Entrepreneurship journey – the Blueprint

Intro

Welcome back, fellow traveller.

It took me a while to reach this point so I’m happy I have some sort of direction now after pushing through the chaos in order to gain clarity.

I feel like I’ve been in a jungle hacking away through the bushes and vines hoping to find a clearing. And finally, I’ve reached one.

So in this blog post is going to be an exciting one, because we’re going to be covering the real entrepreneurship blueprint…

"But money is evil"

I hear this a lot.

But this is a misconception.

Money just amplifies the person you are.

You have billionaire philanthropists who have changed the world – are they evil?

Anyway, what I’ve learnt is that the pursuit of being an ethical entrepreneur is equivalent to the pursuit of spiritual growth.

Because your level of success will never exceed your level of personal development.

People (including past me) seem to equate the goal of wealth as having and acquiring the wealth. But later on the journey, those on this path will realise that it’s more about being and becoming the individual with the capacity to achieve this.

And that individual, more often than not, is one who has undergone a lot of personal development, spiritual growth and self-actualisation.

The more you self actualise, the more you are able to provide value to others, the more value returns back to you.

This is Karma.

My Goal

I’m a big believer in setting big goals which stretch you.

Big goals are the avenue through which you can facilitate self-actualisation.

Also to reiterate, the second lesson of ‘Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ is to Begin With The End In Mind.

So, I had a discussion with my girlfriend about what our dream life would be like. Here’s our combined vision:

The ultimate goal:

· Create an income doing what I love

· Be able to provide a home with a wonderful backyard for my kids to play in

· Be able to allow my future wife to retire and have the option to stay at home with the kids

· Use the wealth to keep building businesses and in doing so I want to also, in the far future, get involved with philanthropic works

Cool, there’s a vision here.

Now let’s break it down;

Here’s what our dream house would be like;

Here is what is required;

Ok, so the goal seems to be to make $30,000/month.

Sounds crazy, right? Sometimes I scratch my head and think this is just pure insanity. But that quote from One Pieces seems to indicate that I’m on the right path.

Perhaps this is the reality of the saying of chasing goals that force you to grow.

Perhaps the rising of anxious emotions when I look at this goal is just my limiting-beliefs getting tested.

Perhaps, as Steven Pressfield would say, that this is just resistance talking.

“Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North – meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others. … The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

– Steven Pressfield

I had a call once with a Youtuber from Canada who is on the same path I’m on. On a call once he said his goal was $50,000 a month. This individual has been putting 110% effort with over 100+ videos and grinding and learning rapidly. He’s no where near that number in his business, but I felt the confidence in his voice when he said that. I knew he wasn’t effing around. That was one of my favourite convos of the year, because it highlighted how small I’ve been thinking. I guess it just goes to show how important it is to be surrounded by the right people. It reminds me of Robert Kiyosaki’s quote;

I forbid myself from saying, “I can’t afford it.” I have disciplined myself to ask instead, “How can I afford it?” Asking myself how I can afford something opens and challenges my mind — to think. The words we say to ourselves and the words we believe are the most powerful forces in the world. In my experience saying, “I can’t afford it” is what poor people say. That is why they are poor. There is a difference, I’ve found, between “broke” and “poor.” Poor is a state of mind that we all have the power to change.

– Robert Kiyosaki

Anyway, enough babbling. $30,000/month is the goal; let’s go.

Studying what other people have done

To help me gain a sense of direction I need to study what other people have done before

I studied some other creators in the ‘spiritual self-improvement and entrepreneurial’ space; I even bought into some to take a peak at what they have to offer to get an idea of what I can do too:

And it seems like a common structure which they have followed is this;

And these are where their tiered services comes from.

Ultimately, the goal is to have a high leverage digital product which = passive income and can sell in large volumes. Buuut hold your horses – we can’t just jump straight to that just yet.

Here’s some of my brainstorming:

Breaking down the goal

I’ve been down this road before, of having a big goal which I need to chunk down into smaller more manageable chunks.. but not of this magnitude.

So it’s going to be a lot more difficult.

This is what I think I need to do;

From my current understanding, the best way is to move from the lowest leverage point then make your way up from there.

I.e. this is what I think the roadmap should look like

· Start with coaching

· Get better at coaching

· After 20+ or so clients, you have more skills and better capacity to move onto group coaching

· After 1:1 and group coaching, you then have a lot of experience and understanding of people’s problems and how to solve it. You also have a tonne of reviews now of the transformations you’re able to achieve.

· This will then allow you to create A GREAT PRODUCT based on YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH OTHERS; this product will likely be a self-paced course with digital products.

So, start of with coaching… then try implement the rest. That’s the plan for now.

The Funnel

All, and I mean ALL successful businesses have a funnel in some way, shape or form.

If you want to start a business, you can start with one of two ways:

1) Build a product, then find the audience to sell it to (which would usually go through ads, affiliate marketing, etc.)

