Seanwes Podcast

I want to talk about this concept I call Gold Miner. A gold miner is someone who is always looking for something positive out of every situation. What a lot of people tend to do is they try to find someone who mostly shares gold—this is good, you want to find people who mostly share gold. But what you don't want to do is completely ignore people that you disagree with, who maybe share things you don't like, or have different views than you, or things that you would consider junk. It's easy to pay attention to the people you mostly agree with and who give you things you appreciate. But a lot of people tend to ignore and avoid people they disagree with. Even if there was something good, they don't see it because they throw everything out. A gold miner doesn't care how much they have to dig through. All they care about is finding that one little bit of gold anywhere they can find it. Every situation you encounter, every conversation you have, every book you read—you're looking for that little piece of go

We're going to talk about money today. We'll be covering the product spectrum, starting with the problem, not the passion, becoming passionate about the problem, and the one thing you lack that's keeping you broke. You can't just do what you want all day and expect that to lead to making money. Yes, it is possible to reach a point where the way you make money involves doing things you enjoy, but you don't get there haphazardly. You get there purposefully. Time is money. People will give up their money if you give them time. To give them time, you need to do work for them or solve a problem for them. You need to be good at doing work that someone else doesn't want to do or can't do. If you're fortunate, that thing is something you happen to like doing. There are two ways to reliably make a living doing what you love: 1. Become passionate about the problem. Get good at solving the problem. When you're good at something that makes you money, this can turn into something you're passionate about. 2. Become pa

Virtual reality is coming. It's not just for video games. It's not just science fiction. We already live in virtual worlds. Look around you. Everyone has their face buried in their phone screen. What will simply happen is the screen will no longer be something you hold in your hands. The awkward straps and head gear you see with early virtual reality devices is not how it's always going to be. Computers used to be the size of a city block. People thought a computer would never, ever fit inside a home. The inevitability is that virtual reality will become more seamless, effortless to use, prevalent, and get closer and closer to looking like real life. It doesn't matter whether you like the idea of it or not. This is the future you will live in. And it's not something you can put off thinking about. You need to be preparing right now. If you want to succeed in an increasingly digital world, there are things you need to be doing right now to prepare. You need to be able to interact with humans and do it w

Dark social is traffic to your website that comes from sources that can't be tracked in your analytics. Every time you share a link in Messages.app, or Snapchat, or in a private chat room, you are engaging in dark social. These conversations can't be indexed by search engines. Your links open up directly in the browser and don't have any referral data. Marketers are somewhat worried because the amount of traffic coming from dark social is increasing. What does this mean for you as a creator? Well, a lot of things. It really just harkens back to the principles of word of mouth. We will revisit 7 ways to encourage more word of mouth referrals in this episode. But beyond just being aware that people are sharing links to your content in places that can't be tracked, you should also be engaging with these people one-on-one as much as possible. As things have become increasing automated and people are scheduling social media posts now, we are understandably yearning for personal interaction. Actually engaging

Today, we're building off of the last episode on creating products. In the last episode, we talked about the order in which you should create products. You first start with something small, then launch something big. After that, you want to go back and fill out the spectrum. You need more products on the shelf. You need more products at all levels. At every price point someone wants to give you money, you need to have an offering. Today's episode is jam-packed with creative ideas for quickly getting more products on the shelf. We talk about things like selling your process, templates, scripts, copywriting checklists, launch plans and so much more... The best part? We're not just talking about making new things. Yes, we do give you a TON of ideas for quick products you can crank out in a short amount of time, but it doesn't have to be new work. You can repurpose what you've already made. We're going to help you make money from work you've already done. You have so many potential products right now under y

Don't know where to start with products? Should you start small? Should you go big? This episode will help. We break down the most sustainable order. You want to get to something that’s big as soon as possible, but that doesn't mean it's where you should start with your very first product. If your first product is too big, you can easily get overwhelmed and never end up shipping. You'll end up biting off more than you can chew. I recommend that you start small and ship a small product to prove to yourself that you can do it. You're going to work out the kinks and learn a lot. You'll make mistakes too. Better to do that at a small scale first. Launching a small product first lets you iterate and develop processes. You'll learn what it takes to market and sell. You'll learn about payment processing. You'll learn about delivery of goods (whether physical or digital). All of this informs your big product. That's the next step: maximize revenue. This becomes the fuel to all of your other ventures. This flags

This episode title is tongue in cheek: The reason you can't MAKE money is because making money is illegal. That's called counterfeiting. This isn't just a silly play on words though. It's to illustrate an important concept: You don't MAKE money, you GET money. You have to go GET money. Someone else has your money. A stranger has your money. You need to go get it from them. Who are the people you want to reach? Who has your money and what do they want? What can you provide them? How can you give them a solution to a problem they have that they're willing to pay to make go away? You need to figure out a way to create value and exchange it for money. This episode is about selling. The degree to which you are sold you will sell. Read that last sentence again, it's important. If you're not selling, you're not sold on your product. You don't actually believe in what you're selling. This episode will remind you that you are a BUSINESS and help you focus on the things that matter.

