Lessons

Lesson Info

Finding a Profitable Idea

Okay, So Session, too. Finding a profitable idea. Now, I use this term carefully because what we have 50% of people here who are creatives who are not making any money. That's not acceptable. That's not gonna happen after today. So a profitable idea and profitable clients is what we're going after. All right? That means you're not putting 100% your money back into your business. You actually taking some out. You're living a lifestyle that you want to live, and you're slowly increasing that as you go on. So most people never get past this point. I ran, I run. I think we collect probably or 40,000 survey responses a month. Very extensive. Better data collection. Here's when we did. What's the biggest thing stopping you from starting a side business? And the number one thing was, I don't know what kind of work to do. I don't even have an idea. Now, some of the people watching don't know what to do. Others have an idea, but it's like semi profitable or they're you know, they're making a d...

ecent money, but they want to take it to the next level. But it's interesting to know. I don't know what kind of work to do. I don't have an idea. Is one of the number one barriers drew When we were talking about your friends, You said I don't have enough time. That's actually usually the number two barrier. Number one is I don't know what to do. How many people have ever run a survey like this with your clients? How many people have? Not yet. We expect to walk in their pitch them on us and why we're so great. And have them just hand over barrel fulls of money. How do you know what to talk to them about? How do you know what to pitch me on If you've never asked me number one question coming up to people's mind, Why would they tell me? Why would they even talk to me? We're gonna cover that. But you have to add value to them. Frankly, most people want to tell you their problems because so few people actually listen. All right, if you came up to me, use ever meet, You know, let's just make up a problem. Workouts, skin. Like I told you, I was a skinny guy. Meet You know, uh, I'm really curious. Like I know you've been working out, and it's like, I know it's been challenging. Like for me. I try to lose weight. It's interesting for you. I know you've mentioned wanting to gain weight. So, like, how does that go, like, how does it feel or what do you do when you go in the gym? And I'm like like I've been wanting to talk about this for years and no one listened. So if it's my number one pain point, I'll talk about it forever. Does everyone agree? If if I if I find out you're number one painful and I genuinely ask you, you will talk about it to me forever, right? Whether it be back pain or photographers website that doesn't actually drive any business or, ah, guy hiring writers and all the writers suck. You'll talk about that forever, and that is where I collect intelligence. Um, what others do is they don't they skip that step, they start wanting to sell, which is why they think selling a sleazy and they just randomly go from tactic to tactic. Right, So so friends and family are like it's easy to go to them because we think, Oh, they have been such big networks. But really, that's not your client. What others do is they randomly do all this stuff that we think we should do and people tell us we should do, and we don't even know why we're doing. We just do it. A better approach is a more systematic approach where we say, OK, what are my challenges? Number one? I need to understand who are who are my customers, what their big key challenges etcetera. And we make notice these, like, sort of messy things around it. There's always going to be mess, even in my sort of customer research that I do, which has become much more sophisticated over time. There's a lot of messiness. Okay, I created 16 versions of my dream job course before we got it right with 17th people were like crying, sobbing all kinds of shit before we got it right. And then it was messy. We threw away all these power points and stuff, but we finally moved systematically. I want to teach you how to do that today. Okay, so I want to show you some ideas that people have used to show you that you don't have to be the most unique person in the world. Power Point designs. How do you think I got these power points? I paid someone. Why? Because they were good. A power point. But a lot of people are like, Well, I'm good at power point, but I just do that for work. Well, perhaps are there people who want their power points to look good and they'll pay you? What's happening right now is like half the people watching us. Because their creative, they're like your PowerPoint suck. You need a better power point designer. I should pitch you right now, but what they don't understand is do you think I really care about going? Let's just pretend that this is 80% of perfection. You really think I care about going to 85% of perfection? What do you think happens when I think about? What do you think would happen if someone pitched me right now read. Your PowerPoint slides are okay, but they could be a lot better. What do you think is going through my head right now? You okay? Sort of purpose that you have for them. I don't care. It's good enough. I think the slides look great. They could they look better. Yeah, but what else? What else? But why would I not want to hire someone? Insulted? