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ALL NEW Tips, Inspiration, and Words of Advice From Some of Our Favorite 2019 Guests

The BiggerPockets Business Podcast
54 min read
ALL NEW Tips, Inspiration, and Words of Advice From Some of Our Favorite 2019 Guests

In 2019, the BiggerPockets Business Podcast was launched. In the past eight months, we’ve gotten nearly ONE MILLION downloads, as well as some tremendously positive feedback.

Our guests have included entrepreneurs who are just starting out, entrepreneurs who have built eight-figure businesses, and everything in-between. We’ve talked to business owners who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars on Shark Tank and have even talked the the Sharks themselves.

We’ve also talked to bestselling authors of some of our favorite business books and to coaches who help entrepreneurs reach their full potential.

Now that we’re entering 2020, we wanted to revisit with some of our favorite and most popular guests from last year, and get their words of wisdom, encouragement, and advice for the new year.

In this episode, we’re bringing back a number of our 2019 guests to give us their best actionable tips and suggestions for entrepreneurs and business owners. Whether you’re planning to launch a business in 2020, are looking to scale your business, or are trying to overcome some business obstacles, today’s show is for you.

Click here to listen on iTunes.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

Intro: Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Business podcast, show number 36.

Alan: What you’ve got to do is stop putting off the big projects and stop taking the small actions as soon as you can. If you do that every day throughout 2020, you will be amazed by the progress you make.

J: Welcome to a real world MBA from the School of Hard Knocks, where entrepreneurs reveal what it really takes to make it. Whether you’re already in business or you’re on your way there, this show is for you. This is BiggerPockets Business. How’s it going everybody? I am Jay Scott, your cohost of the BiggerPockets Business podcast, and this week we have a very fun episode for you. In 2019, we launched this podcast and in the past eight months, we’ve gotten nearly 1 million downloads. That’s right. 1 million downloads in our first eight months, as well as some tremendously positive feedback. Now, our guests have included entrepreneurs who are just starting out, entrepreneurs who’ve built eight figure businesses, and pretty much everything in between. We’ve talked to business owners, who’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars on Shark Tank, and we’ve even talked to one of the sharks themselves. We’ve talked to bestselling authors of some of our favorite business books and to some of the coaches who help entrepreneurs reach their full potential. But now that we’re entering 2020, we wanted to revisit with some of our favorite and most popular guests from last year, get their words of wisdom, get their words of encouragement, and get their advice for the new year.

J: So in this episode, we’re bringing back a number of our favorite 2019 guests to give us their favorite actionable tips and suggestions for entrepreneurs and business owners. Whether you’re planning to launch a business in 2020, you have a business and you’re looking to scale it in 2020, or you’re just looking to overcome some of your business obstacles and get started today, our shows for you. If you want to learn more about the guests we’re bringing back, check out our show notes at biggerpockets.com/bizshow36. Again, that’s biggerpockets.com/bizshow36. Okay, now, let’s jump into our show. On our very first episode of the BiggerPockets Business podcast, back in May of 2019, our guest was Josh Dorkin, founder of BiggerPockets, the largest real estate investing network on the planet. In that episode, Josh walked us through his 15 year effort to start, grow and scale BiggerPockets into the behemoth it is today. More importantly, he opened up to us about his near family tragedy that made him revisit his priorities and ultimately leave the CEO role of the company he had founded. Josh is getting ready to launch his newest labor of love, a podcast called Undeniably Curious. Go find it on your favorite podcast app and subscribe. Okay, now, here’s Josh with some words of wisdom for our listeners.

Josh: All right, so for all the aspiring entrepreneurs out there, my best tip would be stop listening to everybody, because you’re going to have people coming at you from all directions telling you how good your idea, how bad your idea is, what you should do, what you shouldn’t do. Like, don’t even listen to me. Frankly, don’t listen to anyone. You’ve got an idea. Map it out, write it down, take some time and really plan this thing. Put pen to paper. I don’t want you to sitting on a computer, I don’t want you to typing things up. Literally, pen to paper. What is it about this idea that makes it special? What’s going to be the differentiator about this idea? Why are you inspired to do it? What is it that has you so hooked on this one thing? And what is it going to take for you to be successful?

Josh: Because you’re going to need to have some metrics and markers for success. The problem that most entrepreneurs have is they’ve got an idea, there’s really nothing special about it, and they go tackle it, and then a month or a week or six months, they get bored and they’re like, well, I haven’t gotten anywhere, so I’m done, and they move on. Whether it’s six months, a year, two years, five years, so many people fail, because they don’t actually write down their goals, they don’t actually map out what they’re going to do, and they don’t actually stop and say, do I really want to do this? Do I really, really want to do this? Because it’s not easy. This is not working a nine to five job. If you’re going to start something, you need to be ready to bust your ass.

Josh: You need to be ready to fully commit every waking moment and every available moment towards this one thing. And you need to really make it something unique, special, and put your heart and soul into it. That would be my one, very diverse tip for aspiring entrepreneurs. For all you aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to scale your business, the one thing I would tell you to do is stop and take a breath. I think the biggest mistake, it’s not even a mistake, the biggest, the one thing that I see entrepreneurs do most often is get stuck in their business. I was guilty of this for eight years, and so what do I mean by that? Getting stuck in the business is a matter of doing all the day to day, worrying about the minutia or focusing on every little task, answering every single email, dealing with every little crisis and situation that pops up.

Josh: It’s all necessary, mostly, but what you really need to do in order to scale is step back and look at the 1000 foot view. You need to work on your business. What I like to recommend to entrepreneurs is this, take a couple hours a week. What I started doing was I started taking all my Wednesdays, I started first an hour or two Wednesday afternoon, then it became the whole afternoon. Eventually it was the whole day. And I use that to focus on the business strategy, big picture items. And I know it’s easy to say, oh well, but if I’m doing that, then who’s going to do X, Y, and Z? Well, here’s the thing. If you don’t do the big stuff, X, Y, and Z won’t matter in six months, a year, two years, five years, so focus on the big picture, focus on strategy. How are you going to get from where you are to that next stage?

Josh: What is that next stage? What are the things you need to do to get there? I’m going to be recommending a book later, which I think is a very helpful tool to help you get there and it is, I’ll tell you now, it’s the ONE Thing, but you really need to stop and focus on what is that next one thing that I need to do that makes all these other things that I do right now, fairly irrelevant? and every entrepreneur is guilty of this. Everybody gets caught up in it. There’s not a problem with it, but get out there, strategize, take the time to do that and that’s going to help you get to the next level. All right, for anyone looking for a new book to read in the new year, I highly recommend the ONE Thing, this goes along with what I had mentioned before. The ONE Thing written by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan is, you know what? I’d say, there’s another book called Essentialism by, I believe, Greg McKeown, and both of these books help you to see the big picture.

Josh: They really help you to break down whatever it is that you’re doing into what is that next, most important step I need to accomplish in order to get the big picture done. And it pulls you out of the minutiae. Definitely check out both of those books. I’d say the edge goes to the ONE Thing probably because I know one of the authors, but definitely check those out. All right, let me leave you with some inspiration heading into the new year, and this actually comes from a speech I gave at the BiggerPockets Conference this fall. You know what to do. Stop for a second and think about that. You know what to do. We all know in our hearts what is important. We all know in our hearts and in our souls what it is that we really, really need to be doing. We like to procrastinate. That’s human, right? Well, but we know we really shouldn’t be procrastinating. We know we need to focus on those big, scary tasks, but sometimes they’re so big and scary and it’s easier to do the little ones. We know what to do.

