Build Your Business Foundation E21 – Transcript

Janet Fish 0:08
Hello, and welcome to the breakaway entrepreneur podcast where we explore the entrepreneur mindset, and the characteristics and traits that lead to success. I’m your host, Janet Fish. Today I’d like to take a different angle and provide some content rather than interview my guests. I’m just feeling like changing things up a bit. I recently started a free online course where I take entrepreneurs through my 10 step process of starting and growing a profitable business. The first module of the course covers the foundation of building a successful business. We cover your Why, what’s the true underlying reason you became an entrepreneur, creating a business plan for your business, and then the most important foundational component who you’re selling to Who is your target market. One of the things I see a lot in my clients is the lack of a sound foundation for their business. They decide to start a business that They jump right in without really thinking that they need a framework in which to build, you wouldn’t build a house without a strong foundation. And you shouldn’t launch a business without one either. Whether you’re just starting a business, or you want to revisit or revamp your basic infrastructure, I hope you’ll enjoy this episode. So I want to start with it all starts with your y. So your y is the underlying compelling reason that you do what you do, regardless of what that is. So I really want you to think about what is your why as it pertains to your business, identify what it is, what is the thing that drives you to do your business? What is the underlying thing very, very rarely does anybody go in business, particularly to generate a lot of money without an idea of what it’s all what the big picture is, what their what their reason is, whether it’s their kids are, whether it’s their legacy, or whether it really is I want a big house in a boat and, and whatever. So I want you spend a few minutes and identify your y. Your y will really drive you towards your goals. It is something that will absolutely save you on the days that you which we all have, you don’t want to do what you’re doing. You don’t want to work that day when your y will definitely drive you. The y will get you back on track when you falter. And I’ve been coaching for 15 years, I’ve coached over 1000 people, I don’t know anybody who hasn’t had a moment in their business, or in their life where things went awry. And they just do. And for a lot of us we’re in the middle of that awry, right. We’re in the middle of trying to figure out how our businesses have changed how we’re going to change how we’re going to meet that challenge on the other side of this. So your y is a really good thing to rely on to go back to when you have those days of challenge or falter or you question it or you get stuck because We all have those days. So your first piece of homework, by the way, I’m going to give you a lot of homework, because that’s part of the intensive part. So your first piece of homework is spend 15 to 30 minutes in the next couple of days. And really explore the reasons that you want to build your business the way one of the reasons why you grow your business, what’s the underlying thing that that is the fire in the belly that gets you through every single day that excites you, and then I write it down and put it somewhere where you can get to it because like I said, there will be challenging days ahead, and your y is a really significant thing that can help you through that. The next thing is to set your goals so set your goals for the next six months or 12 months. If you want to set your goal for the next four weeks. It’s up to you. I’m a big goal setter, but I’m also one of those people who I set them and I look at them maybe once a quarter. I don’t look at them every single day. But goals are very, very important. And I think what a lot of us do is we’ll set our goals in January or December for the year. And then we put them in a file and I’m definitely can be accused of putting them in a file and sticking them there. And then not even looking at them, then oh, yeah, what are those, let me get them back out. So make them and then make sure you you readjust them, you look at them as you go through. And the other thing that I do is I share them with with an accountability partner of mine. So I have a guy His name is Jim. He’s a really good friend of mine, Susie knows him. He’s another business coach. And so we at the beginning of the year or December we get together we set our goals and then we once a quarter get together and kind of talk about where we are and what we want to do and hold each other accountable because that’s an important part of it. And I don’t only set my business goals, I set my personal goals as well. So if you feel like adding that, add that, definitely write them down. Use SMART goals. I know, I don’t remember what they are. It’s Specific, Measurable, Achievable,

something around that realistic and timely. So anyway, so I use SMART goals. But anyway, you want to write them, just make sure you do them. And, and like I said, I’ll keep coming back to this certainly today. Because I think we really are in a different, we’re in a new space, right where we are trying to figure out what it’s going to look like as we come out of it. Out of this, you know, shelter in place and pandemic and what our business is going to look like. And I’ll talk a little bit more later about, we’re actually I actually have seen some shifts in my target market and the way that they react and they think so I’ll talk a little bit more about that later. So I think it’s important if you’ve already got your goals done to take them out and look at them again in light of what’s going on in our world today. So I think that’s an important thing to do as well. And then so your homework is write down your goals and share them with at least one person if you want. Share them in the Facebook page. If you want to do that, share them with us. That would be awesome. Keep them where you can see them, and then review them. Like I said, I review mine at least every quarter. But certainly take a look at them periodically and adjust them as as time goes on.

