Interview highlights:

01:47 – Did growth just happen?

05:01 – When you hit 20 million…

07:32 – Why not spend more?

08:59 – Knowing how big your business is

11:16 – Triggers and reporting

14:42 – Does segmentation come into play?

17:26 – The impact of current events

21:46 – A CEO’s routine

24:53 – Growing pains to look out for

28:34 – Tool/technique recommendations

30:45 – Sources of business ideas

33:45 – An effect of success

Plan the future of your business while relaxing in the Maldives. Click HERE

Download the PDF transcription

Transcript:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. I’ve got a guest back for the second time. The last time I interviewed this guest, his business was doing around $5 million a year. We were talking about the comparison between direct response and ecommerce styles of marketing and how you can actually blend the two in what he does with his successful business called Survival Frog, and that was episode 491 in August of 2016. Now, here we are, at the time of recording at the end of May 2017, and our guest has almost doubled the business. So today, I’m going to be speaking with Byron Walker about business growth. Welcome to the call, Byron.

Byron: Great. Thanks, James. Glad to be here.

James: Now, I’m interested in the story of how you’ve doubled your store in less than a year. Especially because business growth is a hot topic with both SuperFastBusiness and especially SilverCircle. A lot of the things that I focus on are to achieve business growth. And I think the first thing that we should probably address is, was the growth something that you had planned or has it just happened?

Can you plan growth?

Byron: Yeah. It was definitely planned. In fact, I think a lot of the reason why we’re not only growing but growing in a fairly smooth manner; I mean yes, there’s growing pains and there’s craziness, but overall for the type of growth we’re seeing is fairly well leveled and feels good. And I think the reason behind that is we had already gotten a lot of our basics down, our procedures, documentation, the right people in the right seats. A lot of the things were in place that allowed us to grow. Because I mean growth is great, but sometimes it can cause a lot of damage too. And so we’re growing but we’re also growing where we’re increasing margins. Don’t get me wrong, it is so crazy but it’s pretty well-controlled in our growth. So it was planned and I felt we had a really good strong base before we really started popping the lid off the top.

James: So when you sit down and think about where you want the business to go, who’s involved in that process and what is the process that determines what you’re going to plan and what is the plan for Survival Frog?

The plan

Byron: Again, I’ve got the right people in the right seats. Myself, I’m the CEO, and although I’m out of the day-to-day operations, I’m very heavy into the strategic planning of the company. And so who’s behind that? Certainly, I would take the lead role as the CEO of the company in charting the path to the future and where we’re going.

Discover how one ecommerce store doubled its $5 million a year revenue in less than a year’s time.

The tropics are a great place for surfing, snorkeling, self improvement, and most especially reevaluating how you live and do business.

Video highlights:

01:26 - When a group comes together

02:46 - A hyper brainstorm

03:46 - What’s working best for you?

04:17 - Where the money is in the business

06:08 - Delivering sustained value

07:52 - What’s on your action list?

The best way to rethink your business is to get away from it. Escape with James this September - Details HERE

Download the PDF transcription and Business Improvement Worksheet

Transcription:

It's James here. I want to share with you today some highlights that I got from my Maldives mastermind trip in September 2016 because as I'm preparing for the Maldives Mastermind coming up in 2017, which is in September, I'm just going through and reliving some of the experience.

It's really quite phenomenal. You get off the airplane at the airport in Mali, and you step onto the tender that takes you out to the big boat. And that first night, they have a welcome drink, the air is warm, you find your cabin, you sleep, you wake up the next morning in paradise, like aqua-colored water. There's this shift that goes over you.

Then what I did is I took guests through some facilitated business mastermind exercises. In addition to sitting down with each one of them individually over that week. So I just want to share some of the things we talked about. Maybe it's time for you to do a reset on your business. So you can do this by yourself at home. You could do it next time you're away. I really recommend you do these things when you're away from your business because it gives you more perspective. Of course, you could do it with me in the Maldives in September as well if you'd like to do that.

