Escape the 9-to-5 and live the lifestyle of your dreams by transforming your life's passion into an extremely profitable internet business—starting now.

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Sterling: This is Internet Business Mastery episode 84.

In a world where bosses control your life, and thoughts of escape fill your mind, where inspiration seems dead and cynicism rules the masses. You have the desire to break free, you feel the need to take control. Now there exists a place where the secrets of freedom and wealth are given to those who believe. Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!

Sterling: Hello, and welcome to Internet Business Mastery online at Internet Business Mastery.com, I’m Sterling….

Jay: And I’m Jay….

Sterling: And we’re here to help you escape the ‘9 to 5’ and live the lifestyle of your dreams by turning your life’s passion into a profitable internet business even if you’re just getting started today. Now on this episode of Internet Business Mastery, present the Julia Child guide to succeeding at internet business, and in the Quick Tip we have a cost effective and easy mic for creating audio content.

And we’d like to remind you that if you’d like to get a jumpstart on creating your own profitable internet business using our proven formula, you can claim your risk-free trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy by going to FreeAudioGift.com. So Jay, what’s been going lately? It’s actually been a while since we’ve recorded.

Jay: Yeah we had the holiday break and nice to take a little time off, but back at it in the new year. And incidentally my little vacation or holiday break in New York City has brought up a lifestyle design dilemma for me, and I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ve mentioned many times that we’ve got our eyeball on going back to New York City, currently we live in Portland, Oregon where we’ve been for about a year.

We really like it here, it’s a great city, great quality of life but it just doesn’t compare to the energy and offerings of New York City, especially when it comes to my wife’s profession and things that she wants to do, so that’s where we went for the holidays for about two weeks we were there. And if was interesting to see the stark contrast that came up between Portland and New York.

New York city, of course we went back and it had been about a year and a half, so lots of friends, all the familiar things that we love about the city, the energy and the cool stuff going on, and saw a couple of Broadway shows, and etc. But we were reminded of also what it’s like to live in New York City, and of course we’ve been in this brand new really nice place in Portland, this apartment that we live in right now, great views, lots of light and the place to live in Portland where lots of stuff going on.

And to have an apartment like this, now we’re getting very used to this level of lifestyle so to speak, and now that we’ve gotten used to that and we go back to New York and we realize man, to have this in New York City, it’s like thousands and thousands of dollars a month for an apartment like that.

Sterling: More than what you’re paying.

Jay: Oh way, more than what we’re paying here.

Sterling: Now I mean like thousands of dollars more than what you’re already paying for this great place.

Jay: Oh yeah, more than what we’re paying for the place here, exactly, in Portland. So there’s just this weird thing, it would be nice to have…there’s things we love about Portland, it’s very user friendly, it’s very easy, it’s very clean, very nice for the most part. And New York City, all that cool energy that comes with it comes at the price of being around, well a lot of diversity which is great and also just constantly around people, and you start making compromises in the lifestyle that you ideally have designed because it costs too much money to live in just the right neighborhood, or to have three bedrooms in an apartment, or to have a view, or the amenities in your building that you want, or to have the elevator and the doorman, and all these other things that here in Portland you can get at a fraction of the price in a city that’s really also very cool.

So I don’t know if there’s a point out of that, but all of a sudden it’s like dang, well what do I do? It’s like I’ve got these two key things we want in our lifestyle and unfortunately geographically they’re in two different places, but that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Sterling: Yeah, it’s definitely interesting to think about those upgrades, but yet having to pay for them I guess is the…but the one thing too that can come from that is then you start looking at your business and you go okay, what would the upgrade cost me, and then what can I actually design in my business to pay for it? So I mean that’s certainly something we look at and we talk about in our business when we do our little meetings on what the business is going to look like is okay, what more needs to come in so that I can have these different lifestyles that I want?

Jay: Absolutely, and that’s the conclusion we’ve come to, it’s just like well okay, if we decide that we wanted to move back to New York but we don’t want to feel like we’re regressing in the place that we live, in the apartment and the location and things like that, then we’re just going to have to figure out a way to boost our income to accommodate that.

