MBA853 5 Things I Learned From 5 People in 2016 Plus Free Ride Friday!

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Hey there $100 RMBA listeners, there's something very important I have to tell you this coming Monday, January 2nd, I'm going to be making a very important announcement about the show. It's going to be a special episode and don't worry, the show is not going anywhere, but I want to make sure you tune in because it's very important. I'll be sharing with you something very important that's going on behind the scenes here at our business and how we're going to be doing something a little bit different with the show. We're very excited to share that with you on Monday. It's going to be a really fun episode, so make sure you hit subscribe and you tune in on Monday for the episode. Also, today is Free Ride Friday, so make sure you hang on to the end of the episode to see who won this week's free ride to the 100 MBA training and community. Every Friday we do a weekly random draw with everybody who's left us itunes, ratings and reviews and somebody wins a free ride. All right, let's jump into today's episode. Hey O. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar NBA show, the business podcast that gives you more like Ivan Drago from Rocky iv. That's one of my favorite intros of all time. I wanted to bring it back. As always, I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson, you will learn five things I've learned from five people in 2016. If you're a follower of the podcast, we do this every single year. We did this in 2014, 15, and now 16. And we'll link up to the previous episodes here on the 100 RMBA show notes and you can check that out at 100mba.net mba853 so in today's episode, I'll be sharing with you five great insights that I've learned from five people that I've been studying this past year. Now, these people don't know I'm studying them, but it's something I like to do every single year. I try to learn from other people's work from afar. Some of these people are friends and some people don't even who I am. But the point here is that is I want to share with you what I've learned by studying these people and maybe encourage you to do the same this coming year. This is one of the funnest episodes of the year. I hope you love it. I hope you enjoy it. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. All right, five things I've learned from five people. Let's start with the first person I've been studying in 2016. And that person is Derek Sivers. Derek Sivers is the author of Anything youg Want and the founder of Sivers.org, this is where you can find what he's working on right now. And the founder of Sivers.org check out his site to see his work and what he's working on right now. You can check that out. Sivers.org now so what did I learn from Derek? So I got to know Derek because I picked up his book Anything youg Want. And I was a fan of his website and some of his blog posts. And the book really was a mind shifter. It really made me think differently about how I build my business, how I lead my business, how I kind of engineer my business to the way I want to live, how. And the biggest takeaway I got from just learning more and more about Derek and his work is that he just lives by his own rules. He runs his business and projects the way he wants to. He doesn't conform to what society thinks or what business should be or shouldn't be. He literally does what he thinks is right, what he wants. It's such a profound thing. But it's also very relieving when you hear somebody doing it, because it's like, wow, this is possible. I can just do what I want, create the business I want. I don't have to conform to any rules. I don't have to do any kind of, like, gimmicks or anything like that. For those who don't know, Derek ran a very successful business called CD Baby, and he's a huge thought leader in leadership and business. His TED Talk is very popular. I also recommend checking out his interview on the Tim Ferriss show. He gives some really great insights on that podcast. But all in all, the takeaway I got from Derek, which is huge, is you make your business what you want to be, he says. You make it your utopia. You make it the world you want it to be. Don't worry about what you should do. Think about what you want to do, what kind of business you want to live with every day. It's a huge shift of thinking. And it's also something you need to really consider as you're building your business. Because before you know, you're having a business on your hands, you don't recognize, like, what is this? Why did I create this business? So keep that in mind as you're growing, as you're building, as you're starting out. On a personal note, I've been studying Derek, and he's influenced me from afar. But recently I decided, hey, I just want to reach out to him. I reached out to him on Twitter. We had a couple exchanges on email. It's just nice to know that he's so approachable and that you can actually do something like that. I don't know why I'd never thought about doing it earlier, but I encourage you. If there's somebody that really inspires you that really has changed the way you think of a business or has influenced you in some way, reach out to them. Let them know, yes, they're busy, but I'm sure they want to hear from you. I'm