The Business Generals Podcast | Helping You Maximize Your Entrepreneurial Dreams - Every Single Week

089 – A masterclass in creating a multiple 7 figure information product business with a high conversion rate (w/ Alex Charfen)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 11:19:26 -0400

Alex Charfen is as seasoned as they come, a diverse experience going all the way back to being trained in his fathers business at as a pre-teen, his challenges with standard education and overcoming that through his extensive reading about what it took to be successful in business and to eventually creating an international consulting brand that would peak at $250m in revenue. Alex had a false start at retirement after exiting his consulting business, he re-invested all his gains into real estate quickly which quickly grew into a $40m portfolio, but hurricane weather and the global financial crisis wiped out their portfolio and took him and his family into bankruptcy.

In this show Alex takes the time to walk us through three main phases of two plus decades of his entrepreneurial journey, drawing out some key distinctions that any aspiring or seasoned entrepreneur can use to kick start a multiple seven figure business.

With literally all odds against them, Alex shares how him and his wife, a real estate professional, designed a course for real estate agents and the financial services companies whose clients were facing foreclosures at the height of the GFC.

Armed with real life experience after being served multiple property foreclosure notices, Alex looked for a way to bring all affected parties to a common negotiating table that would help more families keep their home, and help more lenders preserve their investments.

This training course was developed while Alex was bankrupt and it was launched with zero money down, yet made a profit on day one and would sell over 48,000 courses averaging $500 per course, multiple millions of dollars from a standing start.

Alex breaks down a simple methodology of how anyone can create a valuable information product that has high conversion and a high completion rate.

Identify your target audience or gap in the market
Research through direct surveys and find out what their pains are. Alex interviewed over 100 real estate brokers and agents, they shared their pain points and frustrations when it came to foreclosures
Develop a product that will answer the needs of your audience. No need for perfection here just let the creative juices flow, if using a computer slows your creative process then write it on paper, draw up all your illustrations or image guides and create the blueprint
Beta testing – Alex called his target audience and walked them through the course details. With their feedback and additional input he further refined the course and got their committee to to buy once it launched
Launch, don’t over complicate or wait too long, get it launched with a few people, see the response and then move on there.
Alex went on to be recognised as a key contributor to turning around the home foreclosure industry through the course.

If you have any expertise or thought leadership, this methodology above that Alex uses is your guide to creating that service offering your clients want and desire so much they are willing to buy without you “over selling” it to them.

We covered other ground during the podcast including:

How you can transition from a corporate consulting role into your own business; and
A case study of how Alex is helping entrepreneurs grow from $1m to $20m plus in annual revenues: Alex breaks down some of the key strategies that are helping put multiple seven figures in top line revenue for his clients today that you can leverage today

Legacy

Alex passionately shares about what he would like to leave as a legacy when all is said is done – this was a powerful moment during the show – – – make sure you check it out!

Entrepreneurial books Alex recommends for any entrepreneur – –

Connect with Alex

Get in touch with Alex at Momentum Podcast on iTunes or his home page at charfen.com

088 – Pipe Drive: Started with a simple idea with zero customers – now over 60,000 customers, $30m invested and 300 employees (w Timo Rein)

Davis Mutabwa — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 17:17:00 -0400

Timo Rein is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pipe Drive which is a simplified sales management tool that is helping over 60,000 sales teams around the world to get more organised, more focused and helping them sell more. You have probably already heard about Pipe Drive because they have done an amazing job marketing their service, this is a great episode with Timo, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I know we will receive great feedback on this one!

Timo is based in Estonia with his wife and kids, born in the Soviet Union, studied psychology in university, he lived in the US for four years and is now back home living and running his business from north eastern Europe in the wonderful Estonia.

He co-founded Pipe Drive 7 years ago with 4 other founders, prior to that was a partner is a sales training business for 10 years, so Timo is a seasoned entrepreneur with 17 years in the game of running his own business.

Show notes and links at: https://www.businessgenerals.co/timor

Revenue streams

Pipe Drive is a SaaS (software as a service) business, that generates a monthly and annual subscription from customers who are from all corners of the world. They have doubles their revenue each year for the last 5-6 years, so Timo describes as a high growth yet high investment SaaS business. They have invested about $30m into the business which includes successful strong capital raisings.

Dilution of your ownership v Investors

In Timo’s mind their business is run by a team of professionals right across their leadership and executive level, including the investors who he feels are well invested to give the founders every necessary introduction and connection in the market place as well challenge the leadership and ask more of them so as to get the best that the company can deliver.

The big idea and the story of how pipe drive started

The big idea with Timo’s first co-founder, who also had a sales background like Timo
Coming up with the specification document of the product
Looking for developers who would build the code
Meeting up with 3 other start up founders who had coding back ground

The tipping point for Timo

He was running his sales business and going well
An old friend quizzed Timo about his consultancy role at the time and in Timo’s mind this made his wake up to his dream of being a doer, a builder and this sent him back to his drawing board so he went back to looking at building a business.

Building Pipe Drive

With the new 3 co-founders the idea was ready to be dusted off and given another chance.

Timo and his first co-founder described the whole software idea again to the new team.
A brand new specification document was created and it was much better than their original spec, as it was much more visual with screen shots and clear work flows.
The original founders had the idea, they knew how to market and scale a business while the 3 new founders brought in the engineering experience and proven experience in coding a product that can be scaled, so together they created a strong foundation on which to build the business from.
For a period of 3 months the team would get together on weekend retreats at a local farm house, from Friday nights and code through out the weekend and would only head back to their homes on Sundays. Three of the co-founders had day jobs during the week so this project was only worked on during the weekends at this time. The other two founders plus one other engineer (who would later become a founding employee) worked full time on the project during this 3 month period.
Although away from family, this helped the team focus well on the project and also helped them build a strong team dynamic and start to understand each other better.
After a few months a beta version was finalised and ready for prime time, Timo was not fully comfortable with doing a beta (test) launch as the product was not fully ready, but his co-founders were quite bullish about wanting to start getting customer feedback so he went along.
In hindsight Timo says if they hadn’t done their beta launch when they did it would have been a mistake.

The beta launch

They targeted about 500 previous contacts that they had worked with previously in sales and sales management.
The goal was to get the tool into the hands of these teams, have them test it, break it and give feed back so that the team could fix it and iron out all the bugs – this beta testing took about half a year before the team the first market version was ready to launch

Market launch and getting the first few customers

It was launched with a 30 day trial followed by a paid plan.
Out of the 500 beta users, about 30 had good use of the product during the beta trial stage enough to have 10 of these immediately convert to paid customers when the market version launched.
For Timo, he had a back of the napkin calculation that said if they can scale up to 500 customers who had a monthly recurring subscription then the business would be real and sustainable in his own estimations
For about 4-5 months from launch the business grew at about 10-15 new customers each month, but it was quite linear and the growth target of 500 customers seemed very far away.
Before running out of steam, patience and funding due to the shear pace or lack thereof – the founders started asking how they could accelerate their growth and how they could fund their business better.

Enter…incubators

The idea of joining an incubator program became their next logical step on their journey to growth, the US model was most appealing as it had both good programs to help grow the founders, get the start up off the ground as well as strong investor networks and opportunities.
They spent 5-6 months applying to different incubator programs in the US while documenting their successes and failures on their company blog which also helped in traffic and conversions.
After 6 months an incubator in San Francisco (Angel Pad) accepted them Pipe Drive team into its program.
This program brough some initial funding for the business and at this point Timo and his fellow founders were hopeful that this would be a real turning point for the business

What can we change this week to help our potential customers find us better?

Website optimisation
Content creation
Considering crazy ideas like doing collaborations with other companies. So they did a deal with App Sumo and heavily discounted their subscription in order to make some noise in the market through App Sumo. This added 220 new customers in bulk, and this was a good jump for the business.
With consistent weekly effort, the team finally got to their goal of 500 subscribers which was a great milestone.

Pipe Drive’s reach after 7 years in business

They serve small businesses with teams of 4-5.
Customer reach is over 60,000.
With the lowest monthly subscription at $15/month, the maths adds up to over $10 million in annual revenue, a great achievement for an idea that started so simply with limited time and resources.

Other topics we discussed during the podcast

Inspirational books as an entrepreneur:
Common Denominator of Success – Albert Gray
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink
Crucial Conversations – Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson
Team at pipe drive has over 300 team members which is a great team
Best way to connect with Timo – get onto Pipe Drive and use the messenger option and also on LinkedIn
Pipe Drive pricing – check out pipedrive.com

Legacy

“To give people confidence that there is a way to get to great results which are almost guaranteed” – Timo

087 – Becoming an Inc Magazine Top 100 speaker – employee to business owner (w/ Bobby Umar)

Davis Mutabwa — Sat, 04 Aug 2018 16:47:37 -0400

Bobby Umar has been named by Inc Magazine as a top 100 leadership speaker alongside people like John Maxwell and Richard Branson, he has taken to the famous and prestigious Tedx stage four times and has over half a million followers on social media. Bobby is also an international author and a Huffington post contributor. A father of two and loves improv comedy.

Bobby started his business full time in January 2017, he rolled out of his corporate role and went straight into launching his business. His number one revenue stream today is professional speaking – inspirational motivational speaker, travelling mostly around Canada and from time to time internationally. Bobby speaks on leadership as a general theme with specialised expertise in three key areas:

Networking – leadership building and connection
Personal branding
Social media and digital marketing

Bobby other revenue streams are coaching (executive coaching, career coaching and business coaching) and events.

Why and how speaking

During his corporate days Bobby conducted workshops and training and received very strong positive feedback about his speaking and motivational skills. By the time Bobby was ready to leave corporate he leaned on this feedback and took all the positives and embarked on building out his personal brand. After a deep dive into his personal values, traits, personality assessments and some soul searching – Bobby says he found out that his brand was all about connection, people, persuasion, influence, performing, presenting and diversity, speaking seemed like a logical thing to do.

First customer

Bobby kept track of all his connections throughout his career even before the advent of LinkedIn, he maintained an excel spreadsheet with 3,000 contacts, so the first thing he did was to send out 500 brochures to people on this list and then also sent an email to all 3,000 contacts sharing that he had launched a business, his services and clearly specifying the opportunities he was looking for. After sending that out a few people wrote back to Bobby (not as many as initially hoped for but it was a start…), some called and with a bit of follow up Bobby landed his first gig.

Business growth after the first few paying customers

Bobby made it a priority to do an amazing job so that it was easy to get referrals from each engagement
He leveraged his network some more, set up calls and met up with his contacts – he estimates having met over 1,000 people for catch up chats, coffees and meals in his first 3-5 years of launching his business. He let them know what he was up to and this fueled more engagements and referral opportunities.
Maintained a strong social media presence through Facebook and LinkedIn
Saying yes to most gigs that were offered to him, a lot of which Bobby says he wouldn’t do today

Paid v Free events

Starting out, Bobby was doing a lot of events for free as he built out his brand but was always looking for paid opportunities.
His paid opportunities were attracting a $500 fee, and after a while this changed to $1,000 with a lower end engagement being $500, and then $2,500 an engagement and continued to grow that way.
Bobby shares how you have to know when to say NO to certain opportunities if they are not within your core niche as saying NO indirectly helps you say YES to what you are really called to do.

Tedx Talk & Social Media

While previously unaware of what it was, on 5 October 2011, Bobby did the first of his four Tedx talks and decided to launch his social media strategy as it clear in his mind that social media was here to stay.
On this day Bobby launched his social media arsenal on all channels – Twitter, Facebook business page, newsletter and announced his Tedx talk – making sure all his content was all synchronised within the brand he was creating.
Within 6 months Bobby landed his first speaking gig directly from Twitter, and that was the start of good innings from social media.

Break through moments

Bobby says his first break though moment was his first Tedx talk which he simultaneously cross leveraged into his social media strategy launch. He had been in business for 4 years at the time, both these events gave Bobby lots of credibility and visibility as well as a strong edge over many other professional speakers who had not yet embraced social media in the same way.
The second moment came in 2015, Bobby had strong recognition as a social media thought leader by this time and this was then named by Inc Magazine as a top 100 leadership speaker (without even pitching for it!) and secondly he scored a speaker agent which meant less prospecting, less logistical admin work and more time to focus on delivery.

Other topics we discussed on the podcast

Corporate skills that prepared Bobby well for his entrepreneurial journey today
Networking, relationship building and connecting with people
How to use the different social media platforms to generate leads and connect with prospects and how to incorporate email and phone connection to close out your deals
Transitioning social media followers to your in house email list using content
Sales funnel tactics for coaching, speaker training and marketing networking courses

Best way to connect with Bobby

Legacy

“My number 1 legacy is going to be my children, being a dad and raising my kids to be nurtured, happy, fulfilled and global productive citizens is going to be the greatest story and legacy of my life. Secondly, I have always been about connection – I am always there for people, I will support people and I will always help them fly.” Bobby Umar

086 – Leveraging a PhD in Psychology into a lucrative speaking career and helping people create wealth through behavioural finance (w/ Dr Daniel Crosby)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 13:53:47 -0400

Dr Daniel Crosby is a Psychologist, he has a PhD in psychology and behavioural finance specialising in helping people and organisations understand the cross over between the mind and the financial markets. He is a co-author of a New York Times best seller “Personal Benchmark” and also authored the “Laws of Wealth“. Daniel is the founder and CEO of Nocturne Capital – an investment management firm whose approach is rooted in the science of behavioral finance.

Daniel has a growing family, based in Atlanta Georgia from where he runs his business which he has been running full time for the last 10 years.

Check out the full show with detailed show notes and episode links: businessgenerals.com/danielc

Lets talk core revenue streams
Daniel shares how he started off doing speaking engagement to market his other services in his company but it has since taken off and become a major part of his revenue stream. An early take away from Daniel is not to underestimate the power of speaking as an extra revenue stream in your business!

Daniel also manages money on behalf of clients, teaches online courses in behavioural finance and provides consulting services and content development.

While speaking is Daniel’s number one income stream it’s not completely scalable due to the time commitment and extensive travel requirements so Daniel has a focus to grow the other income streams. Daniel has been on the speaking circuit for the last 10 years, and cautions that it is taxing for someone with a young family.

Childhood inspiration

Growing up Daniel was inspired by his dad who is an investment manager, after getting into college Daniel loved the study of psychology, helping and teaching people – but part way through his PhD he felt emotionally burned out as a clinical psychologist. A conversation with his dad about his next options turned him down the road of understanding the intersection between psychology and stock market investing.

Why a PhD and not just a Degree

Daniel says in his experience a psychology degree in the US, does not get you very far in your career as a psychologist. The PhD paid off for Daniel as clients more readily hired his consulting services as a PhD graduate even though he was only 28. While the PhD opened doors for Daniel he says he doesn’t actually use it in its direct form because he is trained to conduct therapy sessions as a clinical psychologist but he now picks stocks for a living.

The skills learned however, of being non defensive, hard work, accepting feedback, critiquing and taking action – are life skills he has taken from his PhD that have helped him in his business.

First paying client and a speaking career

Daniel managed to secure his first client before he resigned from his job, he recommends that you find a way to get at least one good client account before stepping out on your own.

He quickly moved into the world of speaking and in the beginning all his presentations were at no charge, he would look for places to speak at in his city as a way of marketing his consultancy services.

After quiet a number of free events Daniel recalls an attendee asking if they could book him for a paid speaking engagement and he began a new journey where he would eventually be charging between $1,000 and $2,000 to speak. A mistake he shares is saying yes to all speaking requests and having to create a special bespoke keynote each time he got an invitation, this would wear Daniel out and he looked for a different solution.

Major turning points in speaking and some key lessons

After a season of providing bespoke keynotes, Daniel put together half a dozen key notes that covered a few generic topics related to his core message of behavioural finance. This helped his clients focus in on which key note they felt was best for them and this worked well for Daniel as he wasn’t building a new presentation but rather using material that had received positive feedback from previous events and that people benefit the most from.
Daniel decided to start saying No to speaking opportunities that were outside of his core focus of behavioural finance and investment management. This was a difficult decision but it paid dividends as he became more specialized and the market rewarded his expertise with increased demand and increased bookings.
Another key thing Daniel changed was his pricing. An event attendee really loved Daniel’s keynote but privately told Daniel that his company would love to hire Daniel more but probably won’t because they didn’t think he was any good based how low his prices were! Daniel decided to triple his prices. This created a renewed demand for his speaking services and created great growth in the business.
A final piece to Daniel’s successful multiple six figure speaking business came through a bold moment were he decided to jump on a plane to go and have lunch with a prospective client who had been not so responsive to Daniel’s emails. With no guarantee of winning any new business it would have been a costly lunch for Daniel’s growing business, but the move paid off, the prospect became a client and opened the doors to many more such clients who were in the financial management space that Daniel had keenly niched into.

Key lessons in these turning points that I take away are:

Don’t be afraid to create systems that allow you to scale and replicate your effort
Say no to requests that take you away from your core strength and niche
Keep an eye on your pricing model and optimize it – cheap is not always attractive
Take some risks with your target prospects and do something your competition will not do

Other great topics you will not want to miss as you listen to the show:

Why you cannot create wealth from savings alone and why you need to invest
The hedonic treadmill principle and how Daniel believes you can turn this negative human bias to your financial advantage
Financial accountability, mentorship and why people who use a financial adviser double their retirement wealth over a typical working career
How to build towards a million dollar speaking business

Recommended entrepreneurial reading

Reach out and contact Daniel

Nocturne Capital
Twitter
Daniel’s TedTalk

Make sure you grab a copy of Daniel’s Bestselling Book

Laws of Wealth – Daniel Crosby

Legacy:
Daniel shares what he feels he would love to leave as a legacy, check it out on the podcast.

Quote of the show!
“I want to leave my kids enough money so that they feel they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing.” Warren Buffet

Look forward to serving you again on our next show. Till then keep your hopes up and remember that you are good enough to chase to dreams!

You are a TRUE Business General.

Cheers
Davis

085 – The innovative treadmill desk: Getting your innovation from idea stage into a profitable business and scaling up (w/ Rob Jacobs)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 13:10:09 -0400

Rob Jacobs is the guy who gets people up-and-out of their chairs and moving again! A personal fitness expert and the co-founder of UnSit, an innovative company working to get people UP out of their chairs and moving again with the world’s first Treadmill Desk optimized for use in an office environment. His background is firmly in the fitness industry having been in treadmill retail and commercial equipment including a repairs and servicing business model. Being a fitness enthusiast sitting at a chair all day made Rob research into how to help people with desk jobs get fitter by moving more.

First business startup – the walking centre.
This was a fitness centre targeted at middle aged stay at home mums who would go into the store, rent a movie, and walk on a treadmill while watching their movie! This proved to be a great model for Rob. The results were very good and people started buying these high ticket treadmills in the Beverly Hills area, and opened more stores which also included the sale of commercial fitness equipment. Rob eventually sold out of the retail model after a number of years as the market changed with increased competition and margin pressure.

Before selling out of retail Rob had developed a service model that repaired and serviced fitness equipment for health clubs and fitness centres, so with a new business partner Rob developed and grew this business to include retailing of spare parts. Rob has maintained and continued to grow this business over the last 25 years plus and it still continues to be his core revenue generator.

The business model is ecommerce based enhanced with telephone technology support, targeted at out of warranty fitness equipment servicing clients in different countries.

The problem that turned into a new business idea
Rob found himself constantly sitting at a desk, servicing clients and growing his spare parts business, and found himself having less and less exercise, feeling lethargic, lower back problems all from sitting behind a desk far too long.

A book by Dr. James Levine, who is credited as the popular inspiration for the treadmill desk, inspired Rob to work on solving his problem. Book reference: Get up – why your chair is killing you, Dr James Levine

Rob had seen the idea before but he discredited it on the basis that he didn’t think a treadmill desk provided real exercise or real practicality in an office setting. [During this interview Rob was walking along at 1 mile per hour on his treadmill desk and by about 15 minutes into the interview he had clocked over 2,000 steps! Pretty impressive].

Dissecting the research and looking at the market opportunity

Obesity is one third of US population, and this same third is also at the pre-diabetic stage estimated to require medicated treatment in a few years time
Sitting disease is a term used in the book by Dr Levine which includes diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses which can be prevented or recovered from through exercise
Mental creativity is a softer science but this is the marketing point Rob has picked, exercise leads to a more productive and creative workforce and this can be achieved through the treadmill desk technology

Designing the product

After reading Dr James Levine’s book Rob decided to work on designing a product that was fit for purpose
Most designs at this time simply took a tread mill and stuck it under a desk, but Rob figured there was better way
Rob shares that while his academic qualifications are minimal and his learning quite empirical and self taught, this did not disadvantage his entrepreneurial journey
Rob took out an old treadmill, a piece of plywood and created a frame around the treadmill, tweaked it and after a couple of months came up with half decent treadmill desk
Then after using it a for a little while Rob identified further key refinements like making the desk wider and longer, then also found a way to re-engineer the motor of the product that wasn’t noisy and could power the machine at slow speeds
Rob connected with Paul his business partner and they together partnered up with a manufacturer who was given equity in Unsit as a way for all partners to have ‘skin in the game’
The manufacturer with their experience and expertise developed the first 12 beta units which were in line with the initial mock up prototype.

Beta testing of the product

Found 12 beta locations and got feedback from users of the treadmill desks over a 6 – 12 month period
Through networking Rob managed to sell all of these units out to business owners, office managers, professional service firms and other locations
They got the model pretty close in the beta round and didn’t need to change it too much
This led to the first production unit point with about $100,000 invested into the project at this point which included the prototype, the initial marketing, website and initial beta run

First Shipment

104 per container, so they got 2 containers loads in quick succession as the first production batch
This was shipped over to some of the dealers the Rob is connected to
Rob rented out some space at a We-Work shared office location which has generated sales, doing lunch and learns in different office environments with in person demos and online marketing approaches which are still being built up

Small group selling and marketing

Due to high ticket item of $2,500 a unit, it only takes a few units sold to make good revenue
Anyone who had high value units can follow this model of show casing products to a small targeted group of prospects, Rob shares how each lunch and learn is an opportunity to get content for social media sharing of images from the event, he records the talks and demos and re-purposes them online and on social media
To get real scalability Rob is focused on building the online channel

Growth and marketing

Rob discusses how their current product is more of an executive high end line so working on a lower cost option is a natural evolution in order to access growth
Based on research, Rob discovered there are over 1 million stand up desks that have been sold, and so the next pivot was to sell the treadmill separate from the desk, and about 50% of sales is attributed to people who have already acquired a stand up desk and just after a treadmill
Having the product in the field, showrooms has generated revenue opportunities
Online marketing is also a key driver to growth on unsit.com website
People have resonated to the message that they can do more than one thing at once, i.e. work and exercise and the same time
Testimonials also play a key role in validating the brand online and there is a dedicated customer testimonial page on the unsit.com. website

Coaching tips from Rob

Be willing to change when you go into business
Get focused on the end goal, if your site is there to sell, then make sure this is the focus
Your original vision may not be how the market sees it, your original design may not be the hot you expect, “be willing to change and let go”

Revenue since launch

Took about 12 months before they started gaining traction
A market emanated after they started selling and found out lawyers are their key customers and buying 50% of their units
So they have recrafted their message to target lawyers and this has been successful
The product is still in early adopter phase, even though there are other similar products the market uptake is still in its early phase
Being cash positive is a critical part of the Unsit business, while this means no debt and no outside capital, scaling is slower and revenue growth not as aggresive

Developing the Unsit brand

Before building the first batch of products the founders focused on getting the branding building blocks all sorted out
Had a branding workshop, using professional consultants, spent 10 weeks working on this
The logo, colour scheme, the voice of the company in marketing messages – all contained in the brand style guide
This sets apart Unsit from its competitors, as the brand ID guides the business along in a strong identifiable way

Other topics we discussed with Rob

Biggest breakthrough moment – Rob shares a personal story about the California earthquake, his Tony Robbins event and the value of having a group of loyal customers
Legacy and what Rob would love to remembered by when all is said and done
Best two books on Robs entrepreneurial journey
- Awaken the giant within – Tony Robins
- Get Up – Dr James Levine
Best way to connect with Rob
- Company website: unsit.com
- LinkedIn: Rob Jacobs

Look forward to serving you again here on the blog and over on our podcast!

#3 Miles of walking while Rob was on the interview with me, 5,000 steps – well done Rob!!

Cheers,
Davis

084: Camplify – the Airbnb of Caravan Hire and the RV Share Economy (w/ Justin Hales)

Davis Mutabwa — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 10:00:10 -0400

Justin Hales is the CEO and Founder of Camplify, the Airbnb of caravan hire & RV sharing community. Camplify is Australia’s largest caravan hire and RV peer-to-peer sharing community, connecting owners with holidaymakers across the country sharing all types of caravans, campervans, motorhomes and camper trailers to enjoy a getaway in. Camplify gives RV owners the opportunity to earn extra income – anywhere between $280 and $2100 per week – while they aren’t using it themselves. As for their hiring members, they get to experience the joy of camping without having to purchase their own RV.

During the interview, Justin shared how in 2 years the Camplify platform has grown from just a small fleet of rentals to over 2,500 placing the company at the top of the fleet market in its niche of renting out caravans and RVs, an amazing effort in such a short space of time.

The genesis of the idea

Sounds a bit cliche but it all started with a seemingly small conversation with Justin and his wife talking about how cool it would be to go on a caravan holiday. Their conversation was triggered while the couple was walking their dog over and noticed a parked caravan in their neighborhood. Having spent his childhood in caravans this was an exciting prospect and so Justin looked for a place where they could hire a caravan for a holiday but found it quite difficult to find a single provider that he could go to and hire from. As a result Justin found a gap in the market and created a space that was like an Airbnb that got all the hundreds of caravans that sit around in people’s driveways doing nothing most of the year and create a sharing economy market place for owners and holidaymakers to share.

Working on the idea

Justin found a startup incubator program that was looking for innovators and applied to be considered for the program, which included some basic idea testing, putting up a ‘crudely built’ website and a power-point deck.
After a stringent review of 500 applicants, Justin progressed into the final 40 that made it to the “Pitch Day”.
Following a successful outing at Pitch Day Justin was offered a spot in the 12 week startup accelerator program.
This was an intensive accelerator program on how to set up and scale a startup which became the backbone of launching the Camplify business following that 12 weeks

Justin’s key take ways from the 12 Weeks accelerator program

Understood the customer more
Tested more variables
Learned about different marketing strategies
Learned how to build good products that had a great market fit, using lean methodology
Started building a brand and acquiring customers
Leaned on the network in the program to raise capital for Camplify which was well received and helped fund the initial Camplify launch

Customer targeting

The initial market most people would lean towards in the caravan and RV space was the grey nomad market (grey nomad (plural grey nomads) (Australia) A retired person who travels independently and for an extended period within their own country, particularly in a caravan or motor home – wiktionary
But through testing Justin found that while the grey nomads was not going to be their target market to consume their services, they were going to their target partners as RV owners sharing their RVs on the Camplify marketplace
From detailed testing and building customer personas, the ideal customer that emerged was families who were not prepared to outlay $60,000 for an RV but still wanted to holiday in one from time to time, and this was found to a buoyant and growing market

The No Money Survey – Just Sweets (…Lollies/Candy)

2nd week in the accelerator program Justin and team stood outside a Camping and RV show with no money for a booth and basically offered attendees a lolly pop in exchange for them answering a few survey questions
Questions included age, RV ownership, type of RV they own, last question was would you ever hire it out to someone else if you own one
Including testing the price point at which they got interested in hiring out their RV
Funnily enough Justin shares that they eventually got kicked off the premises as they didn’t have the money to pay and set up a formal booth or table inside the event!
Then they looked collating and segmenting the data to identify who the customer is, how do you locate them, how do you market to them as cheaply as possible and convert them into a customer

The Most Challenging Aspect of the Launch

Building the platform was difficult, took longer than expected and cost more but it wasn’t the biggest challenge
Biggest challenge was getting access to those customers and have them trust Camplify as the people that will be able to deliver that long awaited solution for this space and part of it was making sure they had the right team in place. Two team members dropped off and one remained and they built the team from there

Getting Over the Customer Access Hurdle

First thing was to find an amazing digital marketer who is now their Chief Marketing Officer, who helped Camplify find how to get to their ideal customer
Facebook was the best route to their ideal customer, so they invested heavily in Facebook marketing which led to the initial ground swell in lead acquisition and onto the Camplify platform for nurturing and engagement
They targeted both suppliers of RVs and holidaymakers, but that hardest of the two markets was getting the RV owners on board and alleviating their concerns that their RVs would be looked after and not trashed
Similar issues Airbnb home owners had to grapple with at the begining

Finding that First Customer

A lot of Facebook marketing and content marketing
Justin then exhibited at a Caravan and RV Expo where they met a lot of people who recognised the brand from the Camplify Facebook campaigns
They would get a lead and stay in contact with them individually and nurture the lead, assuring them of a perfect customer who would hire their RV, and when this person was found Camplify would get in touch with the owner and help them gain confidence in the brand through a personal relationship
Majority of the Facebook work was focused on content marketing around the topics people were searching for on RV hiring and sharing – they looked on old school forums and Facebook groups where people in their niche had questions and discussions that they could target solutions for, which led to building over 2,500 custom audiences on Facebook
The Camplify team then created high quality articles and videos around the questions being asked on topics of interest for their business, thereafter monitored the forums and directed people to the Camplify site to consume this content in answer to their related questions
Once on the website Camplify would capture their email address through an optin or Facebook pixel them and re-target more marketing to them
This led to the first 20 RVs on book and that led to the first few sales which Justin monitored for feedback closely

>> Tip: This strategy still works today as long as you provide quality content that is answering people’s questions and not just click baiting them so that you capture their details <<

Building Case Studies

After the first couple of customers, Camplify really focused on building a solid feedback loop both from owners and consumers, to understand the experience and improve the service on both ends of their market place
Next step was to build out case studies showcasing owners who had hired out their RVs, detailing their experience and the financial upside of being a partner on the platform
These case studies were used to market the business further

Capital Investment & Growth

Initial investment was $30,000 which helped get the platform started
A capital raising of $650,000 soon followed which sustained the next 18 months of the business
Justin went full time in the business in 2015
Over $300,000 paid out in Sept’17 in commissions to RV owner partners on the Camplify platform with 20% growth month on month
Launched into the UK market in 2017 with only 2 resources required for that initial market entry

Other things discussed on the podcast

You don’t have to be the only one in your market place or niche in order to succeed and why this is a good thing
Dealing with customer insecurity and providing insurance for their RV
Story of an initially skeptical owner, who started with 1 RV and now has a full fleet of 14 RVs that he hires out full time, doing $80,000 a month in income during a peak month
Financial benefit comparison on investing in an RV to share out on Camplify Vs Uber as an owner
The inner workings of the Camplify platform to find and hire out an RV
Investing in mentors and finding people who will also invest money into your business as well as working with a peer group
Exit options and strategies

Best two books

The Lean Startup – How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses is a book by Eric Ries describing his proposed lean startup strategy for startup companies
Running Lean – Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works, book by Ash Maurya

Legacy

To be remembered for being able to influence other people to find a way to do this kind of thing for themselves, run their own business that helps others and makes a difference in their lives and that of others.

Connect with Justin

Justin Hales on LinkedIn
Camplify.com.au

Thanks for listening!
We would love to hear from you in the comments section below, and always looking for your support by leaving us a review on iTunes

Look forward to serving you again in the next episode.
Cheers,
Davis

083: How they Raised $19.9M as a Tech Startup – All the Inside Hacks with Rubicon MD Co-Founders Gil Ado and Carlos Reines

Davis Mutabwa — Sat, 30 Jun 2018 14:12:35 -0400

Gil Ado and Carlos Reines are the co-founders of Rubicon MD, an innovative medical eConsult service that connects primary care doctors to same-day insights from top medical specialists. Their mission is to provide better health care through their online platform that enables primary care doctors to easily and quickly access medical specialists and have online consultations (eConsults) and ultimately provide better direct care to patients. With a fragmented US healthcare system, Gil and Carlos identified a need in the market for access to specialist medical care that didnt require patients to physically be in the same room with their specialist doctor. After a lot of networking and hustle, Rubicon MD was officially birthed in 2013.

>> Show notes Link: https://www.businessgenerals.com/gilandcarlos >>

Today Rubicon is a strong, growing Venture backed Healthcare startup, which has successfully raised over $19M in funding since 2014. The company is scaling at pace throughout the US now with over 5,000 primary care providers using the platform.

The two Harvard Business School graduate co-founders partnered up to launch Rubicon on a mission to facilitate the provision of a higher level of care to patients who may not have access to specialist care due to them not having private healthcare or geographical limitations. The platform allows general practitioner doctors to have direct access to expert specialist help on a case by case basis through e-consult process.

Doctor to doctor interaction via the e-consult platform is one of their biggest wins – patients that would have previously been referred to the emergency department for specialist consultation now receive access through the eConsult process through their primary doctors, and as Gil says this is real tangible benefit that clinicians and patients are excited about.

The business launch and the first paying customer

In 2013 the business was launched with the first key goal being to prove that there was value in the platform and that patients would be able to access greater healthcare through the platform
They put a basic minimum viable product from a technology platform standpoint, they found a doctor who was willing to trial the platform and it run for a few months with a few hundred eConsults and the feedback was very positive
The founders joined an accelerator program focusing on how to build a business around the idea and how to find the people who could potentially buy into your idea
Talked and networked to as many people in the healthcare eco system – learning, doing the research and also selling the idea at the same time
Discovered that groups that are at risk, ie taking care of primary health care patients will be most interested in this
Pivoted on the fact that there was limited supporting data for the idea so focused on finding the companies that were ready to take some risk in this space as well
Their first paying customer contract was from Boston, Gil and Carlos share with excitement how this client has grown and stayed with Rubicon MD for over 4 years, a testament in their minds to the value RubiconMD brings to the clinician.

Cash flow during the start up phase

Carlos was still completing his Harvard MBA at the beginning but working full time in the business, Gil was also full time in the business but they were scraping by and keeping everything very lean financially
It was a difficult beginning for the business, so they had to run their operations in a very lean way but they were determined to see the vision come to life
The duo managed to live through the first startup phase through their savings, family support and just sheer tenacity to make it through the early days

Access to funding

2013 accessed their first seed money from an angel investor, this was enough to run their pilot
After this started accessing funding at this point after they had proved that there was buyer for the product, that patients will be getting real benefit and then ready to access seed money
[UPDATE: Following our interview with Carlos and Gil, we have learned that the duo have gone onto raise an additional $13.8M in a highly successful Series B round]

Working with mentors

Finding someone who helps mentor them through the different phases of the business
Someone who understands the space you are playing in
He also put in his money as the first seed money
This process helped Gil and Carlos stay grounded and stay focused

Temptation to give up or quit?

Once they saw the impact on primary care doctors and the results patients were getting, they knew they just had to find a way to get the business out there because they had established that the need was there and that their solution was of great value
The challenge was how to build a business around having a life, and not having a whole lot of personal wealth to fall back on, and the financial risks that arise can be very challenging
Gil’s wife had the stable income so this helped balanced the personal finances for them

Sharing Roles in the business as Co-Founders

Carlos oversees the operational side of the business, the product, data management, sales, fund raising, delivery of the products implementation for the larger accounts but more focused on the delivery
Gil is focused on the growth side, business development and relationship management

Business Reach

35 states with USA
5,000 primary care providers on the platform – an excited market and growth

Best way to connect with Gil and Carlos

To learn more about Carlos and Gil, visit RubiconMD
LinkedIn:
- Gil Ado
- Carlos Reines

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams!

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

082: Why the traditional profit formula is dead: unless you put your profit first — you risk going broke (w/ Mike Michalowicz)

Davis Mutabwa — Sat, 23 Jun 2018 17:11:36 -0400

Mike Michalowicz is an American author, entrepreneur, and lecturer. He is a business author including the popular Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. He is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the “Business Rescue” segment host for MSNBC’s Your Business. He also hosted the reality television program called Bailout! Mike has founded and sold multi-million dollar businesses and today shares over 25 years of business experience through his books and on stage in front of global audiences .

During this episode we discuss some amazing business concepts with Mike including the following:

How to Differentiate yourself in Business

Mike has an accounting service business called Profit First. While this is an old established service industry, Mike has found a way to differentiate his business. Mike’s team go out to their over 250 clients as Profit Advisor with a special expertise and focus on not just being compliant with taxes and regulatory obligations but making sure the business is profitable and optimised.
They focus is pivoted towards interpreting the business numbers and helping business find sustainable profitability
This is all part of the Profit First philosophy which is detailed in Mike’s popular book Profit First – A Simple System to Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine

Profit First System

It flips the profit formula used in traditional accounting
Commonly referred to as the bottom line, the standard profit formula is “Sales minus Expenses = Profit”. But this creates a mindset problem where a business owner does not focus on profit but leaves it at the last thing, a by product of everything else and invariably what gets put on the back burner can get forgotten and not prioritised.
Profit First in Mike’s world has this formula: “Sales minus Profit = Expenses”. So every time you make a sale you allocate a predetermined percentage that you have calculated as your optimal operating profit level, and take the rest as the amount available for all your expenses (not the other way round).

Acquiring the First Customer in Profit First Professionals

The model is based on finding the right accounting professionals who get trained and accredited under the Profit First Methodology and then operate as advisors under the Profit First banner with a profit share arrangement
Mike didn’t go out with a know it all attitude but went out to the potential Profit First Professional with the mission first, “we can eradicate entrepreneurial poverty together”
They understood that this was something new and it needed to grow so whoever joined would join as the first customers, and it would not be easy but that they will be great upside in the future
They also openly reduced the standard membership fee for the founding members and would bring in the first group of founding members onto the advisory board of the business to help provide real time feedback to help build the business

Marketing Strategy

Mike went to his existing list of customers and followers who were aware of his brand and his message, and publicly announced that he was looking for bookkeepers and accountants who were interested in partnering on this new project, shared the vision and then established a small community that was focused on this new project.
Without a personal community, Mike advises that founders should go and look for the community that the target audience is already established (what conferences do they attend, what podcasts are they listening to or what blogs do they follow) and find a way to start contributing and speaking to them there.

The One Problem Every Struggling Business had when Mike was on TV

Every business that struggled mainly was because they had a spending problem, as revenue went up their expenses went up
The overarching solution Mike found was for them to anchor in on the profit first concept, find the profit mark they wanted to work with and allocate that as profit and then fit all the expenses into the remaining available funds

Mike biggest lesson now

The more I am physically in my business, the more I hurt my business!
Reason being, when the business owner is away, the employees have to figure out how do things on their own
Sometimes the only way to get out of the weeds is to get out of the weeds!

Mentorship

Mike is involved in a peer to peer group each month
Mike believes in mentors, and his biggest investment in that is time, not just money – and it’s not just mentorship in business but also in life in general

Books and how to get the best out of books

You have to understand your problem and then work out which book or resource is best for you
Organic marketing, recruitment, scaling – find out what you need and then find the resource

Great books recommended by Mike

Best way to connect with Sean

To learn more about Mike and get access to a treasure trove of entrepreneurial tips, visit www.MikeMichalowicz.com.
Books: Grab a copy of Mike’s amazing books
Podcast: The Profit First Podcast

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams!

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

Link: Mike’s Wikipedia Bio:

081: From living in his mother’s house to paying off a $450k home in 3 years (w/ Sean Cooper)

Davis Mutabwa — Sat, 16 Jun 2018 13:47:19 -0400

Sean Cooper made news headlines across global news channels when he paid off his mortgage in a record 3 years at the tender age of 30! Sean did all of this while working a normal job in financial services in Canada and freelancing as a personal finance coach and writing as a personal finance blogger. Sean is the author of his very well acclaimed book Burn Your Mortgage.

Sean’s story was very polarizing when it came out on Canadian news outlets and actually got him a lot of hate mail and articles online and offline because of how quickly he paid off his mortgage which goes against standard accepted beliefs around home ownership and the 30 year loan repayment time frame that most banks give home owners. The negative feedback centered around Sean being portrayed as a privileged child with wealthy parents or as Sean living in this basement without a life outside of work and stashing away every cent he earns.

Born and raised in Toronto Ontario, Canada Sean grew up in a middle class family with parents who instilled in him the importance of home ownership so from age 10 Sean had the vision of owning his own home. He started working various jobs at a young age and started saving for his down payment even before he graduated university. Sean bought his first home when he was 27 and he paid off by age 30, a remarkable achievement – all on his own savings and his own aggressive focus on beating the mortgage debt!

Lifestyle choices – no car!

Sean made the decision of not owning a car during his period of paying off the mortgage as it amounts to the second largest payment in most people’s budgets and he found a practical way to make sure he lived near public transport and lived a car free life.

This was a very bold and mature decision for Sean to make a young age, when I was 20 all I was thinking of was owning my first car, and the first loan I ever took out was to buy my first car, a white Toyota Mark II. It requires discipline and laser focus to follow through with a car free lifestyle. Admittedly it may not be entirely possible for everyone due to your professional work, if you are a trades person you may work from different sites each week and need a personal car, so you may need a find a way to get a reliable cost effective car that doesn’t cost you too much to buy or maintain. There may also be opportunities for you to car pool or ride share with colleagues from work where you reduce your car running expenses with the goal of saving up for your first home.

Saving strategy at a young age

Sean found a way to work through his university days which paid off tuition and helped him graduate debt free. He also started saving for his down payment during his college days and after graduating continued on this path and saved 80% of his income after graduating which helped in save up a handsome down payment of $170,000 by age 27.

Advice for saving up for your down payment

Firstly work out whether they want to own a home in the first place.
Work out how much you need to save in order to fund your down payment or home loan deposit.
Calculate how many years you would like to give yourself before having a fully funded down payment and this will determine how much you need to save each month.
Open a stand alone savings account and ‘pay yourself first’ before you do anything else with your salary put aside your nominated savings amount.
Automate your savings process so that it automatically comes out of your salary account into the savings account, and make sure you have very limited access to your savings account so that you can ‘save and forget’ without the temptation to spend it other ’emergencies’.

Resisting the temptation to spend

Sean kept his goal in mind, work hard for next few years, keep saving up and not defer the savings plan. He buckled down and focused on his goal and now he is debt free and able to travel the world and have the lifestyle choices he forego while saving up and paying off his home.

Sean’s timeline of building up his savings and paying off his mortgage

3 years in university while working student jobs at the campus and part time work at the supermarkets on weekends, also did freelance writing on personal finance blogs and also worked full time during the summer.
3 years while working full time (and doing freelance writing work), lived at home where he paid $600 in rent and saved up the rest of his salary to fund the balance of his $170k down payment.
3 years to pay off a $280k mortgage and owned the home debt free at age 30.
Sean continues work full time in the pension industry and works on freelance writing and speaking after hours and on weekends.

Freelance writing career making $30,000 per year

Started volunteering as a financial journalist back in 2011 with a small online publication, and built up a strong reputation that led to larger writing opportunities for other industry publications including rate supermarket, income tax software blogs – his record month was $12,000 from freelance writing but that was a lot of hours of work which Sean has toned down.

Sean currently generates $30,000 in per year as a part time freelance writer.

Advice from Sean on how you can become a successful freelance writer in your area of expertise

You need to build a library of articles and blog posts in order to create a strong ‘by-line’, basically you must build a reputation that will act as your reference when you go out to pitch your work. You can do this through having your own blog and post your articles on there, and secondly you can offer to volunteer as a writer for smaller publications online blogs or offline publications – start with smaller ones (check out any available local ones in your city) and then build from there to more lucrative jobs.

You can paid from $50 and article to $500 an article once your name is out there and you have a strong brand. To generate a $2,000 month one can expect to write 10 articles based on Sean’s experience in the personal finance writing space.

Other areas that we discuss with Sean on the podcast

Dealing with negative hate mail and public backlash when his story hit the main news outlets across Canada, Australia, Europe and the US
Becoming an author – the process involved for Sean to publish his first book ‘Burn Your Mortgage‘ and how that has helped him further his speaking , writing and money coaching career
Mentorship
Goal setting and mindset
Lifestyle

Recommended books by Sean

The wealthy barber returns”
Be the better broker
Oh lala guide to rocking your rsps

Best way to connect with Sean

Grab a copy of Sean’s amazing book ‘Burn Your Mortgage
Blogsite seancooperwriter.com – Personal Finance and Mortgages, visit Sean here and sign up to his newsletter
Twitter @SeanCooperWrite
LinkedIn Sean Richard Cooper

Personal Legacy in Sean’s words

“Finance is very personal to me, money was one of the main reasons my parents divorced and it tore the family apart so I don’t want to see that happening to other families. I have been championing the cause of financial literacy because I see it as being very important for families that is why I speak about it and help promote it. Secondly when you read newspapers and watch the news you find that a lot of millennials feel like the home ownership dream is out of reach and not affordable, so I want to show them through my story that it’s still an option and that home ownership is a good long term investment even for millenials, I don’t want to see a generation that gives up on that dream of owning a house, I want to show people that its still possible.”

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams!

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

080: Generating High Quality Business Prospects from LinkedIn (w/ Sarah Santacroce)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 01:25:38 -0400

Sarah Santacroce is an independent LinkedIn Specialist, Online Presence Mentor and founder of Simplicity Small Biz. She helps people convert their presence online into paying customers. She is the creative brain behind the LinkedIn Challenge, an event that has helped 1700+ people so far to improve their knowledge about using LinkedIn for business. She has helped hundreds of clients from all over the world breathe life into their LinkedIn profiles, put together a strategy for their online presence or generated leads for them by using LinkedIn and social selling strategies.

She also coaches fellow introverted business owners on how to run an online business, and is the founder of the Introvert Business Podcast.

