IIP012: Creating Life After Corporate With Bestselling Author Ralph Quintero

Inspiring Innovation Podcast
Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode 012 Get it on iTunes

“Just Do It. What’s The Worst Thing That Could Happen?”

These were the first words that Ralph Quintero & I shared. The time was May, or maybe June, 2012 – only a year ago. Ralph had just launched his iPad magazine – The Great Business Project. I was procrastinating with launching my magazine – Inspiring Innovation.

I was stuck at getting interviewees for my first issue. I couldn’t bring myself to approach anyone. Funny thing was that for quite a while I knew exactly who I want on my first issue – Pat Flynn, Farnoosh Brock and Cahill Puill, co-founder of world-famous 4HWW muse – LapDawg… But I was scared. I was afraid they’d say no, so I didn’t ask.

One day, I was on a Google+ Hangout (back then it was very exciting!) of MagCast publishers – the platform both Ralph & I were using. Ralph was sharing how incredibly easy it was for him to launch and get interviewees on board.

I was very pissed… at myself.

So I sent Ralph a tweet, something like, “I’m kicking myself so hard after seeing you on the Hangout for not taking action”. The response?

Just Do It. What’s The Worst Thing That Could Happen? —@RalphQuintero

That day was were my friendship with Ralph was formed, and the day that ‘Inspiring Innovation’ became a real thing.

How To Be An Entrepreneur

Ralph Quintero
Ralph Quintero

Ralph became an entrepreneur at a young age, and with a unique profession – DJ! At the age of 13 years old, he borrowed stereo equipment (double cassette tape) from his dad and aunt, and started deejaying school parties. Then his big break came: Ralph and each of his other two partners made $20 on a single night!

Ralph could not have been happier, and to this day he has a smile on his face when he tells the story. That evening was the first time he realized he could make money doing something he loved.

He became a professional DJ. He toured and performed in the hottest nightclubs around the world and got to work with his idols. Life was great… besides the rough hours and lack of any normalcy.

Finally, he was about to get married. He knew he can’t carry on this way when starting a family. So he ended up getting a job at JBL, and moved to the corporate world. Since JBL is a world-known speaker company, he reckons he was, “still doing something I love, but in more reasonable hours”.

Ralph’s attitude and tendency to excel didn’t fade in the corporate world. Quite the contrary; he was climbing the ranks and became head of international sales. Which meant he was traveling 80% of the time.

One night, Ralph came home to his wife, who was alone with their one-year-old son and pregnant. She told him she can’t take it anymore. They decided to leave California and their six figure jobs and go back home – to Miami. This was the beginning of their Life After Corporate.

Life After Corporate

That night in 2003, the Quinteros made a promise to themselves — to only work in things they are passionate about. They had no idea what that may be, but they were going to find out. Ralph decided to leverage his experience from corporate, and combine it with everything he learned from being a young successful entrepreneur. They created a company targeted at helping audio companies establish themselves in Latin America. When they divested from the company 6 years later, it was generating over $35M in revenue for their clients.

This process was documented on Ralph’s best-selling title, Life After Corporate: My Personal Journey from the C-Suite to the E-Suite. That book was an overnight best seller – as you will hear on today’s episode. Today Ralph owns several businesses, one of them is The Great Business Project (magazine, podcast, forum and blog), which aims to be the resource for entrepreneurs that Ralph wish he had when he got started. It’s his way of giving back to entrepreneurs. He’s also an in-demand speaker, coach and advisor.

Successful Entrepreneurs

So what are we talking about today, besides Ralph’s story?

Today, Ralph shares with us the #1 pillar any entrepreneur need to take care of; his own mindset. Ralph will walk us through creating and maintaining the mindset and attitude that all successful entrepreneurs share. We will also cover some of his 5 pillars to having a successful business that works for you — so tune in now so you don’t miss out! Prepare to start having a business that works for you, and not the other way round!

Enjoy the episode.

In this episode you will learn:

  • How having an action-taking mindset and attitude like Ralph’s will change your life.
  • How Ralph discovered how to make money doing only things he loves.
  • Why Ralph gave up on his entrepreneurial career and moved to corporate?
  • Why you need to take action in your life?
  • Why you should ban the word ‘tired’ from your vocabulary?
  • How to cope with getting a ‘no’ from your dream client?
  • What’s the one, and ONLY thing that limits you when someone says ‘no’ to you?
  • How to perform at your best?
  • How Ego affects a person’s success? How can you deal with it?
  • One thing that 84% of the US population wants to do before they die!
  • How Ralph’s book became a bestselling book, without him having any previous writing experience.

