Hello and welcome to the Kaz Johnson Show, my name is Kaz Johnson and I am your host today, this is episode 100 and today I am talking about planning, building and growing an online business.

This has to be a special post today, for a few reasons – first it is episode 100 and it coincides with the doors opening to the all-new Success Club. I launched this membership last year under the brand name of Kaz Academy.

Hello and welcome to the Kaz Johnson Show, my name is Kaz Johnson and I am your host today, and today I am talking about passive income ideas..

I stumbled upon making an online business out of a need, I was recently divorced and I had to start out from where I was with what I had. A PC and an internet connection. I had been delivering IT training and qualifications from my own bricks and mortar business and now needed to find another way of delivering training.

With my background in IT, I did some research and found that you can deliver training online. I remember doing a degree course with the Open University, and that they used the Moodle to deliver some of the courses.

Moodle is a learning management soft (LMS) and it is an open source software used by colleges and universities. So I managed to install it, and set up a website and put it out there! Then Boom! Someone purchased the course, and that is how I started earning a passive income. Since then I have added multiple income steams to my passive income revenues.

So many things have changed since then and it is even easier now than ever before to start an online business and earning a passive income.

But where to start? Let’s look as some of the ideas you can do to start your journey earning a passive income…

Here a just some ideas you can earn a passive income, there are many many more, but I have listed just some of the things…

Here a just some ideas you can earn a passive income, there are many many more, but I have listed just some of the things…

• Start a blog
  • Sell adverting space - eg Google Adsense
  • Affiliate marketing - check out Share a Sale
  • Sell sponsorships

• Create an e-book
  • Sell it on your own website, publish it on Amazon
  • Use a tool like Designerr

• Create a book for Kindle
  • sell it on Amazon

• Create an audible book
  • Sell it on Amazon’s Audible site

• Create printables
  • sell them on your own site
  • sell them on Etsy

• Set up a podcast
  • Sell sponsorships

• Create videos

• Sell them on your own site
• Sell them on Unscreen, Vimeo PRO, CreateSpace DVD on Demand, YouTube

• Create music
  • sell them on your own site
  • Sell them on dittomusic where they will distribute your music to lots of other sites for you

• Start an Online T-Shirt Business
  • Sell on Amazon KDP

• Create a course
  • sell it on Udemy, Teachable
  • Sell it on your own site using learning management system (LMS) like Learndash.

• Create a membership Program.
  • Sell it on your own site using a membership plugin like Memberpress
  • Create courses on your own membership program using an LMS plugin like Learndash

• Create a coaching program
  • Sell on your own website

• Take photos
  • Sell them on your own website
  • Sell them on stock photos websites like:-
    • Shutterstock

• Sell software as a service (SAS)
  • Sell on your own website.

• Take in a lodger
  • Five nights

• Become a host using your spare bedroom
  • Air B n B
  • Homestay

• Rent out your drive
  • Your Parking Space

• Rent out your loft
  • Stashbee

• Rent out your garage
  • Just Park

• Rent your car
  • On Turo

• Take in overseas students
  • Just do a search for ‘Hosting Students’ as there are different schools for different areas.

• Start a Tube Channel
  • YouTube

• Set up an commerce store
  • Sell products on your own store with Woocommerce.
  • Sell products on your own store with Shoppify
  • Drop ship your products

• Arbitrage
  • Sell products on Amazon for them to drop ship and do all the customer service.

• Buy Dividends
  • Buy shares and get dividend payouts

This list is not exhaustive, but it’s a good list to get your head thinking about how you can start an online business with a passive income.

Try one, and then add more as you go.

If you want help with any of the suggestions above, please just drop me an email…. [email protected]

If you want to learn more about planning, building and growing and online successful business,  you can join the Success Club for free as a Lite Member where you can access free courses, resources, online networking events, and challenges all for free.

Click here to get your free Lite Membership pass.

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Thank you for joining me this week.

This podcast is sponsored by the Success Club, a membership program that helps you to plan, build and grow your online business. With a monthly masterclass, an online networking event, and resources. You can join for FREE as a Lite member where you can get access to FREE courses and resources as well as the online community.

