How to Create a Business from Your Hobby with Janine Bolon48 min read

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe, as we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Hello and welcome, Happy New Year. It is 2022, and I am so thrilled about the plans that I have made for myself in my life in 2022. I have a lot of folks that asked me how do you create the life that you live, and that sort of thing, and so this show is going to be focused around how you build out your year. Now, last week, last session, we talked about how to build your perfect life, and I was talking to you about how it’s kind of tongue in cheek and that it was just a joke about, hey, it’s perfect in my mind, right? It’s not that it necessarily manifests in a perfect way. But it’s perfect in my mind. And in this show, we’re going to give you some money tips how to create your financial plan. In the second episode or session, we are going to be talking about how you can go about making money as a creative. In the third segment, we’re going to be describing how to share with other people, what you do so that you can bring new clients or customers to you even if you’re a writer, and you just have a blog, how you can get out and get noticed. Nowadays, it’s never been easier to let people know what you’re doing, and you can actually take your projects on the road, so to speak. And we’re gonna talk about that in the third segment. And the last segment of today’s show, we will be describing how to go about calming the anxieties you may be feeling when it comes to 2022. We’re going to give you some tips and techniques. And so that’s what we have set up for you. So let’s just get started about 2022 and how do you go about creating your financial plan. Now you may have had prior training and goal setting and how to create timelines and resolutions and a lot of that is just not something that works for you, you know, you may be like what I’ve done in that is I just gave up on the whole resolution thing. I don’t do resolutions. And as you know, from the previous show, I talked to you about step by step about how I went about creating my perfect life for the year. But really, when it comes to your financial plan, and we’re gonna be very specific, when it comes to your financial plan and the process of wealth accumulation, it is imperative that you describe for yourself your life purpose. Now hang with me, I know, you hear that a lot and some people say, Oh, forget it, you don’t need a life purpose, just have fun and be happy. Well, that’s true. Okay, hey, I can go along with that. I’d love to have a life that let’s just have fun and be happy. However, when it comes to wealth accumulation, I find that this can be some of the most challenging steps and all of your focus on your financial future. If you have no idea why you were here on planet earth, then you will just kind of continue to flounder around and coast through life without really having any focus or direction. And so that absence of focus is what will lead you to your current financial situation. If you’re not happy with where you are, then what can we do to help you have a better benefit? It is time for you now to kind of give yourself a creation. You need a purpose. This is the thing that will guide you not only today, but tomorrow and the next year. Basically what I’m saying to you is you need a vision. And last episode, we talked about the importance of a vision board. This is why I describe it so much for people when we hit the New Year. Now this vision board is not something hokey, trust me, this is something incredibly important. It basically is a pictorial image of the experiences that you want to have for 2022. What is it that you want to do with 2022? How does this impact your financial future? Just pause with me here just for a moment. And let me describe to you when I start my financial mentoring sessions with my clients. I say okay, what is your purpose in life? And I usually get like a blank look, or, you know, I might get a quick answer, like, oh, I want to be a good mother or I want to provide for my family. And if they’re really honest with me, they’ll say, Janine, I have no idea. So one of the tools that helps break down those quick answers and kind of unlocks what is truly important in your life and you’ve probably heard this before, it’s to write your own obituary. I know that sounds really morbid, but honestly, I started doing this when I was 24. I would sit down and my obituary has changed quite a bit over the last several decades. But I just wanted to let you know that when you sit down and you write out what you want somebody to say upon your death, that really brings it home for you. And this is an insanely old technique. This is a technique that used to be used by the ancient Greeks, because they were very aware of the mortality of man. And of course, it’s been kind of brought to the forefront with the things that were been living through. But I don’t mean to bring you down, it’s actually a very uplifting kind of exercise, because you’re like, What do you want people to remember about you upon your death? How do you want your best friends to talk about you? And it’s kind of neat, it allows you to write in that third person kind of perspective, to where you’re sitting there going, Wow, I really am pretty awesome. And the answer is, of course, you are, there are people in this life that love you, there are people in this life, who are your friends. And I know that there are times you kind of feel a little lonely or alone. But in all honesty, people would miss you if you weren’t here on planet Earth. I mean, there are people who would. And so I just want you to start focusing on the way to change your financial situation is to have a clear target, to have a clear vision on what you want out of life. And so a lot of times, you may have to start with something pretty hokey and corny as, I just want to be happy, I just want to have joy in my life, you may have to start with something very basic like that. It’s very ambiguous, it’s kind of misty, you’re not very clear on it, but you definitely know what you don’t want, right?