But yeah, the nice thing is to know when you’ve got an internet business, that’s a possibility. Certainly if I was dependent on an employer and whatever small percentage he may or may not give me every year, then that wouldn’t even be an option. So I guess all that is to say it does make you very grateful to be in a position to have that kind of flexibility and obviously why we love this internet business and lifestyle design stuff that we teach. And I know there’s probably people listening to this going, “Come on Jay, that’s a rough life having to choose between living in New York City and a super nice place in Portland, Oregon.”

And you know, I realize a lot of people don’t have that flexibility or not yet, and so I’m certainly grateful to even have it as a possibility. But those are the kinds of decisions and freedoms that I’m incredibly grateful to have and that we want other people to be able to have those kinds of decisions to make, to be able to go yeah, well where do I really want to live? And is it going to be here, or there, or if I need to make more money, then I have the vehicle to know how to do that. So anyway, it’s really cool stuff. I like this internet business lifestyle, I have to say.

Sterling: Oh yeah. Well and even because of all the stuff that happened in New York, or Newark I guess you were flying out of, the fact that I think you remember you saying you heard people on the phone so you were waylaid there because of something that happened with the security and had to fly out like three days later. And the fact that you just could, and I remember on the phone you were telling me that people, you could hear them talking on their phones…or talking to the service people and stuff saying, “I’ve got to get back to work! I can’t miss days and days of work!” And for us, we can just make that decision and well even if you’ve got the internet, you can work too. I mean there’s just a lot of options which is really awesome.

Jay: Yeah, when they cleared us all out of that airport, and I think most people listening probably know the news story, but basically a guy went through the wrong direction through security and they had to basically shut down the whole main terminal and evacuate. Like it’s thousands, at least five maybe as many as ten thousand people out of that wing and then clear them back through security. And so all the flights, we would have been there overnight for another eight hours and we just immediately left and said, forget this, we’re not going to sit in this airport overnight.

And so we went and got a hotel and waited it out, and it meant staying another three days. I’m sure we would have liked to get home and stuff, but it was nice to have exactly, that flexibility. You know in mind at first I said to my wife, “Man, why are all these people just staying here and standing? They’ve got to know it’s going to be at least a six hour line, at least.”

And she’s like, “Well, they’ve got to get back to their jobs!” And I’m like oh man, I’m so glad that’s not the case for us because my wife was getting sick at the time, it was really cold in New York, and we’d been out doing lots of stuff. And like stay overnight eight hours in an airport with ten thousand people? No way! So yeah, definitely…it was no fun to have to stay and have schedules messed up, but thankfully we didn’t have to put up with eight hours of standing in line. So that’s good.

And incidentally on the flight back, we saw a movie that I recommended that you check out as well, “Julie and Julia” about Julia Child and really like a lot of things and themes in the movie, so that’s what we’re going to talk about in today’s episode. So I guess let’s get right to that.

And now, the featured segment…

Jay: Alright, so let’s talk about Julia Child, that might have caught people off guard a little bit. The Julia Child Guide to internet business, but I’m sure a lot of people listening to this have at least heard of the movie out called “Julie and Julia.” And to be honest, I was like well maybe I’ll see it sometime, but I wasn’t like oh cooking movie, whatever.

Sterling: Yeah me too.

Jay: Some people love to cook, some people love food, it’s not necessarily my thing but on the plane back you try to anesthetize your brain with whatever and like after two weeks and three extra days in the fiasco that I already talked about earlier, like the last thing I wanted to do was like do work or listen to business related stuff. I was just like man, I’m ready to tune out and get this five-hour flight over.

So we paid for the Direct TV that you get and watch movies, and the first one we tuned into because it was one we hadn’t seen was “Julie and Julia,” and I was like let’s give this a try. So and I was actually pleasantly surprised by, I mean first of all I didn’t know that so much of it took place in Paris, which I love movies that take place in Paris because I lived there before. But actually the story of figuring out what you want in life and the story of going for your passion, looking for some kind of direction, and looking at maybe your life and job and what kind society’s handed you and going, I really don’t think this is what I want. I’ve got to shift gears here somehow.

I mean all that stuff resonated, it’s like wow, this is a lot like the process I went through, the process we teach people to go through to get a life that they choose more for themselves, and not have their life be subordinate to just work. And so a lot of themes like immediately because early on…I guess just to summarize the plot that people haven’t seen – I mean Julia Child, a very famous chef, and had a TV show, book and apparently changed American cooking.

