September 2018 Archives

Episode 21: Why Books Frustrate Us

Have you ever read a book, been super inspired, and then struggled to execute on it? I had an aha! about why this is.

Subscribe On:

Full Transcript:

Hey everyone, this is Julie, I hope you’re doing amazing. I had this big a-ha moment the other night as I was giving William a bath. Any of you parents out there know, after giving children baths. I have four children. I’ve been sitting by the bathtub for basically years of my life, you know, and all the child-rearing books tell you that you have to watch your kid because they could die in three inches of water. So you end up sitting by the bath way longer than you need to. Now that I’m an entrepreneur and I sit at bathtime, this is where some of my greatest ideas and epiphanies come from. So I’m grateful for the boring, nightly ritual.

So you guys want to know what my a-ha was? I notice that people get really frustrated after they read books because what happens is you read a book, it blows your mind open, right? And you get super excited, motivated ideas are flowing. It’s like fire, but then in the actual execution of the idea or whatever the book was about, it’s a lot harder and obviously, some of that is just normal, right? That’s just humanity. We love ideation and creativity and we, you know, are just intrinsically lazy and don’t like hard work. So you know, that’s part of it.

But I realized that especially in the markets of personal development, marketing entrepreneurship, the way people write books isn’t the way they do it. And what I mean by that is when you write a book, it’s usually after years and years of experience, right? So not only have you had the experience, but you have layers of understanding, right?

You understand something at one level, then you understand it at a deeper level then you understand it at an even deeper level, but the way that you actually learned it is very different than the way that you are writing about it now to your audience.

Because if you’re a genius mathematician, let’s say, and you’re writing a book on math, you see all of the patterns and the nuances and the layers that most beginners don’t see. And so when you sit down to write a book, you’re writing it with all of that experience. It’s like you can’t unsee it. And so sometimes the way you write something, even though it gives people an amazing view of the whole thing when they go to actually execute it, the book isn’t designed to be like a daily sequential workbook of execution because that’s not how the mathematician learned it in the first place.

As a teacher, as an instructor, I’m having this enormous a-ha because I’m reading books and I’m getting super inspired and I’m seeing things at a new level, like a higher level bird’s eye view and it’s inspiring to make connections and see how all these things work together.

But then in the actual execution of it, I find myself frustrated because it doesn’t always happen quite the way it’s written about in the book in hindsight because everything in book writing his hindsight.

So when does this have to do with marketing and entrepreneurship? Well, I think a couple things that I want to draw out of this a-ha is number one, if you get frustrated after reading a book and you find yourself having difficulty executing with the book, talked about, you may be trying to execute a plan that’s too complicated because you are basically reading what took somebody a decade to learn and I guarantee you they didn’t learn it in the way that they’re writing it back to you. So it’s not totally your fault. Right?

The second thing is it makes it really fun to actually follow Gurus who are publishing as they try things. I know Steven Larsen, he is like the science of selling online. He does this a lot where he’ll actually document as he goes. It makes it really easy to follow because you can just do it too. I do a lot of this with my Facebook Ad boot camps and things like this where I literally document as I’m working because then you can follow along.

So if you find gurus who you read their books and you love their stuff, see if they do any documenting type publishing either in their podcasts, YouTube, because you may have an easier time learning that way. And then the thing is, just remember that books are designed to give you that decade in a day type experience where you’re trying to basically absorb a decade of knowledge in the day that it takes you to read the book. And it took the person who wrote it a decade to learn it.

So it’s unrealistic to think that you’re going to actually be able to walk out and execute exactly in the same order. And I think what happens to us personally is we… especially if we’re perfectionists and we read this book and we see the plan as a big, huge plan and then we go try to execute it. We can’t or it doesn’t quite work the way we think or things aren’t perfect. We can get really down on ourselves and then we decide not to keep going. And it’s so counterproductive.

So here’s my call to action. I have a call to action for those of you who are reading books and then I have a call to action for those of you who are writing books.

So for those of you who read books a lot, my thought is take one specific thing out of the book that you want to implement.

Okay? So like if we, I want to talk about like Expert Secrets for example. So Russell Brunson’s Expert Secrets book is amazing. There’s so much wisdom and knowledge, but if you try to go through Expert Secrets and use each chapter and go in sequential order, most likely you’re going to get bottlenecked.

