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0:00
let me make a claim here by saying this is probably if not definitely better than nearly anything else out there that is charging thousands and thousands of dollars because this is stuff that you will probably have not seen anywhere in the world this is a full course the ultimate guide on how to start grow and run your business and putting the right infrastructure in place so that you can scale it to a multi-million dollar business and beond now I am not holding
0:21
anything back here this is all of the knowledge and experience that I have gained in the last 33 years or so in me running and growing and scaling my own businesses as well as helping other businesses to grow and scale to six 7 8 and even nine figures but what's more important than all of these successes are the terrible catastrophic failures that I've had expensive failures that I've had that taught me a lot more about business than all of the successes because when you fail you learn the
0:45
important stuff like what not to do and that's more important sometimes than what to do and what I'm going to go through here is both so that you can start your business the right way and avoid all of the expensive mistakes that you could potentially go through let me go through that for you and be your guide to hopefully a shorter and much more successful Journey so I'm going to go through the exact framework that helped me scale multiple businesses to 6 7 8 and even nine figures I'm going to
1:09
get you to know how to think exactly like the 3% that truly win in business and 3% is an appalling number of people that win in business and we're going to try and change that today I'm also going to get you to try and identify a real Market problem so that you can develop an amazing solution that will have customers just lining up without you trying to go out there and say I haven't got enough customers they will be lining up if you do the work and we're going to
1:32
go through step byep how to go about doing that we're going to start also using real strategy and we're going to understand what strategy is this is what the 3% of successful business owners do and this is what I want you to start doing yourself inside your business and we're going to get you to use strategy so that you can really stand out and put you ahead of the curve we're also going to get you to craft a business model that can help make millions in revenue
1:52
and profit because at the end of the day it's what you keep in which is more important than just how much you make right we're also going to start looking at how to create create the ideal solution to the problem that you're solving and we're going to put it in a way where you can put it in a package and put it in an offer tailored to your market and that just practically sells itself and that's what makes a really successful business and it will make your life much much easier we're also
2:13
going to look at structuring your business the right way for growth and success both internally as well as externally so who are you and why should I listen to you great question my name is tamama Shaheen but I am not going to go through the traditional obligatory so story this is not about me this is about you so for sake of completeness let's say big accomplishment big massive failure soul searching big comeback here I am let's just go on with it by the way
2:36
if you are interested here's a little bit about me I've also got more information on the channel you can pause this if you're interested let's just get on with the value that you have come for which is about you growing your business not about me and my sub story so why are you doing this for free are you insane are we insane are we doing this for charity well no but if we're not doing this for charity then how does this make business sense well for me to explain to
2:59
you a little bit about our business model and I want to be as transparent as possible let's take a little bit of a step back to try and understand how we as a Company CEO entrepreneur is approaching our vision and Mission and our vision really is to inspire and Empower each and every entrepreneur to build the business they desire to live the life of their dreams this is something that I'm really really passionate about and this is one of the reasons why I started CEO entrepreneur I
3:24
did not find the information and the help and the experience and the guidance that I needed when I was actually going through my own early journeys of trying to run a business and when I was failing and when things were overwhelming and when I was heading towards burnout and all of these things I couldn't find that information and I believe that we need to have this information out there we are focusing on each and every entrepreneur and I know that there are
3:47
many entrepreneurs in early stages who really cannot afford thousands of dollars to buy a course or to get mentorship or any of these things so I really am a big believer of free education for each and every entrepreneur what we're doing as as a business model is that we're building a community of entrepreneurs the information is there for you to learn and to sort of digest for free but if you want to have personalized advice based on our experience in your
4:11
particular situation if you want to come in and join this awesome community that we're building that will keep you accountable and keep you inspired and have collaborations and conversations with like-minded people that are like you then we will more than welcome you to come into our community and that's where our paid Serv services will happen but for education purposes I want to put as much value out there so that people can get to the stage of where they can
4:37
afford to pay for our services and at the same time you can get to see by going through this course that hopefully we understand a little bit of what we're talking about because we are sharing our value and expertise so that you don't have to spend days weeks months years trying to figure it all out which I did the hard way where I lost $100 million business at one point and it was a catastrophe and there's a video about it on my channel you can go away and see it
5:01
if you're interested at some point but please watch this course first we want to make sure that you don't have to suffer through all of the pain and time and misery of getting things wrong we are at the end of the day for business owners by business owners we've been through your path I've been through your path I've been there it's very hard it's not easy we understand how hard it can be and we want to make sure that we are trying to get you closer to your chances
5:25
of success and the dreams that you want to do for yourself and your loved ones the other thing is that there's too much nonsense out there there's a lot of driil not enough substance and this needs to change I'm not a guru by the way but there are so many so-called gurus who sit there and give like three-step trademark processes that within 21 days you'll go from nothing to a million dollars and your life will be changed and sorry to all of them but that doesn't work in real life it might
5:51
work for a small minority but even then it's not something that is sustainable what I want to do here is I want to make sure that we build businesses is on solid foundations that can last for many many many years not only is it nonsense out there but also there's not enough substance because a lot of people focus on making things super simple so that they can sell them I'm not going to make it super simple I'm going to give you what you need and unfortunately running
6:17
a business is not easy so we have to do some hard work and I'm not going to shy away from that and I want to make sure that the course has the right substance that you will need to be able to succeed because at the end of the day we've got all of these people telling you how easy business it is to run but when you look at the stats they're absolutely shocking less than 6% of businesses get to six figures that means 94% of businesses never get to $100,000 in annual revenue
6:45
I mean that's ridiculous to me all of these people that have been told that you can go and run a business and get Financial Freedom that means 94% of businesses never get anywhere near Financial Freedom let's push this statistic a little a bit more less than 3% of businesses get to Seven figures that means that 97% of people never ever get to a business that has seven figures in annual revenue and I want to change that and we're just talking here annual revenue we're not talking about profit
7:15
we're not talking about what the person takes and keeps in their pocket at the end of the day if we actually look at that statistic that's even more abysmal less than .1% of people make seven figures in annual income themselves per year now that is absolutely crazy to me and it is absolutely unfair but it's also not your fault now let me get on my Soap Box just for a little bit I mean I promise you it's going to be value all the way through the whole course but
7:45
just for this second let me just sort of get this off my back the education system is what has caused us to be in this absolute mess it was built back in the industrial revolution we have moved on our economy has moved on people that are now working remotely having our own gig economy with AI coming into place yet our education system is still from the days of the Industrial Revolution to dish out Factory workers and that at the time what they needed were people to
8:11
follow and comply and do what they're being told and what we need as business owners we need to be risk-takers we need to question the status quo so that we can come up with better Solutions we need to be leaders not followers we need to embrace failure as part of our business we need to integrate it and I will talk about that at l as part of this course so that we can actually go about running our businesses the right way yet none of this is taught at schools and when we do start running
8:39
our own businesses we get into a place where we fall into what we've been taught and the skill sets of what we've been taught and we end up playing the role of 10 or 20 employees in our own business and that's what leads us to overwhelmed burnout an ultimate unfortunate failure for the business that's why I'm putting this course out here so that you will have all of the information you need so that you can run your business hopefully in the right way now you will have no excuse let's change
9:03
these horrible ridiculous stats I'm going to please ask you in return for this free information that you're going to get please share this with as many people as you think will find valuable because I want our mission to hopefully be realized that we get to each and every entrepreneur let's start the community right here put down in the comments below which country you are from what your business idea is going to be how you're going to go about your business what is your dreams in business
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how many businesses have you run are you still at the beginning of your journey or way in the middle of your journey and you're stuck and overwhelm let's find out who we are as a community and let's get this conversation started and also once you do start finding value in the rest of this course please if you can a like would be very appreciated because it's going to give that signal to the YouTube algorithm to start sharing it with more people and it will help us on
9:54
our mission to really start showing this to as many entrepreneurs as much as possible now extremely extremely extremely extremely important really important there are a lot of things to take from this course but if you take one thing from this course please let it be this one do not rush or skip any of the steps even if you think you know them or if you think they're not important to you because you want to get to the good stuff because remember most businesses fail less than 3% of
10:23
businesses get to Seven figures remember these stats that means that 97% of business owners go about it the wrong way so even if you think that you know this thing or you've done it chances are that you've done it not in the way that the 3% club would have sort of done it there are things that we believe and there things that successful business owners really believe being super super important that most other business owners think is fluff and think is not
10:48
stuff that is actually important to the success of the business and then they will start skipping to the bits where they think is important and because the groundw work hasn't been done the foundations haven't been laid down then it all starts crumbling and overwhelm and burnout and all of that stuff happens and things don't go to plan and customers don't come knocking on your door and all of that stuff if you want to build a seven figure business you have to run your business like the
11:11
successful 3% that means that if you want to build a seven figure business you need to run your business in a completely different way to how the other 97% go about it everything that I have put in here is stuff that is part of what the 3% do day in day out to succeed and you need to be able to go through it step by step so that you can actually increase your chances of success this is not an easy course there is a lot of detail and we're going to go in deep but that's what we need to be
11:38
able to go the extra mile because a lot of these 3% that you see successful you think that they're overnight successes but they're overnight success is 10 years in the making there is no successful entrepreneur that has been successful and sustained that success that hasn't put in the time and the work and the effort and all of the hardship that they've come in the beginning to be able to achieve that and I want want to give you the facts as they are so that
12:01
you understand what's coming up in your journey so that you are not caught off guard and you start to panic and we start being desperate and then we start making the wrong decisions so this is why we're giving you our proven framework and it's the one that I have used time and time again in all of my businesses and other people's businesses to help them scale successfully there is nothing that I'm going to give you here as part of this course that is considered as fluff or as filler if you
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do follow and stick to the proven framework that I'm going to give you and I'm going to share with you as part of this course it will improve your chances of success dramatically however on the flip side of that if you skip or if you give up or if you don't watch through or if you don't follow through and actually go and do the hard work unfortunately I've got bad news for you it will probably improve your chances for failure dramatically I don't mean to be over dramatic about this but remember
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the stats are not on our side and we need to do the work and we need to do the things that will start changing that status quo the majority people are not going to follow all the way through this course but I really really hope that's not you do not become a statistic or at the very least don't become on the wrong side of that statistic let's have a deal here that you are going to stick through this please save this video in your save and watch later playlist in YouTube so
13:17
that you can keep coming back to it time and time again what I would recommend you do is really go through it once in two times speed so that you can get an idea of what we're covering and then as you're going through building your business step step by step you can come through to the right section and you can do the work do the tasks and come back and watch the next one you're going to want to come back to this time and time again this is not just on when you start
13:39
your business this is when you're growing when you're scaling when you're building your business when you're developing your products and services when you're marketing them all of this is going to be included as part of this course so now you really really have no excuse let's begin shall we let's start with looking at our blueprint okay so let's start by having a look at the CEO entrepreneur blueprint now you'll see here that there are three key stages and each stage is basically how you shift
14:07
gears and operate your business in a different way every time you kind of scale your business and get to a certain level and that's actually one of the reasons why a lot of people get overwhelmed and burnt out and stuck and they kind of hit a ceiling is that they're still trying to operate their business in the older way while they needed to have shifted gears and sort of like started to operate it in a slightly actually quite a lot different way as you kind of scale up through the stages
14:31
what we're going to do here is we're going to start by having a look at groundbreaker and groundbreaker is essentially the early stages of when you are starting your business and you're still under six figures but what we want to do is we want to really build the right infrastructure so that you can build a multi-million dollar business and Beyond hopefully now the framework behind groundbreaker is the one that I showed you at the beginning of this video and it is a framework it's not a
14:57
step-by step because you will be circling back and coming back to each of these stages at a lot of the times whilst you're growing and running your business at the beginning whilst you're operating it as you're scaling it and you kind of have a cycle and you'll begin to see that sometimes even in this course I'll be jumping back to previous steps because now something new has happened in a step that happened a little bit later down and we kind of need to Circle back and have a look at
15:26
earlier things and revise them and refine them so let's not waste any more time let's go into the first one which is the journey the Journey of an entrepreneur is filled with many Highs but also many lows and we need to be able to expect that and understand that right from the start right from the get-go because it's not all that it's cracked up to be just by itself where everyone says to you flashy cars yachts and sort of living everywhere and having your own private island and all of that
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stuff you you can achieve that stuff but it's not going to happen overnight and it's not going to happen in 12 weeks or 6 weeks it's going to take some time there will be UPS there will be Downs so why do we go through all of this well the highs are quite high and you will be able to Achieve Financial Freedom impact you know time Freedom location Freedom all of the stuff that we as entrepreneurs dream about having our own being our own bosses and having our own
16:23
control and all of that yes all of that is absolutely possible but we need to make sure that we equip ourselves with the right information from the get-go so we don't go in and say hey I'm going to take six weeks or even six months to build this thing I'm going to have Financial Freedom and that's it I'm going to go in because if that's what we go in to the journey planning then unfortunately we're going to get caught off guard and things when they do start going wrong believe me they will go
16:55
wrong I've been through this I learned the hard way I don't want you to do that but when things do start going wrong we then haven't anticipated them then we start panicking and then we start acting out of desperation and that means usually we start making the wrong decisions and I don't want that for you we also want to be in a position where we say let's build this thing so that it could serve us but also serve the customers and we want to understand the difference between the two and we want
17:23
to go about building it the right way now here's what not to do a lot of people going into business the vast majority I know you're watching this course you're not one of them but just in case the vast majority of people will go in and say all right how am I going to start a business let me identify my passion let me figure out a business or a business idea or a product or a service that you know I can offer in this space Here's my business idea and then you hope that people are going to
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buy or sell your products and a lot of gurus you know I'm not a guru but a lot of these so-called gurus out there will sit there and say Hey you know Follow Your Passion what are you good at doing here are top X business ideas that you can do and you know go and run some social media campaigns and ads and then everything will be fine and dandy and that is not the way to do it now I am not saying don't follow your passion if you are passionate about an area that you're going to work in for your
18:20
business great bonus because it's going to see you through the tough times because you love what you're doing right when also going to ask you what are you good at doing but everything needs to be within the right context because a lot of times these things get taken out of context the starting point is wrong and when they are used in isolation usually we don't get the right results and nine times out of 10 if we follow this path unfortunately we end up with crickets
18:50
because we don't have anybody knocking on our door to try and buy our products or Services now what else do you think is wrong with this as you can see it up here you'll see that everything here is about the business owner and that's not what you should be doing it's identifying their passion you know seeing what ideas they can do being able to see what they enjoy the business itself should never ever ever be about you it should be about serving the client serving the customer
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understanding their needs understanding their requirements your business is there to solve a problem for your customers and it should never ever be about you with the major exception that in the medium to longterm it should start serving you and your dreams and your own personal Journey so that's the only time at the beginning here where we're going to start saying what is your journey because once we start going into looking at our products and services you'll see me very quickly switch over
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from okay what is it that you want to what is it the customer wants but we still need to do that bit at the beginning where we try and understand what's in it for you because at the end of the day we're not doing this for charity we're doing this and we're running these businesses so that we can make money and we can have the impact we want and we can be able to you know serve ourselves in the way that we want to as well as our loved ones and family and friends and all of that awesome
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stuff so you'll see me mention this quite a few times the business is about the customer it's not about you but for this part of the course here the journey the first module if you will or the first part of the framework what we're going to do here is start looking at how it can serve you now the other thing that we need to take into account is that the road to business is paved with good intentions we go in there thinking everything is going to be awesome and
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things don't always go to plan and what I want you to start looking at is saying all right the only constant here is change because that's the only thing that will ever stay the same change and change and change markets change requirements change technology changes you will change all of that will change and we sometimes go in there thinking that we're going to do something in one way and then when all of these changes happen and we don't keep up then we don't end up serving either our
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customers or ourselves mistakes are also part of the process and we need to be able to accept that from the beginning and we integrate that as part of how we're going to run the business because if we're sitting there trying to be perfectionists or we're sitting there trying to get everything right and things started going wrong again we Panic we make decisions out of desperation and they're usually not the right ones I've done this before the hard way and I really don't want that
21:45
for you because I failed massively and you know there's a video about it on my channel and you can go and have a look at it I'm not going to waste your time here because this course here is about you and how you're going to be able to build your business business it has nothing to do with me but I'll put it in the description below so that you can see where you can find out a little bit about my failures and my learnings from those failures because why I'm sitting
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here today is because of those failures that have happened and now I integrate mistakes and failures in a controlled manner as part of running businesses because life is not perfect how are we thinking possibly that the business is going to turn out to be perfect it it's just unrealistic and we need to make sure that we understand that however on the flip side of that when we do find things that work we're going to start to try and document them so that we can
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then begin to be consistent and then as we start building our team building people and bringing them into the business we then say hey this is what works this is what doesn't work and what we want to be able to do is document those things one other Factor as part of your journey is resilience will keep you going and that's why sometimes having working in an area that you are passionate about can help because when things go wrong sometimes you need to have that resilience you need to keep
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going and pushing forward because you might think that you have a look at these businesses where they look like they're an overnight success all of a sudden this person or this business came out of the blue no one had heard of that them and they're overnight success chances are that they were an overnight success 10 years in the making 5 years in the making 15 years in the making and you didn't see all of the struggles and trials and errors that they had to go
23:30
through to get to that stage but when that stage happens that's when it sort of kicks off and what we want to be doing is we want to survive long enough being resilient through all of the trials and errors that will happen at the beginning until we find out what works and when I give you this framework I'm not saying to you here's a prescription of exactly what to do you're going to have to adapt it because every Market is different every type of business owner is different you and I
23:56
are different even when I run different businesses I'm still trialing different things and seeing whether or not they work because in one industry they might work in another industry they might not work vice versa or even this year it might work but next year it won't and we need to keep triing and going through all of these processes until we find what works and then we can start scaling that and in the meantime resilience is really really key what I also want you
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to do is I want you to make sure that you keep your eye on the prize now what is that prize what is that for you everyone is going to have a different prize everyone is going to have a different end destination but what I want you to do is I want you to really be able to understand and articulate and really write out and specify what your prize is what is your end destination why are you doing this and what are you going to achieve once you've done this right because if we don't know where
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we're going how are we going to start designing our own journey and our own path remember we don't want to work for other people because we want to be in control of our own destiny right so we need to make sure that we know where we're heading we need to understand that and that as well will then keep you through the tough times understanding that this is where I'm going and I really really want this now there are going to be two aspects to the vision here as part of your journey there's
25:24
your vision and then there's your business's vision and those are two two separate things because you may sell the business you may pass the business down to family you may hire a CEO at one point if the business becomes large enough or hire a managing director and you go traveling the world and let the business run so we need to make sure that we make those distinctions right at the beginning where we say all right what is it that I want to achieve what does success look like for me what does
25:51
success look like for the business and how do I make sure that they serve each other and how do I make sure that the business serves me in the long term whilst it is succeeding in its own way and its own path Beyond just me as the business owner hope that's clear so let's have a look at your vision because the journey here first module is about you so let's understand what your destination is and why and I want you to go about doing that by building a vision
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board now before you click away or just roll your eyes and say vision board Here We Go Again here's some fluff it is not fluff it is really not fluff your journey is going to be hard and that's why I've been really highlighting and stressing this point up until now is because the journey is going to be hard business is not easy it's going to be a SLO it's going to be sort of a marathon not a Sprint and what we want to be able to do is we want to be able to keep this
26:50
motivation for us the accountability the destination understanding that that's our goal that's our Target and by building that vision board it really does help you through both the Good Times where it gives you inspiration and motivation and you can be Innovative and creative and all of that good stuff but also during tough times you can look at it and you can say I need to keep going through this because this is where I'm going and this is what I deserve and
27:15
this is what my loved ones and family and friends deserve for me and for them as well so that you can provide for them if that's what you want to do so what I want you to do is I want you to start creating this vision board choose a medium you know this could be something that you do on a traditional canvas you can you know bring a big sheet of paper you can do it on a platform digitally like in Meo or other places whatever works best for you whether it's digital
27:46
or whether it's traditional that's fine I want you to set the scene where you find a really quiet place where you can take a retreat if you will a self- retreat where you're sitting down and contemplating spend a good few hours is really trying to understand what it is you're doing and where you're going to go and you really need a quiet alone time where you don't get sort of distracted or interrupted or any of that stuff so that you can really begin to have some deep thinking about this
28:12
identify your goals and then hopefully get inspired things that you should be looking at would include you know what do you want to achieve in the next X years in the next 3 years 5 years 10 years 20 years what is it that you want to achieve and why you know why is this important important for you why does this matter because a lot of times when we start articulating the why and it really goes into our fundamental belief system that's when we can do our best
28:39
and that's what's going to keep us going keep us resilient keep us motivated all of that good stuff and then your inspiration and your motivation and your creativity will be contagious to the people that will then start working with you as you build your team what does it mean for you and others by achieving those goals for your friends for your family for your loved ones all of that stuff what does it mean for you and the others and also once you're writing this
29:03
