The Work From Anywhere Podcast

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I don’t teach just to sell courses, and I don’t teach just for fun. Teaching has become one of the most beneficial things in my life, even though I never thought I would become a teacher. I didn’t think I had a reason to. But now, there are eight reasons why I teach and why you should too.

1. Mental blueprints. Teaching forces you to develop mental blueprints of material that is deeply ingrained in your mind. It gives you a system that you can implement over and over again which makes training people easier.

2. Improves thinking and communication. Without being forced to teach, we may be taking things in, but we’re not really sorting through and making sense of them. Once you’re forced to teach, you really have to think about how to communicate that subject matter.

3. Myelin. This is the great matter that forms when you learn something. When you see a musician perform, it seems almost effortless. The physical structure of their brain is built to perform like that. That’s myelin.

4. Finding the 80/20. Teaching can help you figure out the 20% of your business activities that bring on 80% of the results. No matter what subject you’re teaching, you’ll find out what really works and what doesn’t.

5. Teaching creates an evergreen asset. You create this knowledge once, and then you can rent it out on an ongoing basis. It’s like owning a house that you can rent out to thousands of people.

6. To learn. Take out a single sheet of paper and write down the steps as if you’re going to teach someone a specific task. When you get stuck, you’ll realize what steps you don’t know, and you can learn them.

7. Teaching is the fastest path to mastery. Mastery is the key to getting what you want, and teaching will make you a master thanks to all of these steps.

8. Impact and transfer of knowledge. This doesn’t even have to be through a business. Teaching will help you transfer knowledge to your friends or anyone else you wish.

To learn more about becoming a finisher, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/podcast

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What happens when you have a job and you don’t complete your project on time? Usually, you’ll get fired. At the very least, you’ll get written up or just look like an idiot in front of the rest of your team. There are direct consequences to not being a finisher in structured areas of our life. When we start our own business and no one is holding us accountable, what happens? We stop being finishers.

I had to force myself to become a finisher to start getting the results I wanted. Starting projects might be fun, but it doesn’t provide any value to anyone else. It just gets you pumped up. You need to become a finisher, and here are eight ways to do that.

1. Stakes on the line. You have to create consequences, and a good way to do this is to get an accountability partner.

2. Have mandated deadlines. Clearly outline your project and have hard deadlines just like you would during a semester in school.

3. No exceptions. If you give yourself the opportunity to get out of something one time, you will keep giving yourself that opportunity.

4. Have mid-range planning. It’s okay to have daily and weekly planning, but it needs to fit into a bigger picture.

5. Pain vs. pleasure. You have to associate your goals with what the pain will be like if you don’t achieve them, and what the pleasure will be like if you do.

6. Finish the first project. You’ll feel really good after it. The more you finish projects, the easier it will be to finish the next one.

7. Detachment from outcome. Do not look at your results day-to-day. Complete your work regardless of what the results are.

8. “Yoda” yourself across the finish line. Yoda said “do or do not do. There is no try.” You have to get it done no matter what.

If you want success in life, it’s not about starting projects. It’s about finishing them.

To learn more about becoming a finisher, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/podcast

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There’s a cruel monster in the business world reaching out from the depths of the underground, dragging you down and holding you back from everything that you want. That monster is shiny object syndrome.

I’ve got eight ways that I finally beat shiny object syndrome. I still fall victim to it sometimes just like anyone, but I’ve overcome it enough to hit my initial goals in business and get out of that cycle of starting new things over and over again.

1. Have a tangible goal. You may have a strong vision of what you want to accomplish, like “making an impact,” but that’s a very abstract thing. Add something tangible to your vision.

2. Be willing to suck. Most people can’t tolerate not being good at things, so they’ll just walk away and try to find something that’s easier. That’s a huge mistake.

3. Have short-term losses for long-term gains. You have to play a long game, and you’re not going to get there without any losses. Your goal is to level yourself up, not to become a millionaire on day one.

4. Listen to the market. The market will tell you exactly what to do. Just tweak what you’re doing based on market feedback and data that you gather.

5. Recruit support and encouragement. It blows my mind when people won’t spend any money on the education process. You can leverage the power of learning what everyone before you already has.

6. Put yourself in work jail. I put myself in work jail for two years so that there was no getting out from my business idea. It forced me to suck it up when I felt like quitting.

7. Money is just a number. Take the emotions out of money and stop tying it to your ego. It’s just a number. Your long-term fulfillment will come from helping people solve a problem.

8. Have the next goal ready to go. As soon as I achieved my goal, I felt burnt out and like there was no point to continue. Make sure that you have the next goal you want to hit in mind.

