Episodes
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Kyle Gray is a mentor within The Foundation who helps businesses turn their stories into growth tools. He is also the author of the bestselling book The Story Engine, which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs tell their stories and grow their businesses with content marketing.
Kyle developed many of the strategies and systems he uses while working for WP Curve, a startup that grew to 7 figures using content marketing and was recently sold to GoDaddy.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Learn more at TheStoryEngine.co Connect with Kyle on Twitter: @KyleTheGray “How To Create Content For Every Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey”
Production & Development for The Foundation: Starting From Nothing Podcast by Podcast Masters -
Craig Filek is on a mission to map the purpose genome of humanity... for humanity. He is the Executive Director of the Purpose Genome Institute and the creator of a psychological technology for unlocking your potential called Purpose Mapping®.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Learn more at PurposeMapping.com To begin Purpose Mapping for free, visit www.PurposeMapping.com/andy-drishProduction & Development for The Foundation: Starting From Nothing Podcast by Podcast Masters
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Missing episodes?
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Ryan Moran returns to discuss his plans for building a $100M business. If you’re not familiar with Ryan already, he’s the Founder of both Capitalism.com and Freedom Fast Lane – and, although he’s barely 30-years-old, he recently exited a company for eight figures.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Learn more at Capitalism.com Listen to Freedom Fast Lane Listen to SFN179: Ryan Moran on Entering the Freedom Fast Lane -
Torben Anderson was in the corporate rat race for 20 years. Now he’s Founder of Rewired and, after just a few months, he’s generating $20k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) – with just three customers.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/blog.
Resources
Connect with Torben: Rewired.co | LinkedIn -
Just six months ago, Rufus Casey had one customer for his software product, GrowFlow – fast forward to today and he’s generating $26k in monthly recurring revenue. We dig in and share a case study of every step along the way.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Learn more at GetGrowFlow.com -
Phil MacNevin has over 16 years of experience in design, digital marketing, entrepreneurship training, and leadership, and his unique background has allowed him to work with some of the top people and brands in the industry: His digital marketing agency, LiftMedia, has built and automated marketing funnels for industry experts like Eben Pagan, Jordan Belfort, Christian Mickelsen, Chandler Bolt, and The Foundation.
Phil also launched a new podcast, Automate and Convert, where he helps entrepreneurs increase traffic, optimize conversions, and maximize their productivity – all while automating their business and marketing.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Learn more: LifeMedia.co | YouTube Connect with Phil: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn Listen to Phil’s podcast: Automate and Convert Launch by Jeff Walker -
Sergey Zuev is a Starting From Nothing listener in the Ukraine who started his own software company a little over a year ago, and it is steadily growing and generating more money each month. We’re going to learn exactly what he did, where the idea came from, how he got the first version built, how he’s been marketing and selling it, and what he’s planning to do next.
Sergey’s software, GA Connector, connects your sales software with Google Analytics so you can track your website visitors all the way to a physical sale.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Connect with Sergey: [email protected] Sign up for Sergey’s weekly news & tips at performancemarketing.io GA Connector -
Have you struggled to get heard in the entrepreneurial space?
There’s a lot of noise in the space, but Jeremy is the Founder of the Create Your Own Life Podcast and he specializes in helping entrepreneurs share their story and get heard. After the initial success of the podcast, Jeremy partnered with Daniel Gefen to launch Get Featured to help other entrepreneurs get their message out by appearing as guests on the right podcasts.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Connect with Jeremy: JeremyRyanSlate.com | Facebook | Twitter Listen to the Create Your Own Life Podcast Learn more about Get Featured Want to be an epic podcast guest? Learn how by downloading the FREE checklist: GetFeatured.com/checklist -
Jules Schroeder is the founder of Unconventional Life, a media and experiences company that operates a podcast on the Forbes Under 30 channel, while hosting five-day business accelerators in exotic locations worldwide.
Her mission to inspire and empower millennials to live a life by their own design, where their greatest source of happiness is also their source of income.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Connect with Jules: JulesSchroeder.com | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTubeLearn more about the upcoming event: unconventionallifeshow.com/Nicaragua
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Since joining The Foundation in January 2017, Eathan Janney has launched a business (Invisible String Software), pre-sold his first webinar, and started generating revenue. We share what he’s done along this journey so that you can skip some of the mistakes he made and leverage the lessons he learned.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Connect with Eathan: [email protected] Read Eathan’s writing at the Floating Piano Blog Learn more about Invisible String Software -
Matt Bodnar is a partner at early stage investment firm Fresh Hospitality, who are on a mission to help entrepreneurs grow by providing financial and intellectual capital to growing businesses in the food service value chain. He’s also the creator and host of The Science of Success podcast, which is focused on improving decision-making and understanding psychology.
