The Unstuck Sessions Podcast
The Unstuck Sessions
"The Unstuck Sessions" is a podcast dedicated to helping listeners get their marketing unstuck. With a focus on actionable insights and real-world strategies, Bryon and Brandi delve into various marketing challenges and provide solutions to overcome them. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a business owner, or someone looking to enhance your marketing skills, this podcast offers valuable lessons to help you navigate the ever-evolving marketing world.
The Unstuck Sessions Podcast
From Passion to Profits: Bryon’s Guide to Rebooting Your Business Strategy
Ever wondered how to reboot your business strategy and achieve six-figure success? Learn how Bryon from I Sell Words, who turned his passion into a thriving business, shares his secrets to overcoming imposter syndrome and embracing the controlled chaos of entrepreneurship. This episode is a treasure trove of actionable insights tailored for ambitious entry-level business owners and those looking to start fresh. From leveraging Google My Business to prioritizing essential skills, Bryon’s innovative approach will inspire you to take bold steps toward your business goals.
Kickstart your entrepreneurial journey the right way by listing your skills and certifications, targeting businesses over individuals, and crafting a meticulous client avatar. Ryan emphasizes the importance of visualizing your ideal business scenario and identifying your target market before diving into product development. Plus, you'll discover the secret sauce to engaging your audience by focusing on one social media platform, maintaining separate business accounts, and choosing the right business structure. Bryon’s personal experiences and inventive thinking, shaped by his ADHD, provide a unique lens on overcoming common start-up hurdles.
Elevate your business with advanced growth strategies, including the use of cutting-edge AI tools like Opus Pro, Descript, and ChatGPT. Bryon reveals how networking with decision-makers, setting clear goals, and developing a robust branding strategy can make a significant difference. Learn how to streamline operations, avoid unnecessary complexities, and focus on what you love about your business to ensure long-term success and satisfaction. Don’t miss out on Ryan’s offer for a free initial consultation to help you pinpoint and overcome your business sticking points. Tune in, take notes, and transform your entrepreneurial journey with these invaluable insights!
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Need help getting Unstuck? Visit our website and book a time to speak with us: https://www.isellwords.net/
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Wow, it looks like we're live. It's been a minute. I feel like that's my intro all the time, but the reality of the situation is I've had a lot of different things change here in the past six to eight months regarding my recording schedule and my ability to record and stuff like that, and so I always feel like it's always a long time between seeing you guys and conversing with you. Today on the unstuck session, I'm going to talk about what I would do if I had to start over. So this is great for entry-level business owners or people that are looking to make a change, and so that's what I have on today's episode. Hopefully you guys find some value in it and I will get to you guys after the intro.
Speaker 1:My name is Ryan and I run a marketing agency called I Sell Words. I help small businesses figure out exactly what they want to do with their social media and try to steer them towards that point what they want to do with their social media and try to steer them towards that part of that point. My experience comes from the fact that I've helped bootstrap a small business a basketball trading business and bootstrap that without any really outside funding or anything, and we bootstrapped up to a growing six-figure-a-year business, and the idea is we want to continue to grow it. I've used the techniques that I've learned growing my own businesses to help other people grow theirs. I've worked with many different businesses of all sizes in the local area and even some outside of here, and helped them find gaps in their marketing where their social media can take over, and find opportunities to leverage some big outcomes with smaller budgets, and as the budgets grow, we can have bigger outcomes, and so that's really what my sweet spot is.
Speaker 1:I am, by nature, an idea guy. I don't make any secret of the fact that I have ADHD, and so my brain is constantly in motion, and when I say constantly, sometimes it does come into my sleep. So I'll have an idea that I'm working with in my sleep and I'll wake up ready to talk and ready to reveal what I discovered, and so there's a gift and a curse the ideas come to me rapid fire. I don't always retain them, but I feel like I'm a pretty inventive thinker. I have some pretty unique solutions to problems with businesses that I interact with. One thing I'm really good at is helping businesses get started, where they can figure out what their initial marketing message is and what they're offering to the market, and all the way down to basic business coaching features of okay, so now you've done this, now it's time to do this. And so those are the areas that I really excel in as a coach the business and primary cheerleader cheering them on and figuring out ways to implement things and get them rolling. If these things sound like things I can help you out with, hit me up for a consultation. You can see the banner it's mail at isellwordsnet and I can send you a link so that we can go ahead and get started and figure out what our growth journey looks like together. You know, business from the marketing side of things is actually going pretty well.
Speaker 1:The biggest challenge is an ongoing thing, is the fact that and we've had plenty of discussions about my struggles with imposter syndrome and not feeling like I'm enough in terms of what I'm doing and taking losses really, really hard. So I'm not going to relitigate all that, but it's been a struggle and I haven't had any major defeats. Things are going so smooth that I'm kind of having this weird thing where I'm like, okay, I'm waiting for another shoe to drop and it hasn't dropped and things are going really well. I'm trying to really lean in the fact that things are going well. The foundation is pretty solid. I can add more levels onto the foundation to grow it, so that's what we got. I'm always growing.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, the biggest bottleneck in my business isn't some external fact, it's my own brain, and my own brain sometimes sabotages me with bad thoughts and thoughts that don't necessarily cleanly align to anything productive or that will advance. What I'm trying to do and so that's always a challenge for me is making sure that my thoughts operate in good, productive spaces for me, and so there are times where I do need to stop and check myself to make sure that I'm not going down the rabbit hole of negative thoughts and bad things are going to happen. That's about as transparent as I can be with you and unfortunately, being in the seat of business ownership, you strive for consistency, but you realize you do have to embrace chaos on some level and understanding that as long as the chaos is controlled or slightly controlled, you're not completely underwater, and so those are the struggles I'm kind of in right now. We're honest here and we have real conversations, so before I get into the meat of the matter. If you have questions about business or marketing or anything along those lines, do not hesitate. Drop a question in the chat.
Speaker 1:I'm taking questions and I will answer them the best way I can on the live stream. If you see this and it's after the live stream, still ask the questions in the comment section and I will absolutely get back to you of something that requires a more personal touch. I will reply and say, hey, we probably need to schedule your introductory consultation so that we can sit down and really dive into the meat of the matter. Because the worst thing in the world is when somebody is just and I was in this mode yesterday where I clearly am I just, I'm just freestyling, I'm just rapid, firing answers out there into the void, hoping that one of them is the solution for the thing, and it's not a great place to be. But a lot of times people who, especially who are experts that they can't access the information that I need right away. I'm really trying to discipline myself to make sure that if I have a question that I can't answer, I get more comfortable saying I don't know, but I'll get back to you, and so if you have questions, drop them in the chat, drop them in the comments or email them to me. All right, now that I got all that out the way my introductory services, the unstuck sessions. Basically, we come with a place where you're stuck either in the terms of starting your business, launching your business, or in that early I've already lost the business. But now what do I do? And I'm stuck here. Any bottlenecks and sticking points that you encounter along the way that's what I'm here to help out with and that's the consultation service. We can actually jump into the meat of the matter If I had to start over, and so I'm going to give you my credentials one more time.
