Do you desire to create value for others? Are you considering the launch of your own online business? Jimmy discusses these questions and many more with author/speaker/world traveler/entrepreneur, Case Lane, in this episode.
Episode Keys:
- The process of creating your online business from ideation to launch in a simple, step-by-step format.
- Why it is important that you create value for the marketplace and how to define the value in a manner that will attract your
- intended customers/clients.
- How to easily and quickly research the viability of your idea before launching your business.
- Why it is vital to create a team of passionate people to bring your ideas to the marketplace and how to find them.
Case Lane’s newest e-book, Recast: The Aspiring Entrepreneur’s Practical Guide to Getting Started with an Online Business, will be available on Amazon on July 26, 2020. To contact Case, you will find her at www.readyentrepreneur.com
Podcast Transcription
Good morning! Hey, this is Jimmy Williams, your Monday morning motivation expert. I’m the only one on the air today with a PhD in Positivity and a Master’s degree of Motivation. When you get through listening to today’s episode, I assure you you will be empowered to reach new heights in your life. You’ll attain freedoms that you’ve always desired. And that’s the real reason of why we put this show on the air for you. It’s so that you can understand that you can live life by your design.
It’s such an honor today to have our special guest and before I announce who she is. I just want to say this, this person has so much in common with me it’s uncanny. I’ve never actually met her in person, but it’s amazing how much we are all similar in this great world and I want us to focus today on those similarities. And don’t look for the differences in life. Let’s look for what we have in common and make this world a bigger, better and bolder place for everybody. Isn’t that what we are here on this planet to do. And in my life, I’ve always looked for people just like our guest today to add me, if you will, that little spice of life that I like. I like to encounter people like this, as she has seen places I have not seen. She’s written a number of books, we’re gonna get into those in just a little bit. But also she is one of those people that has such a dynamic personality when you finish speaking with them, your feet won’t even touch the ground.
So with that let me introduce my special guest today, and it is quite an honor to have Ms. Case Lane. Case, welcome to the show.
CL: Thank you so much, Jimmy. Thank you, it’s great to be here. Really appreciate it.
JW: Man, you are solely welcome. I gotta say to you that looking over your most recent book that’s gonna be coming out just shortly. I gained a lot of perspective just from the excerpts and things that you had provided me and I will tell you, this is gonna be something that’s gonna change lives, folks. You’re gonna have to pick this book up. And if you’ll stay with us, listen to the entire show and in the show notes you will find a link for free, that Case has provided you so you can get some of the important facts out of this book. Now you’re gonna wanna buy the whole book, but you’re gonna get some good free information today as well. So, Case, tell me though, how did you get into this mode of wanting to be a world traveler?
CL: World travel, well that comes, maybe a bit of it was just from where I come from. Where I grew up. My father’s Nigerian. My mother’s Jamaican. My, I grew up in England, I was born in England, I grew up in Canada, and so I grew up in Manitoba, which has a wide range of people from all over the world. So I was just always interested in the whole world. I wanted to know more about different countries and people and cultures. And how we all connect. That’s a big thing with me as I travel the world. I look for connections, like you know, want to know how we’re all connected. And so once I started to travel it just became, that’s my thing. I’m just going to keep traveling.
JW: Well, I’ve got a goal. I hope yours is the same. I’ve got a goal of wearing out the passport so quickly that before it expires I’ve got to get another one, ok?
CL: Yes. Exactly.
JW: Use it up.
CL: Exactly, that’s what we do.
JW: So, how have you dealt with some of this disruption and I’ve talked about this on several episodes. You know, bless her heart, the world has just been turned upside down for a lot of our friends across the world. How are you dealing with this time of isolation and disruption in your life?
CL: Yea, for me it’s particularly different because I have been, the last couple of years, working on an online business. Which means it is usually just me and my laptop, working away, everything is online. Dealing with everyone, but then I was always looking forward to a trip. I tend to work for just straight, like, especially if I’m writing. I work straight through three, four months. Go getting everything, then I go and I travel. I still keep working while I’m traveling, but of course you don’t, you know, if you’ve piled up a bunch of work ahead of time, you can then enjoy the sites and so on. I was a diplomate in the Canadian Foreign Service, so I have friends all over the world. And that’s a great part of it. And I love to just be planning a trip, looking forward to going somewhere. And that’s when I spend time with people. That’s when I get to reconnect with my friends. Spend time just talking and seeing different places. So to be in this position right now. Where I’m, again, I’m in work mode, but not, ok I’ll confess I really am planning another trip, but I don’t know when it will take place.
JW: Folks, you heard the truth here. You heard it here. She’s really working but/gonna plan another trip. Ok.
