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1/29/14

06: Lewis Howes – How to Build a Business From Your Couch

“You sound dead to me. Wake up, start living the life you want to live everyday, as opposed to living half your life average to pay the bills.” -@LewisHowes

Lewis Howes has become a really close friend over the last couple years. We connected through our circle of friends of Pencils of Promise, as Lewis has built a couple schools for the organization. Lewis is the inspiration and catalyst for starting this podcast actually. He interviewed me over on his podcast, School of Greatness and connected me with his guy Ian over at Freedom Podcasting…now we are here. Lewis has a big vision to help entrepreneurs unlock their inner greatness and go big in their lives. Check out School of Greatness for another great source of inspiration. He’s a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and has created great success in life. He’s a lifeballer! The above shoot is one that Lewis hired me for to help him build his brand presence.

“For the next three years, that’s what I did. Every couple days I did a webinar and just started stacking my bank account.”

[smart_track_player url=”https://soundcloud.com/nickonken/lewis-howes-from-tragedy-to” title=”Lewis Howes – How to Build a Business From Your Couch” image=”https://nionlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/06_LewisHowes_NIONradio_02-copy.jpg” color=”#de4b9b” ]

Some things we learn in this podcast:

  • Lewis Howes growing up the dreamer
  • How being goal driven helped Lewis become an All American Athlete
  • The touching story of how Lewis almost lost his father and how he learned to seize the day
  • How Lewis started making money with no marketable skills and no business experience
  • Using intuition and observation to navigate the world of entrepreneurship
  • Passing tests with the power of great eyesight
  • “Adding Value” as a framework for remarkable performance
  • The story of his first $6,500 per hour experience
  • The most powerful strategies for building a community and a business online and off
  • Why design and packaging are so important to building profitable brands
  • Lewis’s goal to inspire 100 million people to live inspiration
  • How to design a life that allows you to feel the way you want

“Let go of fears and doubts. You’re going to fail, but you’ll make the steps necessary to make your dreams happen.”

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

Book: 4-Hour Workweek
Lewis’s example of building a brand on Social: Gem Steady on Instagram
Lewis’ site & Blog: LewisHowes.com
Listen to the School of Greatness podcast for Free

Connect with Lewis: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

LET'S CONSPIRE & CREATE

CULTIVATING YOUR VISUAL UNIQUENESS AND STREAMLINING YOUR BRAND'S EVOLUTION

“You sound dead to me. Wake up, start living the life you want to live everyday, as opposed to living half your life average to pay the bills.” -@LewisHowes

Lewis Howes has become a really close friend over the last couple years. We connected through our circle of friends of Pencils of Promise, as Lewis has built a couple schools for the organization. Lewis is the inspiration and catalyst for starting this podcast actually. He interviewed me over on his podcast, School of Greatness and connected me with his guy Ian over at Freedom Podcasting…now we are here. Lewis has a big vision to help entrepreneurs unlock their inner greatness and go big in their lives. Check out School of Greatness for another great source of inspiration. He’s a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and has created great success in life. He’s a lifeballer! The above shoot is one that Lewis hired me for to help him build his brand presence.

“For the next three years, that’s what I did. Every couple days I did a webinar and just started stacking my bank account.”

[smart_track_player url=”https://soundcloud.com/nickonken/lewis-howes-from-tragedy-to” title=”Lewis Howes – How to Build a Business From Your Couch” image=”https://nionlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/06_LewisHowes_NIONradio_02-copy.jpg” color=”#de4b9b” ]

Some things we learn in this podcast:

  • Lewis Howes growing up the dreamer
  • How being goal driven helped Lewis become an All American Athlete
  • The touching story of how Lewis almost lost his father and how he learned to seize the day
  • How Lewis started making money with no marketable skills and no business experience
  • Using intuition and observation to navigate the world of entrepreneurship
  • Passing tests with the power of great eyesight
  • “Adding Value” as a framework for remarkable performance
  • The story of his first $6,500 per hour experience
  • The most powerful strategies for building a community and a business online and off
  • Why design and packaging are so important to building profitable brands
  • Lewis’s goal to inspire 100 million people to live inspiration
  • How to design a life that allows you to feel the way you want

“Let go of fears and doubts. You’re going to fail, but you’ll make the steps necessary to make your dreams happen.”

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

Book: 4-Hour Workweek
Lewis’s example of building a brand on Social: Gem Steady on Instagram
Lewis’ site & Blog: LewisHowes.com
Listen to the School of Greatness podcast for Free

Connect with Lewis: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

1/29/14

06: Lewis Howes – How to Build a Business From Your Couch

Business

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infuse your vision with a fresh breath of  creativity and vitality

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LIFE INTELLIGENCE

“You sound dead to me. Wake up, start living the life you want to live everyday, as opposed to living half your life average to pay the bills.” -@LewisHowes

Lewis Howes has become a really close friend over the last couple years. We connected through our circle of friends of Pencils of Promise, as Lewis has built a couple schools for the organization. Lewis is the inspiration and catalyst for starting this podcast actually. He interviewed me over on his podcast, School of Greatness and connected me with his guy Ian over at Freedom Podcasting…now we are here. Lewis has a big vision to help entrepreneurs unlock their inner greatness and go big in their lives. Check out School of Greatness for another great source of inspiration. He’s a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and has created great success in life. He’s a lifeballer! The above shoot is one that Lewis hired me for to help him build his brand presence.

“For the next three years, that’s what I did. Every couple days I did a webinar and just started stacking my bank account.”

