starting a successful business?formula to financial freedom one identify a problem two solve the problem three get paid four refine and repeat. Procrastination is a success killer. start now. learn from reel sotries.

 

I finally got serious about wanting to

change my life a few years ago so I did

my research I found the ultimate side

Hustle by watching hundreds of hours of YouTube videos and picking the one that was right for me and after working just four hours a week for two months I'm now a multi-millionaire yeah right if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you too here's the truth watching videos or Reading articles about

side hustles is just taking you down the

rabbit hole you'll find yourself

clicking on one video after another in

hopes of finding a good way to make

money but after hours of wandering about you'll end up lost overwhelmed and Confused.

I'm here to tell you that for someone

who actually really wants to change

their life for the better side hustles

are not the way to go side hustles are a

distraction an attempt at a quick fix a

little bit of easy money

but your time and energy is limited by

filling up any free time you have with

extra work of some kind that just pays asmall amount you stay on a hamster wheel always running just trying to keep up.

I propose that you do something

different instead of aiming low Aim High follow the four steps that we will

discuss in this article to use your free

time to build a business that can change

your life instead of pursuing a side gig

that will just be a small supplement to

your main job that keeps you on the

hamster wheel

after earning an MBA at Cornell

University I spent my career building

venture capital and private Equity

backed companies I've served as the

Chief Financial Officer of several

software businesses where I worked

closely with sales marketing and

operations to grow the company.

I tell you this so you know that what

I'm sharing today comes from experience

so here's the secret to starting a

successful business actually it's not

really a secret at all but it gets

drowned out amidst all the noise and

distractions on YouTube from countless

how to make money articles.

the truth is finding success in business

comes down to this one simple formula

write it down and always keep it in mind

you need to one identify a problem

two solve the problem three get paid

for refine and repeat.

let's walk through this in a little more

detail with some great examples of how

regular people build thriving businesses

by following this formula.

The formula starts with number one being identify a problem but actually there's a vital step before number one and that is to tell yourself get started already.

Stop talking about wanting to start a

business .stop endlessly watching videos or articles scrolling for ideas stop coming up with reasons why you can't start yet why now is not a good time why I'll start just as soon as something whatever I'm

waiting for to get out of the way

just get started.

 

Procrastination is a success killer

procrastination is negative momentum and what you need is positive momentum once

you start moving it's so much easier to

keep moving so start moving get started good.

Now that you're moving here's what

you're going to do first identify a

problem the world is full of problems

you come across problems in your daily

life the key is to note them write them

down literally sit down and make a list

don't just wait for inspiration to serve

up the perfect business idea in a dream

because that may never happen

think of the problems you've come across in your life think of things in your hobbies or your work that were hard to do or hard to figure out then think about what a solution to those problemsmight be ?

If you can solve these problems you have a potential business.

every business involves someone getting paid to solve a problem for example entertainment businesses can be thought of as solving any number of problems or needs such as boredom loneliness distraction inspiration providing an escape or relaxation Etc a health or Wellness business like a doctor a health author or a fitness YouTuber helps solve all sorts of problems or needs with information and inspiration and support to help people improve their health a tax accountant solves the problems of tax preparation being complicated scary or time consuming for many people so think back what problems have you encountered that you solved or could solve what things have you learned how to do that could form the basis for a product a woman who I used to work with in New York City was from China .she was interested in traditional.

 

Chinese tea but even though we lived in New York City with its thriving

Chinatown she wasn't satisfied with the

tea choices available.

she decided to solve this problem and

started an online tea business called

tea drunk where she sells premium teas imported from China promotes and celebrates traditional Chinese tea

culture and offers free and paid classes

about tea for The Connoisseur she's

created a thriving business around t a

business does not have to be complicated to do well.

Whatever problems and solutions you come up with try to estimate how big the potential Market opportunity is try to answer the questions how many people or businesses have this problem and how much might they pay for a solution ?

when asking these questions you are

following the lead of some of the best

investors and startup companies The

Venture Capital investors they always

want to know what problem do you solve and how big is the market opportunity ?

If you borrow this approach it can help

you choose which of several different

business ideas might be most attractive

to pursue

to give you further ideas of problems

you might find and to illustrate that it

can be simple things here are some

problems I've come across recently in my life.

My wife wanted to raise chickens we live in a country environment that gets

really cold in the winter we knew

nothing about raising chickens or about

how to keep them safe in the cold so to

answer the countless questions we had

about how to do it we scoured the

internet and YouTube looking for advice.