Speaker 1:I own two businesses. One is a small marketing agency and the other one is a basketball training business that I co-own with a business partner. I'm talking specifically about the basketball training business. Basketball training business is something that started two kids from North Omaha with no real direct business experience. Our background was working with kids and families. We needed an offering. We put our heads together and figured out how do we make this thing make money? My business partner was doing stuff in his spare time, teaching kids how to dribble in carpeted gyms for 10 bucks a session, and we just worked from there. We figured out how we can low-level, high-leverage things and cost a lot of money.
Speaker 1:Social media is advanced. You're finding less of those magic unicorns where this is something that doesn't require effort or money, because the tax that you pay is either going to be you have to put in the effort or you have to have the money to do it. You're not going to find a bunch of things that don't require some kind of equity, whether it's money or sweat. But we latched on to Facebook ads relatively new, relatively early and we're able to generate some outcomes with that and for a micro budget, we're able to start filling our camps, and so we just kept expanding, expanding, expanding services and basically, two kids from North Omaha, without a ton of business experience. We're able to create and generate some pretty six-figure outcomes with a business, and so that's what my specialty is. It's going to take that information and knowledge I have of growing this business from essentially nothing, without any major outside capital or anything pouring into here. I share it with companies that I work with on a day-to-day basis so that I could teach them to gain some of the outcomes and some of the opportunities. Aren't the same, but there's always another opportunity out there. So don't think that just because you're late to the social media dance, that that means that you will not have success in the social media dance. Companies of all sizes, a big cross-section of industries, basically is figuring out what we can do to make your social media and online footprint generate the kind of traffic and leads and business that you want to generate with it. And we start out with micro-budgets and scale those up to larger budgets.
Speaker 1:I've worked with non-profits. I've worked with two. I've worked with, you know, two man operations, three man operations, all the way up to where people have entire fleets, and so you know, the advice I give is really dependent on the situation. I spend a lot of time figuring out okay, these are the things that you know, your dream clients and these are the things that you're strong at. We try to leverage your strengths so that you can get more in front of the clients that you want to have. That's my background. I'm currently on the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce. I'm on board. I have a marketing company that's doing well enough for itself.
Speaker 1:I'm always looking to grow new opportunities, but I need to make sure that I can make sure I'm still delivering the same quality, and so that's the big struggle making sure I balance out the need to grow with the need to maintain quality, where I don't always have to have my hands on every single block. Both businesses are kind of at okay, so now we need to scale this mode, and so that's why I wanted to before I get into the next steps with both industries or both businesses, I wanted to do a live stream to say these are the mistakes I made. These are the successes I had. What would I do if I needed to start over? So I hope I gave enough of my resume. I hope I gave enough of my resume.
Speaker 1:So if I had to start over a couple of things, first One it's not in any priority. I don't necessarily have a whole laundry list of it, but just from my experience, one of the very first things we discussed is a lot of businesses who think they need a website actually don't. First things we discussed is a lot of businesses who think they need a website actually don't. You don't really need a website to start out with. I thought that when I first started, I had to have this amazing website that was going to do all of my sales for me, do everything I needed it to do and it was just going to be this amazing thing and customers would see the website and be so enamored with it. The very first thing I did was I went out, especially with me and ColdStroin forces. I went out and got the bells and whistles website. It didn't cost me a ton. I already knew some web design from stuff that I had done, and so it was more of a sweat equity payoff. I had to put in the time to build out the website. I built a pretty decent website and then put it online. It's just out there and I'm proud of it, and not a single phone rang. We didn't get any emails or anything based on how our website looked. What did move the needle was when we started telling people about what we offered, utilizing social media and some paid ads. That's the thing that started moving the needle.
Speaker 1:Having a website is not necessary when you first start. I just put that out there and there's plenty of sites where you can create a quick landing page that highlights your services, where you don't need a full, functioning website off the rip. The thing I tell my clients consistently is you need to take off your Google listings. That's kind of your first website anyway, and people go to Google to find answers and find solutions. So you need to be where people are finding solutions to present that solution. So, more importantly than anything else, you need to kind of go out and take over your Google listing. Wait on it. That's more important than your website, because you need a way to reach your clients that doesn't cost you money out the gate, especially if you're pursuing the sweat equity path where you're going to put in the footwork to get the clients in the door instead of spending money. So take over your Google ad. I know it's depreciated, they don't really use it that much, but you can just type in Google my business and that will lead you to where you need to go. Just go to your search bar and type in Google my business. You need to be in control of your Google, and for a couple of different reasons One, you can post your services. Two, you can post your phone number. And three, you can post your hours, and those are the things that are vital for your client to make a purchase decision. Website isn't going to really move people until you're serving, unless you're selling stuff digitally or selling service selling services digitally or you know. Then you kind of go into the website. But that was the very first thing. You don't need a website to get started. Two, you do need to have an idea of what you're selling.
Speaker 1:I made this mistake when I first started the marketing company at EARNs because at first it was well, I'm a copywriter and I write ads for people, and in hindsight I would have just narrowly stuck with that because I'm a writer and I enjoy writing, enjoy the written word. But I kind of psyched myself into believing that I needed to scale up into everything. So there were two paths, two branching paths that were available to me. I could go into the writing side of things or I can go into the coaching side of things. I felt like I didn't have the skills to coach people the way I wanted to, and so I picked the writing path. I would have taken the skills that I had when I first started. I would have taken the skills that I had coming from managing people, human services at all levels and consulting with them and helping them reach their goals, and I would have folded that into the business side of things, because the skills are transferable. I didn't give myself the credit when I first started for what I already knew.
Speaker 1:First thing first you don't need a website. That's one. Number two you already have the skills. You just need to know how they translate to what you wanted. And don't assume that you need to instantly go out and try to acquire a bunch of skills without a good sense of what you need to do, like right now. One of the things I know that I need to do is I need to go ahead and finish the certification so I can become Google certified on aspects of the platform. As you start growing and as you start taking on clients, you realize what skills you're going to need, and you're going to have to make the decision on whether you want to do it all yourself or you need to delegate it. And that's the next part.
Speaker 1:If I had to start over, what I would do is figure out what I can offload to somebody else and then build the skill set within myself so I can accurately monitor or supervise to make sure they're delivering what I need. That was a big say. Delegation is one of the hardest pieces. I mean and I am, you know, mr, I'll do it myself. It hurt me when I was managing staff. It did hurt me because one of the problems, one of the struggles, was I would take over things that I didn't necessarily need to take over, because it was easier for me just to take over the say they than to lean on them. I would have started with delegation.
Speaker 1:When I first started my marketing agency, I should have outsourced more or found ways to outsource more, instead of trying to learn how to do everything. I learned how to run cameras. I learned how to shoot photos. I learned how to do live streams. I learned a lot of skills that I can utilize. How to do live streams. I learned a lot of skills that I can utilize. But if I had to start over, just because I know how to do it doesn't mean it's something I enjoy doing the two different aspects and sometimes it's not the best use of your time. So, and by not being a, not having that ability to outsource, I on one hand, there are times where I'm a bit off, more than I could chew as a one or two-man marketing agency, depending on what time of year it is and not having that outsourcing skill hurt me because I was burning the candle at both ends and I wasn't able to be my best self when I needed to be my best self, because I was so overwhelmed and underwater with obligations to different businesses, and so I should have learned early on. Okay, this is what I need to outsource, and these are the things that I have enough interest and capacity to learn about, which are going to enhance what I'm doing. So the outsourcing piece was huge.