And then this woman Julie Powell who was working a ‘9 to 5’ job and just kind of like wow, I need something else to be excited about and decided to write a blog because one of her friends sold her blog to a network or something, and the idea of her blog for a book, and I can’t remember what. And she’s like, “Well I can do that,” and she starts going through niche selection process and immediately a little light bulb went off and I’m like, this is interesting. This is a very familiar process here, and so the rest of the movie I’m watching with that idea in mind and I’m also thinking oh I bet Sterling will like this movie because I know you like movies about success and striving for success in what you want and things like that.

And so all these little themes stuck out and that’s why I bounced the idea off of you, it’s like hmm, let’s do an episode of all things Julia Child and this movie.

Sterling: Well and I was going to do her voice at the beginning and then abandoned it real quick because in the movie I think they even showed who was it Dan Akroid playing her and I was like, I can do that voice and then I was like no, I don’t think so.

Jay: Maybe if you had a gigantic goose in front of you that you were like slicing open, that might inspire you to….

Sterling: Yeah, exactly.

Jay: But okay, here let’s see…we’ve got one, two, three, four, five, six – six themes that we’ve picked out of this movie, things that kind of stuck out. And these are just consistent principles that when applied, they absolutely work and help you reach the goals or increased happiness, increased freedom, increased success, however you define those things for yourself, and you see this played out in the movie.

So we recommend that you watch the movie if you haven’t to kind of watch for these themes, but let’s go ahead and talk about the first one and that is consistency. Oh I guess I didn’t finish describing the plot, so Julie Powell decides okay, well I’m going to write a blog and her and her husband are sitting there and like okay, well what do you like and she said this, that, and the other.

And I’m like oh no, I can’t write about that and they’re sitting there eating this delicious meal that she just made and then finally her husband’s like, “What about cooking?” And for a second she’s like well, “I’m not that great of a cook, not like Julia Child or whatever.” And then all of a sudden this light bulb goes off and of course in the condensed time frame of the movie this all happens in like a two minute time slot where sometimes it can take a week or two or few to really go through the process.

And what about this, what about that, and find the things that you want to try, but she decides okay, I’m going to cook my way through the Julia Child cookbook and I’m going to blog about these 500+ recipes and I’m going to do it in 365 days and blog about the experience, because I love to cook and maybe somebody will connect with what I have to say.

Okay, so there’s the plot. And so the point number one that immediately stuck out to me was…I’m actually going to reorder these from the way I have them written down here in the notes. Let’s talk about the passion thing first because that’s really where it starts out, and I know we talk about this a lot – going for your passion, being deliberate about your lifestyle, not just settling what these prescribed believes that society hands to us about life and money, and what it’s all about. And really there’s just one simple question that you just need to ask yourself and it seems like such a basic question, but really how many people ask themselves this. And that question is, what do I really want in life?

And I was just chatting actually with a friend the other day, and he’s going through a rough time right now and I understand a lot of different things have happened but he’s just kind of saying, “I don’t have anything to be excited about right now.” And I just asked him, “What do you want your life to look like at the end of 2010?” He’s like, “I have no idea.” I was like, “So what gets you excited?” And he said, “I have no idea.” And I was just like wow, like it’s just a simple question, what do you really want?

But I wonder if I went out on the street where I live here in Portland and stopped 100 people and asked them, “What do you want in life?” It would be interesting a, to see what the answer are. And I imagine most people would give an answer, but it would probably be something….

Sterling: Something basic…survival…

Jay: Yeah, survival, exactly. ‘I just want to be able to pay my bills,’ things like that. But it’s like how many people really have something and I had the opportunity to see lot of friends and meet lots of people over the holidays. And something I’ve noticed when I’m meeting someone, like one of the default things that I go to asking people a lot is, what do you really want?

I don’t know if I phrase it that way, but essentially I like to see like what do people say. You ask the usual questions like, “What do you do? What did you go to school for?” Those kinds of things, but really what I try to get to immediately is like “Oh, well where would you like to be in five years, ideally what kind of position would you like to have?” And it’s interesting to see what kinds of…and sadly people are like, “Oh I don’t know.”