Period in full time business and core revenue streams

She has been in full time business for more than 7 years. In her LinkedIn business, she works with corporations where she does trainings for HR departments, sales departments, and the people in marketing. She also works with entrepreneurs through one-on-one coaching and teaches people in transition how to get recruited on LinkedIn. She has a series of products like video trainings that generate revenue for her without having to trade her one-on-one time.

She also does affiliate marketing and is planning to host her first retreat for introverted online entrepreneurs. The retreat will be an offline event where they will get together and talk about their businesses, and come up with strategies on how to take it to the next level.

The retreat

She says it will be a quiet, reflective, and respectful retreat with lots of fun. The link for the event is www.sarahsantacroce.com/retreat/

Starting out in business

When she moved to California with her husband and their new second-born, she could consequently not go back to her previous job, and decided to take some time off to spend with her kids. After about a year, she decided to come up with her own business plan and choose to focus on helping business owners with their administrative needs, which was what she was good at. That eventually changed, because with the social media boom at that time, she realised how she was able to use social media to create buzz for her own business.

She therefore choose to move away from administrative/virtual assistant work to teaching entrepreneurs/small business owners how to market their businesses through social media. When she moved back to Switzerland with her family in 2010, she decided to start offering the social media training/marketing services.

Focusing on LinkedIn

She decided to specialise on LinkedIn much later after she discovered that things in Switzerland were very traditional and slow. Most people didn’t use social media for business. The one platform that the Switzerland B2B industry was interested in most, that she was well-versed in, was LinkedIn. After a year of offering her general social media services, she decided to zero-in on LinkedIn.

Corporate career Vs. Business

Sarah says she would never go back to formal employment. She calls herself unemployable because she creates success on her own terms now. She defines how success should be in her life, which she could not do in a corporate environment.

Tip 1: I don’t think business is for everybody. I don’t think everybody should leave their corporate job and become an entrepreneur. Getting side hustles is however a great option for anyone in a corporate job

Tip 2: I don’t advice you to just leave your job and focus on your business idea

Replacing full time job income in a business

Tip 1: If you have a business model that can guarantee to replace your full time income then obviously, go for it!

Tip 2: Full time business is not for everybody because some people need the structure of a corporate job and they may need a team. As an entrepreneur, you are making up your own structure and it can sometimes be very lonely as an entrepreneur, so if you are a huge people person then it will take time to meet other entrepreneurs, and share with them while building a strong network

Getting the first customer

She had just moved back to Switzerland and hadn’t even set things up when she got an email from a potential client asking for a meeting. The client ended up being her first client. That lead and many more came from Sarah’s blogging and her presence on LinkedIn and Facebook. The first client found her through a blog post she had written about the great importance of social media.

LinkedIn as a platform

Her main revenue source in as far as her LinkedIn training is concerned, is the corporate trainings but her best work is always with entrepreneurs because she is an entrepreneur, and understands what their needs are. She teaches entrepreneurs the social selling process where they actually don’t sell but serve. That’s the work that Sarah enjoys the most.

When training a new client, she always starts with their LinkedIn profiles by helping them make them into actual sales tools. The second step is always to help them grow their network in order to increase their reach and get their inbound marketing going.

The third step involves helping them start to offer value by sharing content while the fourth step is helping them with their lead generation targeted at their specific audience.

Setting up a LinkedIn profile to be more of a Sales Tool

Tip 1: The first thing is your headline. Here, you should write more about what it is you do, who you help and how you help them.

Tip 2: In the summary, you should talk more about the services you offer, how you help your clients and what kind of results you provide. This should be written more like an About Us page on a website.

Tip 3: Add visuals into your LinkedIn profile and make it into a portfolio that looks like a mini-website

Sharing and Serving

Tip 1: You have to have a decent size network already before you start sharing because otherwise you will be talking to yourself. Increasing your network comes first.

Tip 2: When you have a network that you think is relevant, you can start sharing, commenting and publishing content that adds value to your network

Lead Generation

Tip: This is where you use LinkedIn as a database for your target contacts. The first step is to identify those contacts, find them, reach out to them, connect with them and then engage them through a series of messages where the main focus is to help, serve and provide value. That way, you can slowly move them a step closer towards hiring you for whatever work that you do.

Case study

Sarah is working with a team that is working on a crowdfunding website. She took them through the 4 steps of the social selling process and right now they are working on their LinkedIn profiles. She is also guiding them in their content development by helping them create an editorial calendar through which they will decide what kind of content they will publish themselves, and what of kind of content they will get from other people to share. She is generally helping them come up with a strategy on how to they are going to be more visible.

They tell Sarah that they are already getting a good response from potential investors, which is what they are looking for at this point.

Most effective content on LinkedIn

She says professional content works really well on LinkedIn. She says LinkedIn is service-related, compared to Facebook which is more product related. Therefore, what works well on Facebook is more visual content while on LinkedIn what works well is sharing content that has to do with services, learning, and career development.

Getting LinkedIn connections

Tip: The best way to get connections to come onto your business database is through content like sharing blog posts so that when they click over to your website, the website will be optimized for conversions. That’s how you get them to sign up to your newsletter

Biggest breakthrough moment

“When I made that decision to focus only on LinkedIn. It was one of the toughest decisions I ever made because I had to start saying no to other work related to other social media platforms. It was the best decision ever because am now known specifically for LinkedIn.”

Size and reach of business

She says that she is internationally-recognized thanks to the LinkedIn Challenge, something she started in 2013 and does with other LinkedIn experts worldwide. In November 2016, she was running the 11th Edition of the LinkedIn Challenge. It has enabled her to grow her business globally and also made her a recognized player in the LinkedIn Specialist/Trainer space.

LinkedIn Challenge

This is training for people who want to learn how to use LinkedIn to get clients. Sarah brings on a team of other LinkedIn experts and together they share one LinkedIn tip daily with the participants of the challenge. Every day, the participants get strategy via email, and they also get to attend two live-training calls where they can ask questions.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers – Timothy Ferris

Legacy:
To be remembered as someone who showed people a different way, a more human way, of doing business. – Sarah.

Best way to connect:
https://simplicitysmallbiz.com – Sarah’s Business Website

Sarah Santacroce – On LinkedIn

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

079: How to Start a Full-time Online Business with Zero Startup Capital (w/ Daniel Scott)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 06:27:24 -0400

Daniel Walter Scott is a certified Adobe instructor (ICE) in Ireland, an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) and he completed the Adobe Certified Associate training (ACA). He has been teaching for more than 14 years and is the founder of Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL), an Adobe Certified Training Centre in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and online.

He has over 16,000 students on the Udemy platform with over 1,000 reviews and over 16 courses.

Period in full-time business

He had always been doing little businesses on the side in his evenings and weekends, but he went into it full-time business in 2009.

Core revenue streams

He has two main streams that are both based on training. One is a sit-down classroom where people book a course, come in and learn from an instructor. He has such training centres in Australia and Ireland.

His other stream is online video training on Udemy and other platforms.

Starting out in business

Daniel used to work for other people but he was always curious about doing it for himself and when he decided to move from the UK to New Zealand, he also decided to start an online business. He started by building a sit-down classroom courses website and promoting it through SEO. He had to borrow some money from his grandmother to cater for his personal expenses so he could focus on building the website and getting customers.

Getting the first set of clients

He got his first customers through search engine optimization (SEO). He learnt everything he could about SEO because he wasn’t a good salesman so he needed the website to do the selling for him. Through that, his website ranked well and because there were people looking for courses, he was able to get customers.

Working with zero budget

Daniel says the one crucial thing he did that can work for anyone now, is content marketing. He says content marketing offers the best value for money. He makes his content in form of videos and in the beginning he used to write a lot of blog posts about his work. It was easy and free for him to do it because he wrote them himself.

Number of videos

At the beginning, he used to write a lot of blog posts and then he did one or two videos a month as a test. When the videos started doing well, he narrowed his content marketing down to videos.

He says if he could get a do-over, he would have focused on videos from the very beginning, because progress on getting the website ranked would have taken place ten times faster. He says the content marketing through blog posts was very slow.

Growth strategy at the beginning

The sit-down classroom courses were more locally targeted so he worked with local businesses like blogs that existed around what he did. He also used to reach out to companies that complimented his work, to see whether he could do free stuff with them. That was the easiest way for him to market the business since it was targeting the local market.

Tip: If you have something local, you have to focus your marketing (including SEO) on the local market

The fundamentals that worked

He says some of the things that really worked for him that can work for a local business include Google local listings (now known as Google Places, Goog Business, or Google Local) which get a business on a map that easily puts a business on top of searches for local products. The other thing, he says, is finding other websites that are linked to the business one is doing (these are mostly professional listings)

Other things that may take some time and effort include relationship building with other businesses, going to conferences and meet-ups organized by businesses that are related to what one does. That way, one gets clients through word of mouth and referrals.

Adobe certification

He says being Adobe certified and having his training centre certified by Adobe, is very helpful. That’s because as part of certification, he gets Adobe.com linked to his website, and it helps a lot, because Google likes to see big companies linking to smaller websites.

He deals with corporate clients and they only trust people who have Adobe certification. His training centre is the only one with Adobe certification in New Zealand, and among only 10 in Australia.

Tip: Corporate clients always prefer fully certified service providers

The transition to online

He says the sit-down classes were successful enough to get him out of formal employment, but it was tough. He kept doing them because he didn’t know anything about online business. When it was time to leave New Zealand and get

back to Ireland, he decided to start his trainings online. The first videos he put up online as content marketing, had generated a lot of interest in his work, so they formed a good foundation for his start online.

To test whether people would pay for his courses, he used a free 30-video YouTube course he had, to direct traffic to his online course. He did that by pulling down half of the videos, and asking people to go to his online course if they needed to get the rest of the course. He has since put the full course back on YouTube for free.

He used a subscription model for his first course and it went for $12 a month or $80 a year. He has been testing out different prices so that over time he can determine which will work best.

The numbers

In terms of the sit-down classrooms, he has great teams running them without his constant input. He earns good income from them every year, ranging between $30,000 and $40,000. He started the online courses in November 2015 and they give him a 6-figure income now, with about $10,000+ a month. In the first 5 months of starting the online course, he was a making $100 per month but after the 6th month, it started picking up. The business has almost zero overheads.

The first 6 months

He says the online courses started doing better because he improved on his productivity. Initially, he was making courses, editing them, putting them out, distributing them and getting social traffic. When he found things that are working, he hired people to help him fulfil some of the tasks so he can focus more on course production. That has enabled him to move from making a course every 2 months, to making 2 courses a month. He has 16 courses and is currently creating a few more.

From his statistics, he has seen most individual customers buying more than one course from him.

Tip: The more courses you create, the more audience you have

Working with Adobe

Adobe found his courses on YouTube and reached out to him so he could help them with a video for a new feature they had created. Since then, he has been making different videos for different Adobe products. Other product managers also work with him when they come across what he’s done for Adobe.

Adobe pays him for every video he works on for them.

The platforms

He offers his courses on Udemy, SkillShare and his website. They generate almost equal income for him. He teaches digital design media (creative IT) which includes digital publishing, web, video and print.

He says the most important aspect of the business is distribution (determining the target market and what they want). He is still in the phase of creating different varieties of courses that people want. He has a check list that he uses to keep up with what courses work well. His distribution channels include Udemy, SkillShare and his website. Udemy and SkillShare are very helpful in marketing his courses but with his website, he has to put up videos on YouTube, and do a lot of video SEO. YouTube is the biggest driver of his website traffic.

Video SEO on YouTube includes coming up with good titles, creating detailed descriptions, and adding tags. He also adds a call to action in all his videos.

Tip: When you upload a video on YouTube, do some research on what to call it and make sure it has usable search terms within the heading. Make sure there is unique content in the description and that it has good tags.

Biggest breakthrough moment

He says this was when he realised that there is more to putting up videos on YouTube including ranking them well in order to ensure that they get good traffic. Half of the conversions on his website are from YouTube.

Another breakthrough was recently discovering that he didn’t need to give away so many of his courses for free because customers were willing to pay for them.

Tip: If you are getting into YouTube, you have to put a lot of effort into it

…………….

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses – Eric Ries
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph – Ryan Holiday

>>>

Legacy:
To be remembered as someone who loved to share what he knew and help others – Daniel.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.bringyourownlaptop.com – Daniel’s Business website
@DanLovesAdobe – Daniel’s Twitter Handle

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don’t miss an episode. Download your free PDF show highlight reel for all the links and resources mentioned in the episode. Go to www.businessgenerals.com/daniels

Thanks for tuning in…see you next time!

Cheers,
Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

078: LinkedIn Strategies to Generate Free Leads & Quickly Grow an Email List (w/ Nathanial Bibby)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 06:08:54 -0400

Nathanial Bibby is the founder of Bibby Consulting Group, a Melbourne Consulting Group. He is a leading Digital Marketing Strategist, LinkedIn Coach and Social Media Speaker. He is also the founder of Linkedinsider, the world’s leading online LinkedIn training course, and a Founding Trainer at the Australian Digital Marketing Institute (ADMi).

With over 12 years of Digital Marketing experience, Nathanial has been at the forefront of the information age. During his career, he has helped 4,000+ businesses throughout Australia and South East Asia gain a competitive edge through effective business growth strategies.

Core revenue streams

His core revenue stream is LinkedIn Lead Generation which is a very unique service that cannot be found easily advertised in marketing. They usually have to first educate people about it before they introduce it. Once they train people on LinkedIn, they also offer them the lead generation service.

Period in full time business and starting out

He has been in full-time business for about 4 years. He started out the day he quit his job and things had gotten really difficult financially, because he was being evicted, and hadn’t paid his bills, the power in his apartment had even been switched off. He found a way to get power to his apartment and sat down to write his business plan. The next day, he started making phone calls and one of the people he called was a real estate agency that he convinced to let him pitch on how he help their real estate agents to invest in their brand.

The real estate agents gathered in their conference area and Nathanial pitched a real estate personal branding make-up product that included a one page real estate website. Nathanial was charging $2,500 for the product and 8 of them signed up, with 6 of them paying on the spot. That totalled $15,000 and it enabled him to get freelancers to build 6 websites, 6 Facebook pages, and 6 LinkedIn profiles. He paid $300 for each of the 6 which totalled $1,800. The money enabled him to get out of his financial problems.

He still didn’t know what he would specialise in, but he later got an opportunity to sponsor an event for his friend and business coach. At the event, his friend thanked him for being a sponsor and introduced him as a LinkedIn Specialist who could people with their LinkedIn profiles. There were 100 people at the event, and at the end, 30 to 40 people went up to him wanting to have a one-on-one meeting. That was when he decided to specialize in LinkedIn Marketing.

Deciding to become an entrepreneur

He remembers that when he started out, he did it because he had no choice since he could not find assistance from anyone to deal with his financial woes. He was so desperate but got immediately motivated when he decided to start working on his business plan. He knew that he had to go straight to the customers, to the market, without even having any marketing material and systems in place.

Niching

The fact that he specializes in LinkedIn when there are very few people specializing in it, enables him to get clients constantly. Whenever people are organizing conferences on social media and digital marketing, they always want an expert on LinkedIn and when they search on Google, Nathanial’s service always comes up at the top of the search results. He gets called to speak at different events and interviews. His company has become an industry leader on LinkedIn and he also gets invited to speak on social media at different events.

Generating leads on LinkedIn

He says it’s easier to help a B2B (business-to-business) company but when dealing with a B2C (business-to-consumer) company, he has to ask them a few questions about their target marketing and how they get clients. Normally, LinkedIn marketing works better if a B2C business has business partners or distributors. He says smaller businesses that desire to sell directly to customers may have more success on Facebook than on LinkedIn.

Tip 1: If you are looking for a quick way to implement a strategy that works, the first step is to optimize your LinkedIn profile which means optimizing for search results. Don’t upload a version of your CV and don’t write your LinkedIn profile in the 3rd person

Tip 2: Use my 3 step process called Find, Connect and Engage which involves finding the people who are in your target demographic and sending them customized connection requests. When you send about 200 requests out, you will get about a 50% average response rate. After that, you can message them, thank them for connecting with you, and engage them about how they do their marketing by asking for a telephone chat. A telephone chat will enable you to determine which client is suitable to work with

LinkedIn Vs. Facebook

He says LinkedIn is a professional networking site while Facebook is purely a social networking site.

Tip: When choosing which site to use for your lead generation, you have to think about the context in which people’s attention is on each site. LinkedIn will be more effective if you are targeting professionals

Case study

Nathanial refers to one of his goals of signing up one of the big 4 banks in Australia as a client. He started messaging the different banks on LinkedIn and 11 months into the business, Westpac Bank came on board as a client and they asked him to speak at one of their events. He then tstarted working with their licensee department which is BT Financial Group. They also asked him to speak at a digital marketing workshop/masterclass that they do in every city in Australia.

Nathanial started by working with one of the licensees first and running a campaign with them, which led to the licensee telling the other licensees the great results they got. Since the clients were financial advisors, they targeted high profile people like lawyers and medical practitioners. They generated 23 leads within 30 days, which was conservative, but they were very high quality prospects which translated to high sales value. This was a good case study for Nathanial

Biggest breakthrough in business over the last 2 years

“The moment I decided to specialize on LinkedIn was a big one. However, being able to come up with systems and processes so that am able to work on growing the business not in the business was also a big breakthrough”

The numbers

Nathanial says they are able to impact thousands of people now through speaking and training.

Core product

He says that their core product is lead generation through social media and that it’s in form of a monthly subscription.

A Lead

He says according to the service they offer clients, they define a lead as someone who has consented to have a phone conversation and provided their telephone number.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results – Gary W. Keller (what one thing will have the biggest impact for you?)

Ask Gary Vee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness – Gary Vaynerchuk

Legacy:
To contribute as much as he can in and out of business while adding immense value without expecting anything in return, and to pass on that mentality to as many professionals and business people as possible – Nathanial.

Best way to connect:
Bibby Consulting Group – On Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don’t miss an episode. To access the show highlight reel for all the links and resources mentioned in the episode. Go to www.businessgenerals.com/nathanialb

Thanks for tuning in…see you next time!

Cheers,
Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

077: Five Things Redundancy and Social Welfare Taught Me (w/ Davis Mutabwa)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 05:46:56 -0400

Here are the FIVE things I learnt that may be helpful for you or a friend you know maybe experiencing one of these “out of body” experiences:

Being on Social Welfare Is Not Fun
I Should Have started Preparing Sooner
Have an Open Mind – Find a Coach and Model them
Consider Taking a Pay Cut – Get Back in the Game
Find a Plan-B Option that Works for YOU

Personal Lesson

I remember it like yesterday, started just like any other Friday: drive down the freeway, get to work have my marmalade-on-toast, and work on completing the financial statements for publishing to the market the following week. At 4pm everything changed, I got the call to the CFO’s office, Legal Counsel also present, felt the situation was a little bit unusual, and sure enough I had been made redundant. I can still feel the shock of the reality of the feeling, very humbling, had until 5.30pm to make my way out.

I wasn’t bitter or disappointed in the people that had hired me to be their Finance Manager. I knew the company was struggling and that the shareholders were putting pressure on the executive team, but there was so much going on, I didn’t expect it that day.

I got back to my office and made the call to my wife telling her I was out of a job. Like a lot of people we didn’t have any Plan-b whatsoever – we were “all or nothing” – single income family with a mortgage, scary. It was a real blessing for us in a sense though, that we had literally just sold our home and so all the gains made on the home became our day to day income, this was only meant to be for a very short while. But soon enough, it became clear that the world was going through the global financial crisis, this was September 2009. Recruiters were not returning phone calls, people were not leaving their jobs. There was zero happening for 6 months straight, not one interview!

The FIVE things I learnt

Being on Social Welfare Is Not Fun

I had no idea where the nearest welfare office was and didn’t even understand how the whole system worked. I quickly found out that it does provide a safety net for families but doesn’t do more than maybe pay the rent. It didn’t cover the car payment so driving our once ‘fancy’ German car that at the time had another party listed on title i.e. bank, was no longer fun. I now had to drive carefully each night and be on the lookout for any suspicious looking cars near our house, make sure it’s not the sheriff!

My advice: You don’t want to be on welfare.

I Should Have Started Preparing Sooner

The social welfare system will not help you professionally get back into a good role – things may have changed now, yes the teams assigned to you will help you write up a resume and prepare you for an interview but in my experience they kind of didn’t even do that – just had to tick the boxes and show up each fortnight.

Tip 1: Don’t leave it too late to have a Plan-B action plan. It took me 6 months to just get a contract role.

Tip 2: Think about whether your savings can last you long and If not, then start putting a robust savings plan together or better still a Plan-B income source for you and your family.

Have an Open Mind: Find a Coach and Model them

In November 2008, my wife and I attended a real estate coaching seminar, the concept was residential property sub-leasing – we had never heard of this approach to generating cash flow, it sounded interesting but life got in the way and never did anything with it. Immediately following my redundancy, we decided to hire the sub-leasing coach and invested over $10,000 from the sale of our home to kick this project off and this was our first venture as business owners. We operated this for about two and a half years running about 30 rental rooms in 3 large furnished properties mainly catering for the student population here in Melbourne. I kept an open mind and learnt a lot about running a business. I made some good money but lost good money too a.k.a. “school fees”.

Tip: Evaluate all options that come your way and don’t discount them on face value or based on non-expert opinions.

Consider Taking a Pay Cut – Get Back in the Game

Following two back to back contract roles, I decided to go for a permanent role that was in an industry I had little experience in, so I decided that I was willing to take a pay cut in order to get back in the game, plus I was still running my enterprise, so I didn’t want the long hours of my previous full time roles; and I was also preparing to study for my masters in finance.

I got the role and worked through the balancing act of all three things until the work load became too intense. I had to make a few changes to the model and opted to get back to school, leave the real estate space and invest into an online distribution platform.

Find a Plan-B Option that Works for YOU

An online distribution platform was appealing to us because it has leverage which I struggled with in my previous enterprise, so we evaluated eBay, Etsy and eBooks but didn’t quite get the results we were after. The challenge was the platforms were there but identifying and sourcing great products was tough.

What actually worked for us was an online distribution platform through which we market essential utility services licensed with a company that partners up with some of the large Australian providers leveraging the network marketing/direct sales model. It’s done online and part time-services people already use and need every day, we loved it and still do!

Tip 1: Do your research and find a Plan-B cash flow model that will work for you and your family (just remember to ignore the skeptics, trust me they won’t help you pay for your mortgage!). Start on that plan now before you need it, NOT after the event like I did!

Tip 2: You can’t always avoid being made redundant, but do your best to put a plan together to help you get through it – and just remember, whatever you may be going through, it too shall pass so stay strong!!

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!
#BusinessGeneralsPodcast

076: How to Become a TEDx Speaker, Creating Your Big Talk and High Speaker Fees (w/ Tricia Brouk)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 05:26:28 -0400

Tricia Brouk is a performance expert, TEDx organizer, writer, director, choreographer, podcast host, and producer of theatre, TV and film. She hosts The Big Talk, a podcast series on iTunes and currently directs and dramaturges Big Talks and Keynotes. She is the current organizer of TEDxLincolnSquare – Risk Takers and Change Makers.

She has produced, directed or choreographed several award-winning theatre and TV/Film productions. Through her company, The Big Talk, she helps people identify, craft and deliver a life-changing Big Talk or Keynote.

Period in full time business and business background

She has owned a company for over 26 years. She moved to New York City from Missouri to pursue a dance career and had no interest in being a starving artist. She started Brouk Moves, an elite in-home personal training company where she hired people to work for her so that she could still make money even when she was on the road. The company has been going strong, has 15 trainers, 25 clients and recently started a personal chef service. The business has enabled her to pursue a creative life outside of business and also given her the opportunity to create a new business, The Big Talk.

Brouk Moves has been her primary income for the last 26 years and has enabled her to pay all her bills, avoid the life of a starving artist and produce theatre. Her team works on the business full time so she can have time to pursue other things.

Starving artists

She says she sees this a lot in the industry and she has observed that artists feel unworthy of making money, because when they make money they then feel that they are selling out, and that they are not truly artists.

She says artists deserve to be paid for what they are worth, to have money and create art simultaneously.

Tip: You are not giving up your artist soul by taking a big fat pay check

First gig

In her first big European tour, she got a weekly pay check to do what she loves including touring, dancing, and being a full time artist. That was while Brouk Moves was still bringing in money because her team was doing all the work. That when she knew she could make a living as an artist in the long term while also making a living as a business woman.

Tip: Once you pursue and achieve what your goal is, do not let go of that business! Do not think that you have to choose. You can maintain them both equally

Getting into entrepreneurship

She decided early on that she would live the way she wanted without being poor or waiting for gigs to find her. She is proactive, mindful and kind in the way she runs her business. Her trainers take time off whenever they want and the rest sub for them.

Tip 1: Stop waiting for that big artist contract, start creating your art, start creating your business, because if you wait for someone else to do it for you, you will spend your entire life waiting.

Tip 2: Get busy, create art no matter where it is, no matter what it is. Keep your artist muscle flexing and find a way to make money on your own terms

The first months in the fitness business

She started by working very hard and personally training all the clients she had. She used to wake up at 4.30am and would do the client training while also dancing and performing. Once she realised that she could hire a team to take on some of the work, she created a system where she could always be involved but didn’t need to be there. That enabled her to reduce her commutes, and her time was spent doing other things. When she hired other people, she had to trust them, let go, and make sure that she put systems in place to ensure the business would run efficiently.

Tip 1: If you are starting up, you have to dig in, roll up your sleeves and do the work

Tip 2: When starting out, you have to create a solid foundation first, then you can back off and do the other things that you want to do

Choosing personal training

She says personal training was very organically connected to her life as a dancer. It was directly related to what she was doing. She also realised that there was a huge market for it in New York City. It was a niche she could get into and make a lot of money. The business is now very saturated but when Tricia started The Big Talk, she found her second niche because Talk is a massive market. She feels fortunate that she has now created a new business in a new market niche that is not saturated yet.

Niching

Tip 1: If you can find something that you are an expert at, create a niche for people who need what you are offering

Tip 2: You have get very specific in what it is you are offering and find those people who want what it is you are selling

Parallels: Getting clients for the fitness business and for the Big Talk

She has always approached clients with honesty and integrity while sharing that she would be their biggest cheer leader, and get them across the finish line.

Growth strategy for The Big Talk

When she started Brouk Moves, she had never advertised for her fitness service because she got all her clients from word of mouth. That was not an option for The Big Talk, so she hired a marketing strategist and a visibility strategist. As soon as she learnt what she was supposed to do, she did it without worrying about making mistakes because she could fix the mistakes. She wanted to do it as fast as she could because she knew it was an exciting opportunity to work with speakers and help them share their message.

She hired the right people to help her set up a sales funnel, marketing and all her social media. From there, clients started coming. In the last year, it has grown immensely. She has 126 episodes of The Big Talk, she has an online course and became a TEDx organizer.

Transitioning into the speaking space

She believes she is still doing what she set out to do 26 years ago by helping speakers achieve their goals. When she is working with a speaker, she works with them just like she would with an actor or performer. She theatricalises their talk and performance. The transition has been organic for her because it’s the same exact thing for her with a different platform.

How she started The Big Talk

In August 2016, she met with Jamie Broderick, a visibility strategist, who needed her help in developing her TEDx script. Their working together was a huge success and Jamie encouraged Tricia to start helping speakers on a professional level, and that inspired her to start The Big Talk. Tricia actually ended up hiring Jamie to work with her for 3 months, in creating a strategy for The Big Talk, including making sure her website had opt-ins, the SEO was effective, she had a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook page, and a strong social media presence.

Jamie then introduced Tricia to several people who would have been interested in working with a public speaking coach. From there, she introduced Tricia to John Lee Dumas, the host of the EOFIRE podcast, who advised her to do podcasts talking about her process in order to get credibility. She started a podcast and did 20 episodes. She made the podcast part of her brand, then started working with speakers. Her desire to put her speakers on a stage led her to apply for a TEDx license; she got it, and became the TEDx Lincoln Square organizer. That enabled her to give some of her speakers a platform.

She then figured that she needed to grow the business and reach people outside of New York City who couldn’t work with her face to face. So she developed an online course for such people.

Importance of introductions in business

She says they are everything. Whenever she is introduced to someone, she never has expectations that she will land them as a client. She always expects that the right people will cross her path.

Tip: Business is introductions, business is relationships. If you are on LinkedIn and you connect with someone and immediately sell something to them, that’s not a relationship. If you can be open to who you are introduced to without having any expectations, that will lead you somewhere.

The first podcast interviews and their impact

At first she didn’t know what she was doing with the podcast interviews. She doesn’t know how to do many things but she always figures it out, does the research, hires the right people or asks for help.

She figured out how to start and run a podcast with the help of Jamie Broderick and her own research efforts. She wrote 20 podcasts, recorded them all in batch and put them all on Libsyn. She loved it and kept doing them from there. She made a big mistake in the first 20 episodes because she put them on a free platform which made it very difficult for her to move them to another platform.

The podcast taught people what Tricia was doing with The Big Talk, who was she was as an artist and a director of public speaking. She talked about the nuts and bolts of how to write a speech and how to give a speech. The first 20 episodes were 5 to 7 minutes long which Tricia learnt was too short. Since then she realised that her podcasts are really packed with content.

Tip 1: As an artist, you can share your work and sell yourself simultaneously

Tip 2: We all make mistakes when we are learning and its fine. We learn from our mistakes

Tip 3: Just because a platform is free, it doesn’t mean it will serve your business well. Do your research, ask people who have podcasts where they are, where they are hosted and do some background research on what it is you are doing.

Starting before things are perfect

When she realised that social media is everything with relationships and business, she had to let go of being perfect because she would make errors in her posts all the time, but she would always correct them

Tip 1: You should always start before things are perfect because they are never going to be perfect

Tip 2: If you can do a little bit more research than you think you should, it will save you time and money in the end.

Tip 3: You should not slow yourself down because you don’t have the time or money. You just need to do it and if you make a mistake, you can fix it

Tip 4: The second you decide that you’re going to be out there, you will be judged, so expect it so you can learn to get used to it

Mentors

Tricia believes and invests in mentors. She hired Jamie Broderick for $3,000 for 3 months. That was money well-spent for Tricia because she worked Jamie for every second of every day for those 3 months. For her podcast and other related content, Tricia used to ask her friends to look into them and give her feedback so she could learn how to improve on them.

Tip: You can invest in the right mentors and you can also invest in mentors who don’t require payment like friends and family who are interested in giving you guidance

Getting the first paying speaker

When she was in a call with Success Connection, a networking organization that Jamie Broderick runs, she spoke to a member (Christine) of the organization who wanted to do a TEDx. So, they got on a phone call later and Christine told her that she had been talking about rare eye disease which got Tricia really interested in helping her develop her talk.

They started by doing an active listening session and in the end Tricia highlighted that the talk wasn’t about raising awareness, finding a cure or raising money for the rare eye disease community, but was about how she learnt to see the world differently through the eyes of her children. That made Christine realise that she could talk about the disease in order to help other parents learn that their lives would not be over because of the rare eye disease. Christine was Tricia’s first paying client. From there, she has had 7 paying clients and it continues to grow.

Becoming a TEDX organizer

When she decided to create an event to give speakers a platform, she looked into TEDx and they...

075: Five Key Benefits of a Home Based Business (w/ Davis Mutabwa)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 05:01:19 -0400

As corporate downsizing continues to make news and the internet makes telecommuting ever more productive more and more entrepreneurs are discovering the benefits of running businesses out of their homes. If you are looking to get out of the rat race, to spend more time with family and friends, and to live a more balanced life, a home-based business may be the right decision for you.

Home-based businesses are quickly becoming the fastest growing form of business start-ups. Growing your business out of your home allows for flexibility that is difficult when renting or buying office and warehouse space. Although

working at home requires self-discipline, the benefits can be substantial-especially in the start-up years.

Starting a Home-Based Business

Nearly one million Australians are running a business from home according to the Australian government. Forbes reported that home-based businesses were quickly becoming the fastest growing form of business start-ups. With a slowing global economy this statistic can only be expected to grow.

Benefits of starting a Home-Based business out of your home

There are many benefits and each would appeal to you differently but here are my top five that I find to be key:

1. Ownership – Yours to build and grow

2. Flexibility – No commute and freedom to structure your working hours

3. Taxation – Put simply…the system favours business ownership

4. Low Overheads – Investment can be low, no large office lease expenses

5. Leverage – Ability to leverage your efforts and scale up

Personal lesson

My late dad was an Accountant – I took after him, he worked long and hard for over 20 years in senior management for a Swedish ball bearing manufacturer. I got back home from boarding school one summer, and dad sat me and my older brother down to let us know that he had been “let go”.

Life quickly changed in a space of 6 months – moved out of the company house, no company car, no driver and no more executive perks.

It became clear that though dad had a great job employment by nature generally does not provide any “business equity” – he got paid his redundancy package (maybe a year’s salary) and that was it, back to the drawing board…which was starting a home based consultancy business in accounting.

This was my first encounter with the difference between business ownership and employment. You get to make your own conclusions here as to how you would respond to such a situation…I have shared in Episode 077: Five Things Redundancy Social Welfare Taught Me, how social welfare became an unwanted reality for me and my wife a few years ago when we went through the same scenario

The 5 key benefits of starting a home-based business

1. Ownership – Yours to build and grow

Building a business means that you will be building equity for you and your family, if you work it right; and even if it takes you say 20 years to really get it established, that is just under half of your working life, you can build a substantial enterprise that is willable, saleable and transferable.

The best time to start is while you are at the peak of your career which for most people is right now, start from your home and grow it from there – don’t just focus on building equity in your home, build some business equity as well.

2. Flexibility – No commute and structure your working hours.

A colleague said to me she spent about 2 hours last week getting home because there were two accidents on the major roads during peak hour…that’s happened to me several times before!

The ABC reported that Australians on average spend close to an hour each day on the daily commute to and from work. A Gallup survey reported the same for the average American commute.

You can save a lot of time and turn that into productive hours, you can work around your family and your own personal routine with your business hours structured around that. As your business grows you can structure and systemize it so that you free up more of your time. This will demand discipline but the flexibility is a real tangible benefit.

3. Taxation – the system favours business ownership

Any good tax accountant will tell you that the tax system favours businesses, there are a whole lot deductions that a business can qualify for that enables a better after tax take home pay.

If your situation qualifies you can benefit from many deductions including a qualifying portion (directly relating to your business) of your mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, home office consumables, training expenses and even client related travel expenses.

Tip: A tax good accountant will help you optimize your taxes further through advanced tax structuring that you can’t benefit from unless you are running an enterprise.

4. Low Overheads – Investment/ operating costs can be low

A home based business can generally be started with low capital investment and low operating costs. Working from the home, leveraging online connectedness

reduces your risk exposure and explains why more and more people feel empowered to start a home based business be it full time or part time.

Office lease rentals and its associated sprinklings can be a debilitating cost for start-ups. A low cost base helps you factor those savings into having competitive pricing which is critical as you build market share.

5. Leverage – Ability to leverage your efforts and scale up

In a job situation you generally only get paid for the hours you personally work, a home based business allows you to leverage your efforts. As an opportunity arises you can begin to grow in systematic and staged approach. You could even outsource some of the components of your business to free up more productive time, or even start to hire a team of people as you grow.

That’s the power of leverage – it can compound in your favour over time and help you impact more lives and champion more causes that you may be passionate about not just with your money but with your time and expertise.

Final comment

If you structure and systemise your business right, and pace your growth well, after a season of planting (maybe 5 to 7 plus years), you will be able to start freeing up some of your time while your business continues to grow without you.

This is only made possible in a business, and in my mind it’s a worthwhile pursuit – if you have that “inner itch” for it, start now, start part time – start from home!

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

074: How He Launched a Speaking Career Through a Daily Sales Blog (w/ Anthony Iannarino)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 15:28:06 -0400

Anthony Iannarino is an international speaker, bestselling author, sales leader, and entrepreneur. He specializes in the complex business-to-business (B2B) sale. He is also a founder and managing partner of two closely-held, family-owned businesses in the staffing industry, leading both entities in strategic planning while growing sales.

Anthony is best known for his work at The Sales Blog, which has helped him gain recognition as a top thought leader in sales strategy. He is the designer of Level 4 Value Creation and Building Consensus methodologies that help sales organizations achieve transformational, breakthrough results.

Period in full time business

He has been in full time for 10 years now.

Core revenue streams

Anthony has very diverse revenue streams. He still has a role in their family’s staffing business and he is a partner in another one of the family businesses. He just started an accounting and finance group (specialised in staffing) where he is a partner. He is also a speaker, coach, consultant and an author.

He says he believes that we are in the age of constant accelerating disruptive change which keeps coming faster and is more disruptive especially for business people.

The speaking, coaching and consulting revenue stream makes up about 75% of his overall income.

Tip 1: You shouldn’t give up any revenue streams, you should have multiple revenues streams going at one time

Tip 2: You should really think deeply about how you can create additional revenue streams

Starting out in business

Anthony used to run their small family business of about $3 Million a year, and with about 6 sales people, he built it up to $50 Million a year. That got the attention of many people who wanted to know how he achieved so much with such a small team. That business was a competitive displacement business which took big companies away from big competitors. People wanted him to help them in that same way but Anthony wasn’t interested until at some point when he felt that he could something to help people succeed in building and growing their businesses.

So he started waking up an hour earlier than he used to every day, to write down everything he knew, and publishing it on his new blog. His goal at that point was to become a keynote speaker within a year. He worked very hard on building awareness on what he did and within 10 months, he got his first speaking gig.

In those 10 months, he used to get a lot of inspiration from Seth Godin, and he applied what he learnt from him in his own work. Overtime, he got introduced to a group of people who had a sales content sharing group. That sharing ended up amplifying all of their messages.

Tip 1: Because of the internet, as an entrepreneur, you have audiences worldwide and they are looking for you. Google will help them find you provided that you publish your best ideas, and people can tell how you create value and what you are all about

Tip 2: One of the things that entrepreneurs struggle with when it comes to sales and marketing is the consistency of doing the work every single day

Motivation during the first 10 months of the blog

Anthony knew that the idea for the blog would work because the statistics were good and kept growing. He had confidence, faith and was willing to play the long game with the blog while building a body of work. He started by getting 7 people reading his blog posts up to the current 2,500 readers that visit the blog per day. On Mondays, the number goes up to 4,000.

Tip 1: Stay with what you are doing for a long enough time that it actually sticks and you will get some traction. A lot of people give up right before that point where they get the traction because they start to worry it’s not going to work

Tip 2: You just have to continually do the work and it will pay off, but it does take longer than you think

Getting the first set of clients

Anthony says his first clients found him through a Twitter link that directed them to his blog.

Pricing the first paying gig

He had picked a number that he thought was outrageously high and even shared it with professional speakers. He learnt that it was about 10 to 20 times what anyone thinks they get on their first speech. When he got the first call from potential paying clients, he knew that talking to 1,000 people and being able to help them grasp a concept and execute it, was worth far more than he was going to charge.

Tip 1: Your price is a reflection of the value you create

Tip 2: When you can create a tremendous amount of value for other people then you are allowed to capture a tremendous amount of value

Growth and marketing strategy after getting the first clients

He has somebody who helps him with prospecting. When people come into his newsletter and download resources, Anthony still reaches out to them. He also blogs every day. In 2016, he did 200 YouTube videos and tries to do them daily

but he hasn’t figured out how to do them when he is on the road. His company also uses Facebook and Google Ads especially for things like book launches where they need to get attention and are willing to pay for it.

Lessons learnt so far

Tip 1: The right way to think is that you have to serve the business and also serve the clients, and you have to do what is right for both of those entities at the same time.

Tip 2: Even if you have more work than you need, even if you think that you can’t take on any more clients, you still have to get up and do the sales and marketing work because the laws of the universe say that you plant seeds in the spring time and harvest in the fall. With business, it’s always spring time because when a client goes away, you cannot be left with nothing in your pipeline. When entrepreneurs don’t do enough sales and marketing, that’s how they end up going back to the corporate world.

Tip 3: The way that you keep a business running is client acquisition. Sales and marketing is an important part of the business that you can’t ignore

Advice to those starting up

Anthony advices those who are starting up a business while also working in their full time jobs, to do a lot of marketing including blogging if it’s applicable, actual cold calling and prospecting. He also says that from a marketing perspective, social media channels work great.

Tip 1: You have to do both cold calling, client calls and prospecting every day. You need to do what is enough to get you the clients that you need

Tip 2: The ability to go out and get attention has never been easier and cheaper

Tip 3: If you’re serving business people, spend time on LinkedIn; and if you’re serving consumers, spend time building your audience on Facebook.

Tip 4: The most important thing is to find a way to get people back to your site with content that is relevant to them and answer all their questions there. Then capture their email addresses because that’s how you’re going to start getting in touch with people, and that’s how people are going to start reaching out to you

His funnel

He says his funnel is very busy. Their marketing and sales consistency over a long period of time brings about a lot of funnel activity. He just had a book launch and it has kept them very busy. They have been sending people copies of the book and the book has been a great lead generation tool.

Becoming a writer and its impact

He always wanted to be an author and when he started writing his blog, people would ask him to write a book. He couldn’t find a suitable publisher so he decided to publish the first book himself. He hired a great editor and spent 6 months editing the book. Through Twitter, he linked up with someone who ended up helping him get a 2-Book publishing deal accompanied with a very nice advance payment. From there, it became a long-term relationship where he will probably do up to 7 books. He is currently working on the third book.

When he was writing the first book, he was taking ideas from his blog posts and fresh-writing them. The book was about how one can be someone worth doing business with and the skills one needs to actually sell.

The book has helped Anthony tremendously in developing his profile and outreach. It has also grown him as a speaker and created a lot of awareness about what he does.

Tip: Who you are matters more than what you do. First, you have to be somebody worth doing business with before you can sell

Their staffing business

He says that it’s a retail staffing firm that serves the light industrial, clerical, accounting, scientific, and other general staffing needs of diverse clients. What he did to grow the business faster and scale it up, was to recognize that they spent a lot of time selling to small accounts which took as much time to win as large accounts. They also took just as much time to serve as large accounts.

It didn’t make sense to Anthony to dedicate the small number of resources he had to small accounts that would not generate enough revenue for the company. So he focused on large anchor accounts, because the company could manage to run profitably with just 2 or 3 such accounts. He systematized the process of targeting and acquiring those accounts, and was very persistent to date, which ensures that he acquires the target clients.

Tip: You can have what you want, but you have to be willing to hang in there

Breakthrough moment

He says he is still waiting for his biggest breakthrough moment because the more he achieves, the more he sees further into how much more he can achieve

A typical day during a book launch

He says there are two painful things for him when writing books; he loves the writing process but hates the editing process; and loves the book launch process but hates what happens after that which includes hundreds of emails and interview requests which become very frustrating because he tries to put people into his already packed calendar.

In his day to day work, he wakes up at 4.30am and works up to about 8.30pm then goes to bed at 9.30pm. He also works through the weekends and that is when he prefers to do interviews.

Book reception and feedback The book he just launched, The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the Ten Commitments That Drive Sales, has been very unique compared to other closing books because most of the other books have all had a long list of different types of closes, but this one is about 10 commitments that one has to gain.

The reception of the book has been very good. It has had forty one 5-star reviews with comments on how the book has changed people’s thinking about what they are doing and producing better results.

It’s helping people rethink their sales process and the conversations that they’re having. It is also helping them recognize the reason they lose is because they are not collaborating and giving clients something that they can easily say no to instead of customizing it for them in such a way that they would have to say yes. The best place to find Anthony’s books is www.amazon.com

The most important commitment

He says the first commitment (The commitment for Time) is the toughest one for people to get and it’s the one he would advise anyone to master first.

Tip: We have so much time but we don’t get anymore, you have to protect that.

Legacy: To have created good adults out of his children so they can go out and contribute while making a difference. To be remembered for having helped other people transform and produce better results in their lives than they would have otherwise – Anthony.

Best way to connect: www.thesalesblog.com – Anthony’s Business website

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis

#BusinessGeneralsPodcast

073: Helping Entrepreneurs Become Champions (w/ Nicky Billou)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 11:06:18 -0400

Nicky Billou is the No. 1 International Best-Selling Author of the book Finish Line Thinking: How To Think & Win Like A Champion. He is also the co-host of the No. 1 Podcast in the world for thought leaders called The Business Of Thought Leadership. His guests on the podcast have been the likes of Seth Godin, Barbara Corcoran, George Ross, Jen Widerstrom, Tony Hawk, Larry Winget, and Marie Forleo.

As an Accountability Coach at Finish Line Thinking, He energizes people to be their best selves. He works with entrepreneurs and professional sales people (top real estate agents, insurance brokers, financial advisors and sales people for top organizations) who want to be held accountable for producing top results. He offers a unique system that teaches people how to Think & Win Like a Champion when it comes to achieving goals.

Starting out

He worked for different technology and telecommunications companies, but the corporate world was not for him, because he felt that something was missing and every day he felt he wasn’t living according to his purpose. He eventually decided to start his own business, and because he did it alone, his success plateaued at some point. Luckily, he found the right mentor who taught him what he needed to succeed in the long term.

Leaving corporate

Nicky left his last job when the last company he used to work for went under. While other people were finding it hard to get a job, he got into consulting, but he went through a lot of years being stuck in the journey of being a business owner. It wasn’t until he started to see what his expertise was, that he was able to turn that into success.

He says the stages of the thought leader’s business journey are:

Stage 1: Being a new comer – this is for people thinking about getting into business or just getting started in business. They have no real experience owning their own business. They are not skilled at marketing and selling what they are offering, and they have no business systems. At this stage one is lucky to make any money at all. It’s a dangerous stage because if one doesn’t get passed it, they may need to get back to their corporate job. People in this stage make between $5,000 and $10,000 a year.