Janine Bolon
You definitely know what you don’t want in your life. And so focus on what you do want to have in your life and put that on a vision board, something that you’re going to see every day. And when you have that, how will that actually then start moving you toward your financial future? Well, it’s just one of those things that when you sit down and write your obituary, and you actually start asking the questions, ideas are going to start flowing to you about the experiences that you want to have. I mean, what is it that you want people to say when you’re gone? Right? We’ve talked about that. What type of person were you? What type of life did you lead? Were you a philanthropist? Did you serve on county commissions? Were you a stay at home mom? Did you run a successful business from your dining room table? Were you a corporate professional? What is the idea? You see, you start getting ideas. When you start writing your obituary, and you start putting pictures up on a vision board, you start clarifying what you want, so that you know what will make you happy. And this is something that has been known by psychologists for years and years and that is, we are driven by what would bring us pleasure, duh, right? Our desires, and some people have been taught that, that’s wrong, or that’s bad, you’re not supposed to have that. But in actuality, when you learn that about your system, at the core, you stop ignoring that primal aspect of who we are, then you start using it in your own productive way. And the thing is, you start saying well what is it that I do desire? Well, I want my children to like me, or if you’re in that kind of situation, or I want to be a better person. And honestly, a lot of things in your life start improving when you focus on yourself. Now I know a lot of us have been taught that that selfish, that you’re not supposed to focus on yourself first, you’re supposed to focus on your community and other things. But in all reality, when I stopped focusing on other people first and I started focusing on really, what is it that I wanted out of life, I became a better person for it, because I started to see where I was doing my own self sabotage, how, but in my interest to serve others first, instead of myself, my health started to go down. You’ve heard these sorts of stories before, I know that you’ve been on these sorts of podcasts before you’ve heard these sorts of stories. So I’m not going to go into detail on this. What I’m going to go into detail on is when you decide what it is the experiences that you want to have in life, and you break out your calendar, and you start putting down stepwise, stepwise, stepwise process to those targets of those experiences. That is when you start to appreciate the sorts of thoughts that crowd around in your head that do not serve you. So one of the tools that we use to break down those sorts of thoughts is to have that vision board that you’re looking at every day. The other thing is, is when you think about writing obituary, most of the objections that you have about doing grand things now dissolve because you’re writing in the past tense, it’s kind of a trick that we use on our subconscious. And this is an incredibly powerful technique. You write a description of your life, as if it has already happened, or at least the one that you idealize in your head, right? You don’t worry about whether or not you had enough money, or if your family disagreed with your life choices, or that your spouse would never, ever, ever agreed to live off grid in Colorado, you don’t worry about those sorts of things, you’re starting to write the story of your life as if it has already occurred. And you are allowing yourself to see your real passions start to come to the forefront of your brain, about the values and the activities that you truly hold dear in your heart, but you may have kind of let pass by, because you were so busy in the day to day activities of just making a living, right? So occasionally, a person will have difficulty writing their obituary because of the rather morbid nature of the document. So I just tell them, hey, what would your best friend say after you’ve gone, so basically write the speech for your best friend. I mean, if you can’t focus on it being an obituary, then focus on it on, this is the speech that somebody is going to say, and then that helped a lot of my clients and customers that you know, weren’t able to say that previously, then I want you to just knuckle down and start writing that speech. And I want you to figure out who is the best friend that’s going to talk about it. And then what matters here, and the most important part of this document is, what is it that you lived well, and see, it kind of helps get rid of all those assumptions that we throw around and banty around in our brain, such as well, I wanted to be a good mother, or I wanted to be a good father, we’re going to make that assumption, I lived in a house that I had paid off, we’re going to make that assumption, all of a sudden, time and money are gone. Because like I said, we’re writing the stories if it has already been lived. So today, I just really want you to focus on taking those few moments. I mean, you can usually do this in about 20 or 30 minutes, get out your calendar, and sit down and say, I’m going to write the speech. And that way it gets rid of a lot of the other things, you can call it the eulogy, or something I want to be said after my death, or however you want to word all of that is totally appropriate. But I just want you to sit down and write out what is the speech that you want somebody to say about you. And it doesn’t matter if that’s the type of person you are in this moment. The thing is, it’s going to be the type of person you will become before you die, and you’ve got time. So take a few moments. Think about that. And in the next segment, we’re going to talk about how that is going to impact your financial future.

