Transcript for:
From Engineer to Entrepreneur Journey

if you're a software engineer who's tired of The Daily Grind feeling stuck working for someone else's dream instead of building your own then you're exactly who this video is for but before we dive in why should you listen to me I'm beo and I secured my first six fig software engineering job while I was still in my junior year of University after climbing the corporate ladder at various Fortune 500 companies I made the Bold decision to actually quit today I run a seven figure B2B consulting firm that I built from complete scratch and and trust me when I tell you the freedom and success I've gained far surpass anything the corporate world ever offered to me in this video I'm going to walk you through the exact steps you need to take to transition from being just another developer to becoming a successful business owner I'll break down how to choose the right business model as a software engineer how to land your first few high-paying clients and last but not least how to actually scale your business to a point where you can work on your own terms meaning you can work from anywhere in the world all the while living a life you never thought possible and the best part I've packed this video with actionable advice you can jump straight to the sections that matter most to you and your current situation the time stamps are both in the description as well as on the video itself as always thank you for watching and I hope you enjoyed this one welcome everybody Welcome to The Ultimate Guide starting a software business as a software engineer first off what we'll be covering in today's video is the four following things so the prerequisites that you as a software engineer need before you start a business because truth be told there are certain prerequisites that you have to meet before you decide to go down the actual path of becoming a business owner yourself then we'll be talking about how to choose a business model and what business model you should choose based on your own strength and weaknesses and then we'll dive into how to get your first 10 to 20 high paying clients and afterwards we'll dive into continuous Improvement the last section is largely for your long-term Vision which we'll discuss but it's mainly for how to actually expand your business to the point where either a you later wish to exit it for a big multiplier or B you wish it to run autonomous so it's just like a cash cow just prints you money but without further Ado let's jump right from chical order so our first point of action which are the prerequisites now I urge you all everybody here to pay careful attention to the prerequisite section especially because there's going to be a lot of stuff we're going to be discussing that not many people have really thought of before and this is largely from I'm tailoring a lot of the information here from my own personal experience through all the mistakes that I went through and what I learned and I'm just going to give it to you right now so you know what to want to do and what to do and with that actually for each section we'll have an action item block at the very end of the section I can show you right now but these are all action items that you'll be able to actually take a look at and do once we cover the entire section but right after B let's just start with self assessment so let's imagine that you're building a house and with pretty much any construction that you're going to do right before you set the actual Foundation you need to ensure that the ground is stable so your building doesn't collapse you need to make sure that all your materials are ready and the blueprints are in place just as you wouldn't start this construction process without these Essentials you can't build a successful business without meeting the necessary prerequisites first and pretty much with anything we really set out to do there are certain prerequisites that we have to meet and it's important to note that starting a business is no different and a successful business is a lot more difficult actually so we first have to assess our own skill set to see if we're capable of building a successful business when it when I'm talking about a skill set I don't just mean our hard skills so I mean both hard and soft skills we'll get into that later but for now you should know that already as software Engineers we already have a strong foundation in problem solving technical expertise and logical thinking but building a successful business requires a lot more than that and it requires a lot more than just your hard skills it requires a completely new set of tools you might not be familiar with yet so before we lay the first break of our entrepreneurial venture we first want to ensure that we have equipped ourselves with the right knowledge and mindset to support the weight of what we're about to build if we rush things if we don't build a proper Foundation then couple months down the line a couple weeks down the line our business can just completely crumble and we'll just look like a fool and we blame everybody but ourselves and you know we'll just question what do we do wrong what happened here and I'm speaking from experience here a couple of the ventures that I first went went through it is extremely important that we set the foundations correctly so by recognizing this fact and addressing these prerequisites we essentially set up ourselves for a smoother construction process and we avoid big mistakes and actually build something that can stand up to the test of time and we talked about briefly about the mindset to support the way that we're about to build and I want to expand on that a bit you see as a software engineer before we get into entrepreneurship before we become a business owner there's a very big mind mindset shift we have to Gap there's a very big bridge that we have to cross in a sense and to actually succeed as a business owner to actually succeed as an entrepreneur we must adopt a completely different mindset than that of a developer so you currently as a software engineer you must adopt a completely different mindset than that of of a developer and if you're asking well what's the mindset of a developer well as a developer right your primary focus is solving very specific technical problems you constantly ask how to make something work whether it's writing code or debugging