Yes.
Wait, I don’t even know you! I don’t care.
I’m still going to say “yes”.
But that’s the short answer.
In this post, I’ll give you the reasons why you should start your own business and how you can make that happen.
Buckle up and let’s do this.
Don’t Quit Your Job
Look, I’m not telling you to quit your job and start a business. The reality is that things have to get paid and if you have a job, keep it.
That paycheck comes in handy early on.
But won’t that make it harder to start a business and build it up because you won’t have as much time?
Yes and no.
Sure if you quit your job you’ll have more time, but that doesn’t mean you’ll begin to make money, or enough money, before those savings run dry.
And the beauty of starting a business, at least a Pocket Business, is that you don’t have to do a ton of things.
I’m being serious.
We have people with full-time jobs. We have people staying at home homeschooling their kids.
It’s easy to get caught up in this idea that a business requires that you do a million things and learn a billion things.
But a business only requires two things.
I’m not even joking.
Two things.
You see, every business follows a simple formula:
Audience x Offer = Money
That’s it.
For your business you’re either on working on your offer, getting people to buy your offer, or getting people to even know you exist.
That’s it.
You aren’t printing business cards.
You aren’t signing documents.
You aren’t going to trade shows.
Figure out an audience. Figure out an offer.
I know I’m making it sound easy and I’m not saying it is. I’m just saying you don’t have to think that there are more levels to this.
So what do you do?
How to Start Your Own Business While Having a Job
Alright, so you know you need an offer and an audience.
Let’s talk about those things.
First let’s start with the audience.
The Audience
In today’s world, people seem to have who the audience actually is confused. Because of social media you see people with all of these big numbers of followers and you think that is their audience.
But let me tell you something. That isn’t their audience.
It feels like every single day there is a new story of a social media influencer trying to sell something and nothing coming of it.
I’m serious. Here is someone with 2 million followers and she couldn’t sell 36 t-shirts.
Those numbers are cool to tell your friends, but they don’t mean much.
You care about actual customers. That means people willing to buy from you and have the means to do so.
Therefore your audience is the buyers.
That’s it.
It’s not the people that subscribe to you. It’s not the people that follow you. It’s not the people that comment.
Don’t get me wrong, those are cool people to have around, but you audience is the people that help you grow your business.
This is important to keep in mind.
We like to call these people your Hero because they are the Hero of the story and you’re going to be their Guide.
Essentially, this Hero is one person. That’s right, just one person.
However, this one person represents thousands or millions of people.
But what you’re going to do is focus all of your effort in attracting this one person to your business. You’re going to write in a way that appeals to them.
Once you attract them to you, then you can show them your offer.
The Offer
This is where people get tripped up.
They think that they have nothing to offer. Creating an offer is too hard.
But that isn’t true. Here is a list of the different types of offers some of our students have created AND sold.
- Meal planning kit
- Pregnancy preparation kit
- Knitting course
- Get a bigger booty workout program
- A self-care course
- Horsemanship course
- Meditation course
I could go on and on with this stuff.
The only thing that your offer has to do is provide some type of improvement to a person’s (your Hero) life.
The reason why is that people only buy improvement. They only spend money on things they think or feel will improve their lives in some way.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a small improvement or a large one. They only want improvement.
Can you give it to them?
So there you have it. You know you need an audience and an offer at the least to have a business so where do you go from there?
Don’t worry, I got you covered.
Next you need to take a look at the Pocket Business Framework to see how to bridge the gap between saying “Hi” to your Hero and convincing them to buy your offer.
The Pocket Business Framework
No, this isn’t something that you need to buy. I’m going to show it to you right now.
- Get the Hero to notice you
- Get the Hero to pay attention to you
- Get the Hero to trust you
- Convert that trust into money
That’s your business plan. That’s the stuff that you’re going to work on daily with your business.
Everything you do should involve one of these steps. If you find yourself working on something that doesn’t improve one of these steps then you need to stop working on it and work on something else.
That’s the key with starting a business while working a full-time job or having limited time.
You don’t need to spend your time on everything. You need to spend your time on the right things.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the 80/20 Rule or Pareto Principle. It applies to business as well.
20% of your activity is going to generate 80% of your revenue.
When you’re on limited time why wouldn’t you focus on that 20%?
I know this is making sense to you so we just need to do one more thing and that’s put this framework together into a gameplan.
How to Start a Business From Scratch
It might not seem like it but I’ve given you all of the information that you’ve needed to get started with your online business.
Now, I can’t talk about other types of businesses, so I’m going to focus on the type that we’re really good at building. I call these Life Experience businesses.
In essence, you’re going to be a teacher that puts their experience in something into an offer for people to learn from. Remember all of the example offers that I showed you above?
Those are just people putting their experience of things into an offer so that people can buy.
That’s what this gameplay is going to consider.
Ready?
Step 1. Choose Your Niche
I’m going with the traditional definition of a niche where you think of a topic. I think niche is more about your audience, but we’ll talk about that in a second.
What you’re doing here is choosing something you feel you can put 100% of your effort behind.
I know it’s tempting to start in a niche that seems like it’s really popular, but if you feel you can put everything into over the next 3 – 6 months, then there really is no point.
You’re working on limited time here and you don’t want to spend that time being miserable.