CL: Because, you know what happens is when you’re working all the time. You do need to take a break every now and then. And there’s only so much Netflix one can look at, and so you just sort of…so I like to, because every time I do go on a trip, I do my research and so on. And so I’m still doing that when I go, ok, I’m going to take a break. I’m going to go online and look up a country and see what I want to see and start preparing. But I have no idea when I’ll be able to travel again. And that’s the tough part about it.
JW: Well, I’m so, I understand that if you work for the Foreign Ministry of Canada as a diplomat, perhaps you can help regain my cancelled trip to Banff, that was in Alberta with my wife, yeah, so, Prime Minister Trudeau shut down, he shut down your borders up in Canada, and President Trump shut ours down and so, what these two men didn’t realize is that we had a great trip planned.
CL: I know it, I know. It’s really unfortunate what’s happening, but hopefully we’ll all be traveling again soon.
JW: Why, you bet. Tell me a little bit, what got you into wanting to be a diplomat for the government of Canada. What caused that?
CL: Well, I began my interest in all things international, and interested in the world and global things. And then in university I was in international relations course and our professor just happened to say one day, by the way, the Foreign Service Exam is coming up, that’s the process that’s, the same process the U.S. uses too, different exam, but it’s the same idea. So you write the Foreign Service Exam. And he said, you know, everybody in this class should at least try it and see what happens. And so I’d never heard of it before. And I thought, ok, sure I’ll try it. So I wrote the exam, and got the interview, and then got the call and said, ok you’re in. I was like, oh! great, I get to see the world. It was a…
JW: Oh, fantastic. And get paid, Get paid to see the world.
CL: And get paid, yes.
JW: You know, the beautiful thing about it is, you have such a great background in foreign relations, and also your lifestyle so far, you have been in several countries. So you got to see that we truly are a common factor among all of us in the world. What would you say is the one trait or one factor, one distinguishing item you’ve noticed of the different people of the world you’ve met that shows us we’re all more alike than we’re different? That’s a long question, but what is it?
CL: Yes, but no, I mean, it’s for me it’s gestures. Some of them, ok, in certain countries not everything. But I’ve never been anywhere where, sort of, holding up an address, like a piece of paper with an address on it, or now your phone with an address on it and pointing to it, that means the same thing everywhere in the world. Like, how do I get here? Everybody understands that. And then always amazes me that you know, or a smile, you know. Everybody, that’s as far as I, everywhere I’ve been a smile means the same thing everywhere in the world. And that’s when things, that’s when you really see the connections between people. When you can make yourself understood. You’re on the other side of the world, and just by the way you make some gestures, or you smile, or whatever, you actually are communicating. You don’t speak the same language, but you speak the human language and that’s enough. And you can get out of a jam or you can get out of where you’re lost or whatever because you’re able to do that with somebody that doesn’t speak your language. That’s, you know, I’ve had great experiences all over the world and that’s one of the things that’s always helped me. Is to figure out, ok what gestures are….that they understand.
JW: You know, you’re absolutely right, Case. So, we’re in Paris, France. Well we went from Paris, Normandy, we went all over France, but stayed in Paris for the most part with our family. On vacation a few years ago. And I always believe it’s good to assimilate to some of the language of the local nation that you’re visiting. Right, to show respect to them. So I learned a few phrases in French, by no means very good at it. But my young, uh, the older daughter of our two daughters has a background in French. So she was kind of my interpreter. And she and the people of France were so patient with me as I tried to stumble through this language. So finally, this young lady, and we’re at a restaurant and I’m trying to order virgin pina coladas. My children at that time were underage. Virgin pina coladas, so you can imagine, I’m sitting there talking to the young lady, about 25, going virgin, ah, let’s see, she just kind of turned her head, like my dog does, kinda, what is he trying to do. And she just suddenly burst out laughing. And I go, what’s so funny? She goes, oh I’m from Michigan, I’m here as a student working. So, again, the smile is everywhere, right?
CL: Yes.
JW: The gestures. I love that. I love that. So, tell me about what then if you left that role of being diplomat, studying international relations. What caused you to want to be a writer?