I would have gladly paid for a course on

raising chickens or a support resource

of some kind it would have saved us so

much time.

same thing with bees she wanted to raise honeybees but again it was not a good resource available or at least not that we found.

we would have gladly paid for a course

or help or food for thought if you work in a business what doesn't work well there.

what slows things down or causes

problems or something that could be done ? a lot better faster or cheaper

can you solve any of them is this a

problem that other companies have too solving these problems are all potential businesses.

speaking of problems I'm having a small

problem right now I can't quite reach

the like button on your screen could you do me a favor and just

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This article. I don't really understand it

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Once you've identified some problems

that you could solve that you believe

have a big enough market opportunity to be worth your while think about how you could solve them for someone is it

something that you would teach other

people how to do themselves or a service that you would do for them or something that you would make and sell decide how you will solve the problem.

okay now listen carefully to what I'm

about to tell you this is a very

important point you should not spend a

ton of time trying to design the perfect

solution you can't because you don't

know yet the extent of the customer's

problem or what the perfect product is

you have an idea but you haven't tested it yet in the market.

so put together what you think is the

minimum viable product known as the MVP the smallest and or simplest product needed to solve the problem is you envision it and to get sales.

This is what you bring to market sell

them this product first and then listen

to your customers to get feedback

with the feedback you can evolve the

product and make it better.

this method is explained brilliantly in

a book called The Lean Startup which

I'll link to in the description under

the article I highly recommend this book for all entrepreneurs and anyone

thinking of starting a business it will

literally make you smarter by showing

you how to think about building and

evolving a product to fit your Market.

Kelly and Daniel are health and fitness

Buffs they enjoyed everything about

eating right and a good exercise routine

but when they look for videos on YouTube on these topics they found it lacking so they started a YouTube channel to fill the gap.

their videos were not fancy just basic

the videos showed Kelly and Daniel

working out together and coaching the

viewers through the routine so viewers

could work out with them a classic MVP

well guess what people love them.

their Channel and business named FitnessBlender has been wildly successful with 6.7 million subscribers on YouTube with loads of free videos plus a website where you can buy premium content and tools.

start with the MVP and evolve it if and

when necessary three you need to get

paid for providing the solution estimate

how much it will cost you to do or to

make include all of your time and costs

then decide how much you will charge forthe solution.

you can set your price by doing market

research to see how much other people

charge for similar services or set the

price equal to your Cost Plus a markup

for profit to be profitable obviously your selling price needs to be higher than your cost be mindful though that depending on what you're selling.

it might be difficult to determine the

right price because it's not clear yet

how valuable your product is to the

market or what your cost will be

at this stage particularly before you

launch a service based product there

simply may be too many unknowns you may not know for sure how much it will cost you to provide the product or solution because you may not know how much time it will take you to do the work involved ?

you also won't know if the product is

right for the market or if it needs a

lot of changes which could change the

cost and you don't know yet how much

value it provides to your customers

so at this point I just aim to set a

price that covers all my estimated costs

including a reasonable wage for my time making sure to protect myself should cost be higher than expected and just try to make some sales.

The product and pricing can be refined

later the purpose of the early stages of all this are to test the product and learn

John Lee Dumas used to drive to work

listening to podcasts but he got

frustrated that the ones he liked only

came out with maybe one episode per week.

he really wished they were available

more often then John realized that he could create the solution himself that he wished was available.

so John launched his podcast called

entrepreneur on fire publishing one new episode every day.

John's Focus initially was not Revenue

it was on building a good product

granted his cost consisted mostly of his

own time but still he was basically

working for free initially to get the

product up and running and in the hands of customers his listeners.

well John's podcast was a big hit with

now over 100 million listens to his

episodes before long he noticed that

some of his listeners were asking him

lots of questions about the steps

involved in making a podcast.

this is where he refined his product

offering because his customers were

telling him they wanted something more in response he created an in-depth online resource to teach people all the steps involved in launching a podcast.

this podcasting course was also a huge

success John has now run these

businesses for over a decade and made

many many millions of dollars from them this brings us to step four refine and repeat this is where you work on the stuff that can make you rich you've

identified a product idea to solve a

problem for someone you've built a

minimum viable product and got it into

the hands of initial customers up until

now production of the product may be

pretty manual and inefficient as you

work with initial customers or get

feedback from them if they bought a

finished product learn from them and

make the product better

then you'll sell and deliver the better

product over time you keep learning keep selling and keep making it better

also start thinking about how to scale

up your production about how you can

make it faster and easier to produce and maybe even less expensive to make you'll also learn better what the value

proposition is to your customer which

will help you in your sales and

marketing and in setting a better price

this stage is where you start to make

your business into a factory where you

produce more better cheaper.

it's in the scaling of your business

where you start to leverage things other people processes software and Machinery depending on the nature of your business.

which can help it to become wonderfully profitable.

once again the steps are identify a problem solve the problem get paid refine and repeat there are countless examples of regular people building great businesses they're no better than you are no smarter no luckier they just found a problem identified a solution and took action if you really want to change your life don't waste time on side hustles work on identifying a problem and then create the solution

so get started now.

I'll see you in the next article.