sure they want to hear who they're affecting. It's always worth a try. So thanks, Derek, for all your insights and the influence you've had on me as an entrepreneur. All right. Second person that I've learned something from in 2016 is Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. Now, Pat is a very popular guy on the Internet. He has a successful podcast called Smart Passive Income. He has a very successful blog, smartpassiveincome.com there's a couple of things I learned from Pat this past year that you may have not noticed. Now, Pat's a huge content generator. He creates a lot of blog posts, a lot of podcast episodes, and he's an authority on online business in a lot of ways. He makes a lot of revenue in affiliate income. But in this past year, he's made a shift in his career, in his business. It's a conscious shift to create his own products. And that was kind of prompted to create his own products and his own offerings. And that was kind of ignited with his best selling book, Will It Fly. Now, Pat spoke about this book and what it's all about in a guest teacher episode here on launderlmba Show. But what he did with his book was very inspiring. It was a self published book that hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, something that he set out to do from the start and he accomplished it. I mean, that's an incredible feat. No publisher, no publicist just did it on his own. Yes, he got some help from his network, but that's something that he cultivated over the years. Now Pat's really creating some great courses off the back of that. Really huge success of that book. And I've kind of followed him along this year seeing this pivot. Reason being I have made a lot of pivots throughout my career and I'm going to be doing one in 2017. And it's scary because Pat's gonna have to let go of some things in order to build his own products. You know, what he has going is working. You know, it's making him money. But I love the way he did it and how he did it intentionally. Pat's also a very generous guy and probably one of the kindest people in business. If you ever met him in person, you'd definitely say the same. Pat's been a huge supporter of Webinar Ninja, our webinar software. We can't thank him enough for his support and for everything he's done to kind of spread the word. And he didn't even tell me he was going to do it. He just did it, which is awesome. I love that. But Pat is a good example of somebody who's had some serious success and is going to have to make a change, which is risky, to pivot his business in a direction he wants to go forward. I highly recommend you check out his blog, smartpassiveincome.com he has some really great blog posts about what he's working on and the decisions he makes. In business. So thanks, Pat, for showing us how to pivot, how to be intentional about it, and how to take some risks even when things are going well. All right. Person number three that taught me something in 2016 that I really, really value is Tim Page. Tim Page is the conversion educator at LeadPages. He's also the host of the podcast Conversion Cast, and he's also a very, very good voiceover actor. And you can check out his work at the Voice of Tim Page. Firstly, I knew Tim just from a distance, on Twitter, on email, and then I got a chance to spend some time with him. We both spoke at a six day conference, the podcast Cruise. This was a conference by John Lee Dumas and Kate Erickson from Podcasters paradise. And we both were speakers on this conference. And it was a cruise. It was a cruise conference. So I got to know him a little bit on a personal level from that point on, as well as some of the other speakers. But Tim and I just really became good friends. Even though we spent like six days together, I felt like we knew each other for a very long time and we kept in touch. And Tim's been a great supporter of our work. He's just a fantastic guy, and he taught me something very important. Tim is the kind of person that gives you support, gives you feedback, helps you out without expecting anything in return. He's a very selfless person, which is a very rare thing in business. Sometimes he's just a good guy. Like, he's a good person, and when somebody's like that with you, just can't help but want to reciprocate. Tim is just a giver. He's a real generous person with his time, with his thoughts, with his feedback. He's always available. If I ever want to, like, have a chat with him or send him a message or an email, he's always responsive. I mean, the guy's busy. I mean, the guy runs thousands of webinars. He literally has done thousands of webinars for leadpages, runs a great podcast, and has a really thriving voiceover career. I'm really proud of him. He's done some really great work for Jimmy Kimmel, for the Jimmy Kimmel Live show, for the ufc, the Travel Channel. He's really, really talented, and I'm really proud of him. But I really think a lot of his success is because he's so generous. I really believe that you get back what you put into this world. And Tim is such a giver. And that's kind of the takeaway I got from studying, Tim. Just give and don't worry about receiving anything in return. It's good to be a giver. It's a good trade. It's a good thing to be. Thanks Tim for teaching me that valuable lesson. All right, number