CL :Yea, you know I’d always wanted to be a writer. So that’s when I started, when I was young. And I actually started out looking at journalism. I thought I could be Christiane Amanpour, and I’d travel the world and explain the world to everyone. And I just ended up being a writer for the government instead. And sending my reports back to the government and not to the media. But I, so I always want to be a writer and when, you know, like most people I did what you’re supposed to do, college, and going to work and getting a profession and so on. But it was always in the back of my mind. I would always, always writing something. I was writing books and so forth. I wasn’t trying to publish and so on at that point. And it wasn’t until the world of self publishing became so accessible to writers to publish and then go directly to the audience and just take your work to the community that really wants to read it. Then I was really able to start publishing a lot more. But it was just in the back of my mind. I like the idea of trying to make sense of things. So I write fiction and non-fiction. So, I like, so on one side of the non-fiction trying to make sense of things. And help other people understand. And then with the fiction, trying to imagine new worlds and…
JW: Sure, sure!
CL: and how we would evolve into them, yea.
JW: So you’ve written, so folks, you’ve gotta pick some of these up. She’s written some political thrillers, right?
CL: Yes, yeah. So, very I will say inspired by my Foreign Service years, but I won’t say based on. I’ll say inspired by.
JW: Or as they say, based on real events but made some of it up, right? So tell me a little bit about the writing process for you. So you say, hey, I work for four months hard, I get all the manuscript written, perhaps, then go to edit after that, but tell me how do you get the idea from formulating the idea to the book. Because this goes to an online business folks. This is what I’m talking about. You have to have an idea. So how do you start your writing process from that nugget of an idea to the possible publication of a book.
CL: Yea, so, the idea is absolutely critical. And you know it’s funny, it comes to me in all sorts of ways. People talk about getting an idea in the shower, or something, and sometimes I wake up in the morning, and some people wake up in the morning and look at their phones to see what email they have, but I actually just use the notepad on my phone to quickly type in ideas that have come to me in the night, you know. So, when I have, once I sit down to write, I don’t normally sketch out the whole story. I just have a general idea what I want to write about and I just start writing. And then sometimes as that process starts, I’ll get some ideas and I’ll quickly make notes. About ok this will happen next, and that will happen next. In the back of my mind I have some of the general idea of a story, and how a story unfolds. And so on. And so I keep that. So the actual, I don’t, when I’m writing fiction, I don’t sketch it all out. It just comes to me. So that’s another reason why I feel that this is what I was supposed to be doing.
JW: Right.
CL: You know, I don’t get writer’s block. I don’t have anything like that. When the story is there, when I sit down to write it just all comes out.
JW: Well, so do you, do you not define in your mind, hey I’ve got a certain protagonist based on someone I met when I was in Foreign Service, and I want to use them as kind of the figure of what I’m going to write about. Have you ever done that?
CL: Yet, not so, the people sometimes are they’re more of a compilation.There’s, I’ll say it, and I really mean this, I’m not trying to cover it up like them, like I’ve written about somebody. But I, there’s no body directly the same, but there are, I will definitely say there are compilations of people. But the ideas themselves come from definitely come from things I have noticed. Like my book Angle of Deception is around this thing that happens that was certainly based on something that happened when I was in the service. So I, some of those ideas do come. But then the people unfold as I’m writing. And, yea, and I would say perhaps it’s again, inspired by.
JW: Sure, sure. So, I do need to ask a technical question since you’ve had Foreign Service for the nation of Canada. I’ve got some dear friends in Toronto, Alberta, Vancouver. All those southern provinces, I’ve got some great friends. Have I in anyway violated any Canadian law by asking these kinds of particular questions, I don’t want any Royal Canadian Police to come to my house or anything. So, you know.
CL: The Mounties. I think we’re ok.
JW: Well, let’s talk just a little bit about your book, Recast, I love the title. So what you’re saying in your book basically is, hey, I have a formula that can help you recast, if you’re not happy with your life now to the life you wish. Give me a little bit of background of how you came up with that idea. Cause it’s so, don’t take this wrong, it’s so simple but it’s so genius.
CL: Well, you know, I’m glad you said it that way, actually, because that’s the problem. It is simple, but nobody talks about it. And then it ends up being how people get derailed. So let me go through it. So recasting, as you hinting at, you know, if I had a career in Hollywood as well, behind the scenes, so I, so the term recast, I think people know is where you replace one actor with another. But it’s in the same role. In the same show, in the same movie. And so when you recast yourself, you’re playing that role in your own life as the person you really want to be. And so that is from whatever you’ve been doing where you’re unhappy, it’s not working, where you can’t really get things, the traction that you want to become, in the book, of course is an entrepreneur. An online entrepreneur and really giving yourself these opportunities. And what I have found in talking with people, I talk with entrepreneurs everywhere and some of the things, you know a lot, or I talk with aspiring entrepreneurs as well and the aspiring seems to hang with them forever because of this, not knowing where to start. And so thought, let me just take it down to the most simple steps that you can use to get started. Because sometimes these little simple things are what give you the momentum to keep going. And so when people, because, what happens when you go online and say how do I become an entrepreneur. You’re just all this stuff comes flying at you and all this noise and it’s all contradictory. You don’t know where to start, so what I do, is I say, let’s start with some foundational things. Again, you know, where are you going to work, because I’ve, too many people say well, I thought I could work in the kitchen because the kids were there, or you know, I was gonna clear out the basement, but you know it’s been a mess and I just couldn’t get around to it. So, I, like, that’s action number two is just figuring out where you’re going to work. And I don’t care if it takes you a day or a week to clear out the basement or whatever it is. You stick with that action until you set up your work space. And then you go on to the next one.