Speaker 1:A lot of business owners you feel like you do have to do it yourself in order to have a credibility. I know how to run a camera. I know how to edit video footage, but these are parts where I'm outsourcing, and right now I'm outsourcing utilizing AI technology to edit videos and transcribe videos for me, and even clip videos at times and write captions and things along those lines, so that I can leave the creative stuff. I can leave that in the well for myself when I need to dig into that well. I don't deplete it doing all these other kind of mundane tasks. So, first things first, I didn't need a website. Second thing, I should have assessed the skills that I was coming to the table with better and leaned into it, instead of trying to learn a bunch of new skills off the rip.
Speaker 1:Three. I should have delegated, and those are the things that I would say for a young business owner, somebody who's just starting. You need to delegate better. You need to get a scope of what your services are and know what your skills are and don't feel like you need to make a bunch of major investments in different things. There's plenty of services out there willing to take advantage of somebody who's just starting up. You know you have to kind of dig your way out from underneath to figure out what you need. And some business owners because the first thing they do is get that bank loan and they buy all these different consultants and all these other bells and whistles and the reality is you maybe need a quarter of that and other stuff. You need to learn how to automate Three.
Speaker 1:I would stay in on my price better. When I first started out, you know, I I didn't know how to price myself and I still struggle because it's a confidence thing a lot of time. But price determines everything about what you're offering. Price sets your position in the market and more times than not, a lot of business owners don't really understand that they can ask for way more than what they feel like they're worth and the only anchor they have is how much they've made working for somebody else. And when you use how much I made working for somebody else as an anchor to set your own prices, you're neglecting a lot of different costs of retaining employees, and so there's a specific cost to maintaining an employee. That's not always translated in your salary, your yearly salary, and a lot of times, young business owners, when they're coming over or they're making that transition, they use how much they made as an employee to determine how much they're going to set their services up for or, even worse, how much they're used to paying as a customer for a specific service, and then use that as a pricing anchor for their own services, and that is something that sets people up to fail more times than that.
Speaker 1:You do not want to use how much you think is a lot of money to determine your pricing for your services. There is no clean formula to do this, y'all. I'm just telling you, I'm just keeping it up with you. There is no clean formula to do this, but the reality is, when you are sitting there looking at how much you're going to charge for a product or service, you need to look at how much do you need to make to justify your existence as a business? How many hours do you have to dedicate to this thing?
Speaker 1:And when you're looking at your pricing, it's like, okay, how much you need to factor in? How much is insurance fee for me and my kids, if you have kids or me and my husband, or me and my wife or yourself? How much is insurance? Or your pets, much of the insurance? How much is my car note? What's my mortgage like? What's my rent like? What are my living expenses? What do I need to survive? And you need to build that into your price. You need to get a little bit more realistic when you're thinking about the price and units of time and look at all the things that you spend money on per month. And the way I say is look at all your expenses and double it and that's your anchor for how much you need to make every month. And then you need to set your prices accordingly. You can always add and subtract different things from your service offerings to make them sweeter, but if you're not making enough to pay your expenses and I'm not saying that has to be from the beginning Like a business can start out as a little side thing that just generates enough money to pay for itself.
Speaker 1:Don't think I'm saying that. Don't think I'm saying you have to instantly jump in and be successful, but you need to have a pathway towards self-sufficiency where the business is paying for itself and then also paying you. That's the reality and a lot of people that are coming from the corporate life don't understand. You have to build in for times where you don't know where your next paycheck is, or times where it's slow and the economy slowed down and you don't know. You have to have those windfalls. You have to make enough money in your off season to support you till your next on season, because when you own a business, it's not always steady when that money's coming in. And so every single interaction, every single unit hour of time, you need to be maximizing how much money you can make in that time.
Speaker 1:Your last employer, when they were determining what your salary range is, they're saying what do I need to do to attract people with this comparable skill set to this position? And that's only consideration. And what other things do I need to wrap around it? So what do I need in terms of benefits to make this an attractive place for somebody to land? Those are the things that they're considering. You're worrying about the same thing. But now it's coming out of your own pocket and you don't have an employer to subsidize insurance and all that other stuff. So you got to pay this on your own.
Speaker 1:And so, standing on your square with your pricing and setting a price, that feels sometimes it may feel uncomfortable and, let's keep it real, it may feel uncomfortable to ask for that, but somebody somewhere among the line you will have to think what do I need to do to make sure that this thing is sustainable six months or a year from now? And I think people undervalue what they know. You have a comparable set of skills in your current position right now. If you think that you don't have any experience outside, look at your current job or look at what you do and write down all your responsibilities and then figure out who would pay you to do that for them outside of there. So figure out all the skills you need to do your job on a daily basis, write them all down and then you figure out who has that specific pay point in the market and that's how you get started. But I would have spent term on my pricing and I blinked. If I was starting over, I would have gotten a little bit more into learning sales processes and documenting that stuff, writing out my own sales process when I still have one in my brain, writing out an actual sales process to follow. That would have been something else I would have done differently if I was starting over.
Speaker 1:Let's jump all the way back to the very beginning. If I was starting over completely first thing first, because I've kind of given you these are the things that I would or wouldn't do. Here's what I'm going to tell you. This is what I would do 100% First thing first. I'm going to tell you this is what I would do, 100% First things first. I'm going to sit down and write out all my schemes, write out everything that I know I have to do certifications. I have things that bring value in my current role. If I'm working at a job, what is my current job description? What are my responsibilities? I write all those things out. What courses have I had to take? Further my ability to do the job I currently have.
Speaker 1:If you don't have a job like stay-at-home mom and you're looking to launch something, sit down and look at what your talents are. What are some of the things that you have an affinity for. Don't necessarily always look at what your talents are. You know what are some of the things that you have an affinity for. Don't necessarily always look at what your hobbies are, because sometimes your hobbies are your hobbies and once you monetize your hobbies you lose the joy out of them and it doesn't give you that mental health benefit of having a diversion. So always look to monetize your hobbies, but sit down and look and see what current things are you good at and everybody has things that they're good at and start building the service around those and say, okay, who would pay for this set of skills? What kind of people would pay for this skill?
Speaker 1:If you need to go and look at the who's who in your bit you know, if you need to find a business directory or find something about business at large businesses in your local area, you can do a Google search and figure out, depending on where you live, what are the 25 largest businesses within a 50 mile square radius. It's to doubt a kind of brainstorm. Would they pay somebody with this skillset that I have right now and then, if that's not the case and if you're not looking at serving businesses, you're looking at serving independent clients. I'm always big about serving businesses because businesses can afford more times. They can afford to pay for the outcomes that you can provide to them.
