EFP 116: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs As Entrepreneurs

It’s said that taking your company from nothing to 6-figures per year requires some major mindset shifts.

How to Put an End to Limiting Beliefs for Entrepreneurs

Today, Joe and I look at some of the limiting beliefs we’ve struggled with as we share our journey in overcoming them.

Check Out This Week’s Episode Here:

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Limiting Beliefs Discussed This Week Include:

• I’m not the best choice
• I can’t be successful
• I don’t have it all figured out
• What if I pick the wrong niche?
• I’m from the other side of the tracks and can’t relate to my customers

Mentions:

• BTCJam
• NichePursuits, check out Spencer’s new design!
• Mark Manson’s 683 Ways to Fail to Get a Job Offer
• EmpireFlippers Twitter

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“If you’re so focused on how you’re going to fail, you’re likely to be the cause of your failure.” – Justin – Tweet This!

How do you overcome your entrepreneurial limiting beliefs? Share your stories and best tips in the comments below.

 

Justin:                   Welcome to the Empire Podcast episode 116. It’s said that taking your company from nothing to six figures per year requires entrepreneurs to make some mindset shifts. Today we wanna look at some of the limiting beliefs we’ve struggled with and share our journey in overcoming them. You can find the show notes and all links discussed in this episode at empireflippers.com/limits. All right, let’s do this.

Automated:       Sick of listening to entrepreneurial advice from guys with day jobs? Want to hear about the real successes and failures that come with building an online empire? You are not alone. From San Diego to Tokyo, New York to Bangkok, join thousands of entrepreneurs and investors who are prioritizing wealth and personal freedom over the oppression of an office cubicle. Check out the Empire Podcast. And now your hosts Justin and Joe.

Justin:                   I doubt you’re the best business partner for me, Joe. Seriously, man, in fact over the last few weeks or so I’ve met so many interesting entrepreneurs in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Las Vegas I’d say it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve met a few other entrepreneurs or potential business partners that would actually be a better partner for me and my business situation.

Joe:                        I feel like you’re breaking up with me or something.

Justin:                   Sounds pretty bad. What are you breaking up? Let’s talk, we haven’t talked. Are we gonna do this in person? No, but the idea is just that there are people out there that might be a better business partner for me and clearly there are people that are better business partner for you. And this kind of worry or concern has had me up at nights in the past and has had you up, too, like, “God, what if Justin goes off and finds someone that could do it better?” I’m definitely not the best person, am I really the right person to be a partner here and what the hell right do I have to be running a podcast? And we’ve had these thoughts I know because we’ve discussed them over beers and I think this is a common problem for someone that’s kind of just getting started, but it’s also something that I think experienced entrepreneurs can struggle with. So because this is a problem for new entrepreneurs and experienced entrepreneurs I thought it would be really good to do a show about. It’s really, I think, less about process and systems early on as an entrepreneur, it’s more about kind of figuring out who you are and kind of getting over yourself or some of those limiting beliefs you have.

Joe:                        Yeah, I can see it being a mindset change, I could see it … Getting out of your own way is kind of the way that I would look at it.

Justin:                   So we really wanted to do an episode that we could refer people to that were struggling with some of these limiting beliefs and just kind of share our thoughts on how we’ve overcome them or how we kind of struggle with them in our business, and kind of share our thoughts and tactics and strategies for that as well. Before we do that, buddy, it’s time to make the donuts. What you got for the featured listing of the week?

Joe:                        So this week we’ve got listing number 40096. It’s actually a three site package, you know how much I love these packages, these sites get a ton of traffic. Now it is in the entertaining kind of gaming niche, the casual gaming niche I’ll just leave it at that, so the traffic may not be that monetizable, but it does have AdSense on it right now. It is making about $1,000 a month net so that is pretty good. It is pretty much on autopilot which is nice. If you have a different way to monetize that traffic, obviously you could make a killing and we’re listing the site at just under $20,000.

Justin:                   What I thought was interesting about this was that, well, there’s very little work required and it gets a shit ton of traffic. Looking at it across the three sites it gets about a million page views a month and I was looking at this and thinking, “Oh, my God. Why is it earning so little at only $1,000 a month,” and the first answer is clearly AdSense, right? AdSense is one of the lower forms of monetization, but also the niche. There are a ton in the entertainment space or kind of gaming websites they get a ton of traffic, but don’t necessarily have a ton of earnings.

