[02:04] – Monique introduces her guest, Mr.Ray Blakney.

[02:21] – Explain everyone out there what the sword fighting is.

• I’ve been practicing the Japanese martial art called kendo for going on dating myself back for about 20 years now. So kendo is the way of the sword and I have been practicing it since I was 22.

[04:00] – Tell me when you’re not sword fighting, what else are you doing in your business?

• I own a website called livelingua.com. It’s the third-largest online language school in the world and I run it with my wife.
• I own a website called twiducate.com
• I also owned a chocolate factory in the Philippines before 
• I am the host of the Anomalous Educator Podcast which helps teachers make money online.

[05:26] – Starting businesses and making them successful is a kind of art for you, explain a little bit about that.

• The creative process is what I like because you get to try things, you get to see what works what doesn’t and you get to go back and fix it.

[10:16] – So when you bootstrap a company, how do you approach everything from the get-go? 

• I’m not creating something that nobody’s ever thought of before, like Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk, or all those people out there.
• For launching businesses, see a need, check that there’s a need, confirm there’s a need and then just do it.

   

[14:10] – How did you get to the point of having this mindset of “failure is not a total failure, I always get something out of it.”

• I flipped my definition of failure. Failing is not when a business doesn’t work or doesn’t make money, failures when I stopped trying. And if I never stopped trying, I never failed.

[15:32] – How did you approach your new content marketing strategy?

• I put Comic Sans and made the whole presentation like a comic book.
• And to my surprise, half the room came up to me with this marketing methodology that we use in my companies and said. “Can you do that for us?”
• So that planted the seed for the agency

[29:40] – So how important do you think is research in the beginning before you even start putting out content, writing content for clients?

• It’s like any other construction, right? You can put a beautiful house on it. But if the base is bad, it’s going to crumble in a year or two. And we need to do that for your business as well.

[31:31] – Do you think that a lot of entrepreneurs that they’re going wrong with the research or not even doing it or don’t know how to do research for their business?

• I think most advanced entrepreneurs might do that because they’ve learned the value in it. 

[33:03] – If you’re starting a new business, do you ask audiences some questions? Do you, like to use the Ask method? Do you use like only the keyword research? What do you use?

• I generally stick with keyword research because I assume I use a little bit of the Ask method now because I do have a network and audiences I can do it for.

[35:59] – After the research how do you think should entrepreneurs use the results?

•  The research should help you find who your audience is.

[38:52] – What actually makes you efficient in a discipline?

• I developed discipline kind of later in life.
• Discipline is what gives me freedom.

[42:44] – You said you use the discipline to be very self-driven. But you don’t believe in working, what your passion is.

• I think people confuse passion with their why.
• If you did a good job and figure out what your why is. That’s enough for you to at least take one step towards it that day.

[46:03] – So how important is efficiency to you now that you have multiple businesses?

• Discipline is key to me be able to do what I’m doing.
• I use an app called wunderlist.

[51:14] – What does efficiency mean to you?

• Efficiency is just getting as close to that goal as I can today.

[52:01] – What are the top three tips for starting a business?

• The first one is research.
• Make sure you plan that you have the time to do this business.
• A final tip would be “just do it.”