On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Erin Smith, who is a serial entrepreneur and has built and sold multiple businesses. She is the woman behind The Starters Club podcast and the author of Master the Start. During the show, we discuss motherhood and business, building business to sell, investing in real estate, delegating and getting out of your own way, and lessons learned from writing a book.

Main Questions Asked:

• Talk about your perspective on motherhood and business.
• How do you prepare yourself mentally and logistically to sell?
• How did you finance your real estate investing?
• How much time is spent managing property investments?
• What is your advice on how to brand your business?
• Share your wisdom around hiring people.
• Tell us about your experience in writing your book.

Key Lessons Learned:

Working Yourself Out of a Job

• As an entrepreneur, your goal is to ‘work yourself out of a job.’
• Get yourself to the point mentally where you can build your business so you get out of it.
• Trust and hire the right people so your business can continue to grow without you.
• In order to set up your business so it will run without you, a good test is to go on a vacation and see what happens.
• There is a difference between having a ‘business’ and a ‘service.’ If you are away and nothing happens, then it’s a service.

Real Estate Investing

• Erin uses property management companies for her out-of-state properties.
• The best things Erin ever did were manage her own properties and having a handy man on her team whom her tenants can contact for repairs.

Branding a Business

• Deciding on whether to go with a business or personal brand is a balance and a decision as to where to put your marketing dollars.
• If you are promoting your business and your brand, then sometimes it’s best to separate the two as a person and as a brand.
• If you want your business to be sellable, it’s best to go with the brand and not the personal name.

Hiring and Outsourcing

• When hiring, go with your gut.
• Any employee should be bringing a return on investment, which should be reflected in their paycheck.
• Make sure employees are qualified and make them do some kind of test before hiring them.
• In the job description, write very specific instructions to test that the applicants are reading the directions.
• Take your time in hiring, otherwise it will cost you far too much to train someone who leaves after a few months.
• If your trust is broken with an employee, then get rid of them.

Lessons from Writing a Book

• Writing a book is such an ‘inner game.’
• Just because someone else has had the idea for a business doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It just means the business model has already been proven. You have to find an ‘in’ and do it better.
• We limit ourselves by the notion on what we grew up with and our own mindset of what we are capable of.
• Everything is a matter of ‘how bad do you want it?’

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

Links to Resources Mentioned

The Starters Club

Master the Start (book)  

The No B.S. Management of People and Profits (book)

On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Carri Drzyzga, who is known internationally as the functional medicine doc and go-to expert on finding the root causes of health problems so you can feel normal again. Carri is a chiropractor, naturopathic doctor, host of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, and author of the hit book Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again. She is the creator of Entrepreneurial Fatigue: How to fuel your brain and body for entrepreneurial success. During the show, we discuss sleep, entrepreneurial fatigue, food and fatigue prevention, Carri’s Ultimate Smoothie recipe, and office strategies to get moving.

Main Questions Asked:

• Talk about the importance of sleep environment.
• What is entrepreneurial fatigue, and how do you know if you have it?
• What are some of the causes of entrepreneurial fatigue?
• What can we do to prevent entrepreneurial fatigue?
• Why is eating at our desk so problematic?

Key Lessons Learned:

The Importance of Sleep

• Even if you don’t have insomnia, you can still have sleep problems.
• It’s important to have your bedroom as dark as you can get it (as dark as a cave).
• The light in your bedroom stops your brain from producing the maximum amount of melatonin.
• If you can’t darken your room, then try using a sleep mask. You may not get more sleep, but the quality will be better.

Entrepreneurial Fatigue

• If you feel that you or your brain aren’t on point, then you are probably suffering with entrepreneurial fatigue.
• Rate your average energy from 0-10. If you aren’t at 8 or higher, then you are suffering from entrepreneurial fatigue.

Food and Fatigue Prevention

• Pay attention to taking care of the number one business asset, which is you. This means taking care of your health.
• Small things will have long-term impacts such as business, health, relationships.

Carri’s Ultimate Smoothie Recipe:

• Organic spinach
• ½ cup blueberries
• 1-2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1-2 Tbsp clarified butter
• 1-2 Tbsp nut or seed butter
• 1-2 Tbsp raw cacao powder
• 3 raw organic eggs (or 20-30g of whey isolate protein powder)
• Coconut water or milk

Exercise Get Moving

• Sitting for prolonged periods of time is worse than sitting.
• Interval training, which is short busts of exercise to get your heart rate up, move the body’s lymphatics, and get oxygen to your brain.
• Booking-in appointment times to perform 5-10 minutes of exercise during breaks is a great strategy.
• Great office exercise breaks include running in place, squats or lunges, commando crawls, and planking.

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Dr Carri

The Functional Medicine Radio Show

Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again (book)

Functional Medicine Ontario 

The Slight Edge

How to make Ghee (Video)

Far too often, marriages and families suffer in the pursuit of business, profit, and growth. On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Susie Miller, who is the better relationship coach, author, speaker, and dedicated to helping create better relationships in 30 days or less. Susie equips high-potential entrepreneurs and executives with ways to reduce stress, improve communication, and not bankrupt relationships in the pursuit of profit and success. Susie is also the bestselling author of Listen, Learn, Love, and during this episode discusses the concept of the entrespouse, relationships and business, the 5 Love Languages, and the Profit Method.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is an ‘entrespouse’?
• What unique challenges do entrepreneurs face in their relationships?
• Talk about The Profit Method.