Joe:                        Yeah, and I think the owner, too, one of the things he said he didn’t focus on was optimizing the click view rate. So if you’re an expert with placement of ads, where to make the ads have the best CTR, maybe you could make an immediate bump in the earnings on these sites.

Justin:                   My thought, too, is that a good profile for this would be a flipper Fred, someone that can purchase this, that can improve the CTR or better monetize the site with all that traffic and six months, 12 months down the road go ahead and sell it off with the improved earnings. So also a do-it-yourself David who wants to get in there, tinker with it a bit and play with the traffic, you’ve got plenty of traffic to play with. So one of the sites was made, I think, back in 2012 and then the latest site was actually made in earlier 2014. So there’s a bit of history on one of the sites and one of the sites is much, much newer. Worth checking out, it’s listing 40096 and we’ll link to that in the show notes. All right let’s dig into the heart of this week’s episode.

Automated:       Now for the heart of this week’s episode.

Justin:                   All right, Joe, so our topic today is overcoming limiting beliefs as entrepreneurs and so we’ve actually got five that we wanted to cover and go through. The first one is the idea that I’m not the best choice and this is something I mentioned at the top of the show. The fact that there are smarter or more talented people out there that can do this better than I can and this is something that I struggled with as an employee when I was a mid-level manager working my way up the chain and I was wondering like, “Why me,” right? There are people that are smarter out there, there are people that know local SEO better than I do, there are people that have more management skills than I do. Why am I in the position that I’m in and why am I getting promoted and moving up the value chain? What do I have that’s special above and beyond what they have? I actually asked some mentors about this as silly as this sounds I asked some mentors about this and it’s interesting to hear their reply. Have you ever felt this way, Joe, that, “Why are you doing this, what’s so special about you?”

Joe:                        Yeah, I have, but I think you learn from experience the fact that there are a lot of smart people out there with a lot of potential, but it ends at just that, potential unfortunately and potential is just wasted talent and you see that because they’re not willing to put in the hard work. I think my answer to number one is, maybe you’re not the best choice, but you’re probably the best choice right now in the fact that you’re in the right place, right time and willing to work hard in order to make things work.

Justin:                   Well, looking at kind of the reasoning for this, I think this stems from a lack of confidence, right, a worry about how things look to other people or from the outside. You’re worrying about kind of why am I qualified or what are my skills in being an entrepreneur? And I think I mentioned that I’m not the best choice and I think the mindset shift that I had to go through was that nobody’s chosen and that you really make your own luck and this can apply to your own company, it can apply to a job opportunity or employment. When I was working for this local SEO company, it wasn’t that these roles were just kind of there and I applied for them and hopefully they picked me to take it, no, I created these roles. As I started moving up, I started realizing opportunities and saying, “Okay, I think we need to do this, we need to add this division, I think we need to expand this team,” and I started to create the role for myself. And it wasn’t that I was chosen, it was that I forced the issue, I pressed the issue and I think as an entrepreneur you need to be doing that. It’s always pressing the issue and expanding your business.

Joe:                        Yeah, agreed and definitely about making your own luck, I think that that’s so true. Whether you have a job or a business, it’s what you put into it that’s what you’re gonna get out and you’re gonna go through a lot of months where you’re struggling, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight and you’re just working for the sake of working, but it does pay off in the end.

Justin:                   I like your point about potential, too, right? It’s not just about what you’re capable of, it’s about being in the right place and the right time, but it’s also about execution. So just because someone’s capable or someone’s potential is there, it doesn’t mean that it’s right and you are right now, and you’re in the position and you’re executing it. That’s why I think you need to get over the fact that you think you’re not the best choice. Second point we had is I can’t be successful, this idea or this belief that just kind of nothing ever works out for me, I don’t have the kind of luck that other people have or I don’t have the success that other people have and I know that this is something that you struggled with a bit, Joe.