Because Russell discovered this after a decade of trial and error. So just pick one thing in the book that you want to implement. One thing, maybe you want to create a manifesto or maybe you want to work on your webinar or whatever it happens to be, pick that one thing and practice that one skill. Even if it feels kind of out of order or in isolation because you’re more likely to make progress if you do that. Then if you try to use a book that took a decade to learn as a roadmap for how to build your business in the next 30 days, it doesn’t work.

In fact, Russell and I were having this very discussion the other day because we’re trying to teach all of this stuff and you may have heard him on his podcast, the Marketing Secrets podcast. He talks about hook, story, offer and how important it is that every time you sell something online, you have a good hook and a good story and then a good offer.

And so he teaches it in that order like have a good hook, which is that pattern interrupt. And then have a great story that matches that pattern interrupt and then have a great offer that you can sell. The reality is that most people don’t actually think in that order, right? So if you try to do it in that order, sometimes you can get tripped up. Most people think of an offer first. They think of something they want to sell and then they go looking for the hook and then they find a story to match, right?

Like that’s really how most brains work and the order in which you actually execute things versus the way you teach things might be different. So try not to take, you know, I was thinking of Tony Robbins’ book, Money Master The Game. That took them a long time to learn. If I tried to execute all of that, in order of chapter, I would get so frustrated. So that’s the first thing.

If you are writing a book, if you are an entrepreneur, you’re thinking about doing courses, writing books, things like that. Number one, consider publishing. Consider documenting. In fact, I am considering creating a project, a community where I document the writing of my book so that I’m writing it and doing it with people so that I’m sure that when I publish the book, the book actually works in the real world. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is if you already have a book written, consider that you may need a workbook or a course or something that goes along that actually takes people sequentially in the natural way that they would learn that thing in the first place. Because just a book as a roadmap can sometimes just be completely overwhelming because of how many years of experiencing experience it’s consolidating, so that’s my advice.

Also, if you’re listening to this, I’m sure it’s going to be published sometime in the next day or two. We’re right in the middle of the 30 Day Summit with Russell Brunson. It’s a big huge summit. He’s invited 30 people who joined the Two Comma Club to talk about what they would do if they lost everything and only had 30 days to get it back.

This is actually a book where you could follow chapter by chapter and actually produce something, so this is one those books that actually would be a great teaching tool for you if you’re considering starting a business or if you’ve started a business and crashed and burned or you’re not getting anywhere.

So if you have not registered for that summit, you should totally do that. It’s at 30Days.com. (NOTE: Not an affiliate link. The affiliate bonuses mentioned in the podcast are no longer available.)

So that was my a-ha on the side of the bathtub the other night that don’t be too hard on yourself if you read a book and get super excited and then find it’s difficult to execute because you’re trying to execute in two weeks or 30 days…What took someone a decade to learn. And that writing a book is often not necessarily the way that you actually execute in real life. So let’s kick perfectionism to the curb. Have a great day everybody, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

If you’re ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com/podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.

How Much Money Should I Save to Leave My Job?

Making the leap to work from home as your own boss can be a little (or a lot!) terrifying. But dedicating your time to the business you want to build will always be worth it.

When I quit my job to work from home, I remember feeling both excited and nervous about whether I could really make this work.

In this episode, I give my three best tips for making the transition to work from home as smooth as possible.

I also dive into the successes and failures of my own story and explain how I saved money before leaving my job.

Are you currently trying to leave your job? Let me know all about it in the comments below.

Subscribe to Facebook and YouTube to get instant updates when new episodes are posted!

Video Transcript

Hey, Julie here. Today I’m talking about how much money you have saved before you can leave your job.

It’s a really hard question to answer because there’s not just one answer. There are some people who need pressure they need pressure to perform.

Other people are more conservative and they like to have a nice safety net and cushion.

So step one is to know yourself know your personality. How do you perform best?

A great question to ask yourself is look back to when you were in school. When you had a final exam, were you the kind of person who waited until the last minute

and then crammed all night long and then aced your test? Or were you the diligent person who made flashcards seven months in advance and then studied every night for five minutes.

I realize those are two extremes, but depending on where you fall in the spectrum, kind of gives you a clue as to your personality.