Janine Bolon
In the last segment, we were talking about how important it was for you to write the speech, what is it that you want to have accomplished in your life? And so what is the eulogy? What is the item that your best friend would talk about upon your death? So it sounds like kind of a gruesome topic, but in actuality, this is how you learn what your purpose in life is, what is it that you want to accomplish? What do you want to do, and by writing that obituary, or by writing the eulogy that your best friend will share to your community, you’re kind of removing from your subconscious mind all the resistance that you would have regarding how you want to move forward with your life, because time and money are gone, because it’s being written in past tense. So we talked about that in a previous segment. Now, I also promised you that in this segment, we would talk about how that impacts your financial future. So this is the thing if you have a target for where you’re going, such as you became financially independent, you were able to die debt free, you had your house paid off, your cars were paid off, you were able to pay for your children’s college, you know, whatever those sorts of goals were for, one of the things you may notice is that you actually need to find a way to make more money. And so we’re going to talk about that, how you can start a business that does not take huge, significant parts of time, because we already know that you’re kind of working kind of full out. You may have some leisure time where you just sit in front of the TV and veg but wouldn’t you enjoy instead of spending times just binge watching Netflix or something like that? I’m not saying you don’t ever do that. But wouldn’t you rather be a bit more productive, where you’re working towards your financial future, if you knew it was going to work, if you knew it wouldn’t fail. So we’re going to walk through some steps that I have used to create the 17 different businesses that have run over the course of my lifetime, I usually sold my businesses for a profit and then would start the next business. I’m what we call a serial entrepreneur, which means basically just say, I get bored easily. And I love the creation of a business. I do not like the maintaining of a business. So I would always end up selling my business and then move on to the next venture. So one of the things I wanted to share with you is how do you go about starting a business over a weekend, okay. Now you will need some time where you can get to the bank. I do want to share that with you that it’s the only thing that may prevent you from starting a business in a single weekend. But I want you to go to your bank. And I want you to open up a separate second checking account. And this is going to be the business checking account, you do not, anytime you start a business, you do not want to just take cash on the barrelhead and all that kind of stuff. You really, in this day and age, it is so much easier to make sure everything is digitized and electronic. And so what you want to do is go to your bank, set up that second checking account, and that will be your business only account. And the only time you pull money out of that account is when you are trying to set up marketing for your business or what have you. What you want to do is you want to start making enough money consistently in that business, that you can start pulling a paycheck. And it may be something as simple as $25 a month that you pull out of it for a while, and that’s your quote, unquote, paycheck, okay? But you start off a business with the whole mindset of you are creating something that brings you joy, you’re creating something that you would love to do, do not start a side hack that is something that you’re doing just to make money, because if that’s the focus, you’re going to burn yourself out. What we’re doing here is we’re going to take that eulogy that you wrote for yourself, the obituary that we’ve talked about in the previous segments, and we’re going to now take, what are the experiences you like doing and I had one client who absolutely loved to travel. So she started a travel blog. And then she set up a account where people could get on a subscription service, where for $5 a month on the subscription service, she would send out pictures to them through email, and give them very personal experiences that she had, as well as recommendations on those places that she went, the best places to eat, and all that. And that was only for her subscribers to her blog. Otherwise, she had a lot of free stuff going out. So what are we going to talk about here, we’re going to talk about whatever is your passion, whatever it is that you absolutely love doing. And I have had people say, but Janine, I just love to go snowboarding. I don’t care about anything else. I just like to go snowboarding. I said, allow people to live vicariously through you. Because by your love of snowboarding, you know a lot about that topic that nobody else does. There were mistakes that you made, that you learned from. Allow others to learn from your failure, allow others to learn from what didn’t work for you. Talk about that, and then talk about what eventually did work. Okay. And so one of the things that I asked business owners to do is after you’ve put the $25 or $50 into that second checking account, there are four things that you need to do over a weekend to start your business. Okay. So the first one is you need a minimum viable product, we’re going to talk about that in a moment. But for the starters, you want a minimum viable product. The second thing is you need to have a way where people can get in touch with you and schedule a zoom call, or a phone call with you automatically where you are not having to set the appointment, unless you want to hire a secretary. And you may not want to do that yet or administrative assistant. I always set up an automated book me or calendar schedule system where people can contact me and I don’t have to be around. I