down always keep checking does this vision board motivate and inspire me by the way there is a worksheet here for you building a vision board as there are many many worksheets as part of this course along with the slides that you can download for free and I'll put it down in the description below exactly how you're going to be able to do that so here are a couple more things that you need to be including as part of your vision board the last one I'm going to focus on because the above ones we've
29:30
kind of mentioned before the last one is do these align with my values and beliefs and making sure that what you're going to achieve and what you're going to do and what you're going to go and accomplish aligns with your values with your belief system because that also then doesn't have that discrepancy and if you have that discrepancy you really won't feel comfortable and you won't be able to survive the longevity of you know the ups and downs as we mentioned
29:55
that was your vision the next thing is your business vision and we're going to cover that as part of your business plan throughout this course because it's not just one thing that we're going to do we're going to cover that in a little bit later you know a lot of people talk about needing to build a business plan right at the beginning of your business and in my case I always do build a business plan but it has absolutely no resemblance to the waffle and driil and rubbish and
30:26
whatever which are like you these 25 30 page documents where you sit down and just do things so that you write a business plan so you can give it to a bank and have a loan that's not what's going to be useful for you what's going to be useful for you is a proper plan for you and your business to act upon and if you haven't noticed by now we've been very sneaky these steps here within the framework basically comprise your business plan and as you go through them we do have worksheets we do have
30:55
templates that you'll be able to fill out and and as you fill them out and compile them together that will be your business plan but it will be a much much more practical business plan where you will understand where your business is going what is it that you're solving how are you solving it the strategy behind it you know how are you going to Market and sell it all of that amazing good stuff that's what you really need to be doing and we're going to be able to walk
31:20
you through that as you go along so as we come to the end of the first journey module as part of this overall groundbreak framework just wanted to say if you're still here congratulations a lot of people are not going to get to this stage and be watching and really take the time to become part of the 3% remember I want to increase this 3% that is a rubbish statistic and I want us to really start expanding that statistic and that is by your perseverance to go
31:51
the extra mile to do the details to do the things that most people will not do and when you do them and you go through them this is what's going to make a difference between the 97% of people that go about running their businesses in a wrong way and I don't want you to be in that crew if you will so you've got this let's move on to the next module now let's have a look at the next one which is the mindset now before you Skip and you say I don't need mindset please take note do not underestimate
32:24
mindset really mindset and strategy are probably the most important factors for success as a CEO entrepreneur or as a small business owner as you're beginning to grow your business and this is true from the get-go and this is true from business CEOs and owners who have grown their business to seven figures eight figures nine figures Beyond and actually it becomes more and more relevant those two sections here which will talk about strategy later on but mindset and
33:01
strategy are probably the two most important factors for you as the business owner because these are the things that will get you to be able to have that edge to be able to succeed to be able to grow the business to be able to take it there sales is really important don't get me wrong it's super important and one of the things that you should be doing right at the beginning when you first start your business is sales and we're going to talk about that however you can hire a sales person you
33:31
can hire a marketing person you can hire an admin person you can hire all of these other people but your role and we'll talk a little bit more about your role your role as the CEO of the business as the business owner working on your business it's all about mindset and strategy most of the time there are other things again don't get me wrong but I am saying they are crucial and as I have worked and as I am currently still working with other business owners that have eight figures in annual
34:03
revenue this is the stuff that we talk about most of the time and this is the stuff that they want to really start growing and excelling at there isn't a successful business owner that has not had amazing mindset and strategy yes you will struggle at times don't get me wrong but we need to find within ourselves the ability to be able to push forward forward and to understand what it is that we should be focusing on what is our job description and all of these things so let's start breaking down
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exactly what I mean by mindset so the first thing that is really important for a successful sort of CEO entrepreneur or small business owner is really having the ability to have vision and long-term strategic thinking not in terms of like being ad hoc or half-hazard it's really about long-term thinking about really understanding that this is where I want to go remember we've already done some of that work in the journey module being able to stick to that and understand
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that I am here for the long run I am here for the Long Haul and this is going to take time and understanding what that vision is and being able to come up with an amazing inspiring vision that not only inspires you but also inspires your customers your clients your team your people all anyone who kind of interacts with you having the ability to have that Vision have that foresight and being strategic about how your long-term actions and activities are going is going to be
35:36
important the next one is belief and confidence now you need to be able to believe in yourself you need to be able to say right I can do this you are no worse off than anyone else being an entrepreneur is not something that we are born with as a sort of natural gifted skill there was a a survey done at one point where they had a look in terms of like whether entrepreneurs are born or sort of like you know educated or is it something that you can learn and actually a lot of times people saw
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that entrepreneurs are usually born because they're born into the family and all of that stuff but when they broke it down to successful entrepreneurs entrepreneurs and business owners actually succeeded it made absolutely no difference and Ed the ones that have been trained to become entrepreneurs trained to do the stuff are the ones that have succeeded and you need to be able to start and saying I'm going to be able to do this and you need to have the confidence to be able to sometimes take
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risks sometimes be strategic sometimes be able to say I can do this I'm going into Uncharted tery but I've had a look at this stuff I've looked at the worst case scenario it's still something that we can survive if it goes wrong so on and so forth and being able to push forward the next one after that is resilience and adaptability now we spoke a little bit about resilience during the journey module adaptability is being able to change again remember the only
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constant is change and as things change you need to be able to see them happening ideally before they happen and be able to adapt based on the new data and the new information that you're getting growth and learning is huge there isn't a successful CEO entrepreneur who has not really worked on self-development getting a mentor being as part of a mastermind being in a community of like-minded entrepreneurs reading as many books as possible signing up to courses not one single
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successful entrepreneur if you go and find one knock on their door and say hey have you worked on self-development for yourself and upskilled yourself so that you can be successful every single one Baran will say yes and I want you to integrate that in your mindset where it is really a growth mindset I'm going to learn I'm going to keep on learning I'm going to keep on upskilling myself I'm going to get a mentor I'm going to get a coach all of these things doesn't need
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to be us but it could be at least you know that these are things that you need to be able to go and do the next one is being customer Centric and what you need to be doing here is really beginning to understand that the business is not about you and I'm going to say it again and again and again and again because a lot of times the businesses that fail are usually all about the entrepreneur or the business owner M El this is what I like this is what I'm passionate about
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this is what I want to do this is this this is that and they end up really building something for themselves that people don't actually want I mean if you are going to decorate let's say a property and you decorate it to just your taste actually the majority of people might not like it and might not buy it and if you are in this to build your home sure decorate it how you want but if you're in this as a business way you're going to lease or sell this property because you've decorated it in
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a certain way then you sit down and say who is the target audience for this how do I decorate it for their tastes for their needs and always being customer Centric now that's just an example it applies to any industry any product any service any business really the next one after that is leadership and team building understanding that you are going to be the leader in your business you're going to start building a team even if they're outsourced even if that
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you're interacting with people that are not full-time early on that doesn't matter you still need to lead them to be able to achieve what you want you can be Outsourcing for bookkeeping or getting a VA or any of these things you still need to be able to have that leadership skills and upskilling yourself as leadership so again when I'm working with business owners that are turning over eight figures in revenue or multiple eight figures in Revenue most of the time mindset strategy leadership
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people how do I lead my people how do I actually build the right work culture how do I do this how and a lot of it is about leadership skills as well so this is something that should be in the back of your mindset in terms of this is how I'm going to approach my business I need to understand and have this mindset so all of these things really each one of them moves you one step further towards the success and the destination that you want to be able to achieve next one is
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financial Acumen understanding how to keep enough cash in the bank because you do not want to run out of cash next up is network and relationship building and really being able to go out a network whether it's finding Partnerships collaborations just having other businesses that you can collaborate and partner with um networking also even finding clients and customers through Network and relationship building is really important and this becomes one of your key responsibilities down the line
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as the business grows where you are beginning to spread the vision spread the mission all of these things is going to be super super important for you as a CEO entrepreneur next one is accountability and discipline accountability you need to keep yourself accountable or find someone who can as an accountability buddy or a mentor or a coach it's really important to make sure that you stay accountable for the things that you're going to do and you are disciplined about it and you are acting
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out of discipline acting out of patience acting out of strategic long-term thinking that we've been talking about right at the beginning and not really out of desperation because the minute we start acting out of desperation and not disciplined and it's ad hoc and it's like emotional we make bad decisions and the business ends up collapsing unfortunately so accountability and discipline the last but not least is values driven and being able to make sure that you are aligned and true to
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your values because that's also what's going to attract the right team the right people the right customers that you're going to enjoy working with because those will be all aligned with your values as well so that's pretty much the mindset of a really successful entrepreneur but at the early stages what is your job description what is your role as the CEO of your business if you are under six figures and you're trying to get yourself to that six figure and seven figure Mark once you go
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past six figures and you're going to seven figures Your Role is going to change and once you go past s to 8 Your Role is going to change again so early on a five- figure entrepreneur let's say from the get-go Your Role is to strategize and plan you're strategizing what is it I'm going to do this business about we're going to do that as part of this course you're strategizing and making sure that you plan ahead you are building or developing your product or
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service right at the beginning you might get some help you might do it yourself but that's part of what you will be doing really early on later down the line you're probably going to hire people in fulfillment in product development or service development but at the beginning in the early stages you're probably going to be doing that yourself next one is promoting and selling if you're under six figures one of your biggest roles is going to be selling because you're testing price
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you're testing whether or not people like this thing you're testing whether or not people are you know having that problem having that issue are you getting the right results who the target market is what is the right product Market fit and being able to sell sell sell so that you can then make that money so that you can build your own team as well and as you scale your business right at the beginning selling is going to be crucial for you then as you grow your business sure you can go
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and hire sales teams and marketing teams and all of those things but at the beginning that's going to be one of your key critical roles and a lot of times people say I hate selling I don't like selling it's too sleazy it's too this and that that business is about selling we need to get that on the table and this is part of the mindset shift that we need to understand there is nothing wrong with having money money is a tool you could use it for good you could use
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it for bad the same thing with selling so if you found something that is amazing that you didn't have to like go and ask money for that you know that is going to solve this person's problem you will be singing from the rooftops and telling them hey I found this amazing thing for you it's going to help you you're not going to be suffering or struggling anymore but it's just because we're not asking for money we'll go and do that but if we are start asking for money then we start saying oh no but
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actually it's your duty to do that and if you build the product or service well enough people will come knocking on your door and we'll talk about that as the course progresses how you're going to be able to get people to knock on your door rather than you sitting there and trying to do sleazy sales cuz that's not something I subscribe to either there is there is a big difference between doing sales and within your right values and moral sort of ethics and all of that and
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sleazy sales which is not what I'm talking about at all so the next one is communicate and manage and that is for you to be able to communicate your strategy to communicate you know the sales of your products and services communicate to the team the small team that you're building whether it's outsourced or your suppliers being able to communicate and manage those people is going to be important but also even if you're a single person a solopreneur you're going to be managing your time
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you're going to be managing your schedule because later on you'll begin to see that you're going to be wearing multiple hats playing different roles in your business and if you don't organize your time well you're going to get overwhelmed you're going to get burned out and you don't know why it's because you'll be going to be doing so many different roles in the beginning because you don't have the money to be able to afford to build you know a big team at
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that early stage the next one after that is cash flow Finance part of your financial Acumen that we talked about in the previous slide and that is really making sure you've got enough cash flow in the bank and again I'm going to touch on that in a second build you're building your business building the infrastructure building the structure building your team building your product or service building relationships building you know list of clients all of that stuff you're going to be building
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right at the beginning building is one of the big things that you're going to be doing as the business owner and what I want you to do is I want you to start looking at building your business almost as the product itself from a bird's eye view right sometimes we get too ingrained inside our business where we're building our products and services but I want you to at times take a bird eye view and pull yourself up and say all right my whole business is a product
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how do I build this product and that's what working on your business looks like and we'll talk about exactly what that looks like throughout the course of this course if you will next one up is legal and compliance making sure that you are complying with the law legally registered all of that stuff is stuff that you need to make sure that you are complying with if it's privacy laws any of these important things like contracts stuff like that that you're going to do
47:17
with your clients with your team members a lot of that stuff is going to sort of fall on you in the beginning you can Outsource again hire a lawyer or download some legal documents that are customized to your business from uh legal platforms but legal and compliance is one of your main roles for your job description at the beginning last but not least it self-develop again and it's that important that I did put it down as one of your key critical roles so that's the job description for
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you as a business owner early on as you scale that will change but we'll talk about that at a different time at the moment we're trying to really start and grow your business business but here is one thing that no other course will tell you you have to be prepared to fail CU everyone's going to sit there and say hey succeed succeed if you do this you won't get it wrong if you don't get it wrong you're not going to grow we have to push ourselves outside our comfort zone we have to be able to
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take risks the world is not perfect we're going to try things and it's going to be trial and error and you have to be prepared to fail but what we want to do is we don't want to have massive failures we want to have controlled failures within the business and we're triing out and and and seeing whether or not this thing works or it doesn't work and I want you to start thinking about integrating failure into your business every time you fail inside your business
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is One Step Closer to You succeeding and it's one step closer for you saying okay that doesn't work let's not try that again let's try this thing all right but what we don't want to do is we want don't want to have a massive sort of failure where it completely ruins us and takes us out of business when you start looking at successful people usually every single one will have some form of failure or mistakes or trial and error integrated as part of their business you see ironically the
49:11
people that actually plan not to fail are the ones that actually fail if you are planning not to fail and you're trying to get everything right and you stick to something and you say no no no it has to be this it has to be this and it's going to work and it's going to work most people people down that path are going to fail ironically and ironically on the flip side of that the people that plan to fail are usually the ones that ultimately succeed and I'm going to leave that there for a second
49:38
for you to have a read because it's important it's really important so what is the trick behind this we do not want to act from a place of desperation we're going to start expecting that things fail and we're going to plan on what we do if this thing does doesn't work what's our backup plan is our backup plan sufficient to keep us surviving is it sufficient for us to get more information and data to know that this thing doesn't work or maybe it's going to point to a different direction that
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will work and what we want to do is we want to act from a place of discipline and patience and what we want to do is what we want to be able to control failure and make sure that we have sufficient cash flow in the bank until we figured out our success strategy right so what we are doing as part of our job description is managing and making sure we have enough cash flow in the bank so that the business doesn't go out of business and we are triing out these different experiments if you will
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within this box of making sure we've got enough cash understanding that if we fail here we're going to try this if we fail here we're going to try this if we fail here we're going to try this until we find the thing that works and the trick here is not to run out of cash until you do the biggest reason that most businesses fail is that they run out of cash 82% of businesses that fail is because they run out of cash and that is why it's super important that we have
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these two understandings and that mindset where we say control failures look at my cash flow controlled failure can I still survive controlled failure look at my cash flow okay you get the point but what I'm trying to say is it's really important and this is one of the key things that will really really put your head and shoulders above most other business owners that do not succeed unfortunately so enough about that let's move on to something else you've already
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built your vision board you're hopefully on your way to achieving your goals take note though because as your business grows you are going to be the biggest limiting factor in your business even from the beginning but as your business grows it will also become a bigger factor to play and we need to identify the things that might inhibit us from succeeding so let's have a look at some common mindset Inhibitors the first one is imposter syndrome where we say who am
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I to do this business look at that business they've been in this for 10 years 15 years 100 years there's no way I'm going to be able to compete with them yes you can because it's been shown historically time and time again the most successful businesses are the ones that come out of nowhere that people had never heard about because they've innovated some new thing when a business is quite old or quite sort of like you know it's been around for many many years it's usually much slower to adapt
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and adaptability at the beginning is key for you to be able to find that Gap in the market where you say I can do this thing and then you do this thing and hopefully it succeeds also impostor syndrome doesn't end you're going to be looking at the next person I'm going to be looking at the person above me the person above me is going to be looking at the person above them and it never ears so when I had my hundred million business I was looking at the billion dollar club and I was saying well you
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know what do I know these guys are doing so much better than me and it never stops so it's not a case where you sit there and say okay when I get to this stage I'm going to believe in myself and I'm going to prove it we don't stop so the best thing to do is stop it from the get-go you are going enough believe in yourself you can do this everyone else is trying to make it up as they go along right everyone else it's the truth they might lie to you they might tell you
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they've got it all figured out but they don't and the sooner we realize this that hopefully easier we can move on and be able to start running our businesses in a way that really makes us super happy and understanding that we are good enough to be able to run that business perfectionism is also one which is the fear of failure as well I'm a recovering perfectionist I still suffer from perfectionism until today and it's something that I'm working on but it's not great right it
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really delays a lot of things and being quick to the market is much much better than being perfect to the market the first Apple iPhone didn't have copy or paste but now it does and that iteration when you look at the first iPhone it's embarrassing according to today's standards and I think it was Steve Jobs who said if you're not embarrassed by the release of your first product then you've released it to the market too late so we want to be able to understand
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that we can push things out that are not perfect if you really want to make a distinction which is what I'm trying to do strive for excellence not Perfection there's subtle but very significant difference because perfectionism paralyzes us and we don't want to be paralyzed because we have been conditioned to fear failure during our education system the education system was there to dish out Factory workers right so it wanted you to comply it wanted you to follow orders and
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instructions and we get conditioned to fear failure in school don't do this you know you might fail your exam if you fail your exam you're not going to get a good job if you fail this you're not going to do this you do and then we get ingrained that we need need to not fail whereas business is completely on the opposite end of the spectrum where it is all about experimenting and taking risks and looking at failures and seeing what works and what doesn't work and that's
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why it's not your fault at the moment but what we want to do is we want to have that shift in mindset where we say actually failure is not bad failure is like an experiment that we just keep trying until we find the ideal result and that's what we're going to hopefully be doing strive for excellence not perfectionism value proposition sometimes we think we don't have good value to offer and yes you do we underestimate how much value and knowledge we have if you start thinking
56:05
about the times people ask you for advice on certain things you might think that they are so easy and it's just obvious and it's straightforward but it's not to most other people it's something that because it's easy to us it's natural because we've been doing it for many years or it's just something that we know how to do or figured it out or our brain works in a way where it just figures this out and we think that it's obvious to everybody else and it really isn't it really isn't so the the
56:34
stuff that you know is super valuable and what we're going to do as part of this course is marry what you know which is super valuable with what the market really needs right and like I said we're not going to start with that we're actually going to start with what the market really needs first and then we're going to marry it with what you really do well and what you're good at and what value you provide because doing it the other way around is not the right way to
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start on things right let's keep going so the next one after that is money mindset and I touched on this a little bit earlier so I'm not going to touch on it much much beyond that and that's essentially there is nothing wrong with money money is a tool you can use it for good and you can like be a philanthropist you would like give money to charity and like Bill Gates and doing all of these good things or it can be bad and you know people with a lot of money can be good can be bad people who
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are poor and don't have any money can be good can be bad money is not the variable that influences good or bad it's the people and money has nothing it's not the rootable evil and it's you know it does grow on trees actually because it's made out of paper in some countries but anyway let's let's keep going overwhelm is another one and we're going to try and look at overwhelm as we move on because understanding what your role and your job description is and other roles in the business and how
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these other roles are not your role is really going to start reducing overwhelm and if we've got the right plan we've got the right strategy we're not hopefully going to overwhelm ourselves by going through this proc in an ad hoc manner anyway next one control and delegating so control and delegating we are control freaks I am a control freak you know again recovering control freak but delegating is is one of the best things you can do to leverage your time we get into business so that
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we can be financially free and Time free right and what we want to be able to do to become Time free we need to delegate and we need to let go of control because otherwise you're still going to be trapped inside your business doing everything that's not what we sign up for when we're starting a business right I learned this once when I saw a a friend who was just flying every weekend to a different country and doing all of these things and just chilling out not doing much and
59:04
and I was sitting there just saying how is this guy achieving all of this stuff because he was achieving a lot of things and I went up to him and I said hey you know what's your secret tell me how you're doing this how are you doing all of this stuff and still have time to go like every weekend to a different country and you know go on holiday and do all of these things and he he kind of leaned in really close and he he he came to me and sort of come come come closer delegate