Josh: Our body, our heart, our mind, when we’re looking at all this stuff that we need to knock out, we really know what we should be doing and our body gives us signals and our brain gives us signals. Oftentimes we ignore those things. Well, I’m going to challenge you to stop ignoring those things. Take the time to listen to yourself. Take the time to listen to the signals and do the things that your, whatever it is, your body, your heart, your soul, whatever it is, is telling you to do, those difficult things, those challenging things, do those things, because those are the things that probably matter more than all those little things that are really easy, and at the end of the day are insignificant.

Josh: Also, take the time to really map things out, map out your goals, map out what you want to accomplish, map out what you need to do, and don’t just write it down, but keep looking at it. I’ve got a notebook next to my bed that talks about all the things I want to accomplish from a business perspective, personal perspective, health perspective, family perspective, you name it, and I go through it and I look at this thing. Typically, every single morning, I go through it, I flip through it. It takes two, three minutes to kind of look at it and look at all the things that I want to get done. It inspires me. It ensures that I’m on the path towards doing it. I guess those would be my inspirational tips for 2020. All right, thanks so much. I am Josh Dorkin, the founder of BiggerPockets and host of the upcoming podcast, Undeniably Curious, found at undeniablycurious.com, or UND podcast on all the social media channels, and definitely come and check out the show in January when we kick this thing off. Otherwise, lots of luck to you guys. Happy New Year. Have a happy and a healthy and we’ll see you soon.

J: On episode number two, we were joined by Trevor Mauch from carrot.com. His advice about where to spend your time and how to maximize your energy and productivity was absolutely tremendous, as was his advice on how we can maximize exposure for our business by being able to rank higher in Google. In that episode, Trevor opened up to us about a scary wake up call that almost resulted in tragedy and how it led him to change the way he viewed his business and his life. Here’s Trevor with his thoughts on how you can maximize your mental energy and make 2020 the most productive year of your life.

Trevor: Hey guys and gals, Trevor here with carrot.com, and man, I was so, so, so pumped to be able to do that podcast with BiggerPockets and BiggerPockets community on the BiggerPockets Business podcast earlier in the year. And it’s been amazing. I’ve been getting tons and tons of people hit me up on Instagram, hit me up on Facebook, even by email, that were impacted by that episode, so guys, keep it coming. I absolutely love, love, love to hear from y’all and I want to hear your journeys. I want to hear your journeys on how you’re doing as an entrepreneur, kind of where you’re hitting your wins and also where you’re hitting some struggles. As we’re leading into the new year and getting ready for 2020, I thought I’d share some things with you guys that you guys can really pull away and put in play in your lives and business leading into the next year to help you have the best year yet, to help you get more clarity on the year, to help you get momentum before the year even starts, to help you create a rock solid plan that doesn’t fall apart three months, four months, six months into the year like mine had so many years passed before I started doing this stuff.

Trevor: One of the first things I want you thinking about leading into the new year, it’s not your business goals, it’s not your high level, “Hey, I want this kind of income. I want to buy this house.” It’s not that at all. The biggest thing that … One of the big things that I learned as I’ve grown as an entrepreneur, is you can always chase numbers, there’s always bigger numbers. You’re always going to have time, y’all, to set number goals here with the coming weeks, coming days, depending on how far you are in your annual planning. But one of the biggest things I want you guys to focus in on is not what numbers you’re going to hit, but where are you going to put your energy?

Trevor: Where are you going to put your energy? Where are you going to make an impact? Because I know so many entrepreneurs who have hit all their numbers, who are amazingly successful in the financial side of things, but are miserable, that are drained by the work that they do, that are not doing the types of things that put them in their zone where they can truly get energy and make an impact. And so I came up with a concept called PIE. And if you’re listening to this around the new years, around the Christmas holidays, then yes, you guys are going to be enjoying some pie hopefully. But I want you guys enjoying the right kind of pie, okay? This is called personal, impact and energy. I want you to have more PIE in 2020 than you’ve ever had, and the only way to do it is by being really intentional with your PIE.

Trevor: Okay, so personal, impact and energy. Write down on a piece of paper, between now and the end of the year or if you’re listening to this after the start of the year, it doesn’t matter if you’re listening to this even in June or July, this is something that I would love to see you implement in your life and your business. On a piece of paper, write down what gives you energy. I have something called an energy audit that I talked about in that episode with BiggerPockets way back when in the BiggerPockets Business episode. Go listen to that and go check out the energy audit. It’s a 15 minute per quarter exercise and it could change your life, but what gives you energy? What truly gives you more energy when you’re done doing it then when you started doing it? What drains your energy right now?

Trevor: Take the energy audit or a simple way to do is draw a line down the middle of the paper, energy drains on the left side, energy giving on the right side, okay? And then at the bottom, total them up on your average week, what percentage of your week is energy draining versus energy giving? If you’re anywhere below, let’s say 60% energy giving activities, you’re likely to feel drained at the end of the week. You’re likely going to feel, man, I did a lot of work, but am I really making an impact? Take the energy audit, will give the guys a link and you guys can grab the worksheet on it, okay? But I want you to focus on where do you want to put your energy in in 2020. Where do you want to put your energy and where do you want to get your energy?

Trevor: What do you want to remove from the equation in 2020 that’s currently draining your energy? Start there, because you can start making goals all day long. You can start to put bigger numbers up there and put the number that’s going to get the fancier car and the fancier house, or help you get to a point of what you consider quote unquote success. But if you’re doing it in a way that drains your energy, I can promise you that you’re going to get burnout and you’re not going to enjoy it at the end of the day. I want you to enjoy being an entrepreneur. I want you to enjoy the journey of entrepreneurship and I know, for me, when I’m enjoying it the least is when I’m out of energy, because I’m doing things that I don’t like to do. So write down where do you want to put your energy in in 2020, the things that are your unique abilities, that give you a ton of energy, that you’re really good at doing them. You add value to the world.

Trevor: Write down the things you want to stop doing in 2020 that drain your energy and those should be some of the first things you tackle in the first quarter. The next part is impact. So the impact part of it. One of the big things that I learned this past four or five, six years growing Carrot is to not wait until the perfect time to make an impact, to not wait until the perfect time or until your income goes up, until you have your business creating true impact, okay? I wish I would have done it way back when I was a one person show, way before Carrot, and saying, you know what? I’m not going to wait until the perfect. I’m not going to wait until my income hits this to start donating. I’m not going to wait until the perfect time to truly get out there and make the greatest impact I can make, okay?

Trevor: So find a way that you can make more impact in 2020. That’s where you’re going to get your fulfillment. You get your energy by focusing on your unique abilities and energy giving activities and ruthlessly eliminating energy draining activities, but you get your fulfillment by making a positive impact on people. If you’re a real estate investor, awesome. How are you going to make a positive impact on people rather than just focusing on churning the transactions? If you’re an entrepreneur in any other type of business, how are you going to make an amazing, positive impact on your community, on your family, on your friends, on those around you, on other causes that you’re passionate about? How are you going to work that into your business plan this year? So on the other part of that piece of paper, want you to write that down, what impact do you want to make this year?

