Jake Lang On Side Hustles, Serial Entrepreneurship and Blogging

Jake is a perfect example of the Just Keep Learning mindset. He started going through the traditional education and corporate system, but kept dreaming and reflecting. He went from engineering, a pivot to the insurance world, and eventually found that his heart was closely tied to business.

This led to a classic side hustle grind of managing minutes on train rides to work, lunch time, the ride home, evenings and weekends to build some leverage. Through trial and error, a few failures and eventual successes he managed to make serial entrepreneur his career full time. He is the founder of 8 businesses and counting, many of which we discuss in this episode.

He shares some pretty cool stories about how it wasn’t always that way. He started his first business making zero sales. Although, he learned how to better validate an idea. His second business actually brought in three sales through pre-selling, but then he refunded that revenue anyway, when he had to close down the business.

One of Jake’s areas of expertise is in building niche sites and using blog posts to create organic traffic to the site. He essentially gives us a mini masterclass about the concept of starting a niche site. How to drive traffic, research keywords and ideas for monetization.

Jake has an overall umbrella company that holds each of the micro, automated, niche businesses. Each of these separate businesses are case studies for his overall project, the entrepreneur ride along. This main business brought us together.

At the Entrepreneur Ride Along he hosts a podcast, blogs, and coaches people to get started in their own business journey. This is where his personal brand and educational content on business specifically exists and can grow forever.

We chat a lot about how to get clarity over your business ideas, how to create content and how to start generating revenue. Jake also reminds us that you don’t need to be everywhere doing everything online. Share your marketing content where it makes the most sense for you and your business. It was neat to hear him tell how he hardly uses social media channels to build his business. While social can be a great addition to your marketing, the ability to build a foundation on your site and rank on Google is more valuable with this business model.

10 Steps To Start Your First Online Business

1. Brain dump and mind map. Think of all the things that you are passionate about, see opportunities in, problems you notice that maybe you could solve and what skills, or expertise you have.
2. Narrow your list of hundreds of things down to a top thre. By going with your gut in terms of passion, but also in combination with overall validating keyword research, figure out, this actually a problem that people need help with? Do people actually search for this online?
3. Find out if people actually care? Once you know there is overall search interest and volume of people who also see that as an important question, or problem, learn more about their pain points. Go deeper with your market research and ask potential clients in forums, messages, or groups.
4. Know your personal marketing channels. Some  businesses may use only email, or newsletter. Others might find that social media sharing is really important. If you have the budget, then maybe you are everywhere, all the time.
5. Create your pillar content. This is the major content creation that you will start with. This could be a podcast, blog, or video creation that teaches and engages with an audience on a topic that your brand values.
6. Build your community. Take a long term approach from day one to build your email list, and, or group as you continue to gain traction by relating to people who have similar pain points. Continue to find ways to bring your community together in fun ways.
7. Ask for feedback. Engage with your community to learn what they think about possible product and service ideas and then create a minimum viable product.
8. Don’t be afraid to get actual commitment to your ideas. If something will take a lot of your time to create, then you can always double check people will actually pay for that product, or service by giving them a pitch and having them actually pre-buy. If enough people show interest and you deem it worthwhile, then create it.
9. Build a keyword strategy by using a service that shows you Google search data. Find search phrases that people use that not only have a high search volume, but when you look at the sites that rank on Google for those terms, you can compete with the authority of that website and rank for yourself.
10. Build a continuous, feedback loop machine that allows you to identify content people want, create content, build an audience, identify pain points, provide solutions (free or paid), get feedback about what customers want, and repeat.

Memorable Quotes

“Don’t be afraid to be different. I wish I learned a lot sooner that I could be different and do my thing.”

“I don't do a ton of social media. I focus primarily on blogging and one on one connections.”

“Do the whole MVP, minimum viable product thing where you ask, what is the simplest form of this product that I can make and sell that validates this idea and shows that people actually want to buy it?”

Guest Bio

Jake Lang started his first online business in 2014. He has built eight online businesses and generated more than $200,000 dollars from his ventures. While he still maintains multiple niche sites, his main personal brand is behind coaching and courses to help others build businesses too.

He has learned what is necessary to start a successful online business that generates thousands of dollars in recurring passive income each month. His expertise are in niche site building, SEO and blogging. He documents his journey, teaches about business and shares results at his main business, The Entrepreneur Ride Along.

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