Items mentioned in this episode include:

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I Need Your Help!

Thank you all for checking out this episode of the Inspiring Innovation podcast!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below! It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Stay awesome,
Meron

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

Transcript

Continue reading IIP012: Creating Life After Corporate With Bestselling Author Ralph Quintero

IIP011: How To Get More Attention To Your Blog And Make Your Fans Insanely Loyal, With Dino Dogan

Inspiring Innovation Podcast
Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode 011 Get it on iTunes

Content Is Not The King, Traffic Means Nothing, And Ads Are Not A Blog Monetization Plan

There you have it. If you want today’s interview with Dino Dogan in a nutshell, the above title will give you the major points.

According to Dino, “there is nothing worse than writing a blog post that nobody reads. Triberr solves that problem for bloggers by developing a community of sharing and support with other bloggers.”

Triberr is a new and better way to grow your blog’s readership. It’s better because it connects like-minded bloggers who are interested in reading and supporting each other. This core community, or Tribe, is the secret to a successful blog.

One Wednesday, a few years ago, somewhere in New Jersey, Dino Dogan had a realization: He’d been studying how to get more traffic to his blog for quite a while; consuming everything he could read about it. But the more he read, the more it became clear to him:

It Was Too Little, Too Late!

Dino Dogan
Dino Dogan

Dino perfectly understood the “science” of link building, PageRank and website authority, and the roaring power of social media. Because of that understanding, he knew that in a competitive niche with well established megawebsites — his blog didn’t stand a chance. Not with the tools that were available back then.

Blogging Tips 101

As Dino saw it, all bloggers needed to do in order to rank well and get a lot more attention, was:

  • Publish A LOT of content.
  • Have TONS of backlinks.
  • Become a brand that Google respects (demonstrated by being given a higher PageRank, for instance).

The problem was that as the blogosphere was changing. With the rise of social media, no one was linking anymore. Everyone was now sharing via Twitter, Facebook, etc., so it became very, very hard for small bloggers to build (or earn) enough high quality links. As to publishing a lot of content – could you seriously compete with the amount of content that is published on Huffington Post? NY Times? Forbes? (Yeah, that’s a bit of a radical competition to pick on, but any blog that’s a tenth as active as any of these will be a huge undertaking).

And as to becoming a brand – the best way was to publish a lot, get as many high quality backlinks and shares as possible. Which for a new blogger on the block – was almost impossible.

Building A Successful Blog (What if…)

What if. That’s how it all started. What if bloggers could share their audience with some other bloggers from the same niche? By doing that, they could get the attention of the audience of their colleagues and have a lot more content to share with their own audience, who were easily consuming more content than the bloggers had to offer.

What would be the compound effect of creating such a tribe of bloggers?

This is what was on Dino’s mind that Wednesday. So he sat down and started searching for such tool, “surely someone came up with this idea already!”, he thought.  But… No such tool existed. So Dino, born & raised in Bosnia who came to the USA and found work as a network engineer, and spent the last seven years teaching computer geeks how to become bigger computer geeks, found a new position: co-founder. Dino pitched the idea to his friend Dan Cristo, and by the next Wednesday, Dino and Dan where on the same Triberr tribe, sharing audience and content.

Solving The Next Big Problem

As press print was invented, knowledge became more accessible than it ever before in human history. People could suddenly afford access to books. In the late 1990’s, with the rise of platforms like WordPress, Blogger.com and others, the gate to publishing was opened for the first time. Today, anyone can start a blog, a podcast or publish a book on Amazon. It’s no longer a small closed clique of the very fortunate.

As Dino sees it, the next big problem is allowing anyone who wants to publish to get attention. Evidently, this is the biggest hardship for almost all bloggers. This is the mission behind Triberr.

Hitler, Apple and Insane Loyalty

In the second part of the interview, we discuss a subject that has been fascinating Dino and is the ultimate challenge for any business owner: Creating insanely loyal fans.

This is where Dino’s studies of Theology come into play, and make the discussion somewhat controversial. Dino claims that there is a lot to learn from religions and cults when planning your online (&offline) presence. Dino actually gave a fascinating speech on this subject at the New Media Expo in Vegas, where I first heard him speak.

Check out today’s interview to find out more about polarizing, social status, isolation and mythos – for examples of how these tools are used to affect us in our day-to-day life, and simple examples of how you could master some of them, and combined with tools like Triberr – create true focused attention to your brand, business or website.

