Episode #5: Live From Mexico with Corbett Barr

You've been told that in order to be successful online, you need to use all the different social media platforms. But what if you're just not good at using some of those platforms? 

It's frustrating when you don't feel like you can be your true self on a platform because it's just not a good fit for you. It feels like you're pretending to be someone you're not and it's exhausting. 

Use the platform or medium that is best suited for you. If that happens to be video, then do video. If podcasting is your thing, then do podcasting. Don't try to force yourself into using a platform just because "everyone else is doing it." 

In this episode of The Chair-apist, I interview Corbett Barr, the co-founder of Fizzle. An online platform that helps you learn how to blog and grow your audience. This was an insightful conversation about what it takes to build a successful blog and how to reach your target audience. If you're looking for tips on improving your blog or growing your online following, this is the episode for you! 

Transcript

Cameron 
Hello, Cameron here with the Chair-apist I am lucky enough to have scored my friend Corbett while I'm down here in Mexico and he is a fantastic human being. 

He actually is the founder of Fizzle. And Fizzle is an awesome platform that you can go on and learn how to blog and actually do some podcasting and organize your time. And I actually used Fizzle and love him for that, and he has a lot of information for people who want to get into education, who want to do more marketing networking? 

So, Corbett Barr welcome! 

Corbett 
Thank you so much Cameron, for having me. I'm excited. We've talked about this for a long time and here we are podcasting. I don't know like 10 years. It's really not that long, but it's been a while for sure, yeah start. 

Cameron 
It feels like that. With blogging and then I thought I'm not good at writing. I'm better at talking, and hat's an important detail, like I think sometimes people try to. 

Corbett 
Hard to use a platform or medium that is just not suited to them in their personality. So I say if you're good at video, use video. If you're good at podcasting, do podcasting, you don't have to just do Instagram because everybody is doing Instagram. You can use a different platform if it suits you better in your style. 

Cameron 
Yeah, Instagram still would place you for helping. 

Corbett 
I mean, it depends on your medium. Obviously for stylists it's important because you want to see the finished work right. You want to see the work in progress and so on. But you could probably do really well on YouTube also, right? I'm sure you've been on YouTube watching people do various styles and you know. 

Cameron 
Yeah, there's a lot more YouTube influence. Yeah, for sure which I never thought YouTube was going to. be a huge platform, but I didn't realize that Instagram was going to be the platform that it's today either, so. 

Corbett 
Right, yeah, but the cool thing about podcasting you know in your case is there probably aren't that many stylists on podcasting, so maybe it's a good way to, you know reach people who want to be able to listen on the go listening their car that sort of thing, you know? 

Cameron 
And right now, at least reach 1 person and make them feel inspiration, and that was my goal. 

So now you're working on a big project, so I just want to talk a little bit about how what a big deal Corbett it - you won't admit it but. 

Corbett 
Thanks, I appreciate that. Yeah, I am currently helping a company called Sounds True, which is like a 40-year-old publishing company. They have published a lot of big-name authors, including people like Eckhart Tolle, Brené Brown, Tik not Han Pema Chodron. People that operate in the mindfulness meditation yoga. Those sort of spaces, even spirituality. They have for long time been a publisher of physical books and audiobooks. Things like that. 

And now we're creating a new platform that will be sort of like a combination between Netflix and Peloton, where you can show up daily and take live meditation, mindfulness classes, yoga classes, things like that. 

So, my expertise is around online media and putting together platforms. So I'm applying that to this other company right now. 

Cameron 
Have fun, that's awesome because a lot of. Those stylists are going to. need that platform for the self-care. So, there's going to be a few episodes on self-care. However, you absolutely, it's improvement catered to it. Especially right now 'cause there's a lot of things going on in the world and we get to work as therapists. 

Corbett 
Yes, you are. And also, you're entrepreneurs and that's the thing it's like as an entrepreneur, it can be really easy to kind of put yourself last because there's so many things to do for your clients, for your business and so on, and you can find that you hit a wall eventually unless you learn how to care for yourself and make sure that you are managing your energy levels and making time for yourself. So, mindfulness meditation all that kind of stuff, it's been really popular in the entrepreneurship communities because we all realize how much a problem mental health can be if you ignore it. Oh wow, yeah it is. 

Cameron 
I'm sure anybody who's listening, 'cause I definitely think about few instances where they've had to help somebody. Or maybe they've come to the end of their rope and mindfulness is so important and intention, so which you know, we've been talking about this podcast for a couple of years now and now it's happening so putting attention into anything. And that actually brings me to people who want to do education and use a platform for education and maybe the modules like you know we have fancy scissors, or they do a modular education, Masters of Balayage. They do a modular education where you can go through and get certified and do advanced classes for Balayage. And so, if somebody wanted to get into that and they could go remote like you are now. How would they go about doing that? 

