Business Mastery, Leadership Lessons, Podcast

SDN EP 118: What You Should And Should Not Be Doing In The First 10 Days Of Business


I've made horrific mistakes in my first years in business, and they're just as interesting. As I look back, I can't help but ask: how could I have been so stupid?

In this episode, I will run through the major things I learned and should have done differently in the first ten days in business. Sales and tech expert Phil Gerbyshak joins me to share the tactical things to work on in addition to marketing strategies.

? Watch the full episode of Stop Doing Nothing — What You Should And Should Not Be Doing In The First 10 Days Of Business with Phil Gerbyshak.

What You Will Discover:

?? Money matters first. If you haven't quit your job yet, get a credit card. Get as high of a limit as you can, but you must control it and use it solely for your business. The separation of business and personal spending is so crucial. Phil encourages you to do that first and then open a bank account and set up an LLC in your state. In many cases, you can't have a bank account unless you have an LLC. So, those are the first two things to prioritize.

?? Set up a professional-looking invoice. Phil emphasizes that it'll be worth its weight in gold & you'll look way more "referable". Get an invoicing tool that will allow you to take money online, accommodate how people want to pay. This also establishes you being legit biz.

?? Build up an email list. I cannot emphasize enough how important an email list is. It doesn't matter if someone you know has got a list of 30,000 and you only have one. Just start; as your business builds up, people [will be] interested in what you have to say. When someone gives you their email address, it lets you know they want to be a little closer to you than they are on social media.

?? No fancy branding or website. All it takes is one page to convince people whether to buy from you or not. So when you are just starting your business, you don't need to problematize if you don't have a website.

?? Find those things you're good at in your business and learn to get rid of the other stuff where you aren't. For example, if you get rid of the accounting work, you've got more time to write a blog post, make a video, or fly to a meeting. If you can get rid of your social media posting tasks, you've got more time to do prospecting, phone calls, or conferences, which are sales-generating things that would boost your business. Leverage your strengths and identify what you can outsource.


Phil Gerbyshak is a speaker, sales expert, corporate sales trainer and small business coach. Phil trains his clients on the power of connection, leveraging the reach of social media, combined with the deeply personal work of nurturing 1:1 relationships, growing profitable long-term clients, transforming businesses and boosting revenue.

Know more about Phil at https://philgerbyshak.com/

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Business Mastery, Leadership Lessons, Performance & Productivity, Podcast

SDN EP 117: How To Disaster-Proof Your Business With Phil Gerbyshak


?? Let me ask you: are you SURE your business can outlast any outage or any kind of disaster?

If you feel that you are not, allow us to teach you how to handle some of your marketing or your I.T. resources go down and prevent losing what you've built online should the unexpected happen. @philgerbjoins me in this episode as one of the best people to talk about business management and disaster recovery.

? Watch the full episode of Stop Doing Nothing — How to Disaster-Proof Your Business with Phil Gerbyshak. It's one you don't want to miss!

What You Will Discover:

?? The riskiest thing you can do is entrust all your eggs in one social media basket.  It's always good to have multiple social channels with at least three to become "omnipresent".

?? Get everything in the Cloud. In the olden days (before the Cloud), I remember how tedious it was preparing should disasters strike. As the head of disaster recovery for the big data center of a big black and yellow car rental company, we physically had to back up our mainframe stuff to tapes weekly. We shipped it off to a vault in Texas because we assume Oklahoma City gets hit by a tornado and wipes out the data center. We wouldn't sleep for 24 hours to ensure a full recovery and get the business back up and running. The wealth of experience and learnings is what I now carry over into my businesses. You can never be wrong if you always prepare and have a backup.

?? Self-professed tech geek and sales expert Phil Gerbyshak shares, "You want to own as much of your content as you can. It's one of the reasons why email marketing is never going to die."

?? If your domain, email and website are all at the same company – and when that company is down, you have access to nothing. Avoid these points of failure and use our ideal setup to ensure you would still have access to everything. Ideally, it's best to have your domain someplace separate from where your web host is.


Phil Gerbyshak is a speaker, sales expert, corporate sales trainer and small business coach. Phil trains his clients on the power of connection, leveraging the reach of social media, combined with the deeply personal work of nurturing 1:1 relationships, growing profitable long-term clients, transforming businesses and boosting revenue.

Know more about Phil at https://philgerbyshak.com/

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Business Mastery, Generating Wealth, Performance & Productivity, Podcast

SDN EP 116: Highly Productive Habits That Will Make You More Money


Are you tired of being just an observer of life?

This video is for you if you want to change and transition your mind and body, live more fully, get in better shape and sustain good habits in the long term.

What You Will Discover:

?? Why you may be spending time on OPP. So you get ten emails upon waking up in the morning, is your reflex to answer and resolve those issues? Then you are living your life based on Other People's Priorities. It would be best first to do what is essential to you, like meditating, taking your vitamins, stretching, hydrating, and everything else necessary to start your day or the week powerfully.