Matt’s work earned him a spot on the Forbes “30 Under 30”, called a “Rising Restaurateur Star” by the National Restaurant Association, and labeled a “Strategy Pro” by Restaurant Hospitality Magazine.
In This Interview I Ask:
1:50 - How did Matt get started in the restaurant industry, and doing what he does now? 5:10 - Why restaurants? 9:20 - When it comes to sifting through decisions, how many deals does Matt look at before investing in one? What is he looking for, and how does he know when one is going to be a winner? 17:00 - How does Matt leverage his time? 25:50 - What are the highest impact things that Matt does? Where does his time go on a day-to-day basis?Value Added Investors
There are two fundamental investment strategies:
The discovery of value The creation of valueFresh Hospitality doesn’t invest in companies hoping to discover a gem that increases in value – they go in every single day to add as much value to that investment as possible.
They do still want to invest in companies with a lot of potential, so they heavily consider the Founder and how the brand is positioned in the marketplace.
Investing in Systems, Processes, and Technology
Restaurants are a fairly complex and low-margin business, so you have to have really good systems and processes in place. Fresh Hospitality specializes in implementing effective systems and process to add value to their investments, and that’s one of the keys to their success in the industry.
A private technology company does all of their in-house IT and developed a proprietary SaaS platform to run all of their businesses, with custom analytics. The invest in an accounting company specializing in restaurants.The result is complete visibility in operations and minute control over costs.
How High Achievers Learn to Leverage Time
At some point, there’s a hard limit on the amount of time you can work. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and other high achievers are more high leverage in how they use their time than most other people.
They can produce exponentially larger results than most people, in the same amount of time… but how?
They focus on improving their decision-making ability. This is one of the best possible investments you can make with your time because the knowledge never becomes less valuable. They continue to focus on learning information that doesn’t change over time (or changes very slowly), and the compounding benefits create exponential shifts in how they view the world.If you want to start leveraging your time more effectively, head over to successpodcast.com/better to pick up Matt’s “4 Steps to Making Better Decisions” guide.
Resources
Learn more about Matt at MattBodnar.com Listen to The Science of Success at SuccessPodcast.com “4 Steps to Making Better Decisions” -
If you are a non-technical person, you can still start (and grow) a successful software company.
Dan Schwartz is the Founder & CEO of InvestorFuse, a bootstrapped SaaS company that just hit $1M in annual revenue. However, Dan isn’t a developer and he hasn’t written any code.
Dan also wrote one of The Foundation’s most successful guest blog posts, “The SaaS Cheat Code," and today he’s going to share the cheat code with you.
In This Interview I Ask:
1:40 - How did Dan get started, and how did he wind up building a software company? 5:30 - What was the community you shared your solution with, and how did you reach them? 11:20 - It’s expensive to build the software from scratch so, instead of doing that, Dan built it on top of Podio. How much did that save you? 12:30 - Did the customer base care at all that it was built on Podio? 16:50 - What were Dan’s biggest lessons from all of this? 19:40 - Where is Dan going next?People Don’t Care How Their Problems are Solved
“We could have built InvestorFuse on Microsoft Word, as long as it did what we said it would do.”
When starting InvestorFuse, Dan saved a lot of money by building the product on top of Podio. They were able to go from idea to beta launch in just three months!
Dan wrote in his guest post, “Here’s the big realization: Cloud based software services, APIs, and integrations that connect all these tools together have made it easier than ever for non-techy people to quickly prototype the building blocks of a SaaS … A ton of investors were using Podio at the time because of its flexibility, but with flexibility came some challenges.”
Dan solved those problems by systematizing and automating parts of Podio.
By productizing the automation service, he was able to sell customers a solution. The customers didn’t care that it was built on Podio because they were still able to stay on top of their leads and close more deals.
Resources
Learn more about InvestorFuse Connect with Dan: [email protected] -
Do you really understand how to address large-scale problems?
James Schmachtenberger has a unique education emphasizing the interconnected nature of large-scale problems, and this drives James to approach societal and health challenges with solutions that account for the entirety of a problem, rather than solving for one issue while creating another.