This episode is about finding your professional focus. You cannot pursue multiple things. Think about the literal definition of the word "pursuit". You cannot pursue more than one thing. Imagine you are in a field and holding three foxes by the tail. They are all struggling to escape. You let go and they dash off. Now, pursue all three. You can't do it. You'll run around like a chicken with its head cut off. You might catch one if you focus on one. You're feeling overwhelmed right now because you don't have clarity. There are too many things you could be doing and you're trying to do them all. With the pursuit of many things in your lack of clarity, you become overwhelmed. Too many projects. Too many choices. Too much to manage. You need to find your focus. You need to know what you're going after because it informs everything else you're doing.

It's time. We're getting serious about money today. Business models, cash, client work, day jobs. You have to get your money right. No, it's not about your expenses. It's that you're not making money. If you're MAKING money, expenses are not the problem. Do you want to save $100 or make $1,000? We're going to get your money right today, and we're going to help you keep your business alive instead of running it into the ground. I want you to be around next year. I don't want you burnt out and hating your passion. It starts with money. You must get your money situation right. You must start with money. Money is not evil. Money is a necessity. You have to have it. We're not talking about pursuing money for its own sake either. Money is an enabler of purpose. If you're not focused on your money, you don't actually care about your purpose. Let's get real about making money today.

If you don't have an interesting challenge, you can't create an interesting story. People enjoy stories where someone faces, and ultimately overcomes, a big challenge. Think of any TV show you're watching to right now. In any given episode, someone wants something, they can't get it because of some obstacle, and they spend the course of the show doing what it takes to try to get it. Every compelling story is comprised of several common elements and you can use these elements intentionally to craft a compelling story. Aaron Dowd joins me to talk about creating your interesting story to get people addicted to tuning in to your content.

70% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. It shouldn't be like this. You've got to get ahead. In your personal life and with your business, you need to get ahead of barely making it month to month. You're living in stress and you're stuck in Scarcity Mindset. You need money in the bank. At least six months of income. You need enough cash in the bank to cover all of your expenses for six months if nothing was coming in. I call this figure "The New Zero". To calculate it for yourself, take your monthly expenses and multiply them by six. If monthly expenses for you and your family are $5,000, you need $30,000 in the bank (six months). That means if you have less than $30,000, you need to see that as being in the hole. If you have $24,000, think of that as having -$6,000. You are below the minimum threshold. This is not a luxury. This is a necessity. Living paycheck to paycheck in scarcity should not be a reality you accept. It should not be something you get complacent about. It needs to be something you

I take a week off every seventh week. I also pay my employees to take off every seventh week. I call this Small Scale Sabbaticals. I was working 18-hour days, seven days a week with no end in sight, and I was heading towards burn out. I knew some people took off a year every seven years as a "sabbatical" and I knew we took off a day every seven days each week, but why was there nothing in between? I decided to try it and I decided to prioritize it with my team. I started doing it in 2014 and haven't look back. It's been incredible. We feel healthier every time, we feel rested, we're excited to get back to work, and I truly believe we are more productive as a whole. I certainly know we all do better work. I've been sharing my journey of taking Small Scale Sabbaticals for some time now. You may be wondering how you could possibly do this yourself. Maybe you're thinking, "How could I possibly take off even a day—much less a whole week?!" How can you take a sabbatical when you can't afford to? The answer is

The seanwes podcast is now going to have only one new episode a week instead of two. In 2013, I started the seanwes podcast with a commitment to produce two episodes a week. For nearly three years now, we've done that. However, some big changes are on the horizon for seanwes. I'm here to tell you about a few of those changes today. I took a step back. Actually, I took many steps back. Then I asked myself, "What is our mission? What is my vision for seanwes?" When I had that answer, I asked a second question: "Is everything I'm doing right now serving that goal?" The answer was no. Many of the things I was doing on a regular basis were not helping me fulfill that vision. They were not getting me closer to the goal. I was just doing them because I'd fallen into a routine of fulfilling commitments I'd made long ago when my goals were different. Things had to change. There are big changes coming to seanwes. I'm going to share a few of them with you today.