Stage 2: An unconscious expert – This is someone who has expertise but they are not clear what their expertise is. They have some systems in place but they are stuck in an obsolete time for money business model. Their sales are inconsistent because their marketing works sometimes, not all the time. They have lumpy billings and make between $30,000 and $50,000 a year.

Stage 3: Conscious Expert – Those in this stage have their message nailed which results in consistent marketing and more predicable sales. The challenge with this stage, is that one has to work lots of hours under a time for money business model which is not sustainable. They make between $150,000 and $300,000 a year.

Stage 4: Thought Leader – At this stage, one has arrived and they are making between $500,000 and $3 Million a year. It’s not about time for money, it’s about getting paid based on one’s expertise. One works between 50 and 150 days a year doing what they love, with the best clients of their choice. Very few get to this stage.

Nicky says there is a final stage called the Celebrity Thought Leader Stage, which is the stage for people like Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Robin Sharma who are global iconic figures. They make between $5 Million and $100+ Million a year. They work whenever they want and they can work a little or a lot. They are sort after by the top business/industry leaders in the world and celebrities. They get to charge whatever they want and their impact is global. The challenge is, very few people get to be in this stage.

Tip: It’s possible to achieve the Thought Leader stage, it doesn’t have to take you 10 years to get to Conscious Expert or an extra 10 years to get to Thought Leader stage. I can show you what mistakes to avoid to help you achieve all that in 1 to 3 years.

Fastest way to achieve 6 figures

Nicky says Matt Church’s program has 150 members and 75 of them are thought leaders (50%) who make between $500,000 and $2 Million a year. Of the remaining 75 members, 40 are conscious experts who make $250,000 to $500,000 a year (conscious experts on the way to being thought leaders).

Nicky says the program is brilliant because it shows people how to get clear on their expertise, take their expertise and utilize it in a fashion that positions them as the authority in their market place while selling it in a way that it appears to be a service to people.

Nicky offers people in North America the ability to hack that.

Tip: Go do Matt Church’s program, go do the thought leaders business school and that will enable you to get to 6 or 7 figures fast.

His book and its impact on his business

He wrote his book Finish Line Thinking: How To Think & Win Like A Champion, several years into his entrepreneurial journey. He says it helped position him as an expert when it came to mindset. He has only sold around $5,000 worth of the book, but it has made him over $1 Million because it has been a brochure and business card for him, since people have read it and decided to do business with him.

Tip: If you are in Australia, go to Matt Church’s program and if you are in North America, go to the eCircle Academy so you can figure out what your expertise is

Case Study: North America

Nicky refers to a fellow of eCircle Academy named Dan. Dan had been making less than $2,000 a month as a personal trainer. He used to travel around by bus and would train anyone he could find.

The academy helped Dan get clear on his ideal target market and eventually he landed on people with missing limbs and now he is the go-to guy for health and fitness for people with missing limbs. Focusing on that market enabled him to move from 7 clients to 400 clients. He also went from doing one-on-one trainings to doing group/online programs, VIP programs, and inner-circle masterminds. This year, he has made up to $610,000 in sales which makes him a thought leader and works less than he used to.

One of the ways through which Dan made it are; he got clear on his message and market.

Tip: Clarity rocks, make sure you identify your message and market

Biggest breakthrough in the business

He says this was when he got connected to Matt Church and the time he started to bring in Matt’s thought leadership program into his business to North America, which has been helping a lot of people.

Tip 1: Anyone in Australia, you need to know who Matt Church is, you must go to the Thought Leaders Business School website, go to one of Matt Church’s events, and sign up for the Thought Leaders Business School.

Tip 2: If you are in the United States, find out about the eCircle Academy, listen to our podcast, and if you want to understand how it can help you, call us by going to ecircleacademy.com/appointment

Core revenue streams

He says the eCircle Academy is one of them and he also does one-on-one mentoring/coaching for people. He does some speaking and will be focusing on doing more of it in 2018. He is also passionate about serving men because he went through a devastating divorce and would like to help men who are going through it. He actually has programs that can help such men.

Action to take before signing up for Thought Leaders Business School or eCircle Academy

He says:

Step 1: Reach out to Nicky Billou (eCircle Academy) or buy Matt Church’s book, The Thought Leader Practice. If you are in North America, you can get Matt Church’s book for free from eCircle Academy if you say that you are a listener of the Business Generals Podcast. If you are in Australia, connect with Matt Church or buy the book from Amazon.

Step 2: Jump on a call with Nicky or reach out to Matt Church

Growth strategy now

Nicky says their podcast and going to other podcasts helps a lot. They also do a lot of cold calling and marketing. They run a program on their Facebook page where they give away Matt Church’s book and they use that to get people on the phone.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The Thought Leader Practice – Matt Church
Cathy Capitalist & Johnny Jobmaker: Teaching Your Kids About Free Enterprise, Dreaming Big, and Going For It! – Nicky Billou

>>>

Legacy:
To raise his sons to be great men, to be men who follow their purpose, who are gentlemen, who are respectful to all people, who will end up being great husbands to their wives, and great fathers to their kids. To be remembered as a great friend and family member who cared about the people in his life and helped them make their own journeys easy. To have helped people achieve their dreams to the greatest extent possible – Nicky.

>>>

Best way to connect:
nicky@ecircle.ca – Nicky’s Business Email

www.ecircleacademy.com/appointment – Nicky’s Business Calendar

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in…see you next time!

Cheers,
Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

072: USA Memory Champion – Turning Your Passion into Your Business (w/Nelson Dellis)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 23:07:28 -0400

Nelson Dellis is memory athlete, mnemonist (able to remember and recall unusually long lists of data such as unfamiliar names, list of numbers, and others), public speaker, and consultant. He is a four-time USA Memory Champion and the co-founder of Memory League, a new type of competitive memory platform that allows memory enthusiasts to challenge each other online.

He is also the founder of Climb for Memory through which he preaches a lifestyle that combines both mental and physical fitness with proper diet and social involvement.

HELP OUT in the endeavour to find a cure for Alzheimer’s by taking The Extreme Memory Challenge, a short, easy memory test online. It’s poised to be one of the largest long-term memory studies ever conducted. Just go to www.extremememorychallenge.com

Becoming a memory enthusiast

His grandmother died of Alzheimer’s in 2009 and that made Nelson develop an interest in memory. He saw how her mind slipped away and didn’t want the same thing to happen to him. From his research on memory, he discovered the US Memory Championship which to his surprise included average people who had just learnt some memory techniques and practised. That’s when he realised that memory was a skill like any other and from there he started off on his journey towards becoming a memory champion.

Climb for Memory: Research on Alzheimer’s

He says the current research is not clear on whether or not keeping the brain active deters Alzheimer’s. Some researchers say it doesn’t while others say it does. Nelson is a believer that keeping the brain active makes a big difference, judging from his own experience with his memory transformation.

Core revenue streams

He says it’s hard to define his business because his revenue sources have not always been clear. He is not much of a business guy. He started doing memory as a business when he found that he had won a few memory championships, had gotten a lot of media attention and was receiving a lot of requests for speaking engagements and different appearances. He used to work in coding and physics as a career but he decided to leave it behind.

The majority of his revenues come from speaking engagements, doing different memory-related events, spokesperson deals, and other memory-related projects.

Leaving the normal job

He loved his formal job in the corporate world but when he started doing the memory-related projects, he had a hard time managing both. When he got an offer to do a memory event sponsored by a certain company, the head of marketing of that company approached him after the event, and asked him to work with them on a long-term basis. For Nelson to take their offer and focus entirely on memory-related work under their endorsement, they agreed to pay him the same amount he was getting as a salary at his job.

Getting to the point of winning competitions

He had to put in a lot of hard work to become a memory champion and it was easy because he was very passionate about it. He loved the whole process of memorization. He wanted to be the best, so he spent as much time as possible training his memory.

He started getting serious about it in the summer of 2009 when his grandmother passed away. He entered into the first competition in March 2010 and came in 3rd place which was commendable considering it was his first time. That inspired him to train more seriously, and in 2011, he won the competition. He used to train every day after work for at least 2 hours. He says he also used to memorize numbers and cards while at work.

Two ways to catapult memory retention skills

He says one way is to pay attention which includes focusing on one thing at time and not multitasking. Since the brain is not good at memorizing abstract things like numbers, names or directions, the second way is to turn those things by association into pictures (visual imagery in the mind).

Tip 1: Paying attention will help a lot with your memory

Tip 2: Always try to think in pictures

Growth strategy at the beginning

A friend of his linked him to someone who became his agent. The agent got him one endorsement deal and promised him that more were to come but later on, Nelson had to part ways with him because he never delivered on his promises. He was able to work under the endorsement deal, but he knew it was not going to last long, so he used to think about how he would go back to a corporate coding job.

The more he got farther from a formal job, he realised that he didn’t want to get formally employed again plus working on memory-related work could not be added to his resume so he just decided to find more endorsement deals and come up with innovative ways to make money from memory-related work. He started targeting companies that were in the memory space and he eventually found one called Brain Health, a supplement company. Nelson knew about Brain Health because they had sponsored several memory championships that Nelson had attended. He managed to close an endorsement deal with them and they have worked together to date.

Nelson also got speaking engagements through the TV interviews he did and media coverage he got when he attended championships. His interest in speaking engagements grew over time because he loved teaching and inspiring people so he eventually choose to focus on speaking engagements instead of endorsement deals. He also identified speaking as the best way for him to grow and scale his work.

The TED talk

He did a TEDX Talk in 2012 and he says it was a game changer for him because it was the biggest speaking engagement he had ever done.

He took a while to prepare for the talk and he used software called Prezi to build his presentation. The presentation enabled him to successfully make his talk. He doesn’t use the software now but he has a fixed deck that he customizes to fit different speaking engagements.

Speaking gigs

Nelson gets about two or so speaking engagements per month and he also teaches at a university. After doing them for several years, he is currently trying to move away from them because they take up a lot of time and can be very exhausting. Now, he wants to have more of a passive income by doing the same thing he does but in different ways that don’t require so much of his constant involvement.

Comparison of coding work to the current business

He says he is better off now than he was at his formal coding job, but he says that if he had stuck to that job, he would always have a steadier, more predictable salary. Now, with the memory-related work, he doesn’t always know where he‘s going to fall though things are always fine.

Tip: The beauty about being an entrepreneur and having that freedom is that when you are in a tough spot, there is always something you can do; you can work harder, you can work something out, and so much more.

App development

He has wanted to have an app for a while but he didn’t really pursue it until he decided to move away from speaking engagements. His ultimate goal has always been to spread what he has learned to as many people as possible and with his desire to do it in a passive way, developing an app, writing a book or creating an online course was the best way to achieve that. The decision to develop the app was influenced by different things and people.

An Australian memory enthusiast who was better at coding than Nelson helped him in developing the app’s back end while Nelson worked on the idea. They called it the Extreme Memory Tournament and they run 3 years of a competition using it as digital software that worked as memory training software that showed on-screen what was happening when two memory competitors were going head-to-head memorizing things. Before that, memory competitions were very boring to watch because they were analogue.

They later joined forces with the Art of Memory, an online forum where people could post questions about memory and learn memory techniques. They have been working together and so far they have done a successful Kickstarter campaign which has enabled them to start delivering the beta products of that.

The Kickstarter campaign

They had requested for $20,000 in the Kickstarter campaign and they got slightly more, which was enough to get the beta version of their software products out. The beta products are geared towards teaching the art of memory and they include tutorials for beginners, training software for practicing, online games to measure memory success against others, and many more memory-related training tools. Their app is subscription based and the funds they have been using have come from the competition software which many memory enthusiasts have used to practice and play.

Wikipedia page

Nelson says he never wanted a Wikipedia page but a mentor of his encouraged him to get one made. The mentor knew a company that could develop his Wikipedia page and she got them to do it. He says it’s been great because it comes up when people search his name.

Tip: Once you have a lot of information about you in form of sources and articles, anyone can write a Wikipedia page for you

Craziest thing he has ever memorized

Nelson says during World Alzheimer’s Day in 2016, he decided to memorize Pi (π in mathematics) which included memorizing 10,000 digits of pie with the world record being over 100,000 digits. The record Nelson was trying to break was someone quizzing him on 5 digit chunks somewhere within that 10,000, and he was to be asked 50 of them, and all he would have to do was say the next 5 digits and the previous 5 digits before each chunk. He was to do it 50 times with no mistakes and in a certain amount of time. He took a long time to study it but he didn’t make it to the end of the 10,000.

Biggest breakthrough in the business

“It’s been not being afraid to delegate some of my workflow to people who are good at the things that I need done. I used to think that I had to do everything myself so a lot of the times nothing would get done because it was something that I had to learn or figure out how to do.”

Tip: It’s better to pay a little money to get the people who are good at what they do, to do the little tasks that you need help with, so that you can stay efficient in what you are best at while also getting good quality in the things that you are not so good at.

Accessing the memory course

Nelson says anyone who wants to learn how to be better with their memory can go to www.artofmemory.com and sign up.

Tool and Resources

Prezi – presentation software which includes online presentation tools that uses motion, zoom, and spatial relationships to bring your ideas to life and make you a great presenter.

…………………….

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 – Marcus Luttrell
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid – Douglas R. Hofstadter

>>>

Legacy:
To be remembered for spreading the word about the brain and memory, and inspiring others to get in touch with our ancient minds to achieve the great things that our memories are capable of – Nelson.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.nelsondellis.com – Nelson’s Business website

>>>

Help out in the endeavour to find a cure for Alzheimer’s by taking The Extreme Memory Challenge, a short, easy memory test online. It’s poised to be one of the largest long-term memory studies ever conducted.

Just go to www.extremememorychallenge.com

****

Thanks for tuning in…see you next time!

Cheers,
Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

071: How to Sell 100+ Online Courses a Day as an Instructor on Udemy (w/ Mike Wheeler)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 09:53:05 -0400

Mike Wheeler is the founder of Mike Wheeler Media which provides Salesforce training, consulting and development services worldwide. Mike creates the course curriculum and provides training for users and those seeking to become certified on the Salesforce platform.

He is also a world-class online trainer and instructor with over 27,000 students, over 9 courses and over 7,600 reviews on the Udemy online training platform.

Period in full-time business

He has been doing his own business since 2001 before which he used to do technical writing, training and curriculum development. He also supplements what he does with the business with some consulting work.

Core revenue streams

One of his primary revenue streams are his online courses on the Udemy platform. He says he has had sales on the platform every single day since he started offering his courses there. He also makes money from Salesforce consulting and development engagements.

Starting out in the business

Mike had a long career in the corporate world doing technical writing for different software companies. That work led him more towards contract work, but he says he had a few stints as an employee. He would always go in at the end of a project to write manuals. That was back when the internet was still new. The contracts would typically be 6 to 9 month engagements with different companies. He would basically go where the work was.

Getting into Salesforce

Mike encountered Salesforce in 2008 when he was doing technical writing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to better rank his technical writing services on Google. He then started getting into WordPress for websites and building his own websites. While building a website for a client, he was asked for a web delete form on Salesforce and he did it but as he was offering the website development services, he realised that Salesforce was becoming more and more popular in the market, so he decided to train more on it.

One day, in 2011, while in a Barnes and Nobles book store, he came across a book on Salesforce development, read it and felt like he had what it took to go into the Salesforce platform professionally.

Salesforce

Mike says it’s a web-based or cloud-based platform that one can use and customize to fit any business or process. It can be used for marketing, sales and customer service. It can be used by any business, in any industry, and is customized through clicks instead of code, though a person can also use code if they want to.

Salesforce is best known for the fact that it can be customized to meet the marketing, sales and service needs of any business. For example, a business owner can use Salesforce to replace Legacy systems, spreadsheets and many other processes/systems. Mike says Salesforce was one of the pioneers of cloud computing and SaaS business.

Knowing the Salesforce business would work

After learning Salesforce, he needed to use it in practice, so while still working as a technical writer he got more involved with Salesforce related work which enabled him to build on his expertise.

Going into Salesforce training services

As he was learning Saleforce, getting certified and seeking his first job as a Salesforce developer, he started to develop an interest in sharing the value of Salesforce with anyone who was seeking it as an attainable path to a cloud-based career. For several years, he thought he would blog about Salesforce or develop his own online help system, but he realised that it would be a big time commitment and hard to monetize. He ended up developing Salesforce-based online courses and teaching on Udemy. He came across Udemy when a friend referred him to a sale Udemy was holding for their courses.

Mike really liked the Udemy business model which enables people to buy a course and keep it for life. He ended up buying more than 20 courses for everything he would be interested in learning. Naturally, he got interested in knowing whether there were any Salesforce-related courses on Udemy and discovered that there were none that were offering quality and value in terms of Salesforce Administrator Certification. With the help of his son, who is a talented videographer and film editor, he was able to put his courses together.

Doubling income

Mike worked for years as a technical writer and had hit the limit of what he could do there. He was going from contract to contract making $40 to $50 an hour, but that work started to go down, and he started learning Salesforce. He then got the relevant certification. The Salesforce development work he had been doing at his day job enabled him to get Saleforce-oriented work earning $80 an hour.

Salesforce certification

Mike spent 3 months getting his first Salesforce certification which included a study time of about 100 to 150 hours through consuming different learning content from Salesforce, reading books that he bought, and hands-on experience through his day job. He failed the first test and had to improve on his knowledge which enables him to pass the second time.

Training others on Salesforce

Mike says choosing to teach Salesforce to different professionals has been very effective because the type of students he deals with are motivated learners, and he gets great satisfaction from helping them achieve their career goals and earn higher income.

Starting out on Udemy

He began with recording his Sales Administrator Certification Course and it ended up being an 11 hour course taking him 3 months to create. He spent more time creating the course than it took him getting his certification. Due to his eagerness to release something, he decided to release the first section of the course as a free preview and just called it “Introduction to Salesforce Certifications and Careers”. That enabled him to get a first-hand preview of the kind of demand he would get for his course. By linking the free course to his website, interested students signed up to get updates on the full course. 6 weeks after that, Mike completed the course and had about 100 interested people signed up.

Building an email list from Udemy

Mike says it’s difficult to build an email list on Udemy because one has to direct students to their website since Udemy puts a lot of restrictions on instructors’ dealings with students outside the platform. Instructors cannot directly ask students for their email addresses.

Getting the first buying customers

The night he got an email that his course was live, the first thing he did was send emails to the email list he had built on Udemy and from his Salesforce work. There was a restriction on Udemy against sending mass emails so he ended up sending them from his gmail account. When he woke up the next morning, he had 8 sales, and by the end of the first 24 hours, he had 28 enrolments. Most of them were from his email list, and about one or two from organic sales. That got Udemy’s attention because Mike had gotten a genuine buying audience very fast, and they were very interested in knowing more about Mike and his plans on Udemy so they could support him in growing on the platform. Since then, he has had sales everyday since he launched on 30th March 2016.

The numbers

Mike offered his first course for $15 because Udemy was in the process of changing their pricing structure at that time and the prices on most courses were ranging between $10 and $15. Within 24 hours, he had made about $300 with his cut per sale being about $10. Mike calls it passive income because he has to do student support while updating the courses and creating new ones. His son, who is a developer, helps him answer student questions. Udemy provides ways of having teacher assistance that helps answer student questions. He says it’s because of his great responsiveness and engagement with students that he was able to get off the ground early. The questions he gets from students also enable him to improve and update his courses.

Current state of the business

He has had students buying more than 1 course and has about 1,000 new students every 10 days. There was a time he was averaging 10 sales a day and now he has about 100 a day.

Repeat customers

Mike has had several repeat customers especially when he releases new courses, but he does not have exact numbers because Udemy doesn’t have the necessary analytics built into their platform. A large percentage of his students come from prior courses that he has done and they always guide him on what they want to learn next which helps him create new courses.

Do-Over

He says if he could start out afresh, he would spend less time fighting the Udemy system and embrace it for what it is because right now it is his largest revenue stream. Despite trying out other platforms and building his own, Udemy still forms about 80% of his online teaching revenue.

If he got a do-over, he would not complicate things and just focus on what he does best for his audience. He would let Udemy play its role of marketing its platform and focus on creating his great quality courses. In terms of marketing, his students do a lot of word of mouth by sharing links to his courses with many people.

Course quality

Over time, Mike has changed the quality of his courses by better structuring them to include sections like quizzes and talking head videos. He previously used to record his videos during early mornings or late nights which brought him out as tired on the videos. 6% to 7% of his students asked him to have more energy on the video lectures so Mike started to exude more energy on his videos and also shortened the length of his lectures. His son has also helped him improve his production quality by getting better gear.

Biggest breakthrough moment

He has had several, which include the day he went live and got 28 sales. He also says trying new courses that he thought would be big but which ended up not matching up some of his certification courses was a learning curve for him. That taught him to stick to motivated learners.

The other breakthrough moment was when Udemy informed him that they were launching a new product for practice test courses and wanted him to create a practice test course. He had never done one before and felt very intimidated, but when he did it, it became very successful, and it is now his second best-selling course behind the full administrator certification course. Since then he has done a practice test course for another certification course that he has.

Now, whenever he is developing a certification course, he also writes sample test questions to test students’ knowledge on the course concepts.

A day in life when launching on Udemy Vs. a day in life now

The first thing he does each day, is look into how many sales he has, to check if things are on track. He then looks at the reviews, to make sure that there are no half star reviews. He used to say thank you to every review he got, but he now doesn’t, because he has over 7,500 reviews, which demonstrate that he has a strong engagement with his audience. After that, he answers any questions from his students and answers messages from different people. He is usually either restructuring a course or recording a course.

Tech Gear

He uses a Mac laptop, Camtasia for his screen recordings and a wide screen Dell monitor to capture his screen demos in high pixel so people can see it well. His son uses Adobe Premiere Pro, has a Mac computer and laptop, and a host of great cameras. They have all sorts of microphones and lights with a dedicated office space.

The worthwhileness of the business

He says the business has been very worthwhile because it has been much easier and profitable than the technical work he did before. Up and until his first course sale, he used to have doubts on whether the business would succeed because everything was speculative. Now, he is always enthusiastic about the future growth prospects of the business.

Tool and Resources

Camtasia – video editing software for creating tutorials and presentations directly via screencast, or via a direct recording plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. Development with the Force.com platform: Building Business Applications in the Cloud – Jason Ouellette

2. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers – Geoffrey A. Moore

Legacy: To positively impact a lot of lives and also leave behind a platform for his kids to stand tall, rise up and accomplish great things – Mike.

Best way to connect: www.mikewheelermedia.com – Mike’s Business website

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!

070: Converting Your Ideas and Giftings into Wealth and Your Wealth into Significance – Part 2 (w/ Davis Mutabwa)

Davis Mutabwa — Sat, 16 Sep 2017 19:37:42 -0400

I am excited to have you join me in this solo episode which is actually a workshop I hosted for a over 50 entrepreneurs. It’s a relaxed yet entertaining training environment where I walk you through a couple of key concepts that have helped shape my mindset towards business over the last 20 years.

Listen in and find out:

What your 2 missions in life should be?
The keys steps to move you from Idea Stage to Significance
Case studies on ideas and giftings that have been executed into global brands today
Plus much more

Listen in to get all the juicy details in this episode on converting your ideas and gifts into wealth and your wealth into significance!.

Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don’t miss an episode. Access all the links and resources mentioned in the episode at https://www.businessgenerals.com/goals2

Thanks for tuning in…see you next time!

Cheers,
Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

069: Converting Your Ideas and Giftings into Wealth and Your Wealth into Significance – Part 1 (w/ Davis Mutabwa)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 23:07:51 -0400

I am excited to have you join me in this solo episode which is actually a workshop I hosted for over 50 entrepreneurs. It’s a relaxed yet entertaining training environment where I walk you through a couple of key concepts that have helped shape my mindset towards business over the last 20 years.

Listen in and find out:

What your 2 missions in life should be?
The key steps to move you from Idea Stage to Significance
Case studies on ideas and giftings that have been executed into global brands today.
Plus much more.

Significance and legacy

Find a reason why you want to achieve what you want to achieve. That way, you will always stay motivated even in the midst of challenges

1.0 NUMBER ONE MISSION IN LIFE

Find out what you are passionate about and what excites you because it causes you to keep going when things get tough.

If you find yourself working in a job that you not excited about, it’s going to be a bit of a drag.

Write down what you are passionate about and then write down the answers

1.1 Areas of influence: Seven Mountains of Influence

These are the areas where your passion will most likely fall under, and they are:

Business: We all go looking for a job from business people. Therefore, they influence our lives.

Government and politics: Government makes the policies that influence our lives. For example, when they say, “Drive on the left,” we drive on the left. If one doesn’t drive on the left, they’re in trouble.

Arts and entertainment: This is where we find music, movies and other forms of entertainment where there are celebrities, for example, Hollywood. They influence the hairstyles we wear, the clothes we wear and much more.

Religion: All of us have grown up in church or some form of variation of that and that influences us immensely

Education: This where we learn most of what we know

Media: This includes popular media outlets like CNN, BBC and different TV channels. They influence how we understand what is happening in the world. What they show on TV is what we believe is happening. For example, if they show us that there’s an earthquake somewhere, we understand there’s an earthquake somewhere and if they show us ISIS is taking over the Middle East, we understand that that’s what is happening. We don’t actually go to the Middle East to work it out for ourselves. If they present Africa the way it has been presented, that is how the world understands Africa as being. Unless we have somebody in the media sphere from Africa who begins to change the perspective that people have, that doesn’t change.

Family: This constitutes how we are raised, how we grow up, the community that we live in.

Tip: Once you understand where your passion sits, then you can begin to take the next step.

1.2 Building a career or business

Once you have identified under which category your passion sits, make sure it always excites you in your day to day life and then look into your actual skills, strengths, and gifts to determine whether they match what you are passionate about. Your skills, strengths and gifts have to work hand in hand with your passion, to help you fulfil that passion.

For example, someone who is passionate about singing has to have a good voice and strong singing skills, or at least be in a position to learn good singing skills. You may also find another angle in the music industry that you can do other than singing, for example, producing music, and much more.

1.3 Ideas

As yourself what ideas you have and what ideas keep resurfacing in your mind.

Don’t keep sharing your ideas every time you get them, build on them for a while before you start sharing them, because you may share an idea with someone and end up aborting it. Sharing it might discourage you out of it completely.

Don’t wait for someone else to do your idea. It doesn’t matter if they’ve made a start because your idea is unique and so are you.

If an idea is in you, just do it

For example, if your idea has been to start a hair salon, the way some else will do their hair salon is different than the way you will do your hair salon. Just because someone else is doing it, it doesn’t mean you cannot do it. Because you are unique, you will attract your own clients and make money.

1.4 Investing in the idea

Once you have made the choice to go into your idea, you have to have faith in it. In business, that faith is called risk. Ask yourself how much money you need to start and how much you can invest in it. If you want to borrow that money, make sure you understand what you are investing in and the risks involved.

Tip: Entrepreneurship requires a lot of work. When you are starting out, you will invest a lot of time without pay

1.5 The risk factor

Tip: Starting a business requires risk. It’s not as safe as a getting or staying at a job but it’s certainly the most rewarding if you work hard at it.

1.6 Understanding your purpose

We all have a different purpose and you can achieve yours if you follow through the above formula. You will know your purpose by looking into whether you are passionate about what you do. If you drag yourself every morning to go to work, then you are not living your passion, you are being forced to do it.

If you are living your passion, you will always wake up looking forward to it. You will not even want to go to sleep because you want to keep doing it every single second.

Tip: Starting a business requires risk. It’s not as safe as a getting or staying at a job but it’s certainly the most rewarding if you work hard at it.

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!

#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

068: Goal Setting that Works – Solo Episode (w/ Davis Mutabwa)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 09:22:52 -0400

Setting goals enables us to move forward in life and business. Goals are like the oxygen to our biggest dreams. They are the crucial first steps in every journey we choose to take. Setting goals will enable you to:

Focus
Measure progress
Stay locked-in and undetered
Have accountability in finishing every task
Motivated at all times

In this episode, i’ll personally help you learn and implement goal setting into your personal and business life so you can build on your self-confidence and increase your productivity. Listen in to get all the juicy details in this episode on goal setting that works!.

Thanks for tuning in…see you next time!

Cheers,
Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

067: Pro Church Tools, From Bible Student to a Seven Figure Business Helping the Church Niche Attract and Retain their Target Audience (w/ Brady Shearer)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 01:08:05 -0400

Brady Shearer is the founder of Pro Church Tools and the host of a popular podcast on iTunes called Pro Church Tools. Pro Church Tools is an organization Brady founded to help small, medium and big churches go professional with their media, communications, and videos. The organization was built on his passion for church media and announcements, and has grown exponentially over time to become sizeable.

Listen in to get all the juicy details from Brady Shearer in this episode.

Remember to click subscribe on your podcast player so you don’t miss an episode. Access this show highlight reel for all the links and resources mentioned in the episode at www.businessgenerals.com/bradys

Type of business

His business is entirely online, they don’t do anything in-person. When he started the business it was entirely laptop-based (laptop lifestyle) for a long time. The business now has 8 full-time employees plus Brady, and has room for about 3 or 4 more people. It has at least 6 to 12 freelancers, contractors and remote employees.

Period in full-time business and core revenue streams

Brady says he has been 3 or 4 years in full-time business and their main product since the beginning is producing video announcements (Pro Video Announcements) for churches. They currently work with about 150 churches each week producing their video announcements. He says what drives the entire business is their brand “Pro Church Tools”.

Since the very beginning he has been releasing videos, articles and podcasts every week to teach people everything he knows. That has enabled them to build an audience called the “Pro Church Nation” which has in turn allowed them to experiment with new products including Nucleus (A boutique church website builder) and Story Tape (An unlimited stock footage site). They are a fully bootstrapped business. Pro Video Announcements has been funding everything.

Starting out in business

Brady started out as the media director in his church while also attending bible college. He didn’t have any video, social, web or design skills at the time but he had a knack for going into something he had never done before, and learning it very quickly. He did that with recording software and learnt everything he could. The more he learnt, the more he did for his church and his work was eventually noticed by other churches, that kept asking him to do freelance work for them.

The more he did the work, the more he started to focus mainly on doing church specific stuff and that’s when he decided to launch Pro Church Tools. The business brought together his interest in online business and the audience he was passionate about serving including churches, ministries, pastors and church leaders. He started www.prochurchtools.com and just began teaching everything that he had learnt about producing church-specific video announcements.

Knowing he could succeed with it

He was full-time in school and also worked 20 hours a week at his church so he didn’t really have time to work on the business. To make time, he started waking up very early every day to work on the business. From 5am to 8am, he would work on the business before going to school. To date, he does his best work in the early mornings.

He didn’t know the business would work but he had money saved up from his freelance work to put into starting Pro Church Tools. He then gave himself 4 months to work on the business but nothing happened in the first 3 months. He was starting to lose hope when in the following next 2 weeks he had 6 churches sign up. It turned out that churches go into hibernation especially with big purchase decisions throughout the summer and that’s why he was not getting any sign ups in the first 3 months. With the first clients, he was eventually able to replace the income that he was earning from church. That gave him the confidence to move forward.

Video announcements for churches

He says church services have 3 elements including the music time, preaching time and announcements time. Announcements time is the worst time and some announcements can take up to 20 minutes. Pro Church Tools takes those announcements and turns them into quick 2 to 3-minute videos that can be replayed every single week through social media or a church’s website. The video enables churches to reclaim 10 to 15 minutes in service time.

Making the video announcements involves Brady and his team hosting and presenting to the different churches’ members.

Doing the initial outreach to the target market

Brady did a lot of content marketing by producing videos, recording podcasts, writing articles and basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization). He had also built an email list from the very beginning. Every week he would email out new valuable content.

At the beginning, he was doing a lot of YouTube videos and articles on the website. He then started doing podcasting a year after that. He has never done paid advertising.

Current state of business

Within the first 2 years of running Pro Church Tools, Brady says he had developed a 6-figure income. From there he achieved 7-figures and now the business is at multiple 7-figures. His goal is to achieve 8 figures, run a $5 Million to $10 Million business and maintain a team of up to 10 to 12.

First clients

Brady says that to this day, 90% of their clients are living within the USA despite Pro Church Tools being a Canadian company. From the early days, it was a while before they had any churches outside of the USA sign up for their video announcements service.

Finding the sales funnel

He says they have a very simple and elaborate pricing table on their homepage for the pro video announcements. That enables interested churches to immediately sign up online and get their preferred service.

The service

Pro Church Tools offers pre-written announcement scripts for those who don’t know how to write their announcements but most churches submit their own scripts. Within the online form, the churches can choose between 5 different audio backgrounds, 9 different actual backgrounds where the host stands, the graphics, intros, and outros. It’s all highly customizable and systemized. Pro Church Tools receives each client’s order in template form which makes their work easier.

Fear of failure

The time Brady was starting out and not getting clients was one of the moments when he felt like he had failed. There have been other such moments but they all teach him very valuable lessons.

Nucleus

Nucleus is a website builder for churches and with it, Brady is trying to change the way churches approach building their websites. They launched the software in April 2017 and managed to have 1,000 chartered churches sign up in the first week after which they shut down enrolment to focus on those 1,000 paid beta members. They have been working with the churches for the last 5 months and plan to eventually open the product publicly within the next 1 to 2 years.

The beta churches have been very patient with them as they have been building up the product. The software is functional but not as robust as they would like it to be. The churches have been funding the project and in return they will get a 50% life time discount once the project is live. Brady expects to put in about $500,000 into the project before it goes public but he is fully convinced that it will be very helpful to many churches.

Biggest breakthrough with Pro Church Tools

Brady says it has been a slow compounding effect from not making any money to actually making money online. That was the biggest breakthrough for him.

Tip: Nothing is as big as having zero dollars and then having a dollar

Podcast’s contribution

He says the podcast enables them to go really deep with their audience. That is proven when people approach him, email or chat him online about how connected they are to the podcast.

Facebook

This is big because their audience is on Facebook more than any other social media platform and so it gives them the opportunity to reach more people than other platforms. They go a lot deeper on Instagram than other platforms but with Facebook they have the most reach because their audience is generally older. He doesn’t love Facebook as much as he does Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter but their audience is on Facebook more than any other platform, so they have to figure it out regardless.

Mentors

He says that he invests in mentors through podcasting. He consumes a lot of podcasts.

Tip: When you are in online business, there aren’t too many things on it already except for stuff that is online and that’s what makes niches. When you have access to the internet and you are able to reach the whole world, you can create a really small niche because you have enough market worldwide.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It – Michael E. Gerber

Thank You Economy – Gary Vaynerchuk

Crushed It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion – Gary Vaynerchuk

Legacy:
To ensure his family can always do what they want to do and have complete control over lives – Brady.

Best way to connect:
www.prochurchtools.com – Brady’s Business website

@bradyshearer – Brady’s Twitter and Instagram Handle
Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

066: Blogging and Podcasting for Business with Million Dollar Laptop Entrepreneur (w/ Yaro Starak)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 01:51:35 -0400

Yaro Starak is the founder of Entrepreneurs Journey. He is a globally recognized internet marketer and online business mentor and coach who started his online journey before being online was a thing.

In this episode, Yaro shares how he launched his blog for fellow entrepreneurs, especially for people who are interested in following the online business model that he has leveraged to make over a million dollars.

Yaro has developed a simple business model made up of the following three components:

Start a Blog

Grow An Email Newsletter

Sell Your Own Digital Products

Listen in to get all the juicy details from Yaro Starak in this episode.

Starting out in business

When Yaro joined the University of Queensland to study business management, he got his first access to the internet and he was fascinated by the ease of access to information. He started playing a card game called “Magic: The Gathering” and became a great fan of it so much so that he built his first website dedicated to the game.

The website was built using GeoCities (a free website building tool) and he built a strong following through articles written by himself and other card players. That turned into a real business because he created a card game store which did very well. He also put up banner ads on the site and used to make $500 to $1,000 during the best times. The business gave him great experience in basic internet marketing.

Later on, while still in university, he started an essay editing business mainly targeted towards international students with English as a second language. His family would help as editors on the site and later on he hired other editors as contractors.

It was Yaro’s first real “laptop lifestyle business” because it enabled him to travel while doing it. It was hands-off for him because he had contract essay editors and all he would need to do is the website marketing through SEO and putting up posters at university campuses. His job was sending emails between customers and the editors, then he would take a 50% profit margin for every job. Eventually when he got enough volume, he hired an administrative assistant to look after the email job. It was a great full-time business and he made enough money, so he didn’t need to get a job after graduating.

After graduating he focused on business and travelling to different global destinations. Eventually he sold the essay editing and card game business because he was no longer passionate about them.

Blogging

In 2004, Yaro learnt about blogging, so he started a blog and writing about business. Consequently, in January 2005, he registered www.entrepreneurs-journey.com purely as a hobby where he wrote 2 to 3 articles a week talking about running his card game and essay editing businesses. In the end, he sold off the card game and essay editing businesses to become a full-time blogger and information marketer.

Period in full time business

Yaro first made a full-time income in 2003 from his online essay editing business and has never looked back since.

Utilizing his business degree

Yaro says that he didn’t use it a lot since he never got formally employed but he says going to study business enabled him to access the internet which developed his interest in online based business.

Core revenue streams

Right now Yaro only sells his own digital teaching products including a flagship course, membership site, and a range of lower priced products like ebooks and the interviews club. All these digital products are created by Yaro, and all sold from his blog and email list. He has a bit of affiliate income and other investments. He also has a new start-up company in Ukraine.

The essay writing business

His idea for this business came from reading an article in the Yahoo Print Magazine about a young student who was making hundreds of thousands of dollars from an essay editing business. That was Yaro’s inspiration for starting the business. The idea was also inspired by challenges he faced in University when doing group assignments with students who had weak academic English skills.

Yaro’s advice on what to look for before launching a blog/ online business

Tip 1: Be lean, do an actual test, put something in front of people to see what works.

Tip 2: Hire a tech person/people unless you are very technical yourself.

Tip 3: Don’t take too long to get to the point where you actually ask people to buy from you

Tip 4: Focus on how to quickly get to the first sale

Starting out in blogging

Yaro knew it was possible to make money from blogging because there were 3 or 4 pioneers in blogging who were making good money from it. His core goal for blogging was to take his 7 years in entrepreneurship experience and turn it into content to help the world. Blogging was the best tool to generate links back then so it was easier for him to have his blog ranked well on Google which consequently produced enormous free traffic. Ever since, Google has been his number one source of free traffic.

In growing his audience Yaro focused on writing blog posts/articles and connecting with fellow bloggers. In 2005, he also experimented with a Podcast which he just viewed as an audio blog. His podcast is almost as old as his blog. The blog enabled him to learn and test traditional sales funnels and direct response marketing including building an email list, copy writing, making offers, and having products.

He went from 100 visitors per day in the first 6 months to 1,000 per day by the end of the first year. By the end of the second year he had 3,000 visitors per day. His email list had also grown tremendously which also increased his subscribers to his other products. All that was from organic content and organic marketing. That then led to the release of his product, a membership site. He has since been releasing new products.

Tip 1: If you are new in blogging today, you have to be a better marketer because there’s way more competition, and way better refined ideas. Be a specialist and make sure your content reflects that

Tip 2: Get out there and promote your best idea whether it’s writing, videos or podcasting. Get some press coverage, guest posts, and get yourself on podcasts or YouTube channels. You have to create your craft and also go out and market it to get attention

Overcoming the challenge of marketing

Yaro says he is still not as good a marketer as he is a creative. When he had the essay editing business, he used to put out lots of posters in major universities and then go home and build links to try and raise his business’ rankings on Google. He applied the same in his first 2 years of blogging.

Tip: You have to build your fame online with lots of great content and aggressive marketing. It’s a lot of hustle but you have to do it

The podcast

He says podcasting for him has always been more of an audio blog. A few years ago, he changed his podcast strategy and decided he will only be interviewing information marketers, ideally bloggers who sell digital products because that’s what he teaches. That way, his podcast has created a fantastic distribution, branding and social proof tool that leads to people buying his stuff. His podcast is about sharing stories to demonstrate what he teaches in his business actually works.

He gets up to 1,000 to 2,000 downloads per episode. But those downloads are made by people who are focused on the business model he teaches.

Tip 1: Don’t try to be the super star mega download podcast. What you need are those 1,000 listeners who are the target market for what you sell

Tip 2: If your plan is to try and get to 100,000 downloads an episode to then make money from advertising, that’s way harder than getting 500 to 1,000 downloads per episode and trying to get 2 to 3 clients or 2 to 3 course sales from each of those episodes which will bring in a full-time income

Tip 3: Don’t try and create the next Mashable or the next Mega Blog, just create a small niche blog, grow a small niche email list and all you need is 100 people paying $1,000 a year to you and you’ve got a $100,000 a year business. That’s way more realistic than trying to get 1 Million people to listen to each episode or visit your blog every month

View of business in terms of reach and numbers

He did an experiment by just maintaining his business without doing any new product launches or promotions. He decided he would only write one post and do one interview per month with his team looking after day to day customer service. His test was whether all the systems he set up to sell his products and services would keep selling them even without his usual input. It worked very well and he calls that automatic income. He gets at least 1,000 new email subscribers to his list per month from all the blog, podcast and social media traffic. All that translates into $20,000 to $30,000 in monthly revenue. One of his many students like Natalie MacNeal and Mitch Wilson, make millions every year from blogging.

He has a series of email campaigns that run automatically to either promote his products, cross promote different products and retain customers. When he was starting out, he made over $1 Million online based purely on product launches but he later shifted from focusing on launches.

Tip: That kind of business model can work provided you come to the table with some of kind of skill or value to offer to the world

Blogging and podcasting as a way of creating a full-time income stream

For people who want to learn how to blog or create a podcast to earn full-time income, Yaro has a free report called “The Blog Profits Blue Print” available at www.blogprofitsblueprint.com. It teaches the How-To steps to starting a blog and also mentions podcasting as another content distribution channel. He ultimately teaches content marketing to sell products and services.

……………….

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story – Arnold Schwarzenegger

>>>

Legacy:
To positively influence many people worldwide so they can be motivated to completely change their lives or businesses while also passing on the benefits to others so that the cycle of positive impact continues indefinitely for years to come – Yaro.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.entrepreneurs-journey.com – Yaro’s Blog and Podcast
www.ejinsider.com – Yaro’s Training Programs and Coaching

@yarostarak – Yaro’s Twitter Handle

Listen in to get all the juicy details from Yaro Starak in this episode.

Thanks for tuning in…see you next time!

Cheers,
Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

065: Udemy Instructor: Over $20k/month Selling Online Courses (w/ Phil Ebinar)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 01:48:08 -0400

Phil Ebinar is a video creator, educator and online business creator. He is a best-selling instructor on the online learning platform called Udemy with over 300,000 students in 211 countries. He has over 27,000 reviews and 76+ online courses. His passion is always to inspire and educate others through documentary and educational media.

He teaches all kinds of things from video production and photography to design and online marketing. He owns the Video School Online brand through which he teaches people the skills that he has. He also started the Online Course Masters podcast to train people how to teach their own online courses.

Phil graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Film and Television Production from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Over the past 5 years, he has shot and edited thousands of videos that have played everywhere from the movie screen and television to film festivals and YouTube.

…………

Business podcast recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Listen Money Matters: An uncensored personal finance podcast
The Mad Fientist: Financial independence podcast

>>>

Legacy:
To touch the lives of millions of people all over world by teaching them skills that will be a benefit to them – Phil.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.philebiner.com – Phil’s Business website
www.videoschoolonline.com – Phil’s Mentorship Program
www.onlinecoursemasters.com – Phil’s Podcast

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com/phile

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast
www.businessgenerals.com

064: From Intense Army Missions to Killing It on Fiverr (w/ Levi Newman)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 01:47:36 -0400

Levi Newman is a freelance international copywriter on fiverr.com focused on crafting engaging marketing and advertising content. His work has been featured by numerous media outlets including Huffington Post Live, U.S. News and World Report and Social Media Today.

He is passionate about copywriting, online marketing, and client-based relationships. Over the last 10 years, he has constructed an improved relationship between brands, achieved success through strategic and focused consulting, and has been an innovator when it comes to engaging people on multiple social media platforms.

He has helped to develop and execute successful, large-scale social media programs that helped curate a following of more than four million people. He has been responsible for brand building and brand awareness by means of cultivating relationships through marketing, public relations, website/blog content and advertising, and he has done so by creating marketing materials in a variety of mediums (print, web and video)

Switching from Army/Police to becoming a writer

Levi enjoyed writing since he was in high school. He joined the army so he could be able to go to college, left the army at age 28 then attended the University of Missouri where he graduated from at age 32.

Crazy army missions

Levi was among the first soldiers in Afghanistan after 9/11 and the first to take detainees to Guantanamo bay. Being the first soldiers in Afghanistan was very challenging for him and his fellow soldiers.

After the army

Immediately after leaving the army, Levi went straight to university. In his junior year, he got an internship at Veterans United, a fortune 500 real estate company. He used to manage their social media and was very successful at it, he took it from 30,000 likes to 1.4 million likes within a 3 year period. After 6 months working there, one of the writers quit and Levi was offered the job.

Later on he became a director and senior marketing writer for about 3 years during which he won industry awards for his great performance. Eventually he decided to leave the company and apply for a senior marketing/writing position at an international crafts company. He got the job and worked there for about one year before leaving to become a freelancer on Fiverr.

Joining Fiverr

Levi had just returned to Missouri from Utah, where he worked at the crafts company. He decided to do freelancing and looked into a few freelancing platforms including Fiverr. He had tried Upwork but didn’t like the bidding system and on Christmas day that year, he chose to start working on Fiverr.

