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Living a Richer Life

Today we're going to talk about living a richer life now my entire business for the last ten years has been about helping us live a rich life, and I think there are a lot of different aspects of a rich life most people think it's just about money, I think money is important, I think it matters, but I think that a lot of us want to know what do we love? How do we share that with the world? How do we get the freedom to do the things we want to do? And so for the last ten years, I've talked about automating your finances, starting to invest, finding your dream job, finding a business that you can run, whether it's with clients as a freelancer or a consultant and most recently starting an online business. All of this has one thread interwoven throughout the whole thing, and that is using the power of psychology to change your behavior and change the behaviour of the people around you in a positive way. Um, we're going to cover a lot of tactics today. I'll show you some strategies that I've...

used to grow my business, but it's not just tactical, we want to really understand the mental and psychological side of starting a business as well, because I know for a lot of creatives, you know, I could give you the perfect idea today and we have a lot of mental barriers and blocks right? How do I charge mohr nobody will pay for my services what is my idea? I'm not sure there's so much competition why would anyone choose me? So we're going to talk about how to cover those in starting a business so today we're going to cover how to start a business we're going to cover we're going to do a case study with one of my students vanessa she has an amazing business and chase jarvis one of the founders of creative life he's going to come out we're going to chat as well so as we start as we start talking today about an online business, I'd like to first ask the people here in the audience who here has thought about starting an online business before all right? Perfect. So we have mike's I want to ask a few questions why an online business? What is appealing to you about starting an online business in particular? Go ahead, just pick up the mic pretty loose today. Yeah, go ahead, sir. Just the impact that it be ableto have on a number of people just kind of a magnitude right kind of one to one but one of many beautiful so you khun scale okay, perfect what else? Just how many people you can reach versus your local markets absolutely so impact what else ah location independence what does that mean allowing me to work from wherever I want to work beautiful so we have the prototypical pictures of people on their mac laptop on a beach right? Ok, so that's one the other thing is you can live in a different city you could travel for two three weeks at a time and your income continues growing your impact continues going what else? It's right over here let's see you can like personalized teo each customer like individually because like technology's very ah you could manipulate very easily yeah well I wouldn't use the word manipulate but you can certainly scale your knowledge so think of the best sales person in the world maybe this person works at nordstrom maybe this person works at g whatever the case they can typically work one toe one they're really good but now we have some of the best salespeople online that khun work one to a million think about amazon's recommendations think about somebody that creates a life changing course and spends the time to really understand their customer and now for the rest of time for the next ten twenty, thirty years anyone who comes to that site and identifies as a customer it's almost as if it was created custom for them so when I think of starting an online business I started asking people around me and it was very interesting how most people said I want location independence, by the way. Interesting how no one here mentioned money. I want to make money. Why don't we just get real with each other? I think that a lot of people want to do it because they use the word passive income, right? Oh, I want to make money while I sleep and we're gonna cover that as well. Uh, but you'll notice that a lot of people say I want location, independence. I want passive income. I want to be able to scale. Just put that aside, we're going to come back to those things I just said in a few minutes. Um, I want to talk about what the lifestyle can mean, and I want to talk about how I built my business, and then we're gonna go through exactly some strategies to do that. So let's, take a look at some of the products that we've released in my business over the last five years or so, and I want to ask you what you take away from this chart. So this is, uh, my book. This is some online information products. I create courses to teach people strategies around their finances around finding a dream job around, building their businesses and even mastering their inner psychology. What do you notice about this chart right here? What do you notice what's? The implication you're doing good you're doing better okay back here I don't know to me it looks like it gets a little more complicated definitely that's good. We're going to talk about that. What else? Anyone else? So let me point out a couple of things that are not obvious the price points on these air about ten bucks and eight dollars a month. The price point on this was around twelve thousand dollars what's the implication a lot of people try to jump to creating a two three four thousand dollar course the first course they