Hey everyone,
I'm going by Young-Gun round here. Hey, 26 might hardly be young to some of you early-starters, and I'm starting to feel my age (27 next month) but. still. for someone with zero experience or education in business, I feel pretty young.
Really, life just got started for me about 5 years ago. That was when I graduated with a degree from one of the finest, most respected small colleges in the U.S... with a CLASSICAL PIANO DEGREE *talk about slowlane family, giving me zero advice or assistance in understanding how the world works*
So, pretty darn good at the piano, but zero conception of where "income" comes from. Or even any idea of the differences between "income" (i.e. asset-based semi-passive income) vs. "salary" vs. "wages."
So, being a young idiot, I was taken advantage of, and my time was robbed from me to work for incompetent bosses at criminal "wages" for the first 18 months of my life. But the advantage was, I REALIZED that I was being taken advantage of.. and began to read, and read, and read.
Think and Grow Rich. Richest Man in Babylon. Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Then I started my business. I'm not going to lie, this was NOT easy. If I had known HOW HARD and grueling, I might not, probably wouldn't, have gotten over the hump and started it. Luckily I was just a desperate, clueless 23-year-old stuck living with parents and previously only making minimum wage (despite my insane over-education and perfect test scores throughout school). I had literally nothing to lose, nothing to use, and nowhere to go but UP. That thought got me out of bed many times at 5 in the morning, kept me working through 2 day jobs, and kept me working till midnight after I got home.
Starting the business took nearly a month of brainstorming .. just BRAINSTORMING, before I could even start taking action... thinking of what skills I had that I could offer as a service. I just wanted to avoid having a boss - that was the main thing. A boss who told me when and how to work. A boss who criticized me from their comfy office chair. A boss who made money off the sweat of my labor. IT WAS SO GALLING. There was no way I was going to put up with that my entire adult life. NO WAY. I was going to be the boss of myself.
The books continued to fall away with the pages of the calendar, with the leaves of the trees around me.
How to Get Rich. The Law of Success. Biography of Jobs. Biography of Larry Ellison.
Once I figured out my most marketable skill, I began finding free ways to advertise. I had under $1000 to my name. Most months, for the first year, I had an elevated heart rate the MOMENT I WOKE UP... the heart rate of "near-panic"... rent was due... I had food, but not much.. my car was always on the verge of breaking down.
But, I started getting my first 1-on-1 clients (I called them "clients" then, "customers" now - to represent how I'm moving from custom-solutions to streamlined service products). Of course, I charged almost NOTHING for my time.. didn't believe in my own value. With gas costs, coffeeshop purchases, and the time spent finding and retaining clients, I was still probably making minimum wage for my time, truth be told.
Yet still, as the seasons continued to roll on, I was learning my trade... my tiny niche industry. Its cycles, what the customers wanted and expected... what they liked about me, in contrast to the other, bigger companies they could have worked with. I improved my branding and my free advertising. My copywriting continually improved with practice and with metrics. I raised my rates. Raising rates, to the "right" price, skyrocked the requests for my service. This blew my mind, but now I understand it perfectly.
Raising rates increased demand for my service. Being "too busy" to take more customers also increased demand for my service. These confused me at first, being a TOTAL business novice, but as I thought and thought about them, gave me key insights into EXACTLY what I was actually "selling." I thought I knew what that was (professional service) but it's much, much more (I've slowly realized... I sell parents an investment in their child's future that helps the whole family "keep up with the Joneses." Talk about a niche where the customer will just THROW money at you. Spending on kid's futures is huge.... HUGE... witness everything from Toys R Us to the college higher-education bubble)
I began to see how this could all fit together. I moved my (education-related service business) from random bookstores and coffeeshops into a small office. I took what I had learned and made a blog out of it, learned basic SEO principles out of necessity, wrote several e-books, released them on Amazon and Kindle. I have not fully maximized this and I see great opportunity here to tie everything together into one unified brand, just as MJ talks about. But I did generated some REAL passive income.. the holy grail, for a 25 year old kid... money made while sleeping... or pooping, or playing guitar, or while with my girlfriend, or on the motorcycle.
My best month was $1000 in pure-passive income. Sadly, I've actually dropped off that - it's now about $400/month. But that's alright. My focus has changed to another angle of this industry that isn't passive right away, but has a much, much higher ceiling for total profitability. I'm going to have to set up human-resource systems if I want to make the BIG bucks in this field. This is something I could only truly have learned through all this experimentation and time spent directly with customers.
There's no way to guess or plan your way to success. You just have to hustle. Failures and disappointments point the way to what will actually work. Pivot, pivot, pivot.
