Tag: Freedom lifestyle

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13 WAYS WALKING CAN BENEFIT YOU

 

There isn’t even enough space here to include all the benefits of walking. Walking is simple to do, most healthy people can do it even if it might seem hard at first, and you can do it almost anywhere at any time. The only special equipment you need are good walking shoes, and then you’re in business.

walking

  1. Burns More Calories – Walking burns calories like any other exercise, but without the impact and stress that other forms of exercise can like jogging and running. Even if you’re not feeling well, you can go on a leisurely stroll and still get the benefits of the movement.

 

  1. Builds a Strong Heart – Working out always helps your heart because you cause your cardiovascular system to work a little harder, which is good for it when you’re healthy. Keeping your heart strong will keep you alive much longer.

 

  1. Builds Better Bone Health – As we age, our bones become more brittle and we experience more pain. This can lead to broken bones and other issues. But if you keep walking and moving, you’ll be less likely to develop those problems.

 

  1. Improves Balance and Coordination – The more you use your body, the more it works for you. Walking more often improves your balance and coordination because your body gets used to standing upright and moving more often. It’s a matter of practice and getting the muscles and ligaments strong.

 

  1. Improves Your Lung Capacity – Walking, especially fast walking, will get your breathing up and cause you to build your lung capacity. Usually it takes about six to eight weeks of cardiovascular workouts to see the full improvement that you can experience.

 

  1. Lower Your Blood Sugar – People with high blood sugar can see huge benefits from walking and burning off that extra sugar in their blood. It’s not a cure for type 1 diabetes but it can help people with type 2 tremendously, and it can help people with type 1 lower their insulin requirements.

 

  1. Eases Joint Pain – As people age, they tend to get joint pain, often caused by arthritis. It might seem counter-intuitive to keep moving through that pain, but pain from arthritis absolutely can be reduced from more movement. This is because arthritis causes build-up of scar tissue in the joints from lack of movement, so if you move more it can stop that problem.

 

  1. Bosts Your Immunity – Getting your blood pumping and your cardiovascular system working will also boost your immunity from regular common illnesses like colds.

 

  1. Energizes You – Anytime you’re feeling tired for no reason, try going on a fast, ten-minute walk and you’ll find that you have much more energy. This is one reason a fast walk is an excellent way to wake up in the morning.

 

  1. Improves Your Mental Health and Mood – A nice walk in nature can vastly improve your mental health and mood. If you are feeling down, getting out in nature for a leisurely walk can help. If you’re feeling anxious, try a fast walk (even on a treadmill) to burn that extra energy.

 

  1. Helps You Live Longer and Healthier – When you incorporate daily exercise into your life, it will extend your life. Not only that, you’ll also enjoy your life much longer because you won’t be as sick or in as much pain.

 

  1. Strengthens and Tone Your Leg Muscles – There is no hiding the fact that walkers have good legs, but it does also improve muscle tone all over your body – especially if you work on getting your arms in on the action and pay close attention to your glutes and core muscles.

The Areas of Life You Need to Design for Success

  1. Boosts Your Creativity – Anytime you’re having a glut of good ideas for anything you’re trying to accomplish, going for a walk without technology, just you and nature (or just you and the treadmill), you’ll get a boost of creativity that will carry you through.

Walking is something almost anyone can do. Because of that fact, it makes it the perfect exercise to start if you want to get healthier and improve your life in every single way. When are you going to start your walking program?

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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

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I work from home. Do I still need a business plan?

 

Home business owners often underestimate their business. If you start a home business, respect the importance and value of your home business. A home business is not a fake business. A home business can be more stable than a wage job. A home business can earn millions. Where the business is located really doesn’t matter as much as you may think. The location doesn’t define either legitimacy or potential.

 

Many people think of business plans as a document you create if you need a bank loan or investors, but the truth is, the business plan is a lot more useful than that. A business plan helps you evaluate whether your idea is feasible or not.