JW: Very good.
CL: And these, and then as you’re doing that, not only are you signaling to yourself, that ok, this is for real now, because I’m cleaning out the basement for a reason. But you’re also signaling to everybody, well, I’ll see, you know this is real. I’m going to stop talking about becoming an entrepreneur and I’m really going to do it.
JW: I love it. And the book of, for all of our subscribers and listeners, the book is so easy to follow in terms of it’s steps from an ideation situation, where you’ve just got an idea. To how it can become your online business. So I want to take you through some of those, if you don’t mind today.
CL: Yes, go ahead, please.
JW: Just kind of ask some questions with details on that excerpt from the book. So the first thing you said was, breathe. Tell me how come you came up with that?
CL: You know, I think when people just jump in without taking…and I should say, again, I did everything wrong, so this is to make sure that you don’t have to come up again the same obstacles that I came up. I just rushed right in, I did all this, and then I realized, like hey, I need to take a step back. So when you first start, you really just have to take a moment and tell yourself, I’m really doing it this time. Take a deep breath, I’m going to clear my head. I’m going to work through this, I’m going to make it happen. And especially if you have business ideas in your head. If you’re, you know, you’re in an entrepreneurial family and you’re not sure if you want to get started. If you’re trying to go, or you’ve got an idea and you don’t know how to just sort of organize yourself. This is the point where you just take a step back and go, ok, I’m definitely going to do this. I’ve got the physical stamina to do it. I’ve sort of looked at the scene. I know what I want. And yes, I’m convinced…and this might be a five minute exercise for some people and it might be a week long exercise. Maybe you want to listen to some Tony Robbins or something to give you some, you know, some excitement. But this is the process of getting your mindset. And sometimes the mindset process can be really just knock you off so quickly because you just never really thought about it, you thought, ok, I think I’m going to try a business. Especially right now with things that are a little shaky. And so some people are just saying, oh I need to do something. But they didn’t take a minute to think about it, and when it doesn’t quite work they’re just like, ah, this is horrible. And then they never come back. And I would really like to encourage people to get started and keep going. I think we need a lot more entrepreneurs in our country and around the world, and you know, self sufficient independent people with purpose in their lives because you’re doing something of value and you’re providing solutions for people. So, if you just take one second. Just tell yourself, yes, you’re good to go. You’ve thought it through. It feels good, you take your deep breath and you can move on to the next one.
JW: I love that. There was a question in your book too, so I’ve been an entrepreneur since about 1992. So I’ve been doing this a long time. And I’m a wealth manager, we have our own company there. I also speak internationally and I’m a writer as well. I’ve got a book coming out this fall, of course titled by the same as this podcast, so Live a Life by Design, it tells you our process of how you can get there. But you talk about in your book, Recast, about how do you deliver value as an entrepreneur? So, part of that process is defining well what really is value. So run me through your mindset of what that section of the book is about. How to deliver value in an online setting.
CL: Yes. You know, what I remind people, what I like to just think about what we’re all doing online. We’re searching. We’re searching on Google.
JW: Right.
CL: On Amazon, even people are searching on Facebook even if it’s just for two minutes of entertainment. They’re searching. Searching on Youtube, that’s what we’re all doing there. So, that means there’s a lot of gaps. There’s a lot that people are looking for. There’s a lot of solutions they can’t find. So especially, and I always can say, you know when people say, oh everything’s been done. Well there’s no way it’s all been done because all these people are searching, searching, searching. So they’re searching for something. So if you can be that person who identifies that gap, why are all these people searching. And if you can find from your own interest and your skills, and your hobbies, or your education experience. Wherever it’s coming from for you, if there’s something that you see that gap and you see that opportunity and you can help, you have a product or service that can fill the gap and provide that solution, when people search, they find you and they don’t have to search anymore. Then you have delivered that value. You’ve really changed somebody’s life in terms of, and it could have, you could be anything. Could be a hobby. Could be something fun. Whatever it is.
JW: Right.