[smart_track_player url=”https://soundcloud.com/nickonken/lewis-howes-from-tragedy-to” title=”Lewis Howes – How to Build a Business From Your Couch” image=”https://nionlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/06_LewisHowes_NIONradio_02-copy.jpg” color=”#de4b9b” ]

Some things we learn in this podcast:

  • Lewis Howes growing up the dreamer
  • How being goal driven helped Lewis become an All American Athlete
  • The touching story of how Lewis almost lost his father and how he learned to seize the day
  • How Lewis started making money with no marketable skills and no business experience
  • Using intuition and observation to navigate the world of entrepreneurship
  • Passing tests with the power of great eyesight
  • “Adding Value” as a framework for remarkable performance
  • The story of his first $6,500 per hour experience
  • The most powerful strategies for building a community and a business online and off
  • Why design and packaging are so important to building profitable brands
  • Lewis’s goal to inspire 100 million people to live inspiration
  • How to design a life that allows you to feel the way you want

“Let go of fears and doubts. You’re going to fail, but you’ll make the steps necessary to make your dreams happen.”

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

Book: 4-Hour Workweek
Lewis’s example of building a brand on Social: Gem Steady on Instagram
Lewis’ site & Blog: LewisHowes.com
Listen to the School of Greatness podcast for Free

Connect with Lewis: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

1/29/14

06: Lewis Howes – How to Build a Business From Your Couch

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If your message keeps shifting, your brand feels inconsistent, or your presence doesn’t match your capability yet. This is where you build the foundation before you scale.

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It’s an ongoing creative partnership focused on bringing your personal brand identity to life.

Your brand. Your website. Your visuals.
All shaped as a direct extension of who you are. The work also includes a bespoke process of identifying and aligning the right experts when needed, so nothing gets built out of sync with your core.

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read the latest

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I’ve photographed Justin Bieber several times and seen fame up close. His stripped-down Coachella set showed the thing I keep relearning about creative work: production amplifies, and only artistry carries.

Calm Jamaican coastline, a nervous system coming all the way down in creative burnout recovery

You recover from creative burnout by treating it as a nervous system state: build real down-cycles, read your own signals, and return to the work you love.

Mountain landscape in New Zealand, one clear thread running through a magnetic personal brand

A magnetic personal brand comes from coherence and one clear through-line. Here is how entrepreneurs build one, in order, and the trap that keeps most brands scattered.

Hiking a New Zealand mountain trail, learning at your own pace in midlife

I spent a month training kung fu in Wudang at 47, the oldest and slowest learner in the room. What being a beginner again in midlife taught me about pace, comparison, and starting anyway.

Photographer walking a snow-capped mountain ridge in New Zealand, the long practice of seeing that develops taste

You develop taste through thousands of reps of looking closely and deciding what works. A photographer’s honest answer on how taste gets built.

Silhouetted figure leaping from a sea cliff at sunset, committing to one coherent personal brand identity

You make a personal brand more coherent by naming the identity underneath it, distilling a one or two word through-line, and bringing the four layers into agreement. The full path, in order.

Nick Onken travel image, Life Intelligence essay on travel as creative input that sharpens the eye

You cannot pour from an empty well. Travel is how I refill mine. Here is why new places are creative input rather than a break from the work, and why output without input runs dry.

Nick Onken portrait, Creative Intelligence essay on the creative act versus performing one

There is a difference between making something and performing the act of making it. Here is what I learned about the creative act, content, and why the resistance is the whole game.

Nick Onken portrait, illustrating that personal brand identity is human-built with AI as the tool on top

AI can generate endless brand content, but it cannot construct the identity underneath it. Here is the real line between what AI can do for your brand and what only you can.

Nick Onken portrait, Life Intelligence essay on nervous system regulation and creative recovery

Burnout is less a willpower problem than a nervous system running with no recovery. Here is what I learned about creative recovery from social media burnout and a reset in Costa Rica.

Elevated Realism brand portrait by Nick Onken, a subject looking unmistakably like themselves

Most brand photographers take good photos of you. Few capture who you actually are. Here is what to look for when hiring a brand photographer so your images match your authority.

Nick Onken portrait, Creative Intelligence essay on taste and the discipline of seeing

Taste is less a gift than a discipline you build through thousands of reps of seeing. Here is what twenty-five years behind a camera taught me about the art of seeing.

Nick Onken portrait illustrating visual frequency of authority, presence matching identity

Visual Frequency of Authority is the energetic signature your images transmit before anyone reads a word. What it means and why two people with the same credentials read so differently.

About the Blogger

I was born in a low middle class conservative religious family in the suburbs of Seattle. Art was and always has been my passion, and more than that a way of life. Starting as a graphic designer, I taught myself photography, built a commercial/editorial business shooting for the worlds biggest brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas and more. I've also had the opportunity to photograph the world's biggest celebrities like Justin Bieber, Usher, Jessica Alba and more. I've curated a lifestyle around creativity and have learned a lot along the way which I get to share here. 

I was born in a low middle class conservative religious family in the suburbs of Seattle. Art was and always has been my passion, and more than that a way of life. Starting as a graphic designer, I taught myself photography, built a commercial/editorial business shooting for the worlds biggest brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas and more. I've also had the opportunity to photograph the world's biggest celebrities like Justin Bieber, Usher, Jessica Alba and more. I've curated a lifestyle around creativity and have learned a lot along the way which I get to share here. 

NICK'S STORY