Fail To Learn: Teaching Stories From Business, Sales, Marketing, Coaching, Blogging, Freelance, & Entrepreneurs.

Informações:

Synopsis

Success is found on a path of mistakes. Matt Fox from FrictionFreeSales.com talks with those who have found success so you can learn from their mistakes and failures. You'll discover you're not alone on your path to a successful business. Don't repeat the mistakes others have made, you'll find new insights that will help you grow your business. Past guests include: Nate Kontny, Dov Gordon, Jason Leister, Mike Vardy,Tony Stubblebine, Tim Brownson, Barry Moore, Zephan Blaxberg, Nicholas Kusmich, among others. Marketing, business, automation, coaching, freelance, sales, entrepreneurs, outsourcing, selling, search engine optimization, building authority and trust, social media, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Podcasting, eBooks, online marketing, productivity, management, leadership and more to help you better understand yourself, your business, and truly prosper and avoid failure.

Episodes

  • FtL 32: Lame Hiring Process Caused Regret And Slowed Growth At Copy Hackers, And What They Did To Fix It

    22/06/2016 Duration: 42min

    As your business grows you have to make many decisions around hiring employees. Bringing on employees brings on an entirely new set of challenges, and highlights challenge areas in your business you never realized you had. Joanna Wiebe, founder of Copy Hackers, shares the struggles and challenges she endured with her hiring process. The struggle to hire the someone who won’t sleep on the job, to the challenges of training and building a cohesive team. Joanna is a joy to talk with and this is a conversation you want to listen to, even if you never plan to hire an employee. Here’s what Joanna and I discuss: How she put off hiring anyone after being burned by her first hires. Writing a blog is a lot more work than most people think. How her first hire fell asleep on the job, literally. The emotional struggle she faced when firing him, and how it took a long time to recover. How she tried to live with only virtual assistants and the constraints that placed on her. Why she should’ve hired someone immediately and

  • FtL 31: How Keenan Learned What's Not Taught, Through Trial And Error

    08/06/2016 Duration: 35min

    Keenan went through a lot before he found success as A Sales Guy. He’s a great example of persistence in light of disasters after disaster. He had one collapse after another, falling like dominoes in a line. Each attempt was great. They were brilliant ideas. They just didn’t take root, despite the amount of work and effort put into them. Keenan share his stories in today’s show. He talks about what happened and how he’s glad he went through each of these flops. As he told me, he has no regrets. Here’s what Keenan and I discuss: How he came up with his first product that he sold via infomercials. Why he didn’t understand the industry he was selling this product to. Why he received a cease and desist letter from Anthony Robbins. How the product sold like crazy, and had refund requests almost just as fast. How he started his first “dot com” business, CreateBuzz, in 2003. It was a social network and content aggregator wrapped together. Despite the success in some areas, he couldn’t get it to grow as intended. Ho

  • FtL 30: You Have To Be Prepared For Things To Go Wrong

    01/06/2016 Duration: 34min

    In this episode I get to speak with Amber Wright. Amber is a communication expert, public speaking coach, and award-winning adjunct professor in Communication Studies. That’s the short list of her professional credentials. She knows a bit about the art of communication and public speaking. Yet she makes mistakes too. She opens up and shares a couple of stories where she struggled with things we can relate with. Here’s what Amber and I discuss: How technology almost ruined a relationship with someone she highly respected in her industry. How she fixed it and was able to pull it off. How she continued to make mistakes with that person and can laugh about it today. Why she said you need to slow down and build contingency plans. What she learned from her worst public speaking events. The challenge she faced when speaking to a group of teenagers. What happens when you make a mistake trying to understand your audience. Why it’s important to develop strong communication skills. Why public speaking doesn’t alway mea

