Thanks very much.

Adam G. Force 40:45

Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change creator.com forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

Where Does Happiness Actually Come From?

Where does happiness actually come from?

I have found it can be like a maze where you sometimes think you found the path but it’s just a trick. That short-lived burst of joy that dies quickly.

After 40 years of life, I have personally found that we all are easily led further away from real happiness and are teased more and more with tricks.

I know it’s uncomfortable to admit but it’s a result of how we are told to live our lives. We do things that take us further and further away from who we truly are as a human being.

There is a growing misalignment between our inner and outer world. Like the classic example of working the dreaded 9-5 just to put food on the table. Rationalizing that it’s the right thing to do, maybe even convincing ourselves it’s the only thing we can do.

We tend to yearn for something more meaningful. More raw life.

We have options if we choose to see them and are willing to pursue them. Sometimes we become blind to them and other times we are just too afraid to change because it’s hard.⠀⠀

The truth is that the more you align your true inner desires to your actions the more happiness you will find. But first, you have to lift the veil and allow yourself to see who you really are and what you really desire.⠀⠀⠀⠀

When I started Change Creator it was an extension of who I am, my core beliefs. I’ve never felt such alignment in my life since the day I met my wife.

Most of us are afraid we won’t make money. But, money is all around us and abundant for the taking. Money is not the roadblock, how we think about ourselves and our personal power. ⠀⠀⠀⠀

When you start opening your mind to finding your truth, that alignment between your inner subconscious world and the outer conscious world you will start to feel true happiness. The more our outer world dictates how we live, the less happiness we will feel. ⠀⠀

So, take more time to listen to your inner self. What does it say?

23 Self Improvement Tips for Social Entrepreneurs

We all feel lost from time to time and we’reb overwhelmed by fears, challenges, and changes. That’s why we must create our life’s mission to do whatever it’s necessary in order to improve ourselves and boost our well-being. This is the only way in which you can become the person you’ve always desired to be. 

All the self-improvement tips presented below cover all main areas of one’s life, from career to health and personal development. Self-improvement is a lifelong journey so buckle up for the ride! 

1. Develop a Reading Habit

Through reading, you will boost your knowledge base. Moreover, books will develop your vocabulary by exposing you to new words and expressions. Keeping a reading habit will maintain your brain healthy and it will help it grow. You should look at reading as you would to regular exercise, only that, in this case, there are other kinds of “muscles” involved. Even your memory is improved through this particular habit.

According to research, brain function and memory might decline with age. Due to regular reading, we could prevent these problems, or, at least, we could slow them from progressing. Keep your mind sharp with all sorts of books, from self-development ones to fiction and business readings. Make time in your busy schedule to read at least 20 minutes per day. 

2. Meditate on a Regular Basis

Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years. It is believed to combat the effects of stress as well as anxiety. One of the most popular and effective types of meditation is practicing mindfulness which enables you to achieve clarity and peace. You can do that by becoming aware of each moment and being present. 

Feel free to experiment with different kinds of meditation techniques. All of them focus on pretty much the same idea: expanding your consciousness. As long as you meditate on a daily or regular basis, you will soon benefit from this practice in all the ways you can think of: mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. It is known to alleviate feelings of anxiety and stress. Moreover, it lowers bad cholesterol, regulates blood pressure, and improves sleep. 

3. Establish SMART Goals

Another way in which you can improve yourself is by setting realistic, achievable, time-manageable, measurable, and specific objectives. Keep in mind different time frames. In other words, you should consider daily, monthly, weekly, and yearly goals. Write all of them down and keep track of your progress. 

Also, don’t forget that success isn’t measured by how many goals you manage to obtain but by the journey you embark on in order to make those goals happen. This journey is truly enlightening and it will make you stronger and wiser. Once you’ve established your objectives, they will become your purpose on which you will focus all year round. They help you remain on the right track. 

4. Visualize Your Success

Unfortunately, many people are demotivated by the obstacles they’re facing in their way of achieving their goals. If you’re in pursuit of a big accomplishment, you shouldn’t ignore potential impediments but instead, you should focus more on visualizing your victory. The real issue here is that most people tend to let their fear of failure as well as the forthcoming challenges cloud their judgment and overtake their dreams.  

Don’t create any more barriers in the way of your success. Envision it as detailed as you possibly can and try to feel as you would feel once you’ve accomplished your goals. Imagine those close to you standing nearby and supporting you with all their hearts. How does it feel and how does it look to have achieved your dreams? 

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5. Measure Your Progress and Celebrate Each Small Victory

An essential part of the process of reaching a goal is keeping track of your progress. Measure your improvement and celebrate each accomplished milestone. This will keep you motivated and prepared to face any issue that might appear along the way. According to experts, we tend to have a boosted drive to reach what we desire when the motivation comes from within rather than from another person or from an external factor. 

By doing so, you can significantly improve your overall performance in so many meaningful ways. Makes sure that, through your actions, you’re offering value to others, in both their personal and professional lives. For all these reasons, doing process analysis is of crucial importance. 

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6. Use Your Time Effectively 

Stop wasting your time, which is the most precious resource you have. Invest your time in meaningful things and activities that bring you close to your desired goals. Use it wisely and by that I mean you shouldn’t waste all your free time watching TV or binge-watching movies. It is essential to create effective time-management strategies and find a balance between working hours and spare time. 

One action that seems to work for most people is to spend a few minutes in the morning to establish your daily tasks, those things you want to accomplish each day. Then, come up with a clear and well-structured plan to make sure those milestones are reached. Schedule your time properly and follow your priorities. 

7. Learn New Skills and Abilities

We all have hectic schedules that don’t allow us to dedicate time to all the things we would like to do. For instance, one great self-improvement method is learning something new, developing a new skill but not many of us have the time or energy to do that. Although work takes a lot of our time, dedicating minutes or hours to develop new abilities provide us with so many benefits. 

In today’s ever-changing world, we must keep ourselves updated with all the technology and innovations that surround us. The entire world is moving forward so why shouldn’t you do the same? There are plenty of skills that can improve your life immensely: new languages, drawing, horseback riding, photography, writing, playing a musical instrument, etc. 

8. Engage in Daily/Regular Workouts 

Respect your body because a healthy body hosts a healthy mind. Besides eating whole foods and avoiding junk food, you should also engage in daily workout sessions. Nowadays, people spend a lot of time sitting down because of their office jobs. The human body wasn’t created for a sedentary lifestyle. Therefore, it is important to move as much as you can. 

Outdoor exercises are essential for a healthy and well-balanced life. On the other hand, most people think that going to the gym for one hour a day compensates all those long hours spent on a chair, in front of a computer. Well, they are wrong. For that reason, you should set an hourly reminder that motivates you to take a short break from work and stand up or do some easy stretching exercises. Walking is also useful. 

9. Develop Healthy Eating Habits

Daily workouts go hand in hand with a healthy eating habit. You should focus on consuming foods that are safe for your health. Avoid eating processed foods or harmful substances. Try not to develop any vices such as smoking or heavy drinking. 

Listen to your body because that’s the way to discover what suits it best in terms of exercises, needs, and nourishment. Consuming plenty of veggies and fruits is a good way to start. Besides whole foods, some people also need supplements like minerals and vitamins but you should take these only after receiving your doctor’s approval.

10. Practice Self-Care

For some of you, the concept of taking care of yourself might sound a bit indulgent. Believe it, it is not! In fact, it is of crucial importance for your overall well-being. If you work too much, you will become exhausted and stressed out, both of which can be toxic and harmful for your body. 

I understand that sometimes, you need to work hard and boost your productivity. However, it’s also essential to rest while taking care or even pampering yourself. Here are some of the best things you can do in this regard:

  • Avoid toxic people;
  • Challenge your brain;
  • Take an occasional nap;
  • Find a new hobby and work with your hands;
  • Buy new books; etc. 

11. Practice Gratitude and Mindfulness 

I’ve talked a bit about mindfulness when I mentioned meditation as a successful technique to quiet your mind. Through mindfulness, you can bring your entire attention to here and now. Accept the present moment without judging it. Let your mind wander without trying to stop it. For now, don’t try to adjust your thoughts. It is well-known that mindfulness lowers stress and might increase happiness. 

Besides mindfulness meditation, you should also practice mindful listening. This can truly help you bond with people at a whole new and more profound level. It also increases empathy and you retain information a lot easier and quicker. 

Gratitude is also something everyone should practice on a regular basis. Spend some moments at the end of each day thinking about the things that went well and the facts that you’re appreciative of. You may also start a gratitude journal where you write down at least 3 things that you’re grateful for, every day. 

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12. Befriend with Positive People 

Surrounding yourself with positive people has a great effect on your well-being. Keep your distance from toxic people, from those that don’t support your ideals or those who tend to bring you down. As a matter of fact, you should apply this rule in your digital presence as well as your real life. 

Positive people will encourage you to continue your journey towards achieving your dreams. Their energy will vibrate so strong that it can even change your view of the world. Negative thoughts have a way to slip into your mind and make you see things in an unclear way. 

13. Be Kind and Giving 

For a meaningful life, you should definitely be kind to everyone around you. Also, you should be kind to yourself. Treat yourself with patience and empathy and behave well with others, just the way you want them to treat you. Working on one’s self-improvement is something an individual must do on a daily basis. This isn’t an objective you can abandon and then revisit only from time to time. 

Become aware of both your strengths and weaknesses and focus more on those areas that need improvement. Develop some small practices and make them a habit by doing them every day. Once these activities turn into habits, try to create new ones. 

14. Think Outside the Box

If you want extraordinary things to happen, you must break free of your comfort zone. Do something every day that challenges you. Only by doing things that might make you a tad uncomfortable, you will become a better version of yourself. Embrace change and don’t be afraid of unpredictable things. Look at the wider perspective, question almost everything, and set your creativity free. 

Another way to think outside the box is by constantly changing your working space, engaging in regular brainstorming sessions, and changing your routine. Be spontaneous and accept any problem that arises by looking at it from a different angle. After all, problems are nothing else than opportunities in disguise. 

15. Try New Hobbies

Start a new hobby. I, for one, love to play the piano and learn new languages such as German, Spanish, Italian, and French. Another thing that I discovered recently is working with flowers and creating beautiful floral arrangements. So, as you can see, there are plenty of potential hobbies out there that you can choose from. 

Think about the things you’ve always wanted to do but never found the time for them. Discover your true passion and do anything you can to get better at it. Maybe it’s drawing, painting, hiking, or even fitness. Hobbies complete us and make us well-rounded people. 

16. Don’t Compare Yourself with Others 

The only person you should compare yourself with is you. Stay focused on your goals and on your path without minding too much what others do. To become better at what you do you should always compare your present self to the way you were one month or one year ago. 

Don’t worry that much about what others think or say about you. You’d be surprised to know that most people worry about others or their own problems so that they don’t find any spare time to judge you. Focusing on others’ opinions might stop you from becoming better at what you do. 

17. Find a Mentor 

You will face many challenges in both your career and your personal life. Therefore, you will need someone you can trust who’s more experienced than you to guide you and what better person could do that than a mentor?! Good mentors will inspire and support you but they will also have the courage to criticize you. 

Here’s what you have to do to find the right mentor for you:

  • Find a person with great achievements whom you truly appreciate and admire;
  • Study that person – see what he does and how he or she manages all sorts of situations;
  • Ask the question but not from the very start – don’t ask someone to mentor you right from the very first meeting because it can be overwhelming and there’s an increased chance you may receive a negative answer;
  • Allow your relationship with your mentor evolve organically, naturally;
  • Ask your mentor all you need to know without being demanding;
  • Ask him or her for honest feedback and learn from it. 

18. Create Milestones 

Achieving a big goal might be tricky. Therefore, you should split your objectives into smaller milestones because it is easier to accomplish them, one step at a time. Milestones will help you become disciplined, more organized, and better focused. So, dividing big goals into smaller individual tasks will help you achieve your purposes easily and quickly. 

This method works also as a motivational factor because, after each accomplished milestone, you will receive a new boost of confidence and self-improvement. 

19. Accept Failure 

You shouldn’t just accept failure. In fact, you should see it as a new opportunity to grow and learn. See it as a valuable lesson. Looking at the things you couldn’t reach as failures will only make you perceive yourself as a hopeless victim. Therefore, instead of helping yourself, you will always wait for somebody else to save you which is a counterproductive approach. 

Instead, you should always stand on your own, embrace every life situation with acceptance and courage while also face your failures and learn from them. Don’t let your unsuccessful endeavors darken all your other accomplishments. See what your mistakes were and try to fix them because failure is nothing else than the realistic path towards success.   

20. Be Open to Change and Embrace Challenge 

Change is inevitable. During your lifetime, expect to go through all sorts of situations because life doesn’t stay still. There’s a constant evolution and all of us must experience these transformations. Although most of us like familiar things while being reluctant to change, we must surpass this uncomfortable feeling and face all the ups and downs we’ll encounter. 

Embracing challenges brings plenty of opportunities. People who’re willing to do this have higher chances of being successful because they see opportunities in places and situations in which other individuals only see impenetrable obstacles. Challenge yourself but don’t forget to rely on practical and realistic goals. 

21. Prioritize and Delegate 

Not all tasks need to be performed right away. Establish your priorities first. Begin with the most important or urgent projects and then continue until you reach to less important work. Also, you shouldn’t do everything on your own. Even the most responsible and committed managers and entrepreneurs should know how to delegate. 

Delegating tasks comes in handy when you don’t have the necessary skills for those projects or when you have your hands full with too many tasks. This is also a way to show your employees that you appreciate and trust them. 

22. Give up Control 

Stop being a control freak if you want to be happy. In order to be successful and happy, you need to let go of control. This is an issue that stops many people from living their life stress-free while creating new great memories with their loved ones. Living freely and learning to adapt to ever-changing plans will set you free and make you happier. So, you should do the things that make you happy but without stressing so much, every step of the way. 

23. Overcome Your Fears

All humans have fears. That’s completely natural. The most common ones are fear of taking risks, talking in public, and life uncertainties. All these anxieties keep you from growing and make you remain in the same life position over and over again. Those fears of yours are nothing else than reflections of certain areas you need to improve. So, don’t be afraid to address your fears

Also Read:

 23 Self Improvement Tips for Social Entrepreneurs – Wrapping It Up 

As a final conclusion, I must say that you, as a social entrepreneur and as a human being, should turn all your fears and limitations into growth opportunities. I cannot guarantee that all of the above tips will help you improve yourself but most of them work for all people. I know for certain they worked like a charm for me. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t expect them to work unless you get up and get started. Without applying them in your daily lifestyle, you won’t see any results. 

Don’t postpone them anymore. Take action as soon as possible to create the best version of yourself and live a happier and more accomplished life

Further read:

4 Tips to Get Out of Your Own Way And Create Next Level Success

Think of yourself as a thermometer. What temperature of success are you set for and why?

There are so many external variables that contribute to how we think, behave and in turn the level of success we have in our life.

I have always loved to study human behavior and debate my sister who’s a Ph.D. in Psychology. When I interview people for the Change Creator Podcast, I usually like to ask what they were doing before they had their business. The conditions that surround a person – family, friends, location, school, anything you can think of – impacts your perspective and behavior.

One of my favorite books by T. Harv Eker is – Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth.

Successful people think in similar ways. And unsuccessful people also think in similar ways. The way you think will determine the results you produce.