2) Build an audience, then create a product to sell.

I much prefer the second way because the leads will already be warm if they know you.

“To know you is to love you! When potential customers have at least seven hours of interaction with you and your brand, they feel like they recognise you and can buy from you with confidence. The moment of truth is also the moment of trust.”

– Source: Brevity.Marketing

This is great, because Youtube long form content BUILDS TRUST.

So, with that being said, below is an illustration of how my funnel will look like.

Here’s the power of audience building;

If I were to pay for ads to get the same amount of eyeballs towards my content, it would cost over a grand. Not only that, but those eyeballs would be cold and not familiar with my content.

So I definitely prefer this way more.

Anyway, once the audience watches the video I will mention/promote the product/services I do have to offer with regards to the audience’s particular problem, which will most likely revolve around ‘Higher Self’.

From here, if the customer decides to proceed they’ll be lead further down the funnel to either my website/email list/discord community or they may skip straight to my landing page/clarity call.

The last part of the funnel is important;

– Landing page – Your landing page is your ‘leveraged’ sales pitch. Instead of you pitching to a thousand different people, your landing page serves to do the selling for you. This is most likely ideal and has true power when it’s towards the digital product/course, because this is where passive income is generated. However, I decided to try out a landing page also with my ‘clarity call’/coaching services.

– Clarity call – They can either navigate to the clarity call through my website if they’re already there, or they can click straight to the Calendly link from my Youtube description (or community post promotion). The clarity call will be VERY important in closing sales and getting customers.

Building my website, landing page, email list

I spent over a week building my website. It took a while because I made it from scratch, although I did use WIX which was helpful with its interface of just dragging things around.

Also as mentioned, I made my VERY FIRST landing page! This is for my clarity calls. Exciting stuff!

Also, I need to build an EMAIL LIST. When I first heard this I thought emails were outdated… until I took the time to actually have a look and realise that A LOT of businesses have this. They do it to remain in the back of your mind and remain relevant in your conscious awareness (e.g. newsletters) or to send you promotions.

Examples of this are:

· Mortgage broker always sending emails talking about property updates and RBA updates

· Quantity Surveyor/Tax Agent always sending emails related to property and investment

· Dan Koe (Youtuber) sending his newsletters (which I sometimes read because they’re really good)

· The Good Guys (alerting me of big sales)

All these emails are designed to provide value, keep ‘warm’ and ‘in touch’ with you (nurturing the audience), and hopefully, in the long run, convert to me taking the call to action and buying or engaging with a service.

So, to begin building my email list I needed to come up with an OFFER.

People won’t just randomly sign up to a random email list.

So I made an awesome workbook (spent 20+ hours on it, sick graphics, loads of value in it – this worksheet was inspired by a combination of Wes Watson, Joseph Rodriguez & Jordan Peterson products…)

Also, for email marketing I decided to go with Aweber instead of Wix. This was also a big learning curve learning about email marketing because there’s tonnes out there, and different ones are suited for different creators.

What made this difficult also is applying our favourite principle of “beginning with the end in mind”… I need to understand WHAT I NEED from the email marketing software and its CAPABILITIES… and to do this I need to have a VISION. I won’t get into it here since there’s too much to explain but essentially, from my research Aweber will be able to do the custom email automations I have planned in the future.

Here are the results which I’ve found from implementing my funnel for the very first time!

Also getting my very first traffic to my website which has been pretty awesome 

I know I still have yet to go before I make my first sale, but it is pretty amazing to see the email subs and clarity call come to play… its awesome to see how something that was once held in your mind comes into fruition if you stick to it.

Marketing & Sales

“Do what you love but study psychology, marketing, and sales so you don’t become a starving artist.” – Dan Koe

Getting the leads is one thing.

Closing the sale is another.

Ah, I find myself in a familiar place once again…

The bottom of a mountain. A large one.

I’ve been watching/listening to a lot of sales related content and yes, there’s quite a large mountain for me to climb. Quite a big learning curve.

Sales is something I’ve always been afraid of. Something I’ve avoided like the plague.

“One day you will have to face the reality that you will have to do things you don’t want to get what you want.” – Dan Koe

Sales is something I’ve always, for some reason, attached a negative connotation to. Maybe from seeing sleazy greedy salesmen ripping people off and not giving value in return.

This is a flawed belief which I need to understand and deconstruct, because it is wrong. Because sales isn’t always about being sleazy and acting on your self interest. If you’re able to genuinely provide value, then sales is the process of guiding the client to the decision to purchase the service you have to offer.

I think it was Alex Hormozi who said something along the lines of sales being energy exchange, how you are transferring your belief in the product/service over to the potential customer. And for this to work, you have to 100% believe in yourself, in your product, in your service, that you are giving the 100% best product/service to the customer.

