The Foolish Adventure Show | Internet Business Radio

This episode of The Foolish Adventure Show is all about business innovation — from products to customer service and it’s all wrapped in the concept of “sell ’em what they want, but give ’em what they need.”

Also, welcome Lain Ehmann back to the show. Lain has decided to become a part time cohost for the show. I think her experiences in her niches and her membership site will bring back some of the consultant/business owner dynamic that former Foolish cohost Izzy brought to the show.

I think Lain and I were both a bit surprised by some of the actionable nuggets of wisdom that sprang up while we recorded.

Listen in and learn how to grow and innovate around what your customers want and need.

Enjoy your Foolish Adventure,

Tim and Lain

Join The Forge: A Group Of Entrepreneurs Creating A Life While Building A Business
bit.ly/entertheforge

New Training: How To Scale Your Business
If you want to get in-depth training on operating and scaling your business check out The Bootcamp: TimConley.co/bootcamp/

It’s not just bad advice; it’s so subtle you can’t tell it’s bad advice — the problem with correlation.

After two hours of conversation, Dan Andrews and I decided to hit record to talk about why success is singular.

No one wants to talk about this problem — especially in the Self-help and Internet Marketing industries, because it doesn’t help sell info-products. The reason success advice is usually bad advice is because people attribute their success to factors that weren’t the real reason they succeeded.

It’s a matter of correlation instead of causation.

Because of this conundrum about knowing what really caused the success, Dan and I typically provide high-probability business advice that we think will lead you to success.

Gurus — and every blogger giving advice today seems to be one — will promise you all kinds of success if you follow their system that they claim made them successful. They make these promises while ignoring the variables that you’ll face when trying to replicate their success.

In this episode, Dan and I suggest you do as the successful do and not as they say. Listen in to find out more about the causation of success and how to evaluate when advice is correlated to success.

Also, Dan pulls some free consulting out of me on how to determine if using a popup would be beneficial on his site.

Until the next time…

Enjoy your Foolish Adventure,

Tim “Causation” Conley

Join The Forge: A Group Of Entrepreneurs Creating A Life While Building A Business
bit.ly/entertheforge

New Training: How To Scale Your Business
If you want to get in-depth training on operating and scaling your business check out The Bootcamp: TimConley.co/bootcamp/

My guest on the Foolish Adventure Show this week is Lain Ehmann of LayoutADay.com. Oh, and 30 Minute Martha, which I think is a compelling brand concept.

Lain operates a successful membership site in the scrapbooking industry and also a few other niche sites. She brings a wealth of knowledge and passion about running a business especially as a busy mom.

In this conversation we cover briefly the topic of rejuvenating an industry during a recession — essentially filling gaps in a market after older companies fail or pull back their growth.

Then we jump onto the topic of Scope Creep — a term normally used in project management. Lain wanted to discuss the concept of scope creep in relation to growing a business. As we grow there is always more work to do, but sometimes that additional work doesn’t make your business more successful. Instead it usually just wears you down from the effort you expend.

Small businesses must jump this hurdle if they are ever to become sustainable companies and an asset to the owners as opposed to being just a very taxing job.

So, how does one go from being a solo entrepreneur to building a company without falling prey to scope creep?

Listen in to the show to find out…

Enjoy your Foolish Adventure,

Tim

Join The Forge: A Group Of Entrepreneurs Creating A Life While Building A Business
bit.ly/entertheforge

New Training: How To Scale Your Business
If you want to get in-depth training on operating and scaling your business check out The Bootcamp: TimConley.co/bootcamp/

Dan Andrews of The Lifestyle Business Podcast and I have a conversation about being normal and making normal decisions versus being entrepreneurial and what that means for your life — good and bad.

We discuss how purchases can effect you and determine your future. A lot of this conversation revolves around money. Spending it, saving it and earning it.

You can quickly lock yourself into a typical workaday life without ever trying to. Since your coming to Foolish I presume you don’t want to work at your job or your want to make changes in your worklife to have more control over your day.

For those of us who have left normal a long time ago, this episode will be a nice reminder that we need to keep our eye on the prize.

Enjoy your Foolish Adventure,

Tim “Abnormal” Conley

Join The Forge: A Group Of Entrepreneurs Creating A Life While Building A Business
bit.ly/entertheforge

New Training: How To Scale Your Business
If you want to get in-depth training on operating and scaling your business check out The Bootcamp: TimConley.co/bootcamp/

Foolish Adventure really needed a woman’s touch in sprucing up the show. The Foolish Adventure Show had become a bachelor pad of sorts so I’m setting out to change that by bringing on a successful woman entrepreneur.