If you’re not getting the results you desire then you must consider these two things:

  1. What thoughts are holding you back?
  2. What strategies can you implement to recondition your mind so you think like a successful person?

“It’s not what we don’t know that prevents us from succeeding; it’s what we know that just ain’t so that is our greatest obstacle.” ~Josh Billings

Below I outline 4 tips to get out of your own way and create next-level success

1. Forget Instant Gratification

In today’s technological climate we have all adopted a desire for instant gratification. How can I become a millionaire in six months or what can I do to make $5k this month! This is not big picture thinking and holds you back from hitting long-term goals. There are no overnight successes or tricks for fast success. So many people jump from one business opportunity to another thinking if they just get in on the right idea they will explode. That’s like the lottery and is super unlikely to happen. Stop being sidetracked by new opportunities, bells, and whistles or when things get tough. Focus and commitment to a real strategy is an essential step.

2. Understand The Difference Between The Tools and The Toolbox

In Eker’s book, he talks about this and it’s one of the most important lessons to understand. You can share strategies, marketing tips, SaaS programs, and a million other things to two of the same people. One will go and crush it while the other falls flat.

But why would that be?

Well, you can have the best “tools” in the world but if you got a leaky “toolbox” (your mind), you’re in big trouble. The tools are the outer game and the toolbox is the inner game. Like most of us, you probably have bad thought patterns and habits that set your success thermometer to a temperature you’re not happy with.

I always say that if you hate black jelly beans you probably will never have any, right? Well, if you have financially negative thoughts and believe that what your mind tells you is always true, it will be a huge obstacle to reaching the next level of success. If you believe money is the root of all evil, you will never have much of it. You have to learn to not entertain thoughts that do not empower your vision for success.

Training and managing your own mind is the most important skill you could ever learn, in terms of both happiness and success.

3. Become the Person You Need to Be

If you’re just starting a business great if you’re already doing six figures, great. We all are pushing to the next level and have goals we wish to achieve. These insights are essential no matter what your situation is if you want to continue growing your success.

“It’s not enought to be in the right place at the right time. You have to be the right person at the right place and time.” ~T. Harv Eker

That quote is one of my favorites. It begs you to consider who you are. You have to be honest about the answers to that question and some of the others listed below.

  1. How do you think?
  2. What do you believe?
  3. How do you feel about yourself?
  4. What are your habits?
  5. What is your level of confidence?
  6. Can you act in spite of fear, worry or discomfort?

This is like taking a self-inventory which we talk about a lot in our mentor program. Most people don’t want to deal with this stuff, they just want the next overnight success idea or that magical investment. But if you can take this seriously, you will see where you need to start transforming yourself and then you can define the steps you need to take to do it. Again, your toolbox (inner game) is critical to your success. The tools (outer game) will not matter if you have a leaky toolbox.

Think of it as a house. If you have a blueprint for a 900 square foot bungalow made out of straw, then that the house you will get. And it will suck and fall apart which is stressful and requires you to build it over and over. But what if it took some time to learn how to build a new house that is 3,000 square feet and built from steel, wood, and concrete? Now you can change your blueprint and the result will be a new solid house that you truly wanted. But you have to take the time to learn how to build it.

Years ago, I acknowledged some serious thought patterns holding me back and had to create new ones. I had sticky notes all around the house where I would see them the most. My wife thought I was nuts but it was a huge help! Do what you have to do to avoid negative thinking and learn new wealth principles.

So, where do you begin? Well, a good start is to become aware of yourself more. Take notice of your behaviors and thinking. Learn what people at the next level of success do and how they think. Adopt education and action into your daily routine.  Think of it as a system that is a well-oiled machine. This will give you consistent growth.

4. Find Your Circle of Support

At the risk of beating a drum, you’ve heard many times before, I’m going to state this anyway because it’s so important. You must take note of who is toxic in your life and stay away! At the same time, you have to surround yourself with people who lift you up.

This might be:

  1. Friends
  2. Family
  3. Business network
  4. Mentors
  5. Advisors

it’s important that they support your big dreams and ideas and push you forward. For example, stay away from people who only see obstacles and find people that focus on opportunities. Negativity is contagious.

At Change Creator we connect with the best and brightest digital entrepreneurs in the business. We have invested thousands of dollars in the right programs and masterminds that have accelerated our growth and helped us see a better path for our business. We have also interviewed the best mentors around the world for Change Creator Magazine. Sure, that’s part of our business but we also learn priceless information and strategies which we share with you!

Final Thoughts

No matter where you are with your success now, if you want to level up, you will need to push your self to grow more by watering the inner game. Your success can only grow to the extent that you do. That growth is a lifelong process. You cannot change the visible if you don’t change the invisible first.

Are you ready to turn up the temperature on your thermometer? Let us know your best growth secrets in the comments!

You might also enjoy:

Transform Your Life as a Highly-Sensitive Entrepreneur with Heather Dominick

Interview with entrepreneur and mentor, Heather Dominick

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

This is such a great conversation. Heather is full of energy and great insights. She been an entrepreneur for over 16 years and helps thousands of others transform their lives. Find out what it means to be a highly-sensitive entrepreneur and how to overcome common challenges so you can grow your business too.

Heather Dominick is a woman who is impressively successful, and highly sensitive. A former high school drama teacher who collaborated with none other than Bette Midler. A graduate of NYU where she received her first coach training. Heather is the winner of the 2015 Best of Manhattan Coaching Award and creator of the 2014 Stevie Award-winning virtual event A Course In Business Miracles®: 21-Day Discovery Series that attracted close to 6,000 official registrants from all around the world including: Iceland, Nigeria, Russia, Asia, South America, Australia, Europe and the U.S.

She has appeared on Lifetime Television and has been published in numerous books including Stepping Stones to Success alongside Deepak Chopra.

Heather is an amazing teacher known for creating a safe, sacred community for true transformation. She has helped thousands of highly-sensitive entrepreneurs release life-long limiting beliefs, overcome fears and learn how to build their business in a way that actually feels so good that they can’t help but create solid, sustainable, high-level financial success. 

Are you a highly sensitive entrepreneur? You can take her quiz here to find out >> https://www.businessmiracles.com

Start Manifesting More Money For Your Impact Business with Cassie Parks

Interview with author and entrepreneur, Cassie Parks

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

What if you could manifest another $10k in your life over the next 90 days?

Sounds compelling right?

That’s exactly what Cassie Parks helps people do.

Cassie Parks is an entrepreneur, author, business coach, and leadership expert who runs the successful course, “Manifest $10k.” After spending her professional career navigating corporate culture, Cassie realized her dream of pursuing her own aspirations and becoming financially independent.

Having created enough passive income in real estate, Cassie “retired” at 32 and launched her own coaching service. Served over 1500+ people in 23 different countries, “Manifest $10k” is designed to help people write new powerful money stories while also manifesting $10,000 in 90 days.

She helps participants change their thoughts so they approach money differently and are open to creating more wealth and achieving their dreams.

She’s the author of 7 non-fiction books, on the topics of money mindset, business and lifestyle design.

Listen close to this interview and start thinking about the money blocks you might have so you can break through them!

Proven Strategies to Grow an Audience on Facebook with Rachel Miller

Interview with author and founder of Moolah Marketing, Rachel Miller

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Rachel Miller has a big heart and is a marketing shark!

So much fun to talk to during this episode as she shares the secrets behind an impactful Facebook strategy to help you grow an engaged community.

Our team has learned a lot from Rachel and stand by her teachings.

Not only is she expert in Facebook marketing but she’s an author with two books that have sold over 100,000 copies EACH!

A little about Rachel…

She calls herself a mom who is a coffee-chugging, extrovert. She’s been building pages for over a decade, some into multi-millions in fans which she, of course, used to promote her wildly successful books.

She appeared on Good Morning America to discuss her viral video and has spoken to crowds in the thousands.

But what she loves the most is seeing others do the same thing.

You can check out Rachel’s books here:

The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments: Awesome Things To Do With Your Parents, Babysitters and Other Adults

101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever!: The Entertainment Solution for Parents, Relatives & Babysitters!

Full Transcription of Interview

(Note, there might be some errors below. Transcribed by https://otter.ai)

Download a PDF of the full interview here!

Adam Force 0:11
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the change credit podcast show excited to have you here. If you guys missed last week’s episode, we spoke with Sydney Sherman, a really great conversation. She’s building an online marketplace that is helping combat poverty through the things we buy. But she talks about her, you know, challenges and successes of actually building an online marketplace and what that’s all about. So, this could be really interesting for anybody in the online marketing space, a lot of key lessons and insights there in the e commerce world. So today, we’re going to be talking with somebody that we’ve been connected with for a little wild in 2019. And she is a super duper rock star. And her name is Rachel Miller.

So she’s been on a tear lately, and she is about mom of six children. She’s, you know, adopted a bunch of children, and she’s doing amazing things in her family life. And we love her for that. And she’s also running several businesses. So you know, you have to ask, scratch your head and say, how do you how do you become a mom of six children run several businesses successfully, and have time to actually enjoy anything else in life, right? But this is what she does. And she’s really, really good at it in her business that we found out about her for his moolah, which is all about helping you grow your Facebook audience, right. So if you have a business, you got a business page, and you’re using the Facebook ecosystem, Rachel is the guru on how to grow an engaged audience. And we’ve learned a lot from her and her strategies. So we’re going to talk about all that with Rachel in just a minute.

For anybody that doesn’t know already, we’re very excited because just around the corner, we’re going to be releasing the next edition of changes magazine, June 15, with the one and only Blake Mycoskie. Blake is a super Rockstar founder of Toms, for anybody that just happens to not know he’s also the creator of the whole model, the one for one model. You know, you buy a pair of shoes, you give a pair of shoes to someone in need. And we get into some really great conversation with Blake so that cover story is going to be killer. So keep an eye out June 15. That will be coming out with Blake Mycoskie.

If you haven’t checked out issue 27 of change career magazine, we had NASA rain shake. She is a incredible woman credible, incredible. She’s very inspiring. She’s from Nepal, she was actually a child slave. You know, she worked in terrible, terrible conditions for years. From 4am to midnight, she found her way into education. And she was able to start two businesses now to combat child labor and support women in Nepal. Her story is very, very inspiring. And we met her over in Toronto, this is how we got connected at the by good feel good Expo. Lots of good socially conscious consumers, manufacturers and entrepreneurs. And she was there doing a speaking engagement and also telling people about her products and businesses. So a lot of fun. We had a video interview so you guys might have saw some of those clips flying around Facebook. Yeah, so check out issue 27 really good stuff.

We also had Laura Gassner outing, she was just on Good Morning America. And she has an incredible book called limitless. And the article in issue 27 is called pushing your boundaries, she will light a fire under your butt. So you’re going to want to check that out. Alright, guys, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with Rachel.

This was actually our first video interview we ever did, we did it over zoom, we actually found that that the audio quality is not our favorite. So bear with us. It’s not the normal, but it’s also not bad. So everything is good. Just want to give you a heads up on why there’s a little bit of a difference there. But you will also get to see some of the video clips flying around Facebook as we put them out there with Rachel talking about some of these key points. So make sure you follow us on Facebook guys. And if you want to learn how to put storytelling at the heart of your marketing, join us in our group storytelling strategies to grow your impact business. Lots of good stuff going on there. Okay, guys, let’s jump into this conversation with Rachel Miller.

Unknown Speaker 4:25
Okay, show me that. Hey.

Adam Force 4:30
Hey, Rachel, welcome to the change creator podcast show how you doing today?

Rachel Miller 4:34
I’m good at I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for hosting me.

Adam Force 4:37
Absolutely. Well, you’re welcome. So much. I want to pick your brain on and I know our audience is dying to hear from you. You know, the Facebook guru over here. I love that focus. I love what you’re working on. There’s so much power and value in marketing on Facebook. So before we get too deep into this, tell us a little bit about what you’re working on. Now, what’s the latest one?

Rachel Miller 5:00
Well, I just I have a course. And that’s pretty much it. I don’t have like a massive value letter, I have one product that I give people a lot of value in. So that’s my my marketing philosophy is to help people make the biggest impact on the world with their own businesses. And the fastest way that I can do that isn’t Of course. So that’s what I do.

Adam Force 5:23
And yeah, watch for it. Because, you know, guys, look, I’m gonna say something here. She’s a marketing shark, you’ve got to be, she will suck you into this vortex of I gotta have it. And that’s it, you’re done. But the good news is,

Rachel Miller 5:39
the thing is, I don’t just do this for me, I have websites, I’ve created multiple websites, and they’re still running today. And they’re still earning, and they still bring in people. So it’s, I have that business and in addition to the business where I teach people how to do it.

Adam Force 5:53
So I’ll Break That down a little bit. So I know you have you been in like the marketing website kind of world for quite a while. So if you could just tell us a little bit about how you converted from that world, I guess you think you’re still in it? Where did it start? And how did you get into your massive Facebook page strategy stuff?

Rachel Miller 6:12
Yeah, I began as a mommy blogger, and I had to quit my job as a teacher because we had too many kids that couldn’t afford daycare. And that was like heartbreaking for me, because I was like, in with people all day. And now suddenly, I couldn’t be with people, the world was going to end. Literally, I was probably like saying the world was going to end. Anyways, you know how it gets if you’re like a key person and I felt caged in. So my husband came home, he’s like, you can apply here, here, you can interact with people on a blog. And at the time, we didn’t even have a car for me, because that’s how tight things were we My car broke down and we couldn’t fix for the repairs because I wasn’t working anymore. And we had these babies. So I’m saying he’s like, get a block. And I don’t know, if you meant to get a blog like so you can, you know, help us pay for the grocery or, you know, get a free movie ticket, because you’re an influencer? I don’t think I think that’s kind of the level he was thinking it was going to be I don’t think he meant for it to, you know, meet a scale into a business of getting 10 million page views a month and like a 2.2 million fan base page. And then the second or third families aged two more families ages to Pinterest accounts. And he’s like, now he’s like, so you’re going where? And you’re speaking where when? Oh, ok. Ok. I know he was not anticipating any of that. But God’s grace, it’s happened. And yeah, we are we get to I have businesses, I’ve got two best selling books that my businesses have been able to create. And then and when I say best selling, I don’t mean like a New York Times bestseller because it only takes 1000 copies to get on New York Times bestsellers. I sold over 100,000 copies of each. So yeah, it’s I’m like we’re

Adam Force 7:55
talking topics of those books, just so we get a sense of what kind of category we’re playing

Rachel Miller 7:58
in activities, kids, kids activism parenting. Yep,

Adam Force 8:02
I have no,

Rachel Miller 8:04
I have six kids. So out there, I’ve got six kids. So I’m able to do this working mostly part time. So I don’t know very many other entrepreneurs that work under 35 hours, guaranteed every week. And that’s kind of where I am because I have the kids. So I’m working as full time as I can.

Adam Force 8:23
I mean, wow, I don’t know how you do it. Because I you know, I know people have one or two and they are having a difficult enough time.

Rachel Miller 8:33
I find it makes life fun. And honestly, I would not be the mom I am without my business. And I would not be the business owner I am without being a mom, because it helps me focus my business. So I can get a lot done. Because I have all these deadlines of these little bodies that are saying, Mom, you need to come do this, we need to go here. So I have because you’ll just shorten your amount of work time I think I get more done. But then in addition to that, I say saying because I have a job. My life is not like my children because I you can wrap your identity up and your kids. And for me that was that was stifling me. And it was it was making me go crazy. And I can stay sane. And I wouldn’t say that I literally went more sane, because they’re also

Adam Force 9:13
your fulfillment team. I saw the photos.

