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Sterling: This is Internet Business Mastery, episode 111.
In a world where bosses control your life, and thoughts of escape fill your mind, where inspiration seems dead and cynicism rules the masses. You have a desire to break free; you feel the need to take control. Now there exists a place where the secrets of freedom and wealth are given to those who believe. Internet Business Mastery.com – free your mind!
Sterling: Hello, and welcome to Internet Business Mastery online at Internet Business Mastery.com, I’m Sterling….
Jay: And I’m Jay….
Sterling: And we’re here to help you escape the ‘9 to 5’ and live the lifestyle of your dreams by turning your life’s passion into a profitable internet business, even if you’re just getting started today. On this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we discuss how to achieve freedom of expression with an internet business. And in the Quick Tip, we reveal a site where you can outsource just about any task for $5.
And we’d like to remind you that if you’d like to get a jumpstart on creating your own profitable internet business using our proven system, you can claim your risk free trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy by going to freeaudiogift.com.
So Jay, what’s been going on?
Jay: Well, it’s crazy to think it but the holiday season is right upon us again?
Sterling: How does that happen?
Jay: I know, every year is just seems to whiz right by…what the heck? I don’t even know! Anyway, so wherever you’re at in the world or however you’re celebrating it, Happy Holidays to you.
Sterling: If you’re listening to this in June, oh well, Happy Holidays next year.
Jay: Well I guess…well I guess…yeah, how is that if….
Sterling: Time shifted content…
Jay: Time shifted content, there you go…but…so anyway, I wish I knew how to say that like in twenty different languages considering all the countries our show gets listened to but sadly I don’t. So you’ll just have to settle for my American ‘Happy Holidays to you.’
But every year we like to do something a little special for our listeners around the holiday season and this year we wanted to kick it up a notch. So we are doing an absolutely free no holes barred, come onto this webinar and ask us absolutely any question you want, holiday Q&A for Internet Business Mastery listeners. That’s going to be taking place on December 15th at 5 pm Pacific. And if you’d like to register right now for that webinar, you can go to InternetBusinessGiftGuide.com. And that’s the web URL for that…gift guide because also on that page you will find some suggestions of things that you can buy for your favorite hosts of your favorite…things you can buy for the internet marketer in your life, or even for yourself if you like to treat yourself right around the holidays.
You’ll see plenty of different ideas at different price levels at that site, so to register for the holiday Q&A, InternetBusinessGiftGuide.com.
Sterling: And if you’re listening in June after this comes out, maybe we’ll put a recording up for you and you can listen.
Jay: Right. It will be like Christmas in June!
Sterling: Yes! Happy Holidays early!
And now the featured segment…
Jay: Okay well in the spirit of our freedom series, we have yet another installation here. We’ve talked in the past about freedom of location, we’ve talked about freedom of time and now we’re going to talk about one in this episode that’s maybe a little less obvious to people but definitely a big benefit of internet business and of this lifestyle that we’ve talked about on this show and that is freedom of expression – the freedom to be the kind of person that you want to be to do the kind of things that you want to do, and to build your work and your business and those things that you do for money around what it is that you really want to do in life, to have more fulfillment and things like that.
So what we’re going to do is first we’re going to talk about the benefits that come along with freedom of expression and then we’ll talk about five ways to attain freedom of expression, to obtain more freedom of expression in your own life. So the first benefit we want to talk about here is that you don’t have to spend your time doing what others want you to do. You are the one in control, of course when you’re an employee, something that I think starts dreaming on a lot of us, especially those of us who might have a bit of an entrepreneurial bug or the joke that we put out there, some of those of us who realize that we’re chronically unemployable and can’t work for other people.
It’s because we don’t like doing what others want us to do, we want to be able to choose the projects we work on, we want to be the one in control, we want to be able to direct what it is that we spend our time doing. If you attain for more freedom of expression, you put yourself in a position where you are able to choose what it is that you do and how you spend your time and what it is that you…the value that you produce in the world and what it is that you put out there, what it is that your life stands for and means.
Sterling: Well and as kind of a side note of this, today my brother called me in the morning on a work day and asked if I wanted to go do some holiday shopping for the family, get lunch, catch up which is kind of funny because he’s like an EMT mechanic so he doesn’t usually say, “Hey, let’s go holiday shopping. Let’s shop; let’s talk gossip about the family.” No, but I was able to say sure let’s do it and I had control that way.