Sterling: Yeah, and I ask almost the same exact question but I always say, “What are you passionate about?” And that’s after getting through all the mundane stuff of ‘what do you do?’ and all that stuff. So very, very similar and like you said, most of the time I get the same exact answer, “I don’t know.” And it’s so weird because I mean in a world we’ve designed for ourselves and the people that we know – most of the time they’re so crystal clear on what it is that they want.

It’s a tiny group though, believe me, it’s not most people or anything like that. But again, being in this world, the people usually know exactly what they’re passionate about or what they really want, but outside of that it’s not a normal thing that people ask. And a lot of times when I ask this kind of thing, they kind of look at me like how dare you ask? Sometimes I get that, I can see that, like “Don’t ask me that! I don’t know!” Like how annoying is that? But it’s an absolutely important part of our lives that is and how different our lives are with that question answered.

Jay: Yeah, and so there you go. We talked a lot about definite major purpose, a lot about passion, deciding what you want, what your fulfillment factors are. And I understand there’s all kinds of reasons or even excuses why people don’t ask themselves that question and yeah, sometimes it can be scary to ask yourself that question because then you realize oh, I’m no where close to having what I want and that’s a scary thing to look like.

And that’s a scary thing to look at, but the point is…and yes, it was a very condensed format in the movie because the movie is an hour and a half long, but at least she asked the question where it all started, is asking the question. What do I really want?

Sterling: Yeah, and being able to start your internet business with passion makes it so absolutely every time you’re annoyed by business which happens from time to time, you fall back to the fact that you’re absolutely passionate about the subject matter. Like that takes you through any of the annoying things like dealing with lawyers, or dealing with accounting and taxes, and all these other things that are a necessary part of business. You can get through those much better when you realize that you absolutely love what it is you do.

Jay: Now the other thing…so that’s number one is passion. And if somebody listening to this gets nothing else out of it than asking themselves that question, then I think that’s a big deal right there is asking that question. And in the movie it happens over two minutes, but even if you spend the next few weeks or couple months, or even if it takes you a few months to come up with a good answer to the question, it’s so worth having an answer to.

But then the answer to that question means nothing without actually acting on it which is the big problem that we have with say a movie who’s name we won’t say but it starts with an ‘s’ and rhymes with ‘ecret’, and it talks about what do you want in life? Oh, let’s just think about it and it will happen, right?

And it all starts with thoughts, it all starts with…but then it all comes down to you’ve got to take action. What’s the vehicle, how are you going to make it happen? And so that’s the other thing – number two thing she came up…so Julie Powell in the movie, she comes up with, “I’m going to write the cooking blog, I’m going to go through this cookbook, I’m going to put myself out there. I’m going to write, I’ve done some writing. I can do this,” and then she took action, she took bold action.

And I love it, there’s that moment of her and her husband sitting down, she’s starting the blog, she’s like okay, and her husband’s helping her with this, that, and the other and she’s like okay here’s the title, here’s the subtitle, and then bam here’s the first post and she kind of just puts it out and like, ‘I don’t know what to expect but here it is, and this is what I’m going to do so let’s see where this takes us kind of thing.’ It’s like, that’s the kind of attitude because you know what, yeah, there’s a lot of variables that can happen and maybe the idea would of ended up being a horrible one. It ended quite well for her, but maybe it would have been a lot harder than she thought, and in fact it definitely was, they addressed that in the movie and all these things.
But the point is, is that she took the action and she kept taking action because everybody listening to this – we don’t know the circumstances of your life are and we all have our own individual challenges, and we all have our different things that we’re trying to achieve. And for some people yeah, “success” or the big payoff happens very quickly seemingly and for other people it might seem like it takes a long time.

But because all of those variables can’t be predicted, the one thing that we can tell you that will get you there is taking action and just keeping at it, because you know what? Something is going to happen, even if you’ve got to shift gears, even if you have to come up with another idea. We’ve said this a million times to say it again, but at some point you’ve got to ask yourself the question, ‘what do I really want?’ And then the second thing is, you’ve got to take some form of bold action.

