Business Panel

Once you get your business in motion, it may be hard to keep it moving…to keep from getting bogged down. It is important to keep isolating and concentrating on your next step and don’t be afraid to fail.

John runs the audience through a quick exercise to get them to expand their awareness.

Brian Johnson, Mary Ellen, and Lisa Wagner lead the Business Panel.  Topics of discussion include:

• Things to keep in mind if you want to publish your own book
• How to create goals and what to do to achieve them.
• when and how to outsource
• Things to consider re merchant accounts
• Important considerations in hiring staff

Brian Johnson, Mary Ellen and Lisa Wagner lead this panel

4:35 Expanding your awareness: John

Strongest emotions: Love, Fear, Rage

Get rid of cynicism. That reflects fear and rage.

Get rid of psychic vampires. When you strat achieving your goals, your family and friends may cheer for you to fail.

Love is an “awakened” emotion.

5:00 John takes the audience through an exercise in waking their senses and increasing their awareness.

Stan: Condense your notes indo 3 action items that you want to implement this week.

John: Paper is your friend. Keep a journal or inclusive file where you can take notes.

12:03 Question from the audience: How to take a book manuscript to completion

There are people who do this.

There are online resources.

Considerations:

What is the end goal (credentializing vs best seller)

PDF or ebook?

Joe” Get a copy of Tim Ferris book – updated version of 4hour work week

Or get a “dummies” guide

Almost no one is making money from their book sales.

Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, in developing Chicken Soup for the Soul spent a year knocking on doors being available for interviews and didn’t stop until they created critical mass, when it became a brand.

Mary Ellen: Must know what your goal is. One of her goals was to develop focus while writing the book.

Book Title: Should be targeted. Not cute. You can use social media to find out which titles are most engaging.

23:13 Goals Review:

How to know what to do first? John: you have to figure that out for yourself. Set goals, work through them, and find which are the best for you.

The universe rewards action. Find out what plays for you and take action. If you aren’t sure where you want to go it is kind of exciting because you have so many avanues open to you.

26:46 James Shramko: Chunk out your business into Content, Traffic, and Conversion and put a list of options beneath each (paper or whiteboard). List benefits, costs, which are easiest to get started.

James scores his opetions: How much does he love it? Is there a long-term payoff? He asks his wife, who knows him well, for her opinion.

John: Culitivate some schizophrenia. You need one part that is very critical and one who is supportive.. When he got started he first lost all his friends because they were afraid he wouldn’t be there to buy them drinks any more.

Take a recorder with you during the day and at night and write things down as they come to you.

32:00 Stan: Everything comes down to taking action. Motion begets motion. AS you get going, opportunities will be offered to you.

When you start something you have to have a metric to determine if you should continue. Have benchmarks.

John: Don’t be afraid to change course if something is not working. Even if you have years and huge money invested already. This is a benefit of hot seats. You can get advice from an impartial person.

38:30 Kevin Rogers: Look at the Big Dogs. They listen just as attentively at events as everyting else. Everyone shares a passion for getting ahead and knowledge is the gas.

40:40 James Shramko talks about how it felt to give up a $300,000 per year job to start his own business.

51:04 Managing employees

52:45: Brian: Everyone in the company has 5-7 major initiatives.

They have 15 min daily meetings where everyone gives a general report. If they have a problem then they discuss it privately. On Wednesday they have a one-hour meeting where everyone’s report is specific.

If someone goes off track it is everyone’s job to help them get back on track.

You have to know when to not take on an initiative, and if you have your vision straight then it is easy to decide.

57:03 Mary Ellen: Just left a job with a large salary to start her own businsess. She immediately hired a website designer to get her site up because she doesn’t know how to do it.

She learned the other jobs so she know who to hire and when she hired someone she could tell them how to do their jobs and she knows how long every job should take.

She says that her company should be making $1 million per employee. $500,000 is minimum.

59:30 Braggable network: Network of people who can help you. You develop it by being helpful to others and do what you say you are going to do.

Guidelines for hiring rather than outsourcing: She wants everyone to be freelance but well-paid. Then later she could decide if someone should be hired full-time.

Stan: Compare online business with brick and mortar business. Eg you don’t have to know how to build a building but have to know something about security. You don’t have to know all the laws but there are some that you should know.

There are a lot of outsource sites where you can find qualified people.

1:05:30: Mary Ellen: To get started with a website use WordPress. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks to get it online if you hire it out.

1:06:50: What is the best payment processor?

Stan: Start with Paypal. When you outgrow it look to your local bank for a merchant account. Then you can change if you find a better deal later.

John: Before the internet it was almost impossible to get a merchant account. That’s why ads asked for a check.

1:10:00 John When the internet started it was easy to get merchant accounts but it is getting harder now.

1:12:25 Christina Hills: If you are doing a launch, call your merchant account company know so they are ready for a spike in sales. Paypal is excellent to get started with but you will outgrow it.

One Shopping Cart: You can use paypal only, paypal with merchant acct or mercant acct only so it grows with you.

1:16:00 John tells his technique for getting ushered in to meet the VP of marketing when he was trying to sell a client and how he gets paid before anyone else.

Bob Serling (in audience): Understand that the bank is loaning you the money when someone purchases something and then have to collect it from the credit card company, and you have a limit, so you have to tell them if you are going to exceed the limit.

1:20:15: Organization and hiring

Lisa Wagner: We have a constantly creative environment. We use a KOLBE score to find out what the prospect’s tendancies and strengths lie.

We started out training carpet cleaners to grow a very uninteresting business, then templated that training for other businesses. Then showed them how to use the same marketing techniquest to find and hire people. The same mechanismm that can weed out

Stan: To bring someone in, first know what they need to do. Be able to explain it to someone else. They don’t need to have the next great idea, they just need to be able to do the work.

Read the 4 hour work week. It is not really that easy but it will give you the idea that you can hire stuff out.

Be sure to put something from the book into action. IF you are not at that point, leave it for later.

Mary Ellen: Most important thing for your company is marketing. If you are not good at marketing, you have to hire someoe and treat them as your partner.

1:20:10: Brian Johnson explains the process he uses to hire outsourcers. It is a well-developed process and is very demanding of the applicants.

1:32:00: Lisa Wagner: Be very clear about what skill sets you want and what you don’t want and don’t just hire the first person to come along.

This video has a lot of disparate ideas and suggestions, so you have to pick one that speaks to you and go for it.

There was a good discussion about how to figure out where to start, so I will use that as an example.

1. Whenever you have an idea, list it on a white board.
2. To evaluate the ideas you have, take a sheet of paper and list pros and cons until one good one jumps out at you.
3. Divide it up into Traffic, content, conversions.
4. For each category, figure out where you want to go and the steps that you need to get there.
5. Start with the first step. Most important thing is to take action. You don’t have to always be perfect. Adjust as you go.

They mention Stan’s presentation about planning.  Click here to link to that video.

We have a lot of resources about how to publish your own book, whether it be a physical book or Kindle.  Click here for the links to Marketing Rebel Insider’s Club posts about publishing.