Speaker 1:If you're looking at individual clients, I would sit down. This is where you're going to have to visualize what your dream scenario, what your dream life looks like as a business owner. Who do you want to serve? What do you like to do? And that's going to change, as actually do the process of we call creating a client avatar, where you're actually literally mapping out the psychographics of this client, where you're like this is where they work, this is how old they are, these are the things they like to do, this something because they have this, how much they make per year, this is what they you know hobbies, interests, likes, dislikes, political affiliations, things that would absolutely repel them from doing business with you, and things that would attract. You got to sit down and even come up with a name for this person. Create, generate an entire client avatar for you, and it's got to be somebody that you want to. You know the clients that you dream of serving, because I'm a big proponent and it's something I haven't always done in life and business will kick you square in the ass and kind of tell you hey, this is what you need to be doing.
Speaker 1:If you don't sit down and figure out who you're selling to before you figure out what you're selling, you might have the greatest doohickey in the world, but if you don't have a person in mind to buy it, then you've just wasted a bunch of effort. It's easier to figure out what your market is than what your product is, because markets and people have needs and wants and desires and pain points and problems they need solved wants and desires and pain points and problems they need solved. So if you can figure out how to solve those problems, then you could design a product or service that aligns to solve those problems. Do not fall so in love with your thinking that you don't qualify what you're doing, which means don't fall so in love with this idea for a service that you don't think about. Who's going to buy that service first? Service that you don't think about who's going to buy that service first? Because you may have an amazing service that doesn't have an audience for it, or you don't have the skills or ability to identify that market or audience for it, which is almost just as bad.
Speaker 1:I've made this mistake myself? I do, but we're always going right, and so I come up with a lot of different ideas for different services. But I discipline myself to say, okay, now who is going to buy this? That's important. You have to know who's buying it, otherwise you need to take some time to figure out how this aligns with the client avatar. Do not come up with the service that you don't have an audience. You could do it when you have more capital and stuff like that, because every product or service line you roll out is going to require a down payment of cash or sweat equity. You're going to have to put in the work to market. This way, every new service is going to cost $1. You know, maybe 20 or 30 man hours of marketing. You need to look at it. So don't come up with ideas and products. Make sure that you have an audience in mind and then you attach the audience to the products or service that you're trying to sell. Is this working for you? Is this something that is beneficial? If it's beneficial, leave me a like. If you're seeing it, let me know that this has value to you.
Speaker 1:If I'm starting out, I would spend more time in figuring out who I was selling to than what I was specifically selling, because if I have a who, then I can solve specific problems. The reality is, you know, ideas are great but every idea is bad until you implement it or test it. A great idea is the only great idea of theory. It takes time to iterate and have the ability to test it against what the real world is going to bear. And sometimes we have great ideas that never foment anything because we don't know exactly who we're selling this thing to, because once you have a who, you realize how much they're willing to pay to solve their problem.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't spend too much time trying to identify and learn new social media avenues when I was first starting out. That was very. That was one of the things I. That was one of the things I did. I tried to master Instagram. I tried to learn TikTok. I tried to do all these things at the same time, pick one and dominate and learn how to dominate in that space and then expand out. So you have your idea and you have your. I would say now we have the idea to start asking around, start asking your social media audience and start using your personal social media to be in the spaces of the people that have the problem that you're trying to solve, be in the spaces of the people that have the problem that you're trying to solve. So if you have a better bowling shoe in mind, then you need to be informed where bowlers are so that you can ask questions, so you can iterate your product and iterate your idea. You just need to start surrounding yourself and immersing yourself in the places where your clients are going to be so that you can learn what they value and what they don't value.
Speaker 1:The next piece is you're going to have to decide how you're going to structure this business. Are you going to just do a sole proprietorship? Are you doing the LLC? There's lots of things that you need to learn about the LLC, but figure out what the next step is. Do not just run out and grab an LLC. I know that there's an entire group of people on social media that present LLCs like they're the solution to every cashflow problem that you have in your life and they're powerful tools and they're really dope.
Speaker 1:If you're going to do the LLC route, have an idea of what you're going to be doing with it and I would set aside money for your first LLC to pay for legal services to help you set it up. That's what we did. That's something I could recommend Use legal services if you're first LLC. Do not just try to legal zoom it. You can if you want, but I promise you you're going to be heading into more headaches and problems trying to just legal zoom up. But if that's all you can afford, if that's all you can afford, then legal zoom it up. So you set up your LLC, okay. So first thing, you have your idea and you have your market and those two things align. You've got your LLC set up. You got the paperwork and got your article of incorporation and all the other stuff that you need for your state While you're the secretary of state. A lawyer can do all this stuff for you, but if you do it yourself, there are plenty of guides online. I am not going to walk through it because it looks different in every single state, but you have your LLC documentation in the end.
Speaker 1:Go open a bank account, which are under your LLC. Please go open a bank account under your LLC. You do not want to get in the nightmare of commingling your money that you're going to make for your business. That is something that will come around to bite you. So you need to have separate accounting, and the best way to do that is a that will come around to bite you. So you need to have separate accounting, and the best way to do that is a separate bank account, one that is at a different bank than where you normally bank at, possibly so that you're not even tempted to call an equal fund.
Speaker 1:I cannot tell you how important that piece is, because when you open up the LLC or business bank account, you're going to put other things, attach other things to it maybe attach savings accounts, other things, or attach QuickBooks so that you can do your accounting. You do not want to have the threat of okay, I made a thousand dollars and now I paid myself a thousand dollars and just move it over. No, that's not how that works and just move it over. No, that's not how that works. So you have your LLT paperwork and documentation, go to the bank and set up a separate account so you can collect money for it. These are things that I actually did. I didn't necessarily know, but it benefited me. It gave me a framework to do my accounting in a separate place and not have to worry about the shifting of funds and stuff. And having a lawyer and accountant on hand when you're forming this LLC allows you to figure out okay, am I going to do regular LLC, am I going to give it the IRS designation of an S-Corp or C-Corp and all that other stuff and I'm not getting into all that here, but they can help you make the best decision for yourself and what that needs.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, taking over your Google listing, you've done all the steps leading up to here. You've identified a segment of a market that you need to serve problem. You've identified a price point that makes sense to keep you alive, you identify who is within that market and you have your account to collect money. Now we need to figure out what channels are we going to use to reach that audience. The most important one is one that is going to take a while to build. It won't take a while to build a mailing list, but those are really important. It allows you to start from scratch, no matter where you go with your business, because you always have your client then, and that may be outside the scope of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1:So I may have to do a separate episode on what a mailing list is and how you utilize it, because nonprofits, small businesses, large businesses they need a mailing list. Mcdonald's has that app on your phone. Mcdonald's, popeye's has that app on your phone. Your favorite fast food restaurant has that app on your phone. And the condition of having that app on your phone, you are on their mailing list, you're on their text message list, you're on their notification list. So whenever they roll out something new or roll on some kind of value mail or something, all they got to do is send the message out to your phone and it will update you. And by doing that, they know that not everybody that subscribes is going to go at the same time. They only need about 0.1% to respond. That data is more important than anything else in the world and they're willing to pay millions to have Facebook scrape it off a year and send it to them. But those apps are basically their mailing list. It's a variation of growing their mailing list, and so you need to have one for your own business.
