How to Start A Creative Business In Two Hours a Day With Dane Maxwell

Bryan Collins: 0:00

He wakes up at 6:00 AM and he goes and writes right away for an hour and a half, six to seven 30 then he takes a half hour break for breakfast in his family. Yeah, she's got a half hour. Not many people have breakfast for a half hour. You get a full half hour with his family for breakfast. Then from eight to nine 30 he writes for another hour and a half, nine 30 to 10 he spends that time as his wife or a half an hour. Then from 10 to 1130 writes for an hour and a half.

Jingle: 0:25

Welcome to the become a writer today podcast with Bryan Collins. Here you'll find practical advice and interviews for all kinds of writers.

Bryan Collins: 0:37

Could you build a creative business in just two hours a day? Hi there. My name is Bryan Collins on welcome to the become a writer today podcast and that's a question that we're going to answer in this week's interview with the author Dane Maxwell. Before we get into the interview, I want to share some insights about a creative idea that I've come across recently, which is helping me bring some order to all of my notes on research. You see if you're a nonfiction writer and I write a lot of nonfiction, your search is key for your articles are for your books. You need a way of extracting what you read in books, in articles that you've come across on in your research and you need a way of taking all those extracts and putting them into one place that you can refer to regularly. Now over the years I've tried a couple of different tools and approaches for this. I've clipped and saved articles to Evernote, but then I found that it became quite big a difficult to Wade through all of these notes and I've also experimented with using a commonplace book, which is something that all the Ryan holiday recommends and that simply involves writing down ideas on index cards, on filing them in a box or in some sort of filing system, you know, in your office or wherever you right. And both of those approaches can work quite well, but what I found was I had information in my commonplace book. I had information in Evernote, in a journal, in my Kindle, highlights in podcasts, which are used for reading articles and photos on my phone and text files and so on. In other words, all of my notes were in multiple different places and I didn't really have any warm place where I could go and look for everything. Now, it's not necessarily about the tool that you can use Evernote to fix this problem and also many people have done this, but what I've come across is a technique called the slip box, or is that total cost as it's called in German on. It was a system that was created by the German author on sociologist Nicholas lumen, who wrote dozens of books during his lifetime, but essentially what you do is write a single idea down. It could be on an index card, it could be in an Evernote entry, or if you're like me, it could be inside of day one. You write this thing, the idea down and then you write your reaction to it and the idea is that you add to that note over times you allowed a second note that builds upon what you've learned about that idea and questions. So you kind of ask yourself about your research on probe yourself or push yourself in different directions. The idea is that you write from the bottom up rather than the top down. What do I mean by top down? Well, top down is where you consider a topic that you're interested in such as creativity or productivity or thrillers. If you're writing fiction and you go ahead and write about that or writing on the bottom of all involves looking at what's captured your attention in your notebook or slip box and then using those as inspiration for what you're going to write about. If you're writing nonfiction, you really need a system that you can use and having a system is more important than the tools are your technique. That side. If you wanted to learn a little bit more about the slip box, there's a great book on Amazon that I recommend you buy. It's called how to take smart notes and I'll walk you through the steps of setting one up using an analog or digital tool, and I'm also going to write an article about this, which I'll publish in medium. I'll share that with you when it's ready. You could also, Google does, that'll cost them methods. That's Z. E T T E L K S T. E. N. To learn more about this technique, of course, having the technique, our system is one thing. There comes a time when you need to turn your ideas into a book, into a product, or even into a business so you can earn money as a creative. How long does all of that take? Well, according to Dane Maxwell, the author of start from zero, build your own business and experience true freedom. You can do it in just two hours a day. Dane Maxwell is the founder of several software as a service businesses and in this week's interview he explains how you can build your business in just two hours a day and he talks about was what you should do if you want to increase your profits rapidly. He also gets into how to balance the ideas that you have with figuring out what readers or students or customers or clients will actually pay for. And towards the end of the interview he explains why he liked James Patterson's writing routine so much and how it helped him write his new book. What I started by asking Dane how to build a business in just 120 minutes a day.