I began to get the first stirrings of the courage and conviction it would take to hire employees. Remember, I'm just a semi-slacker, music student, clueless non-managing introvert. So hiring would be a really, really big personal step for me - not just the business - for ME. I keep developing to meet my challenges.
More books.
Steve Drucker's books on management and entrepreneurship. The Millionaire Fastlane . The One-Minute Manager. The e-Myth revisited.
Customer demand is steadily growing.. faster and faster.. SNOWBALLING.. and suddenly I can barely keep up. There's no longer room in the schedule. I'm working 80-hour weeks for weeks on end. Burnout rears its ugly head... I cannot... go on... my relationship with a great girl ends. We are still friends. I don't know what happens next.
Dropping the relationship gives just enough mental and emotional space to push through. I make an entrepreneurial breakthrough - I will start working with groups as well as just 1-on-1. By setting smart prices, I am able to EXPLODE my monthly income to over double in a short time.
I was just interviewed by local TV this very week as a top expert in my field. Total elapsed time - 3 years. My mom, who used to scream at me "get a JOB! get a goddamn JOB!" is now asking me for a job! LOL!!
But all this is mere build-up. Because now I can see the final goal:
Finish automating my scheduling and payment system. Hire and train (better than good) customer service to take over e-mail and phone duties, because customer service is the foundation of my semi-premium service. The service can be pretty standardized in reality, but it needs to FEEL customized from the start. Hire and train smart, emotionally-intelligent employees to do what I do, both 1-on-1 and group. Then, expand marketing in every local free and low-budget-paid channel I can find. There are many secret places to advertise. Now that I'm not in charge of fulfilling all that new business, I can just put the pedal to the metal and take over my city.
One of my only remaining questions is - once my automated system is running smoothly, I'm working <10 hours per week and the system is highly profitable... do I franchise? or do I retain complete control and open regionally, then nationally, by hiring mid-managers to travel around opening new cities? It remains to be seen.
But focus. For now, write myself out of the business and create training materials and automated systems. I know that this can be done. I know that once it is done, there will be a buyer. I know that I can navigate the changes within my industry and turn them to my advantage. I know that I can become a national player in this field, within a matter of years.
The goal is a $25 mil sale. Target date is 4-7 years from now. Why do I want this so bad? Live the lifestyle. Complete freedom and security. And, money enough to start the next business and go even bigger and harder than before. Can I do it before I hit 30? It will all depend on my hiring decisions and my continued hustle...
I'm going by Young-Gun round here. Hey, 26 might hardly be young to some of you early-starters, and I'm starting to feel my age (27 next month) but. still. for someone with zero experience or education in business, I feel pretty young.
Really, life just got started for me about 5 years ago. That was when I graduated with a degree from one of the finest, most respected small colleges in the U.S... with a CLASSICAL PIANO DEGREE *talk about slowlane family, giving me zero advice or assistance in understanding how the world works*
So, pretty darn good at the piano, but zero conception of where "income" comes from. Or even any idea of the differences between "income" (i.e. asset-based semi-passive income) vs. "salary" vs. "wages."
So, being a young idiot, I was taken advantage of, and my time was robbed from me to work for incompetent bosses at criminal "wages" for the first 18 months of my life. But the advantage was, I REALIZED that I was being taken advantage of.. and began to read, and read, and read.
Think and Grow Rich. Richest Man in Babylon. Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Then I started my business. I'm not going to lie, this was NOT easy. If I had known HOW HARD and grueling, I might not, probably wouldn't, have gotten over the hump and started it. Luckily I was just a desperate, clueless 23-year-old stuck living with parents and previously only making minimum wage (despite my insane over-education and perfect test scores throughout school). I had literally nothing to lose, nothing to use, and nowhere to go but UP. That thought got me out of bed many times at 5 in the morning, kept me working through 2 day jobs, and kept me working till midnight after I got home.
Starting the business took nearly a month of brainstorming .. just BRAINSTORMING, before I could even start taking action... thinking of what skills I had that I could offer as a service. I just wanted to avoid having a boss - that was the main thing. A boss who told me when and how to work. A boss who criticized me from their comfy office chair. A boss who made money off the sweat of my labor. IT WAS SO GALLING. There was no way I was going to put up with that my entire adult life. NO WAY. I was going to be the boss of myself.
The books continued to fall away with the pages of the calendar, with the leaves of the trees around me.
How to Get Rich. The Law of Success. Biography of Jobs. Biography of Larry Ellison.
Once I figured out my most marketable skill, I began finding free ways to advertise. I had under $1000 to my name. Most months, for the first year, I had an elevated heart rate the MOMENT I WOKE UP... the heart rate of "near-panic"... rent was due... I had food, but not much.. my car was always on the verge of breaking down.