If you’re the flashcard type I would say that you need at least three months of savings before you make the jump.

If you’re the guy who crams three hours before, drinks a red bull, and then aces his test I would say that you definitely work best under pressure

and it might be in your best interest to jump before you’re completely ready because that environment will help you rise to the occasion. So that’s my first piece of advice.

Second, prepare to leave your job by reducing expenses and this doesn’t have to be something that you do permanently so you know I know nobody likes to reduce expenses

it feels sad you know, and you have to cut your cable and your Netflix and buy ramen noodles instead of Progresso Soup.

But if you think of it as a temporary situation in which to make the jump then you can do it. So look at your expenses. Figure out everything that you can get rid of for three to six month.

Pare down your lifestyle so that when you do make the jump even just a thousand dollars less a month will give you a little bit more breathing room.

Next, my advice would be to moonlight until you can get some savings ready to go.

The reason why this is so important is because there are things that you lose when you walk out of a 9:00 to 5:00

that you need to make up in a business things like health insurance, 401k.

And so if you have some extra money saved, this allows you to start budgeting correctly from the get-go in your business.

Most of us start a business and we take our expenses and then we just take all the profit and then we stick it in our bank account and we forget about things like business savings, business investments. Things like health insurance and life insurance.

So if you have an extra cushion ready to go it gives you a little bit more breathing room.

So here’s how I did it.

What I did was I worked about 32 hours a week. So it was just about full-time. And then I moonlighted my job and I tried to save everything that I was making in my business.

The good news is that once in a while I took some of that savings to reinvest, to try to build more momentum in my business knowing that my job was running out soon.

And my job really was. It was a six-month temporary job. So I had six months to give my business as much momentum as possible.

So I saved all that money invested a bunch.

And then when my job ended I had savings to live on for three months until my business was matching what I had made. Luckily it did. But I want to tell you that

there was a moment where I faltered. Where I got nervous. Where I thought oh shoot I don’t know if I can do this. And so I went looking for a part-time job thinking that that would make the transition easier for me.

I got that part-time job and decided to work for hours in the morning at the job and four hours in the afternoon on my business. And after two weeks I quit.

And I quit because I realized that the prime time of my energy was being dedicated to a different business than the one I wanted to build.

And so I quit. And I never looked back and in that environment and under that pressure, I performed and my business grew.

I know the best conversations happen after the camera stops rolling.

So if you’re trying to save enough money to leave your job, leave me a comment below and I’ll get back to you soon.

For more videos like this one go to my website at Juliechenell.com.

Business Strategy Sep 2, 2018

When Facebook Deleted My Account…Here’s What I Did

I sent an email out yesterday when I discovered (to my panic and horror) that 11 years of my life and business on Facebook, had been erased…without warning. The good news is….

I got my account back, but with consequences.

My profile was reinstated, but my entire business manager (not just one ad or ad account) was deactivated. This means my 80 ad accounts are gone. I wasn’t using all 80…just a few, but the whole “just set up a new account” advice is dead. I can’t do any advertising on Facebook…at all.

For those of you wondering, I was following ALL the rules. I had disclaimers, I removed income claims, I didn’t use the word “you” excessively, I didn’t spam people, I monitored comments, I didn’t target irrelevant people…I did everything right…and it didn’t matter.

I also seem unable to go live from my phone. I did go live from my computer to explain a bit of what I learned, but for those who want the cliff notes… here it is…

1. There appears to be a correlation between advertising on Facebook and profiles associated with those accounts being manually reviewed and deactivated...ESPECIALLY if you’ve ever had an issue with a disapproved ad or deactivated ad account.

There are rumors everywhere that it has to do with profile funnels (turning your Facebook profile into the top of your funnel), but that isn’t confirmed. In fact, my COO Jessie Valle, also lost her account and she has NO business dealings on her profile. Just to be safe, many people are “dialing down” the marketing feel on their profiles just in case someone does manually review the profile and decide they are using it too much for business.

Facebook wants you acting like a PERSON on your profile, which is exactly what we’re doing – so I don’t think there’s a true breaking of TOS, but if you have a “fake” Facebook profile that is setup like a brand or a business, I would get rid of that…right away.

