Ten Weeks to a Real Business

Business Coaching: June 17, 2015

Ten Weeks to a Real Business

The number one way to pay less tax is to have a business. I talk a lot about business tax savings in these coaching classes. Today, I want to talk about another aspect of business. Making money.

And, not just making money, but making more money and working less hours. It’s not a case of creating your own “4 hour work week” (reference to Tim Ferriss’s book). I’m not going to say it’s impossible to work just four hours a week and still have a viable, profitable business. But, it is hard.

No, instead the goal is to simply work less and make more money.

There are 4 types of income, from a business, not tax, perspective:

Active income,
Leveraged income,
Recurring income, and
Passive income.

Most people focus on active income. It’s the work you get paid for. If you have a service business, this is the time you work that gets you paid. If you have a product business, it’s you getting everything done which may including creating the product and shipping it, too.

For most start-up businesses, the fastest way to earn money is to offer some kind of service. If you’re the one doing the work, it’s also the most cash flow-efficient way to do it.

After awhile, though, you’re going to get tired of being the person who has to be there to get the work done. You start to hire, but if you don’t have written systems that you train and enforce, you’re going to have a problem. And when that problem occurs, you have some choices. Close down. Fire the workers and do it yourself. Or, do things a different way. Most people fire the workers and decide to never trust another person with their business again.

If you do figure it out, though, you can start to have leveraged income. Think of visiting a Dr’s office. You meet a receptionist who takes your insurance information. You go back to a room where a nurse takes your vital signs and finds out why you’re there. You may also see a nurse practitioner or physician assistant when you see your Dr. The NP or PA will give you prescriptions, handle scheduling for surgeries and send you off to see the receptionist for the next appointment

You went to “see the Dr” but you actually spent a whole lot more time with the other people in the office. Yet, your insurance and your co-pay pays for an office visit.

That’s leveraged income.

Recurring income is money that shows up every month. It’s really the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow for a business owner. You don’t need to sell fresh every day or every month. If you can create a business with recurring income that will cover your monthly recurring expenses, you’ll take a huge pressure off of the business, and off of you. Even thought the profit margins are generally not as good for recurring income, the mental and emotional relief is pure gold. It allows you the time and space to be more creative.

Most people go searching for passive income, which is defined as money that shows up with little to no work. Usually the benchmark is that you work 5 hours or less per week for the income. If you can hit that mark, it’s passive income. Usually we think of real estate as passive income, but again, it depends on how you approach it. If you are doing a lot of fix-up work yourself, it’s active income.

The bottomline, though, is that you want to be paid more for the work you do.

That’s the long introduction to the concept that I want to talk about. You can do this whole process of start to cash in 10 weeks. Here are the steps:

#1: Identify Your Inner Expert

If you have a business already that is built around some of your own unique abilities, this might be easy. For me, I would focus in on a niche of taxes that I want to identify as being an expert in.

For example, I want to be known as a real estate and small business expert.

It might be harder if you’re a good business person who has a product or service delivered by others that really doesn’t have a lot to do with an obvious expertise. For example, my husband, Richard, takes care of client support. He talks to prospective new clients to make sure we’re going to be a good fit for them. But, he’d say his expertise is really in seeing how to turn broken down real estate into cash flow.

What will you be an expert in?

The book “Good to Great” talked about finding the convergence of three things:

(1)What you are passionate about,

(2)What you can be best in the world at, and

(3)What your market wants or needs.

Wouldn’t be great to be known as an expert in something that gives you all of that?

Take a few minutes and write down what that thing would be for you.
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Stuck? Here are some ideas to get you jump started on figuring out what that one thing will be for you:

Make a list of 10 people who know you and whose opinion you trust. Write them an email or letter and ask what they see your own expertise could be. What could you be best in the world at? Thank them for their answer and then just listen. (No argument, no defense, no objections.)

Think back to a time when you felt most confident in your life. What were you doing? Why was it important to you?

Join or start a mastermind dedicated to finding individual expertise. Sometimes hanging out with like-minded people can trigger ideas and solutions you never thought of before.

The purpose here is to build exposure and get you credibility as an expert. You can do the same thing with a blog, but some testing that I’ve done with Internet marketing expert, Shane Hunter, indicates that You Tube might be faster.

#2: Build Exposure & Credibility

There are a lot of ways to get publicity. You can hire a publicity expert. You could write a book and go on a book tour. You could take out ads. You could do interviews on radio and TV programs.

I’d like to suggest you start a YouTube channel. I’m starting a 10 week intensive this next month to study what one person did, for less than $100, to create exposure to thousands of people.

There is more to the “how” for setting up a YouTube channel: How do you actually set up a You Tube channel, for example, How do you record, How do you upload, etc.

We’ll talk about that in the 10 week intensive, but for now, I want to focus on just one thing. WHAT you’re going to say. Or rather, who you are going to talk to.

You want to attract your ideal client. How do you do that? Build an avatar. How old is your ideal client? Male or female? Married? Divorced? Where do they live? Kids? What kind of music do they like? What do they watch on TV? What games do they play? You need to know who your focus will be because that’s who you are going to talk to.

Describe your avatar:

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What is his or her biggest pain?

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What can you do to take that away?

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What are his or her dreams?

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What can you do to make that more attainable?

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Once you know who you’re talking to, it’s time to develop a format.

Here’s one that I use:

Start with a short description of the problem
Tell a real-life story that demonstrates the pain or dream
Break it down into a few first steps
Give a call to action (CTA)

#3: Create Your CTA

At the end of your video, you need to send your viewer somewhere. That’s the CTA. It could be going to a website to pick up a free ebook or to go to a page to register for a newsletter.

The key is to give something of value for your prospect in exchange for getting some information about them. At a minimum, you’ll want to get them to opt-in and collect their email address.

To do this step, you’ll need some kind of website set up and email program. The website part of this is easy these days with Wordpress blogs for do-it-yourselfers or with inexpensive labor through fiverr.com, elance or odesk resources. There are free email programs like aweber or chimp monkey.

Two things are happening now. You are building credibility and reputation. And you are building a list of people who want to hear more from you.

#4: Build Rapport

Now start emailing them. Some say to email daily. These are people who have just found you or just discovered your inner expert and they want to learn.

Teach them. And direct them to solutions that will take away their pain and/or help them achieve their dreams.

This step may take some more training and a whole lot of practice. There is an art to writing copy in a way that sells and informs.

You could spend a lifetime learning how to put this simple 4 step process in place. But you can’t do it until you start.

Start a You Tube channel today and just see what you can create. Once you’re comfortable with the process, do some ridiculously inexpensive You Tube ads to drive traffic.

Try it. Analyze it. Tweak it. Repeat it.

That’s how you build a brand new business with very little money that will establish you as an expert.