Joe:                        Yeah, I think if you get slapped down enough times in life then you start to just think, “Woe is me,” kind of thing. [crosstalk 00:08:30]

Justin:                   Yeah, if you have this like … Well, that also you have a poor track record or you have some things in your history where you just weren’t successful and things didn’t work out and I think if you dwell on those things, this idea or this negative belief kind of sprout out basically and ultimately it’s kind of a negative self-image. It’s an idea that you’re not able to be successful, that there’s something wrong with you or something not so great with you, but I think there’s some truth to the idea that if you’re really focused on how you’re gonna fail and you’re constantly trying to avoid failure that you’re more likely to be the cause of that failure because you’re so focused on it. Now I’m not gonna get all meta here and say, “Because you’re focused on it this is always gonna happen,” or, “Whatever you’re focused on always happens.” It’s not the secret or anything, but I do think that having a negative mindset in general can lead to more negative outcomes.

Joe:                        I disagree with you there. Justin, I think we’ve talked about this privately at nausea, but I don’t really think a negative mindset will cause negative results. Yes, I know that sports professionals try to picture the ball going through the hoop and picture the perfect spiral going in to the end zone, but-

Justin:                   Why do they do that?

Joe:                        … I’m not … Well because in a short period of time muscle memory and all that kind of stuff, yes, it probably makes a huge difference, but I’m not sure that’s something that you have to consistently work through it makes a difference. But what I will say is that your failures really make you who you are and your failures can make you a success later on and the people I’ve seen that have early success tend to struggle with being a success later on in life. So the people that have had consistent failure and overcome it, they tend to be more steady successes and larger successes later in life.

Justin:                   So you think people that have failures in general tend to have larger or more sustained successes later than the people that don’t fail early on? Are you saying that because they haven’t had any failures that they come across and hit a roadblock or major failure later on and they can’t get through it?

Joe:                        Yeah, exactly. So I think people that had too easy success early on, they go ahead and their setting themselves up for failure later because they just expect it to be so easy for them and later on it’s not and now they just wind up not being able to overcome obstacles likes you were saying.

Justin:                   That’s interesting. Yeah, I would agree with that. I disagree with you, I think you’re wrong though about the mindset thing and it’s more beyond the athlete trying to set themselves up for success. I think as an entrepreneur, and I know these people that are always focused on kind of the negativity or the things that are happening to them outside their control, they’re always thinking it’s a third party. They’re always thinking it’s some outside influence that’s causing them to fail and that negativity, I think, and that focus on things that are outside of themselves really keeps them from understanding the fact that their success is really dependent on them especially as an entrepreneur when you’re working inside of your own business. Your success if yours, if there’s a problem with your company you can’t blame these other outside influences. You change it. You adapt, you make your company and your business different.

We’ve realized this at times right, Joe? That we’re working inside of our business and we go, “God, I wish our business could be this way.” We’ve actually talked about that, about other businesses, we’re like, “Oh, I like what they’re doing over there. I wish we could do that.” And then we stop and talk about it we’re like, “Well, we could probably make our company that way if we wanted, too, right?” Yeah, we probably could with the doubling down and the dropping all the side projects. That stemmed from, at least for me, looking over at Clay Collins and Leadpages and looking at what they’re doing in terms of their marketing and saying, “Wow, that’s so cool. They’re so focused on what they’re doing. I wish we could do that.” And us basically deciding that, yeah, we can, we can make that change in our business.

Joe:                        Yeah, I will say that dwelling on negativity excessively is definitely not good for your business, not good for your life, not good for anything. But, yeah, I just don’t think that a negative attitude is gonna affect the outcome of life either way, but I’m sure a lot of people-

Justin:                   I don’t know, man. I hate you for this. I know where you’re coming from, I know where you’re coming from with this, but I think you are so dead wrong, dude. And studies have shown, that’s a pretty cop out answer, but people have looked at this and generally the negativity that you come into something with will affect kind of how you view the outcome. So negative people will view it kind of more negatively than positive people, but they’re okay with that. They can generally make it work, but I think for people like me, focusing on that negativity is a particularly bad thing. For people like you, not looking at the potential negatives or downsides would be probably a bad thing. So I think it depends on where you’re coming from with this. I don’t think that … And I’m not saying, “Look, just be positive and roses all day.” No, I’m not saying that, but I’m saying that I need a more positive outlook than you do.

Joe:                        Yep.

Justin:                   I think the other you can do is if you have that ‘I can’t be successful’ kind of limiting belief, it would help you to get in a mastermind with like minded people. So people that are either earlier in their journey or in a stage that you’re at in their journey and talking to them and kind of masterminding with them and talking about your business and where you’re having success and where you’re having failures. I think it will help you realize that other people have struggles, too, they’re running into roadblocks and issues, maybe the same ones that you’re having, and you guys can work together to kind of work through some of those problems or limiting beliefs as well.