 

Plus, your business plan will also inform your marketing, operations, and pretty much everything you do. Not only that, but the business plan can also be used every single year as you update parts of it to make it even more accurate.

 

So yes, the short answer is that if you’re going to start a successful business that you enjoy, you need a business plan. Studies show that if you have a well-thought-out business plan, you boost your chances of success by more than 30 percent. Since most businesses that start from home either go nowhere or do not succeed, this is a big deal. Because here’s the truth, businesses don’t fail for no reason.

 

If your business fails, most of the time, it will be due to a lack of planning. More than 70 percent of successful businesses had a plan before they started. The other successful businesses usually develop a plan after the fact for the future, or else it’s hard to replicate success. Understand that a business plan that boosts your success potential is not something you will make in one day. It takes time and effort to create a quality business plan that truly sets you up for success.

 

However, as a home-based business, you can create a smaller plan where the summary and outline fits on one page with attachments (appendices and supporting documents) making up the rest of the business plan.

 

The important parts of the business plan that you need include:

 

  • Your Business Vision – Answer the question about what you are building. Include specific information, including time, expertise, and the who, when, what, why, and how of the business and customers you’ll serve. “Build a worldwide network of support for women who need to get healthy and lose weight.”

 

  • Your Business Mission – Develop your business mission statement. The mission statement needs to include your target audience, the product or service, and what makes this product or service different. “Motivate overweight and unhealthy women to become healthier by teaching them how to change to a healthy Keto diet.”

 

  • Your Business Objectives – All the goals and objectives you develop need to have a number attached to them. List everything you plan to measure, from reach, to list members, to sales, and so forth. For example, if you’re an author who wants to sell a specific number of books, you’ll state how. “Speak about once a week for a target of at least 40 speaking events this year.” “Generate revenue of $75,000 in 2021.”

 

  • Your Business Strategies – At this point, you’ll want to describe fully in chronological order each milestone and success you’ll experience over time. For example, “I want to become known as the go-to source for Keto Diet information.”

How to Pick a Niche You Can Succeed In

 

  • Your Action Plan – This is one of the most important parts of your business plan as a home-based business. This is the work you’ll do. Make a list of each thing you’ll do over the next year, at least including deliverables, deadlines, and results. “Develop a Keto Cookbook for Two by 3/21.” “Complete building of my studio kitchen by 2/22.”

 

As you can see, the point of the plan is to help you know what you need to do to build and grow your business. Without the plan, you may be very busy all the time, but your busywork may not be accomplishing anything without a plan.

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

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

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Describe Your Ideal Customer or Client: Create a Customer Avatar

One of the parts of your business plan that is essential is to describe your ideal customer or client. As you get to know your customers, you’ll find answers to questions such as: Who are they? Where do they hang out? What do they want? What do they need? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night. Where do they get their information?

 

One practice that has become popular due to the fact that it works is to create a customer avatar from the information you collect that best describes your ideal customer. When you first begin, you’re going to create one avatar that best describes your most ideal customer. You’ll use that information to inform all the products that you create.

 

A customer avatar is simply one document that succinctly describes who your customer is, how they live their lives, and what they want and need in terms of your expertise.

 

The information you need to complete a customer avatar is as follows:

 

  • List Places Your Customers Get Their Information – Make a list of websites, journals, magazines, blogs, newspapers, books, and so forth that comprise where your ideal customer likes to get their information. These are all excellent options for networking and advertising.

 

  • List Your Ideal Customer’s Goals – Make a list of your customers’ goals for the solution you are trying to sell to them. The goals have to be in line with your expertise and your offers. For example, if you’re a Keto Coach, their goals will be about succeeding on a Keto way of life.

 

  • List Your Ideal Customer’s Values and Principles – Most people make decisions based on their morals, values, and principles. It’s the way they judge if something is true or not. The more you can relate to these values and principles with your words and actions, the better.

