Build your own Business - Andrew Ford

Nicholas de Castella joins us in this episode to talk about his journey from being an employee to owning and managing several businesses including being a Master Life Coach. Nicholas has spent the last 28 years working with the healing power of the breath, mindfulness and body awareness, travelling the globe. His goal is to teach mature people practical, emotional intelligence to find their passion and live it.

What is covered in this episode:

• Background on the work Nicholas does today.
• His first paying job.
• How running has helped him improve his life and performance at school.
• What led him to his work on personal growth.
• The 4 levels we exist on.
• Why Nicholas decided to study and understand emotions better.
• How to find out if someone is accredited in Breathwork.
• The benefits of verbalizing and crystallizing your intent.
• Being in touch with yourself to access the flow stage.
• 3 sources of intelligence.
• The future for his business.
• Biggest challenges in the way of growth.
• Nicholas shares his knowledge on money, business and marketing.
• One piece of advice Nicholas can give to people planning to leave their job.
• Where happiness comes from.

Colin Barr of Barr McIntosh Advisory joins us in this episode to talk about interviews, recruitment and how to find the right people for businesses. He takes the guesswork out of recruitment. He has over 30 years of experience and offers completely impartial, insider, expert advice to help you reach your greatest career goals.

Barr McIntosh is an Australian Search and Advisory Firm who has provided recruitment solutions to complex assignments to various business industries in Australia

What is covered in this episode:

• Colin’s background and business.
• The story on his first job, his stint in the Navy and the other jobs he took.
• Are the skills of people innate or honed?
• Standing out to get hired.
• How to handle job interviews.
• Picking the right people for the job.
• Andrew and Colin share their stories on their experiences interviewing potential team members.
• The inaccuracy of standardized tests.
• Andrew shares his process of finding candidates.
• Colin shares one interesting question he asks in interviews.
• Knowing more about candidates through interviews.
• Top 3 tips for writing your resume.
• Can you do what you love as an employee or is that only achieved when you have your own business?
• The advantages of and things to think about having your own business versus working from corporate.
• Colin's advice for listeners.

What's the best way to launch your own business? Well, to be honest, there are many different ways that will work.

For mature corporate escapees, we believe it's building a small but reliable network working group around you. People who are running their own small businesses and so can understand you. People who might be able to refer you to others. And importantly those who are fun to have a drink and hang out with too!

In the latest BYOB podcast, Andrew explores his ideas on how to build your own network and how we are working hard to build it in our Social Club.

Carl Rigoni, CEO & Founder of SixSix, joins us in Episode 35 of the Build Your Own Business Podcast to share the story behind how and why he set up his business and quit corporate. He shares his journey from university, his learnings, and his future plans.

SixSix is a consulting practice that Carl has recently founded. Carl has had extensive practical experience in driving innovation frameworks with large corporations. The company focuses on assisting companies and Government organisations with digital transformation agendas. It also includes how to leverage and develop a “start-up” mentality to achieve better business

outcomes at a lower cost and significantly greater speed.

What is covered in this episode:

• Carl’s business, SixSix, and the services they offer.
• The story of Carl’s first job, his university experience and how this has inspired him to have a personal project of teaching uni students the way of the corporations.
• His corporate history and how it has helped him with running his own business now.
• Carl’s secret success and the things he has learned from it.
• The importance of having business mentors.
• Future plans for Carl and SixSix.
• Ben’s shares an idea for education about training kids about business and finding their passion.
• The reason behind the rise in fintechs.
• The massive changes in how people are working and getting jobs.
• How to cultivate and foster innovation for businesses.

CEO of the Synergen Group, Julian Carle, joins us in Episode 34 of the Build Your Own Business Podcast to talk to us about timelines for starting a business from scratch, time allocation for sales, business development and more. He also shares his journey from university to quitting corporate and starting his own business. Be inspired and listen now.

What is covered in this episode:

• The services of the Synergen Group and how they help people.
• Julian’s educational background and his love for the arts.
• His interesting corporate journey.
• The turning point in his career and how he realized that he wasn’t for the corporate world.
• How long he’s been running his business now.
• Tips on how to run your business without you.
• Timelines for starting a business.
• Time allocation for sales.
• How Julian does business development.
• More about Julian’s book “Give Back Lead Forward: Why Every Leader Should Be a Mentor and Have a Mentor” and podcast “Synergen Leadership Podcast”
• Would he do this all over again?
• His top tips for individuals in this precipice.

Risk Management Expert, Lyndon Holland, joins us today in Episode 33 of the Build Your Own Business Podcast. Lyndon will share his knowledge and expertise on insurance and how to handle risks in your business and personal life. His 35-year experience and training in the insurance industry has allowed him to protect his clients’ business success with risk management programs and insurance advice over the years.

