Creative Warriors

When you've been in business as long as I have and coached other business owners for 15+ years, you start to notice some cycles people get stuck in that are common and pretty predictable. I wonder if you'll recognize yourself in any one of these cycles. It might also help you to understand what's coming.     Contact Jeffrey –   Website Books Watch my TEDx LincolnSquare video and please share!       Valuable resources to help you –     The Self-Employed Business Institute You know you're really good at what you do. You're talented, you have a skill set. The problem is you're probably in a field where there is no business education. This is common amongst self-employed people! And, there's no business education out there for us! You also know that being self-employed is unique and you need better strategies, coaching, support, and accountability. The Self-Employed Business Institute, a five-month online education is exactly what you need. Check it out!     Take the Self-Employed Assessment!

We may be given life, but life itself is not a given. It is to be earned. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Marshall Goldsmith about what it means to live a deliberate life, avoid regret, and achieve an ‘earned life.’ For Dr. Goldsmith, an earned life occurs when our risks, efforts, and commitments are aligned with a higher purpose, regardless of the results. Those of us who are self-employed entrepreneurs are usually ambitious and focused on results. But in this fascinating conversation, Dr. Goldsmith wisely advises us to never base our self-worth on results, and never assume happiness comes from results. Rather, you can choose fulfillment, regardless of results.   Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is a member of the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame. He is the only two-time Thinkers 50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World. He has been ranked as the World’s #1 Executive Coach and Top Ten Business Thinker for eight years. Marshall was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Lifetime Award for Leadership by the Harvard Institute of

How do you even answer the question, "How do I get more customers?" That's a huge, open-ended question with many possible answers. So, I made a formula of it to help you see the big picture and break it down to actionable steps.     Contact Jeffrey –   Website Books Watch my TEDx LincolnSquare video and please share!       Valuable resources to help you –     The Self-Employed Business Institute You know you're really good at what you do. You're talented, you have a skill set. The problem is you're probably in a field where there is no business education. This is common amongst self-employed people! And, there's no business education out there for us! You also know that being self-employed is unique and you need better strategies, coaching, support, and accountability. The Self-Employed Business Institute, a five-month online education is exactly what you need. Check it out!     Take the Self-Employed Assessment! Ever feel like you're all over the place? Or frustrated it seems like you hav

Almost all of us have felt ‘stuck’ at some point in our lives. Some of us go through temporary phases of feeling stuck, some of us feel chronically stuck, and some of us feel stuck in some areas of our lives but not in others. (Those of us who are entrepreneurs and self-employed are certainly not immune to feeling stuck.) Our guest today, Shira Miller, felt significantly stuck in her life – so much so that she now specializes in studying why people feel stuck, identifying the ‘types of stuck,’ and most importantly, helping others learn to get unstuck! Who doesn’t want to ‘get unstuck’ for good?     Shira Miller, a two-time TEDx speaker, Certified Professional Coach and a former entrepreneur turned Chief Communications Officer of a $2 billion corporation, knows a lot about getting unstuck – and teaching people how to do the same for themselves. She has transitioned from financial ruin to prosperity, chronic health challenges to a constant state of wellness, obesity to sustaining a healthy weight loss, divo

We often associate being overwhelmed with being a negative. Understandably, because being overwhelmed can often be paralyzing, dealing only with what's in front of us. But what if there's a positive side? If you're currently feeling overwhelmed or ever have in the past and expect you will again in the future, this might be an interesting perspective for you.      Contact Jeffrey –   Website Books Watch my TEDx LincolnSquare video and please share!       Valuable resources to help you –     The Self-Employed Business Institute You know you're really good at what you do. You're talented, you have a skill set. The problem is you're probably in a field where there is no business education. This is common amongst self-employed people! And, there's no business education out there for us! You also know that being self-employed is unique and you need better strategies, coaching, support, and accountability. The Self-Employed Business Institute, a five-month online education is exactly what you need. Che