Trevor: Who do you want to impact? How do you want to impact them? Take some time to write those down, really seed those in and be crazy, crazy excited about it, okay? Guys, I want to see you make 2020 your best year yet, because business is ups and downs, okay? It kind of looks like the stock market, right? Where you have a bunch of ups and downs, but you hope that you can make it trend upwards into the right overtime, okay? But once again, it doesn’t always happen exactly how we plan. So as long as you focus around energy, as long as you focus around impact, as long as you focus in on ruthlessly eliminating the things that drain your energy, I think you’re going to have the most amazing year yet. And the funny thing is, your numbers, your goals will actually be easier to hit. Okay, so focus on getting more PIE this next year guys. Personal, impact and energy. Once you’ve done that, then set your numbers and go, okay, now that these are going to be my guide, this PIE is going to be my guide, how do I now go out there and chase the bigger goals and build a business that will make sure I stay within my energy, ruthlessly eliminate the things that drain my energy and I focus on making greater impact? Guys, we’ll talk soon. So pumped to be apart of the BiggerPockets community.

Trevor: And thank you BiggerPockets for putting together such an amazing podcast. I’m grateful to be a part of it.

J: Episode number three brought us Brent Underwood, marketer extraordinaire who shared with us some of the craziest and most out of the box publicity campaigns he created for some of the biggest names in publishing and marketing. Gaining viral publicity is a great way to get your product or service noticed, and Brent shared with us some amazing tips on how you can use creative marketing to boost attention for your business. Now, here’s Brent with some tips on how you can build and grow in 2020, including a great exercise for how you can overcome the fear of failure in both your life and your business.

Brent: Hello everyone, this is Mayor Brent Underwood reporting live from Cerro Gordo, California. And I think we’re going to get into these questions. For all of you aspiring entrepreneurs looking to get started, my best tip for you is to stop what I call playing business. And I think for me, playing business meant things like registering domains on GoDaddy, changing your bio on social media platforms, printing business cards, setting up profiles for your yet to be created company on BiggerPockets, researching complicated legal structures, trying to get followers on social media accounts, again for those non-existent company. In reality, that’s just playing business, that’s not actually doing business. And so I think none of that matters if you don’t know what your product’s going to be or your offering is going to be, so stop doing that completely today, unless what you’re doing is working on funding or crafting your pitch or doing deals or building your product or shipping the actual book, stop all the kind of play business and kind of get down to it.

Brent: And I think that also applies to people that recently started their business. I think sometimes you start a business, things are hard and it’s easy to get distracted, well, I need to spend today growing our Instagram account, because that’s going to bring in more leads. And really what you’re doing is you’re just avoiding some more difficult task and you’re using that as an excuse to do so. So I would say for people looking to get started or that have just gotten started, stay focused on your core product, because if that isn’t great, nobody cares about anything else. For anyone feeling overwhelmed and not sure how to get started, here’s what I recommend, Tim Ferriss does this thing that he calls fear setting. Basically, it’s thinking through the worst case scenario if you follow your dreams, and really it’s never as bad as you think. And so I think for anybody that is feeling overwhelmed about how to start, take out a piece of paper and start with the three steps that Tim would recommend. The first one is define. So what’s the worst that could happen? Think through absolute worst case scenario.

Brent: I start doing what I’ve always wanted to do, it fails, what’s the worst case scenario? Does that mean you move back in with relatives? You eat peanut butter sandwiches for a couple of months? Think through the absolute worst case scenario. And I think the second step to that is prevent. So how could you prevent those worst scenarios from happening? What’s the absolute best you could do to make sure that those didn’t happen? And the third is repair. So if the worst does happen, how can you fix it? Let’s say you decide to leave your corporate job and start your own business and invest every single dime that you have into it. Six months in, you run through your money, it goes bankrupt. Absolute worst case scenario, you have to move back in with your brother or your parents or your friend on his couch and you’re eating those peanut butter sandwiches every day. How long would it take you to get back?

Brent: Could you go back into the corporate world? It really, probably wouldn’t be that big a deal. So I think if you’re sitting on the sidelines and you’re thinking about it, think through the absolute worst case scenario and then think through how long it would take you to get back to where you currently are. And it’s never really gonna be that bad. And for me, I always thought when we were doing our projects is if I was on my death bed and I was looking back at my life, would I be more upset that I tried this thing and failed at it or would I be more upset that I never tried it? And I think anyone listening to this podcast is probably going to agree that they’d be more upset with never trying it.

Brent: And so if you are there thinking about starting something up, I would say, you got to go for it. You got to try. For anybody looking for a great book to read in the new year, I highly recommend Stillness Is the Key, written by Ryan Holiday. I’m a bit biased, because Ryan is a business partner in a company called Brass Check, but I think the content and his book is important. A lot of times, particularly on podcasts and on social media, you see the Gary V mentality of hustle, hustle, hustle, put out a hundred pieces of content a day. If you’re not hustling in your sleep and garage ceiling when your kids are sleeping on Saturdays and $71 from old Legos, then you’re really blowing it. But I don’t think that’s how important work gets done. That’s not how thoughtful work gets done, that’s not where deep work gets done. And Ryan does a great job of exploring that topic in the book. And so I would recommend Stillness Is the Key.

Brent: Finally, let me leave you some inspiration heading into the new year, and it would be memento mori, or remember you’re going to die. I think, with Ryan, who I mentioned wrote the book Stillness Is the Key, I help run a website called Daily Stoic where we make these coins, and on the front it says, “Memento mori”, which is Latin for, “Remember you’re going to die,” and on the back it has a quote from Marcus Aurelius and it says, “You can leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” And the idea is to remember that you’re going to die. Don’t waste time. Don’t get upset about things that don’t matter, don’t pursue things that don’t matter. Create your personal priorities and meaning.

Brent: And for me, I carry around this coin and I feel it in my pocket when I’m stuck in traffic and want to get mad and yell or I find myself wasting time on Instagram. If you zoom back out to the context that you’re going to die, I don’t have time to be on Instagram. I don’t have time to be stuck in traffic yelling or yelling at somebody in traffic isn’t that important when I zoom out to the lens of, I’m going to die. And so I think, into the new year, it sounds grim, but it’s actually very motivating in some ways. You’re going to die. Remember that. And if you want the little coin that I carry around, if you Google Daily Stoic and momentum mori, you’ll find a lot of stuff about it. Anyways, thank you so much. You can find out more about what we’re doing at the Ghost Town of Cerro Gordo by googling Cerro Gordo ghost town. Or, a lot of stuff, find me at brentunderwood.com. And looking forward to having a great year and hope that you guys get out there and make all your dreams come true.

J: On episode number six of the Business podcast, we were absolutely thrilled to welcome Jay Papasan to the show. Jay is head of publishing for Keller Williams and is a bestselling author of several books, including the ONE Thing, which he wrote with Gary Keller. Jay helped us tackle one of the toughest issues we all face, when and how to say yes or no to all the opportunities that come across our desks. Hint, the key is setting up systems and putting conditions around your commitments so that everyone is happy regardless of whether you say yes or no. Now, here’s Jay with some great tips on how to reinvent your to do list, to really get things done, and how to decide what books should really be on your book list.