?? As you start building habits, treat yourself like a seven-day machine, not a five-day machine. If you choose to get up early, eat a certain way, or start any new thing to make your life better, do it for the rest of the week. These are lifestyle habits, not something that you're going to do and then take a break.

?? Don't rest on your purpose. Remember, you are on this planet for bigger things, and so you are going to have to stretch yourself (even on Saturdays and Sundays!) because while everyone else is sleeping, you're going to be awake working on the important stuff.

 ??  If your body is not in a peak state — nothing else matters. You can't work on your work, business, or finances if you're chowing down a half-gallon of ice cream every night with sugar dragging down your energy levels. So put your health on top priority.


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Attitude Adjustment, Business Mastery, Leadership Lessons, Podcast

SDN EP 115: Feeling Stuck In Life? Why Every Leader Has Been In Your Shoes


Are you stuck ? bored ? and have nothing to do?

These are some of the worst things in life that can possibly hit you and turn into a perpetual downhill spiral that will suck you up.

In this episode, glean ideas and tips to recognize when you're in this situation and how to get out of a rut, master your mind and become the person you want to be.

What You Will Discover:

?? Why boredom can be a result of a lack of purpose or aim in life. Almost often, purpose is not taught in school. This is something you discover on your own as you live a couple of decades on this planet.

?? Pick one problem and dedicate your life and your time to solving it. Then, obsess on finding solutions that will make somebody's life better. Doing so will keep you motivated and push you forward to work on a mission bigger than you are.

?? Get out of your regular environment to spur some creativity. So if every single day you are staying in the same place, decide to go somewhere. You don't need a big budget to fly across the country, but you can drive twenty minutes across your city and find a coffee shop there. Just change your environment up, and your mental environment also changes.

?? Start planning on your giant, hairy dreams. Life can only progress or regress. A leader with ambitions will never allow life to run on autopilot. So don't sit in the boat of life and let the ocean push you around.

?? Decide what you want your legacy to look like. Then, think of the years down the line after you die; what do you want people to remember you for? What do you want people to say at the podium when you pass away? Ponder on this, and you will be directed in your every step and action.

?? Aspire to teach. What we learn and improve upon, we have an obligation to pass that on to future generations. So dig deeper, and you'll realize pretty fast that you have a lot of knowledge in your brain. Teach the younger generation to use your voice for good.

?? Better your best. Getting outside of your comfort zone physically, mentally, psychologically, and emotionally pushes you to adapt and get better. You wouldn't have time to be bored and stuck. Instead, aspire for bigger and better things in life.

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Business Mastery, Leadership Lessons, Performance & Productivity, Podcast

SDN EP 114: Staying Committed to Difficult Goals


The Importance of Staying Committed to Difficult Goals. 

How many motivational podcasts and videos have you listened to or watched, and yet you still sit your butt down doing every other thing you need to do in life except HITTING your goals?

Even a super guru on top of the hill wouldn't be able to tell you that staying committed to challenging goals is 100% easy peasy! Because it's not.

In this episode, I will not bombard you with "wise" information. Instead, I will share valuable lessons from my own mistakes that are practical and actionable steps to get you unstuck and finally get you to MOVE and attack your big scary dreams!

What You Will Discover:

?? Be reminded that playing small will do you no good.
Most people are scared to go for their ginormous dreams! Big challenging goals will test you and make you stretch yourself and are so worthwhile because you will come out a different person on the other end.

??  Why "Later" is a success killer!
Most people let life go on autopilot and wait for later or next time that eventually never happens. We get too busy cooking, eating, exercising, socializing, raising kids, sleeping or doing our job or taking out the trash, or mowing the lawn that we don't plan time in our day to plan our life. So if you don't pull up your calendar and say when later is, you're in for a major tragedy.

?? Pick five significant goals.
Make sure those five things are challenging, quantifiable, and the things you can do. Once you focus on those, it will determine everything else that comes after that. What skills will you need? Who are the people you should be with? Determine these to layout your environment, and change your life.

??  Use TV time as a reward when you hit goals.
Sleep, rest, mental refreshing, and even bingeing on your favorite shows are essential for you. However, ensure that you plan and limit that time and use it as a reward for other things you've accomplished.

?? Honor a dream building and planning day.
Set a day in your calendar to stop and do nothing! Let this personal appointment with yourself allow you to pull away from work and distractions and plan. BUILD time into your life to THINK about your life.

?? How to shut down distractions and protect your focus.  Bing, bing, bing... email, text messages, and notifications come in, and you always feel like you have to answer it! Don't be governed by these, and learn how to focus.

??  Follow one course until successful.
Narrowing down the things you want to do and constantly removing everything in your way to focus on one particular goal will work wonders in your life.

??  Be obsessed with time and learn not to waste it.
Take advantage of the tools built into your technology that help you focus and maximize utilities that allow you to be mindful of your every action.


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