Speaker 1:Do not let that weapon of the mailing list be the sole providence of major corporations. You need to have one yourself. Mailing lists are the names that you own. You need to figure out what social media platforms you're on or which ones are easiest for you to learn and start maximizing those A lot of free space. Now I'm going to be honest with you. They wouldn't incentivize you spending money on these platforms, so they make advertising as easy as possible, which is another gift that occurs. It's really easy to buy a Facebook ad. It's painfully easy, to the point where you could waste a lot of money on Facebook ads because it's so simple. You need to learn how to run the Facebook business manager. Spend some time and learn that piece of it. If you all are interested in it, I can talk about it. The reality is the thing changes every six months or so, and so any course I do now is very you know this specifically about facebook. You know the faith business manager degree and any course I do now is going to be outdated within six months to a year because they are as adding and subtracting features. But I could teach you the basic strategies of utilizing it and you can use that for Facebook ads, for TikTok ads, for Instagram ads, linkedin ads and all that. I could teach you the fundamentals behind it. So if you're interested in that as a specific and I'm on an episode then I can do that one too, but you gotta let me know with a like or a comment.
Speaker 1:Pick one horse and if you're not on social media, you're going to have to get on social. You're going to have to bite the bullet and create a social media account for your business and learn the lay of the land and start putting out what you do On social media. The mistake we make is we think that because especially business owners that have been doing it for a long time we think that everybody knows about us and they don't. And everybody knows what we do, but they don't, and so you get sick of seeing your own products and marketing message way before they, they've been done, forgot about all the stuff you were talking about, and so they may need to hear 3, 4, 5, 12 times. But the reality is people get, so it's tough because people get so wrapped up in the idea that people are getting tired of them or they don't need to hear it, or I've been told them a thousand times that you end up discounting the fact that they may not know who you are. You need to pick a social media platform and start finding your audience so that you can learn how to deliver effective messages to that audience so that when it's time to okay, now, here is product I'm selling you can have people reaching out to contact. And the only way you do it is by learning it.
Speaker 1:One of the things that, as a marketing consultant, one of the hardest things for me is where there's no connection with the business owner in terms of marketing. They view marketing as this icky thing that's over in the corner, this icky monster that they lock up in the basement. They only feed it when they have to and they never really go and pet it or interact with it, and it's always somebody else's problem. And one of the biggest problems with marketing companies like that is people don't buy, they buy a solution. But a lot of times people buy a personality. You know there's a reason why companies have mascots. You know the steak farm guy. There's a reason why the I'm trouble guy, the reason why they have these mascots the Geico pavement, the Geico lizard, their specific personalities that they're buying. Even if these are fictional characters that aren't fully fleshed out in their minds, they are still purchasing those they think of the Geico lizard, the cute little Geico lizard.
Speaker 1:If the major corporations are trying to fake, humanize their marketing, then your small business needs to have some kind of human element to your business. People get so caught up with I need to look professional. It's got to be professional and professional. All the time. They end up draining all the personality and the uniqueness out of their business and it ends up becoming one of these boring, boring, I hate to throw it. It ends up becoming one of these boring, boring, I hate to throw it. Boring, ultra-suburban. You know you can dime a dozen kind of businesses. When you drain all the personality and all the uniqueness and all the things that make your business your business out of it, client retention becomes hard because it's hard to retain clients that feel like they're just buying just a bland thing and they feel like they're connected with you and supporting you and your vision and your imperfect, clawed self. It's a little bit easier of a sell, but the reality of the situation is don't fall headfirst into believing that you have to sacrifice all of your personality into your business.
Speaker 1:Picking a social media platform where you communicate your marketing message is great because, as a marketer, the best businesses to work for are the ones that say my audience is clearly defined. They push back against me. I had this happen recently where they push back and say no, this is the audience that I want. Okay, here I can dial into the audience, the ones that have the idea of who they are and what their marketing message is, and these are the people that align with it. These people that don't align with it, those are the best clients to serve, because it allows me to do so many different things with their marketing and speak it in their voice. Um, so, get really proficient.
Speaker 1:If you're just starting out, pick a social media platform and get proficient with. You need to leverage this stuff. While it doesn't cost money, if you get good at delivering messages on social media, that once you get to the point where you can start creating paid ads, it's going to make it reach so much further. It's going to give you so much more impact than you know where you just hire some generic marketing agency who doesn't really focus on the specific thing that your specific audience you're trying to engage with. So, if I had to start over, my advice to somebody starting over is you don't need a website. You need to dial in who you're serving and what you're selling. You need to have a business account for your LLC and you need to pick what channel you're going to use to reach your audience and get proficient at delivering messages on those channels. And when I say channels, a channel can be Facebook, a channel can be email, a channel can be text, a channel can be a phone call. Get really proficient at one way of reaching your client base and then build upon that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so for those that are tuning in, my name is Brian. I own two businesses. The thing that makes me uniquely qualified to discuss what I'm talking about is today, because I'm talking about what I would do if I had to start over a business to give some tips to new and aspiring business owners. What makes me qualified to talk about this space is I've taken a small business with no experience and scaled it up into a six-figure business that's growing year over year, with a micro budget and basically paying what we could and operating largely in cash, with no major outside funding or anything else, and I'm using the skills that I've learned doing that to help other business owners create well set kind of outcomes for themselves. I'm a marketing consultant, I'm a business coach and I can help you grow your stuff, and so I'm basically today. I'm talking about what I would do to start over, and if you want to find out more about my business, my business is I Sell Words. I have plenty of videos on YouTube, a good amount of videos on Facebook regarding that. And then the business that I've helped grow is Coachable Athletics. We're constantly growing that one. And then I have a number of businesses around the country that I've consulted with and helped them figure out sticking points in their business growth path, and so these are the things that qualify me to talk about, and I'mma be real straightforward, because this is this is transparency session here.
Speaker 1:That was really uncomfortable. I do not like hyping myself up. I don't like necessarily talking about the things I've accomplished, because it feels like bragging, but it's not and I have to get through that piece of it. This is what the Unsuck Sessions is is to help me grow as much as y'all grow. So we talked about some. I gave you some tips and they're not all inclusive and I can always circle back if you have any specific questions regarding what I would do if I was starting over as a business owner. I'm still taking questions. You can drop them below.
Speaker 1:Now we're in. You know we've gotten past all the inaugural points of getting business, got a couple of clients that we're servicing. We're doing a lot of the work ourselves. Right now, we don't have a lot of systems in place to make our lives easier. So now, what do we do if I'm starting over? So I'm at that point again where I got clients and it's not enough to pay the bills, but it's enough to make the business, to prove the concept of business, the concept.
Speaker 1:What do I do? First thing is I'm going to sit down and look at what my goals are, really, try to get specific and measurable with those. That's something I did not do. I just had this general idea of what I wanted to do and that's what I rolled with, and that wasn't as beneficial for me moving forward. It didn't help me grow. So that would be one of the very first things I did in that.
