Aaron Hoos

In this Inc. Magazine interview by writer Clarissa Cruz, food blogger Deb Perelmen answers questions about what it takes to blog and how she grew her food blog into a (nearly) full-time career.

The recipe for building a successful blog is passion + dedication + time + consistency. A valuable lesson for any brand that wants to blog.

Read the interview here: Building a Successful Food Blog.

In a recent issue of Clickbank’s ezine GetRichClick, I read a great article about two business partners who owned a gym. Facing industry pressure to lower prices, they slowly transitioned their offline bricks-and-mortar business to an online one… a very successful online business.

Starting with a small product and relying on organic search (instead of pay-per-click), they built a large list. Although the target markets were similar between their gym and their online business, they had to build an entirely new sales funnel. They focused on the right things and eventually achieved a point in their business where they could sell the gym and focus entirely on their online business.

From this article, I’ve distilled some useful tips about transitioning from bricks-and-mortar to online:

• Start slowly with an idea that has some synergies with your existing business.
• Leverage the brand equity you already have and work to build additional online equity.
• Create a new sales funnel, run it parallel to your existing bricks-and-mortar sales funnel.
• Work hard, be consistent, and stick with it.
• Build a list.
• Get others to start selling for you (via affiliate relationships).

Read the full article here: Super Affiliate Shares Business Roadmap

A friend of mine wants to start a business. She’s successful at work but isn’t earning what she is worth. Like a lot of people I’ve met, she really wants to start a business but here’s the conundrum:

It’s hard start a business when you’re busy with a “regular” job. On the other hand, it’s hard to quit your job then start a business.

Here’s what I recommend:

START HERE

1. Choose what you want your business to be about. Even if you don’t yet know WHAT you want to sell, you probably have some idea about the topic. Are you a mechanic and want to (eventually) run a business that is mechanical in nature? Do you love jewelery and (eventually) want to do something in that field? It doesn’t matter yet what you sell, but choose your topic. It can be fairly broad.
2. Start a blog. Spend 20-30 minutes a day writing a blog post. Do it every single day. Build up a body of knowledge on the topic. (Okay, if “every day” is too much, then start off a little less — say 3 times a week — and slowly increase over time until you’ve developed a good habit of daily blogging). Aim for high quality, insightful posts that help to advance your reader’s knowledge of the topic.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do in the beginning. If you’re at this stage — a sort of “dreaming the entrepreneurial dream” stage — then this is all you need to do. Don’t worry about search engine optimization, blog design, social media, etc. (That’s good stuff, but it’s not the point right now).

Eventually, you can take it further and turn your blog into a business (as I’ll describe in a minute), but your top priority should be consistent, compelling blog posts every day.

What you want to do is build a body of knowledge, which will:

• Position you as an expert.
• Help you explore the depths of the subject
• Teach you things you didn’t know
• Build an audience (and they’ll be more likely to listen and respect you because you don’t have an agenda of selling them anything)
• Create an asset of information that you can later draw from

FAST FORWARD TO QUITTING TIME
Let’s say you stay with your company for another couple of years. You don’t love it, but the income is nice and the health care pays for your knee operation, but now you find yourself transferred to a department with a boss you don’t like. You can see yourself quitting in a month or so.

The good news is, you have been consistently positioning yourself as an expert for the past couple of years. You have 600+ blog posts and an audience of faithful readers.

Here’s what to do next:

1. Decide what you are going to sell. A product? A service? There are lots of options. Pick one or two that you can do now and shelve the rest for later.
2. Create your sales funnel. Describe the contacts at each stage of your sales funnel and how you’ll engage them at that stage and then move them forward. (Download this Sales Funnel Quick Reference Guide to get you started).
3. Implement the contact-engaging marketing that you’ve just outlined in the above step to engage and market to your Audience, your Leads, and your Prospects.
4. Quit your job. Woohoo!
5. Implement the contact-engaging content that you outlined a couple of steps above.