Corbett 
Yeah, that's a whole big can of worms. The cool thing is that I've seen this pattern happen for a number of people who do something in person that they get really good at, and then they realize they have something to share that other people might want to learn. And then you're able to eventually teach online, which opens up a whole bunch of possibilities for you either just diversifying your revenue stream, which is really interesting, right? Because instead of having to be behind the chair all the time, you could then be earning money from people taking your courses. I've seen this happen to people who teach music.  

For example, one of the biggest success stories to come out of Fizzle, which is an entrepreneurship training platform that I run is someone named Scott who runs Scott Bass lessons and he literally was a electric bass teacher in England and started teaching on YouTube and then opened up his own platform and has gone on to do 7 figures of revenue, and so if you think about the difference between teaching individual kids or adults, lessons for $4050 an hour or something like that versus being able to teach 10s of thousands of people at once on a platform. 

You can see how powerful it is so if you want to get into teaching though online, you have to have an audience, right? You have to be able to reach people in some way and so that's where blogging, podcasting, creating videos that sort of thing or even on Instagram. Whatever it is, as long as you start to grow an audience, then you can create something that you want to sell those people online. And in fact, a lot of times it's even more effective than selling people in person services, because if you're big on Instagram, you reach people around the entire world. But if you're only offering something in person, only a small fraction of people in Tacoma or wherever you live could actually take advantage of that, so by having something that they can buy online you can start to sell, you know and diversify. 

Cameron 
Absolutely, and that's one thing that I was thinking about too because the pandemic created a lot of online presence and influence because people went to online to purchasing online for education online for connection in general and so not saying that we're going to have another pandemic, but it's also nice to be able to work from wherever you are. 

Corbett 
Yeah, and I think a lot of people have realized that I know that you know small business owners who do like in person-services were impacted really, really hard during the pandemic and so I think a lot of people realized how nice it would be to have something online and then some other people realized how important it was. Yeah, absolutely. If they already had something online that they had at least established a foothold there, so that when something like that happens, if it's a pandemic or a disaster of some sort, they aren't completely impacted. 

And we've also seen this kind of two different sections of the economy, there were people who were able to easily switch to working remotely, and they weren't really impacted at all by the pandemic. 

Cameron 
Yeah, I know. I mean you well, you work remotely. He's here in Mexico for how many? 

Corbett 
Months, yeah, we have lived in Mexico for 13 years now. Every winter for three or four months and I'm able to do that because I can live and work from anywhere, which is amazing. So, the pandemic didn't really change anything for me but knowing people who run bars and restaurants and stylists and everyone else it was a pretty rough go so you know, I'm not saying that everybody needs to have something online, but if you're interested, it's not a bad idea just because it gives you some safety and margin. 

Cameron 
You know it's been such a wild ride this whole COVID thing and I know a lot of people had a pivot, you know we went to doing touch and goes or building care kits for our clients and that's something we couldn't do necessarily remote, but for some of my education friends they were really able to set themselves apart from other people through working on education and not having to just focus on working. So, it gives you more things to do and it definitely diversifies its portfolio. 

Corbett 
Yeah, well flexibility is great. 

Cameron 
That flexibility 'cause you guys were in Spain a couple of years ago, yeah? 

Corbett 
It really doesn't matter. I mean the only thing that might impact our choice of where to live around the world. But otherwise, as long as there's a decent Internet connection, you know it's nice to be. We live in Portland normally, and it's nice to be out of Portland during the winter when it's rainy, so we spend our winters in Mexico and it's amazing. 

Cameron 
Yeah, and I'm so lucky to get some. You know, these awesome people down here in Mexico. We're actually in a town called Garden Navidad, and it's fantastic 'cause there's lots of different people from all over the world, yeah. 

Corbett 
I mean, this is where we've met and then and then we went out in the Northwest as well. So yeah, and we only want to stay away, but they wouldn't matter. 

Cameron 
Exactly, so I have two questions that I asked people at the end of all my podcasts and the first one is what's the craziest thing that's ever happened to you? 

Corbett 
Oh my God, the craziest thing that's ever happened to me? 

Cameron 
So, you can think about it because I have to talk about my sponsor Trey from Style Sharp Shears. 

Ok, please do. 

Cameron 
He's amazing, he comes in He sharpens my shears while I'm working. He chats it up with my guests or not and he. Just reads the room and then my shears are sharpened, and he leaves, and my life is better because of sharpened shears. 

Corbett 
That's great. 

Cameron 
I mean if you need any sheers sharpened in anyway kitchen shears? I recommend them if you live in Tacoma. 

Corbett 
Maybe when I pop through, I’ll call Trey. 

