Bibliosnap – Yaro Starak

If you look at Yaro’s site, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, you will see that is blog that focuses on how to make a living out of blogging and Internet markeing – this may or may not float your boat. What hooked me as a reader was his use of the blog as a journal of his own, ahem, journey – chronicling in great detail his own personal growth and discoveries along the way. His recent Positive Change series of articles are Required Reading. Period. Just make sure you have a notebook and pen by your side when you read through the series – there are a million and one take-aways (in the non-pizza/curry/chinese sense that is). Please read, enjoy, and change.

De rigueur, I have extracted some answers from Yaro to my Bibliosnap questions – Yaro kindly recorded them for you, which gives a much better feel for what he is saying, and hear the passion in his voice when he says the word ‘trance’ . Fire up your audio weapon of choice and have a listen:

yaro-starak-interview-halfadozenmonkeys

I have also transcribed what Yaro says below incase you can’t gets to something with speakers. Enjoy:

1. Who are you in one sentence?

My name is Yaro Starak and I am an entrepreneur living in Brisbane, Australia who runs a blog called Entrepreneurs Journey where I write about how to make money online, set -up and profit from blogging, personal development and other subjects I’m interested throughout the course of my day-to-day life.

2. What do you write about and more importantly, why that?

I write about Internet marketing, business and personal development mainly because those are some of the most interesting subjects from my own point of view, and what my blog has slowly developed through and become. Although to begin with, my blog has been very much a tool used to chronicle my own experiences – that is why it is called Entrepreneurs Journey – and it is a really good label for what the blog is even though it has been going for 5 years and I have been covering subjects that have been quite varied. It has always been reflective of what’s interesting in my life, what I’m learning at the time, and what I’m helping other people with, whether it is through coaching, or expressing myself through writing. Ultimately though the blog is focused around the subject of money and Internet marketing because that is what people out there are interested in, including me.

3. What is the Big Lesson you learnt most recently?

I’m constantly learning but I think the biggest lesson I have, perhaps not learnt recently, but have put into action recently, is something I have known about for a long time and something I have only recently started to take action and try and develop in my own business. This is the use of outsourcing and getting other people to help me. I have been largely a one person show for the first two or three years of what I have been doing, and only recently had only one or two core people help me, my tech person and my personal assistant/admin person and there is only so much they can do so my limitations are capped at what I can create. What I am looking to do now is hire some people to help me expand my business and get more out the door quicker by eliminating some of the tasks I currently do and have other people do them. Just basically more support with technical issues, more support with graphics, more support creating video and content, marketing – all those areas. So I’m just trying to get two or three more people to help me.

4. What are you NOT going to do ever again?

Lets keep that in the context of business, rather than go into anything else! In terms of what I am not ever going to do again? I don’t think I will ever go along the lines of ever building a website entirely by myself again – that was something I used to do a lot when I was just starting my Internet marketing phase – in fact I spent the first three to five years playing around with websites trying to teach myself everything, so I would never build a blog or website for a new project by myself again. I’ve had tech people do that for me for many years now – it is not my strong point so I would never go back and do that.

5. What is the first thing you try when you need to up your productivity level?

I’m extremely good at getting things done once I get on a roll, its actually just starting that is the challenge usually because you can procrastinate quite easily whether it is through television, or in my case through eating – eating is one of the biggest distractions I have, considering my fridge is less than 5 seconds away from where I am working. It is a dangerous temptation! I’m pretty good in terms of productivity if I have a bunch of tasks that I need to get done in front of me and I try and clear a day to get them done. For example, I would like to get a blog post written so I will go to a cafe and just and sit there and write that for an hour or two, and thats the only thing I will do. I have been doing that for years and it has always worked really well for me. The same with e-mail now – I will often leave it for a week without really responding to many e-mails and then on a Friday afternoon I’ll sit down and batch process them. Batch processing and getting on a work-train/path where I get a lot done in a session followed by a break, then another session followed by another break, and making sure I mix it up with eating regular meals and exercising, and getting away from the computer for refreshment.

6. What do you do to put a smile on your face when you start your day?

To be honest, as I said before, I am really big on food, so I just make sure I get a nice breakfast as a big part of my energy boost and music is a huge part – I listen to a lot of Internet podcasts in the genre of music I like, and it is amazing as it is all free. I’m really big on the European trance music scene, DJs like Armin van Buuren, Andy Moore, Cosmic Gate, Markus Schulz, Themory, there are a lot of European based trance DJs so I listen to all of their podcasts through iTunes and it is very motivating, high-energy stuff, so gets me going for sure.

7. Where would you rather be right now?

That is hard for me to say as I could pretty much be wherever I want to be at any point in time as I have the freedom of choice with the lifestyle I lead, the income I make, and how much time it takes to generate that income, so it is hard for me to say I would rather be anywhere else at any point in time. The only limitation I would have is that I would like to visit my family in Canada and be there now, but it is a 24 hour trip. Or I would like to check out this really great thing I saw about Europe on TV, but it takes a flight to get there. So while I am happy where I am, it would be nice if they could invent some sort of teleportation system so we can get to other places on this planet much quicker than we currently do! Maybe one day.

8. What is the best thing you have ever read?

I have read some good books in the past – it is hard to say the ‘best thing’ as that means I am putting it above everything else and I don’t think I can do that. One of my favourite all time books is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, I have recently gone through the Conversations with God series [HDM - by Neale Donald Walsch] which I found very very powerful, and there is some Internet market stuff what are great resources in that space even just on blogs and email and just watching what other Internet marketers do – reading their email and reports. Rich Schefren had some great reports a while ago, the Internet Business Manifesto was one of my favourites of all time, but I read books from all areas from productivity to spirituality to business, and of course just fun stuff, things like Hitchhikers Guide the Galaxy [HDM - by Douglas Adam in case you live in utter isolation] I’m reading right now so I have some quite varied tastes.

9. What is the best thing you have ever written?

Again that is tough for me to say but in terms of results, the Blog Profits Blueprint, a free report I released back in 2007. That report has been a real ground breaking release of content that spread my name and my information, and really helped me to build my e-mail list. That is definitely up there as one of the best piece of information I have published in terms of results – I might like other articles better in terms of writing style or impact of message, but if you are talking about results then the Blog Profit Blueprint has been the most impactful piece of work I have released – other than my blog itself of course!

10. What soundtrack shall I listen to when I read your work?

Well obviously I recommend you check out the trance scene, but that’s not for everyone! I know lot of people call it ‘duff-duff’ music and don’t really get into it which is total fine, so maybe a bit of classical out there – I am a big fan of anything with violin or piano. But it really depends on how you read and how you work. I personally can work to some high energy music so would strongly recommend, and I’m going to pick something out of the blue, DY Tydi. He is an Aussie based Trance/Dance DJ, and is currently number 1 in Australia, and because he is Australian and I am Australian, you should check him out. He’s got some good stuff and I have met the guy personally a couple of times and seen him live and he is well worth checking out – especially his Global Sound System podcast.