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Show Topics:

• Bob Baker – making it in the music business
• Self-publishing and giving away knowledge
• Marketing any business with guerrilla techniques
• Advice for starting and marketing a business today

Bob Baker writes about speaking and music from St. Louis, MO where he makes his living as an author, teacher, and speaker. Music marketing is his niche and he’s best known for Guerrilla Music Marketing.

He’s been writing and speaking for the past 20 years but his business has changed quite a bit, even in the past few years.

Bob discovered an interst in music and writing as far back as 11 years old. He’s self-employed now but wasn’t always. He’s had to take some day jobs along the way but he doesn’t ever plan on going back.
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Show Topics:

• Tammy Strobel’s story of simple living in Portland, OR
• Figuring out what makes you happy and doing it
• How to get featured in major news outlets
• What’s the best form of content to produce?

Tammy Strobel and he husband, Logan, sold many of their belongings, including two cars, and downsized into a small place near public transportation. Tammy started a business and their lives have never been better.

I ask Tammy how she’s been able to be featured in The New York Times, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, AOL, The Today Show, and USA Today.
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I found Surviving Your Serengeti to be interesting and helpful. It’s a parable for life and business that helps you understand how you operate and how you should think both differently and uniquely. It’s not about following the crowd, it’s about understanding yourself and operating within it.

Find out what animal you are by taking the free quiz at whatanimalami.com.

This is more of a personal post and may not pertain to your business, so if you skip over it, my feelings won’t be hurt. But if you do read and comment, there’s a chance you might win.

A few months ago my wife Christine and I started talking about making a move.  We even made a few exploratory trips, drove around with many realtors, and looked at dozens of homes.

Where we live now

First off, we don’t hate where we live. In fact, we really like it here. We’re in the suburbs of Raleigh, NC and it’s a great place to live. It’s constantly at the top off all of those Best Places lists.

While we like it here, we’re not completely in love with it. I’ve also wanted to move my office home for quite a while now. We live in 1,200 square feet  with three kids and two 60+ pound dogs, so office space is not in the floor plan.

Since we’d already be moving into a bigger house that has room for an office, we started asking the question, “If we lived somewhere else and were making a move, would we choose to live here?”

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Show Topics:

• Why Matt Garland has the audacious goal of chronicling 10,000 acts of greatness
• Why he’s not planning to monetize the site and how he is making money
• How Matt is using his weird college studies to change the world

Matt Gartland calls himself an anti-hero. He’s on a personal crusade to chronicle 10,000 random acts of greatness. Matt has no plans to monetize the site. The important thing is that he’s doing big things and monetizing in other ways.

I did the math during the show and if there is only one blog posted each day, it will take over 27 years to chronicle 10,000 random acts of greatness.

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Show Topics:

• Karol Gajda is ridiculously extraordinary
• He lives full time from his blog
• Traveling the world comes second nature to him
• Find out where he’ll be in the next few months
• How an eBook sale made $185,755 in 72 hours

The ultimate goal with RidiculouslyExtraordinary.com and Karol’s life is to help 100 people achieve Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom.

I asked Karol what this Ridiculousy Extraordinary Freedom is.  He says it’s different for everyone and he can’t define. Some people want to travel. Others want a high income. Some define it by experiences.

Karol is 29 and has been self-employed since he was 19 years old. His first business was designing websites, then transitioned to selling on eBay, selling info-products, pay-per-click, and SEO. Karol is now a full time blogger, fully living from his website.

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Show Topics:

• Dustin Riechmann’s story – creating engaged, fit marriages
• Creating an ebook with over 60,000 downloads
• Partnering with people who live across country

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Dustin Riechmann is a manager at a transportation engineering company.  His first foray online was engagedmarriage.com.  He had never heard of a blog before he got started, but he got started nonetheless.

He and his wife were young (he’s 31 now) and plugged in at their church in marriage ministries.  A turning point for him was reading No More Mondays (affiliate) while on vacation.  It clicked with him that he needed to do something online to help people, build a ministry, and be creative.

He launched the Engaged Marriage website in September, 2009.  Dustin wanted to make money from it, but it was always secondary to the other reasons for starting it.  For the first few months of his website, he had a free theme and did everything himself.

Dustin’s advice to getting started online.  “Define your niche when you get started.  It will guide everything you do from picking a domain name and knowing who you’re talking to and how to talk to them.”

Dustin is very engaged in social media.  He had no clue how to use twitter (@engagedmarriage) when he visited for the first time.  He says it took him about six months from signing up to become an active user.

Dustin had a part in creating a free eBook called “Love Everyday – Thoughts on Loving Amidst the Chaos of Life.“

Tony DiLorenzo got together with Dustin and realized they both cared about marriage and being fit.  They decided to create a site together called fitmarriage.com.

They’re monetizing by creating a fitness summit.  The first fitness summit will be released in January for free with the premium version available to purchase afterwards.

Together, Dustin and Tony have now created a workout program.  They got together in St. Louis to create the program, which was the first time they met in person.

Dustin’s secret to success, “be accessible, get plugged in online, encourage people to comment and then follow up with them, build a community around a website, and reach out to others.”

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I’d love to help you turn your ideas into a business that changes the world (and your bank account).  Here’s how.

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I’m on the trail the day after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) and reminiscing about my wife’s night in the parking lot of Target.  Christine overnighted there with a friend so she could nab a few great deals when the store opened at 4am.

Many of us wouldn’t dream of hanging on the side walk in the wee hours of the morning, but I admire her tenacity and passion for living out a cool story.

I, on the other hand, stayed at home with the kids.

More Trail Talk videos