How do we use technology to facilitate real relationships? That’s the big question driving Gina Bianchini’s epic entrepreneurial quest. Today we’re talking about the magic phrase that will transform what you’re building, the difference between social networks versus social media, why a course is not a community, how to avoid working too hard as the host, and why you might benefit from building a small, tight-knit group before trying to grow a bigger audience.

As Gina writes in her new book, Purpose, “Community takes things from incremental to exponential: If a community of just five people each helped the other members get just one percent better every day, that one percent compounded by four over a year ends up making everyone two million times better.”

How many times have you gone skidding into vacation, arriving exhausted from trying to “earn” it before you leave? Then feeling guilty for any loose ends you were unable to tie up in time, maybe even brooding the first few days because you’re so burned out that you aren’t even enjoying your precious time off nearly as much as you thought you would?

Research shows that we can experience diminishing returns when we have too much free time, which might explain the onset of vacation blues. In this episode, I’m sharing my rollercoaster that arises at the beginning of longer stretches of free time and a few strategies for settling in to find true peace and relaxation.

Here are a few food-for-thought reflection questions, inspired by today’s guest: Are you working with amateur clients or ones who bring out the best in you? Are you pricing the “aggravation factor” into your proposals when necessary? What about “throwing proposals over the fence,” creating self-inflicted stress when prospective clients ghost you as a result? Finally, are you stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle of your business?

If any of the questions above resonate, you will love this conversation with Ilise Benun, who has been running her business helping creative professionals for over 35 years. Ilise shares The Proposal Oreo Strategy; how she stays consistent with content creation while walking the line between discipline and rigidity; why she sees word-of-mouth marketing as a result, not real marketing; and creating abundant interstitial time by embracing eigenzeit—the German term meaning “the time inherent to a process itself.”

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “A book is a business card.” That’s because what you don’t hear is that a book is a wonderful revenue generator! It isn’t — at least not directly. The extreme Time-to-Revenue Ratio of writing and marketing a book is not for the faint of heart, unless the book connects directly to a larger part of your business model, serving as lead generation for more profitable products and services.

Some interesting stats for you: Even the big behemoth, Penguin Random House, reports that just 35 percent of books they publish are profitable. Among those that make money, just 4 percent account for 60 percent of those profits. In 2021, fewer than one percent of the 3.2 million titles that BookScan tracked sold more than 5,000 copies.

Continuing on last week’s conversation about the three different publishing options and how to choose which one is right for you, today I’m diving deep into the mysterious royalty waters. How do each of the three methods — self, hybrid, traditional — stack up? Listen in to find out.

Prolific punchy pontificator Khe Hy—creator of the $10K work accelerator and Supercharge Your Productivity—returns to the pod to share his strategy for collecting inspiring content, repackaging interesting tidbits, and regularly hitting “publish” on his newsletter, RadReads.

Today we’re talking about idea kernels: micro-ideas that can be elaborated upon and turned into different kinds of content that help you connect with your audience, and your fellow creators. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Khe’s earlier episode on 129: The $10K Work Framework.

Should you self-publish? This is a big debate among aspiring authors, and there is no one right answer. Today I’m sharing my take on the three main publishing options you have to get a book into the world:

1. Self-publishing (including direct-to-ebook or audiobook) where you hire your own team of specialists along the way.

2. Hybrid where you partner with an established publisher, while fronting the costs as an author (for the team they assemble and either print-on-demand or funding a larger print run), and

3. Traditional publishing with one of the “Big Five” publishing houses, where they give you an advance, and you get the cache of making it through the “gatekeeper” gauntlet.

Processing email and social media inboxes is overwhelming enough for one person — can you imagine creating an entire company to help entrepreneurs do this at scale?! Communication curmudgeon that I am, I most certainly cannot.

That’s why I invited today’s guest, Yaro Starek, to share the systems and approaches behind Inbox Done, his company that helps clients tame the never-ending email beast.

Do you ever feel like you’re just not good with systems? If so, then this is the episode for you. The more efficient we can be on the backend in our operations, the more time we can set free. Today, I’m going to share 5 questions you should ask to increase your awareness, heighten your senses, and be able to find those golden nuggets of opportunity that might be right under your nose but you're just not seeing. Identifying candidates for automation is a skill, and this episode will help you get better at it.