Rachel Miller 9:17
They’re awesome. That’s fantastic. So somebody said we should, I should outsource that I’m like, but then I wouldn’t be able to get tax write off for me

to work. So this is a win.

Adam Force 9:29
Like a true business mind.

So okay, so I’m curious, let’s let’s dig into some of this a little bit. And I know a lot of people listening here they have they get frustrated, they get frustrated with Facebook, because well one is so powerful, but it’s also complex, right? So there’s a lot of different things you can get sucked into $50 a year hundred dollars. So am I doing this? Right? I did. So you know, it like if you can just give the one on one. How did you start getting knowledgeable about what works? and what doesn’t just trial and error? Like Where did the marketing expertise start to grow for Facebook?

Rachel Miller 10:06
Well, I think it started before I was in Facebook. So how many of you, I guess your everyone in the audience?

I don’t know why I’m saying that. Um, but anybody who’s here Seriously, though, like, raise your hand like, you know, verbally let let Adam know. Are you a people watcher, because if you’re one of those people who when you go to the diner and you like hear the ladies to two booths over who’s talking loudly, and she’s telling her story about something, you’re like almost drawn into her life, or you’re imagining what she’s doing later. Or, you know, if you’re a painter people watching, you’re like, I’m kind of pigeon holing all the people that you see around you, if that is who you are, you’ve got the perfect, you’ve got all the skills you need to become me. I’m that’s what I did in college. And I think that skill that I developed in college led me to become a really good marketer. I started I grew up in the night, so, and I was homeschooled. So but so we’re talking like homeschooling was just legalized. I knew like six other people that were homeschoolers. It was like, teeny tiny group. My I mean, like, my social circle was like, non existent. And, and I’m an extrovert, right? So as soon as I could, I left and I went to college, and in college, I realized like that, how everyone else knows who Michael Jackson is. and sweet is like, this is like everyone else comes in boys. Everyone knows Michael Jackson. And they’ve got these dance things. And you don’t know who any of these boys are. And yeah. Anyways, I didn’t know what clothes to wear. So okay, I was starting at like zero when it comes to social skills. And so I sat and I watched people, and I watched what do people do to get reactions out of people? What kind of reactions are positive reactions? What do those popular kids do? That everyone walks to them? Why? Why what what are they saying? What kind of actions are they doing? I noticed something that now I know is like nearing where if you lean in when they lean in, if you move to the left, you know, if you do those actions, people respond to you. Well, guess what we do in marketing, we are our audience, we literally get to know our audience, and we mere their actions. It’s the same type of tricks that we do in a party to get interactions. When we go to a party, we don’t start instantly talking about ourselves. That person does that. Well, in marketing, how many times do we have ads fall flat? Because we start them we start the relationship, spouting out all these facts, and why they need guys like running over here at the party like Dude, I just I didn’t. I was at a party and a guy named Rob. I love Rob, because I love Rob, Rob gate kept trying to give me his his card so I could buy his refrigerator surface. And I’m like, dude, I don’t actually need refrigerator service right now. I think I’m good. I swear to you, I’m good. And he could not let it go. He was like you need was like I so I like literally kind of bailed the party because him following me try to tell me about these refrigerator, refrigerators. And how if I promote him, then he gave me a free refrigerator. And, and you know, all this stuff, right? We don’t want to be that person. We don’t want to follow people around. Yeah, annoying way. Yeah. And just like we do in life. So if you’re a people watcher, and you’re watching the poor girl getting chased by Rob, the refrigerator salesman, and you know what that feels like, you know, you’re able to see that situation. And if you can see that situation, a real life, you can see that same situation online. And you can rescue those people and you can be their friend, you can be their loud speaker, you can be that that popular person online, with your business, loving people serving people and selling to them.

Adam Force 13:46
Well, I love what you said about the refrigerator story, because it’s really important, like what people miss is that when it comes to sharing what you have to offer any kind of story, you know, we’re really into the storytelling stuff. And when you talk about connecting with somebody, there’s also the factors you have to consider a time and place. So if your timing is off, and the place is off, like it’s even if you have the right message, it’s gonna fall flat. So I love what you said,

Rachel Miller 14:13
I noticed this myself, okay. Um, I often we go right to the solution. And we want to tell our audience about the solution before they brought it bought into the fact that they have a problem. So we also have to go right for that I’m going to solve your problems. I’m going to solve your problems. Here’s the pain that you have. Let me fix it for you. And what is that? If somebody comes to us, like, oh, maybe my mom and says, I’ve got a solution for this problem you have you just need to fix it these ways, like your kids. drive me crazy this way. Well, if you did these five things, your kid wouldn’t bother you so much. How many of us have heard our our mom or mother or grandmother say those things and rolled our eyes? Yeah. Okay. It’s the same thing we do with our ads. And I fell for this because I I’m Ashley black actually bought I think appreciate that dream, like spacing for a second here. But she has this thing for cellular lice it cellulose in women like with fat dimples, okay.

100 pounds. So in my mind, I don’t need this product, right.

But she doesn’t talk to me about my problem have how she’s going to fix my problem. She talks about chickens, and how there’s this thing with chickens and how they fit. And next thing you know, I’m watching this product demo

about chicken fat. And before long, I’m like, you know, I might have a problem with dimples.

You had come to me with a problem. If she had come to me with a problem. I would have like run like this marketing’s way off by like $80 worth of stuff. Because she didn’t sell me the solution. She sold me on to the problem first. So in not in a way that says you have the problem. But more like other people have this problem. Don’t worry about you. Yeah, don’t worry. We’re not talking about you. Were talking about these other people. Yeah, exactly.

Adam Force 16:06
And they do start relating and it starts resonate.

Looking at myself going

Rachel Miller 16:10
you know what, I might be 100 pounds, I still have those dimples. Personally.

Adam Force 16:19
Well, and it’s and you know, one of the things that we had an expert come in that kind of worked with us on some of the stuff that we’ve been doing. And they talk about exactly what you’re saying, which is kind of like having these persona ones. Right? Here’s your audience, right? But are they already? Where are they in the funnel? Meaning do they already believe that there is a problem or, you know, if they don’t, then you have a totally different messaging. So you can get them there, right. And I think you’re just hitting the nail on the head. And it’s this whole game of psychology and the more you can understand where someone is that is in your audience, the better you can serve them. And that that’s, you know, right, the way you think about is how am I helping them and getting their

Rachel Miller 16:54
test? And if you know your audience really well, then you Next up is Do you love your audience? If you can love your audience, well, how do you love them? And that’s that is by serving and selling to them. So I see serving and selling is kind of the same thing. Yeah. Because when you serve them, you’re going to serve them in a way that most helps them take action. If I spent $2, on the cellulose tool, would I actually use it? know, if I spent $180 on the cell us tool, I’m probably going to use it. Yeah, he’s getting me to have action in my life and see a transformation. Because I’m using whatever that tool thing is the facial blaster, that’s what I was. Because I’m using that because I spent enough money to have the buy in for it. So we if we love our audience, and we’re not just going to just serve them by giving them like

Adam Force 17:42
things for free. We’re going to serve them by selling to them so that they can have a transformation in their lives. Yeah, no, that makes sense. So So let’s dive into the Facebook world a little bit more for people. And you know, we have these Facebook pages. We have Facebook groups, and then maybe the private things they buy your membership. Of course, you might have this like private stuff. So let’s define them a little bit for people because I think there’s a misperception of

Rachel Miller 18:09
geeky on you. And I like chicken scratch to now, let’s go through it like,

Adam Force 18:13
what is the page? Like? How should we think about a page and the purpose it serves versus a group and so on, so forth? And if you can maybe walk through some high level ideas just

Rachel Miller 18:23
on Yeah, well, I kind of think, well, I sketch it out. So I know that some of your audience is listening, but I’m like a visual person. So I like just ignore my doodles, but I doodle it out for people. So if you’re listening later on the podcast, and you want the screenshot, maybe hold a screenshot, or something, I’ll send it to you. Okay, guys. So we’ve got five different elements of Facebook, it’s not, it’s not just groups and pages, there’s so much more to Facebook. And as businesses, we kind of at least need to be aware if not having our fingers and all the pies. And so we’ve got our personal profiles. And like we’re asking, How do I optimize? These are what do we do with our messaging, our story on each of these with personal profile, I want to establish trust with my audience. So that is, who am I best able to connect with? Who am I best able to serve? And for me, I relate best two families, because I’ve got a big family. And I understand like the struggles that families have, in a way that I don’t understand the single 22 year old guy. So in comparison, that’s who I’m trying to track. So what do I do on my profile? To make me attractive more to families? Am I going to have a funnel that says, do this and get rich and have freedom? Well, maybe, but they’re kind of tied to their family. So they’re more for security? What can I do on my profile that establishes trust in who I am, I’m not using my profile as the funnel for them to enter my content. I’m using the funnel my profile, as when they engage with me in groups, when they engage with me on my page, and they go back to check me out and they’re stalking me. What do they see that’s going to make them love me more. And trust me more. So that’s again, at the party, I’m not going out there with the funnel that says, I sell these five things. I say, this is what I believe in, I have manifesto statements, I believe I’m a I’m a believer, I’m a Christian, I have a lot of kids, I’m married and happily married. And I can’t help myself, I start a lot of businesses. Those are the things I want people to to see of me first, so that they love me and trust me more. And so so that’s what I use my personal profile for. And so after do, we got our personal profile off. Now we’ve got groups, groups, because we as people, when we’re building our pages, we interact in groups. As we’re interacting, I like to do it a tactic called friend segmenting. So anybody that I’m interacting with in groups, I add them to different lists, so I can re target them later from my personal profile. So that’s when tactical user group says or when I’m in other people’s groups, and then later on, I’m going to create my own group. And whenever I’m creating a group, I like to create the group with the keywords that the group is about. So an almost like a club name of possible. So I’m dog lovers of America, or dog walkers of America. So you’re about dog walking in America. So people know exactly what they’re getting when they go to the group. I don’t like calling them something like x and x tools. Well, I don’t know what x and x tools is. So why would I join your community? So I said it’s tools might be amazing software product for for small businesses. Instead, I would say, small business hacks to make life easier. Whatever it is that you are your promises. That’s what I would call your group. And then

Adam Force 21:42
you said you would actually save men people? Are you collecting email through? Oh, he was saying this is for other groups. So how are you actually?

Rachel Miller 21:50
Yeah, I say no, just my personal profile using interest list. It’s one of the hacks I teach on Facebook.

Unknown Speaker 21:55
Hmm. Okay.

Rachel Miller 21:57
So we’ve got a personal profile. We’ve got groups, now we’ve got pages. The thing about pages is we get to run ads from pages we get to collect audience of pages, we get to segments more with pages. So I you can’t have a business without a page. I don’t believe I don’t believe Facebook. Can you sell your personal profile? Yeah, but if you do that all the time, you’ll get in trouble. And you can get your account man. Yeah, in a group. Well, you can’t retargeting you can have it easily hijacked, you can, you can have a rogue moderator kind of take over the personality of your group, you need something that you can control the direction of the group. And when I believe the group, bring them back, because they forgot about it for three weeks, and they still want to be there. They just forgot to open it because they were on vacation. And you have to bring them back into it. So that’s why I think a key just super important. And again, I’m not going to call my page XRS tools, right, as anyone knows what that is. I’m going to call my page, what my reader calls themself. So this is what I would call a club was a search term, an SEO kind of search term. I’ve got my page, I would call what my reader defines themselves as readers, my readers aren’t going to call themselves Rachel Miller. But my readers of my mom’s side, they might call themselves quirky moms. So that’s why I called my page quirky moms. I actually have a cat audience of almost 200,000 people. And I call it the crazy cat ladies tonight. Because who who do I attract the most crazy cat women. So they were crazy cat lady like a badge of honor. It’s not a negative term for them. It’s a badge of

Adam Force 23:34
honor proud of that.

Rachel Miller 23:36
They’re proud of it. They’re glad to be a crazy cat lady. So for them, I call my page that because that’s what they want the world to know of them. Why do I do that? Whenever someone first sees our page, the part of our page that they see is the profile picture and the name. So you want those things to be something that they instantly connect with as guess that’s me, or Is that me? recast like no, you’re not my crew. You’re not you’re not my home. I wanted to be an instant yes or no. Oh, so

Adam Force 24:05
I’m going to challenge that just a quick second. So you have a page though for moolah marketing and it’s mobile marketer. So nobody probably caused them a bull market. I do that

Rachel Miller 24:14
as well. Do they call themselves moolah? Do they call themselves a marketer?

Unknown Speaker 24:19
I don’t know.

Rachel Miller 24:20
Would you call yourself a marketer? Yes, I would say yeah. So I have to use I can’t just call myself a marketer, like the page alone isn’t enough? Um, do you like making money as a marketer? Yeah, no, it makes sense. Okay, gotcha. So that’s why I did that name. Now, could I have named it better? Yes. But at the time, I didn’t think I was just about Facebook, I thought it was going to be about helping people build all audiences to make money. And then I started teaching my audience. Because here’s the thing is I actually grew multiple audiences to multiple hundreds of thousands on Pinterest, I’ve grown a YouTube channel to I think we got up to like, 45,000 in like a very short period of time, before I left that already organization, I grew an Instagram account 224,000 in a very short period time before I left that organization. So I was like, you know, I had a lot of skills to build multiple audiences. And I tried to teach all of them and what did people say? Yeah, right. Um, thanks for telling us that tip about Pinterest. What we really want to hear is what you told us about Facebook. And so once I realized that my audience really loved Facebook from me. And you really want to be known for one thing, I pivoted into just Facebook. So I listened my readers, and they told me Hey, look, you’re great. You got some great tips about Pinterest, but nothing really original there. But what you’re doing on Facebook, what did you do here? Yeah, it was what people wanted. So if I could go back in time, I would switch it to something Facebook, but I can’t put Facebook in the title of the page without any trouble with trademarking. So it’s like, I have to find some way to do that. The only problem is, you know, you use your I’m sure your business has evolved a little bit. And so yeah, what do you think it’s going to be might not end up being where you end up,

Adam Force 26:00
happens all the time happens?

Rachel Miller 26:01
Yeah, we’ve got our page, our profile, we’ve got our group that and we’ve got our page. Now, that’s not everything. So a lot of times, we think, like, oh, if I just have my profile, and I interact in groups, and I’ve got a page, my page interacts in my groups, I’m done. And I could just share my content. And I mean, you’re good. But you’re even better if you add the rest of the spokes of the ecosystem, and the rest of spokes to the ecosystem, our messenger chat, and off Facebook. And what I mean by that pixel fires, so that would be your email list that you’ve collected custom audience of your email list, your website traffic, Facebook tracks the engagement on your landing pages, and that actually comes back to your page and affects your ad cost and your ad engagement, your scores on your page. So adding things like so far we did this, we added a bar where people could slide it was a moving my hands if you’re on a podcast, guys, just wave your hands with this bar in front

Adam Force 27:00
fan gestures.