It’s always a fine line between being a person who happens to have a lifestyle business and uses their profile to talk about it, vs. a hard spammy sales pitch all the live long day.

2. Download all your Facebook data…immediately.

It’s hard to explain what it feels like when your content, your coaching, your livestreams, posts, photos, and memories…just disappears.

Go to the top right of Facebook and click settings.
Click Your Facebook Information.
Go to Download Your Information and click View.

This way, you at least have something preserved in the event Facebook decides you’re not worthy of a digital footprint anymore.

3. Disapproved ads matter (and stack up).

You won’t find this in the TOS anywhere, but when you get an ad flagged (even if it doesn’t trigger your ad account going down), there definitely seems to be some backend flagging system that adds up over time. The more ads you get disapproved, the more at risk you are. So…when you’re running ads, ALWAYS submit and publish ONE ad first, make sure it gets approved, and then you can duplicate if you wish. Otherwise, if something is wrong, then if you send a huge batch at once, you’re at risk for getting 10 to 100’s of ads disapproved at once time.

4. Remember that Facebook doesn’t care about you.

This is probably the hardest lesson of all. Facebook just doesn’t care. We have a company with virtually no competitors, with a tremendous amount of power that appears unstoppable, and with influence over the ENTIRE planet. I don’t know if people realize just how scary that is when one company holds all of that in their hands. It’s scary.

When my profile disappeared, it felt a little bit like I did. After all, my friends, family, and business are all integrally connected on Facebook – and if you’ve seen the movie Avatar, you understand…we all have an avatar. It might not be another creature, but our digital footprint – the way we connect online, is an avatar of us. And for me, I am REALLY myself online (not some fake character). Facebook can erase that…at will. It’s awful.

This isn’t just about losing money or getting “space” from social media addiction, this is about the real revelation that in my quest for freedom – financial and lifestyle freedom – I am actually at the mercy of a company that doesn’t care one lick about me.

The only one who will protect me…is me. And you should think the same way.

Convert traffic you don’t control (social media) to traffic you own.

Build your network on software you can control.

Use Slack, Voxer, email lists, hosting, your own software, servers, whatever you have to do. Just because I’m back on Facebook, doesn’t mean I’m safe. It means that I can use it and leverage it…while also figuring out how to build my communities safely away from the giant that squishes little people regularly.

5. It’s not just me.

As I started talking to people who might be able to help me, I started to see just how many people this was happening to. It’s not just me. Facebook is changing, because they have pressure from the government to be more careful with their power. At the top, it’s about politics and money and power. The government is scared at the level of power Facebook has, and they should be. So if you’re reading this, remember that this isn’t a case of me breaking some horrible rule or getting reported by hundreds of people.

This is something that is happening to a lot of people, and if you advertise or have advertised on Facebook, it may happen to you as well.

6. Your customers are everything.

I don’t know how else to stress this. I’ve always known your net worth is your network, but it’s never more true when stuff like this happens. Connect with them. I had so many people who reached out, who were willing to post in groups for me, reach out to reps, escalate my case, etc.

People are everything. Care for them, and they will care for you too!

By the way, if you don’t keep an up-to-date CRM (customer relationship manager), you should. I’ll be talking about that in a bit (I plan on writing a blog post about it), but for now – I’m doing my due diligence, and collecting updated contact information from the people who I want to make sure I can stay connected to. I’ve been bad about keeping a CRM updated, and that’s going to change.

I would LOVE to keep in touch with you – in alll the ways – so I’m requesting updated info from anyone who’s wanting to stay in the loop – no matter what happens. Update Your Info.

What to do if this happens to you…

When you submit a photo for verification, use your ID and make the photo as CLEAR as possible.
If you have a Facebook Ad rep, reach out to them.
Make sure to connect with your followers and customers as soon as possible through another channel.

I also reached out to my people and asked if ANYONE knew someone who works at Facebook, and I did! She was so helpful and managed to escalate my request more quickly.

In most cases, unless you’re being an out-and-out spammer, your account does come back – although it can take anywhere from 4 hours to several weeks.

I hope this is helpful. I hope you’re able to learn from what happened to me.

As always, the TRUE way to make sure you keep up with your customer base, is through an up-to-date CRM and email list. So make sure you’re on mine!