Jay: Hey everybody, this is Jay Papasan. You might remember me from episode 6 of the BiggerPockets Business podcast where we talked about the ONE Thing and how it impacts your journey as an entrepreneur. J and Carol asked me to record a few tips for you to kind of kick off your 2020. They asked for three in particular, so here goes. I think if there was one thing that you can do to help reduce your stress, reduce your overwhelm, is to turn your to do list into a success list. This is a big part of our training around the ONE Thing and it’s really simple, which is why I like it. Most of you have some form of a to do list, right? You write down all the stuff that you know you need to do and the challenge is can you bring priority to that? So it’s a simple step. Look at all the tasks that you said you were going to get done this week or this month, and then I want you to create a new list. By going through that list of, say 25 things, identify the stuff that you know is really important. Of all the things that you could do, what are the handful that you really should do?

Jay: Now you’ve got a much shorter list, just to begin with, and we’re going to do one additional step. If you look at those five or six things, however many are left, if you could only do one this week, what would it be? Usually we know the answer, right? Okay, this is really, truly the standout. This is the thing I’m going to put off, the thing that I know I don’t like to do, but I need to do, and that gets to be your number one. Well, if you get that done and you have time to do another one, what would that be? Well, that becomes your number two and you work your way through your list. In our trainings, we’ve done this for probably 10,000 people now and what we see is people take a list of 25 or 30 things and they identify, in order of priority, usually the five or six things that actually matter. Here’s the key to that, if you look up and you spend about four or five minutes, that’s as much time as you should take in this, you just go with your gut, you eliminate and prioritize, you still have all that other stuff, but the point is as you launch your work week, you launch your work day focused on your number one. And when that’s done, you go to number two.

Jay: And what we like to say is great, successful people have a successful day before noon. Usually you can knock out a lot of that list and be really disciplined for a few hours and that’ll allow you to be a little spontaneous for the rest of your day. Over time, what happens is you’re knocking out those big priorities and you’re feeling the freedom of having done them a little righteousness, like, “Hey, I’m going to go have a cheeseburger after my workout,” kind of righteousness, right? And now you can go do the other stuff. It might be a little bit more fun knowing that you did your most important stuff. I find it a huge stress reliever and it also is really a super hack for getting you on the path to success. J and Carol also asked me for a book recommendation, which drives me crazy, because if you looked in my office, I’ll give you a quick peek, there are bookshelves and bookshelves and bookshelves.

Jay: I am surrounded by books. I have a book buying problem. So here’s a better hack. As an entrepreneur, as a business person, what’s an area where you lack confidence? Is it public speaking? Maybe it’s financials. Maybe it’s about marketing. And pick the category and here’s your goal. We’re rolling into the new year, set a goal to read a minimum of four books around that category. And now your job is to reach out to your network and say, great, Jay, what are your favorite three or four books around marketing? Now, when somebody asked me a specific question like that, I can get pretty prescriptive. I love Spreading the Ideavirus, Positioning, the 21 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I kind of start rolling through, like here are the classics. I learned so much from, what is it? Al Trout and … No, is it Al Ries and Trout? Whatever. Trout and Ries. They’ve written some amazing books.

Jay: There’s a handful of books that really stand out. Financials the same way. So pick a subject. Don’t just read one book. Read three or four books in that, I would say four at a minimum, and this year, you’ll get that much smarter. Now, Gary and I try to do this all the time. He’s my coauthor with the ONE Thing, if you didn’t know. We’re trying to read with purpose. When you’re going to read nonfiction, it can be entertaining. I love a great book. I love to engage with it, but at the end of a nonfiction book, you should sit down and say, what did I learn from this? Are there key concepts I want to carry forward? What are those things and how can I apply them? I would encourage you, if you use Evernote or you have a journal, put them there, someplace that you can go back and reference it. And then that book will continue to serve you, and when someone says, have you read that book? You say, yeah, I’ve read that book.

Jay: It just came up today, actually, I was talking to someone about Seth Godin’s book Tribes, and there’s lots of great stuff in that book, but the thing I remember is that in his language, and I’m paraphrasing, people want you to notice when they’re not there. And we have applied that principle in our business. When we do events, inviting your clients to an event’s great. Calling the ones that didn’t make it and saying, “Hey J, hey Carol, we had an amazing event at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater and you know what? We missed that you were there. Hopefully you’ll make it next time.” That touch is one of the most impactful touches that you can do, because now they feel valued. You miss them. So that’s a concept that came from a book, because we read that book with clarity, what am I learning from it, and we tried to carry it forward. That’s just a quick example.

Jay: Your homework assignment is create a to do list of all the topics, make a success list of the ones that you really need to focus on to get your business career going, pick the number one. Now, same technique, right? The success list, you’ve narrowed it down. Now, in that category, go find out what the best four books are and commit to reading them this year. It’ll increase your confidence, it’ll make you a better decision maker and hopefully it’ll give you tons of new ideas that you can apply for your business. Okay, final thought, kind of, they asked for my favorite tool to recommend for the new year and I’m going to go to an oldie but goodie for probably going on 10 years now, since we did the research on the ONE Thing, we found out that it takes on average 66 days to form a habit.

Jay: And when we studied extraordinary performers, what we notice is these are people who figure out what really matters to them and then, wow, I really should brush my teeth. Well, I should form a habit of doing that every single day, three times a day, or whatever it is. They just go make a habit out of it. And if it takes 66 days to do that, well you can form as many as five habits a year, if you’re just average. I would encourage you to do what we call taking the 66 day challenge to launch your year. We’re actually doing it in our community, we’re all trying to launch the year by forming a habit we feel will serve us in our business or in our personal lives the most. Maybe the number one thing you can do for your business is to get more sleep, or to start exercising, right? So you have more energy and more clarity at work, whatever it is. Research says if you do it for 66 days in a row, you got a pretty good chance of sticking with it.

Jay: So if you go to the1thing.com, that’s with a number one, dot com/66daychallenge, you’ll find a free training video and a calendar that you can use to form your first habit. It’s a great way to launch your year. You’re focusing on the one thing that might serve you the most. And once you learn how to form a habit, I got to tell you, it’s a superpower. That’s that thing that you can just keep doing and keep doing. Let’s combine all these. The idea of success list, all you’re doing is taking a long list of stuff in no order and giving it priority and hierarchy.

Jay: There’s only a few things that you really need to do. You can apply that to your book reading, right? Because we want you to pick not a book, but several books that you can get smarter. And I’ll tell you what, your first habit might be, what if I read 10 pages a day? There you go. If you read 10 pages a day, about every month, you’d knock out a book that’s even faster than we talked about, so hopefully this serves you. Best wishes for 2020. Hope your 2019 finishes strong and keep going out there and doing your one thing. This is Jay Papasan signing off.

J: We spoke with Christina Gillick on episode number eight of our show and she walked us step by step how she mastered the art of copywriting, how she built and grew her copywriting business, and how we can do the same. Christina walked us through the psychology of that old infomercial trick, “But wait, there’s more,” and why it still works. She also taught us how we can get optimal response to our direct response campaigns by using split testing in our copy. Now, here’s Christina guiding us on where we should be focusing our efforts in the new year.