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Okay, that's probably true. What else? That's good. But what else? Correct. Is it gonna help me in some way? And what are the risks with dealing with someone they may show me? Like some of the power points? They're beautiful. What are the risks? If you're working with someone who is trying to take you from 80% to 85 there's a good chance that they're in that circle of the craft and probably will ignore all of the other. Think already that my risk is I have to deal with someone new who's not gonna be timely. They don't know. Like they don't look. No, my colors and my styles and all kinds of stuff. Now I have to spend 80 million hours dealing with this person. I'm too busy. I don't have time. Why do I care? This is serving its purpose. Let me. This is one teeny part of my business. But this person, because this is their life. They think it's this wrong. People come to me the biggest mistake people make when they pitch, I get pitched like hundreds of times a week. They pitch me because I teach people how to pitch. So they think. But the ironic thing is, my students don't pitch me cause they know better there. Like I'm gonna just sit and bide my time until I see a pain point. Go in there and get That's how I hire a lot of people. But the unwashed masses, as I like to call them those are the people who haven't taken my courses. I call them the unwashed masses. They pitch me on the worst pitches in the world. Let me tell you the number one pitch, they give you a meat. I noticed that in your emails. By the way, my emails are like, quite long. Uh, I noticed in your emails that, like, there were two typos in there, it's really unprofessional. And it definitely will decline in resulting decline sales. I'm like, Do you know what the hell you're talking about? I track everything and I know for a fact that doesn't result in decline sales. By the way, if I have to spelling errors, why do I care? Is it worth it for me to hire someone at another body blow up? No. They're picking some minor corner of my business without ever understanding what I really care about. So other things that people have uses aerial students of mine in De Witt wedding DJs. Notice that's not just a wedding wedding deejay, but Indy weddings. Very niche down. You're gonna play a different type of music. You're going to dress a different type of way, right? I have no idea what this would look like. I don't go to Indy weddings, but somebody does. So that's a good thing. Making custom collector, plush dolls, whatever somebody buys it. So what is the point here? The point is, you don't have to be the most unique person on the block, but I would like you to be nichd down. Don't force yourself to get too clever. You don't have to be super unique and new. You can actually start off at a very sort of, um, standard level that other people are doing. If you see competition, that's a good thing. I want to say that again. If you see competition, that's a good thing because so many people say that phrase we use earlier. Uh, if oh, that guy's already doing and I can't do it wrong, you can do it better than him. You could do it better than him. In a lot of ways, you can get better at your craft, which you probably should. You can also do this, which no one else is doing. Every creative is sitting around worrying about this and buying these craft magazines, and they're not listening to their clients at all. That's how you that's how you can beat your competition. Who has 10 years more experience. I'll give you an example. I heard a book researcher to research my book, so when I started writing this, it was like, um, I took this book before this was even a cover. I put a post on my blog's and looking for a book researcher. Okay, so I get a bunch of applicants, and some of the Africans were professional book researchers. They work for big names. I ended up hiring a kid at U. C. L. A. Is a college kid. He's still in college and he worked for me, and he actually worked for me for free. We're gonna talk about this later, cause I know everybody's really mad about free work, etcetera. Why did I choose him? It wasn't about the free, By the way. The money was irrelevant. Anybody have an idea? Why would choose him over other professional book researchers? He's in your target demographic. Good. What else? He's willing to listen to what you wanted. He didn't, like, Have a presumption. Like somebody who has years in the business. Excellent. What else? He was very communicative. When I emailed me email me back in, like, 10 minutes. He went through some of my tests and he was willing to do like, like, one of the things that I wasn't particularly great out with some of the math in the book. Not that good at math. And he was really good at it. So he supported what I needed to fix some of the math numbers. He would check my numbers. Well, what? So I ended up hiring him. He continues to work with me now, and he now makes a great living. Okay? He makes a lot of money, So he's been instrumental in what we've done. The key is he understood my needs, whereas the more experienced people were just like, Here's my list of things I do take