Rachel Miller 27:02
So there’s like a bar and you could raise the money or lower the money and it causes like this little like calculator thing to work. When I did that, on my website, my landing page, it cause my ad rates to plummet. So my, my cost for ads, as they like, with so low, I’ve never seen him so low before. And it’s because my page was getting people to play around on it and Facebook like, Whoa, the people really want to play on this landing page. So we’re going to not just it starts at 25 cents a click, we’re going to get two cents a click on this one. I don’t remember exact numbers. Yeah, it was to sense it might have been before but it was really I was like 26 cents to that number. I was just like, this is free, like, free to you know, this

Adam Force 27:44
activity. So they see activity on a page like people are interested.

Rachel Miller 27:48
And as we wait, yeah, I had better ads delivery and at my cost went down. So for you know, that is that tells me it’s not just one of these things, Facebook, and then that also affected my ads on my page and affected my content on my page. Because my my page and my website were connected. So know for you guys that these are all part of a system. And if you can get engagement in one of these, you know how to get engagement and the other, the way that you have a conversation in a group is assuming you’re gonna have a conversation with someone over messenger. And the same way you share content from a page into a group is the same way you’re going to build your email list into your group, or on your profile or all of those things. If you know how to work, one will add another one. And once you’ve got that one game, then down at the next part of the ecosystem and

Adam Force 28:35
do it all at once. Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. And I guess a lot of people struggle to with, you know, what is the end. And I know I’ve been through your program. So I know these things, but I want to talk about it a little bit for people listening. And it is the targeting aspect. I think people struggle with how they should be targeting. And it comes down, I know, you talked about interviewing people, we share that with our audience, as well, as you know, you got to talk to your customer. I mean, this makes all the difference in the world, like we had some sales for our program. And if we didn’t talk to them, we would not have realized, like where they were coming from where they were in their business that made sense for us, like, you know, to for someone who bought that kind of product. So I think the same thing applies here. And I know you talked about looking at people’s likes, you know, when you go to their page guy and get a sense, I want to talk a little bit about interpreting that information. So if you see a lot of public figures, and you see that they’re into music and entrepreneurship or very left leaning, you know, news, how do you interpret it? And how many interests and targeting is too much or too little? and all that kind of stuff? Is it? Is there any rules for that?

Rachel Miller 29:46
I like generally to have my original art audience I target to be about a million people. So when I’m picking a general audience, and no, okay, whenever I’m teaching people how to target, we start with your message. Because if you haven’t the wrong message, well, your targeting is going to fall flat no matter where you try. So you have to first before we even go into targeting who the right people are. Test your message. If your message doesn’t convert, well, it might not be the audience, it might be that you need to work on your message first, because you can have the best most audiences cat people. But if you’re talking about cat food, you’re going to push them away because cat audiences really like their own special cat food, like every cat has. The believes that they’re passionate is the best. And they’ll tell you why. So if I’m coming at them with cat food, I’m going to even though it looks like it’s the right audience, I’m going to push them away, and they may even unfollow on my page. Yeah, I’m speaking something that they see as offensive. So if you’re off on your messaging, you have to test with your audience. Don’t assume I’m a cat food, my audience is cat people, I’m going to put this to them like this, and they’re going to love it. Don’t assume that because you might end up falling flat on the next success. So check your message first. And I took my message with an audience of a million, because I can see it’s enough of a general pool that I can do an engagement ad and see does this actually get engagement? Or does this get all the wrong engagement where I get a lot of angry faces and I all I can test a message easily with a general audience. And then after my million audience, yes, I could let Facebook find the right people. But that takes a lot of ad spend. And I’m personally like a nice, I want to spend my money on like, in a little while we’re gonna be doing a promotion for chickens. And I want to build a school in Kenya. I want a promotion for chickens. I’m buying chickens for people and you saw. Yeah, so I want to do I want to do things that matter in the world. I don’t want to spend my money giving it to Zuckerberg to test. You’re like me, and you don’t want to give it to Zuckerberg to test. The next thing that you do is what I call a game of I spy. So just like when we play I spy when we’re kids and we sit in a room and it says obscure blue book on the left counter, you know, whatever that is, right? No one’s going to think of that product. But how many times do we say okay, is it the clock? Is it the zebra toy underneath the couch? Is it? No, don’t do that. Is it on the left side of the room or the right side of the room? Come on. Okay, is it white? Where is it a dark color? Okay, like, imagine the color spectrum? Is it light or dark? Come on. Okay, okay. It’s a dark color. Great. Well, is it closer to the TV or farther from the TV? TV? Okay, so now we’re getting near narrowing in and eventually I’ll find out that the target audience or the target product is that blue book on the counter there. But I would have never got there. If I just hit as a sniper all like one thing here. And one thing that Right, right, but I get it, yes. But it’s kind of like luck or chance. So what do I like to do, I like to spend separate them into batches, and then test each batch until I can funnel down to my perfect people. And usually I can get the test done in usually six to nine tests, I can be at a really close idea as to what will convert, I know the messaging. And I know the audience, and I can now create more content just like that, and keep trying to beat my previous win.

Adam Force 33:19
Yeah, they Yeah. And then, you know, for some of us that kind of stuff, it takes a little patience and a little organization.

Rachel Miller 33:27
I don’t I don’t think of myself as super organized. So I only run three tests at a time because I’m not one of those organized people. And my brain can only do three at a time. Now I’ve had students all of my tactics and then do 21 at a time, which I say, Well, good for you. Rest of Us, we do three at a time. And it just takes two or three days. And so we in 18 days, we’ve got we’ve got enough of a data that we can

Adam Force 33:49
Yeah, yeah. And are you doing? Do you do like batches of like an ad set of three or four different like creatives or gym? I mean, messages?

Rachel Miller 33:59
No, I do want that’s it one add one. That’s that one. And then if it’s successful, then I’ll duplicate it and do multiple creative. Yeah. Why do that work? If it’s not successful? Yeah. All right, for me, and if there’s so many things to look at, I get confused. So I don’t want to see three creatives in each one because I’ll get confused. So I just want to see which one’s the winner. And then that winner I scale by adding those extra creatives, but until I’m ready, like, I don’t see how many guys get decision fatigue, you know, exactly where the same thing every day and what good girls do that totally not fair.

White t shirt for the rest of my life.

Yeah, so anyways, he or his great t shirt, he worked gray, gray something right. But my point is he said something that we all struggle with the decision. Yeah, that decision until you have to. So I just do the three test one, add one add set. And then if it’s successful, then I duplicate then I clone, then I you know, scale it, we add more and spin to it. And we you know, take it to the races.

Adam Force 35:05
Yeah. Is there any do you have on the top of your mind? Like so if you were going to do message testing? for people to understand like, well, what is how do you test the message? Is it a mean? Or an article title of video? And what kind of messages? What makes the messages different? Is it just what the audience might be thinking at the time like,

Rachel Miller 35:25
I want to my first message that I want to test is what they call themselves? Because how can we sell our software tool if we’re selling it to small businesses that are accounting firms, when you don’t realize it that small businesses accounting firm really defines themselves as

empty nester mom who happens to have an accounting business, because she doesn’t actually care too much about counting.

So if you can sell to her as the empty nester who needs purpose, and her county becomes her purpose, your message will sell your ads will sell a lot better, you will speak for her and you will sell far. And actually we’ve seen that happen in our audience. We have one student, this last round, who grew her audience to 160, middle age accounting firm owners, cool women, over 45, she has 160 of them, she spoke that you can regain your purpose and make an impact through your business as an accountant in the financial services market. And she has 160 people on her page, I’ll offer them a product and has $10,000 recurring revenue coming in every day, in the first four weeks of the course that I taught, yes, this last round, it was insane. 10 she did that because she spoke the message of who her audience was, she didn’t go out and say accounting professionals, these accounting professionals get really bored with accounting and their kind of bored with their life right now. And their kids just moved out. And that’s really what they care about. When she spoke to, hey, our kids moved out, that doesn’t mean we’re done. Like, come on, let’s get our new kid is going to be our business. And we’re not going to be an accounting business to be in the impacting business. For market that way, her business exploded and exploded because it only brought in the right people. She didn’t want anyone. She asked me not to share her page with people, because she doesn’t want people visiting her page that are not 45 year old women accountants who actually within this country of Canada, like that’s all she wants.

Adam Force 37:37
Yeah, that’s really interesting. I love hearing you know, and you can hear Gary Vee and all these guys talk about this too. It’s like, everyone’s so obsessed with vanity metrics of big numbers. But the big numbers don’t matter if they’re not engaged, right. So they’re

Rachel Miller 37:48
not knowing her audience is a page, she doesn’t have a group, it is just a page. And they love her. Because she talks to them. And they’re on her page talking. I mean, like she gets 33 comments on a post, it’s a malaria.

Her people, they relate

to that audience and talking the exact message, instead of trying to sell them an accounting tool, talking to them about Hey, guys, as accountants, we just lost our kids. So what does that we lose our kids but like, what does that mean in life? As we’re transitioning ourselves in our business? Yeah, no one’s talking like that for them.

Adam Force 38:24
And she’s inspiring, like hope in a sense of like something fresh, something interesting. And they’re kind of like at that crossroad in their life. And she’s, you know,

Rachel Miller 38:34
the transition. It’s like, you know, like that the coming of age story that teenagers have. Yeah, you can have it again, when your mom

Adam Force 38:40
Hey, never too late. Yes, they’re bringing up hearing that though I love hearing that. And big believer in that focused group, high high engagement, numbers don’t matter.

Rachel Miller 38:52
The thing is to that same tactics that Samantha’s using to win her hundred and 60 people are the same tactics that Allison’s using right now. And she’s got 9.8 million on her post. So she’s most likely going to hit 10 million today on her content. That’s crazy. I have noticed that the mom category is like, just, that’s because I relate better to moms. So when I’m training people, the people that put when I tell them into place more quickly, tend to be mom and women. So that’s I’m not trying to like, could guys do this? Yes. Our guys on Facebook talking all day long. Yes. Yeah. But for some reason of my students, the ones who, without arguing, tend to be more women. been taking my courses, but I do target my ads to women. So when I give all my examples, almost all of them are women. Yeah. Adam and Damon and Greg. They’re three of my stories. So I guess I have some men in there. Sorry. I know. You’re on your show. I don’t I’m not trying to bash

Adam Force 39:57
believable.

Rachel Miller 40:00
Totally wrong.

Everyone attracts their tribe. And my tribe happens to be women. So

Adam Force 40:06
yeah, yeah, no, of course, of course. I just noticed that. Like, I’m like, oh, there’s someone’s like a moolah when and I’m like, let me guess it’s a mom pays a guarantee

Rachel Miller 40:18
that I helped them on page. But it also helped HGTV shows, I’ve helped the largest Facebook person in the entire world, who is in the pet space, I’ve helped and he sky, I’ve helped one of the people in Shark Tank. I’ve helped all I felt a wide variety of businesses, fortune 500 companies, the ones I care, love, and get all excited, I’m not gonna tell you about the time I helped an apparel company that their shoes go viral. Because for crying out loud, they had enough money on that ad. But it did go viral, they had something really, really wrong. And nobody else has a kind of money on ad campaign. So not nobody a couple other my clients do. But it’s not those stories don’t make me actually cited. Yeah, the mom who you know, was has a about to go to be divorced. And she suddenly needs to have an audience so she can pay for like life with her kids. And so her kids cannot can go to that soccer plant camp, that they’re planning on going to the summer, and not have that taken away from them in spite of the divorce. And she’s very motivated to make sure she grows an audience. I’m motivated, really to help her

Adam Force 41:24
make that happen. So I love it. Now listen, we’re running low on time. And I have one selfish question that I’m going to throw at you because this is the end of the funnel says people build their audiences get the pages chat with you, Mr. Now we have a product and we want to sell something, you know, you have the conversion objective. You know, when the how much money that because that one ever behaves differently I have personally noticed, then, you know, engagement traffic and stuff, I

Rachel Miller 41:53
love engagement ads, and I sometimes even use them for conversions.

Adam Force 41:57
I was that’s where I’m kind of going I’ve noticed some time the link clicks and stuff might even be a more cost effective and engagement than it is with the conversion. We have seen on our team just to be transparent, like, you know, 20 $30 can go by before you start triggering that conversion objective. And you’re like, wait, something’s not connecting, I’m going to bail. So it’s like, how much do you spend before you start believing in the effect of it?

Rachel Miller 42:24
I spend on for conversion that I spend until I get 2000 views 2000 views landing pages up to 2000 clicks, because then I’ll know if that traffic is converting. So okay, it’s 1000 views, I can kind of have a guess. Because I’ll know I’m thousand people 100 of them went on and took this action and click through well, then that’s that’s a test. But I can know for certain by 2000. So by 2000 if I have not wiped out though the losers and promoted the winners, then usually for engagement as I usually do 100, because out of 100, I can check an action. So I don’t 100 I would expect to have say 20 clicks or 20 actions of that may not be a buying audience. That’s why I want to get 1000 on the actual ad because that might give me 200 people that clicked and of the 200 people that clicked 10 of them purchase so that that gives me enough of a numbers to be able to see the ratio. Are you

Adam Force 43:23
saying reach 2000? People?

Rachel Miller 43:25
Yes. So when your ad your ads gets to 2000. You know, those all know, by the 2000 mark, if it’s if it’s flunking in a conversion, or if it’s if it’s Yes, in an engagement, and I don’t need as many people to see if you’re taking action. So I don’t because you need a larger range of engaged people to be able to tell if they’re going to be a buyer. Because just because they’ve engaged it might be the wrong timing, like they’re in the grocery line, and they’re checking out their groceries, and then they’re not in a position where they can buy it right now. So that doesn’t mean it’s a loss that we add still a win. But it’s not a conversion ad. So it might so it takes more of those people to catch them in the right. mindset feels it works.

Adam Force 44:06
Yeah, I wonder if going desktop only would help that.

Rachel Miller 44:11
Oh, well. I mean, how many people are on their phones, though? Yes, you actually get a higher conversion rate on desktop. But for me, I buy so much stuff on my phone now. A lot of my people are like me, so but because of that I do have PayPal, because I’m too lazy to get off my button and go type it into my phone. Yes, yes. Make sense. Here. I want to have a one click Buy. So either sell or Apple Pay. I try to have that and everything

Adam Force 44:38
comes in handy. But listen, I want to be respectful of your time. This has been a lot of fun. And I appreciate you being part of the show. So Rachel, where do people learn about what you’re doing? Find out about how they can work with you and get involved in your program.

Rachel Miller 44:51
Yeah, I have a free Facebook group. That’s my primary like place I drive people to and tell people give people advice. And that’s Facebook page strategy. So if you type that into Facebook, you should be able to see my group there. And the girls big hair. And if you want to follow my Facebook page, it’s moolah marketer, and if there’s any changes on the algorithm, I tend to talk about that on Google marketer Facebook page. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Well,

Adam Force 45:13
there you have it, everybody. Lots to learn from Rachel highly recommend the group. The course is also very good. So Rachel, congratulations on everything. And your books too, because they’re super cool.

Rachel Miller 45:25
Thank you so much for having me on today.

Adam Force 45:27
You’re welcome. We’ll talk soon. Thank you. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the change. Create a revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit change creator mag calm. We’ll see you next time where money and meeting intersect right here at the change creator podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Building a Company Culture for Your Startup Where People Thrive: Moe Carrick

Interview with coach, author and entrepreneur, Moe Carrick

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

One of the important parts of any companies success is the team and the culture that is created for the company. The best time to begin creating a great company culture is at day one if possible. As you build your team and bring new people on to be part of the journey, you want to have your culture that will help them thrive.

