ANNOUNCING: The New Economy & Your Money
Ever since the personal credit crisis of the 80s and 90s, you’ve been getting personal finance advice rammed down your throat.
And, let’s be frank: most of us needed it.
I remember when I got my very first credit card at 18 or 19. It felt like a bomb about ready to go off in my pocket…
…but I knew I needed to start building my credit history so that I could one day buy a new car, buy a house, or even qualify for a great job.
I followed as much of the advice as I could (but I’ve by no means been perfect).
Once I started my business, though, I realized that some of the advice I’d been exposed to for 20 years was counter to my new needs as a bootstrapping entrepreneur.
After I became more successful and started making more money in a month than I used to in a year, I realized some of that advice was just plain unhelpful! I suddenly had new kinds of assets, new opportunities, and new strategies for building wealth…
…but no idea what to do with them.
As I’ve worked with business owners over the last 8 years, I’ve noticed this same story play out over & over again.
While some lucky people are born into entrepreneurial families and grow up with an investment mindset, most of us are born to parents with regular jobs and traditional ways of managing money.
Taking risks, using debt, investing in new opportunities… they all can seem off limits based on the conventional wisdom about personal finance.
I’ve been wanting to tackle this subject for years but I’ve never had the right situation.
You see, I’m no expert in this area–I’m just hella curious–so teaching a course was out. I’ve done an interview on the subject here or there, but this topic is too big to even scratch the surface of in one 30-minute chat.
That’s when it hit me: I could bring together several experts, plus our curious community at CoCommercial, plus my own skill as a facilitator and host a virtual conference on the topic.
So today I’m thrilled to announce:
CoCommercial Presents
The New Economy & Your Money
The Changing Landscape of Wealth & Personal Finance in Our 21st Century Economy
This virtual conference will include interviews with 4 experts in the areas of entrepreneurship, finance, and business budgeting. Plus, I’ll be guiding participants through the experience with specially designed preparation & integration sessions so they don’t get overwhelmed with ideas or to-dos.
Now, you might be wondering: “Tara, I know you’ve said you have a real problem with telesummits in the past.”
Yep, I have. This isn’t like most telesummits.
My team and I have designed this experience to be manageable, social, engaging, and interactive.
It’s as close to the experience of attending an in-person conference as we can manage. There will be time to meet other participants, reflect on your own experience, and chat with the experts.
You won’t be getting bombarded with a massive playlist of interviews–the conversations will happen live, with your input and guidance.
You won’t be surrounded by people who have no connection to our community or values–the conference is a closed network.
You won’t be forced to fit in hours and hours of content into your downtime–the conference is 1 day you can plan for and attend as a live participant to get the full experience.
Here’s how it works:
On Thursday, June 1, you’ll meet me live in our virtual conference room on Crowdcast at 11am Eastern/12pm Pacific.
My opening remarks will guide you to consider some of the financial challenges you’re currently facing–both personal and financial–and look at the opportunities they’re presenting for you.
Then, you’ll hear from Amanda Steinberg, founder & CEO of DailyWorth and WorthFM (and my personal money mentor). We’ll talk about how to become affluent at any income and what that means for managing how you grow your business.
Next, you’ll hear from Mark Butler–the Budget Nerd–on how to budget in your business so that you can finally afford to invest in the opportunities (coaching, training, tech, travel, etc…) that will help you grow faster.
Our third speaker is Jaime Masters, author & host of Eventual Millionaire. Jaime and I will talk about the ways people who make it to millionaire status have used their money differently than those who don’t.
Then, we’ll take a break for lunch and networking. Afterwards, I’ll host an integration session where I’ll take your questions, give you prompts for reflection and planning, and point you in the direction of additional resources.
Our fourth speaker is Jacquette Timmons, author of Financial Intimacy. Jacquette will share how to approach tricky money conversations in our most important relationships. After all, it might be you running your business… but your money is a whole-family affair.
Finally, we’ll close out the day with more reflection, networking, and planning.
Now…
…at this point you’re probably wondering how much this is all going to cost.
We thought long and hard about it. We could have easily priced this experience at $399, $299, or $199.