launch it's pointless would you try to the first time you go for a run? Would you try to run a four minute mile? No it's pointless would you try to create five, six, seven, eight different courses in one year? No it's impossible. And so I had one of my students who came out and said, this is our first information products was going to create a video course about a certain type of business and she was like, I wantto already know the price I want a charge I was like, okay, I already know where this is going I'm not going to charge anything less than two thousand dollars and I said do you understand what it takes to be able to know how to create a two thousand dollar course that sells why not start somewhere else and be able to master that before you jump to this it's very similar to one of my students who reads my e mails and I asked what is something you claim you want to do more of, but you don't actually do so what's a classic answer to this, like, I claim I want to what work out right have better relationships with my family, etcetera. So she writes me and says, I always tell people that I want to run three times a week, but I never do it and I said, well, why don't you just go run once? And she wrote back and I'll never forget, she said, why would I run one time a week? What's the point? It doesn't even make a difference, so she would rather dream about running three times a week than actually run one time a week and that's where many of us trip ourselves up. But first we look att our competition, we look at these other people who have been at it for five, ten, fifteen years like I want that I want the beautiful video, I want the hd quality, I want the multiple funnels, conversion optimization, but the truth is we don't start there, you start at the very beginning, learning about a modest product and learning how to solve a very simple problem. And when you could do that, then you can catapult that inter growing into not just a product but a business all right, so let me break down some really simple ways to create a business online because there's a lot of confusion there's a lot of people who say like I want to start a business online show I do affiliates I do coaching so I do this and that so it's a simple way of breaking it down here low profit, high profit so ads in general you're going to see sort of low profit per ad high profit you're going to see software, you're going to be online courses building software's pretty expensive online courses and coaching, in my opinion are great ways to start a so who here has ever given some advice to a friend about relationships fitness, uh, clothing style keeping your house clean and anyone not given advice to someone all right? Weirdos all right, so so there's a lot of things you can do when it comes to sharing your insights with others on dh that's specifically the area we're going to talk about today we're not going to cover optimizing your ad spectrum and stuff like that we're going to talk about how to share your knowledge with the world and in my opinion, the two best ways you could do that our coaching and online courses so let's talk about some counter intuitive insights about a successful online business notice the word I used successful? How many people here know someone who talks about business, who has a website who's on every social media network and actually is not making any money and doesn't have any real clients? Anybody know people like that they're one tra preneurs, they wanna play entrepreneurship, but they don't want to do what it actually takes to build a successful online business. Today we're only talking about successful, and that is a very important distinction because it means that you eliminate doing so many of the things that other people are doing for example, one of the classic things you're going to hear, one thing has got to get on social media got to be all over all these now, it's not true, we didn't have a functioning facebook page for about eight years um my twitter account drives as over sixty thousand people on it, it drives virtually no business it's purely ego, which I love, but it is mostly ego there's a lot of things that people say out there, but they haven't actually tested. How about another one got to keep your emails short? People people just want to read it and move on has anyone heard that keep it snappy, keep it short not true, my emails are over ten pages you know what someone else said that there's another guy who writes even longer emails than me and someone said like why would you write those e mails who well reads that stuff? And he smiled and said on ly the buyers so one of the things we learn is that what a lot of people are saying out there maybe true it may not we're going to learn how to test it the first counter intuitive insight passion is not enough people love to talk about find your passion just look to the sky where is this passion? No it's raining passion today it's not true you don't passion doesn't just fall into your mouth from the sky you find it and also passion alone is not enough all right let's let's pass the mice around what is something you're passionate about and don't don't be like I'm really passionate about helping people do conversion optimization could be true like what do you passionate about acting great what else? What else? Um hand lettering, calligraphy and illustration what else? The creative process okay anybody else fiction good okay, so actually all the passions that we've heard today could be turned into successful online businesses but there are also people who are passionate about apple