 

  • Describe Your Ideal Customer’s Demographics – Demographic information includes things like age, race, income, education, and so forth. Include everything relevant that will help you with targeting ads and content.

 

  • List Your Ideal Customer’s Pain Points or Challenges – As it relates to your experience and offering, list their pain points and challenges. What wakes your customers up at night? If you’re a Keto Coach, maybe your customers have diabetes, but maybe they just want to lose weight. You may have more than one ideal customer, too, but you should differentiate them so you can laser target the information you provide.

 

  • List Any Objections Your Customer Might Have at The Point of Purchase – Take the time to go through and make a list of each objection your customer may have based on who they are. When you list the objections, find facts and information that can overcome the objection.

 

You’re going to have to ask and answer numerous questions to fully gather all the information you need to create a well thought out and effective customer avatar. Once you do that, you should give your ideal customer a true persona and name. You can draw a picture of them, or you can cut out pictures from a magazine or use clips online to build your customer avatar. It’s up to you, but you want the avatar document to be as specific as possible. Once you start your business and start to collect more data information, you’ll be able to create more avatars based on their buying journey.

 

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

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

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What Is Your Business’s Financial Outlook? How Can You Know?

As you are creating your business plan, the part about understanding your industry and business’ financial outlook can seem daunting. But the truth is, while the numbers are assumptions based on what you studied, if you do a good job, your projections should be pretty close. Let’s look at how you can know and document your business’s financial outlook.

 

  • Study Your Industry – Remember that killer technologies are always being invented that can impact your business and even end your business. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but you should keep up to date so you can mitigate or change course as needed.

 

  • Study Your Competition – If you keep aware of your competition and what they’re doing every day, you’ll also see signs of issues in the industry or with your customers, especially if you’re in business by yourself and not a huge multinational corporation. If big businesses are worried about something, you should be too.

 

  • Project Your Expenses – Make a list of all the potential expenses you’ll have for your business—for example, website hosting, software updates, contractors, employees, supplies, and so forth. Before you make one cent, you’ll have a few expenses.

 

  • Project Your Income – After you know how many customers you can go after and how many you think you’ll convert over time, you can now project your income. You do that by figuring out how much they’ll buy per purchase, whether or not they’ll be repeat buyers, and how you’ll get more customers over time.

 

  • Know Your Break-Even Point – Your break-even point is when your basic expenses match your income. Knowing this is going to help you know where you can cut back in hard times.
  • Understand Your True Financial Needs – The business plan only includes how much you are going to make, how you’ll make it, and how you’ll spend it per your business, as a small business owner who wants to make a certain income, you can include that figure for your own needs.

 

  • Document the Potential Income and Expenses For 12 Months – Once you have the information, create a spreadsheet to enter the income and expenses you’ll have for your business over the next 12 months.

 

  • Use the Figures for Planning – Each of the numbers you generate can be used for future financial planning and business planning. For example, you can set up benchmarks that inform you when you add to your business. “When my net income is $5000.00 per month, I’ll hire a virtual assistant for $1000 a month.”

Know your number

  • Be Ready for The Unexpected – One thing that is always good to do with any financial projections is to have contingencies in place if your plans don’t work. For example, what will you do if there is a natural disaster? What if you can’t do business in the way you are used to? Can you change and how will you do it?

 

  • Monitor the Reality – While you’re making projections, understand that reality will happen as you grow your business. As reality happens, update your projections to account for that reality.

 

  • Update as You Know More – Update your projections any time you have new information that will make your numbers more accurate.

Use a spreadsheet to enter the figures you discover so that you can easily update it and change them based on new knowledge or assumptions. As you grow your business each year, your projections will become more and more accurate. This means the planning you do, based on those projections, will also become even more useful.

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

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

 

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What Do You Sell? Really?

 

As you work through your business plan, one of the things that come up is what do you sell. Well, it may seem easy to list products and services by name, and that’s enough. But the truth is each product or service has a reason it’s selling that has nothing to do with what it’s called but instead what it does, namely, solve problems or provide exceptional value.

