09 September 2010 ~ 27 Comments

FA011 – How To Quit Your Job And Live Your Passion: A Foolish Interview

Audio Interviews

This episode is an awesome Foolish First.

Izzy and Tim interview the coolest cat in woodworking, Marc Spagnuolo of The Wood Whisperer.

Marc shares some great ways to start and grow your own online business.  He’s so good we ask him to become the permanent host of Foolish Adventure so we could just sit back and sip drinks with little umbrellas.

Marc politely declines.  And we don’t blame him — his online business is doing very well so listen in.

And take notes.

Enjoy your Foolish Adventure…

Subscribe

You can also right-click to save the file to your computer, or subscribe to the show in iTunes. Or you could manually add the RSS feed to your aggregator.

As always, you can find all the past editions here.

  • oscar wright

    what a great show Izzy and Tim…oscar wright, rome

  • http://www.izzyvideo.com IzzyVideo

    Thanks Oscar! I’m glad you enjoyed it. :-)

  • http://thenickedfinger.blogspot.com Kerry Drake

    Thanks for the show, that was a ton of good information.

  • http://www.izzyvideo.com IzzyVideo

    Thanks Kerry! I’m glad you liked the information.

    As we recorded it, Tim and I were both thrilled with all the great nuggets of gold that Marc was giving out. He’s one sharp dude. :-)

  • thewoodwhisperer

    Thanks for having me on the show Tim and Izzy. It was a blast. Let’s do it again some time. :)

  • Grant

    Hi Izzy and Tim,
    Sup. :)
    I’ve been an Izzy fan/member for over a year now. Tim, I appreciate your insights and it’s good getting to know you. The thought of giving away so much free information as one starts their Internet business, seems counter-intuitive to the max. How can a guy or gal make a buck? However, after seeing Don’s, Izzy’s and Marc’s model and success it is hard to argue. One of the benefits of giving away material up front is it reduces the anxiety of getting started. In other words, my videos and articles don’t have to be perfect at the beginning. It is more important to simply get started. Too many times perfectionism stops me cold.

    I got so many great pointers from Marc today. It was great to hear about sponsors, internet business lifestyle, distaste for corporate life. I could go on and on. Thanks for all the great information.

    Grant

  • http://www.izzyvideo.com IzzyVideo

    Marc, you were awesome on the show. I’m certain there will be PLENTY of people who find value in what you had to say.

    Thanks for joining us! :-)

  • http://www.izzyvideo.com IzzyVideo

    Great comment, Grant! Thanks for listening…

    Yeah, I got a lot of value out of what Marc had to say too. So much good stuff in there.

    Giving away content for a while is a big tip. I think more people should try it. Free spreads much easier than something with a cost. Even if the cost is one penny, it still changes everything.

  • Businessanalyst

    Thanks for all the great tips. I have listened to each of the podcasts and have even started back through some trying to take notes. But I noticed that the downloaded MP3 files do not have the Artist and Albums encoded with the exception of the very first episode. It makes it nice to see that information on my MP3 player or stereo as I listen in. Just wondered why it was not on every file.

    It would make a great FREE advertisement or conversation starter for anyone that happened to see it scroll across my screen.

  • http://twitter.com/Dark_Lady_Ginny Justine Holubowicz

    When a podcast is good it doesn’t get old with time, I listen to it many times and take notes for myself.

    This one was outstanding. I’ll be following you.

    Kudos to the Wood Whisperer, I was linked by him to this show :)

  • StudioWendy

    Fantastic episode. Very fun and enlightening at the same time. Would love to hear more guest interviews like this one!

  • http://www.izzyvideo.com IzzyVideo

    Hmm… that’s strange because I take the time to add all the tags to each file. I wonder why it’s not working… I’ll have to look into that. Thanks for the heads up!

  • http://www.izzyvideo.com IzzyVideo

    Great insight! Thanks for the kind words.

  • http://www.izzyvideo.com IzzyVideo

    We’ll do plenty of guest interviews… Case studies are a huge way to show how things really work. I love them, and I always learn from them.

  • http://renaissancewoodworker.com Shannon

    Excellent show Izzy and Tim! A big thanks to Marc for stepping up and doling out the know how. I like to consider myself as a colleague of Marc’s and he originally pointed me to Izzy video when I started podcasting a few years ago. I hope to follow in his “foolish” footsteps shortly thanks to this show and advice from Marc. Keep up the great work guys

  • Paul

    Great podcast

    I’m just wondering though if you need to blog/give away loads of free content to start a membership site.
    A veteran membership site owner said if he started again he’d go down more of a sales page route.

