Category: Marketing

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What Do You Do All Day?

 

As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate. But, in order to figure out how to automate your business, you first need to know in detail what you do all day long so that you know which tasks can be automated, should be automated, and even whether it’s something you should be doing at all.

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Stay focused

In every business, you will have daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks, and even yearly tasks or quarterly tasks. The best thing to do is to get out a calendar and enter the items you know you have to do.

 

For example, you have to pay quarterly taxes, and you have to balance your books at the end of the month. You must buy a business license each October or January depending on your location and the rules and laws in your area. Whatever it is that you know for sure has to be done, enter it into your calendar, blocking off the approximate time it will take you to do it.

 

But there are also the daily things you do that generate your income. When it comes to generating income, it’s essential to specify which actions you are doing that generate income and which actions you’re doing that support generating income. Go through the steps you take in your day and write down what you’re doing, step by step.

What’s Your Job as The Owner of Your Business?

 

Coaches Example

 

Ø  Business: Coaches retired teachers starting a second career as independent course and project designers.

 

Ø  Morning: Checks the mail, email, and Trello to find out if there are any fires to put out this morning before paying any bills due for the day. Calls her group coaching clients for the weekly hour Zoom group coaching session. Writes 7 product educational and nurturing emails for a new one-on-one coaching product to market to her group coaching clients.

 

Ø  Afternoon: Records part of an online course in development. Transcribes the group call and sets up her part as a standalone presentation video.

 

Ø  Evening: Answers coaching client questions for those who signed up to receive daily emails and schedules them to be delivered in the morning.

 

As you can see, this is just one day out of an entire year and is not representative of all the money-making tasks this coach does, nor is it a complete picture of what happens in the business overall. But it does give you a great idea about where to start automating and even outsourcing. Once you see what you’re doing visually written out, it’s a lot easier to figure out places that you can improve your process. Take the time to write out every process you do each day that you do them. Once you’ve documented the different activities you do each day, you can identify what needs to be perfected and then automated or outsourced or both.

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What’s Your Job as The Owner of Your Business?

As a small business owner, you probably think that you have a lot of jobs to do. Some people like to describe the job of a business owner as one that wears many hats. As the saying goes, sometimes you have on your salesperson hat, sometimes you have on your finance hat.

 

It depends on what is happening what your job is at any moment. However, your main job description as a business owner is to plan and organize the daily operations of your business.

 

On any given day, you may be responsible for:

 

  • Developing your business plans
  • Arranging financing
  • Hiring staff or contractors
  • Reviewing sales
  • Developing marketing strategies
  • Overseeing daily activities
  • Identifying opportunities

 

All of these jobs represent your main function as a business owner, which is managing your risk.  In each of these jobs, you really don’t physically do anything other than analyzing what someone else did for you, whether it’s automation or human.

 

Therefore, when you realized that you don’t need to physically do the tasks that you design, your job as a business owner becomes a lot simpler and can be boiled down to risk management.

 

When you realize that your job as a business owner is really one of risk management, it becomes a lot clearer what your main function is as a business owner. Realistically, you may have to wear a lot of hats at first, doing the tasks defined for each, — but it’s your choice to do the projects yourself or not as a business owner.

 

In fact, one can argue that it’s best for a business owner not to physically do the tasks that don’t require them since you only have so many hours in the day. It’s always, or should always, be less expensive to outsource or automate where you can. But you do have to start someplace, and most small business owners start out doing all the tasks themselves.

 

In any case, it can help to understand that finding and setting up automation in your business is one of the roles you play as a business owner. By doing so, you’re going to reduce risks associated with your business because you’re going to ensure those tasks get done in a timely fashion by someone (or something) who knows what they’re doing.

 

The more you can automate, the fewer things you have to outsource, and the bigger and better you can build your business because you’re going to free up your time to do more of what an owner does instead of the tasks involved in each area. After all, one of the reasons you started your own business is so that you can have more work-life balance, right?

 

One can argue whether the idea of balance even exists, but it’s clear that if you’re doing the job of 10 people, it’s hard to find that time freedom, much less anything resembling balance. In fact, you’re very likely to get burned out if you’re a small business owner who thinks that you have to physically do everything in your business. Instead, realize that part of risk management is to find ways to free up your time so that you can devote yourself to discovering new opportunities for your business.