Christina: Hi everyone. I’m Christina Gillick, an online business owner and direct response copywriter. For all you business owners looking to grow or scale your business, here’s what I suggest. Focus on what’s already working best. Often, as business owners, we get distracted by bright, shiny objects or we get misled by listening to vocal customers. I’ve had to learn over and over again, just because a few customers request a certain style or color doesn’t mean it’s going to sell well. Instead, focus your efforts on what’s already working best. You’ve likely heard the 80/20 rule, and it says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. And likewise, 80% of your income comes from 20% of your products, or maybe 20% of your customers. For instance, with our business, we found that customers often ask for gold styles. We sell earrings, but the silver styles, they sell faster and better.

Christina: So by using the real data from our real sales, instead of simply customer requests, we know that we’re creating products that will sell well. We also create customer requests, but it’s good to have a balance of the two. Now, maybe in your business, you find that 80% of your customers are coming from Facebook, but maybe Facebook is only 20% of your ad budget. That’s a good example where it would make sense to spend more of your money on Facebook ads. Or maybe 80% of your traffic is coming from Google, but only 20% of your time and effort is going to your SEO strategy. Now, I could give you more examples of the 80/20 rule in businesses and they’ll be different for every business, but the bottom line is this. When you take a look at what’s already working in your business and you do more of that, instead of chasing bright, shiny objects, no matter how tempting they may be, your sales will increase and you’ll be able to have more profitable products and phase out the less profitable ones, or services, if you offer services.

Christina: Now, for anyone who’s looking for a great tool to improve your business, I highly recommend checking out Trello, that’s T-R-E-L-L-O. It’s basically a project management tool, but you can access it through your browser, on a computer, or through apps for Android and iPhone, and there’s a free version and there’s paid upgrades, but what I like about it is that it’s so flexible. I use boards to manage everything in our business from our social media strategy and our posts with all of the due dates and deadlines and hashtags, to our incoming orders and our inventory and when we can expect updates or shipments. And so it’s just a really great way to just, I guess it’s a dashboard for my business, and it also has integrations with all the other tools you probably already use, such as Google Calendar or Drive, Evernote, Slack, and many, many more tools I’ve never even heard of.

Christina: And it’s great for working with other people, especially if you need to collaborate on projects. It’s a great tool for communicating with your team. Now, for anyone who is looking for a great book to read in the new year, I highly recommend the Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. I’ve already read this book several times and I will be reading it again in the new year, but I recommend it, because for one thing, I always pick up new things when I read it, but it’s also always a good reminder. One of the very first things in the book, it talks about quieting the voice inside your head. Sometimes that voice can be discouraging or overwhelming, and when you’re trying to start a new business or grow an existing business, it can be difficult. And so I really like rereading this book to get a reminder to quiet that voice in my head and move forward with action. I recommend it to anybody who is listening and who maybe that voice in your head is telling you you can’t do it. I highly recommend this book. So that’s all for now and thank you so much. You can find me at christinagillick.com or comfyearrings.com. Happy New Year everyone and have a great 2020.

J: On episode number nine, founder of the PopUp Business School, Alan Donegan, taught us how we can test our business ideas for their likely success before spending any money on building the business. At Alan’s Popup Business School, he provides a multi-week training on how to conceive of, start, and grow a business with minimal risk, and it’s completely free. In fact, he has a training event coming up in February in Charleston, South Carolina that still has spots open. Now, here’s Alan with some amazing business tips entering the new year and listen to the end when Alan tells you how you can register for the free Charleston, South Carolina PopUp Business School training.

Alan: Hi, my name is Alan. I’m from the PopUp Business School. So for all of you business owners that are looking to grow and scale your business, my tip for 2020 is a little bit old school. As the world gets more connected, as the world gets more online, as social media takes over, my recommendation to you is to get more personal and to get more connected to your clients. First thing I want you to do is look down your client list and see who your favorite clients are to work with, who the most profitable clients are, and I want you to get on the phone and call them. I want you to go have coffee with them, I want you to meet them. In a world that’s going more online, it’ll help you to stand out if you get more connected physically. For anyone who’s feeling overwhelmed, not sure where to start, and stuck, I know exactly how you feel.

Alan: I felt that way for many years when I started my business, and it took me a long time to get over it. Here’s my top three tips to help you get going in 2020. The first is you just need to do one thing each day. If you can just target to send an email, make a phone call, build the first page of the website, do one thing each day, it’s incredible the progress you will make incrementally over the first weeks of the year. And tying into that, is my second idea, it’s the project versus next action. A lot of people get stuck in what they’re doing, because on their to do list, they have build website. Is build website a project or a next action? Well, for most of us, it’s a big project. What you need to do is break that down, get photo for header of website, write text for homepage of website.

Alan: So it’s a simple action you can actually make progress on. Do marketing for business is not a next action. It’s a whole big project. You need to break it down to help yourself get going. And my third tip for you in 2020 is to focus on sales. Sales are what drives the business. It brings in the lifeblood, the cash into the business, it gives you customers, it gives you reviews, it drives everything you do. If there’s one thing I’d love you to focus on in January this year, it’s getting those sales in, work to meet the customers, work to get started, and sell your value before you create it. Get out there and sell. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just start with one thing. Let me leave you with some inspiration for 2020. Quite often what happens is when we have these huge goals, they look like insurmountable mountains to climb and it puts people off ever starting.

Alan: You’ve got to break that down into small steps, so you can get going. If your goal is to build a big business, it starts with making one sale. If your goal is to launch a product, it starts with making the right connection to get it designed. If your goal is to become financially independent, it starts with saving and investing $10. It all starts with a small thing. What you’ve got to do is stop putting off the big projects and start taking the small actions as soon as you can. If you do that every day throughout 2020, you will be amazed by the progress you make. I’m Alan, I’m from the PopUp Business School and we offer free courses on how to start a business with no debt. If you’ve ever been intrigued or want help start your own business, or you’ve got to a stage in your business where you’re not making the sales you want, then come along. The courses are always funded by sponsors, so they’re free to you.

Alan: And actually this year, February the 17th, we have a course coming up in Charleston, South Carolina. Now, if you want to come along, check it out, popupbusinessschool.co.UK/Charleston. I’ll be there at the course. It’ll be great fun. And if you want an online guide to how to start a business, come along to popupbusinessschool.co.UK. Have a Happy New Year and good luck with all your goals.

J: David Greene, cohost of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast and author of two great BiggerPockets books, joined us on episode number 20 of the show. From beginning to end, David provided us fantastic tips on everything from delegating to hiring to using systems and leverage to run your business like a well oiled machine. And he does it again here with his tips for starting out 2020 in explosive fashion. Here’s David.

David: Hey everyone. This is David Greene, cohost of the BiggerPockets Podcast, and I am here to help you aspiring and established entrepreneurs take your business to the next level. Now many of you know I got my start in real estate buying rental properties as a police officer. Not everybody knows that I’ve actually moved on from that and now I am a real estate broker with a real estate team under Keller Williams and I just opened a mortgage company where we help people refinance and get loans with high customer service and really cheap rates. What I’ve learned is being a cop is completely different than being a business person, and I’ve had a lot of growth in my career as a business person in a short period of time and I had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way and I want to share some things with you guys so that you can have similar results without making some of the same mistakes. For all you business owners looking to grow or scale your business, here’s what I would suggest.