And then last week my daughter wasn’t feeling well while she was at school, I was able to get her and bring her home and take care of her, still get a little work done here and there as she was sleeping. But I was able to go do that and not have to take a sick day from work. I just love being in control like that, but any of those little things that come up, you can take care of and that’s not to mention certainly the freedom of expression on this show and being able to just be my passionate self without having to not act a certain way because I’ve got bosses who are like, “Oh, that’s not appropriate.”
Jay: Right, right. Yeah I can remember as an engineer I had all these great ideas, yet it was always…obviously I had to spend my time doing whatever the company decided was the next project. And here I was a musician, I was actually their target market and I’d think oh, as a guitarist I’d really love to have this, wouldn’t this be cool, and I just never had the opportunity to really dive into those exact projects that I think would be cool.
And there’s definitely a lot of research out these days, in fact a really good video and maybe we’ll have the link to this. It’s by Dan Pink if you go to YouTube and search for Dan Pink, I believe it’s called like the surprising truth about what motivates us and it talks about the typical employee model of just getting paid for our time versus actually spending time doing those things that are meaningful for us and the success that some companies have had allowing their employees for a day to just you know what, go and work on whatever you want today.
And some things I might be getting this wrong, but some big project at Google, Gmail or something like that came out of those days. Somebody at Google thought, well wouldn’t it be cool to do this? And because Google loosened the reins and said yeah, spend your time doing whatever you want…so imagine if your life was set up in a way where every day you got to choose what it was that was meaningful for you and what you spend your time on. Amazing things would happen, not only for you but for other people, the impact you’d have on them.
Number two is you get to wake up every day then obviously excited about what you get to go and do because it’s something you’ve chosen, you’ve based it around what we call your fulfillment factors, you’ve based it around those things that make you happy when you do them. And that’s the kind of thing when you set up your business in the way that we’ve talked about on this show and in our Academy, that’s what you get to enjoy is waking up excited every day.
Sterling: Yeah, and it eliminated a couple of things for us. One was Sunday night dread when you’re like oh I just can’t go to work again, I’ve got to go to work on Monday, had a great weekend and now I’ve got to go back. You don’t have to do that, most of the time I’m like okay, I can’t wait to get back Monday because I’ve got so many things I want to do.
And then the dread of waking up to an alarm clock. I haven’t done that for a very long time. I mean that used to be a major part of my world, oh I’ve got to get up at exactly this time and if I want to do anything extra it means I’m biting into sleep time. I hate the alarm clock but that’s certainly another benefit of freedom of expression is you won’t need that.
Jay: Number three is you get to work with the kinds of people that you want to work with. Something that really does affect who we are as human beings, affect our happiness, affect our day to day lives are the people that we associate with. And of course in an employment type atmosphere we’re not always in control of who it is that we have to associate with, who it is we work with.
I know that people say oh, it’s so important just to be a team player, and that’s great and all but wouldn’t it be nice if you were in a situation where you only partnered with people who were like minded, had similar values as you, had similar goals they were going for. But if you only hired…if you were the one in charge of hiring people so you could choose who it was that you got to work with so that in the end who you were associating with, you were happy to work with them, it was synergistic, both of you got something out of it, it wasn’t just because somebody else stuck you together to work together or because out of obligation, or some other outside force but you’re the one totally in control of who it is you associate with on a regular basis.
Sterling: Yeah, and I really love that I get to work with the people that have a high desire to take control of their lives by creating a business. I love their dreams, their desires, and the process that it takes to make those dreams and desires come true. It’s really a daily dream for me to be around them, I mean that’s what’s so awesome about internet business and being able to have this freedom of expression.
Jay: Yeah I can remember when we were in New York, my wife, she’s going through this whole process of being able to become a therapist, going to all the schooling and you have to work certain internships and things. And even though she liked the kind of work she was doing, there was all this anxiety and sometimes the anxiety was all about oh my gosh; this boss is just horrible. The manager, completely unrealistic expectations, she doesn’t realize the way that she demoralizes everyone at work, or yeah, this other person over here is just like in everybody’s business and always gossiping about people.
And that’s just an environment that she just had to put up with because that was the internship that was given to her. So to be able to free yourself of that and not have to pretend and have to be around people out of obligation is a very freeing and fulfilling thing.