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everything everything just give it to other people to do and do you know what it changed my life it really did so delegate really start learning how to delegate and don't make that to become an inhibitor because if we don't and we become control freaks we're going to get overwhelmed and we're going to hit a ceiling and we're not going to be able to grow next one is limited vision and again that goes back to strategic thinking and what we're sometimes doing
1:00:01
is we're caught in the day-to-day and we are sitting there thinking about what is the dayto day what I have to like do this I need to put you know pay the bills and I need to get this sale and I need to develop this thing and I need to run write this social media post and I need to do and we are very limited in our vision and we do need to always kind of take a step back and look at the bigger picture and have strategic thinking next one is resistance to change that goes up with adaptability so
1:00:31
I'm not going to spend too much time on that procrastination is another one you know procrastination is really one that I think also is tied with perfectionism because if we are perfectionists we know how much time and effort we're going to spend doing that one thing and we're not going to finish it until it's just perfect and we procrastinate lot because we know what's coming ahead and we don't want to start and we keep saying yeah we're going to start we're going to start we're going
1:01:02
to start so if you start Distributing your time as we'll talk later on on how to start time blocking based on your roles and the different roles and functions inside your business we'll get to a place where hopefully you won't have time to think about whether or not to procrastinate let's let's put it that way last but not least and I've mentioned this before is discipline and patience and that is really important so we need for you to realize your true value when it comes back to that whole
1:01:31
belief system because even though I probably went through that last slide chances are if you're like me you're going to say yeah yeah but you know that company and that person you know who am I you know stop doubting yourself right stop it stop doubting yourself I mean it stop doubting yourself really stop doubting yourself how many times I need to say you are good enough you really are good enough and you are no less than anyone else you can do amazingly well if you put your
1:02:05
mind to it and I know that sounds like something my mom would say or something your mom would say but it's really true they say it for a reason it's it's actually true and you're going through this course right now probably dare I say one of the best if not the best courses on starting and running a business anywhere in the world right and you're going through this now you have all of the tools you have all of the skill sets you've got all of the knowhow that I've gone through years and years
1:02:33
of succeeding and failing and knowing what to do and what not to do is in here you can do this you just need to add your little bit which is going to make you special which is your value which is what you're amazingly good at which is something you probably don't realize that nobody else knows how to do as well as you do and even if you don't do it as well as other people there are so many copycat businesses if you package it in the right way and go about this and think about this
1:03:01
strategically again apple is never the first product to you know it wasn't the first smartphone it wasn't the first all of the things it's not the first laptop but they do it in their own way and they package it and they make it in this ecosystem of things and you can still carve your own space and what I want you to do is we have a worksheet where it's really sort of translating and trans forming your limiting beliefs into liberating truths where you say this is
1:03:30
a limiting belief actually it's an advantage for example if you say hey I'm too old to start a business the liberating truth can be hey I've got so much years of experience in this area that I'm going to start a business in that most people who are just like starting out and just coming out of college will not have this experience and knowhow so try and look at each thing that you believe is limiting you or having that limiting belief and translate it and transform it into a
1:03:58
liberating truth spend a good amount of time to do this because it really is super super important next one is identify what you bring to the table and this is really about trying to understand your unique value proposition and if you are afraid of losing business you probably won't the world is abundant you know when you go for an interview sometimes and you don't care you probably get the job approaching it from that confident believing in yourself really understanding your true value is
1:04:29
probably going to get you to a place where you will be getting business but if you sit there and you are afraid of losing stuff and you act out of fear and Desperation chances are people will see through it and not be confident the customers they'll be thinking hey if you don't believe in yourself and you don't believe in your product or service why should I so you need to start believing in it and then you will see how much business that will drive towards you and
1:04:52
for you hope that makes sense now if you want to work a little bit more on realizing your true value really start understanding what your unique value proposition is and I'm not talking about the business here I'm talking about what your unique value proposition is now this is not about you finding where to build your business this is not about you finding out where to build your business model we are going to use this later down the line to validate a problem that you've identified if you've
1:05:22
got multiple problems then you can say can I sort of like refer back to this figure and see which one aligns better with my unique value propositions so we've got here a circle which is what customers want the next one here is basically what you do well and last but not least we've got another one which is what your competitors do want now if you start mapping here the overlaps in terms of what customers want to what your competitors want if you don't do that
1:05:52
well that's something that you shouldn't really care about anyway good luck to your customers good luck to your competitors because it's not your strength right so the next one is if we are looking at what competitors do well and what you do well but customers don't need it then there's no point in doing it at all because customers don't need it the business is about the customers not about you so the one in the middle is where it overlaps with everything so
1:06:13
it's something that you do well but your competitors do well and your customers actually want it it's risky if there's a lot of good competition but it doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't go into it if you feel that you can stand out in a certain way but if you can stand out significantly that should be your focus which is where your competitors don't do well you do really well and your customers want it so remember this figure and try and fill out each of these circles in terms of
1:06:40
what your customers want what your competitors do well and what you do well in order to identify where you really are in terms of your key strengths and again don't build your business model around this we're going to use this now for you to start believe leing in your own value that you bring to the table but later on we will refer back to this when we start identifying the right target markets and the right problems to solve for your business so on and so forth what we're
1:07:07
trying to really do here is we're trying to push you outside your comfort zone because if you're not pushing yourself outside your comfort zone you will not grow and I want you to grow as the business grows because your skill sets will need to change and adapt and grow as your business grows and we need to start that work from today hope that makes sense so that is the mindset module the next one is the problem and that is all about you identifying the problem that you're going to solve for
1:07:39
your customers or clients are you ready let's go okay in this module what we're going to be doing is really identifying what problem are you solving for your business because after all that's why a business exists right a business exists to solve a problem we need to find what the right problem is because if we don't chances are that customers won't buy it and the business won't succeed the second reason why businesses fail is because there is no need for the
1:08:09
particular product or service it was the wrong Market fit the wrong product Service First reason is people running out of cash second reason solving the wrong problem nobody actually needed this problem and that's why we really don't want to just come up with a business idea from scratch and come up with a solution and say hey this is a good idea let me go and try and sell this what we want to do is we want to be able to first of all identify the problem understand the root causes of
1:08:32
the problem validate that this problem exists and is real validate that this is something that will make business sense and can scale and we're going to do all of that in this module so I don't want you to become a statistic we want well actually I do want you to become a statistic but a good statistic you know in the 3% and we're going to grow it together right okay so don't become the other statistic that's what I mean by that but anyway the point is I want you
1:08:58
to make sure that you are solving a real problem a real problem that people need and also makes business sense and we're going to break down all of these things in detail in this module this is a little bit of a slog this module I'm not going to lie but then again I didn't promise you that this is going to be an easy three-step process right this is not easy and we're going to go the extra mile to really understand the problem because once we do and once we
1:09:29
understand the benefits people will come knocking on your door because it will be the thing that they want fixed right and you will be also be able to sell it much better because you'll say hey this is the thing that you want fixed this is the problem that we're solving for you and it makes life and business so much easier so what does it mean that a problem that people need it's something that really is a serious pain point it's something that keeps them up at night
1:09:56
and I know that there are some Industries where there's entertainment that also is solving a pain point of making people not upset making people not depressed making people happy making people have good memories love emotion all of these things are still a core human desire that we need and if we don't have that it is a particular pain point so what we want to do is solve a business problem that people need keeps them up at night but also it makes business sense what does does that mean
1:10:26
so we need to make sure that we've got valid underlying assumptions and I will break this down in a lot more detail in the slides to come but essentially what that means is that we want to make sure that we are actually solving the right problem the assumptions that we've made about this problem are correct because sometimes and I'll give some examples we can make the wrong assumptions and it will make us solve the problem in a completely different way and actually
1:10:50
that's not what customers or clients wanted they wanted something else but they might have stated this same paino also the product or service that you're going to do needs to have a target market that makes Financial sense they can pay you money there's no point you know selling a Rolls-Royce to a student in high school because a they probably don't have the money and B they can't drive so it needs to be a target market that makes both financial and realistic
1:11:19
sense and also to make a good business case and I'll break all of those down in detail as we go along remember this is not about you we're now having that switch over where in initially in the first two modules we were talking about the journey your journey we were talking about the mindset your mindset now we're doing that switch over everything from this point forward is going to be about customer about the client about your leads all of those kind of things right
1:11:48
okay let's keep going so it is important that you consider the problem you're solving holistically I'm going to go through 10 steps to identify and really understand the market problem breaking them down very quickly step one we're going to explore the landscape we're going to engage with potential Market really unearth the problems and challenge assumptions validate the problem here you go you can read it pause it read it we'll move on to it let's go through each one in detail step
1:12:15
number one explore your Market landscape right so a lot of times people come to me and they say do I come up with the idea and then go and find the right crowd or like you know do I find the right crowd and then come up with the business idea or do I really find the problem from the crowd which comes first is it the chicken or the egg situation and in a lot of cases it's not really about finding the idea first it can be about finding the right crowd and then trying
1:12:45
to solve their problem or identifying a problem then validating that this crowd is big enough for you to be able to sell and grow and scale into hopefully makes sense so if you have a business idea already then please park it aside and go back to this thing here that we've just spoken about we're going to try and make sure that we find the right crowd find the right problem and validate it because your idea that you've come up with may not be a problem that also
1:13:13
makes business sense right it might not be something that will be scalable it might not be something that actually has a big like Market that will have that will want to buy it so these are things that I want you to please park it aside remember 97% of business owners go about it the wrong way we're not going to do that we're going to go about it the right way and we're going to dive a little bit deeper it's a little bit of like work that we're going to do right
1:13:36
now but I didn't promise you that this was going to be easy here we go so your Market landscape we are going to have four different things that we're going to break down the the target market if you will we've got the demographics which is the age the gender occupation education ethnicity basically like who is this person who are who is this Market that I'm trying to attract the next attribute is geographic location are you going to be a local business are you going to Target certain
1:14:05
postcodes are you going to Target regions are you going to Target globally the world you know the universe who knows so that's where you start saying okay geographically where am I going to actually sell this thing why the psychographic attribute here is actually really just as important as the other three that we're going to talk about this is where we start really understanding the values the personality traits the culture the goals Lifestyle the more you understand your client or
1:14:36
your potential client the easier it will be to make sure that you're giving them the right benefits and giving them the right results and marketing to them in the way that they understand and actually communicate with them in the way that they do things and also align with their values and and and all of that good stuff last but not least is is behavioral which is you know where do they spend their time sort of like you know what is their spending habit do they buy things in bulk do they buy
1:15:03
things regularly in small quantities do they buy online do they buy offline you know do they have particular brand loyalties where do they actually hang out so that we can go and Target them so all of this stuff is about how the demographic actually behaves right so let's break each one of these down in a little bit more detail now before we move on this this is not the same as picking your avatar this is really really really really extremely important please I do not want you to start
1:15:33
picking an avatar just yet what not to do is most people most gurus so-call gurus will tell you pick a niche Niche down just super Niche like go all the way like the tiniest Niche and that's where you start your business that's not where you start your business we are not picking an avatar now a lot of the reasons behind this again the context is right you will be picking a niche but not at this early stage of you starting a business because a lot of times a lot of these gurus come
1:16:05
from a marketing background and in marketing that's where you Niche down that's where you pick your avatar that's where you actually when you're developing your marketing messaging that's where you say who is this marketing messaging or campaigned particularly for and you Niche down but if you start your whole business by saying hey my avatar is Mary and Mary has a a three-legged cat and she lives in a house that you know has two doors and a and a and a roof up on the roof
1:16:36
there's like you know a swimming pool then you say well that's my avatar you know I'm going to do cleaning only for like swimming pools on roofs and you then realize that the market size is not big enough because no one else has a swimming pool on the roof and also a three-legged cat you know so what we want to do is we want to establish that this business model the target market is big enough for us to scale in and then we can start niching down and then we
1:17:02
can start doing that so take an example like an iPad like from Apple I know we're not going to be big enough you know as big as Apple but it's still illustrates the purpose an iPad is a portable tablet device that can be used by anyone and everyone right so the the scope for scaling is huge but when you look at their ads the marketing messaging that's when they pick their Avatar so they will have an ad that has grandparents communicating on FaceTime with their grandchildren you know across
1:17:33
the world then they'll have another ad which is for doctors and nurses in hospitals using the iPad to look at data for the patient then they'll have another ad which is students taking notes at you know college or university then they'll have another ad which is artists using the apple pencil drawing and being super creative so on and so forth and you can begin to see that's where they've picked their app avar right so here this is us finding a market segment This Is Us trying to
1:18:00
identify is this Market segment big enough for us to scale in or not this is not the same as say I'm going to pick Sue or Mary or you know John or Paul or whoever anyway let's keep moving so the first thing we're going to do is having a look at the demographics you can find demographic data on a lot of these websites um as well as the sort of sources that you can have a look at because you can then begin to see how big is this demographic so if you say people from the age of 25 to 45 and you
1:18:29
know they are earning a you know minimum family salary of at least $60,000 you can then find out how big that market size is and you can begin to identify that similarly for Geographic data what you want to be able to do is you want to be able to try and understand where you're going to be targeting this thing so why do you need to do all of this at this stage well let's take another big company example which is McDonald's so McDonald's adapts its menus based on the
1:18:59
country it's in so you know in India for example they will have something called a Maharaja Ma and they will have a maalo Tika which is like a potato based Burger because of a lot of people that are vegan there and that's their taste whereas in Japan they'll have a teriyaki burger and hey I want these stuff we don't have to travel to all of these countries McDonald's please give us the stuff in like all the restaurants but anyway back to my point the point is that every different demographic or
1:19:31
geographic location will have its own tastes and will have its own culture and will have its own needs and desires and the way they do things and being able to understand the culture the the the habits of of the people you know where you are logistically as well is really going to be important for you and also understanding within that region that you're targeting how big is that market and we'll talk about Market size as we move down later in this module so back to the next one which is the
1:19:59
psychographic and this is really psychographic data is about their interests right so this is beyond just the basics this is I want you to dive deep into their lifestyle their values their interests you know the their their attitudes all of this stuff is really important for you to be able to understand the potential Target sort of customer or like lead that you're you're targeting and this will also be able to help you uncover their needs and their desires and their problems and their
1:20:30
pain points and this was one of the first things that I did when I started CEO entrepreneur for example I just had a huge list of like you know this paino this is my market this is my segment I did not Niche down on a particular business industry I said all businesses but I started saying starting businesses businesses that are six figures businesses that are seven figures what are their pain points what keeps them up at night so on and so forth forth and you need to be able to really get into
1:20:58
the mindset of your potential target market and really understand them like you know maybe even like try and pretend to be them for 24 hours or 48 hours and try and understand how they think what they do all of that stuff is really really important and here it kind of mentions you know it's unlike the demographics which is external characteristics psychographics is really the deeper insights from your customers sort of world if you will so here are a few things that you could be looking at
1:21:30
for psychographic data personality traits are your customers Risk Takers or cautious planners values what values principles opinions do they have you know what is their stance on particular industry or societal issues because sometimes on your marketing messaging you can side with them or side like against a certain thing if you believe in that as well don't don't don't go against your own values but if they align and you are saying we stand for this then you stand for that and you
1:21:58
will find people in that segment that will then identify with you and be able to say raise their hands and say hey we want to be a part of what you're doing and your mission and vision and all all of that good stuff so interests what what hobbies lifestyle so on and so forth these are the kind of things that you can have a look at for psychographic data so here's an example for you here for you to be able to have a look at I'm not going to go into it in great detail
1:22:20
you can pause the video and be able to read it and see an example of what that looks like and you can find this information through surveys questionnaires you know you can actually go and directly ask them you can look at social media analytics to see you know the types of comments the shares the engagement that they have the the different characteristics what time are they on you know during the day what days of the week are they on uh social media you know if you've got any
1:22:47
customer feedback if you've already got a business have a look at customer feedback in terms of what they say and how they give you sort of constructive and maybe sometimes not so constructive criticism so all of this stuff is going to add that information for you to be able to really understand the psychographic data for your uh target market last but not least is behavioral now behavioral is really their purchasing habits and habits in general in terms of how they do things so you
1:23:14
know what and when and how often do they buy do they do these like things you know usage patterns um things like you know do they regularly log on to social media first thing in the morning or do they regularly subscribe to a magazine or do you know where do they hang out are they like in restaurants or are they do they go to the theater or do they hang out on Facebook or is it Instagram or is it Tik Tok or is it YouTube all of these things is going to be important
1:23:42
and this will help you not only understand them now but it will help you down the line in terms of when you begin marketing to understand exactly where they are and how to engage with them and how to build that customer loyalty as well with them so here are some other places where you can look at and try and understand this is not where do they hang out this is for you to find out where do your target market hang out so you can go to Reddit and see what your
1:24:08
target market is complaining about and asking questions and and you know and they they will say where is a group to do this and and relevant forums all of that is going to be very useful for you and you need to identify which one of the these um sources are going to be most suited for your particular target market so let's have a look at a an example let's take a look at Jill here Jill here has a lowcost retail store and she has two pain points poor checkout
1:24:43
process and the different employees have like they don't have uniforms they they just wear whatever they want and they come in and it doesn't look very professional and sometimes people have spoken a little bit about that so she's that now sitting down and you are as a business owner looking at her two different pain points and you're trying to decide which one do I solve for Jill well when you look at lowcost retail from a poor checkout process it results in longer wait times decreased staff
1:25:11
productivity and increased labor costs because obviously you have to pay your staff for longer because it's just a poor checkout process whereas with different uh employee uniforms it's really not a Poe necessity it's subject to preference and it's very limited Financial impact because lowcost Shoppers are not really bothered about an experience they're not really bothered about high quality and like super high value they want to go in and out and buy things at the cheapest
1:25:41
possible price point and this when you start looking at the psychographic data for this that's exactly what you'll see so you'll see that the consumer profile they're price driven time sensitive they're seeking convenience their motivations are customers are primarily motivated by efficiency speed they prefer a No Frills shopping experience that allows them to make purchases quickly and conveniently so observe Behavior you know they have high abandonment rates at checkout complaints
1:26:10
negative feedback about long wait times complicated checkout processes all of that stuff so with that data and understanding the psychographic data and understanding the people more now you will know that actually the poor checkout process is very strong business case that will help really solve Jill's problem whereas actually the uniform is not that important it's not a core necessity and it's not that important by understanding also your target market however however context is everything
1:26:42
and this is why I want you to sometimes take a step back and looking at certain pain points and looking at the the environment and the overall picture of where things are Imagine That maybe Jill actually is in a high-end Fashion retail store which is not lowcost now let's have a look at the target market and the psychographic uh insights from their particular target market so you've got consumer profile experience driven uh values immersion and thematic consistency they're willing to invest in
1:27:13
a memorable experience you can see the difference now people are going in to get an overall experience if you want to walk into you know um Christian J or if you want to walk into Louis Vuitton you you're looking for an overall experience you know and you expect to be like well served and you expect this thing to be super high quality motivations customers are attracted to themed environments and are looking for cohesive immersive experiences that align with the theme of
1:27:40
the store for example if this is a Disney Store you kids sometimes want to go in and see their characters all dressed up and they want to be able to see what they look like and interact with them and have this sort of themed experience and then when you look at behavioral data positive customer feedback on employee interaction High engagement with staff members and customer interested in themed merchandise or experiences actually they want to spend more time in so maybe long Q times is not as
1:28:11
important so when you look at it longer wait times is no longer a priority because increased staff in engagement it increases labor cost so what you have with a poor checkout process is that you might have a poor checkout process but you can include increased staff engagement it does increase your labor cost but at the same time you're charging an arm and a leg for your products or services but when you look at the other side you've got now for uniforms it's brand positioning
1:28:43
it's brand like uvp you know um unique value proposition reinforcement it's high Financial impact it creates a great experience it looks professional it looks branded now po checkout yeah it could still help moderate but the different employee uniforms are now a much stronger business case so that's why I say context is everything because here we've got two pain points in a retail store but based on the different type of retail store and the market segment and
1:29:15
their psychographic data and behavioral data you will come to completely different conclusions on which problem that you want to be solving hope that makes sense right let's move on to the next one which is engage with your potential market now when you are trying to identify pain points you should really try and go out and speak to people right or like whether this is via text or email or surveys or or just going out and speaking to people in person really understanding their pain
1:29:45
points is going to come by you interacting and engaging with your audience so things you can do subscribe to Industry Publications that are in the area or or in the industry that you are looking to make have a business in read market reports search online forums you can use AI tools for research at the moment you can attend conferences and trade shows one of the first things I do that whenever I start a new business I look for all of the conferences and trade shows in that particular um
1:30:11
industry and I go and attend them because I want to see what people are asking questions about what people are complaining about what what what what's the latest state of the art but also what are problems that people have raised and said oh we have a problem in this how do you solve this how do you solve that and it's a good way for you to be able to start getting some ideas now your task is you should try and conduct at least five interviews focusing or understanding their pain
1:30:37
points and needs right so try and find five people online offline up to you but you really want to start making sure that you are having these interviews and beginning to asking them questions about their pain points about their struggles so on and so forth and really beginning to understand now this step here is about digging deeper to uncover the real problems the root causes and the benefits to solving them I I want you to to peel the layers right I don't want
1:31:03
you to just say okay this is a a problem up here we want to be able to peel the layers and say what's the root course problem here okay why is that a problem and then you keep going why is that a problem until you can't get into any more y's because you found the root cause problem that might become the pain point that you're looking for so look through social media uh uh threads discussions to find out issues that people are talking about uh how solving them would benefit them as well so you
1:31:32
