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26/10/2017 0 Comments entrepreneur interviews - series 1interview 1 - rob cubbon, the content creatorWelcome to Entrepreneur Interviews!
We'll be kicking of Series 1 with "laptop entrepreneur" Rob Cubbon. Some of you may have come across Rob online. He has a number of books in the Amazon stores, and has his own range of online courses. He also publishes his strategies, latest experiments and his monthly earnings online. In this interview he talks about life as a location independent entrepreneur based most of the year in Thailand (I interviewed him via WhatsApp whilst he was in Chiang-Mai), the importance of making time for strategic thinking, and his top productivity tip. Rob, what do you do, why do you do it and how did you get into it? I used to work in graphic design in London doing desktop publishing work, and I was doing that for a long time. Then I started blogging. That was back in 2006. It was quite easy to rank for certain keywords in those days, and I began to get design work that I could do from home. That's how I got started. Two years after I started blogging, I was able to stop working for other people. What are the biggest benefits of entrepreneurship? The benefits of being an entrepreneur? Mainly freedom, but there are lots of benefits. Currently I'm living in Thailand - that's a huge benefit! I consider meeting people to be a benefit too. I'm in a great place; there are a lot of Western and Thai entrepreneurs here. There's a centre for it, so I get to meet really interesting people at the local entrepreneurial meetups. On top of that, you're free to choose your hours and you don't have to commute, so that immediately saves you two hours a day. Also, if you "go out to work" you don't have a choice of what jobs you do. The jobs I don't want to do I can outsource and give to other people, and the jobs I do want to do, I can do them myself - although it doesn't work out like that all the time! It's freedom of choice – I can choose what to do, when to do it, where to do it and how to do it, without anyone telling me to. What are the most important lessons, or realisations you've had about life as an entrepreneur? It depends what sort of person you are, but I've learnt that what I'm good at is getting things done. I'm not a perfectionist, in fact, I'm quite the opposite, but I've learned how to use that to benefit me. I've produced over 20 courses and 10 books, among other things, and the lesson I've learned is to finish things as quickly as possible, and to move on to the next thing. So, with courses, the first one wasn't great, as you can imagine, but by the 5th or 6th they started to sell well. The other side of it is consistency, doing things quickly and to keep on doing them, not to move on to something vastly different, but to keep on the same track, so you can become good at something and spread your bets by creating different products. You've got to find your own way. This is where it can be a very individual type of game and that is where copying other people isn't necessarily the best thing to do. What are the top tools that have made a significant difference to your business?
They really help me with outsourcing, because I can share different folders with various people around the world and get those people working in concert. I wouldn't be able to do it without those tools and the ability to get things done securely. My best tip for productivity is an offline one – set yourself a goal every day. For example, creating a video every day, or when writing a book, I'll make sure I write 500 words every day, so whatever I'm doing is finished within a month. I set myself a short term, medium term and a long-term goal, on top of what I'm doing whilst I run my website business, https://robcubbon.com/ each day. I make sure that I also do that extra task which goes towards a mid-term, or long-term goal, and if I do that, I'm contributing to my productivity. It is difficult, especially for entrepreneurs, because you're dealing with all sorts of things and want to get involved in others and find yourself pulled all over the place, but I find a good way of grounding myself is to complete that one extra task a day. Maybe it takes an hour or so, but it builds towards your future vision – that's really helped me. You can find out more about Rob at: https://robcubbon.com/. Contains copyrighted material from the book: Entrepreneurial Espresso.
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In Series 1, I'll be posting 5 interviews with entrepreneurs from a range of different sectors, and locations around the world - one location independent entrepreneur is based in tropical Thailand!
They were all interviewed for my 4th and most recent book, Entrepreneurial Espresso: 450+ business-boosting and productivity enhancing tools to take the hard work (& guesswork) out of running your enterprise, one of our software survival books to help modern entrepreneurs get the most from the great free and low-cost software available to manage business "chores", save time and money, increase productivity... and to save us from going crazy with all the competing demands we have to deal with on our own, or with help from a small team!
When you have too much to do and too little time...
Here's where you can find our more about us and our books. In addition to talking about their journeys, each interview features top recommendations on great software for small business owners... Why? Because Purposeful Products is all about building, and buying great software products (plus, who doesn't like to compare notes?!) With huge thanks to:
Series 2 of Entrepreneurial Interviews starts in early 2018, where 100% of the interviews will be with tech entrepreneurs. In each interview, we'll review each person's story, and how they got "from idea to launch" with their software products.
You'll find all the interviews in the blog category Entrepreneur Interviews - Series 1, beginning with my interview with Rob Cubbon. You may have come across this quote from Steve Jobs (also attributed to Rob Siltanen, founder of Siltanen & Partners advertising agency.) It's so inspirational that it's well worth sharing here to kick off series 1 of our interviews with a salute to entrepreneurship: “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” Here's to making an impact! |
WHAT INFORMATION WILL YOU FIND on THE PURPOSEFUL PRODUCTS BLOG?Want to build a mobile, or web app to offer to your existing customers? 
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