And the art of sales is to help the customer navigate towards that decision, to navigate through their own internal resistances, doubts, limiting beliefs, etc. because you genuinely believe that what you have to offer will be a great investment for them.

Two books which I have right now which I think may help a bit with navigating clarity calls are these:

But I do think I need to get a sales book or try a sales training call of some sort. This will be on the to-do list.

Business Coaching, First Hires & Scaling

I came across an interesting case study where they go in depth of how these guys were able to scale a fitness influencer’s income through the moon to help him make $116k revenue in 2 months.

It was an almost 2 hour video case study and they touched on literally EVERYTHING.

What I learnt from the video was this;

– How much I don’t know about the game (haha)

– How MASTERS at business and scaling play the game. They have an incredible amount of systems in place and optimise basically everything imaginable. This is reaaaally one of the purest form of Kaizen (continuous improvement) I have ever seen in relation to influencer business scaling. I had no idea what goes into it and how it works…

In hindsight, I see now how Wes Watson was able to go from 0-multi-millionaire in just a few years using the power of scaling – I see how all of this is applied to his business. I also see it in Clark Kegley’s business in some ways too…

Crazy.

Anyway, watching this video opened up my mind to the possibilities. It was a refreshing reminder of Robert Kiyosaki’s advice of hiring people smarter than you to work in your team.

When an entrepreneur starts off, they are basically juggling all of the following areas:

Where an business coach/scaling agency comes in is that they will try to take charge of the marketing, sales & strategy so you can focus on doing what you do best, WHICH IS YOU (creating content for the funnel). And they can focus on the rest (the customer journey through the funnel all the way to the sale.) When you look at big companies, they have entire departments for marketing, sales, operations and strategy. When you are taking the steps towards SCALING your business, you will essentially do the same, and what it seems like to me from this video is that this one agency helps do all of these for you; (for e.g. they may help with video edit hire or hire sales closers for you). If you’ve read the 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris, essentially they apply all the principles in that book to free up your time and energy to focus on WORKING ON THE BUSINESS and not IN THE BUSINESS.

Further Product Ideas

On the side, my girlfriend and I have been sketching up some cool designs ideas for merch 

She’s done an amazing job and did 99% of the work.

We leveraged our understanding of e-commerce (from my failed e-commerce attempt back in 2020)

Here’s some rough drafts of shop before we launch it:

My girlfriend also created a 2000+ word business plan!

We also have ordered samples too of the hats, t-shirts and hoodies. I won’t reveal too much as of now and when we launch is still TBA. I’m thinking when the audience is a bit larger and I’ve executed the services/digital products.

Systems - couple teamwork

A life philosophy of mine is to ‘live the dream now.’ Which was an idea given by Brendan Burchard in one of his videos.

Anyway, I believe what this also means is to think about how your future life will look like, and start taking small steps towards that reality.

So, in the beginning of this document I specified our collective goal as a couple which was to create a life where my girlfriend/future wife will have freedom from the 9-5 and can be at home with the kids.

At the same time, in order to achieve this, I need to scale my business. The process of scaling requires delegating, and we came to the conclusion that she can assist with the finance/accounting side of things.

So my girlfriend has been doing a really great job with her excel magic to build a system for our finances.

Also, not just for now, but with the future taken in consideration; “begin with the end in mind.”

Also, I’m still new to this and trying to learn how to be a good leader.

I’ve taken a notion template from the web and made our very first notion collab space. What I’ve learnt so far on this collaboration journey is how much I don’t know about collaboration and leading. I’ve had many failures in trying to lead the relationship but as with anything this is a learning process. And I need to keep iterating.

A quote I’ve taken from the book ‘The E-myth Revisited’, which is probably my favourite, is this:

“The system isn’t something you bring to the business. It’s something you derive from the process of building the business.” — Michael E. Gerber.

With time, self-reflection, collaboration and a lot of iterations, I hope that we can create a system which works towards out common goal.

What will the future look like?

In a 2022 mastermind, I talked about this concept of how building wealth is a combination of these two things;

2022 was the year of maximising (1) which was buying real estate until I’m maxed out.

Now that I’m maxed out I’m focusing on (2) which is increasing my income… (from business).

Then, ultimately the goal is to have the balance statement of the rich:

This is what Robert Kiyosaki says about ‘breaking out of the rat race’ and that once you’re ‘out’ then its much easier to make more money because you can keep reinvesting, reinvesting, reinvesting.

Well, that is the plan, in theory, anyway.

We’ll aim to get here and see how it pans out!

Conclusion

If you made it all the way here, then I’d like to thank you for reading 

It may seem like I have clarity on my direction forward and a pretty decent set plan right now, it wasn’t always like that.

For the majority of the year I have had to push through a lot of resistance, self-doubt, negative self-talk and most importantly, battling the feeling of feeling lost in the unknown.

One thing I will always believe, however, is this;

‘And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.’

-Paulo Coelho

Thanks for your time and see you in the next post. Peace!