And guaranteed that action is going to be scary, and I bet it was scary for her to start a blog and maybe it’s scary for you to do something like that too, but that’s the second step that has to be taken.

Sterling: Well and the interesting thing in the movie is, it actually happens in two different time periods and you also get to see the bold action, and the passion, and that kind of thing with Julia Child. (I get them mixed up all of a sudden). So Julia Child also takes bold action and she goes and takes a cooking class in France where everybody, all the people in the class, are men and they look down on here and don’t think she’s serious.

I mean she takes this bold action, and then she gets involved with writing a cookbook when she’s barely learned to cook herself. I mean on both characters in the movie deal with this bold action, it’s not even just simple action; it’s like bold action for both of them. So it’s an interesting thing, and again, bold action for many people is just to even believe in them self enough to take bold action towards starting an internet business and actually doing it with people telling them, “Oh, that’s crazy.”

I mean that’s the kind of stuff…it’s interesting in the movie like at first, the girl that started the blog, her mom’s like, “Oh, what do you know about that?!” and then kind of down about it. And then of course later in the movie the mom’s like, “Hey, how come you haven’t been writing? Get that writing going!” All a sudden, like she had been helping her all along or something like that. But yeah, it’s definitely both characters taking bold action and finding what bold action you can take for an internet business.

Jay: And see what I like, and I’m glad you brought that up because the Julia Child character they show how she actually tried some other things at first. So they moved to Paris, and her husband had this big ambassador job, or some kind of job at the Embassy and she’s like, “Well what am I going to do?” And they actually showed before she did the cooking classes, what was it like hat making classes, and I don’t know. She tried a few other things and finally it was the cooking.

So again, condensed time frame in the movie but who knows, it might have been weeks or months that she was trying these different things and she’s like, ‘oh wait, this is what’s really going to fulfill me,’ but yeah, she just kept at it. And when they finally get to the cooking thing, you’re right, it was bold action because at first she walks in and it’s an incredibly famous cooking school and like the lady who is in charge of it hates her right away and is like, “No, there’s no way, you should be in this beginner class over here,” and just totally down on her.

And then she walks into the class and it’s all men, and of course there’s always gender issues we’re dealing with, but this is a few decades ago and even more so back then. It was like ‘women have a certain place,’ and what are you doing in this very serious…and she had to face all that because she knew that’s what she really wanted. And so, going back to she knew what she really wanted and that got her through the scary moments of having to take bold action.

Sterling: Well and I guess that reminds me too, I wasn’t even thinking at the beginning of this to talk about Julia Child and her part in the movie, but her passion – it’s funny, when she figured out what she wanted to do which was the cooking. It was played very well like you see her like really light up, like oh my gosh yes, this is it! In the same way as the blogging character, she was a writer. That was her big thing, and she was trying to find a way to write and also find a passion in her writing and so again, it was really interesting to find both of them find their passion and then completely take that bold action.

Jay: The number three is focus. I mean you start taking bold action, but of course it needs to be focused, and I think one thing I think – and I’ve seen myself do this many times and I still struggle with this at times and I definitely see a lot of people who are starting out with pursuing something new or pursuing an internet business, is a lack of focus.

And part of that is because when you start striking out and doing your own project, I mean society teaches us to have a very employee mentality where you go to work and we’re taught about multi-tasking and all these other things and like things are just handed down to us from the top and now all a sudden where we’re striking out doing our own thing…and probably the types of personalities are attracted to entrepreneurship, maybe we have a little ADD in us, I don’t know.

But people forget that focus, well they don’t forget it, but they haven’t learned yet that focus is so important. And I think one of the biggest things that fights against focus is fear, is the fact that you want so badly because you are putting yourself out there – starting a cooking blog or starting whatever this pursuit is and you’re afraid that oh no, well what if that one thing doesn’t work out and then all of a sudden I have nothing?

You feel like a real failure, so you feel like if I don’t put all my eggs in that one basket but if I throw ten irons in the fire, well then one of them….and I don’t have to feel like such a failure. And also then somehow you never get around to really putting yourself out there with the one idea. You kind of run around like a chicken with your head cut off between the different ideas and feel like you’re getting stuff done but the focus never happens.