should end up at this stage by the end of this step here with a collection of potential pain points that keep coming up everywhere you look whether you look on forums or threads or or on online offline surveys interviews a lot of these times you'll see these pain points consistently coming up so it's not an isolated issue where one person says well I don't like it but actually everyone else does right so we want to make sure that we are making sure that this problem is is real and it's
1:32:02
actually a shared problem in this market segment don't worry about the format right just now just just write them down and make sure that you've got is collections now you don't need to do all of these tasks here I'm going to give you a list of options each step you need to do right so we've got 10 steps in identifying the problem each of these steps you need to do within each step we've got multiple tasks you don't need to do all of the tasks within each of
1:32:28
these steps so here I've said you know conduct an interview look at online forums and threads or you know do a survey and and and and distribute it and this time try and focus on digging deeper try and figure out what makes sense for you until you really have found out that you will now okay I've uncovered this problem now I really know how it is so almost become a detective and just say right once you've uncovered that problem then you can go back and ask again and say is this really the
1:32:56
problem or is there something else under that so you're almost validating and we'll talk about validating the problem later on but at this stage you can have a selection of these tasks right so that's step two which was engaging with your potential Market step three is unearthing problems and challenging assumptions so in this step identified a few pain points but is this actually a problem and is this really the right assumptions that we're making about this problem and
1:33:22
I'll give you an example I'll show you in a second it's the same pain point but actually it could be multiple different things based on assumptions and then also we want to begin to decide which one to go for because by now you should have a list of pain points it not just one hopefully if you've done the the last step correctly so for a point to make business sense it needs to have valid underlying assumptions a target market that makes Financial sense and to
1:33:49
make a good business case let's have a look at valid underlying assumptions so are you making the right assumptions and to really identify the problem so let's have a look at an example here a common customer complaint could be home coffee machines make Bad Coffee they're not as good as the ones you get in Starbucks or retail actually probably better but anyway you let's not talk about Starbucks but they're not as good as professional Barista Coffee machines
1:34:17
let's let's let's let's let's uh keep it that way okay so home coffee machines make Bad Coffee that's your pain point right okay so what does that actually mean some assumptions could be the taste and quality of coffee machines they don't match professionally brewed coffee right because that's they just don't match they inferior in taste most coffee machines lack the Precision to control pressure temperature and Brewing time and leads to a less than ideal cup so the pressure is not as good as
1:34:47
professional machines basic or inexpensive ones lack the identified features necessary to produce high quality coffee coffee machines produce a result similar to instant coffee and they're perceived as lower quality so all of these are a list of assumptions that we can kind of make based on what the customer's paino has said because a customer is not going to sit there and say to you you know the pressure is not right it's not the same they're just going to say to you the coffee machine
1:35:15
tastes bad and you're going to go there and say okay maybe it's because the pressure is not the same maybe it's because they don't have the same features maybe it's because this and this and this what is it that I'm going to actually try and fix here do I make a better coffee machine maybe it's all of this but H hang on a minute the same complaint could have a completely different set of assumptions users aren't purchasing and using high quality beans consumers of coffee machines don't
1:35:43
fully know how to use their settings effectively consumer machines are difficult to use users might be neglecting proper care and maintenance of the coffee machine other factors could be affecting tastes such as water quality getting cheap or inexpensive pods might you know they might be cheaping out and not getting the original stuff so there's a whole bunch of other assumptions that actually has nothing to do with the coffee machine itself but it's all the things around it
1:36:05
you know they're not getting the high quality beans they're actually difficult to use they're actually this so on and so forth and when you start looking at these two different sets of assumptions it's the same pain point but actually we could come up with completely different solutions products or Services based around these sets of assumptions that we make based on the complaint or the pain point that the potential customer has made so the pain point a user gives might be the same but it can
1:36:36
be the difference between you having three different solutions right manufacturing an amazing new coffee machine that focuses on coffee buring manufacturing an amazing coffee machine that focuses on ease of use because if it was difficult to use we make it easy to use but actually it has nothing to do with the pressure it has nothing to do with Brewing the coffee it's just difficult to use and if we can make it easier to use then great or simply educating consumers on how to use a
1:37:01
coffee machine properly and you can see now we've got three different potential business ideas that we've got out of the same paino and they were all based on different assumptions that we make and I don't want you to make the wrong assumptions I want you to dig deeper to make sure that the assumptions that you're making are valid and they are the correct assumptions because you can go back to the potential customer and you can say Hey how do you use your machine you know and then they might dig
1:37:32
in and they might tell you it's really difficult to use and whatever and this and that and the other I don't know how to use it and I lost the manual and I did this and I looked at the manual it didn't make sense and now you're beginning to see actually if we can just do a a course or a book or an educational video on how to use your coffee machine it might actually make an amazing cup of coffee for them or they will sit there and tell you actually I've tried every single Coffee Bean I've
1:37:54
tried using all the different processes I've tried you know looking at all of the videos it just does not make great coffee or it's super hard to use so you get the idea so here now we need to refine our problem statements and we're going to expand our problem statement as we go along but now let's refine the pain points and the underlying assumptions the first one which would be resulting in a new coffee machine that focuses on coffee brewing is consumer coffee machines do not have the
1:38:27
technical capabilities of professional coffee machines they make inferior coffee that people at home do not like the second one which is based on making an easy to use coffee machine is consumer coffee machines are difficult to operate which makes it hard for consumers to make great tasting coffee the third one which is on how to educate consumers on how to make coffee users do not know how to take full advantage of existing consumer coffee machines because they lack the knowledge
1:38:56
necessary to make a great tasting cup of coffee so what I want you to do is I want you to take the pain point and expand it out into a real pain point that customers need that has the right underlying assumptions right so this is a big difference right and and this is why sometimes we jump to conclusions we go and create these business ideas and then we find out that people don't actually want to buy that thing remember the second reason businesses fail is because there was no need for that
1:39:27
product or service so you might be sitting here telling me yeah but I'm not going to fool for that trick I'm going to know exactly what they do the second reason most businesses fail is because they don't have the right product or service because they jumped straight away and they miss out all of these steps so please don't miss out all of these steps right so what I want you to do is I want you to test and adjust the different assumptions until you find one or more multiple pressing pain points
1:39:52
backed with reliable dat and that's what I want you to please do now as you're going through this course what I've suggested before is just maybe listen to this on two time speed the first time around and then hopefully you've saved it in your watch later uh section under YouTube but you can then keep coming back to each of these sections going away doing that task coming back and doing the next section going away coming again and like moving forward as you're doing these
1:40:21
things step by step so hopefully that that's how you're going to doing it and that's how we're structuring it hopefully for you so that you can disseminate it and use it in in in the right way okay so your task is to write down any assumptions you've made so far critically analyze them based on evidence or speculations you've gathered and then you create a list of potential problems ensuring they align with the actual needs and frustrations of the target market that was step number three
1:40:47
let's have a look at four which is validating the problem and basically this is really you going back and asking people to confirm that that's a problem so you've now come up with the problem you've identified it you've made the right hopefully valid assumptions you just go back through a survey or or or an interview or just go back to the people and say hey this is how I understand the problem is this right or wrong and hopefully they will say yes to you so you can choose a few individuals
1:41:14
or you do a survey it doesn't matter which one and that's a very very quick step but it's really about you just going back and saying hey is this thing that I think is wrong actually the thing that is wrong and hopefully by now you'll get a yes if no then you go back to the drawing board until this section is yes and your problem is validated next one is addressing significance and alignment and remember we need to solve a serious pain that keeps them up at night ideally your business product or
1:41:43
service should be a painkiller not a vitamin or vitamin if you're in the US so what does that mean so a vitamin is are nice to have it maybe works there's evidence to say it works it's a luxury if we start running out of money then maybe I don't want to buy vitamins I'll I'll or vitamin but you you know what I mean a painkiller is like I have a headache I need to kill this pain and I need to get rid of it otherwise I can't function all day and I will go and make sure I buy
1:42:19
that thing no matter what you might say to me Tama but not everything is going to a vitamin because vitamins are actually a multi-billion dollar industry as well and vitamins do well and the industries that tell yes but the way they do it as well is that they change their vitamin into a painkiller so they will Target specific market segments that know that vitamins are super important for them so they will say to like people like hey pregnant women these vitamins will make your baby
1:42:49
amazing otherwise you know it might not be a healthy baby painkiller vitamin but you've converted it to a painkiller hey super healthy people vitamins are going to help you do this and this and this and this otherwise you're not going to be super healthy in your goals and dreams and aspirations vitamin into a painkiller so it's not necessarily you saying that it has to be a painkiller and vitamins that's a bad business model no vitamins will still or vitamins will
1:43:14
still make good business but we need to find the right Market segment and understand who that segment is that will convert that vitamin into a painkiller that really is a problem that keeps them up at night even if it's like you know entertainment a movie you'll have a movie that you must absolutely go and see otherwise you're missing out you know so I'm not going to name any movies here because I don't want to date this thing but there are some movies that are recently in the
1:43:41
cinema if you have not watched it where have you been I mean come on and it's done in a way where it's it's made that you cannot miss out on this thing so even when we are talking about the ENT entainment industry we're talking about holidays holidays you have to have a holiday otherwise you know you you you'll burn out and you have to do this so all of these things will will and can be converted into a painkiller we just need to find the right Market segment that will consider that product or
1:44:09
service or that paino as a serious pain point that keeps them up at night so let's take Jill's example Jill now has moved on from you know retail and she's now in the skin care industry so she has two problems reduce or eliminate acne or moisture dry skin right so notice here the problem didn't say acne cream or moisturizing cream and we'll get to that when we go to a solution at some point you'll see the difference why but for now we'll say that you know potential
1:44:41
markets might want to reduce or eliminate acne or moisturize their dry skin okay so who is the target market and again it's going to differ right based on who the target market is now let's have a look at skin care for 16 to 21y Old females now for them reducing or eliminating acne is a strong business case it's very visible it affects confidence it's hard to solve right and moisturizing dry skin is a weak business case it's not a major issue it's a nice to have it's not specific no pressing
1:45:14
need so if you are looking at targeting moisturizing dry skin cream or whatever ever the product or solution is to 16 to 21 year old females it's not going that's a vitamin for them that's not going to work however eliminating or reducing acne is something which is a painkiller and this is something that they need and that's a strong case in that scenario now context is everything let's have a look for skin care for 35 to 45 year old females no longer a major issue is acne
1:45:49
it's no longer a major issue whereas actually now with moisturizing dry skin helps with dry skin helps with initial signs of like aging it affects confidence it is a pressing need with education and now this becomes a strong business case because you know moisturizing your dry skin it will help with with aging or you know it's anti-aging it's all of that it keeps you fresh it keeps you confident it keeps you all of this stuff with education it becomes now a painkiller and that's why
1:46:15
when I say to you identifying Target markets and going the extra mile here we can then have the right product Market fit or the right service Market fit exactly what you're trying to do for the for the people that you're targeting they will come knocking on your door if you've got that right fit because let's say it again second reason for why most businesses fail is that there was no need for that product or service or it was the wrong Market fit so it is an
1:46:42
iterative process for you going through and you still being here and watching this now most people hopefully not because I want to change the stats but most people would have clicked off now and if you're still here and you are actually going through this process your chances for Success are going to be so much better because not everyone goes through this process they don't have the patience they don't have the will they don't have anything and then they end up
1:47:06
saying why can't I find clients I need more clients I can't sell my thing nobody's buying my thing and then and and this is why it's because they haven't done the work and they haven't done the fundamentals of really making sure that you're building the right product or service for the right customer at the right time in the right place all of that good stuff right so your task is determine confirm whether or not your identified problem is a painkiller or vitamin now think about how you can
1:47:38
change it to become a painkiller if it is actually a vitamin um for your target market segment or potentially changing the market segment play around with it it's an iterative process until you find out the best um fit for yourself and for your industry and for your potential Market make sure that you're solving a real problem now remember this this this figure here from mindset and I said that we're going to come back to it what you want to be able to do as well is you
1:48:05
want to now start if you've got a multiple pain points that you've got down this is where you refer back to this and you say right which one of these pain points can be in my uvp can be in the place where where I do well customers really want it and the competitors don't do it well and it's obvious for me but it doesn't seem like it's obvious for other people right and this is where we start marrying the two together not the other way around so you see how we flipped it so when people
1:48:34
say Hey you know find your passion find what you're good at doing all of that's great but it has to be done in the right order and it has to be done in the right way otherwise people end up picking the wrong business idea and unfortunately it just doesn't work and they end up having to shut down in a year two three or less so fact you're still here good sign let's keep going right so try to align your pain points with your uvp and that's step number five we're going through
1:49:01
these quite quickly hopefully step six um I think is the last long one and then after that they're going to be quite quick after that so let's let's go through them detail direct and indirect benefits now look at the problem that you're solving what direct and indirect benefits does solving this problem provide what do I mean by that well imagine that you're exploring the following problem lack of collaboration and efficiency in remote teams right the direct and indirect benefits to these
1:49:28
problems should be solution neutral we're not coming up with a product or service yet we're still identifying the problems but the idea here is really beginning to understand that if I solve this problem does it have benefit to the customer would it be sufficient results that are beneficial to them that they will want to buy and this is going to help you with your marketing down the line as well but we really want begin to understand these benefits without coming
1:49:55
up with a solution yet we're going to talk about solution later on but this is important because I don't want you to Al also jump to conclusions I don't want you to jump to these things now let's have a look at direct benefits for lack of collaboration and efficiency in remote teams potential Solutions should result in these things increase productivity complete projects faster improved collaboration centralized communication all of that good stuff those are direct benefits so when you
1:50:20
solve it these are the direct benefits that will happen because of you solving this problem the indirect benefits are you know higher employee satisfaction better work life balance lower employee turnover cost savings increased Revenue because if you've now got teams that are more efficient and they're collaborating more they're going to be happy they're going to be more productive and hopefully we'll be able to do more projects in a shorter space of time so we will have lower costs increased
1:50:51
Revenue all of that good stuff so looking at the direct benefits and indirect benefits you can then begin to see is this something that people would actually pay money for if they are able to get those results and this is the beauty here of doing it this way is that you don't tie yourself down to a solution because now you're looking at this pain point and you're looking at the benefits and then your product or service is built around making sure that those benefits are addressed you're
1:51:17
working this way around not the other way around where a lot of people say here's my business idea here are the features will you want to buy my features and they don't really talk about the end results or the benefits or any of that we'll talk more about this when we come to solution right if we've got another example here lack of Team cohesion and morale in remote teams this will be the direct benefits you can pause the screen if you want to and these would be the indirect benefits as
1:51:43
well so another example just to give you an idea I'm not going to go through it for time but you're more than welcome to pause and look at it to get some more ideas for yourself right step seven estimate market demand and potential so what we want to be able to do here is Will solving these pain points be financially rewarding you don't want to go and have a $10,000 product or service that's offered to unemployed people who don't have money because you're going to get
1:52:12
them a job right it's just not going to work and we need to be able to understand the purchasing power of the target market that we're doing and the whether or not the product or service that you're going to offer is it going to be at a high price point a low price point is it feasible to do it at a low price point if that's the way that you're heading all of these things so here is a sort of quadrant Matrix if you will based on Market size the higher the larger the market size uh on the on the
1:52:43
vertical and on the horizontal we've got the purchasing power so on the right it's people that have can super afford and pay tons of money where on the left it's small Market size and low purchasing power so to give you an example you really don't want to be in that bottom left where it's small Market size and low purchasing power because that means that you're going to have low volume and you're going to have low price points and it's not going to be really good for you so always try and
1:53:11
avoid that section here that's not really a great Market to be in it's useful to start for some form of experience like for example if you've got a food truck in a small rural area that's not really going to make you a lot of money you can have a food truck in a busy City where you've got tons of like foot traffic but if you have a food truck in a rural area there's hardly anyone there and you're only charging really small prices for what you're selling in terms of fast food and you're
1:53:40
going to be selling just a couple every day and that's not really going to be great for you so it's not the case of the food truck that's a bad idea it's a food truck in a rural area so you have to match the purchasing power with the market size and try and see whether or not these things fit with each other or not so for example Walmart is right up there which is large Market size they attract a lot of people and they Attract it at sort of value and low cost as well
1:54:07
as Ikea apple is on the other side of the spectrum where it it has a large Market size and it has people who have high purchasing power who will spend thousands to get into the ecosystem that they provide whereas small you know on on the bottom right you've got things like art galleries where you've got small Market size but very high purchasing power so things like SpaceX you know pay a million dollars to go to space or whatever so the price point is high but the volume is low but it's
1:54:36
justified by the price point that you can still make a lot of money in that particular business venture hope that makes sense so you try and identify what your Market segment will be and where you're going to be in that here are some tools you can look for validation and trying to understand things like statista is very good at giving you like data in terms of like uh purchasing power population size all of these things industry Trends all of that um as well as like Google Trends and other
1:55:04
ones that you see up here you don't have to use all of them you can try and again and see where you can get the data for yourself now as we're looking at Market size we need to start quantifying it somehow initially you want to look at your total addressable Market size which is like T or Tam so this is like dreaming super big this is like if I had a huge party and I invited everyone in the world who could potentially come to my party and you know no restrictions so
1:55:35
that becomes like who possibly could buy this thing or could benefit from buying this thing your serviceable available Market or your Sam or Sam is a little bit more realistic this is basically looking at all right who can I actually service is it going to be in my local region cuz I'm a local business is it going to be people that are just online is it going to be only English speaking people is it going to be people who are over a certain salary uh as a family or
1:56:02
people who are like professionals or people who are business owners so you know what is that serviceable sort of available Market from the overall total Market side so in essence if you're looking at that party metaphor for example okay you've invited everyone but who can realistically potentially come because they're in your local region or you've got your Rich friend who's like on the other side of the world but you know he can very much buy a flight or he's got a private jet and he can come
1:56:28
to it so these are the different people but most people on the other side of the world are not going to be able to turn up to my party so that's where you begin to start looking at okay whilst everyone can join this party and I can send out an invitation the serviceable market is not really the whole world the serviceable obtainable Market which is like your s so now this is getting into specifics this is like okay okay who can I really get who can I actually obtain
1:56:55
from this huge Market size who you know what kind of market share am I actually going to be able to get for myself so this is usually Bas back to the party sort of metaphor again this is like okay who's actually going to turn up who am I expecting to turn up I I might invite the whole neighborhood but actually just my friends are going to turn up here and you know this the friends of the friends because they they speak to each other referrals they're going to be able to
1:57:19
come and and that's who's actually obtainable for I can actually Target and get and make them buy my product or service so understanding these are going to be really important for you because you want to understand that your business is scalable and you've got a sufficient Market based on the volume that you're doing so if for example you only charging a dollar for a product or service you need to understand that your s so your serviceable obtainable Market is going to be high volume right is
1:57:47
there enough people like you know a million people to have a million dollar business you need a million people to buy one thing for a dollar alternatively you need one person to buy something for a million dollars if you're buying a house or selling a house and and you say all right I just need one person to get a million dollars So based on your your price point based on your the problem size based on the type of demographics the their behaviors all of this you can
1:58:13
then begin to see all right how big is this market and is this something that actually I can scale into that can actually generate me enough Revenue to get me to where I I want my business to be so identify the specific subset of the total addressable Market um that your business can Target considered location resource availability all of these kind of things and then take it down to Sam and then take it down to s o to really be begin to identify the numbers that you think try to make
1:58:42
educated guesses look at the population data look at statistics demographic data look at your traffic that is on whether it's on your website or social media or people are searching for this specific problem there are a lot of ways that you can try and identify that but you know it at the end of the day it's an educated guess you can't get exact numbers you can't predict exactly who's going to buy from you I know that you know that but we try our best right okay
1:59:09
so use the tools highlighted before to research um research well I need to learn how to spell but anyway use the tools highlighted to research how many people are searching for problems related to your business okay it's research but you know anyway right um analyze current trends related to the problem and chosen Market is it a passing fad or is it something with lasting potential this is also important because sometimes these things come and they're just a passing fad it's like a
1:59:38
month you fidget Spinners and then after that nobody buys fidget Spinners anymore so on and so forth and you want to make sure that if you are going to grow and scale a company for years and years and years it's not something that will just you know become out of trend within within six months time and then your businesses has to shut down again okay so summarize your findings and decide if the market demand aligns with your business aspirations or not so that was seven
2:00:04
which is estimate market demand and potential step eight is confirm problem relevance and Longevity relevance is you now looking at the current Solutions so this is the first time now that you are actually looking at how this thing has been solved or what are the competitors actually doing in this space list down how they fall short how you can actually make it better because if this problem was solved people would not be having this pain Point still right so when
2:00:31
you're looking at current existing Solutions you're still looking for the shortcomings that they have and does this present an opportunity for your business and and and that's kind of really what you want to be doing is making sure that okay I understand now what the problem is so why has nobody solved this or have they maybe it's really just bad marketing this company has actually solved and it's bad marketing so then you know that your issue is going to be and marketing be
2:00:56
better at marketing but maybe the product or service itself is inferior so then you have to improve the product or service again just trying to understand this and gauging so that you go in and the decisions you're making down the line as we start looking at strategy and we start looking at marketing and we start looking at sales and all of these things you're making really informed decisions hope hope that makes a lot of sense that's step eight like I said the
2:01:18
last few steps are just a couple of things that we just want to check off check off often validate the hardest work is has already been done uh so far in terms of identifying your problem number nine the penultimate step which is analyze your Market opportunity and risk and in this case I want you to compile your findings and outline the market opportunity is this a problem worth tackling is this something that you want to do what possible challenges and obstacles can arise and tackling
2:01:46
this problem think about competition think about behaviors technology Trends because you might be solving something that just around the corner AI is going to solve anyway maybe it's just an example but you know what I mean you just need to understand what trends are happening as well and begin to say if I solve this problem this is still something that I can continue to solve for 5 years time at least hopefully all right so reflect on the overall viability of
2:02:10
tackling the problem is the opportunity big enough to outweigh the risks because your risks are better competition the risks are Trends the risks are like changes adaptability all of that stuff is the opportunity still big enough to outweigh the risks if yes then you know carry on I guess and we'll move on to the next step last but not least is Step number 10 which is finalize your problem statement and this is going to form your business case part one and essentially we've said this before this
2:02:42