David: Now, people are going to talk about leverage, people are going to talk about delegation, all of that is true. I’m a big systems guy and people are going to talk about systems, but the one thing I think is overlooked, that you really got to get right is building and maintaining a database. You need to get a CRM, a customer relationship manager, and put all the contacts of all the people that you know into that and then meticulously communicate with those people. Business is a relationship sport. It’s a contact sport. You got to make contacts with people if you want them to send you business. And what I want you guys to understand is a CRM can help automate that and help manage it. Every day, every week, every month, I look to add a certain number of people to my database and then communicate with those people. It can be phone calls, text messages, emails, social media helps with this. It helps them reach a large number of people with a little bit of effort. But it’s all about touches, it’s all about maintaining a relationship.

David: This is very important as a business owner. You can’t just hope that the phone will ring and people will come to you. You need to create a database of people that can help sell your product, buy your product, send you referrals for your product, and let them know that you need their help. Focus on your database first and then all the other advice that you get from automating things, delegating things, systemizing things, that will all have its place once you’ve got your database in place. For anyone feeling overwhelmed and not sure how to get started, here’s what I would recommend, take what your ultimate goal is and work backwards.

David: You can’t … You’ve got to start with the end in mind, but you can’t expect the end. Look at where you want to be and then go one step back, right? Let’s say, for me, with my real estate business, I want to sell 50 houses a year. Well, what do I have to do to sell 50 houses a year? I have to make X amount of phone calls every single year. Well, what does that translate to every day? I got to make X amount of phone calls a day. Well, what do I need in order to make those phone calls? I have to have a database to manage these people and to tell me who to call. Well, what do I need to have that? And work your way all the way back until you are where you are right now. Write that down and then go about checking off the boxes or knocking down the dominoes of what you just set up that you need to get to.

David: For anyone looking for a great book to read in the new year, I highly recommend So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. Now, Brandon and I interviewed Cal on the BiggerPockets podcast, but I loved this book even before then. It’s all about being so good at what you do that you get to dictate the rules of how you do it, when you do it, and what you get paid to do it for. Now, a lot of people, they’re spending all their time looking for the perfect opportunity, the perfect company, the perfect title, the perfect position. They want something else to give them all they want in life. The problem is, nobody cares what we want. They only care what we could do for them. And instead of looking for what the perfect thing is, instead if you look at becoming the perfect person, the perfect employee, you then get to name your price when those people find you.

David: It’s much, much better than spending your effort looking for a situation that’s ideal for you to make yourself ideal for any situation. Read that book and focus on pursuing excellence and falling in love with the process of becoming great. If you do that, you can write yourself a check for whatever amount you want when you get there. Let me leave you with some inspiration heading into the new year, this is one of the best economies that we’ve ever seen and maybe will ever see. It is easier to make money right now than at any other time on earth. Capital is cheap, opportunities are aplenty, take advantage of it while it’s here. Don’t worry about being overworked. Take advantage of that. Look at every opportunity that you have to learn as much as you can possibly learn. Gather as much information as you can, get as much experience as you can, make as much money as you can, right?

David: This is the harvest and you’ve got to bring in everything you can, because at some point, the market will correct. At some point, the economy does change and you get a lot of people fighting for a small number of jobs. You want to be the most qualified person when that comes. You want your powder dry and ready to rock and roll when the economy turns around and there’s investment opportunities. Big wealth will be built in bad markets, and bear markets, right? We’re in a bull market right now. Use this opportunity to stack up your ammunition to get as much information as you can, as much knowledge, as much experience, everything that is of value, gather it up, hoard it up, be greedy right now, because you don’t know when things are going to change and you don’t want to look back and be one of those people that says, man, I wish I’d been ready when 2010 came and there was all that real estate that was really cheap, or I wished I’d saved some money because when I lost my job, I was living paycheck to paycheck. Don’t let that be you.

David: All right, I am David Greene. You can catch me at DavidGreene24 on Instagram. I’m also on BiggerPockets Real Estate Agent with Keller Williams, so I’m basically all about everything real estate. I hope you guys liked my episode I did with J. I hope you continue listening to J’s podcast, because it is top notch. I listen to every single episode myself. Good luck in business and go crush it.

J: On episode number 23 of our show, sales expert and the author of the Science of Selling, David Hoffeld helped us to understand how our prospective customers think through concepts like fear and risk. He taught us how to use stories to reassure and overcome objections and gave us the six why’s that explain every single buying decision. Now, here’s David telling us how we can overcome our fear of starting a new endeavor and what we should be doing right now to get our business started.

David: Hi, I’m David Hoffeld, CEO and chief sales trainer here at the Hoffeld Group, and author of the Science of Selling. As we get ready for the new year, a couple quick thoughts, for anyone feeling overwhelmed or really not sure how to get started, what I’d recommend you doing is identify the first few things you need to do. Oftentimes, it’s hard to see the whole path, right? The whole what the journey will be like when you’re trying to get started in any new endeavor or achieving your goals or taking the plunge into being an entrepreneur, but it’s usually, relatively easy to identify the first few things you need to do. Let’s say the first two or three activities or things you need to do that you can act on over the next week or two. And so I would encourage you, once you identify those things, create what researchers call an action trigger. What is an action trigger? It links a behavior up with an environmental stimuli.

David: What the data or goals show is that creating goals isn’t where most of us struggle. If you’re like me, it’s not hard to create a goal. What’s really hard is achieving it, right? It’s doing the things necessary every day to achieve those goals. So what can we do to make that a little easier for you? And that is, use an action trigger. What that basically does is, let’s say, for example, you wanted to make a phone call to a certain person, right? You could schedule that call. Let’s say you’ve been reluctant about doing it, but you know it’s a critical first step. So then rather than just hoping that you find time today or tomorrow or whenever to make the call, you say, “I’m going to make that call today at 3:30 PM,” or, “I’m going to make that call as soon as I get back from lunch.”

David: You link the behavior with an environmental stimuli so that when the clock hits 3:30, or I come back from lunch, that’s when I make the call. And what the data shows is when you do that, when you use action triggers, you are significantly more likely to act in the ways that you want. Try it out. I think you’ll be very impressed. In fact, that was what I use when I wrote my book. I was struggling with what you can see over my shoulder, the Science of Selling. It’s all blown up there, but when I was writing that book, it was challenging. I was having a hard time finding time during the day to actually write, and so what I did was create an action trigger. I said, “I will write as soon as I put my kids to bed.” So as soon as I put my kids to bed every night, I would go and write the book and it freed me up.

David: I didn’t have to try to find time to write or try to fit it in between different activities throughout the day, because that wasn’t happening. Or try to muster up enough willpower so then I would write, I’m just using an action trigger, knew I would write as soon as my kids went to bed. And I was able to begin writing almost every single day and it’s one of the big reasons why I was able to actually finish the book. Use action triggers. For anyone who’s looking for a great read for the new year, what would I recommend? I would recommend Ron Friedman’s, The Best Place To Work. Friedman is a social psychologist and the book is written about how do you create a workplace, both for yourself and others, that motivates you to doing your best? It’s a fascinating book. It’s a couple of years old. I recently just looked over some key parts of it that I had outlined and made note of when I had originally ran through it, and it reminded me of how relevant it is.