We certainly talk enough about the self-employed life but not very often about how to actually LIVE the self-employed life. It turns out to be something people ask me about often. How actually to manage our lives and how to deal with the realities of being self-employed. So here you go! Some realities and suggestions that I hope will make your self-employed life a bit easier.     Contact Jeffrey –   Website Books Watch my TEDx LincolnSquare video and please share!     Valuable resources to help you –     The Self-Employed Business Institute You know you're really good at what you do. You're talented, you have a skill set. The problem is you're probably in a field where there is no business education. This is common amongst self-employed people! And, there's no business education out there for us! You also know that being self-employed is unique and you need better strategies, coaching, support, and accountability. The Self-Employed Business Institute, a five-month online education is exactly what you nee

Data is the not-so-secret tool to understand your target audience, the messaging that resonates with them, and how to find them. Executive coach Kent Vanho is here today to talk about how data can be used to scale a business, solve challenges, and make your marketing leakproof. He’s developed a proven sales process, system, and machine that can drive client businesses to multi-six and seven-figure businesses. Kent left the corporate world after 17 years at Cisco. He then scaled his consulting firm to over $624,000 in annual recurring revenue. It only took him three months using his systems and strategies that we talk about today.   He is now on a mission to help other coaches, consultants, and service-based businesses scale beyond what they thought was possible. He teaches using systems and strategies that free up time and space for the important stuff. Some people think they don’t like numbers and data and all the tedious analysis, but Kent says that some tools and platforms can help gather and analyze the d

We often make our lives harder than it needs to be. Either we try so hard to be one-of-a-kind or we throw ourselves into a really big bucket, making it nearly impossible to get noticed. So here's a way to get noticed that I think you'll find much easier and your audience will get far more value from.   Contact Jeffrey – Website Books Watch my TEDx LincolnSquare video and please share!   Valuable resources to help you-   The Self-Employed Business Institute- You know you're really good at what you do. You're talented, you have a skill set. The problem is you're probably in a field where there is no business education. This is common amongst self-employed people! And, there's no business education out there for us! You also know that being self-employed is unique and you need better strategies, coaching, support, and accountability. The Self-Employed Business Institute, a five-month online education is exactly what you need. Check it out!   Take The Self-Employed Assessment! Ever fe

Giving someone a sincere compliment is a way to connect, praise, and build a relationship with that person. I don’t mean in a phony kissing-up kind of way. I mean noticing and appreciating the exemplary work or behavior that this person has exhibited. If compliments are a form of praise and appreciation for our actions, why are we consistently bad at receiving compliments? The answer to that is somewhat complicated, but according to Christopher Littlefield, it has to do with four things. Compliments can take us by surprise, which causes us to freeze momentarily, find an explanation for what’s happening, shift our perspective, and share our experiences.  According to Christopher, compliments are more about the giver than the receiver. This episode dives into how to give and receive compliments and why they are so crucial to creating connections and building relationships. Christopher Littlefield specializes in employee appreciation, recognition, and workplace culture. He is the founder of Beyond Thank You, an

Self-employed people and entrepreneurs wear so many hats that most of us have a broad skill set. We are creative and notice changes. We have empathy and understand the importance of making connections and building relationships. Some of us could even be highly sensitive people. 1 in 5 people are highly sensitive people or HSPs. Highly sensitive people are very good at noticing little things that others might miss. They are also empathetic and are great at building rapport and developing strong connections quickly.  HSPs are fast with their emotional perceptions and have a wider depth of processing. They crave alignment and are troubled when things are out of alignment. These traits go hand-in-hand with creativity and having your own business. I’m happy to share my conversation with Clare Kumar. Clare is a speaker, consultant, and coach who helps highly sensitive professionals optimize their performance. She is also a highly sensitive person who understands the challenges and superpowers that HSPs have.  Clare

Often urgency is associated with stress. But there's a way of working, having a sense of healthy urgency, that offers several benefits. Think of it as holding space between knowing you have many years ahead of you while at the same time feeling like you don't want to take forever to get to where you want to go. A healthy urgency.   Contact Jeffrey – Website Books Watch my TEDx LincolnSquare video and please share!   Valuable complimentary resources to help you-   The Self-Employed Business Institute- You know you're really good at what you do. You're talented, you have a skill set. The problem is you're probably in a field where there is no business education. This is common amongst self-employed people! And, there's no business education out there for us! You also know that being self-employed is unique and you need better strategies, coaching, support, and accountability. The Self-Employed Business Institute, a five-month online education is exactly what you need. Check it out!  