is what it needs needs to make a good business case so what does that actually mean the more knowledge you get as you go along you will constantly need to check on you know whether or not this updates things and changes things right so you need to go keep coming back and make sure that you know that this is going to make a business case so if you find out a new piece of information you go back and review it again and say all right does this still make a business case or
2:03:09
not and and this is really you going back and having this iterative process is how you're going to gain an improve your business Acumen because at the beginning this is going to be hard this is going to be a slug this is going to be oh my God I have to do all of this stuff but once you know how to do this your business Acumen from experience you'll know how things are done very quickly and you'll be able to gauge whether or not this is an opportunity that's worth making that decision or not
2:03:35
I'm giving you the fundamentals here and as time goes on I'm not telling you to skip stuff in the future but you will be able to zip through these very quickly when you start looking at a similar business problem and a pain point and immediately your brain is like okay is this the right assumption no it's not actually what's the Assumption here let me go and speak to this person let me do this let me do that and then you very quickly these 10 steps you could just
2:03:57
zip through hopefully once you become a pro at running businesses right so let's let's still establish a little bit more what a problem statement will contain what's the problem write down the problem what it is try to be specific how did I validate the problem is actually a real problem who does it affect write down who the problem effects including demographics psychographics geography we're now compiling and putting everything together what is the mark Market size
2:04:22
can they afford to pay for solving this problem what are the assumptions list down any assumptions how are you deciding the validity of these assumptions what are their pain points list them down are these pain points a vitamin or a painkiller if it's like a vitamin can you convert it into a a pain color somehow how does it affect your target market and your target audience keep asking why until you've got to the root cause of your problem what would the benefits be for solving this problem
2:04:53
list them down put the direct indirect why is this important to solve and have you jumped to any conclusions for a solution yet this should be no you do not want to have come up with any solutions at this stage because when we get to solution we've got another process to go through for us to make sure that we've got the best solution and the optimal solution for the business that you're hopefully trying to grow and scale into a multi-million dollar business right so does this make
2:05:19
business sense what the market opportunity the market size what are the risks and is this a problem worth solving from a business standpoint here is an example problem statement that you will be writing down where you say problem validation target market affordability assumptions pain points impact you know is this a painkiller or a vitamin direct and indirect benefits and basically this is a list of all of the work that you've done and at the end of the day you've got your first problem
2:05:49
statement and that formulates the first part of your business case study we're going to do the second part of the business case study when we get to solution but for now this is part one of your business case study and again I'm not going to go through this in detail you can pause the video you can have a look and read it um and by the way like I said if you want a copy of the slides there will be information in the description below on how to be able to get those right okay so your task based
2:06:18
on all of your research compose a problem statement job done we finished the problem congratulations you're doing amazingly well if you're still here by now the next one is going to be not solution the strategy and I'll explain in a minute why strategy needs to come a little bit before solution so let's do that right now ready let's go strategy is a funny one because a lot of people sometimes think it's fluff and think that they don't need it at the beginning
2:06:50
come up with a business idea let's go and try and sell it and you know we'll make things up as we go along and all too often as businesses begin to grow the ones that do actually end up growing and scaling they come back to strategy and they say I should have done this earlier if I had done this right at the beginning I would have saved myself a lot of misery a lot of like mistakes a lot of things that I did wrong a lot of things that didn't work several businesses of mine actually failed
2:07:20
before I got to the the one that actually worked and because I started strategy early and then as you begin to scale through the business as well it becomes more and more and more important at the end of the day your job as the CEO of your business is strategy that that's your job description is laying down a strategy for the business and making sure that everyone else around you executes it and that's what working on your business actually means and we need to lay the foundations from day one
2:07:53
day zero even like we need it right from the beginning it's not fluff so please do not underestimate it remember mindset and strategy are probably the most important factors for success as a business owner or a CEO entrepreneur that's what the 3% do that's what the real minority work on that's what working on your business actually is and I want you to really start thinking about because people sit there and they say well my strategy is to make more money by the end of the
2:08:24
year that's not a strategy that's a goal or you know my strategy is you know my vision and values and let me copy and paste some things from the internet and put it down on my website and that's my values and that's my whatever it's a tiny part of strategy and it's a and it's done in the wrong way as well so let's break down really what strategy is and let's try and get this right from the get-go okay so again if you're here you're doing amazing you know this will
2:08:55
set your business on the right tracks with the right foundations so you're not building a house on like sand with zero foundations you're building a solid infrastructure for your business so that as it grows and you'll be able to hopefully grow faster as well because you'll be able to identify certain things that you need to make decisions on right so what is strategy exactly so let me break down this long sentence into Parts actually this is the first part of three parts and let me explain
2:09:21
each bit as we go along and then we're going to start dissecting it even more as we sort of go through the module uh as part of this course so a strategy is a series of integrated deliberate choices that you make now each word here is super important they are picked intentionally on purpose because together they formulate your job description so take time to read this and really understand what this means a strategy is a series it's not just one thing it's a multitude of things in
2:09:54
series so things that happen in consequence with each other integrated deliberate choices so you're not making ad hoc decisions all integrated you're looking at the whole picture holistically and you're making deliberate choices of what to do and what not to do it's just as important to say no to things in strategy in your business because remember the 020 rule like you know 80% of your success comes from doing 20% of the things so that means the 80% is a waste of time and if we try and identify
2:10:29
what that 80% is at the beginning we can get rid of a whole bunch of stuff so it's a series of integrated deliberate choices you make designed so you are intentionally mapping out your path you're designing and navigating through challenges so designed to navigate so you're going through obstacles and challenges and you're saying here this might happen so I'm going to do this way it's like Google Maps for your business it's like you know GPS satnav whatever
2:10:59
you want to call it Apple Maps it's it's that for your business when you start a route or a journey you say here's my end destination Google Maps or whichever one that you use way or whatever it will basically start saying well there's traffic here there's a roadblock here there's Road works here there's this this this this is the best route actually you've got three routes but you can't go this way cuz that that's just going to give you 2 hours like extra waiting time cuz that's an accident on
2:11:26
this road so take this road instead and this is what you want to be doing for your business you want to be saying here's my destination and here's my potential options and here are potential obstacles and challenges and this is what I'm going to do to be able to get there and most people don't do any of this everyone is working at the tactics level and I'm going to show you a figure in in in a bit which shows you the difference of where most people work and
2:11:48
where we want to start and then work our way down okay so a strategy is a series of integrated deliberate choices you make designed to navigate you through challenges and obstacles and steadily guide you towards your long-term destination steadily guide you so it's it's it's not something that we're going to do in a short term it's not ups and downs it's not a roller coaster ride we're trying to make sure that we're going through this systematically methodically steadily towards your
2:12:17
long-term destination which you've got ahead that is what strategy is now it's a whole bunch of gobble deuk and a whole bunch of words it will make sense hopefully when I start taking you through what we're going to be doing um as we go along why strategy strategy is super important if you don't have it your business is not going to do great that's the the cynical way of of looking at it but from a non cynical way when you don't have a strategy you've got all
2:12:46
of these objectives and they're they're not really identifiable where you're going maybe I start Instagram maybe I do this maybe I bring a salesperson maybe I need to run some ads maybe I need to like have these three products and see which one works best and by the way that's a horrible idea please don't do that actually just focus on one thing at a time and actually get it right split test it make sure you you've optimized it then move on to the other thing we'll
2:13:14
get on to that in when we're starting to look at solution and and and marketing and stuff like that but for now you've got all of these objectives that are all over the place you have no idea where you're going and it's just a mess and you might be starting things that actually are a dead end and what strategy does is it really begins to say here's my destination here are some obstacles and this is my path that I'm going to take these are things down here that I am not going to even attempt I'm
2:13:42
not going to do those cuz they're a waste of time they're not aligned they're not integrated they're not in series of what I want to do to get me to my long-term destination and I'm going to have all of these things that will guide me to my long-term destination so you've probably heard all of these phrases and terminologies right Mission Vision value strategy tactics goals objectives kpis all of that stuff so so what do they all mean and how do we fit them into a bigger picture well we've
2:14:07
developed a strategic planning framework and your business starts with your values and values again do not underestimated I I I sat down last week working with a business owner who has for $ million in annual revenue and we spent an hour just talking about values that he had already spent a day working with his team on so that they can improve it and he was sitting there saying to me you do not realize how important every word is because this is what's going to attract the right team
2:14:40
this is what's going to attract the right customers this is what's going to create our work culture this is what's going to be the basis for how we develop products this is going to be the basis for this and this and this and this and this and a lot of people again they think of values as this thing that you know Integrity transparency you know Excellence let's copy and paste these words and it it becomes meaningless and it becomes something that is not really what you should be focusing on and
2:15:07
values is something that is called it's your it's your DNA it's the DNA that binds your business this is how you're going to behave and function and work and work with each other as a team as yourself along with your client and then later down the line As you move away from the business and start working on the business and you have a team the team will be the ones that align with your values and your vision so on and so forth so you'll see the values then you
2:15:33
have the vision mission and strategy so then underneath that you've got your business strategy which is this module here and we will focus on the business strategy in terms of how are we going to get to our end destination what do success look like all of that good stuff and then from there you've got strategic goals so once once you've come up with your strategy that's when you come up with your strategic goals and I'll give you an example later so that you can see what each one means then
2:15:58
after you've got your strategic CES you've got your overall business strategy then you've got functional strategies within your business so customer strategy it's like your marketing strategy your sales strategy your operation strategy your Finance strategy your people strategy all of these are functions within your business where you're coming up with a strategy for each of these but you as the CEO you're sitting there looking at the whole business as a product and saying
2:16:20
this is the strategy for the entire business as a unit and then things will trickle down and Cascade down then you've got objectives then you put down a plan in place and then you've got tactics and then you've got some metrics to measure these and that's kind of how this thing works now most people are working down in the tactics let me run an Instagram thing let me do cold email let me do this let me do that and these are the tactics that are not tied to any structure at
2:16:50
tool and that's why a lot of businesses will sit there being overwhelmed by trying to throw everything at the wall and seeing what sticks and by the end of it they've either run out of cash or they've just burnt out and that's not what I want for you I want you to begin to say all right now here is a structure here's a framework for me to be able to start building my business in a way that everything is clear and everything is aligned so that when you do start hiring
2:17:16
teams they're aligned to your overall strategy and your overall Vision when you do start looking at your products and and services that you're developing it's aligned your customer service aligned everything is Unified and it forms like I said the backbone of your business and everything becomes so so much easier now another way to present this is why what how and who why do we exist you know what needs to be done how will we do it and who's going to do it the values are
2:17:50
essentially you know what do we stand for why and how will we behave that's why what and how now your vision is up in the why why what is it that you're going to achieve and and why your mission is also up in the sort of the why and the what the strategy is like diagnosing the challenges so when you look at Vision vision is your compelling future you know built around your why so that's your vision and we'll talk a little bit more as we start breaking them down your Miss
2:18:21
is why do we exist and what we do to realize our vision right okay strategy then comes up where you diagnosing the challenges that you're going to have and proposing a coherent approach on how you're going to move forward so so the strategy that I'm talking about here isn't your just your values your vision your mission that's just a starting point what we want to do is we want to start saying okay what are the challenges and what are the Strategic approaches that we're going to take then
2:18:48
you start putting down desired outcomes then you've got your objectives which are meas measurable steps then you've got your tactics and initiatives which are your coordinated plans and then you've got your actions which are your tasks most people are working in t tactics initiatives and actions and they're leaving all of that out thinking it's a waste of time but it really isn't so this is our strategy Playbook it's something that we've developed in house after years and years and years and
2:19:16
years of running businesses and seeing how other businesses and helping other businesses and we've been able to put it on a couple of pages and by doing it this way you can then not only come up with your own strategy for your business but you will be able to also communicate that with your team with other people that are internal that need to understand and align so the first section in yellow here is vision and vision really breaks down into a couple of things what does success look like
2:19:44
for me personally why is this destination important what does ultimate success look like for the business and why is this destination important now when you look at Vision vision is this compelling future it's a compelling future it's something that is so like so when Microsoft started saying you know a computer on every desk in every home and it was just a compelling future and and it's Everlasting it doesn't have an end date because a computer on every desk in
2:20:15
every home you were always going to have new homes and always have new desks when you look Disney at one point it was make people happy and and you'll always try and make people happy so that's what you want to be looking at when you're looking at vision and we started this course by us talking about our vision to inspire and Empower each and every entrepreneur to build a business they desire so that they can live the life of their dreams now when you're looking at
2:20:41
that it's to inspire and Empower we're not just about doing things for people we're about inspiring them we're about empowering them with the tools like we're doing here and the skill sets for you to build the business that you need so that you can get the lifestyle you desire now when we say each and every entrepreneur that means that we understand that every entrepreneur is different and what we need to do is we can't have a three-step trademark process because it doesn't work for
2:21:07
everyone every business owner is different there's no two business owners alike and every business is going to be different so what we need to do is we need to have Frameworks and then some of our services are personalized experiences that where we take them through at Mass but also it's still very personalized so you can begin to see and and then Inspire and Empower each and every entrepreneur Everlasting hopefully compelling and all of these things and that's what I want you to look when
2:21:32
you're looking at the ultimate success for your business what is that what is that compelling future that you really is going to make the people just wake up in the morning and say I want to be part of this thing I want to do this this is your why and this is what you would write down so in those boxes there you would write these down the mission is why do we exist and you know why is it important so now we've said this is the ultimate success for the business but
2:22:01
why are we doing this why do we exist why is this important and and and for us it's you know 3% of business owners succeeding is disgraceful the education system has not helped us at all an education system was created back in the industrial revolution to dish out Factory workers and everyone is taught to follow and and not lead and not to take risks and it's conditioned us to Fair failure and we need to fix this status quo and that's why we want to do it and so this is
2:22:32
something that you need to be going for is then you say why do we exist and why is it important what will we work on to achieve this now the mission really is what is your mission on a day-to-day basis that you're going to do to achieve that Vision that you put down so what will you work on to achieve this so to achieve this Vision so that's your mission values is what do we abide by what is it we do and what actually we're against what is it that we don't do and
2:23:02
and in here don't just put down words like integrity and you know all of that stuff just really have a think about it this is going to define the DNA of your business so so for example we have like do the right thing as part of our values in inside the business do the right thing and then that trans you know translates into into everything we do if that means we need to be compassionate with with with with you know our clients we are if that means that we don't cheat on this we don't if
2:23:31
that means that we have to be ethical and moral we are if it means we need to go the extra mile to get a result we do because we're doing the right thing and and and and so on and so forth now I'm not going to list everything that we have for you but I want you to begin to understand that it's not just about a word of of Integrity nobody actually can how do you how do you make that practical how do you make that tangible so these are the kind of things that you're going to say
2:23:59
that we do and also the things that you're not going to do that's the values section now let's move on to the customers and target market so how are we going to do this where are we going to play which demographic which target market what industry you know who are we going to Target so where are we going to play which is like which region and and Industry who are we going to Target the demographics the psychographics the behavior of the people so on and so forth and how are we going to help them
2:24:28
you also want to look at positioning so positioning is how are we stand out how are we going to differentiate ourselves from what other people are doing right so when you look at CEO entrepreneur we we believe in giving as much value upfront as possible we believe in substance rather than just superficial stuff we believe in strategy that actually forms the backbone of how you're going to run and grow your business so that you can have that CEO mindset so these are things that will
2:24:56
make you stand out whereas other people we say well you know they they're focusing on tactics they're doing this so these are the kind of things that I want you to start thinking about for your business and apologies if I'm just using our business as an example but I just wanted to demonstrate to you that this is stuff that we practice this is not theoretical stuff this is not stuff that you will sit there and we just say hey let's do it for the for the fun of
2:25:18
it we do this and we practice it on a day byday basis every product every service we need to look through that it's personalized it's for each and every entrepreneur it's you know it's excellent it's this it's has substance it's this it's this it's this and I want you hopefully to do the same for your business so how can we make it difficult for our competitors to copy you don't have to have something that's super like unique it can just be tweaks here or there it could be in your brand it could
2:25:50
be in innovating a process it could be in solving a particular problem or a paino that wasn't solved in that similar type of solution so have a think about it and you should have done this a little bit when you started looking at your problem the next one is your strategic challenges and approaches now what challenges do we have to overcome so now you're looking at this destination you've looked at the pain point you've looked at all of these things we haven't remember we haven't
2:26:16
done a solution yet and we need to do this before we go on to solution because as we're developing products and services your strategy is overarching it's not like let's build my solution and then let's put a strategy that sort of bolts on to what we've already built everything that you do inside your business needs to be formulated around your strategy and that's why we're looking at these things now from a solution neutral perspective because down the line you're going to be
2:26:42
introducing new products and services but your strategy is going to be the same might need tweaking every now and then I would suggest you have a review of IT minor review every year year that every 3 years you have a solid review and you just say do we need to have a a rethink on this but your products and services can be changing month to month if that's the type of Industry that you're in so what challenges are we going to have to overcome and what are the Strategic approaches to overcome
2:27:06
these challenges I'll give you examples so that you begin to understand now this here is the first page of the uh business strategy Playbook and as you start your business you're literally just answering these questions to put down the first part of your strategy but as the business grows and scales and you shift gears when you're a six and a seven figure and an eight figure business each one of these boxes is going to have its own tools and its own scenario planning and things like that
2:27:32
which is why I want you to start thinking about this and laying down the foundations like this from the get-go so this is the first page of your business strategy Playbook and as you are starting out and under six figures and you're just starting your business all you need to do is answer these boxes and answer these questions and fill that out and have a really good think about it again take some time out and have a good think about this but once your business
2:27:57
scales and you start moving into six seven eight figures you're going to need to shift gears and then each one of these boxes has its own tools and has its own philosophy behind how to approach it but you don't need to do that at this stage yet and this is why you start now with the right infrastructure but then as your business scales this Foundation here can then become more complex and then can scale with you as you go along so once you've begun to put down your strategy and you
2:28:26
say here is my strategy the next set is then laying down strategic goals and let's have a look at a potential approach as an example so a strategic approach could be compete at a higher price point using our standout feature now you could either compete at higher price points you could compete at lower price points you could compete based on Innovation on technology on process on Logistics there are so many different ways that you can have a look at your strategic approaches and we're going to
2:28:54
have a look at business models um after after we go to solution we'll Circle back and have a look at business models but let's say for now that you're looking at competing at a higher price using our standout feature that we've got a strategic goal 1A could be then phased pull out of current target market segment that prefers lower price point because we've been selling this at a lower price point we're going to have a phased pull out from that Target Market
2:29:19
because is we can only sell it to them at a lower price point and then introduce this differentiating factor or feature into our main products and then successfully enter the next or this identified target market segment so you can begin to see here's a strategic approach and here are the Strategic goals that we're doing and again we're not putting down make $1 million that's that's just a goal we we're looking at strategic goals of entering a market introducing a new product or service
2:29:48
trying to look at price points points trying to do you know things in a way we had a change of strategy by releasing this course on YouTube and that was backed by a whole bunch of things where we started looking at Ai and we started looking at different trends of YouTube and how things are working and we said no actually you know what we want to put this entire course on YouTube we think that this has the best way for us to get to as many people as possible provide
2:30:16
value to those who cannot afford it but at the same time it gives us the exposure that when people do want to have a community and mentorship and sort of like-minded entrepreneurs as well as the knowhow and the experience and the personalized advice and and accountability then they could come to us at a separate sort of way and that will be where we stand out so you can begin to see that strategy is always maneuvering based on Trends as well as and when they're happening so the second
2:30:47
page then of the business strategy Playbook is your strategic goals and you'll see here that it literally gives you the space for you to sit down and put down here is my strategic approach here's my timeline and here are the Strategic goals for this strategic approach and this is what I'm going to focus on year quarter 1 quarter 2 quarter 3 quarter 4 for the year and you update this once a year in terms of how you're going to go about it so that's your strategic goals for your business
2:31:15
strategy Playbook and it should give you a good starting point for re really beginning to understand how you're going to stand out in the marketplace in your business and I'll show you an example after this section here where we're looking at the strategic planning framework remember this right all of these things let's give you an example of what each one of them actually looks like for an example I think it's for the skincare oh uh yeah I think it's for wellness and skincare so when you start
2:31:45
looking let's let's zoom in a little bit so strategy so the strategy of the business is to lead in Innovative Wellness solutions for 16 to 25 year old females through technology Community engagement and personalized content our datadriven brand will adapt to market trends and customer feedback strategic Partnerships team development and a customer Centric approach that will guide us in navigating future challenges now that is a short two paragraphs but actually there's a lot in that and it
2:32:14
takes a lot of thinking to be able to come in come up with this kind of strategy when so let's break it down a little bit to lead in Innovative Wellness for 16 to 25 so we've identified our Market segment through technology so technology is going to be one of the key standout Innovative factors for the brand so through technology Community engagement building communities and engaging with the communities that's how because they feel that that demographic really is all about Community engagement
2:32:42
as well as personalized content our datadriven brand so the brand is going to be focused on data and insights and business intelligence so it's not going to come up with random products or Services based on a whim or market research that's very basic this is based on data so that means that part of the strategy will be how do we collect data from our customers from our potential Market from you know customer feedback from testimonials from uh surveys from interviews from all of these kind of
2:33:14
things from comments so they're going to be adapting so they're going to need to follow market trends because this age group is about following market trends whereas if it was a slightly older age group not so much necessarily as important strategic Partnerships so Partnerships are going to be important in terms of how they're going to Market and collaborate with whether it's influencers or whether it's other businesses and other companies team development focusing on getting amazing
2:33:39
people and a customer Centric approach will guide us in navigating future challenges so they're going to look to the customers for advice for feedback so that they can actually come up with new products and services based on that information so you can see here that it's two small paragraphs but there's a lot to unpack in that so what would a strategic goal look like for for this establish a strong brand presence and loyalty among 16 to 25 year old female demographic their preferred choice for
2:34:08