To learn more about defeating shiny object syndrome, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/podcast

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People reach out to me and they ask, “is this a good business idea?” If you’ve never been in business before, you might not understand how ridiculous that question is. The idea that I would know anything about your business is just silly because I don’t know anything about your market.

My friend recently had an idea for an app where you could buy a monthly subscription for a given industry. Then, you’d be able to go to many different providers in that industry. First off, I think the idea sounds great, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not. An idea is just motivation to start investigating your market.

A business is a series of systems that provides a solution to a painful problem. If we look at an app, it’s a tool to distribute this solution. An app is a silly way to test an idea because it’s very expensive. A better way is to see if there’s demand for what we offer and if we can supply it.

The first thing we could do is just ask friends if they would pay for your idea, and if they say yes, you ask if they’d be willing to write you a check if you could get it done right now. Don’t cash the checks yet. Then, we could walk into businesses in the industry and tell them how many people you have willing to pay to use the provider. Next, we could ask for a discount from the provider if we send them a certain amount of business.

If they say no, we have to rework our business model. If they say yes, you have two sides of the equation. You have customers who are willing to pay, and businesses who are willing to provide services. Now you have a business, but it’s still too early for an app. We need processes for attracting more people to the business.

You should first build your business in just one city. Once you have a business up and running at a certain size, then you can think about expansion. At this size, you might need a better distribution system, and that’s where an app could help.

If we start with an app, we’ll be dealing with development issues and bugs in the app. These are not the core problems of a business. The first step in business is to prove that you have a solution to a problem.

To learn more about creating your own bag of tricks, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/podcast

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Today we’re talking about giving two people the same information, the same plan of action, the same strategy, the same execution, and them getting vastly different results. What causes the difference?

It’s a very simple answer: a long-term outlook. People come in, want to start a new business, and they just dip their toe in the water. They tell themselves that they’ll try something for a day and if it doesn’t work, they’ll go try something else. Do you think somebody is going to get extraordinary results with only a few days of effort?

You need to care more about the process than the result. People who only put up with the process because they want to get the result will fail very quickly. They just look at everything as a nuisance and struggle. Contrastingly, people who are all about the process know that the results are a by-product of the process. If you stick to the process, the results take care of themselves.

It’s common knowledge across all industries that you need to stick with something for five years. That five-year mark is when your business will really start to blow up because you’ve stuck with it long enough for mastery.

The big question is are you in this game just to get a result, or have you made a new lifestyle out of it? Stop being one foot in, one foot out. This isn’t going to reward you because you’re not doing anything for anyone. It’s not about the opportunity, it’s about you committing to mastery.

When you start, of course it’s going to be hard. However, you can become the master of your niche relatively quickly compared to other things in life. In five years, you can be making more money than 95% of the world.

Don’t chase the result. Chase the process.

To learn more about building a strong process, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/podcast

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There’s this idea out there that you should only do what you’re good at doing. The people at the top in business often will just focus on their strengths. They’ll stay in what’s called their “zone of genius” where they are the best at doing something and are the only ones who can do it.

If you’re not running a thriving business, you’re not ready for that. If you don’t have a team surrounding you to fill in the gaps, you’re not ready for that. If you don’t know what your zone of genius is, you’re definitely not ready for that. Ignoring your weaknesses could be the worst possible thing that you can do.

In business, we have a bag of tricks. You might be good at copywriting but terrible at actually running Facebook ads, or you might be good at talking to clients but have no idea how to select proper images for ads. Once you have enough of these tricks, you’ll be getting pretty good at business.

So, what happens when we don’t focus on our weaknesses? We just never do the things that make us uncomfortable, so we default to doing what is easiest in the moment. When I know I need to master something in business, I have to put in the time and practice. My goal isn’t to get rid of my weakness or become great at it; I just make sure I put in the hours and see what happens.

For the longest time, I was avoiding running YouTube ads because I didn’t understand the interface. I was so used to Facebook ads that I would just completely stay away and pay someone to do the YouTube ones. I finally had to jump in, and I was so confused about the interface. It was not fun on the first day. All of a sudden, my second day of running YouTube ads was less scary. I thought “you know what? Maybe this isn’t my biggest weakness.” By the end of the first week, I loved running them.

If you’re avoiding business activities that make you uncomfortable, you’re probably avoiding everything that’s important.

To learn more about creating your own bag of tricks, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/podcast

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One of the toughest things about operating a business is that you have to give up attachment to outcome. There are so many variables interacting with each other in a business that you don’t know what the combination of those different things will do. You just have to do your best and give up attachment to the outcome.

This week, something bad happened. My Facebook business manager got totally shut down. We have tons of data in there; all of our ads, algorithms, and more. We lost it all in one fell swoop and Facebook won’t give us any reasoning. I told my friend about it on the phone, who said that I seemed really calm about it. I was, because I didn’t know if this would be a good thing or a bad thing.