Group dynamics

So, when we got together, of course there's this group dynamics. It's people coming together. It's a new group. You've got to find out who does what and where they're at and learn more about them. So I do an introduction exercise where I take people through a mindset exercise, opening them up for the experience and helping them be ready to make change, because that's what I would like to have happen over that week. I want them to come out of the end. So when you're sitting down doing your planning, think about what result do you want, what does success look like, and where do you want to move to. So that's what we do there. We share something each so that we can start to feel for who's there.

 

"What does success look like?"

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The next thing that we do is we go deeper into people's specialties, not only what they're really good at but what they really want help with. So I start joining people up naturally. And you'll find that over the breaks, over the snorkelling sessions or the breathing exercises or the lunch on the deck, or the dinner or the breakfast and the casual couch conversations that happen, people gravitate towards the people who are like them, people who have a strength they're interested in, but also if people can solve someone else's challenge, they're going to gravitate there and help them out, which is just wonderful to see.

The PEQ technique

Then the next exercise we do is called a PEQ, and I learned this technique from Ed Dale, but it's like a hyper brainstorm. It's not just a blind one where the strongest people in the room get the m...

Discover content marketing tips and how you can put out valuable, effective content online - without losing your sanity in the process.

In the interview:

03:14 - Setting yourself apart

06:39 - Why pick a fight?

10:24 - There’s got to be other stories

16:05 - More than a glorified testimonial

18:21 - The power of origins

20:13 - You MUST create value

22:07 - Straddling two worlds

26:31 - How to build authority

30:40 - The roundup post strategy

34:02 - Co-authoring content

35:51 - Can you skip content marketing?

39:52 - The hardest part

41:31 - Some wild ideas for retooling content

50:14 - Going back to the core problem

Part 1 of the series

Enjoy a trip on a boat in the Maldives (and grow your business while you’re at it) - Early bird tickets HERE

Download the PDF transcription and Tips For Leveling Up Your Blog Content

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here from SuperFastBusiness.com. Welcome back. This is part two of a special series with my friend Kyle Gray who is an entrepreneur who helps startups and small businesses grow especially around content marketing. In our part one, which is the episode prior to this, we talked about how you go about making content creation a little less challenging, a little less intimidating, and we covered some really epic points. I encourage you, please go back and listen to episode one if you've just arrived at this post because this episode is going to continue to build on what we talked about before.

In the last episode, just for a quick highlight, we talked about content strategy, we talked about style guides, we talked about key relationships and influencers, building a keyword bank, leveraging your own story. We had a bit of banter about two perspectives. How we've leveraged our content flow a little bit. We talked about stories and some things that you must do and a couple of content marketing mistakes that you shouldn't do. So I encourage you, please go back and listen to that.

We also published a guide called 9 Tips for Easier, Better Content Marketing, which you can go and download from part one. So go and grab that. In that guide, we talk about some of the tips that are going to help you make way better content and build more empathy with your audience and get right into the zone of where your customer wants you to be. So with that mention, I'd love to welcome back Kyle Gray to the episode.

Kyle: Thanks so much for having me again, James. I'm excited to be back.

James: Well, you're pretty much back because we had plenty of things to talk about in part one, and we didn't finish our list of ideal topics to cover. So today, we're going to cover some extra topics. We're going to talk about the blog's purpose and how we can stand out from every other blog. We're going to use some examples in that section. We'll also talk about beyond just getting traffic for your content and how we can use it to build relationships.

We'll also continue on that journey of how we c...

How do you take the stress and needless effort out of content marketing and content creation?

Podcast highlights:

02:51 - Two perspectives collide

06:47 - Stories waiting to be told

09:24 - When you can't spend all day writing

11:16 - Writing by talking

13:06 - Content you can repurpose

16:48 - Have THIS written down

18:34 - What should your content look like?

21:47 - Telling your whole story

24:07 - An opportunity to collaborate

29:59 - How tuned in are marketers to empathy?

32:57 - Avoid this content marketing mistake

35:27 - Maybe they haven't purchased, but...

37:30 - The value comes back to you

39:14 - How do you stay on topic?

Part 2 of the series

Learn high-level business concepts while relaxing on a boat in the Maldives. Click HERE

Download the PDF Transcription and 9 Tips For Easier, Better Content Marketing

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, I have a special guest back for his third visit.