Initially he didn’t take it very seriously but he got a few orders within 2 days. In the following 3 months, he was doing very well and had made good money. He figured if he could make $100 a day ($3,000) a month, it would be enough to sustain his family and lifestyle. He therefore started aggressively selling his services and after 6 months he decided to raise his prices to earn more as he got more and more work. Levi got so busy on Fiverr that he didn’t need to go into formal employment so he decided to go full-time into it

First gig

Levi’s first gig was offering a service writing 250 words about a person’s business. One of his first big orders was fixing a client’s 25 page business plan for $600. After that big order he decided to niche down and streamline his gigs so he could deliver the best service to his buyers.

Income growth on Fiverr

Levi says there is a big misconception that a person cannot make good money on Fiverr or that they will always be limited to $5 jobs. Some people limit themselves by downplaying their worth through providing their services for very low prices, which Levi says it’s a self worth mindset problem.

What is Fiverr?

Levi says it’s a universal platform for anybody that wants to make a little bit of money. He works relentlessly for months at a time without taking a single day off. He doesn’t care much about the money or success, he does it because he likes spending time with his family. Working on Fiverr enables him to give his family the best life.

Tip: If you willing to put in the work and go the extra mile, you can really be successful and become a full-time freelancer.

Laptop lifestyle Vs. Desktop Lifestyle

Levi mostly works on his laptop but also uses his desktop in his very well set up home office. He works on the desktop during the day since his kids are always at school and when he needs to get out, he works on his laptop. He also gets to work while travelling with his family.

Core revenue streams

Fiverr is his main income source. He also gets some work via LinkedIn. He just started a new and fun t-shirt business with his wife. The business’ website is www.sagemodeapparel.com

Reason for success on Fiverr

Levi signed up on Fiverr in October 2014 and didn’t do anything on it until December of that year. He says what contributed to his fast success on the platform was his availability and being able to talk to people when he was needed. He also made sure that he offered great value by making sure he delivered or over-delivered on exactly what his buyers needed.

Tip 1: You have to respond to messages fast, always make sure you are available

Tip 2: Offer value that will set you apart from the rest who are offering the same service that you are offering

Growth strategy in the beginning

Levi used to focus on each buyer individually and the business just took off via word of mouth. He has never used social media to market his gigs. He feels that social media is limiting in terms of actual human interaction and prefers to talk to people first hand as much as possible. Half of the work he gets, comes from word of mouth referrals.

Tip: If you have a strong social media base then you can use it to market your Fiverr gigs

Having an assistant

Levi doesn’t have one but wishes he did. Sometimes he has to work very hard to ensure he is consistently delivering the best to his buyers.

Scaling the business

He says people keep ordering regardless of what he is doing. For clients who return consistently, it’s easier to serve them. New clients are harder to serve because it takes time to understand some of their needs. For the buyers who order directly, Levi has to do the work but if he can’t do any of it he tells the buyer and they mutually cancel the order. If a buyer reaches out to him and he is too busy, he just honestly tells the buyer to look into other sellers. Sometimes he has to turn down up to 20 to 30 orders a day because he is so busy.

Partnering with a top seller on Fiverr

Levi recommends this for sellers who are seeking to get more orders. There is a Fiverr seller who approached Levi so he could give them the extra work that he couldn’t do when he was very busy. The seller experienced a 70% increase in their Fiverr income due to Levi’s support. He is always very selective with the sellers he chooses to work with.

Statistics

On average, Levi does about 250 orders per month. Some single orders are big in terms of entailing a lot of work and he of course charges much more for them. So far he has been averaging $16,000 a month in income. He turns away about $5,000 to $6,000 worth of orders every month because he is too busy. He feels that if he had another person working for him, he would generate more money.

Hiring people as a seller

Levi wishes Fiverr offered an opportunity where he could hire someone underneath him on Fiverr so that he could start a brand on Fiverr that would offer its services on a larger scale.

Biggest breakthrough moment

“It was the point when I hit $100 a day, it was very uplifting to know that I could do it.”

His jobs “gigs“ on Fiverr

His Amazon gig is the best draw card. The gig service is usually for Amazon products in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. He writes everything about a product from the title, bullet points and the description. He writes them in a Word document so the buyer can copy paste them into Amazon for themselves. His work enables the buyers to successfully sell their products on Amazon. Levi has done over 9,000 Amazon listings.

In his other gig, Levi offers generalized writing services including writing website content, blog posts, brochures, B2B and B2C emails, personalized letters, and voice over scripts.

A good Amazon listing

Levi says a great Amazon listing has to have keywords in the listing but says that the best way to sell a product is to talk to people about the benefits of the product in comparison to others using simple to understand sixth grade English.

A day in life when starting out on Fiverr Vs. a day in life now

When starting out, Levi used to wait in anxiety to get orders but today the orders just come in in large numbers. He used to work up to 18 hours a day but later re-evaluated his work process. Now he tries not to work past 10pm at the latest and spends more time with his family. When necessary, he works after his family goes to sleep.

Mentors

Levi doesn’t focus on direct one to one mentors because he feels that majority of them don’t help people out of goodwill. He lives his life by looking up to certain successful people and working towards becoming similarly successful.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

He prefers reading fiction books because he likes to get away from real life when is reading.

Legacy:
To be remembered for having taught his kids how to be passionate about what they do, to work hard, put in every effort into what they love and make that successful on their terms without necessarily focusing on money but rather on happiness – Levi.

Best way to connect:
https://www.fiverr.com/levinewman – Levi’s Fiverr Profile
https://www.linkedin.com/in/levinewman – Levi’s LinkedIn Profile

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!

063: Building an E-commerce Powerhouse with over $7 Million in Combined Annual Revenues (w/ Michael Jackness)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 01:00:42 -0400

Michael Jackness is the co-founder of colorit.com, creators of top-quality coloring books for adults. He is also the CEO of terrain.com which focuses on domain investing, ecommerce, SEO, PPC, and affiliate marketing. He is also the co-host of a popular podcast called Ecomcrew Podcast.

Michael has been involved in the online marketing world for over 10 years. Since running one of the largest poker affiliate networks in the world with over 60 employees, he now runs a network of ecommerce websites generating over $7 Million in revenue annually.

Period in full-time business

He started in business for himself when he was 18. He was graduating high school and he didn’t have much to look forward to because he wasn’t going to go to college due to his poor grades and lack of attention in school. So he got a box of business cards and a pager then started computer consulting because he was very good with computers. He would go into people’s homes and help them with their computer needs for $20 an hour. That was back in 1998

Core revenue streams

He says that over the last 4 years, they have been immensely focused on e-commerce. In 2017, their projected revenue is $7 Million and in 2018 he projects $15 Million in revenue. They have been growing at 200% to 300% per year and the only thing that slows their growth is lack of enough cash.

They currently have 4 brands. The first one was www.treadmill.com. He has been investing in domains for a long time and says they are like real estate. He ended up starting an e-commerce business with www.treadmill.com and then sold it at the beginning of 2015 after which he purchased another site called www.icewraps.com which offers hot/cold packs for different parts of the body.

From there, he developed www.colorit.com which offers a brand of colouring books geared towards adults. They also have www.tactical.com which offers information on gear, camping, hiking, hunting, DIY, food, and more. They have a new brand called “Wild Baby” which they recently launched exclusively on Amazon and are currently developing its website.

They also have the Ecom Crew which consists of a blog and podcast about e-commerce. His background before e-commerce was affiliate marketing and from his e-commerce experience he learnt that he would need to talk about e-commerce through developing different valuable content. They have been looking into monetizing the blog and podcast.

Tip: There are a lot of ups and downs in business, everything you start isn’t going to be successful but it’s all about identifying those that can become successful

Domain investing

Michael does speaking engagements on e-commerce and business in general. He says that domain investing comes down to being at the right place, at the right time, and knowing that domain names are illiquid assets and that they cannot be sold on a moment’s notice. He never really chooses to pick a particular domain name because he mostly gets opportunities to buy them from different people. He may sometimes resell the domain names or choose to develop them like he did with www.treadmill.com and www.tactical.com.

Tip: You have to be prepared for the fact there is only a couple of people in the world that can purchase these mid-6-figure or high-5-figure domain names

Affiliate marketing

He got into online poker affiliate marketing in 2004 and that’s where he made a lot of his money. That was during the growth of online poker and being an early adopter of that, he had affiliate sites that were not just about content because he did several unique affiliate marketing-based things. When he got out of that in early 2011, he started doing the keyword domain investing with his focus being on affiliate marketing.

Michael later realised that Google was shifting away from allowing such affiliate sites to rank because there were too many unscrupulous affiliate marketers who didn’t provide any value. He therefore decided to build a site that would provide a lot of value while also having a store, and that has been their strategy ever since.

ColorIt

He says Color It was created from an accumulation of being in e-commerce for several years and refining a business plan. Running www.treadmill.com taught him a lot of valuable lessons about e-commerce and the major one was that he did not like running a drop shipping business (Drop shipping is when you take an order, you don’t have the inventory and you are relying on someone else who does have the inventory to ship it for you).

Drop shipping presented so many challenges which pushed Michael and his partner to finally sell the treadmill.com site. They therefore started Color It based on a product that was light, easy to ship, that they could inventory themselves, that had no expiration date, that didn’t have any technology component, and much more. That’s how they also got www.icewraps.com.

They also decided to be developing their own products instead of selling other people’s products; to be selling products that had some type of consumerability so they could resell to the same customers over and over again; and to be selling products that people would be passionate about so they would automatically promote them by word of mouth. That is the case with ColorIt.

The ColorIt idea was created by Michael’s cousin who is his partner in the brand and she is the face of the brand.

The viability of ColorIt

Michael was confident that the idea would work because from his experience in e-commerce, he knew that they could launch a successful brand in that niche.

Getting the first clients for ColorIt

He says today it’s easier than it used to be to launch a product. One can just launch it on Amazon with relatively little inventory and then do PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising. That enables someone to test their product in the market without wasting money on advertising. The same applies for Facebook because once can target people who are looking for particular products.

Big advertising budget at the beginning

He says his philosophy has always been that his advertising budget is unlimited as long as he is getting a positive ROI (Return on Investment) on an ad campaign. That’s how they have run all their e-commerce businesses. Unlike in TV ads which are very expensive and have no guarantee of success, advertising on Facebook, Google PPC or Amazon PPC can be as affordable as $5 or $10 to launch an ad. They also enable someone to quickly know if their idea will succeed or not.

A $100 advertising budget hypothetical

Michael says that if it’s on Facebook, he tries to spend at least $10 for any one ad. If he had $100, he would try 5 or 10 different ads just to try to get the best imagery and the best audience to target. Through that he would know which ad works better.

Identifying his specific niche on Facebook

One the things they look for before launching an e-commerce brand, is a one-to-one exact match type of audience. Different brands have their audiences, so when creating Facebook ads for example, one can go into Facebook ads manager; and look at the different audiences and how big they are. For example, for baby-related brands, there is an audience of people who are expectant mothers. Knowing in advance that an audience exists assures Michael that there will be people looking for any particular product they want to offer and those people will also make spontaneous purchases. Some products are harder to target on Facebook because one cannot figure out which audiences would be more interested in the products.

Once a person has a couple of thousand customers, they can then create a look-alike audience which becomes even more powerful in expanding the audience.

Differentiation in the market

Michael says they re-invent products with really great packaging, great messaging; and original designs developed by their in-house artist.

Tip 1: To differentiate yourself in a competitive market, don’t make any other product; you have to make it better. This depends on the industry you are getting into for example, you cannot reinvent the shirt

Uniqueness of their products

He feels that he only needs to focus on what he is doing and not what everyone else is doing because he cannot have 100% of sales in any one industry. He tries to grow his business relative to what he does. He considers anyone who copies him as just another competitor. They focus more on building a brand and loyalty. ColorIt for example has a very strong loyal customer base on Facebook.

The Wild Baby idea

He says they bought the domain name www.wildbaby.com for $1,500. The idea fit all the criteria they consider before launching an e-commerce site so they went into it.

Manufacturing lessons

They typically find a manufacturer first before designing or prototyping a product. They go to the Canton Fair which is the largest trade show in the world and it’s every April, May, October, and November. There are always so many manufacturers there but the difficulty is always in finding those that care about quality.

Tip 1: Make sure you are going with a reputable manufacturer who makes high quality products. East Asian manufacturers don’t particularly care about quality the same way an American manufacturer does.

Tip 2: People don’t want low quality stuff

Tip 3: Do your best to expand your relationships with the reputable manufacturers.

……………

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Who Moved my Cheese – Spencer Johnson M.D.
Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick – Ken Iverson

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.ecomcrew.com – Michael’s Business Blog and Podcast
michael@ecomcrew.com – Michael’s Business Email

@mjackness – Michael’s Twitter Handle

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

062: Helping Businesses Build Award-winning Proposals (w/ Kyle Racki)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 04 Sep 2017 00:24:35 -0400

Kyle Racki is the founder and CEO of Proposify, a software-as-a-service company currently doing seven figures in annual recurring revenue. Proposify allows companies to make better proposals faster to win more business. When Kyle launched Proposify in 2013, he and his co-founders almost gave up in their first year but despite enormous challenges, they now have 2,500 paying customers. He dedicates most of his time to product design, management and customer support, and doing his best to make Proposify all that it can be.

He has been an entrepreneur for over 10 years and has lived with hustle, tenacity and resilience. He shares what he has learnt and what he continues to learn every day because he wants to help other entrepreneurs succeed. He does that through his blogs, videos, speaking and his upcoming book on building a SaaS business.

Period in full-time business

At age 24, he became a freelancer and a while later started a small web design agency with a guy he had met in the agency world. They ran the business for 5 years before starting Proposify which has been in operations for the last 3 years. They sold the agency in 2014 and also raised a seed round of funding for Proposify.

The Journey

He never thought he would be an entrepreneur and was in fact terrified of it.

Core revenue streams

Proposify is a software-as-a-service business. People sign up for a free trial of their proposal software and later they can opt for different pricing plans based on how many proposals one writes. Each pricing plan also has a range of features. So far they have 5,000 paid accounts and retention is very good.

Starting out in business

Kyle says everything he has done so far in business was not planned. He was freelancing in 2008, doing web design and development, but he got lonely and decided to get a business partner. Together they started their agency.

Getting the first set of clients for the agency

His business partner already had a few clients but they struggled a lot in trying to get clients. They did well in the first year, maintained low overheads and they got several good projects. They also struggled with their growth after the first year because they couldn’t effectively manage the volatility of the business.

Core agency products

Kyle says that social media and digital marketing were there but very new. They used to do a lot of web design, UX work and online marketing. One of the problems they noted with the agency is that they didn’t have a speciality. They never focused on a niche so they were stuck competing with local companies for smaller contracts.

Tip: When starting a service business especially a creative one, you need to specialise in one thing.

Starting Proposify

When he was employed and freelancing, he used to write proposals and as he was freelancing he came up with the idea for a SaaS product for proposal management. He didn’t have any coding skills but created its wireframe and shelved it for several years.

In the process of running their agency, they started getting tired of chasing clients for payments among other issues. They really desired to transition into a SaaS business and tried out different SaaS products which didn’t work. That’s when they started discussing the proposal SaaS idea and they decided to go into it.

Developing a SaaS product

Kyle was not skilled in building a SaaS product but he knew how to create the interface. As they were developing different SaaS products, they built a team of developers internally. They got a grant to hire a developer who worked on the Proposify idea for one year. The developer is now the CTO.

They got the grant from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) after they pitched their early stage prototype at an event. They also got an investment from another government-related organization which put in $250,000.

Tip: To get funding, go to start-up events where they let you pitch or demo your idea. It’s better than looking up investors in a directory and trying to contact them

Bringing back the Proposify idea

Kyle and his partner had tried out many ideas to see what would stick. They tried a do-it-yourself website builder like Wix or Square Space, they had a few customers but it didn’t work very well. They also tried a social media analysis tool that they put out, got a few customers, but it too didn’t work.

Proposify was one of the ideas they decided to try out. The reason they stuck with it was because when they did the demo of the early stage mock up, they got very good feedback from potential customers. Kyle discovered that proposals were a big pain point for so many people.

Tip: If you are trying to find out if your business idea is viable, focus on the pain

Time allocated to each idea

It was an easy choice for them to let go of the projects they tried out because each of them would fizzle out after being launched. When they got Proposify out as an MVP (Minimal Viable Product), they didn’t hit the product market fit (when people actually start to really love it and pay for it) for about 17 months. It was 17 months of putting out new releases, listening to people saying how they use it, fixing it, and building new features.

Tip 1: Until you get a product into somebody’s hands, you haven’t began. Until you get somebody using it, you haven’t started

Tip 2: Get the product out in as little time as possible so you can begin to learn and build on it gradually

The Pitch

When Kyle presented the demo of Proposify, it was just an initial go of the product, and it was very early stage. He says the first product was ugly but it was just their first kick at the idea. Because they hadn’t launched it when he presented it, they had time to add critical features that met users’ needs.

Proposify core features

Kyle says their value proposition has been well refined and they know their audience. A lot of the customers they get are people who are searching on Google for web design proposal templates, and other templates. Once people sign up on Proposify, they are immediately launched into the product to start editing the proposal templates.

Proposify has templates of all the different proposals that people write and that is the hook that gets people on board. Overtime, people save time writing proposals because they can put their content in a content library. That is one way Proposify is offering great value to its users.

Evolving away to other target clients

Kyle says that they will always have a lot of customers from the web design/marketing agency space because that is the space that they know and so, the content they write is naturally agency-oriented. Their desire is to keep their core customer base of agencies, but they also want to expand their proposal templates into other industries.

Getting the first clients

Kyle can’t exactly recall their first client but he remembers a moment when they were surprised to see that a free user upgraded to a paying account without even being sold on the idea by the Proposify team. After a month or so, the client left, but it was exciting for Kyle and his team to get that first paying client. Before the product was launched, they built a landing page with a sign up form, started doing guest blogs, started writing a blog about proposals and pitching/how to win proposals, and much more. They also did a lot of marketing.

Tip 1: Doing a lot of marketing before launching a product is super important

Tip 2: It’s going to be a long haul in terms of getting regular traffic to the site. At the beginning you can put a landing page; send a little Adwords or Facebook traffic to it; and start doing a little bit of guest blogging or being a guest on podcasts. Start by getting traffic to the site and once you have people signing up to the product and using it, it’s just a matter of how great the product and on-boarding is; and can you actually convince someone to take out their credit card and upgrade to a paid account

Core growth strategy after launch

Kyle says he has been a big believer in inbound marketing and content marketing. He thinks it’s a good long term strategy and good for both traffic and brand building.

Tip 1: If a customer finds your blog and signs up to get new posts every week, you start to build an audience and relationship with that person. The customer begins to be loyal to your product because they feel an attachment to your company.

Tip 2: As you get bigger and start to scale, you need to start looking into paid acquisition and build a sales team.

Tip 3: In the first years, you can build a great business without spending a cent on sales people or ads, and just work at being great at producing content, networking and getting your content on other people’s networks

Content production

He says at the beginning it was blogging including guest posts. He also did some trolling to get people who were looking for proposal software and he got some of them by checking out a competitor’s site for client reviews and then dropping comments on each of those clients’ sites with the link to Proposify included in there. That got a handful of people clicking the link and finding out about Proposify.

The podcast

The biggest reason for launching the podcast was because he knew their core audience was agency owners. It had been a year since he had run an agency and he was starting to run out of ideas. He felt like his experience as an agency owner was limited and so to create good content on the agency business, he needed to get that knowledge and wisdom from well experienced agency owners. That was the motivation behind starting the podcast

He says the podcast has been good in bringing in organic leads. 90% of Proposify customers come through organic channels through the podcast, blog, referrals and direct traffic. Paid leads make up a very small percentage of their customers. All that is because they kept investing a lot in content from their earlier days. They get 6,000 new trials every month.

Tip: In every content marketing activity, you have to go all in and you have to treat it like it’s a company/product in itself. It has an audience, it has a target customer, you acquire customers by getting them to subscribe, and you retain customers by having them not unsubscribe from you. You have to deliver a product that meets their needs.

The funnel set up

Kyle says that getting the 6,000 new trials every month is a result of having a marketing site that effectively communicates the value proposition of their product and having a blog that produces good articles that are keyword targeted for good searches. For example, one of their most highly trafficked blog posts is the one called “How to write an executive summary”. Search is a big part of their inbound strategy.

Tip: There are a lot of great resources out there to find how to optimize for search. A lot of it comes down to content and that you are creating content that people want and are searching for

Business size

Proposify now has a 23 member team which includes the 2 founders. It consists of developers, sales people, marketers and customer support. In the next year, he projects that number growing especially in the sales team. In early 2017, they passed $3 Million in annual recurring revenue and they are trying to grow that to $5 Million by the end of 2017.

Comparison: Proposify Vs. The Agency

Kyle says that in the agency business they never achieved $1 Million in revenue, they had gone as far as $800,000 and the growth projections in the new business are more solid.

Biggest breakthrough moment with Proposify

“There are a lot of little moments that all add up to a big thing but the most notable milestone was hitting product market fit because we had been trying for a very long time to hit the product market fit”

Free plans

They don’t have a free plan on Proposify, they only have a free trial but they had experimented with a freemium plan (free forever plan) but it didn’t work out so well. They had 14 day free trials for a long time then they switched them to 30 day trials, but after a year, their data showed that their conversion rate was double with 14 day free trials so they went back to 14 day free trials.

Tip: Never stop testing and never stop experimenting

……………..

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaire, Icons, and World-Class Performers – Timothy Ferriss
Things a Little Bird Told Me: Creative Secrets from the Co-Founder of Twitter – Biz Stone
Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson (Had the biggest impact on Kyle as an entrepreneur, helped him get to where he is)
Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster – Alistair Croll (Recommends it for startups)

>>>

Legacy:
To be remembered as a good person who was good to his kids, employees, and other people; and who built a world-class business – Kyle.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.kyleracki.com – Kyle’s Personal Website
www.proposify.com – Kyle’s Business Website

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

061: The Techpreneurial Genius Behind WooThemes (w/Adii Pienaar)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 03 Sep 2017 02:36:00 -0400

Adii Pienaar is a serial entrepreneur best known for founding the successful and multi-million dollar company WooThemes in 2008 which he also built from his home country South Africa. Since WooThemes, Adii has started a few new businesses, most recently Conversio (previously Receiptful), a SaaS business for all-in-one ecommerce marketing including features like email receipts, cart abandonment, follow ups, recommendations, product reviews, search, and feedback.

Starting out

When Adii started out in business, he just wanted to be an entrepreneur and work for himself. He got into Wordpress out of necessity because he needed money for school. So he started doing some consulting for clients and he got to a point where he was building free Wordpress themes as a way to gain traction and find customers. That’s how he started WooThemes.

That was before the ecosystem around Wordpress products even existed and there were only 2 to 3 other entrepreneurs who were selling premium Wordpress themes. Back then, one could only offer free opensource stuff or consulting services. Today, there is a vibrant community of different kinds of products, services and business models around Wordpress. Adii never thought Wordpress would become so big and that WooThemes would grow sustainably as far as it has.

On 2nd November 2007, he launched the first theme, The Original Premium News Theme, that eventually became WooThemes. The theme sold widely. He had started working on themes a year before that and he used to sell them through his blog.

Themes

Adii says that Wordpress has become a tougher place to build and sustain a business.

Tip: If there is a way to productize and some way extend some kind of service that you are doing, especially cost efficiently, then you will always have a market

Core revenue streams

He says with Conversio, they apply a Saas (Software as a Service) business model. That’s unlike what he did with Woo Commerce/Woo Themes which only offered one-off downloadable content.

Conversio

In 2013, he was hoping to try his hand at building a new business. So, he stepped out of the Woo Themes operations and took a non-executive position. He then started working on a new product, Public Data, which was an online developments and learning community for entrepreneurs. While working on that, he was also negotiating his exit from WooThemes which concluded at the end of 2013.

He eventually shut down Public Data as a product. In early 2014, he came across a blog post about Email Receipts and when he read it, he became very interested in the idea. The first version of the idea before it became Conversio was called Receiptful, and it allowed people to include some form of marketing in their email receipts, this became very successful. From there, they slowly evolved into building complimentary tools including email marketing tools (now includes email newsletters and widgets).

Adii believes that anyone who read the blog post that inspired him could have just as easily started the same business he did. He says that what helped him was the fact that he had more understanding and experience in terms of building solutions specifically for people who were building ecommerce stores.

Building up on the idea

The first thing he did was Google to find out who else was doing something similar. His idea was slightly different from the existing ones. Addi identified Stripe (a payment platform) which was going through a massive growth phase as a potential business partner. People could build apps on top of the Stripe gateway exclusively and get a lot of success.

Adii outsourced the development of Receiptful’s first version which was an app that would work with Stripe. It was geared towards other SaaS companies instead of ecommerce ones. He didn’t want to target ecommerce customers because he wanted to initially build Receiptful as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as it would be easier. Once it was built, he had a few users test it and what he learnt is that people were engaging with the receipts and their main upsell was the annual billing.

Adii realised that there was no conversion through that but the engagement on the receipt was significant enough for him to move forward with the full development of the Receiptful software and focusing on ecommerce clients. He hired a full time team of 2 at that stage who are still with Conversio to date.

Getting the first set of clients

His initial idea was for Receiptful to be a paid product and that’s how they launched but within the first week he realised that that wouldn’t work in getting them the necessary user feedback so he changed it to a free model and that remains to date. They needed a lot of feedback so they could determine what kind of marketing to input in their receipts. The first month they sent 250 receipts and the second 1,000 receipts. Today, they send over 4 million receipts a month.

In June 2015, they released the first non-receipt product which was a recommendation widget (that says other customers who bought the item you have bought also bought this or a similar worded buying recommendation) and they started charging for that. By then, they were sending 250,000+ receipts per month and had 10,000+ free customers using the receipts. From there they were able to release more paid tools.

Best tools

The receipts are still the ones that make them stand out among a vast majority of customers. Since the consolidation of all their tools into a single dashboard and rebranding to Conversio, they have seen the adoption of the idea of having an all-in-one marketing dashboard. That has proven to be so convenient and cost effective for users that they eliminate all the other tools they use and move to Conversio. There has also been a massive benefit to users in the way that they get to have all their customer and marketing data in a single dashboard without having to use other apps to connect things into another central location.

Current receipts function

Adii says they do upsells but they also send post-purchase follow up emails. Once a customer purchases a product and gets the receipt in their email, they always open the receipts to verify that they were charged the right price.

Growth strategy at the beginning

Adii says they try loads of things and hope something works out. They have continuously focused a lot on word of mouth and it has worked very well because they have maintained a great reputation through their easy to use, convenient and cost effective products.

Their customer service has also played a major role in ensuring growth. They do paid ads minimally and do content marketing through their own channels. They also try to incentivise referrals. The Shopify app store is their number one user/customer acquisition channel.

Tip: Marketing is always the hardest thing. You have to do marketing in a way that you know exactly what is working and to what extent it’s working

Shopify App Store

Adii says that one of the ways Shopify ranks things is through a combination of 3 things which include looking at period usage (installs and uninstalls of an app) and considering the ratings and reviews of the app.

Size of business (statistics)

Conversio has a team of 14 full-time people including Adii and they use freelancers when there is a need. In the last few months they passed $2 Million in annual revenue run rate. Their user base is mostly North American (60%) followed by Europe (33%+), and the rest is scattered all over.

Outside capital

Adii says that in mid-2015, they raised a small angel investor seed funding of $500,000 which was a great experience for him. It reduced his personal anxiety over the business’ success. They were able use that funding alongside their revenue growth to get to where they are today, which is to grow within their own means.

Cape town, South Africa base

He loves living in Cape Town and he calls it home. He is very grateful that he gets to build his entrepreneurial career without leaving Cape Town. Being located there was initially challenging because Cape Town didn’t have a vibrant tech startup community, so Adii felt disconnected and had to build relationships with friends internationally. He even had to sometimes fly to the US to meet people in person. Time zones and logistics have been a con to being based in Cape Town because most of their clients are based in the US. That forced him to work evenings and have very unbalanced, unhealthy lifestyle.

He now enjoys working in the early mornings and sometimes he works in the evenings if it’s required. He usually leaves work at 5pm.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi

Legacy:
To leave something valuable behind for his kids – Adii.

Best way to connect:
ww.adii.me – Adii’s Blog
adii@conversio.com – Adii’s Email

@adii – Adii’s Twitter Handle

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

060: Building an Online Business from the Beaches of the World (w/ Michelle Dale)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 01:48:01 -0400

Michelle Dale is the founder of Virtual Miss Friday, an online business consultancy and academy with built-in virtual assistant services. She is also the creator of Insourcing, a service that helps 6 to 7 figure entrepreneurs to organize, monetize and cultivate their online businesses. Through the academy, she offers a range of training programmes and courses for virtual assistants and digital nomads.

Michelle built her business while travelling through 6 countries and has expanded Virtual Miss Friday into multi-6 figure, multi-VA team supporting a global client base.

Travelling the world

Michelle has been on the road travelling globally since 2005. In 2005, Facebook and social media were not invented and there were very few people offering services online. She left the UK to travel the world and she thought to herself that there must be something she could do online to earn a living in such a way that she could keep travelling. Eventually, she discovered that she could provide VA services online which is what she did.

Current base

She is currently based in Greece, on the island of Crete, where she spends most of her time during the summer months after which she travels in the winter. She goes back to England on Christmas and then takes her kids off so they can travel for a few months after which they return during the summer.

Corporate role

She was in banking for a long time. She left school at 16, so she did any work she could do to make ends meet. At age 17, she landed a job in a bank and by the time she was leaving the UK at age 23, she was working as a para-planner and office manager in a mortgage and financial administration firm.

Core revenue streams

She makes money from services she provides to clients including consulting services, VA services, and online-oriented training courses. She also sells products, training programs and does a lot of coaching. She is currently trying to focus more on her programs and courses. She has a membership site as well, which generates income for her through membership fees. This is her primary income source.

Starting out in business

When she started out, her house in the UK was broken into and the thieves took everything except her passport. Michelle took that as a sign and so she decided to start travelling. She immediately quit her job, sold her house, booked a one way ticket and left. She then did some research online, came across virtual systems and started the business. She also contacted her friends to get people and resources that would enable her to test the services before she started getting paying clients.

She then started taking paying clients for services like customer support, administrative support, and personal assistance. From there, she later branched out into website design, and when social media was created, she started offering social media marketing. Michelle didn’t have any skills in website design but she self-taught herself HTML code and Dreamweaver so she could build her own site and it worked out so well that people started asking her to do websites for them.

Identifying what to do

She had a criterion of things that she absolutely had to have fit into her business and one was that it had to be a business she could do on the internet so she could work while travelling. She also wanted a business that wouldn’t require her to commit to specific times. The criteria included many other things which she wanted in a business. She then researched online about working online and she came across many different online businesses including ecommerce. She had tried selling things on eBay but she wanted to use her skills in what she was doing, and enjoy it. That’s how she settled on administrative and customer support, and personal assistance services.

Knowing it would work

She didn’t know for sure but she had no other option but to make it work because it was all she had.

Tip: You have to have enough pain or passion to achieve what you desire because with that you can make it work. Enough pain means that the consequences of not making it work are very bad while the passion is enough promise of a better life, more income, and getting what you want in life.

Getting the first set of paying clients

She was living in Egypt at the time and started picking some odd jobs she came across. She even did some work for people in Egypt as well but she eventually decided to get serious about the business especially when she got pregnant a month after meeting her husband.

She says that back then, it was difficult to do the online business because there were not social media networks. She used to advertise on a networking site and business directories online like Yellow Pages. That’s how enquiries from potential clients started coming in. She secured her first client through an initial consultation.

Virtual assistant courses

She teaches something more evolved in the virtual assistance space. She teaches “One-sourcing” which is about a person having somebody not just process tasks for them but also partner with them to help them progress with their business through operations management. She has a range of courses that teach people the basics of virtual assistance including how to set up online, how to identify one’s skills, how to get started, how to grow the business, and how to get the first clients. Then that evolves into one sourcing which is more about consulting, strategy and operations management where they take care of the full administrative, marketing, and creative areas of a business online. That service really helps people with their businesses especially when starting out. It helps them keep their costs down and focus on what they know how to do best. She teaches clients how to work with one-sourcers and also teaches one-sourcers how to get and retain clients.

Teaching One Sourcing and offering it as a service

She has several one sourcing clients who are made up of online entrepreneurs who sell diverse products and services. Michelle takes over the entire back end operations of the businesses so the clients can concentrate solely on what they do best in the business. She compares it to having a CEO who runs and manages everything and every employee in a business. The virtual assistance team that works for a particular business is hired by the one-sourcer, not the client; and that enables the monitoring of efficiency, productivity, time and other operational aspects. The one-sourcer is also the one that pays the team.

Advice for those starting out

Before training someone to be a successful virtual assistant, Michelle starts by helping them figure out what they want out of the business, how they want to spend their days, what they can do for free, what they enjoy most. Then she helps them figure out the logistics of how to make that happen online.

In terms of her one sourcing operation, she has 9 key roles in it including content creation, marketing assistance, social media marketing assistance, customer support and many others.

Tip: The ones who love what they specialise in, are the ones who succeed at it

Marketing strategy

She primarily uses webinars to market her business. She does a breakthrough plan with all her clients and they focus on operations (the systems, what customer support desk they will use, where to build the website, and much more) and the income strategy (based around a webinar style format where Michelle delivers a lot of value, involves a membership site, involves a lot of amazing content, involves high ticket products/programs/coaching services, and using a webinar to build the audience).

The strategy involves a consistent stream of needs coming into a free or low cost membership site using Facebook ads, podcast interviews, and others. It then upsells every month into a monthly webinar where Michelle delivers real high value content based on what she or the client knows. She uses the same strategy for herself and her clients. She delivers high value content on a webinar on different topics and then sells her products and services at the end of the webinar. It works very well and has even enabled Michelle to get clients to do 6 figure launches just from webinars.

Tip 1: The internet changes constantly. What might work today doesn’t work tomorrow

Tip 2: Always keep your finger on the pulse of what’s happening online all the time

Value of webinars

She says webinars work today because they deliver a lot of value. They give people instant gratification more than anything else like videos.

Tip: People are more likely to attend a webinar through a 7-minute video with high impact content than they are a 3-part video series. Always make sure that when you are on the webinar, that you keep what you are teaching short, concise, actionable, and high impact so that people can take away immediately something they can go and act on. That builds the foundation to sell anything else because you’ve gotten them hooked

Getting leads from Facebook, podcast interviews and others

She pays for Facebook ads and says that there are many other things one can do, like going onto podcasts. Michelle also builds communities for clients through Facebook Groups and it has been working very well. They start a free Facebook group for the client where anyone and everyone can join, then they put valuable content in there, and invite people to webinars. The groups have more of a community feel than a promotional one.

Tip: You don’t always get massive results, you don’t always do your first launch and get 6-figures; but if you do it on a consistent basis, you will attract organic traffic

Facebook Groups

Most of her clients have digital products, programs or coaching packages. Therefore, Michelle builds public Facebook groups where any interested persons can join and then builds private Facebook groups where only buyers or paying customers can join. Michelle often finds that when they are feeding content into the free groups, there is often a spill over of existing customers who talk about the Facebook groups which brings about a situation where customers sell to other customers.

Strategies that are working are live streams inside groups and the “3-word formula”. The 3-word formula is where everyone who joins a particular Facebook group describes themselves in 3 words and that works very well in engaging the audience. Whenever anyone is subscribing for anything, they are also directed to join the Facebook groups.

Tip: Share your Facebook group anywhere and everywhere

The numbers

She says that her business generates between $30,000 and $50,000 per month from everything she does.

Inspiration for VAs, especially those in third world countries

Tip 1: The internet is completely borderless, once you start working in this environment it’s like you step off the planet into another world

Tip 2: There is a place for everybody in this industry

Tip 3: The internet is a global community. There are an abundance of clients out there who are prepared to pay any rate that you want to charge.

Tip 4: Focus on being the best so you can serve your clients and help yourself

Tip 5: Charge what you’re worth and always over-deliver

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The Science of Getting Rich: How to make money and get the life you want – Wallace D Wattles

The 48 Laws of Power – Robert Green

Legacy:
To change the outsourcing industry into something much better through the methodology and business model of one-sourcing and taking all the best pieces of the industry and bringing them together into a super outsourcing model that will help clients and VA’s to live their best lives, make money, and become abundant – Michelle.

Best way to connect:
www.virtualmissfriday.com – Michelle’s Business website (Use the contact form or check out the social media platforms at the bottom of the site page)

059: Number 1 Voice Over Artist on Fiverr – Becoming a Successful Full-time Online Freelancer (w/ Redd Horrocks)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:48:28 -0400

Redd Horrocks is a professional voice over artist specializing in British and American accents with a wide range of experience across multiple forms of media including radio to commercial, phone systems, video games, podcasts, and company demo videos. She is an expert when it comes to growing an audience on sites like Fiverr.

She has been featured on Forbes Magazine and Business Insider as one of the top earners globally on the Fiverr website. She works out of a professional recording studio and also offers her voice over services through her company, Red Swift Media. She is also the founder of Instant Voicemails, an instant download voicemail resource. Redd has been helping people to maximize their earnings on Fiverr.

Starting out as a professional voice over artist on Fiverr

Redd says the Fiverr platform is a fantastic marketplace where people can buy and sell digital services with the name “Fiverr” coming from the fact that the base price on the platform is $5. The platform is suitable for professionals like logo designers, voice over artists, SEO experts and others who can provide their services digitally. She says it’s a great way to gain business and clients.

One thing Redd likes about Fiverr is that it’s got a built-in system where people are funnelled to look at a seller’s offering and people from all over the world can find the seller without him/her doing any external marketing. The seller just finds orders in their account, works on them and delivers.

Redd’s voice over services were initially a side gig but Fiverr enabled her to turn them into a full-time career.

Starting out in the voice over services space

Redd started doing voice over while back in college when a friend of hers asked her to record a voice for his video game. She really enjoyed doing the voice and it got her interested in doing it more. Over the following years, she would do it as a favour for different people and at some point when she needed to clear her credit card debt, a friend of hers introduced her into voice over work for an audio book company. She did several books for them, and it’s around that time that she came across Fiverr.

Redd has a knack for cold reading scripts and switching her accent completely from British to American. The two things have enabled her to offer diverse voice over services on Fiverr for different individuals and businesses. She used to offer her voice over services on Fiverr while also working during the evenings which ended up becoming too tiresome for her so she eventually gave her employer 4 months’ notice after which she left to work full-time on Fiverr.

Entrepreneurial passion

Redd has always been entrepreneurial and built several businesses including a bath and beauty company that she built up and sold. She was a co-founder on a big UX blog which she helped build and later sold her share. She also used to make pies and jam for sale. Business has always been a great passion for her and she likes to build and grow things.

Her drive

Redd says she is the bread winner for her family and they are the ones who motivate her to keep doing what she does every day. The voice over business enables her to work from home, spend time with her family, support them and help her husband achieve his dream.

Redd likes the fact that with freelancing she can grow as much as she wants which is unlike when someone has a corporate job.

Tip: Freelancing has its cons because for example one does not get paid time off or sick days, but it’s totally worth it

Projecting Fiverr’s value

She had no idea Fiverr would be such a great benefit for her. She is a very methodical tracker of analytics with her work so she has details on everything she has done on Fiverr and how much money she has made over time. The reason she was willing to go full time into it is because after a year of working on the platform, she had seen exponential growth month after month.

To move into doing it full-time, she had to have a discussion with her husband on whether they could maintain their lifestyle if she decided to work on Fiverr full-time and leave her job. They started by banking her pay check every month and acting like she only had the Fiverr work to depend on. When they realised that they could live on the income Redd was making from Fiverr, she took the plunge and left her regular job. Initially, she used to have nightmares about not wanting to lose her job.

Orders so far

So far Redd has executed 33,000 orders on Fiverr and close to 60,000 outside Fiverr. She does 200 to 300 projects per week and has achieved that by building in systems that make her more efficient, like having an assistant and other work processes that she set up.

The Fiverr funnel

People start by going to her gig page, they select her voice over gig, enter in their word count ($5 per 100 words), choose any extras they want to add, and after that they make their order. They then send Redd the script and any other relevant details, she records it then uploads it. After that they approve the work, then she gets paid. Fiverr handles all the payments which makes it easier, safer and convenient for Redd to operate her business.

Her work processes

Redd starts by opening an order to check that all the required details are in there. She then records it and saves the file. Her assistant then uses a specific program that enables her to pull order information into another system through which Redd can access all the pending orders, do them and deliver them. The combination of her assistant’s support and the program enable her to finish each order much faster.

She gets a lot of messages every day and she handles them all personally.

Best and worst month

Redd says the last year was really good for her though business was down in the last month because she took 4 days off. She has a strong client base that works with her every week including one client who gives her up to 30 orders per week. Majority of her clients are always ordering but the level of new clients has been lower than usual though she still gets a lot of work.

Redd is also on 5 different platforms apart from Fiverr which ensures that she has a consistent flow of orders.

Fiverr ambassadors and 6-figure makers

Redd says there is always room for new freelancers on Fiverr to become ambassadors when they build up their gigs to the point of making up to 6 figures. She says there are probably over 100 freelancers who make 6 figures on the platform. There are a lot of good opportunities on Fiverr.

One of the biggest benefits the platform offers Redd, is getting new clients. One of her clients has worked with her consistently for 18 months and ordered more than 1,300 times from her.

Tip: If you come into Fiverr and you think you won’t get work because there are so many other people offering the same service, don’t give up because once you get that one client who loves working with you, that will push you to the next level of growth

Retaining clients

Redd has several areas where she finds clients keep coming back and they include explainer videos, white board videos, voice mails (her favourite), and training programs.

Work hours

She is usually in the studio recording for about 4 to 5 hours a day and does administrative work for some hours. She always has daily targets to meet and she usually exceeds them. In total, she works about 40 hours a week with 2 hours on the weekend.

Building up to numerous orders on Fiverr

Redd says it takes time and patience.

Tip 1: This is a long game not a short game. This is not a get rich quick scheme.

Tip 2: It’s a business that you are building and building a business takes time

Tip 3: The best thing you can do is going above and beyond to deliver the best to your customers

Tip 4: Have good customer care: be responsive, be accessible, and be reasonable. In the beginning you will have to take a lower pay and build up your pricing as you grow.

Psychology of the upsell

In Redd’s work, bigger projects are the best. She does projects that have between 150 to 50,000 words. The 50,000 words projects are very rare but they come in once in a while. The average order usually has a word count of 200 to 300 words with the average turnaround time being 3 days. She also has an option where clients can pay for one-day delivery, and another option called Q-Jump where she can do a special trip to the studio for a client or give the client’s project priority above others. Clients pay more than the average prices to get the one-day delivery or Q-Jump.

Growth strategy

Redd says gig videos are an absolute must regardless of what service someone is offering.

Tip 1: On Fiverr, you are creating your brand and you are your brand so regardless of what service you are offering, you are the thing that makes you different from all the other people

Tip 2: Have a gig video, explain your services, and talk on camera to represent yourself personally. Clients have to connect with you so that they can come to you for what they need.

Working with Fiverr clients directly

She says one of Fiverr’s rules is that people can only work together on the platform and people are not allowed to share email addresses or phone numbers. Redd deals with her Fiverr clients on Fiverr only and when a client asks for her email address or phone number, she does not give it to them to avoid getting her Fiverr account restricted or even closed.

Redd has maintained brand consistency which gives her hope that clients can find her even if Fiverr seized to exist. Her Fiverr username is her real name and the same is on her website and email address.

Tip: If you are thinking about going into Fiverr, really think about what you want your username to be. Make it representative of you rather than your service

Fear of failure

She says freelancing is a challenge but she always powers through and plans strategically. She has several safeguards in place including an aggressive savings plan, diversifying through working on 5 other platforms, ensuring she has no debt, and not spending above her means.

Tip: Be realistic about what your expenses are and what you can do. If you are still spending on credit cards then it may not be a good time to go into freelancing full-time

Biggest breakthrough moment

“This was the day I wrote my husband’s resignation letter from work because it was the moment I realised that I could handle being a bread winner from doing the freelancing work“

Instant Voicemails

Instant Voicemails is Redd’s direct download website for voicemails. It was built on the fact that many of Redd’s clients would always ask for a professionally done standard voicemail greeting. People can go to the site and instantly get voicemails for their businesses. There are diverse voice options for customers to choose from. Business on the site has been growing gradually.

Redd’s vision for Instant Voicemails is to enable her to expand her reach, expand her offerings, and get more passive income. She wants it to grow to include numerous voices and accents so that it becomes the go to destination for people looking for voicemails.

Demand for Voicemails

Voicemails comprise between 10 and 20% of her orders every week. The orders are usually one-offs but she has a few clients who have been consistently ordering voicemails from her. Voicemails are her most favourite of all the products she does.

Redd would like to build it up to the point where individuals can get their own personalized voice mail messages at an affordable rate.

A typical day

Redd works from home and her day starts at around 8 or 9am. She gets up, grabs her coffee, grabs her laptop and does some administrative work. She then goes to the studio at around 9am where she does all the pending work until around 12 or 1pm. She takes it easier in the...

058: Recurpost Founder – Optimizing Your Social Media Presence to Increase Sales (w/ Dinesh Agarwal)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 03:01:15 -0400

Dinesh Agarwal is the founder of Recurpost, a social scheduler that lets people recycle their best updates on social platforms. It is the only “one click, share all” social media system that seeks out content with the highest “like-and-share-me” power, attracts highly-qualified leads, and inspires sales calls that practically close themselves. Dinesh holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and had initially created Recurpost to help his start-ups build a strong online presence but as his clientele grew, he choose to provide Recurpost to them and it became a huge hit.