encourage you to do this because it’s a real time drain. Okay, so first thing, you’re going to come up with a minimum viable product. We’ll talk about that in a bit. The second thing is, you’re going to set up an automated calendar system where people can communicate with you either through zoom, or through your phone call. The third thing that you need to automate is what are going to be your working hours, set up your working hour schedule. When you’re starting a side business and you work full time. You don’t want to burn out, you’re still going to need time that you have days off, you will need time off. When you’re starting a business a lot of people think you have to work hard, that is incorrect. You do not have to work hard. What you do have to do is you need to work with focus. And then when you’ve focused on the particular things that I’m talking to you about, then you can relax. So for starting a business. You want to set up what your working hours are. Now when I first started a side business where I was working on teaching people how to do follow up systems for their businesses, I only had from 8am on Saturday morning to noon that I could do because I was homeschooling my four children. I was working full time. So I only had that four hours and in that four hours I would set up my calendar so that people could book time to talk to me at that time, and I also set up during that four hours time where I was writing my blog posts, I was doing marketing, that sort of thing. So basically, I was only able to meet with people in little 20 minute segments. That’s all I had time for them, because I had to have time to also build certain aspects of my business. So you can see how you can carve out just four hours a week to start off a business. But it’s imperative that you set up working hours for yourself, because you already have a job that does that. So you set up your working hours, and that way you create that perfect life we were talking about in our previous episode, what you’re doing is you are creating the life that you want to live, and you’re not living by default anymore. Now, how does this help your financial situation? While we still have one more thing to talk about, and that is that fourth thing, first, you have the minimum viable product that you’re selling. The second thing is that you’re automatically making sure people can schedule a phone call with you, right. The third thing is you set your working hours, what’s the fourth thing that you must do over that weekend to create your business, the fourth thing is probably the most important, people need to have an automatic way of paying you, you want to be able to set up a button, you want to be able to set up a link so that people can automatically pay you either through Paypal or Venmo. Those are the two that are the biggest, I prefer Venmo for business owners, but you also have Kofi which is ko-fi.com. That’s a really good service for creatives. Anyhow, those are the four things you want to have in your business model. So set up that checking account, create a minimum viable product, automate how people schedule time to talk to you make sure it’s only in 15 to 20 minute segments. And that way, they don’t abuse your time. And then the third one is create working hours. And then the fourth one is make sure they can automatically pay you. All right. So once you set up those systems, those are the four systems that need to happen. So we’ve got a few minutes before we move on to our next segment. How do you go about creating a minimum viable product, start with something where somebody would be willing to pay $5 for it. If you are somebody who enjoys making jewelry, don’t you have like little earrings or something like that where people would pay $5 plus shipping? Start with that minimum viable product and start creating that to get ready to sell. Now say you’re like Janine, I don’t want to create a product. That’s not my thing. I have intellectual property. I have a blog. Well I’ve already talk to you a little bit about what you can do regarding a blog. But the third thing that you can set up for is what is the activity? What’s your hobby? What is the thing that you absolutely love doing? Is it video games? Do you have a video game that you know the inside and out and you could write the book on how to get to the levels faster, easier, what have you? Well, if that is the case, then start writing a blog on that. Or if you want, create an ebook, or create a checklist. With Zoom, and so many people used to being on Zoom now, create classes where people can do that. The thing is, set up that minimum viable product, some people’s minimum viable product is a $25 short course, on how to write a book. Some people, it’s Hey, buy my book for free, I will send it to you in the mail, if you just pay shipping, and in the book is a whole list of check sheets, and then they have a website where people can go to. But the thing is, is there’s all kinds of ways now if you would like some help with your minimum viable product, and you really don’t know how to move forward with that, you can go ahead and reach out to me, and I have what is called laser coaching sessions or lightning coaching sessions, where for $75, you can reach out to me, and I will be happy to walk you through some of these processes very quickly and easily. All you have to do is go to my website, www.the8gates.com/lightning, and you’ll get a 30 minute session for $75 and we will walk you through how to start your side business to help you with your financial future. So it’s pretty simple to set up that way. So remember your four things, create a minimum viable product, have an automatic payment system that people can pay for, set your working hours, make sure you schedule that, and make sure that people can schedule time to talk to you. Alright, see you in the next segment, where we’re going to talk about how to promote what you’re doing with your minimum viable product by using podcasting to market your business.