Skin Care Solutions so this is about building a brand presence so that's one of the Strategic goals is build a strong brand presence through Community engagement personalized experiences all of that good stuff right so that's number number one uh functional strategies so under remember we had a a product strategy customer strategy all of these kind of different functions within the business so we're going to take a look at two one of them is product development which is product
2:34:35
strategy and then marketing comes under customer so product development develop solutions that resonate with specific needs and preferences of the 16 to 25 year old female demographic incorporating user feedback and Trends again user feedback and Trends marketing so they're building their products based on user feedback and Trends marketing is utilized datadriven and culturally relevant marketing approaches to connect with and engage the 16 to 25 year old female audience effectively now you can
2:35:03
begin to see how everything is aligning to the overall strategy so now marketing is looking at data driven and it's looking at sort of like Trends product development is looking at user feedback and Trends and it's developing its products and services everything then becomes aligned and that's why having this Str becomes very important so that even when you start building departments or functions or units and having people there they align to your strategy objectives launch two new products or
2:35:29
Services specifically designed for the 16 to 25 year old female Market within the next 18 months now now we've got objectives and the objectives have measurable things marketing objective increase brand awareness by 50% achieve a 30% engagement rate on social media within the next two years so on and so forth so now we're getting a bit more specific in terms of what we want a plan plan so the plan now starts taking us to conduct market research user testing inform you know to inform the
2:35:56
development of the new products ensuring the needs blah blah blah marketing Implement a marketing campaign focusing on social media influencer Partnerships so here remember we said strategy Partnerships influencer Partnerships targeted content marketing because it's individualized and personalized everything ties up everything align and you're no longer sitting there throwing a whole bunch of things at the wall now what else can we have a look at now tactics this is where most people stop
2:36:22
right with marketing it's collaborate with influencers popular among the 16 to 25 age group run a targeted ad campaign on platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok but now you know why you're doing these things you're not just saying let me go on to Facebook let me go to LinkedIn let me go to Tik Tok let me go to YouTube let me go to this let me run some ads let's try and get influencers but maybe also let me try and you know set up a popup store in in in a mall or let me do
2:36:50
this or let me do that and and everything becomes like let just throwing things at the wall whereas now everything is coherent everything is integrated everything is a series of choices based around the original strategy I'm not going to labor the point you can begin to see these the rest of these as as and when again you can pause the video and have a look so you you then start getting into the actual tasks and the tactics of how you're doing this and your metrics are
2:37:16
okay how many new products did we launch what are the feed feedback score from beta testers you know engagement rate on social media platforms and you're giving metrics that you're measuring based on the actual strategy that you lay down and the Strategic goals the objectives all of that all of that good stuff so that's your strategic planning framework and you can begin to see now how it hopefully all begins to make sense and that is strategy for you part one because we will come back to the
2:37:43
business model which is in strategy again as soon as we've done the next one which is solution and then we'll be back to strategy again okay like like I said this is not a step-by-step this is a framework where sometimes you need to Circle back and do certain things so now let's have a look at solution ready let's go so needless to say this is the section and the module where we try and come up with your business idea the solution the product or service now if
2:38:08
you already have a product or service or an idea please park it because we are going to challenge some conceptions about products and services and we're going to go about doing this in a way that you've probably not seen before and the reason why I'm going to go about this in a completely different way to how most people go about it is that in a previous lifetime I used to be an engineer uh actually I had a PhD I used to teach a professor at University and one of my areas was engineering design
2:38:42
and Engineering product design and I've written a book which has been translated in many many different languages and has a few additions as well as it being used in universities as a textbook for coming up with a product design or a service design if you're actually trying to come up with an idea and how do you actually make that product kind of I've written the book on it so I I don't say this to show off I really don't say this to show off because I just want you to to know that
2:39:14
because we're going to do this a slightly different way you can still be reassured and confident that actually hopefully this guy knows a little bit of what he's talking about so with that said I'm not going to labor on this point anymore let's get into it it will be different it will be very unique on how we approach things but believe me and trust me this will make your product absolutely the most optimal product that you will do for your business and for
2:39:40
your customers when all is said and done now when I say product here I going to use product and service interchangeably it doesn't really matter you should be probably designing and developing Your Service as a product anyway and not charge by the hour and charge as a package but needless to say even if you still are doing a service it's still all of it is the same and I might refer to one or the other but whether it comes down to pain points or functions or
2:40:06
features all are relevant for either a product or a service and it works equally well I've used the same process in product based businesses I've used the same processes in service based businesses such as this one as well uh CEO entrepreneur and it's exactly the same process every single time right so remember we talked about having a painkiller and not a vitamin so here is what not to do and like I said at the beginning I I I I know that usually telling people what to do
2:40:39
is is the best way about going through things but because the majority of people do things in the wrong way I just want to kind of like again highlight it and say this is not how we're going to go about developing our business idea a lot of times most people will just come up with an idea and say let me start a business around this thing that's not the way to do things you probably figured that out from me by now but there are other ways that then people say oh okay let me have some solutions
2:41:05
and maybe let's pick the best one that's still not the way to go about it okay so then you say to me all right so maybe we come up with the customer pain points because we've done all of that amazing work yes you have all of that amazing work in you know customer pain points and maybe that's how we go through it so with the pain points we come up with Solutions and then we pick the best one still no even when we get to doing this which is a lot closer to what we actually need
2:41:33
which is from customer pain points we switch over and try and identify the benefits gained and then come up with Solutions according to the benefits and we touched a little bit on that during the problem module so this is a good way of doing things and then you come up with a solution that's optimized that addresses your customer pain points almost there but not quite we need one more missing thing that actually makes a big difference in how you go about developing your
2:42:03
products and services and that's with solution neutral functions let me explain what that is because what we don't want to do is jumping to conclusions straight away we need to take a step back and we need to think about all of the different options and all of the different possibilities as we're going through we need a much more structured approach so that we don't overlook the oversights now when you are looking at something or looking for something our brains work in a way that
2:42:35
once we've come up with an idea we focus predominantly on that idea on that thing so you know and and there have been many many tests and and and and scientific experiments on this where if you're not looking for cars you won't see them on the road or a particular make of cars but all of a sudden you start thinking red car and all you see down the road are like red cars all over the place or if you're looking for a a Porsche you'll start seeing them even though that your
2:43:02
brain hadn't seen them before because that's what you focus on and it's it's similar when you start saying all right if I come up and say I need to build a jug so that you know this is what I want to do I want to sort of pour like liquids and pour like juice and I need to go and build a jug and what you're going to be doing is you're going to be trying to find all of the best ways to build that jug but actually if you take a step back and say well why do I need
2:43:27
to build a jug I need to build a jug to pour juice now that becomes a function and it's solution neutral I'm pouring juice but I don't actually necessarily need it to be a jug it could be a bottle it could be a container it could be a kettle it could be something else and then your mind starts opening up to all different possible solutions based on ID identifying what the function is that you want it to do without really coming up with those Solutions hopefully that
2:43:54
makes sense what we want to be doing is we want to be going through this kind of process pain points benefits understanding what the benefits are and then we develop our products based on the results and the benefits we're going to get then we go down to functions then we come up with ideas then we do the features go back to business case and then we start building our minimum viable product and we're going to take you through these steps so there are seven steps that we're going to go
2:44:18
through the first one is pain points we've done that which is done in problem so actually we're going to just do six steps so let's start with these things now I put this in here on purpose because if you haven't done the problem module yet or you haven't gone through that please do go through and go back and go through it again um before you come and do this because I this is built on the foundation that you've done a lot of work into really identifying the
2:44:47
right problem statement so I've included it in here again to make sure that we have covered this particular point so let's have a look at an example problem statement so young adults aged 16 to 25 are grappling with the tough reality of acne we're back to the acne problem again so it's not just about dealing with skin breakouts it's the emotional stress the social pressures the confusion caused by so many much conflicting skincare advice they're trying to find treatments that are both
2:45:14
effective affordable all of that good stuff again you can read the rest of it so the problem statement will then have different pain points and we will then have our problem statement as we had and outlined in the first sort of problem module so this is another example here which is busy parents struggle to maintain clean and organized homes we're going to have two case studies that we're going to cycle between them one of them is going to be a product based one
2:45:40
of them is going to be service based so this will be a uh we won't decide which one is a product or service yet because you don't actually decide until but we've done them in a way that one of them will be a product one of them will be a service so in this case it's busy parents struggle to maintain clean and organized homes due to time constraints leading to increased stress disorganized spaces fatigue Mis quality family time lack of cleaning expertise they want a
2:46:06
solution on you know that addresses cleaning but also saves time and enhances their overall home environment those are the two problem statements with pain points exhaustion stress Mis quality time all of that good stuff again you can pause and have a look right so now we've got our problem statement we want to start translating those problem statements and highlighting them and identifying them into solution neutral benefits so once we've done step one we go on to step two
2:46:32
which again we touched on a little bit in the problem which is the benefits but we just want to again highlight and make sure that the these are solution neutral benefits so from paino to benefits again you should have done some of that work if you haven't fully formed it then go back please and make sure it's done but by doing this it helps you understand what value your users are going to gain from choosing your product it also helps you develop the product and service with
2:46:56
the end results in mind it helps you develop something that is actually going to work for the customer and surprise and funly enough it actually is what the customer needs and they will keep coming back and knocking on your door to ask for more it's going to support with your brand it supports with marketing later on it supports with sales it supports with after sales it's super important please do it so from these pain points from acne you'll see that these were the
2:47:22
pain points like we mentioned before we can then move them into the actual benefits so instead of having irritation as a pain point we would have the benefit being reduced redness and irritation it's clearer skin cleaner skin Balan complexion you know healthier skin enhanced skin suppleness smooth skin texture stronger skin resilience hormonal all of that good stuff improved self-confidence so all of the benefits you know that we want to be make sure sure that is in our product or service
2:47:51
and again you can pause and have a look at all of them but I think you're getting the idea of how we move it and I I don't want to label the point so with case study number two which is the busy parents managing households here are the pain points and here are the solution neutral uh benefits which is like having a clean home efficient cleaning time saving stress reduction all of that good stuff all right so your task is to create a list of solution neutral benefits to the pain points you've
2:48:18
identified if you already started having direct and indirect benefits from the problem have a look at them and just go back and make sure that their solution neutral and try and see if you can come up with anym at this stage and that's step two now let's move into converting them from benefits into solution neutral functions and that is step three which is the one that we're on right now okay so solution neutral functions functions are like I said you know poor juice you're you're you're saying
2:48:46
what the function of the you want it to do it's a set of descriptions or specs that solve the needs without specifying how they're addressed so essentially it's Define what the product must do in terms of functionality not how it will do it in terms of you know U solution so try and use a verb noun phrase like Po liquid heat water or heat liquid stuff like that so it'll be you know Crossroad um Balan complexion stuff like that so we you can begin to start understanding
2:49:21
how this product is going to function and the reason why this is important is that sometimes the functions might not be laid out by the pain points or by the benefits so in some cases the the pain points might be bad coffee but actually you want to make sure that you know you've got higher pressure you have got good pressure to you know Brew the coffee and that is a function that you're going to do that actually would not be identified as at the paino stage
2:49:50
and that's why having this stage this is more of the technical stage if you will based on what we're trying to achieve so we're trying to focus on what the product or service will do not how it will do it so here is the acne example again and you can see here we had the first phase where we did pain points into the benefits which we've already shown before and now what we want to do is we want to have the benefits in two functions saying diagnose the skin diagnose severity and track changes
2:50:19
balance you know um and when you're looking at like when you've got the complexion you can see that you want CLE clear the skin pores you want to regulate this you know this sebum production you want to destroy harmful microbes you want to increase moisture retention it becomes a little bit more technical but what we're not doing here we're not actually saying how it's going to do this you know enhance personal confidence streamline choices reduce expenses all of these are functions of
2:50:46
what it will do but not how it will do it hopefully that's clear now let's have a look at the other example which is the uh clean home that was the benefits now we going to move those benefits into solution neutral functions where you've got remove stains disinfect surfaces deodorize rooms organize clutter minimize cleaning time you know simplify cleaning methods ensure safety all of this stuff is what the function needs to do of basically cleaning very very
2:51:14
easily so your task is to come up with a list of solutions neutral functions and focus on the what and not the how because it will allow you to then start thinking about products and services and solutions that you might not have thought possible in the beginning because you're really just focusing on just the solution right so in some cases where you say hey I want to build a bridge you're just going to think about building a bridge but if you say I want pedestrians to be able to cross a busy
2:51:43
road then you can say I want to build a bridge I can have an underpass tunnel I can have a traffic system I can have a like a diversion I can have this that there's so many different ways of doing it so this is what I want you to do is is not focus or fixate yourself on one solution just yet right so step four is consider any operational and non-functional requirements because we've been trying to think about what this thing must do functionally but also sometimes there are things that we want
2:52:11
to do from a benefits or a requirement perspective that really is doesn't have a function like you know user friendly interface or privacy and security or you know it's accessible or it's compliant it adheres to regulations and and standards so these are functions that you also need to think about and I want you to have a good think about your pain point if for example if your medical service or a medical device what kind of regulations and and and and stipulations
2:52:38
and standards do you have to adhere to so your product and service needs to be able to do this for example if you building a medical app uh privacy and data and and all of these things are super important and they need to be part of the functions that you're doing right okay so hopefully that's clear once you've done your functions you've now moved on to step four which is your ideation and this is the creative process of generating and developing as many ideas as possible to solve a
2:53:05
particular problem or Challenge and in this step I really want you to take a step back and now brainstorm as many ideas as possible focusing on quantity at this stage rather than quality be silly be ridiculous that's come up it doesn't even need to be like remotely possible but this is what's going to give you that creativity this is what's going to give you that Innovation this is what's going to give you that spark of like what about if we do this how about we do that how about
2:53:32
this how am I going to get this function what are the different ways I can solve this particular function and then you you do it per function and then you see all right can I mix and match can I mix and match different solutions together so there are different ways where you can start really ideating and coming up with different solutions and try and come up with with as many as possible again don't focus on is this realistic or not the time will come where we start
2:53:54
picking the right one but for now just really try and focus on creativity and coming up with as many as possible so do not rule any ideas out at this stage including whether or not it's a product or service so even come up with products or services for these different types of products for these particular functions right so in the case of acne 16 to 25 year old emotional suffering and physical offering so we've got a few ideas overthe counter skincare line a subscription based skincare kit that
2:54:24
delivers personalized skincare products monthly a wearable device that treats acne using light therapy you can see now how different these these ideas are a tele medicine service that provides virtual consultations to prescribe medications a holistic skincare app that tracks skin condition offers skincare routines and provides educational content again that's why I said at the beginning when we were looking at problem I notice I didn't say acne cream here right because we could do so many
2:54:56
different things if we had just said okay let's build some acne cream because females that are 16 to 25 are struggling with acne and we need to give them acne cream we've limited our ability to be creative and find out and try and discover out of the box Solutions so a holistic skincare app or lifestyle and diet coaching program that focuses on natural remedies again very different ones some of the them products some of them services and that's why I'm saying
2:55:21
don't limit yourself just yet okay so I think hopefully now you're beginning to get the idea of why I'm doing this and why I'm saying to do it in this particular way so let's say we have a look at teley medicine service you'll be able to see the functions diagnose and track skin conditions is virtual Consultants diagnose severity of acne conditions soothe skin inflammation virtual Consultants to prescribe anti-inflammatory medication clear skin pores recommendations for topical
2:55:48
treatment that unclog pores so now it's about tele medicine it's about remote online giving a consultation and advice and prescribing medications and you will begin to see that even though we have the same exact functions let's have a look at the skincare app now diagnose and track skin condition is an app uses photo camera AI to analyze the severity of the acne and tract changes over time if we want to soothe skin inflammation app suggest natural remedies for calming routines
2:56:21
clear skin pores step-by-step guides for Effective pore cleansing methods you can see now the functions are the same but they're completely different solutions so that's what I want you to do and that's what's really going to make your business pop because you're going to be coming at this from an angle that most people will not even contemplate they'll sit there and say I want to build an acne cream or I want to do this here's my business idea this is what I want to
2:56:46
do and by you taking that step back makes all the difference okay so I know I've labored the point but it's so so important it really is so so important let's have a look at the other busy parents one so time management app organizing and decluttering cleaning service with expert cleaners multi-purpose and ecof flandry cleaning products multi-purpose cleaning robot um digital cleaning assistance app Compact and efficient cleaning tools again same functions same benefits same pain points
2:57:16
completely different solutions and I'm not going to labor on this anymore you get the idea please now you try and do this for your particular paino and your benefits that you're trying to do brainstorm all of your ideas for possible solutions to the problem you're solving do not limit product or service and try and come up with as many as possible for your business idea now step five is all about picking your solution so how do you choose a solution so go back to the customer benefits
2:57:45
yes yes them again customer benefits they are very important and that's why we spend a lot of time doing them because this is what's going to make or break your marketing and your sales people don't buy features people buy benefits people buy results people don't buy these things because they buy it because it's going to make them feel a certain way or it's going to give them a result that's going to make them feel a certain way it's always about making them feel a
2:58:13
certain way at the end and that's why we need to go back to the customer benefits and what you want to do is you want to start looking at your different solutions and see which solution best addresses your custom benefits and pain points remember we're customer Centric first which one of these pick a couple that really that stand out and then you start considering factors such as feasibility now you start saying okay well that was a silly idea that's not feasible this doesn't align with my
2:58:39
values or goals this one has potential impact or this one doesn't this is quite new this is something that actually might be really really good this is something that's really bad you're looking basically for the most promising idea for further development and that's what we want to be able to do and you link it back to the benefits and also link it back to your passion link it back to your uh uvp remember that so that's why I keep saying we're going to come back to these things but we're
2:59:05
going to use them at the right time in the right place okay so in this particular case study case study one we're going to pick the skincare app as the one that we're going to make for this uh case study and in the busy parents managing household we're going to pick a cleaning service where people expert cleaners come and clean uh based on uh appointments and as you can see product and service so your task is analyze your Solutions and pick your final solution don't if if if you get stuck don't
2:59:38
overthink it pick one that feels the right way but make sure that you've done it based on a lot of data that you've done because you've done a lot of research now you should really have a good understanding of what the benefits are what the pain points really are what the core problems are and if you think you've stumbled on a solution that really addresses it well we just want to make sure that it's going to be financially viable it's scalable it's all of these things it's feasible so
3:00:04
just have these sort of you know sense check them and just make sure that you are that they make sense to you step six is then now we start looking at the features because a lot of people start with the features and they say let me have this idea let's have these featur Fe in there and let's sell these features and nobody buys features everyone buys benefits and results so we are now going to build the features to satisfy the benefits and the results and that's the right way about going through
3:00:29
them so features are specific attributes characteristics or functionalities that a product or service offers to fulfill particular user needs or requirements so they Define what the product can do and how it can benefit the user so they're really specific things that you are addressing pain points or value that you're adding to the user so if we're looking at the skincare app again diagnose and uh track skin condition we've got an app uses photo camera AI app suggests this all of these and these
3:01:01
then what we're going to do is we're going to start looking at the features so we've got a skin analysis tool here's a feature so in the case of the skincare app again you can see our functions here this is still the functions section we can now start looking at how we can address these functions by having specific features so here we've got 1 2 3 4 five six features one of them is a skin analysis tool which is users can upload pictures of their skin and the
3:01:27
app uses AI it's a feature personalized skincare routine based on the skin analysis the app suggests a daily skincare routine with product recommendations educational content so on and so forth and these now become features that you're now building into your product or service similar with your decluttering and organizing and cleaning services um the features are flexible scheduling because remember these are busy people and they want better quality of life so you're giving
3:01:53
them flexible scheduling stressfully cleaning decluttering assistance eco-friendly cleaning consultation and custom plans so on and so forth where you're beginning to now put features as a little bit of a selling point but again these selling points are tied back to convenience to efficiency to ease of use to better quality of you know life to all of the stuff that you have said before and you're not no longer just chasing a feature because it's cool or because it's technologically impressive
3:02:22
because nobody is going to buy it if it's just like yeah that's a cool piece of tech but nobody actually wants it or that's a great feature but I actually I don't need it why should I why should I pay for that can I remove that and get a discount from you and you'll get that and if you get that you'll know that you've probably gone about building your features the wrong way all right so your task is list out all the features Your solution needs to have at this stage
3:02:48
okay so we're almost there last step in the solution and that's to assess the business case remember we did business case part one business case part two is here we want to make sure that it makes a good business case because remember when we looked at the business case before we would just looking at whether or not this problem is worth solving but now we've actually got a product or service or a solution we want to understand is this feasible is this going to scale is this going to do the
3:03:13
stuff that we wanted to do this is the step here where you will determine whether or not your business idea and solution actually has a good strong business case first of all we're going to look at do the numbers add all and for you to make a million dollar you need to have sell one thing for a million dollar or 10 things for $100,000 or 100 things for $10,000 or a th000 things for $1,000 and so on and so forth you can see where you're going to be on the scale and how
3:03:44
much volume and the volume then you go back to your Market size and say all right is this viable or not is this price point good or not and you will see at each price point things are very very easy to sell at that price point based on the target market of course so you know if you're selling uh a house you can be selling a house for multiple Millions if you're selling a car you can be selling a car for 10,000 or 100,000 if you're selling a an online course you
3:04:11
can be selling it either for a th000 or coaching for 10,000 or 100,000 there are different brackets and you need to be saying okay if I'm selling this thing at 10,000 I only need 100 how can I get 100 to make a million right and then it becomes easy and then you can start looking at okay once we get that product and people buy it are is this something that's going to be recurring that they're going to be buying on a subscription basis or is this something that we can upsell them to or is this a
3:04:39
one-off so that we now need to know okay actually they're just going to buy a house once every like 5 10 years or whatever so we we can't have these customers come and go and we need to generate new business all the time so these are the kind of things that I want you to start thinking about we'll delve into that into more detail down the line but as a starting point these are some rough numbers so that you can begin to start seeing whether or not this makes sense so you need to validate your
3:05:05