Period in full-time business

When he was an undergraduate, he started a software company with his fellow students through which they developed different software for local businesses and it worked very well but after undergraduate he went to a master’s program and had to stop doing the software work. He knew that he wanted to be an entrepreneur but didn’t realise it until he went into the Ph.D. program.

At one point, a former school mate approached him about a software idea and Dinesh developed the required algorithm immediately. Dinesh used to attend a lot of events in Atlanta based on startups and he realised that most of them had great software ideas but didn’t know any IT people who could develop them affordably and reliably. Dinesh saw an opportunity in that and once he graduated from the Ph.D. program, he went back to India and started a company offering the development services to people who had ideas.

Initial project

The first project his company worked on doesn’t exist anymore because they couldn’t get users to use it so they had to shut it down. He says that over 30 projects they worked on ended up failing.

Tip: If you are working on an idea and it fails, don’t feel bad about it, just move on to the next failure. You only need one successful idea

Reason for failed projects

He says there are many things that cause failures. They now don’t work on ideas that are not properly defined in terms of the target market and other criteria, Dinesh also says he does not invest in online marketplace ideas.

Tip 1: If you want to get into your software idea then be ready for a lot of expensive marketing or work with someone who knows exactly what needs to be done

Tip 2: If you are getting into an idea with someone who will not be able to contribute a lot of time, the chances of failure are high. You should work with people who are passionate about what they are doing.

Importance of technical founder Vs. outsourcing

Dinesh says that there are 2 problems to outsourcing and they include; the person is not married to the idea, they are more concerned about the money they will make. They may be good people and do good work, they will not be there to handle all the technical issues that will definitely come up. He gave an example of how once they had someone buy a domain for them and the person forgot to renew it so it expired and the client’s website went down and affected his business.

Business model

He says that his company works with its clients on a partnership/equity basis where the client doesn’t pay them for their time but instead gives up equity in the idea. The client only pays for any required freelancers and pays a small amount for the overhead costs of Dinesh’s company. Therefore, the company only works on projects that have future value. They never work on more than 4 projects at a time.

Core revenue streams

Right now, Dinesh says they have some projects that are making them money like Recurpost. Recurpost is making them enough money to pay the bills. One of the projects they just started is about to get funded and he hopes that it will be a great success. The project is based on replacing ERP software from the manufacturing industry. Manufacturers are not highly tech savvy people so they don’t want software that increases their work load or requires them to hire more people to operate it. They need something that is simple to set up and use, and that’s what Dinesh is working on.

Targeting businesses rather than consumers

He says B2B is easier to work in because one doesn’t have to target billions of people. One only needs to target a few businesses and if successful, it’s much easier. B2C is difficult because one has to have strong marketing and product development skills and resources. Dinesh usually prefers B2B based projects over to B2C.

Recurpost

Dinesh built Recurpost because for every project, they had a challenge getting the word out about each project. The startups didn’t have money to spend on ads for the projects so they had to use different avenues like posting guest posts on people’s blogs, leaving comments on people’s blogs where it was relevant, or getting the word out through social media. Social media marketing was much easier especially because most people are on social media. So they decided to develop something based on social media and that’s how Recurpost was conceived.

Recurpost allows people to create their social updates, the ones they want to share on their on multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Twitter. A user starts by creating different libraries which are like categories for example “funny posts category” or “product tutorials. After that, the user sets up a schedule for each category for example “post one funny post every afternoon on all my social media accounts or just one social media account”. The post will be reposted every time based on the schedule.

Recurpost Vs. other scheduling tools

Other schedulers do not offer the option of repurposing content, you have to go in every time to reschedule the post after it has posted out but Recurpost allows you to same the post or content multiple times and on different platforms.

Recurpost’s offerings

Dinesh says that there is no one-size fits all when it comes to their service packages because people are based in different industries with different audiences. For example, some people need to do one tweet a day while others need to do 5 tweets a day. He says weekdays are better for B2Bs while weekends are better for B2Cs.

Notable successes

He says Recurpost has ensured increased traffic of about 30 to 40% for all projects they have worked on. To maximize the benefit of Recurpost, they usually chose their exact landing page and how they are going to convert customers.

Being in start-up stage with Recurpost, they don’t write blogs but they share good articles from others. They also tell people the benefits of Recurpost and pitch its exact features so that people can sign up for the free trial. They currently have a 60 to 70% conversion rate.

Tracking

Dinesh uses Google Analytics to track customer and revenue levels then they match what they get with some customer parameters that they have.

Philosophies around free trials and paid plans

Dinesh says that they never considered the philosophies when they were developing their plans because the most important thing for them was to give small businesses a level playing field with the bigger businesses. They developed Recurpost for businesses that cannot afford a social media manager or that cannot afford to pay for highly priced software.

When they were starting out, their competition was charging at least $80 per month. Since new start-ups only need to post few updates a day, the free plan was built for them.

Knowing Recurpost would work

Dinesh had seen a site that was doing something similar but he realised that people were complaining about the site not having a feature they needed. He discovered that the site was more marketing focused than development focused, and so was not delivering on their customers’ needs while charging them a lot of money.

Dinesh already had something similar that they were using internally so they just tweaked it and released it to the market.

Growth strategy now

They are first of all using Recurpost to grow themselves. They are then using social media heavily to get customers to visit the Recurpost site so they can be able to convert them. They are also working with social media influencers on different platforms to have them test out Recurpost then recommend it to their followers.

Encouraging free plan users to upgrade to paid plans

Dinesh says one of the features the free plan doesn’t have is video uploads so when they need to upload videos customers have to convert to paid plan. People also keep adding stuff to their library and Recurpost only allows 100 recurring updates for the free plans so to get more they have to upgrade to a paid plan. The third reason people updrage from free to paid is also because they get to experience first-hand how beneficial Recurpost is.

Main platforms

Recurpost according to Dinesh is on platforms like Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. They are not on YouTube yet parlty because they don’t consider it a social media platform.

Numbers

Dinesh says that they are currently hitting $100,000 per year and their yearly goal is to get that to about $150,000 and $200,000.

The team

He says he launched Recurpost in August 2016 and his team consists of two developers, one designer, one customer support person and then him.

Budget for those starting out with their tech idea

He says the amount depends on what kind of developers and designers one will need. From his experience, he says on average, one needs $2,000 to $2,500 per month. The idea may take one to two months to build up for beta testing.

The same apply regardless of whether one needs a website or mobile application. For those who need both, the price may be higher than the normal average. That is because there are different developers for apps and different ones for websites.

Apps

Dinesh says there is a lot of money to be made in the app space. He says that the same apps they have built for the average budget, companies in the US will charge between $100,000 and $120,000 to develop.

An example of a successful app they built is ZonedIn App at www.zonedinapp.com which now has over 50,000 with the users being very addicted to it. The app teaches kids how to skateboard. It’s like kids’ favourite skateboarding video game but in real life. Top users of the app have been funded by giant companies in terms of sponsorship deals. One such is someone that comes from a small US town of 600 people and he is the number one user on the app. He recently got sponsored by one of the biggest skateboarding companies.

Dinesh says the revenue model for the ZonedIn App is built around allowing companies to pay them every month so they can host a minigame for them which people play in. Every time someone finishes that minigame, Dinesh’s company sends a coupon to that person. Dinesh’s company also gives those companies access to those who play their games so they can communicate with them.

Dinesh says that the app is currently breaking even though not making a lot of money but they are getting new users through word of mouth. They don’t spend anything on marketing. To turn the fortunes around, they will need money to invest in marketing through the right channels. He says they don’t believe in charging their users. Once a person downloads the app, they are required to sign up and in the process Dinesh’s company gets their email address.

Educational and professional background

Dinesh did his P.h.D at Georgia State University in Atlanta. In total, he took his undergrad for 4 years, Masters for 2 years and 4.5 years for the P.h.D. After the P.h.D, he never went for a job because he knew he wanted to start a business. He only worked after his Masters.

Fear of failure and moment of real failure

During his P.h.D., he started testing things out with Google Adsense, created some projects, and he figured out how to rank websites. That enabled him to properly rank his website which earned him up to $200,000 by the time he was done with his P.h.D. He saved that money and it helped him as he was launching his company in India. He generated most of the money from ads.

Other income generating projects

Other than Recurpost, Dinesh’s company has several other projects including the ERP software; a project called ClickNation, a Cricket-based app; and the Flippiness app which finds online opportunities to make money. They are all doing very well.

Biggest breakthrough in business

057: Helping Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Financial Results (w/ Todd Tresidder)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 28 Aug 2017 04:18:31 -0400

Todd Tresidder is a successful entrepreneur who has built many businesses and actually retired at age 35 from his position as a hedge fund investment manager responsible for over $20 Million dollars. He is now a financial coach and educator at financialmentor.com where he offers coaching, a blog and ebooks on how to build wealth and invest smarter.

He is the author of five financial planning books including “How Much Money Do I Need To Retire?,” “Don’t Hire A Financial Coach,” and “Variable Annuity Pros and Cons.”

Period in full-time business

He says he has been in business his whole life. He only worked as an employee for 6 months and then got fired. When in college, he was the associate students’ business manager at the University of California which involved running the student run businesses on campus. He had been an entrepreneur since childhood starting out with paper routes and working his way up. He also had a boating business, taught sailing and had a pool supply company when in college. He says he is unemployable. He worked for HP straight out of college but was fired after 6 months.

He had made them millions by cleaning up their service contracts but got fired because his great performance made the boss look bad.

Core revenue streams

Currently, his revenues come from www.financialmentor.com. He sold the coaching business about 3 years ago. The coaching generated good revenue but he never wanted to become a thousand dollar an hour coach which is how people make money in coaching. He knows he could have done it but he didn’t enjoy it anymore after a while because it started becoming like a job.

He is in the process of converting the business into the seven steps to seven figures courses. He began the coaching business because he used to ask himself how he could help ordinary people achieve extraordinary financial results. From coaching people, he learnt that acquiring wealth involves 7 processes that people go through and he finally got it down to a system that worked for clients. He then had to figure out how to formalize it into a structure that worked for everybody regardless of their class. It took some time for him to figure it out but he eventually broke it down into a 7 step process and he is now turning all that into product form so that he can be able to scale it in the long term.

Retiring at 35

He says it was planned. He worked his way through college and came out with debt. He used to work all summer while other students went on holiday. He didn’t want to struggle in life and was determined to have financial independence so he figured out how to do it and mapped a path with the hedge fund business being a big part of it.

He figured that since he had to learn how to compound wealth then he might as well get paid to learn how to do it. Hedge funds were the only way for him to achieve that so he went to work for a hedge fund where he was responsible for developing statistical and mathematical trading systems.

Tip: You have to have a plan that‘s built around your interests, skills, resources and abilities because otherwise it won’t work: This is step 3 of the seven steps to seven figures

A hedge fund

Todd says that the difference of a hedge fund from a mutual fund is that it’s skill based (the return is a function of skill) but with a mutual fund, the return is the function of what the market gives. If the market is up, most mutual funds are up and vice versa. A hedge fund has skill based strategies and therefore they can make money under any market condition.

The 12 years to success

At the hedge fund, Todd started working in the marketing department and all he had to do was attract company presidents and vice presidents into what they called medium size return plans. They had a strategy for soliciting them and started building the business. One day as he was looking at the accounting, he realised that it was wrong and his boss asked him to fix it which he did a few weeks later. He later started developing statistical and mathematical trading systems. His boss then started trading side by side with him and Todd out-traded him. Working together made the business very successful. Eventually, he was made partner and he later made a successful exit.

The Exit

After leaving the hedge fund, he tried doing business but it was not fun anymore after a while so he sold the business.

Tip: When you are creatively producing in alignment with your values, fulfilment tends to follow. It doesn’t mean you have to make money

Coaching people how to enjoy building towards their plan

Todd says there is going toward goals Vs. going away from goals. Most people want to achieve financial freedom because they are trying to get away from something and those are the people who never get fulfilled once they achieve that financial freedom. If Todd sees that in a person he is coaching, he teaches them to go toward goals because it’s much more fulfilling and driving.

The other thing, he says, is to have a next step once one has achieved the goal they had already planned. That helps to avoid having a vacuum in life after they have achieved their goal. It helps people to keep working so they can have a community, social connection, and sense of purpose. It also gives people a clear definition of their daily life but once they achieve financial freedom all that can be lost.

Tip: The pursuit for financial freedom becomes an interesting excuse for all the reasons why you are unhappy. Once you have achieved that financial freedom, you are stripped of all those excuses and suddenly happiness is your responsibility. For most people that responsibility is a burden

Tip 2: In “going toward a goal”, one of the keys is to have a clear next step that you are excited about

Seven steps to seven figures

Todd says they are paired in terms of personal and financial steps one can take. The first one is the foundation which is step one and two (personal foundation and financial foundation). In financial foundation it’s all about the basic financial planning one can get for free on the internet like how to spend less than one earns, planning to get a home, and others. Personal foundation is about the habitudes that result in wealth. Habitudes are an amalgamation of habits and attitudes as they work together since one drives the other and vice versa.

He used to accept get-out-of-debt client engagements but he doesn’t anymore, while coaching some clients on how to build wealth and others on how to get out of debt, he discovered that they were diametrically opposite clients because their habits and attitudes were opposite to each other, so that’s where Todd’s Habitudes of the Wealthy came in and he just formalized it into a course. One of the key habits that people need to take up is “self-responsibility”. People who are in debt always blame it on someone or something else but people who are self-responsible will look at where they made a mistake and work towards correcting it.

Step 3 is about how to design one’s life so that financial independence is the result. It matches up the characteristics of the 3 asset classes people build wealth with which are paper assets (traditional stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and others), business entrepreneurship and direct ownership of real estate, with the resources, interests and skills that someone brings to the equation then integrates it all into a plan and engineers it with maths and calculations in order to correctly work out what they are doing, when and how. It formalises all that so that a person moves there very efficiently. This is the starting point that Todd has with every coaching client.

Step 4 is about implementing the wealth plan by taking a lot of action. Todd’s course has several modules that teach very specific steps about how to overcome personal obstacles, how to structure life to create massive action and how to produce great results.

Step 5 is about expectancy investing, this is the course people demand the most from him. It stems from his hedge fund days. Step 6 is about investment strategies that are relevant which involves reworking your investment plans to convert them into income so that you can enjoy the rest of your life. Step 7 is the personal side of step 6 which is about what to do after you have achieved millionaire status. Todd plans to turn step 7 into a membership site instead of a course.

Tip 1: If you want to achieve goals and grow then self-responsibility is the only productive place to come from because it’s the only place where learning comes from. Learning is how you compound and grow your internal beingness just like you grow your wealth because one is a mere reflection of the other.

Tip 2: A plan without action is worthless

Tip 3: Financial freedom is passive cash flow (cash flow from businesses that don’t require your time) exceeding expenses

Success story

Todd had a client that just left him because they had accomplished their goals. The client went to Todd because he had a large net worth but no cash flow and had a high paying job but no freedom. Within 2 years, Todd taught him the expectancy investing principles, he liquidated certain real estate holdings and replaced them with other real estate holdings then reallocated their portfolio and is now traveling the world for 2 years.

Todd had another client who came to him and has been with him for several years. She has accomplished all the goals she was working towards, she wanted to be married and is now married. She wants financial freedom and is very close to achieving it because her income has multiplied dramatically.

Achieving financial freedom while in a normal job

For people in a normal job, Todd applies his Advance Planning Framework which involves business entrepreneurship and direct ownership of real estate. It works a lot for people who are struggling, having difficulty saving, and the traditional planning isn’t working for them.

Todd built wealth from a combination of paper assets. He made a lot of money from his career in his youth but he was not a big spender. He has always had the philosophy that happiness comes from experiences not stuff. He used to keep his spending down to a college lifestyle but he raised his income up dramatically and so ended up saving 70%+ of his income which he then rolled over the paper assets category and had his hedge fund strategies to multiply them. Even today, he is not a big spender but he has a nice house, nice cars and wears decent clothes.

His Books

He has 5 books and his best is How Much Money Do I need to Retire. It’s a great read for anybody who cares about financial freedom. The book generates a fairly good passive income for him.

Faith, Fun, Family, Friendships and Finance

Faith comes first and it’s important to all the other areas, then Family and friendships, Fun and Finances.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown

Legacy:
To be remembered as a good guy who made a serious contribution, really went for it and lived the adventure fully – Todd.

Best way to connect:
www.financialmentor.com – Todd’s Business website (His Step 3 Wealth Planning Course is available. He gives away a free book and a free course to people who become subscribers)

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

056: From an $800 Startup to a Million Dollar Custom Apparel & Merchandising Business (w/ Zee Ali)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 04:03:19 -0400

Zee Ali is the founder of Zee Group, a full-service custom apparel and merchandising company. Their products include custom apparel/uniforms, promotional products/custom premiums, print material/direct mail, event/tradeshow products, graphic design, award products, brand identity, and packaging/gift with purchase.

Zee started the business as a hospitality apparel company while he was studying restaurant management and culinary arts at Triton College. He started it with just $800 in his bank account and has grown it into a million dollar business.

Period in full-time business

He has been in business for 7 years now.

Core revenue streams

When he started the business he was selling chef coats and uniforms to culinary schools. In fact, he was selling the chef coats to his fellow students while he was studying the culinary arts. When people were asking him for aprons, hats, knives, pastry sets, pens and mugs, he would supply them all without exception, and so far his company offers more than a million products. They have partnered with some of the largest brands in the world including Nike.

His company is a B2B business that customizes merchandise for clients.

Culinary arts industry

His company works with different culinary schools to provide them with all their uniforms, pastry sets and other items. They also manage the logistic fulfilments for the schools. Zee worked in the industry for a while from being a buster to a server, bar tender, and executive chef but he now doesn’t have time for that. In future he would like to travel through Europe and do some cooking.

Starting out in business

The root of his business journey started when he was very young. He was always money hungry and had side hustles all the time. He sold bootleg music, dvds, cigarettes, and any item he could get. He eventually got a job at a senior luxury living community as a busboy and worked his way up to a server. He used to really want a chance to cook and one Saturday he got the chance to wash dishes which eventually led him to becoming a prep cook and later a line cook. He had the job all through high school and through sponsorships he got a chance to join culinary school.

While there, he started getting chef coats from a flea market for a few dollars and then selling them to other students from his duffle bag. He kept selling the chef coats because a friend of his used to get them from a good source and together they would make good money from that.

Getting the first set of clients

His first customer was a culinary school he was referred to by one of his teachers. He showed up at the school with his duffle bag and his prices printed out, which really impressed the chef who ended up making an order immediately but Zee couldn’t supply them there and then because the chef required him to have some business-related paperwork to become an approved vendor. Zee went and got all the necessary paperwork for his business and went back to them after which he got them as his first customers.

He would always secretly record all the conversations he had with clients and prospects because he never understood all the business language they used. At that time, Zee was not branding the coats and the only reason why he got them so cheap from the flea market was because they were considered defective coats. They used to be in great condition so he could comfortably sell them to his customers.

Growth strategy in the beginning

Zee used to print fliers and give them to people in the culinary schools. He also convinced teachers to let him show up in their classes and let the students try on the coats so that the ones who needed them would order. When he started getting into the other merchandise like t-shirts and hats, he would target businesses that were visible to him like auto shops and many more. It all worked well for him.

Tip: If you are working on a business, make sure to take the time out to identify your ideal customer profile and spend time to figure out how big the prospect should be.

Growth strategy now

Zee now has a very clear understanding of his target customer, and who is a good fit for his company. They are always testing new ways of acquiring customers and they use methods like direct mail, retention programs, and referrals.

Why branding

Zee says he started Zee Group to make money and within 5 years he was doing very well, he lives in downtown Chicago and bought everything he ever wanted to buy except a Lamborghini which he says he will eventually buy. Once he had bought everything he ever wanted, he got depressed for a while because he didn’t have any purpose. Once he recovered from that, he found his purpose because the reason he runs Zee Group is because he is very passionate about marketing, he hasn’t accomplished all his goals with the company, and he loves scaling a business.

Fear of failure and biggest moment of failure

He says that in everything that he has ever accomplished in business and personally, he always wanted to quit but when he didn’t and achieved his goals, it was a very fulfilling feeling. He says that to him, failure is just a stepping stone to getting closer to where he wants to go.

He says he has failed numerous times and the reason he keeps going is because he is inspired by the motivational story lines he sees on WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) which have contributed to his mindset, where he knows that no matter how rough things get, he can figure things out. He referred to a time when his company had a 6-figure account that made him very confident but at some point the client stopped emailing the Zee Group and they later learnt that they had lost the account. That account formed 80% of all their revenue and losing it devastated Zee. But he eventually learnt how to diversify his client base.

Zee acknowledges that there are a lot of different businesses worldwide which may make it harder for someone to start a business that is similar to already existing ones. This may cause someone to fear starting a new business. Zee Group builds on its competitive advantage by greatly emphasizing customer service and always over delivers on their customers’ expectations.

Tip 1: If you don’t fail, you will never make it. It’s either you get used to failing or you can just hide and loose everything

Tip 2: If you are creating a business that is similar in a lot of ways to your competitors, the real way to separate yourself is to create a brand that is radically different from the rest. Your value proposition needs to be very clear

Biggest breakthrough in business

He says that this was when he learnt about the branding industry. While in culinary school he got to meet a lady who introduced him to the owner of the largest rugby apparel company in the US and Canada. That’s how he started learning about the promotional items business. 9 months later he was exposed to industry related conferences, events and educational resources. He even hired a consulting firm and all that gave him confidence to do the business that he is in now.

Tip 1: There is no excuse to not hit your goals, its either you are lazy or scared

Tip 2: List down all your problems then go find the answers to each of them. Do whatever you can to find the solution

Zee Group Products

They have partnered with hundreds of different brands and the core of their business is apparel. They don’t custom manufacture the items unless they are required to. They usually use apparel from brands like Nike and then do the necessary decorations according to each client’s branding needs.

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances, and Friendships

Faith comes first because it applies to everything else, and for Zee, health comes second, then relationships (fun, friendships, and family) and finances.

Burn out experience

Due to working too much and exhaustion, he ended up being diagnosed with shingles because of stress. He used to work 18 hours a day.

A day in life when starting 7 years ago Vs. a day in life now

When he first started, he didn’t know what he was doing. He had a job and still did the business as a side hustle. He didn’t know what was right and what was wrong, but he kept moving. He figured the faster he moved, the faster he would make the mistakes and the faster he would figure it out.

He now knows what he is doing, things are structured now, he tries to work in block schedules, his day typically starts out with working out, writing and reading; and working on operational issues.

Mentors

Zee invests in mentors and he once hired a consulting agency that was specialized in his industry and they helped him understand what he needed to do. He also invested in one on one coaching and other programs from them. He has several incredible mentors and he learns valuable lesson from them.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Zag: The Number One Strategy of High Performance Brands – Marty Neumeier

The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies – Chet Holmes

Legacy:
To have people learn from his lessons so that they can have a more impactful, better life, and find their purpose – Zee.

Best way to connect:
@thezeeli – Zee’s Handle on all social media platforms

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!

055: How to Grow Your Business & Influence Through YouTube & Online Video (w/ Sean Cannell)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 03:50:19 -0400

Sean Cannell is a best-selling author, YouTuber, and lifestyle entrepreneur who has built a 6-figure online business. He operates through Think Media TV and Video Influencers with YouTube channels that have more than 16 million views and numerous high quality video that help people become more influential on the YouTube platform and with online video. He is passionate about helping influencers get noticed and get results with social media and online video.

Through Video Influencers (www.videoinfluencers.net), Sean offers educational resources to help brands build their influence, grow their income, and increase their impact with online video.

Starting out

Sean started in video in 2003 while volunteering in church under the youth ministry. He got a Canon HB30 video camera from the youth pastor and started making video advertisements. That’s how he slowly learnt how to be on camera, do production, edit videos, manage people, etc. That was before YouTube was even launched.

The first YouTube channel he worked on was his church’s YouTube channel back in 2007. He eventually started Clear Vision Media through which he helped small businesses in the North Seattle area with their marketing videos, and also helped YouTubers, authors, and other experts build their personal brands using online videos.

In 2010, he started his personal YouTube channel and began by doing affiliate marketing until 2015 when he went all in. He considers himself a lifestyle entrepreneur and online marketer who works in the e-learning space helping people learn online video from the equipment and tech side as well from the strategy and what works best on the platform side through digital products and free training content. Sean and his team are based out of Las Vegas and now works in that business full-time.

Tip: When you want to start doing online video, just start because you learn by doing.

Period in full-time business

In 2015, Sean worked full-time in client work while working part-time on his online business. By January 2016 he had gone full-time into his online business generating revenues from his YouTube channels and other revenue streams linked to his channels.

In October 2015, he lost all of the 3 clients he had and after consulting his mentor he saw it as a sign from God to go into his own business full-time. The whole experience taught him the power of focus because when he concentrated solely on his online business, it grew exponentially.

Tip: If there is a business that you want to go into, take the leap and with great focus, it will succeed and grow.

Core income streams

Until October 2015, Sean was doing YouTube videos and affiliate marketing. He was making money from YouTube ads on his videos and also did a lot of affiliate marketing. A few months after starting, he found that he was making $500 a month from the videos and their associated affiliate marketing which taught him the power of creating strategic videos that meet what people look for.

When he decided to go full-time, he relied solely on affiliate marketing through the Amazon Associates Program. By January 2016, he had 20,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and that month he had made $5,000. Later, other revenue streams like YouTube ads started growing. He now makes 6-figures from Amazon affiliate marketing alone. His channels also generate revenue from 25 other different affiliate programs. His biggest source of income is digital products then affiliate marketing followed by YouTube ads.

How to start a YouTube channel business

Sean says today is a very good time to start a YouTube channel because there is massive opportunity for one to build influence online

Tip: One just needs to look into different products and determine whether there is a large enough market for each. If a product is viable then one can develop YouTube videos related to questions people ask about that product

How to choose a platform when starting out

Tip 1: Start by experimenting on different platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. in order to get the hands on experience that will enable you to identify which platform works best for you.

Tip 2: Use the platform you like consuming the most because it’s probably the one you know best, for example if you love podcasts then it’s the most suitable are for you to go into

Tip 3: Know which modalities you are most effective at communicating in. They include audio, video or writing (text).

Getting the first clients

When he was doing client work, Sean acquired clients by slowly building business relationships with people through networking events. He got his first clients while still in beta stage and used different video testimonials to attract more clients. He also got credibility from his first client and built his clientele gradually from there.

How to start from $0 to $1,000 on the YouTube platform alone

Tip 1: One can start a YouTube channel and depend on YouTube ads related to their content. This generates $2 per every 1,000 views so to get $1,000, one needs to generate 500,000 views. That may be an uphill task but can succeed depending on the content one is providing and its value to viewers, for example, entertainment based videos are more effective with this kind of revenue source.

Tip 2: One can start a YouTube channel with affiliate marketing as the core revenue stream. This is the best way to get started but depends on what your niche is.

Case Studies

One example is Heather Torres who works with Sean in Las Vegas. She learnt how to start a YouTube channel from Sean and decided to start one. Being a home school mom, she used her channel to share tips on different home schooling aspects to help home school moms. Her channel now has 5,000+ subscribers and growing. She generates income from both YouTube ads and affiliate marketing but also has brand deals where she works with companies/brands to promote their products in exchange for free products, marketing fees and affiliate marketing commissions.

Heather built her brand deals income by approaching the curriculum company that she bought her home schooling curriculum from and pitched to them the idea of promoting their curriculum through her videos. She ended up getting a deal with them where she gets the curriculum for free for her own personal home schooling, the company pays her $4,000 and she gets 10% of every curriculum sale made through her channel.

Another example is Justin Khoe who has a faith-based YouTube channel called That Christian Vlogger. He started that program from 0 and built it to up to 30,000+ subscribers. He went full-time into it, didn’t concentrate much on affiliate marketing, but does fairly well on YouTube ads. He creates different merchandise for his fans but his biggest source of income is crowd funding through his patreon.com platform through which up to 60 people now fully support him financially on a monthly basis so he can focus on producing videos that will be useful and valuable to his existing and potential viewers.

Building an email database

Sean says it’s critical to build an email database/email list in the YouTube video/social media business.

Tip 1: Building an email list is important because the platforms you use may seize to exist at any one time therefore depending solely on them is very detrimental. Whatever happens on the platforms you use, you will always have your email list to rely on

Tip 2: Build an email list because whenever you want to launch a new product or just tell people what you are doing next, it’s much easier to do so. Without an email list you will always have to start from scratch.

Sean says the best way to build an email list on YouTube is to make a video, add value to it with niche content and then send an invitation to subscribers to join the email list. Sean sends a weekly newsletter to his subscribers to keep them informed and generate consistent traffic.

Free training program

Sean’s free training program is about 45 minutes long and breaks down 5 of his best strategies for growing ones audience and income on YouTube. It’s a crash course that helps people determine what works on YouTube and how to generate income on there. He also shares how he was able to grow fast on YouTube.

Promotional code for business generals podcast listeners

Sean’s signature program is called Video Ranking Academy and it is a one-day training program on how to rank videos at the top of YouTube search results. It also teaches people how to make videos that get views and grow one’s influence enough to monetize it.

The promo code for business generals podcast viewers to get 25% off of the Video Ranking Academy program is BGP25. That is an exclusive offer for the viewers to learn how to start their own YouTube channels.

Tool and Resources

Think Media – YouTube channel that teaches people how to build their influence with online video.

Video Influencers – YouTube channel that shares tips from different video influencers to teach and inspire aspiring video entrepreneurs.

Best way to connect:
@seancannell – Sean’s Twitter Handle
Think Media – Sean’s YouTube Channel

Video Influencers – Sean’s other YouTube Channel

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!

054: Turning Your Side Hustle into a Full-time Business (w/ Nick Loper)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 03:05:22 -0400

Nick Loper is an author and online entrepreneur featured on The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, and speaking at a TEDx event. His latest role is as Chief Side Hustler at Side Hustle Nation, a growing community of aspiring and part-time entrepreneurs, where he also hosts the top-rated Side Hustle Show podcast.

He is the author of 4 books including Work Smarter: 350+ Online Resources Today’s Top Entrepreneurs Use To Increase Productivity and Achieve Their Goals, which became an Amazon bestseller in 2014. Nick has been working with virtual staff since 2005 and has a free course on how to hire a high quality and long-term virtual assistant. He also runs the web’s leading virtual assistant company directory and review platform, Virtual Assistant, with more than 100 VA companies and 700 user reviews. He has helped thousands of readers identify their outsourcing opportunities and take action.

Period in full-time business

Nick has been self-employed full-time since 2008 and worked in business as a side hustle since 2004.

Core revenue streams

His biggest revenue streams on his podcast, The Side Hustle Nation, include sponsorships and affiliate revenue. He also has several other affiliate websites that do well. He was able to leave formal employment because of an affiliate website. It was a footwear comparison shopping site built on an affiliate model and used to refer traffic to Amazon and Zappos, and Nick would earn commissions from the resultant sales.

He does self-publishing with books on Amazon including some on side hustling. He also does some freelancing work which including book editing for other non-fiction authors, sales courses on Udemy, and selling products on Fiverr.

Key focus going forward

The podcast has been his main focus in the last year. It started out as an afterthought experiment but it has grown faster his blog to become his main focus.

Reason for podcast growth

Nick thinks the main reason the podcast has grown so fast is because of word of mouth marketing but he also highlights podcast marketing and iTunes optimization as some of the other reasons. Some episodes have had people engaged and talking about the podcast.

Focusing on his niche

Nick says that focusing on the side hustle side of business may have contributed to the podcast’s success. He only had an email list of 11 people to market the podcast to when he was starting the podcast and that’s how he built his audience slowly.

Leaving corporate

The footwear comparison shopping site was the business that helped him leave his job. He used to intern at a shoe retailing company in Seattle which had a brick and mortar store but decided to try selling the shoes online. The online segment of the business grew 10 times faster than their brick and mortar shop. That’s how Nick got exposed to affiliate marketing, pay per click advertising and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which enabled him to build his own footwear comparison shopping site.

When he was running the site, he was very reserved and heads down working on it. He didn’t mingle with any people in the business world and faced a lot of challenges with the business. At one time he had a problem with Google and it was very frustrating because 80% of is traffic was coming from Google ads. Later the problem was sorted but it taught Nick the importance of diversifying his business. Later on he started several other different side hustles, most of them flopped but a couple have stayed afloat including the Side Hustle Nation site.

Knowing when to leave corporate

One of the factors that helped him leave his formal job included the income he was making from the site. It was not replacing his salary in the beginning but he felt that if he could work solely on the site, that it could make him more money.

Getting the first sponsors

He says the first sponsors reached out to him about a year ago and asked him to consider doing an ad on the show. To achieve that, he started by self-sponsoring his own products and services or did affiliate ads for companies that he liked including AirBnB. That sent a signal that his podcast had sponsors and therefore made it easier to get serious sponsors when needed to.

Today, he uses a service called AdvertiseCast which enables him to put up the show and get advertisers who buy spots on the show. Nick just did a couple of deals with some companies.

Growth strategy now

Right now Nick has been working on building the podcast’s audience by building on its discoverability on iTunes and social media while also doing SEO. He has also been working on turning listeners into subscribers by for example giving them valuable content. He does content upgrades which comprise of episode specific opt-in offers which have raised his email list to more than 6,000. He also provides a highlight reel of each episode and includes that in his newsletters.

He recently built up 8 to 10 different welcome sequences based what a person opted in for which ensures that they get a welcome/on-boarding sequence that meets their specific preference. Initially, every person got the same generic autoresponder sequence and it was not working very well in engaging or serving the audience. He has gotten more replies from those messages. Nick has not monetized them yet but there are some links on the sequences to posts on the podcast site that are monetized but it’s not well orchestrated. That is mainly because he currently doesn’t have any flagship course.

The first way Nick monetized the podcast was with a private mastermind but it has been on hold for a while. He has been trying to come up with a way to restructure the mastermind so that it can more impactful for participants.

Productizing

Nick has tested doing other products apart from the podcast. An example is what he is doing with the opt-in offers. He also does a few joint ventures every year like webinars and they do very well.

Affiliate marketing for bloggers and online marketers

Nick says affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to get started because one doesn’t have to create any products. It’s always better especially when one is recommending products or services that they use and trust. He recently did a post on the redesign of his website and he shared an affiliate link to the IT service that he used to do the redesign.

He did very well in affiliate marketing Udemy courses through blog posts. He kick started that with an email to his list and also reached out to all the instructors that he featured, and they were very supportive in sharing it to their social media channels. That way, it ended up ranking well on Google.

Tip 1: Always try to work in the products or services you are recommending into all the content on your site.

Tip 2: You can still provide helpful content and make money from it too

Generating revenue from affiliate marketing

His post on Udemy courses has generated over $30,000 within a year and a half. It generated $6,000+ in the first month and then sustainably kept generating fairly good revenues in 2016. In 2017, Nick updated it with the latest offers and relaunched it in January. That month it made around $12,000 and has been doing well so far.

Fear of failure and the worst moment with Side Hustle

Nick didn’t take the leap of leaving his formal job until he had built some track record with his business. He says he is very risk averse and likes to start projects on a small scale. The podcast was a very big step out of his comfort zone. He also did a TedX Talk a few years ago and it was the hardest thing for him to rehearse.

Shutting down the mastermind has been the worst thing for Nick in the last 12 months. A few years ago he did a 30-day side hustle challenge and the feedback he got from participants was positive but people were not seeing results from it within the 30 days and Nick has to redo it all over again.

Tip: Fear of failure can be paralysing but you have to look at what the worst case scenario is, so you can make small improvements or make it so that the worst case scenario is not that bad. It’s probably not life threatening, you can always get a job if it doesn’t work

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances, and Friendships

Family comes first, fun and friendships fall into the same group then finances and faith.

A day in life when starting out Side Hustle Vs a day in life now

Tuesdays are meeting days for Nick and earlier in 2017 he started a theme day project where Tuesday is bust doing recordings, calls, and different meetings from 8 to 5. He sets aside Monday as content creation day for Side Hustle Nation including shows. He is trying to get to a point where he can be editing shows for 3 or 4 weeks out.

Wednesdays are when he works on the other Side Hustle projects that he has like websites including the administrative tasks involved with them. He dedicates Thursdays to mastermind calls in the morning and then does the weekly newsletter while the rest of the day is set aside for growth projects like the recent email migration and website redesign. He starts the day on his treadmill desk.

Email system switch

Nick switched from Aweber to ActiveCampaign and even though he is still learning how to use it, one the most important features for him was the geo-tagging features that are based on a person’s IP address and uses it to estimate where they are in the world. He can use that to host meet ups all across the country and even meet with people all over the world like they did in Japan in 2016 where they had 5+ people attend his meetup.

Tool and Resources

AdvertiseCast – Podcast Advertising Network.

Aweber – Email marketing platform

ActiveCampaign – Marketing automation platform that includes email marketing and small business CRM

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Buy Buttons: The Fast-Track Strategy to Make Extra Money and Start a Business in Your Spare Time – Nick Loper

Legacy:
To set a good example for work, do business ethically, be of service to people, and do something in the world that will outlive him – Nick.

Best way to connect:
www.sidehustlenation.com – Nick’s Podcast site

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!

053: Healthy Gut Founder’s Story – Healthy Gut, Healthy You (w/ Rebecca Coomes)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 02:41:52 -0400

Rebecca Coomes is the founder of The Healthy Gut where she coaches people with Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) and guides them on how to live well with SIBO. She achieves that by sharing her SIBO friendly recipes in her cookbooks, on her SIBO Cooking Show and on her blog. Rebecca hosts a popular podcast called The Healthy Gut Podcast where she interviews the world’s leading SIBO specialists. She is also a marketing consultant who knows how to grow a global audience in a short space of time.

Transitioning out of the corporate world

Rebecca used to work with a big hospitality company in Melbourne whose management changed at some point and that negatively affected the work environment to the point where Rebecca didn’t like working there anymore.

She therefore took some time out and travelled around South America where she had a near fatal diving accident which gave her a perspective on what she wanted in life. When she got back to Australia, she decided to try her hand in the not-for-profit sector specifically working with animals. Later on she realised that she was too commercially-minded to work with people with no commercial experience. In the meantime, her health and work enjoyment were deteriorating so she had to make a change. In her early twenties she had her own business and she loved it.

Eventually she started her own marketing consultancy because she wanted to be the master of her own destiny. She was able to secure clients quickly and at some point her major challenge was having so much work that she didn’t know how she would manage it.

Getting the first clients

She had been working in hospitality and events, and was also an executive member of the Special Events Society which exposed her to a broad network of people and businesses. She started by sending out an email to the network to pitch her new marketing services and within 30 seconds she got a response from one of her associates who said their company was rebranding and needed marketing support. She got other clients from then on through referrals and her network. Within 3 months, she was so exhausted from working so hard because she used to work 80 hour weeks.

Fully exploiting her enormous network

Rebecca started by going through her email list, Facebook and LinkedIn to look for everybody she knew in the hospitality and events industry in Melbourne. She then emailed them all with details of her new marketing consultancy business. She used to target small to medium sized businesses that didn’t have a marketing manager, but needed marketing support. Her great marketing experience appealed immensely to those businesses. One of her first clients had a successful business but the sales were not good because their marketing strategy was not well developed.

Rebecca helped the businesses with planning to determine where they wanted to go and the future they wanted. She even helped them identify inefficiencies in their operations and streamline their marketing activities to achieve maximum sales. Her support would enable her clients to do a full overview of their business and determine what works for them and what doesn’t.

Before working in the hospitality and events industry, Rebecca also worked in the Australian and UK retail industries where she ran more 400 stores and that equipped her with operations management skills that were highly applicable in her marketing consultancy.

The light bulb moment

Rebecca was in the Dent Business Accelerator Program about two and a half years ago and it was very beneficial to her. As she went through the program, she realised that she was standing on a mountain of value made up of 36 years of personal experience with chronic illness (SIBO) and a passion for cooking. She could see an immediate gap in the market because there were no recipes or cook books for people who suffered from SIBO.

It took her a month to launch her first cook book and it was the world’s first cook book for people being treated of SIBO. Despite that, she faced a lot of challenges especially because she doubted her credibility to talk to people about their health.

She launched the first cook book as an ebook and within no time she was getting emails from different people in the US and UK requesting for a printed copy of the book. They used to ask for her help and support in getting themselves treated of SIBO.

The cook book

Rebecca decided to do the cook book because part of her SIBO treatment was avoiding a lot of food groups. She had to cook all her food from scratch and there were no recipes for that, which was a big problem not just for her, but also everyone in the world who was being treated for the condition. That problem would be a huge barrier to people getting healed of SIBO. Rebecca’s cook book solved that problem. It has helped people with SIBO eat more foods than they were eating before.

Writing the cook book

She is very aggressive when it comes to achieving to her goals. She loves photography and was lucky to have a friend who is a professional food photographer. The friend coached her on how to take food photos and through that, Rebecca was able to take all the photos in her first cook book. She would spend 12 to 16 hours every day working on it. She got a graphic designer online who would help her do the ebook.

She used to cook and take photographs of the food at home during the days then send all the content to her graphic designer. Within one month the cook book was finished.

Testing the cook book

Rebecca partnered with Australia’s leading SIBO specialist who had developed a diet protocol that Rebecca followed. Rebecca contacted her and asked if she could use her protocol in the cook book. They negotiated the necessary terms, and that enabled Rebecca to develop SIBO-oriented recipes that would meet the market need.

She then used her network to test the recipes and got about 15 people testing each recipe. That worked very well.

Benefits of the cook book

Rebecca didn’t have any clientele and only had a Facebook page for The Healthy Gut with a few likes from friends and family. There was an active Facebook group for SIBO where Rebecca was very active, so she decided to give away her cook book for free to the group members and all she asked for was a person’s name and email. She then launched the cook book by sending an email out using MailChimp, and set up a landing page on her website to capture people’s names and email addresses. She also posted the same on Facebook and she quickly started getting people on her database which rose to over 1,000 people.

Then, she realised that she needed to build a community of people who were willing to buy from her and the people who got her cook book for free did not convert into paying customers very well. Despite all that, they gave her a launch pad to start building a community of buyers.

Core revenue streams

Her cook books are one of them; they were her main revenue stream for a long time. She now has her SIBO Coaching Program which is a monthly subscription to a live webinar with her and special speakers who are made up of the world’s top SIBO doctors. She is currently in the process of launching her menu plan to help people plan out what they will be eating every week. In addition, she does events like shopping tours where she teaches people how to shop for this new way of eating. She also has a contribution button for her podcast. She is in the process of securing sponsors for the podcast but at the moment she asks people to contribute money towards the running of the podcast.

Cost of printing

Rebecca wanted to partner with a local printing company. She had found one in Melbourne which did the first cook book very well. But when she went back to them for the second cook book, it was a total disaster and they had to reprint it 8 times because every time they printed it, there were too many errors in it. She ended up going to China to print her books. That enabled her to print a lot more books. She recently negotiated a partnership with a US based company that purchased the rights to her books for the US editions and they now manage the printing, orders and distribution of the books to customers in the US and Canada. The partnership is working really well.

Initially, Rebecca was funding everything from her own savings but she now works smartly by partnering with the right people.

Volume of sales

Rebecca has sold several thousand books so far.

Business model for the meal plan

Rebecca says she is currently launching as a two-week meal plan that will later on become a monthly subscription. She realised that she didn’t have enough products that people could keep buying, and doing a full cook book was very time consuming and expensive, so she decided to develop food solutions because that’s what people were demanding from her.

Therefore, the meal plans are a great way for her to generate recurring revenue. She now has a subscription functionality on her website so that people can just buy whenever they want. She has seen that the more she can do products that sell themselves, it’s better for her financially. She is also partnering with a US company that produces ready-made meals and they are going to create a SIBO friendly line including snacks that people can buy at stores. Because Rebecca has built such a strong brand around her great expertise and reputation on SIBO, she has gotten enormous interest from people.

She always thinks about how to build data around people so that she can communicate with them better. She set up an easy online survey through Google forms and asked people what they would need her ready-made meals and snacks to cater to in terms of dietary requirements. That way, she could make sure that when she developed them, they would be right for the customers. She then asked them to leave their email addresses if they wanted to know when the ready-made meals and snacks were in the market. That has gotten her more than 600 people filling the survey so far and it has gotten her the needed data so quickly while also growing her email list.

She always uses that kind of research to know what her potential customer base wants. For example, when it came to her cook books, she would go to her Facebook group and ask people what meals they were struggling with most, among other questions. She applied the same research techniques before starting her coaching program and meal plans. That technique ensures that when she goes to market, she is confident that the market wants what she is offering because they have already told her what they want.

Tip: When developing a new product or service, before you spend any money on marketing, make sure that you have done your due diligence and that you’ve spoken to your ideal target market about whether it’s something they actually want.

The ready-made meals and snacks

Rebecca is very excited about this and it has been another steep learning curve for her.

Printed book Vs. Ebook

With the cook book, Rebecca says people prefer them in front of them as they cook in the kitchen. When she had just printed her second cook book, Rebecca attended a SIBO conference in the US where all the top SIBO doctors were attending. She wanted the doctors to know her and wanted to know them too. She took several cook books with her to the conference and gave them out to the speakers with her business cards attached. She even signed the books for them and it impressed and excited them all so much. The doctors always talk about how proud they are to have had the first edition of her book before she had really started out in the business. She acknowledges that that would never have been possible with an ebook. Printed books have a far higher impact than ebooks.

Her podcast

Her podcast was a direct result of her attending the conference in the US. She came away having met many doctors who were experts in SIBO and she thought that the SIBO information had to get out to the lay person because most of it was known among doctors but not among patients.

