The Business Bitch Podcast

In Chris Guillebeau's new book The Money Tree, he explores the idea of not creating a brand-new business from scratch, and instead taking advantage of the money-making ideas that ALREADY exist around you.

The book is fiction, but focuses on a the very realistic story of a main character who finds himself stressed TF out over money and life, and who could use a way to make some quick cash, fast. He gets challenged by a mentor to make $1,000 in a week, and the story unfolds as he finds his opportunities, talents, and ways of making a significant amount of cash that fit into his already-busy schedule.

Chris is someone who's made a career of patching together side hustles (rather than going all-in on one business idea), so his insights are intriguing and refreshing. Listen to the interview to hear all of Chris's advice, but here are some basics of what we cover:

• Why the "if you do the exact same things as Warren Buffet every day, you will be successful too" advice is BS.
• Things he's learned by creating a career solely of a hodge-podge of side hustles, and just one "job" or one "business."
• Why authenticity & original thinking were important to his successful ventures vs. not-as-successful ventures.
• Why it's actually a good idea to approach side-hustles & money-making without expecting your first few ventures to become a full-fledged business.
• "Just do the thing that is in front of you."
• How freaking exciting it is to make more money, and how that motivates you to keep going.
• Ain't no shame in reselling to start! (And how you can STILL sell stuff on Craigslist.)

Find Chris online:

• ChrisGuillebeau.com
• MoneyTreeBook.com
• Chris's YouTube Channel

Book & podcast recommendations:

• The Money Tree
• The $100 Startup
• Side Hustle
• 100 Side Hustles
• Side Hustle School Podcast
• Born for This

Rewind 10 years, and I was a brand-new graduate with a fresh journalism degree. I was the #1 journalism graduate in my class, but I STILL couldn't get a job ANYWHERE. So... I had to get creative. I started writing online for money, and because the recession forced me, I got *really* creative in how I did new client outreach... and landed a LOT of amazing gigs.

Better yet, they've served me REALLY well and landed me a lot of high-competition (and therefore high-paying) client gigs over the years.

I'm sharing these tips in today's episode, so you can use them to get new clients and make more money, even in the middle of a recession.

If you're a freelancer interested in learning how to land high-paying client gigs worth $10,000 or more (or you want to start working as a high-paid freelancer), check out my training: Land Five-Figure Client Deals.

Put in your ear buds, and get ready to take some notes on ways YOU can start landing new clients too!

After you're done listening, here's the quick list of six tips I share to help you remember:

1. Don't stop when you get rejected. Just seek council.
2. Message people hiring in new, creative ways.
3. Start somewhere – even if it's not perfect.
4. Block out other peoples' noise.
5. Pay yourself with the money you bring in.
6. Determination will take you very, very far.

It sucks, but it's bound to happen to most entrepreneurs at one time or another: your business & your revenue absolutely TANKS. Your profits go down the hole, and you wonder if THIS is the defining moment that'll make your business (and you) a failure.

Freelancers experience it in the feast-or-famine cycle, product sellers experience it when something upsets their supply chain, and A LOT of people experience it when the economy hits a downturn. (Like with what happened to a lot of us during the Covid outbreak.)

Unfortunately, dips in business will happen, but we CAN make sure it doesn't spell the end of our companies or our dream business ventures.

In this episode, I'm talking to Matt Warnock of Matt Warnock Guitar, who saw his profits absolutely PLUMMET at the end of 2019 and into the beginning of 2020.

Today he's back on track, but it took some smart business moves to get there, which is exactly what we talk about in this interview.

👉 I can't emphasize how helpful this interview was for me, and I've been an entrepreneur for five years now.

Matt's insights & business disciplines that saved him & his company when the shit hit the fan and his profits bottomed out for four months straight (less than 1/10 of the sales he expected! 😱) were a big inspiration for me.

Even though my companies aren't in as dire of a situation as his were at the end of 2019, I'm inspired to use some of his strategies both NOW when things are hard, and when things get easier again.

 

Here are the talking points from the interview:

• Matt's background as a musician & how he ended up as an online entrepreneur.
• How a transition in Matt's business (from selling ebooks to digital courses) ended up causing a crash & everything fell apart in his business.
• The moment of hitting rock bottom and thinking…. shit…
• The four months where he didn't take a salary & cutting ad spend by 80% to keep the company afloat.
• The business saving, salary, and spending discipline enforced by an investor that saved his ass when the shit hit the fan.
• How business finance discipline can translate to personal finance discipline to protect yourself against your business tanking for a while.
• The tactical thing he & his team members did to recover from their profitability tanking. (Like going all-in & producing A TON of courses to sell because they saw signs in the data that it would work.)
• Breaking down technological barriers to their target audience so they could sell more courses.
• Creating "pathways" to sell more courses.
• Why paying close attention to the customers mattered SO MUCH in helping them recover their business profitability.