Dane Maxwell: 5:00

You would do that by stop trying to be an expert at something and just focus on building two skills, sales skills and outsourcing skills and within that you'd want to rewire your entire orientation around sales so that you see selling as a loving, gentle, noble act. And when you get real deep in your unconscious that selling can be gentle, selling can be loving and selling can be noble. It becomes a very enjoyable process because every single person on the planet has a dormant inner salesmen or an active one, right? But you know, children are naturally amazing at selling. And then somehow we start thinking of this along the way. We don't know sales, but the belief blocks the natural innate ability to want to serve someone, which is the true orientation of sales. So you know, if you did sales and you, you got on a conversation with someone and you could be happy no matter the outcome of that conversation, like you could be happy whether they bought whatever you were selling or not. If you have that sort of unconditional happiness, you can actually really serve them where they're at and not force them into something that might not be good for them. So selling is the first, and selling is such a beautiful act when done with real beautiful intentions. And then after you sold, then you outsource. So if you're going to build a business in two hours a day, it requires you just take away some of the activities that would otherwise make it an eight hour day. And most of the activities in a business are spent doing the technical aspects of that business. Whether you're a neurosurgeon, an eye surgeon, a dog Walker, or a plumber, most of your time is spent in business doing the technical aspects. Unfortunately that doesn't really ever build wealth unless you're in a really, really unique situation or category. So first stop trying to be an expert second, so and then third, outsource what you sold. That'll do it.

Bryan Collins: 7:08

So yeah, there's a couple of points that brings up. So when I started my business a couple of years ago, like many people who write, I taught there was a distinction between writing on selling and maybe selling and felt a little bit sleazy. And yeah, I still think that that's an issue I got over that problem eventually. But I still think that's an issue that people have when it comes to their idea. You know, they want to get somebody else to take care of sales or perhaps they believe their card or a product that they're creating. Our course is good enough to sell itself. So what would you say to those people?

Dane Maxwell: 7:42

I mean, if you're struggling, then you're an idiot. You're literally accepting your stupidity. If you're struggling, like in order to ask a girl out, you got to ask her, in order to dance, you have to dance. In order to be in business, you must sell. There's no way around it. There's absolutely no way around it. So I did a little research on the history of selling from the 18 hundreds so 2011 and 80% of sales material, roughly 80% of sales material that's been released is manipulative in nature. Like our entire origin, 80% of what I, what I could see the primary, the primary hallmarks of sales material are they're manipulative in nature. Like we've been conditioned historically, it's probably in our DNA that selling is manipulative. In the 18 hundreds Chinese workers sold oil to Europeans who were making railroads and they told the Europeans that the oil would stop the pain. So they bought the oil and they put it on and they would not stop the pain. And so they started calling those Chinese workers snake oil salesman and that's where the term snake oil salesmen came from, from people literally lying about their product. If you really don't like the word sales, selling is really about alignment. Alignment is such a precious thing to find and that's when you align the real true desire of someone with what you have to offer. The business can be a very pleasurable place. Like you don't need to struggle in business and you don't need to avoid selling either. You can embrace selling without shame and you can rewrite historical conditioning and be one of the amazing people who doesn't even think that they're selling when they are because the highest level of selling is like uh, probably something like Elon Musk where he's motivating humanity to go to Mars. He has a pretty cool, that's like pretty cool cause you know like if you're doing a nonprofit, your ability to motivate people to enroll in that cause that's a sales skill. I encourage people to look at the historical conditioning of sales and then embrace that. We can rewrite that conditioning cause if selling is about alignment, the fundamental of a business, there should be no struggle in business. None. There should be none. Like really? And here's how you can do that. If you have a very clear customer and you have a very clear result that they want, then you have a very clear mechanism that provides the result, the customer that wants that result, you will never have to worry because I've met very few. If any businesses that I can recall that had a very clear customer, a very clear result in a very clear mechanism that were struggling. When you talk to writers and they're like, you know, I'm writing a memoir or I'm writing about this, and I'm like, well who's the customer for that? Well, you know, well you're in murky water like dirty, murky water and it's such an inspiring thing, man. Like business can be such a place of joy and such a place of pleasure and it can really be an act of love. It's an incredible place to find yourself to, to express yourself if you just really adhere to the basics. And do those super well. You can replace your personality through the whole thing. You don't have to change who you are to sell. You just need to look at the conditioning and the beliefs around selling and find a, find a way that like make it your own. You don't have to, you don't have to put yourself into a box and like ask stupid template questions. Like also, you're ready to get started today. We'll take it to take for you to get stuck. You don't have to do any of that. You can literally be yourself and express yourself in business. And more than anything, I just, I think it's such a gift to be able to use your voice and express your voice in the business world and express your voice in a way where people are captivated by what you have to say. And then they, they want to pay for what you're offering and it's just a gift when that happens. It's a beautiful harmony. And to do that you want to get a clear, very clear customer, a very clear result in a very clear mechanism. And that can be in the weirdest places, man. You could have a very clear customer is a a gray African parakeet owner. A bird in the clear result is they want that pair to stop pooping all over their house. And the clear mechanism is a, is a pair of trainer that you found at a pair shop that you brought your iPhone to and recorded some video lessons for that pair of trainer to teach and you give that pair of trainer a 20% profit split on the sales of the business and all they have to do is teach and now you're in business and you're not an expert. Now you can work two hours a day and just focus on selling. And then when you do, you're like looking to talk to great pair of grey African parakeet owners about their bird. And then like when your course gets the bird to stop pooping all over the house, you really, really improve the world. But most of us are still narcissistic. We want to write about our topics and we want to create our own ideas. And to me that's, that's borderline narcissism. I think business should be a called love. I think we should be doing business to serve and of course we want to be doing it in aligned somewhat aligned interests like you know, we don't, we're not going to bend over backwards or anything, but I really want people to know if they take anything away from this is that there doesn't need to be any struggle with making money. There's a need to be any struggle with business. It can be very pleasurable place. Did you take the time to get clear on a few things? Making an extraordinary amount of money can become quite ordinary.

