The Creative Entrepreneur Blueprint

I recently finished recording a podcast episode with Jennifer Neal, which kind of blew my mind. It's a five-step framework that she's created, leveraging what some of the best influencers on social media are doing, the systems they use to amplify their brands.

The reason I think this episode is so impactful is that before this, the idea of a content calendar or posting content gave me anxiety. Now it gives me excitement! Jennifer has shown me how to take one piece of content and turn that into more than 20 pieces of really engaging social media content. She also shared fresh ways of automatically uploading content into your Google calendar for the month, which is fantastic. Jennifer also helped reduce some of the friction that I've had around what tools I use to publish. And even more important, she helped me understand you don't need a team; rather, you could hire a virtual assistant for a fraction of the cost and have them do this monthly for you. Have a listen to this episode!

The thing that excited me the most about this episode was going into it, I knew that Jeff had done an amazing job of educating folks via his Instagram handle. But what came out from the episode was he makes a lot of his money through the work that he doesn't post, and that's through his commercial headshots and portrait photography.

So, it kind of broke through some limiting beliefs for me. Basically how to focus on a really specific niche, make money from that, and then use that as leverage, if you will, to be even more creative.

And the thing that is very exciting is when you talk about education with him you realize that that's actually the thing that lights him up the most. It's teaching others how to approach photography in their own unique way that he loves to do. So he shares tips on how to optimize the commercial side of your business, how to ensure that you over delivering for clients, how to price yourself while including discounts.

At the same time he shares his passion for education, and how that allows him to not only have complete creative control, but also price, his products the way he wants.

So it's a really cool episode, and I was grateful to be able to spend the time in his studio, in-person, connected at that human level and talk a little bit about business and making money.

I wanted to explain why I'm so excited about yet another amazing photographer on the podcast. I came across this woman's website after looking for award winning go-getters. Photographers that were doing something I thought would be great to share on this podcast, and I came across Kara Trombetta, of Kara Marie studios. She is an award winning boudoir photographer who is booked year round without doing ANY marketing. No joke. She broke through massive, massive limiting beliefs that I had held. During the episode we talked about how she was selling her process to client, her big ideas and successes within the first few years of her business. She even talked about how she built a business model first, and then the art followed. This is an episode you've got to listen to! Let's rock!

I have to share with you just a quick little story about why this episode is so exciting. I have thought, for many years, to be an artist you have to go out and hustle and find clients. Eric Thayne who is the CEO and founder of an info course called Cinema Mastery, he really busted through that limiting belief for me in this episode and really shared how you're able to articulate a method to drive those leads directly to you, where they are filling out an application and setting up a call with you. You’re literally taking qualified calls daily instead of the opposite! It’s a really really exciting episode and I’m excited to share it with you. I’m hoping you find nuggets of gold in it as I did!

You Rock!

I was honored to have Felix Kunze on, and I thought I'd share with you why I was so excited to have him on the show.

I originally reached out to him because I loved his work. I loved his lighting course that he was selling online and felt it was filled with an immense amount of value for the cost.

I kept getting ads for it and I was thinking, man, this could be great to have Felix talk about the business behind his course creation. Let's unbox what he’s doing as an artist, but also an entrepreneur and educator.

Well, we ended up going down a completely different tangent. It ended up being about looking at the core of what makes an artist successful, and identifying what you're drawn to, what you're good at. Then just being so dead set on delivering value to your community.

It removes the focus on tools, tactics, and technology and brings us back to why we do what we do as creatives.

So that’s why I think it's a powerful podcast, and why I STRONGLY encourage you to listen to it.

Enjoy and keep rocking!

I was able to host Kirk Mastin and the CEO of Mastin Labs. And in this part two of two, we dig into how he's built an incredibly successful worldwide business by selling a digital product. He talks about how to stay lean, how to automate, and how by doing so, you're able to weather most, if not any storm.

I have, my entire adult life, really been attracted to people who are running successful businesses and making it seem easy. For the past eight years I have watched Kirk weather economic, weather personal storms and still have this seemingly thriving business and I wanted to understand how. So for an hour we got to sit down and talk through the current economic/coronavirus crisis and what good can come of that. He shares a lot of insight into the tools he's used to make his business run lean and scale incredibly well.

Things such as;

How to work backwards from your business goals

Tools to use to automate your social media and business processes

The importance of staying lean and agile

The power of a digital product

It's a really incredible episode and I hope you find just as much value from it as I did.

In this episode I share some tactics from Trevor Moawad and Michael Hyatt about the power of doing less. Want more energy... do less. Want to accomplish more at work and in your career... do less. Want more positive thoughts.... Speak less negative ones. In our culture of DO MORE, this episode is all about taking a moment and deep breath to realize you don't have to do it all.

This episode is all about going back to the basics of your business. As entrepreneurs we fall in love with our product or service. Ways of making it better, more innovative, additional features, etc. But we forget about the most important part of our product or service which is the customer consuming it. Nathan spends time walking through FIVE steps you can take to fall back in love with your customer and learn everything it is to know about them. From that place start to build your product or service offerings into a value ladder that provides massive value for your customer and in turn, makes you widely successful as well.

Super intense and loving episode where I dig into the feeling of anger. I share how I've been using it recently to get into a warrior mindset instead of letting it take me down into a victim path of not having control. We should feel our anger, we should let it flow in and out of use but in the right ways. I share my take on which ways I find to be helpful. Take a listen if you've ever been pissed about something and see how this resonates with you.