The next one is that you get to base your life and business around your strengths rather than wasting your time on weaknesses. Sadly, society does spend a lot of time grading us in school and saying, that “C” in mathematics, we’d better do something about fixing that whereas we’ve read a lot of books that are very…I find them very hopeful, very encouraging, and just very true to really how human beings work that talk about, we all have these innate abilities, these strengths, these things that we’re really good at because of upbringing, because of genetics, because of just the way that our brain is wired.
Why should we have to spend lots of time strengthening weaknesses and end up with all these like so-so abilities when we could really gear our life and have the biggest impact for ourselves and people around us by truly focusing on those things that we are good at and we do get the best results with, and that people value in us most. And so when you gear your life around that and build a business that allows you to do that on a daily basis, the results that you get are exponential. The happiness and fulfillment that you get are exponential and it’s just a much better situation for you and everyone around you.
Sterling: Yeah, who knew I could tell my personal stories and experiences and get paid? It’s crazy! Like certainly in our situation as far as this goes, like one of your major strengths is being able to teach the step-by-step and know how to process that and know how to explain it to other people. That’s definitely a strength of yours and my chiming in with something, a story that might be able to drive the point home in another way is what I do very well. So it merged really well for us, so we both get to express ourselves in the way that’s more of a strength maybe for us and it works out great. I love it!
Jay: Absolutely. And you know, when you’re operating in that kind of a situation, you’re going to make more money because you have more energy, you’re more productive, you find the best opportunities for you. People are happy to pay for what it is you’re giving because you’re giving so much more than if you were just doing something out of obligation or because you were trying to make a weakness better.
When you’re concentrating on what you’re good at and what fulfills you, it’s just…I’m not sure all the ways why this works but it’s just…you make more money in that kind of environment.
Sterling: Yeah I think a part of it is as you’re being able to really freely express the things that…your strengths and be talking about the things that you’re passionate about, you make different decisions on ramping up the amount of time you do it. You can ramp up and ramp down based on the enjoyment level you have, based on maybe money needs; you definitely if you want to just like for us, we did our launch just recently so we knew that if we were going to do a launch we’re going to ramp up the amount of time. And then sometimes, like let’s say during the summer we ramped back down to about four hours a day so we could go play.
But when you’re expressing yourself and you’re getting that control as well, it’s one of those things that it pushes you to do more which ends up being possible to make more money.
Jay: Absolutely. You know and that’s just going to lead to the last point here, the last benefit is that you’re just going to be happier. Not necessarily just because you’re making more money although money can contribute to happiness as well, but mostly just because you’re doing those things that are fulfilling for you and you’re not spending time with people or doing the kinds of things that take energy from you, the things you do and the people you spend time with give energy to you.
And then you just see exponentially the kind of impact and results that you have which then bring more success and more fulfillment and we see the fruits of our labors so to speak, and so more happiness. I think most people would agree that happiness is definitely a primary goal of this life so why not gear your life to be able to express yourself in a way that you will be the most happy?
Alright, so there you go. Those are some of the benefits of freedom of expression. So how can you have more freedom of expression in your own life? Well, the top one right here is going to be well, start your own business. And specifically we love internet business again because of the flexibility of it, the ease of starting it, the way it allows you to create a system, create a business in whatever niche you are passionate about, whatever niche you have skills in and be able to make really, really good money wherever you’re at in the world. And so you have not only the freedom of time, not only the freedom of location, but then you also get to choose the channels and the ways that you express yourself online.
If you just think about Internet Business Mastery, I mean we built a business with the show that we create and the blog that we have and the types of courses that we deliver and all the things that we talk about. These are the things that…I mean we could talk about these all the time because we just love it. We lose track of time, we feel like we’re really good at it, people value it in us, it inspires others, it fulfills us and so we’ve created a business that allows us to do this at the same time as we make really good money as well.
Sterling: Yeah, and the interesting thing about that is by doing that, by building a business around your passion and your expression, it also builds a business that attracts your ideal audience, somebody that actually wants what you have to offer in the way you present it.