Janine Bolon
Hey, welcome back. This is Janine Bolon, and we were talking today about how you can go, making more money doing passionate work. And what I mean by that is doing the things you love doing, the hobbies that you have that whether it happens to be you enjoy Scrabble or you happen to enjoy being a snowboarder, it doesn’t matter, whatever the hobby is that you have, how can go about making a side business out of it, and yet still have the joy of that business. So in the previous segment, we were talking about how it was important for you to have some sort of a vision for yourself, for 2022. And then the second thing we were talking about is how to start your business in a weekend and the four areas that you need to have in place, the minimum viable product, how to automatically set up your payment system, how to set up your scheduling system. And the fourth thing, making sure that you create working hours for yourself. Now, what is the next step on all this, so you create your system, you create your business, whatever that happens to be, you do it for very little money, you’re going to bootleg this thing together, we talked about that. Now the thing that moves forward, and I promised you on how this would help your financial future and that is now it comes to marketing your minimum viable product, now you are going to get an awful lot of advice that may not work for you. And I will let you know what I’m trying to do is save you seven years of high anxiety, and $25,000 of mistakes that I have made. Yes, I had spent over $25,000 learning systems, trying to develop systems that would work for my businesses, currently I run four businesses, and I also run this podcast, this Janine Bolon show, which is also on the radio. And so I have a lot of experience on things that work and don’t work. And so if you would be kind enough to listen to me for the next 10 minutes, I will share with you the single best approach that I have found that is low budget, low cost, and serves me quite well. And that is once you have your minimum viable product, you’ve set up your other automated systems that we talked about, it’s now time for you to create what we call a media kit. Now, what’s a media kit, in the old days, it used to be called a press kit. And this press kit was a item that you would hand out to people who were reporters and the press. So people that were doing newspapers, magazines, that sort of thing. And you would describe for them some sort of event or product that you were promoting, and you were giving them all the information that they needed to assist you in that promotion. So one of the things that’s absolutely incredibly valuable in this day and age is for you to teach people what you failed at. I know, I know, a lot of people like to say, Oh, I’m a great success. I’m this, I’m that. But guess what? Where’s the money? The money is helping people not fail at what you failed at, right? So I make a living, I make a very good living, sharing with people, the things that don’t work, because I found out what did work. And I make sure I tested with a lot of my clients, my customers, and I make sure that they are successful too. And when we find a repeatable system that works for multiple different types of businesses and persons, then I go about selling that. And so that is what I’m doing for you today, I am offering you a chance to learn something for free. That took me seven years and $25,000 to learn. So do you have your pencil ready? Are you guys thinking caps on? Alright. What is this media kit, and how can it help you promote your business? Well, the media kit is something that you build on a shareable document. So I use Google because I absolutely love Google. I use Google Documents. It’s free with my Gmail account. So, but you can do this in Dropbox or any other shareable document, it needs to be digital because that is where we are people, we are all digital now. So if you set it up on a Word document, just make sure that your media kit can be shareable so that people can pull your images and stuff off it. So let’s talk about what this media kit does. What I’m getting ready to teach you is how to go about getting on the podcasting circuit, start getting into the realm of podcasting, get on these podcasts, radio shows, that sort of thing. It’s much easier to get on radio because you don’t have to worry about how you look. And at the same time you’re able to teach so what you’re going to do is with this new business that you’re starting, you’re going to teach people things that you have learned. How have you been able to become that A class one snowboarder that you are now and what were some of the things that you learned the hard way so that you can help people not learn it that way? Right. They can be better at it. Maybe it’s a video game, maybe you had a video game that you really struggled with for months and months, weeks and weeks, and finally broke through and you realized what it was you could do to make the video game more entertaining, something that was more fun, maybe you got a group together, so you have a minimum viable product. And so now start teaching people. And when you come to podcasters, with solutions, like there was a problem, you have a solution for it, and you go into the niche market of that podcaster, they love you. They love people who share with their audiences, things that make life better, which is why you’re listening to this show. You’re listening to my show, because I bring to you solutions that either save you time, they save you money, they save your sanity, or they help you save your knowledge, right? So these are the things that I like to share with people. And you can do the same thing with what you know, it’s going to be a different perspective, but it’s going to be similar. So what is this media kit? You create a shareable Google Doc or something like that, you can put it in Dropbox, just make sure that people can have access to it, and then you want to set up a header. So my particular media kit says Janine Bolon, author, podcaster, scientist and sacred clown, and that usually triggers a lot of questions from people like who is this crazy woman? And what is a sacred clown? That’s for another topic. But what you do is you have a header, you have that, and then you have your email address under