CL: But you’re giving people your opportunity to find that thing that they are looking for. And you’re the one who’s delivering it.
JW: You know, and I think too many times we make this so difficult when it could be so easy, as I said earlier. You have given them a step by step process, the book is Recast, we’re gonna talk some more about it here, but I just want the people listening to understand. If you are at all wishing to bring out your passion into a way that can help others in the world and make a dynamic lifestyle for yourself, give you several freedoms in life that you could not have if you were tethered to a company working as an employee or even as an officer of the company. Let’s talk a little bit then about a couple other things about research. So you give in the book, Recast, hey, you know, maybe I’ve got some ideas, but they’re just not really what I think is an idea to take to an online business, but you give them ideas of how to research some things. Maybe to build that case for the idea. How does that work?
CL: Yea, I always say, you know, if you have a spark of an idea then it came from somewhere. There’s something out there, so and, knowing, you know, the history of inventions, most of the famous inventions which we could never live without today were told that they were bad ideas. So…
JW: Right.
CL: You wanna go forward. Now sometimes there are bad ideas in the world, that’s true. But you want to go forward with yours and figure out where it sits. And it’s a great idea to just start putting it out there. In some incremental way so that you can find out if there’s any interest at all. And remember it’s not the folks around you, cause they might be the ones who are like, oh, you know, you’re always talking about a business, and here’s your latest idea and it’s never going to fly. And all that type of thing. Your market is the whole world. Like most people have access to the internet and so nowadays, when you have an idea you can put some feelers out online. You can put them in social media. You can run advertising, you can do all these things just to see if any interest is out there. And you might be surprised at how quickly there is an interest. You’ll start getting clicks and that will be a sign to you that you should go forward.
JW: You know, and let me mention something to and what I think of value. Value to me, I define, Case as something that I take an idea and if I can further process it to a new use then that’s a good idea possibly that might be the marketplaces need, right?
CL: Yeah.
JW: And so all I’ve ever done in my career is look at what I call this is terrible lame how I say it, but the check writers.
CL: Ok.
JW: The one’s that’s going to write the check for it. Hey, is this something Case that would be helpful to you, would it make life simpler, would it give you more efficiency in life. Would it give you more options of how you wish to do things to get to the same place in a less costly way. These are all value items, don’t you agree?
CL: Yea, absolutely. Absolutely. So critical. And again, people, in fact, I would even say look at your own life. I’m sure there’s, like, you, those listening, in terms of what’s missing. Like, what you probably, as you walk around, you’re in the store. And you can’t find something, or you ah, I’d rather…there’s a better way this could be done. Or there’s a better service that could be provided or less expensive or what have you. So, you can see this is where all this value is waiting to be put back into the marketplace for people to actually get, you know, directly from you. Because it’s all out there. You can see it from the way you interact with people. What people are asking for. What they’re talking about. You can see what they’re talking about online. What they’re searching for, you can see what terms they’re searching for. So there’s just so many different ways you can understand that. There are so many opportunities to do something. To create a business that you can have online.
JW: You know, the one thing too, that I love about your book is you talk about using varieties of research materials. Don’t just get online and do searches. Read books. What would be, outside of one of your own that you’ve written, what would be your most influential book to Case Lane’s life if you had to pick just one? What would be that book if the boat was going down and you had to grab only one book out of your library or lose them all, what book would you grab.
CL: Well, ok, I would say, I’m going to go with the business answer because I’m going to assume I survive the boat going down. But, which is, so Think and Grow Rich, which is the first time I, Napoleon Hill’s book, it’s been around for decades now. I think since the Great Depression, but it’s the first time that I realized you could have a designed life, the first time I realized you could live a life by design. That you could actually organize yourself and the things that you’re doing and how you see the world. You can give you, you know, give yourself affirmations. You can set goals and work towards them and just use your own brain to drive yourself forward. This is not something that’s taught in school. This is not something I learned growing up. The people I grew up with didn’t talk like this, and the surprising thing is that of course it works, at least in my sense. The different things that I wanted to do that people said, oh, you can’t do that, you know I ended up being able to do them anyway. And partly because I tried. You know…
JW: Sure!
CL: I would say like probably 100% of the people told me I couldn’t do something had never tired it themselves. Or didn’t know anyone who’d ever tried it, it just came off the top of their heads. But part of it was having that confidence to actually try because I had a formula so to speak of thinking about how you can make your goals and your objectives actually come true. So, that book had a great influence on me that way.
JW: I’ve got to tell you, Lane, Case, that you have said something again that proves that great minds think alike. That’s my book, so, I actually read it annually. Now that sounds crazy, but I’ve read it now for 31 or 32 years, I’ve read it every year.