it or leave it and they actually selected themselves out. Instead, I picked someone who had no functional experience. So even if you have no experience, you can actually beat people with years of experience based on listening to your client's needs. Okay, that's what we're covering today. Any questions so far? Okay. One of the goals for people who don't have an idea is to find $100 idea than tune it up 200 hours a month, 500 hours a month, $2000 a month, etcetera. I covered this extensively in some of my other material on my site. Why do I say 100? Our idea how many people know someone who came up with this grandiose idea like I'm gonna be a photographer for bricklayers and they create a website and a Twitter account and business cards and LLC. And then nine months later, they go out and try to talk to people, and nobody wants to pay for their service. Anybody know somebody like this? Yeah. They've wasted their time. They've wasted their money. They wasted their opportunity costs. Why do I say $100 idea? I want you to be able to validate this quickly. What this means is I don't care if you're if you should. Let's say your market charges 50 bucks an hour. Okay? Let's just say I don't care if you start charging $20. Are you going to get the wrong type of client? Probably. Are you gonna be underselling yourself? Probably. But you're gonna get validation from 1 to 3 people. And once you know, the 1st 1 might be your mom. I don't recommend it, but it could be a second person. Your grandma. Third persons. Not a fluke. That's a real client. Now you have validation that the market is willing to pay and yeah, you're under charging and stuff like that. But now you have a portfolio. Now you can tune that up. Okay, Now we're gonna talk a lot about pricing, cause I already know people are going crazy. Raw meat. You're just trying to depress the wages of the working man. Blah, blah, blah. No, I'm not. I'm trying to get you clients and validate what you're doing so that you don't spend six months on a feudal idea that would never make money. Got it? Okay, Step one is to get specific. We've talked about ideas, and we're gonna go into these ideas now. People are like I'm a web designer. Well, no, you're not a web designer. Targeting a photographer has nothing to do with a Web designer targeting me. Someone selling weight loss strategies to ah, 25 year old woman has nothing to do with a 54 year old woman. I was at a conference speaking to, uh, it was 200 was a 254 women in, like, 10 dudes is a great conference. And eso we're talking about some of this idea stuff, and I said, Like, what? Your challenge. What's your idea? And so what do you do? You selling? And someone said, like I'm selling, um, like, consulting on love. Two women, I said Okay, great. So you're helping them with relationships? Terrific. And she I said, who is your client? All right. She goes What? My client is a woman between the ages of 25 to 54. I like what can you say that again? 25 to 54? I'm like, Do you think a 25 year old woman has anything in common with a 54 year old woman? When it comes to love? Nothing. The words they use, the emotions they feel the things they do are different. It was lazy to say 25 to 54. Another way to put it is, let's say you are looking for a shirt you go to north from dot com or whatever. And, uh, you see the shirt you like, kind of like this. You zoom in, you know, the image pops up and it's Let's just say it's, uh let's say you're like a 32 year old woman, okay? And you push the enlarge button and you see, like a 30 year old woman wearing it, she looks good. She got a nice scored on. She looks good, all right. And then you click next, and all of a sudden you see this 16 year old girl wearing it just kind of like promiscuous. You're like, I don't like I don't like how this girl look. She should her shorts too short. Then you push the next button. You see a 60 year old grandmother wearing What's the first thing you do? Close the window. Goodbye. In a world of infinite choice, if something is not made for me, I'm gone. So when you say to me, the meat I'm a web designer. I say, get to the back of the line. The line that I'm gonna ignore when you say we meet from looking at what you've been talking about, you're really interested in conversion optimization? I happen to have some experience. I was able to raise conversions 268% on four other sites. I'd love to talk with you. And I think there are four things out recommend for you. I can give those to you right now, if you like. Let's talk in five minutes. Okay, so we're gonna get specific. Okay, so we're gonna get specific. Do that in a second. We're gonna talk about I'm gonna take your ideas, and we're gonna get ultra specific, including people on the web. Two. Once you have an idea number how he talked about being comfortable stereotyping people, like I might say, 0 35 year old mid level executives who work in Manhattan. Is that stereotyping? Is that gender based sexist? Maybe. I don't know. I'm gonna test it. And I have a variety of ways to test your idea. Now everyone here should be listening carefully because many of us are serving clients that are never gonna pay us. Never. So I have people that are like, I'm like, what? Your client. They're like, I'm a grant writer. I'm like God, who is your