Tyrone Shum Interviews Corbett Barr
Corbett Barr Towards Lifestyle Design And Absolute Adventure
Today is really an inspiring episode full of driven experiences and knowledge where I share with you my latest podcast for this month featuring a well-respected professional blogger and entrepreneur when it comes to lifestyle design and building traffic, and also growing following with the online audience.
Corbett Barr is definitely this lifestyle entrepreneur who has successfully managed to escape the entrepreneur-corporate world and go through an absolutely unique adventure outside his home country switching lifestyles from San Francisco to Mexico City. His great sabbatical gave birth to these 2 blogs FreePursuits.com and also ThinkTraffic.net which straightaway built big following audience in only a few months while he take time off getting to know different life experiences.
The Corbett Barr Interview
How Everything Started?
Corbett: Its been coming up on two years ago this coming January, my wife and I actually setup on a 6 months sabbatical to Mexico. We did a roadtrip, I live in California so we just packed up our car and brought our dog along with us and drove down to Mexico without any destinations in mind or plans or anything. And the purpose was really just to take a break from the careers that we had been. I had actually work in corporate world for a while and then actually started a company, sort of a traditional startup in Silicon Valley here where we raised investment capital and so forth. And my wife and I were both sort of on a break, shes an artist. This is one of our paintings back here actually.
And so we were both and we did take some time off and when we went to Mexico, I initially thought that I would just really take some time to plan out what I wanted to do next and not jump into anything. But within a month or two, I started noticing a pattern, we had met a lot of people out there who were living sort of alternative lifestyles. And what I mean by that is these are things that I wasnt really aware of in the past. These were people who werent rich or retired but theyre also work just down there for a week at a time or something either.
These were people who were spending months every year living in a foreign country and they had just worked out some way for their career to work around their lifesytle. They were a slave to a cubicle and then have to spend just 2 or 3 weeks on vacation every year. They were able to either put their work on hiatus for a month in a time or you know, bring their work with them and do a lot of work down there. So I started my first blog, FreePursuits about 21 months ago now, while Im in that trip really to just share those stories about people that we were meeting and its sort of chronical to the trip that I was on and thats taken me really to were I am today.
Escape From Corporate Entrepreneurial World
Corbett: I had probably put in I guess about 10 years or so working before I started my blog and started this alternative lifestyle you know, career choice that Im on now. So I spent about 3 years building an email prioritization service that really thrive to integrate with Yahoo or Gmail to make it easier for people to sort through the email that they were getting especially if theyre getting a lot of it. And this was sort of the time when spam filters worked nearly as been as ours today. And so we went the traditional route as I mentioned, we shopped it around to Angel Investors and venture capitalists. And living here in San Francisco in Silicon Valley, Im really in the heart of all of that activity so its relatively easy to meet a lot of venture capitalists. And so we had an appraising, a decent amount of money and built an office and we had 10 employees and really just everything that you think of as a start of it being.
And what I found personally was that instead of just having one boss like you do in the corporate environment, when you have an office and employees and investors, and a co-founder a board of directors, all of these things essentially become a lot of different bosses that you have to answer to. You have to please a lot of different types of people, not to mention you have your users, you know or customers to worry about as well. And so for me, it ended up napping the ultimate scenario and I thought here I was, started a company and becoming an entrepreneur which was in some ways the life I dream for me but I ended up feeling a little bit more trapped than I did before in some ways.
And so when I set out on that sabbatical it was really the purpose was not only to think about what I wanted to do next from a topic perspective or you know, what sort of service I wanted to build but also how I wanted to do it and how I wanted to live my life. And, you know, if I could figure out a way to do it without sort of aiming just to get rich and retire mentality that so many people have, but in some way to really enjoy what I did and to make it feel more like I was retired because I love what I do and I know itll take time off and do that sort of thing. And that really was a better choice for me and thats what Ive been pursuing for the past 2 years.
Lessons From San Francisco To Mexico City Shift
Corbett: The most important thing for me is simply just hearing that those type of things are possible because I honestly had no frame of reference. I didnt know anyone before when we lived that sort of lifestyle and the only people that I did know who were entrepreneurs really loved being an entrepreneur and certainly being their own boss but they were also very, very busy people and there were a lot of headaches associated with being an entrepreneur especially if youre running sort of brick-and-mortar type business.
But the people that I met down there are sort of just created different priorities for themselves. Their priorities werent to become rich necessarily and they werent into owning a bigger house and having more stuff. Really what they wanted was more time and more mobility and their ability to live where they wanted to and maybe to take their work with them if they wanted to. And some of these people also really love what they did for living as well and so all of that stuff really just opened my eyes. And, Im a huge proponent of sabbaticals and travel and taking time off.
Fears Behind Living In A Different Environment And How They're Solved
Corbett: It takes a little bit of practice to get comfortable with just jumping in with both fear and realizing that the worse that can happen isnt really that bad. In your mind, you might have a lot of fear but its really the fear of the unknown. If you can sort of quantify that fear and realize that what youre afraid of is maybe not having as much money as you had before or maybe not having as much or maybe not having the identity you had before, you know driving a nice car and having a nice condo and fitting in to a group of people that you used to fit in with. Losing that identity and striving for something different is really scary and so I had to work really hard to sort of quantify that fear and realize what it was.
And when we went to Mexico, what I realize was there were a lot of people doing that and we were just fine and also that you can save a lot of money by living a different type of lifestyle. Its much cheaper in some other countries and so if youre taking a sabbatical, it can be ideal actually to go to a different country because you can afford 6 months there whereas maybe you can only afford 2 months in your home country. If you live somewhere like Sydney or San Francisco or somewhere thats rather expensive. So it was great because we were able to spend 6 months there for the cost of essentially 2 months here.