  • FtL 29: The Successful Mistake Of Matthew Turner

    25/05/2016 Duration: 31min

    In this episode, I speak with Matthew Turner, the author of The Successful Mistake. Matthew wanted to take advantage of the vast opportunities crowdfunding a product offers. Last year he decided to do just that. And it flopped. During the time he realized an important factor that plays into the success of anyone in business: relationships. In this episode he shares how his relationships were effected during the launch and what he learned. Here’s what else we discuss: How Matthew came up with the idea for The Successful Mistake. How he discovered most successful people look at their mistakes as some sort of badge of honor. Even after interviewing 163 successful people about their mistakes, Matthew still had to make his own. What he did that caused his crowdfunding campaign to fail. Why he expected people to spread the word. How he made the decision to give up. Why he said it didn’t deserve to be funded. How easy it was for Matthew to burn relationships. Why he thought he was right to get angry because people

  • FtL 28: Why Your Default Should Be "No" with Jon Nastor

    18/05/2016 Duration: 35min

    Jon Nastor is the guy behind a coupe of highly successful podcasts (Hack The Entrepreneur and The Showrunner) and over the past 3 years built a product called VelocityPage. One of the first products that allowed you to quickly create landing pages without knowing how to code. VelocityPage was unique and made a huge splash on the market. Over time Jon’s plans changed. And that’s when the focus of VelocityPage began to fall apart, and what Jon and I discuss. Here’s what Jon shares: How Jon first came up with the idea to start VelocityPage. What triggered the hard decision to close the business, even though he is still making sales. Why he didn’t feel good about the fact people will were buying his product. Why it was important for Jon to get Mark Jaquith as the lead developer, even though he didn’t know Mark at the time. Why he said he didn’t put enough action into this business, and didn’t want to. How the concept of “Hell Yeah!” drove the nail in the coffin before burying his business. Why it’s important to

  • FtL 27: How To Make The Critical Shift From Creator Mindset To Marketer Mindset with Ravi Jayagopal

    11/05/2016 Duration: 48min

    In this episode I talk with Ravi Jayagopal, to cofounder and codeveloped of Digital Access Pass (often called DAP). DAP is a sophisticated membership plugin and marketing platform for WordPress. (And, if you don’t know what any of that means, don’t worry. This isn’t a tech show so we won’t geek out on you. Keep reading.) Ravi built DAP after noticing a gap in options. He built the first PayPal and ClickBank download protection scripts. Before these scripts, if you sold digital downloads/content (ebooks, audio, video, etc), anyone with the link could download your products and you couldn’t do anything about it, except lose money. Ravi’s story starts when he sold the resale rights to one of these scripts. It wasn’t a total failure, he made $30, but it taught him an enormous lesson about marketing, and the difference between creating and selling. In this show Ravi and I talk about: How he started online in an extremely small niche selling a book to find Indian baby names. When he found time to learn coding whil

  • FtL 26: Turnkey Business Opportunities Fail Too, With Ryan Healy

    04/05/2016 Duration: 44min

    How would you recognize a legitimate business investmentopportunity if it was presented to you today? That’s a questionRyan Healy didn’t know how to answer 16 years ago.Ryan has become one of the best direct response copywriterstoday. And many years ago, before he had the knowledge he hastoday, he was a hyper-responder to good copy. And that’s what ledto his incredible story.What we talk about in this show:Why Ryan was hyper-responsive to direct mail.How he analyzes what he went through before investingin the business opportunity.The advice he received when refinancing his home to buy thisbusiness.Why he went through with the loan even though he didn’t feelgood about lying to get the loan.How advertising worked to get him to spend $30,000 for thisbusiness opportunity.How hustle couldn’t save this business.Why he couldn’t keep up with the demand and couldn’t afford toquit his day job to do it full-time.Why he ignored good advice from his banker and still boughtinto this business – and how you could do the same

