Small Biz Life

Hi my name is Jeff, and I spent years burned out. If I was ever going to start a self-help group. It would start off saying that statement. About a couple of years ago, I started breaking out of nearly permanent burnout. My work was suffering, my relationships were suffering, and I was just not happy. I question my ability to be a proper husband. Maybe, I was a total failure.  I believed it was only a matter of time before every else knew the level of failure that I had achieved. I even spent several long afternoons with a therapist trying to figure out why I felt guilty not getting killed in a war. The therapy helped some. I knew part of why I felt so guilty. However, I did not break out of my funk. I was stuck. I was burned out, and to defend my therapist, I never asked for help with burnout. I just wanted to get past my survivor’s guilt.   Then I finally recognized that was burned out. My wife, Kristin shared with me Jon Acuff’s book call “Start”. I read it, I loved it.  It woke me up. It made me question

Episode 81 – Sleep: Your greatest productivity tool What!!! I cannot sleep, I have too much work Hey we understand. Jeff resisted this notion for years. Because, the idea that if you sleep more you can get more work done in less time is truly counter-intuitive. However, when Jeff was researching content on the basics of improving performance. We found lots of evidence that sleep is really the foundation of performing at a higher level. Really, sleep is the foundation of better performance? Yes, since adopting a few new strategies. May of which we learned at Brendon Burchard’s live High Performance Academy, not an affiliate. We have both found an increased level of energy, to get rid of time loss to low energy and increased focus for the entire day.   The results have been so astounding we have rescheduled our entire content plan at Small Biz HQ to dedicate April 2017 to help our friends and peers.   While researching, why we had the improvement. The true importance of sleep became apparent.   If you do not kn

Why is listening to customers still important online? A business online is moving the way of the dinosaurs.  Even in the smallest businesses, 73% are expected to have websites by the end of 2017. As the move to online happens, it becomes more difficult to perform the most important task of a business owner. We do not know how to listen to people we never meet.   Why is it difficult? Clutch looked into this in 2016. Even if we interact with some people in social media.  How many of those move to the website? How many of those buy from us or ever purchase one of our products?   We completely understand the problems of feeling lost when you interact with only a small portion of your online traffic.  Across out platforms we served people a little more than 990,000 times, and from that we had under 10,000 interactions with people in social media.   So, we looked to better listen to the people we educate online. We knew we needed to up our listening skills.  We knew we need to find a new way to listen.   We starte

How where your sales today? Ever wonder why those other businesses seem confident when the make an advertising buy for their business. Heck are you too scared to even try to buy and add because you think it will just waste your money? It can be scary to create a funnel or a process for converting prospective clients into sales. We are looking will have to measure what we are doing.  We will see all of our mistakes.  Just follow me for a moment as we start to look at the benefits of a funnel and learn to make your business start working for you.   Stop being scared, invest your time creating a sales funnel                 If I asked you how many sales would you get if I could introduce you to 100 people, how many people would buy your product or service? Ten? One? Thirty? Could you even answer?  I have not met many small businesses that can some do not even what a sales funnel is. And many who do think that is something big businesses do to create sales, or a thing that online marketers talk about, and it wil

((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Visit Show notes ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://www.smallbizlife.com/blog/episode-78-the-best-social-media-platform-for-your-audience   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Mentions links ))))))))))))))))))))))))) Amy Campbell Pew Social Media Stats http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/ Snap Chat https://www.statista.com/statistics/326452/snapchat-age-group-usa/ YouTube https://fortunelords.com/youtube-statistics/ Use our framework to dream big and start moving towards your dream visions for free https://www.smallbizlife.com/dreambig https://www.smallbizlife.com/store/5CQukiiy Small Biz HQ Car Crash Flash Sale code MARCHFOR5 expires on March 31, 2017.   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Rate and Review us in iTunes ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/small-biz-life/id1039595496   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Like our Facebook Page ))))))))))))))))))))))))) https://www.facebook.com/smallbizlifepodcast/   ((((((((((((((((((((((((((( Join our F

In our journeys in real live and networking with people we keep running into the problem of perfectionism.  And yes it is a problem.  We know and love improving processes.  We also know that the sooner we can identify and correct errors the easier they are to correct. However, we have noticed that most incarnations of perfectionism are holding back many of the people that we have met. They approach the problem of perfectionism with good intentions.  However, as they fill up their life with more and more task they end up with hurting themselves. They trap themselves in a loop that makes it impossible to move forward in life. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Do not let your perfectionism be the pavement In order to better address the issue. We found a wonderful series of articles over at the website Personal Excellence. Celes put together three wonderful articles on the subject on these topics. How to Overcome Perfectionism: Your Complete Guide 11 Signs You Are a Perfectionist 6 Hidden Downsides

Whether you are planning your first day working full-time for your business or you had your first day ten years ago, this episode is for you. We discuss Jeff's plans for his first day working for Ingram Digital Media, Inc. and the three pillars of success for our business.   Your first day If your first day in your business was tomorrow, what would that day look like? If you've been running your business for years, how would your first day and first week be different if you restarted today?  Jeff has spent a lot of time working on his time budget and master schedule (get our Mastering your Time course free and try Small Biz HQ for 30 days for just $5 with coupon code MARCHFOR5) to ensure that he can hit the ground running. We've also spent a lot of time planning what we want the next few months to look like.  You may not know this, but we actually have three active brands in our business: Small Biz Life, Accounting In Focus, and Gardul/Worldbuilder's Anvil. We've got a lot of ideas floating out there for each

