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The European investor's favorite podcast.

Episode 37 – Stocks, Reinvesting & Diversifying with Marco Schwartz

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James couldn’t make it for this episode due to illness, but fear not, Jean is joined by online entrepreneur, engineer, and author, Marco Schwartz.

With Marco at hand, they discuss stock, dividends, and profits from a business, as they answer tough questions, like, “Should you reinvest, buy other WordPress businesses, or diversify?”

Topics Include:

  • Marco’s story, his travels, his studies, how he found success.
  • How Marco maintains revenue with his books & video courses, which all started with self-publishing.
  • Environment matters; using your destination to aid your business and productivity.
  • Lifestyle Design, and how it fosters a simplistic & positive philosophy.
    • Defining what you want out of life.
  • Try biting off more than you can chew, when making a life plan, pushing yourself to work harder.
  • Why you should invest money as an entrepreneur.
  • The difference between investing on a shorter term, versus long term.
  • Marco’s style of investing: defining The Online Empire model.
  • Explaining and simplifying stocks.
  • Why diversifying your stock options is one of the best things you can do.
  • The reason Marco only invests in dividend paying stocks.
  • Weighing higher risk against higher returns.
  • The best Peer-to-Peer lending sites in Europe.
  • Bit Coin, and what it has in common with Peer-to-Peer lending.
    • High risk, yet higher yields.
  • Marco’s recommended platforms.
  • Jean inquires about Marco’s negative experiences with investing.
  • Real Estate, and why it really is the best and most basic investment.
  • On selling your investment.
  • The most recent addition to Marco’s investment portfolio: Profitable Websites.
  • Marco elaborates and explains all of his sources of revenue, his lifestyle.
    • Why he keeps 3 months in physical currency.
  • Marco’s wisdom regarding Hong Kong.
  • Abiding by CFC (Controlled Foreign Corporation) Rules.
  • Lastly, the benefits of having a podcast, why Marco started his own.

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Episode 36 – Interview with Curtis McHale

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“Is your business taking all your evenings and weekends? Even with all that work are you just making ends meet because your clients are always trying to drive down your pricing?”…
“Stop running a hobby START running a business.”, Curtis McHale.

That’s right everyone, in this episode of Mastermind.fm, James and Jean interview professional consultant, Curtis McHale.

Curtis is a man of many mottos, but one that undoubtedly personifies is, “Help people run the business they want, so they can live the life they want to live.”

Specializing in ecommerce and membership sites, the crew dives into what this gentleman knows best:

  • The one-to-many business model.
  • The importance of personal mission statements to achieve success.
  • Measure your opportunities and business potential based off what you want for yourself.
  • Just because you aren’t online, doesn’t mean you can’t be productive.
  • Software Curtis uses for running his consulting business.
  • Addressing and weighing whether you are the right “fit” for your client, and vice versa.
  • Taking the extra time to develop a interpersonal dialogue with your clients can go a long way.
  • Managing work and hobbies.
  • Why taking care of yourself mentally, by optimizing “wind down” time, is vital.
  • On Curtis’ books and generating income in the info space.
  • Trust: quantifying the “trust scale”, and how to rise on it.
  • How trust guarantees clients.
  • Jean has Curtis detail some of the offline work he does with his clients.
  • A creative use for text expander.
  • Curtis’ philosophy of “write it down, or it didn’t happen”.
  • How “personal and awesome” reaching out to someone in the physical realm can be.
  • Taking advantage of opportunities to commune with peers and other professionals.

End of show giveaway! Mastermind.fm is giving away one copy of each of Curtis’ books. To participate in your chance to win, just send us an email podcast@mastermind.fm (it can be a question, comment, what-have-you), and we will choose lucky individuals randomly.

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Episode 35 – A Look Inside the WP Ninjas with the Whole Team

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The WP Ninjas unite with Mastermind.fm
On this week’s show, Jean is willfully “trapped” in Cleveland, Tennessee, after the hurricane evacuation in Florida rendered LoopConf cancelled.

Since Jean’s conference was cut short, the WP Ninjas crew shows Jean and his wife their Southern hospitality, and their lovably cheesy sense of humor.

So be sure and join the whole team in this very special episode, as they “let their hair down”, have some fun, and even bare their souls.