What is covered in this episode:

• A background of what Lyndon does.
• Lyndon’s job experiences and his transition to what he is doing today.
• How he offered his products to his clients when he was starting in the industry.
• Stories about how he helped his clients with their insurance coverages.
• Things that we need to know about insurance.
• Findings and implications for business owners.
• Getting a free consultation from Lyndon.
• His transition from working for someone in insurance to starting his own business.
• Highs and lows Lyndon has experienced in his career.
• How to know when you need to talk to a professional about insurance.
• Lyndon’s advice for people who want to leave corporate.

In this solo episode, Andrew talks about the 3 main ways to scale a consultancy business over time. Tips and advice to use your knowledge to make more income than time per hour. We discuss the 3 stages of growing a consultancy business which are personal branding, business branding, and product innovation. Andrew shares his personal experiences with his business and gives us tips on how to improve your consultancy business.

New personal brand coach of Social Star, Elva Li, joins us in Episode 31 of the Build Your Own Business Podcast. Elva shares her inspiring story from growing up in Shanghai, moving to Australia to pursue further studies, and then quitting her job and following her passion. Her work today involves helping female entrepreneurs, like her,  create a personal brand that makes them feel confident online so that they can stand out from the crowd and attract their dream clients.

Elliott works on a different flavor of project management. He drives positive organisational change through the delivery of fit for purpose services & solutions for companies. He has worked with well-known companies to transform their finance, IT and design practices. In this episode, he joins us to share his journey from being a corporate employee to building his own consulting business.

What is covered in this episode:

• Elliott's business services and who he works with.
• The project outcome differences of construction and IT projects.
• Reasons why IT projects fail.
• Elliots work background and how he transitioned into what he is doing today.
• The best way to get jobs or clients and how this relates to the importance of building your network and brand.
• What’s next for Elliot.
• Tips for people who want to start a consulting business
• Elliott's advice for people who are still working full time and want to jump into business.

In this episode, Andrew discusses step 3 of leveraging your digital profile which is pitching. He goes through the Etraction pitching methodology and how it relates to the sales and content models.

What is covered in this episode:

• What is pitching?
• The 5-step pitching methodology that Andrew uses and the explanation for each stage.
• His explanation of the 3 important middle steps of the pitching methodology to help you communicate with your prospective clients: Problem, Solution, Why you?
• The first and last steps of the methodology: Tease and What’s Next is where he discusses how to tease people, make them interested and ask more about what you do.
• Andrew walks us through how he pitches his business to other people in real life situations and how you can apply this to your own pitch

Lynn Garbers, President of Eagle Achievements, shares her story from being an enterprising kid at the age of 8 to having a business and becoming a successful coach. She has educated herself through the process and has gone through several career switches before ending up doing what she really loved. And in this episode, she shares with us her interesting journey that led her to where she is today.

What is covered in this episode:

• Lynn’s background and the services she offers.
• Her interesting job and entrepreneurial history.
• Her turning point to having her own business and the story of how she became a coach.
• The strategies she uses in her services.
• A background on her clients.
• Lynn’s advice for people who want to develop their career.

In this solo episode, we cover the step 2 of leveraging your digital profile by producing content that is helpful, valuable and creates traction. We discuss the importance of what, where and why we need to post your content.

What is covered in this episode:

• Things you need to know about the business and business owner before creating their content
• Kinds of content that businesses can make and recommendations for creating video, blogs and posts.
• Starting and posting blogs to help your SEO.
• How to choose which social media platform to use when posting your content.
• The importance of having your target audience understand what you do.
• Ideas to help you attract and gravitate people towards your business.
• Framing content in the sales process.
• The benefits of podcasting for your business.
• Sneak peek on the next episode: Pitching

Mandy Nolton, Founder of Rec Relief and Managing Director at Rec People, shares her story in this episode and talks about her journey from university to building her own business and the experiences she went through getting to where she is today. Mandy is very passionate about her work with local government in the recreation and leisure space. She is currently in the process of building her new business Rec People.

In this episode I cover:

• Mandy’s business and services.
• The story of her first job and how she was led to work in recreation.
• The benefits of loving and enjoying what you do.
• Business as a merged lifestyle with clients becoming friends.
• Her journey to starting her own business.
• Getting a business coach to help run her business.
• How to know the right time to start a business.
• The experience that taught Mandy to just push on and carry on despite challenges in her business and life.
• Advice for people who want to start a business.

In this solo episode, we will continue talking about the 12-step process of building your own business, becoming a corporate escapee and building the lifestyle you want. We will focus on the first stage of leveraging your digital profile and what we need to do in this part of the process.