Bryan Collins: 13:01

That's good advice. Dana, the second part of what you said about outsourcing, what would you recommend somebody outsource first or one of the key areas that really moved the needle?

Dane Maxwell: 13:13

Outsource the mechanism outsourced. Most of the mechanism, if you can customer, you do that. You get clear on your cut. You don't have to, you could outsource that, but I'd focus on outsourcing mechanism. I focused on finding customers. I focus on talking to them about the results that they want. Then I would outsource mechanism. It's a beautiful life. Imagine, you know, you sit with pregnant women and they're like in their second trimester and you're like, so how are you doing? Well, you know it's okay. And it's like, are you gonna stress or give nausea? How are you doing? Well, you know, it's like, is there any like results that you would want to have right now? Is there any improvement you'd like to have? Like anything different about your current situation and you know, they might say, you know, actually I really like to be rid of this nausea and I really don't. I don't really don't like this pregnancy. And he said, okay, how would you like to do that? Is there a dream solution to that? Like, well, you know, they say you're not really like a droplet. Like a drop it on my tongue under my tongue to hell with my nausea. And now you didn't have to come up with an idea. You didn't even have to come up with a product. They gave it to you. Now you go out to anacupuncturists, you b ought to naturopathic doctors, you ask them if they can make a potion of some kind, give them 20% of the profit. You're good to go. Outsource the mechanism.

Bryan Collins: 14:23

Yeah. I've, I've spent some time interviewing customers are students of course and stuff. It's definitely worse, you know, talking to the people that you want to serve.

Dane Maxwell: 14:33

Scary too, right?