But, I started getting my first 1-on-1 clients (I called them "clients" then, "customers" now - to represent how I'm moving from custom-solutions to streamlined service products). Of course, I charged almost NOTHING for my time.. didn't believe in my own value. With gas costs, coffeeshop purchases, and the time spent finding and retaining clients, I was still probably making minimum wage for my time, truth be told.
Yet still, as the seasons continued to roll on, I was learning my trade... my tiny niche industry. Its cycles, what the customers wanted and expected... what they liked about me, in contrast to the other, bigger companies they could have worked with. I improved my branding and my free advertising. My copywriting continually improved with practice and with metrics. I raised my rates. Raising rates, to the "right" price, skyrocked the requests for my service. This blew my mind, but now I understand it perfectly.
Raising rates increased demand for my service. Being "too busy" to take more customers also increased demand for my service. These confused me at first, being a TOTAL business novice, but as I thought and thought about them, gave me key insights into EXACTLY what I was actually "selling." I thought I knew what that was (professional service) but it's much, much more (I've slowly realized... I sell parents an investment in their child's future that helps the whole family "keep up with the Joneses." Talk about a niche where the customer will just THROW money at you. Spending on kid's futures is huge.... HUGE... witness everything from Toys R Us to the college higher-education bubble)
I began to see how this could all fit together. I moved my (education-related service business) from random bookstores and coffeeshops into a small office. I took what I had learned and made a blog out of it, learned basic SEO principles out of necessity, wrote several e-books, released them on Amazon and Kindle. I have not fully maximized this and I see great opportunity here to tie everything together into one unified brand, just as MJ talks about. But I did generated some REAL passive income.. the holy grail, for a 25 year old kid... money made while sleeping... or pooping, or playing guitar, or while with my girlfriend, or on the motorcycle.
My best month was $1000 in pure-passive income. Sadly, I've actually dropped off that - it's now about $400/month. But that's alright. My focus has changed to another angle of this industry that isn't passive right away, but has a much, much higher ceiling for total profitability. I'm going to have to set up human-resource systems if I want to make the BIG bucks in this field. This is something I could only truly have learned through all this experimentation and time spent directly with customers.
There's no way to guess or plan your way to success. You just have to hustle. Failures and disappointments point the way to what will actually work. Pivot, pivot, pivot.
I began to get the first stirrings of the courage and conviction it would take to hire employees. Remember, I'm just a semi-slacker, music student, clueless non-managing introvert. So hiring would be a really, really big personal step for me - not just the business - for ME. I keep developing to meet my challenges.
More books.
Steve Drucker's books on management and entrepreneurship. The Millionaire Fastlane . The One-Minute Manager. The e-Myth revisited.
Customer demand is steadily growing.. faster and faster.. SNOWBALLING.. and suddenly I can barely keep up. There's no longer room in the schedule. I'm working 80-hour weeks for weeks on end. Burnout rears its ugly head... I cannot... go on... my relationship with a great girl ends. We are still friends. I don't know what happens next.
Dropping the relationship gives just enough mental and emotional space to push through. I make an entrepreneurial breakthrough - I will start working with groups as well as just 1-on-1. By setting smart prices, I am able to EXPLODE my monthly income to over double in a short time.
I was just interviewed by local TV this very week as a top expert in my field. Total elapsed time - 3 years. My mom, who used to scream at me "get a JOB! get a goddamn JOB!" is now asking me for a job! LOL!!
But all this is mere build-up. Because now I can see the final goal:
Finish automating my scheduling and payment system. Hire and train (better than good) customer service to take over e-mail and phone duties, because customer service is the foundation of my semi-premium service. The service can be pretty standardized in reality, but it needs to FEEL customized from the start. Hire and train smart, emotionally-intelligent employees to do what I do, both 1-on-1 and group. Then, expand marketing in every local free and low-budget-paid channel I can find. There are many secret places to advertise. Now that I'm not in charge of fulfilling all that new business, I can just put the pedal to the metal and take over my city.
One of my only remaining questions is - once my automated system is running smoothly, I'm working <10 hours per week and the system is highly profitable... do I franchise? or do I retain complete control and open regionally, then nationally, by hiring mid-managers to travel around opening new cities? It remains to be seen.
But focus. For now, write myself out of the business and create training materials and automated systems. I know that this can be done. I know that once it is done, there will be a buyer. I know that I can navigate the changes within my industry and turn them to my advantage. I know that I can become a national player in this field, within a matter of years.
The goal is a $25 mil sale. Target date is 4-7 years from now. Why do I want this so bad? Live the lifestyle. Complete freedom and security. And, money enough to start the next business and go even bigger and harder than before. Can I do it before I hit 30? It will all depend on my hiring decisions and my continued hustle...
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