This mission recently led James to Founding the Neurohacker Collective, an applied neuroscience company that has assembled some of the world’s most accomplished doctors, scientists, and intellectuals to address the optimization of the human consciousness itself. Their first product to market, Qualia, is a revolutionary cognitive enhancement product and the most advanced nootropic on the market.
We discuss the importance of our world’s interconnectedness and how entrepreneurs can use universal principles of interconnectedness to make a greater impact.
In This Interview I Ask:
1:15 - How did James become somebody who has that kind of bio and thinks about problems in that type of way? 4:00 - When James talks about universal principles and why they matter, and the connectedness of all things, why is that something an entrepreneur should be taking into account? And what does he mean by universal principles? 8:20 - What were James’ parents like? 9:50 - Does James think about philosophy a lot, on a day-to-day basis? What philosophies shapes his lens and the way he sees things? 11:20 - How is having the experience of a more connected perspective going to help someone make a greater impact? How can people go about doing that? 14:30 - How does someone shift from thinking about self to thinking about the bigger picture, and how do they make it habitual? 24:10 - Empathy is possibly one of the greatest skills you can have as a human. Nobody really talks about it, but it is the driving force behind so many different things.Universal Principles & Entrepreneurs
In Western society, we have a tendency to think about things very separately. We compartmentalize our health, business, relationships, politics, the environment, and just about everything else. We don’t tend to look at how all of the different facets of life interconnect and guide each other
If you only take into account the one thing you’re looking at or interested in, and don’t take into account how that plays into everything else, you’re going to be looking at too narrow of a picture – and, as a result, you will have a much lower likelihood of succeeding at whatever you care about or creating a real impact.
The Value of a Macro Perspective
“Whatever it is that we put a substantial portion of our time and attention into is going to take up our awareness and shape the kinds of thoughts we’re having and the actions we’re taking.“
If your thoughts are primarily focused around meeting your own needs, that will be the extent of where your mind allows you to go, and that’s not a meaningful or motivating place to focus a huge amount of your attention.
When you expand our awareness into a bigger picture, particularly how you can contribute to the bigger picture in a beneficial way, daily life becomes easier and you can affect more.
How to Become More Connected
“Pay attention to something bigger than yourself that motivates you, take some action, and more starts to illuminate along the path.”
The ability to hold a bigger picture is a skillset that has to be developed:
Start by picking something bigger than yourself that you already care about, and start investing more time and attention into that. You generally can’t start with the whole. From there, you will inherently start to learn all of the other things that apply to that space and this will allow for expanded awareness.Enhance your capacity for empathy:
Empathy isn’t just caring or understanding – it’s allowing yourself to fully step into the experience of another living creature and allowing yourself to experience life as they do. That is the most profound way to expand one’s capacity for awareness, and for real maturity.Resources
Get 10% off Qualia using the coupon code FOUNDATION at Neurohacker.com Learn more about Neurohacker Collective: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube -
Do you know how to captivate people?
Today, you’ll find out how science can help make every social interaction more successful.
Vanessa Van Edwards is a national best selling author and the lead investigator at her human behavior research lab, ScienceofPeople.com. She is a professional people watcher and her goal is to crack the code of interesting human behavior. She shares her research with audiences around the world, and in her book Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People.
Vanessa also preaches the idea of being the most memorable person in the room, and what she preaches is exactly why we met. In this episode, we discuss why being memorable is valuable in networking, and how you can use her research to improve your social interactions both in person and online.
You will learn…
The key to good social interactions The two types of game-changing relationships Where people screw up the most in social interactions (and how to avoid it)Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Learn more about Science of People: Website | Facebook | YouTube Connect with Vanessa: Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People by Vanessa Van Edwards -
Don’t listen to self-doubt – anyone can live an abundant life.
Caitlin Pyle is an entrepreneur who started out as a freelance proofreader and, just three years ago, had zero knowledge about marketing and product creation. Now Caitlin and her husband Ben (also a Foundation alumni) manage BCP Media, a multi-million dollar media company with multiple blogs and digital products, including the site that started it all, Proofread Anywhere.
Caitlin’s life mission is to help hardworking people worldwide develop the success-oriented mindset and skills they need to generate income, from anywhere, online.
