TREPX Podcast | For enTREPreneurs by enTREPreneurs, TREPX Podcast provides actionable advice, tips, and steps for freelancers

Micky Deming: (00:35) Hello and welcome to the TREPX Podcast! This is Micky Deming and I’m really excited about today’s interview! I had a chance to talk with a fellow journalist. I talked to Leanna Johnson who is a journalist and who is using her journalism to build a business around it and to promote entrepreneurs to help them tell their stories. As entrepreneurs, as business owners we talked about this in the Chris Smith interview if you’ve heard that, telling your story is one of the most important things you have to figure out how to do. How to pull out those stories of who you are, of why you do what you do, and sometimes we can’t pull it out of ourselves.

We need to be interviewed, we need to talk to someone else, and a journalist can really help with that. So Leanna is doing that for others and she is really documenting everything that she’s doing, everything that others are doing, on her website. It’s some really cool stuff. So if you are at all curious about how to do some better storytelling, some better writing, you definitely want to check out her site and everything she’s up to. You can find it at LostLass.com and again that is Leanna Johnson.

Had a great time talking to her. Talking about the fun journalism stuff that we’ve both seen with interviewing and telling stories. Very much enjoyed chatting with her. Again, you can see her at LostLass.com and see this interview at TREPEXGroup.com. Please enjoy this interview with Leanna Johnson.

Micky Deming: (02:04) Hello Leanna Johnson, welcome to the TREPX Podcast! How are you doing today?

Leanna Johnson: (02:08) Hey Micky! Glad to be here! Thanks for the opportunity.

Micky Deming: (02:11) I am really pumped because we have so much in common. I just sense how exciting that is! The main thing is that we are both journalist. I guess I would be a former journalist, but it’s still in my soul and you are very much a journalist. This is going to be fun!

Leanna Johnson: (02:30) I think so too!

Micky Deming: (02:31) I don’t think I’ve interviewed a journalist before, but here’s where I think I was disappointed because our way into journalism, yours was so much more noble than mine! I was reading your website and it says, “I became by the human experience. I combined my love of world cultures, curiosity of the human condition, and global awareness to create a multi-dimensional, multi-media career”. That’s so awesome!

Leanna Johnson: (02:58) That was also really good copywriters, just so you know!

Micky Deming: (03:04) When people ask me like why did you get into journalism? I say, well I was a pretty good writer and I like sports, so I thought I could write about sports and that’s my answer. Yours is so much cooler!

Leanna Johnson: (03:16) Blinding skills! Yeah well, I guess writing has always been sort of a part of how I communicate and I traveled a lot when I was a kid and up until now. I have a pretty multi-cultural background, so it just kind of seemed to fit. I don’t know, it was sort of a natural progression. I grew up wanting to be an FBI agent, so I didn’t start off with the journalism thing. I sort of rejected the idea of criminal justice early on in college when I figured out how much desk work that would be and how probably boring that would become and I thought you know what, I can just kind of make my own rules and do my own thing as a journalist and still have that kind of detective, dangerous, fun experience. So there might be a little bit of an adrenalin junkie in there too.

Micky Deming: (04:17) That’s cool! So you’re going to create the next cereal, that’s what you’re saying. You’re working on that right now? No, this is cool! There are so many things I want to ask. This audience being entrepreneurs, I always have said this, that the skillset you needed for journalism is so important in marketing and entrepreneurship and communication and so I think there is a lot we can learn from you and your experience, but before we get into that I just want to let you share kind of an overview of your business and how you’ve turned your journalism skills into an actual business.

Leanna Johnson: (04:55) Well Micky, I honestly didn’t take the traditional route. When I think of journalism, I think of someone who works on the school paper, who practices photography from when they’re like 13, and interviews everyone, and just sort of builds up this really solid, awesome background with internships, and jobs, and so forth in college. I did not do any of that. I did dabble a little bit in newspaper and magazine journalism early on in community college, but I took kind of a roundabout way to get to it I guess. Instead of majoring in journalism, I actually majored in communication at UIC in Chicago. You could concentrate in journalism, but I really got this, I think of it as, English degree for 21st century people where you can actually make money as opposed to where yo...

Alex Charfen has dedicated his life to answering the question, how do you make your business grow? As a personal consultant to billionaires, the Fortune 500 and some of the most successful individuals in the world, Alex’s pursuit evolved into a larger calling to understandHow do you help people grow? For the past two decades, Alex has created and curated proven business philosophies, models and strategies geared specifically to entrepreneurs.

Alex was labeled as developmentally disabled back when he was in school and didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere. In his adult life he went on the journey to find success and ended up finding where he belonged. Alex, and many others belong to the most important group of all, the group of entrepreneurs. “We learn nothing standing still and we accomplish nothing standing alone.” Alex encourages entrepreneurs to work together as a team. “Learn the secret that every great entrepreneur in history has learned. Build a team or join a team, and do it fast.” He is an expert when it comes to understanding the entrepreneurial personality type. If this episode resonates with you

To hear more from Alex, check out his podcast The Evolutionaries T or find him on twitter @AlexCharfen

Jim Palmer is a marketing and business building expert and host of Newsletter Guru TV and Stick Like Glue Radio. He is known internationally as ‘The Newsletter Guru’- the go-to resource for maximizing the profitability of customer relationships.

“Every entrepreneur needs to be working with a coach and be in a mastermind group. When you think you have all the answers or you think you know the plan is when you either are not doing well or your growth is being stunted because you don’t know what you don’t know. When you work with a master mind or a coach they can point out something obvious that you can’t see because you are far too close to your business.”

Jim is an expert when it comes to newsletters and entrepreneurship. His home page is http://www.getjimpalmer.com/ the website for his newsletter is http://www.nohasslenewsletters.com/ if you are interested in coaching a mastermind group, visit http://www.dreambizcoaching.com/index.html

Lee Caraher is a CEO and acclaimed communication strategist known for her practical solutions to big problems. She started Double Forte as a new kind of communications firm designed to work with good people, doing good work for good companies by providing the best results and service in the business. So far so good. This is not her first rodeo, and she’s learned a lot along the way that she shares with others in the hopes that everyone can reduce drama and conflict in the workplace and create careers that matter.

“Growing a team starts with knowing who you are, what your strengths are, and knowing where to spend your time. The first person we paid was our accountant because my time wasn’t best used in accounting and that was the best investment I have ever made.” –Lee Caraher

After the crash of 2008, Lee realized that when an economic shift happens, you have to look at your business model and make sure that it will still be relevant on the other side of recovery. This led her to hiring millennials and eventually writing a book on Millennials and being known as “the millennial whisperer”.

Lee’s book Millennials & Management: The Essential Guide to Making It Work at Work http://www.leecaraher.com/books/

See more of what lee is doing at http://www.leecaraher.com/ or find her on twitter @LeeCaraher

Michelle has one bottom line for all of her clients. Measurable results. She does not teach the “one size fits all” approach to marketing.

Michelle L Evans walked away from her global marketing strategy role at Microsoft in 2012 after a successful 16-year corporate career spanning many industries. Now she shows business owners how to stop being the best-kept secret around and instead become a sold-out success. Combining her proven business-building skill set with her ninja marketing skills, Michelle shows entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and small business owners how to build a steady stream of clients and profits for their business.

“Getting to the point where you don’t have to work with bad clients will almost always require you to work with bad clients as a learning experience. You have to be able to focus on what is right for right now because the clients you have now might not be what you want to have in 5 years.”

This is a great episode with the marketing expert Michelle Evans. To see more of Michelle, visit her website http://michellelevans.com/ or find her on twitter @michellelevans