In this episode you will learn:

  • How Dino went from songwriting and blogging about dog training to founding Triberr?
  • How can small bloggers get more eyeballs on their content.
  • Triberr’s ultimate goal.
  • Why Triberr is considered a big secret among the successful bloggers.
  • How a small blogger can compete with big sites like or big media properties?
  • How to create insanely loyal fans?
  • What is polarization and how can it help you succeed?
  • How does giving status to your followers (this could be users, members of the site, customers, or employees) help you with succeeding in your business?
  • How do you apply these tools in blogging, magazines or podcasting?
  • What is the importance of isolation?
  • What Dino decided to wear for this interview (caution… you might not wanna know!)

Items mentioned in this episode include:

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Using something else? Copy this address:
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I Need Your Help!

Thank you all for checking out this episode of the Inspiring Innovation podcast!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below! It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Stay awesome,
Meron

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

Transcript

Continue reading IIP011: How To Get More Attention To Your Blog And Make Your Fans Insanely Loyal, With Dino Dogan

IIP 010: How To Create a 6 Figure Business With No Risk And No Idea With Dane Maxwell

Inspiring Innovation Podcast
Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode 010 Get it on iTunes

How To Create A Successful Business Out Of Thin Air With No Previous Knowledge

At the heart of The Foundation’s success is Dane Maxwell and his passionate belief in reviving the Great American Dream.

Starting out at the young age of 21 years, from his parents’ basement, Dane created a successful six figure business, followed by more success stories. While it may sound like any entrepreneurial tale, what is remarkable about Dane’s is the fact that he did not have any winning idea to base his business on. He, literally, created successful enterprises out of thin air!

In a unique exclusive interview with the podcast, Dane shares some of the Foundation’s best kept secrets to inspire a whole new generation of aspiring entrepreneurs.

How To Find Good Product Ideas For a Business

Dane Maxwell co founder of The Foundation
Dane Maxwell

The most basic human desire, is not to be loved; it is to be understood, says Dane. This core concept is the underlying principle of ‘idea extraction’, a multi-tiered process that Dane uses to figure out what any line of business really needs as a service.

The process is all about finding a real pain — and solving it. It’s done by interviewing target customers in a specific process, and asking them specific questions that lead them to reveal their pain, their business problems. Once you understand their problem, it’s incredibly easy to suggest a solution for them. More than that; according to Dane, they will beg you to build it for them. They will be angry if you don’t take their money and create the solution you’ve just described.

Dane Maxwell’s Idea Extraction Questions

What made Dane’s interviews on Mixergy and Smart Passive Income incredibly popular was the sharing of some of his ninja-questions that he teaches his students at The Foundation, and that have helped him create multiple successful software businesses for himself. But on today’s episode, you’re not only getting access to one ninja-question that he never revealed before in any previous interview (!!!), but also get to see Dane in action; when he flipped sides and became the interviewer, conducting a LIVE idea extraction session on the show.

After the interview, Dane asked me to send him a copy of the audio so he could share it with his paying students. That’s how valuable today’s episode is, and I hope you’ll make good use of it! 🙂

In this episode you will learn:

  • The 12 phases of Dane Maxwell’s Idea Extraction process.
  • How to tap into an endless source of product ideas for new businesses.
  • Dane’s parameters for picking a target market.
  • The 4 key elements that Dane looks for in a business.
  • Why should you sell tools instead of digging for gold?!
  • How to find ideas about business that can be done at home.
  • How to approach people for idea extraction & where/how to find them.
  • How to sell a product that doesn’t yet exist <<< — HUGE!
  • A LIVE Idea Extraction session that was ultimately shared with Dane’s students.
  • How to use Google to approach prospects.
  • Why you need to collect money in advance from your customers, and why this might unveil the real crucial problem your customer needs solved.
  • What keeps Dane inspired.
  • What’s the one thing Dane would’ve done differently in his career.

Items mentioned in this episode include:

Sharing the love – gratitude for reviews!

My deepest appreciation to all of you (comment or email me if you want to be removed from the list):

  • Patch Porter from the UK – you rock!
  • Terdfurg from the US – I hope the sound was better today. Thanks for your kind review!

Don’t Miss an Episode! Subscribe Below:

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes
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  • addtomyyahoo4
  • Subscribe with SubToMe
Using something else? Copy this address:
––– http://www.meronbareket.com/feed/podcast/ –––

I Need Your Help!

Thank you all for checking out this episode of the Inspiring Innovation podcast!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below! It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Stay awesome,
Meron

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

Transcript

Continue reading IIP 010: How To Create a 6 Figure Business With No Risk And No Idea With Dane Maxwell