In the end, we decided to give it to you free of charge.
All you need to do is give CoCommercial a try.
That’s right, The New Economy & Your Money virtual conference is a free, members-only event.
To join us for this epic event, just sign up for your free 30-day, all-access pass.
Inside, you’ll meet other New Economy small business owners having in-depth conversations about what’s really working (or not working) to grow and manage their businesses. It’s the perfect place to trade notes about money and business finance, too!
Click here to claim your free 30-day pass!
Cancel anytime.
See you there!
Tara
From Wholesale to Brick & Mortar with Girls Can Tell creator Sara Villari
[smart_track_player url=”http://media.blubrry.com/creativelive/content.blubrry.com/creativelive/PPP_SARA_VILLARI_2017.mp3″ title=”From Wholesale to Brick & Mortar with Girls Can Tell creator Sara Villari” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_pinterest=”true” social_email=”true” ]
The Nitty Gritty:
- Why wholesaler Sara Villari decided to buck the trend and open a brick and mortar shop
- How to determine what will really sell (Hint: It’s not about a pretty shop)
- Why trust in the right people is crucial for a business to grow
As we learned in this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast, sometimes your business can be the exception to the rule. In 2006, Sara Villari began selling screen-printed products that featured her doodles through her online shop Girls Can Tell gift co. Her wholesale business grew thanks to the support of small businesses and boutiques that purchased her products. In 2013, Sara decided to buck the online retail trend and opened up her own brick and mortar shop in South Philly, Occasionette, to feature her entire line of products as well as products from hundreds of vendors. At first, it didn’t seem like a big leap, but it has since surpassed her first business in revenue and scope.
Patterns for Success
What became my retail shop Occasionette has eclipsed my first business by leaps and bounds.
– Sara Villari
Inspired by the patterns she recognized from shops who reordered from Girls Can Tell gift co. often and were really good clients, plus finding a fantastic location on East Passyunk Avenue with lots of foot traffic, Sara decided it was time to open a brick and mortar location. She saw that successful shop owners would pick really strong SKUs and they would order very deeply into those SKUs because they had confidence in what would sell. She recognized that the secret to success for Occasionette was understanding what would sell—a combination of knowing what’s a really good product at its core, what fills a need in the marketplace, what people are looking for and what’s on trend right now. If your goal is to make a lot of money, don’t create products that are a vanity project.
Evolution of a Team
Sara has surrounded herself with fantastic people who really have the best interest of her companies at heart—a partner and employees who complement Sara’s strengths and are passionate about things that she isn’t necessarily good at or cares about. Her team also has the autonomy to handle their parts of the business. Building this trustworthy team is the linchpin that allows Sara to juggle two businesses and to expand Occasionette to a second location.
In the full episode, learn more about Sara’s current team and the plans for her businesses, how she manages to nurture her creative side while balancing the demands of being an owner of two businesses, and how she divides her time between the two.
Every week, I get the nitty-gritty details about how small business owners develop products, build their teams and manage their time. Don’t miss a single episode of the podcast named by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the top 24 Exceptional Women-Hosted Podcasts for Entrepreneurs in 2017 and subscribe to Profit. Power. Pursuit. on iTunes.
Growing a Million Dollar Online Course Institution with School of Motion founder Joey Korenman
[smart_track_player url=”http://media.blubrry.com/creativelive/content.blubrry.com/creativelive/PPP-JOEY_KORENMAN-2017.mp3″ title=”Growing a Million Dollar Online Course Institution with School of Motion founder Joey Korenman” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_pinterest=”true” social_email=”true” ]
The Nitty Gritty:
- How it’s possible even when you’re successful to change direction and create something that works better for your life
- What signals of success let Joey know he was on to something
- How building a team allows you to focus on what matters most to allow for company’s growth
A few years ago, School of Motion founder Joey Korenman, my guest on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast, had achieved what he thought would mean true business success and happiness. Instead he realized he was so busy climbing the mountain of success he thought he should be on, he forgot to summit the mountain of success he wanted to be on. We talk about the path Joey took to build a $1 million online course institution for motion designers in less than 3 years and some of the lessons he learned along the way.
