All posts tagged: entrepreneur

How to build a successful coaching/consulting business?

Published by

Continuing to learn from Dorie Clark’s book “Entrepreneurial You” Step 1 Develop your initial market. Tell your family, friends, contacts about your decision to launch a consulting business. Ask them for introductions to folks who are able to hire and who you may be able to help. If time permits you should do this with a personal call or e-mail. And be specific about the type of client you want to attract. I would love to work with anyone in the aviation industry, or ask do you know anyone in Google, they would be my dream client. Of course, this assumes that you have a clear idea of what type of coaching/consulting business you want to build.   If it is not obvious to you where your skill set lies, or maybe you are a generalist, complete an assessment of your areas of expertise.  Some pointers from Bozi Dar who runs an online business as a side gig, Understand what you are well qualified to share. In her book Dorie uses the phrase uniquely qualified, …

Monetize your expertise.

Published by

Continuing to look at the ideas contained in Dorie Clark’s book “Entrepreneurial You” Building up the courage to charge for your services is challenging. What if no one wants your product? Or people complain that you are overpriced?  Or call you a sell out for charging at all? Yes that may well happen. But you cannot help others with your advice or great product or outstanding service if you cannot keep yourself in business. It’s strange, people willpay $200 per hour for a psychiatrist  but will look askance at paying the same rate to tap into your decades of experience. I “lose” many potential clients when I tell them my charges, for me this is often a cause for regret, not because I have lost a potential client but because I know I could deliver them many times more value than I charge. Should I reduce my rates? No! I charge what I am worth, as is borne out by my client history. My clients can terminate my services at any time, I do not …

Build Your Brand

Published by

The underlying advice contained in Dorie Clark’s “Entrepreneurial You” is that most entrepreneurs in the coaching, consulting, speaking field fail to diversify themselves. Diversification can enable you to earn more and mitigate risk. Too many entrepreneurs focus on earning revenue from one or two activities, such as consulting and coaching. To stop being held a slave to the clock, trading hours for dollars you need to develop multiple streams of income. In her prologue to the book Dorie states that her business model has seven distinct streams. Before you tune out at the thought of developing seven, yes seven, income streams, keep in mind that it has taken Dori over ten years to get to this stage. As she describes in her book “The Long View” it takes time to achieve great things. Not all potential income streams will be appropriate for you, select the ones that match your business goals. Your objective, and its mine since reading Dori’s book, should be to be earning money while you sleep.  And although I will focus on …

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

Published by

At this stage of our business cycle, you are profitable and growing organically. Maybe this is the end game for you, you are earning a nice living for you and your family. But many entrepreneurs want to continue to see their businesses grow. And to stand still means to go backwards in this every changing world. You do not need to grow like crazy, but you do not want to stagnate either. As a minimalist entrepreneur you have a built a business that you enjoy working on, it’s a pleasure to go to the office every day. But sustained growth presents its own set of challenges.  One tool that may help you decide the best path for your business in the Ansoff matrix which I discussed in episode 29 of season 7. To listen to that podcast CTRL Click here When a business fails, it is not usually due to a tide of unforeseeable events, its usually for a handful of reasons. The most common of which is running out of money. In his book …

From e-mails and communities to profitability.

Published by

Make email the backbone of your marketing – maintain control. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook can take away your business at any time by changing the algorithms, shutting down your account, or making you pay to turn up. Social media is a great place to gain distribution, but you are building on rented land. Once you have social media followers, start building an email list. Email is a peer-to-peer network giving you a direct line to your customers. This is not controlled by anyone but yourself, an algorithm or whether you spend money. The author’s position is that when someone gives you their e-mail address they are your friend, not a stranger. But it is very easy to lose that friendship. You would not spam your friends so you should not spam these contacts either. I have had some bad experiences recently. Look I get it, a business owner has spent time to develop a piece of useful content, or to produce a YouTube video. If I want more, then I buy the additional information …