 

At this point in your business plan journey, you’ve likely heard the idea that you need to focus on benefits over features. But sometimes, this can feel unnatural and maybe even a little tricky as the business owner. After all, you sell a product or a service, and how it benefits the person who buys it might vary – but you do need to know this information.

 

Knowing this information will help you not only advertise your product but will also help you create new products and services. To figure this out, it will help you first to list the features that your product or service offers, then describe the benefits and value of the feature in words and terms that your ideal customer will appreciate.

 

When you write clear benefit statements for each of your products and services, it shows your audience that you relate to their needs, you understand their pain, and you know what they need. For example, if you’re a virtual assistant selling customer care services, what is the benefit in the mind of the person buying your service? If you can put yourself in their head, it helps

If you already have customers, send them a survey and ask them directly how they most benefited from your product or service. This can help you get the words right. You can use these words in future advertisements or sales pages.

 Write Your Business Goals Down. Why is this important

 

To write your benefit statements for your products, do the following:

 

Know Which Problems the Product or Service Solves

 

Make a list of the problems that each of your products or services solve for your audience. You might want to take a look at your customers at different stages in their buying journey to differentiate each benefit and whom it benefits.

 

  • Highlight the Feature That Provides the Benefit – Make a list of each feature and the corresponding benefits that the feature offers based on where your customer is in their buying journey.

 

  • Explain How They Garner the Benefit When Using Your Product or Service – As you know, the benefits offered don’t just come from the purchase in most cases. They come from an action that the buyer takes too. Make sure you explain that.

 

  • Prove, Qualify, and Quantify the Results – The more sources you can use to showcase the facts that your product or service does what you say, the better. Use stats, studies, and testimonials to prove, qualify, and quantify the benefit’s results.

 

Focusing on the value and benefit your products and services provide your ideal customer takes a little practice. You’ll need to put yourself in their shoes and see your offering from their viewpoint. It can take a little practice, but once you get the hang of this, it will not only improve your business plan, but it will improve product creation and the entire selling process.

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

 

https://flawlessfreedom.com

 

 

 

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How Will You Find Your Customers and Clients?

 

As you research your customers, you’re going to figure out where they like to hang out, what keeps them awake and worried, and more. It might help you to know some of the processes of finding your customers and clients as you move forward with creating your business plan.

 

  • Create Products and Services They Need and Want – Before you design any products or services, you need to know who it’s for, why they need it, and how they can afford to pay for it. When providing your audience what they want, it will sell itself.

 

  • Know Where Your Customers Hang Out – The reason you need to know where they like to go for fun and work is that you can then go there too. You can run ads where they are, and you can network with them and speak at their events. The more you are around your customer, the more you’ll appeal to them.

 

  • Know Where Your Customers Like to Get Information – Which magazines, publications, and shows do your customers like to find out the facts of something? Wherever they go is where you need to go as well. Again, you can pay for ads that they’ll see where they go. You can sponsor events. Speak at events and more to get to know them better.

 

  • Optimize Your Website – Learn about search engine optimization or hire someone to build your website in a professional way that helps bring people to your marketing funnel so that you can get more customers.

 

  • Be Present on Social Media – Expanding your branding by using social media platforms is important and a good boost to your website SEO. It provides backlinks and an opportunity for you to network with and get to know your customers better.

 

  • Network and Get Referrals – Online and offline spend time wherever your audience spends time. Try to stand out, so they notice you but don’t be a salesperson at the wrong time. Give them the information but do it professionally, focusing on providing value to your customers.

 

  • Partner with Complementary Business Owners – One great thing about networking and studying your competition is you will meet some fantastic people who will want to work with you. You can find Joint Venture partners even who are your competition to work together to serve the customers better.

 

  • Form Strategic Alliances – Another way to expand your reach is to join forces with others, including your competition or anyone in your industry, to raise money for a cause you all care about.