but you never really question the why and your work is largely Project based with very clear instructions and deadlines right and your success is measured by how efficiently you complete these tasks and contribute to the larger project as a whole however as a business owner it's completely different instead of the how you have to focus on the why right so you need to understand the purpose behind the problems that you solve as a Dev you don't necessarily question the purpose you just do what you're told right you you you given a problem and you're told to find a solution but you don't necessarily care why the problem happen in the first place you know the problem's there and I need to solve it as a business owner that's reversed you need to understand the purpose behind the problems that you solve and your role changes from an executor of tasks to more so a creator of tasks now and another thing that I want to talk talk about it in terms of the mindset many people don't talk about this but it's important to note that entrepreneurship is inherently risky it comes with more risk that's the meaning of Entrepreneurship more risk greater reward so you'll definitely need to step into certain uncertainty you'll need to make calculative decisions and you'll need to grow comfortable with the unknown you'll need to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and the shift in mindset is a trly important that's why it's a prerequisite you need to focus Less on solving technical issues and more on understanding why these issues actually exist in the first place so why did this problem occur before you get to the solution you need to First understand a problem and only when you truly Gras why can you build something meaningful and sustainable right so with this we discussed sort of self assessment understanding our soft skills and hard skills and then we discussed the Mind mind mindset ship that you need and now the third prerequisite that I'm want to discuss is the financial cushion so there's an interesting story I want to talk about here and that actually resonated with me quite a bit and this is the story of Herdon Cortez now I don't know if many of you know him or not but he was the person actually in charge of Conquering the Aztec Empire and in 1519 when he arrived in a new world he gave out the order to burn all their ships so keep in mind this is 1519 right they just discovered a new continent they arrived with their ships at this new continent took them months to make this journey and the captain says who orders his own man to burn all their ships and this is largely where the term as they say burn your Bridges right you can think of it that that way this is literally the perfect depiction of that they come to a completely new land they've never been there it's completely unfamiliar and they decide to okay we're here to conquer and to make sure we need to do it we need to make sure we don't have a plan B so what they do is they completely abandon their plan B so of them retreating on their ships they burn their ships and despite being vastly outnumbered Cortez and his forces actually captured the a the capital in 1521 two years later and this is extremely not only inspirational but it also gives you kind of a secret of human potential that we'll talk about shortly but whenever we're starting any business venture or just any big Venture really in our lives we often think that we need a financial cushion at least a few months of living costs before starting a business because it feels safer right it gives us a fallback if things go wrong or in case things go wrong and while this might sound smart before you get started it could actually be holding back your true potential let me explain you see throughout my journey I've seen mainly two types of successful people or I should say hyper successful people some who carefully manage every single risk I call them proactive people and some who just dive in head first without any safety nets I call those people reactive people and I want to make a note here neither approach is better so they both have their pros and cons I've seen both of them both are extremely successful both can be not successful right but nevertheless one isn't neily better than the other and in hindsight the best way forward in my opinion is actually finding a balance that works for you and me personally I'm more so lenient towards the reactive rout as that's what works best for me but I know other people who slightly lean towards the proactive routee but they still have a good balance of both but you first actually need to understand where you fall so if I were to draw let me draw a line here and if we call this this side of things the left side the proactive and then the right side reactive all of us watching this video are going to be somewhere in here right somewhere on this line so I'm more so over here I'm also on this this side so if I draw the middle over here you need to find out where you are on this line right here are you maybe more so of a proactive person or hyper proactive person are you maybe a hyper reactive person are you maybe smik dead in the middle you need to understand where you are because if you don't know where you are then you've probably never been in a situation where failure isn't really an option and if you've never been in a fa in a situation where failure isn't an option then you don't know your full potential because that's the only case where you truly pushed to the brink that you're in their potential can actually come out and on the opposite end if you always act without thinking things through and you just rush things you don't give pay any attention it's time to actually add some strategy and see the difference that it might make so whether you're here or here there can be a lot of things that you need to be doing differently but you wouldn't know that until you take a look at yourself and understand where you fall on this line and once you finally understand where it is that you fall on that line what you need to do is what I call the 369e Outlook so while pushing yourself is important having a long-term vision is equally crucial because the ultimate goal of your business isn't necessarily to make more money sure that's one of the things that you get but it's actually to gain freedom and in my case before I started my business I had my own 3 six and N year outlook right so