CL: Yea, I’ve read it a few times.
JW: Yea! And the thing about it is, he’s not put anything in that book that you and I don’t know, but he gives you a way to think about those things we do know. See the difference? So tell me, from that book, what one item do you think made the most impression on you that said to yourself, Case Lane, you can do this. Now it’s gonna be hard some days, it’s gonna be easier others. But I can do this. What out of that book did you gain from that?
CL: Well, it’s the underlying philosophy, and spoiler alert, but it’s been out a long time. Is that underlying philosophy of thinking that it’s about how you think. And not just for setting lofty goals or anything like that. But just day to day. How you interact with people. Like you have such a positive energy, Jimmy, you know you’re positive with people. And so many people just they start their day grumpy, then they’re mean to people and all this and I thought, you know, if you’d just think differently, everything that happens, somebody hits your car, ok, well, you know, yelling and screaming at them is not going to miraculously fix the car while you’re standing there.
JW: Right.
CL: But just being rational, thinking it through, saying ok, I’m going to rearrange my day in my head. Get this person’s information and move on. Like, and I know a lot of people are like, Oh that’s impossible. You know, that person was not paying attention…but you just have to learn, this, that reading Think and Grow Rich, set me on the whole path around success consciousness and personal development and so on. So, this did not come to me yesterday folks….
JW: Right, right.
CL: It does take a while. And I understand all the sort of, where people are going to say, oh it doesn’t work and these types of things. I understand that, but truly it’s that underlying, in fact I think the way, the way that he even presents it in the book, like it’s all in here somewhere you just have to figure it out. And so you spend the book reading, like, yes, ok, I’ve figured it out. That it really comes down to how you think. Across the board with everything you do and it just changes your life when you do that.
JW: No, agreed. That’s great advice on the book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill. I will tell you the biggest thing I gained from that, and you’re gonna laugh, so I’m the youngest of six children. Raised up with very little money, but lots of love. Never went hungry as you can tell by looking at me. I did miss a meal once though, 1984, scared me forever, I’ll never do that again. But anyway, what I was gonna say is basically when I read the book I was in undergrad school, cause it was, it’s been about, I’ve been out of university now, undergrad school at least for 31 years, so, 33 years, excuse me. So I read it in undergrad school, so it’s been a while. But what I gleaned from that book, Case, that really changed my life, I didn’t have a bucket to carry my clothes in. I didn’t hardly have any clothes, I mean I was a traditional United States college student that didn’t have any money. But what I gained from that book, which I found at a, don’t laugh a used book store for like 55 cents. And I bought it, you know, yea, a gold nugget in the old rough, if you will. What I learned from that book though is this, that if in fact we want to be successful in life we can not pursue success because it will evade us. But we can attract success by what we put into our mind and how we work with others and react and respond. That’s exactly what you’re saying about the car accident.
CL: Yea.
JW: So, the point I always try to tell people that they come at me, they always accuse me of being a preacher. I don’t know how that comes out, or I just have that attitude, I guess. But I’m not a preacher, but what I am is an advocate for treating others with kindness. And that is one of my personal virtues as well as our corporate attributes.
CL: Yeah, that’s fantastic.
JW: So, that’s what you get out of the book.
CL: Yes, yeah.
JW: So let me ask you a couple of other things. I don’t want to hold you too long, I know you’ve got a lot in your day.
CL: No, no, no, great conversation. I’m enjoying this.
JW: I’ve got all kinds of questions here, so let me ask a couple more. If I’m not a technological genius and you’re saying I can be an online business entrepreneur, how do I assemble the team. How do I find alternatives for all the technology pieces to this? I just don’t understand technology, but I’ve got a great idea. How does that work?
CL: I’m so glad you asked that. Yes, that’s great because, so, one of the reasons I really advocate online entrepreneurship right now for everybody, you know who’s thinking about businesses. One, you have the technology resources, and two you have the whole global market as your potential customer base. And the technology has just come so far in getting easier and easier and easier to use. So, and a lot of resources are free. You can certainly start for free and build from there. And because you’d have access to the global market, if you still don’t want to do it on your own, which is fine, not everybody wants to do even touch, like a website or anything on their own. You could outsource to folks all over the world who are willing to work on helping you with your website, your writing, your editing, your graphics. Like I don’t have the artistic bone. I send that work, you know, off by somebody else will do that for me. Same, my book covers and so on, that’s outsourced. And, or you want, let’s say you want to be a manager, you’re like, well I’ve got an idea but I don’t want to do anything all at. So you can set up your own global team that you can manage to manage your idea and getting it out there. So, what tends to happen is once you get into this world of online business you’ll realize what you like to do, and not like to do. And then you can figure out where you want to put your personal resources, your personal time. And where you want to outsource and manage, let other people, and pay, again, the costs are much lower than they have been in the past because you have access to a global of work, of people who are interested in doing the work.