Speaker 1:First, where I have my first class is I need to set more measurable and specific goals for myself and give myself the grace that if I don't meet those goals, I will meet them. As long as I keep hacking along and keep going along that path. I need to figure out what skills I need to acquire and what skills I need to outsource, and that piece of it comes once you start looking like, okay, I can't do all this by myself and I need to grow this Past being a one or two man operation, I need to let go of some of this. But I need to understand and have a good foundation of what skills I need to acquire and what skills I need to outsource and the outsourcing piece also comes with. You have to learn how to delegate effectively. Or you pass something off to somebody and then you follow up and you make sure that they have the resources they need to deliver that thing. Get back to me, and then it doesn't get done because the person is either in a position where they cannot do the thing that you've asked them to do because they don't have the skills, or they will not do it because it doesn't align with what they want to do in life or what they want to accomplish in business, or it feels like a conflict with something that they're already working on. So there is no check-in process, is what I'm saying? Y'all, you just hand shit off to people and not give them any framework or what to do with, and so I would really focus on learning the delegation piece as you're assessing what skills you need to learn and skills that you need to outsource.
Speaker 1:This is also the time while your business is small and you don't have enough clients to get. This is where you focus in on making sure that the clients you serve are happy with everything you do. But you also need to take a small client size and figure out if they're the clients that you're happy with working with for it, because if you hate working with them, you don't have enough clients to pay for the month. You don't like working with them. You don't have enough clients to pay for the month. You don't like working with the clients. You rather determine that now, before you're depending on serving people that you don't like, you want to figure that stuff out when you get started Like, okay, I'm doing this service man, I hate this. Ooh, I hate this doing this service man, I hate this. Ooh, I hate this.
Speaker 1:You do not want to be in that position where you realize you don't like the service you're providing or the client base that you're interacting with on a day-to-day basis. You'd rather do that when you're small. So this is the time where you really need to dial in who your dream clients are and what your dream services are and what your core offerings look like. You do not want to try to figure this out after the fact. It does no good for you. You don't want a bunch of clients asking for a service that you physically hate because now you go to prison for yourself, and that's not what the goal is. So we need to figure out specifically what clients you're serving, and does that service align with things that are your personal goals or things you enjoy doing? I'm not saying you're going to enjoy every aspect of doing business, but it is a red flag if you actually actively hate the service you provide.
Speaker 1:I got into that with a very narrow, specific kind of web design where I was generally I had to come up with all the ideas myself and I didn't have any input or anything to work off of. I hated that. I can design a website, but I need to have what your mission statement is or what your unique selling proposition is. Have some of this stuff written out so that I don't have to create it myself. You don't want to be in that position where you absolutely hate the services you're providing. It's a dark place to be.
Speaker 1:So you've got to dial in the branding and your target audience, because your branding will shape who your target audience is and what your core offerings are, so you need to have that really dialed in. So take that time when you're small to really say these are the clients I want to serve and these are the clients I don't want to serve. And my marketing needs to attract more of the people I like and push away the people I don't necessarily want to interact with, or the clients or services I don't want to do. Okay, um, you're going to want to start looking in the technical solutions to take some of this stuff off your plate. There are AI checkboxes that are amazing now and they're $30 a month. There are survey things that you can install on your web to help you qualify, on a website or landing page to help you qualify customers by asking very specific questions and then categorizing them by score and saying, okay, this is a client for this and this is a client for that, or this is a client that we need more exploration with. There's plenty of things to do like that.
Speaker 1:I'm talking from a specific video production standpoint. I roll out a suite of video editing apps and things that make my life easier so that I'm not manually going through editing all this stuff by hand Now. Is it perfect, and will it be better, when I have the money, to outsource and send it to a professional video editor? Absolutely. The AI stuff helps me right now. It helps me work with the stuff I've created so I can manage it and not feel cramped by the production cycle of okay, now I've got to spend 12 hours editing this video. That doesn't happen, and so leveraging the different technologies that exist to get outcomes is crucially important. It's going to cost you money, it may cost you sweat equity, but it's worth it and it will help you reach your outcomes a lot faster.
Speaker 1:Specifically, with your marketing. Your marketing can be multi-tier. Marketing isn't always setting up an ad or commercial or a bulletin. Sometimes it's just you being interviewed on a podcast talking about why you got into business or what your business does. That clip can do more to humanize your business, attract clients, than any marketing thing that you can pay for or create yourself. So leverage it, create it once and use it forever. The best marketers I've seen and this has saved me a ton of time creating Google ads and stuff is I have an entire worksheet full of first for every client, worksheets that have different headlines and descriptions and all that other stuff and images that I can dig into and slap them together in different ways and different formations and just test, test, test, test, test, figure out which ones work the best and make those your templates and build off those and ride the ride it to the wheels fall off and then, once the wheels fall off, you blitz on it, then you carry it. But if you make something that works, you test it to make sure it works the right way and then you just keep delivering it over and over and over again until it doesn't work anymore and then, when it doesn't work, take it back to the drawing board, figure out what's changed and then you update it and roll it right back out there.
Speaker 1:You do not have to try to keep iterating a thousand different things, but utilize technology, facebook and I'm not lying when I say that AI tools save me almost an entire day every week worth of editing and working on and I'm not talking about eight hours, I'm talking 24 hours of video editing and clipping and all the other stuff. It's a godsend, and so when you're able to find tools that save time like that, that's more valuable than anything else, because the engine that drives your success is always going to be your brain and your reserves. Even when you've outforced most of your business, your ability to think and see things and see opportunities for yourself clearly it's going to be the thing that takes you to the next level. So don't further yourself with that kind of stuff all the time. Don't feel like you have to outsource, outsource, outsource whatever you can.
Speaker 1:Networking is huge. The thing I would have done before I got into networking is I didn't start figuring this out until late in the game I'm talking about two years ago, where I clarified what my offer is, because when I first my offer, my offer was a jumbled ass mess and it still is to a degree but at least it talks about specific pain points and problems I can solve for businesses. I can help you get started with podcasting. I help you get started with email marketing. I can help you get started with podcasting. I help you get started with email marketing. I can help you get started with Facebook posts or help you get started with Instagram posts. I can help you get started with video content. These are different things that I can absolutely do for you, and they're going to check a box for somebody somewhere.
Speaker 1:Really focusing on that delivery piece and how clear that message is was super important before I went out and networked, because all I did was just confuse everybody in the room. But the other benefit of networking is it puts you in direct contact with people that sign checks other business owners and you get a chance to see how they see and perceive things. Now, to keep it real, my goal, one of these days I would love to do a business networking group where it's a lot less of the pretentious stuff and I was talking about real issues that business owners encounter Loneliness, the imposter syndrome, figuring out how to be the best for your employee and the best for your family and balancing those things. These are conversations that need to be happening in business groups and I haven't necessarily always heard, and so I think that's the only thing that needs to happen. But to get started getting out and networking with the decision makers is really important, especially if you're running a service business, like if you're cleaning cars or something you're directly in contact with the person that decides who gets paid and what vendors you take on. That is more powerful than calling around and talking to the assistant of the assistant and the assistant, because they have no loyalty to anybody. They'll just go to whoever does the service for the cheapest price. So you want to build that rapport and the only way you can do it is being seen face-to-face and interacting with them in that working group.