Key Lessons Learned:

Entrespouse

• This is someone who is married and also has a business.
• As an entrepreneur, you have two loves: the husband or wife and the business.
• We tell our spouses to ‘wait’ and that we will get to them, which puts them on the backburner and wrecks marriages.
• When you spend time investing in anything other than your business, your business will suffer because it doesn’t have you 24/7.
• If you are working to grow a strong marriage, you can’t be 24/7 in your business.

Relationships & Business

• The biggest key is to invest in your marriage before the crisis hits.
• When we are having relationship issues at home, we are distracted, burdened, and aren’t firing on all cylinders.
• If the marriage ends, the business will be impacted by the separation of assets.
• Having a better relationship frees up energy and creativity, so you have more of yourself present in your business.
• Susie is on a crusade to have relationships talked about at business conferences because better relationships increase a businesses bottom line.

Entrespouse Communication

• The level of unpredictability for entrepreneurs wreaks havoc on relationships.
• We get so busy trying to stay on top of things that we forget to have discussions about it with our spouse.
• If you don’t have conversations, then far too much gets assumed, which is where the problems start.
• Entrepreneurs have a different mindset, so it’s important to develop a common language to enable spousal discussion with your non-entrepreneur mate.

The 5 Love Languages

• If you want to know your spouse’s love language, just watch how they give you love.

1. Words of affirmation
2. Physical touch
3. Acts of service
4. Quality time
5. Gifts

The Profit Method

• Priorities - Make time in your schedule.
• Rekindle - Don’t live like roommates.
• Open Up - Don’t let things build up.
• Focus - When you are with your spouse or family be 100% with them.
• Intentional Interactions - This isn’t quantity time. This is developing a strategy for engagement and interaction.
  • This could be putting in a reminder to pick up flowers or send a text.
  • In the midst of life, it’s the touch points of communication that keep us going.
• Tactical - Strategic and preemptive things to help your relationship grown.

Mindset

• As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get wrapped up in what other people think, do, and say.

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Susie Miller (First interview)

Susie Miller

On this episode of Rhodes to Success, I interview Joe Naab, who is the founder and president of Vocal Nebula, which is a learning community online for those who love to sing. Joe has been an entrepreneur for more than twelve years, and during this episode explains why we should focus on our voices, talks about how to use your voice as an instrument, and teaches you vocal warm up exercises.  

Main Questions Asked:

• What makes the voice an instrument?
• Why should we warm up and focus on our voice?

Key Lessons Learned:

Podcasting and Your Voice

• As a podcaster or public speaker, it is important to take your voice seriously.
• Treat podcasting as a craft and not simply a marketing tool.
• When people are listening to your voice through headphones for prolonged periods of time, you want it to be an enjoyable experience.
• Warm up your voice.
• Remember to save this podcast and go back to the vocal exercises!

The Voice as an Instrument

• The voice is an instrument because it makes music, but we tend not to think of it as an instrument.
• When you see the voice as an instrument, it helps accelerate your progress as a singer, speaker, podcaster, or voice actor.
• People are both the ‘player’ and the ‘instrument.’

The Three Parts:

1. Aerator

• This is everything below the vocal chords.
• Lungs, diaphragm, abdominal muscles.
• The aerator provides air pressure to the intonator.
• This is where we make sound that is projected into the resonator, where we shape the sounds.

2. Intonator

• The voice box and everything it contains.
• Larynx and vocal folds.

3. Resonator

• The top of your neck and your head.

Focusing on the Voice

• When we focus on the voice, we replace inhibitory behavior with exhibitory behavior.
• Since early childhood, we are always taught to dampen the sound and lower the volume of our voice.
• When you are about to podcast or do a speech, you need to warm up your voice to ensure you aren’t pushing too hard.

Benefits of Vocal Exercises

• When you do these exercises, you are driving sonic energy into your brain.
• While you sing, your brain produces dopamine and other feel good neurotransmitters.
• Focus on a kinesthetic awareness of the feeling of the instrument. This is the secret to fast vocal development.
• The student that learns how to do vocal exercises correctly will develop much faster than a student who just does them.

Four Vocal Exercises

1. Lip trill or lip bubbles
2. Closed Mouth Vowels (CMV): humming
3. Fricatives: Th, Z, S, (consonants with vowels behind them)
4. Articulators: The scale where you have a sound for each note of the scales.

• Joe recommends: 1x lip trill, 2x closed mouth vowels, 2x fricatives, and 2x articulators.

Subscribe to the show in iTunes or Stitcher Radio!

The music in today's episode was written by The Danger Os and produced by Nick Palmer. Check them out at https://www.facebook.com/thedangerosmakemusic 

Links to Resources Mentioned

Vocal Nebula