JW: Oh, absolutely. And one thing I’ve always had pride in, is I really only want to work, when I first started my company I had to do things I was not crazy about doing. I’ll just be honest with you. I was not passionate at all to do. You probably had to do the same. Starting out, right?
CL: Always.
JW: So we got to the point, every time I could I would add someone that had expertise in the area of which I did not even want to grow my expertise or didn’t have the passion. So all I work on now, you’re gonna laugh, is I’m just, those things I’m passionate about, talking to people like Case Lane and learning from them. And so, I’ve assembled a team, like yourself. It’s out there folks, what she’s saying is absolutely true, either buy it, build it, do whatever you have to do. But you can be in control of your future with just a little bit of thought and reach out. Now, this world is an open business line if you just want to call it. That’s it.
CL: I should say, you know, I’ve worked for small business, the government. I’ve worked for private partnership, I think the same one as you. And I’ve worked for a big global corporation. So I know what it’s like to come out of the workplace and then try and learn the online tools. And so, and if I can, I’m just say, you know, it’s trite to say if I could do it, you could do it. But really, yea, I want to say that. Because I started I took the first course I took was a diy course. A do it yourself course for self published authors, and it’s only because I took that type of course, I didn’t know it at the time, I didn’t, I thought that’s how all authors were doing it. I didn’t realize about the whole outsourcing it thing. It just happened to be a course that taught everything like self, how to do landing pages, how to do websites and so on. And that’s where I learned all of that. And I’m so glad I did, because even if you want to outsource it later, at least you know what it takes and you can give yourself, you know, a much better assessment of what it should cost you to outsource. How long it should take to get things done and so one. So these are great skills to have, to learn, and then as you go through you just decide how you want to use them.
JW: You know, absolutely, so what would you say, Case, is your favorite technical tool you have right now that you either carry in your purse, your hand, whatever, what is your favorite technical tool that helps keep Case Lane organized, on all of her books and businesses she’s got going and all these things you do?
CL: Yea, let’s see, I guess, what I really like for myself is, I do a lot of email. I have email lists. And so I use a tool called ConvertKit, which organizes my email for the different pieces of my business because I have the writing. So even within the writing, I have the different things, I have different book series for example. So those are different audiences. And then I have ready entrepreneurs, which is the other pieces. So, I, it allows me to just keep everything straight, and when I’m working, and because again it’s writing, emailing is writing, so that’s what I enjoy. I’ll do that work myself and I like to keep it as organized as possible. So, that’s how I work through it and actually use that particular tool. So yea, there’s, but there’s so many. And I’ve tried a lot of different ones as well, I must say that, so I try and help people understand what are some good resources to use. I’ve got some hints on my website. And I try and track out the news ones. A lot of them you can do a free trial. So I’ll try them out, see what they’re like, just to see what people are doing now, what they’re evolving to. And I’ll also admit to just using, you know, and Excel spreadsheet, and sending out a plan. You know. Like, old school. That works as well. So you don’t have to spend a lot of time and effort, time and money learning new things, especially when you’re first getting started. If you’re more comfortable in your old apps and those look good to you, and you know how to use them. Start there, again, just start where you are and then over time, as you get more comfortable and you’re ready to spend some money on different things, then you can upgrade to some of these other types of apps as well.
JW: So, you pulled out the card, so the good old stand by for most of us in entrepreneurism is the good old Microsoft Word for publishing or whatever, or Excel spreadsheets, I love it.
CL: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I write my books, I write my books in a software called Scrivener, but near the end, just before editing I do put them all in Word, so everything is finished on Word and it’s a Word document that gets uploaded to Amazon. So.
JW: Right. You know, at the end of the day though, the point she is making folks is spot on. There are so many tools out there, try some of them. Don’t just feel like, oh I tried one, it didn’t work so I give up. That is not how this works. So think about it today. Case, where would we be if Thomas Edison and the United States and the New York area had said, you know, I’ve tried this filament a hundred times, I’m done. You know, I don’t know the number, but I have heard it’s like 1,000 times he tried it, and he, someone came up to him at one of the writers for like one of the newspapers, and he said, well Mr. Edison, don’t you feel like a failure, you’ve tried this for 1,000 times and it didn’t work but it did finally work. He said, oh no, I was successful. And he said, the writer looked at him kind of funny, like, what? And he said, yeah I found a thousand ways not to do this bulb filament. So I love that aspect.