Speaker 1:I'm not talking about a networking market where we always have to sell stuff to people. I'm talking about networking where you're actually going in and introducing yourself and presenting your business and you're making yourself visible to other business owners. So support, especially if you're starting out, you don't have the webpage and all you have is a business card. You need to be out and about work. That's a high leverage opportunity Once people start to get to know you and trust you. I don't want to do this and you're in the room with the owners, as opposed to calling somebody's receptionist or the way they filter through. So those are the things I would focus on getting out and figuring out networking to be in and just go in and listen to how the business owners talk for the first couple episodes. It's really impactful and really powerful all through the way that you see business. It changed my perception of the price and how I price stuff, because it's like, if I have a price. You know the price is immaterial. As long as I can solve the problem and they have the resources to pay me, price is immaterial and so it puts you in those kinds of mind frames, puts you in direct contact with people that make the sale.
Speaker 1:If I was starting over and I survived my first six months, I had my LLC built. I had my bank account started, I had my client avatar lined up. I had product in sync with who I was selling to my social media channel set up. I have product in sync with who I'm selling to my social media channel set up. I have a Google business thing set up. I have all these things set up. The next part is I'm going back and looking at my goals and making sure they're clearer and easier to follow. I'm focusing on my branding stuff and making sure my price is aligned with the market that I want to be in and give the outcome control. That's really important.
Speaker 1:I'm leveraging technology to help me out with my marketing piece of it. Different technology can trim hours In my case, days off of your week, where I have an entire less day of editing that I have to worry about because I have systems that do that. Opuspro, o-p-u-s, dot, p-r-o and he's written is D-E-S-S-C-R-I-P-C-T. I think it's basically D and script like movie. Those tools have been invaluable to my video workflow. They've done so much for my video workflow. It's tripped hours out of my day and then utilizing chat, gpt to go through the transcripts and create summaries for me so that it's still my words, but it's just formatted in a way that makes cognitive sense for people. These tools have been amazing for my business and I'll explain what they do.
Speaker 1:So Descript is it's almost like it's a video editor. You don't need to have anything else. I do my rough edits in it and then I transfer it over to Permuter Pro and do my color correction and all the graphics to make it look great. Descript you can do all that stuff in it. I just like I'm just used to Premiere Pro and Final Cut, but Descript basically it takes the transcript of your video and makes it into a Word document and makes it into a Word document and by making it into a Word document, editing it is as simple as editing the Word document. It's a game changer Because you can and then it will automatically you can tell it remove all the ums and ahs. And there's another AI tool that allows you to change things around and create chapters and show notes and all that other stuff. But it's a game changer when I'm utilizing it.
Speaker 1:Descript is amazing and I'm going to go ahead, go to the website so you can see what it looks like. Descript is an amazing video editor and really it's the only one you need. You can have the more advanced ones and as you get more complex, things get a little bit more complex for you, but it's an amazing little video editor and I can edit stuff really, really simply. So even when I get done with this live stream, I'm a download it and drop it into Descript and it's going to transcribe it and get it ready and get it prepared for me to do edits and it's going to take out the undoubtedly thousands of ohms, ahs and repeated words and weird gags that I have with my normal screen pattern. But it's a dope, dope little product and it's pretty much AI driven. Now it allows me to do things that I couldn't normally do and edit pretty quickly. So I'm going to share my screen here. We can open up Descript so I can just kind of show you what it looks like.
Speaker 1:Let me go to the live stream that I did. It's going to pull it up, see here, see the video and the encode mode. And here's the script. And as I want to change stuff in, as I want to edit stuff and move things around, I will edit out pieces of it. If I don't like a specific word, I can just edit it, and it edits the video at the same time. I don't have to do anything. And then I can edit by ear and not by sight as much, so it just helps me out a ton.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's called Descript, is worth getting. And then the other one is Opus pro. And here's the thing this stuff costs money. I'm not even going to front this stuff. Oh, it is cheap, but it's not free. I should say, um, opus pro is another one is dope. So, and I'm gonna share my screen with you to see that these tools help me, these tools can turn somebody who barely knows that operator camera into a pretty decent video editor. Uh, pretty quick.
Speaker 1:So once I get everything edited up in Descript and get punched up in the extra unnecessary stuff, but it's what I use, but once I get everything punched up, edited and ready to go, and I'm ready to have videos that I posted, I post them to my YouTube channel, post them on Facebook and LinkedIn or whatever, and then I'll take them to Descript In Descript share. Descript allows me to take those video clips and you drop the link in here or you could upload the video file straight to there, and so what that does is we'll go to the Cosmo, it will transcribe it. So it's the prime learning years and that's one of the things we were talking about last week. It's a little bit early for the entire conversation and put the text crawl across the bottom and it allows you to clip shorter videos that you can advertise your longer form video. So this one I did this one specifically.
Speaker 1:This clip job is for like posting YouTube and LinkedIn videos. You see, the format matches YouTube and LinkedIn. Well, here's the cool part about it. So I got to find it. Let me make sure I got it right here. All right, those are YouTube. Those are going to be longer form, but if I wanted to do shorter form, you can also clip them into reels and YouTube shorts, and everything that you need to know, or everything that you want to learn, is out there for you to learn in one way or the other, and so it allows us. It allows me to create bite-sized bits of it for sharing on social media. Game changer.
Speaker 1:This stuff would have taken me hours to do and I can do it in minutes. I can literally drop a clip in here and go to the gym and it come back and it's. It's all 20 clips that I can use. Is it perfect? No, it isn't. Is it as good as it would be if I did it all manually? Probably not. But as you start realizing and start leveling up, you realize that right is the enemy of done. I hope this is at value for you.
Speaker 1:I'm going to post when I find the referral links. I'm going to post the links here so that you can go in and take advantage of these services yourself, because I can't express enough how important these services are to my workflow. They help out with so much that I wouldn't know what to do without them on a daily basis. Let me go ahead. I'm going to find the link so I can post the direct links to this so that you can have it. But it also does catch yourself Like you can link Opus Pro to your social media account so it automatically posts stuff to them and all kinds of other cool little fun things. But it just makes my life easy and I think a lot of times we punish ourselves for opting for easy. Does that make sense? We punish ourselves. I think sometimes we get so caught up in oh, this is too easy, this is too easy, this is too easy that we don't necessarily realize that sometimes the easy way is the best way to deliver things. Best way to get them done is the best way to deliver things, best way to get them done.
Speaker 1:Once I find my affiliate links, I'm going to send them to you so I can make sure that you're able to connect with things that make sense for you, and I'll probably end up having to drop the referral links after the fact just because it does it. There's a lot and I don't want to waste y'all's time. I do think it's a valuable thing to put the links for the two services that I use. That save the most time. Sorry, so I'm finding the referral links. If you're online and if you have other things to do, I 100%. But yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm looking for the links so that I can put in the tools that I use to put out videos, but if you just want to jump in there, it's openspro. But giving you the referral links allows you to take advantage of any discounts or anything. I'll just give you the regular links to the websites. I will just give you the regular links to the websites and then, if I find my referral links so that you can get some discounts when you first sign up for services, I will send them your way and I'll put them in the show description and so that you can kind of see it in the Place to refer it, a place to get started with your clients.
