Dreams Start With Patience #40

Reading time: 4 minutes

To escape your 9-5 and start something worthwhile.

What is needed?

Your own business.

I tell people 24/7 that if they’re not going to college or a trade school the way to enrich their life is through creating a business that provides value to society.

Simple enough right?

Starting a successful business is one of the hardest endeavors you can commit to.

What one thing do we all desire?

Freedom.

Freedom to do as we please.

Freedom to wake up when we decide and ultimately call the shots in our lives.

A business is the vessel to do so

There’s a joke among entrepreneurs:

I quit my 9-5 to work 24/7.

While this may seem daunting at first, it’s the truth in the early stages of any business development.

Anything meaningful you can do in your life stems from the challenge it presents.

If it wasn’t difficult:
1. Everybody would do it
2. You would get bored eventually.

You will struggle, but you can survive and achieve freedom through selling a product or service.

The internet opens up employment and business opportunities - most people haven’t picked up on this yet.

All great entrepreneurs in this new frontier leverage their time, attention, and energy.

This ultimately makes the act of running a business easier.

Everything starts in the mind - it’s why there are tons of individuals who study big businesses and the founders who started them.

My favorite resource? The Founders podcast by David Senra

The blueprint + first principles thinking:

A business has 3 components:

1. A great product or service
2. Getting your offer in front of people (marketing)
3. Solving a problem, closing deals, and helping your customers (sales)

This is a basic understanding and obviously, there is an entirety of depth to this.

Sales and marketing are like PB&J - you can’t have one without the other for a great sandwich.

The 2 problems every online business starts with:

The first problem is the struggle to make money.

The second is they can’t grow an audience.

And from time to time - they are frozen in place and cannot act at all.

Done is better than perfect, complacency kills a business more than anything.

To solve the first problem:

How do we make money?

A few things:

-Every business starts in the revenue range of $0-$10,000 a month.

-The first bottleneck here is your marketing.

If people aren’t aware you exist and aren’t aware of what you offer.

You’re not going to make any money - simple as that.

Blindspots in your knowledge contribute to a lack of cash flow.

You must be able to understand why you are selling a product or service in the first place.

There are an absurd amount of moving pieces in business.

Trial and error leads to data points, not failure.

Become a generalist - understand everything about your business.
(easy in theory, insanely difficult in practice)

Running a business is hard work, more times than not you’d rather hire someone to do the work for you.

If you truly want to understand your business you need to adopt a “everything is connected" mindset.

You can hire someone to do your taxes or accounting but they won’t have the same care for it as you would.

I regret not learning with urgency about sales and marketing.

Even more - I regret not focusing enough on product management.

You need to make sure you know what you’re selling (your offer or product)

You do this by seeing what the market wants or struggles with.

Create an amazing offer.

Show testimonials and case studies.

Get your offer in front of more people.

Close deals and handle objections while creating a win-win situation for your clients and customers.

Test, iterate, and pivot every once in a while to avoid complacency

The marketplace is always changing

So it’s why we need to focus on our customers rather than our competition.

Jeff Bezos made Amazon the most customer-centric company in the world.
(you know how that turned out)

Why do we need an audience?

An audience in a world where attention is the new currency is the most underrated asset you can own.

Capital is abundant - but someone has to give it to you.

Having 10k followers who do not engage with you on social media is not an audience.

An audience is essentially people who respect and enjoy what you do.

How do we grow an audience?

Right now - the path of least resistance is organic marketing.

Capital at the beginning of any business endeavor is scarce - it’s best to understand what the market wants before making a big commitment.

So our tools are content and conversation.

People buy from people - as simple as that.

The basic understanding for growth is:

1. Awareness - people need to be aware of who you are and what you can do for them.

2. Authority - we position content to establish our expertise and reputation.

This is why branding is so important - it takes a significant amount of time to cement authority.

3. Personality - we buy from companies and people we like.

Chances are if you don’t like someone, why the f**k would you give them your hard-earned money?

I’ve made laptop money selling prints, NFTs, and workshops

It’s a wonderful experience.

The #1 lesson I’ve learned in my failed photography business?

You have to overcome the bottlenecks in your business.

Most of the time the bottleneck is you.

It’s a hard thing to admit and understand.

You are the reason your business is performing well or not in the beginning.

Everything comes down to your accountability with yourself.

Time management and consistency come knocking on your door and it will bust it down.

Your business will fail…

Thanks for reading!
Another way I can help you when you are ready.
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Your friend who is diving deeper into online business and meeting some incredible individuals in the process.
-Zachariah