that, and then you have your phone numbers. So you’re kind of setting it up like a resume only in this case, it is all the information that a podcaster is going to need so that they can make their show better. After you have that header, you have a table of contents, because we’re going to have a whole bunch of items you’re going to put in that media kit, you’re going to have headshots, I recommend that you have somebody who’s a professional photographer, or maybe you have a family member who does photography that can light you appropriately, take two or three headshots of you so that we can put those on our thumbnails that we use for our shows. And if you’re listening to the show, you understand you see thumbnails all the time of where they have a picture of the person that they’re interviewing, right? And so what you want to do is set that up, you want to have that headshot that image set up for them, and you want it to be professional. So it doesn’t look fuzzy. Why? Because if it looks fuzzy, it makes us the podcaster look like we’re not pro. Okay, and trust me, we’re pro. And we want to have you look at your best. So go ahead and have that headshot done professionally. The other thing you want to do is have some action shots of what you’re doing. So like if you’re a snowboarder, I want you to have some shots of you doing snowboarding. If you’re a jeweler, like you’re somebody who likes to make jewelry, have a picture of you at your workbench, looking down at your work doing what it is you do, I’m a teacher. So, some of my action shots are standing up in front of a class teaching, okay, so it just depends on what you’re doing. Some of you have seen the headshots with me with my headset on, alright, have shots of you with what you’re doing, and then it will be up to the podcaster which image they’re gonna pick. Then you want to have images of what your business does. Now maybe you have a logo for your business look. You can run a business without a logo people, you don’t necessarily need one. But if you have one, go ahead and put that in there. But the thing is, you want to have images that the podcaster can use for the thumbnail sketches, then it’s important that you create three different bios. Now these bios describe who you are, you’re wanting to help your podcaster be able to introduce you well. And so that bio is going to need to be in place so that you have a 150 character bio, and that’s for the people that podcast on to Twitter, then you need to have a 200 to 300 word bio, and then you can have a long bio, and that’s for the articles that podcasters sometimes have. So those are the things you want to talk about. How do you want to be introduced? And then after that, you want to have your topics, your talk topics. So one of my talk topics is author podcasting, How to be a Standout Guest and take your book on a Virtual Tour. And so that’s one of my talk topics. Another talk topic I have is How to Nurture your Business in four Hours a Week, The Thriving Solopreneur, the fourth talk topic I have is How to Write a Book a Year, Setting up a Calendar Year to Write your Next Book and stuff like that. So you have these things that you can talk about. And I know you may not have ever seen yourself as a public speaker, trust me, you’re not a public speaker, you’re a speaker to podcasters it’s very different. All you have to do is talk about what you know and the podcaster is very good at interviewing. So as long as you know the top three ways to fail at snowboarding, then you can twist that around and you can say the top three lessons I learned about snowboarding, you can go on from there. If you have some struggles with this, and if you you’re like, Okay, Janine, this sounds really good, and I really want to learn more about that, I have what I call my lightning coaching sessions. And what those are is 30 minute sessions where we talk about this one topic, and I can coach you for 75 bucks. Trust me, I have years of experience that is going to be worth your $75. But we can help you solve some of these situations that you have, and you just go to my website, www.the8gates.com/lightning, and you write that out, and that will help you, okay. But moving on, we also have interview questions, go ahead and put in your media kit, some suggested interview questions for your broadcaster, you know, podcaster, and then any social media links. If you want people to follow you, say on Facebook or LinkedIn, go ahead and put one or two of those links there. Maybe you’re a jeweler, or an artist or a creative, and you have an Instagram account, put that down. You don’t have to be on all social media, just direct people to where you want them to find you and see what you’re doing. Instagram is wonderful for people because they can have a visual image of what you’re doing, what your activities are. And so when you’re creating a new piece of jewelry, or you’re writing a new book, and you’re so excited about the new book cover, these are the things that can be posted on Instagram that are very helpful to your podcaster. So when it comes to podcasting as a guest, and how you be a standout guest is by having a media kit, you’re showing them that you are a professional, that you know what you’re doing. Even if you don’t you, you give the impression that you know what you’re doing. And if you really would like to, I can go ahead and be your first podcaster you’re welcome to come on my show, I recommend that the quickest and cheapest way to get on my show is buy my book, Author Podcasting Be a Standout Guest while taking your Book on a Virtual Tour, you may say, but Janine I don’t have a book, well you have a business and just put business instead of book. It’s the same systems, it’ll work for you, go to www.authorpodcasting.com, and you will find a book and it will lead you there, and I suggest you buy my book it talks about the media kit, it talks about how to get on podcast shows, I have systems in place that are very helpful, and you can just go through that system and you will be able to start taking your business on tour and market it for very little cost. The next segment, we’re going to talk about how to calm some of the anxiety you may have regarding the topics we’ve been discussing, as well as just anxiety that you have in your life for now. Stay tuned.