Steph, of TheDailyDigi.com, has a life many people (women and men) would love to have — great kids, happy marriage and an income-producing business she can be passionate about. 

In paying attention to my audience, I’ve noticed that Foolish listeners are almost split 50/50 between men and women. Yet only once before has a woman been on the show and that spotlight was shared by her husband (I interviewed Izzy & Noell about their membership sites). 

Steph brings a woman’s perspective to running an online business that I hope will resonate with more than just half of the Foolish listeners.

Why am I making a big deal of this?

I have a daughter.

I want her to know — beyond her dad just telling her — that she can do anything she sets her mind to. She can achieve success in any field (as long as it’s entrepreneurial — a dad can hope, right?). 

I don’t want her to be afraid of standing up for her dreams or to be intimidated by technology and finance two crucial parts in modern business success.

That’s why I’m doing this. It’s for me. But…

If I want my daughter to grow up in a world where women are considered equals, I need to make sure I contribute resources for all women to succeed.

On another selfish note, I love being a stay-at-home dad. Right now my daughter is sitting across from me doing her math. She also gets to see what I do for money. Consulting and “Interweb” stuff is very abstract so it is good for her to see how it all gets done.

I think more parents would be happier if they could design a life for themselves and their children that includes lots of quality family time anytime and anywhere they wanted it. And hopefully, the Foolish Adventure Show can help parents create the life they dream for themselves and their kids no matter where they are in the world.

This episode isn’t about me, but about women in online entrepreneurship. I just wanted to share my motivation for this episode and to let you know that more women will be on the Foolish Adventure Show very soon and frequently. FA is no longer a bachelor pad.

Tim “aka Dad” Conley

Having control of my life is important to me. I’ve arranged my life so that I can do what I want on my schedule without needing to ask permission of a boss. However, I have limited my success by not getting better at management.

You can’t have really big success without the help of others. 

I didn’t want employees because I didn’t want the imposition on my freedom. Wow, was I wrong!

I’ve watched Chris Ducker, through his blog VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com, transform himself into a Virtual CEO. This episode is a conversation with Chris to see how we regular folk can use the power of outsourcing and virtual management to build really successful companies like Chris.

Chris has a service for helping entrepreneurs find high-quality virtual assistants that I will be using in the next couple of weeks. I personally know several business owners who have used this service and have had great results. If you are in need of virtual staff then do yourself a favor and visit Virtual Staff Finder.

Thanks go out to Dan Andrews of LifestyleBusinessPodcast.com for connecting me to Chris Ducker. 

I highly recommend you take some notes when listening to this episode. That way you can craft your Virtual CEO plan for growing your business while keeping control of your lifestyle.

Enjoy your Foolish Adventure,

Tim “Virtually Successful” Conley

No show description needed for this one. It is a must listen…

A huge, shocking announcement…

Listen now to find out what it is!

We’ve talked about the Minimum Viable Product, but now we take it up a notch.

This is also the minimum viable post — just enough to give you the episode. 

Okay, there is no way I could just write a couple of sentences…

This episode combines several topics that we have talked about in the past. The first being the minimum viable product (MVP), the idea of good enough, taking action and iteration — changing things as they are needed.

The main reason we did this episode is to remove any confusion to whether a product is a business and to get you to a sustainable business as fast as possible.

Enjoy you Foolish Adventure…

Know the wants and needs of your target market puts you on a fast-track to success.

Not knowing and just throwing out products to see what sticks is a lousy approach and will most likely lead to failure instead of success.

Listen in to this episode and you may be surprised at some of the simple methods you can use right now to know what your prospective customers need.

Tim Bourquin was day trading stocks after getting off his shift as a police officer.  He got interested in podcasting in the days before it was called podcasting and built an audience for a mountain biking/triathlon podcast — he later sold this podcast and it was most likely the first podcast ever sold.

Tim has a broad range of business experience so he has a big picture view of business combined with a depth of knowledge that only comes from being in the trenches — from creating a couple expos & selling them to building a successful membership site called TraderInterviews.com that gives Tim and his brother a great lifestyle.

This episode is a Blow Your Socks Off actionable, information-packed interview.  Listen at least twice if not half a dozen times.  You’ll learn something new each time.

We can’t wait to have Tim Bourquin back on the show.

Enjoy your Foolish Adventure,

Tim and Izzy