Hello and welcome to the Kaz Johnson Show, my name is Kaz Johnson and I am your host today, this is episode 97 and today I am talking about feedback.

Last week I talked about measuring and testing, and I think this week’s topic about feedback sits closely with that.

Unless you get feedback either from your students and customers, then how do you know what went well?

As a teacher, we use end of session feedback forms, where we get to ask the students feedback about how they found the learner experience.

When I was teaching in a class, we gave them forms at the end of the lesson to complete, we did not ask for their personal details as I wanted the feedback to be as honest as possible and some people like to tell you what they think you want to hear, but if it was anonymous, they are more likely to tell you as it was for them.

I would ask a range of questions, not only about my teaching but the whole learner experience, things like the registration process, the venue, from things like parking, was the room temperature ok? Ie too hot or too cold, the teacher's knowledge, the pace of the course, the quality of the handouts, and that sort of thing. That way by getting feedback from the learners, I could constantly tweak it for the whole learner experience.

The more I could get good constructive feedback the better I could make it for the learner, who would then feedback their experience to other people. When I first starting teaching for myself, it was this feedback from the students that helped me to learn and grow my business.

Sometimes though, we get feedback that we feel was unjust and that leaves us feeling irked, but it is their opinion and their opinion is not wrong, so you do need to take it onboard from an unemotional place. Teaching is so personal and we put so much time and effort into it sometimes that we do take it personally. When that happens, it’s best just to park it for a while and come back to it. Especially if you get the same kind of feedback more than once.

It’s easier than ever to collect feedback online these days, you can use surveys like Survey Monkey, to create, collate and analyse the information. When you are creating your survey for feedback, and remember we are not talking about testimonials here, we are looking at getting feedback about their experience, from the first time they engage with us, to the last time.

Online things could include,

Here are a few tips when creating a feedback form.

Make sure that it's easy for them to view on a mobile device. Check it on your own mobile device to see that it works ok.

Make it as easy as possible for them to create feedback, for example, could you just use a yes/no answer. How about asking a question to rate a few questions using arrays like ‘from 1- 10, would you recommended us to your colleagues or friends’ .

When asking them for more information about a topic, make sure that you give them plenty of space to answer your question, as there is nothing more frustrating than trying to complete a feedback survey and not having enough room to express yourself and getting cut off as you have run out of space. The user will get so frustrated that they will not bother with the question and you will have missed out some vital feedback that will help you in your business.

Try not to make the survey a huge one, people are busy and impatient, so really think about the questions you are going to ask here. Spend more time thinking what is the outcome for the feedback.

Anonymous feedback surveys are different from complaint surveys where the customer wants to feedback a complaint and they want you to resolve it. This survey is one where you do not make it anonymous as you will not be able to respond to them with the solution and in this case you need to be alerted of any type of complaint feedback as soon as possible, so when you are setting up this feedback form, make sure the email that you set up for this form is dealt with really promptly.

When setting up your complaints policy, make sure that you include a way that you monitor the complaints, what they are about and how many you have over a set period of time and then analyse these to see how you can overall improve the customer experience.

Thank you for joining me this week.

This podcast is sponsored by the Success Club, a membership program that helps you to plan, build and grow your online business. With a monthly masterclass, a monthly Q and A session, group coaching calls, resources and challenges, all designed to help you plan, build and grow a successful online business..

You can join for FREE as a Lite member where you can get access to FREE courses and resources as well, just head on over to thesuccessclub.co.uk and sign up as a Lite Member

Hello and welcome to the Kaz Johnson Show, my name is Kaz Johnson and I am your host today, this is episode 96 and today I am talking about measuring and testing.

There is a saying that, if You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It. Management thinker Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Drucker means that you can’t know whether or not you are successful unless success is defined and tracked.

When I was teaching we were taught to deliver a lesson, then to evaluate what went well, what did not go so well and what we could do better next time. – Great lesson for me, and I always do that not.

When I was taking my marketing qualifications we were taught to plan, action and evaluate, then plan again, in a round circle. Another great lesson that I always adhere to, however sometimes we are so busy wanting to move onto the next exciting project, we feel that looking back is a waste of time and effort.

Nothing could be further from the truth, in fact, it’s the complete opposite. By measuring and testing nearly everything we do, will save you time, blood, sweat, tears, and money.