She contacted the doctors, told them that she wanted to launch a podcast on SIBO and invited them to guest on the podcast. Her first guest was the top SIBO doctor and they did a two-part special which enabled her to launch the podcast with a bang. That gave the podcast a lot of credibility. In quick succession she hosted a lot of other top doctors.

The podcast has given her authority in a space where she doesn’t have any medical qualifications. She is seen as a knowledgeable person in the SIBO space and she taken the mantle as the voice of the patient. She even has doctors coming to her asking for her insights into the patient realm. The podcast is her free product/gift and the only thing she needs to invest is her time, and ensuring that the content is very engaging. She has been promoting her services more heavily within the podcast to test the waters as she plans to generate revenues through sponsorships.

Tip: You can’t take people from not knowing you to asking them to pay thousands of dollars for your core product. You need to take them on a series of steps where you start small, start with something free and then work your way up to your key product

Her marketing consultancy

Rebecca still does her marketing consultancy services and she has identified her core market as health and wellness businesses. Her vision is to help reduce disease, obesity and chronic illnesses in the global population. She believes that she can achieve that by offering her marketing consultancy services to those health and wellness businesses so that they can improve their offerings, gain more clients and help more people get well.

Legacy:
To be remembered as someone who made an enormous difference in the lives of millions of people around the world by helping them to feel empowered and educated to take control of their health so that

052: From Hollywood to Homeless to Million Dollar Performance Coach (w/ Kurek Ashley)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 02:00:17 -0400

Kurek Ashley is an internationally renowned speaker, author and coach in the fields of self-development and success coaching, he is recognized as a premier expert in personal and professional development, self-discovery and peak performance. He is the founder of Life Success Club that brings together a community of like-minded, positive, success-driven people from all over the world. His No. 1 Best-Selling book How would Love respond? has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

For over 30 years, Fortune 500 companies and major corporations around the world such as Apple, Seagate, Schwarzkopf, Westin Hotels, The Australian Royal Airforce and Carlton United Brewery, hire Kurek to teach them tactical success strategies that have produced awe-inspiring results. His list of private clients include Hollywood film and TV stars, movie directors, producers and cinematographers, a quintuple platinum rock band, hit music composers, top business leaders, oil executives in Kuwait, Olympic Gold Medalists, professional athletes and sports teams, and many others. He is also the founder of Action Heroes Inc., a movement dedicated to sharing inspirational thoughts, ideas and life experiences that have been put into action to produce results that have transformed people’s lives around the world.

Shift from movie industry career

Kurek was always coaching people since high school, talking to them about fulfilling their dreams and goals. It was always a passion of his to coach people on personal development.

He started acting at age 12 and at 18 he moved to Los Angeles where he was taken under the wing of a movie director whose best friend was Sylvester Stallone. The director, and a host of books he used to read, forced him to read the book Think and Grow Rich.

As he was acting and working behind the camera, he once got an audition on a Saturday for the lead bad guy in a movie titled Mighty Ducks Part 5. It was an emergency casting, and very rare for a major studio to audition on a Saturday. Kurek was supposed to hear from them on the following Tuesday on whether he got the part but they never called; and on the Thursday that followed, he left for Georgia to do a speaking engagement for the youth in a small town.

Kurek didn’t check his answering machine until that Sunday when he got messages from the studio saying he had gotten the part, and that he would start shooting on the Friday that had just passed. His lack of response to the studio’s call caused a lot of anger and he was worried that his acting career would come to an end but then he figured it was better that he did the speaking engagement to help change the young people’s lives. He loved helping people more than acting so he started doing many more speaking engagements and finally let go of the movie industry. The speaking business became very successful because Kurek directed all his focus onto it. That was 23 years ago.

Going full-time into the speaking business

As he was starting out doing more speaking engagements, he recorded one of the first corporate speaking events he ever did but he didn’t like it at all and the people who were to give him a testimonial letter refused to do so because they felt that he did so badly.

Kurek watched the recording over and over again to try and figure out what was good about it and he discovered some pieces that were good. Those pieces were the ones where he was off script and spoke from the heart on what he was passionate about. So, Kurek learnt how to expand on that. Immediately after that bad speaking engagement, he booked himself into 13 others and did that every month from then on because he realised that if he was to get good at it, he would have to keep doing it continuously.

Tip 1: It’s always better to keep yourself in motion despite the downfalls you face

Tip 2: Always ask yourself, “How can I make it better?”

Tip 3: In anything you want to be great at in life, you have to change your mindset and work on developing the relevant skillsets

Getting speaking engagements after first flop

Kurek used to do a lot of free ones but also did paid ones with his core focus being on marketing himself.

Tip 1: You have to get out there and market yourself and believe in yourself

Tip 2: If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to push out the naysayers

Getting calls from paying clients

He still does a few free speaking engagements mostly for charity but all his clients are now paying clients. He has done more than $5 Million in coaching revenue and his client base has grown consistently for the last 18 years.

Tip 1: At some point when you are starting up, you have to draw a line in the sand and say no more free ones, here is my rate, and then promote yourself at that level

Tip 2: Cheaper is not easier. Doing a low price doesn’t mean you will succeed because people who pay for value will not be attracted by your cheap offering. You have to put a price on yourself

Tip 3: If you make a low amount of money in life, that is all your worth to yourself. If you think you are worth more, you will demand more

Getting out of homelessness

Kurek says he has been homeless twice, once in the US and once in Australia. Being homeless in Australia came about when the company that brought him in, left him stranded by not paying him so he ended up spending all his savings. He was 37 years old then and the experience depressed him immensely but he never gave up.

A person he had previously come across in Australia had offered to produce one of his seminars 8 months earlier but Kurek never called or took him seriously. Eventually, Kurek called him and he produced his first seminar in Australia where Kurek broke the longest fire walk in history record (81 metres of 600 degree coals on bare feet). He also met Natalie Cook (Australian professional beach volleyball player and Olympic gold medallist) and worked with her team for two and a half years, and took them to win gold medals at the Sydney Olympics. He achieved a lot of other great milestones with his work in Australia.

Tip 1: Nothing happens if you don’t follow through

Tip 2: Everybody gets a shot in life but it all comes down to what you do with that shot. Your shot rarely looks like what you expect it to look like and so, you should treat everything like it is your only shot.

Difference between an Olympic gold medallist and the person in fourth position

The difference is usually a one-one-hundredth of a second difference in time or in some sports its one point between getting everything and nothing. The person in fourth position doesn’t get anything, but in Kurek’s view, the fourth person is still fourth best in the world and it’s an amazing fete.

Kurek trained Natalie and her team to be gold medallists in advance. They applied that into the 2000 Sydney Olympics and it gave them the motivation and zeal that led them to winning gold against their very formidable Brazilian counterparts. Kurek’s coaching made them believe in themselves.

Tip 1: All great achievers are visionaries, they don’t look at what they have or don’t have now, they focus on who they are going to be in future and what they are going to have

Tip 2: Challenges give our lives value and make us better

Core revenue streams

Kurek does speaking engagements and has a best-selling book called How Would Love Respond? that has been out for 8 years and sells massively. He recently bought back the rights to it and re-released it.

He also has coaching clients and a coaching group called The Entrepreneur’s Inner Circle. The coaching group only takes in 20 entrepreneurs at a time, who Kurek coaches for one year. Kurek is also writing more books, works with sports themes, and has an online personal development club.

Benefits of writing

Kurek says a book gets the public looking at someone as an expert and when one has a number one best seller, that amplifies ones credibility. He says Robert Kiyosaki told him that Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a brochure that he wrote to promote himself, and that people pay $29.95 for. That is the same way Kurek’s book works for him while also helping him help more people in a more leveraged fashion. People buy his book, love it and buy many copies of it to give to their friends and families. He also gives away copies whenever he travels and it has worked very well for him because it has gotten him corporate clients, media interviews, numerous sales, and many other great gains. He even sold 150 books in Kuwait.

How Would Love Respond? was the first book he finished. He had written a book in the early nineties called Nutritional Support. He self-published it and sold about 3,000 copies. He also wrote two other books before How Would Love Respond? but they never took off because writing was not Kurek’s natural talent. Eventually he hired a wordsmith to teach him how to structure, started learning publicity and got a big New York agent to represent him before he had even written anything.

Growth strategy today

Kurek does a lot of interviews, media, blog posts, webinars, and is regularly on social media. He pitches segments to media outlets that he wants to be on. Once, while in New Zealand, he met a breakfast show host and convinced him to have him on his show. During the show, Kurek took the host across broken glass and after that he helped the host fire walk, and through that he got 18 minutes on TV and it didn’t cost him anything.

He says he not only sells his business but also sells himself (the Kurek Ashley brand). A good example of that is Richard Branson.

Tip: It’s on editorial that people trust you more than on advertisements and it really builds your profile

Biggest breakthrough moment

“Whenever I see a door, window, or pathway open to me, not only do I go through it but I capitalize on it”

For example, with the current podcast interview (The Business Generals Podcast), Kurek says he will share it with all the people in his database and social media platforms. He always does as much as he can to keep expanding everything.

Telling great stories in his speaking engagements

Kurek says people like to be entertained more than educated. For example, How Would Love Respond? is made up of stories about his own life and other different things, and it has made such a big difference in people’s lives because they get caught up in his story.

Tip: Stories are the fastest way to induce trance, which means to get into people’s sub-conscious minds, because they listen to your stories, and the teachings are imbedded in the stories

Mentors

Kurek believes in having mentors and he is always reading and studying new things. He has had different coaches, for example, he had a publicity coach in New York who gave him one sentence, and that sentence made Kurek over a million dollars. He has coaches at different levels except personal development because he is always teaching personal development and is therefore always speaking, reading or studying about it. His coaches are mostly in internet marketing and business.

He has also been studying Aikido for the past 9 years and is one rank away from his black belt. It’s not just about martial arts, it’s about how someone conducts themselves in life. It coaches Kurek on how to operate, how to handle challenges, and how to handle people.

Tip: To be an authority, you have to be an ongoing student

A day in life when starting the business Vs. a day in life now

The only difference is that he is now married with 3 kids. Him and his wife work from their farm on the sunshine coast. He gets up at 4 or 5am, reads his goals, does affirmations, reads, does some exercises, drives the kids to school, and does coaching and other work throughout the rest of the day. He is always engaging in activities to expand the business.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The Science of Getting Rich: How to Make Money and Get the Life You Want – Wallace D. Wattles
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It – Michael E....

051: Email Marketing: The Revenue Generation Phenomenon (w/ Ben Settle)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 22:00:41 -0400

Ben Settle is a world class email specialist, full-time email marketer and copywriting trainer. He teaches people how to make more income from emails. Over the past 15 years, Ben has written ads, created email campaigns, and cooked up marketing strategies for clients that have collectively earned tens of millions of dollars in sales in hyper competitive, “cut throat” markets.

His methods have also gotten rave reviews from the world’s top A-List copywriters, marketers, and designers. He has taught methods he pioneered to some of the world’s most prestigious direct marketing companies. Ben also publishes a monthly print newsletter called “Email Players” that costs $97 per month and is read by hundreds of people in over 30 countries, including some of the most respected copywriters and marketers on the planet, such as A-list copywriters, publishers at prestigious direct marketing companies like Agora Financial, leading auto-responder and email trainers, world class copywriters, and more.

…………

His books

Ben’s books are available on www.bensettle.com/kindle and they are mostly business related including topics like copy writing, selling, positioning, traffic generation, and others. Three of them are basically twisted monster books.

He says his books are made up of content that he had already written so he just repurposes the content into short books. He makes good money from the books and they also bring him solid leads.

>>>

Legacy:
To have an impact as a teacher and educator, helping others learn, inspiring them to learn the English language, inspiring to pursue their business dreams so they can have a meaningful life – Ben.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.bensettle.com – Ben’s Business website (opt into email list to get the first issue of the Email Players newsletter or check out the blog)

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

050: The Power of Direct Response Marketing (w/ Brian Kurtz)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 22:00:22 -0400

Brian Kurtz is the founder of Titan Marketing, an educational consulting business that teaches direct response marketing to online marketers. Brain started in the list business which gave him a solid foundation in learning about audiences, demographics and database marketing. Brian helped Boardroom, Inc. create tens of millions in revenue from mastering the skill of direct response marketing.

Brian has been able to market and sell huge numbers of newsletters and books via direct response television (infomercials) and email/internet. He has overseen the mailing of approximately 1.3 billion pieces of third class mail over the last 20 years. He has been responsible for buying media in excess of $80 Million and selling over 3 million books via direct response television over a three year period.

Going into full-time business

Brian worked for Board Room, Inc. for thirty four years as a partner in the business with an equity position, and so never felt like he was working for his employer. He says he considers himself an intrapreneur rather than an entrepreneur because even though he didn’t participate in starting the company, when he became partner, he came up with a lot of innovative growth ideas that contributed to the company’s continuous success. Working there honed his entrepreneurial talents.

After his employer passed away, Brian left the company to start a direct marketing educational business through which he could share what he learnt at Board Room, Inc. about direct marketing. It’s been two years now, as of 2017, since he started the business.

So far, within the two years, he has created two high-level mastermind groups for entrepreneurs, marketers, and copy writers. He has written a book; created different products; republished books by other classic direct marketers and copy writers; and he does a lot of public speaking internationally.

Core revenue streams

He generates revenue from the mastermind groups, the products that he sells and his speaking engagements. He also does a lot of consulting for different clients. He says he doesn’t prefer the consulting work because it’s not as scalable as the other revenue sources he engages in.

Board Room, Inc.

Brian says Board Room mostly sold books and newsletters (magazines without advertising) directly to consumers and most of the books that were the biggest sellers were the health-related ones. Books on personal finance, investments, and consumer information also did very well. They had a big newsletter called Bottom Line Personal which was the largest broad-based consumer newsletter in terms of circulation in the US. At some point it had 1 million subscribers and Brian estimates that it now has around 300,000 subscribers. There were years where they sold up to 3 million books a year through direct mail, the internet, e-newsletters, affiliates, radio, inserts, and TV.

Brian says he prefers to work with companies that are willing to use multiple channels to sell their products. He even owns a url called http://www.singlechannelmarketingissoboring.com which directs people to his regular website, http://www.briankurtz.me. He says he bought that url so he could talk about it wherever he speaks in order to emphasize how dangerous single channel marketing is.

Tip: Using one medium of marketing is very dangerous. Make sure you do multi-channel marketing

Transition from Board Room, Inc. into self-employment

He says it’s been better than he expected despite some challenges. The most challenging part of the business is the consulting service he offers because he can’t be as deeply engaged in the businesses he consults for to ensure their success. That is unlike his work at Board Room where he was 100% responsible for all the operations of the business and therefore was always able to ensure all the necessary processes were implemented to facilitate the company’s success.

The mastermind groups have only been more of a great opportunity than a challenge because Brian always wants to over deliver to the members of his groups by getting them the best guests, incredible information, and game changing resources for their businesses.

The easiest thing to do when he was starting the business was building his mastermind groups, because they were made possible by the strong, long term relationships he built with clients for the 34 years he worked at Board Room. When starting out, he knew the first 50 people he wanted to put in the high level mastermind group and he actually got 25 of them into it through one on one interviews.

He says the second mastermind group, which is for up-and-comers, has taken longer to develop, because it’s made up of people who were not part of his network but knew him from his work.

Secret to growing a business massively for people who have no list

Brian doesn’t sell a lot of stuff to his list and gives away a lot of free content. He says direct marketing is about playing the long game.

Tip 1: Get my video on “…how I built a database of 9 million names…most of which were buyers…without the internet” by opting in through my site

http://www.briankurtz.me

Tip 2: When using direct marketing, develop a relationship with your potential clients first, through for example, giving them free content and then later ensuring that you over-deliver

Tip 3: It’s okay if you don’t figure out how to monetize your product right away. Focus more on building your list first

Successes at Board Room

Board Room, Inc. had 3 newsletters including Bottom Line Personal and Board Room Reports (business-oriented). Brian realised that the health information in Bottom Line Personal was getting the most responses from their audience which indicated that there was a lot more interest in health than in their core personal finance editorial. That prompted them to launch a health newsletter called Health Confidential but they struggled to market and sell it. Brian discovered that the problem was in the messaging to their audience about the newsletter and their positioning, so they moved the whole branding to Bottom Line Health which ended up becoming incredibly success.

From then on, every book they spun was under the umbrella of the Bottom Line brand. With all their direct marketing based on the Bottom Line brand, all their health books were successful. They also did deep research on the health topics that their audience was more interested in which enabled them to keep launching different marketable health books. One of the most successful books they ever did was on diabetes, an epidemic that still exists today. That’s how Board Room ended up being more of a health publisher than they did a general consumer interest or financial publisher.

Tip 1: Sometimes you have to let the audience tell you what they want

Tip 2: Every business problem can be solved with a great sales letter

Difference between direct response marketing and standard marketing

Brian says it’s all about measurability and getting a return on investment on all the advertising one does. Direct marketing is the most measurable unlike standard marketing. It is also tied into the concept of Lifetime Value which is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.

Tip 1: You must always know the results of your advertising efforts to determine whether the method you are using is effective in getting you sales

Tip 2: Make sure whatever you are spending on advertising is recoverable and in case you don’t recover the money then make sure you have a second product that you can promote through a different advertising option

Tip 3: No direct marketing business can survive without repeat business. Make sure that you have multiple products that you market through multiple channels

Business model

He says it’s always about repeat business for him in as far as business models are concerned. This is why he gets frustrated with the consulting work he does because in that consulting model, he gets paid for time while it would be more gainful if he got paid for his expertise. Brian says that it’s possible to achieve that by for example, putting everything into a course that people can buy coupled with coaching and monthly webinars. That business model would be very successful and it’s part of it that Brian applies in his mastermind groups.

When he is coaching people on how to apply the business model in their own businesses, he has to know what resources they can offer so he can help them build up a way of delivering the resources to their clients. He does that through a webinar group, mastermind group, coaching group, monthly webinar group, a course with coaching and training or a live event. Brian helps them develop diverse continuity models which enable them to get ongoing revenue in the long term. He always discourages people from selling a one-off product or event without continuity.

Starting a podcast (hypothetical)

He says he would not want to start a podcast but that he is a good interviewer. He loves being a guest on podcasts because they help him think about his ideas and come up with new innovative ones to grow his offerings.

Tip 1: To start a podcast you have to be a great interviewer, know how to ask probing questions and how to pull out what is in someone’s mind that they were not even expecting to share in an interview

Tip 2: Podcasts are a great way to build an audience for one’s business

Fear of failure

This has never stopped Brian from doing anything. He is always conscious to reality and the fact that things can get bad any time so he is always prepared for anything that might come his way. The only thing that Brian fears is not delivering what he promises his customers.

Tip 1: Always stay optimistic but still be constructively paranoid because it will always keep you sharp

Tip 2: To make a lot of shots you have to take a lot of shots

Tip 3: Everything in business, everything you do, you don’t win or lose, you either win or you learn – From Susan Garrett, the dog trainer

Tip 4: For the first two years of business, everything you do is a pilot so whatever doesn’t work with time, you can get rid of it or change it

A day in life when starting the business Vs. a day in life now

When he started the business, it was hard to get some free time because he worked on the business 24/7.

Now, his assistant knows that she does not make appointments for him on Mondays, Wednesday mornings, and Fridays because he always wants time for creative thinking. That includes on weekends. On Wednesday mornings he goes to his personal trainer for a workout. Tuesdays, Wednesday afternoons, and Thursdays are always very busy.

He conducts his mastermind groups on a Thursday once or twice a month.

Tip: When your brain is working in a creative mode, it’s different than when you are responding to emails, doing coaching calls and other business activities.

Mentors

Brian doesn’t look at having mentors as an investment or a cost but as a must have. He has a 5-minute video blog post titled “You don’t choose your mentors, your mentors choose you” where he says that all his mentors were created by his own sense of contribution which means he first found the people he wanted to follow and learnt from, then tried to figure out how he could help them.

For example, with two of his major mentors, Dick Benson (one of the fathers of direct mail) and Eugene Schwartz (one of the most amazing copywriters), they both needed Brian to help them with their lists. When he helped them with their lists, he didn’t have to ask them to be his mentors because they wanted to mentor him.

His Book

Brian’s new book is called The Advertising Solution and is available on www.thelegendsbook.com. The book is about 6 of the greatest legends of direct marketing ever, what people can learn from the eternal truths that they pioneered, and how they are all applicable today.

...

049: Make Your Product or Service Instantly Famous using Celebrities (w/ Sarah Shaw)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:58:00 -0400

Sarah Shaw is the CEO of Sarah Shaw Consulting. She started her career as a costume designer for Hollywood movies, went on to build several businesses and sold millions of dollars’ worth of products including the Sarah Shaw Handbag which got a lot of press, TV and movie placements. The bag is sold in over 1,200 stores and over 70 of the world’s most famous celebrities have worn or carried her products. Within a year Sarah Shaw Handbags could be found on the pages of InStyle, Oprah, People, Lucky and Marie Claire magazines.

Sarah provides private one-on-one coaching packages that give entrepreneurs the overall know-how to create and launch a product as well strategies she used to grow her own million-dollar company. One of her special areas of coaching is teaching clients how to get their products into the hands of celebrities and then leveraging their celebrity clientele for press and sales. He experience in production and entertainment has lent itself to unique approaches to packaging, marketing, distribution and public relations.

Sarah also founded Entreprenette, a company through which she coaches female entrepreneurs through the process of taking their fashion, home, lifestyle or accessory product ideas from concept to reality.

Period in full-time business

Sarah started her first company in 1994 but has been in full-time self-employment since 1998.

Core revenue streams

Sarah’s current business is Sarah Shaw Consulting through which she works with entrepreneurs to help them launch their product-based companies. She works with them for 6+ months in building their businesses.

Starting the consulting business

Sarah started Sarah Shaw Consulting in 2009.

Starting out in business

After college, Sarah started working in the film business doing costumes for movies. She never thought of entrepreneurship back then. In 1994, she started a clothing company that made clothes for movies. She partnered with a fashion designer and manufacturer who produced the clothes for her.

Her second business was buying wardrobe trailers and renting them to the film business. She later got the idea for a handbag in 1997. She made the bags, sold them, and they took off very well in the market. The handbag was taken up by 20 to 30 stores, and in 1998 she got a big order from Anthropologie, which drove her to quit her job as a costume designer.

Role of a costume designer in Hollywood

Sarah says costumes are the visual aspect of a movie and are therefore very critical in developing a character in the audience’s eye. She was a costume supervisor working under costume designers and some of her roles included managing the budgets and making sure all the costumes were on set when needed. She also performed a lot of other tasks and worked a minimum of 12 hours a day.

Take away from the costume supervisor job

The costume supervisor job enabled her to discover her tenacity and willingness to succeed. She learnt how to manage budgets, how not to take no for an answer, and how to put her vision to paper in the best way possible. All that helped her as she started her entrepreneurial journey.

Starting the handbag company and growing it

When she was first creating the handbags, she used to create rough designs and create samples. She consulted her former business partner in the previous clothing company she had, and he connected her to the people who eventually helped her get the first order from Anthropologie.

She had initially contracted a family that sewed the bags for her but she later started using a factory she knew to do the sewing in mass. At that point, she had a small office where she managed all the operations from. She eventually got orders from Nordstrom stores and other boutiques across the US.

Sarah did a lot of cold calling and sometimes mailed out her printed catalogue to get new buyers. Later on, she started sending out the handbag to celebrities. When the celebrities were photographed with her handbag, it generated a lot of gainful media coverage which led to an increase in sales from $500,000 to $1 Million.

Being good at those marketing techniques helped her when she started her next business. In 2003, she patented a closet organizer which she sold many units of. The massive sales were made possible by a combination of internet marketing and the traditional marketing techniques. She had that business until 2006 when she decided to start a whole new business.

Shifting business to start Sarah Shaw Consulting

Sarah Shaw handbags lasted between 1997 and 2002. Sarah lost most of her investors after 9/11. They pulled out of the company because they had too many financial problems and Sarah had to close down the company because she couldn’t run it without investors. That’s when she started selling the closet organizer while also doing some consulting work.

She later launched a handbag hanger business and in 2006 she decided to focus more on it, and that eventually led her into the consulting business where she taught some incubator programs for women starting out in business. She would have 12 to 20 product-based businesses wanting to work with her each month and Sarah really loved doing it.

The woman who used to give her the consulting work suggested that she could start a consulting business of her own and that roused her curiosity. She ended up hiring a business coach for six months to teach her how to start a service-based company. Two months after working with the coach, Sarah slowly launched her consulting company.

Handbag hanger business

The handbag hanger was a fabric strip fitted with several tools that would hold 7 to 14 handbags while hanging from a closet or wall. It helped customers create space for storing other items. Sarah marketed the business by using celebrities, the media and her enormous mailing list from her previous handbag company. By the end of 2001, the business was generating $25,000 to $30,000 in monthly revenues. She was also selling to about 400 stores and some overseas distributors.

Sarah had the business for about 10 years and decided to close it in 2013 because she wasn’t passionate about it anymore.

Current consulting business

Most people who seek Sarah’s help are those who already have a product developed and manufactured but cannot successfully market and sell the product. She helps them collect their customers’ email addresses through setting up pop-ups on their websites; get their products to celebrities to generate and increase sales; and gett their products on magazines.

Sarah recently had a client who developed a calculator for baby boomers that lights up the menu so they can read the fine print in the dark or in a dimly lit room. Sarah has gotten the calculator to about 15 celebrities so far including Betty White and Julian Moore. Real Simple magazine also recently put the calculator on their magazine because it had been highlighted by the celebrities. Sarah expects that to generate lots of sales for the client.

Accessing celebrities

There is a database website that Sarah uses to get celebrities’ contacts. She works with their publicists and managers in order to get products to them. She starts by identifying how a product will resonate with a particular celebrity to make it easier for them to embrace the product. She then crafts an email pitch letter to attract the target celebrity’s attention. Follow up emails after the initial email are also critical and they include sending thank you notes or offering free samples to the celebrities where possible. One of Sarah’s clients approached Demi Moore for her travel item and Demi’s people asked her to send the item to them so Demi could sample it.

The main niche

Sarah focuses more on getting products to celebrities and her strongest expertise is in working with fashion accessories, baby products and lifestyle products.

Biggest breakthrough moment in the consulting business

She says the business has been compounding year after year. She started creating a lot of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) programs a few years ago and some of the DIY videos have been doing very well in helping people who can’t afford her services to learn how to market their products on their own. Some of the programs include a celebrity DIY program and another one that teaches entrepreneurs how to do email marketing and set up an ecommerce website.

Loving the business

Sarah loves solving people’s problems, especially those with product-based companies because most of her experience was in the product-based business. She loves helping them avoid big disasters or potential problems in order to change the course of their businesses faster than they would be able to achieve on their own.

Fear of failure

She believes having fear of failure is a healthy mentality for an entrepreneur to avoid being too over-confident. She gets worried from time to time when dealing with new and existing clients but she keeps a healthy connection to the fear of failure in order to keep moving forward successfully.

Tip: When there are problems in your business, always try to find new ways of doing things and consult experienced mentors/coaches instead of taking advice from different people

Mentors

Sarah consulted a business coach when she was starting the consulting business and the coach helped her in building a coaching offer. The coach came in, analysed the needs of Sarah’s target clients and came up with the things Sarah could teach them, that they couldn’t learn anywhere else. She then taught Sarah how to aggressively market her service and within three months Sarah had made $50,000 from her first clients.

Sarah also consulted other coaches like Frank Kern, a digital marketer; and took several online programs to learn diverse technical skills.

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances, and Friendships

Family and friendships come first because they are the most important to every other aspect of her life.

A day in life when starting Sarah Shaw Consulting Vs. a day in life now

She is more focused now, than when she was starting out because she used to scramble too much to get clients and deliver gainful business development services.

Her services are now well packaged and she focuses more on her new podcast, the people she interviews and how the interviewees can add value to the lives of her listeners. She also works full-time on helping her clients grow their businesses

Normal week day

Sarah does coaching calls 2 days a week, one in the morning and one in the afternoon each day. She talks to her clients every other week and spends a lot of time on emails with her clients, coming up with promotional ideas for them, updating the documents her team has worked on for them, among other client related work.

The Team

She has one team member in Pakistan and one in Sri Lank. Her IT guys are based in Oregon.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc. – Gary Erickson

Hustle: The power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning, and Momentum – Neil Patel

Legacy:
To be able to show her kids that they can do whatever they want in life while also motivating her clients to always work towards achieving their business goals – Sarah.

Best way to connect:
www.sarahshowconsulting.com – Sarah’s Business website
Sarah Shaw Consulting – Facebook

@AskSarahShaw – Twitter

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

048: Helping Small Businesses Grow and Impacting the World Economy One Small Business at a Time (w/ Carissa Reiniger)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 01:40:14 -0400

Carissa Reiniger is an entrepreneur and small business growth expert. She started her company, Silver Lining, at the age of 22 and has been highly involved in the world of small business ever since. She spent over a decade of her life learning how to effectively help a small business grow and developed the SLAP methodology which has managed to influence over 10,000 small businesses.

Carissa has written 3 books on how to grow and help small businesses succeed. She has also been featured in many publications and media outlets including the New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, National Post, Globe and Mail, Inc., Entrepreneur, CNN and more. She speaks often on entrepreneurship and has worked with the small business teams at The White House, Google, RIM, Staples, American Airlines, Citrix, and many more.

Carissa is also the founder of Thank You Small Business, a big movement to help more small businesses succeed. She is extremely passionate about the arts, has 2 books about relationships, and a play based on her book that she produced across Canada and many other projects under her belt. She is currently working on writing and directing her own play in NYC and producing and directing a documentary.

Period in business

She started Silver Lining eleven years ago when she was 22 years old. It was her first official business.

Core revenue streams

When she started Silver Lining, it was a consulting business which didn’t work in the long run because the overheads were too high, their consulting fees to high, and it was not scalable. She eventually changed the business model to a training model where they were getting paid to train small businesses. The revenue streams changed because they were getting paid large sums of money by large organizations, companies and government agencies to train small businesses. Though that business model was highly profitable, they could not support the small businesses in the long term so four years ago Carissa came up with another business model through which she invested heavily in the development of a software product that enabled Silver Lining to become a SaaS business.

That business model has so far been very successful because their prices are affordable, it’s profitable, they can scale, and they can work with small businesses long term. They have three different SaaS package levels depending on how much support a business owner needs.

Core service offering

Carissa wanted to help small business owners successfully sustain their businesses while making more money doing what they love. She first interviewed 400 business owners trying to figure out why it was so hard to grow a small business and why the failure rate was so high. She discovered that small businesses never have enough time or money; and they need more time to make more money, and more money to make more time which Carissa called The Cash Flow Capacity Catch 22.

To solve that problem, Carissa developed the Silver Lining Action Plan (SLAP!), better known as the SLAP Methodology, which is based on behaviour change psychology; and it’s more of a modern, provocative, interesting, action-oriented, interactive business growth plan. SLAP is a one year program where business owners spend the first 30 days building a one year growth plan.

The business owners start by thinking about where they want their businesses to be, evaluating their business models, setting financials goals, deciding who their ideal customers are, and building an action plan to go into the market and meet their target customers. Once they are done, which usually takes 10 hours, they have to implement that action plan within a 12 month period. Silver Lining offers them support, structures, resources and training for the 12 months to help them achieve their growth plan.

Current business model

Silver Lining’s business model is SaaS overlaid with consultancy and their pricing is between $200 and $500 a month. Every client at any level gets four things including access to the SLAP center (where they build their action plan, manage their results, and get the resources they need), a SLAP assistant (a supportive team to help them stay on track), access to SLAP school (ongoing online training), and access to SLAP world (where they are connected to other business owners and resources that will support them in their growth plans).

Silver Lining also offers them access to SLAP experts made up of successful entrepreneurs looking to give back by mentoring small business owners. The entrepreneurs get certified by Silver Lining to become SLAP experts and they mostly serve the clients who pay more than $200 a month through one-on-one or group meetings based on the need of every business owner. The amount a client pays per month determines the amount of time they spend with a SLAP expert which can be weekly or monthly.

Coming up with the current business model

Carissa says she came up with the current business model by getting it wrong so many times in the beginning. She believes that one earns their stripes not by their moments of grand success but by their moments of massive failure.

Silver Lining grew exponentially and achieved $1 Million in revenue in just their first year of business, but that rapid growth became a problem in the long run because by the end of their second year they had $400,000 in debt.

Initially, they had tried a lot of business models including consulting, franchising, and training, but they all failed. The failures taught Carissa a lot of valuable lessons. She has always been conscious about the quality of their service and whether it helps their clients succeed; whether the business was profitable; and whether the business is scalable to ensure widespread impact.

Tip 1: Fast growth is not always good

Tip 2: You will become your best over time, going through different failures and successes

Motivation behind starting in business

She never thought she would be an entrepreneur and never had aspirations to work in the corporate world but she was passionate about making a difference in the world. While interviewing the 400 business owners that she talked to about small businesses, she connected mostly to the fact that they felt stuck, and she really wanted to help them out of that. Her desire to solve that problem was the driving force that led her to start Silver Lining.

Getting the first clients

She initially worked for free for anyone who would listen to her and worked hard to get clients. The first thing she did after quitting her job was write down a list of all the business owners around the world who she hoped would be her clients one day. She then called each of them and asked if she could interview them and learn from them. Silver Lining was built on what she learnt from the business people she interviewed.

The second thing she did is call all the people she knew who believed in her and asked them if they could buy into her consulting services. The combination of those two things quickly built up a lot of business for her.

Hiring the first team

She hired an assistant within a few months and by the end of the first year she had a small team that grew to about 12 to 15 people by the second year. She focuses more on keeping her staff count low and ensuring sustainable profitability and scalability.

Growth strategy now

Carissa has a growth team which has two sub-teams. The first sub-team is the partnership team that focuses on building relationships with organizations and companies that serve small businesses, to help them implement SLAP into their operations. The second sub-team is the direct connecting team which focuses on fun promotions that they can offer including referrals and thought leadership activities that they can do to offer support to small business owners who are not yet their clients.

Biggest breakthrough moment

This happened when she was having her SaaS software developed. There were so many unexpected challenges, that she doubted whether the idea would work. But one of her advisers motivated her to keep going and from that point on she became very focused on achieving success in her business.

Lowest moment

This was when the company was in so much debt. In the beginning, when the business was low on cash flow, she used to borrow money and pay it back at high interest rates. Those interest rates became a burden over time and they got her into $400,000 in debt, which negatively affected her relationships with people.

What she would have done differently

Carissa says if she got a do over, she would have asked for help a lot sooner to avoid accumulating debt to the point where she did. When she finally sought help, she got the strategic input she needed to solve the problem and the emotional support she needed to forge on.

A day in life when starting Silver Lining Vs. a day in life now

It has somewhat been almost the same now as it was then, but today, she is always in meetings all day long and has been consistently building structures around her to operate the business. She used to spend more time on external meetings with potential clients but she now makes sure that she has a 3-hour meeting with her staff every day.

Books

Carissa has several books and the first one is Inspiring Entrepreneurs: How to Build a Business to its First Million which is based on the interviews that she did with the 400 business owners and the lessons that she learnt. The second book is an ebook called I Will and it’s about the systems that she uses to keep track of everything she has to do and making sure she does them.

The third book is called Thank You Small Business and it’s about how important small businesses are to the economy. It’s also a thank you message to small business owners for how hard they work for the economy to create jobs and opportunities. It’s also a call to action to the general public to advocate for and support small businesses more.

The books are available on www.carissareiniger.com and www.smallbizsilverlining.com

Legacy:
As an entrepreneur, to have created a business that changed the economy one business at a time, and that lasted far beyond her while sustainably helping small businesses grow and thrive.

On a personal level, to have her life remind people that they can create the reality that they want and that anything is possible if they keep working hard at what they want to achieve – Carissa.

Best way to connect:
www.smallbizsilverlining.com – Carissa’s Business website (use contact form)

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

047: Clarity, Confidence and Direction (w/ Joel Boggess)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 03:56:40 -0400

Joel Boggess is the go-to guy for clarity, confidence, and direction. He is an author, life coach, and online radio host (ReLaunch Show). He teaches professionals and women on-the-go how to find clarity, confidence and direction even when they feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unchallenged. He helps entrepreneurs, owners, and business leaders make better decisions, take bolder actions, and get greater results.

With a Master’s degree in counselling and many years’ experience working one-on-one and with special interest groups, Joel has the know-how, skill, and wisdom, to help you tune into fully expressing your voice. He is a No. 1 Best Selling Author for his book, Finding Your Voice, which hit the top spots on Amazon. He is also a contributor to Huffpost and Success.com.

Last corporate job

His last corporate job was in the Dallas, Fort Worth area working for Morgan Stanley. He officially left formal employment on November 30th 2006.

Core revenue streams

Joel has been doing podcast coaching and one-on-one coaching. He has helped people create, launch and grow their podcast shows. He recently tweaked his business model to focus exclusively on speaking to get paid, where has had some experience.

Tip: Podcasting is the new networking and the best way to make connections that you would never make through any other channel

Starting out in business

One month after leaving formal employment, Joel got a speaking engagement. During that speaking engagement, Zig Ziglar was seated in the front row which challenged Joel to do his best and also motivated him to move forward as an entrepreneur. He initially started as a one-on-one career and life coach and that was his primary revenue stream for a long time.

Replacing the Morgan Stanley income

Joel says it took a couple of years to replace his Morgan Stanley income.

Tip: If you live under the same roof with someone who is highly involved in your life, make sure you have an agreement with them before you leave formal employment.

Why podcasting?

Apart from having mixes of experience in radio and TV, Joel knew he had to be in the podcast industry and be a leader. Podcasting is of great value to him and he says that having a podcast has been one of the best business decisions he has ever made.

Monetizing the podcast

He says this is not the most important thing because he views his podcast as a door opener and relationship/opportunity maker. It has helped him get on stages and develop relationships with million-dollar speakers, actors, best-selling authors, and athletes. Inviting those people on his podcast show enabled him to bridge the gap between him and them.

Reason for success so far

Joel says focusing on what he wanted to accomplish enabled him to create a show that would add value to people and help him get some growth opportunities. He has been focused on creating that show, getting quality content from the guests that he hosts, and developing the show’s social media presence. Focusing on the show has helped him get to the point where he can now move forward into diversification.

Tip: Focus is the number one competitive advantage

Initial wrong move

He says one of the mistakes he made in the beginning was counting on his previous guests to drive his show growth by directing traffic to his website and social media sites. The results were disastrous for him despite having all the biggest names on his show because the show was not growing. Taking ownership of the show’s growth later on was a big game changer.

Tip: As a podcaster, add value in the conversation and to the conversation, and that will change the way the interviewee views you

Leveraging the networking aspect of the podcast and the current social outreach strategy after each show

Joel says that he has learnt the importance of repurposing content which involves sending out shows multiple times on various social media channels. He mostly uses Twitter for the repurposing of content. He used to use HootSuite and is currently using SocialOomph. All he does is upload his show to SocialOomph and it keeps going. He is also able to repurpose the show content, artwork, and guest quotes.

Tip: Ask all your guests to give you 3 or 4 quotes and then create branded artwork with those quotes inclusive of the podcast url link to each show and the guest’s picture. Repurpose those over and over again while giving the guests the opportunity to share them

Fear of failure and low moment

Joel doesn’t think the fear of failure has kept him from running his business. He admits he is scared of certain things as is human nature, but he always makes sure he moves forward.

Tip: One of the ways to combat fear is to keep moving, do something and keep momentum rolling

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances, and Friendships

Faith and Family definitely come first, then Fun, Finances and Friendships

A day in life when starting in business Vs. a day in life now

Joel says one thing he has always done is pick up the phone and call people without fear in order to establish solid business relationships. That helped him establish a name for himself in the financial world when he worked for Morgan Stanley and it has been contributing to his entrepreneurial success.

His Book

Joel released his book “Finding Your Voice: Sort Through the Clutter, Discover Clarity, Confidence, and Direction” in November 2012 and it’s a guide book to help people get clarity, confidence and direction with who they are at the core so that they can then build their business in a way that adds value to them and the clients they serve.

The book can be found on www.fyvbook.com where people can also find diverse free resources extracted from the book. It’s also available on Amazon.

Tool and Resources

HootSuite – a platform for managing multiple social media accounts in one place.

SocialOomph – a powerful social media automation tool that enables people to easily schedule updates, find quality people to follow, and monitor social media activity.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Finding Your Voice: Sort Through the Clutter, Discover Clarity, Confidence, and Direction – Joel Boggess

Legacy:
To be that guy that people point to and say, “He is the one that believed in me when no one else did, he is the one that drove me to write that book, he is the one that encouraged me to launch that podcast even though everyone else told me not to, and he is the one that helped me believe that I could build a business worth building and worth having” – Joel.

Best way to connect:
joe@relaunchshow.com – Joel’s Email Address
relaunchshow.com/subscribe – Joel’s Podcast

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

046: Tanga.com, $30 Million a Year Online Deals Site, How Did They Build It? (w/ Jeremy Young)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 13 Aug 2017 23:30:02 -0400

Jeremy Young is the founder and CEO of Tanga.com, a company he built from scratch to become one of the fastest-growing privately-held companies in Arizona (#14 2015 ACE Awards) and the largest bootstrapped company in its market, with no outside investors or debts. The company has had over 5 million orders shipped and served more than 2 million customers.

Tanga was honored by Phoenix Business Journal in 2014 and 2015 as one of Arizona’s 25 fastest growing private companies and included in the Internet Retailer’s lists of Top 1000 ecommerce companies. Jeremy was named the 2016 CEO of the Year by Phoenix Business Journal at the AZ Top Tech Exec Awards.

…………

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Founder’s At Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days – Jessica Livingston
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – Malcolm Gladwell
Other Malcolm Gladwell’s books in general

>>>

Legacy:
To leave a mark, do something that changes the world, and leave the world a better place – Jeremy.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.tanga.com – Jeremy’s Business Website

jeremy@tanga.com – Jeremy’s Business Email
Jeremy Young – LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

045: Making Super Hot Chilli Sauce & Building it into a Multi-Million Dollar Specialty Food Company (w/ Dave Hirshkop)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 11:21:46 -0400

Dave Hirshkop is the owner and creative force behind Dave’s Gourmet which is a Gourmet products manufacturer that is made up of several brands including Insanity Sauces and Snacks, DG Sauces, Palette Fine Foods, and Chile Today Hot Tamale. They have won dozens of awards, are in national distribution and have a ton of media coverage including The Today Show, Good Morning America, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The Food Network, NPR, and many more.

…………..

Tools and Resources:

Blinkist: An app that offers very informative summaries of diverse useful books

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Dave reads audio books and has now been reading book summaries on Blinkist, but doesn’t have any in particular that he can recommend. He advices entrepreneurs to read books on management. He says Seth Gordon books are also very gainful.

He still recommends “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss”

>>>

Legacy:
To be remembered for having created ideas and products that had a positive impact in people’s lives – Dave.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.davesgourmet.com – Dave’s Business website
dave@davesgourmet.com – Dave’s email address

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

044: Making Money by Making a Positive Impact (w/ JV Crum III)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 10:06:59 -0400

JV Crum III is the founder of Conscious Millionaire Institute, which works with coaches, consultant and people who want to make their first million dollars and do something bigger – even if they have not yet fully identified every aspect of what that is, or how big they truly want to play on this planet.

JV is a true master at helping clients discover, craft, and expand their “Big Impact Vision”. Conscious Millionaire works with business coaches and consultants who are next-generation thinkers, people who seek to create a transformational shift – for themselves, their clients and our world.

You can find more about JV at http://consciousmillionaire.com/

Join us in this awesome episode between me and JV, and I know you will have a blast!!

………

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference – JV Crum III

>>>

Legacy:
To help at least a million people achieve the financial freedom they want by building businesses that make a positive impact in the world – JV Crum III.

>>>

Best way to connect:
www.consciousmillionaireshow.com – JV’s Podcast (Send Email or Voicemail)
www.consciousmillionaire.com/freebook – JV’s Business Website

043: Contactually, Organise Your Contacts and Stay in Touch – From an Idea on his Evernote to Millions in Revenue (w/ Zvi Band)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 21:04:14 -0400

Zvi Band is a software developer and entrepreneur, the CEO and co-founder of Contactually which is a software service that gives people everything they need to easily organize and stay in touch with the most important people in their network. He built the company from an idea in his Evernote to 60 employees (and growing), millions in revenue, 12M+ in venture backing, numerous awards, and thousands of paying customers in SMB and mid-market.

He previously led Workstreamer as CTO from its initial product development to acquisition. Prior to Contactually, Zvi ran a software consultancy firm, working for clients such as Ford, NYSE AND Volkswagen. He also serves as a mentor to two DC-Based incubators, 1776 and Acceleprise. He founded DC Tech Meetup and ProudlyMadeinDC to promote DC entrepreneurship. He has been named a DC “Tech Titan” 3 times.

………..

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers – Geoffrey A. Moore (has been a key part of the business strategy behind Contactually)
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers – Ben Horowitz
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future – Peter Thiel

>>>

Legacy:
To be remembered as someone who made a positive impact in the world and made a lasting effect in some way – Zvi.

>>>

Best way to connect:
@skeevis – Zvi’s Twitter Handle (His favourite way of communicating)

www.contactually.com – Zvi’s business website

042: Behind the Scenes of the Successful Unlimited Graphic Design Services Business (w/ Russ Perry)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 20:51:15 -0400

Russ Perry is the founder Design Pickle, the number one flat rate graphic design service in the world, offering clients unlimited graphic design support at a flat monthly fee.

Design Pickle solves a lot of problems for just about everyone, from the small business that doesn’t have an in-house designer to the entrepreneur who shouldn’t be spending time trying to put Facebook ads together for hours on end.