And unfortunately that really holds you back and so even going into this new year, I’ve asked myself, I talked a lot about that in the hard questions about focus. But it was clear, both the characters were very focused on what they were doing and so you’re choosing that one thing and just going for it and giving it all your attention. And yeah, you know what? At some point you decide I’ve got to cut bait on this idea and you have to shift gears, fine.

So then you shift to the other thing, but putting too many irons in the fire too early or early in any point is going to definitely hold you back. That was another thing that stuck out to me.

Alright, number four is consistency. And I think this is one of the…well, all of these are big themes, but this one definitely sticks out because there’s some points where a husband’s just like well, what’s it going to hurt if you don’t go through, or you don’t blog today, or if you don’t cook all the recipes or whatever? And she’s like, “Well I’ll know, and Julia Child will know!” She has like this…but no actually at one point or two her husband’s like, “Well why do you have to….” I can’t remember the exact question, but he’s like, “You have to post about them all the time.”

I can’t remember what he asked but she’s like, “Like I need something that keeps me doing it consistently every day or else I won’t finish it.” And consistency…and that’s the awesome thing is obviously, and it ties in with the fifth principle. So I guess four and five kind of go together – consistency and accountability. But consistency, so every day she’s doing at least one recipe and she’s blogging a little bit, and she’s constantly working at it.

And I think that that goes a long way to really building up momentum, you’re mindset changes and this reminds me of another story that kind of ties into this is a friend of mine who was actually in a band with us several years ago and then she moved to New York City and we reconnected with her there. And she’s an amazing cellist, her name is Emily Hope Price, and her music’s just incredible, I love it.

And we saw her over the holidays and she said, “You know, I’m thinking about doing this…” I’m always grilling her about, “Okay, let’s market you and don’t sell yourself short,” and all this stuff. She’s like, “Well I do have this thing I’m thinking about doing and that is, I’ve heard about musicians who say that they try to write a song a day and it completely changes their mindset about songwriting, and it really refines their craft and gets them really good.

And not all their songs are good, but they do it every day, they write a song. She’s like, “I think I’m going to do that,” and she just started the beginning of the year a blog where she has been writing a song every day and posting them. And I’ve been following it, and I love the stuff that she’s putting up there. And she talks about the process and all this stuff, but that consistency of every day having to think a bit about her songwriting craft and this is what she wants to do with her life.

She wants to write her music, she wants to get it out there; she wants to become a better songwriter, a better artist. And that consistency of every day doing it is going to change the way you think, it’s going to keep your skills sharp, and so even if you’re working full time and trying to start an internet business, being consistent about it. You don’t have to be like, “Oh yeah, well you know this came up and that came up,” and next thing you know it’s three weeks until you work on you internet business again, that’s just not going to cut it.

You need to schedule time and maybe it’s not…is that at all possible? I would encourage you every day to do at least one thing to move your business forward, to move yourself forward in those goals whether some days you only spend 15 minutes, or thirty minutes, or maybe some days you spend two hours, fine. But the more consistent you can be, the more momentum and fulfillment you’re going to find and confidence you’re going to find in that process of building your business.

Alright, and then accountability goes along with that. Accountability, I mean by having a blog – both my friend Emily as well as Julie Powell in the movie – by having to post to the blog and know that your audience is going to be there, especially when the comments started coming in. She’s like, “Wow, I have readers, like people are commenting that I don’t know.” Not only does that build your confidence and stuff, but when it gets tough you’re going to know, well people are going to be there expecting me to write.

People expect our show, Internet Business Mastery, to come out so many times a month. We want to make sure we get a course done on time, we set a date and we tell our audience when that’s going to be – accountability goes a long way whether with a mastermind, with a partner, with a mentor, with your audience, with your customers. Writing a blog, putting it out there, talking about your goals to other people, I mean there’s a reason why these things work and it’s because we need that accountability.

So the character, she made her plans known to the world, she reported to others about her progress through the blog, and she garnered support of the community through doing that and that accountability kept her going. So consistency and accountability kind of go together because that kept her consistently working on it.

Sterling: Well and in the Internet Business Mastery Academy we have the mastermind community in there where if you wanted, you could find a group of people or just one other person to hold each other accountable. I mean that’s part of what that mastermind community was supposed to be, was not only to be able to create mastermind groups and be able to have people all over the world mastermind together.