Bryan Collins: 14:35

Comedy. Yeah. Because you find out that they, my case students want something different to what I might have wasted time creating so that that can be a little bit off why I did that. Plenty of times customer would tell me what they want and I'd be like, damn, so, but then go out and find the mechanism

Dane Maxwell: 14:52

expert and that'd be okay. Yup. Yeah, that's, it's cool. But good idea to find a product. Well, from my experience that people are already buying until you can create something seminar in particularly it's an online course or something with your own spin on us. One of the other ideas in your book is about building wealth and something you talk about your seven skills backed up by data that you need to build wealth. Would you be able to elaborate one or two of those skills? Which one would you like to talk about? Which one did you like the best? I guess go with whichever one you feel resonates best with you are would resonate with creative people are maybe somebody who's just starting a business. Probably the skill of being a newbie. How can you be a newbie? Like being a newbie has an advantage. That's important. You know, experts like to focus on making sure they know things. Yup. Owners like to not know things. When I was starting my first business, I was like twenties and I was helping real estate companies with recruiting real estate agents. I don't know the foggiest cooler do that. So what I did is I contacted real estate companies and ask them how they were doing it and I found the best of what worked and I packaged it into a system and I was a facilitator. I was essentially a newbie. So in terms of being a newbie, I would just encourage people to experiment with. If you're a writer, try and write an article about something you don't know about and leverage other's expertise to write it. If we're talking to writers and then as you're writing that article, consider how the same thing could work for creating a moneymaking product. Yeah. But if you wanted to make sure that everything you ever wrote for the rest of your life would be read and remembered the same processes as used, the same process, you would define a killer product. For example, how to cure your nausea, nausea, pregnancy, nausea in three steps. How do you get your parents to stop pooping everywhere in one simple trick, one simple training technique. We just wrote those because we had a clear customer. Yeah. I guess every book or article should start with an idea of reader in mind. Actually you did ask me what skills it was the last one about how to make the biggest leaps and do you talk about how you took quantum steps, not knowing where to spend your savings and where not to. So want to just reminded me of maybe some of the mistakes that I've made with mindsets around money and investing when I was in my late twenties and I was out of work on then more reason you don't want to start a business and what to do with the profits from the business. You know, whether to take it as drawings are we reinvested in the business, start to do something else with us. Um, certainly made mistakes but sometimes you need to make a mistake to get to the next level so to speak. I think opposed suppose one example will be, you know, investing in the wrong types of outsourcing on a field, like an expensive mistake. But then you get somebody who was more skilled at the task and then you realize and I was actually worried after all and that'd be like the section, the short of that section is to buy courses online. Yep. Buy courses. You don't even need to take the course. You can just buy the course and get inside of the Facebook group. I mean, my girlfriend asked me how to start making a lot more money. How can I start making a lot more money? I was like, Oh, the way you do that is you find five women that are just crushing it and the other friend and your brain will update so quickly to their way of thinking, you'll start making more money. So one of the fastest way to do that, the people that buy courses are amazing to be around because they actively invest in themselves. They're like them, some of the best people to be around. And so she happens to be in a course of like women that are starting like an online blogging business. So I told her to go on Facebook and post what are your sales results been so far? Women, let's hear what you've been up to. And then the women would comment about like what they've done results wise. And then the most successful students I'm in there, she would private message me to become their friend. Like courses is great. Like if you have, you know like I spent like$1,500 of like four grand or something. I had maybe four to eight grand. It made my stomach sick to buy it, but it was such an easy purchase. I spent$1,500 on a course, changed my life. Those courses are incredible.

Bryan Collins: 19:06

You're more interested in the community behind the course rather than necessarily the video in essence, our materials inside of that course.

Dane Maxwell: 19:13

Oh yeah. I think people haven't asked backwards about advice stuff for the content and most folks are, they're lost for a reason. It's not a tactic or technique that's holding you back. I'll tell you that much. It's now

Bryan Collins: 19:26

it's unusual to meet somebody who runs the courses. Uh, cause you described the Google ad words course you took with Perry Marshall on, then you got to meet him. How did that come about? Because most courses that I've taken, the instructor tends to be, you know, from around the world or maybe they're hard to reach unless you're actually paying for one on one college where you're fly, I'll fly over and meet them. So it's, I suppose I'm curious about how you ended up getting to meet uh, Perry Marshall's for those that don't know me. He's like one of them kinda more high profile