Janine Bolon
Welcome back, this is our last segment of the Janine Bolon show for today, and I had promised you at the top of the hour, when we were talking about money tips and how to make money and how to be a standout guest with the business that you’re running. I promised you that in this segment, we will be talking about how to calm some of the anxiety that can actually happen with what’s going on in the world today and that sort of thing. And these are systems that I have used not only for my clients, but also what I’ve used for myself, and that’s what keeps me rolling and moving through life creating it the way I want it, rather than living life by default. So let’s talk a little bit about our lives and how we can calm some of that anxiety. Now, in order for us to truly make our life into the experience that is in our own best interest, we will need to pull out all the stops and to define for our own selves what discipline we want for our spiritual, mental and emotional selves, as well as our physical selves. And believe it or not, I’m going to ask you to stop taking advice from well meaning people around us. Now these well meaning people continually think that they know what is best for us. If you are listening to this, I am making some assumptions about you. First of all, I am making the assumption that you’re an adult. Second of all, I’m going to make the assumption that you have the presence of mind to know when you’re feeling good, and when you are feeling bad. No one else can tell you if you feel good, and no one else can tell you if you feel bad. I mean, right? I mean seriously, come on. I mean, it’s so get down to basics here, no one can feel what you feel right now. As much as we have people in this world who are empaths and they can kind of feel it, for the most part on a day to day basis no one can truly feel the way you feel. This is what makes you an individual. This is what makes you so you, is the way you feel. So unless you’re standing in the presence of truly a highly trained sensitive Empath, who has gone through their training of discipline, no one can really tell you how you are feeling in any one moment. Even the best empaths that I’ve ever met, that have been around have to feel a shift in the energy that’s usually what they’re picking up on. They’re getting their cues from other aspects rather than just your current emotional state. So the important thing to remember is that you are in control of two things, you are in control of your thoughts, and you are in control of your emotions. And you may have been told otherwise on this planet, but trust me, you have control over these things. However, you may feel out of control, and a lot of those, and so what I’m going to do is give you some simple tips and systems that you can use so that you can start gaining control again of your thoughts and your emotions. This allows you to stay in awareness of what is in your highest and best good. If you allow your emotions and your thoughts to go nuts and go crazy, then you’re not in control of your own life experience. And I wish people could do this for you but it really comes down to you in this point. So if you find yourself in a state of recurring anxiety, nothing is wrong with you. It’s just your body telling you, hey, you need to be able to calm down. And so I’m going to give you some tips that works. Now, a caveat, my attorney wants me to say this, I am not a trained psychiatrist. I am not a trained psychologist, I have absolutely no medical training whatsoever. Okay, except my first aid merit badge and CPR training. This is all the medical training I have. So if this does not harmonize for you, or does not work for you don’t do it. Okay, if this is not something that it helps you feel better, don’t do it. Okay, don’t take my advice. But if this is something that resonates with you, and because I know that there are a lot of people walking around in a state of anxiety, anything that works for me, this is just what helps me, I hope in my heart of hearts, that it will also help you. Okay, so now that we’re done with the legal part moving on.

Janine Bolon
So what I’d like you to do is get kind of get settled in some sort of a discipline that is of your own making. Now let’s talk about the word discipline, it means to be a disciple of, and what I want you to do is to be a disciple of your own well being. I want you to start focusing on that if you don’t feel good, and if the thoughts are rampaging through your brain, you are not in a good state of mind or in a good state of emotion. And when that happens, most people recommend that you walk away, that you go calm down, well, sometimes you’re kind of stuck on a subway train with a bunch of other people, and you’re not feeling all that fabulous. So what do you do? Well we’re going to talk a little bit about that in a moment. So what we want to do is help you improve and embellish the traits and talents that you possess, and help you choose to express yourself in a way that you prefer, rather than what may pop out of your mouth by accident. Now, there are four areas of discipline that need development, no matter who you are on planet Earth, and this includes me, I’m raising my hand here, people, I am just like you, I constantly am working on these four disciplines, and trust me, it is a work in progress. You are never done. And for some people that causes you to lose heart, look, we are creative beings, we are never done. Until we die until the day we die we’re not done on this planet, okay? And so don’t see yourself as being accomplished. There is no way to finish that to do list. Why? Because we always have a new desire, we always have another thing we want to do, another thing we want to learn, another experience we want to have, okay, so it’s impossible for us to ever be done in that way. Now, you can finish projects, you can complete experiences, you can set targets for yourself