So what are some of the things I measure and when I measure it?

Let’s look at some of my routines. I do a 90-day review that is set out against my 90-day goals. I tend to plan in 90 days and take a holiday every 90 days. I take my break first so that I am clear-headed and then spend a whole day looking back on how my actions planned out against my goals. This falls against my ‘what went well, what didn’t go so well, and why, and what will I do better next time’

Then there is the weekly review, this is more of a look back on the week, and I look at things that were on my goals for the week. And again, this falls back against the ‘what went well, what didn’t go so well, and why, and what will I do better next time’. Now by seeing if there was a common thread here, for example, I did not exercise, and yes exercise is one of my core must do’s if I am going to run a successful business, because if I am sick, I have bitterly learned that this has a massive impact on my business, so, it could be that I didn’t exercise for a reason, or in most of my cases, my excuses that I was using not to go to my pilates class. By keeping a weekly review, I can measure the why’s and change them into a must!

These reviews are the core of what I measure, it is so easy to get off of track for something so easy, but if we are not tracking them, we can’t improve upon them.

I could easily get off track if I don’t stick to my core set of reviews. Sometimes I have had to change a time that I am exercising because I used to exercise first thing in the morning, but go so excited about what I was working on, that I made my excuse and skipped my early morning walk. I now schedule my exercise for noon as this is when I have done most of my creative work, it’s out of my head now and feel ready to take time out of my work. This simple one change came about from me keeping weekly and 90-day reviews. It has been a game-changer for being because my main push goal was to exercise daily as my health was number 1 priority for me. Without my health I had nothing.

Let’s look at what else I measure. Each day I check my stats, from how many people checking with my blog and where they came from, how many email subscriber I have gained or lost. I changed from sending out updates on an as and when basis, to a weekly email digest, I now have less unsubscribes, more opens and more clicks. I listened to feedback from people who unsubscribed and changed things up a bit. Now my subscribers can scan the digest to see what is important to them and I save myself time by only sending out one newsletter each Tuesday.

I check my newsletter stats, the opens, and in particular the clicks, what it was that people are interested in. It’s all such useful information that helps me move forward in my online business.

Other things I look at is my interaction on social media, what posts gets likes, so I can do more of this types of post, what does not get any likes, so I don’t bother to do any more of that particular post, and so and forth.

The is a myriad of things that you can measure, but just make sure that you do make the time to put it into your routines and do it on a regular basis, it sure will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Thank you for joining me this week.

This podcast is sponsored by the Success Club, a membership program that helps you to plan, build and grow your online business. With a monthly masterclass, an online networking event, and resources.

You can join for FREE as a Lite member where you can get access to FREE courses and resources as well as the online community.

This week I am talking about Why resting more results in more productivity

Hello and welcome to the Kaz Johnson show. My name is Kaz Johnson and I am the blogger behind Kazjohnson.com and the founder of The Success Club. The Success Club is the place to be if you are planning, building or growing your online courses with a membership program. You can learn more about what I do at Kazjohnson.com.

Hello and welcome to session 94. This week I am talking to you about Why resting more results in more productivity.

I was recently scrolling Facebook, as you do, and saw someone had posted the question 'so what are you doing this weekend to help your business'. Most people had put on a huge list of all the things they were going to do. I posted with the comment 'rest'. Then someone replied to my comment 'someone gets it'. But I did not always get it.

I used to work 7 days a week, I love what I do and never saw that working at all times, night, day, weekends would actually detract from my business and I would be doing a disservice to my customers. Then I kept getting sick, this became a recurring theme for a couple of years, till finally, I suffered a very bad case of pneumonia. I now believe getting sick is telling you to have to rest.

Many people tell you to work your side hustle all the hours you can, but I now believe that resting results in being more productive. So it's a case of working smarter and not harder. I make sure that I have systems in place for work efficiency and batch my work where I can, and I tend to follow this mantra, automate, delegate or delete it. I only do the things I love or can only be done by myself. As a former IT Trainer, I love setting up systems that run themselves, the more I take me out of the equation the better.

