[Interview series Episode 4] Guest: Ray Blakney - Interview topic “How do you make 2021 count for the business you love?”

Our fourth episode in the series of interview with Entrepreneurs that are building a business they love. 

Tonight's guest is Ray Blakney | Award-winning Filipino-American entrepreneur | Bootstrapped multiple 6 and 7-figure online businesses | International Speaker | Podcaster | Semi-professional sword fighter 

He and his businesses have been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, The Boston Globe and other top publications. Ray has also been a speaker at multiple conferences around the world. 

---  Below you can find a time breakdown of the topics we touched in the interview: 

00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:51 - Ray's background 00:02:54 - Ray, are you a night person or a morning person? 00:05:07 - Ray, how do you manage to upkeep your regime? 00:06:57 - Talking about passion 00:09:17 - Process as a passion 00:13:17 - What businesses is Ray building 00:14:53 - How long does it take to build a sustainable business? 00:17:07 - Importance of self-awareness and self-development for business success 00:18:51 - Optimizing reading process. Reading vs listening books 00:19:58 - Side hustles and new businesses in the making 00:27:01 - Reinvesting profits. Business pocket vs personal pocket. 00:29:04 - Making investments from business profits 00:32:34 - Ray, how do you manage to balance business, family, self-care and development? 00:36:15 - Ray's daily routine and productive day structure + Decision making process 00:40:41 - An important question to ask yourself in prioritizing 00:42:33 - Personal Manifesto, what is it, it's value and how it works + Itamar Marani | business - mindset coach 00:48:12 - Life planning, vision and Ideal life scenario 00:51:23 - What systems help you to stay productive besides journaling? 00:52:26 - Systems and tools for business productivity 00:54:51 - Limiting your business with you time + What do you do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis for business growth? 00:57:29 - For solopreneurs, what is the main daily activity they should focus on? 01:00:27 - Tips on outsourcing from Ray 01:04:58 - How do you find freelancers? 01:07:00 - What should be the first hire for businesses? 01:09:47 - Ideas on Search engine optimization 01:11:33 - What tools or systems helped you with building self-awareness? 01:15:13 - Changes in self-perception with growth of income 01:18:22 - Ray, what actually influenced your growth of income? 01:20:23 - Ray shares additional self-care ideas 01:22:37 - The surrounding and its influence on success 01:24:54 - Masterminds and what do you believe makes them work? 01:27:33 - How to build trust in a mastermind? 01:29:14 - Getting in to masterminds 01:31:23 - Using podcasts to build a community 01:32:20 - Advice from Ray on what to do right now, to make the most of 2021 in your business 01:33:15 - Advice for 6 figure + business owners 

--- Some of his businesses include Live Lingua (one of the top online language schools) - https://www.livelingua.com/ Twiducate (a social network for schools with over 200k registered users and Podcast Hawk (a SAAS product that helps you get booked on podcasts on auto-pilot). - https://podcasthawk.com/ He is also host of one of the top language learning podcasts on iTunes Learn Spanish with Live Lingua releasing a new episode daily. 

--- Life Origami Podcast with Alen Leit, is a talk show, where we take a look at business as a tool for self-realization. We will invite to the microphone Entrepreneurs who are building a business they love and will cover topics from self-development and self-awareness to productivity and business strategies. 

--- Support the podcast by becoming an official Patron and join our closed Patron Facebook group: https://www.patreon.com/lifeorigamipodcast 

--- More information about what I do you can find below: * www.alenleit.com * https://www.facebook.com/alenleit/ * https://www.instagram.com/alenleit/