Find Matt online:

• MWGcourses.com
• Facebook: Matt Warnock Guitar Lessons
• Instagram: @mattwarnockguitar

His book & podcast recommendations:

• Pat Flynn's podcast: a series on what to do when your business is tanking
• Amy Porterfield's podcast
• Frank Kern podcast
• How to Write a Good Advertisement – Victor Schwab
• Books by David Ogilvy

It's happened to A LOT of people over the past four months: finding yourself fired, laid off, or with your hours furloughed due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Let's not gloss over it: it SUCKS to lose a full-time job, even if you have a successful side hustle you're passionate about.

The good news is, no one's going to hold it against you for losing your job right now, so if you're trying to build a career alongside you're entrepreneurial endeavors, you're still in good shape. (Even if your bank account isn't because those steady paychecks aren't coming in anymore.)

In this interview, we're talking to Kim Ikemia Arrington who's the founder of BOTH Courageous Career Women and Courageant Consulting Group. Her speciality is in helping people she calls "parallelpreneurs" who have the full-time career and some kind of entrepreneurial endeavor on the side. This is also a BIG portion of the Business Bitch audience, so I know a lot of you will be interested in what she has to say.

She's got some incredible advice and pointers on how to make it through this time and come out stronger on the other side, even if you lost your "dream job" like one of her clients did.

Here are some notes from the interview:

 

Trends almost ALL companies are taking a hold of right now:

• Trying to forecast & plan for the worst-case scenario.
• Identifying what they can preserve.
• Preparing for when things don't ever go back to the old normal. (Things like disposable menus, new waitress uniforms, lobby setups, etc.)
• Who they need to keep & who'll they'll need on board when they open up their doors again.

How to manage yourself right now so you can get out of the unemployed / being laid off situation as soon as possible:

• Give yourself grace to feel the feels & acknowledge that it does suck.
• Recognize that opportunities are still there, they're just on pause at the moment.
• Use your time to live up to employers' expectation of readiness:
  • Take online courses
  • Develop a new skill
  • Make a new, innovative business plan for your industry
  • Assess where you want your career to go & reverse engineer it

Find Kim Online:

• Instagram: @IamKimArrington
• Facebook: Kim I. Arrington
• Parallelpreneur Facebook Group: The Dream Builder's Network

In today's episode, we're talking to Amanda Ferrat of Value Yourself Coaching about ALL THE THINGS self care. As an entrepreneur or business owner during the coronavirus pandemic, there's a lot of uncertainty out there, and that uncertainty can REALLY start to weigh us down if we're not proactive in taking care of it.

Quarantine might not feel quite as intense as it used to, but we're still dealing with a lot of the fallout from it, so Amanda's advice is just as relevant as it was two months ago when we were all getting used to our first month of staying away from public places.

Listen to this episode if you're going through a hard time in business or life right now, and you need some concrete things to help yourself feel better and to start getting yourself back on track to your normal self.

You can view the video version of Amanda's session right here, and sign up for free access to ALL of the sessions in my 'Get Your Shit Together During Covid' Virtual Summit right here.

Listen to the full episode for all of Amanda's powerful advice, but here's a brief collection of the topics we talked about:

• Anticipatory grief over potential life changes we can't control
• Beginning to manage your anticipatory grief without shutting it down
• Social self care
• Immune health
• Intellectual self care
• Vocational & financial self care
• Spiritual self care
• Emotional self care

Mental health resources she sent me after the session:

• NAMI, National Alliance on Mental Illness 1-800-950-NAMI(6264)
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK(8255)
• SAMHSA Treatment Referral Helpline 1-800-662-HELP(4357)
• Crisis Text Line, Text HOME to 741741

Find her online:

• Journal prompts on Pinterest
• Value Yourself Coaching on Instagram
• Value Yourself Coaching's Facebook page

Her book & podcast recommendations:

• The Self-Care Prescription
• Books by Brene Brown
• Brene Brown's Unlocking Us podcast
• Bill Maher's podcast
• The Trevor Noah Podcast
• Sonya Renee Taylor
  • Book: The Body is Not an Apology
  • Her Instagram account

I didn't quite expect to do another behind-the-scenes episode so soon...