Joe:                        And mastermind is always a good idea, but yeah especially if you’re stuck in a rut. I’m not sure if finding other people that are stuck in a rut as well is a good a idea, but finding people that are in the same level as you for a mastermind or maybe a bit above you that can pull you up and kind of show you the way.

Justin:                   The third limiting belief we wanna talk about is the idea that I don’t have it all figured out so how can I operate in this niche, right? I’m not an expert, maybe I’m not the expert, I’ve been studying this for 15 years there are other people that have been working on this for 15, 20 years. Why the hell am I talking about this and what right do I have?

Joe:                        Yeah, let me tell you a little secret, none of us have it figured out.

Justin:                   Right.

Joe:                        I remember talking to old people back in the day and I’d say, “What’s the difference between being 25 and 65 besides the physical thing?” They’d say, “Mentally, you’ve just been through things so many times that you’ve just learned your lessons.” There’s really no difference so you don’t become some expert overnight, you have to just experience it and I think that even the most experienced people still find themselves in situations that are new to them. That’s what kind of makes I good, that’s what kind of makes it exciting, right?

Justin:                   Yeah, we were at [inaudible 00:15:19] Weekend talking to a bunch of other brokers and people that are in the industry and what we were realizing is that in terms of a lot of things in the industry, everyone else doesn’t have it figured out either. On the one end you have a broker that says, “I don’t care about buyers. My whole goal is to get the sellers maximum value as possible.” On the other end you have brokers that are, in terms of valuation, worried more about their buyers and trying to really play the buy side brokerage. So people are all across the spectrum and no one has the right answer all the time. Some people love the marketing we’re doing, some people hate our deposit process so it really just depends on where you’re coming from. But there are other people out there, even the experts probably don’t have it all figured out either

Another thing you can do is you can leverage the people that are supposed experts, that actually do know more about the industry than you do and you can do this by having them on a podcast for example. You can interview them, you can sit down with them for a steak dinner, give them an email, give them a call and see if you can meet up with them and ask them questions and then share that information on your blog, in your emails, through your podcasts, that kind of thing. So you can leverage their success and their experience through your content.

And the fourth limiting belief we have is we see this a lot in our industry in the building, buying and selling of websites and online businesses is the question of what if I pick the wrong niche, right? What if I pick something and I end up wasting all my time and I’m spending all this time, effort and energy on something that’s just a loser, right? And this stems from just a fear of failure, right, a fear of wasting your time and this is actually something that we did when we started out. When we started building sites I picked sites that I thought had great search volume and I thought we’d be able to rank for, and the search volume sucked. It was broad match instead of exact match and anyway we built out these sites and they got like zero traffic, we’re making zero dollars and I was like, “What the hell?” And I did pick the wrong niche, but the only reason I was able to figure out that I picked the wrong niche is just because I started, right? ‘Cause I actually-

Joe:                        Yeah.

Justin:                   … picked one and did it.

Joe:                        That being frozen, dear in the headlights kind of situation I think is the worst thing. We see this a lot from people looking to buy sites like you said and I understand people really want something that their gonna be excited about, but there’s a lot of things to get excited about in business besides just what the subject matter is. So I wouldn’t focus on that exclusively and I would make sure to find other pieces of the business that excite you, but remember … And I know Justin this is gonna the big point of view of yours, is adapting and the way things are going to change over time is something that you don’t know what the course of your entrepreneurial journey is going to be. So where you start out may not be as important as you think.

Justin:                   Yeah, I think just getting back to getting started, it’s never a waste of time to get started, right? You’re never wasting your time, you’re never heading in a wrong direction because at least you’re getting the momentum or the ball rolling, you’re getting something started. And the trust is no wildly successful entrepreneurs look back and attribute their success to that initial niche selection. They don’t look back and say, “Okay, it’s because I chose this niche that I was successful.” No, it was because they got started, they learned the market, they learned their customers and they adapted to their marketplace, right, that’s why they were successful and it wasn’t based on some initial niche selection they had before they even sold their first product or sold their first service. So I think, “What if I pick the wrong niche,” a better question to ask is, “What if I don’t get started at all,” right? And so I think this fear of failure needs to go away, you need to start and then realize that oh, you probably did fail or make a mistake and then change and adapt and keep moving forward.