Moe Carrick offers a fresh, honest, and direct roadmap for leaders everywhere who seek to make their workplace fit for human life as she says. And, she offers advice for workers and encourages them to be their authentic selves, something we truly love at Change Creator.

Her message resonates with leaders in all organizations, at every level, as well as those in development, HR, OD, coaching, and consulting who advise others about organizational culture, leadership, structures, and teams.

Moe’s book Bravespace Workplace: Making Your Company Fit for Human Life shows us the truth of what it takes to make companies bring out the absolute best in human beings, despite our messy, imperfect, needy, demanding, and complex habits, needs and issues.

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Earning Millions With Penny Stocks to Fund Big Social Change with Timothy Sykes

Interview with penny stock millionaire and founder of Karmagawa, Timothy Sykes

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Timothy Sykes stares risk in the eye like Dirty Harry on a dusty day.

He has the kind of gravelly voice you’d expect to hear in smokey poker halls, but he’s no gambler, even though he’s made an estimated $12 million on penny stocks.

Ask the Wall Street Journal about stocks that speculative and it’ll tell you that free trade isn’t really free — that there are sharks in these waters, and that most of them bite. Timothy knows that, but he also knows the difference between investing and hustling.

He antes up because he knows when to hold and when to fold, and that has meant the difference between driving off with chips in his pocket and walking home because he threw his car keys into the pot.

He attributes his penny stocks-based wealth to education, so it’s only appropriate that he’s used his millions to build 51 schools in a mere three years, help protect thousands of animals, and served over 220k meals. He’s also helping cancer patients, bringing medical centers to the Philippines, and building libraries in Mexico.

Discover Your Innovative Angle to Scale Your Impact Business (interview)

Interview with Jessi Honard & Marie Parks, founders of Northstar Messaging

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

This is dynamic conversation since we have three people on the line who all love content strategy and storytelling!

Jessi and Marie both are rockstars with a lot of great experience to share. They are also contributing experts to our signature program, Captivate.

Their company North Star Messaging + Strategy is a full-service messaging and copywriting agency.

Since 2010, they have supported successful businesses in sharing their message with their audience. From personal brands to nonprofit organizations and universities, they work with thought leaders and entrepreneurs to develop strategic messaging, hone their brand voice and create compelling content.

Here’s a little background about them…

Jessi kicked off her career as a high school teacher and then moved into marketing. Her writing has found its way into the pages of magazines and onto the walls of museums, and she’s passionate about sharing the power of clear messaging and strategic content with the world.

Since co-founding North Star with her hiking buddy, Marie, Jessi has helped countless business leaders hone their messaging in a way that fits their needs and connects deeply with their audience. She advocates for the power of clear strategy, concise language, and a solid dose of authenticity and realness.

Marie got her professional start in the nonprofit sector as a grant writer, where she learned to merge heart and logic in her writing. She’s carried those skills to North Star, along with the values of respect, transparency, and communication.

Call her a romantic (or a nerd!), but Marie believes the pen is mightier than the sword. Messaging has the power to drive thought leadership. When we showcase our expertise, innovation, and influence, we inspire growth in others and ourselves. This is the crux of what she teaches through speaking engagements, courses, and workshops.

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How Chrissie Lam Took a Novel Idea and Turned It Into A Flourishing Social Business

This article was written by Tobias Roberts for Change Creator Magazine.

We have all heard inspiring stories of how massive corporations got their humble starts in some struggling college student´s garage. Growing from a one-person entrepreneurial idea to a multinational corporation employing thousands of people can be difficult to imagine.

Chrissie Lam, the founder of the “Love is Project”, however, offers an encouraging story of how a novel idea, focused effort, and great intentions can come together to launch a successful and flourishing business model that impacts people from around the world.

We sat down to talk with Chrissie and learn about the story of how the “Love is Project” took off.

How did the Love Is Project Get Started?

Chrissie spent much of her career working in the fashion industry for companies such as American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch. According to her LinkedIn page, she has leveraged 12 years of experience in trend forecasting for multi-billion dollar brands to help translate global trends into successful product lines.

At the same time, Chrissie is an avid world traveller who has been to 104 different countries. Her experiences in meeting people and different cultures from around the world helped her to make contacts with inspiring people and organizations doing uplifting work to help people living in marginalized situations of poverty.

According to Chrissie, “what is interesting about (my) travel is that I want to incorporate my travel with my job.” After leaving her corporate job about two and a half years ago, she decided to dedicate more time to her interests in international development and design. While visiting Kenya, she spent time working with different women´s artisan groups of the Maasai people.

The support she offered these groups in product design eventually led to a unique beaded bracelet that could be marketed in order to help these women support their families and feed their children.

While this international development work that she participated in was originally launched as a personal photo project and social media campaign, she realized that there was enormous potential for the bracelets made by the women of the Maasai people to grow into something much more.

About two years ago she created a brand focused on using those bracelets to get people to talk about what love means to them.

Using her contacts from her previous corporate jobs, Chrissie pitched the bracelet idea to American Eagle and received a $250,000 order for the bracelets made by groups of women from Kenya.

The organic grocery store Whole Foods followed up shortly after that with another massive order that helped jumpstart the business. Since that initial starting point, the “Love Is Project” has grown to work with around 1,200 artisans from 9 different countries around the world.

Financially, her business has made 1.2 million dollars in revenue in just over 2 years of operations.

Importance of Staying Focused

Starting up an entrepreneurial endeavor usually comes with an enormous outpouring of energy and enthusiasm. For many small startups, however, there is a tendency to want to branch out in several different directions and try to capture the seemingly endless opportunities for growth that are out there. Chrissie, however, stresses the importance of maintaining a singular focus during the initial startup phase of her company.

“My (current) challenge is that I keep creating more countries and artisan groups (that we work with),” Chrissie mentions. “But I want to make sure that goes well before branching out. It is important to do one thing and do it well….and that is what I’m aiming for. As we grow there will be other opportunities, but capital wise…it’s good to do one thing well to get out of the gate.”

By staying focused and grounded in the bracelet industry and the corresponding media campaigns that they run, Chrissie has been able to maintain 100 percent of the equity in her business and stay completely self-funded. Her team is made up of a group of five freelancers and her mother who is currently helping her with structuring and operations.

Marketing Tips from Chrissie Lam

Chrissie says that the “Love is Project is essentially “a media company that happens to sell bracelets.” She believes wholeheartedly in the importance of good storytelling and offering compelling visuals to help her clients identify and engage with the 1,200 artisans making the bracelets around the world.

“I’m not the first person to put love on a bracelet,” Chrissie says, “but it´s the message behind (that makes the difference). It’s not just a plastic bracelet, but a product that is unique to each country. We use local resources and cultural history to make each bracelet unique.”

In each country where they work, the “Love is Project” has a group of photographers and videographers that help to make the storytelling compelling enough to make the product personal for the clients.

The combination of solid brand assets, great storytelling that highlights the artisans and the impact made, and a high quality, convincing product were important in helping to launch the brand. “People see the depth of our story and our (bracelet) collections and get excited about what we´re about,” Chrissie mentions. “We´re not just creating jobs, but also spreading the message of what is love across social media.”

Making Connections

Chrissie also mentions the importance of taking the time to meet people who could become future clients. She goes to several tradeshows each year and actively seeks to gain press attention for the “Love is Project.” “It is very important to do tradeshows to connect,” Chrissie says. “People want to meet you, hear your story, see the product in person.” She goes on to say that “having press (is) great for awareness.

You have to really be doing everything, and growing your email campaigns just to make sure you´re not leaving money on the table.”
Recently they were featured on the cover of Oprah Magazine while also being highlighted on Good Morning America. This has allowed the “Love is Project” to benefit from several different marketing channels. While they mostly market directly to consumers, they also have wholesale clients such as American Eagle, Whole Foods, Bloomingdales, Macy´s, among others.

By creating a solid proof of concept and focusing on persuasive media campaigns that are authentic (“real people sharing real messages,” according to Chrissie), the “Love is Project was also able to leverage a variety of publicity and marketing channels. Several influencers on social media channels helped spread the message. Celebrities like Anne Hathaway also have worn the bracelets to help create important, organic viral moments for the business. This, of course, led to more shareable content. The project also created a gratitude book, where they share personal “thank you´s” from customers to the artisans in each country.

Pay It Forward Business Model

As business is focused on improving the lives of women artisans from around the world, the “Love is Project” also incorporates a unique and inspiring business model that Chrissie calls the “Pay it Forward” business model.

“The idea is to do something good and someone else will as well,” Chrissie says. “The profits from each country help to fund the project in another country.” Originally started in Kenya, the project then expanded into Indonesia, and Ecuador following Chrissie´s travels around the globe and the organizations and individuals she met. Besides reinvesting the profits to incorporate more global artisan groups, Chrissie also makes it a priority to give back some of the profit to local charities and organizations.

“We are still a startup, so we have to make sure our company is (financially) stable,” Chrissie, says. “As we continue to grow we will be able to do even more. It is good to try and put money back into local communities.”

Entrepreneur Lessons from the Love Is Project

  • Stay Focused on a Specific Project at the Beginning
    • It is tempting to want to spread your business in several different directions from the outset. By staying focused on a specific product, market, or strategy from the outset, you will better be able to get your company or brand off the ground.
  • Learn Every Aspect of Entrepreneurship for Better Management down the road
    • The “lean business model” requires entrepreneurs to learn every aspect of their business. Even if you don´t actively engage in every aspect of your business, it is important to understand so that you can more effectively manage those areas of your business that you outsource or hire in the future.
  • Stay Open to Different Types of Markets
    • Chrissie and the Love is Project got their start selling wholesale to American Eagle and Whole Foods, but now sell direct to consumer. Stay open to different types of marketing schemes to attract different types of clients.
  • Importance of good photography/videography
    • You can do simple stuff on your own with your iPhone, but be willing to spend the money for campaigns and important advertising material that will captivate your potential clients.

Listen to the full interview with Chrissie Lam Here

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5 Tips for Gaining Traction in Your Small Business That You Can Start Today

Starting a business and making a sale all requires connecting with the right people. You might have an elevator speech memorized, business cards printed, website running online, and are on all the right social media platforms, but the question becomes how you close the gap. How do you connect with the right person at the right time? If you want to gain some serious traction in your small business, then this is the quick list for you!

If you’re ready to market your business or sell products a little more proactively, here are a few tips to consider:

1. Most people will never cross paths with you unless you help it happen.

Broadcasting your skills, products, or services needs to be done in a variety of ways, succinctly, and frequently. To be convincing you’ll need to clearly know yourself and what it is you do best and get the message across clearly. If you have a target audience in mind, your content can point out the benefits for that market.

Then you’ll need to connect with your target audience. Promote your products or services through your website, in newsletters, in person, in multiple social networks, or take out online advertising.  Be careful not to be tacky or pushy. Those you connect with will take but a few seconds to decide if they want to connect deeper with you or not.

2. People don’t know what you want them to know until you tell them.  

company culture change creator

It’s easy for a small business owner to stay huddled up in the safety zone of their office hoping to make sales. Does fear of sharing or self-promotion hold you back?

While you know what it is you provide customers, they won’t know it until they hear about it from you. It’s best not to assume they’ll come to you and ask what you have for them.  It’s best to narrow down one or two products or services to feature that will catch the attention of those that might invest in them.

It may be very easy for your connections to forget what you do or even care on an ongoing basis, so frequent online posts or tweets at various times of day can be helpful.

3. People want to know: What’s in it for me?

Not everyone will be receptive to your posts or promotions because most people are self-indulgent, or at least self-protective of the time and money they’ll devote to new information or products. Make your point in as few words as possible always from the angle of describing what’s in it for the person reading.

It’s never a good idea to bore anyone with lengthy speeches or long online posts, and it’s never wise to bombard people with constant sales pitches. Before posting online put yourself in the shoes of a member of your target audience and ask what their perception of you might be and what there take away is.

4. People will ignore you if you don’t engage.

 

It’s a good policy to listen to others.  Listen to the words spoken in person and in online social media posts, blogs comments, or forums. Listen to what is said between the words too. Enter into two-way conversation when appropriate.  Ask questions, respond to replies. Earn trust.

Engaging also offers a great way to do suggestive selling.  A bakery shop owner might respond to a reply to a comment and add, “Just made a three-layer chocolate cake with thick frosting now waiting to be purchased, interested?”  The person may not head out to the shop to buy it, but if they’re a sweets-lover, chances are the image will stay lodged in their brain until they can no longer resist.

5. You’re stronger in a tribe. so build one!

Never before has there been a greater opportunity for small business owners to learn from each other.  Gone are the days of only knowing as much as your high school teacher, college professor, in-house specialist, or textbook might have taught you.  There’s a crowd of knowledge out there and you get to be part of it.

Look for your crowd and join in. Get to know individual members.  Look for ideas.  Ask for solutions. Learn from them. Put your ego down and listen. Take advice. Thank those who respond. Promote others. Then plan what to do with your new information. If you make a good impression, your name will be first on their mind to recommend to others when given the chance.

Traction in your small business starts with creating your basic branding platform, followed by connecting, linking, and interacting with others. Once you begin to get feedback and see what others are sharing your posts, re-tweeting you, or helping to promote you, you’ve gained traction. As your brand, message, and personal story are broadcast, chances increase for you to make the right connection at the right time.

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Starting a Social Enterprise and Landing Funding with Justin Goodhew (Pitch Deck Inside)

Interview with the founder of Trellis, Justin Goodhew

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

When Justin reached out to us we were enticed by the work he was doing and the steps his startup has taken so far to grow.

In this interview, we talk about starting a social enterprise and raising funding. You’ll hear why he was fired from his volunteer job (didn’t know that was possible!) and some of the key steps he took to get started. Have you heard of Startup Weekend? Well, if not, you will now because Goodhew not only found inspiration there but he highly recommends it for any aspiring or active entrepreneur.

You know you’re doing something right when you’re able to get someone to invest serious money into your startup. He put together a pitch deck, very diligently, and started shopping it around with his strategy. In just a few months, which is usually not the case, he found someone willing to put money down.

While he was looking for a few hundred thousand to get rolling, he landed $600k (an update since this interview took place).

About Justin

Justin is a technology entrepreneur and an aspiring social entrepreneur. He is the founder at Trellis.org; a social enterprise connecting passionate people to charities.

Justin started in technology by co-founding his own application development company called Biznas Innovations Inc. Biznas built large internal business apps for Fortune 100 companies and smaller B2C apps for startups in Kelowna and Silicon Valley.

Are you curious what his pitch deck looked like?

Well, he was kind enough to share it so you can learn from what worked for him. Now he can’t do the pitch for you but this is a good framework to get you started.

Review the Pitch Deck Here

Learn more about Trellis @ https://trellis.org/

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Should I Become a Cannabis Entrepreneur? (Advice From 5 Experts)

We reached out to leading cannabis mission-driven entrepreneurs and asked one question: Should you jump into the cannabis industry?

Here are their answers:

1. Yes! It’s a welcoming community of entrepreneurs.

“What I would tell any aspiring pot-preneurs is that the cannabis community is welcoming and encouraging, so dive right in. Get involved locally and stay updated on current laws and issues by joining your local NORML chapter and/or other cannabis-related organizations.

Go to events, meet people and network. Find ways to make a difference in your community and don’t be shy.”