Now I’m clicking and it’s not going. There we go. All right, quickly. If there’s anybody on here who is starting a business and hasn’t started one yet, I’ll just really quickly go through this. Because this is just some thoughts for how to figure out what that looks like. Step number one figure out what is your skill set. What do you know how to do? How have you made money in the past second is What have you done? What skills have you used on other jobs? I’ve noticed people through the years who have said, Well, people, people come to me and tell me I’m good at that. I’m a good project manager, I’m a good organizer. I’m a good people person. I’m a good whatever. So what people have also commented about you that you’re good at and what things that you know, that you are good at, and that’s a great starting point. What do you like to do? So, I don’t know if I’m a huge proponent of Find your passion and build your business around that. I believe that having passion for what you do is important. But I’m not exactly sure that that you can passion can do it alone. So I use an example of a woman that I coached a long time ago. She worked at Yahoo in the HR department, and she wanted to start a real estate company and I forget what You want to do in real estate, whether she wanted to sell homes or fix and flip, I forget, but she made that she wanted to. And I said, Well, so what kind of experience do you have? She’s, I have no experience in that. So that’s kind of a hard jump or a big jump. Not to say that it’s not doable. If you find a mentor that can help you do that. So in my experience, I went from working in a sales job for corporate America. My first one, I quit my job, the first thing I did was I did land development in Mexico. Now the skills that I used in my job, project management and people skills and sales and all that because I raised a lot of money to do it. certainly helped. But I had a mentor that knew how to do exactly that. So I partnered up with him, and that really helped. So just some ideas on determining your business. I have a sheet that’s got 1000 ideas upfront. different businesses. So I will share that on the Facebook page for anybody who might be looking to start a business. And then like I said, just decide and then start. Because here’s the beautiful thing that people get caught up in spending a lot of time to figure out exactly what they want to do. And at the end of the day, it’s that’s not the critical thing, whether you’re selling pencils, or you’re selling coffee mugs, it doesn’t matter. When you build the business, the foundational things that you do are the same and the widgets can be can be switched out. So you won’t lose all of the work that you do when you build the business if you decide to go in another direction, so just know that Okay, so the next piece is to create a business plan. So you absolutely need a plan for your business. It starts with the goals, but the plan is really what are you going to do to achieve those goals. So your plan could be 120 days. It could be six months, it could be a year, it could be five years. But you need to have a business plan. It also needs to be written down. So it’s super important that that is also written down. There are a lot of templates available online. And I will share a number of those with you on the Facebook page. But I would say to you, I’m going to as you see, I’ve already started to give you homework, I’m going to give you a lot of homework, and I’ll talk in a minute about each phase of what we’re going to cover in this course. Once we get through, you get through this course you will already have a fairly robust business plan that you can execute on. So if you stick through it and you really do the homework and you really do the work as you go through this, you’ll already have a phenomenal starting point for a robust business plan. So the homework there is to start your business plan or if you’ve already got one, reassess your business plan, through your why the new goals that you have or adjusted goals that you have And then the components that we’ll talk about as we go through kind of building this whole framework, this whole business plan. The next step is to find a model company. So a model company is a company that is like yours, that

is kind of at the next level of where you want to be. And, and so it could be a company, it could be a much, much larger company, it could be a company that’s just a little bit more further along than you are. But it’s important to find a company that you want to emulate. So once you’ve identified that, and there’s a couple of components one is it doesn’t have to be in the same industry as you. It helps if it’s in the same industry as you. So if Suzy was to go find a model company, she might go find a publishing company that publishes you know, authors that’s at that next level, to kind of Figure out how she can emulate what they do, why reinvent the wheel when there’s already companies out there doing that. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be in the same industry. It’s, it’s good if it does if it is, but it’s not super important. What is important, however, is that they have the same target market as you. So you could be selling watches and I could be selling luxury vehicles. But we have the same target market. So I could learn a lot by how you’re selling a Rolex so that I can because we’re selling it to the same people pretty much I could learn a lot by how you do that and it could help me better market how to sell luxury cars. So same target market is important industry not so much. But the same target market is and what you look at is one of the products that they sell. Right so help you fine tune what products you Want to sell? By seeing what’s most popular? What works for them? And then how do they market? I mean, it’s so critical. What are the your words that they use? What’s the terminology that they use? What media? do they do? Do they do social media? Do they do print? Is it online? Is it offline? What photos do they use? What pictures do they use? Do they use video? A great way to figure all of that out, is to identify a model company or a number of model companies, and then opt in and get their emails. I mean, I’ve done that for years. I’ll go to other business coaches to other people, and I’ll opt into their emails and then I’ll look at the way they structure them and what they say and do they do cute little emojis do they do bullet points? Do they do three lines do they do video and you can learn a lot By successfully looking by looking at successful companies and how they market and like I said, the words that they use where they market, so find a model company or two, and then start doing some research on the products, the market, how they market where they market and all those different factors. Oh, and then terminology. All right. Um, the other thing that I love and for any of you who know that I have a podcast called the breakaway entrepreneur, I am unbelievably fascinated by the mindset of the entrepreneur. And I think we can all agree as entrepreneurs, that our mindset is very different than people who work for somebody else for a living. And I’m just fascinated by that. So, like I said, I started this podcast called the entrepreneur and I interview amazing people like Suzy pruden. On what it’s like and how entrepreneurs think differently. And so there’s some traits that I think entrepreneurs have. And this is just a very short list of them. But I want you to think about your mindset as an entrepreneur. And if it’s an area of interest, and it’s an area of things that you could explore and learn more, I love books about leadership. And I’ve read a gazillion of them. And I every time I read one, I learned something that helps me be a better leader or a better entrepreneur. So just something that I’m fascinated with. So I brought it up. And and I invite you to think about it. The traits that you have as entrepreneurs that make you great entrepreneurs, and some of the things traits that you have that you might think I could use some work on that or I want to explore that a little bit more. Because the mindset is just such a, it’s such an amazing thing when it comes to, to being an entrepreneur and to be a successful entrepreneur.