Most people do not feel confident about their pricing. They are not 100% certain that the price they put on their proposal is completely fair to the client and completely fair to them. A common misconception about Value-Based Pricing is that you will charge some companies more just because they're bigger. That is not at all the case. In fact, two companies of vastly different sizes will always receive a quote of the same price if the value they get in return is the same. Value-Based Pricing is the fairest pricing model in existence because it ensures a client never pays more than a fraction of the value they're getting. Of course, discovering and uncovering that value in an accurate fashion is the key. You then have to take that quantified value and calculate a value-based price that also accounts for the time it takes to realize that value. That's what we teach inside the Value-Based Pricing course, and that's what the tools we've developed will help you accomplish.

How do you find clients that pay well? First, stop saying yes to all the wrong clients. You will never convert the wrong client into a great client. The only way to get great clients is to attract them. You have to be the kind of person they want to work with. You can't chase them, you must attract them. Chasing clients starts the relationship off on the wrong foot and leads to problems. This fights the Rule of Reciprocity. There's only one way to get on peoples' radar without chasing them (we talk about it in the episode). But attracting clients means attracting all kinds of clients—including ones you don't want to work with. That means you have to filter people out. You do this by asking questions. Yes, there are bad questions to ask. We share one question you should never ask in this episode. To get great clients, you need hyper-selectivity. You must say no to all other potential clients. Even the good ones. If the client is not a great client, you say no. This advice is counter to what most other p

You want to do good work. You want to be paid well. You want to work with great clients. There's only one thing stopping you: your broken pricing model. The way you're pricing right now is holding you back. Everything is based on arbitrary numbers. Hourly rates and flat rates both have the same issue: they have to be based on arbitrary numbers at some level. What's wrong with that? The problem is that your goal and your client's goal are not aligned. With hourly, you're trying to work as much as possible so you get paid more. Your client wants you to work as quickly as possible so they can pay you less. With flat rates, you're trying to get the job done as quickly as possible because there's no other way to increase your earnings. But where does that flat rate come from? It can only be arbitrary. When your pricing is based on arbitrary numbers, you can never be certain if your price is fair. It could be unfair to the client (you may be overcharging), or it could be unfair to you (and you should have bee

Maybe you’re thinking about creating an online course. A lot of people want to start creating their own online courses and it makes sense: you record your curriculum, lessons, or videos once and then it’s an asset for you. It continues to serve you, teach other people, and bring in revenue automated on a consistent basis. Who wouldn’t want this? However, I actually recommend that you host an in-person workshop before you create an online course. That seems really strange because a workshop requires you to be there in person. You have to teach people, you have to be present at the workshop, and you only make money at that one event. Once a workshop is over, you don’t make any more money. If you want to make more money, you have to do another event. Why in the world would I recommend doing a workshop first instead of creating an online course from the start? In a word: validation.

I know you have big goals. I know you have ambitions and things you want to accomplish. This episode is for you if you have a significant other or someday plan to. Successful people know what they want, they know what they're going for, and they invest all of their energy in getting there. You need clarity and you need concentrated efforts. If your spouse is not on board, you will not be successful. Read that sentence again. I'm serious. You cannot make progress when the very person who is your other half is not on board. If someone is not helping you get closer to your goal, they are taking you away from it. You must get your spouse on board with your vision. You have to be completely on the same page. It's going to take time. It's going to take a tremendous amount of time and investment, but you absolutely have to do it. It means spending time with them, it means having conversations with them, it means doing the things they enjoy, it means making sacrifices. You have no business spending a single se

Most people are not taking action on your content. There's always something you're wanting people to do. Maybe you want someone to reply, buy, share, or subscribe. For instance, today, I want you to listen to this podcast episode. The problem is you're giving people too many calls to action (CTA). If you want people to do something, tell them to do less! The hardest thing is getting people to take any action at all. When you're so busy setting out an array of options for people, you're not addressing the primary reasons most of your audience isn't taking any action at all. Today, we talk about moving people from inaction to action by focusing your message.

Being old is not an age thing. It's a mindset thing. You know what I'm talking about. You know people who, despite their age, seem just as youthful as ever. It's as if they missed the memo on how you're supposed to act once you reach a certain age. I think you can be 50 and be young. I think you can be 70 and be young. I think you can be 105 and be young. Old is when you lose your plasticity and willingness to adapt or change. There is only one thing that is constant: change. It's all you can count on. You can be sure that change will continue to happen and you can be sure that change will continue to be uncomfortable. New technologies come that seem strange. Suddenly everyone is talking about a new device or new app. What's with all the emojis everywhere? Why are the photos disappearing? How are these people spending hours by themselves with virtual reality gear on their head? Our initial reaction will be to reject these things. These things are foreign. They're unfamiliar. We resist because it's differ