(Antonio DeRose, Co-Founder & COO, Marijuana Fitness Nutrition)

2. Yes! There’s still room for new companies.

“The sky is the limit. There is so much room for new businesses and there is a good amount of competition as well. This fact is a leading point to how professional they need to be in this industry. Cannabis is a consumable product and supporters/fans need to continually purchase.”

(Johnny Welsh, Author of Weedgalized in Colorado: True Tales From The High Country)

3. Yes, take the risk, but it’s a lot of work.

“I would pass on a few pieces of advice: follow your heart and take the risk. You will never know the outcome of your efforts unless you actually follow through and do it.

If you have made it to the point in your life where you are aspiring to be an entrepreneur in the cannabis industry you must have a vision and the desire to create it, keep your vision clear at all times. Being a successful pot-preneur takes a lot of work, vision, and perseverance.”

(Garyn Angel, CEO of MagicalButter)

Related: How Vangst Built the Number One Cannabis Recruiting Platform From Scratch

4. Yes, legal cannabis is the place to be.

“I’d say we are fortunate to be in an industry with tremendous growth and opportunities for wealth creation and social/environmental impact. For those interested in social enterprise, legal cannabis is the place to be.

The field is still pretty wide open but it is no longer a secret subculture. The primary verticals of growing and processing are becoming more saturated but there are loads of opportunities for new innovation and ancillary verticals to make things better.

The pot industry has welcomed some great social enterprises that either struggled or just couldn’t gain traction in other more traditional industries. That is, folks that had a process, service, or technology that has dual or multi-industry application, apply it to the pot industry and use it as sort of an incubator to get funded and grow into a viable business, and maybe one day they could return to their ‘home’ industry and affect change the way they originally intended. Give it a try.”

(Steven Looi, White Sheep Corp. Director of Strategy and Origination)

5. Yes, but with caution.

“Cannabis businesses need to get past the initial euphoria of the “Green Rush” and settle in for the long haul. Recognizing that medical cannabis will be the long play with the highest ROI is still difficult for most business owners.

Consider that 20-30M Americans are stoners and studies have shown potential 1-2% growth. This is untapped, but capped, market. Soon it will be saturated and a major shakeout is coming.”

(Jordan Tishler, MD is a Harvard Physician, President/CEO of the Association of Cannabis Specialists)

9 Proven Signs That You’re Ready to Start Your Own Business

I was a mad scientist, head down in the lab building the brand Change Creator, my second business. But this time around, there was something different.

My first business was a record label—AlterImage Recordings—and I had a co-founder. This time, I was flying solo.

During the first year, I didn’t come out of the “lab” too much using cool tools like Facebook Live. At some point during year two, I created an awkward monologue video that did a quick review of the first year.

A key takeaway I shared was that you have to be a little crazy to pursue a business on your own. But it’s the good kind of crazy. Meaning, you must be obsessed with what you’re doing because it’s meaningful to you. This will keep your motivation up and help you persist through the ups and downs.

There is no sense in going on doing something you hate, just so you can go on doing something you hate.

If I knew what I would have to do in the first year, I would have said, “You’re nuts.”

Now, we have released 26 editions of Change Creator Magazine and have interviewed people like Richard Branson, Seth Godin, Arianna Huffington, Jay Shetty and so many more.  Why? Because I was obsessed and a little crazy.

Think you can take an idea and manifest into something real that actually is meaningful and impacts lives around the world?

Can you disrupt the norm and change the status-quo?

We all have the entrepreneurial fire in our belly, but is your fire lit?

Starting your own business is a very big undertaking, but at the same time, if you’re doing something meaningful, it’s exciting and fulfilling on many levels. You can earn good money, change people’s lives, create something from nothing, be your own boss and find true freedom.

Nine Indicators: How many define you?

Vulnerability

You have to be willing to put yourself out there in the world and have people look at you like your nuts. When you have a big idea or vision but little to show for it because you’re just starting, many people will think your ideas are a bit out there. Especially if they have never started a company themselves.

But, it’s absolutely essential today to be willing to tell your story if you want to build a sustainable advantage with your impact business.

Freedom

Being hungry for freedom—the power to do what you want when you want— is a great motivator. Nobody wants to wake up each day doing something they don’t like just to pay the bills. If you’re comfortable doing work as an employee from 9-5pm everyday, five days a week, then that’s okay, but starting a business is not for you.

Purpose

Do you crave more purpose in your life? Have you ever sat with your thoughts and asked yourself, “What will I be doing in 10 years, and is my current path making me the person I want to be?” What will be your legacy?

Those thoughts are what lit my fire. There was no way I was satisfied working for someone else doing something that gave me no sense of fulfillment until I was 65 years old. I wanted to build a lifestyle where I woke up each day pursuing a mission, not a job. Do you relate to this?

Today, my work is a reflection of who I am because I took a serious self-inventory to start from the inside out. There’s nothing better than waking up each day doing something that aligns with who you are.

Deep Frustration

When you open up Facebook 10 times a day—you know you do—and cruise the newsfeed, do you ever see news from around the world that frustrated the hell out of you?

For example, I cannot stand the incredible amount of plastic pollution or deforestation taking place in the world. Maybe you have a soft spot for animals and believe in stopping factory farm abuse. Or the fact that over two billion people around the world don’t even have access to a toilet. You get the idea.

That frustration is a huge driving force that empowers entrepreneurs who innovate solutions to problems. When you start to bring a solution to life that helps address a major challenge like those, it’s darn fulfilling.

Comfortable with Risk

This has to be called out even though you’re aware of it already. You might not have a lot of money. You might have major school debt from buying a diploma. No matter what your situation is, you must plan for risk and be comfortable with taking risk. You cannot grow yourself or a business without it. One day, you’ll need to pop your cherry by taking a calculated risk that just completely fails. You will then find out that the sun will still rise the next day, and you will move forward on your mission wiser than before.

For example, Milton Hershey went bankrupt several times trying to make Hershey chocolate work. After the first or even second time, most people would have been shattered and given up. But not Milton. Nobody, banks or family, would give him money again. He didn’t care, he created a new plan, and you all know his chocolate very well today.

During the first year of Change Creator, I made many mistakes and took big risks that cost me thousands of dollars. For example, hiring a public relations team too early and hiring the wrong marketing support. Or doing heavy paid marketing without truly having product market fit yet. Live. Learn. Move on. If your risk is calculated, you won’t lose your shirt.

Willing to Work Very Hard

Don’t fool yourself. It’s a sh@! load of work, especially if you are a solo founder. Speaking from experience on both ends—co-founder and solo founder—I can tell you there is a major difference in the workload.

Being a bootstrapper, I learned graphic design, web development, video development and all the necessary skills to speed up my process—and to avoid hiring as much as possible, at first. If you’re willing to learn new skills, wake up at 4am to work before your day job and spend at least half the weekend working, you might be ready to make the push.

Personally, when my startup was a side-hustle, I would wake up at 4am in the morning to give myself a few hours before I had to catch a train from Philadelphia to New York at 7:24am. I did that for at least five years. Now, with Change Creator as my sole work, I wake up everyday at 5:30am and work until about 3-4pm. On weekends I worked from 7am until about 12pm or 1pm. I still do today. But I spend the second half of those days with family, working out, or hiking. Living the other part of my life.

Remember, the number of hours doing work is not what matters, the type of work and quality of it does.

An important lesson and tip is to schedule your success. Being successful is more than just work. I talk about that in more depth on Influencive right here.

Financially Organized

Let’s keep this simple, you don’t have to be rich, but you need to know how to manage your money if you want to survive entrepreneurship. This means being organized and doing regular audits of your spending. Know where your money is going and what you can afford to spend. There is nothing more stressful and destructive than lack of financial management.

Around the first of each month, I review all my finances using a side-by-side view of the previous month and current month to see which revenue streams are growing and which are not. This includes an assessment of all established recurring expenses. You can ask me my total net-worth any time and I know the answer, you should too.

Skills

Aside from developing yourself into an authority in your field, you must remember that you are not an employee playing a single role when you start a business. You are playing every role. Passion is important, but having the appropriate skills to manage all the various aspects is important as well.

They can be learned or delegated. When you just start out, you probably don’t want to delegate too much because it costs money. Be realistic about your strengths and weaknesses. You likely have some learning to do.

I’ve had over 18 years of professional experience doing marketing, account management, or managing teams. But I had to take on learning new skills like graphic design, basic web development, and video development. There’s nothing to be afraid of, and Youtube has a video for everything.

If you want to know some of the key tools I recommend for bootstrapping, I share them here.

Unreasonable Leadership

Do you understand leadership? What makes a good leader and what is required? As CEO, you must have a vision and be capable of strategizing solutions for fulfilling the vision. Why unreasonable leadership? Because if you have a vision that is big, people will tell you you’re crazy. This is what people said about flying to the moon or creating automated chefs and cars. But the leaders were unreasonable and that is why progress happens.

George Brendard Shaw, known for radical rationalism, wrote novels and plays in the late 1800s and was known to use them as an outlet for attacking social hypocrisy. A famous quote by Shaw said,

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

At some point, you will hire contractors and then full-time employees. They follow your lead, and you need to be ready to be at the helm and intelligently lead the charge. Tactics and strategy will change and pivot, but you must stick to your vision no matter how unreasonable it may seem to others.

Conclusion

Starting a new business could be the most exciting and rewarding experience of your life if your fire is lit and you’re ready to make the leap. There are many fears and factors that hold people back from even starting—said to be the toughest part of all. You just need to be in the right mindset to overcome the fears and be persistent.

In my humble opinion, we can all do it, and if you reviewed the 9 signs I shared above and feel that most or even all describe you, your fire is lit and you’re ready to go.

Strategies For Building an Authentic and Lucrative Business with Michelle Ward (interview)

Interview with creative business coach, Michelle Ward

Subscribe to this show on Spotify iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Michelle Ward is fun, energetic and smart. She’s also a fighter who overcame breast cancer twice.

In this conversation, we dig into important lessons from her experience and what it takes to start building an authentic and lucrative business.

Michelle has been offering dream business guidance for creative women as The When I Grow Up Coach since 2008. You may have seen or heard her in New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, Etsy, Newsweek, Freelancers Union, USA Today, the Forbes Top 100 Websites for your Career List or 150+ other media outlets.

She’s the co-author of The Declaration of You, which was published by North Light Books, and the teacher of Create Your Dream Career and Ditch Your Day Job, which was watched by tens of thousands of people live on CreativeLive.

When she’s not coaching, teaching or speaking, she can be found building a fort for her little girl, sitcom-binging with her husband, or belting out show tunes.

Today, Michelle helps hundreds of people live there best life. She knows what it takes, has a lot of experience and a track record that shows it.

This interview will offer you a lot of little gold nuggets and a big boost in motivation.

Here’s quick video from Michelle…

You can also learn more at: whenigrowupcoach.com

Fair Trade Fashion Startup Strategies and Lessons with Maureen Dunn Fetscher (interview)

Interview with Mata Traders founder, Maureen Dunn

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Maureen has a lot of great experience and insight into the fashion world and has done extensive travel around the world that has inspired her.

In this interview, we talk about ethical fair trade fashion, e-commerce and startup lessons.

The Mata Traders mission is to ‘fashion a better world’ by creating designs that celebrate a woman’s originality and empower her to use her dollar for a change. We merge uncommonly vibrant style with fair trade practices to make an impact on global poverty – bringing fair wages to artisans in India and Nepal.

They partner with several fair trade organizations in India and Nepal that train and employ hundreds of artisans in marginalized communities, with a focus on gender equality and empowering women.

At the cooperatives, their garments are individually stitched in small workshops, with one seamstress creating an entire garment rather than being part of a production line.

Many Mata styles are then carefully finished with hand embroidery in the women’s own homes. Their training starts with hand sewing, moving on to simple machine patterns, like bags, and eventually mastering the sewing machine. Showing leadership skills offers the women a chance to become head of their sewing group or get promoted to positions like trainer, quality checker, materials buyer, or assistant production manager. In a country as socially stratified as India, this type of social mobility in the workplace is a rarity.

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Laura Gassner Otting: Carve Your Own Path and Live Your Best Life (interview)

Interview with author and professional speaker, Laura Gassner Otting

Subscribe to this show on  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

This was a really fun conversation. Laura is full of energy and is not afraid to tell you like it is. On top of being an author and speaker, she’s a big-time straight shooter which I personally love. If you’re feeling stuck where you are she’s got advice that will help.

What if success doesn’t equal happiness? Many of us spend our lives pursuing a singular idea of success, one that was created for us by someone else. We give votes to those who shouldn’t even have voices and strive to go faster and faster even as we find ourselves falling further and further behind. We chase gold stars, we check all the boxes, we lean in – and yet we still feel incomplete. When we don’t define success in our own terms, finding our purpose and carving our own path becomes impossible. So how do you break the cycle so that you can live your best life?

The invigorating new book, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life by confidence catalyst Laura helps you discover your consonance — how you align what you do with who you are — to achieve your limitless potential.

With lessons learned over 20 years of interviewing hundreds of nonprofit, corporate, and government leaders, all of whom were in the midst of massive career change, Gassner Otting helps readers discover their greatness and encourages them to forge ahead and become the best versions of themselves.

Get our FULL feature story with Laura in Issue 27 of Change Creator Magazine”

Take the Limitless Challenge: We can set up a personalized page for your audience to take an assessment and learn what is stopping them from becoming limitless, and what they can do about it.
http://www.LimitlessAssessment.com

You can learn more at https://lauragassnerotting.com

Watch Laura’s TEDx Talk for more inspiration!

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How Kind Karma Launched Their Ethical Fashion Social Business (interview)

Interview with the founder of Kind Karma, Laurinda Lee

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In this interview we talk with the founder of Kind Karma, Laurinda Lee, about how she launched Kind Karma, lessons learned, and processes that helped her grow her social business.

The first few years running your own business are no easy task.

Laurinda started crafting jewellery when she herself was a youth but it wasn’t until last year that she decided to implement those skills towards building a business.

Surrounded by entrepreneurs, starting a business had always been a lifelong goal but for her, giving back and ensuring positive community impact were the ultimate motivating factors and so, she adopted the social enterprise model to craft her own form of change.

Today, Kind Karma Company partners with local organizations with similar goals to employ local at-risk and transitioning homeless youth to handcraft quality jewellery.

Proceeds from all sales are returned to employees to support their individual goals and aspirations with the hope that as these youth transform into successful adults, they too, will have the ability and motivation to continue to pay kindness forward.

 

How to Start Creating a Brand That Matters with Mona Amodeo

This article was written by Tobias Roberts and was originally published in Change Creator Magazine.

People in business know the importance of branding. Besides setting you apart from competitors, a brand can also promote company recognition and represents the unique promise you bring to your customers. From traditional logos and symbols, to video-based outreach on social media, and even to the unique customer service you provide, branding certainly transcends most aspects of how businesses function.

Mona Amodeo, founder and president of the IDG group, believes that building a brand that matters should go beyond simply improving the profit margins of your company. Instead of employing and promoting your brand for short-term business visions and purposes, Mona believes that successful brand development can positively impact your customers, employees, the community where your business works, and the wider world.

Who is Mona Amodeo?

Mona has a Ph.D. in Organization Development and Change, and works with several companies and organizations promoting Branding from the Core®, a multi-disciplinary approach to strategic brand development. She also is involved in helping businesses to become more engaged with their local communities and develop sustainable business operations while making corporate social responsibility an elemental aspect of business identity.