    Something like:

    1. Create a month of content, get influencers and affiliates to look at it and see what you are made of. These people have lists you can tap into fast and need targeted products to sell, they love recurring income from affiliate linking to continuity membership sites too!
    2. Join clickbank (tap into the vast number of affiliates)
    3. Give a couple of free videos to list subscribers to show how useful you are to buyers.
    4. Test some targeted facebook ads on relevant people with interests in your niche.
    5. Do the forum, twitter facebook, article method to get seen.

    Then start the site, reduce rate for new members who can watch as you build more content then raise prices when you have more content (a few months worth) for any new members.

    Just seems if you get get say 200 members at $20/month by this method quickly you would have funds to carry on and expand. i.e earn as you build.

    Spending months on creating free content and building a blog seems like a slow route.

    what do you guys think? I think Izzy won’t agree!

    Ps I have no membership site this is all theory!

    paul

  • http://FoolishAdventure.com Tim Conley

    Paul,

    This is more than a good theory. This is essentially how membership sites, ebooks and other infoproducts have been sold for years. I’m a big proponent in getting paid as soon as possible. I don’t think anyone should go beyond four months without offering something to sell.

    Here are a few benefits of giving away free content even when using the steps you outlined. 1. It is going to take a bit of time before you get your membership site built and tested and getting affiliates on board. Some people are able to get this done quickly–say a couple of weeks, but most take a couple of months.

    This is a great time to be spreading your ideas and building an audience.

    2. Getting even just a few high quality affiliates can take some time and you need to build a list of prospects even as you are seeking affiliates. So if you have no connections in your chosen niche or if that niche is crowded with competitors, then giving away free high quality content is going to break you into the market.

    My advice is not to take an either/or approach.

    And Izzy and I recently discussed revising our approach. When we initially conceived of FA, we were going to focus on just the membership site idea (our favorite), but we think it would be best if we brought in more of my breadth of knowledge along with Izzy’s expertise in membership sites to give our audience more tools to use in achieving their Foolish Adventure.

  • Anonymous

    This is great to hear Tim. I would welcome your thoughts on alternatives to the membership site. I think this can add diversity to the earnings like Marc said in his interview. In my space I wonder how this can play out other than selling exposure due to large visitor stats. If I were to sell “one off” products without recurring membership it seems like you would be constantly in product creation and testing mode much like producing actual tangible products. I’m curious to hear more about these strategies and tactics.

  • Paul

    thanks Tim ..

    think this middle way is my adventure!

  • http://www.ronniecreates.blogspot.com Ronniecrowley

    Great show again. Learning lots (and waiting patiently to see what you offer on the WordPress side of things.) It was great to hear what Marc had to say today and how he wasn’t really planning on making money at the start. I think sometimes the best businesses happen this way. He did all the leg work before in his own community developing a trust basis so that people were used to get what they wanted from him “good reliable information”. Ronnie

  • http://ihelpbloggers.com QueenGeek

    I really enjoyed this episode. It was great to hear Marc on the show after meeting Marc & Nicole at PodCamp AZ. Marc nails the feeling of spending 8 hours working for someone elses dream!! Geez, how true!!

    You mention starting a wordpress blog….A shameless plug, but I outline getting a blog starting at http://ihelpbloggers.com. Tips from getting a domain name, upgrading wordpress, etc.

    Great show guys…I have so many folks listening to you…keep it up!!! I even have my dad thinking about doing a side business at he’s been retired for almost 20 years!!

    Terry aka @QueenGeek
    http://ihelpbloggers.com

  • Kathy

    Terrific show. Best one yet!

  • http://www.dancepulp.com Joshua Martens

    Great show guys! Please keep these interviews rolling. It’s so useful to hear people’s story and different approaches to their business. I love it!

  • Eric

    Great work! Just spent 10 hours in the car back and forth to Chicago and listened to the first eleven episodes. I’m dizzy. I’ve been an Izzy Video subscriber for about a year, which has been a huge benefit. This is exactly the kind of content I have been looking for. I would love some insight into the tools that you have experience with in your businesses: email list management, video hosting, screen capture, podcast software, etc. Maybe put some links to tools on the Foolish Adventure site (sounds like an Affiliate Marketing opportunity to me!).

  • Pingback: How A Passion For Macs Turned Into A Full Time Online Income: An Interview with Don McAllister from ScreencastsOnline.com – FA022 | Foolish Adventure

  • Pingback: Foolish Favs: 5 Of The Most Listened To Episodes | Foolish Adventure

  • Pingback: The Wood Whisperer | This Wood Shop