personally speaking in my first three years I wanted to reach a specific income goal right and I want to pay off any Debs that I had and this stage for me was more so you know about building a stable foundation for my future stabilizing my finances and preparing for bigger opportunities and then in a six-year Outlook I had I started thinking of how I wanted my life to evolve right I wanted to invest in property maybe other Ventures other businesses I want to start a family potentially relocate and the goal here was for me to expand my wealth outside of just money right focus on bigger life goals and finally year nine it was more so about long-term sustainability so I wanted to potentially maybe exit my business maybe have an exit plan for business make multiples like Millions right like nine figures eight figures whatever the case and maybe move on to something else or just call it quits start but what's so interesting about a 369 year outlook as we'll get into later it's that you'll almost always you'll almost always beat these year outlooks by an insane margin so I reached my six-year outlook before my three-year Mark right so where I thought I was going to be at the six-year Mark I got it before my threeyear Mark and so now completely my new 369 year outlook is changed because every year it literally changes every year I surprise myself and I have to set new kind of vision right I need to set up a new long-term vision and this is going to be the same exact case for you because we always tend to think of if our potential is let's say here right we always tend to think of ourselves around here and whenever we set a goal we tend to set the goal somewhere in this range either slightly above or slightly below but but our actual potential is always way higher than that right and the main reason why our potential is actually that much higher is because of our unique advantages so every single one of you watching this video has a unique Advantage right and once you've defined your vision you've assess your strength and weaknesses and you've understood yourself the next step is to identify your unique advantages and there are three main factors that will give you an edge in achieving your goals and those three key factors are your location your n work and your experience location I mean physical location so where are you located does your city offer any strategic advantages to Top Talent funding or networking events so are you in like a tech Hub like San Francisco or New York and you need to consider both the opportunities and the challenges maybe your city is a tech Hub but you have high living costs and you to evaluate how your location actually impacts your progress is it better for it or is it going to hurt you in the long run right you then have to take a look at your network who do you know that can help you look at your family friends co-workers and acquaintances are they in Industries or positions that could maybe open doors for you think about mentors investors or any key connections that could FastTrack your success so whatever you want to do is there anybody that can help you get there just a little bit faster and last but not least you need to take a look at your own experience so you need to reflect on your personal and professional experiences what have you learned from your work history life lessons or even failures that set you apart from other people and these unique insights can be extremely powerful tools down the line because guess what they are what will set you apart from other people right and if you recognize and leverage these unique advantages you can position yourself ahead of the competition and move more quickly towards your long-term Vision so if we were to discuss action items this is what you'll be doing right now so I urge you first and foremost do a self assessment right you need to assess your strength and weaknesses so I'm speaking both Technical and non-technical right so don't look don't just look at your programing languages or text de that you know or how good you are at web development or whatever the case right don't just look at your software engineering skills or more so technical skills look at your soft skills as well list what you can do to improve them as well so let's say you're extremely good at your technical but then your non- technical is lacking list what you can do to sort of improve your non-technical and then you need to focus on the tasks that provide the highest leverage so I call these the 10x tasks to maximize the impact of your time spent so if I were to give you an example right let's say for my communication skills I'm good at clearly explaining technical Concepts to non-technical team members and I can effectively communicate ideas in meetings as for where I can improve I struggle with public speaking and often find it challenging to articulate my thoughts in high pressure situations so I now know okay I'm good at this thing right here I'm bad at this thing so I need to do a 10x task to improve this thing right here right I struggle with public speaking and I go through the list pretty much of every single one of my Technical and non-technical skills that I'll be needing so my negotiation leadership sales and marketing experience and so on and so forth you get the point and after I do a self assessment of that I'll then move on to my mindset shift so what you need to do is you need to shift your mindset you need to stop thinking like a developer I cannot stress this enough you need to start understanding the why behind everything you do adopt the mindset of a Creator as creation is the core of any business stop being just a robot to executes tasks you need to start leading and thinking like a creator more so understanding the why in everything you do not the how the how will always come if you understand the why then you need to evaluate your financial situation so this is I'm sure this is a big concern for everybody watching this video you need to understand whether you're proactive so you're calculative or reactive so like a risk taker in your approach to business you need to identify where you stand and where you need to grow to balance the risk and strategy effectively right and this is largely the main point of this is for you to understand are you going to be stronger in situations where you maybe don't have as much going for you and you have really no choice