After working as part of a team at the University of West Florida making documentary films to tell the stories of people around the world, Mona gradually transitioned into finding ways to help businesses tell their stories as well. “I became interested in the power of organizations to be a force in the world in a positive way,” says Mona. She wanted to help organizations matter more to the people who work for them, the communities they are in, and the wider world, and believed that brands had the unique ability to do just that.

The Changing Face of Branding

“Everybody has a different idea of what a brand is,” Mona clarifies. “For me, a brand is simply the associations people make when they hear the name (of a business), and the meaning that people associate with that.” In a sense, then, branding is the intentional process of creating meaning.

A couple decades ago, manufacturing processes all made similar products. The early pioneers in the industry of branding relied on psychology and the need to create an identity to convince customers that their products were different. The history of branding, then, is closely associated with discovering how to tap into that human need to belong and to identify with something.

Over the years, the underlying principles behind the beginnings of the process of branding remain very similar. However, how we use those principles and what people are looking to identify with, is shifting as our society changes.

“I believe that we can use this idea of wanting to belong and of wanting to be a part of something to engage people in a different way of living,” Mona states. She goes on to say that business should utilize the desire for people to belong “to connect people to things that matter to them and to things that will leave the world a little bit better.”

Changing Consumer Demand

Branding is usually seen from a marketing standpoint. We want people to recognize the product or service that our company offers in order to develop a loyal customer base. However, Mona believes that people today are less interested in the sometimes trifling product differentiation and much more eager to attach their loyalties to businesses that tap into their wider sense of identity and purpose.

“With products and services,” Mona admits, “there is such parity…and very little real difference.” Without undermining the importance of product quality, she believes that people want to follow and be a part of things that they identify with and that reflect positively on that identity.

Businesses that promote the ideas of purpose and responsibility (both environmentally and socially) not as an add-on corporate social responsibility gesture, but as foundational to who they are and how they operate, will be able to capture the growing consumer demand for businesses that offer products and services that reinforce who they area.

If 86 percent of Americans will support a brand that advocates for a cause they believe in, companies that don’t actively attempt to tap into their customer´s needs for identity and purpose, might be losing out on business.

The Process

Mona says that the first step in building a brand that matters to potential customers is through helping leadership teams at different businesses identify their values and discover what their story is. “Every organization has to answer these questions,” Mona believes. “Who are you and why should I care?” The answers to these questions help consumers discover who you are, what you believe in as a company, and what you can offer that sets your business apart.

From a branding perspective, the most important element is not just how we tell our stories, but what those stories actually are. The difference that we want to make in our communities and in the world is what people want to be a part of in today´s society.

By aligning your business plan with a branding strategy that taps into the need for identification and purpose, businesses can build a loyal customer following.

“Creating a tribe of people who want to be a part of your business because it represents something they believe in is essential,” Mona states. “Branding is the vehicle for building meaning and for connecting people (as your most valuable resource) to create your most valuable asset (your business´s reputation).”

Shifting Business Culture

The process of creating a brand that matters, both to employees, customers, and the wider world, begins with businesses and organizations that are willing to change their company culture. “I like to think of culture as the operating system of a company,” Mona says. “It is what holds everything together. If that operating system is not correct, then there is nothing that will hold the system together.”

Actively changing a business culture begins with what Mona calls an identity narrative, which is what the organization says to itself.

“It is important for leaders to understand that this identity narrative cannot be forced down on people, but is rather created through dialogue.”

Having people in your company critically reflecting on their values, how those values affect their behavior, and what sets them apart from their competitors has to live in the hearts of the people who are a part of the organization. This is what we call Digital Conversations™️ here at Change Creator. 

“A brand story is a co-creation,” Mona recognizes. “It is what you say to the world and what the world says about you. You have to be clear about where you want to go…and then translate that story and create a performance culture that reflects that narrative.”

Convincing Versus Connecting

Whereas traditional branding focused on convincing consumers that your product or service was superior to those of your competitors, this new type of branding that Mona talks about is more focused on connecting on a deep level with a customer base that shares vision, purpose, and identity that your brand communicates.

The best way to connect with customers is through the authenticity of the story that you tell to the marketplace. “You create authenticity by engaging people inside your organization with this narrative,” Mona says, “and connecting them to this sense of purpose and why we´re all here.” She goes on to say that collective purpose creates a level of performance that cannot be forged, and this in turn creates genuine motivation for people in your company to be a part of what the brand is attempting to communicate.

“When you tap into the inner sense of people´s desire to do something that matters…to have an impact beyond the moment, that’s a whole different level,” Mona believes. “When you tap into that, when you present people with challenges, innovation arises.”

A Few Important Business Lessons from this New Concept of Branding

Branding has a tremendous power to create connections because it is focused on connecting with people´s innermost sense of self. Through engaging in the process of changing the culture and forging a brand that matters, a business can not only prosper but also make powerful differences in the world. Below are a few key business insights that arise from the challenge of taking your concept of branding beyond a hip company name or a colorful logo.

Consumer demand is changing due to the interconnectedness of our digital world. Now more than ever people are demanding that businesses act ethically, and people are much more willing to show loyalty to a company that shares a purpose and an identity that they can connect with.

Branding is a vehicle to create a reputation. Instead of simply adding corporate social responsibility as an add-on, making it a foundational aspect of your business culture will allow your authenticity to shine through so that customers can connect with who you are and what your business stands for.

Creating a brand that matters and that is authentic begins with fundamentally changing company culture. This cannot be a top-down process, but rather has to be forged from internal dialogues that engage people who belong to the organization.

Creating a brand that matters is more about connecting with people who interact with your business than convincing them to purchase what you have to offer. From an employee standpoint, connections on a deep level allow innovation to arise. From a customer perspective, connections allow them to allow your company to forge a part of their identity.

Listen to our full interview with Mona here…

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How Gerard Adams Sold Elite Daily for $50m and Became The Millennial Mentor

Interview with Gerard Adams

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Gerard Adams is on fire.

He is full of inspiration, energy and strategic insights. This discussion was a blast and I know you’ll get tons of key takeaways from it.

In this interview, we talk about how he actually built the media company, Elite Daily, and then sold it for a cool $50m. There a lot to this story. Adams has gone through his own transformation after losing his first fortune. Only through hard work, mentorship and persistence did he get it all back.

Today he’s known as the Millennial Mentor helping others build their dreams.

A defining moment for Adams was when he spent time with Tony Robbins, a renowned speaker, entrepreneur, and mentor (issue 8 of Change Creator Magazine) who has had a world-wide impact. Tony says, “Success without fulfilment is the ultimate failure.”

That statement has become a driving force for Adams. A materially rich life without purpose and fulfilment is an empty dream.

Want Adams to help you build your dream? Shoot him a DM on his Instagram and mention Change Creator.

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How Zoetica is Helping the World Go Waste-Free

Interview with Zoetica Founders, Karen Hoskin and Elizabeth Smith.

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In this interview with Zoetica founders, Karen and Elizabeth, we discuss their mission to free society from convenience trash and plastic. Learn how they came up with their innovative solution and run operations from the ground up. In this discussion, you’ll hear helpful insights about starting a social good business and how to manage e-commerce, especially during the early years.

Karen and Elizabeth know that once you begin observing, you notice the crisis of convenience trash everywhere around you. Stand outside any office buildings in downtown San Francisco, LA and New York and observe first hand how many disposable coffee cups, to-go containers, plastic forks, straws, and plastic bags are used and tossed every day, all day. We had to ask ourselves the hard question: who is going to fix this?

They decided they couldn’t sit around waiting for some politician to pass an ordinance. No, they took action to solve the problem themselves in their own way. In comes Zoetica! Lifestyle change has never been easier.

About Karen

“I began traveling for work in 1991. Every day for years, I was heaped upon with throw away trash: plastic shopping bags, coffee cups, cutlery wrapped in plastic, to go containers, straws, plastic water bottles. I began to feel like the Native American in that old 1970’s commercial with the tear streaming down his face. The trash cans filled with single use waste hurt me. The litter left around the airport lounges and hotel lobbies hurt me. I needed to make a change. Today, I refuse an average of 19 to 20 pieces of single use trash each day on the road and 5-6 when I am home. All it took was making a pledge, reorganizing my life with systems and sticking to the Zoetica zero waste lifestyle – no matter what.

I have been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years. I am currently the owner and founder of a craft distillery called Montanya Distillers. Zoetica is my first social entrepreneurship project and my first time partnering with another female business owner. It is an incredible blast and so empowering. I believe one day Zoetica will come to represent a lifestyle that we all live to keep our planet habitable for our children.”

About Elizabeth

“I am fortunate to have spent time in many beautiful places on this planet. I enjoy exploring wilderness areas and diverse cultures in this world. Travelling has awakened me to so many issues affecting our planet. Watching the destruction of our planet is heartbreaking for me. I am often left with a feeling of helplessness in not being able to change what we are doing to our only life-support system.

In those moments, I remind myself to examine my own life and the choices I make on a daily basis. It all begins with being the change you want to see. Convenience trash such as plastic water bottles, utensils, coffee cups, and straws are literally choking our planet. Every piece of plastic we have used is still here. Plastic just gets broken into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually penetrating our oceans, our soil, our food chain, and our drinking water. The production and disposal of these products are affecting our planetary health worldwide. This convenience trash is not going “away”. There is no “away”, and no one is going to clean it up for us. It is up to each of us to create solutions and find new ways to make a change. Convenience trash is not the only issue facing us but it is one problem I can take on as an individual.”

Start going waste-free and check out Zoetica here.

 

How Edovo is Disrupting The Prison System in a Big Way: Brian Hill, Founder (Interview)

Interview with the founder of Edovo, Brian Hill

I was sitting in what could be considered a lounge area at a conference in 2018. There was this guy sitting on a little ottoman next to me. I decided to bullshit with him a bit and see what he was working on. That’s how I met Brian Hill, the founder of Edovo, and learned about the amazing work his team is doing.

Brian is not the kind of guy that is worried about being in the spotlight or news. His focus is to change an old broken system that is doing more harm then good – the prison system.

Every year, 12 million people in the U.S. will see the inside of a jail or prison cell. Although education and communication with loved ones are well-documented ways to keep people out of jail, most prisoners don’t have regular access to programming on the inside.

Edovo builds technology to support positive outcomes for incarcerated individuals and their families. We offer a digital platform to meet the education, communication, and rehabilitation needs of justice-involved people and their loved ones.

We are passionate entrepreneurs, technologists, operators, and educators with a firm belief in a smarter, safer justice system for everyone. We work with empathy, integrity, and collaboration to champion this vision.

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Joel Solomon: Secrets From an Impact Investor Leading the Clean Money Revolution

Interview with Impact Investor & Author Joel Solomon, Renewal Funds

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This was an invigorating conversation.

Joel is full of wisdom after 30+ years of experience in the impact business space.

Why are things the way they are, where are they going, what can we do to all help, what do impact investors look for from entrepreneurs? Those are just a few of the questions we answer in this discussion.

As the founding partner of Renewal Funds, Joel manages over $98M in assets supporting companies that are shaping a better future.

Renewal Funds is Canada’s leading “mission venture capital” investment firm supporting early growth stage Organics and EnviroTech companies in Canada and the USA.

The Fund has over 150 individual, family, and foundation investors mostly split between Canada and the USA, with several in Europe and Asia. The goal is above market financial returns from a portfolio of companies offering positive societal advances. Renewal Funds dynamic team is led by Paul Richardson, President and CEO, and Joel Solomon, Chair, with crucial backing from Carol Newell.

Renewal Funds has been named a “Best for the World Funds” by B the Change Media, for setting the measurement and management bar for impact investing. It has also been name a B Corp for “Best for the World Company.”

What caught my attention was his book, The Clean Money Revolution. It’s inspiring and very much aligned with my values and led me to meeting Joel.

I would highly recommend checking it out!

Here More From Joel in this Video

What You Need to Know To Step Up Your Sales Game with Dom Cappuccilli (interview)

Interview with the founder of The Clean Sell, Dom Cappuccilli

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If you can’t figure out how to make sales with your business then you won’t be able to scale your impact. Sales has become a dirty word with many entrepreneurs in the impact space but it doesn’t have to be. This is an art we all practice in one shape or form.

In this interview, we explore some of the expert strategies that have been proven over and over to help you advance your sales game so you can grow your business and impact.

Dom combines the power of a trained storyteller with the real world experience of an elite salesperson. In fact, he became an elite salesperson because he was a trained storyteller.

He is the CEO of The Clean Sell consulting firm which has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to not only tell a better sales story but also built many of their sales efforts from the ground up.

After 10 years as a reporter, author and screenwriter, Dom found his calling when he rewrote the sales story of a fast-growing healthcare company and doubled their revenue in six months. From there, he quickly rose to be a sales leader at unicorn startup ZocDoc – currently valued at $1.8B – before he went to Arches Technology and created and sold an entirely new healthcare technology product to health systems.

During his career, Dom was amazed that almost all of the companies he saw were succeeding in spite of their sales story and strategy, not because of it. In 2016, he decided it was time to change that and The Clean Sell has been helping startups and small businesses ever since.

You can learn more at The Clean Sell

 

How Love is Project Generated $1.2M Spreading Love With Bracelets (interview)

chrissie lam change creator love is project

Interview with the founder of Love is Project, Chrissie Lam

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#LOVEISPROJECT CONNECTS SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS CONSUMERS ACROSS THE WORLD WITH A MESSAGE OF LOVE.

It grew out of a simple desire to find out what love means to people around the world, and how despite circumstance or history, love unites us all.

During founder Chrissie Lam’s extensive travels around the world, she heard the needs of local communities and saw an opportunity to partner with female artisans to create beautiful jewelry while empowering them and their families.

Many artisan groups create beautiful products but are unable to realize the potential size of their market because of a lack of resources, trend-right products, marketing knowledge, industry connections, and lack of funds which hinder artisans’ abilities to successfully scale a business. Having worked in fashion for over a decade, Chrissie understands the need to bring unique products to consumers with an appetite for new and interesting things.

A growing group of socially conscious consumers is looking for brands with social impact and inspiring stories. The #LOVEISPROJECT solves the problem of availability of socially conscious merchandise for consumers by generating creative, inspiring concepts to help create a mass market for beautiful products with high growth potential.

Chrissie found artisans – with local NGOs and social enterprises to manage productions and QC. Each bracelet designed is unique to each country’s culture and resources, while each collection evolves the concept of love.

The narrative continues from country to country, creating an ethical supply chain of economical empowerment while inspiring and connecting people with a message of LOVE.

Check’em out here to learn more!

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Putting Impact on Auto Pilot With A Funnel Marketing System: Michelle Evans (interview)

michelle evans change creator

Interview with funnel marketing expert, Michelle Evans.

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In this interview with talk with funnel marketing expert Michelle Evans to learn how she went from a cosy job at Microsoft to making her own schedule as an entrepreneur building funnel systems.

We wanted to learn how she help busy entrepreneurs free up their time to work on their most important tasks. Well, smart funnel systems that automate your process is a big part of that and what she does best.

Get her best advice and start building smart systems that work for you.

Michelle got the entrepreneurial spark at a young age. Today she works with a fantastic community of business owners – coaches, consultants, experts, speakers, authors and solopreneurs – using her 20+ years of successful marketing experience to create client-generating, income-producing, stress-reducing marketing funnels.

