#dactalk - For Entrepreneurs By Entrepreneurs

Attend any conference for entrepreneurs and online marketers and take note of how many people attend the breakout session on, "how to use video in your business." Video is huge and the internet is being taken over by live streaming. As easy as it is to create video, it's much harder to create video that plays a role in your business and that's where you need direction. What role does video play in a business? In this episode of #dactalk, Dave Shrein and Holly Gillen talk specifically to that question: what role does video play in business? Discover some basic starting points if you've never used video before and learn how you can take what you already do and improve upon it for deeper impact.

Podcasts are an incredible way to get your message in front of your audience. There is a lot of freedom to network with others in your niche and grow your authority beyond what web and social allow. You may have considered launching a podcast but if you don't have a familiarity with all that's involved, the mystery alone may prevent you from giving it a shot. In this #dactalk Dave Shrein and Ryan Bilello discuss the launch of The Inside Scope, Ryan Bilello's podcast for Periscope broadcasters, and they share their experiences with podcasting equipment, software, scheduling and more!

Customers. Such an impersonal term. Okay, so let's call them clients. Better, but somehow it still misses the mark. The reality is that no matter what you label those who choose to work with you there is a simple element you must remember... beyond the tasks, invoices, labels, etc. Your customers are real people. One of the most promising things about social media, when the term was coined, was an awareness being placed on the fact that these networks were socially based. Somehow marketing and sales have taken over and while you may still call it social media, we're not describing these networks as social - we are referring to them as social. In this episode of #dactalk , +Dave Shrein and +Ahna Hendrix talk about the human element of online business. Is there a proper balance between money and relationship? How do you remember that those you are communicating with are real people with real lives and treat them as such? A conversation with two entrepreneurs sharing what they've heard, learned, seen and exp

You dream and dream and dream of that moment when you turn pro. When you can finally spend all day, every day working on your dream. It's liberating and freeing, but it's also overwhelming and scary. So, what should you expect during your first 90 days after turning pro-entrepreneur or full-time freelancer? What resistance will you meet? What will continue to motivate you? How will you find work and expand your business? Maybe most of all, what do you do when those first 90 days don't work out like you intended? In this episode of #dactalk,+Dave Shrein and +Bethany Jett talk about what those first 90 days were like. Dave is nearly a year into running his business full time and Bethany is just over 90 days from launching hers. Two perspectives, two experiences, one amazingly powerful episode for the entrepreneur or dreamer.

You may not have expected to become a freelancer - a friend knows you're good at something and recommends your work to someone. Next thing you know you're clocking out of your day job and going home to clock in at a side job - you just became a freelancer. Not all freelancers want to leave their day jobs but all freelancers want to earn money working at the art they love. How do you achieve success at something you only give part of your time to? How do you find the right clients to work with - or more importantly, how do they find you? How do you know which clients to take on and which clients you tell to pound sand? In this episode of #dactalk  +Dave Shrein and +Emily Carlton talk from their years of experience as successful freelancers revealing what it takes to achieve mad crazy success at freelancing. While every freelancer's priorities will vary this conversation will pull back the curtain on what successful freelancing can look like and you will discover tips and strategies that can help you take you

If the title doesn't say it all. You know exactly what this is all about. You have passion or a dream that burns inside of you and yet the majority of your time is spent at your 9-5 building someone else's business. It's not that you begrudge their business (after all, it's keeping food on the table and a roof over your head - and in some cases Apple products in your hands) but you know that you were meant for something different than the 9-5.  In this episode of #dactalk Dave Shrein and John Meese talk all about how to manage the fine art of pursuing your dream while working a 9-5. How do you focus on your paying job while you're clocked in yet give the necessary attention to your dream that is beating inside your heart? How do you manage caring for your family and friends while using every spare moment outside of the 9-5 to build your dream? How do you turn what you love doing into what generates meaningful and consistent income? How do you build an audience to engage with along the journey? If you'v

You've been in that precarious position of asking the question, "how do I raise my prices without losing my clients?" You started off looking for experience and rather than charging the prices your competitors were charging you undercut the competition to get the client and gain the reps. Over time you've added more clients yet you haven't been able to transition those past relationships. In this episode of #dactalk Dave Shrein and Mike Kim take time to discuss the art of transitioning your pricing. There are many subtle tactics you can employ in order to honor your faithful customers yet earn the money that accurately reflects that value you bring. You don't need to feel the need to choose between loyalty or getting paid what you're worth: you can have both but it requires a lot of thought and a lot of relational equity. Dave and Mike will walk you through possible ways you can transition your pricing and feel good doing it.

