Aaron Hoos

Lending and leasing professionals should offer some of these ebooks for free to help position them as experts in their market, or for sale to help generate a passive revenue stream.

1. Leveraging: How to make money with borrowed money.
2. How to improve your credit to get more money at a lower interest rate.
3. How to understand a lending agreement (including: What clauses to watch out for and what a stated interest rate really means).
4. A decision-making framework to determine whether someone should buy something outright or lease it.
5. A borrower’s “101 guide” to understanding interest rates: What is interest, why does it fluctuate, etc.
6. How to borrow money like a pro: Getting what you need, paying it back on time.
7. Troubleshooting your loan: What happens if you forgot to pay; what happens if you are unable to pay, etc.
8. How to be a loan officer/loan broker.
9. Top tips and ideas to borrowing and paying it back from real borrowers.
10. How to extend the life of your purchase (with care, maintenance, upkeep, upgrades, etc.)

The Question:

Should I use a blog or a website in my financial or real estate business?

Aaron’s Answer:

Here’s the really basic difference between a website and a blog:

• A website is like a brochure. You create it once and it stays like that for a while. Sure, you might make some changes over time but in general it has the same content.
• A blog is like a diary or journal. You add new content regularly to it and people who click to your site will see your most recent post.

If you’re wondering whether you should have a blog or a website for your financial or real estate business, you need to know this: Both are good and it’s okay to have both – a blog AND a website. Don’t think of it as one or the other.

SOME PROFESSIONALS CHOOSE TO HAVE ONE OR THE OTHER

Some professionals choose to have just a website because they want to create the content once and then not worry about it, and then focus on other things in their business. And, since it’s slightly more acceptable to “sell” your services on a website, some professionals prefer that clearer call to action. (Note: They can appear on blogs, too, but generally do so to a lesser degree).

Some professionals choose to have just a blog because their potential or existing clients like reading new content, and because search engines like fresh, authoritative content. Unlike a website, a blog has some relationship-building tools built-in (such as a commenting feature) so you can build a connect with your blog visitors.

SOME PROFESSIONALS CHOOSE TO HAVE BOTH

Some professionals choose to have both – a website at one domain and a blog at another. This gives them the advantages of both.

SOME PROFESSIONALS CHOOSE A HYBRID APPROACH

Some professionals have a website with a blog on it, or they have a blog with elements of a website on it (which is what I have on my site – it’s primarily a blog but there are website-specific elements like a Portfolio page, a Services page, and more).

WHICH SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?

It depends on your sales funnel.

If you have a well-established career with tons of referrals or you’re a face-to-face networking rockstar, then a website might be all you need because you’ll drive people to your site pretty infrequently. If you plan to sell downloadable products, you’ll also want to consider a website because you’ll need sales pages and hidden download pages.
If you want to grow your financial or real estate practice and you want to drive traffic to a site and build relationships with those who visit your site, a blog might be better.
But my favorite is both. You get the clear “sales-focused” calls-to-action that are more acceptable on a website plus the search-engine-loving opportunity to create fresh content and build relationships with your website visitors… and at the same time, you can also dial in other things like product sales.

Unlike many other professionals in the financial industry, private equity and venture capitalists have the unique benefit of not really needing to chase after clients – rather, they have the opposite problem of culling through a big list of potential clients to find the right ones. And in some cases, they might also have multiple audiences to consider: Prospective clients who are looking for capital, existing clients who already have capital, and joint venture investors who will be investing some of their capital.

1. How to start a business.
2. The investible business: How to build a business that VCs will WANT to invest in.
3. The perfect pitch: How to create a sales pitch without the BS.
4. Understanding corporate structures and share structures.
5. A collection of case studies of your most successful investments and how your money helped to make the business great.
6. How to evaluate companies as a VC or PE professional.
7. A collection of top tips and ideas from VCs or PE professionals for business owners who hope to get capital for their company.
8. How to work with a board of advisors.
9. You’ve got some money from your VC… now what?!?
10. How to become a private equity professional or venture capitalist.