Topics Include:

  • WP Ninjas team introduction.
  • James has Jean describe his perception of what the WP Ninjas “day-to-day” is like.
    • Table tennis, LOTS of table tennis.
  • Jean wonders how the office layout was determined or assigned.
    • The benefits and challenges of working as a team in one large room.
    • How the team combats distractions and/or interruptions.
    • Plans for their setup as the team continues to grow.
  • On considering a hybrid model of distributed and in-office team members.
  • WordCamps and deciding who attends.
    • Why attending and speaking at WordCamps is important.
    • The origin of the official/unofficial WordCamp Atlanta 2016 mascot: The Kenatee.
  • How the team accomplishes 8 hours of support work in 1 hour every morning.
    • On keeping consistency in writing across documentation written by the whole team.
    • The benefits of having the development team work support and write documentation.
  • How working for WP Ninjas has changed each members’ life and perspective.

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Episode 34 – A Complete Plugin Rewrite Case Study with Ninja Forms

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Expressly laid out in absolute detail, this Episode is presented in QA format, as Jean inquires how James and his team took their existing product of Ninja Forms and released a complete rewrite successfully.

As such, James gets quite candid about launching WP Ninjas’ tremendously challenging work on Ninja Forms, with the release of their very own Ninja Forms 3.0.

Covered are things like: the successes, stepping stones, marketing, feedback, the competition, and fear itself.

Topics include:

  • The epiphany that innovation is key.
  • How rebranding & reimagining form building has led to WP Ninjas’ sizeable achievement.
  • Jean has James detail the time and monetary investment that went into 3.0 before release.
    • The hefty and worthwhile expense of hiring a professional UI company.
      • How to get in touch with people who provide such a service.
      • How a mutual love of the classic comedian/actor/singer Danny Kaye sealed the deal on James’ chosen UI company.
    • The development & opportunity cost.
      • Keeping existing users happy during 3.0’s lengthy development.
    • Predicting optimum sales “seasons” in the plugin community.
    • Preparing for low income months.
    • Fighting to battle toward continued growth in user base.
  • How James made his peace with the anxiety of working toward something so important.
  • James’ hindsight clarifies the value of preparing a budget.
  • Contrasting product revamps as an entrepreneur vs. the process of doing so under an investor facing potentially exponential loss.
  • Understanding and quantifying support costs.
  • How transparency can save face.
  • The lengths James and team went to, to include others in the celebration of launching Ninja Forms 3.0.
    • Building and harnessing anticipation.
    • Timing is everything.
  • The results of all the hard work
    • The issue of having 50+ add-ons that had to work on the new schema.
    • The positives of users being able to roll back to a previous build, should problems arise.
    • Managing the inevitable increase in support load & prioritizing paid users.
    • Defining and admitting failures.
    • The fruits of their labor.
  • James’ advice for those going through a similar process.
    • Seize an adventurous outlook and take risks.
    • Never be afraid to ask “What if?”

Featured on the Show:

Additionally, the technical side of the Ninja Forms rewrite can found here in Episode 14.

Episode 33 – Interview with Andy Wilkerson

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Guesting on Mastermind.fm this week: Andy Wilkerson

Andy is the president of Parallelus, UpThemes, and creator of the Runway framework for WordPress.

So, join Mastermind.fm as we walk through all that which has led to Andy’s acquisition of UpThemes, and any trials, lessons, or ordeals along the way.

Topics Include:

  • Venting support frustrations via James’ “patented” company communication technique that can help defuse a bad situation.
  • Andy’s history and experience with Theme Forest and Envato.
  • Hot tips for inclusion of unique features to make your theme stand out and attract users to your product.
    • Which may not be as difficult as your think!
  • Andy’s personal account of the transition and acquisition of UpThemes.
    • Insight into his mindset going into the process of leveraging value.
    • The critical role of planning stages when moving forward.
    • Deciding on a  plan of action to make the acquisition worth the investment.
  • Also discussed is Andy’s objective consideration in striving to harness potential and maximize the grow of his opportunity.
  • Being aware of the need to foster direction.
    • Both amongst employees eager to move into the next task, or a project in general.
  • The importance of analyzing what you are as a company.
    • Your goal/s for the near and distant future.
  • The deceptive comfort of “an easy acquisition.”
  • Topic on security and handling users properly.
  • Advice for budding theme developers on what to expect from their endeavors.
    • Requirements
    • Submission Times
    • Turnover rate in the Envato & WordPress.com marketplace.
      • How long does it take to develop a theme on average?
      • What defines a monetarily successful theme?
      • Expect to be pulled away from starting a new project, simply from the obligation to work support.
      • Don’t let a sales dip lead to discouragement.
  • The importance and necessity of a backup plan!

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