 

 

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What’s Your Customer’s Buying Journey

 

One of the first things you need to learn about your business is your customer’s buying journey based on the sales funnel. Big businesses like to call this their customer relationship management pipeline. They tend to use a few basic pipeline structures that follow their customer’s buying journey from awareness to delight.

 

The truth is that no matter what type of business you have, the basic sales funnel is the same and defines the buyer’s journey.

 

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Consideration
  • Decision
  • Delight

 

Map your customer’s potential journey so that you can visualize where you need to place touchpoints. For example:

 

  • Awareness – Sync your favorite apps such as Google Sheets, Aweber.com, and other apps using software like Automate.io or Zapier.com to deliver the right content at the right time based on the customer’s behavior.

 

  • Interest – Automatically deliver email subscribers content that teaches them about the products and services you offer via your email software as well as your website using auto sequences and conversational chatbots.

 

  • Consideration – This is when the buyer really wants what you have to offer, and it’s your sale to lose or gain. You can automate content delivery that asks for the sale, such as delivering a free webinar to them. Using the right software, such as offered by HubSpot Automation and others, you can even let the software generate new one time offers based on their behavior.

 

  • Decision – Depending upon the type of business structure you have, whether it’s a course or a physical product or not, you’ll want to help them make the choice to buy by setting up automated discovery call appointments. You can synchronize your website with scheduling software like Acuityscheduling.com to let your customers schedule their own call.

 

  • Delight – Finally, you can create a whole new funnel to use during the post-purchase stage in order to elicit customer delight. When you delight your customers, they’re going to make more purchases and recommend others to you. One way to do this is to automate the onboarding of new customers so that they receive enough information to want to stick with you.

 

People add different steps along the way to each of their funnels based on the path the buyer likes to travel on their buying journey. Each step is a chance to streamline and automate part of the process. To make your customer’s buying journey successful, you’ll hopefully lead them through the entire process past the point they decide to buy your product to include customer delight, loyalty, and advocacy when it’s appropriate.

 

 

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What’s Your Business Type?

 

Do you have a store where people purchase products, or do you offer a service like coaching?

Maybe you offer courses and classes, or you provide customer support or something else entirely? Whatever you offer, how you have structured your business is vital to determine before you start your automation plans.

3 step plan

If you have an online store that people come to in order to purchase products from you, the way you automate and run your business will be very different from the way someone who offers courses or one-on-one personal services does.

 

So, consider what your business type is.

 

Online Store

 

If you sell any type of product, whether it’s physical or digital, with a shopping cart, you have an online store. You may be selling books, content, and even courses if you’re selling them as a product without your extra coaching and input. Essentially if you sell anything online in a shopping cart, you have an online store and can use a lot of automation tips for online stores.

 

Virtual Services

 

If you sell any type of service, administrative, one-on-one coaching, and so forth that you perform at a distance, using your website as your storefront, you are a service-based business. As a service-based business, you’ll organize your business and market yourself differently from an online store where you don’t speak to the customers directly yourself and sell products directly.

 

Virtual Support and Consulting

 

You may also offer only virtual support and consulting without offering direct service. For example, you may coach your clients to create a sales page, set up a freebie, set up a discovery call, but you don’t do it yourself, you simply advise them on what to do, and the client with their team does it. This is an entirely different business structure than a business that does the services directly or delivers the product directly.

 

Virtual Training

 

If you offer classes and “how-to” information to your customers via courses, classes, and content, you have a business that provides classes either self-paced or teacher-led this is a training business. A training business sometimes needs more personal input and engagement than a storefront that just sells the complete self-paced course.

 

There are numerous opportunities for automation in each of these business structures. But first, you need to write it down. What does the composition of your business look like? What do you do for customers and clients, and how do you do it? Is it hands-off or hands-on, or a combination of both? The more you can document how your business works, the easier it will be to find ways to automate and outsource.

 

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The Fundamental Parts of Your Small Business

 

The first thing to think about when you seek to make your days more manageable and more effective is the parts of your small business. What parts of your business are essential to your success? For each business, you’ll need to look at your own situation to determine it, but this can get you started.

 

  • Human Resources – If you hire or contract out to others, you’ll need to concern yourself with setting up, organizing, and managing all your HR. Having some knowledge of this even if you think you’re going to do everything yourself is essential because you should not do it all yourself, and there are laws to consider.

