212: Book Writing, Amazon Bestselling Book Launching, and Driving Tanks with Small Business Tax Pro Jonathan Maki

Sword fighting, Peace Corp serving, apple pie with cheddar cheese-loving business owner Ray Blakney stops by to share with us how he’s grown the largest language learning online school in the world that hasn’t raised venture capital.

Whatever content you have -- a blog, a book, a podcast, a website, a YouTube channel, or a combination of them -- Ray’s 4 proven steps will get you from crickets to consistent growth of your brand, business relationships, and revenue.

A Few Highlights from This Podcast:

Starts first business as a language school in Mexico with wife (who used to be his Spanish teacher)...but then swine flu hits...and it forces them to go online, which leads to huge growth (got over 4 million visits in 2019) - Shares a lot of personal information on your site and podcast questions...why? Psychologically what is the reason? - Tips for coming up with a name for your business - 4 steps (plus a bonus 5th step!) for his proven content amplification process 1) Research 2) Create great content 3) Amplify on social media 4) Ranking and linkbacks - Resources named: UberSuggest and Ahrefs.com - Advice on writing emails that get people to agree to link back to your content - What’s a realistic timeframe for all this to work and snowball? Answer may surprise you. - And be sure to book a free, no pressure call or jump on a live training to get help implementing what you learned. This is so valuable!

Our Guest

Ray Blakney is an award-winning Filipino-American entrepreneur who has over a decade of experience building (bootstrapping) and operating 6 and 7-figure online businesses. He and his businesses have been featured in magazines such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, The Boston Globe, and other top publications.

In his free time, Ray is a part-time sword fighter.

Learn More: LiveLingua.com InfiniteUpcycle.com Anomalous Educator Podcast

Great Quotes

• “The advantage of us not needing to grow is one that a lot of people overlook. They look at it as a business. You grow, grow, grow, just for the sake of growth, and sometimes if you're happy where you are, I don't know if you're making a hundred thousand dollars a year, were you really that much happier making 120.” -Ray Blakney
• “Bookstores are making a comeback in the United States. Those like little niche corner shops where you used to go and read books, Barnes and Nobles, you know the big ones are going bankrupt, people want that personalized thing where you can go in and you know the seller or the seller knows you. It's like: -You know, a new book just came in that I know you would love because you, this is the kind of book that you read.” -Ray Blakney
• “I think a lot about names and people ask me a lot about names cause it was all about like copywriting and words and it can be really tough, but it's great to know, one you can change it, two its kind of like no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care that sort of phrase, it's like no one cares about the name of your business, they care about the results they're going to get for them or how you're going to make them feel in doing the interaction. So focusing more on that and less on the names.” Laura Petersen
• “So you really need to know yourself first and then write some content that is around that, we find that that's the base for creating any great piece of content is that there is a point to it, your personality is included and you know what you're trying to say in that content.” -Ray Blakney
• “Even if you sell 20 copies to 20 people who really need it, you did something good and you never know where those relationships could go, it can just completely snowball in a way you can't anticipate. But let's not worry about trying to please everyone and be this massive overnight success.” - Laura Petersen

Take Action Now!

1. Amazon Bestselling Book Workshop + Resources [free]
2. Bestselling Book Accelerator [best option to get your book done, live, and #1!]
3. Speaker's Secret Gig List [get more speaking gigs]

For full show notes click: Create Content That Gets You Ranking