What is covered in this episode:

• What is the Leverage stage and how does it relate to the first stage of the process?
• The reasons why businesses fail.
• A discussion on the first stage of leveraging your digital profile - Connections.
• Understanding and identifying your target market.
• The importance of building connections.
• 4 steps of the sales process.

Jordan D’Urbano, Director of Independent Closers Agency, joins us in this episode as we talk about his journey from starting as a coach, discovering his love for sales and then building his own business.

What is covered in this episode:

• Jordan’s story of taking on his first paid job to building his own coaching business at 16 years old.
• Andrew and Jordan share their personal experiences that encouraged them to build their own businesses.
• The challenge he went through when he closed his first business, how this started his shift to sales and the experiences that led him to put up the Independent Closers agency.
• The power of visualisation and how he applied this to his sales jobs and business.
• The importance of choosing a business that fuels you.
• Jordan’s tips for new business start-ups to help them succeed.

In this episode, Tracey Rojko, owner of The Philosopher’s Stone, joins me as we talk about her journey and business. We discuss how she helps people open their minds to alternative ways in managing their emotions and gives them the advice and tools they need.

What is covered in this episode:

• Tracey shares her personal experience on her son’s night terrors and how this started her search for alternatives to manage his emotions
• What is Reiki Healing and what you get from a healing session
• The story and outcome of her son’s Reiki Healing session
• Tracey’s life story from childhood, getting married, having children, working and escaping the corporate life to build her business
• Andrew shares his story and how he relates to Tracey’s story and experiences
• The future for her business and how she wants to help people

Welcome to season 2! 

In this episode, we are starting off with myself speaking about:

• The importance of winning the SEO search for your name specifically and how to do it
• The difference between branding and digital marketing
• How to have a strong presence for your name by having a personal website
• The effect of SEO being geographically based when searching on search engines like Google
• Discussion of the 5 main traits or primary source of SEO: URL, length of time, regular addition of content, having great and useful content for customers, number of site visitors
• What Google looks at and why front page SEO is what counts nowadays
• Sources for SEO tips
• How having a Google+ profile, creating a Google business profile based on your Google+ profile and making sure you are on the map helps your business

Welcome to episode 20! Today I talk to Connor Gillivan who is the CMO of Freeeup.com. He is a young entrepreneur who has been successful in the internet space.

In this episode I cover:

• Connor’s introduction about himself and the services of Freeup.com
• His first entrepreneurial journey, what he studied in college and how he got into the digital space
• The business partnership and agreement of FreeeUp’s owners and how they make it work
• The transition from their Amazon business to opening Freeeup.com
• Entrepreneurship as an assembly of quality assets and the different types of assets
• Connor’s Book - Free Up Your Business: 50 Secrets to Bootstrap Million Dollar Companies
• What his parents think about his career
• Connor’s opinion on how education affects future careers
• Andrew’s story of wanting to work in business since he was young and his thoughts about the drive and challenges to succeed in business
• Where Connor sees himself in the next 5 years
• Examples of how the lack of building blocks and passion can dissolve or affect opportunities for businesses
• Model of Andrew’s and Connor’s businesses and their staff members
• The importance of time freedom
• Connor’s advice to people who want to start an entrepreneurial journey

Today on the podcast I talk to Ben Carvosso, a coach for business owners, about his coaching business, taking pivots in your career and life and doing your life’s work.

In this episode I cover:

• Work-Life Balance and why he doesn’t believe in it
• Ben’s work and business journey and stories of his ups and downs
• How he got clients in his chiropractic and radiology businesses by differentiating his businesses and services
• How his personality and mindset drove the team in his chiropractic practice and vice versa
• What drives Ben now that he doesn’t work with a team anymore
• The importance of getting connected with purpose and mission
• The interesting story of the start of his coaching business
• Why we need to be attractive to others
• How Ben came to do what he is doing now
• Being Busy-less and getting your life’s worth
• Helping clients with direction, purpose, and challenges
• The process of working with people to navigate the turn they want
• Andrew shares a story of his experience with taking a big turn in his life
• The methodology of being a great CEO
• The length and process of clients working with Ben
• Ben’s thoughts on changing relationships
• Making choices, taking responsibility and an amazing story about Ben impacting a client’s life
• Excuses as a symptom of fear
• Where is Ben now and his advice for people to do something different today

On episode 17 I talk about my favorite social media, LinkedIn. We will talk about why LinkedIn is the best social media for aspiring entrepreneurs’ personal branding, how to use it and how to use it in conjunction with your other social media.