Cameron 
Yeah, I don't know if he does kitchen shears, but I imagine he can do pretty much anything. 

Corbett 
Uhm, can I tell this story that might involve just a little bit of salty language? 

Cameron 
It's totally fine. 

Corbett 
Ok. Ok, this I don't know if this is the craziest thing that's ever happened to me, but along with the Mexico theme we live in a town here where one of the neighboring towns is called San Patricio which is Saint Patrick and in March during Saint Patrick Day there is this insane weeklong celebration for Saint Patrick's Day 

Cameron 
So, one of Mexico’s top 10 fireworks shows. 

Corbett 
It's an amazing firework show. It's also a very dangerous fireworks show because in Mexico people just have a different idea of safety I think, and so there's a carnival and some of the rides are a little rusty and questionable. And if you watch the fireworks show you learn that you need to be at a safe distance if you don't want to actually be involved directly in the fireworks or burn. 

So at some point at the end of the firework show a number of young men come out with these things they called Toro's, and the tools are basically these wooden bowls that they hold above their heads and out of the bowls come these rockets of fireworks and they run around the town square with these rockets and they shoot out of the crowd and generally it's kids that are playing, running around in the town square, whatever and having a good time, but they sometimes get burnt and a friend of mine got burned in this one. A firework bounced off the ground up, his shorts, burned one side of his leg, somehow made it across without bringing any important bits and down the other side of his leg. 

Well, once a buddy of mine and I decided that we were going to watch the fireworks, but we knew that it was kind of dangerous and we're too old for that **** so we decided to stay on the side, and we thought we were far enough away. But as we were watching the the Bulls run through the town square from about 50 yards away, a rocket shot out and directly came at us and hit me in the groin. And I looked down and I was actually on fire. I was smoldering from this firework, and I look over at my buddy. He's like in disbelief and at that very moment a guy who was selling churros on the side runs over and he goes a Mexican guy - He goes your **** **** **** it's on fire. And my buddy Doug, my buddy Doug takes off his hoodie sweatshirt and he's like beating my groin to put the thing out. And luckily, I had like 3 layers on so it just burned a hole in my shirt. Sure, so I was thankful that I wasn't like seriously injured, but that's one of my favorite things that's ever happened in Mexico. 

Cameron 
There's always a crazy story. 

OK, and then the second one is. What's a little-known fact that people don't know about you? 

Corbett 
Little known fact that people don't know about me I grew up extremely poor. My dad worked in a factory for a good chunk of his life, and then he ended up working as a janitor for the last part of his life. My mom worked three jobs and I remember like doing layaway at Kmart for Christmas and things like that. We ate government cheese like the whole thing, and I didn't know any different like I had a great childhood. I you know, I knew that we struggled a little bit, but my parents were very loving and caring and always made sure that my sister and I had everything that we needed, even if it meant that they had to work three jobs and I I love them for that. And I feel lucky in a way that I grew up blue collar because it makes me appreciate the world in a different way and able to relate to people in different ways. But also, I love that we live in a country where we have so much opportunity that I was able to start a blog, you know 14 years ago, and it led me on this crazy journey to be able to live and work from anywhere. And it's just like such a a cool transition and I can't wait to see what happens for the next several decades of my working life. 

Cameron 
Well, we know you're going to be successful 'cause we've watched you just get more and more and more successful and stay really levelheaded fish, that's why we love Corbett. 

Cameron 
But if anybody wants to get involved with Fizzle or they want to utilize Fizzle’s services, how would they do so? 

Corbett 
Yeah, so over at Fizzle Co. We have basically hundreds of hours of training on things like how to start a podcast or how to start a blog and we don't just give you like the technical details because that you can frankly find on YouTube what we try to focus on are the stories of what's the difference between one of the millions of blogs that are out there, frankly or millions of podcasts versus the handful of them that become really successful? And we don't just teach, we also have done this ourselves we've I've run a blog that has attracted over 20 million visits over the years. I've run a podcast that has had 5,000,000 downloads and we interview people and get behind the scenes and find out what really make successful online ventures tick. 

And at Fizzle.co we have a free trial and then you can tune into a weekly coaching call if you like and bring your actual issues that you're struggling with - you know I started this blog, but I'm not getting the traction that I wanted. Could you take a look at it? And we have coaches that actually get in there and talk to you about your specific situation. 

Cameron 
In fact, it was really because of Fizzle that my blog improved greatly, because when I first started putting it out it was just like what do I do? What do I do? But I'm glad that I chose the podcast format because obviously I can talk to a park bench. 

So, thank you so much for being here today it was perfect. Thank you. I mean this is huge to get 20 minutes of your time, I really appreciate it. 

Corbett 
Awesome, thank you so much and yeah and love to see what you're doing Cam. 

Thank you so much.