But also if you want to get an accountability buddy and really keep each other to it, in there we’ve got a thing where you can talk about what goals you have for this month, and at the end of this month if you want to say, here’s the ones I did and didn’t do, I mean that’s part of being able to at the very least hold yourself accountable by putting it out to everybody. “Here’s what I’m going to do,” and then at the end saying, “Here’s what I did, here’s what I didn’t, and here’s what I learned from it, here’s how I’m going to make it so I do all of them next month.” I mean these are all a part of the Academy and why we wanted to design that was also for accountability.

Jay: Yeah, that’s something our platinum group has been doing really, really well because they have their own forum and stuff. And I’ve noticed they’re constantly in there saying, “Okay, here’s what I’m going to do,” and they’re having regular calls and talking about their goals and what they’re to get done. And it does, it goes a long way to helping you make that progress when you’ve got someone to hold you accountable.

Alright, and the last and sixth one is just to have good boundaries and good filters for yourself. Sterling, you already mentioned earlier that characters, they all put up with these different people trying to tear them down and the reason why is because when you ask yourself that question, “What do I really want?” then all of a sudden you have a good answer for it, it can be really threatening to people around you. Because guess what? They haven’t asked themselves that question.

Or they did and they never got it, they never did anything about it. And so they feel bad about it, so when they see someone with a good answer to the question or especially when they see someone taking bold action to achieve that thing whether consciously or even unconsciously, it affects them in that way. It’s threatening to them, and so what do they do?

Well they try to tear you down, they try to stop you; they try to because then it helps them feel better about themselves. It’s like oh well, that’s not really going to work out, you don’t really want to do that. You just can’t put up with that stuff, and so that’s why you’ve got to put up boundaries with people and say, “You know what? Maybe it’s best we don’t talk about that.” Or maybe you don’t hang around with that person as much anymore, or maybe not even at all, or sometimes if family members are tearing you down, maybe just say, “Hey look, you know what? I really want to do this thing, and I could really use your support in it.” So draw those boundaries, have good filters, see that stuff for what it is and even cut it off when possible out of your life because you don’t need that.

When you’re pursuing your passion and your dream, and you know what you want, and you’re taking bold action, there’s going to be plenty of things for you to overcome to not have to deal on top of that with friends, and family, and acquaintances, and coworkers tearing you down as well. So that’s something that’s also portrayed in the movie really well.

Both Julie and Julia are dealing with people saying, “Oh no, you’ll never be a great cook. Why would you want to write a blog?” And thank goodness they stuck through that and told the people to stop bugging them because everything turned out really well for them, so that was the sixth principle that I pulled out watching that movie, is having those good filters and those good boundaries when pursuing your passion.

Alright, so to review the six principles that you can pull out of the Julia Child guide to internet business and really just general success in life is number one – passion, asking yourself what do I really want? Number two – taking bold action to achieve that. Number three – being very focused in doing that. Number four – acting consistently on a regular basis (daily preferably); number five is finding some sort of accountability, in whatever form will work best for you, get that accountability because it’s just human nature, we need it. And number six is to have good filters and good boundaries so as to not allow others to tear you down and hinder you.

So even if you just choose one of those to put into action for yourself right now, I think you’ll see a big difference in your confidence and in your progress that you make, and it will be really helpful. So choose one or more of those principles, preferably all of them eventually, and determine a way right now this week that you can put one of those in action for yourself, and in your life, and in your internet business.

Sterling: Okay, we’ve got one quick breakthrough here, and it comes from Hirem from Salt Lake City. And here is what he wrote to us: “I have been involved with internet business for 13 years. I quit my job when I was 29, and then spent two years on perpetual vacation. I’m currently making a very high five figures a month. I did this all on my own with very little input from outsiders other than participating in various forums and blogs on the net.

I came across your podcast recently and began listening. I heard you discuss getreplacemyself.com and checked it out. It completely changed my life. I’m currently working with a team of four, I hired a project manager, a content writer, a programmer and a graphic designer all for less than what I would have paid for one employee here in the states.”