 

  • Accounting and Finance – Every business must figure out how they plan to keep track of income and expenses and set up benchmarks for planning purposes. There is a lot you can automate in this area too.

 

  • Marketing and Advertising – No business can exist if they don’t get the word out about their solutions.

 

  • Production – If you have a product, whether physical or digital, the product has to be produced somehow. Much of production can be automated depending on the type of products you have.

 

  • Information Technology – Most small businesses today do have to deal with technology in some way, which means you need to have a general understanding of the technology available in your industry to help you manage and do your business.

 

  • Operations – The inner workings of your business are ripe for automation. It doesn’t matter if you sell products, manufacture products, or perform services, someone has to be in control of this work, and that’s typically the small business owner because they don’t typically hire managers, but you can.

 

  • Customer Service – Even if you only serve five customers a year, you need to focus on customer care in order to keep your customers happy. A lot of this process can be automated too.

 

  • Purchasing – This is a department that will often fall to the owner of a small business but exists as a separate department in a large business. In this department, you’ll want to figure out what the business needs, how much, when, and negotiate better prices, and so forth.

 

  • Legal Department – This is one of the first areas to go for a small self-owned business, but it is still important to acknowledge this area. You always want to make sure what you do is legal and follows the laws.

 

  • Business Development and Growth – This includes sales, marketing, project management, product management, and more. If you focus on business development, you’ll focus on how you can use what you have to expand your audience and make more money.

 

While in general, all businesses share the same fundamental parts, some businesses, especially home solopreneurs, may place importance on different parts depending on their goals. But these potential fundamental parts of your small business bare considering so that you can create a solid automation plan.

 

 

 

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6 WAYS YOU CAN TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

 

When you are truly committed to something, the best way to succeed is by making goals and then measuring and tracking your progress toward reaching those goals. Most life coaches love the saying, “If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail.” And, whether you like it or not, that’s the truth. If you want to succeed in your walking plans to improve your health goals, then track your progress.

Walking

Let’s look at some different ways that you can track your walking progress.

 

* Buy a Pedometer – There are many different types of pedometers out there. You can get one for about ten bucks nowadays. A pedometer counts your steps for you so that you can simply wear it all day or when you are exercising to ensure you are getting as far as you want to get each day.

* Write in Your Calendar / Planner – A low-tech way (unless you use an online calendar) is to simply write down in your calendar how far you walked each day. That way you can ensure you’re hitting your daily goals, which will also ensure you reach your long-term goals. Even if you are using an electronic means of tracking, sometimes it’s more motivating to see your calendar filled with walking data.

* Join an Accountability Group – On Facebook and other social media platforms, there are numerous support and accountability groups for walkers that you can join. You can tell the group your goals and sometimes find a mentor that will hold you accountable in your walking goals.

 

* Get a Fun Tracker Like Fitbit – Fitbit.com offers not only an app that is essentially a pedometer, but also more features such as joining with others to track your walking, sharing your walking, and meeting up with others who love walking.

 

* Get Fun Personal Training Software – Need even more motivation to track your progress? A fun app that can help you stay motivated is called Endomondo. You can sign up for free, and it’s like having a personal trainer in your pocket each day while you’re also keeping track of your progress.

Link – https://www.endomondo.com/

* MapMyWalk – This is an app that tracks your walking progress. However, it’s even more than that because you can find walking trails in cities across the world that you might want to try. Plus, you can keep track of your time and distance with the app.

Link – https://www.mapmywalk.com/app/

 

Tracking walking progress is essential to ensuring your success with walking for health issues. The only real way to be sure you are doing what you have set as your goal is to double-check your progress using any of these methods. If you write it down and look at it regularly, it will motivate you to do more.

 

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TIPS TO SMART WALKING

 

The main thing to remember, no matter what you’re setting a goal for, is that your goals should be SMART. That means they need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. If you make a habit of creating goals for all aspects of your life using this acronym, you’ll be a lot more successful – no matter what you do.

 

But before you get started with your SMART walking goals, let’s talk about some factors to consider as you’re creating your goals.

 

1) Know Your Fitness Level – Almost everyone can walk. This includes people who are very unhealthy, even if they can only walk for five minutes. Start with your fitness level and set your goals accordingly.