I now work fewer hours, I tend to work about 30 hours a week on my business. This is just 6 hours a day for 5 days a week. I block this time into my calendar so when I am working, I am working and when I am resting I am resting. I can guarantee that you will be more productive if you rest more.

As a teacher, I am a huge reader of books, especially of self-development books and when I discover a book called Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. This book really resonated with me and affirmed what I was finding out. Since doing less, I have so far, touch wood, not kept on getting sick. I take time out in nature, which I adore and always come back feeling so full of vitality, and I am raring to go, this was not the case a few years ago, I felt like I was going around with a ball and chain on my leg. Not good for me, my family nor my customers.

The book Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, which I have now read several times, funny how sometimes you miss something the first time around, is great for people like me, who are creatives and can only do their best work when they are not tired.

I find by resting more, spending more time in nature, that I also sleep better too. For years I suffered from insomnia, and for those who suffer with, I feel your pain. Insomnia had me working in the middle of the night as I thought I might as well work if I am awake as I was going to be tired the next day anyway... How wrong was I! I was not doing my best work at all! I get you when you can't seem to switch off and end up scrolling through social media as your poor head won't let you rest.

I also found by simplifying my life and doing some deep work, as suggested by the book of the same name, Deep Work, by Cal Newport, I am able to focus single-handedly on task without distraction. I turn off all notifications on my laptop, on my phone I have taken off all social media except Instagram as I like to be in the moment and capture moments and share them with people.

And finally I put my Pomodoro timer on, a Pomodoro timer is a productivity tool designed for your work and study, it enables you to stay focused and finish tasks effectively and you can set it for 5, 15, 30 and 60 Minutes, I got mine on Amazon, I will put the links for you in the show notes. I put my timer on for blocks of 40 minutes and then get up, go into my house and take a break for 20 minutes. The reason I don't put my timer on my phone is that I keep it in the house when I am working for that I am not distracted.

By resting on a regular basis, I come back to my task in hand refreshed and vitalised then I can focus again for another 40 minutes working deep on my task in hand. When I first started doing this, I could only work for say 20 minutes, then have worked up to my now 40 minutes.

I now make sure that I have a balanced routine going on, and that I take all my devices out of my bedroom and lock them away when I finish work! As I need to go out of my house and walk to my office, this cured me of 'I am just going to...'. I can't say it was easy weaning myself of my digital devices. I now read paperback books when I am not working, although I do like to listen to audible books when I am driving instead of the car radio.

Anyway, I thoroughly recommend you getting this book, Why You Get More Done When You Work Less Paperback by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang to help you rest more and get more results in your productivity Soojung-Kim also explains the silence behind it so you don't just have to take my word for it. Please get this book if you are wanting to be more productive and work less so that you don't go down the route that I did and start suffering from burnout. It's a long road to recovery and one I do not want to go down again.

Thank you for joining me this week.

This podcast is sponsored by the Success Club, a membership program that helps you to plan, build and grow your online business. With a monthly masterclass, an online networking event, and resources.

You can join for FREE as a Lite member where you can get access to FREE courses and resources as well as the online community. Click here to join

Hello and welcome to session 85. This week I am talking to you about Finding a need and then fill it.

So many people make the fatal mistake of creating a product or service first, then they take it to market and wonder why their business fails.

Hello and welcome to session 82 This week I am talking to you about Ideas to increase traffic to your blog

If no one knows about you, you are wasting your time, so one of the most important things you need to do when writing your blog is to make sure you get traffic to it if you want people to visit it and eventually make sales.

This week I am talking to you about micro courses and why they are good for your business.

What is micro learning?

Micro courses and micro learning is about small bite size courses that enable the learner to have a quick win. It can be a small part of a larger course or it can just be an introduction to a specific topi

Hello and welcome to session 80. This week I am talking to you about about membership sites, and in particular, the Memberpress plugin for WordPress.

Memberships are a great way to enable your customers to access premium content that is available only to registered members.  By having a membership plugin like Memberpress, you can lock your premium content, whether it is digital downloads, courses and forums behind a paywall so that the only people who can access is it is your members.

This week I am talking to you about about Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business

I love books, and read daily.  I like books specifically that helps me grow.  So today I am going to review the book called ‘Company of One’: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business by Paul Jarv.