Dane Maxwell: 19:55

entrepreneurs. Yeah. You know, we ended up becoming somewhat friends too and it was an incredible experience. I mean, I really trust my intuition when I buy a course. I don't really read the sales letter for the course. Like I'm like, what's the general idea of this course? What's my intuition say? Let's do it. That's all I do. So with that course, I didn't buy it to meet Perry. I bought it because I loved Google ad words. Like I just loved it. I love Google ad words. I was like, Google hours is so incredible. You know, I can write an ad targeted towards older people that want to find a relationships, sexy senior singles online, you know, I could write ads for selling swimsuits. It was just like, I was like, Oh my God, I can do anything with this. Got I got to learn about us. I loved it and I bought it and then it turned out there was like a and event at the end of it. So I just went to the event. I also spent five grand recently on another course and that course is by a gentleman named Alex Becker. That guy is just a fierce business dude and like I tremble a little bit. I'll just like, I'll get on those zoom calls and I'll like raise my hand and get personal time with them in front of everybody. And you can get access to the guy if you want. That's the sales course or an advertising course. It's about how to sell courses with YouTube ads. Okay. But you think about it, but you think about it, right? Like you know, you buy a course and then you like are you, if you're not very proactive about it, but like I buy it, I get on the zoom, I ping Alex, I raised my hand, I ask if I can ask the question. Like talking to Alex, I probably asked three or four questions to Alex and it's changed my life every time I have people who take courses actually don't engage with them. So I guess that that would set you apart from some other students. One of the things you told me for example, was Dane, quit trying to sell people your values. People don't want to buy your values. So once they want to buy the result, they want to buy the power. Yes, yes. They want that result. I mean, think about poop on your floor. It would be nasty. Like the result is the Holy grail, like an electric car. You know, that's a pretty cool result. Carta doesn't need maintenance. Um, something slightly different. Do you still believe with everything that's happening at the moment, being an employee is riskier than being an entrepreneur? It really depends. If you don't have any sales skills or even like, like if he's never been to like fiber.com or upwork.com[inaudible] dot com and like had anybody do something for you. If you've never had the experience of outsourcing and you've never sold anything and you're an employee in this current climate, I would be reticent to'em. I think that might just bring up a tremendous amount of fear for someone and that fear alone could be quite paralyzing. For someone like me who has taken the time to build the skills that I need. This is one of the best environments you could ever imagine because for example, like if you know what you're doing, you can do so well. Right now, one of my friends is like converted their gym to a virtual gym membership. He's like signing up like 20 members a week now and he used to only sign up for a week to his physical gym and now we signing 20th his business is literally more than four X grown because of Corona virus. Virtual like gym. Yeah, I'm in the gym and they post workouts too. I was using an app that was the virtual gym, working groups doing workouts. That's fantastic. This is great. It's a great time. Like if you got some balls, this is a great time. Yeah, like a really, really good time. The survival brain is really creative. Like if you're, if you're like going to die, like the survival brain will do like anything to not die. Yeah, but if you don't have anything to trigger that survival brain, you're not going to have much creative juice from the survival brain. But when you got the survival brain online, well in my opinion I think, I think some people could do a lot of stupid things that just survival brain on what I'm talking about is like you become infinitely resourceful. This is going to force innovation. I'm so excited to see what people make because of this situation and build. I saw Jimmy Kimmel with like the late show. He did a late show on zoom and like posted it to YouTube and it was a cool, I watched it. I was like, this is amazing. Like I got to see him at his house. I got to see as a little girls, his wife was holding the camera. Really cool. This is a wonderful time. No imagine. Let's say for example the value of a business. This is really hard for a lot of people to wrap their head around as it's still sometimes meat, maybe even often me, but the value of a business. I definitely still struggle with this and this is still what's true. I think it's true. The value of a business is in the alignment and selling system that you have created around the product. Not the product like the products, 5% 10% maybe. Maybe in the best case, 25% like he has an iPhone, 25% of the value of the business but it's in the selling system. It's in the client alignment and selling system. It's in the first landing page. They see it's in the email auto responder sequence. They see it's in the sales page that they see the sales, the product. It's in all the customer testimonials that you've written. It's on all the advertisements that you have going around the internet to sell said product. Like if you have the parent training thing, the parents thing is probably, you know, you got like you go to a pair of store and you say, Hey man, do you have like a four or five step method to get a pair of stop pooping around the house? And the guy's like, yeah, absolutely. And so you do it with an iPhone, he teaches it on the iPhone and you've got like maybe four 10 minute videos and if that gets a parent to stop pooping, someone will pay for it. And that's only four 10 minute videos. Now you've got to write a video that sells it, that then goes in front of every pair of training video that people are looking at on YouTube. So you gotta write that video script, you got to post it on YouTube, you got to run ads to that, you got to track the clicks from the the landing page. You've got to track the landing page to the email opt and you got to track the email, opt in to the sales letter, you attract the sales letter to the sale. That stuff is where the lion's share of your time is. So think about this, the gym owner, if you want it to make money right now, for example, like brand new, if you wanted a brand new way to make money, you could take that gym idea and contact gym owners and ask them if they would like help turning into a virtual gym and that you could help them run ads and then you could go to Amazon and you could pick up a book on Facebook advertising. Tell them it's your first time doing this, your first client so you won't even charge them anything. But you're going to follow a proven practices to do it and now you've got a client you work for for free. You get a result with that guy and then you charge, I had one gym owner say he paid 16 grand to put together a selling system for his gym. 16 grand. Like he paid$16,000 yup. Just for the selling system.

