- August 15, 2023
- Business
Greetings! Now, this document isn’t pretty. Sue me. Do you want real tangible actionable information or do you want icons and pictures with a vague helping kind of sort of advice? If you want pretty and empty than put this down, step back, and just walk away… Knowledge isn’t for everybody and it might just not be for you either.
I assume you are still reading. Nice to meet you. I really like your sense of fashion, it is very authentic and your hair is particularly radiant.
You want to start a business. You came to the right place. I am your host; black ink on white background.
You want to start a business. You came to the right place. I am your host; black ink on white background.
Entrepreneurs and small business owners are a breed in and of themselves. People will hate you with a passion, people will take your dreams and ideas and spit on them, they will say that that dress makes you look fat, and you know what, they are going to love every second of it. Why? People are petty, they don’t want you to do what they themselves cannot do. They do not understand. They don’t. What you are doing is alien to them. Completely bonkers. Every step you take toward being an entrepreneur is going to confirm to them that you might have sniffed a little too much cement glue when you were in school. Can’t blame you though, the stuff smelt great.
Your only friends, truly, are entrepreneurs and small business owners. They understand that the struggle is real, they understand how to think the way that you think. People who do not embrace your independent life choices are not people you want to be around. There is something to be said about friends being honest, or trying to be real, but it is a horse of a different color when they relish in naysaying everything that you do.
I say all this because I want you to drop all your preconceived notions on being an entrepreneur. In short, your closest allies are your competition. The people that will help you the most are your direct competitors.
- 1. When you start, you do not need LLC, S-corp, etc unless you have a lot of money to invest right off or you need legal protection and liability.
- 2. Branding and perfect? No, thank you. If you haven’t made one dollar, do not think about branding, think about making the dollar. When you have a proof of concept (getting money – and a fair bit of it) then you can start worrying about branding. Every day you waste planning your dream is another day it becomes a pipe dream. Start. Now. Right now. No more waiting. NOW.
- 3. Don't overreach. Narrow your sights on one product or service. Your website doesn't need to be beautiful, it just needs to convey what you do. Always ask people who bought your product or service what they did and didn't like about your website. Your clients will teach you what you need to know.
- 4. Getting clients does not happen overnight.
- 5. When you get a client – you get ALL their information. It is underutilized and underappreciated but if you are not giving your clients a birthday card and a Christmas card every year then you are failing them, your failing yourself, and your failing your dream. But cards cost money. No, no they don’t. You might as well use that line of logic for business cards. There is something called the cost of business. Get used to it. Takes money to make money. Print something out, sign it, and say that you ‘like them’ or that ‘You appreciate them as a person’, generic as it gets, but it gets the job done. Scale up quality as money allow.
- 6. Don't invest in a coach or anything. Call or reach out to people who do what you do, or are in an adjacent field. Ask them to mentor you. When they say they are willing to field questions, right up a list of 5-10 good questions for them to answer. Learn from them. The top questions to ask are “Where does your marketing work and where does it not work” And “What are some suggestions you have for me to make my business better?” But nobody would help the competition out, nobody is going to expose their secrets. Get over yourself. I can give you my entire business blueprint from the top down… Good luck running it. People love to talk about themselves, their accomplishments, their victories, and really, their helping you to do exactly what they do is NOT going to harm or ruin their business.
- 7. There seems to be some major confusion to the cringe term over saturation and I blame society, econ classes, and small business classes for this. Over-saturation does not exist. It does not exist. It does not EXIST. I can throw a stone and hit 20 fast food places, 100 lawn care places, and probably 1000 house cleaning places… always room for one more baby.
- 8. The moment you have spare capital, get a Virtual Assistant. If your busy work can be outsourced for 5 dollars an hour... Do you want to work for 5 dollars an hour? No? Alright. Have clear definite parameters of what do to and not do for the VA. Many aren't independent thinkers and are NOT marketers. They point and click for you, not think.
- 9. Budget, budget, budget. 33% Fed tax. 7% (depending) state taxes, 25% MARKETING, 10% Nest egg, 10% EXPANSION. Work a job while you turn your hustle into a small business.
- 10. ALWAYS keep padding in the money sense. When you don’t have money, you make questionable business decisions, you lower your prices, and you put yourself into a perpetual lowball of pricing. You didn’t become an entrepreneur to get back into the rat race, you became one to get OUT of it.
- 11. If you decide you need to hire a coach, please do your due diligence. Reach out to previous clients that they have done work for/with. The right coach helps, the wrong coach wastes your time and money.
- 12. Focus your efforts on this order: delivering value to present clients, delivering passive value to all clients, automating more marketing, and automatic your sales process. Let’s break it down - give attention to your current clients before other hypothetical clients. Your past/current clients will get you the best referrals as those are ready to purchase with little effort from you. Are you exceeding their experience expectations? Then, where possible, automate actions. Do you regularly send out the same email at a certain point? Do you set them up with access to files or your system after purchase? Do you follow up with them after their coaching is done? This can be automated. Then add marketing sequences to your followers. Some of your followers won’t purchase until years after they follow you. A value-rich email every two weeks keeps you at the top of your mind. Create marketing content (focus on one platform at a time). Marketing content and social engagement aren’t the same. Lastly, improve your sales funnel if needed. A client like a systematic journey once they decide to learn more about you/what you do and they usually like instant info. How can you make the “learn more” to “thanks for scheduling your consult” seamless?
- 13. When you are using social networks to promote your business, don't promote your business. Put all relevant information on your profile and provide value, for free, to people in general.
- 14. Look into partnerships or sharing valuable information with other people.
- 15. Protect your business (CYA). Set up a solid policy/guarantee on your website or contract. Record your calls, send recap emails, etc. The last thing you need is a person who tells their bank they didn’t get what they paid for and you have no way to prove it or show they agreed to pay what they paid. This hasn’t happened often, but when it has, CYA has helped me win every case.
- 16. Said this above, but focus on ONE product until you hit your first MRR goal. If you want to hit $20K a month, just sell one product until you get there on a regular basis. It’s easier for you and potential clients when there’s only one product to choose from. I started my business thinking I can do/offer so many things so I listed them all. Biggest mistake - 80% of them hardly sell if at all. Just focus on one, prove it works, refine, refine again, get client testimonials, refine again, get that system down, and then add more.
- 17. Set an entire day to work on the business, not in the business. What makes a business grow is not continually offering a service or product repeatedly, but growing, streamlining, and elevating.
- 18. Celebrate your accomplishments. You worked hard on what you have done and you should be proud of it. Nobody is going to recognize your accomplishments better than you.
- 19. Get a CPA or accountant the moment you actually decide to actually start a business.
- 20. Don’t overreach yourself. If you have had a good month in money, don’t scale your operation up. Save that money. Wait for three solid good months before any meaningful scaling-up operation. Owning your own business really means you are a freelancer and you are always dabbling with the brink of collapse. Remember that. Prepare for collapse. Have that nest egg. Then move forward.
- 21. Be helpful, always. The return is great.
- 22. Fake it until you make it. But be honest. Never collect money if the return to a client is dubious. If you cannot assure something, or at least, reasonably assure it, don’t do it. You can be all things in your private life but never do bad business. Ever. There aren’t many ramifications to it, truly, but there is a code you need to adhere to in a professional capacity and it is stricter than your personal moral compass.