but to succeed or are you going to be stronger in situations where you have everything planned out you have all your finances planned out week to week you know what you're going to spend how you're going to do it and you just have everything strategically laid out what kind of person are you and until you actually look at yourself and identify who you are because some people might have misconstrued ideas about who they are I always thought I was a calculative person but it turns out I was a risk taker I did extremely well in high pressure situ situations and so I didn't know this about myself until I put myself in those situations so that's your third action item and then your fourth action item should be to create a 3 to 6 n year outlook so map out where you ideally want to be in three six and nine years down the line and chances are you'll completely crush your goals way faster than expected so be prepared to reassess and adjust as you achieve more than you anticipated and last but not least your last action item in this case will be to actually identify your unique advantages so your action item here is to list the unique advantages you have over others so this includes your physical location right your network your experience and these will not only serve as kind of like a confidence booster to make you realize oh wa like I have pretty decent amount of advantages over other people but they'll also be your justification for why you need to become an entrepreneur as a software engineer right because already one of the biggest unique advantages that you have is you're a software engineer that's already pretty much doing better than 90% of the population in the world right and it's that other 10% where your location your network and experience has to play a factor and once you do all these action items it's then time to move on to the second section of choosing a business model now before we actually dive into what business models are out there and which one you should choose let's first understand what I call the SAS curse okay so as software Engineers we are pretty much programmed to think of SAS when it comes to creating a business and why shouldn't we right we see startups being valued at billions of dollar we hear about massive exits we look up to figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and marus Zuckerberg and that's why it's no wonder that they they're legit millions of software Engineers trying to build the next Facebook or Google right and I refer to this as the sasur and unfortunately it is a legitimate curse plaguing software Engineers sure you can follow this path if you want you can try to create the next Facebook or Google but do you actually realize that there are countless other opportunities available to you and in my in my case like in my situation I would even argue that those opportunities are much better and as a software engineer your real Advantage lies in your deep understanding of technology and ability to create using that understanding so you can always quickly adapt to new advancements and leverage code to solve Technical and non-technical problems and if we decide to just step outside of this sass bubble that we place ourselves in we'll see that there are many other Solutions we can build solutions that don't have to follow the traditional sass model and the possibilities are pretty much endless if you're willing to think creatively and break out of the mindset that sass is the only way to succeed if you're wondering like okay but you say that but what is there for me to do outside of SAS well let's actually take a look so what business model should you actually choose the answer is pretty much simple you need to choose a model where you can leverage code and there's two main paths that you can follow when it comes to businesses as a software engineer you either got to go the product based model right so you're going to create and sell software products directly to customers so this would includes SAS this would includes a subscription based tool to or software that's licensed to other businesses or developers or B you would do a service based model so you can use your own coding skills to provide a service such as maybe automating processes consulting or building custom solutions for clients and your software supports the service but the revenue comes from delivering that service I created a software completely from scratch pretty just utilizing python that helps analyze data so we input data into it and it helps analyze it and I spent about a month and a half on creating this software and while I can technically have this as a SAS I decided to use this on a service based model so I have this on a back end to help me with my actual service that I'm providing and it just supports the service it's not the literal service it just supports it and the revenue comes from me delivering that service I'll talk about that later but in this in this case if you're deciding to choose okay do I go with a product based model or service based model you need to identify your actual strengths weaknesses and unique advantages because that's what's going to guide your decision so if you remember I said only move here if you did the action steps for the first section this is what I meant your self assessment your strength weaknesses and unique advantages should guide your decision here so you need to choose the model that gives you the most leverage based on your long-term Vision so should do you just remember that product based models they have a higher ceiling for growth but they are more challenging to get off the ground so you would maybe I would only recommend you guys to go to product based model if you have somebody in your network or experience that will give you that leverage over other people if you don't have anybody in your network or your experience to actually help support that I would not start off from a product based model in my opinion in my personal opinion I believe it is not only a little bit difficult to get started but the opportunity cost of not doing a service based model when you don't have the proper backing that you need for a product based model it's just going to hurt you in the long term and with a service PA model sure your ceiling might be a bit lower but at least they're easier and faster to start so they allow you to generate Revenue a lot more quickly within days