We all want to know the secret to success. We look at what others are doing around us and wonder, "what is it that they're doing because it seems to be working." There is, in fact, a secret to success - though honestly it's not as interesting as your typical secret.  In the world of building your brand and creating an online business there is one thing you must do if you want to achieve success at a significant pace and here it is: suck up your pride and learn from others. You may see four or five others who are building their business and it seems like everything is just falling into place - so what is it that they're doing that is bringing success? While it may not be a prescription for what you should do it may be a good description that you could adapt for yourself. In this episode of #dactalk Dave Shrein and Meiko Seymour team up to talk about their most recent experiences of learning and share some of their favorite places to listen to the success and failures of others.

You're sitting in a room listening to an online business speaker whom you admire. They share strategy, they share thought process and a whole bunch of other good stuff but they never touch on the one subject that you find more perplexing: what technical resources do they use and how do they manage it all? Every one of us is uniquely talented and we want to share our talents with the world - often if feels like technical difficulties are the only thing holding us back. In this episode of #dactalk Dave Shrein and Charissa Moore talk all about tech. What tech do they use? What tech have they used? What frustrates them? How do they overcome tech problems? How do they keep technical difficulties from holding up their business? *We want to take your questions during this episode. Use Twitter to Tweet us your questions ahead of time or live - simply use #dactalk  so we will see them.* Don't let technical difficulties delay you from reaching the world with your message, gift or talent. Tune in to this episode

It's so tempting to look at our professional peers and become envious over their systems and successes. There's just one problem when we start comparing ourselves. It's a major problem that can be summed up in a great quote from Doug Fields. “Comparison places what you know about yourself against what you don’t know about another. That's not a fair evaluation.” You may be a writer, photographer or designer and it's inevitable that there will be literally hundreds of thousands of others out there who can produce the same quality of work. However, there is one thing that sets you a part. It's something that no matter how hard any of your peers or competitors try they will never be able to match. It is this one thing that will change your business but more importantly, it will change your outlook on life.

There is no right creative process, however there are best practices. Most best practices involve identifying what works and not straying from it. In this episode Dave and Charissa talk about what each of their creative process looks like and explain why they choose to do what they do. If you've ever found yourself stuck sometimes all it takes is knowing what your go-to creative process is to jolt your creative juices.

The internet has opened the door for anyone to start a business, including anyone looking to make a few extra dollars in their spare time. People with full-time jobs have been able to sell the products they themselves use. Health, beauty, fitness, personal care, decoration and a range of other products offer us the chance to make decent "extra" cash. It's easy to find opportunity. It's not so easy to know how to gain traction for your new side-business using social media.  We can post a picture of our family, our wedding, our new baby or our graduation and light up Facebook with likes and comments. However, we can share a picture of a life-changing product and... crickets. In this episode Dave Shrein and Charissa Moore talk about how to sell on social media without coming off as a salesman. It's a tough gig, but it can be done.

Systems can never replace relationships. Let's get that straight. However, systems can bring freedom from mundane and repudiative tasks that steal your time. There's a reason the assembly line was so revolutionary: it replaced the need for constant communication with understood next steps. For the entrepreneur and small business owner, smooth systems are not only the key to freedom in your day to day responsibilities but systems are also the key to freedom away from work. If you have setup an effective system, you don't have to be concerned with, "is my business going to be there when I get back," because your system sustains the business, not your presence. Again, this isn't a replacement for relationship or good leadership but it is a way to expedite items that don't require relationship and can amplify good leadership.

The internet is full of all sorts of awesome goodies meant to help streamline your work flow allowing you to be more productive. Struggling to find the right text editor or graphic program... even which email client is right... is not uncommon. In this episode Dave and Charissa reveal their top five tools that you may not yet know about... but let's face it... they'll probably talk about a whole lot more than that! If you've had a desire to use the tools that "just work" or have had a hard time even knowing where to look for productivity tools to begin with, then holy smokes... this is the episode you'll want to watch!

Dave and Charissa have each taken a different approach to how they market themselves and their services. Talking about these differences will shed light on how you may want to brand your business site and how you will want to position your expertise and business value proposition to the world. If you've ever had a question like, "what should I call my website?" or "what content do I need to have on my website," and really anything connected to business websites, this talk is for you!

If you’ve ever wondered if you’re “doing things right” you’ll love watching/listening to this episode as we pull back the veil on our individual business and reveal that there is “no right way” to set goals for your business or project. We approach the subject from an attitude of, “here’s what’s worked for us and here’s how we’ve failed.”