painkiller and what I want you to do is I want you to check is this feasible or not is this viable so feasible is can we actually do this like Is it feasible for us to actually make is this technologically possible is this technologically from a a a price point as well possible it might cost you a million dollars to make and you just don't have the amount of of of money to be able to make this thing so it might not be feasible for you at all feasible is one thing but viable is
3:05:38
another thing because viable is like is this something that can be remain feasible because if you go and borrow a million dollars from a bank or somebody invests in a million dollars in you and and you and and you invest it and you actually make it happen and you build this one product and then you sell it at for $10,000 and you've made a loss or even you sell it for a million dollars back and you pay back the million dollars you haven't made a profit but you haven't lost any money either but
3:06:04
it's not viable anymore because you don't have a million dollars to build another one so you need to understand that feasible is can I do it once viable is can I keep doing this and then you want to understand is this going to be profitable for me am I going to be able to make money from this and then is this scalable because as you start scaling costs go up sometimes costs go go down if you're Mass producing but also sometimes you're going to need to hire more people and you're going to
3:06:27
have a more complex organizational structure and you're going to have higher more qualified people and experience and the economies of scale sometimes just do not work when you if you're operating on tiny tiny margins so you want to understand is this something that ice can scale into but also is this Market size something that I can scale is it just a limited population of 100 people or is this something that actually there are multiple regions or there are multiple different categories
3:06:52
of product I can grow into even though it might be a small Market but I can actually keep giving them new products or services or it's a service that they're just going to keep on a retainer and a subscription can I scale that or not as well so these are the kind of things that you want to be looking at and last but not least you want to be saying to yourself is it the best option for your customers and for your business right now and answer this as honestly as
3:07:16
you can because it might not be the best thing for your customers you might get really excited about an idea but actually it's not the best option for them and like I said again when we look at this at CEO entrepreneur is do the right thing is this the best option for the customers if it's not then we're not going to do it do the right thing so values strategy all of this comes into play here where you're really sense checking again and saying is this the best option for the customers and then
3:07:40
if it is is this the best option for the business customer Centric then is this the best option for the business right now can we afford to do this do we have the time do we have the resources do we have the capabilities all of that will play a factor and I want you to really start thinking about these things so with that said here are ways for you to assess each of these items so for feasibility these are the things that you would go through review and test
3:08:04
your market research competitor analysis technical assessment resource evaluation if you want to go through viability I'm going to run through these because you can again take your own time you can go through each of these now you understand what they are meant to do and each one is then I want you to be able to go through and ask and here are some prompts for you so that you can begin to question whether or not this is the right thing for you and for your business is this viable here we go and
3:08:29
from a profitability how much will it cost how much can you sell it for how many you know will you be able to sell so these are prompts that you can go through and each of these questions are things that you sense check with and say can I do this can I do this can I do this and then you don't get caught out by building a product that nobody wants that cost costs you too much and you can't sell it for the price point that you want to and the market size is not
3:08:51
big enough and then you sit there and say no one's buying my product or service so this is this is the way to do it the right way right okay scalability here it is here are some prompts for you for scalability what I would like you to do is go through that process and curate your business case study which is feasibility viability scalability profitability for your business idea so once you've identified that this is a strong business case for your business then you can move and say right okay
3:09:18
what are the key features that I need for me to build a minimum viable product or service this is something that a lot of people spend a lot of time in myself included where we try and get things right before we release them and this is something that we should not be doing we should try as much as possible to release to Market as soon as practically viable so minimum viable product is that it needs to still deliver the results you don't want to give a a product or
3:09:46
service that doesn't actually end up solving the problem but it needs to solve it at a very very minimal level where you can then start getting feedback you can then start getting advice on what more do you need to fix because sometimes the things that you thought were important features are not actually the features that are wanted by the customer and and having that feedback loop is going to be always important for you so get your product or service out to the market and test it as
3:10:12
soon as you can and what you need to do is you need to try and identify what are the features that must absolutely be there as a minimum viable product for me to push out to the marketplace and then not only that it it's also more cost effective because you haven't gone in and built and spent a lot of money and a lot of time building something that you end up finding out that actually that's not really what people want remember we're testing we're split testing there
3:10:37
will be times where you release a service or a product that doesn't do well you expected it no matter how much research you've done you expected it to do well but it still didn't so we want to always always be making sure that every step of the way even if it fails even if it doesn't succeed we're minimizing the loss and that's why we're pushing out a minimum viable product to test it out and then we get feedback we get testimonials we get results that will then improve our product and then
3:11:02
we can start scaling that to a wider audience if you will so the important thing to note here is that the goal is to really balance costs and benefits together so you basically look at what's important to the customer in terms of value and importance and look at it from a cost perspective for you and for your business and that's not just money cost this is time money resources Etc and what you want to do is you want to be able to balance those two together things that are super high value and
3:11:31
really important for your customers and actually it doesn't take you much time those are like a that's something that you should definitely do and then you've got a a scale all the way to something where it's actually not very important and it's going to cost a whole bunch of money and time and resources and it's probably not worth the effort and what you want to do is you want to start looking at you know my MVP is at a maybe a little bit of B worth it but actually
3:12:00
a is the no-brainer and this is what you want to be looking at in terms of what's important what's valuable and what's going to cost me the least amount to make it happen but also making sure that I have satisfied and I'm actually still getting a benefit and getting the end result for the product and service hope hopefully that makes sense what you you need to be doing is focusing on the most essential features that solve the core problem for your target market and avoid
3:12:22
the temptation to include too many features we all have been there I have been there where needs to do this and it needs to do and wouldn't it be cool if it does this the less is more approach here is what you need to do and really try and push it out as soon as possible so your task prioritize the features ensuring the most crucial elements are addressed first and list out the features that your solution needs to have for your MVP last but not least is then you start
3:12:52
building your MVP so once you've identified what your MVP is time to start building and start developing but while you're testing and building your MVP out you are going to be going through the rest of this framework so it's stuff that happens in parallel now so you are going to start looking at building the structure of the business looking at your marketing your sales looking at the finance the tech setup all of that stuff we're going to start doing in parallel whilst You're Building
3:13:17
building out your MVP hopefully that makes sense so one thing to note as well about your MVP is have a look at the user experience and I'm not talking about user experience on a mobile phone like ux I'm talking about the general overall user experience as your customer or client interacts with your product and service and make sure that your MVP gives the user an awesome and stress-free experience that is the minimum viable thing that you should be doing get them the result make them
3:13:42
happy no more at that at this stage and that that is something that you need to focusing on along with obviously your budgets and resources and legality and compliance you cannot do things that are not compliant based on your country regulations laws so please check what they are based on the industry that you're in and what you need to make sure that is actually present in your MVP as well you do not cut corners on these types of things Define what success looks like for your MVP put down what
3:14:13
metrics are actually good set clear measurable goals or kpis where that will help you understand whether or not your MVP is meeting the objectives so you want to be able to say how many of these have you sold uh conversion rates you know or you know feedback what what the different sort of how many positive ratings are you going to have five star ratings all of these things are different metrics that you can look at and Define them now not later so you're not just fiddling the books where you're
3:14:39
saying oh well look at this data here let me let me let me put this as a kpi because this is going to look really good don't let's not do that I've done that it's not good and you're just fooling yourself and what we want to be able to do is we want to start putting down the metrics now so that later on we can be very objective about the results that they have it's an iterative process you know this is the journey this is not the the MVP is not your destination it's
3:15:03
not a one-time effort it's a cycle of building measuring learning iterating improving all of that good stuff so that's what you need to be doing if the first version of your product doesn't embarrass you You released it too late to the market I think that was Steve Jobs I'm not sure but I think that was Steve Jobs um so please make sure that you are embarrassed but at the same time it balances all the other stuff that we've just talked about right so your task is assess the time resources and
3:15:26
features you need to build within your MVP plan out the timeline for when you can test this and off you go and then last but not least you validate and test start testing your MVP as soon as possible as early as possible this is how you're going to go about doing it in terms of like defining clear objectives identifying the target users create test cases gather your feedback evaluate functionality user satisfaction so with this here are some examples of how you're going to validate
3:15:57
it so functionality testing we want to be able to make sure that the functions we promising actually work validate that the app accurately tracks skin conditions provide personalized skincare routines Etc usability testing observe users as they navigate the app track their interactions identify any usability issues or confusion user surveys collect user feedback through surveys to assess overall satisfaction AB testing you know conduct AB tests to compare different versions of the app
3:16:23
and determine which features or design resonates better for users so on and so forth that's for this one and here's another one for the cleaning service as a service and this is how you would go and validate it now I'm not asking you to copy this you'll need to adapt your own measuring metrics if you will to understand how you're going to measure the success or feedback for your MVP but this is going to give you some hopefully some inspiration and some guidance on
3:16:50
how to go about doing it so create a survey for user feedback collect feedback on your MVP and then make sure that you're testing it in a controlled environment last but not least is Monitor and refine so we want to be making this an iterative process so make a list of incremental changes you need to make your MVP based on user feedback to improve it so this is all stuff that we're putting in here so that you've got a checklist of things to go through so I've discussed them already before but
3:17:19
when we've got like your task here is for you to say have I done this have I done this have I done this have I done this so again this is for monitoring and this is for refining you can pause the screen and have a look at them as you go through and here is an example for monitoring for the skincare app as well as refinement for the skincare app again you can pause the screen and have a look um as well as then try and decide if you're going to give trial services
3:17:44
customer satisfaction you surveys how you going to going to measure all of that information for the cleaning service this is how you would go about refining and identifying this as an example again you can pause the screen and have a look so this is your task is closely monitor the initial performance of your product and then list out the refinements of how you're going to go and improve them so rinse repeat rinse repeat until you make it better and make sure that the solution makes business
3:18:12
sense before you start releasing this to the mass Market identify what more Your solution needs so it can be Market ready once it is Market ready you'll have a lot of data a lot of feedback and you will have gone about this the right way don't get me wrong charge money whilst you're doing this unless you've got investment or funding to be able to beat a test for free but there is nothing wrong with you now setting up your business selling this as your MVP and
3:18:40
getting feedback as well Apple do it all the time they release things and then they keep updating and updating and updating if one of the the biggest companies in the world can do that we can do that as well right okay so that is the solution like I said before now that we've done solution and we've got our idea by the way before I move on to the next one if you're still here and you're still watching this how awesome are you because most people would have like clocked out by now so I don't know
3:19:09
if anyone's still watching if someone's still watching please can you write down like in the comments below still watching because that will give me some encouragement that some people got through this but uh yeah let's let's hope that as many of you do get through this because I'm giving you everything here I'm I'm not holding back anything because I want you to have all of the knowledge that you want that you need to have to be able to have as successful as business as possible um please don't
3:19:35
skip the steps and I know I've said it before I'm not trying to over complicate things this is what we do for every business that I run and every business that I grow we go through these steps we go through these phases make sure that we've got got it the right way and that's what increases our chances for Success so if you are still here comments down below please still here still here and and if if you're finding this value please also hit the like button and share it with anybody who you
3:20:02
are finding actually might let's spread the message you know share it with anyone who you think will find this valuable right let's get on to the next one which is we're circling back to strategy again and actually we're going to have a look now at your business model because we couldn't think about what Revenue stream we're going to put down for our business model until we actually had the solution right so it wouldn't have made sense to do that before the actual solution but now
3:20:26
we've got the solution down we're going to go in and start looking at the business model so now you have your solution what we want to do is how do we pick the right business model for your business solution if you will so one of the ways that we're going to go about this is business model canvas now before you fast forward or skip if you know about business model canvas this is not something that we have done ourselves this is something that was developed um by strategizer and why reinvent the
3:20:57
wheel when something is good right so we have created our own business strategy Playbook and other templates and worksheets for systems and processes and strategy and and all of these other things product development but when it comes to business model canvas it's already there so we didn't need to recreate or reinvent the wheel now one thing though that will say is please do stick around whilst I'm walking through this because in the middle of the canvas when I go into revenue streams I will
3:21:23
start talking about what different types of Revenue models you can have and the list will be quite good and quite big so stick around right let's have a look so what we want to do is we want to start looking at our business model canvas now this is basically like the business strategy Playbook where it is one sheet of paper and on there you can see exactly how your business model is going to work and this is important for you to begin to identify how you're going to
3:21:50
make money how are you going to spend money who you going to deal with all of that good stuff so first thing is on the right side is going to be all about the customers on the left side it's all about the business and in the middle it's going to be your uvp so customer segments we're going to start on the right half of the page so customer segments is who are your customers you should have already identified this here's an example Netflix serves multiple customer segments including
3:22:13
individual consumers families and international markets yours will be a little bit more specific than that because we're not Netflix let's face it right so that's where customer segments goes now the next one will be your relationships customer relationships how do you interact with your customers so this is how you interacting with them on a day-to-day basis so for example Spotify engages customers through personalized playlists and recommendations so they are providing
3:22:39
playlists recommendations communicating are you communicating and engaging with them through email through uh social media through marketing uh information through uh cold calling how are you actually building relationships and interacting with your customers this is not the same as what is your distribution or marketing channels but this is more to do with how are you engaging and building relationship with your customers the next one is your sales channels which is your
3:23:05
distribution so how do you reach your customers by selling them so Amazon for example uses its website mobile apps and Alexa devices you might be able to use a Shopify store or you might have an an online platform or you might have a brick and mortar sort of like real physical store where people come to you you might have a clinic uh you might go and visit people to their own homes and provide services there so what are your sales channels and how are you going to
3:23:34
uh get them in terms of not only um where are your sales channels but how are you going to contact them as well so are you going to be doing uh sales calls are you going to be doing ads what are the channels and how are you going to reach your customers the next one is your revenue streams and is the one that I spoke about uh a little bit earlier so this is how do you earn money and there are a lot of business models and a lot of Revenue models out there and I
3:23:57
thought let me try and have a list so again whilst it might not be exhaustive um it's probably covered the majority of different types of Revenue models so here is an example Uber earns revenue from ride commissions and Uber eat so it's commission based from from rides and stuff like that but let's have a little bit more of a detailed look shall we so here are the different types of Revenue models you've got product based models and in there you'll have things
3:24:21
like manufacturing where you produce goods and uh and sell them uh at price that is higher than your production costs retail buying products from wholesale and selling them at a markup to Consumers wholesale selling products in bulk to retailers or other businesses at a lower unit price but higher volume so one's looking at low volume higher price point one's looking at higher volume lower price point Drop Shipping selling products without actually holding inventory so this is also a
3:24:50
common thing for Amazon so you've got dropshipping and and that's a type of business model now I'm not going to go through all of the different business models here because this will be a ridiculously ridiculously longer video then it already is ridiculously ridiculously long so I'm going to put them up here so you've got here things like you know service based models whether it's Consulting whether it's freelancing whether it's agency and how they actually make their money and as you can see
3:25:19
here we we've we've got a list of pretty much every business model out there so you've got platform ones which are Marketplace sharing economy digital products whether they're online courses ebooks coaching digital media um subscription based models SAS products membership sites premium and and also the list goes on we've got two pages so one is rental leasing auction models licensing models if you're doing franchise or licensing out your brand or licensing out IP technology all of these
3:25:48
kind of things utility usage mod models where it's Meed services like you're paying bills for utilities and things like that uh nonprofit social Enterprise models this is how they work affiliate models experience models ad-based models Hybrid models and data driven models now this is not exhaustive but I think it covers pretty much everybody so once you've come up with your solution and you have identified it as a product or a service have a look through this list
3:26:14
here and basically try and identify which one of it fits best for you and which one you can test and remember you're not married to the business model you can e you can test a few of them you can say actually let me try this and then let me try this if that didn't work and let me try that sometimes startups will go through multiple different types of business models until they find the one that works for them they might have started off saying you know we're going
3:26:38
to run ads um and make money of ads from our platform but actually they end up making money from subscription Services as a SAS platform so there's there's no right or wrong here the trick like I said again is expecting that if this goes wrong I have a backup plan and we've got enough cash to see us through this and that's what we're trying to balance all the time as we're going through this aspect so that's your Revenue stream value propositions you should by now know what unique value you
3:27:05
are going to deliver so for example Apple delivers Innovative technology with seamless user experience it's all about its ecosystem its user experience that's seamless from one device to another and it's Innovative and privacy is another thing that they they really sort of Drive try to drive home anyway right so key Partners now we're on the left half of the canvas which is who are your partners and suppliers so examples Uber partners with drivers and payment processors so you will have payment
3:27:35
processes because you're collecting you know payment if you are doing Drop Shipping you've got your suppliers if you're um doing uh an agency you've got your um contractors that you're actually getting them to work with you on certain retainers and projects so on and so forth so all of this stuff is going to be in here as well then you've got your key activities what activities are crucial to delivering your value proposition so for example Netflix focuses on content acquisition
3:28:00
production and streaming technology this is where they actually these are the critical activities that they need so you will need to say okay what is the core functionality or benefit that we provide which makes a stand out and these are the activities we need to focus on because this is going to help you really understand that everything else is going to be noise and these are the critical Key activities that will make your business and make you stand out and that is linked back to your
3:28:23
strategy remember so everything here it's it's all connected it's all connected anyway right so that's your key activities next one is Key Resources so what assets are essential for your business so Airbnb relies on platform hosts customer service so these are the things that you will need to have as resources whether it's devices whether it's people whether it's platforms whether it's what resources will you need to basically make you able to deliver this product or service that you
3:28:53
have so that's where Key Resources goes and last but not least we've got the cost structure which is what are you going to spend money on you know you're you're going to have to have money going out and money coming in on the revenue stream so the left side here will be the expenses and your partners and your activities and what you're doing as a business the right side is the customer what are your major costs so for example Amazon incurs costs related to Logistics
3:29:18
inventory and Technology infrastructure so you need to start thinking about what is it that's going to cost me is it paying my suppliers is it Logistics do I need a warehouse do I need um to hire people so that they can you know do I need hire Consultants do I need to uh all of these things do I need to run ads so that I can attract people so what are your what are what is your cost structure and what is it that you're going to be spending money on so that
3:29:42
will now enable you when you look at the whole thing it will enable you you on one page to see where am I spending money where am I making money and how am I making money what model who are my partners what are my key activities what are my key resources what's my value proposition that stands right in the middle between those two and this is the the bridge between the divide and then how am I maintaining my customer relationships how am I reaching them well to them and which segments have I
3:30:09
decided on focusing on and this along with your business strategy Playbook really now starts making your business plan now you begin to see hopefully where we're getting at with this Which is far far more useful than you sitting down and trying to go through 40 pages of drible and Waffle that nobody's ever going to read as a as a traditional business plan this is much much better and you will be able to clearly communicate this both for yourself and also other members in your team as you
3:30:36
begin to scale and grow the business so that is the um business model which is the strategy part two with that done we've now got structure which is number six and this is quite an important one so stick around you still here you still here if you're still here really really really well done if you're still here you're awesome and the chances are that your business is going to succeed because most people don't get to this stage so if you are still here I might I
3:31:06
I might just be talking to myself at this stage who knows so if you're still here put down not talking to yourself at this stage you know winky smile and I'll know I'll know you got to the structure bit all right let's get on with structure okay so with structure whether you're a solopreneur or you've got a micro business which is only a small number of people you still need to structure your business the right way from day one you're probably seeing a trend here like that I keep on saying it
3:31:34
needs to be done the right way from day one it's a lot of work in the beginning but really when you put down the right foundations it makes life so much much easier for you as you begin to scale and grow your company because what usually happens is if you don't do it the right way either a it doesn't work or B when you do succeed things break and and they break at a time when you don't want them to break in front of customers and clients and in front of your team and
3:32:02
Things become like people start leaving or people start complaining customers start complaining or any of these things and and that's the wrong time you want these things to break right so what we're trying to do is we're trying to put the right infrastructure now so that later on when things begin to grow and scale your business is ready for it and it's ready to grow from day one pretty much right so with structure here I'm talking about structuring your business
3:32:27
but there are two parts to structuring your business the first one is internal and the second one is external let's start with the second one first and we will begin to then move on to the internal one afterwards by the way none of what I'm saying here is like Financial advice or any of like legal advice or any of that kind of things you really need to make sure that you check with your country rules regulations seek legal advice seek Financial advice make sure that you do all of that because
3:32:56
every country is going to be different so whilst I might talk about Concepts here and in general this whole course really hopefully you're an adult um you know but even if you're not speak to an adult but hopefully you're an adult and if you're starting business all of the advice that we're giving here is like these are best practices the this is the framework you're still very much responsible to make sure that you do it right and any decisions that you make
3:33:21
are going to be decisions that you make right and we're not liable for that hopefully I just wanted to say that just to be absolutely clear but anyway the advice here that we're going to give is just basic concepts of what each things are but hopefully you'll be able to go and get the right advice and by the way getting an accountant and someone from a legal aspect right at the beginning is probably money well spent because they end up actually saving you a lot of
3:33:47
money you know in taxation in setting them up in penalties that you don't have to pay it ends up costing you more if you don't get this advice early on so do try and set some of your budget aside for getting the right legal advice and getting the right Financial advice hopefully as well so let's start looking at the internal and the external like I said we're going to focus on the external first so internal it's really about your business functions it's about ownership and control funding and
3:34:14
investment exter external is about legal structure Taxation and compliance so with external one of the first things that you're going to do is you want to start registering your company right and we're going to have a kind of like Steps here again but these are not all things that you should be doing necessarily in a particular order like you have to do in the problem or solution so here determining your business structure is something that you're going to need to
3:34:42
