The Fizzle Show

As an independent entrepreneur, your business lives or dies on the progress you make week in, week out. Let’s talk about some EFFECTIVE ways to stay focused on things that matter.

Avoiding distractions is utterly essential to your success, but that little device in your pocket…

yea, that one…

the one with the screen and the apps and the notifications…

that thing is hungry, and all it eats is YOUR ATTENTION.

When you’re scrolling through a Facebook feed or half-a-dozen videos deep into an unanticipated YouTube binge, do you know what’s happening?

Well, I’ll tell you what’s NOT happening: your business ain’t growing and your projects AREN’T getting done.

So, here’s the deal…

… we’re not recommending a puritanical approach to business where modern technology is abandoned. The internet is undeniably powerful for building massively successful online businesses, included our own.

But we must make sure we are using the tool, not the other way around.

The whole “sales” thing has been a little bit wrecked by used car salesmen, Glengarry Glen Ross and old dudes in suits in weird hotel ballrooms.

In the online business world, there’s a lot more fun shiny stuff to talk about than real deal selling.

Sometimes we inadvertently make content creation the sun around which our entire businesses orbit, as if churning out enough content powers our business.

But as a Fizzler, Harriet, admitted in a recent email, she created 300 videos and never made more than $5,000 a year in her business until she dealt with some deeper sales fear.

So today, we’re facing this head on: sales is the sun, or the engine of our businesses. Without sales, you’ve got a glorified hobby.

As entrepreneurs we’re always finding new things to educate and give us a little motivation. Because, I mean, we’ve got to strategize and sh*t, you know!? And strategizing takes effort. And then after the strategy, we gotta do ALL THE WORK. You know what I mean? That can take a lot out of a gal. So, on the show today we’re talking about 10 links that are helping us so far this summer, 2017. You’ll find books, ideas, products and services linked to below. And more importantly, in the podcast episode you’ll hear WHY these things might be so important to your work. Enjoy! Show Notes: http://fizzleshow.co/226

As an independent, a full time indie-entrepreneur, a maker of things that sell, a creator of my own wealth, a designer of my own creativity over time, I feel a strong call to do more things my way for the results I want. Which, for many of us, seems to beg this question: **can you give more of yourself over to being a creator?** Often times I hear it referred to as *“pursuing completely”* — like, how completely are you pursuing your thing? I think this plays solidly into that dream of being an artist who abandons herself to her work. Like, many of us really, if we’re honest, feel like we should have that kind of abandon, conviction, sold-out-ness to the thing we’re pursuing. Right? **BUT, what if pursuing that thing is putting other things in our life in jeopardy? ** What if we want to pursue our blogging more *completely*, BUT our blogging isn’t contributing to our financial needs yet. We want to give blogging more time because maybe that’s what’s necessary for us to even get to a place where we can generate revenue, BUT, spending more time there may take away from the job that IS earning us revenue, or our family or other relationships that might be good for us to keep in tact as well. **So, today we are going to talk about this:** how much are you pursuing your thing *AND* how much *SHOULD ANY OF US* pursue our thing? Should we leap with abandon and trust the universe and the intention of our hearts to construct the solution in real time? Or does being cautious really give us a better chance at success? Read More: http://fizzleshow.co/225

How can we decrease the volume of fear in our head and increase our feeling of confidence? Because, for many of us, if we can do that, won’t our work have a better chance of succeeding? “I got this!” That’s the feeling we want. “I *got* this. I can do it.” You know what I think of when I think about confidence? I think about the difference between “this *MIGHT* work” and “this might *NOT* work.” Which way does the voice in your head normally sound like? For many of us it’s WAY more common to resonate with “this might NOT work.” Truth is, for many of us, it’s difficult to feel positive, optimistic or confident about a creative idea or project. **Does your head sound like that?** Well, you’re in for a treat because you’re about to hear things you need to hear about confidence, how to grow it and how to change that dialogue in your head. **Because you need confidence to take the right kind of risks,** and success for us independents relies on us taking the right kind of risks with the right kind of energy and outlook. So, first of all lets talk about what I call the “Necessary Delusion” of being an entrepreneur. READ MORE: http://fizzleshow.co/224

No matter what kind of business you’re thinking of starting, you have got to solve a REAL problem with a REAL solution. We tear apart this idea in depth with Dan and Tom from [Studio Neat], makers of fine, modern physical products. They’ve just launched a brand new (and very unique) [notebook on Kickstarter], and it hit it’s goal in just a few hours. So, naturally, we wanted to ask them about what they’ve learned about business in their several years creating successful products from scratch. Here’s three pieces of advice from them good for *all* of us, no matter the kind of business we’re running: More at http://fizzleshow.co/223

If you make a podcast or need to interview people at all, there’s a trick you can use to get deep into interesting material. You know that’s how your podcast or youtube channel or interview posts get popular, right? By having incredibly interesting content? That’s the trick. And this tip is going to help you get that interesting moment into more of your content. **You simply have to hear this tip in action… honestly, it makes it so easy to understand.** In the podcast episode here Steph shows us three moments in her own show where she used this trick to find “the moment” for each of her guests. Show Notes: http://fizzleshow.co/222