 

2) Know What You’re Working Toward – Pretend you stuck to everything you are supposed to on this journey; what is the dream goal you’re working toward? Even if it seems crazy, knowing that final goal is essential for designing your plans.

3) Know Your Time Availability – This is part of being realistic because if you have roadblocks to having enough time to devote to walking for health to meet your goals, you may not succeed

Creating SMART Walking Goals

Walking

Here is an example of a healthy yet sedentary office worker for you to follow:

 

* Specific – My goal is to walk a minimum of 10,000 steps per day by the end of six months, starting where I am now at 1000 steps per day.

 

* Measurable – Every day, I will add 100 steps to my total. It will take me 90 days to reach 10,000 steps per day.

 

* Attainable – I am overweight but with no health problems, so my goal to walk 10,000 steps a day by the end of 90 days and to maintain it for 6 months is entirely doable in terms of my health.

 

* Realistic – Adding in 100 steps a day is realistic because I am healthy, and I have enough time. It’ll take me about an hour and a half at my walking pace to reach 10,000 steps. I plan to walk each morning between 7 and 9 am. I also have an indoor place I can walk when the weather is terrible.

 

* Timely – By adding the goal of reaching 10,000 steps in 90 days, then maintaining that for six months, it makes the goal timely – meaning it has a time limit that you have set for you to reach your goal.

As you see, crafting SMART walking goals will help you set up a plan that is achievable if you simply follow it. Once you have set the plan up, you can put it in your calendar, tell your accountability partner, and then just follow it. You will reach your goal without issue.

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Business Plan Resources You Can Use

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to create your business plan. There are numerous resources you can use to help you. Use this list to find resources to use to help you create the best and most functional business plan possible.

 

The more you work on this, the more likely you are to be successful. But don’t forget, set a deadline for yourself so that you finish your business plan so that you can get started living the life you dreamed you’d have as soon as possible.

 

  • Small Business Administration – [https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan] In the USA, you can use information from the SBA to help you create your business plan. They have a lot of precious information on their website and in their offices across the country, and most of it is free or low cost.

 

  • Business Plan Software – There are numerous choices, such as bplans.com, liveplan.com, and others. They’re all pretty much the same, so you can choose based on what you need.

 

  • Business Plan Templates – You can find them right inside your MS Office templates and free online. Whatever you do when you do use a template, don’t copy someone else’s information. Make sure you add your own information so you don’t make a mistake. Just use the template for layout purposes.

 

  • A Business Plan Outline – Once you decide the type of plan you want to create, make your own outline, so you don’t forget to add any information. It does help to have the basic structure laid out, so all you do is fill in your own information.

 

  • An Accountant or Other Professional Expert – CPAs, Enrolled Agents (EAs), and some bookkeepers who specialize in a business start-up are professionals you want to have on hand to help you with the financial aspects of your business plan. Plus, they can help you with tax planning. Every small business owner should visit a tax planner before they start their business.

 

  • A Mentor, Coach, or Consultant – There are people who are willing to assist you for free or for payment, depending on your situation. Try going to a local SCORE.org office to get some help with your business plan. You can also find a coach or consultant online. Ask your colleagues for referrals.

 

  • Find an Incubator – Almost every local city with a college or university has a small business incubator that is willing to help. Check out your local coworking spaces for more information about this. They can help guide you through your research and business plan creation.

 

Finally, you can also hire someone to create your business plan for you, but this can be expensive. It depends on your situation whether you do it alone, go the volunteer route, or hire someone. The main thing is to learn as much as you can about creating a business plan, read other people’s plans, and then get yours started and done.

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

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Information You Need to Know for Your Business Plan

 

There are many reasons to write a business plan. You may need a plan to borrow money, attract investors, or to validate your ideas. Plus, creating a business plan helps work out operating procedures and can put your business at a strategic advantage over other businesses.

 

To create your business plan, work on collecting the following information and documentation.

 

  • A Description of Your Business – This is simply what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, how you do it, and when you do it.

 

  • Describe the Problem(s) Your Customer Has That You Solve – Make a list of each problem you solve for your customer. Describe them fully and why they need to be solved. It can help to attach the product to the problem for reference.