David: It’s a great book though, because Friedman is a social psychologist, and so all of the … His insights are backed by real research. It’s not this anecdotal ideas that may or may not work and based on someone’s experience, it’s really based on hard evidence. Check it out, Ron Friedman’s, The Best Place To Work. I think you’ll like it. What is some inspiration I may have for … As we all go into the new year, and one of the things that I’ve been reflecting on a little bit recently and thinking about the last year and even the last few years, is the value of doing hard things, of pursuing that which is difficult. And I found that in my life, and I’m sure many of you can also relate to this, that when I pursue things that are easy, I get minimal results, meaning even if they’re accomplished, it really doesn’t matter. Who cares, right?

David: It was easy to do and it doesn’t really move the needle or improve my life in any significant way. What seems to make the biggest impact by far is doing hard things, and I’m sure right now something pops into your mind of, okay, this is the big thing that if I can do this this year, over the next couple of years, it would be a game changer. Go after that. Now, there’s a reluctance around doing hard things, because they’re well, hard. And that’s kind of the wall that you and I have to scale to achieve those significant goals, is we have to go through the challenging times to get to them. And there’s a tremendous opportunity there, because if you think about it, most people won’t put in the work, won’t do hard things. They just settle for what’s what’s easy and they settle for what’s in front of them, what’s already good.

David: They don’t go for that next level of greatness. And so that’s why you and I must. We must do those things that others will not do, if you want to experience the outcomes that others will not experience. That’s what it all comes down to is how far will you go? How far will you push to achieve those goals? I would encourage you, think of what can I do this year that will change things for the better for myself, for my family, maybe it’s professionally, maybe it’s personally, maybe it’s health wise, whatever, and if you identify as something that, boy, I’d love to do that, but it’s hard, do it. Pursue it. Go all in. Pay that price. There’s always a price for success and you always pay it upfront, but when you go through that journey, it’ll mold you into a different person, the person that you truly want to be, and that’s in line with your goals. And when you do that, when you achieve those goals, it is an awesome feeling. Why? Because they were hard. My final inspiration you would be, do hard things. With that, let me wish you a wonderful and productive new year. 2020 is going to be awesome, and the exciting thing is, you and I can make it all some by what we do every single day to move ourselves closer to our goals.

J: On episode number 24 of the Business podcast, Paige Wilcox from Wilcox Wellness & Fitness joined us to help us learn how to both prioritize what we’re doing and how to be more efficient using systems and processes in our business. She also walked us through the process she’s using to franchise her business, allowing her to create maximum income with minimal effort. Now, here’s Paige with some great advice on how you can start automating your business today.

Paige: Hi everyone. My name is Paige Wilcox from Wilcox Wellness & Fitness. I was on the BiggerPockets Business podcast earlier this year to talk about how my husband and I achieved time and financial freedom by establishing systems and processes in our business so that our business can run without us. If you’re running a business right now, my best piece of advice for you is to document every single thing that you do in your business so that one day you can hire and train somebody to run the business without you. And that’s what I did. That’s why … How I was able to franchise the business, that’s how I’m able to work from home, pick my kids up early from school, when they need me, and really be present for my family. Even if you’re a solopreneur right now, get into the habit of documenting everything that you do.

Paige: What do you do when a prospective client reaches out, because they’re interested in more information from you? Develop scripts that you can just copy and paste and tailor the information to that individual. That’s not only going to save you time, but it’s also going to lay the groundwork for you to continuously improve your processes. So many people feel like writing down and documenting their processes is going to take so much work, but I promise you, it really doesn’t. It actually will save you time in the long run. And don’t feel like what step one, two, or three that you put into place today is going to be the same in three months, in six months, in six years. It’s a starting point so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you’re doing a certain procedure inside of your business.

Paige: I was asked to share my favorite book or a book to recommend in the new year and I’m sorry guys, I’m not going to be able to do that. I have three. Early on in my entrepreneurial journey, I had so many mentors telling me that leaders are readers. That you need to get up and read, and if you read just 10 pages a day, that can transform your life. And let me tell you, it really has transformed my life. I really believe that the information that you put into your brain is just like nutrition. If you put good in, you’ll get good out. I’m going to share with you my three favorite books for business and kind of what they mean in my life. This first book, Start With Why by Simon Sinek was absolutely incredible. It really just talks about finding your purpose and figuring out why you do what you do, for you personally, but then also for your business.

Paige: If you figure that out, everything else in your business is going to become incredibly easy. The next one is called the ONE Thing. The ONE Thing is my top recommended book for productivity, and really the message in this book is figuring out what the top priorities are for you, in your life and in your business, and focusing only on one thing. The book starts with a Russian proverb and I really love it and I think it’s important to keep in mind and it says, “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.” And I think that’s so true. As multi-passionate entrepreneurs, we are … Have lots of ideas. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got lots of ideas, and I think it’s important to really decide what idea we want to track down, what change we want to make in our business, what new project we want to put in place, and do only that and do that well.

Paige: And then the last one that I’m going to recommend to you is The E-Myth. This is a business classic, but I think that really reframes the mindset around the work that you do in your business. So this book talks about either working on your business or working in your business. And I strive to work on my business for at least 90% of the time. And for me, that means developing new programs, developing content to attract new prospective clients, and developing our franchising program. And then working in your business is what you can hire and train somebody to do. Those things that I listed are things that only I, as the business owner, as the visionary in our business can do. Nobody … I can’t outsource that. Nobody else can do that for me. But I can hire and train an administrative assistant to take phone calls, to answer emails. I can hire and train personal trainers to train all of the clients.

Paige: And so I think that if you’re in a place where you are a beginning to hire a team, I think that this book would be a really great start for you. I’d like to close by just telling you to go for it. If you’re on the fence about starting your own business or making a move career wise, you only have this one life, just go for it. It’s going to work out. If you put your all into it, I’m confident that you will be successful. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you have a really great new year. If you’re interested in learning more about Wilcox Wellness & Fitness, head over to our website, it’s Wilcoxwellnessfitness.com, and you can also follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. We are going to be expanding our franchise offerings later in 2020, so if you’re interested in that, please feel free to reach out. Have a great 2020.

J: Finally, episode number 29 brought a serial entrepreneur, author and former DJ, Andy Seth. Andy’s excitement was contagious while he shared with us some great tips on finding your passion and maintaining your energy while juggling multiple pursuits. And he reassured us that it’s okay to try lots of things while you look to make a real impact on the world beyond just success and money. Andy’s back with that same level of enthusiasm and even more great tips on how you can jumpstart your entrepreneurial passions in 2020. Now, here’s Andy.