There are always new players in the social media marketing world. In this episode, Jeff and Kristin look at two new players in the market: Tailwind and Recurpost. We also discuss our requirements for social media scheduling apps. Our social media scheduling requirements There are a few key items we always look for in social media scheduling apps: Library building for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn - we want a social media scheduling tool that will allow us to build libraries of content which will automatically repost. We can load content to manually or via RSS feeds and reuse the content.  Ease of setup - we want something that is easy to setup and use. Ease of scheduling - scheduling your libraries should be easy. Bonus items we look for are good analytics and finding the best times to post our content.  This week, we look at two new players in the marketplace, Tailwind and Recurpost. Tailwind Tailwind is a social media scheduling app for Pinterest and Instagram. The software does allow you to repost cont

We all have way too much on our to-do-lists. Trying to determine what takes priority can be difficult. In this episode, Jeff and Kristin discuss how to prioritize all the things you need to get done.  Often, we try to get everything done at the same time and end up getting nothing meaningful done. Knowing your priorities is an important step to finding the meaningful tasks in your business. Your top priorities should always be products and people.  Products include everything you sell. If you don't have something that will generate income, you won't be in business for long.  People are those who will assist your business and those who will become customers. Focusing on relationship building is an important part of your business. How much time are you focusing on it? Don't get caught up in perfection. Don't get caught up in the technology. There are always ways to simplify the process so you can get started easily. If you are getting bogged down in the details, tells us about it in the Facebook group. Jeff and

In this episode, Jeff and Kristin discuss the basics of affiliate marketing and how to get started if you wish to add affiliate income to your revenue sources. What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is an arrangement between an online business and a website owner, that pays a commission to a website owner for traffic or sales referrals. The website owner can place links or ads on their website, social media, and in emails (depending on the terms and conditions with the online business). In simple terms as an affiliate, you promote other business's products and receive money from those businesses for doing so.  Affiliate marketing is not just for bloggers anymore. Many businesses with an online presence are using it to supplement their income with products and services they do not provide or wish to provide to a larger audience. Affiliate marketing does not require you to place ads on your website. Many people just use links to the products in content, on resources pages, on social media, or in email

According to a 2012 survey in the U.K. Daily Mail, most people give up on their New Year's resolutions by January 10. If you are still working on your goals and your dreams, well done! In this episode, we discuss how to keep your goals and dreams alive into February and how to keep going for the rest of the year.  If you haven't done the Dream Catcher Assessment yet, we highly recommend you download it. It will help you keep your dreams and goals close. Even if you are using another method to create your goals, reviewing them on a regular basis is important for your success.  When reviewing your dreams and goals, it is important to see if they need to be modified. Do you need to dream bigger? Are any of your goals no longer relevant?  Take a look at your monthly contract sheet on the last page of the Assessment. You will want to print a blank copy of the page so you can do your contract for February. If you need to download the Dream Catcher Assessment, just click the link and enter your email again.  First,

Your task list can say a lot about your business and your mindset. In this episode, we discuss what your task list says about your business and how to design a task list for success.  Types of Task Lists We believe there are three types of task lists: the nonexistent, the mundane, and the dream vision task list. Each of these types of task lists tells us something about your business.  The nonexistent task list As the name suggests, this is not having an organized task list. You may have scattered pieces of paper or no list of any kind. These businesses are reactive and operate without a plan. These business owners may have created goals but these goals are often not achieved because there is no plan to achieve them.   These business owners may believe they have a level of freedom but are often frustrated by their lack of progress. They may have a slow start each morning trying to decide what to do or may get lost in email or social media due to not knowing what the next step should be.   The mundane task lis

In this episode, Jeff and Kristin discuss limiting beliefs and how they might stop you from reaching your potential. We also discuss a way to eliminate your limiting belief. What are limiting beliefs? A limiting belief is an internal belief you have about yourself that limits your potential and ability to dream. Unlike fears, limiting beliefs are generally focused on you and your abilities. These are the voices in your head that tell you you aren't good enough, smart enough, or worthy enough. Often, these are voices from our past and you will hear them in other people's voices. Sometimes, these voices are our own voice from the past. These moments in our life have cemented a belief about ourself, very often a negative one. Identifying and eliminating limiting beliefs Typically, limiting beliefs pop up when we challenge ourselves and unknowingly challenge the limiting belief we hold. Many people encountered this when taking the Dream Catcher Assessment. If this was the case for you, we challenge you to go back

On January 3rd, Jeff gave his notice at his job to come work for the business full-time. In this episode, we discuss why we decided that now was the time, the planning we have done to get here, and why we gave up half our income to create our dream. 

Are you having trouble with sticking to your goals? You may be thinking too small.  Why is dreaming big better for success? When we dream big, we get excited about our lives again. We see an amazing vision for ourselves and that vision allows us to push beyond those goals we made in prior years. If you want to start dreaming bigger, check out the Dream Catcher Assessment we have developed to help you dream bigger in six key areas of your life and create an action plan to move in the directions of your dream vision. 

Every business has a peak season, whether it is a natural part of your industry or because you are doing a launch. In this episode, we discuss strategies for having a more productive and profitable peak season.

Starting a podcast can seem very overwhelming, but it's actually easier than it appears. In this episode, we discuss how to start a podcast, what equipment you'll need, and how to get it out to the world.

We are often so excited about creating new goals we reflect on previous ones. In this episode, we discuss how to review old goals before setting new ones. We also discuss a few things you should add to your goals this year.

We have a simple choice to make each morning: do I want to live my life full of negativity or do I want to be a positive person? In this episode, we discuss how to change your attitude to allow more joy and prosperity in your life.

Are you displaying gratitude in your life? Do you take time each day to reflect on the things you are grateful for? In this episode, we discuss why gratitude is important and how you can show more of it in your daily life.