 

  • Describe Your Solution – Explain how this solution solves the problem for your ideal customer. Try to write this from their perspective to ensure that you are putting the customer in a central place.

 

  • Describe Your Target Customer – You may need to describe more than one target depending on your products and services, especially if you have different levels of products, depending on their place in the customer buying journey. This is a good place for customer avatars.

 

  • Describe Your Competitive Advantage – This is all about how you are different from the competition. It may be due to price, service, innovation, operation, or something else. Some people also describe this as a unique selling point or unique selling proposition. It’s all about your place in the market and how you can leverage it to your advantage.

 

  • Describe Your Selling Process – Website, storefront, affiliates, distributors or salespeople, door-to-door, or something else? For example, perhaps you’ll set up a squeeze page with a freebie to build your list then nurture your relationship with them in email. Be specific and thorough.

 

  • Describe Your Business Model – This is a list of your revue streams and how you’re going to make money. If you have no revenue stream potential, you have no business. For example, starting a blog is not a business until you monetize it.

 

  • Describe Your Start-Up Costs – What are the funds you need to get started? List each expense and why you need it.

 

  • Describe Your Goals and Benchmarks – If you don’t set deadlines, it won’t happen, so make sure you match a deadline or benchmark to each of the goals you’ve set for your business. For example, “I will get 100 new customers each week by hosting two-hour long webinars each week.”

 

  • Describe Your Business Setup – For example, if you’re a sole proprietor who outsources to contractors, state that; if you are an employer with a management team, state so. If you plan to buy human resources, as time goes forward, mention those benchmarks so you know when this will happen.

 

  • Describe Resources You Have and Need – Make a list of the resources you have available now and how you’ll use them and a list of resources you need to buy, and when you’ll do so based on benchmarks.

 

As you work on creating your business plan, it can help to understand fully all the information and data that you need to complete a business plan that is useful for you. Use this list of information you need for your business plan to guide you as you create the plan and build your business.

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

 

 

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Are You Being Realistic About Your Goals?

People often struggle in both life and business with the process of goal-setting—more than likely, you’ve read a lot about creating SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Being realistic is one of the criteria for setting goals that will serve you, but the truth is, the rest of the acronym helps ensure that your goals are realistic.

 

It’s fun to fantasize about starting a business, and it’s not uncommon to imagine becoming a millionaire or making a high six-figure salary while sitting on the beach. The problem with this is that it’s just not that realistic. It’s not to say that no one has ever done it, but more than likely, they already had tons of resources like money and contacts that allowed them to simply delegate while they’re lying on the beach.

 

This is not an uncommon happening. Even the neighborhood dog walker probably had high hopes for how much money they can earn. When you come up with a figure or a measure for your goal to track, you want the number to be realistic and not just pulled out of thin air.

 

For example, let’s say that you are a virtual assistant. You plan to work as a VA full time. At first glance, you may think that means you can bill at least 40 hours a week. We often choose 40 hours because that’s what we’re used to in terms of work. However, it’s not really that realistic. There are other things you need to do for your business aside from the direct and billable work you’re going to do for them.

 

To be super accurate and realistic about how much you can earn, you need to figure out the order of operations at your VA business. What will you do all day? More than likely, once you figure out, you’ll realize you can work four or five hours a day that is billable, and the rest of the time, you’ll need to work on marketing and other aspects of your business.

 

After you’ve organized your day, you accept that you have five hours a day, Monday – Friday, that can be considered billable hours. That means you have that much time to work directly for a client that you can bill them for the time. How much money will you earn with that criteria at the rate you planned to charge? If you only charge $20 per hour, you’ll only make $500 a week before taxes or expenses. Is that enough?

 

You can raise your rates, or you can find other ways to earn more money, such as by going to a flat fee per service and finding people to outsource to or by hiring a full-time employee to help. Perhaps you can automate a lot more than you have so far to free up more billable hours. Maybe you develop an app that does what you would do automatically that you sell to your audience or that you use to serve your audience.

 

The main thing is that you should not leave these numbers to chance. Design your entire day and figure out what is realistic for your goals in each case. Don’t just pull a number out of the air. Think about the number and how it can happen or not happen before you put it in writing.

How To Build A Wildly Profitable Income Stream From Home Without Lies, Hype, Manipulation or Pressure…

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com