In the previous iterations, we talked about, in Episode 451, How to Find and Train Your New Content Manager. And in that episode, we talked about finding a medium that suits you and we talked about simple processes you can use to get content out on your website so that people find you. And in Episode 457, we talked about leveraging guest content. We revealed the fact that you can't be a master of everything, and you need to get some external resource and pair that up with your content and really power up your campaign.

So today, we're actually talking about how to succeed in content marketing without spending all day writing. We're going to continue developing this topic, and I would love to welcome back my special guest, Kyle Gray.

Kyle: Thanks so much for having me, James. It's a pleasure to be here.

James: Kyle, you are an entrepreneur, you've been helping startups and small businesses grow with their content marketing especially. And you've been creating scalable content marketing strategies. I think that's important, because when we initially hear about blogging or content marketing, I'm sure we have this vision that we're going to be sitting there with a blank screen, thinking about what can we write. I'm sure most people's campaigns stop right about there, before they dive back into their email, grab another course or hop onto Facebook, and it's all finished.

What I love about what you've been doing is you're good at creating these step-by-step processes and templates that have been helping people automate and delegate what they're doing with their content. And you've even been teaching entrepreneurs and startups in places like the University of Utah, where I think you're currently located. But you do tend to travel around. Right now, though, you've parked yourself for more than five minutes so that you can do this podcast.

Differing content writing philosophies

Kyle: Definitely. Yeah, it's interesting to see how many different perspectives all kind of collide when people are t...

Got your eye on an existing online business? This episode offers helpful business tips for making that purchase.

In this episode:

03:20 - The background on AppBusinessBrokers

05:14 - A forecast for mobile apps

06:22 - Why many people sell

09:54 - The arrangements buyers look at

12:33 - Can businesses do without capital injection?

14:34 - A red flag for buyers

17:00 - The multiples involved

19:10 - Can transactions go sour?

21:53 - New trends for buyers

24:55 - What buyers must validate

30:27 - When you don't have the cash...

33:31 - Prepping and payment for legal agreements

36:01 - Avoid this mistake

The complete presentations of SuperFastBusiness Live 2017 are inside the community. One of them is "How to Grow your Business Strong to Sell It."

Download the PDF Transcription and Things To Consider When Buying An Internet Business PDF Resource

Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. Today, we're covering the topic of buying a business. We've got plenty of episodes on SuperFastBusiness about selling. And for every one who sells a business, someone has to be buying that business, so I've brought on a specialist in this field. Eric Owens from AppBusinessBrokers.com. Eric has been selling businesses and facilitating transactions for people with internet, e-com, SaaS solutions, mobile apps and has built up a fairly good reputation. I actually originally got referred to Eric from Ezra Firestone, another great friend of our SuperFastBusiness community. Welcome to the show, Eric.

Eric: Yeah, thanks, James. Appreciate you having me on. Yeah definitely, Ezra's a cool person. I'm glad he connected us up way back when.

James:  You know, Ezra has, I think, started and sold quite a few e-commerce stores. And originally, when I was looking to enter into selling my businesses, I asked Ezra who's good at this. And he sent me your details, and we had a conversation, and you sent me over a checklist. It turns out I was able to just sell the business myself. But I think that was through probably a fortunate scenario of both the business units that I sold, I ended up selling to customers of mine. So I already knew the buyers, which took away a huge part of the equation from the point of view of a broker. And also, I'm pretty comfortable with buying and selling from my previous experience, so that I wasn't worried at all about the negotiation phase or the pressure of making offers or the scrutiny. I've seen it all before in high-pressure sales environments.

So, two of the factors that I imagine are very appealing about a broking service were not present for me. However, if I didn't know the customer or if I was uncomfortable buying or selling, I think a broker is going to become a really great asset for someone in that situation. Is that correct?

Eric: Yeah, definitely. I mean like you said, if you have, with your experience with negotiating and selling to someone you know that definitely helps with a couple of those factors where most business owners don't have that negotiating experience or being able to value their business and know what's a good deal and what's not. And the buyers they may work with, you know, they don’t know who they are, really, so...