But given the fact that Coronavirus took us all by surprise, it felt like the right timing to do so.

In this episode, I walk you through the lessons I learned from hosting a two-week virtual summit during the Coronavirus pandemic to help people get their shit together during Covid, and I talk about how I'm dealing with the temporary revenue losses in my business due to the economic downturn that's happening right now.

 

Links mentioned during the episode:

• Business Bitch's 'Get Your Shit Together During Covid' Virtual Summit
• [email protected] (If you want in on that $100 deal)
• BusinessBitch.as.me <- To book a free discovery call with me.
• Instagram: @businessbitchchelsea

In this week's episode, we're talking to Preston Lee, founder of Millo.co.

Preston started his career as a freelance designer in 2009, but has evolved it over the last 11 years to encompass so much more: including running a blog designed to support his fellow freelancers, and running a high-quality freelance job board.

In this episode, we talk about the evolution of his career, how he makes money from his online presence without having to take on freelance work anymore (like getting sponsorship deals for his website), and how his company fits a huge market demand for helping freelancers get more clients with Solid Gigs.

Listen to learn how you can start to land freelance gigs for yourself... or if you're already working as a freelancer, how to better convey your value to potential clients so you can both land more gigs and earn more for the work you're already doing.

 

A few times throughout this episode, I mention my training on Landing Five-Figure ($10,000+) Client Gigs. You can click here to check that out.

 

Things We Talked About:

• How his website evolved from serving graphic designers to serving all kinds of freelancers.
• Why he changed the name of his blog from Graphic Design Blender to Millo.
• How he started using his blog to make money, even when he didn't have much of a plan in the beginning.
• What he wishes he'd done earlier in his freelance & blogging career.
• Why it's important to focus on revenue over things like traffic & email subscribers.
• Why it's non-essential to create a huge, impressive portfolio online
• My own "Minimum Viable Portfolio" that I still use.
• How Preston found sponsors for his blog content. (It's an easy Twitter search anyone can do.)
• How he now gets inbound sponsorship leads.
• Why Solid Gigs is LEGIT different & better than other freelance job boards out there. (It's sorted by hand by a fellow freelancer… not by some random bot that doesn't give a shit about how much you get paid.)
• HOW to land high-paying gigs as a freelancer: our secrets from more than 20+ years of combined experience in the field.

 

Links Mentioned During the Episode:

• BusinessBitch.com/coronavirus: Business Bitch's 'Get Your Shit Together During Covid' Virtual Summit
• Digital Training: Land Five-Figure Client Deals
• Millo.co
• Freelance to Founder Podcast: Interview with Chelsea Baldwin
• SolidGigs: $2 for 30 days
• Preston's guest post on HoneyBook: 16 Pro Freelancers Reveal How They Stay Booked for Months Into the Future
• Millo Mastermind Facebook Group
• Freelance to Founder Podcast
• Talk to me on Instagram: @businessbitchchelsea

 

Leave a 5-Star Rating & Review

If you loved this episode, scroll down & tap to leave a five-star rating. And if you're feeling up to it, leave me a review too! Tell me what you loved about this episode, and what you'd like to hear or learn about in future episodes. I make this podcast to help you, so I'm happy to fulfill your requests!

 

Karaminder is a professional, full-time headshot photographer in San Francisco.... but who has an INCREDIBLE entrepreneurial track record from before he started his photography business. Most notably, he helped his father develop a family-operated wine shop into an ecommerce store that they grew very successfully before the economic crash of 2008 / 2009 hit. He's got an incredible mind for growing a business in a fun way, and has a fun & funny personality that makes this conversation fun to listen to.

 

What we talk about:

• Growing up with an entrepreneurial father who one day went to buy candles & ended up buying the whole store with his savings from being a cab driver.
• Learning to be a salesman in a computer company.
• Becoming a Dot Com founder to sell wine bottles from his dad's wine shop.
• Growing his Dot Com wine business so it evolved into a restaurant.
• Volunteering to get work experience in your niche.
• How he started gaining traction as a potential photographer in a competitive city.
• How to take a GREAT, professional-looking selfie. (Full list of steps below... keep scrolling down to find them!) 
• YOUR WEBSITE IS IMPORTANT - Get found on Google
• Divi + SEO product
• How to make yourself easier to book online & therefore get more clients.