  • FtL 25: Chris Johnson On Integrity, Moral, And Business Failures

    27/04/2016 Duration: 54min

    Chris Johnson is the founder of Simplifilm. We talk about his failures here. We talk about his failures in the mortgage business. We talk about his failures with his family and business partners. You'll enjoy Chris' confessional. You'll recognize challenges you face every day and hopefully have a new way to approach these difficult decisions. Here's what Chris and I discuss: Why he said, "Startups are all bullshit." What it was like when he was in the mortgage business and how he hated giving loans to people he knew couldn't afford them. Why he said, "We all lie. We all have moral failures," and how it can help you. How partnerships can fall apart. The not obvious reasons why it's important to work with people who have integrity. Why we find ways to blame away failure. Why we stop believing in ourselves. His 3 steps to receiving when we fall out of integrity. Why it's a hard battle to admit our flaws and mistakes. Why Chris said he hasn't sold cars yet but that's something he plans to do as a right of passag

  • FtL 24: What Business Are We In And Where Are We Going?

    19/04/2016 Duration: 43min

    What business are we in? You would think business partners would discuss this question with each other. Roger Dooley can tell you that it's not that obvious. Roger is the author of Brainfluence and The Persuasion Slide. He started in the corporate world and left after starting his first business. Roger and his partner both understood their business and worked smoothly together. They understood they were in the direct marketing business selling computers and electronic items. When they brought on another partner things changed. The business changed. People changed. And that's the story we talk about in today's show. Here's what Roger shares: How partners need to identify what the business is about, first and foremost. Why Roger's new partner thought they were in the computer business and how that clashed. Why it's important to understand this difference. Why direct marketers understand the "bet" you take before your marketing hits the mail. When it's important to bring on a new partner and why they thought it

  • FtL 23: Steli Efti’s Stunning Start Up Struggles And How It Shaped His Character Today

    12/04/2016 Duration: 47min

    In this show I have the fortune to interview Steli Efti from Close.io. Steli's start is a stunning story. He came to the United States in search of the American dream. He sold everything he had in Germany and moved to Silicon Valley. And then he found a few challenges, to put it lightly. When he arrived he didn't know anyone here. He didn't know the area. He didn't know English very well. He didn't even carry a proper visa. And that's just the start. We talk about those struggles, the failure of his first business, and what he's learned along the way to build his amazing company, Close.io. What Steli shares in this episode: Steli's philosophy on building a business How charisma was his crutch early in his career, and the problems that caused. How he's been a serial entrepreneur since he was 18 years old. How he came about his vision for a tech company. Why he said he was ignorant, not gutsy, for moving to Silicon Valley. How he expected to be an amazing success story in only two years, and how that fell thro

  • FtL 22: Why It Takes Guts To Be Ash Ambirge

    05/04/2016 Duration: 42min

    Ash Ambirge is one of the most colorful and unique writers on these old internets. I love her style. She brings details to life. She elegantly dances with metaphor. As Seth Godin said, she has an, "original voice in a world that sorely needs it." You can find her at The Middle Finger Project. Go subscribe and let her tickle your reading bone. Ash shares how she went from sleeping in her car to launching her first product. And how it's all about guts. Here's what we talk about: Her start in the corporate world and her painful trip through her own copywriting business. How Ash picked the wrong clients, even though they seemed like the ideal clients. Why she did work to make her resume look good but didn't enjoy the work at all. Why she said she was "foolishly optimistic" and what that led to. The struggle she faced, praying not to overdraw her bank account, when her roommate kicked her out (so her roommate's boyfriend could move in). A wild story about a beautiful guy (her words) who ended up surprising her wi

  • FtL 21: How Ben Settle Paid The Cost To Be The Boss

    29/03/2016 Duration: 46min

    Ben Settle lays claim to being a lazy marketer. He says he spends about 10 to 15 minutes each day to send an email and then screws around the rest of the day. I don’t think he has it that easy. But I’m sure he doesn’t work as hard as he has in the past. If you don’t know the song reference in the title, it’s from a song that has one of the most beautiful beats in music: James Brown’s The Boss. It’s a line Ben mentions in our interview and a song he’s mentioned in his emails about the struggles he’s gone through to get where he is today. I enjoyed this interview immensely. I learned some things about Ben’s business I hadn’t known before. He’s built a nice little empire and it came from struggling to figure out where he could fit in. It seems like he was just selling stuff to try and make ends meet. He ultimately paid the cost through those failures and became the boss after finding a way to help people become better marketers with email. You’ll enjoy this episode. Here’s what we discussed: Why Ben wishes he h