 

  • Study Your Competitors – Always study your competition so that you can learn what they’re doing right, what they’re doing wrong, and also notice the gaps in their coverage. The gaps are where you may find the sweet spot.

 

  • Advertise – Once you know who your competitors are, who your audience is, where they hang out, and understand the point of your product or service, it’s time to start investing in paid advertising. You can boost your business much faster if you set up an advertising budget.

 

Use this information in your business plan when you talk about your customers. Showing that you know who they are and how to find them is an integral part of crafting your business plan. It shows that you can get your products or services in the hands of the people who need it most, which also shows that you can earn the money you want to earn that will enable you to live your best life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How to Analyze Your Market and Why It’s Imperative to Do It

 

One thing you will notice about your business plan development is that there are lots of parts. You’ll have to do a lot of research to get the answers that enable you to create your business plan. Analyzing your Market is one of the things that you need to do to gather the right information. If you don’t go through this process, you may make decisions based on erroneous information.

How to Identify Over the Top Goals to Make Them Reasonable

 

A market analysis answers the following questions:

 

  • Who Are Your Ideal Customers? – Depending on your business, you may have several ideal target customers. Make a list of who your customers are. Describe them and give them a name so that it’s easy to know who you’re targeting with each new offer.

 

  • What Process Does Your Ideal Customer Go Through When Shopping? – In marketing, this is called the “buying journey.” It’s basically standard depending on where they are in the marketing funnel. Understand this so that you can differentiate the content you use to target them.

 

  • How Big Is Your Target Audience? – If you don’t know how many people are out there needing your solution, how do you know you can earn enough money. Pricing depends on many factors, such as how many people you can attract plus your production cost or time available to perform the services. If there are only 100 people who need what you’re offering, can you profit?

 

  • How Much Is Your Ideal Customer Willing to Pay? – Understanding who your customer is helps you also know how to price your products or services. Knowing their budgets and what keeps them up at night is enormously helpful.

 

  • Who is Your Competition and What Are Their Strengths and Weaknesses? – Understanding who and how your competition does business is also helpful. If you don’t have customers yet, you can learn almost everything you need to know by immersing yourself in studying them.

 

To get the information, you need to make good choices for your life and your business. Don’t try to skimp market research. Not only do you need to research before starting your business, but you should also continuously research your ideal customers over time.

 

While your customers may stay the same demographics, they can change their principles and values over time. Imagine creating a commercial for DOVE soap today compared to the 1940s and 1950s. Many old ads offend people today. You don’t ever want to offend your audience, so keep studying them and your market so that your communication with them fits.

 

  • Know Why You Are Doing the Research – Before you start researching, have a reason to do it. For example, if you want to find out where your ideal customer in the awareness stage finds their information, you should search for it; don’t just look at the information randomly, have a point for your research.

 

  • Stay Up to Date on Your Industry’s Outlook – One thing some business owners forget to study is the overall industry. You need to be on the lookout for killer technologies that might end the need for your product or service or otherwise change something drastic in your business. Remember, no one is still making VHS tapes. (Those used to have movies on them.)

 

  • Focus on Finding and Identifying Exactly Who Your Ideal Customer Is – You may think you know who your customer is already. If you do, it’s because you decided who they are before you even created your product. But if you already have a service or product, you may need to work a little harder finding the customer, but it is still possible.

 

  • Study Your Competition Regularly – Don’t just study the competition one time. Join their lists, get to know them. Become members of their community. The truth is, you never know when the competition might become a wonderful colleague.

 

  • Use the Data You Discover – Don’t just do all this work for nothing. Use the information you gather. Once you’ve collected the data and analyzed it make changes based on the facts. Then do it all again. And Again.

 

There is no point doing all this work researching if you’re not going to make changes and adjustments to your ideas. Once in a blue moon, your assumptions may be right, and your research confirms it, but often assumptions can be wrong, so always match your assumptions with the metrics and data that show the truth.