The Fizzle Show

<p>Of course you’re worried about your business idea. Of course you don’t want to put all the time and effort into building a business only to realize there was a mistake built into the idea that will forever stunt it’s growth. Show Notes: FizzleShow.co/177 Think about your business idea like a boat. You’re on dry land making your boat, designing and planning and strategizing. But you put it in the water and realize it’s got holes in it you didn’t notice before. THATS what this episode is about, showing you where the holes would be so you can investigate further and be CONFIDENT before putting your boat in the water. Because the thing about business ideas is that there’s no such thing as certainty, only confidence. There is no way to tell if a business is going to work with 100% certainty, but we can find confidence. That’s what we’re going to guide you through today in the form of 10 huge mistakes we see all the time.</p>

<p>Before people start a business they usually have a decision to make: am I going to quit my job and work full time on this, or am I going to work on this on the side? Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/176 Both have pros and cons, both are frustrating for different reasons. This is a topic to be careful about. Some experts and gurus out there would have you believe you need to just put it all out there, believe in yourself and take a big leap of faith. That’s the model that worked for them so they tell you to do it. But maybe there are more practical ways we can be intelligent about this decision. In this episode we break down common variables you may not already be thinking about like: - How much savings do you need? - What does ‘runway’ mean? - What’s a ‘burn rate’? - What are the different decision points here that would allow me to make a smart decision? It’s a practical and exceptionally helpful episode. Enjoy!</p>

<p>Some business ideas can be thought up and launched in a single afternoon. Others, however, require a ton of time and effort to get off the ground. Show Notes: FizzleShow.co/175 So, imagine this (or maybe it sounds familiar to you): - Imagine you want to support yourself, earn a living independently. - Imagine you have an idea that’s big, one that may not feasibly be able to bring in revenue in the short term, but who’s long term prospects are great. - What can you do for revenue in the short term that won’t take up all your time and energy so you can keep building your bigger idea? It’s a great question, especially if you’ve been thinking and scheming about starting your own business for a while. But it’s also a complicated question for reasons you may not see from the start, so it sparked a big conversation for Corbett and I. 
So, here’s another great, honest, no BS conversation on the Fizzle Show. I hope it’s helpful! Enjoy.</p>

<p>We probably all have one of those friends in our lives who thinks *too* big. Or those who once thought too big. Maybe now they’re angry at the world, jaded, cynical. [Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/174] **There’s a danger to thinking too big.** It can burn us out, burn us up, make us miss all the amazing that’s happening right now. **There is also a danger of thinking too small.** You keep doing what you’ve always done because you’ve always done it and then one day it doesn’t work. The market and the world has moved on. That danger could hurt you *financially*. You could also get hurt *psychologically* by thinking too small. Not a single one of us wants to end our careers thinking, “dammit I wish I would have been more brave, saw the bigger picture earlier on.” So, there’s an art to thinking big, and that’s what we explore in this podcast episode. We have no books to sell. We’re not gurus. We’re just a couple people who’ve been trying to think bigger (without toppling over) for about a decade with some success to show for it. I hope you love this episode. Enjoy!</p>

<p>On the show today, 2 experts share what it’s *really* like to run a membership site. The experts, of course, are Corbett Barr and Chase Reeves (that’s me) 2 of the co-founders of [Fizzle’s Business Courses & Community], a membership site that’s been live for almost 4 years at the time of writing. There’s a lot of conversation in the world of online business about how valuable a recurring revenue model. Dependable recurring income that you can count on sounds very sexy if your business needs to be selling to new customers every single day. So, is it as good as it sounds? Or, as a smart Fizzler put it in the forums: what *don’t* I know about running a membership site? That’s what we lay out for you today on the show, diving in deep to a big list that Corbett prepared. Enjoy! Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/173</p>

<p>“I’ve heard from the Editor in Chief of a big site and they said Twitter was basically ineffective for them. Should I still even bother with it?” Here’s the deal — you’re a small business person. You’re the little guy. You can’t pay to advertise and reach people. You have to build an audience to get your message out. Social networks are where people are spending time. So that’s an opportunity to get in relationship with potential customers in meaningful ways. BUT, you’ve only got so much time. You can’t afford a team to run your social media for you. You’ve got to do it yourself, and that means you can’t show up in a meaningful way on *all* the social networks. (Unless it’s your job. I’m looking at you Gary V.) So, if Twitter is a waste of time, you want to know it right away so you can make investments in social media accounts that will produce returns for you. So, is Twitter a waste of time? It’s complicated. And it’s all explained in the podcast episode. I did, however, pull out 10 ideas we had for how to make your Twitter use more effective in 2016 (so, you can assume we’re not writing off Twitter completely). Enjoy! Show Notes: fizzle.co/172</p>

<p>Listen, as bloggers we want to get as many people interacting with our content as possible. And more than that, we want them to become FANS, to live their lives in relationship with us. Recently we made a guide to promoting your blog (fizzleshow.co/170) which talks about *syndicating* your blog posts, that is, publishing your existing articles to different websites like Huffington Post or Medium. > **Syndicate:** (verb) to publish or broadcast simultaneously on multiple channels, websites or platforms. (Comes from the Latin *syndicus*, meaning delegate of an entity.) [Medium] has become extremely popular in some circles, and can be a great place to syndicate your blog posts. ***Why? Because hundreds of thousands of people could come to know about your work!*** BUT, are we shooting ourselves in the foot if we use it because it simply doesn’t bring people into a strong enough direct relationship with you? That’s what we get into on the show today. Great conversation. Enjoy! Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/171</p>