In this episode I cover:

• How I discovered LinkedIn and realised its potential
• What is LinkedIn and what it is not?
• LinkedIn in the business context
• How to build a great profile that represents your brand
• First things that people look at in your profile and why
• Three things to put in your banner
• Engage and form trust using your biography
• Talk about your business, products and services in the experience section
• How and why all the parts of your profile should form a story about why you’re awesome at what you do today
• Philosophical difference between branding and digital marketing
• The people and clients you want to attract to your branded LinkedIn profiles
• Two things you need to do to create engagement in LinkedIn

Today on the podcast we chat with Darren Bourke, a business coach, mentor and consultant to small and medium business owners for 15 years and author of The Fourth Moon.

Darren shares his story from his humble beginnings as a regular employee to building and owning his successful business. He specialises in coaching business owners to replicate his lifestyle design using his tried and tested methodology in achieving sustainable business success.

What is covered in this episode:

• Who is Darren Bourke?
• Darren’s methodology in making money, time and lifestyle work together
• The lifestyle Darren lives, how he lives it and why it’s something people should emulate
• Book: The Fourth Moon by Darren Bourke
• The idea of the busy fool and how to change and overcome it to open yourself up to more time and opportunities
• Darren’s work and family history and the story of following his dream of building and running his own business
• How a sabbatical helped him re-calibrate and discover what he really wanted to do
• Helping businesses by changing their format without changing their goals
• Darren’s rituals and activities to keep him going and retain his focus
• The story of launching his own brand and business
• His new venture, Coachtopia, and how he wants to help start-up coaches to build their businesses
• Business models and how it helps

Today on the podcast I talk about the fourth stage in the Attract process – Resources.

There are three areas we focus on in the resources section - time, money and connections.

In this episode I cover:

• The importance of focusing on those activities that you enjoy doing and get you into a state of flow
• The daily routine of writing out your intentions each day
• How to map out your time allocation
• Writing down the ten things you love and hate doing in your business to understand where you need to focus your time on and where you need to delegate.
• Knowing the value of your time to understand the amount you can spend to outsource
• Understanding that you don't know what you don't know and why it is important to get the right help when starting out
• Knowing how much to invest when starting out
• How to use your connections and network at the beginning of your service based business
• What is your ultimate destination - what do you want to do and when

Elphie Coyle is master at knowing his strengths and how to build a team around his weaknesses. Hear his journey to entrepreneurship and how his particular background and style is reflected in all his businesses.

We discuss how he uses 5 freedom areas as his guiding principles in life and business and the impact owning a computer at the age of 7 kicked off of his entrepreneurial journey.

Listen as we dive deep into the mind game that is entrepreneurship and how choosing to work allowed him to escape a self-imposed freedom trap.  He shares how his relationship with money has changed, mentors that have shaped his thinking, the importance of knowing your numbers and what it took for him personally and professionally to come back from the brink of losing everything.

"Dance in divine love with the moment, whilst building keystone performance habits towards our best vision, integrating our past & preparing for the worst through total self sustainability."
- Elphie Coyle

The concept of values is as old as Greek philosophy but we are not talking about right and wrong. More the core areas of life that determine how we spend our time, money and energy.

There are seven that we explore and how they influence the choice of customers we engage and business we operate to be truly fulfilled.

Values can help you to identify the difference being wanting and putting in the effort to get that success.  Perhaps you want a million dollar business but are you willing to work 80 hours a week for a long time to get it?

By ranking your values it can help to structure a business that will work for you.   Business owners fail because often they are working towards other people's values and not their own.  If you values aren't aligned to your business, it will fail. 

You have to 'find the juice to get the squeeze' – what gives you the joy in your business. 

Once you understand your values it also help you to identify how you work and the target market to focus on, and focus is everything when it comes to a successful business.

In this, the first episode of the Build Your Own Business Show, the tables are turned and Belinda Coomes, my podcast producer, puts me in the hot seat. We talk all about my background, my values, my own business and what drives me.

Belinda and I discuss my escape from corporate life and how I turned my skills, knowledge and expertise in digital, marketing and branding into my own successful business, Social Star. We talk about how both personal resilience and willingness to evolve my business over time, has been key in my own journey as an entrepreneur. Belinda and I look at how creating a robust and nimble business has enabled me to be flexible in my work/life balance. We also talk about why I believe it’s important for all small business owners/entrepreneurs to understand that there are no shortcuts to success, that it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Keywords:

build your own business, Andrew Ford, social star, business journey, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, how to be a successful entrepreneur, small business, small business owner, empowerment, achievement, working with passion, journey to success, positive mental attitude, mindset, personal development, business coaching, e-ttractionist, linkedin, utilising linkedin, branding, personal branding, personal brand management, digital marketing, online networking, podcast, business podcast