  • FtL 20: Slow Growth Wasn’t The Goal Of ActiveCampaign’s CEO But, In Hindsight, It Was The Right Thing To Do

    22/03/2016 Duration: 37min

    Today I talk with Jason VandeBoom. Jason is the founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform used by many online and offline businesses. It has evolved to become a unique solution that excels in the arena it plays in. Jason started the company in 2003. They offered email, marketing, and customer support type software you uploaded and installed on your own server. You had to be slightly techn savvy to understand the details and get it up and running. And that caused some issues. In 2010 they decided to slip away from those products and focus on one ideal solution. And that's where Jason found his struggles and thinks they would be different today if they made some different decisions. Here's what we discuss: How they decided to transition from 8 products to only one, ActiveCampaign. Why you don't want to sell tech heavy software to tech fearing people. How they survived going from selling 4 and 5 figure purchase contracts to offering a single product starting at $9 per

  • FtL 19: We Had A Great Team, And A Bad Business Model with Adam Franklin

    15/03/2016 Duration: 38min

    Adam Franklin runs Australia's top business blog, BlueWire Media. His business started out strong as a web design agency and evolved into an online marketing agency. They had a team of 10 full-time employees and a business model with unpredictable cash flow. Things were running strong when their clients began 'suspending' their monthly payments. Cash flow shriveled up. Without cash on hand, he had to do the hardest thing any business owner has to do, lay people off. And that's when they began to evolve into his current business model. In this episode we discuss: How Adam started BlueWire Media in 2005 and sold websites without knowing a line of code. Why marketing your website is more important than the site itself. How consistent expenses with "lumpy income" is the worst type of business. How quickly bringing on clients, so you can pay your bills, leads to lower quality clients and higher aggravation. Why cash on hand is important in your business. It may seem obvious but this will drill it home. Why Adam f

  • FtL 18: David Nihill’s Fear Of Public Speaking Lead Him To Discover Comedy Insights You Can Use To Captivate Your Audience

    08/03/2016 Duration: 56min

    Today’s show is layered with a small dose of funny. My guest is David Nihill, the author of Do You Talk Funny? 7 Comedy Habits to Become a Better (and Funnier) Public Speaker. When I originally asked David to be on the show he replied saying he didn’t have any business failures to share, but thanks. I didn’t agree with that because he took on comedy to overcome his fear of public speaking. He couldn’t stand in front of a room and talk. That’s a problem many people, possibly you, face. So I hit him over the head and dragged him into the cave to share his story. What he teaches will help entrepreneurs, CEOs, managers, sales people, coaching calls, and more. Humor makes everything easier. And David makes humor easy. Here’s what David and I discuss: Why David’s friends called him “Shakin Stevens.” How he fell apart the first time speaking. How fear of public speaking can hold you back at work and other areas of your life. Why David still hates being on camera, and what he’s given up because of this fear. Why he

  • FtL 17: How Scott Oldford Went From $726,000 In Debt To Infinite Possibilities

    03/03/2016 Duration: 47min

    How Scott Oldford Went From $726,000 In Debt To Infinite Possibilities Scott Oldford started his first business when he was a child selling eggs. That business grew, yes it was a business, and as he grew he moved on. He was a golden child and, as he said, he felt like he had the Midas Touch. And then the roller coaster ride began. Here’s what Scott and I discuss in this show: How the people around him gave him a false sense of business invincibility. How that opinion kept him taking bigger risks, which led to his eventual collapse. How he prevents that false security today, and why you want to do the same. How he went to receive an American Express Innovators Award while his business was failing. How he found himself $726,000 in debt and how he climbed out. The question that blew him away and made him realize he wasn’t what he thought. Why he attributes Chris Brogan to his change of attitude and ability to please everyone. Why he wakes up feeling like he has a gun to his head and how that motivates him. How

