Corbett Barr: A Million Ways to Skin a Cat and Joining the Cult of Chase

“Everything good that’s happened to me over the last five years is the result of starting a blog. Of putting my thoughts and words down on the page.” One of my favorite conversations so far, Corbett Barr (if that’s his real name) is the real deal.

Corbett and I spoke at length on this topic and it's one of my favorite conversations so far. I've wanted to get Corbett Barr (if that's his real name) on the show for a long time and when we finally made it happen, I didn't want to waste a minute of it. We really covered the gamut in this one, folks.

We talked about taking risks and pursuing our dreams, audience building (how to do it and how NOT to do it), product building, entrepreneurship as a lifestyle, what “success” really is and so much more.

Corbett is co-founder of Fizzle, a community and video training libraries for people working to become self-employed. He's also one of those guys who just exudes wisdom. It kind of pours our of him like sweat. So get read to get a little Corbett wisdom sweat on you.

Here are some of my favorite bits from the show:

On Creating Products and Success

“There are a million ways to win, you just have to be at the right place at the right time”

“You can only do so much to create a really great product and you never what thing is going to take off and what thing isn’t and a lot of times the solution is to buy more lottery tickets because each project is essentially a lottery ticket and you can’t get better at winning the lottery.”

“It may be that your thing just isn’t good enough.”

On Icky Marketing Tactics

“You owe it to yourself to examine every tactic your aware off and pick it apart and follow you’re own internal compass.”

“It is possible to create a really great product that goes nowhere if you’re not willing to promote it at all”

“When you say [these tactics] work, the problem is who do they work better on?”

For some who is using [these tactics], they might win the short term game of getting more subscribers or whatever, but what they lose is is the influence game, over time.”

“You do this sort of stuff long enough and you lose influence with the people that matter.”

The Importance of Influence

“Most people don’t think for themselves. They just look to the clues, the influencers, the reviews, the social proof. So maybe what matters is not reaching each individual person who comes to your site be reaching the people whose opinion matters because that’s how you’re going to grow an audience anyway.”

“Some of the people that are close to me and that I’ve worked hard to cultivate are worth 100,000 email subscribers.”

On Blogging, Career Desperation and Branding

“Everything good that’s happened to me over the last five years is the result of starting a blog. Of putting my thoughts and words down on the page.”

“I find that over time if put constraints on myself in terms of what the topic is, who I’m writing for and what goal it has to achieve, then I end up not enjoying the process so much and that’s where friction happens and that’s where a great project can sort of get stuck in the muck.”

“People can sense desperation in your career.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of if you commit to living your life in the meantime.”

“[Eventually] you learn that any sort of adversity is just another challenge and there’s always a way around it.”

“There’s no reason the an