In This Interview I Ask:
2:20 - How is Caitlin’s mindset different than it was three years ago? 9:20 - Cultivating skills matters. Are there any skills that Caitlin is working on right now? 10:40 - What is it like working with a spouse? 13:45 - Tell me about the webinar “unlaunch.” 16:40 - Where is Caitlin generating leads? 21:00 - If someone is starting from scratch but wants the same kind of lifestyle that Caitlin has, where should they start? 23:15 - What were the most significant mindset shifts that Caitlin has had over the past three years?Mindset: What a Difference Three Years Make
“I look at skills as the real job security. If you can create your own income, you’re way better off than someone who depends on a job for income.”
Three years ago, Caitlin looked at earning money as something for other people. Seeing other people get money made her feel bad because it felt like there was less for her – it was a scarcity mindset that limited her.
This mindset still comes back from time to time, when she is on the precipice of something she never thought would be possible – but, every time, she has smashed through that barrier and life continues to get more abundant.
Real, Limitless Job Security
“We can create our own job security by learning new skills. The more skills you have, the more income you can generate – there really is no limit to it.”
Now Caitlin realizes that there is an almost endless well of opportunity in the world, especially online, if we learn to leverage our skills and make our own income.
Start by reflecting on where you are right now: what gets you excited? Chase the thing that excites you, find people who are doing that, and learn from them.
Don’t try to chase the big picture. Keep your focus on the step that is immediately in front of you, accomplish those smaller tasks, and then the big picture won’t look so impossible or overwhelming.
Resources
TheWorkAnywhereLife.com ProofreadAnywhere.com -
If you are trying to start a business, you’ve probably been through some trials and tribulations along the way… and today we’re talking to someone who triumphed over their year of hell and came out stronger on the other side.
Kyle Racki is the CEO of Proposify, a seven-figure software business with $250k MRR after only three years. We discuss the start of his entrepreneurial journey, some of the challenges he had to overcome, and how he is growing Proposify.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Connect with Kyle: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Medium Learn more about Proposify: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube “How This Startup Founder Triumphed Over His Year of Hell” via TimeProduction & Development for The Foundation: Starting From Nothing Podcast by Podcast Masters
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We all know starting a business is hard – and it’s even harder when you have a full-time job and a family to feed.
Balancing all of these priorities is extremely difficult… but it’s not impossible.
Today’s guests, Dean Collura and Eliot Dill, were facing that exact challenge when they started TitleTap. However, they still managed to grow the company from nothing to hundreds of customers and hundreds of thousands dollars of revenue in just a few years.
In this episode, they will share how they got there, the challenges they faced along the way, and how you can bootstrap something when you have so many other responsibilities.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com
Resources
Learn more about Dean & Eliot (and get free tips) at DiligentMe.com Learn more about TitleTap: TitleTap.com | Facebook | LinkedIn | TwitterProduction & Development for The Foundation: Starting From Nothing Podcast by Podcast Masters
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Entrepreneurs and high achievers often struggle with the simple parts of living a good life, like relationships.
Today’s guest, Mark Manson, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, a blogger, and an internet entrepreneur – plus he’s hilarious, insightful, and wise.
We explore how he grows his business as an independent writer, why romance is an overrated aspect of relationships, and his plans for the future.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Connect with Mark: Website | Facebook | Twitter The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark MansonProduction & Development for The Foundation: Starting From Nothing Podcast by Podcast Masters
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Raj Jana scaled JavaPresse Coffee Co. to six figures of monthly revenue in just one year, and it’s only picking up steam.
Raj is the Founder and Chief Brewing Officer of JavaPresse Coffee Co., a company that creates innovative products that make coffee fun. He JUST left his day job (after working out an incredible deal to receive severance) and is gearing up to invest in the business full-time.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com
Resources
Connect with Raj: [email protected] Learn more about JavaPresse Coffee: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube -
Do you struggle with generating attention when you start a new project?
Maneesh Sethi is one of the most eclectic, interesting, and written-about guests we’ve had on the show. He authored an international bestselling book when he was 14, trekked across the world for a Travel Channel show, and created Pavlok – the world’s first wearable that actually changes behavior.
Whether he’s becoming a famous DJ in 90 days or hiring a woman from Craigslist to slap him when he uses Facebook, Maneesh has a knack for generating attention and press.
Click here to order Pavlok 2 at a discount.
Click here to learn more and read the blog post at TheFoundation.com/podcast.
Resources
Order Pavlok 2 at a discount Learn more on Maneesh’s blog: Hack The System The Art of SpeedReading People: How to Size People Up and Speak Their Language by Paul D. Tieger & Barbara Barron-Tieger - Show more