  • FtL 16: Life Changing Story Creates A Story Coach Success

    01/03/2016 Duration: 39min

    Who doesn’t love a great story? We all do. Did you know you can change your life simply by creating a story? Lisa Bloom joins us today to share her life-changing story and how story changed her life. Now she uses story to help businesses and individuals communicate their story in the most effective and compelling way possible. Lisa was a joy to speak with because I love how story and metaphor weave their way throughout our lives. Even when we don’t think they’re there. Here’s what Lisa and I discuss: How a person who tells stories creates trust more quickly, attracts better clients, can sell more easily, etc. Why adults have forgotten how to tell stories and how important they are to us. How she lost a job interview because she didn’t understand their story. Why she kept asking “Who do I need to be?” in order for them to hire her. Why she was unsuccessful when asking that question. Why people respond favorably when you tell stories. How stories open minds and communicate on multiple levels. How storytelling

  • FtL 15: Is There A Success Club?

    25/02/2016 Duration: 41min

    Is There A Success Club? How long do you think you could keep trying to build a business before you gave up? This show’s guest shares his long struggle to find success. Today’s guest is Shannon Hansen. Shannon is an overnight success generating leads for the financial world. Overnight success doesn’t include the six years of struggling and fighting until everything finally fell into place. You may not know who he is but his story will keep you pushing through and looking forward to the next time the world tries to knock you down. What Shannon and I discuss: What made him leave his secure position as a contractor. How multi-level marketing was his gateway drug into the entrepreneurship world. Why he thought he wasn’t coachable and how that held him back. How he was able to stay motivated despite constantly losing each battle to survive. Why he believes there is a “Success Club,” and only those who can wait the longest in line are allowed into the club. Why it’s important to have a deep connection to your “Why

  • FtL 14: Facebook Advertising Genius, After Learning Some Brutal Truths About Life And Business

    23/02/2016 Duration: 37min

    Facebook Advertising Genius After Learning Some Brutal Truths About Life And Business Nicholas Kusmich runs a highly successful Facebook marketing agency/consulting business. It wasn’t like this a few years ago. Nicholas was lucky. He hit success when he was young. He was a top salesperson for Cutco knives. He moved to selling investments from the stage and earning a living that was the envy of his friends. Then he found out the investments he was selling weren’t above board (which is a nice way to say they weren’t legal). And things didn’t just start going downhill. It’s like he was thrown from a cliff. And, that’s what we start discussing in this show. What else is in this episode? What people said to him after finding out what he sold was illegal? Why he left his father’s side in the hospital, the day his dad had a heart attack, so he could go sell from the stage. Why he kept defending the “investment” company when he first found out things weren’t right. How he realized, “Your reputation is all you have.

  • FtL 13: What Would Happen If You Left Your Business To Travel For A Month?

    18/02/2016 Duration: 41min

    Today’s show is with Zephan Blaxberg. Zephan has had a fortunate career. He hasn’t been through the massive losses some of our guests have seen but he’s had his own issues he had to battle. One day he decided to leave his business for a month and find out what would happen. What would happen to the business? What would happen to him? Here’s what Zephan and I discuss: How his successful video production company left him angry with most of his clients. Why he kept working, even when he felt like everyone around him was living their life. What motivated him to uproot everything, leave his successful business, and go to California. How his motivation for money had him looking around his apartment for things to sell on eBay, even when he was financially safe. The surprising thing his mother told him when he said he needed to go on his trip to California. What happened to his business when he returned from his trip. What he means when he said, “Who am I when you take everything away? I am everything when you take

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