If at first you don’t find happiness; try, try again
It was a little bit of strategy and a little bit of naivety.
– Joey Korenman
Joey seemed to be living the dream. He had opened his own studio with two business partners. His office was in the heart of downtown Boston with a client list that included ad agencies for some of America’s biggest brands. About two years in, a daily 3-hour commute, all-nighters and client pressure to perform regardless of what it did to his work/life balance, Joey looked up and realized he was depressed and needed to “figure out an escape hatch.”
When he started to consider the possibilities, he didn’t know his new business would be selling training. Joey started a blog (even though he knew nothing about digital marketing) to teach people motion design after seeing Greyscalegorilla, a business in his space, was blogging. At the time he built his website, he had no idea how he was going to make money. After a trial period developing and selling plug-ins for animation tools, Joey realized what he really wanted to do was teach.
The moment he knew he was on to something
If you can bring someone from their head space into yours they will follow you anywhere.
– Joey Korenman
While blogging, Joey was honing his entrepreneurial skills and learning through resources from Pat Flynn, Tim Ferriss and Jaime Masters. He knew there was a need in his niche for an intent 6-week long course for intermediate motion designers where humans would review the work. The only problem? It would take 3 months to create the course he imagined; in the meantime, he had to keep paying the bills.
So, he took a bit of advice from Jaime and he decided to pre-sell a course (yes, a course he hadn’t even created). He sent an email (the email content is included as a case study in Pat Flynn’s book, Will It Fly?) out to a list of approximately 4,000 he built and very authentically told them he was going to build the animation course he wished he would have had coming up and he was going to explain more in a webinar. The webinar sold out in 5 minutes. At the end of the webinar the beta version of the course sold out in 5 minutes, and he made $5 grand in 5 minutes. These were clear signs Joey was onto something.
Building a team
Joey took it slow when building his team by first hiring a part-time contractor in part due to his fear of “having another mouth to feed.” However, every time he’s unable to focus on the work that he should do to build the company—content production and products—he realizes it’s time to hire another resource. Once the right person has joined the team in the right role, their collective productivity soars. And as Joey becomes better at learning to let go, he is finding ways to manage quality control in a different way rather than being involved in every aspect of the business.
There’s a lot more in the full episode including a conversation about confidence and authenticity, customer acquisition and how Joey’s team is focused on creating systems that will catapult them to a $3 or $4 million-revenue company.
Become a subscriber of the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast on iTunes to get insights from today’s creative entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses, made money and found work/life balance.
Lessons from Pre-$1 Million Businesses with MNIB Consulting Founder Breanne Dyck
The Nitty Gritty:
- Why you should figure out a different way to do what’s already working rather than start over with something new
- Why the hub-and-spoke organization model isn’t sustainable for growth
- How when you focus on things that feel easy to you, your results will improve
My guest this week on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast is Breanne Dyck who published an interesting article earlier this year called “15 Lessons for Pre-$1M Online Businesses” that got a lot of play in our community. Breanne learned these lessons as she built her own business as the founder of MNIB Consulting Inc. and as she continues to help others build theirs. In this episode, we explore some of the lessons she wrote about with a focus on how they impacted Breanne’s business, MNIB Consulting.
Don’t Stop as Soon as Something Starts Working
Every time we pivot we get closer and closer to the thing that is ultimately going to work.
– Breanne Dyck
Breanne describes the big business model overhaul MNIB Consulting just went through where they reviewed all the products they have ever offered and evaluated what was working, what was not working and what’s the least complicated way to combine the things working and be the most transformative and impactful for their clients. As a result of this evaluation, they simplified their client support and made it very easy for their clients to come to them when they had questions.
Your Approach to Team Is Part of the Problem
What matters is, are you hiring someone that you can give ownership to of their entire area of responsibility?
– Breanne Dyck
The hub-and-spoke model of team development, where everything still goes through the CEO, doesn’t effectively free up the CEO to work within their zone of genius. Breanne describes how she specifically built her team from the org chart framework described in Gino Wickman’s book Rocket Fuel so that was not the case. When she hires new team members she gives them ownership of their entire area of responsibility.