four, fourth person that has taught me something insightful this last year and that's Chris Savage and the Wistia Team. Chris Savage is the co founder of Wistia.com, which is a video hosting solution for businesses. I'm sure you've heard of it. We've mentioned it a whole bunch of times on the show. One of the Wistia team members, Chris Levine, gave a guest teacher lesson here on the 100 MBA show on creating videos. But the thing I really learned from Chris and his team at Wistia this past year is that epic, great, valuable content is so valuable. It is incredibly valuable. It's such a great investment in your business. If you don't know Wistia has one of the best blogs and training portals for video marketing and video creation. Everything from lighting to scripting to cameras to you name it. If you're going to create a video, you have to check out Wistia's content. They do a great job with their videos and their guides and their blog posts and they really invest in creating great content. And the proof is in the pudding. They're ranked number one on Google for video hosts. Think about that. They're ranked number one for video hosts over some major major players. People that have been around a lot longer. A lot of big names like Vimeo are not even close to the ranking. Love Vimeo. But I got to say that Wisty did a great job with their content marketing. I mean he really shows you the power of great content, what you really do if you just invest in content and see as a long term plan. So great job Chris and the Wistia team Love what you guys do. Well done.

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Alright, number five, fifth person that has taught me something in 2016 and I'll share with you that insight and it's Sarah Blakely. Sarah Blakely is the founder of Spanx, which is an American intimate clothing company for women. Now, I don't know Sarah personally. You know, I've learned about her and studied her from afar. And if you want to learn more about her story, I really recommend the free first episode of How I Built this. It's a new podcast from npr and she goes through her whole story of how she created Spanx. Now, Sarah has plenty of accolades. She was listed as number 93 most popular woman in the world by Forbes. Time magazine listed her as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world. And Spanx is a billion dollar company. Now, we don't know exactly how much money Spanx makes because it's a private company. Sarah literally started this company out of her apartment and still owns 100% of this company. She started a billion dollar company with $5,000. She did her own trademark and spent $350 to trademark it herself. She got her mom to help her out with the, you know, designs and the drawings for the trademark. She bootstrapped the hell out of this business and grew it year after year. And the thing that's really inspiring and the biggest takeaway that I want to share with you that I learned from her this year and is that you can do this without funding. You can build your business with no investors, with no partners, with no seed funding or rounds of funding or any of that stuff, you could do it. She did it again. She still owns 100% of the company and she grew it step by step, year after year. She didn't go public, it's still private. And she's the sole owner of a billion dollar company. If that's not inspirational, I don't know what is. So think twice if you think you need external funding or investors. I mean, she started a business in retail. This is physical items, this is clothing. There's a lot more overhead than an app. And I'm saying this as a software business owner, so what an inspiration. It shows you what you can do if you persevere, if you have grit, if you have what it takes to make it through the other end to really make it. And you don't need money, you just need a little elbow grease. Well, you need a lot of elbow grease. But the point here is, is that she made it happen on her own dimensions. So well done, Sarah. And thank you to everybody who I mentioned in today's episode. You may have not knew it, but I learned so much from you this past year and it's helped me become a better person, a better entrepreneur, and a better teacher to the listeners of this podcast. So thank you so much. That wraps up today's lesson. But today's episode's not over because it's Free Ride Friday. I gotta give away a lifetime membership to the hundred MBA training and community. Let's see who won this week's Free ride. And the winner is. Nate Rumble. Nate Rumble says great work. Five stars. This podcast is the real deal. Such great info and nice digestible bites that make a big difference. Well, thanks, Nate, for your review and for your love and for your listenership. Welcome to the Hunter OMG Training and Community. Your mission is to email us@supportusinessrepublic.net so we can hook you up with the free ride. Thank you so much, guys for listening. Thank you for subscribing, for leaving us reviews. It means so much to us. All right, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Just a quick reminder. Monday's episode, January 2nd, is very, very important. It's a very special episode. Make sure you tune in. You're gonna love it. Alright, I'll check you tomorrow. Take care.

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