Russ has been involved in branding and marketing strategy for over the last decade, and has worked to shift the status-quo with brands like Apple, Morgan Stanley, Pebble Tec, LG, Botanicare and Harlem Globetrotters.

……….

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport
The 7 Day startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch – Dan Norris

>>>

Legacy:
To be remembered as the enabler that ensured his family had amazing, unforgettable experiences – Russ.

>>>

Best way to connect:
Russ Perry on Instagram
www.designpickle.com – Russ’ business website (Fill out contact form)

041: Shift Your Finances – Sound Financial & Investment Advice (w/ Darryl Lyons)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 06 Aug 2017 09:26:31 -0400

Darryl Lyons is the CEO and co-founder of the PAX Financial Group which helps people improve their financial planning and quality of life through strategies for investing. He is a licensed financial planner and the author of Small Business, Big Pressure. Darryl began his career in the financial sector right after university and throughout his career; he had won awards for recruiting and development form Fortune 100 companies.

He started PAX Financial Group back in January 2007 with his co-founders Andres Gutierrez and Joseph Schuetze. He has built the company to officially become “one of the best places” to work in San Antonio.

Darryl also served as the Chairman for the Brooks Development Authority which earned him the honor of having Mayor Julian Castro name a park “The Darryl W Lyons Park”. He was also named to the 2010 San Antonio Business Journal’s “40 Under 40 Rising Stars” which honors people making a difference in business and the community

Period in full–time business

Started out alone about 12 years ago and after 2 years, brought in 2 partners to form PAX Financial Group. In the beginning he had a sole proprietorship business.

Current Revenue streams

The main revenue sources for PAX Financial are managing people’s money, insurance services and group retirement accounts. Darryl and his team take pride in liberating people when it comes to managing their money. Their services enable their clients to focus on what they are good at.

Starting out in business

His entrepreneurial journey started while in college. He used to work at a bank full-time to pay for college and that’s where he developed his interest in finance. Decided to study accounting and finance which enabled him to go into the banking and investment world. He started by working for big companies. Started his own firm about 5 years later.

Transition from formal employment into self-employment

It was a painful process for Darryl. His father had always motivated him to be an entrepreneur. Getting his first child was the first factor that pushed him to quit his formal job because he had the fear of losing his job while having so many personal responsibilities. A series of other difficulties eventually led him to go into entrepreneurship and despite the challenges he faced in the beginning, he persevered until he achieved success. His faith in God played a major role in his success to date.

Working on his new business

Working in the corporate world taught him how to create a habit of excellence. He used to do aggressive cold calling coupled with direct marketing and they helped him achieve solid sales leads which turned into long term clients. He applied the same to his new business and it helped him achieve sales while also maintaining his previous clients.

Getting the first set of clients

He engaged in a lot of networking which helped him get a fresh list of clients after losing all the previous clients he had when starting out. One of the people he met at a networking event appreciated Darryl’s level of integrity in his work, which led to Darryl being endorsed by Dave Ramsey. That endorsement became the new catalyst to his growth. He started getting 100 referrals per month from Dave Ramsey. Still works with Dave’s team to date.

Working towards getting endorsed

Darryl had a high degree of authenticity in his work and that naturally led to influential people endorsing his work.

Tip: Doing what you are passionate about will eventually make you visible in your area of business and if you maintain a high level of integrity and professionalism in your work, the right people will endorse and validate your work.

3 minute talk to 30,000 people

Darryl was offered an opportunity by his pastor to talk to his 30,000 strong congregation about financial and investment management. He enjoyed making the talk.

Growing the business

PAX Financial currently has 18 employees and more than 2,000 clients. They have been facing some challenging regulatory changes but they have managed to overcome them while still achieving considerable growth in the market. They have been doing a lot brand development activities to ensure that whenever people need financial advice, PAX is at the top of their minds.

Darryl doesn’t like branding since it takes too long to generate solid sales leads but he recognizes its importance in the overall long-term growth of a business.

Major challenges PAX helps people overcome

Darryl says the biggest one is helping clients determine how much money they have and how long it can last. They give their clients informed financial and investment advice to help them achieve self-sustainability and contentment in life.

Moments of failure

When Darryl was struggling with getting the business off the ground, he was also experiencing a lot of difficulties in his personal life. He decided to seek advice from an older Christian who inspired him to become more faithful in God. That gave him a renewed strength, fearlessness and zeal to work towards achieving entrepreneurial and personal success. Darryl says it was the biggest catalyst for his growth.

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances, and Friendships

Faith definitely comes first and it’s very important, then Family and fun, Finances and Friends.

A day in life when starting PAX Vs. a day in life now

When starting out he would always be in front of people or figuring out how to be in front of people. He would get to work at 7am, make phone calls, and drive to 5 potential clients’ homes or offices every day.

Today, he plans his day in advance by writing down the 6 most important things he needs to accomplish. He starts the day by praying before going to work. Meets 5 or 6 clients every day at his office. Leaves work by 5.30pm to spend time with his family.

Darryl’s book “Small Business Big Pressure: A Faith-Based Approach to Guide the Ambitious Entrepreneur”

He wrote the book to teach business owners how to integrate faith into their work. People refer to it as a reference book for small business owners. Darryl gets good feedback on the book from people all over the world. The book can be found at Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and Darryl’s website.

The biggest thing that people resonate with in the book is the fact that it’s all across the board. People mostly enjoy topics like “how to manufacture a vision and mission statement”, the hiring and interview questions, and the leadership habits. The book helps different business owners at different stages in their businesses

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All – Jim Collins

The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company – Joseph Michelli

Legacy:
To leave behind a strong reputation and positive principles for his children to live by – Darryl.

Best way to connect:
darryl@smallbusinessbigpressure.com – Darryl’s Email
www.smallbusinessbigpressure.com – Darryl’s Website

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

040: Solving his Mum’s Appointment Scheduling Problem led to Acuity Scheduling with now Over 50,000 clients (w/ Gavin Zuchlinski)

Davis Mutabwa — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 15:53:47 -0400

Gavin Zuchlinski is the founder of Acuity Scheduling, a clever online automated way for businesses to manage their appointments online, allowing clients to schedule themselves. He is a self-professed tech geek and espresso maniac who wholeheartedly believes that business should be fun.

Gavin says, “At Acuity Scheduling we are obsessed about helping businesses like yours offer and manage appointments online so you can focus on what you’re good at.

It all started with seeing my mom spend hours scheduling her clients. I knew there had to be a better way, so I built it. It transformed her life and now does the same for over 50,000 businesses.”

Effect of relocating to Acuity

Gavin started by working in a government job before leaving to start Acuity Scheduling. He recently moved from New York City to Pennsylvania to be closer to family. His move didn’t affect Acuity’s operations because it’s a completely remote company. Every Acuity employee either works from home, a co-working space or other suitable location. Whenever Gavin needs to hire new employees he still sources them from New York because it’s easier to carry out training and on-boarding.

Current core revenue streams

Acuity is a subscription based SaaS business where every client who goes to their website can sign up for a trial and later pay for the service either monthly or annually. 100% of Acuity Scheduling’s revenue comes from the subscriptions.

Target clients

Gavin originally built Acuity for his mum’s small business and he has continuously ensured that they only serve small businesses that have less than 10 employees. Acuity offers 4 pricing plans including a free plan, $10 plan, $19 plan, and a $34 plan. They also have larger clients who pay the same low prices which enables Gavin and his team to ensure that clients are treated equally in terms of service delivery.

Acuity has tens of thousands of low paying customers. That has helped the company avoid being reliable on one segment clients for its major revenues.

Starting out in business

During a long drive with his mum, Gavin realised that she was having a hard time scheduling, cancelling or confirming appointments, and that inspired him to develop a program that would help her efficiently manage her appointment scheduling so she could concentrate on her core activities. That software program was what became Acuity.

Gavin also set up a web development business around the software but in the beginning he didn’t succeed in getting clients. He still kept it running and eventually people started organically signing up for it. Back then, Gavin was still working in his government job so he would work on Acuity during his free time. In 2013, he decided to go into Acuity full-time because it had grown considerably and needed his full attention.

The idea for Acuity

Gavin came up with the idea for Acuity in 2006 and started developing it immediately in his free time. He is a developer by trade and thus built the software himself. It took him a few weeks to build the first version and take it to market.

Getting the first set of clients

The first client for Acuity was his mum and even though he can’t remember the second client, he could recall that one of his one first hundred clients is a fly fishing instructor in the Mid-West US who has been a client ever since.

To get the first clients, Gavin put up a self-service marketing sign on the Acuity website to direct new users on how to sign up and pay through PayPal while also setting up their subscription. He did a lot of search engine optimization which the sustainably increased the number of clients directed from Google search results. He also got a lot of clients from diverse recommendations and referrals.

Acuity’s ranking on Google

When starting out, Acuity didn’t rank on page one. Gavin didn’t have Google Analytics to determine where his clients were coming from but he knew that most of them were searching for some variations of appointment scheduling. The way people search has changed over time which gradually took their ranking to page one. Their ranking was also improved by their effective keyword stuffing.

Balancing the government job and working on Acuity

Gavin loved both jobs but when he became tired of one (the government job), it was easy to switch to Acuity. Acuity was giving him additional income which kept growing considerably with the increase in clients.

It was a challenge managing the two together because during his day job he couldn’t access internet or a phone to check on the Acuity site, and manage customer support. As a result, he worked on Acuity slowly and it enabled him to conveniently get the feedback he needed from existing clients to make useful improvements on the software.

Growth strategy at the beginning

In the beginning, Gavin was more focused on search engine optimization which was much easier. He then diversified his methods to include sharing Acuity on different lists and directories. He also approached bloggers whose target clients were in the same demographic as those Acuity targeted, and it worked very well in getting exposure for Acuity while also generating solid sales leads.

Referrals from existing clients were also a considerable source of new clients for Acuity to date.

Biggest breakthrough moment

This came in 2013 when Gavin had to make the decision between leaving his day job and ending Acuity. When he choose to focus on Acuity, he directed all his efforts into it and it has given him good returns over time. Acuity had become too demanding for him to keep his day job since he could not even get enough time to effectively train his first support staff. Working on Acuity full-time enabled him to concentrate on both the development and marketing aspects of the business.

The financial implications in the beginning

When Gavin left his day job, he was making much more money from Acuity than he did from his government job. His overhead costs in Acuity were very minimal which made things easier financially.

Fear of failure and lowest moment in business

Gavin is very conservative when it comes to business which has helped him avoid failures and disappointments. He used to get concerned when they were not getting new sign ups but that was mitigated by the fact that Acuity had numerous clients that used the software in their day to day business operations.

His lowest moment was when he realized the initial financial risk and lifestyle change that was needed to start working on Acuity full-time. At some point he tried to stop Acuity and started working temporarily as a contractor.

Desire to be an entrepreneur

Gavin never planned to be an entrepreneur and doesn’t consider himself one because he sees himself as someone who builds a product and a small business owner. He didn’t develop Acuity to be something big. He says the reason Acuity has grown in terms of employees is to maintain good service for their clients. He has avoided a lot of things that could have grown Acuity faster and generated more revenue because he prefers to focus on best serving the existing clients. Acuity’s scaling has been a by-product of serving their clients in the best way possible. That philosophy comes from the fact that Gavin enjoys building things and caring for his clients more than anything else.

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances and Friendships

Fun comes first because he likes to enjoy everything he does, then finances, family, and friendships.

A day in life when starting Acuity Vs. a day in life today

When he started working on Acuity, he would spend 1 to 2 hours a day answering support emails and dealing with customers. He would then spend 1 to 2 hours doing improvements on the software and some marketing.

Today, he manages his 15+ employees, does a lot of planning, and handles some marketing activities. He spends 30 to 40% of his days doing active development/improvement of the software while spending the rest of the 60% on human resource management, marketing and other managerial and administrative tasks.

Current growth rates

Gavin says that they get 90% of their new signups from organic marketing which includes word of mouth, referrals from other websites, and Google results. The remaining 10% comes from some paid sponsorships and paid ads. He has been scaling on the paid ads up and down depending on the need. He spends between $10,000 and $30,000 a month on advertising.

Projecting current growth when starting out

Gavin never projected that Acuity would achieve the kind of revenues that it is now. He has always been conservative with his projections and always hires new employees when there is a dire need. He has also concentrated more on streamlining operations in order to eliminate the need to increase overhead costs like need for more support staff. He has ensured that Acuity has maintained its self-service nature so that it runs itself as much as possible.

Mentors

Gavin engages with a lot of people but gets more of his mentorship from books on business and management.

The name “Acuity”

Gavin got the name “Acuity” from a company he worked for on contract basis. The company’s name was Acuity Innovation so naturally he used that name when he built the software. The definition for Acuity is “clarity”

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration – Ed Catmull

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company – Andrew S. Grove

The Hard Thing about Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers – Ben Horowitz

Legacy:
Wants to make sure that he will die happy about how he lived his life while doing what he loved – Gavin.

Best way to connect:
acuity@acuityscheduling.com – Acuity’s general enquiries email
support@acuityscheduling.com – Acuity’s customer support email
gavin@acuityscheduling.com – Gavin’s business email
Gavin Zuchlinski on LinkedIn – Gavin’s professional profile

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams

Cheers,
Davis!

039: How to Leverage Innovation, Grow Customer Engagement & Loyalty (w/ Nicholas Webb)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 16:34:05 -0400

Dr. Nicholas Webb is one of the world’s top business thought leaders as a senior partner at Lassen Innovation (www.lasseninnovation.com). He works with Fortune 500 companies throughout the world to help them lean their industries in innovation and strategy. He is a Bestselling author who has been awarded over 45 patents for breakthrough technologies including one of the world’s smallest medical implants. He is also the founder and CEO of Cravve (www.whatcustomerscrave.com). He has over 25 years’ experience working with leading brands to solve complex strategic, innovation and customer experiences challenges that drive growth and profit. His clients represent top global brands like FedEx, Pfizer, Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente, McDonald’s, Gatorade, Dimer Motors Corporation, Johnson & Johnson and Cisco.

Nicholas is also one of the world’s Top Keynote Speakers and travels the world speaking on Innovation, Future Trends, Healthcare, Leadership and Customer Experience.

Time in full-time business

Nick says he hasn’t had a job in over 30 years. He left corporate life in favour of being autonomous.

Current Revenue streams

He generates his revenue by providing Fortune 500 companies with a diverse range of consultant services related to strategy, innovation and customer experience. He helps them build future ready organizations.

He also generates considerable revenue from his speaking business. He will have done 60 to 80 talks around the world in 2017 alone.

Tip 1: To be a successful boutique consultant competing with the largest firms in the world, you have to earn the right to serve your target clients. You need to write popular books, speak at all the top conferences, and have your community of fellow thought leaders validate your importance in the thought leader ecosystem.

Tip 2: Books are not a money maker but they help to propagate your message and differential view of the universe.

Science/Innovation type business

Nick invented one of the world’s smallest micro silicone implants for ocular surface disease. He also invented one of the world’s first wearable medical technologies 18 years ago. He is currently working with strategic partners like universities and industrial partners to start building out a disruption lab that will develop connected technologies that will help meet some of the new modern day challenges of healthcare.

Starting out in business

He used to work as a lifeguard in California when a friend referred him to a new company (STAAR Surgical) that was starting to make the first minimally invasive implant for cataract surgery. His friend needed someone to help market the product so Nick took up the challenge. Before marketing the product, he had to spend several weeks in a lab doing surgery on pigs’ eyes. His experience in that lab intrigued him. Nick did very well in helping them launch the technology and later went on to start his own ophthalmology company through which he worked with a famous refractive surgeon, Dr. Ron Jensen. Together they created a line of breakthrough technologies in the area of refractive surgery. He later sold the company to one of the largest medical companies in the US.

He used his experience and expertise from running the ophthalmology company to start providing consulting services to healthcare companies.

Initial focus on strategy and innovation

Nick used to have a new product development function within his previous business through which they used to develop non-regulated medical devices. Eventually, they choose to concentrate more on helping companies understand the future trajectory of technology and consumerization so the companies can take what they learn and apply it towards improving their revenues, profitability and customer satisfaction.

Early inventions

Nick was involved with a company in the dry eye business and that equipped him with the knowledge of the eye-related healthcare problems of that time. That inspired him to design and develop a product that become very successful in the treatment of dry eye syndrome to date. He developed a lot of products by designing, building and marketing them. He mostly developed the products for his consultancy clients but also developed and sold his own inventions.

He has started and sold several businesses and technologies including an educational toy company that he is now in the process of selling.

Tip: To be successful in the inventing business you have to take risks and look at it from a stock portfolio perspective; some will be high risk, high reward and others will be low risk, low reward

The consulting practice

Nick was lucky to have entered the consulting business with a great success story from his previous work. Many people knew about his great reputation and they were instrumental in marketing his consultancy business globally.

The massive success of his books has also been instrumental in helping him get a lot of clients.

Tip: When setting up a consultancy business, start by approaching the people who already know about your unique professional value proposition before you start doing aggressive marketing to attract other clients who don’t already know you

Growth strategy then and now

Nick was advised by one the world’s greatest thought leaders in business, Brian Tracy, to use as many marketing channels as possible to market his consultancy services. He used to employ mail, trade shows and outbound telemarketing in marketing his services.

Today, he uses digital marketing and his talks at different conferences all over the world. His company has a strong digital marketing strategy which includes analytics and they have a digital command centre where they are constantly conducting different digital marketing activities in order to ensure that they stay ahead of the competition and constantly deliver value to their clients.

Scaling the consulting practice

He does not focus on managing infrastructure, assets, facilities or people because his core goal is to be at ground level so he can deliver the highest possible value to customers while making the most amount of money. He identifies low value activities and outsources them to freelancers so he can concentrate on the most important core activities. His services have millions of dollars of impact on any corporation which makes them high value and enables him to charge a lot of money. That gives him the time to concentrate on delivering on the clients’ expectations.

The consultancy business was profitable from the very beginning and he always has more business than he can handle.

Tip: As a young entrepreneur, don’t let your first focus be on how much money you will make. You need to first ask yourself what you want your lifestyle to look like and how much money is enough, then build your strategy around that

Identifying the consultancy niche

His business grew when he finally committed to doing what he loved to do the most. Speaking about innovation, customer experience, enterprise strategy and the future is his most favourite thing. The more he did what he loved, the more money he made.

Tip: When you connect who you are with what you want to do every day then that is the sheer definition of success. You don’t have to be super rich to make things work

The current book

Nick believes that the future of innovation is to understand that the greatest wealth, the greatest opportunities in business, are going to come from people who have identified ways to invent new and better human experiences.

In the book, Nick talks about the five touch points which are: the Pre-touch Moment (most entrepreneurs lose 30% of their revenue potential because they are accidental or incidental in the way that they architect their pre-touch research moments), the First Touch Moment (the way that businesses set the trajectory of their relationship with their customers), the Core Experience Touch Moment (what it’s like for customers to do business with an enterprise or organization), the Last Touch Moment (the last thing that an enterprise or organization leaves its customers with), the Fifth Touch Point Moment (the way in which an enterprise or organization authentically stays in touch with its customers in a way that doesn’t sell them anything).

He discovered that everything he learnt about market demographics in his earlier years was wrong because he realised that what matters when engineering perfect customer experiences or designing world class technologies is understanding what customers hate and love.

Tip: You need to look at your customers very differently regardless of your business size

Feedback on the book

The book just launched and already has several companies using it as a playbook to their formal customer experience strategy. There is a great video review about the book on Amazon and it has also received positive reviews from professional reviewers like Publishers Weekly.

Biggest breakthrough in business

He has had a range of breakthroughs over the years where there was rapid expansion. The most recent one was that he spent so much time looking at what he should do, that he is constantly looking at other things that he should do, and that he looks at other things that he should be doing. He says the best thing he has ever done, is to put together a daily list of things that he needs to stop doing.

For example, he stopped looking at emails throughout the day. He now looks at emails in the morning and at 3pm.

Tip 1: Avoid those activities/things/people/customers that do not deliver a good percentage of enterprise benefits

Tip 2: Be very jealous and thoughtful with your time.

Tip 3: Be very thoughtful about the behavioural habits that you get into

Tip 4: Create a list every week of the things you are not going to do

Tip 5: Look at the most productive activities that you engage in every week that deliver the most enterprise benefit then try to bolster those activities

Tip 6: To succeed as an entrepreneur today in the highly competitive business world, be strategic in the way that you use every moment of every day

A day in life before business Vs. a day in life now

When starting out, he expected the business to invent itself. He would try to sell everything he could and hoped that the next big deal would come in. That was poorly directed and didn’t deliver good value to customers.

What changed is that he focused on the value creation that he wanted for customers. He also recently became very systematic in prioritizing productive activities and non-productive activities. That has enabled him to successfully run his multi-million dollar business with only himself, his wife and occasional freelancers as the business’ employees. He develops processes around delivering the most amount of work with the least amount of effort.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint – Nicholas J. Webb

Resource:
www.whatcustomerscrave.com – customer experience consulting insights and training

Legacy:
To be remembered as someone who acted upon his tremendous gifts and opportunities in a selfless way to provide value to others – Nick.

Best way to connect:
www.nickwebb.com – Nick’s Speaking Business Website
nick@nickwebb.com – Nick’s Email Address

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

038: How to Generate Recurring Revenue by Productizing Your Service Based Business (w/ Brian Casel)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 05:04:17 -0400

Brian Casel is an entrepreneur focused on bootstrapping online businesses that combine software with productized services. Since starting his self-employed career as a professional freelance web designer back in 2008, he has built and later sold web design/SaaS business in 2015. He now runs Audience Ops, a content marketing service focused on helping B2B software companies grow their audience and customer-base.

He writes and teaches about entrepreneurship and freelancing through his blog and newsletter at casjam.com. He also creates and sells courses and ebooks there, most notably his course, Productize, which teaches consultants how to build, launch, and grow a productized service business.

His work and articles have been featured or published in Mashable, Smashing Magazine, Mixergy, Entrepreneur Magazine, and others. He has spoken at industry conferences such as MicroConf and Double Your Freelancing Conf. He also co-hosts the Bootstrapped Web podcast with Jordan Gal, where they talk behind-the-scenes of bootstrapping their online businesses.

Being in full-time business

Brian left his last full-time job at a wed design agency in January 2008 which translates to about 9 years in business. He started doing freelance web design while also working on different product ideas that didn’t take off. Started RestaurantEngine in 2011 while still doing other freelance work. Launched RestaurantEngine in 2012 and in 2013 starting working on it full-time till 2015 when he sold it.

First product

The first product business that Brian worked on was creating Wordpress themes that he would sell as digital downloads. This made him some income every month but he sold the business to someone else in 2015.

Inspiration behind leaving formal employment to freelancing then to business

While still working at the web design agency, Brian noticed that the company used to hire freelancers occasionally. He realised that the freelancers were making a living from that, which prompted him to learn freelancing through free online resources. In 2008, he decided to start doing freelance work which actually helped him through the economic downturn and gradually led him towards starting his own business.

RestaurantEngine idea

While building websites for different clients in diverse industries, he realised how difficult it was for small business owners to build and set up their websites even on platforms like Wordpress. That inspired him to create a hosted platform built on top of Wordpress in order to make it easier for business owners to build websites for their businesses. While in the planning process he realised that he could not standardize the platform for all types of businesses so he had to specialize it to one business sector and he settled for the restaurant sector because restaurants always require the same content on their websites like menus, etc. Focusing on one industry/niche made it easier for him to market the product.

Going full-time into RestaurantEngine

Brian was balancing his freelance work with working on RestaurantEngine for 2 years before he could go full-time into it. He had three people working for him in customer support, one in sales and one in content marketing. He built the site himself and had one developer on-call to support when needed.

Determining the viability of the RestaurantEngine idea

Brian didn’t know whether the idea would work but it worked out eventually. He had to invest a lot in terms of time, hard work and personal finances in order to build the platform before it even launched and started generating revenue.

Tip: Validating a new product idea or business idea before going into it is very important

Transition from RestaurantEngine to Audience Ops

By the time he was selling RestaurantEngine, he had already started building Audience Ops. The sale closed in June 2015, and Audience Ops had launched and gotten its first clients in May 2015.

Reason for the sale was because Brian eventually became too disconnected from RestaurantEngine due to his core focus being more on working with SaaS-oriented businesses.

Audience Ops idea

Brian got the idea for Audience Ops from RestaurantEngine because he used to use content marketing as the only marketing channel for RestaurantEngine. That formed the foundation for Audience Ops because while doing the content marketing he came across numerous SaaS businesses that had great difficulty trying to apply content marketing in their internal marketing activities. Brian built Audience Ops around the concept of an end to end, start to finish content marketing system that could be easily plugged into any SaaS business.

He launched Audience Ops and got the first paying customers within a 30 day period. RestaurantEngine took 6 months to launch.

Serving the first Audience Ops clients

Audience Ops started serving the first clients immediately they signed up. One of Brian’s goals when starting Audience Ops was to make sure he wasn’t the one writing the content required by clients so he could concentrate more on building the company. He therefore hired a team of two freelance writers while he handled project management, sales calling and bringing in new clients.

Growth strategy then

Brian continued to use his podcast and contacts he met at conferences he spoke at, to generate solid sales leads. He also did in-house content marketing, used paid ad campaigns, webinars, different podcasts, and got different referrals from people in the software industry.

Productized services

Productized services are focused manually done-for-you services that can take on a lot of forms, for example, Audience Ops is a done-for-you content marketing services platform. There are different productized services built around different problem areas of running a software business.

Audience Ops’ growth

By November 2016 the business was generating $5,000 monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from the productized services which grew gradually to reach the current $50,000 MRR. The company’s team has so far grown to 20 employees, both full-time and freelancers, with some of them based in the US and others abroad.

Current Audience Ops products

Brian is currently working on a new product called “Audience Ops Calendar” which is a content calendar planner with checklists and automated systems built into it to help businesses automate the processes of managing their content marketing activities.

He is also working on a training product that will teach people how to do content marketing by plugging in Audience Ops’ strategies, systems and procedures into their businesses.

Moment of real failure

Brian worked on a lot of businesses where he struggled and got discouraged many times but never gave up. He has faced different challenges while running both RestaurantEngine and Audience Ops. Currently, work life balance is still a challenge for him but he manages to allocate his family and the business sufficient time.

Tool and Resources

WordPress – formed basis for his first product.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It – Michael E. Gerber
The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable – Seth Godin

Best way to connect:
www.casjam.com – Brian’s Personal Website
www.audienceops.com – Brian’s Business Website
@casjam – Brian’s Twitter Handle

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

037: From Developing a Multi-Million Dollar Accounting Software to Helping Businesses Build Successful Software Products (w/ Steven Bristol)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 22:38:12 -0400

Steven Bristol co-founded, built, marketed, supported and sold a multi-million dollar SaaS software product called LessAccounting. LessAccounting is an easy-to-use small business-accounting software that allows clients to easily track online invoices and carry out their bookkeeping tasks conveniently.

He is also the co-founder of LessEverything, a company that builds software for different clients, creates integrations between products, and improves companies’ conversion rates. His program adventure started as a 9 year old writing BASIC. In the past 28 years he has written many languages, become a Ruby on Rails core contributor, and a 2007 Google Summer of Code Mentor.

He is a former motorcycle racer and has gone over 150 miles per hour with his knee on the ground. He is also a proud father of three.

Core Revenue streams

Steven jointly runs LessEverything, Inc. with his co-founder Allan Branch. They have two revenue streams with the first being offering consulting services to people who want to build successful businesses. He has been applying his talents and 10-year business experience in helping different SaaS products get to market and do better in the market.

Their second revenue stream is a business division called LessFilms.com which makes marketing videos for diverse clients.

Starting out in business

Never wanted to be an entrepreneur because from observing his entrepreneur parents, he felt it was too much work. He never really held a job for long and eventually felt formal employment was not for him. After he left his last job, he partnered up with Allan Branch to start working on LessAccounting. They also started the umbrella company LessEverything, Inc.

The viability of LessAccounting

He thinks they succeeded with the LessAccounting idea out of sheer arrogance and non-belief in failure. Their bar of success was also very low so they just needed the idea to generate enough money for them to sustain their company’s operations and meet their personal financial obligations.

The tech world was not very saturated with similar products back then and therefore it was easier for them to market LessAccounting and secure enough users to generate considerable revenue.

Main competitor issues

QuickBooks, their biggest competitor, saw them as a threat, and being an established company, they had an upper hand in terms of marketing. With their limited marketing budget, Steven and Allan became the first Twitter trolls. They discovered that majority of the Twitter reviews related to QuickBooks were negative so they created a website called weallhatequickbooks.com to leverage on the negative reviews.

Steven believes that QuickBooks used to replicate some of the features on LessAccounting into their product.

Getting the first paying clients

Steven and Allan had a lot of friends on Twitter who were either in the tech world, offering consulting services or starting their own business. They leveraged on that by tweeting out that they had launched LessAccounting and people immediately signed up for the free trial. At that point, Steven had not even developed the billing code but built it within a month so that they could start charging people to use the software. At first, they had about 4 paying customers and that number grew steadily from month to month.

Growth strategy in the beginning

Never really had a growth strategy but concentrated more on building LessAccounting. Steven and Allan did consulting work in order to generate enough income to finance the development of LessAccounting.

They used a lot of word of mouth by attending conferences to make friends who would recommend them to clients. Steven used to speak at Ruby on Rails/tech conferences globally. That approach proved to be fruitful in terms of marketing.

Dealing with the accounting aspect of LessAccounting

The philosophy behind LessAccounting for Steven was to make software that didn’t require users to have a background in accounting in order to use it. Neither Steven nor Allan had any strong accounting knowledge but Steve had some foundation in it gained from working at his mother’s accounting office when he was younger. He had an understanding of most accounting concepts which enabled the development of LessAccouting’s features

Adding on bookkeeping services

Steven and Allan started offering bookkeeping services to diverse clients and they had their in-house bookkeepers do all the work involved. The service didn’t go very well at first and they had to discontinue. They later revived the service after they had laid down proper operational plans and work processes. The second time around the service did very well as part of LessAccounting services until the software’s sale.

Achieving profitability for LessAccounting

Back in 2007, Steven was making good money from consulting and used part of the money to pay himself market wage. LessAccounting took four years to generate enough revenue to sustain the business’ operations including Steven and Allan’s salaries. That enabled them to stop doing consulting work.

Breakthrough moment

Steve and Allan never had any specific breakthrough moment because LessAccounting grew steadily but there were times they felt frustrated because they couldn’t achieve their expected growth. By consulting a friend of theirs who had a successful Saas product, they learnt that marketing a Saas product was very difficult and growth couldn’t be achieved as easily as they had initially thought. That encouraged them to keep forging on.

Tip: Reset your expectations because everything you hear about how to succeed in business is almost always false. You cannot plan your business on the thought that you will have the same success/same rate of success that others have had. Build your own business strategy and set of realistic expectations

Fear of failure

Steve doesn’t have a real fear of failure. He had a lot of positive privileges growing up and his parents instilled a great sense of confidence in his capabilities to succeed in anything he set his mind to. He has never wanted to work so hard.

Started a conference in 2009 called LessConf that among other things, motivated people to stop being afraid to do what they dream of doing.

Tip: If you are afraid of failing, just do it; try spending an hour a day on the business you want to start if never getting the time is one of your core worries

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances, and Friendships

Faith is the last for Steve. The rest are at the top of the list for him, it all depends on which one is a priority at any one time.

Life when starting the business Vs. Life now

Steve used to work 16 hours a day when they started working on LessAccounting and he used to take some time off on Saturdays for family.

Now, since they sold LessAccounting, he is mostly relaxed and free.

Tools and Resources

Basecamp: Project Management and Team Communication Software (used it to manage their clients under the bookkeeping services)

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application – (Jason Fried, Heinermeier David Hansson, and Matthew Linderman)

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not – Robert T. Kiyosaki

Legacy:
To leave his kids a strong financial foundation, teach them to believe in themselves, and empower them to achieve great things – Steve.

Best way to connect:
www.lesseverything.com – Steves’s Business website
steve@lesseverything.com – Steve’s Business Email
@stevenbristol – Steve’s Twitter Handle

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

036: Helping You Amplify Your Online Reach through Influencer Collaborations (w/ Fabrizio Perrone)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 00:45:17 -0400

Fabrizio Perrone is the founder and CEO of Buzzoole, a media platform that helps people become influential online. The 33 year old digital entrepreneur and innovator has been a serial startupper since 2007 and was among the first people in Italy to establish a successful online-based business. Buzzoole operates as a vertical tool for the construction and management of digital PR campaigns. As an influence engine optimization platform, it helps in generating quick, easy and qualitative word of mouth. Buzzoole enables new and established brands plan buzz campaigns with the same ease and speed of an Adwords campaign or Facebook ad, all within a self-service model. Buzzoole main clients and partners include Redbull, Ferrero, MSC Cruises, Henkel, Fastweb, Sammontana, Mailup, Orphea, GroupM, Mec Global, Aegis Media and Be On.

Starting out in business

Fabrizio knew that he wanted to be in business immediately he left University. While in Ireland, he came across a lot of businesses that would work well in Italy, and one idea in particular stood out to him. In mid-2008, he started an offline events company, the first in Italy to have imported an armoured limousine for hire to different clients. With time, and applying the experience he gained from the offline events industry, he slowly changed the company into a digital PR agency with its first service being viral marketing. The company then evolved into offering other digital PR services. He later sold it to a public company in 2013. His experience with that company formed the basis for his Buzzoole idea.

Period in full-time business

Fabrizio has been in full-time business for the last 9 years. When he started Buzzoole in mid-2013, he raised his first investor funding at the end of that year. The business grew steadily through 2014 then got another round of funding in year 2015. The company has been growing rapidly and is now establishing offices in different countries.

Choosing entrepreneurship Vs. a 9 to 5 job

He choose to be an entrepreneur when he discovered from the job interviews he taken, that employment was not for him. The entry-level employment terms he used to get from the big companies he interviewed with were not appealing to him. He wanted to do something that would be more challenging and rewarding in the long run.

The Buzzoole idea

He came up with the idea for Buzzoole when he realised how difficult it was to conduct digital PR campaigns manually. It was too labour intensive to contact every blogger and influencer one needed for their campaign, and managing the campaigns was also very cumbersome. The manual processes were highly ineffective. Fabrizio therefore decided to develop an efficient digital PR campaign technology that would include influencer analytics, campaign management and real-time reporting. He partnered up with his current CTO (Chief Technology Officer), who developed the Buzzoole platform including its algorithm.

The need for brands to engage with influencers and celebrities

Companies know that it’s more important what people say about their brands and products; that people widely talk about their brands. That is what builds a brand’s positioning and penetration into its target market. Influential people and celebrities are the most ideal in creating and spreading positive sentiments (word of mouth) about a product/brand.

Viability of the Buzzoole concept

Fabrizio applied the widespread knowledge that word of mouth is the most effective method of marketing a product. Data he collected showed that more than 80% of user trust from reviews online and more than 50% of all purchasing decisions made were due to online review consultations. Therefore, companies knew that effective digital PR was important in order to develop their brands. In the process of their campaigns, companies needed to follow-up on every process in order to make sure the expected results were achieved. Buzzoole’s technology enabled the companies to achieve that in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner.

Getting the first paying client

The first big client for Buzzoole was Ferrero. Fabrizio initially approached them and got an opportunity to pitch the concept to them after which within a few weeks they wanted to do a pilot test of the Buzzoole platform for their brand. The pilot was very successful which led to Ferrero becoming a long-term client to date.

Retaining Ferrero as a client

Ferrero’s use of Buzzoole platform has continuously proven to be cost-effective and efficient in achieving their digital PR goals. Buzzoole went beyond reaching the celebrities needed to promote Ferrero’s brand and also directly reached the overall target market which greatly developed the brand more than ever thought possible.

One Ferrero campaign, for example, where they were releasing a new product, Buzzoole sent the product to 100 influencers who then created posts on Facebook, Instagram, and blogs in order to announce the release of the new product. The campaign was so successful in terms of virality and engagement, that by the end, it had more than 2,000 people publishing content about the product.

Benefits to influencers

They get to try out the products first and Buzzoole exposes them to other work opportunities with multiple brands. They also get Amazon credits.

Growth strategy at the beginning and now

Fabrizio used to pitch the technology to more than 50 potential clients every month in Italy in order to get new clients.

Currently, Buzzoole has opened an office in the UK and is planning to open in other locations including France, Russia, Spain, US, and South America.

Growing the Buzzoole brand in the UK

Buzzoole is creating an influencer community that is using its platform for their activity analytics and growing their personal branding.

Buzzoole also has representatives engaging with top brands and they have so far acquired business from brands like Hilton, MasterCard, Audi, Volvo, and Unilever. Buzzoole has been recognized by Unilever as one of the best 12 tech start-ups worldwide and was also recognized by Intel and SAP as one of the best European ICT and big data start-ups for its technology.

Buzzoole is also aggressively spreading the word about influencer marketing since majority of big global brands are still not knowledgeable on its effectiveness and how to apply it.

Biggest breakthrough in business

Buzzoole has been growing steadily since it started with its 2014 revenues being $200,000 which grew to $1.2 Million in 2015. Fabrizio projects the revenues to reach $3Million in 2017.

Buzzoole also started off with 4 employees, then 10, then 20, and in the last six months the company has hired more people, raising the number to 45 employees.

Revenue growth

Fabrizio says that Buzzoole’s revenues grew so rapidly because of the high quality of its platform in terms of guaranteeing effective digital PR. 82% of all Buzzoole clients have also been repeating their campaigns every six months and spending up to $250,000 a year on Buzzoole to conduct their campaigns.

A day in life before starting Buzzoole Vs. A day in life now

When starting the company, Fabrizio took up different roles in the process of running the company but now he concentrates solely on building the UK office. When at the head office in Naples, he gets very engaged in different projects.

He currently works from both the London and Naples offices on a week-by-week basis.

Mentors

He is mostly mentored by his investors and shareholders.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses – Eric Ries
Technical articles (keep him updated on the tech world)

Legacy:
To be known as an entrepreneur who never gave up and persevered until he achieved his business goals – Fabrizio.

Best way to connect:
www.buzzoole.com – Fabrizio’s Business website
info@buzzoole.com – Fabrizio’s Business Email
brands.buzzoole.com – For brands looking to advertise

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

035: How to Manage Your Virtual Staff, Pay Them, and Understand their Productivity Levels (w/ Dave Nevogt)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 22:18:33 -0400

Dave Nevogt is the co-founder of hubstaff.com which helps businesses easily manage virtual and remote teams through SaaS time tracking, project management, and employee development.

He has founded several multi-million dollar internet businesses since the he was 22, and has been working on them since 2003. His start was in online golf instruction in 2003 which he grew to $1.5Million by 2005. He sold those businesses in 2009, and then purchased and ran a larger search engine optimization software company that focused on link building.

While building and managing these companies he’s managed over 100 virtual employees/contractors concurrently. He also writes a popular blog series that teaches what his team has done to grow Hubstaff to where it is today.

Current Revenue streams

Hubstaff has been generating enough money to pay out the founders, pay employees’ salaries and sustain operations but it doesn’t have one sole revenue stream. The business is currently generating $6 Million in annual revenues from selling its software through a SaaS subscription model.

Starting out in business

Worked for 18 months in a large pharmaceutical company in Chicago. After that he only worked on his own businesses. His first business was a golf instruction e-commerce platform which taught people how to swing a golf club better through videos, eBooks and training aids. Within a year, the business was generating $1.5 Million in revenues and had customers globally. The business taught him his first skills in running an online business.

Scaling up the first business quickly

Dave believes it was a right place, right time scenario because he picked the right business and the right market. The business was very unique because there were only a few people doing what he was doing. The business’s quick growth was made possible by the high conversion rates the site was getting because he was using very cheap and unsaturated advertising channels like email marketing. Dave then sold off half of the business.

Transition to the next business

In the course of selling his business, Dave met one buyer in particular who used to buy underperforming ecommerce businesses, turn them around and sell them for a profit. Dave and the buyer bought a software related company together. With Dave managing its operations, the business started generating $2 Million in revenues from selling content. That gave him hands-on experience in running a software related company. They eventually sold off the business.

He also started Hubstaff while still running the software company. He currently runs the marketing and operations side of Hubstaff while his partner runs the technical (development) side of the company with each of them working with a team of 10 and 12 employees respectively.

The Hubstaff idea

While running the golf business, Dave was in dire need of software that would help him manage his technical staff since he had no technical knowledge and therefore needed to make sure he was effectively tracking their performance to ensure projects were being done on time and in the expected way.

That need gave Dave the initial idea of developing Hubstaff. He was also inspired by the need to develop a product that would give value to people, that they would use every day in their businesses. Hubstaff uses time tracking to enable business owners manage their virtual and remote employees by ensuring they are doing what they are expected to do at the right time. The software also acts like an activity tool.

Once he came up with the idea for Hubstaff, Dave looked for a local co-founder. They both invested $26,000 each into the start-up and started the development of the first applications which cost about $40,000. They invested the remainder of the capital into advertising and building traffic for the app. They initially launched the app on free trial basis in order to test the market and once they discovered that it was a highly viable product they launched it in August 2013. Immediately after the launch they were making $2,000 a month in recurring revenues and kept growing to reach $15,000 a month in recurring revenues within 15 months. At the end of 2015, the business was generating $70,000 a month in recurring revenues which has so far grown to the current $130,000 a month.

Growth strategy at the beginning

Dave and his partner first employed free trials in order to leverage on word of mouth as a marketing tool. In the long run, that method didn’t work very well in generating solid referrals so they had to devise a better strategy. They started developing landing pages and applying search engine optimization while also posting ads on popular websites and directories which paid off on in the long-term.

Growth strategy now

They currently use their extensive blog (drives 15% to 20% of users to Hubstaff), multiple landing pages, on-page search, minimal advertising, word of mouth, and podcasts. They do not have a sales team and don’t use techniques like cold calling and email marketing.

Importance of a team

Dave doesn’t believe in having an assistant because he believes in doing his work himself.

Fear of failure

He does not have any fear of failure. He always goes for it and does what he feels is right from his business point of view. He has had several businesses and products in the past that failed which taught him to always analyze the pros and cons of an idea to determine its worthiness before going into it.

Biggest breakthrough in business

“Realising we were onto something with Hubstaff and people would pay for it; and getting to a point where Hubstaff would run itself.”

Faith, Fun, Family, Family and Friendships

Faith, family and friends are at the top for Dave, then finances and fun.

A day in life before Hubstaff Vs. a day in life now

When he started out he was trying out a lot of ideas to try and come up with a viable business that would work in the long-term. It was more about surviving at that time.

Today, he focuses on one business and applying his experience into making sure the business continues to grow. He still gets up as early as he used to since early morning are when he does his best work. He also works normal hours.

Mentors

He doesn’t have mentors but deeply believes in the importance of having mentors especially when one doesn’t know exactly what they want to do.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back – Verne Harnish
The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less – Perry Marshall

Legacy:
To provide for his kids, raise them the right way, and try to help the world as much as he can through his technology products – Dave.

Best way to connect:
dave@hubstaff.com – Dave’s Email
@dnevogt – Dave’s Twitter Handle
blog.hubstaff.com/grow – Dave’s Blog

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

034: Helping Business Owners Effectively Streamline their Business Operations (w/ Raj Bhaskar)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 20:52:46 -0400

Rak Bhaskar is the co-founder and CEO of Hurdlr, a mobile business management application that is targeted at entrepreneurs and small business owners to help them bridge the gap between manual spreadsheets and complex small business accounting systems.

He is also the founder of Visual Homes, a leading real estate rental management platform designed specifically for subsidized housing programs. In 2010, he sold Visual Homes to Yardi Systems, a global leader in real estate software solutions. He also worked for Yardi for 2 years in a business development capacity. Raj holds a Business Administration, with honors, from The George Washington University  

Current core revenue streams

Hurdlr’s core revenue stream is Mobile SaaS which users pay a small monthly fee to use.

Starting out in business

He was passionate about business from a young age and also grew up within a business-oriented environment. Was selling candy in the fifth and sixth grade after which he moved on to selling sodas at golf tournaments in high school. He also had a car detailing business and shovelled snow in the winters.

Always wanted to work for a start-up before starting his own business. After graduating college, he worked for a wireless software start-up for a year and then started his first business, Visual Homes which he sold to Yardi systems after 10 years. He worked for Yardi systems for a year and a half just to create value for the company while also gaining the perspective of being the employee of an established company.

Visual Homes idea

The idea for Visual Homes was based on helping local communities thrive through public and affordable housing. It also helped real estate agencies thrive in supporting the communities. The technology platform was primarily built to help in financial and compliance management of housing agencies. Visual Homes helps in determining who is eligible for public housing, among other things.

The idea for Visual Homes was not originally Raj’s. There was a business that had developed a similar technology so Raj bought it without paying for it upfront (had an agreement with the owner of the business to pay him later on) and derived the new technology from the old one. The old technology was targeted towards small agencies, but after Raj developed the new product, he targeted it towards medium and large agencies.

Growth strategy at the beginning

Raj looked up the top 500 housing agencies in the US and cold called all of them. Within 6 months, he landed his first contract, worth $500,000. That enabled him to meet all the financial needs of the business and build it up gradually. He initially outsourced the app enhancements to developers in India to keep his costs low.

Transitioning from a business background to a technical one

It helped a lot that Raj had started off his college education with computer science for three semesters.

Current growth strategy

Raj still uses cold calling while including demos and the building of long term relationships. That worked for the first five years of Visual Homes and within the second five years, the business started growing exponentially.