<p>Today on the podcast How to promote your blog. This is the ultimate guide to getting more traction for your blog, whether you want more people to a particular post or to your site in general. It’s a huge episode and comes with a HUGE article where we lay out even more strategies. but here is where you’re gonna get some of the stuff we might edit out of the article. Because here’s the thing: you might be trying things already but it’s not working because you don’t understand the real core of those strategies, what’s important about them, or you might be afraid that promoting your blog takes a lot of work. We want to lay both those fears to bed. You can do this, you can create a strategy that you use to promote each and every post that feels right to you AND gets you the results. So in this episode and the article that goes along with it, that’s what our goal is: to help you put together a checklist for yourself to promote your individual posts and your entire site. Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/170</p>

<p>Listen, there’s so much shit out there you need to learn. So many tips and tricks and “best practices” to start using in your blog, podcast or business of any kind. Show Notes: fizzleshow.co/169 So today we wanted to try to cut through the smog and prioritize the biggest, baddest, most important things you should know. This list isn’t *everything*, but each item is *essential* if your business is going to succeed. Barrett Brooks has been working closely with indie entrepreneurs for the past 2 years. Long enough to see the patterns, not so long that he’s withered up inside. Today on the show (and in the text below) he shares the 5 lessons he feels are most important to entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. Whether you’re a blogger, podcaster, freelancer or maker, these are 5 areas that can bring substance to your business, helping it get off the ground safely AND last through the years. It’s a bittersweet episode for us at Fizzle as Barrett is moving on to the next stage in his career. He shares all the details in the episode (if you’re looking for a business coach you’ll definitely want to listen in). We’ve loved having Barrett on the team. His voice has been a huge help to listeners over the last hundred episodes or so, and his ideas have helped shape what Fizzle is today. OK, more on all of that in the episode for today, and below I break out each of the lessons with the transcript from the show so you can read instead of listen.</p>

<p>We make courses for a living. We have 40 something courses in the Fizzle library and we made each one of them. Right now there’s a lot of interest in making online courses… … packaging up knowledge you’ve learned on a topic and selling it. And there are some people earning their living doing just that. The online learning industry was projected to reach $107 billion in 2015. BUT success stories and stats about a big market mean nothing much to your success… because it’s easy to fail here. So in this episode we thought we’d bring you the top 10 fears of online course makers. These are *real* fears… straight from the mouths of real people making courses (or getting ready to). This is a really helpful episode — enjoy and thanks for listening! Show Note: FizzleShow.co/168</p>

<p>Are you wondering if if you’ve picked the right business topic? Thinking about changing to a new topic, but maybe you’ve already built something? This is common. You come up with an idea, get to work on it and at some point down the line you get a sense that a different topic (or *part* of your topic) would be better to focus on. In this episode we talk you through what you need to know to do a *great* job on a transition like this. - What do you need to know about the new topic before switching? - What questions should you ask yourself? - How do you know when to trust your intuition or not? - How can you switch without pissing off your existing audience? - Have you planned enough about the new topic so it’s more likely to be successful? - **Plus some smooth jazz flute stuff… seriously, I’m way into it. ** All of that in a totally unedited podcast episode (well, we do bleep the swear words) so you get *everything*; you won’t miss out on a thing. This topic is just a great recalibration of business ideas in general. I think you’re gonna like it. Enjoy! Show Notes: Fizzleshow.co/167</p>

<p>It’s no secret that the way we structure our days can foster our creativity and discipline. This is how you and I get our work done, the times and places we do the work, the activities we do so we’re in the right headspace to plan and strategize the work. So in this episode I wanted to learn more about how Corbett Barr (founder of Think Traffic and Fizzle) structures his days. This is a zero BS look at the real life of an online entrepreneur and in it you’ll find some hard-earned insights about motivation, productivity and time management. Enjoy! Shownotes: fizzleshow.co/166</p>

<p>This episode is a whirlwind, we really hit a nerve. What we talk about are the things that we feel are actually easy and actually difficult about building a successful business. After listening to this episode you might realize that something you’re spending a lot of time and energy on right now should actually be a lot easier… … and it’s not because you’re missing a critical piece. I hope that this episode can help you find that critical piece. Show notes: fizzleshow.co/165</p>

<p>I heard some advice from an entrepreneur about how hopeful entrepreneurs should pursue their first business idea. (That advice is explained in the podcast below.) It made me think about how long it can take before your business starts earning revenue. How long is too long? Should you be fighting for revenue right out of the gate? Should you keep a job so you have some financial stability while you get your own business off the ground? In this episode we share our advice about these question. We’ve been, done and seen a lot in the world of small business, and this episode brings some excellent perspective. Enjoy! Shownotes: fizzleshow.co/164</p>

<p>There’s ALL this work we want to do… but it’s not getting done. This is the work that’s going to lead to our success — the ideas and projects and tasks that our careers are built on. … and I’m getting distracted… … and I’m resisting the work… … and you probably are too. It’s ok, you can be honest; this is a safe place. So here’s three reasons why we’re NOT getting our projects and tasks done. Show Notes: FizzleShow.co/163</p>