Do What Feels Easy
Too often entrepreneurs get caught up in the “I have to do this” mentality even if it doesn’t feel easy. Breanne felt that way about blogging. She knew she needed to produce regular content, but blog writing never felt easy to her. So, she found ways to regularly produce content in different ways such as a daily email, posting in Facebook groups and podcasts.
This format for content is more conversational and off the cuff and allowed Breanne to process ideas as she was having them. And, you know what? Her daily email, a task that feels easy to her, is working remarkably well and the response rate is 10X that of when she was writing regular articles.
There’s so much more in this episode including how a line in Profit First by Mike Michalowicz led to a breakthrough for Breanne about how she would grow her business, what percentage of revenue online businesses should dedicate to salaries (including yours) and why Breanne stopped list building. Access the full episode to learn all of this and more.
Do you subscribe to the podcast? Jump on over to iTunes to listen to all episodes where today’s creative entrepreneurs share strategic and tactical components about how to make money, take control of their businesses and pursue what’s most important to them.
Self-Publishing, Distribution, and Writing for Wealth with Author Joanna Penn
[smart_track_player url=”http://media.blubrry.com/creativelive/content.blubrry.com/creativelive/PPP-Joann_Penn-2017.mp3″ title=”Self-Publishing, Distribution, and Writing for Wealth with Author Joanna Penn” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_pinterest=”true” social_email=”true” ]
The Nitty Gritty:
- How the Amazon Kindle and ebook pricing made it possible for independent authors and entrepreneurs to self-publish and write for wealth
- Why marketing, packaging, and pricing correctly can expand your sales
- How mobile, audio, and the growth of the international market are the next opportunities for authors
Ever the entrepreneur, Joanna Penn, my guest on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast and author of 26 books and counting, realized the potential to write for wealth in October 2009. That was when the Amazon Kindle launched internationally and lower ebook pricing allowed independent authors access to a much larger marketplace.
Ebook pricing was a revelation. When the Kindle came out, independent authors could price their books lower and still make good margins.
– Joanna Penn
Joanna’s entrepreneurial mindset quickly realized the potential to sell books digitally to people all over the world.
Online marketing, packaging and pricing
If you are going to publish online, you need to market online.
– Joanna Penn
In 2009, Joanna was miserable at her 9-5 job, so she decided to write her first non-fiction book. After self-publishing and self-marketing the book through traditional channels (PR, TV, and newspapers), Joanna had sold about “three copies.” At the time, she really wanted to tap into the American marketplace that was much larger than Australia’s, so her focus shifted to online marketing to reach those American readers. She ditched traditional media for anything with a clickable link; started a blog in 2008, a podcast and Twitter account in 2009.
Since “you can’t have a career with just one book,” don’t trap yourself into launching a website or social media channel for just one title. Chances are you will write another book, so make sure your branding can encompass this growth.
99 cents made the first Kindle millionaires.
– Joanna Penn
By 2011, Joanna had a number of books and realized that she could leave her miserable job because her income would grow based on the size of her audience and the number of books she had.
In the podcast, Joanna shares her insights about figuring out the right price point to get the highest number of people to purchase your book and why offering something for free to your audience is still very important to build your email list and give them a chance to sample your work to see if they like it.
Under her pen name for action/adventure thrillers, J.F. Penn, Joanna’s first book in a nine-book series, Stone of Fire is permanently free on Kindle. That freebie is like the cheese samples in the supermarket. You go in and try it. If you like it, you’ll buy the whole packet—or in this case, the reader will purchase the entire series or more books if they liked what they sampled for free.
Think of Amazon as a completely different ecosystem. Amazon’s algorithms will recommend your other books that are at a higher price point to shoppers when they show interest in your free book. This is why Joanna uses J.F. Penn for her action/adventure thrillers and Joanna Penn for her non-fiction writing—to fully leverage Amazon’s role as a search engine to get in front of the right audience without confusing the algorithms.