We don’t always know the implications of what happens in our lives or in business. With how much stuff that is thrown at you, it’s not good to make judgements whether it’s good or bad. Often, the difficult times in business will produce the absolute best results you’ve ever gotten. We get stuck in doing things a certain way, then things break, and people think it’s terrible. It’s better to just say “we’ll see."

This week, we relaunched our Facebook ads and a new business manager with none of our data. We got a three-to-one return on our ad spend, which is phenomenal. We weren’t getting that much before. A lot of the old stuff we were doing got cut; we were probably spending a little too much before.

Bad things happen in business that seem so stressful at the time they’re occurring. Whether something is good or not isn’t for us to decide. Life is going to happen, and that will set a motion of events that will change our course.

To learn more about getting a good return on your ad spend, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/podcast

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Getting started in business can be really lonely. You have all these grand plans of getting rich and doing whatever you want. Thirty days later, you’re stuck inside with you and your computer talking to yourself in the same clothes you wore yesterday.

I’ve got my friend Trent with me today because we’re both in the same group coaching program. A lot of people call these masterminds. I have an informal group that meets every Wednesday, but this event we’re at in San Diego is a formal one. There’s about 150 of us here to talk about utilizing online marketing tools to grasp a target audience.

The cool thing about events like this is you get to make friends who have the same goal and you get to hear from people at all different levels. Thanks to events like these, you no longer have to be alone.

For the past eight years, Trent has been investing in real estate alone. He used to network a lot but moved away from that into his own little world. He wants to get back into networking, which is why he comes to these events. Every time he goes, he gets energy back and is excited to learn from everyone.

Whenever me and Trent sit down for a meal at this mastermind, it seems that we’re sitting across from someone who is doing the same type of investing that he is. He makes great contacts and learns from people who are already doing what he wants to do.

If you’re starting a business and feel a little worn out, you probably just need to get around people who are doing what you are. To get involved in a mastermind, my recommendation is to join a paid group. That will give you motivation to stick with it, and you’ll also be hanging out with people who have made the same commitment.

To learn more about growing a digital marketing business, visit https://www.christianmartin.org/podcast 

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A lot of people that are in business don’t understand that bringing on a client is a two-way street. Some people act like they owe everything to the client just because the client is paying them. You need to work with clients who treat you with respect and value what you do, or you’re going to have a terrible time in business and in life. You’ll probably burn out and hate your business.

If you’re in digital marketing, you need to select clients who have the budget to pay you, appreciate the value that you bring to the table, and have a growth mindset about their business.

Many beginners work with low-hanging fruit. These clients are already failing in their business and expect a marketer to come and save it. Once you add advertising to a business that doesn’t work, it’s just going to fail even faster. For a business that already works and has a product that people need, putting in marketing money will make it grow even faster.

You have to work with businesses that are already succeeding and are too busy to do the marketing themselves. They’ll value what you do for them, respect you, and will be more than willing to pay your fee because they want an expert in every piece of their business.

A couple of months ago, I brought on a client and thought everything was going great. I set very clear terms and expectations at the beginning. A couple of weeks into it, they were emailing me six times per day and making my life miserable. I was providing great results, but they were bringing in all these problems with their business structure. They also had an unrealistic expectation on what their return on ad spend should be.

If somebody is bugging you, taking up your time, and messing with your ability to grow your own business, it’s time to fire them. You want to be very respectful, leave things on good terms, and not burn too many bridges. Send a very clear email saying that it’s time to part ways.

Find the clients that are high performers. You can make their business even better.

To learn more about getting digital marketing clients, visit https://www.christianmartin.org/podcast 

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I got so sick at the gym this morning that I threw up. I was totally incapacitated, my whole body was shaking, and my legs were seizing up. Business is exactly the same way.

There’s no better metaphor for business than fitness. There’s no way to get quick and easy results. You have to be consistent. You have to go through the pain. You have to push yourself. And, if you have long-term commitment, the results are worth it. Anybody that’s gone through the process knows this.

Once you commit to doing something and make a habit of it, it gets easier. It becomes a lifestyle, and the immense pain you had at the beginning is something you enjoy because you know it’s going to pay off.

I get messages from people who are new to business saying that they’re frustrated, and they just want to give up. I tell them that I’m frustrated every day in my business. I hit walls all the time and I expect to. When it happens, I tell myself that this is what I signed up for.

For some reason, people think that making money shouldn’t be painful. If you go to the gym, you know it’s going to hurt, and you know you have to show up anyway. You know that you have to feel the pain and push yourself to your limits every day.

If you can take this same attitude over to your business, you will be successful.

To learn more about getting into a good business routine, visit https://www.christianmartin.org/podcast