Alright, so I want to talk about your target market. So your target market is, who is your ideal client? So who are the people that you sell a new market to? Who are the people and let me put it to even a better way? Who are the people who buy your product, right? And it’s so important as the first step to really understanding how to effectively market to understand who your target market is. So we all know when we think about target market, we all think about demographics, Where do they live, what’s their income level, what’s your education level, male, female age, those are all really important things. To understand what the demographics are of the people that you’re selling to, because you would sell very differently to a 25 year old than a 40 year old or 60 year old. So it’s important to understand this, you sell differently to people who live in California, then perhaps live in New York or live in the south. so important to understand that psychographics. So how do they think and what are their values and those kinds of things, especially with such a tense time that we’re in right now? how people think and their ethics and their values, also very much, very much come into play.

And

if you’ve already done enough, a lot of work and understanding who your target market is, I think that’s fabulous. I would also invite you to revisit it in today’s atmosphere in today’s environment, because I I’ve actually had a couple of conversations with some clients who have put me on hold. So I keep talking to them and wait until we get back, right. But two of them that I’ve spoken to in the last week have shifted their focus when it came to their values, and I won’t go into a whole lot of detail about that, because it’s, you know, it’s not my, my place to be to do that. But I think it’s worth re asking those questions, in light of some of the tremendous shifting that’s going on in our world today than ever interests and what do they like to do? I love I don’t do a lot, a lot of Facebook ads. But what I love about Facebook ads is Facebook tracks everything we do, they track every page we go on, they track every like we do. So if I’m a dog lover, they know a whole lot about What other things I’m interested in? Right? I’m selling dog products, and I’m a dog lover, but they know. So things like Facebook can really drill down on interests that people have to help you further fine tune your message to your target market. So interests are really important.

And then lastly,

where are they and where do they hang out? So people are always asking me, where do I find them? Where, who to where do I go to sell my product will go where your target market is? Where are they physically? And where are they online? What groups do they belong to? Where do they shop? Physically? What networking groups are they in? What events do they go to really understand who they are and where they are and where they’re hanging out because that’s where you where you need to be. And all of these are super important. However, the most important part of your target Get market, in my opinion, is answering these two questions. So if you don’t get anything else out of what we talked about today, to me, this is the most critical piece of what we’re talking about today. And that is your target market is, is solely a funnel is in addition to all those other things a function of these two questions. The first one is, what is the problem that you solve? Because that’s how people buy. So there’s this idea in marketing called aspirin versus vitamin marketing. And I’d explain it to you like this. If I have a headache, and it’s two o’clock in the morning, and I’m I can’t sleep I can’t do anything. I’m paralyzed by a headache. I will get up I will get in my car and I will drive to the store and I’ll buy some aspirin. I wake up at two o’clock in the morning and I think, wow, I probably should be healthier. And a way I could be healthier would be to start taking vitamins. I am not going to get up in the middle of the night and go to the store and buy some vitamins. So while at the beginning, I really pushed back on this notion of selling to the pain or selling to the problem. But I absolutely believe it now because I’ve seen it in my experience with my business to identify what the problem is that you solve is key to marketing, because that’s going to get people running to you saying I need you because I have this problem. And I know you can solve it. So the first question is, what’s the problem you saw? And then the second problem is, question is how do you uniquely solve it? What do you do that sets you apart from your competition, and especially as your marketing online