picking probably not going to be a successful online business could be probably not gonna be so passion alone is not enough this is where we have to ask ourselves what are we passionate about? But also what does the market one and if given a choice when creating a successful online business of what am I passionate about? Versace what is the market want? The market will always win. In my opinion you become passionate when you are winning it's a totally different way of looking at a lot of people think I'm going to find my passion and they wait ten, twenty, thirty years looking for their passion, my opinion, you get really good at something and as a result, you've become passionate about it. This is a very counterintuitive way of looking at it. Let's talk about the next one here who'll so a lot of us, how many of us are stuck because we have not found an idea how money? All right, so what is typically the process when it comes to finding an idea, we create a venn diagram, right? We write down all of our ideas and we see like which one jumps out at me and then we then we throw the piece of paper weigh and we go off and do something and then we realised this doesn't work and we come back and do it again, what else do we do? We go online, we type in all these things about ourselves to some questionnaire. And it tells us what type of sex and the city character we are. Right? And what type of business we should start. You should be a forest ranger. No, I shouldn't. So eh? So, it's not just about finding an idea, because there are a million ideas. In fact, by the end of today, you're gonna have more than twenty ideas. It's about finding a profitable idea. We're going to talk about why that's important, anyone could start. Any idea, let's. Just take my business. When I originally started, it was about helping people manage their money. That's not particularly compelling. It's. Certainly not novel there's a million other people who do money management stuff online, but you can add wrinkles. You, khun, position yourself differently. You can choose a different audience, and you could make it your own. Like there are all kinds of fun things you could do with your business. You do not need a novel idea. All right, you don't need to have a brand new countering. Uh, brand new idea. You can have an idea that exists, but change it for your own or market, we'll talk about that and finally front load the work, so there's a there's this really popular concept right now of m v p s minimum viable products lean startup the idea is just come up with something quick throw it out there and see what sticks now a lot of us have heard this concept and in translation it works like this people come up with some idea they write it down on a piece of paper there like yes, this is my ticket and then they create some kind of e book right or really quick website and they throw it up and then what happens? Who knows who can tell me crickets that they wait and they're like, where my million's where are they? I'm a big fan of rapid testing I'm all about it, but I have a slightly different belief in the idea that you can just test your way to success. I believe in front loading the work, so when I taught my other creative live class it was three days and it covered personal finance, dream job and starting a freelance business. One of things we talked about is when you walk into that interview room, most people walk into an interview and they think I'm here to answer their questions wrong you've already lost you're there to communicate your key messages, and the truth is that eighty percent of the work is done before you ever set foot in the room this is a hugely different way of looking at business than most people so in an interview they think they walk in they answer questions and they went wrong you already lost cause everyone else is doing that if you've done eighty percent of the work if you've front loaded the work you already know the name of the interviewer in fact you part already met him for coffee you already know the key challenges of the company because you've taken three other people out to coffee you've studied the interviews of the ceo you've done everything fact you have a ten page document showing them what you're going to do in the first thirty, sixty, ninety days at that point it's undeniable they can't resist hiring you and the same is true for an online business front loading the work front loading the work means that you do the research up front instead of just throwing it out there and seeing what happens just to give you an example from our own business in my first online product that ever created it was a four dollars and ninety five cent e book he was called ra meets guide to kicking ass I mean I have a weird thing about names but I was nervous I was petrified that people wouldn't buy it I had a lot of mental barriers about pricing in fact if you go look at the sales page which is online you can see how I was super defensive about like he goes. Was this no free? I know you can find most of it on google, blah, blah, blah and, like, and then recently, you know, I sold a twelve thousand dollar course, and the language was very different. I said this course probably isn't right for you, here's. Why? If you have credit card debt, you're not allowed to join any of my courses. That's, a policy I have for my flagship programs. If you have this, you're not allowed to join, and, in fact, we did way better way better. So front loading the work means being able to understand who you're targeting and what they want before you go public with your launch.