So if you want to choose your niche, think of something you would love to dive deeper into over the next couple of years.
It could be something you’re totally interested in right now or it could be something that you’ve been thinking about and now is the time to dive in.
Yes, you don’t have to have experience (yet) in the niche that you choose. The journey will be slightly longer, but that’s okay.
Step 2. Find Your Hero
This is probably more difficult than choosing a niche. For this you need to unlock your Hero.
That one person that you’re going to talk to with everything that you do. The better you get at this, the faster you’ll begin to see results.
Some questions that you can ask to unlock your Hero are:
- What are their fears?
- What are their ambitions?
- What do they think about daily?
Answer those and you’ll be a lot closer to understand your Audience, the people that are going to spend money on you.
Step 3. Find Their Transformations
We haven’t spoken about transformations yet and I know it’s a big word that makes you think you need to do something fancy, but they don’t have to be.
Transformations are just the improvements that people are looking for in their lives.
Here is a course on learning how to knit. What’s the transformation?
Someone who can’t knit to someone who can.
You want to figure out the different transformations that your Hero is looking to achieve.
I like to map out a whole journey of what someone wants to achieve to get a feel for the different offers that I can create.
For example, let’s say that someone wants to be a gourmet chef. Well, they can’t do that in a day so what steps are needed?
I’d list those steps out and I might find that there are groups of steps that I can put together as offers or maybe all of the steps are just one giant offer.
The choice is yours.
Step 4. Choose Your Platforms
You need to meet your Hero somewhere. Preferably wherever they are at. If your Hero is on YouTube then maybe you start with YouTube. If they are on Instagram maybe you start there.
But you need to choose a platform where you feel you can meet your Hero.
Most of our students either start a blog or a YouTube channel or both.
They each have their own pros and cons. If you choose a blog then you’ll need to choose a promotional platform as well like Pinterest or Instagram.
YouTube itself is both a promotional platform and an acquisition platform for you.
Step 5. Write Your Sales Page Copy
That’s right, you don’t have an offer or a site yet (probably) but you should write the sales page copy for your offer.
Why?
Because it will help you see if you would buy your offer. If not, then what things should be added to the sales page to make you want to buy it.
You aren’t sure what to include your sales copy?
For now, just write about the awesome things your offer will do for the Hero. Benefits are more important than features.
People don’t care that it’s a 267-page book. They care that it’s going to help them lose 13 lbs.
Step 6A & 6B. Create Your Offer & Work on Content
I’ve combined these because I don’t know how long it will take you to create your offer. For some people it might be a weekend while others it might be a couple of weeks.
If you find it’s going to take you a couple of months then you’ve gone too far.
The goal isn’t to make money in 2 years. The goal is to make money as soon as possible because money is oxygen to your business.
So work on your offer and create the kind of content that will bring in the kind of person that will want to buy your kind of offer.
That’s important.
Don’t waste time creating content that won’t bring in the right people.
For example, it makes no sense for me to write a post on 37 Part-Time Jobs You Can Do at Home for this site because then it will bring in people looking for part-time jobs and not thinking about starting their own business.
Are you going to publish your content yet?
I’d hold off on that until the next step.
Step 6. Create Your Email Funnel
If money is the oxygen of your business then your email list is going to be the trees (or whatever other cools things create oxygen).
Starting an email list might seem intimidating, but it’s really not. You know the cool things that you’re helping people with. You know the cool experiences you’ve had in your life.
That’s what you’re sharing in your emails.
I know, I haven’t recommended an email service for you or anything and you don’t need one to actually write the emails.
All of these things can be done in whatever writing program you want, but I’d recommend just using Google’s Suite of productivity apps. Very convenient to see everything in one place wherever you go.
Step 7. Create Your Opt-in
You need to convince people to sign up for your mailing list somehow so you need an opt-in.
The opt-in might be the emails that you’ve created. For example, I like to create Bootcamps and Challenges.
That way my Hero gets used to seeing me in their inbox.
It also means that my opt-in is “Sign Up for this Bootcamp”.
Kill two birds with one stone.
Step 8. Setup Site & Email
If you’re starting a blog then you need to get that setup.
If you’re going with YouTube then you just need a page where people can opt-in to your mailing list.
You’ll also want to sign up for an email provider and get those emails loaded up.
Step 9. Publish and Promote Content
Now it’s time to start bringing people to your content. If it’s a blog then you’ll need to get the blog setup.
If it’s YouTube then just need to make sure you have a page setup for your opt-in so people can sign up for your mailing list.
Step X. Sell Your Offer
I don’t know when you’ll finish your offer. You might decide that you want to publish your content while still working on your offer or you might wait until the offer is done.
Either way you get to decide but eventually you should be selling it.
Depending on the price you have a number of different strategies to go with but never think that people are just going to show up to your site and buy your offer without engaging with you in some way.
You Should Start Your Own Business
Phew.
I know that’s a lot, but that’s not so bad if we can explain why you should start a business and how you should start one all in a single blog post.
You can definitely take this post, print it out, and run with it.
We also have a program that goes much deeper into all of this stuff and will guide you to building a 6-figure business.
But if I’m being honest, I don’t want to show you that. Instead, why don’t you check out the Workshop that I’ve created that explains things a bit further.