because people don’t get

the chance to See you and they don’t get to engage in a conversation. It’s even more critical online, that you understand the problem and then how you uniquely solve it. Why do they want to come to you what sets you apart and then make sure it’s in line with your branding. If you spent some time doing some branding then there’s this concept which I just love of the elevator speech and I wanted to touch on this because we’ve all I think heard of it and talked about it but I’d like to rewrap it a little bit. When I think about an elevator speech it makes me think of I go to a networking event and I meet somebody and I say So Joe, what do you do for a living and he launches into this diarrhea of vomit on me of what he does and how he does it. And Baba Ba ba ba

bla bla bla

and that’s typically when an elevator speeches and I don’t know if any of you guys have ever experienced that. I’ve seen that a lot when you go to these networking events. So I’m gonna I’m gonna reframe it a little bit. Because I think the out that idea of an elevator speech is important. It’s it’s what you know, you’re going to say to somebody when you meet somebody that you have practiced, so that you’re not fumbling and you feel real confident in it. First, I’d say 30 seconds or less. Second, I’d say it needs to talk about what you do. But it needs to talk about what you do from their perspective. So if I were to go to a networking event, I might say my name is Janet Fish, and I’m a business coach, and I help entrepreneurs get more clients and make more money. That’s about them. I don’t say I’m a business coach, and I spend an hour with you every week and we talk about I help you grow a plan and I asked you the right questions to ferret out Bubba and then we put together a plan and we design your marketing and that’s all great, but to That’s just vomiting on me. Right? What I want to know is what exactly do you do? I help you find new customers, new clients new prospects, so that you can make more money. Like that’s about you. So what you do from their perspective, ask a compelling question. Would you like to make more money in your in your business? So I and I’ll be honest, I will be as bold as that. I’m Janet, I, you know, I’m business coach, I help entrepreneurs, get more customers and make more money. Is that something you’d be interested in? Would you like to make some more money in your in your, in your business? I’ve actually had people say no, but not very many. Right? And then it becomes a discussion about them. Tell me more, tell me more engage in conversation. So my dad, God rest his soul, best sales guy in the world. He was he was just amazing at what he did. But he would talk to anybody and everybody I mean, it would take an hour to get out of the grocery store because you’ve got to talk to the person behind the Towner people in my dad always said people love to talk about themselves. So when you’re in those networking groups, or you’re in that conversation, and it’s now or maybe even getting towards a sales conversation, engage in the conversation with good compelling questions. People let people talk, spend more time listening and less time talking. So I have this guideline, it’s not statistically accurate, but I use it all the time. And I say, the amount of so it let’s say, I’m trying to sell Brian on a coaching program, right. And so we’re having this conversation. So my guideline is the percentage of time that Brian is talking, versus the percentage of time that I’m talking is the percentage that I will have of getting the sale. So if I’m having a conversation with Brian, and I’m selling in this coach program, and he’s talking 90% of the time, I have a 90% chance of making the sale. versus if I’m talking 90% of the time, I have a 10% chance of making the sale. So while I said not necessarily statistically accurate, it’s really something to keep in mind. And then the other thing I’ll say, and we’ll go into deeper dive on this when we talk about sales, because I’ll go into some really deep stuff regarding the sales conversation. But one of the things that I find with some of my clients, when they get into that conversation, and now they’re getting towards the sales component of it, and they then they get stuck. And they like that because they don’t know how quite how to transition into the so when you give me your credit card and let’s agree that you’re going to pay me to do this thing. So I get that I like so we’ll go deeper in that. But what I want you to also take home is if When you’re in that conversation and you start to feel a little bit stuck, ask them a question. Even if it’s a question that just gets the conversation back on track, if you feel like the conversation is sometimes it goes off the rails. Sometimes it’s languishes. Like it loses a direction, right? So when you’re ever you’re feeling like you’re in a conversation and you feel like things are not things are going off or whatever. ask them a question. Because that will that will get you back on track that will give you some chance to get your footing back to redirect it back to where you want it to go. Buying you some time so that you can kind of regroup. So your homework is to create your elevator elevator speech, which would be what you do and

from their perspective, and maybe a couple of compelling questions. And then if if you want to People are like, I need to have it just flow, then practice it. So create it and practice it. Alright, thank you for listening to the breakaway entrepreneur with Janet Fish. To learn more about the 10 steps to building a profitable business. Check out my book, quit your day job 10 steps to financial freedom, you’ll find a link to it below. Until next week, make it a great day.

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