Jay: And I guess we should point out just in case anybody’s listening, we talk about this site all the time, but just if anybody’s new listening to this, getreplacemyself.com is the place that we learned about and then where we go to hire Virtual Assistants and programmers from the Philippines at a very, very reasonable price. So that’s what he’s referring to.

Sterling: Okay, so back to the letter. He says, “I deal directly with the project manager for a few minutes each day and then he manages the rest of my team. It is strange because I don’t know what to do with my time. I don’t have to work, and yet all my projects are still moving forward. That single tip to outsource myself was excellent. I would highly encourage anyone considering getting into the field of internet business, to consider your course. Thanks guys, Hirem.”

Well that’s awesome, especially somebody that’s already doing internet business for years and years to finally have that come in and now he’s got four people doing his work for him. That’s amazing.

Jay: Yeah, I was totally intrigued of the whole idea of he hired a project manager and the project manager managed everyone else. That’s certainly an awesome level of outsourcing to achieve in your business. So anyway, Hirem, maybe you can give us a couple tips of how you are setting that up because that’s a pretty cool idea.

Sterling: Well and he actually took it to kind of the extreme of what John Jonas from getreplacemyself.com talks about, which was John certainly hired a project manager and he’s got a bunch of people under that project manager so he just deals with one person. And that’s an incredibly smart way to do it, and that’s definitely the more advanced one, and he went right for the advances way of doing it. That’s awesome.

Jay: So thanks for sharing that with us Hirem, and sending your breakthrough in.

It’s time for the Internet Business Quick Tip…

Jay: So Sterling, I don’t know if you knew this or not, but my brother, he’s a rapper.

Sterling: Nice.

Jay: Well yeah, it’s his creative outlet. He likes to write hip hop, and he’s constantly writing rhymes and things like that. And anyway, so when he visited me last year in Portland, I sat him down and said, “Hey you should check out this program Audacity, it’s free and you can record with it. And here, sit down in front of the mic,” and next thing he knew he had a song instead of it just being these ideas on paper and in his head.

He was ecstatic, he was like, “Oh my gosh!” and he’s like showing it to all his friends, he’s like “I’ve got a finished product, I recorded it!” And of course he’s like, “Well how can I do this myself when I go back to Alaska?” And so the question he asked me was, “Well is there a microphone I can get?” Because I had already told him Audacity was free for him to download.

So what I told him it was the same thing I told all the beginner podcasters who want a good enough production quality but can’t go and spend a few hundred dollars on a nicer setup or whatever. So the recommendation that I gave to him was to go and buy a microphone called the Blue Snowball. And Blue is the company and Snowball is the name of the particular mic, even back in my band and recording days, Blue had a lot of great mics that we would use sometimes in the studio and on our albums.

But the Blue Snowball is kind of this easy entry-level recording thing that all kinds of people use for voiceovers and podcasting, and audio content or whatever. Lots and lots of podcasters use it because it only cost like between $80 and $100 I think depending on where you get it, and it’s kind of this funky little round…well it kind of looks like a snowball on top of a little stand that sits on your desk. But for the price and the audio quality you can get out of it, it’s definitely bang for your buck.

And the nice thing is that it’s just really, really easy to use. It’s USB, you can plug it straight into your laptop and off you go, and USB is the best way to record into your laptop because you can get the cleaner audio signal by going digitally into your computer. So that’s my recommendation, my quick tip for this week is the Blue Snowball microphone for creating audio content, podcasting, or even rapping if you feel so inspired.

Sterling: Now if you’d like dozens of other resources such as this one, you can find them in the Internet Business Mastery Academy, along with video tutorials showing you exactly how we use them. To get a 30-day no risk trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy, visit freeaudiogift.com. That’s it for this episode of Internet Business Mastery, until next time we wish you ultimate success in your internet business.

You’ve been listening to the Iconiclass of the 9 to 5, and the purveyors of freedom and fulfillment – Sterling and Jay! Sterling and Jay invite you to discover one of their most popular audio programs ever, the free builders of designing your ultimate internet lifestyle! Visit freeaudiogift.com now and sign up for the free weekly Internet Business Mastery email newsletter! And you’ll get instant access to the life changing audio presentations, pulled directly from the content of the acclaimed Internet Business Mastery Academy membership community. Go now to freeaudiogift.com! Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!