So the fifth part we had is something that I’ve dealt with a little more recently. In the last few months I’ve been talking about or wondering about this and that’s the fact that I’m from the other side of the tracks and I can’t really relate to my customers. When I look at some of the people that are buying and selling websites especially for $200,000 $300,000 Joe, we were talking about this before about you and I are blue collar kids, we were raised in very middle class families. I was on the west coast, you were on the east coast, your dad a trash guy, mine was a postal worker, they’re not these crazy white collar guys giving us all this great rich dad, poor dad amazing financial advice. So in terms of buying $200,000 $300,000 assets and leveraging your money and other people’s money to rule your wealth, that’s not something that we’re terribly familiar with. So it’s daunting to think that we have to talk to this audience or that we have to relate to this audience and I think this comes from this mistaken belief that you are where you come from and that your background defines you and that’s simply not the case.

Joe:                        Yeah, definitely in my family although I got great advice on managing dollars or maybe managing pennies, I didn’t really get a lot of advice on how to manage dollars and that’s what I feel I’m doing now and it’s definitely new in terms of the people I’m interacting with and the amounts that are flying by. So I guess that will only get worse as things go on and it’s just something you have to adjust to because the majority of people are not born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they’re not born into the one percent, most people do come from middle class society.

Justin:                   Joe, that’s something I’m realizing is that the people that matter don’t care where we’re from. Our customers that matter to us, the ones that are buying, the ones that are considering investing in our business, don’t particularly give a shit, not nearly as much as we do. And the other thing I’ve realized is that our customers don’t care so much about our interesting story, they care that we’re interested in what they have to say, and their concerns and their needs. So we don’t have to share as much about our background to do business, right, we need to instead listen to our customers and adapt and change our process and what we offer to meet their needs. I think ultimately, Joe, if you care about your market and your customers, you’re gonna pick it up soon enough so you’ll be able to relate to your customers because you’re deeply involved, and you really care about what you’re doing, and you’re interested in it and you’re learning in that space.

Joe:                        Yeah, it just happened to us over time as we learned from our customers. We learned by talking to other customers who weren’t as knowledgeable and teaching them and then just investigating the niche more. And you just learn over time and then you become more comfortable with hanging out in that sort of circle of people. It’s something that you shouldn’t be afraid of and you definitely shouldn’t be worried about.

Justin:                   Cool, man. All right, you ready for some news and updates?

Joe:                        I am.

Automated:       You have been listening to The Empire Podcast. Now some news and updates.

Justin:                   All right the first thing is you recently borrowed 15 Bitcoin from BTCJam. What’s going on, buddy, you putting us in debt? What’s the deal here?

Joe:                        Well, yeah, I thought we should eat some of our own dog food. I should say first that 15 Bitcoin currently only equals about $5,500 to $6,000 so it’s not … We’re not talking about a whole lot of money here.

Justin:                   Thank God Bitcoin dropped. I thought it was still $1,000 per, I thought it was about 15 grand. Oh, only 5,500 we’re good.

Joe:                        So I thought we would eat some of our own dog food here and say if we can build up [inaudible 00:22:50] on Bitcoin and really start to use the platform as a way to buy sites, possibly to build out our inventory, that kind of thing so this is kind of my first toe tap into the waters. I’ll try to figure out how to use the platform effectively, build up a respectable history of payment and therefore be able to get larger loans ’cause let’s face it, 50 Bitcoin right now is not really that much money, but you gotta show that … Even if you provide all the details, which I have which is fairly extensive, you still have to show a payment history in order to get the best loans and the largest loans funded, but the other great thing, I think, about the platform is I was able to talk about Empire Flippers, able to talk about the fact that we do take Bitcoin to buy sites and a lot of people have shown interest in that.

Justin:                   Yeah, we talked about this a couple of episodes ago. We were talking about how to purchase sites with little or no money and one of the options we came up with was borrowing from P2P sites and this is one of the loans we mentioned which is BTCJam. It’s interesting that you’re getting started with is. So the idea is that … I remember when you started this, you signed up, you were harassing us to give you reviews. You were like, “Dude, did you give me my BTCJam review yet?” Dude, you were skyping me, “Dude, did you get me my review yet?” But I know a bunch of people gave you reviews there and you verified bank accounts and all kinds of stuff and then you said you’re doing this loan so that you can get it paid off, get it paid back and kind of roll that up and start making larger and larger loans. I think that’s an interesting approach. I also think it’s pretty cool that the interest rates are really low compared to the other ones that are out there. I know it is with Bitcoin, but the interest rates are low which is helpful. But, yeah, if we can keep rolling this up and making it larger and larger and then we can actually start showing how to buy sites based on this borrowed money. I think that’s an interesting approach.