In addition, Joanna is adept at re-packaging her work to be more easily found on Amazon whether by adjusting titles, creating box sets or altering the categories she shows up in. If your book has gone stagnant on Amazon, look at changing the cover, the category, and keywords and putting some ads on it and you may restart the whole thing.
Growth of mobile and international marketplaces
Kindle apps on mobile. Audio through Alexa. Best-seller lists on Amazon. The digital transformation of publishing continues. Joanna predicts the next opportunity for independent authors will be international marketplaces, and a little foreshadowing, it might not be on Amazon.
You don’t want to miss a thing from my conversation with Joanna about self-publishing. Tune in to the full episode to learn more about how she repackages her work and what’s on the horizon for self-publishing.
Join us each week by subscribing to the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast on iTunes.
The Power of Dedicated Social Networks with Mighty Networks Founder Gina Bianchini
[smart_track_player url=”http://media.blubrry.com/creativelive/content.blubrry.com/creativelive/PPP-GINA_BIANCHINI-2017.mp3″ title=”The Power of Dedicated Social Networks with Mighty Networks Founder Gina Bianchini” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_pinterest=”true” social_email=”true” ]
The Nitty Gritty:
- Why it’s time to disrupt our existing social networks
- How we can create a better future when we connect individuals who share a common identity or interest
- Why there’s room for the old social networks and new interest-driven social networks; entrepreneurs can leverage them both
While we may not have a crystal ball to predict the future transformation of social networks, we have Gina Bianchini as our guest on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast, and she has some amazing thoughts about how social networks must evolve. Gina is the founder and CEO of Mighty Networks, a company that facilitates the creation of dedicated communities around an identity or interest, and founder and former CEO of Ning.
Existing social networks served a purpose but we have outgrown them
There’s just no substitute for people who are on your same path.
– Gina Bianchini
When Facebook started 11 years ago, it set out to help you consume information from people you already knew—former colleagues, college roomies, extended family members, high school and elementary school classmates. And, it did its job splendidly. Today, there are 2 billion people who are connected in ways they weren’t previously.
But, as Gina describes in the podcast, Facebook doesn’t support finding, meeting and breaking the ice with people who are on the same path as you—whether that path is a career or entrepreneurship, an illness, parenthood or more—via a newsfeed that whizzes by and gives no context for the updates that you see. Dedicated social networks solve that issue.
Small (with the ability to scale) is the next big thing
The people who don’t already know each other is the next chapter in how the world is going to create new relationships and a better future.
– Gina Bianchini
So, is small the next big thing? Tune in to the podcast to hear Gina’s full explanation, but the reality is that it doesn’t take a lot of people to make you feel like you’re in it together. At the same time, being in it together should be able to scale to larger numbers.
You can connect with people who are at the same stage as you (there’s a reason there’s a freshmen orientation), in the same region as you are and as the network grows you can meet more and more people that are just like you. An interest-driven network should focus on all the kinds of relationships that very naturally mirror the perfect environments of the real world.
So, it’s not really a matter of small versus large. What Gina loves about small though is that it feels attainable. Anyone can create a network based on an interest that then can create these really phenomenal moments and spark incredible relationships that don’t require millions, thousands or hundreds of people. It just requires a handful of people that care about each other.
How to use dedicated networks to grow your business
Think of your traditional social networks as your marketing (or the front of the house), while a dedicated network is the “back of the house” where you trade shop talk with like-minded people. A dedicated network doesn’t have to compete daily with hundreds or thousands of posts on divergent topics and issues and viral sensations.
When you try to use Facebook for everything in your business is where it falls down and where interest networks can really step up.
– Gina Bianchini
There are plenty of useful nuggets in the full episode of Profit. Power. Pursuit. about the notion that interests bring us together, the power of dedicated social networks to enhance your life and your business success and the critical role word-of-mouth advertising is even for a venture capital-funded business such as Mighty Networks. Gina also shares what’s on the horizon for dedicated social networks—videos, smarter software (that can actually ORGANIZE events for the network) and revenue features to make the networks even more powerful.
All you need to do is to subscribe to Profit. Power. Pursuit. on iTunes so you access all episodes of our award-winning podcast with the best entrepreneurs of the 21st century.