Thanks to your consistent effort, you have positioned yourself as an expert long before you made the leap out of your job into the world of business ownership.

ADDITIONAL TIPS TO MAKE THIS WORK

• Pick a topic you love and know something about and can spend years doing. Otherwise, it’s not worth it.
• This only works if you are consistent. I’ve seen people do this and succeed. I’ve seen people not do this and struggle. It really does work. Set an alarm, brainstorm some topics, and be relentless. Consider it an investment into your escape hatch. (Check out this blog post about blogging frequency and check out this blog post to discover what you should never, ever do).
• I mentioned earlier that you shouldn’t worry about search engine optimization (SEO) at this point. There are probably some SEO aficionados that are rolling in their graves right now but my reason is this: I want it to be a fun and simple effort. And search engine benefits will still be present in your blog, it just won’t be an intentional thing that you’ll do right away. You can always integrate that in later.
• Don’t fret about what you’ll sell while you’re working. That will work itself out, trust me. Here is a blog post about 5 different types of content monetization to get you started. There are other things to sell, too, but content monetization is an easy first step. If you can’t figure out what to sell, send me an email and we’ll talk about it.

Like anything that is effective, this method takes some effort. There will be days when you want to quit. But this is, in my opinion, the most effective way to start a business when you want to start a business someday but aren’t ready to quit your job just yet.

Starting businesses is fun. Growing them is also fun but it’s hard work too, especially if you want to grow them profitably.

One client of mine, who is a serial entrepreneur, has a handful of businesses in various stages of start-up and operation. But they were running out of time and money, worn ragged by demands of each business and unable to eke out growing profitability because they couldn’t focus on a single thing. Although I was initially focused on their sales funnel for two of their businesses (obviously), we ended up looking at the bigger picture of ALL of their business(es) to find ways to make them all more profitable.

Here’s a chart I put together to help my client analyze the demands of his time and attention on each new or existing business.

UNDERSTANDING THE TIME-AND-ATTENTION DEMANDS CHART
Across the top, the chart lists three key functions of the business: Administration, Marketing, and Deliverables. The three functions are divided up into 5 segments with “P” for passive on one side and “A” for active on the other. Down the left, are the businesses, business ideas, or projects/initiatives that are being analyzed.

For our purposes, let’s use the following broad definitions:

• Administration includes the various “housekeeping” functions that keep a business running.
• Marketing includes all of the sales and marketing efforts to move your contact through the sales funnel to the point of purchase.
• Deliverables include the things a business does to provide the products or services it sells, such as manufacturing, assembling, shipping, analysis, etc.

(Yes, there are other ways to divide up the business but this provides a quick-and-dirty thumbnail sketch that is suitable for our purposes.)

An example of a passive business:
A business might be passive in the Administration section if everything is outsourced and automated. A business might be passive in the Marketing section if they have a lot of word-of-mouth marketing or advertising that is running without much input from them. A business might be passive in the Deliverable section if they sell digital content.

An example of an active business
A business might be active in the Administration section if it requires a lot of hands-on delegation and management. A business might be active in the Marketing section if they have a lot of social media marketing that requires constant participation and engagement. A business might be active in the Deliverable section if they provide services that require the full attention of the owner – like consulting, freelance writing, or graphic design

I’ve created the above 2 fake examples below:

Now that you know what the chart is about, it’s just a matter of figuring out where the time is being spent for YOUR business. (Or, in the case of business ideas, it’s just a matter of figuring out where the time is GOING to be spent).

These are just estimates to get a general idea of your time. This isn’t an exact science but it is still revealing. Think of each of the five “P” to “A” segments as something like:

ANALYZING THE TIME-AND-ATTENTION DEMANDS OF MY CLIENT’S BUSINESSES
First we drew the chart for his 8 businesses (actually, businesses 1-5 exist and businesses 6-8 are in progress). In the example below, I have removed the names of my client’s businesses and just numbered them.

Then we went through each business and figured out how much time he was spending on Administration, Marketing, and Deliverables.