Joe:                        Yeah, it would be an awesome little case study of the fact that you can buy at a very reasonable interest rate, you buy a site, go ahead and flip that on our platform, pay back the loan and everyone’s happy. The investors are happy with the interest rate they get, you’re happy with the property you were able to flip and show a profit and I think it’ll be a good case study.

Justin:                   And like you said, for a few hundred bucks or whatever that we’re paying in interest, it’s probably worth it to help get Empire Flippers some traction over there, let people kind of hear about what we’re doing, show them what we’re doing and get them possibly involved in buying and selling websites or using some of their Bitcoin to purchase some of these assets. I think that’s kind of interesting.

Joe:                        Yeah, we had almost 80 investors on five and a half grand so that’s 80 people that we reached.

Justin:                   Not bad, buddy. All right so the next thing, I’m digging the redesign over at nichepursuits.com, what do you think, man? How is Spencer doing over there?

Joe:                        Yeah, he definitely went for that flat sort of modern design, he used colors sparingly which was awesome. So, yeah, I do like it a lot, I think it’s definitely the right way to go. I don’t know if I’m too hot on the new logo, but the rest of the site I do enjoy. It’s pretty sweet although I’d have to say his latest podcast about the statistical impact of recording a weekly podcast, I don’t know if I’m too happy about that, what he has to say over there, but-

Justin:                   What’d he say, buddy, what was that about?

Joe:                        [crosstalk 00:26:00]

Justin:                   Come on, don’t tease me. What’s the deal?

Joe:                        He said kind of that although he was able to show good monthly downloads and that people were actually listening, he felt like he had two separate audiences, one from his blog, one from his podcast and he could relate the podcast directly back to any increased sales or other business activity. He felt like it gave him more authority in the niche for sure, but he’s not sure that it really made any increase in revenue.

Justin:                   Oh, that’s interesting. Is he dumping the podcasts?

Joe:                        He’s not dumping it, but he’s definitely gonna scale back and not do every week.

Justin:                   Oh, that’s too bad. Yeah, I see where he’s going with that though, it’s not like … He needs to reach the masses with Long Tail Pro, right, and so the podcast isn’t necessarily the way to reach the masses. If he were selling $100,000 websites like we’re attempting to do, it doesn’t take as many. It takes a closer relationship, but because he’s trying to reach mass appeal I’m not sure that the podcast is great. I don’t know, it’s too bad though that he’s coming to those realizations I would have liked to see him continue that.

Joe:                        I think one of the things that he came up with in his blog post, which was very realistic, is he’s not asking the podcast audience to do anything. He gives out a lot of information, but they’re not actable in terms of something for him. He brings out that a number of podcasts that are very successful are sponsored, but maybe he needs to push his own products or services a little more prominently in the podcasts in order to directly relate it to be successful.

Justin:                   Yeah, it’d be interesting to see what he does with that. All right, man, last point is we’re putting the finishing touches on our new evaluation tool and we should have that out by the end of the month and we should be able to share that publicly and have people start playing around with it. This is gonna be big for us, man, and we’ve played with it a little bit, we’ve had it in Beta and we’ve gotten some, I think, good leads out of it, we’ve gotten some good feedback from people that are using it and it looks pretty good. I think this is something we’re gonna start using in terms of valuing sites and actually listing them on our marketplace. This is, I think, a new direction for us. We’re gonna be talking about that a lot more in future blog posts and kind of laying out our case for why we think this is the way forward.

Joe:                        Yeah, I looked at so many other evaluation tools out there and at the end of the day I was just kind of looking at the competition, man, they’re all garbage.

Justin:                   Yeah, it sucks.

Joe:                        They’re all just made up, it’s garbage. Basically lead generation sources and not collecting any sort of information, you just enter in your domain name and they spit out some random number based on some automated data they collect. So it’d be nice to see if we could actually produce a tool that real people find through a Google search, and use and find the evaluation effective.