Marketing: Just be You

Published by

Selling to strangers is hard, it’s much easier if you have a connection with your potential client.  In this episode we will hear what Sahil Lavingia tells us on developing your audience. Congratulations, by following steps outlined in last week’s  blogs which were part manifesto and part roadmap. you know how to build a community, a product and one hundred customers. You have achieved product market fit. Note the 100 customers is not a hard number, it will depend on your business. If you are a coach, consultant or other solopreneur this number maybe only 5 or even as low as 3. The point is that you have repeat customers. This week we will look at the advice for the minimalist entrepreneur offered by Savil Lavingia on how to grow beyond 100 customers starting with marketing by being you. Sales got you to 100 customers, marketing will bring you thousands. Marketing at this stage of your business should not be confused with advertising. Ads cost money and as a minimalist entrepreneurs we only spend money …

Getting Ready to Launch – Your first 100 customers

Published by

Lessons from “The Minimalist Entrepreneur – How Great Founders Do More With Less.” By Sahil Lavingia Constraints lead to Creativity. If you are a minimalist entrepreneur the early stages of launching your business is all about constraints. You need to focus on doing one thing well and avoiding the temptation to try to do everything at once. Scope creep where a project or product launch becomes unwieldy due adding just one more feature and wouldn’t be nice if we could do this. Sahal Lavingia uses this check list to keep things manageable. Can I ship it in a weekend? Most prototypes of a product offering should be capable of being developed in 2 to 3 days Will it make my customers lives a little better? Is it likely a customer will be willing to pay me for this solution? Can I get feedback quickly? This first product does not need to be pretty. Maybe the best example of a popular but not pretty solution is Craigslist. It’s never been pretty, but it has always worked. …

Be Confident Be Minimalist

Published by

Lessons from “The Minimalist Entrepreneur – How Great Founders Do More With Less.” By Sahil Lavingia Don’t let self-doubt set in; build as little as possible. Writers are told, “Write what you know” for entrepreneurs it’s not quite that simple. When you are starting a business you are imaging something that has not been done before, or at least not in the way you are contemplating your business vision. This applies even if you are considering a consulting or coaching business, there may be many similar businesses out there, but yours will be unique because you will bring your skill sets and unique personality to the table. Unfortunately, this is when many aspiring solopreneurs decide that building a business is not for them. Although they have the passion, they let self-doubt set in. They convince themselves they do not have the hard skills they need to be successful.  Let me tell you a secret, every entrepreneur has doubts that their business with be successful. Even the most successful were not sure of success when they …

Finding your business niche

Published by

Lessons from “The Minimalist Entrepreneur – How Great Founders Do More With Less.” By Sahil Lavingia Give away so much value that you think you’ve given too much, then give more. Michael Port Book Yourself Solid Start with Community Sahil Lavingia starts this chapter with a story about entrepreneur Sol Orwell who, in 2009, was overweight and unhappy. He decided he needed to learn more about fitness and nutrition. He joined a Reddit community and the more he learned about the subject, the more he shared, he answered questions and posted about his personal journey of losing sixty pounds (27KG). Working with co “Redditor” Kurtis Frank, they built a community of 50,000 members. Kurtis and Sol noticed a common theme, many questions were raised around the subject of nutritional supplements. In 2011 together they launched Examine.com, they did not sell anything, just provided information. In 2013 they began to think about monetizing. By asking their audience Kurtis and Sahil identified a need for a single reliable source of information about supplements available in the market. They launched Research Digest a …

The Minimalist Approach to Success.

Published by

Lessons from “The Minimalist Entrepreneur – How Great Founders Do More With Less.” By Sahil Lavingia  Are you a Minimalist Entrepreneur? Introduction: Sahil Lavingia started his career chasing unicorns. He joined Pinterest as employee number two but left before his stock invested to build his own billion dollar company: Gumroad. A tool to help creators sell their products online. Simplicity was key, no complicated setup, no elaborate storefront. Just a link for customers to pay and you are in business. Fifty thousand people visited the site on the first day and Sahil felt he was on the cusp of something big. Gumroad never did become a unicorn, after burning through $10 million of investor’s capital, growth plateaued, attempts to raise additional capital failed. Three quarters of the company’s staff were laid off, including many of Sahil’s good friends. From the perspective of Silicon Valley, and in his own eyes, Mr. Lavinga was a failure. A move from San Francisco to Provo Utah enabled Sahil to change his perspective. Gumroad was a sustainable business, thousands of …