client? Non profits. So I apply a very simple back of the napkin test. It's called the Pace Certainty Technique. This is one of the things from my earn one K program pay certainty ensures that you will be certain you get paid. Were not that creative, that I will teach you the rich. And it goes like this simply to questions number one. Does this client have the ability to pay? Do they actually have money? So let's talk about the non profit. Do they passed or failed that test? Shout it out. Go ahead. Say they fail, they fail. In general, we're generalizing here. You wanted to be all encompassing because it's not politically correct to say that nonprofits really generally don't have money, but we're speaking generally we have to, Necessarily because we were at the back of a napkin level were not at the specific level. So again, does a nonprofit do they have the ability to pay? Not really, Especially if you're charging a premium price for your service, right? All right. If you're gonna charge, you know, $182 to write Grant writing that, maybe they haven't. But you want to charge a competitive price, right? 6 10 $20,000. Do they have money? They have that ability to pay. No, Everyone's really uncomfortable here. Let's go to the Web. What's up with this? No one is saying no. They're, like, really uncomfortable with this point. The results of the grant to pay for it. We'll talk about that, but I disagree with you were talking about ability. Does a nonprofit I'm generalizing here and I'm really comfortable doing that. Do they have the ability to pay? No. Unless it's the gates correct on. You're not gonna be pitching the Gates Foundation. What is the website? I'm super curious about this reaction. The majority have been Let's see. Three fails in a row, Tracy Martin says. My biggest clients are all nonprofit. Take a photo says my main client is a non profit, and they pay me not a lot. Yeah, All right, So look, there are always exceptions, but we're generalizing here and I'm really comfortable doing that. And you should be, too. Otherwise, you're gonna be living in a world where you believe that every single person is different. What we discovered yesterday, we're pretty much all the same with specific exceptions. So they fail the first test, the ability test of the pay certainty technique. What's the second part? Do they have the willingness to pay? No correct. They feel that as well. Even if they have the money, Will they pay in general? No. Why? Why? Why will nonprofits in general not pay correct their passions? Their cause? They're very used to trading services because they're nonprofits. That's fine. I'm not coming down on nonprofits. I'm simply using them is example of a troublesome client. If you're trying to grow your business now, let's go to another example. Let's say that I'm a personal stylist, okay? And I want to pick Let's Let's say, as I pick up my pockets were, Let's say that I'm a personal stylist and I have three potential clients I could go to. I want us to apply the pay certainty technique to these clients. Um, so I help men look better wearing better clothes. Okay, Um, client number one a 30 35 to 40 year old executives who live in Manhattan. Do they pass the ability test? Do they pass the willingness test? Why? Why are they willing to pay? They're upwardly mobile. They live in really expensive city. Their salaries got to match that. And what? OK, so that's the ability part. But why would let's say I'm 36 year old executive in Manhattan? Why would I would be willing to pay for a stylist? You want to climb status and I want to look good at work, right, Because that helps me go up pass. Well done. Um, 20 year old college student fail on all accounts, super interesting, so they don't have the ability and have any money. They don't have the willingness because why they were like free T shirts from Google right now. 65 year old retiree past ability test. Yes, yes, yeah. Willing This test correct. He's like, been married for 40 years. He doesn't care what he looks like. He's really overweight. You see that? Complexity? This This is a very simple on the surface technique, but it immediately eliminates 70% of the people that you've even been thinking about. Let's just take a second here in pause. I want everyone to think about how they can apply this to their own clients. And what surprises you about the Pacer into technique. Okay, so what have we learned from this, we've learned, is that many of us are just focusing haphazardly on anyone, and we don't even apply a back of the napkin technique. This is just like the simplest technique you'll find in some of my earn one K material. But it actually helps you cut down the people that you're talking to and focus on the people who you actually care about. Remember that diagram a couple of slides ago with all the haphazard stuff and the systematic stuff? This is what we're working on, getting more systematic. So if you if you are watching and you have no idea what to do But you want to earn more money, You come up with a list of 10 ideas. Then you think about who's my ideal client profile. 35 year old executive, 26 year old single woman. Whatever again, stereotyping is okay. At this level, you apply the Pacer into technique. Cut some of those people out. Now we're gonna go deeper.