Natasha Miller is an Inc. 5000 Entrepreneur, a business growth evangelist, speaker, and author. She is the Founder and Chief Experience Officer of Entire Productions, an event planning, and entertainment management company. She also has an incredible story that she wrote about in her poignant memoir Relentless: Homeless Teen to Achieving the Entrepreneur Dream. Without giving away too much, she went from a life of horrible abuse to becoming a significant success.  Natasha grew up in middle America in the 70s and 80s. Her mom was very abusive from the moment she was born. To escape, Natasha threw herself into music. She was awarded college scholarships but started her business, Entire Productions, which is now a profitable multimillion-dollar company. She has spent the last 20 years working on this great business, and now her next chapter is this book.  We learn some interesting things about her journey, including how writing the book had on her. Natasha started writing her memoir project in 2018. Her original

Being self-employed can often feel like everything rests on your shoulders. Nobody wants to feel like a hamster running on a wheel. Once overwhelm and stress sets in, it destroys the freedom, creativity, and fun of being your own boss and running the show. That's why Reese Spykerman is here today to talk about having a saner schedule and optimizing how you are in your business.  Reese Spykerman is a website and email marketing expert and the Creative Director of Design by Reese, where she helps e-commerce founders scale their businesses and optimize their conversion and marketing rates. She is also an expert at optimizing your schedule and planning so that your business works for you and not the other way around. She gives us permission to design our weeks and days to meet our needs and respect our emotional patterns.  We dive into the task list and how to create tasks to increase productivity, efficiency, and energy while moving you forward towards your goals. Once this is done, you will feel calmer about yo

We all get knocked down from time to time. The difference between using that as an opportunity and staying down comes down to how resilient we are. Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafo has a unique perspective on resilience, and I’m excited to have her share it today. Robyne’s writing and speaking focus on resiliency and wellness and how these topics intersect with stress, self-identity, and how we navigate our world. She is a psychology and education instructor, a keynote speaker, and the author of Calm Within the Storm: A Pathway to Everyday Resiliency.   She shares some of the critical concepts of her book, starting with the unique view that resiliency that tough exterior or keep fighting mentality. According to Robyne, learning happens when we can trust and feel safe. Fear and shame are barriers to authentic growth and change. She shares her kinder, gentler approach to taking on challenges and developing authentic alignment in our lives. Robyne shares how she defines resiliency and how it’s about understanding pressure

Jenny Blake, the author of Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, is here to talk about her new book and how busy entrepreneurs can free up time to focus on creativity and deep work. Lack of time and stress over not getting enough done or not getting the right things done is a massive problem for many entrepreneurs, so this episode is the perfect motivation to continue getting this year right and make the most of valuable time.    Jenny has been running her own business for a decade. Before that, she worked at a Silicon Valley startup and then spent five years at Google. She’s a keynote speaker and licenses her Pivot Programs to clients like Google and CHANEL. She is the host of the Free Time podcast and the Pivot with Jenny Blake podcast. She is also the author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One. She is passionate about career development and helping entrepreneurs and business owners move from friction to flow through more intelligent systems.   We learn a little bit about her b

Sales is one of those necessary things that so many dread, especially those of us who want to be authentic and ethical. This episode is good news for entrepreneurs who feel this way because Jason Marc Campbell talks about selling with love. It’s time to stop looking at sales in a negative light. Avoiding sales doesn’t serve the world and prevents you from putting yourself out there. Jason wants to teach ethical businesses who genuinely want to make a difference in sharing their product with love.  Jason is on a mission to inspire small business owners with reluctance to succeed at sales while doing it with joy and integrity. He is the host of the Selling With Love podcast and the author of his brand new book Selling with Love: Earn with Integrity and Expand Your Impact. This book is designed to shift our thinking about sales to positively impact and make us great at sales and marketing.  We talk about so many valuable topics today, starting with why it was so important to have love in the title of Jason’s boo