do whether it's an LLC or you know partnership or a so proprietorship uh we're going to talk about them in more detail you're going to need to choose and register your business name obtain licenses and permits look at tax regulation and tax law and make sure that you've got filed organizational sort of documents that are important as well um because you might be asked to present them at certain times so and also opening up a business account so let's start breaking each one of these
3:35:09
down separately so determining your business structure so it's going to matter on a few things it's going to matter on your specific business needs the country you're in your financial situation whether or not you've got Partners or not as well as your risk tolerance in terms of how much liability you're willing to risk personally as well as for your family and your business so the simplest one is s proprietorship now that is you essentially saying I'm operating as an
3:35:39
individual not as a sort of registered uh limited liability company or any of these things it does have have some tax advantages it's Direct Control you in control it's simple to establish and operate however it's a limited lifespan because it's based on you so if something happens to you there is no business uh pretty much um it's also difficult to raise Capital because you're trying to go personal loans rather than business loans you can but it's still very much because there is
3:36:07
also unlimited personal liability so you could lose potentially your house your assets if you get into debt or if you know contractors or suppliers start demanding money that you weren't able to pay them they will come after your personal stuff and that's why I tend to really Veer away from this because you want to make sure that you're in a place where you've got limited liability for the business and not for you or your loved ones uh but from the get-go that's
3:36:34
probably the easiest one to start with and it's probably the simplest one to establish and operate and in some cases it might be beneficial to do it Partnerships are if you've got more if you've got a partner and sometimes again tax advantages shared responsibility easy to establish there is complexity in taxing files like who did what and who spent what and and all of these things that sometimes you'll get dispute amongst Partners as well as joint and SE several liability you do you are still
3:37:01
liable and sometimes something that your partner does you might actually be liable to pay money because your partner did something got you in debt as a business and you're ending up to sell your house for it so that's also something that I I it depends on the industry as well because certain industries Partnerships are actually quite good and they work really well and the structure of how they are legally structured does give some form of protection so again Ask for legal advice
3:37:29
depending on the industry you're in this is by far the most popular one and the most common one which is the limited liability company now that's an LLC or an limited LTD depending on which country that you're in in terms of how they abbreviate it this is essentially you registering a company and being a director on that company uh you have limited liability so there is no liability on your part personally so they won't come after your house they won't come after your cars you won't
3:37:56
come after your asset they won't come after your family um as long as as long as you stay within the the the law if you have clearly done something that is against the law they will come after you and so will the law so please don't do that right but uh also other Advantage is Perpetual existence so this business is not tied to you you the the the government sees you or the law sees you as two separate entities so if you decide to sell it or something happens
3:38:22
to you it can be passed down to family it can be sold on to other people and it has Perpetual existence and it could last for hundreds and hundreds theoretically infinite number of years um it's easier to raise Capital because it's a company and everything is is is easy to see in terms of like what the ingoing and the outgoings are where when it's personal things just kind of blend and merge and you don't know what's actually spent for business and what's spent for
3:38:47
you and and all of that things um cons are varied laws uh depending on which country some have advantages more than the others um self-employment taxes you do have to pay taxes for yourself once you pay yourself from the business so you're kind of almost like paying twice but in many many ways it's still a lot more tax efficient than other other setups so it's still not bad from a tax perspective uh cost and maintenance as well um it there's a lot of cost to to
3:39:15
maintain it and keep it and and file for sort of accounts and pay accountants and and all of these things uh it it does have some kind of Maintenance even uh if you're not doing anything it still needs to do all of these things Corporation is the next level up where you still have limited liability Perpetual existence same Capital sort of uh raising but then it becomes a lot more complex in its cost and structure it's got regulatory requirements where you need to file and
3:39:43
be open about certain details about your business it's double taxation there's a whole bunch of cons to it and really it's this is when you are scaling to a very big level is when you start when you start having shareholders and things like that that that Corporation actually makes some sense but again please check in your country because every every country and every region is different and the laws are different and the setups are different in terms of the
3:40:07
benefits are so here's a checklist for you to be able to choose which entity it's really going to depend on you know risk tolerance Capital needs business goals all of that stuff um so next one is let's have a look at registering uh your business name and choosing a name choose a unique name try and come up with a distinctive name that people will remember something that reflects your brand and your identity something that's easy for target audience to identify the
3:40:36
name and pronounce it um make sure that it's not registered and is not in use so you you might not be able to use it if it's trademarked or registered in your specific industry so it might be registered and used in a different industry and that might be fine in your country again check with your country to see sometimes you cannot come up with you know two two company names cannot be the same in other countries they can be the same as long they're in different Industries and so
3:41:00
on and so forth have a look at your domain availability so if you come up with a name see if there's a.com that's always the best one still by far is com but you know you can look at country. co.uk doca Za do all of these are also viable um even it depends on the type of business it could be TV a do whatever and there's a whole slew of them but is usually still the one that a lot of people think to go to First the next step is really making sure that you understand naming regulations in your
3:41:30
country because sometimes you can and cannot have certain words or certain things used in a country and sometimes you need to take permission and there might be trademarks there might be laws about the the country actually saying you have to name your company based on this if it's in this this industry so again check with your country once you've got all of that and you've identified the name you've got the domain hopefully all you can go and register your company name with the
3:41:53
appropriate government body and then you try and protect it if you feel that it's something worth protecting like trademarking to protect your brand identity so that's your company name the next two ones are like license and permits and tax regulation so if you are in a an industry where you need to have licenses and permits whether you're selling food or you're selling Medical devices or whether you are providing Medical Services or like health or any of these kind of things even from an
3:42:21
engineering construction all all of these things they will have their own compliance and regulations that you need to abide by and you need to make sure that you check and make sure that you are following and Abiding and complying with all of these things here's a checklist for you to to to go through again don't it's not exhaustive but it's a good starting point guide for your business to try and get an idea of what you need to be looking for so that's for regulations and this is for compliance
3:42:45
next one is filing organizational documents and opening up a business account now you will need to have important company documents here is a kind of list of categories of what you will probably need to have um you might not have them all in the beginning but you'll probably build up having most of them at any given time and you need to make sure that you've got a place where you can store them both digitally and in paper and make regular backups of them as well uh in different locations in
3:43:14
case like fire happens data breach all of these things you just need to make sure that you've got backups and backups of backups hopefully right so Corporation documents formation documents financial documents um compliance regulatory documents employment contracts HR documents intellectual property documents if you're registering or filing any IP or trademarks or patents um contracts agreements with your um clients or with your customers or with your team or with
3:43:42
your people all of that stuff governance and meeting records in terms of like you know uh minutes of meetings insurance documents as well as data protection um because of data privacy laws now and miscellaneous so these are the main categories I'll open this up a little bit more for you to be able to see um a little bit more details in terms of examples of what these articles are again this is not exhaustive but you can begin to see that these are typical documents that a company will build up
3:44:10
over time and you need to make sure that you've got a nice place for you to store them as well um here's a checklist for you and um hopefully that for the external structure I told you we're going to try and be comprehensive in this course right we're not leaving anything unturned hopefully if you have any ideas about any extra videos that you would want us to do please put in the comments below and say hey can you talk a little bit more about this and we'd be more than happy to uh consider
3:44:35
it if it gets asked enough times right so internal business structure now let's have a look at your internal business uh and how you're going to structure your business business internally and again you need to do it from day one no surprise now I'm okay you get it right okay first thing is first you the business owner the CEO you can call yourself whatever director manager business owner CEO Bob whatever you want to call yourself it doesn't matter but that's the thing is
3:45:02
having a CEO mindset understanding your role as the business owner and that you're running the business and managing the business to grow and scale it so that you can have the impact the Financial Freedom the time Freedom that you really want to be able to have you can't be working inside it 24/7 right otherwise you'll burn out and you're not going to achieve your dreams or goals that you put early on in the vision board so we've got four main pillars here if you will really and within each
3:45:26
pillar we've got a set of functions so the four main pillars are the CEO pillar which is your pillar the product pillar which is where you develop and deliver and fulfill your products and services your customer which is Marketing sales after sales and your business which is all of your business operations Legal Financial admin processes systems HR it all of that stuff we'll talk about it in a second so let's have a look at each one in particular so the CEO one is you being the CEO the product
3:45:56
one is research and development again it doesn't matter even if you're doing you know a Kung Fu tutorial like you know a gym if you've opened a gym if you've opened you're developing you're still researching and developing your products and services in the way that we've spoken about right so it doesn't matter this doesn't NE necessarily need to be a product it doesn't need to be a tech company it doesn't me need to be R&D in the in in the traditional way of
3:46:18
thinking it's research and development of your products and services if you are building an online course it's still researching and developing the online course for example um right so then you've got production which is actually once you've researched and developed it you produce it and you're able to distribute it as well as fulfillment which is actually delivering it so if it's a service you're actually giving the service if it's a uh product then you're giving out the product and
3:46:41
shipping it and making sure that they've got the product in customer we've got Marketing sales after sales so marketing is attracting the customer sales is converting the customer after sales is making sure they're happy they have an awesome experience they sing and Praises about you and they basically keep coming back and get other people to come and line up as well that's the idea behind the customer pillar right the business that's where we've got operations where
3:47:06
our systems and processes are we've got admin and management and by the way admin and management there's a difference management is you managing the the team uh and and admin is doing the admin work or the processes now the difference between operations and management is the operations is designing how the operations and the and and how things are going to be managed whereas management is actually then executing those so one is designing it and designing the processes designing
3:47:36
the systems designing all of these things of how they're going to be done and then the admin and the management are actually executing the management and the administration of the business Finance is accounts um bookkeeping all of that good stuff getting paid paying you need to get paid you need to have a finance function you've got it from day one you're going to be doing it probably and maybe you're going to Outsource to a bookkeeper or an accountant which I
3:47:57
would recommend but if you can't do that you're still going to be doing that from day one legal again from day one purchasing HR it intelligence so with HR your function inside HR is still going to happen from day one because you are basically hiring yourself to be doing a lot of these roles in the beginning you're going to be working in your business you're going to have contract with yourself you you know as a shareholder you're going to U open up a company you're going to have all of
3:48:26
these kind of things and you're going to need to manage your satisfaction and you not overwhelming yourself and burning out but also even if you're Outsourcing to a VA or even if you're Outsourcing to A supplier or a contractor you'll need to actually also it's human resources and you are looking at all of the human resources that you're going to need to have so that your business can function and you will still need to have it from day one you don't necessarily need to
3:48:48
hire anyone in HR until your business is a big size usually around about 50 people or so um anything under that you're usually either doing it yourself or then having someone inh house as an admin doing that as as a double rooll and potentially even Outsourcing out you know a fractional HR person you don't need to have one full-time all the time but it's something that you will have from day one actually all of these you're going to have from day one even purchasing for example so this is where
3:49:14
you will go and buy things H and you're going to need to buy equipment you're going to need to buy stationary you're going to need to buy uh websites and and and and development of websites and and all of these things uh so all of that comes under purchasing it is your equipment we all have it at the moment laptop and web services and all of these things intelligence is basically the data and the insights that you're getting for your intelligence so as you
3:49:42
are going through all of what we've been doing this course is literally intelligence really we've been doing research making sure that we've got the right data the right information the right feedback the right testimonials the right all of that stuff so that we're making the right business decisions based on data based on intelligence and as your business grows this function becomes even more important uh as you scale your business once you scale Beyond six seven figures
3:50:05
it then becomes a section of its own which in this day and age is actually one of the most important sections one of the most important functions inside your business so that your essentially the internal structure and the different pillars and the functions that you have inside your business and along with your job description as the CEO in terms of what your role is then that sort of really lays out all of the functions that you have inside your business and
3:50:29
let's have a look at trying to map out the next 3 to 5 years and what kind of positions you will want to have so right at the beginning when you start it's probably just you doing a lot of the things you may have like an executive assistant or a v a you might have like an accountant or a bookkeeper who does your accounts maybe even once a year um you've got legal to just basically set up the company register the company again all of these might be tiny outsourced stuff but essentially it's
3:51:01
you and maybe a VA then as your business grows your first thing usually will be to add in fulfillment because that's usually one of the things that takes the least amount of like Leverage because what you want to be doing is the things that are high leverag your time where you can make more money for the business is where you should be spending your time and things that are low leverage tasks are things that you should start giving out as soon as possible so for example you should be doing sales
3:51:29
because your hour spent selling a customer who's going to be on a retainer for you for 12 months and giving you $55,000 a month for you know and that's $60,000 over a 12-month period or you spending an hour and So you you're doing an hour and actually making $60,000 or you spending an hour and working on a job that you know you can pay someone $35 an hour for or $50 an hour for and then the numbers don't make sense and that's what I see a lot of people do is that they sit there
3:52:00
and they say I need to do this thing and I need to work on this thing but actually you can Outsource that get someone to do it and you go and build the business you go and grow the business right so this is what I want you to start thinking now in terms of what are the high leverage tasks that I need to be focusing on and what functions do I need to hire out as soon as I can and when it practically and financially makes sense of course right so that's your fulfillment the next one
3:52:24
after that is usually operations and that's when you start getting someone to start looking at the systems and the processes within your business and Logistics and all of these things and how your business is going to run because nine times out of 10 we as entrepreneurs are Visionaries we don't go into the nitty-gritty details we we are you know we've got the Shin OB syndrome where it's like shiny shiny shiny this idea this idea this idea and then we we sort of like pick something
3:52:50
and as soon as it's exciting and then as soon as we touch it then it becomes boring and we jump on to the next thing and you want someone who's an integrator in your business who then actually gets the stuff done in detail who loves the numbers loves the spreadsheets some entrepreneurs will have both some entrepreneurs will be integrators and not have the Visionary you need to identify who you are and and hire the kind of the opposite end of that Spectrum for you so if you're a
3:53:14
Visionary hire an integrator if you're an integrator hire a Visionary who could really take your business and say hey this is our long-term destination and this is what we need to be doing so that's usually the next hire then after that we can start looking at production um of actually making the products as well as after sales customer service is usually something that also can be handed off quite relatively lower price point and you're still maintaining the higher leverage tasks now of course
3:53:41
every business is going to be different and who you need to hire from from day one is going to be different depending on the industry but I'm just giving you an idea here of averages of typical uh typical ways of how we would structure and grow a business but again you will need to have your own order and take it in the way that makes the most sense for you so one way to look at it is like you know what is the biggest thing that's holding you back from scaling from
3:54:05
growing and if it's that thing then you you fix that thing if you if you are not if you don't have the right systems and processes and you need to have them need to hire an operations person if you if your fulfillment is like you're you don't have enough time in the day because you're fulfilling fulfilling fulfilling and your resource capacity is going to hit and you can't hire any more clients and you can't find time to sell to other clients and get someone in
3:54:29
fulfillment and that's how you should be thinking about growing your business right so next one then is sales right at the beginning when you are under 100K in annual revenue like let's say us do under 100K give or take you are still doing the sales you are testing price testing product validating your MVP doing all of these things so that you can understand the market understand the pricing points understand what it's going to take to sell this product and this item and once you've understood
3:54:57
what what it's going to take to sell then when you bring on sales teams then it becomes really really easy to train them right so that's what we want to be able to do is it becomes so so easy to train them because you've gone through it you know the processes so that's when you start building a sales team and then after that as your business grows more your delegation is going to change and this is what I was talking about ear on in the course where I was saying you
3:55:20
shift gears because you need to start shifting gears as your business grows so for example from a delegation perspective initially it's going to be you and an admin and you are giving them some tasks and you say right you do these tasks so you're delegating tasks and they give you back the tasks you approve it you say it's good or not and and and and so it goes and as you're growing your team usually you're the the boss and everyone is coming to you but at one point you become the bottleneck
3:55:48
so then as you go on to the next phase once your business is about 100K 300K uh annually per year again this is going to depend on the industry uh but on average then you're going to see hit a ceiling because you can no longer have enough people sort of asking you and you become the bottleneck and you hit your resource capacity so then what you need to do is you then you need to start hiring leads and that's where you start getting a product lead or a customer lead who then
3:56:13
becomes your sales coordinator or sales manager or marketing director or or product you know head of product or any of these things where they are now in charge and what you're doing is you're delegating Authority and and rather than just delegating tasks you're delegating Authority and you're saying okay now you have sign off on this I'm no longer going to be the bottleneck here are the systems here are the processes here are our quality controls here's my our
3:56:36
strategy here's my business strategy and here is your functional strategy go away and make sure it happens and that's what you're doing and as soon as you start growing then beyond seven figures plus then what you do is you shift gears again and then you start delegating strategy so that's when you start getting your coo chief operations officer and CMO your Chief marketing officer and what you're doing is you're saying now not here is your functional strategy you come up with the functional
3:57:05
strategy for me that aligns with the overall business strategy as a CEO that I put down so the COO puts down an operation strategy the CMO puts down a marketing strategy and now you're delegating strategy not just Authority not just tasks and this is what I mean by shifting gears as you scale your business and this applies across the board delegating is just one one example of this so what I want you to do is I want you to understand that this is where we're going and this is how the
3:57:31
business can can scale so in this step here we've got the leads and these leads are managing the sales team or managing the production team and then after that the next stage after that when you're multiple seven figures this is where you start getting leadership teams and then you are building a leadership team you're no longer just building the team itself you're building a lead a leadership team that then builds and then they delegate down Authority then they delegate down tasks and so on and
3:57:57
so forth and that's how the business is able to scale without you being the bottleneck inside the business now how you want to be able to do this is you want to be able to sit down and then map out like an or chart and sit down and say okay these are the functions that need to happen inside my business when I first start off it's going to be me you you you you sales you marketing you in operations you're an admin you're in finance you're in HR and then as your business starts growing
3:58:22
then you start saying okay I'm still in finance but I might Outsource to an accountant and I might Outsource to a bookkeeper I'm still you know in operations but I might Outsource to you know customer service or it I'm still the sales and marketing um lead but I might Outsource to a copywriter and then you've got your other people where you've outsourced like HR and outsourced like a VA and you know you've outsourced a lawyer so on and so forth and you can begin to see
3:58:48
that now you are starting to to switch you yourself around with other team members and then as your business grows then you start having marketing leads sales leads they have their own smaller teams so on and so forth operations manager has a like you know a VP of marketing and as you grow and grow and grow then you start getting you know a COO a CTO a chief technical officer and then they have their own leads and and and and teams underneath them and you sit at the top and that's how you will
3:59:16
build your business but don't panic yet you're not here yet we're still at stage one but I'm just giving you a glimpse of what is possible and why you will need to start shifting gears as you grow the business and whilst this course here focuses on groundbreaker fire starter is for example is the next stage and Trailblazer is the stage after that so for six to seven figures is is is fire starter 7 to8 figures is Trailblazer for now we are just focusing on getting you
3:59:41
started and getting you to build the right business so that that you can scale it to a million but hopefully our main first Milestone is 100k which is six figures in Revenue now whilst you're not there yet one day you might want to be which is why we're establishing the right structure right now but the important thing here is if you cannot yet afford to hire a roll you wear the hat for that role until you can afford it you block off time during the day and
4:00:09
you say Wednesday afternoon I'm going to be marketing or I'm going to be sales Tuesday morning I'm going to be fulfillment and you block off time to play that role and wear that hat but no it's not your role and this is a big big game Cher because a lot of people sit there and they get lost in the working inside the business and they think that that's what it is to be a business owner but it's not that's not your role that's not your job your job is to work on the
4:00:36
business grow the business and then you can then have that time Freedom have that Financial Freedom because other people are doing the stuff for you right that's what we want to be able to do now it doesn't need to be a big Corporation it could still be four or five people it could be a tiny family but at the end of the day you still need to make sure that you leverage other people to do the things that are things that are not going to grow your business so that you
4:01:02
can focus on things that will actually grow your business not on the things that are not going to grow your business hopefully that makes sense here's a checklist for you to Define your organizational chart and with that we have now come to the end of you registering your company and building your structure and understanding how you're going to structure your business inside out what we've done here in this course so far it's been a journey it's been a real real journey hasn't it and
4:01:31
if you are still here I am so proud I am so happy and I really really wish you the best but this is what we said at the beginning of the course we are going to get you to understand what your journey is really get the right CEO mind set figure out what problem you're going to solve come up with a strategy come up with a solution so that you've got the business idea that's validated and tested and actually then start registering and structuring your company so you're ready to be able to sell your
4:01:58
products and services now the next half of the course which is really about marketing about sales about after sales about Finance about how you're going to make money how you're going to set up your technology the systems and the processes how you're going to start looking at your team and testing that is a second half of the course and that is part two and no I am not going to sit there and say hey if you want part two you must buy it no I'm happy to release
4:02:23
it for you for free if you really want it and you found this valuable please put down in the comments below part two please and if we get enough part twos and we get enough likes on this video and we see that what we're doing actually is making a lot of sense to people I'm more than happy to release it again free of charge no cost full detailed nothing held back so if that is something that you really want to see please put down part two please and make sure that you like make sure that you
4:02:52
share make sure you get other people to do that so that we know that this choice of what we're doing is actually working but also I do want to point you to two things the first thing is if you want a copy of the slides and if you want the worksheets there is information in the description below on how you can get that for free the second thing that I want to point you towards is if you have enjoyed this course and you thought that this is going to be super valuable for
4:03:18
you and if you're looking for a community that is of awesome like-minded people like yourself where we can discuss this stuff and we can keep you accountable and personalize advice for you and really have a a community for accountability for for experience for all of these kind of things we are building a community and we would love to welcome you in the community and I will put down again in the description below information on how you can join us in our awesome Grand breaker Community I
4:03:51
really want to thank you for taking the time to listen to me and I really wish you the best of luck in your business and hopefully if we've got enough likes by now and hopefully if you're watching this a little bit later on then hopefully what I'm going to do is I'm going to point here and I'll say that part two is here if you don't see it yet that means that not enough people people have commented and liked yet so please comment and like and say part two please
4:04:19
part two you know and then we will have it here if it's here then you'll be able to go there and watch it and we will go through like I said Marketing sales after sales Finance teams systems and processes everything the whole lot hopefully if it's there I'll see you on in this one otherwise I'll see you next time
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