 

Make Your Website Look Gorgeous + Get Found by Your Ideal Clients in Google

If you want to make sure you have a beautiful-looking website, my clients & I are obsessed with Divi - which is a theme you can use on any WordPress site. In fact, ALL the pages on BusinessBitch.com are made from Divi's designer-made templates: all I had to do was change the colors, font, text, and photos. Easy peasy! And it looks soooo professional!

Click here to check out Divi.

And if you're a new photographer (or new to ANY niche, for that matter), getting found on Google by your ideal clients is REALLY important: it brings more potential clients to your site, giving you more business, which translates to more money, more word-of-mouth, and more business growth. SEO (or search engine optimization) is the secret to making that happen. I've created an easy-to-follow SEO process to use on blog posts that helps you land on the first few pages of Google, attract the RIGHT people to your website, and grow your business... even if you don't have any industry connections yet. It's called SEO for Blogging, Traffic, and More Clients.

You can check that training out here, and download it & have it forever for only $47.

I also mentioned a free copywriting course during the episode, which you can sign up for here.

 

How to take professional-looking selfies when you can't afford a photographer:

• • Find good light: open window w/o sun blasting through it
  • DON'T POSE
  • Pay attention to your face & body language - Don't go into an over-eager smile - use a smaller smile, not a used car salesman smile.
  • Think about tasting your favorite dish that your mother cooks.
  • Mind your background.
  • Use the back camera, not the selfie camera. (Unless you've got one of the new iPhones.)

 

Connect With Business Bitch Online & Schedule a Free Discovery Call

If you liked this episode, make sure you hit me up on Instagram @businessbitchchelsea to tell me what you liked & what you want to hear in future episodes. (I LOVE hanging out on Instagram!)

Also - If you'd like to book a free discovery call to talk business strategy & gain some clarity on getting yourself from Point A to Point B, book a call with me by clicking here, or going to BusinessBitch.as.me.

Talk to you soon! 😘 📞

 

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

• Karaminder.com
• IfYouCanSpellMyName.com
• HeadshotCrew.com
• My FREE copywriting course to learn how to write better website copy
• Acuity Scheduling <- What Karaminder & I both use to schedule client appointments & calls.
• Mixmax <- An easy-to-use & FREE scheduler that works with Gmail & Google Calendar.
• "All About the Jaw" viral video that helped put Karaminder on the map
• Video on looking confident: It's All About The Squinch
  •  The "Squinch" getting covered on ABC news
• Instagram: @Karaminder
• Twitter: @Karaminder
• Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• Charlie Bit My Finger
• The End of The World video
• Evolution of Dance

Happy Birthday, Business Bitch! 🎉

In this episode, I take you behind the scenes and tell you exactly what it's been like running Business Bitch for the past year... and all the lessons I've learned from balancing it with my other online company.

There were a number of unexpected twists & turns, and I tell you about all of them, AND I give you insight on exactly what I'm going to be doing to grow both companies in the future. Here's a little sneak peek on what I go over:

• Business Bitch's profits for 2019 😱 (still kind of can't believe I admitted that, but 🤷‍♀️)
• Things I did to grow Business Bitch over the past year
• A project I started for Business Bitch that took SO MUCH TIME, but still has never seen the light of day
• Why I decided to scale back my Instagram posts & podcast episodes... and why I'm ramping up on Pinterest.
• How I'm making my money-making more automated for both companies.

 

And here are all the cool things I mentioned in the episode:

• BusinessBitch.as.me to book a free call with me 👈
• Course Pre-Sale: Land Five-Figure Client Deals
• Write a Better Website (Copy Power's digital course)
• Blogging With Balls Masterclass
• My Passive Income Training Freebie
• Paid Passive Income Training (it's way more in-depth & valuable than the free version 😉)
• The Business Bitch Dispatch
• MY PINTEREST PROFILE!

Hey loves -

Sorry to say, when I double-checked my sound file before I published this morning's podcast episode, it wasn't good.

There was either a constant hum in the background... or if I tried to fix that, the sound would pop in your ears every few seconds, which is extremely uncomfortable to listen to.

So instead of publishing an f-ed up episode that I know you guys were looking forward to, I decided to postpone it by a week so I could re-record it & get everything sounding GOOD, instead of bad.

So here's a little mini-episode of explanation about how sometimes, shit happens. 💩 🤦‍♀️ Enjoy!