Bryan Collins: 27:13

Yeah. I must have my, the team. I've been know about that idea. Finally, Dane, do you have or did you have while you're writing this book,

Dane Maxwell: 27:19

an ideal early morning routine? Yeah, I definitely, I definitely follow the schedule and this thing out. I follow James Patterson's writing schedule. This one, he wakes up at 6:00 AM and he goes and writes right away for an hour and a half, six to seven 30 then he takes a half hour break for breakfast with his family. She's going to half hour. Not many people have breakfast for a half hour. You need a full half hour with his family for breakfast. Then from eight to nine 30 he writes for another hour and a half, nine 30 to 10 he spends that time with his wife for a half an hour. Then from 10 to 1130 writes for an hour and a half. At 1130 he has lunch with his wife for a half an hour. Then at 12 he writes from 12 to one 30 and then for a month or two he takes a break with his wife again or a half hour and then at two o'clock he does an hour and a half of like admin work and stuff from two to three 30 I mean that's a killer schedule.

Bryan Collins: 28:15

That's like let's fix that. Six hours of

Dane Maxwell: 28:18

six hours of pure writing and an hour and a half with your family every day during the day and you're not checking email, you're not checking phone calls until two. Come on. That's a great schedule. I gotta find myself all over again. I did that. It, it worked and it worked and it was really cool and like in two weeks I wrote most of the things. The book.

Bryan Collins: 28:43

Yeah. I was actually thinking of Dan Brown, I think I saw him speak a few years ago and he described getting up at 4:00 AM because it was no email. He also likes to hang from the roof on gravity belts.

Dane Maxwell: 28:56

Where can people find out more information about you are start from zero. Well, I'd ask people not to buy the book. Just check out the extra and see if they like that they like the extra. Then check out the book cause I'm not not for everyone. As you can probably tell if the most listeners

Bryan Collins: 29:13

so that start from zero.com to get the XR

Dane Maxwell: 29:16

well yeah. Actually if you go to start from zero.com you can actually, you can actually get my book completely free in video form. If you, if you prefer that you listen to the book on it, we put like 1725 grand into creating the book as a video course and giving it away for you. That's a great idea.

Bryan Collins: 29:36

People like to consume information in different ways. I like our cover as well. It's yellow and green and has big balls,

Speaker 4: 29:42

ladders like a business book. I mean it's great to talk to you today, Dan. I hope you enjoy this podcast episode. If you did, please leave a rating on the iTunes store and if you want to accomplish more with your writing, please visit, become a writer today. Dot com forward. Slash join and I'll send you a free email course. Thanks for listening.