On top of it all, she family loving mom who has 3 active kids running around.

As Marketing Strategist she basically helps business owners make more money.

She says she has a proven, strategic approach to marketing that works. An approach you can learn. An approach where you do the work once to set it up and then let the system run. 24/7.

No more losing money on bad marketing. No more creating content that is lost and abandoned in the far, forgotten dusty corners of the internet. No more navigating the overwhelming and confusing world of marketing alone.

If you want to check out her work or even borrow her brain, just pop on over here.

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How Somya Munjal is Creating Social Change Through Socioeconomic Empowerment

Interview with Somya Munjal,  founder of Youthful Savings, Managing Partner of CPA for the People, LLP and the Creative Director of Audacious Endeavors

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Somya is full of energy and ambition. I’m pretty sure nothing can stop her! Our conversation will inspire you and provoke new ideas. It’s amazing to see what one person can do if they put their mind to it.

Somya has one clear mission in life – socioeconomic empowerment.

By working hard, understanding the economy and collectively transacting consciously, she believes all can be empowered and live a better life. She is a social entrepreneur with a passion for helping people through financial planning, education and impact-driven entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Youthful Savings, Managing Partner of CPA for the People, LLP and the Creative Director of Audacious Endeavors. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a FINRA licensed financial advisor. Her social enterprises focus on fiscal and monetary policy reform through the empowerment of people.

Somya is a member of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Southern California Mediation Association and an active volunteer with the Centinela Youth Services restorative justice programming. She is dedicated to solving socioeconomic issues and appreciates the opportunities of growth that solutions-based, action-oriented thought communities provide to her mission.

Somya is a firm believer in affordable education as an agent for change. She paid her way through a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy, Master of Science in Accountancy, Master of Business Administration in International Business and is currently pursuing a law degree. Somya credits her academic success to her parents’ zeal for education which then gave her the courage to pursue social entrepreneurship as a career. She realizes that not all youth are as lucky and hopes to inspire every youth she encounters to become the best version of themselves, have the confidence and resources to pursue higher education and serve humanity at large so the world can become more kind and equitable.

 

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Looking to Nature and Tech to Solve Social Problems with Shel Horowitz

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Interview with best selling author, Shel Horowitz.

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I had a great talk with award-winning author, speaker and ethical marketing expert, Shel Horowitz. We cover a range of thought-provoking topics that will inspire you and your impact business.

A bit more about Shel.

For over a decade, Shel Horowitz, “The Transformpreneur,” has been showing business owners how to be more profitable by being green and ethical. Shel shows businesses how to go green affordably and effectively and how to market that green commitment to winning new customers, turn those customers into fans, and turn those fans into ambassadors for you.

Recently, he’s focused on the profit motive as a powerful tool for turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.

Shel is an international speaker, transformational business consultant, and the multiple-award-winning author of ten books, including the long-running category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and the newer Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (both co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson, Father of Guerrilla Marketing).

Check out one of Shel’s best selling books…

shel horowitz change creator

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Building a Massive Audience Through The Power of Storytelling with Jay Shetty (interview)

Interview with Jay Shetty

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In this interview, he shares strategies, tools and insights that he has never shared before and you can’t get anywhere else. Don’t miss this one!!

Jay Shetty is a rising star who has carved out his path by mastering the art of storytelling. Shetty was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, has billions of views for his videos and was the host of HuffPost Daily.

He now works with the biggest brands in the world. He has been invited to keynote at leading companies including Google, L’Oreal, Facebook, Coca-Cola, HSBC, EY, Microsoft and Accenture. In 2016 he won the ITV Asian Media Award for Best Blog and came 3rd in the Guardian Rising Star Award in 2015.

His authentic marketing style is exactly what the saturated digital market requires today. We had to learn more about how he does it!

How to Go Lean and Innovate Social Impact with Eric Ries and Ann Mei Chang (Interview)

eric ries and ann mei chang change creator

Interview with Eric Ries and Ann Mei Chang

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This is a really unique interview because we were able to pull the two leaders of the Lean movement together at the same time. I personally read Eric Ries book, Lean Startup when it came out and it was transformative. Since then his ideas of taken hold of the startup world. Before that Eric worked with Ann closely, and now Ann is taking on the social impact space with Lean Impact. Eric wrote the forward and the book is amazing as it takes the Lean Startup principles and molds them for social impact. The insights and stories are priceless!

If you don’t know Ann and Eric here is a bit more about them. Don’t miss this interview, its packed with insights and they made our issue 23 cover story for Change Creator Magazine which offers a deep dive into their lessons that will help you become more effective as you grow your own impact business. If you don’t have the app, be sure to download it on iTunes or Google Play or just visit us on the desktop app here.

ABOUT ERIC

Eric Ries is an entrepreneur and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, which has sold over one million copies and has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, which has become a global movement in business, practiced by individuals and companies around the world. This methodology was the inspiration behind his founding of the LTSE and his books The Leader’s Guide and The Startup Way.

He has founded a number of startups, including IMVU, where he served as CTO, and he has advised on business and product strategy for startups, venture capital firms, and large companies, including GE, with whom he partnered to create the FastWorks program. Eric has served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School, IDEO, and Pivotal, and he is the founder and CEO of the Long-Term Stock Exchange.

ABOUT ANN

Ann Mei Chang is a leading advocate for social innovation and author of LEAN IMPACT: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good (Wiley, Nov. 6, 2018). As Chief Innovation Officer at USAID, Ann Mei served as the first Executive Director of the US Global Development Lab, engaging the best practices for innovation from Silicon Valley to accelerate the impact and scale of solutions to the world’s most intractable challenges. She was previously the Chief Innovation Officer at Mercy Corps and served the US Department of State as Senior Advisor for Women and Technology in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.

 

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Connecting Social Enterprises with Buyers and Consumers: Rafik Riad, Buy Good. Feel Good. Expo (Interview)

Interview with Rafik Riad, founder of Buy Good. Feel Good.

One of the most important growth channels we have found at Change Creator is through strong partnerships. What has been most fascinating is how easily we can become stuck behind the desk working in the business rather than getting out to conferences and working on the business. One day at the right conference can be a game-changer based on who you meet.

Rafik Riad is originally from Egypt and has studied and worked globally on policy design and project implementation in the field of international development.

In 2011, Rafik founded SALT, a fair trade social enterprise that worked with communities in Africa and Latin America. Rafik’s appreciation for social enterprise led him to found Buy Good. Feel Good. in 2014.

Today Buy Good. Feel Good. is North America’s largest marketplace dedicated to connecting social enterprises with buyers and consumers.

Here’s a great example. We interviewed the founder of S’well water bottles, Sarah Kauss, for Change Creator Magazine issue 17 and found out that in one year she attended 17 tradeshows where she made all her big distribution deals. Today, S’well has reached over $100M in revenue. That’s certainly worth the price of admission!

We love the work Buy Good. Feel Good. is doing and are the official media sponsors for the 2019 event. And of course, our team will be representing in Toronto this April to attend the Buy Good. Feel Good. event as well. Maybe we’ll see you there?

Learn more and register to attend the event here.

What can you expect?

This is where good people motivated to push the world in the right direction through responsible business and purchasing will convene. Full of energy and excitement you can expect to connect with ambitious entrepreneurs, distributors and buyers alike. You might be one conversation away from changing your business forever at Buy Good. Feel Good. Expo. As they say, surround yourself with good people and good things can happen — but you have to put the effort out.

The event goes for a couple days starting on April 12, 2019 and ending on April 14, 2019.

Nows the time to start planning and reserving your spot an exhibitor.

Learn more and register to attend the event here.

How to Establish Product Fit: Gavin Armstrong, Lucky Iron Fish (Interview)

Listen to our interview with Gavin Armstrong, founder of Lucky Iron Fish

This article was originally published in Change Creator Magazine issue #6

Many social entrepreneurs often wonder how they can help hundreds of thousands of people, and at the same time build a profitable enterprise so they can turn their venture from a side hustle to a full-time endeavor that multiplies their impact and income.

Gavin Armstrong, CEO and founder of Lucky Iron Fish, has made that happen. He not only created a product that has a global impact, but also successfully commercialized the venture for it to become profitable and sustainable. In this interview with Change Creator, Gavin shared his experience and insights on the evolution of the business.

Iron deficiency impacts over 3.5 billion people around the world! Here’re 5 marketing lessons he’s learned along the way, and how you, too, can apply them to navigate the world of social entrepreneurship:

Understand the Local 1 Community

Lucky Iron Fish was first developed in Cambodia as an effort to help solve iron deficiency. Gavin’s effort to understand the local lifestyle and tap into the Cambodian culture helped him align with the communities and gain traction in the market. He conducted extensive research to understand those he was marketing to.

He spent a few years in the country while launching the product, and paid attention to the psychographic of the market:

  • He developed a focus group kit to gain insights on how the villagers see and feel about things, which helped inform how he could adapt his message for different communities.
  • He talked to the women in the villages – end users who cook for the family – to understand the impact of iron deficiency in the country, as well as their cooking habits, so he could better integrate the product into their lifestyle and routine.
  • He showed them the different shapes under development to find out which one resonates.

He chose the fish design as it’s a symbol of luck in the local culture, making it easy for villagers to accept this new product and use it on a daily basis. When he was conducting research, Gavin didn’t speak the local language. He didn’t completely rely on the translator to get his answers, either. Instead, he paid attention to the facial expressions of the interviewees and the way they physically react to and interact with the product.

To make sure he creates a product that’s compelling to the end users, Gavin didn’t simply ask what they want and take the response at face value. He observed their interactions with the product at a tactile and physical level. The research and interactions with the local communities gave him valuable input to quickly iterate the design through a process of rapid prototyping and refine the product such that it’s widely accepted by the local market.

This level of attentiveness helped Gavin build trust with the community – an essential component to the success of the product. After all, he was asking the villagers to put the product into their cooking pot to make food for their families. Gavin’s deep understanding of the culture and the market also informed the development of the brand’s image and color palette. Like many social entrepreneurs operating in a foreign culture, he had to learn from mistakes and quickly adapt. For example, when they tried to cut cost with black and white package design, they found that this didn’t work because these colors are equated with death in Cambodia.

The final packaging is done in red and blue and white – the Cambodian flag color – to evoke national pride. Every element of the brand – from the shape of the product to the color palette – is carefully considered so the product can be easily accepted into the households of the targeted end users. Gavin also innovated the product to meet the needs of rural Cambodia. The principal feature of the Lucky Iron Fish is that it lasts for about five years, providing a practical and sustainable solution to the iron deficiency problem in the area.

Embrace The Origin

Gavin wanted the brand to have a global impact and implication, at the same time recognize the history of its origin. For that to happen, the brand needed to appeal to a wide global audience while staying true to its original mission. They use storytelling techniques that connect consumers with the brand on an emotional level to help build a loyal following. The design of Lucky Iron Fish’s logo and website pay tribute to the root of the brand by using the color palette of the original packaging – red, white and blue – as well as images of villagers from rural Cambodia.

Gavin shared the story of Lucky Iron Fish’s origin and local involvement, connecting consumers with the product at an emotional level. While embracing the origin, Gavin didn’t lose sight of the global market. The company leveraged the simple 3-color design of the original packaging and translated it into a template that can be adapted to different markets. The simple and customizable template allows the use of color combinations that speak to local markets while keeping a consistent image for the brand.

Develop Local Partnerships

One major blunder in Lucky Iron Fish’s early days happened in sales and product distribution. Initially, Gavin developed the idea of a “traveling road show” – he’d travel to villages and stop for a couple of days, present the product then move on. He made the incorrect assumption that because the value proposition of the product was so clear that he could just go from village to village and sell it.

The biggest disconnect occurred when he failed to establish trust within the local communities. He didn’t stick around long enough to answer questions, engage in dialogues, and give villagers the opportunity to try the product before making their purchase. To remedy the less-than-desirable results, Gavin switched gears. He partnered up with NGOs that have already established trust and a line of communication with the communities.

Local representatives of these organizations are available to answer questions and assist villagers to make sure they’re getting results from the product. Partnering with local NGOs also helps the company reduce costs. Although they still go to villages to offer talks and workshops, they can now increase efficiency by covering more ground in less time.

Leverage Media Opportunity

Lucky Iron Fish has a “Buy-One-Give- One” program – for every fish purchased on their website, they donate one to those in need.

The initial volume of sales (and the number of fish donated) worked fine for partnerships with small- and medium-sized NGOs. However, Gavin had challenges getting in the door with larger organizations.

The big break came when the company was featured in a BBC article. Their sales went from 100 in a month to 100 in an hour. Besides immediate revenue for the company, it also meant they now have tens of thousands of fish to give away. Offering free product is a great way to enter the NGO space. Almost overnight, Gavin had the volume to approach large NGOs and establish partnerships.

This media opportunity not only helped the company increase revenue by turning their online business from a secondary component to being front and center, thereby reaching a global market, but also gave them the traction to gain the much-needed foothold through larger NGOs in local communities they wanted to help.

Introduce Product to Developed Countries

Gavin saw an opportunity when he realized that iron deficiency is also a problem in the developed world. In fact, it’s a serious health concern in the US and Canada. He also recognized the gap in the market – there’s an increasing number of health and socially conscious women looking for a more natural solution that’s healthier than popping a pill every day.

The company started offering the product to this demographic – women who manage the household looking for ways to raise a healthy family – attracting them with not only the innovative feature but also the “buy- one-donate-one” program.

At the time of our interview with Gavin, the product was available in 66 countries, and as of January 2019, they have given away over 45,000 Lucky Iron Fish, helping 200,000 people.

The commercial success of the product, in turn, fuels the social impact that inspired Gavin to start the venture in the first place. There are many marketing lessons we can learn from the success of Lucky Iron Fish. Even though the specifics may vary depending on context, it’s always important to listen to your market, pivot and adapt quickly, and not be shy about introducing your product to developed countries so you can leverage the success to fuel your venture.

 

How Sylvain Labs Creates Product Innovation for the Greater Good

Interview with the founder and CEO of Sylvain Labs, Alain Sylvain

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Alain Sylvain is not just a hardworking creative entrepreneur, he’s the founder & CEO of Sylvain Labs. Sylvain Labs is an innovation and brand design consultancy that solves complex business problems for some of the biggest brands in the business (Airbnb, Spotify, Google, BlackRock, Patagonia, Pepsico, Calvin Klein, GM and BuzzFeed, to name a few). Their tools are ‘science and whimsy’. Their driving mission is to leverage the might of corporations for the greater good.

As we know, big business can destroy or protect our precious blue marble of a planet. Many (most) big brands are truthfully leaving dangerous footprints on our earth. Alain has made it his mission to ensure that Sylvain Labs takes that fact and leverages it, using product innovation and a global culture of unavoidable mass consumption as a key tool.<

Sylvain Labs was also just named a Certified B Corp (you can see their Impact Report here), which is something that’s resulted in a workplace culture heavily rooted in like-minded values and employees that constantly press themselves to find the social connection to their day to day work.

Alain has also taken a stand in the form of brand purpose with several clients (including the WNBA, Waze and BlackRock), addressing many of today’s societal issues head-on with his strategy work. He’s not afraid to stand up as a CEO activist (he has much to say about the matter and modern CEO roles) and encourages his clients to do the same.

In this interview explore how he started Sylvain Labs, their approach to product innovation and why becoming a Certified B Corp was important to his business.

[vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbkL3byDQM”]

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