that you shoot at, and you hit, right? But the idea here is that these disciplines are what help keep your emotional and mental stability while you’re moving through what would otherwise be described as a chaos planet. Okay? Right. So, these four disciplines are the physical discipline, the mental discipline, the emotional discipline, and the spiritual discipline. So I would like to talk about the physical discipline first. A lot of people are like, oh, yeah, Janine, I know, I need to exercise more. And I’m like, No, you don’t you need to move. What is your physical discipline? If you don’t like the weight that you currently are at, and currently I’m about 20 pounds over where I like to be to be quite frank. And so because of that, I’m starting a physical discipline. Now this is not harsh. Now some people say discipline is harsh. Please realize the word discipline has been used at us. It has not been used within us. When you have discipline forced upon you, that’s what I call a negative space. That is someone trying to control you. When I use the word discipline it’s a positive word to me because it is what I want to create within myself. Okay, so discipline for me is a positive because I am creating my reality, I am creating my life, I am creating systems and routines that benefit no one but me. However, if I put myself first, then I make a higher impact in this world, because I want to serve the world at my highest and best level that requires me to have these four disciplines. Okay? So for the physical discipline, it’s not that you’re going to hurt yourself, or you’re going to sacrifice, it’s about what you want to do. And I know I need to lose this 20 pounds, so I am looking at ways that I enjoy moving. So I dance a lot, or I do little exercises, like between my Zoom meetings here at the office, I will do a couple of push ups and all that. I spend little bits of time throughout the day, moving my body in ways that I normally wouldn’t. You can catch me in between Zoom meetings doing situps, and I have a set of stairs right here next to my desk and I get on those stairs and I do my push ups. Why? Because I cannot do push ups from the floor. I have tried. I’ve even used my knees. It doesn’t work, I have to use an angle and that’s how I do my push ups. And guess what people? That’s good enough, right? No, I’m not going out for the Marine Corps. They wouldn’t take me I’m too old, I’m 58. Right? So it’s like, come on now we don’t need to be that serious about it. Then the next discipline is the mental discipline? Are you reading books that you enjoy? Are you learning? Are you taking online classes? If you are, that’s the mental discipline. That’s the scholarship, learning new skills, learning new techniques that help you move closer to the experiences that you want to have in your life. The third discipline is the emotional discipline. And that’s just being emotionally aware, instead of getting triggered and moving into a state of high anxiety and the next thing you know, you’ve got yourself all spun out, is realize when you’re starting to feel anxious. What can you do to self soothe yourself? Can you take a step back? Are there breathing exercises that you can use? When it comes to your emotional state, some people are so disconnected from their emotions because of life experiences, they either are angry, or they’re content. They’re either angry, or they’re in a state of peace or calm, okay, and that’s all that they’ve got because that’s what’s happened to them in their life. So for those of you who are angry, or content, and that’s all you’ve got, you’re kind of binary in your emotional state, become a bit more aware that before you hit angry, realize that there are signs that show you that you’re moving into anger. Now if you get triggered unexpectedly, most people know to walk away, go get themselves calm down work on those systems. The thing is self awareness. Are you aware of what’s happening to you? Are you aware of what you are doing? And then the next point is the spiritual discipline. Now, that is a very private topic and a very intimate topic. And all I wish to share with you that is a commonality no matter what person you are on this planet, is take time to sit with yourself each day. And some people call it meditation, some people call it visualization, this is the thing, make sure that you spend time each day with the most important person in your world. And that’s you. You spend more time with yourself than anyone else on this planet. You’re in your head, you think your own thoughts, you have your own emotions. Take time each day, and I recommend 15 minutes, where you’re sitting down and you’re away from everybody else. I used to have to sit in my closet because I was a single mother with four kids and, so I’d say mommy’s taking a timeout and I go sit in a closet for 15 minutes with a flashlight, and would just time with myself, and talk about all the good things that I was able to accomplish that day. So in whatever way that is, that is the spiritual discipline that will help you with the anxiety that you may feel regarding the world as it is. If you’d like more tips and techniques on how to calm anxiety, be sure to listen to the next episode of The Janine Bolon show. What we will be doing throughout the next couple of months is giving you tips and techniques and systems that will help you as you move forward in 2022. Thanks so much for listening. It was great to have you with us today. We wish you the best that 2022 can offer and you know how to get ahold of us. Otherwise, stay tuned for the next episode, next Sunday. Take care.

Bryan Hyde
Thank you for listening to the Janine Bolon show. Be sure to subscribe to our show notes by going to www.theJanineBolonshow.com, where you’ll find additional resources as well as the opportunity to sign up to receive our program in your email each week. Be sure to visit our sponsor at www.the8gates.com.