Jay: Yeah I mean that’s a really key one, definitely that would be another point because…some people, they say I’m going to go into business for myself so I can be my own boss and then I’ll be in control and so maybe they do obtain some level of freedom of time or some level of freedom of location. But what they forget then is because of the way they set up their business, they end up…or the way that they do their marketing, they end up having to take every possible lead and every possible client out there and putting up with a lot of clients who probably drain their time, drain their energy, a real pain to work with, are not the kinds of people that they can do their best work with, whereas the model of business that we encourage people to do and the way that we teach people to market their business is so that it does attract the ideal audience, the people that you do do your best work with, that you’re thrilled to work with.
We very specifically chosen…we like to teach things about business, and about freedom, and about more control in your life, but we have very specifically chosen to work with beginner internet entrepreneurs, probably people who are still in a job, want to get out of that situation because it’s something that we very much resonate with and relate to because we’ve been there, we know what it’s like, others can resonate with us when they listen to us talk, and we very specifically chosen that audience to work with because we love talking with and working with those people. So it’s an important part of this equation is knowing who that person is that you want to target.
Third, you want to learn to value your time and energy because if you don’t learn to value your time and energy then you are going to put up with things that drain you, because to you it’s just like time is just something that you go buy and you just allow to pass through you and you’re just there kind of almost a zombie sadly sometimes and you allow yourself to have to day after day work and situations that you don’t like, work around people that you don’t enjoy being around, doing the kinds of things that aren’t fulfilling, that are not necessarily your strengths.
Part of that is not valuing who you are and what you do have to offer and the time and energy which is a limited resource we all have, and we only have this life to live so why not make the most of that? And there’s a lot of great resources out there to help you learn about valuing your time and valuing your energy. One that we’ve really enjoyed came from an old mentor of ours, Dan Kennedy, who has a book called “No B.S. Time Management,” definitely something that you want to pick up. I think it’s only about $10 in paperback.
And that teaches a lot of great principles about how to not only manage your time, but really to value your time and carefully choose how you spend your time. The fourth thing is that you need to know your strengths. We talked earlier about freedom of expression being about having that ability to express the things that you’re best at, to do those things in your business, do those things to make money, have as much of the time in your life as possible spent doing those things that you’re really good at, that bring you energy and bring you great value to other people.
Two resources that have helped us really hone in on what it is that we feel like we do best and has really had an impact in our business and our fulfillment, and the kind of energy we have day to day working on our business. First of all, Strengths Finder 2.0 which is a little book you can go and buy on Amazon or at your local bookstore and that gives you access to an online assessment that really gives you a nice breakdown of here are the things that you’re good at, here are the kinds of things you might want to think about doing and how you can play to these strengths even more in your business or just in your life and your work, whatever it is that you’re doing.
Sterling: Yeah and if you’re getting just a little overwhelmed with books, don’t worry. This book, I think you read one chapter and then you take the test and then the only reading you do after that is you read about your specific strengths. So it’s a quick thing and a very enlightening process, to know those and realize what those strengths are so you can play to those.
Jay: Absolutely, awesome book. I know in Traffic Attraction Formula I recommended it early on in the first module where we’re talking about them coming up with a topic for their show and kind of planning their brand. And a lot of people said it just really, really helped them in honing in on what it was that they wanted to do so that it could really be as passionate and fulfilling of an experience as possible for them.
Another book that we’ve read that’s really helpful is called “Unique Ability,” it’s based on teachings by Dan Sullivan. It’s actually technically written by a bunch of his staff that put together his ideas in this book, so I don’t remember all the names right off, but if you just search Unique Ability on Amazon or online, you’ll find it. It’s like Unique Ability: How to Live the Life You Really Want I think is what it’s all about. And it just does a great job of honing in on again, what are your strengths, what should your business and your day-to-day stuff be focused on so that you can deliver the best value to the world and be the happiest and most fulfilled, just a really powerful idea and a powerful process to go through.
And then the number five thing you want to do is just make a commitment to yourself now to increase the amount of time you spend on your passions and strengths. One thing that we did in our business recently is we made kind of an inventory of all the different activities that we did in the business, and everything from sending emails to paying affiliates, to creating content, to doing the show – whatever the case may be and then we tried to kind of categorize. What we did was categorized all those different activities to whether we felt like these were things that were really our strengths and unique abilities that we were passionate about doing, or was it more on the end of the spectrum.