Justin:                   Speaking, buddy, those ones that are out there that are already ranked, that are already getting some traffic, we should look at buying those up. They can’t be getting a ton of value in terms of selling off those leads or whatever. I’m sure they’d be much more valuable to us in terms of getting sellers. So that’s something we should look at and talk to Mike about. Anyway that’s not for the podcast, but you guys have real value in that.

Joe:                        Strategic purchase, BTCJam.

Justin:                   Yeah, for sure. I think you guys have some strategic value there for us for sure. All right, buddy, enough about that. Let’s get into our listener shouts, aka the indulgent ego-boosting social proof segment. First up we’ve got a five star iTunes review it says, “Great podcast.” We’ve got Russ in Canada it says, “Justin and Joe consistently put out great content week after week with real actionable items for the listener to take on. Keep up the good work guys, we’ll hear from you soon as I start to move into the buying and selling game based on your solid advice.” Thank you so much, Russ, for the five star review, appreciate it. We can’t wait to get you into the buying and selling websites, we’d be glad to help you out.

Joe:                        Yeah, thanks, Russ.

Justin:                   Okay, buddy, on Twitter Dave said, “Just sold another website with the awesome team over at Empire Flippers. These guys are the real deal. Thanks again Joe and team.” Thank you, Dave. Thank you for trusting us to list and sell your website. We’ve got a Ryan who said, “Empire Flippers was it you who wrote the great post about what people did right or wrong when applying for the apprenticeship? Do you have a link?” Actually, that wasn’t us I don’t believe. I think I was referring to a post over on Mark Manson’s site, but I’ll look up the post and link to his comments and thoughts on the apprenticeship and the people that applied. I thought it was really interesting especially if you’re looking to start an apprenticeship.

Joe:                        And talking about apprenticeships, both Marcus Lemonis from The Prophet and Supremacy SEO just came out with some new apprenticeships if you guys are interested.

Justin:                   Marcus Lemonis has one? What’s the deal with that? See you keep these little cliffhangers for me, Joe, you keep throwing it out there and not following up. “Oh, yeah, they just created an apprenticeship, buh-dum-bum.” What’s the punchline, man? What’s the deal?

Joe:                        So he puts something on Facebook about wanting … He calls them interns, I think they’re more like apprentices definitely for sure. Paid internships where you would work within his business and he’s just looking for smart, talented people anywhere from technical people that could run websites, to retail people to work in some of his stores, to manufacturing people who could work on the backend in the process automation area. So really a wide spectrum of skillsets, I imagine you’d probably get some face time on the show if you have the TV sort of personality, you never know.

Justin:                   Shit, man. I told you you might not be the best business partner for me. I think I might have to go check out this apprenticeship. You’ll have to send me that link afterwards, I wanna check it out. Get my LinkedIn all fired up, ready to go. Next we got where some Stuart Walker said, “Just out of curiosity do you guys ever successfully sell blogs? Most of the listings seem to be affiliate Amazon or AdSense sites, no?” Yes, Stuart we do sell blogs although you might not be able to see it as clearly based on the descriptions, we have a blog up for sale right now, we’ve sold some in the past. They sell just as well, it really just depends on the monetization, how long they’ve been around, how they’re attracting customers or how they’re attracting readers and perspective customers, that kind of thing so just like any other site. I would say depending on how much content you’re having to put out, it may be less attractive as someone who’s looking for a passive investment. If you don’t have writers in place or at least a process for you to acquire those writers and have the content go up on a regular schedule.

Joe:                        Yeah, I’m working on a blog right now that’s in the vetting process, it’s been out five years with a guy who really knows his stuff in the niche. And so I think one of the things with blogs that you do have to be a little bit careful about is that someone could be very excited about the content and that could be hard to recreate with a new owner. So as long as that’s easy to transfer or that we could have a writer come in and replicate that sort of content, then it’s we could sell for sure.

Justin:                   All right, man, that’s it for episode 116 of The Empire Podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. We’ll be back next week with another show. You can find the show notes for this episode and more at empireflippers.com/limits and make sure to follow us on Twitter @EmpireFlippers. See you next week.

Joe:                        Bye-bye everybody.

Automated:       Hope you enjoyed this episode of The Empire Podcast with Justin and Joe. Hit up empireflippers.com for more, that’s empireflippers.com. Thanks for listening.