CL: Absolutely. And the same is true when you’re in your business. You know, I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all going to be easy and it’s all just so, you know, your business will be a big hit overnight. You do have to work at it, and so often the work is just a little tweak here, and a little tweak there and just a new iteration, or a new, because sometimes you’ve got a great idea, but your distribution doesn’t work, or your marketing doesn’t work. Or your products not strong enough, so people are not talking about it. So there’s different things like that. And so it’s that constant iteration everyday, so at the end, you might, yea, from the first idea you have to the one that actually starts selling, you might have done 1,000 iterations or more, but that’s the only way that you’re gonna find you. You know, you just have to keep going. And that’s how most businesses end up. The reason you see most businesses is because somebody kept going and kept trying different approaches.
JW: The absolute truth is you can not quit at the first wall that comes up folks, you have got to keep working. Find a way over, under, or around. Use all of those phrases to get that wall done. I want to ask you one last question, if I could, before we talk about the book a little bit and how they can get the book. What does the next three years look like in your mind. Cause I know that you’re a planner like myself. You’ve got this stuff mapped out, not that I know exactly what’s going to happen, but I have goals out there. What’s one of your biggest, hairiest, audacious goals for Case Lane over the next three to five years?
CL: You know where I’d really like to take everything next is to investing, with new entrepreneurs and not just in the actual businesses but in the ideas that are going to help change things. You know, we’ve seen this massive movement of everybody online, and so I still see more, you know, we need more sort of simple solutions on how to help people function online. And whatever I want to look at that and what other people are doing and see how we can grow that and make it just more, just spread the word to more people. Because I think it’s quite naturally going to become the future now. Originally, I write future thrillers, and the end, what I used to call the near future we were all working online, and now that’s right now. And so, they take education, you know there’s a lot of opportunity there to get more tools out, certainly workplace. A lot of young people, who, if you’re not, if you’re not, if you’re gonna miss the college experience you’re gonna do something else. Ok, so start a business. That’s what I’m telling, so start a business, and so make that transition, so that’s really, that’s my next thing that I’m thinking about. Is how could this work as investing in some of these great ideas to really grow and expand the entire world of online business for more people.
JW: I think that is a very admirable approach and great idea for the goal. Folks, the book is titled Recast, that’s R-E-C-A-S-T, 10 Practical Actions for Aspiring Entrepreneurs Who Want to Start a Business Online, Live with Purpose and Achieve Their Dreams. Tell me now, Case, when will the book be available and what platforms may they find it?
CL: Yea, the books out July 26th, so it’s out and people can find it on Amazon, you’ll find the ebook first, and the audio book will be following in a couple of weeks, and as you mentioned, we’re gonna have a link that will allow you to download the reader summary for free, so you can get a look at what the 10 actions are, and if it interests you, you can go and get the book for the details.
JW: Yes, absolutely. Be looking for that on the show notes, we’ll prominently display for the book, and I just want to say thank you today, Case, you have been an awesome, awesome guest. You’ve given us a lot of things to think about. A lot of value, I wish you the most success as you go through the years, changing the lives of your readers, and those that are your subscribers to readyentrepreneur.com, we’re gonna put that link in our show notes, you can contact Case there for any purpose that she can provide assistance. And we will have that in the show notes. A parting last word, Ms. Lane? I would just like to encourage everyone, if you have a business idea in your head, you think you want to be an entrepreneur, or it’s floating around. You know you want to be an entrepreneur, but you don’t know how to get started, you know, come and get into these process, be a part of this process of what I think will just be the overall, we’ll stop calling it online business and we’ll just call it business in the future cause that’s where we’re all going anyway.
JW: I think you’re absolutely right. Thank you so much, again for joining me today, Case. It has been truly our pleasure. One of the things that I want you to listen as subscribers and listeners to Live a Life by Design, is the fact that we bring practical, implementable ideas to you. Learn to capture these ideas, either in your journal, get out your Evernote, simple even a notepad would work. But just capture these ideas you may hold in your mind now, it just takes a little action, the change in your life that you seek so badly. Do not sit down and look for it to come to you. That’s not what life is about. Everyday it’s reminded of me that I get up and there’s a herd of gazelle on the safari in Africa and they look at each other and they realize the lion will be chasing them today. It takes action for their day to be fulfilled. And the only thing you have to remember is I do not have to be the fastest of the gazelle, I only have to be the second to the last. Hope you have a great week. Go out, touch the lives of those around you, and do us a big favor. Live your life by design.