Interesting Things Done During The Mexico Sabbatical
Corbett: For the past 3 winters now weve returned to Mexico just to spend a few months living there again and weve been returning to the beach everytime. So I end up on a nearly daily surfing routine when were down there and I have some good friends who also had that same time that we go to and so we get to hangout quite a bit. It really just soaked up the relaxation of the beach time. My wife does a lot of yoga while were down there. Theres actually a group tickets together everyday, every morning she does yoga so she really enjoys that. The two of us also get work done while were down there.
And, you know shes an artist and so shes able to bring her work with her and then as long as we have an Internet connection, I can get the work I need to do and done as well. Weve tried out to work as much while were there because theres a lot of other things, outdoor activities to do. Theres also a bit of a music scene at night that we like to enjoy and go out and listen to bands play.
And so theres plenty of stuff to occupy. Its a small town so its different to being in San Francisco. There are these many big events to do but on the other hand, I think the small like this is a perfect compliment to coming from a big city because you really get to know everybody that lives in the town and just get a feel complete difference from the life that youre living normally and thats really what I want. Its a way to get away and to open up the creativity to think about new things from there.
The Blog Think Traffic
Corbett: So as I mentioned FreePursuits was sort of a passion project and it was kind of something that I started on a whim. I didnt initially plan to become a professional blogger. I really wanted to sort of chronical or trip and explore for myself what alternative lifestyle would be possible and what I felt like I wanted to live. And from FreePursuits I learned a lot about building an audience to a blog because it grew very quickly and at one point, just 6 or 8 months into it. I actually had about 100,000 people to the site in one month and I learned a lot about sort of building relationships and writing content that people cared about and people would be interested in sharing and really just how to build and engage the audience.
And so I felt like I had some knowledge to share on that topic. I also was really into it and Im sort of a geek when it comes to thinking about traffic and building audiences and thats really when I focused on FreePursuits and Ive built as I said a couple of other online services in the past. And so I took all the knowledge and I thought, what do people struggle with as entrepreneurs? And people who want to become professional bloggers or who want to design a different life in themselves that involves running an online business. And, time and time again, the thing that people ask me about was how do I build an audience, how do I get people to actually pay attention to what Im doing and it seemed like it was a good combination and something I was interested in and something that I had some skills in and something that there was a need to be filled for.
And so that really accomodated in launching the blog ThinkTraffic which is more than just a blog because as you know a blog isnt really a business in itself or else be an underlying business behind it. And so I really started that site from the ground up with the intention of building consulting businesses around it and then ultimately launching products from it as well. And so I launched that site about 8 months ago and the responses have been great and Ive been able to build a really thriving business around it as well.
How Corbett Managed To Generate Income From FreePursuit and ThinkTraffic
Corbett: Right now its a combination of 3 things: affiliate marketing which is the thing that I got started with and then more recently its through selling my own products and also through doing consulting. I actually work with people to help them figure out how to market websites for either motivated individuals or small businesses and like I said, its a combination of those 3 things which is working well for me right now to sort of earn the amount that I need to earn because I was able to sort of ramp up those 3 revenue streams rather quickly.
When I got started actually with affiliate marketing, Ive focused on building mini sites essentially which is you build a small site thats dedicated to a very specific topic and you just represent a couple or a handful of products that might meet peoples needs who come to that site. And really the traffic that you generate to those sites is through the search engines and thats a very specific formula and thats how I got started. And the topics that I focused on there were really opportunistic, it wasnt necessarily you know, related to my blogs because the two were separate so you know, I might represent some sort of financial product or some sort of guide that helps people get over some health condition, whatever.
And I tried to focus on things that I had experience with at least so I was able to build a compelling offer and actually help people as opposed to just putting noise out there and thats the approach that I teach within the course.
Now however, because my audiences at ThinkTraffic and FreePursuits had grown to be rather large, I can earn more from affiliate marketing by promoting products to those audiences and so the products that I promote to them are obviously related to the blogs topics which are lifestyle entrepreneurship in the case of FreePursuits or you know, building a high traffic businesses or building online businesses in the case of ThinkTraffic.
What's The Secrets Behind Corbett's Success On Building Traffic?
Corbett: The fact that I spend a lot of time trying to build businesses online in the past and I jump from one business to the next without taking any assets with me. Not building any assets in the business that I could roll over into the next business and so essentially youre starting from scratch. You may have knowledge that you can use for the new business but you dont have assets. And what I mean by assets or essentially if you have subscribers, if you have a list of people who are interested in a particular topic, you can use that to jumpstart your next business.
If you have a personal brand, if people start to know you as an expert on a particular topic then you can bring your audience that you built that has recognition for you to your new projects as well. And I didnt experience that, the value of that until I started ThinkTraffic. Because as I said I wasnt starting from scratch in that case, I built up an audience at FreePursuits who knew who I was and a certain portion of that audience was also interested in building online audiences so they come over to ThinkTraffic so thats how I was able to start the things so quickly.
But I just think back to as I said back to like 2003 when I built my first product, if I had spent more time building my personal brand and building the assets that I had within the businesses that I worked on, where would I be today? And so I encourage people to think about the long term and the first thing that you start might not be successful and in fact you wont be successful but what youre going to take from that business to your next business and how can you sort of start building a snowball essentially, theyre just sort of built overtime until it gets enough momentum that can move on so.
How To Get In Contact With Corbett Barr?
Corbett: The best place to get a hold off me is through either the blogs, FreePursuits.com and again that site is about lifestyle entrepreneurship and how to work for yourself and live the life that you want; ThinkTraffic.net is about how to build online audiences and either of those sites have you know, links to contact me or to all my projects.
by: videomarkster
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