You know what, we’re really not good at doing these things, I don’t enjoy it, it drains me, I don’t know why I’m doing it, I actually don’t get great results because I’m not that good at it. Why am I doing it? So that we can start eliminating those things, and trying to focus more of our time on the things that do fulfill us. So if you make that inventory and try to guess what percentage of your time whether in your business or in your life in general you spend on your strengths, and that gives you a baseline and you can start making small goals and new habits so that you can gradually increase the amount of time and make a commitment to yourself to spend more time in all aspects of your life on doing those things that are your passions and are your strengths.
So there you go, that’s what freedom of expression is all about. We shared a number of the benefits that it brings you and the five steps we have here are: start your own internet business, build a business that attracts your ideal audience, learn to value your time and energy, know your strengths, and then make a commitment now to increase the amount of time you spend on your passions and strengths. So we just encourage you to pick one key element of what we talked about here in this episode and put that into action right away.
Maybe it’s to go read one of those books that we recommended, maybe it’s to keep working on your internet business. Sit down and think about who is my ideal audience, maybe it’s to do that baseline to figure out where you’re at on spending time on your passions and strengths. But pick one of those actions that you can put into…you can execute in the next month to start bringing yourself to a higher level of freedom of expression and enjoying some of those benefits that come along with that.
Alright, we just have one quick announcement and that’s to remind you again, the special holiday Q&A coming up on December 15th, 5 pm Pacific Standard Time. You can go to register for that at InternetBusinessGiftGuide.com. If it’s already past that date, still go and check out that site, lots of great recommended resources as well as a recording of that call that you can download and listen to. So go now to InternetBusinessGiftGuide.com.
It’s time for the Internet Business Quick Tip…
Jay: So Sterling, I have a favor to ask of you.
Sterling: Okay…
Jay: I need a video made and I want this video to like promote one of my products and make it look really, really cool. Okay, so you’re a marketer, you should be able to do that. However, I want it to be done Jersey Shore style, that TV Show Jersey Shore? So you’ve got to have the Jersey accent, have like the Italian big sunglasses. So you’ve got to put on the whole Jersey Shore shtick and make my product look really cool. And here’s the cool part is I’m going to pay you $5 to do it. What do you think of that?
Sterling: Yeah, I think I’ll pass.
Jay: Come on! Fine, I guess I’m just going to have to head over to Fiverr.com because right here is a guy for $5 that says, “I will record a video of myself making your product look cool Jersey Shore style for $5.” How about that?
Sterling: Nice! And look at all…there’s crazy stuff on here! “I will show you how to toilet train your cat for $5.”
Jay: “I will write your name on a grain of rice and send it to you for $5.” There’s a voiceover, voiceover work…$5.
Sterling: “I will write twenty comments on your blog for $5.”
Jay: “I will make a great banner for your site for $5.”
Sterling: So it’s not just crazy goofball stuff, there is some actual business stuff, which is part of the reason of mentioning it as well. There’s things like what we just said, there’s things about blogging, there’s different things like this that also are for $5.
Jay: Yeah, there’s a whole business category actually. I’ve seen people on here saying, “I’ll install WordPress for you for $5,” “I’ll do a video testimonial for you for $5,” yeah here it is, “I’ll install WordPress for your blog for $5.” “I will practice English with you via Skype for $5.” It’s amazing, Fiverr.com. So head over there is you have some little task that you want to outsource for your business or just your life in general, if you’ve never outsourced before, this is a great way to just dive in and give it a try.
I mean look, $5 – you’ve got nothing to lose. Practice delegating, get someone doing something for you, go check it out. There’s no excuse and it’s just a lot of fun in the meantime to see what you can get people to do for you for $5. So give it a try.
Sterling: Now if you’d like dozens of other resources such as this one, you can find them in the Internet Business Mastery Academy, along with video tutorials showing you exactly how we use them. To get a 30-day no risk trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy, visit freeaudiogift.com. That’s it for this episode of Internet Business Mastery, until next time we wish you ultimate success in your internet business!
You’ve been listening to the iconoclasts of the 9 to 5, and the purveyors of freedom and fulfillment – Sterling and Jay. Sterling and Jay invite you to discover one of their most popular audio programs ever – The 3 Pillars of Designing Your Ultimate Internet Lifestyle. Visit freeaudiogift.com now and sign up for the free weekly Internet Business Mastery email newsletter and you’ll get instant access to this life changing audio presentation pulled directly from the content of the acclaimed Internet Business Mastery Academy membership community. Go now to freeaudiogift.com. Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!
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