Administratively, he’s getting his business in order by trying to consolidate and automate his administrative functions. Unfortunately, it’s his marketing and deliverables that are killing him. He’s marketing almost all of these as separate brands with little cross-over or overlap. That means 8 different identities on Twitter, 8 different Facebook pages, 8 different identities in other marketing channels. And on the deliverable side, he’s spending A LOT of time delivering his services, with each business demanding his full attention to provide paid services.

This amount of active administration, marketing, and deliverables might be fine for a business that employs several people or is able to outsource more, but my client is an entrepreneur with some outsourced administration, but he loves to market his businesses himself, and it’s his expertise that is being hired. That means a lot of HIS time in marketing and deliverables.

I’ve highlighted the two key problem areas – he’s spending so much time trying to market and deliver services for 8 different brands.

No wonder he’s feel like he’s running around, and no wonder his profitability is suffering!

Of course, this time-spent is only one side of the equation. Cash flow and profitability should also be taken into account. Businesses that provide more cash flow or profitability to the business owner should be allowed to take more time and attention than those that do not.

So, here’s what we did to solve it this serial entrepreneur’s problem:

Businesses 1 and 2 provide the most cash flow and profitability. Those ones are going to be the key. We also determined that Business 4 could have a positive impact on cash flow and profitability in the near future.

Our goal there was to find ways to reduce the active demands of Administration and Marketing. (You can see our results where I’ve grayed out the previous demand and put the new one in blue. It’s not always possible but it can be done.

Next, we explored some ideas about consolidation. Business 3 is closely linked to Business 2 so there was an opportunity to combine them together. Both Business 2 and Business 3 had a lot of deliverable demands, and my client was worried about losing the income, but since he didn’t have a lot of time to provide the deliverable anyway, we don’t think he’ll see a significant drop. I think he’ll actually see an increase income because he can focus. Business 8 could also be consolidated into the Business 7 brand.

Then, we had a brainstorming session to explore how his new businesses should be focused more on passive administration and passive deliverables. And even if they required some initially active marketing in the beginning, the goal should be in the near-term to make the marketing as passive as possible, too.

The result? My client has gone from 8 businesses that were requiring a lot of his time to 6 businesses that are requiring moderate amounts of his time. This is not a perfect picture but it’s a step in the right direction.

The goal for every business is to move toward the passive side of each of these business functions. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the perfect business requires NO effort for administration, marketing, and deliverables, but rather that these are managed in a way that take less and less time and attention with the goal of providing greater profitability.

Tomorrow, I’ll give some ideas about how your business can increase the “passivity” of each of these three business functions.

As a business owner, one of your tasks should be to get your Customers to buy from you again. Repeat business is more profitable because your buyers have already been through your sales funnel once! Therefore, it takes less work to sell to them, which means less of the money is “spent” on the sale and more of it is profit.

But if you sell services, this isn’t easy to do: Customers who need your service for a brief season may not need it after they have achieved the goal they hired you for.

So how can you extend your contract? Here are 3 ways to keep your service clients:

1. Know more than anyone else in the organization about the topic.
Your Customer has a lot on their mind and they rely on you to be the specialist in your particular area. Take this a step further by becoming a specialist on your area in your client’s business. Become an expert in your client’s business! Know more than your client does about one particular aspect of their business and they will keep coming back to you for more. (Oh, and as a bonus, you’ll also lock yourself in over and above the competition).

2. Be the easiest person in the world to work with.
Your Customer just wants their business to run. They don’t need drama, they don’t want divas, and they definitely don’t want to hold your hand. Instead, they want to hand off one aspect of their business to you and trust you to deliver on time, in full, as you had promised. Deliver your service, be clear and a pleasure to work with, and be helpful. These will go a long way.

3. Proactively search for other projects and make recommendations.
Don’t wait for your Customer to come to you with project ideas. Search out opportunities in your Customer’s business and make recommendations. Create a proposal with one or two ideas (don’t overwhelm them with ideas; just give a couple) and ask if they’d like to extend your contract.