The Fizzle Show — Heart & Hustle, Self Employment & Creative Business

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

Recently we’ve experienced some work being stolen. Creative ideas getting plucked up and sold elsewhere without attribution. This isn’t new for us. Nor is it new for many who do work online. In creative work there is often this risk that ideas or product can be stolen, used elsewhere by other people. In fact, you may have heard that old adage great artists *steal*, which is to say that much of your own creative work may be have been heavily influenced by other work that came before you. How can we indie entrepreneurs navigate these tumbly slopes? How should we think about this? How should we behave and how should we protect ourselves? This is what we get into in the podcast today. A *great* episode for any of us who want to be lifetime creatives. Enjoy! Show Notes: http;//fizzleshow.co/221

If you work with clients directly there’s a very good chance you’re going to have to deal with some shitty situations. - Clients asking for late refunds - Clients delaying payment for waaaaaaay too long - Customers leaving bad reviews on Yelp, Etsy or something like it - Clients changing requirements in the middle of a project - Client taking *forever* to get back to you, stopping your progress, and preventing you from finishing and getting paid - Clients ending up completely unhappy with the work On the podcast episode and article below we walk you through several steps to try to alleviate your client blowouts. And we go one very necessary step further and help you understand steps you can take to keep blowouts like this from happening! Show Notes: http://fizzleshow.co/220

We know you’ve heard it before (um, even from us) — you should join a mastermind group, also known as a group of 4-6 people who meet about every two weeks to give each other advice and hold one another accountable to big goals. It’s kind of a no brainer, isn’t it? We all know that trying to do it all alone as an entrepreneur is a recipe for eventually giving up when the going gets tough. So to join forces with people who get what you’re doing, who you can bounce ideas off of — it’s basically a way to build an informal board of advisors into your business. We’ve already written all about masterminds, what they are and how to find them. So for today’s conversation, we’re approaching this from a new angle. We’re focusing on the pitfalls: why groups fizzle out before they really get off the wrong, how even groups with the best of intentions might set themselves up to fail, and how to build yours strong from the start to avoid losing steam. Show Notes: FizzleShow.co/219

In this episode we hear the back story of Jonas Ellison, now a leading publisher on Medium.com. Jonas tells how he started as a freelancer, got burnt out on working with clients, and then found his way to creating an audience around a topic he loves. Enjoy! Notes: http://fizzleshow.co/218

Jonas Ellison spent the last year growing an audience on Medium.com, and it worked… accidentally. On the show today you’re going to hear tangible tips about Medium.com, which will help you decide if you should use this growing platform to grow an audience. There are some new features on Medium that make both Corbett and Chase do a bit of a double take on using this platform. Grab a cuppa and dive in for some entertaining education about the “youtube for bloggers”, Medium.com. Enjoy! ShowNotes: fizzleshow.co/217

Travel can lead to inspiration, vision and clarity for your business. That can mean *huge gains* when you’re an owner-operator of a small business. As indie-preneurs and solo-preneurs we can often be the bottleneck for our business. Our mindset can be the leading cause of atrophy or stagnation in our strategies and execution. Play time, vacation and travel, however, can be used to “knock the barnacles off” and reset our intention and focus so we can see clearly and move with more purpose. BUT you may not want to put everything on hold and dive right into vacation without planning it through a bit. So, in this podcast we teach you how successful indie entrepreneurs think through and plan their vacations. 
Enjoy! Show notes: fizzleshow.co/216

In this episode we walk through a process to get clarity about what projects you should focus on next. You know the feeling… too many projects on the todo list; you bit off more than you can chew. So we could all use a simple process to get us back on track. We call it the Energizer Planning Method because when you go through this process you’ll have clarity and confidence about exactly what’s next… and that just happens to be very energizing. Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/215

Is the work you’re doing towards your goal working at all? What if you’ve been working for several months and don’t have much to show for it? Is this normal? Is this how it works at first? Speaking of normal, what is normal!? What kind of results should you be expecting? Today on the show we talk about several places you can look to diagnose where your problem might be coming from. And the first step is looking at those expectations. How can we *intelligently* set our expectations in modern indie business? Dive into the show and enjoy… Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/214

Work. Side-hustle. School. Morning routine. Kids. Commute. Exercise. Meditation. Meal prep. Rest. Evaluation. If you’re like me, you fill your days with as much “I’m supposed to do this” stuff as possible. I’m supposed to exercise. I’m supposed to have good ideas for my business. I’m supposed to be diligent about executing those ideas. I’m supposed to eat healthy. I’m supposed to be present. I’m supposed to make enough time for my family. Oh yea, I’m supposed sleep well too. It feels like A LOT, like too much, if I’m honest. So, it was *amazing* to see this topic brought up on the Fizzle forums by Xenia Ferraro who asked: *How do you balance your life?* She adds: > “how in the world do you do it?? I always thought I was awesome at time management **but I'm finding that I may be taking on too much?** Spreading myself too thin? I would hate to give anything up for the time being, but am nervous I may have to.” Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/213

In the kinds of very small businesses we talk about at Fizzle, with teams of fewer than 5 people, many with just one person, very little of what we do on a day-to-day is CEO-type stuff. Most of what we do is run around wearing one of dozens of different hats. Marketing, product development, finance, team building, and on and on. In a bigger business, a CEO would care about all these things, but they wouldn’t be his or her primary focus. A CEO’s main job in a bigger company should be to own the company’s vision and convince everyone possible of why they should support that vision. Customers, investors, employees, everybody. Beyond that, a CEO is responsible for making sure the company’s efforts are driving progress toward that vision, and that the business has the resources it needs to succeed (skills, talent, money). Read More: Fizzleshow.co/212