Andy: Oh yeah, oh yeah. This is the new year’s episode and this yo boy, Andy Seth. What’s up y’all? AKA, A-Luv in the house. I am back with some useful tips for you for the new year. And first of all, I just got to say big ups, big ups, big props to all of the BiggerPockets Business podcast listeners. You guys, by far, hands down, no question, had the dopest responses, the most responses, the most people reach out to me, the most people who are asking questions and engaged. Y’all are amazing. I’m not even playing. It was awesome to hear you guys’s response to my podcast. So, as a thank you, I want to give a little bit back, in a few quick minutes, I’m going to give you some tips for the new year. So you guys ready to rock? Here we go. First thing for all of you aspiring entrepreneurs looking to get started, here is my tip for you, you need to learn how to analyze business opportunities and you’ve got to check out this dude’s model.

Andy: The guy’s name is John Mullins. Just Google him. John Mullins, and Google seven domains. The seven domains model will teach you how to research any business opportunities. John Mullins is a professor over at the London School of Business, by the way, and this is what you need to do in terms of research to vet your idea before you even go about testing it, before you even go check out whether or not there’s a problem solution fit or a product market fit, before you go do any type of testing, there’s some very, very basic research that you can do, pretty quickly in fact, to evaluate across seven domains whether or not this idea even stands a chance. This is my number one tip to all of you. Go check out the seven domains by John Mullins. You can Google it. He’s written a book on it too, but I honestly … There’s articles on it that will tell you everything you need to know there, so go check that one out.

Andy: Okay, for those of you who are already in business and you’re looking to scale your business, here’s the three things that I’m going to suggest for you. Number one is to learn to trust your gut, and I don’t mean that all fufu ways. I’m talking about like how do you actually use your gut as a tool? How do you refine it? You need to learn how to trust your gut. Why? Because you make faster decisions, you make decisions with signals versus noise. You don’t get analysis paralysis, and you are doing what you feel is actually called, you feel called to do rather than what your ego is telling you to do. And so trusting your gut is a lot more than just like, oh, I’m going to try to trust my gut. It’s like for real.

Andy: You need to refine this as a tool, because if you want to accomplish a lot in scale, you’ve got to make a lot of decisions, be accurate with your decisions, be smart with them, but also be quick with them. So number one, trust your gut. Number two is how to stop energy vampires. Energy vampires suck the energy out of you. Most people don’t have a time issue, they’ve got an energy issue. If they don’t have enough energy, they can’t get the thing done. How many times have you been kind of lazing around or whatever and somebody calls you and is like, “Hey, let’s go.” Well, at least me anyways. And you’re like, “Yo, you know what? Yeah, totally.” You get that energy surge, that is because of energy. It’s not because you didn’t have the time.

Andy: It’s because before, when you were laying around, you didn’t want to, because you didn’t have the energy. Energy is very real. And so there’s three things that you’ve got to stop from vampiring and leaking and sucking all the energy out of you. Number one, unresolved conflicts. Number two, people. And number three, things. The number one thing, though, is unresolved conflicts. Unresolved conflicts will drain your energy left, right and center. I wrote an article on my blog, again called burning ritual. It’s called burning ritual, like how to do a burning ritual. And that ritual is how you resolve these unresolved conflicts. How do you heal those unresolved conflicts, so you’re not just leaking energy all over the place? And then the third thing for scaling your business is train yourself to be great at concentration.

Andy: With concentration, you’re able to trigger flow state and when you’re working on something in flow state, when you’re undistracted, you produce more, you innovate more, you have a greater output of work, you get a lot more accomplished in flow state, but that requires you to be highly skilled in concentration. If there’s something that I’m going to give to you is to learn how to be great at concentrating. If you don’t know how to be great at concentrating, but you are into trying meditation, that is definitely the answer. If you are not into trying meditation, you can learn to concentrate by something very simple as like every time you wash your hands all day, just stare at the water going onto your hands and try not to let your awareness drift away. If you feel it drift away, come back to just looking at your hands being washed, and that will give you reps.

Andy: You need reps every day, day in day out, to practice concentration. That’s a very simple thing that you can do on a daily basis. Anyone looking to read a great book in the new year? I highly recommend Running Lean by Ash Maurya. This is for after you’ve practiced those seven domains that I talked about and you’ve vetted some ideas and now you want to test them out. The book, Running Lean, teaches you five things, in my opinion, that I thought were quite groundbreaking, if you will, but really impactful, really helpful. Number one is how to drop a one page business plan in 20 minutes. You don’t need all that fancy pantsy stuff that’s just going to sit on a shelf. You need something that you can articulate in 20 minutes to yourself so that you can see the big picture. It’s a one page business plan.

Andy: Number two, where are the risks on that businessman, because when you have those risks, that’s what you need to test your hypotheses on, right? You need to test out whether those risks are valid or invalid. Number three then is to create your problem solution fit. Here’s these problems you think you’ve identified in the market, can you come up with a solution that actually solves those problems? Then number four, once you think you’ve come up with solution, it’s going back and creating a product around that, a minimum viable product, not even having to create it. You could just even be talking about it, putting a demo together, putting a PowerPoint together, but testing and seeing whether the market actually wants that. And then number five, learning what experiments you need to run in order to test your business idea itself. That will help you actually launch your business, and even if you’re looking at scaling or building a new product, rather, this is a great model for you to use.

Andy: Running Lean by Ash Maurya. Go check out my blog, sign up for the newsletter. You can go to andyseth.com. A-N-D-Y-S-E-T-H.com. Sign up for the emails, read the blog and if you want to pick up my book Bling, go for it. Get it on Amazon. And if you’re a hip hop fan, I did produce a soundtrack under the same title, Bling, under my artist A-Luv. A-L-U-V. A dash L-U-V, if you want to look it up on Spotify or whatever. It’s available wherever music is, Apple music, et cetera. I know this, we are going to crush it in 2020 together. That is my word. I love you all. Here is to raising the vibe. Let’s go get it.

J: Everybody, that is it for this show and that is it for 2019. Thank you so much for tuning in and making our inaugural year fantastic. Thank you for all the great feedback and for being fantastic listeners. We really appreciate it. We look forward to coming back in 2020, helping you start your business, grow your business, and scale your business. Thanks so much everybody. Happy New Year and have a great rest of your 2019.

Watch the Podcast Here

In This Episode We Speak To:

  • Josh Dorkin – BiggerPockets Founder
  • Trevor Mauch – Founder of Carrot
  • Brent Underwood – Co-Founder of BrassCheck
  • Jay Papasan – Co-Author of The ONE Thing
  • Christina Gillick – Owner of ComfyEarrings.com
  • Alan Donegan – PopUp Business School Co-Founder
  • David Greene – Co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast
  • David Hoffeld  – Author of the book Science of Selling
  • Paige Wilcox – Owner of Wilcox Wellness & Fitnes
  • And Andy Seth – Flow Founder & CEO

Links from the Show

Books Mentioned in this Show

Tweetable Topics:

  • “Stop listening to everybody.” (Tweet This!)
  • “It’s not about the numbers but where you put your energy.” (Tweet This!)
  • “It’s all about maintaining the relationships.” (Tweet This!)
  • “Memento mori: you could leave life right now.” (Tweet This!)
  • “Create your own priorities and meaning.” (Tweet This!)

Connect with our Guests

Josh Dorkin

Trevor Mauch 

Brent Underwood

Jay Papasan

Christina Gillick

Alan Donegan

David Greene

David Hoffeld 

Paige Wilcox

Andy Seth

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.