Speaker 1:Bro, that's what the most important piece is. I think that a lot of times we see these things as barriers and hindrances for us to get rolling on our social media, on the social media side of things that we don't. We don't take advantage of things and we don't take advantage of things that make our lives easier. Okay, I got the referral and so we see that we punish ourselves by always trying to do things hard. This is my way of showing you that it doesn't have to be the hard way. I can do it the easy way. So for Opus Pro, this is the thing that clips my social media and makes my life up a jillion times easier so that I can create smaller related videos for my content and I'm not double dipping on content all the time. That's what that is. That's what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Other one is Descriptor, if you like, the video conferencing software I'm using. It's uh, stream yard, and stream yard is pretty simple. It allows me to stream to all the major platforms for the same time. So I didn't mean to get off on this tangent y'all I really did. What I wanted to do was I wanted to discuss the things so that you don't have to feel burdened doing things the hard way. Don't get addicted to things the hard way that was a big barrier and find the things that make your life easier. Now I'm going to do a quick recap here so that we can wrap this thing up here. So that we can wrap this thing up.
Speaker 1:Descript is the video editing software, the primary one that I use to make my primary edits. You can utilize it for your full edits, so I'm gonna drop that Heads up with Opus Pro. I am a. I do have a referral program link, so I do get a commission on that, but it also I think it pledged you with a bunch of discounts to get started, and Descript is right there. So these are the two things. Opus pro is for my short form video content to longer form content. It just clips it. It's my clipping software, this is my editing software. So I do the edits before I do the clips. That's what I got All right software. So I do the edits before I do the clips. That's what I got all right.
Speaker 1:Let's recap, because I've been on here for almost 90 minutes running my mouth, so if I'm starting over again, I would absolutely not get a website to start out with. I would take over my google listing or create one for my business. I would make sure that I have have my LLC or doing a sole proprietorship. Either way, have those registered and created. If I'm doing the LLC, I'm having a separate bank account set up for that LLC, so I have a container to put my money in. I'm making sure that I'm taking time before I create services. I'm making sure that I have a client to sell, making sure that I want to sell to those clients on the front end, and then I'm lodging. I'm making sure that my price point covers, make sure that I'm not spending more than I need to to deliver the service and eventually, at some point there's going to come a threshold where I reach a specific amount of clients. I'm able, where the business is paying for itself, and then I'm able to start paying myself in the business. So I'm taking real time to dial in my pricing to make sure it meets those goals.
Speaker 1:I get through the first year. I've got a couple of clients, I have my price point, I have my systems laid out for how I deal with clients when they come in, and that's a piece. I didn't spend enough time talking about Having my sales system to take a client from a lead, from a prospect, to a lead to a client. That's going to be another episode. I don't want to burden it with it and that's pretty involved so that I don't want to shortchange that one. That's an hour long conversation by itself. But I have my system. I'm now moving ahead. I'm in my first three to six months. I have a couple of clients.
Speaker 1:Now I'm looking to kind of scale this thing and make it so that I'm not the only person doing it, and so now I'm going to sit down and really look at what skills I need to grow, what skills I want to grow, what skills I can outsource and figuring out what I can put on somebody else's lab and how to effectively delegate that so I can keep track to make sure they're doing. I am also figuring out what resources I need to apply to gain those skills. If I need to hire somebody to teach me, then stuff's available online. I need to figure out what the time investment or the money investments would be in order to attain those new skills. I'm going to sit down and look at my goals and make them clearer and more measurable and more deliverable, because you know no matter where you are. As you get more experience, you can more clearly define your goals, and so that gives me a target to shoot at. I'm going to make sure that my marketing and branding is dialed in to bring the kinds of clients that I want to serve doing the kind of business that I want to do.
Speaker 1:You're never going to love every aspect of your business. It's going to be things that you don't like. Ideally, once you get to a certain point, you can offload the things that you don't like. Ideally, once you get to a certain point, you can offload the things that you don't like, but if you don't like the funnities of your business, the fundamentals of what you do on a day-to-day basis. You're in a world of hurt. You hate your business and your clients, and not hate your clients, but hate serving your clients. You're in a bad place and I've seen businesses get caught there and they never emerge from it. Businesses get caught there and they never emerge from it. It ends up becoming a trend that you hate.
Speaker 1:Leverage technology the tools I use to create content and edit videos are down in the links.
Speaker 1:Figure out what tools you need to deliver your stuff better and more quickly. I'm not talking about a workday. I'm talking about 24 hours out of my week of video editing with the softwares I have listed below. And if you want to get started, all you need is those and a camera and maybe a mic, and your phone has both. Go, get started and then getting out and networking. And networking is good for growing your pool of potential clients, but also puts you in with other business owners. You can have conversations with them and start realizing how business owners interact with one another, and it makes your marketing a little bit easier because you don't have to specifically talk to business owners. It's somewhere where you want to be. It doesn't hurt to get out there and start networking. Make sure that you have all your other stuff dialed in before you dive head first in a network. That's something I did not do and it's something I wish I would have done at the beginning, because I wasted a lot of time and money. Networking allows you to grow and you may find your mentors in that networking group. You have people to bounce ideas off of. If I had to start over, those are the things I would do.
Speaker 1:If this content's been valuable to you, I did include and this is my mental notes the things I did include was gave my resume, told why I'm qualified to speak to this. I didn't necessarily give you a call to action. Follow like, share, subscribe, and I probably need to pick one that I want you to do, so give me a light if this connects with the next time I'm going to ask you to share. If you can do both, that would be great, but I need to have a call to action and say like the channel, subscribe so that you can get more content like this if this stuff connects with you, and then leave a comment. If you have questions after watching this, hit me up. I think I still have my email scrolling, but I'm going to post it here just so that you guys can see it. Hit me up. If you have questions and want to have more in-depth and real conversations about this, you can always hit me up at mail at isowordsnet.
Speaker 1:It's important that, if you do, don't hesitate, don't wait on it. You want to get unstuck, email me and have your initial free consultation so we can figure out what your sticking point is and figure out how to get around. That's all I got, guys. I do appreciate y'all's time. I know that this is kind of the middle of the day and any eyeballs or attention that you can give me is cherished. I'll be clipping this. I'll be utilizing the email tool the tools I've been showing to actually create this video in different formats so you can see it in other places.
Speaker 1:But it's important to leverage that stuff and sometimes, even when you're deep in your business, sometimes it does benefit to sit down and say, if I had to start over, what would I do, because you're going to find strategies that may simplify your life as a business owner. I know I did that and it's been a good day. So that's what I got. I appreciate y'all's time Like this. Share this with somebody that they can help out with, that can benefit from it, and if you want more content along these lines, subscribe on all my channels wherever you're seeing this. I appreciate y'all. I'll holler at you later, ryan, I make your dollars make sense. Talk to y'all later.