Tip 1: Know the market you’re in and understand what the sales cycles are like so that you can develop a realistic and achievable business plan

Tip 2: When you over-deliver on value, and provide your clients with exceptional unmatched service, they will always refer you to other clients

Knowing the Visual Homes idea would work

Raj persevered a lot and always made sure he over-delivered on value to clients which led to a lot of referral business coming in.

Starting Hurdlr

Released the Hurdlr app to the public more than a year ago. It took several years to develop the app because it is a real time income tax calculation engine which had to have mileage trackers and automated financial tracking. The app also needed to be connected to more than 15,000 banks and credit cards. Its development was based on modern entrepreneurs’ collective preference for seamless, mobile and diversely connected apps.

Tip: When you think you are making a lot of money compared to actually knowing it, you spend more money than you have which a recipe for failure

Benefits of Hurdlr to users

Hurdlr’s core value proposition is that it provides users with their real time profit or “true profit”, which is profit after taxes. It helps people manage their finances conveniently while also tracking their mileage, alerts them of valuable tax deductions, tells them what their quarterly estimated payments are, etc.

Hurdlr’s current market

Hurdlr currently covers the whole of the United States and plans to venture into Canada and Australia.

Selling Visual Homes

Yardi had half of all United States’ apartment buildings using their software and was therefore the obvious option for Raj to sell Visual Homes to. The exit from Visual Homes for Raj and his employees was smooth. He ensured that his employees and customers were well taken care of during the transition.

Leadership philosophy

Raj’s leadership philosophy is founded on putting his employees first even before customers because he believes when employees are well taken care off then they take good care of customers. He firmly believes that employees and customers are both equally valuable to a business.

Hurdlr’s development

Raj co-founded Hurdlr with his younger brother sometime after he sold and exited Visual Homes. He first started by doing angel investing actively for four years before building an accounting platform in the cloud. That progressively led to the eventual development of Hurdlr.

Raj and his team marketed Hurdlr to Uber drivers and real estate agents. They used a consumer based approach with Uber drivers and an enterprise-based approach with real estate agents. Hurdlr partnered with Keller Williams Realty which has over 150,000 agents in order to gain considerable market share in the industry. Hurdlr currently has more than 100,000 users and is looking to monetise its service by the beginning of 2018.

Advice to aspiring app entrepreneurs

Tip 1: Determine your target market

Tip 2: Understand how you are going to acquire your customers

Tip 2: Interview a few potential customers to find out if they can actually pay for the product you want to offer

Angel investing

Though he is not as active in angel investing as he used to be, Raj has over 40 investments and expects to have a solid performing portfolio within the next 5 years. His current performing investments are in the loyalty space and commercial real estate technology. He avoids investing in consumer related technologies.

A day in life when starting Visual Homes Vs. a day in life now

He says it’s all the same with the only difference being that he was single when he started Visual Homes while now he is married with a child. Always plans his days and makes sure he has fun.

Faith, Fun, Family, Friendships and Finance

Family comes first, then friendships and finances while fun parallels with the first three. He doesn’t believe in faith much but he always tries to do the right thing as is dictated by religion.

Mentors

Believes he should be investing more in mentors. He has had different mentors and coaches all through his entrepreneurial journey.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results – Gary W. Keller
The Millionaire Real Estate Agent: It’s Not About the Money…. It’s About… – Gary W. Keller

Legacy:
To create successful ventures while concentrating more on positively impacting people’s lives and ensuring that he enables his children to become future entrepreneurs as is the family tradition – Raj.

Best way to connect:
www.hurdlr.com – Raj’s Business website

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

033: How to Successfully Sell Your Book Online and Sustain Huge Sales (w/ Dave Chesson)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 18:51:01 -0400

Dave Chesson is a 9-year veteran of the US Navy who spent his nights working in online marketing, creating niche websites which earned him advertisement and affiliate commissions. Within a 3 year period, he now has 27 websites, 7 published books, and multiple YouTube channels with his greatest project being www.kindlepreneur.com. While working on the websites, Dave perfected his skills in SEO, website development, social media marketing, online video marketing, and a whole lot more. Later on he started publishing his own books and combined his online marketing skills to his self-publishing endeavours which created a consistent steady stream of sales that have made him a consistent No. 1 best-selling author on multiple topics. Through his new endeavour, Kindlepreneur, he does everything possible to show self-publishers how to harness the power of the internet to not only help them sell more books, but also build their author name brand

Core Revenue streams

Generates revenues from his books (Amazon pays him every time a person buys). Also generates revenue from being an Amazon associate where he uses Amazon affiliate links and gets paid for every person the links send to Amazon. His third largest revenue source is Google advertisements where Google puts ads on his website and when anybody clicks them, he gets paid. All the sources generate revenue for him without his presence or constant input.

Starting out in business

Started by weighing the options of leaving the Navy by choosing whether to go into an 8 to 5 job or starting a business. Settled on building up his own business and decided to start an online marketing business that he could do while still serving in the Navy outside of the US.

Discovered the viability of the business when he read a book about it. Tried out affiliate marketing and made a $1 sale when someone clicked his link. That’s when he realised it was a good business model and started to develop it from there.

Began by testing different ways to direct online traffic to landing pages and was also doing Facebook advertising and Google AdSense while paying for traffic. Later he decided to learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that he could avoid paying for traffic by generating the traffic for himself. Became passionate about SEO and started creating his own niche websites that generated a lot of traffic. Eventually, he was selling a lot of different books through his websites and decided to start writing his own books to increase his revenues. He writes books tailored specifically to different markets to capture a larger market share of the global self-publishing industry.

Pre-determining the viability of every book

Used Amazon to determine whether every book he wanted to write had an existing market. He also used the same method to validate that every target market was willing to pay for books and that his books could beat the existing competitors’ books in terms of sales. That way he would always know in advance that he could publish a book that Amazon could sell for him. He would then use his websites to direct massive traffic to his own books.

Discovering the valuable resource that is Amazon

By applying his knowledge of Google and Google-oriented SEO, Dave discovered that Amazon was a huge search engine too because when people go to Amazon they first search for the product they want and they get search results about the product. Just like with Google, the products that show up at the top of the Amazon search list are the ones that sell more.

That raised his interest in Amazon-oriented SEO which has so far enabled him to sell massive numbers of his books.

Ranking high in an Amazon category

Tip 1: You first need to be indexed for a particular search keyword (Amazon asks for 7 keywords)

Tip 2: Make sure the keyword (s) is somewhere in your book title, sub-title or description so that Amazon can index it

Tip 3: Increase your click to buy ratio by making your book very attractive (including nice cover page, title that talks to the customer, etc.) to potential buyers so they actually click on your book from the search results and buy it. This increases your conversion rate

Tip 4: Tell people you know who would want your book to go directly to Amazon and buy it so that Amazon can automatically rank your book higher

First sales

His first book has made about $1,300 per month for the last three and a half years. The book has little to no competition which has also contributed to making it very successful on Amazon. He chooses to write books about topics that have high search volume and little to no competition. That ensures that his books rank at the top of Amazon and he never really needs to do any extra aggressive marketing to promote the books. Dave uses pen names in his publishing and has 9 books published that generate $9,000 per month

Tip 1: What makes Amazon more money is always put at the top of rankings

Tools for discovering what people look for in Amazon

At first he used to use Google search terms to determine what people search for in Amazon and after that verify which search terms can be used to produce a book people will want to buy.

He used to use cumbersome manual excel spread sheets to collect his search terms research which led him to develop a software called KDP Rocket to help do the Book Idea Research. He now sells KDP Rocket to the mass market of different self-publishers who sell on Amazon.

KDP Rocket

This is a software that works on any PC or Macintosh and uses Amazon’s API to go into Amazon and pull the needed information and present it. The software provides the Amazon Best-Seller rank on each book which enables the person doing his/her book idea research whether the books they want to write/sell can make money on Amazon. KDP Rocket provides self-publishers with the all the details they need to determine whether their book can sell on Amazon.

KDP Rocket was created in 8 months by a team of software developers he brought together.

Fear of failure and moment of real failure

Spent three and a half years building his business while still in the Navy so that he could have a strong foundation to start on once he left the Navy. He was afraid of not having a stable salary which kept him from leaving the Navy earlier to concentrate fully on his business.

Biggest breakthrough in business

“Realising that Amazon was a search engine just like Google which enables him to sell his books continuously and sustainably from the very beginning.”

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances, and Friendships

Family comes first then faith, finances, fun, and friendships.

A day in life when starting in business Vs. a day in life now

In the beginning he made sure that he prioritized his time properly to ensure he spent enough time on the business and family. Used to wake up at 4am and would work from 4am to 7am on the business after which he would leave for work. After work he would spend time with his family until 7pm when he would work on the business until 10pm. Sometimes he would spend the 7 to 10 pm time with his wife when needed

Today, he works from home. Wakes up early, has breakfast with his family, has lunch with his family. He is now very flexible, he doesn’t have to work from 9 to 5 because his business is most of the time self-running. He achieves better flexibility by planning out every week instead of single days by deciding what he needs to achieve every week.

Tool and Resources

Trello – uses it to plan his week in advance.

Common items on weekly to-do list

Always makes sure he is cultivating his team by not just making sure they fulfil their tasks every week but also grow on a personal level

Also spends 2 hours a week reading about how to improve his writing and spends 5 hours per week writing.

Mentors

Hasn’t invested in a mentor yet but highly recommends that every entrepreneur should invest in a mentor. Believes that every entrepreneur should look for people who are ahead of them in the same industry they are in and ask them for mentorship. That way one can thrive more and faster in their business

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

The One Thing – Gary W. Keller (what one thing will have the biggest impact for you?)
The ten times rule – Grant Cardone

Legacy:
To make sure that his children can look back at what his done and be proud of him, to give them the tools and capabilities to be able to take care of themselves and find their own success – Dave.

Best way to connect:
www.kindlepreneur.com – Dave’s Business website
@davechesson – Dave’s Twitter handle

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

032: As Seen on TV – Getting Your Product onto QVC & Wal-Mart, From Zero to a Billion Dollars in Sales (w/ Bill McAlister)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:36:27 -0400

Bill McAlister is the owner and president of Top Dog Direct, the newest company in the direct response television (DRTV) industry. He has over 24 years’ experience in the manufacturing and wholesale distribution of consumer products. Throughout his career, Bill has sold more than $ 1 Billion worth of “As Seen on TV” products. He focuses exclusively towards the Direct Response TV arena which has resulted in the successful development of innovative TV marketing formats for a host of popular new products. He specializes in finding products, developing marketing strategies, and implementing the plans. His success stories include dramatic wins in both short-and long-form advertising and home shopping sales

Period in full time business

Never worked for anybody. Has owned businesses since he was 7 years old starting with lawn mowing/snow shovelling services and later while in high school, a painting company which put him through college. After college, he started an import company which led him to start his current business, Top Dog Direct.

Was the first person to import products for QVC and also worked on air selling the products which led him to specialize in the “As Seen on TV” products industry. Made more than 3,000 appearances on air within a 5 year period. QVC later bought his 100-Million dollar import company

Tough moments starting the import company and overcoming them

Was fortunate enough to get his first client as QVC which depended on him wholly as their sole importer thus ensuring sustainable revenue for him in the long-term.

Tip 1: Try to do one thing and do it very well

Tip 2: In business, when you do what you do very well, clients automatically recommend you to other clients

Reason for starting an import company and getting the first customer

Got introduced to the import business by a friend who had experience and success in the industry. The friend gave him the necessary industry knowledge and contacts necessary to set up his import entity.

Tip: Do not start a business without a game plan and make sure you develop a good business plan

Finding manufacturers/suppliers for his products

Currently works with the most established company in East Asia, Base4, which has offices across China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The company has been manufacturing all his products exclusively for the last 15 years.

Growing the current business

Doesn’t worry about growing the business, concentrates more on getting new products to keep sales going due to the fact that the “As Seen on TV” products business is primarily dependent on new products that attract demand.

He finds products from inventors, produces them; and sells them on TV and through online channels

Core revenue streams

The primary sources of revenue are retailers and online channels which have so far been extremely profitable

Product cycle from inventor to the market

Takes product ideas from inventors and has his engineers develop CAD/CAM drawings. It can take up to 90 days to develop a mould of the product and an additional 30 to 45 days to put out a television commercial of the product after which the product is tested on television with $25,000 worth of media. When the product sells well on TV, Bill approaches retailers like Wal-Mart so they can buy the product in large scale.

Works on 14 to 20 products a year with only 3 to 4 making to the market and thriving in terms of sales. Comes across thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of products every year. Constantly looks for new products online (for example, Kickstarter), Amazon, QVC, and other sources.

Selling inventors’ products on TV without charging them any money upfront

Understands the financial hardships that inventors go through while developing their products and therefore prefers to offer them a long-term partnership during the development process of their products from idea to market. Once a product makes to the market and achieves sales then both parties benefit from the sales generated in accordance to their prior revenue sharing agreement

Most favourite product sold so far

Bill’s most favourite product is the “Watanabe Pillow” which is made with buckwheat filling. One of the unmatched characteristics of the pillow is that it cools a person’s head down naturally thereby leading to a better night sleep. It is the No. 1 Best-Selling pillow in the history of the United States with over 22 million units sold so far.

Key ingredients to a product succeeding on TV and in retail

There are 3 ingredients; it has to solve a problem, it has to hit a price point and it has to be demonstrable (meaning it has to be easy to demonstrate on TV for viewers to be impressed by it and consequently buy it)

Online sales

The company makes considerable sales online due to the fact the entire population of Millennials in the US only buy products online. The products that sell well online do not sell in retail (for example, at Wal-Mart). Bill is therefore continuously investing on selling products through online channels to compliment the TV/Retail sales channel

Researching/selecting good products and due diligence

Due diligence is mostly legal in nature since products have to be patented and passed through intellectual property ownership checks before being produced and sold in mass.

Tip: When starting a business use the internet more to do your market research on the business idea you have

Current core products

In order to attract the consumers who watch TV and shop in retail outlets, Bill’s company currently deals a lot in products that are related to pain and pain relief. The best performing 3 products on TV in the last 3 years have been related to pain and pain relief

Fear of failure

Bill uses a baseball batting average analogy to approach the fear of failure in business. In baseball, one’s batting average measures how good they are. A batting average of 300 means a person successfully hit the ball 3/10 times. In business, Bill chooses not to measure his successes that way

Tip: No matter how many times you fail, keep going and don’t listen to anyone else. Always put your blinders on as long as you know what you are doing

Biggest failure/low moment in business

Bill and his partner lost $11 Million in a deal with unscrupulous business people. Though Bill and his partner sued them and won the case, they were only awarded a small percentage of the much they had lost

Tip: If it doesn’t kill you it only makes you stronger

Biggest breakthrough moment in business

It’s always a breakthrough moment for Bill every time a new product he invests in is gaining momentum in the market and selling amazingly well

Faith, Fun, Family, Friendships and Finance

Faith: Bill is not a big believer in religion

Family, fun and business are all the same for him but he always makes sure he is putting his family first while also constantly engaging in his business. He doesn’t view his business as work but rather as part of who he is

A day in life when starting his current business Vs. a day in life today

When he started his business he had no furniture in his house, had an old school fax machine, woke up at 5 am every day, worked out, got to the office at 6am, and was always on the phone looking for products.

Today, he wakes up much later than 5am, still works out, and used to drive his kids to school and pick them up but not anymore since they can all drive. His work life is more laid back and he allows his employees to do their work so he can focus solely on acquiring new products.

Investing in mentors

He doesn’t need to invest in mentors because he always knows everything about the business he is in and how to keep succeeding in it. He has had people ask him to be their consultant but he doesn’t accept because he feels he cannot be of any help to another due to the fact that he is only good and experienced in the business he does

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Bill is severely dyslexic and cannot retain anything he reads so he does not read any books other than the children’s books he reads for his kids

Legacy:
To be known and remembered for providing the world with high quality products that have a positive impact, and add value in people’s lives – Bill.

Best way to connect:
www.topdogdirect.net – Bill’s Business website

Get Your Hopes Up and Maximize Your Dreams [Symbol]

Cheers,
Davis!

031: How to Double Your Customers, Sales & Profits (w/ Justin Christianson)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 13:28:57 -0400

Justin Christianson is a digital marketing guru whose core emphasis is on conversion optimization and implementation. He is the number one Amazon best-selling author of Conversion Fanatic: How to double your customers, sales and profits with A/B testing. He is also the co-founder and president of Conversion Fanatics, a full service conversion optimization company.

Conversion Fanatics provides its services to e-commerce, finance and software companies that have revenues of between $1Million and $200Million. The services have helped companies worldwide improve their revenues, increase their customers and retain existing ones.

Justin shares with us how to improve the performance of a website in terms of revenue and overall growth through conversion optimization and implementation.

Core Revenue streams

Revenue for Conversion Fanatics comes solely from the conversion optimization services they offer to diverse clients. They are currently developing proprietary software that will help support their services, allow other people to use it for business purposes and also generate additional revenues for the company

Starting out in business

Started in business in 2002 and has been in full time business for the last 11 years. Initially owned a successful information publishing company with some partners which he sold to them in 2009 and went into digital marketing.

Tip: Personal development is the best way to develop yourself as a new entrepreneur and some of the best ways to achieve that is through working in marketing, improving your mindset, and learning different things from free information accessible online

Getting the first set of clients

Has been doing A/B testing since he started working with his previous employer. He kept getting people asking him about various aspects of digital marketing like implementation and other technical aspects. Initially, as Conversion Fanatics, they provided a broad range of services but eventually specialized on services related to conversion optimization and implementation.

Helping clients develop and grow their online presence

Conversion Fanatics starts by finding out where the client’s target customers are online, where they go in terms of websites, blogs, etc., how they interact with the client’s online experience and how they relate to the client’s brand. They find out why the target customers do not visit the client’s website and why those who visit it do not do what the client desires them to do, for example, buy a product.

Tip: Pay attention to your website visitors, the analytics and understand the interactions of the target customers online. This is achievable through Google Analytics which is available for free. Other affordable software like Hotjar and CrazyEgg can help in determining how people interact on a website. One can also conduct usability testing by interviewing a few people from their target market

Starting up Conversion Fanatics and the growth strategy at the beginning

In the beginning, Justin and his partner invested $750 and started their company under the name “ROI Society”. They started building their clientele from scratch by creating a basic membership website through which they used webinars to train people on the importance of conversion optimization and how to do it themselves but the eventual feedback they got was that people did not want to learn optimization, they preferred it being done for them which is how the two entrepreneurs started offering implementation and optimization services to their first clients and specialized in that area to date.

Growth strategy now

Justin and his partner are currently using the more traditional direct response marketing channels like email marketing, direct mail, trade show sponsorships, and others because they discovered from their customer behaviour analysis that their target customers do not utilize social media and other online resources the way they used to, and therefore, the more cost effective marketing methods like social media marketing were not being as effective as they were in attracting new customers

Success stories helping clients

Recently helped one client achieve 1882% premium subscription sales, helped another company achieve 1850% growth within 10 months and helped countless clients increase conversions by 30%, 40%, and 50%.

They also helped one client (an artisan treats and confectionary company) double their active paying customers and reduce their advertising costs (customer acquisition costs) by 25%. The company was spending $25 to acquire a $50 customer and had about 1,000 active paying recurring customers at the time. They had problems retaining customers and getting new ones. Conversion Fanatics went in, streamlined their advertising, tweaked their offering, streamlined their online experience, reduced their customer acquisition cost to $13 per $50 customer, and within 45 days the company had reached 2,000 customers. Conversion Fanatics achieved that by getting rid of free trials on the company’s website and instead started offering customers a bonus for trying out what the website was offering through purchase. This worked very well because customers would buy products and get bonuses for their first purchase. This pay to play strategy also worked in bringing in the more serious, valuable customers that were easier to retain for longer

Tip: In some markets, like in the software industry, offering free trials on a website works but in other industries it doesn’t. Offering bonuses to customers who choose to buy a subscription works well in other markets in comparison to offering free trials

Period taken to do split testing/analytics

In the example of the artisan treats and confectionary company, it took a dozen split tests and 3 weeks to get through all the analytics, understand what was happening with the website, develop a test hypothesis, figure out what to test, and set up the test

Upcoming service offering

Conversion Fanatics is developing software that will help clients with reporting and split test management because it’s currently very difficult for people to use the traditional project management tools, set up split tests and calculate the overall improvement cycles. The software will help people manage the historic data related to their split testing/conversion efforts

Helping a client who is launching a new product without existing data

Justin recommends market research as the first step to launching a new product in order to determine whether it’s viable. Conversion Fanatics is very picky about the clients they choose to help because some businesses may have products that are not viable enough to succeed in their respective market. Conversion Fanatics has to believe in a product before they can take up the job of helping grow that product

Tip: Learn to SAY NO to clients that you don’t believe you can help. The money you get from a client you can’t help is not worth the trouble you will get because you can’t deliver good results

Testing for growth and scalability in a market

Tip 1: Check what is being sold, the size of the market, and whether people really want what you want to offer. Don’t go into a niche market until you find out whether it has enough customers to sustain you in the long term. Make sure that the market is big enough for you to scale and if there are people in that market then chances are it’s a good one

Tip 2: Go to Amazon and search for a product that you plan on launching and if there is a category there for that product then there is a high chance that it’s a good market to go into

Getting people to respond to surveys online

Justin recommends the use of incentives like ebooks, gift cards, or anything of value in exchange for their feedback. When carrying out usability testing for example, Conversion Fanatics always pays the people who participate in their tests. Paying them works when the testing is on a small scale but for larger scale testing, cost effective incentives work better.

Using the information collected from the surveys

Tip: Find commonality and trends in the information

The best available survey software to use

For general surveys, software like SurveyMonkey works well and they are affordable. Many autoresponder services are also convenient because they have survey features built in

How to craft a survey

Tip 1: Keep it short, normally not more than 10 questions

Tip 2: Keep the questions open-ended which means don’t ask for specific yes or no answers. Allow the participants to elaborate on their answers

Biggest breakthrough with Conversion Fanatics

“Finding out where our target market is and what keeps them up at night. We figured out that they weren’t necessarily online and that their biggest pain point was that they just didn’t have time to do what it is they knew they needed to be doing”

That was achieved by asking the clients, many different companies, and prospects what was going on and asking them relevant questions in relation to Conversion Fanatics

Period it took to achieve initial income goals

Justin and his partner were living off their savings for the first 9 months after which they were able to hire their first employee. For 6 to 9 months, they were ploughing back all the income they got from serving different clients into the business

Fear of failure

Justin had had times when he second guessed himself a lot especially when he decided to leave his formal employment. It even caused enormous fear of the unknown and uncertainty because at that time he and his fiancée were about to get married.

Tip: You can’t be one foot in, one foot out. If you’re going to do it, DO IT!

Faith, Fun, Family, Finances and Friendships

Family comes first then fun, finances, friendships, and faith

Day in your life when you started the business verses a day in your life now

It’s very similar. Works less hours now. Gets to the office by 7 to 7.30 am and goes home by 5 pm. Ranks family very high in life and tries to make sure he is always home to do dinner and bedtime. Works very hard and fast which ensures he does more than other people at the company

Investing in mentors and why

Always invests in mentors for education and personal development, and recommends it for every aspiring entrepreneur. It helps entrepreneurs grow and succeed. Justin and his company have hired business development coaches, overall agency coaches, sales coaches, management coaches, and any other mentors/coaches that help them gain an edge

Tip: If you have to hire a mentor or coach at a great expense then it’s worth the investment

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

Playing to Win by Alan G. Lafley
Slight edge by Jeff Olson

Justin’s Book

Links to the book can be found on www.conversionfanatics.com and is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle. Wrote the book to highlight the importance of split testing and optimization. Justin used a lot of specific examples and case studies in writing the book, and has gotten great feedback and reviews from his peers and mentors in the digital marketing field.

Legacy:
To make the world a better place and be remembered as an honest, trustworthy, hardworking person that really tried to help people – Justin.

Best way to connect:...

030: Scale Your Business…From Car detailing to Success in Telecom (w/ Rick Day)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:28:49 -0400

Rick has owned many businesses over a very successful and diverse professional and business career from car detailing to telecom which he successful exited for a tidy 8 figures.

Rick says business success is hard, and there’s a lot of sub-standard advice out there. That’s why he’s so passionate about helping: because he’s been there, done that and he’s still in the game today, and he says his stuff works!

You can find Rick at www.businessbyday.com check out his blog and his podcast while you are there!!

Excited for you to be joining me in hearing Rick’s…so welcome to the show!!

029: Speaker, Author & Consultant: Helping People and Businesses be More Successful (w/ John Spence)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 12:43:04 -0400

For more than 22 years John has travelled upwards of 200 days-a-year worldwide helping people and businesses be more successful.

John is the author of seven books, a keynote speaker, business consultant, and executive coach to numerous clients ranging Fortune 500 firms all the way to small to medium-sized businesses around the globe!!

Super pumped to dig more into John’s story so welcome to the show!!

You can reach John at

johnspence.com
‎@SpenceBizLeader

For more info and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com
Thanks for tuning in!!

Davis

028: Inventor & Successful Packaging & Manufacturing business story (w/ Charlie Webb)

Davis Mutabwa — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 13:20:36 -0400

Charlie owns a company called Van der Stähl Scientific which deals with medical device packaging, commands a very strong share of the market – has used unique marketing methods to grow their brand and it’s a great story that I am looking forward to diving into!!

Super pumped to dig more into Charlie so welcome to the show. Check out more of his work at Van der Stahl Scientific

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

027: The Nomad Capitalist Lifestyle, Improving your Personal Freedom and Diversifying Your Lifestyle (w/ Andrew Henderson)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:50:54 -0400

Andrew is the founder of Nomad Capitalist a company designed to help people increase their personal freedom and to help them improve their financial situations and intelligently diversify their lives.

This is what Andrew says about himself and I thought its pretty good into to the show:

“I travel to 15-20 countries (sometimes more) every year in search of what I call “the new safe havens”. Safe havens can help you follow my Five Magic Words: “go where you’re treated best”. It’s the 21st century, and you can choose from the BEST country to bank, the BEST country to own a business, and the BEST country to live. Each of those countries can be different, and each can be a “safe haven“.”

Super pumped to dig more into Andrew’s story, so welcome to the show!! More about Andrew on www.nomadcapitalist.com

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

026: Former medical doctor turned Internet entrepreneur (w/ Rob Rawson) DETAILS COMMENTS LINK/EMBED

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 22:49:38 -0400

Rob is a former medical doctor turned Internet entrepreneur. He started out eight years ago and was very successful with affiliate marketing, earning almost $1 million per year while working from a bedroom in his parent’s house. Now he is focused on building his current ventures: TimeDoctor.com and Staff.com.

Super pumped to dig more into Rob’s story, so welcome to the show!!

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

025: Connecting Technology Thought Leaders with Entertainment Innovators (w/ Kelli Richards)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 11:30:58 -0400

Kelli is a true trailblazer in the digital music and media arenas with more than twenty five years of senior-level experience. Kelli has a unique talent for connecting thought leaders from technology with innovators from entertainment.

A highly sought-after consultant, radio show host and best-selling author, Kelli is the CEO of The All Access Group (check her out at www.allaccessgroup.com), prior to launching AAG, Kelli was responsible for driving music and entertainment strategies during her many years at Apple!!

Super pumped to dig more into your story Kelli so welcome to the show!!

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

024: How to Use PR to Attract the Perfect Audiences for Your Business (w/ Josh Elledge)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 21:52:40 -0400

Josh Elledge is on a mission to help entrepreneurs attract the perfect audiences!

He is the Founder and Chief Executive Angel of SavingsAngel.com®, which bolsters the buying power of the average U.S. family by combining technology, coupons and smart thinking for extreme savings on household consumables and everyday items.

Through the years, Josh has consulted dozens of successful entrepreneurs – assisting them in creating the same sort of success he’s earned. That consulting eventually led to the creation of upendPR.com – which is designed to consult with and provide the tools for entrepreneurs who want to dramatically increase their own sales by attracting the perfect audiences without the typical expense associated with a PR firm.

upendPR is a software as a service / membership-based website providing step-by-step video coaching, live training, direct access to over 1 million media contacts, media monitoring for ongoing story-ideas, agency-level journalist inquiry monitoring, ongoing pitch creation, and impactful consulting for entrepreneurs and startups seeking to exponentially increase sales & traffic.

Super pumped to dig more into Josh’s story so welcome to the show!!

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

-Davis
#TheBusinessGeneralsPodcast

023: Humble Beginnings to Millions in Revenue in Software Solutions Revenues (w/ Vipin Sahu)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 03:53:29 -0400

Vipin is the cofounder of Webkul which is software company providing ecommerce solutions; his story has been featured on may business and entrepreneurial platforms and that is because it is a remarkable story and that’s why I invited Vipin to come on the show today!

You can find Vipin at www.webkul.com

Super pumped to dig more into your story Vipin so welcome to the show!!

For more info including show notes and resources check out www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for tuning in!!

022: Army Combat Principles for Small Business Growth, Bestselling Author (w/ Andreas Jones)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 22:30:33 -0400

Andreas is a leading authority on small business growth and profitability, a #1 International Bestselling author of Business Leader Combat and a certified John Maxwell coach, he is a contributor with the Huffington Post.

Andreas’ service in the US Army forged his character and leadership skills which he says have been tested and tried through the fire – forming the key principles of what he teaches his clients today!

Super pumped to dig more into Andreas’ story so Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Andreas to the show!!

You can check Andreas’ out at www.combatbusinesscoaching.com

Check out the show notes at www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for listening!!

– Davis

021: How to Publish a Bestseller Book & Multiple Income Streams (w/ Honorée Corder)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 22:30:13 -0400

Honorée Corder is the author of 20 books, including You Must Write a Book, Prosperity for Writers, she is also Hal Elrod’s business partner in The Miracle Morning book series.

Honorée coaches people who want to publish their books to bestseller status, create a platform, and develop multiple streams of income.

You can check her out at www.honoréecorder.com

Super pumped to dig more into your story Honorée so welcome to the show!

Check out the show notes and resources at www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for Listening!!
– Davis

020: Silicon Valley’s longest serving CEO, Tough Things First (w/ Ray Zinn)

Davis Mutabwa — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 19:19:31 -0400

Known as Silicon Valley’s longest serving CEO, Ray founded his own business in 1976, and he says that was the last time he received a paycheck from anybody else other than himself, now over 40 years later we are sitting here with Ray to share that amazing journey.

You can check him out at www.toughthingsfirst.com

Super pumped to dig more into your story Ray so welcome to the show!!

Check out all the show notes and so much more at www.businessgenerals.com

**Thanks for listening**

– Davis

019: Direct Response Marketing, Partnering and Collaborating to Start and Grow Your Business (w/ Kevin Thompson)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 22:35:17 -0400

Kevin is a hugely respected direct response marketer, a speaker, a trainer and connector. You can check him out at partnerplaybook.com!! Super pumped to dig more into Kevin’s story.

Kevin has been full time in business for over 20 years after 7 years of saving up money in order to start his first business which was a cleaning and restoration business but he blew all his start up capital of $200k in one year and had to start from scratch again.

He has taught many people how to start and grow a business from all his years as a business owner, and now he teaches people how to leverage their business growth through partnership and collaborations.

To connect with Kevin:
kevin@partnerhipplaybook.com

Get the shownotes at www.businessgenerals.com

Thanks for listening!
– Davis

018: Brik Book Founder’s Success with a Combination of Lego creations and MacBook Computers (w/ Brett Miller)

Davis Mutabwa — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 12:01:31 -0400

Brett is the CEO and Founder of Brik Book, which is the creator of what Wired Magazine described as a Case that is a pop-on plate that lets you jazz up the back of your Macbook with Lego creations.

It has received raving reviews and has been featured by Oprah, Vanity Fair and Wired.

Super pumped to dig more into your story Brett so welcome to the show!!

——

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey

2. Becoming Steve Jobs – Brent Schlender: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

3. Creativity Inc – Ed Catmull: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/brettm

>>>

Legacy: I want to continue to build products that inspire play, I want my company to bring a smile to people’s faces, get out the ruts, help people get creative and if I can get people to do that then I will die with a big smile on my face – Brett.

Best way to connect:
Email: support@brik.co
www.brik.co

017: How to Generate Wealth On Any Income, From Foreclosure to Property Investor (w/ Rennie Gabriel)

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 21:40:29 -0400

Rennie is the award winning, best-selling author of “Wealth On Any Income. Rennie is a UCLA Instructor, Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU).

A business owner, property investor and business coach. 100% of book and coaching profits are donated to a charity called sheltertosoldier.org!!

Super pumped to dig more into Rennie’ story so Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Rennie to the show!!

Rennie talks about how his family was at the brink on foreclosure with only 2 days left before losing their family home. He explains how he raised capital, found the right team and started a property portfolio that grew into the millions of value in a very short space of time.

Rennie is passionate about helping people learn how they can build wealth starting on any income.

——

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill

2. The Richest Man in Babylon – George Samuel Clason

Legacy: I want my legacy to be the charitable causes that i supported, saving lives of our veterans who gave up so much for the country, saving the lives of dogs that serve a purpose to many – Rennie.

Find books authored by Rennie here:
wealthonanyincome.com

Best way to connect:
wealthonanyincome.com

016: Fired from Corporate but Now Ajay is a Global Business Owner with Millions in Sales (w/ Ajay Prasad)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 23:08:40 -0400

Ajay says he is a migrant to the USA who started had a successful corporate career holding senior positions at Fortune 10 companies but he shares how he was unexpectedly fired as head of product development and marketing for a large company and losing all the perks of being in a senior corporate position.

After one month of introspection, Ajay decided to become his own boss and have more control over his life. He now owns several profitable businesses, generated millions in sales and is a published author of several books including Local Search Marketing Secrets Unveiled and Plant Your Online Biz Money Tree.

Super pumped to dig more into Ajay’ story so Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Ajay to the show!!

Best way to connect:
ajay@gmrwebteam.com
repugen.com

Ajay’s books:

1. Local Search Marketing Secrets Unveiled – Ajay Prasad

2. Plant Your Online Biz Money Tree – by Steve Burgess and Ajay Prasad

015: Garage Sales to Flea Markets to Millions in Sales – Selling Underwear (w/ Joel Gandara)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 11:37:43 -0400

Joel owns Underwear Station, an amazing company that manufactures and distributes men’s apparel. Starting from buying his first consignments from garage sales and selling them at flea markets from the trunk of his car and now to selling millions of dollars in sales. Can’t wait to dig deeper with you into Joel’s story.

Joel’s company also acts as a fulfillment centre for other brands and for e-commerce websites and he now also owns Morro Capital which intentionally acquires other ecommerce businesses that have potential for growth.

Super excited to listen in to more of Joel’ story so Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Joel to the show!!

——

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. The Secret – Rhonda Byrne

2. How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/joelg

>>>

Legacy: Want to remembered as a guy who didn’t have a lot going for him when he started out in life being a Cuban migrant into the US at age 4, and later in life has put in the hard work and it’s all paying off – Joel.

Best way to connect:

LinkedIn: @joelgandara
Email: joelgadara@morrocapital.com

014: Learnings from a Long Time Educator Turned Bestselling Author (w/ Mark Barnes)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 19:00:38 -0400

Mark Barnes is a long time educator, bestselling author, founder of Times 10 Publications and the creator of the Hack Learning Series.

Mark is the author of six education books and has co-authored Hack Learning’s Flagship Book: Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School.

Reaching nearly 5 million people every month on Twitter, on twitter handle @markbarnes19 – Mark is one of education’s most recognizable engagers, a popular keynote speaker and education presenter!

Super pumped to dig more into Mark’s story so Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Mark to the show!!

Mark discusses how his companies generate over 70% of revenue from books, how to build a brand around your book writing so your audience keeps coming back for more.

——

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. Drive: The Surprising Thing About What Motivates Us – Daniel Pink

2. WIll it Fly – Pat Flynn

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/markb

>>>

Legacy: To be remembered as someone who made a real impact on education who changed the outdated approaches in education especially how we assess learning, de-emphasising the traditional grading system and creating a conversation about learning, as well as shifting the conversation of homework from a “drill and kill” approach but to go home and want to extend upon the learinings from school because students want to learn, to make learning fun for students – Mark.

Best way to connect:

@markbarnes19 on Twitter
#hacklearning on Twitter
www.hacklearning.org

013: Shayna Oliveira – Selling Online Courses, Over Six Million Website Visitors and 80,000 Subscribers to Learn English Online

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:08:26 -0400

Shayna Oliveira is the founder of www.EspressoEnglish.net

If you want to improve your English, but you’re busy and you don’t have much time to study you go to Shayna, she been doing this since 2012!!

I am super pumped to dig more into Shayna’s story so Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Shayna to the show!!

Over six million people have visited her website since January 2012! And more than 80,000 students have signed up to receive Shayna’s English tips by Email.

Shayna’s has over 14 products on her website, she says no need to drive to an English school… at Espresso English the lessons come to YOU – delivered directly to your e-mail address, you can take the lessons online or download them.

Shayna discusses how to build a large list online from scratch, creating your first online course, how to pre-sell your products, a typical sales funnel for an online course including tips, we also talk about all the lessons learnt and failures along the way.

——

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. The One Thing – Gary W. Keller (what one thing will have the biggest impact for you?)

2. Running Lean – Ash Maurya

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/shaynao

>>>

Legacy: To have an impact as a teacher and as educator, helping others learn, inspiring them to learn the English language, inspiring them that they can pursue their business dreams and have a meaningful life – Shayna.

Best way to connect:

www.espressoenglish.net Shayna’s Business website
www.entrepreneursinmotion.com Shayna’s Podcast

012: Lisa Woodruff – How to become organized in your home and in your life

Davis Mutabwa — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 00:31:13 -0400

Lisa shares her passion and her love for organization and the freedom an organized life brings. Lisa runs a successful professional organization services business, Lisa’s also a blogger and a podcaster.

As a former teacher, throughout this episode Lisa makes the complicated manageable with er step by step presentation style.

Key Takeaways:

1] Understand the organizational phases of life.

2] Identify the unique organizational challenges you’ll face in each phase of life.

3] Make a plan to get organized.

Book Recommendation for Entrepreneurs:

1. The E-Myth Revisited – Michael Gerber

2. Generations – William Straus

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/lisaw

>>>

Legacy: People put memories into storage and save them for the next generation but I want to help people pull out those memories and share them at the holiday times and relive those times with their families and not just put them in a box for a future generation – Lisa.

Best way to connect: https://organize365.com/start

011: Take Your Home Based Business Online. Becoming very successful through blogging (w/ Tanya Aliza)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 20:14:22 -0400

Tanya worked as a Finance Specialist in Canada until coming to a cross-roads in her professional career life, and after a series of events she decided she would plunge into her own home based entrepreneurial business which has evolved into a very successful online business and we are going to hear all the juicy details on this show so Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Tanya to the show!!

Tanya took a home based business in direct sales and network marketing from the traditional model to a successful online business using blogging and content creation.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. The 4 Hour Work Week – Tim Ferris

2. Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiyosaki

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/tanyaa

>>>

Legacy: I want to have a family that looks up to their parents for inspiration and know that they can do anything that they want in life – Tanya.

Best way to connect: www.tanyaaliza.com

010: Becoming a Technology Entrepreneur and Strategic Thinker (w/ David Werdiger)

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 03:10:38 -0400

David is an experienced technology entrepreneur, strategic thinker and advisor, philanthropist and not-for-profit innovator, public speaker and writer.

26 years ago David founded Billing Bureau and built it into the premium provider of billing services to Australian tier-2 and tier-3 telecom carriage service providers.

He is now expanding & reinventing it to meet the needs of the evolving subscription economy! Ladies and gentlemen please welcome David to the show!!

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. The E-Myth – Michael Gerber

2. The Lean Startup – Eric Ries

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/davidw

>>>

Legacy: To be remembered as a good person who did all that he could to help others, because that is an important value in my life, being a giving person – David.

Best way to connect: www.davidwerdiger.com

009: Lessons from a serial entrepreneur and investor in startups, cofounder of over 8 companies (w/ Sarah Riegelhuth)

Davis Mutabwa — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 23:13:05 -0400

Sarah is an award winning serial entrepreneur and investor in startups, having cofounded 8 companies alongside her husband, Finn Kelly. Following several successful exits, she is currently the CEO of Wealth Enhancers (Gen Y financial advisory firm) and Grow My Team (global recruitment).

Sarah is also a speaker, blogger and the author of Get Rich Slow! Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Sarah to the show!!

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs:

1. Built to sell – making sure your business has saleable value and not just 100% reliant on you.

2. Good to Great – another great book!

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/sarahr

>>>

Legacy: To show people that you can live whatever life you want to live, that anything is possible for you regardless of how or where you started and especially love helping people take care of the personal finances and help them start and grow their businesses – Sarah.

Best way to connect: @SarahRiegelhuth on twitter or www.sarahriegelhuth.com

008: Ivy League graduate, freedom strategist obsessed with helping entrepreneurs achieve FREEDOM (w/ Vasavi Kumar)

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 22:47:59 -0400

Vasavi is a freedom strategist who is obsessed with helping you achieve the FREEDOM in all that is you. An Ivy League graduate, a certified coach, a qualified vegetarian chef, best-selling author of Succeeding in Spite of Everything. Featured on TV, Radio, numerous online shows and magazines, ladies and gentlemen please welcome the legendary and boisterous Vasavi Kumar!

Works one on one with entrepreneurs either budding or seasoned, helping them align their business with their personal values or budding entrepreneurs who are at the beginning stages and figuring out their business model, pricing and helping them get out into the market place.

Recently launched a new business, Soul Special, meaning full merchandise that matters, with the first product being a gym tank top with the message “No Shame” in line with suicide prevention month, donating part of the proceeds to National Alliance of Mental Illness.

Book recommendation for entrepreneurs: Conversations with God – Neale Donald Walsh

>>>

Free Show Highlight Reel Reveals… All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is download and take Action! Free download: www.businessgenerals.com/vasavik

>>>

Legacy: I want to be remembered for being an honest human being that people could come to for an honest response, as a person of integrity who was trustworthy – Vasavi.

Best way to connect: vasavikumar.com/focusedaction

007: Meet Trav Bell,The Worldʼs #1 Bucket List Expert

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 00:24:22 -0400

Trav Bell is the “bucket list guy”, the world’s number one bucket list expert. He’s a self-appointed “bucket-list-ologist”. Trav has obsessively studied the bucket list phenomenon and blended the world’s best positive psychology principles to create his own unique life philosophy. He has designed a life around his bucket list and now helps Bucket listers is all over the globe creative and cross off theirs.

“Well the thing is my business is my life and my life is my business and I don’t believe in work life balance it’s all one of the same really. I mean we just spoke off line. I’m going to do a big keynote talk in Africa. But I’ll be over in Africa for three and a half weeks climbing Mount Kilimanjaro so that is my life.”

Best two (three) books for entrepreneurs

The E-Myth – Michael Gerber.

The 4 Hour Work Week – Tim Ferris.

Screw Business as Usual – Richard Branson.

>>>

All the tips and highlights of today’s interview…All you have to do is jump onto: www.businessgenerals.com/travb

>>>

Legacy: I hope that I help people with a philosophy of how to live their life, how to re-prioritise their life to concentrate more on their life than their work and to help people live a regret free life – Trav.

Best way to connect with Trav:
thebucketlistguy.com
https://au.linkedin.com/in/travbell

006: Daniel Mumby Shares How he has Founded, Built & Launched 15 Ventures…some good and some bad

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 11:50:14 -0400

Daniel Mumby ‘That Startup Guy’ is the Co-Founder of Start-up Foundation a start-up accelerator for professionals. A speaker, writer, and investor in ‘disruptive innovation‘; an ex-corporate professional who has founded, built & launched 15 ventures.

005: Five start-ups and Three Successful Exits John Perry knows how to Develop, Start & Grow a Business

Davis Mutabwa — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 04:29:25 -0400

John C.H. Perry has co-founded five start-ups with three successful exits and having mentored others to do the same John knows what it takes to develop, start and grow.

004: How Rex Hartley Has Built a Software Business for the Car-body Shop Industry with no Tech Background

Davis Mutabwa — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 04:19:27 -0400

Rex is the CEO and Founder of WebTrim a SAAS business servicing the car-body shop industry. Trained as a Chartered Accountant Rex shares how he transitioned out of Corporate into owning a successful software business.

003: Growing a $400m Corporation after Being Flat out Broke with an ex SAS & Mercenary Dave Hodgson

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 21:00:12 -0400

David is the founder and managing Director of Paladin Group – a multimillion dollar diverse group of companies. David sits on advisory boards and committees of recognised corporate brands, he also travels the world as a sought after speaker and lecturer.

002: How Bunmi Ajayi Launched his Successful Insurance Business from Home without a Big Network of Contacts

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 20:36:14 -0400

Bunmi is the founder and CEO of Megalines Insurance & Risk Advisors based in Melbourne Australia, he is an award winning insurance expert, a speaker and a leadership coach.

001: Creating a Powerful Personal Brand w/ Sir Andrew Ford

Davis Mutabwa — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 14:00:07 -0400

Andrew Ford is the founder of Social Star, a personal brand marketing agency specializing in building online brands for individuals and businesses in order to e-ttract more career and business opportunities. Andrew spent many years working for large global corporations, leading their social media and online

strategy.

In this interview Andrew shares how he has built multiple income streams through consulting, coaching and speaking all centred around the core business of building people’s personal brands, which includes helping them build websites, profiles, photography, writing and brand promotion.

Andrew has found that most entrepreneurs, are their business, and their brand is their company’s brand especially at the initial phase so he helps clients build their own brand, while they build their business brand.

More info at: https://www.businessgenerals.com/andrewf/

Contact Andrew: www.socialstar.com.au

To your success!

Davis