if not weeks right and essentially you need to choose a path that best fits your skills vision and risk tolerance so as I mentioned before if you take a look at your location Network and experience and you have an extremely overwhelming Advantage this isn't going to be many of you to do a product based model product based business you can do so but for many of you myself included when I when I started up I did a service based model so you can UTI utilize code to actually create a software that supports a service but the revenue comes from delivering that service there is a little copy out here in that many of you could possibly instead of literally just doing consulting you could do you could build custom software solutions for other people so you can kind of be a quote unquote Staffing Company in a sense where you have your own developers and you create custom software for other companies in that sense you're not technically a SAS but you create multiple sasses for other people right so technically you're still a service based model and doesn't really matter which one you choose you're whatever one you choose you're going to have to do Market demand for right and the important thing here is that once you've actually chosen your business model and the one that ideally provides you the most leverage so the one that ideally fits the best with your network location and experience then the next crucial step is to understand the market demand for your solution so no matter how skilled or Innovative you are your business can only succeed if there is sufficient demand for what you're offering if you're offering something but nobody wants it then you're not going to get any money and it's just going to fail so you have to make sure that whatever it is you're offering people actually want it and pretty much the best way of finding this out is doing market research so market research is essential to determining whether your solution effectively addresses the pain points of your target audience and if you'll notice I highlighted pain points here because once again this isn't talked about often but this is the most important part when it comes to doing market research any solution that you'll be creating right any problem you're trying to solve it needs to be one that's causing pain to your customer or the person you're trying to solv it for so if we take a look at what are the biggest pains in the world right now right outside of let's say physical pain right you'll see Beauty companies doing extremely well because a lot of it has to do with insecurities male and female insecurities so both boys and girls that have certain insecurities and it's a really big pain point for them hence why these companies offer solutions for these pain points since we're software Engineers we're not going to be directly be able to spot pain points like that as easily as that but if we just spend a little bit more time and utilize our creative thinking skills we'll start to understand the pain points in certain businesses I'll bring a couple examples later down the line but just understand that you need to understand what the pain points are for the customer that you're going to serve whether be it you're doing a service based business or a product based business and you can do this a lot of ways my when I personally started out I analyzed the current trends in the market I decided to look at my competition see what they were doing and I just looked at the market saturation as well to identify any potential opportunities that people weren't taking advantage of so in my case when I started off when I created this essentially AI data analytics company nobody at the time in my area had that there was just pretty much normal data analytics people that they would hire or usually from the big four right tooy and tpwc and things like that but there was no small business that was doing this so I'm like okay I found the Gap and and that was the opportunity they got into and for product based businesses you should focus more so on the scalability and the long-term relevance of your product so if you're doing market research and you're trying to look at competition or you're trying to understand the pain points of of the customers the companies that you need to take a look at are those who have been in it for a long term right they're they're they're in it for at least five to 10 years and they've scaled to quite a large degree for service based models it's more so understanding where you can find the UN un underserved areas right so the goal is to specialize your skills in the place where you can have the most significant impact because the place where you can have the most significant impact means the place where you will generate the most value which means by law you will get the most in return for as well right so for product based and service base it's going of be kind of different focuses that you're going to take a look at when it comes to analyzing current trends understanding competition as well as addressing the market saturation right and last but not least it's also important to consider how your offer actually fits into the larger ecosystem of things and whether there's a sustainable need for it so sustainable is a key word here because if let's say when Co took place right and people were selling masks and hand sanitizer that was a that that wasn't necessarily a sustainable need that only lasted for one or two years right but then now things are back to normal so those companies that made a killing off of those selling those now they're probably not doing too hard because there wasn't a sustainable need for it right so all the research you do here will validate your business idea it will ensure that you're creating a solution that meets real market demand and it's also setting the stage for longterm success and once you actually have your business model you you know looked at your market demand as well so you took a look at your competition you identify the pain points now what you need to do is you need to create an MVP so minimum viable Prof product the main reason here is because before you go and just fully invest your time energy and money into building your solution you need to first test it you need to First make sure that whatever it is you're building people actually want it as much market research as you do as many surveys as people fill out as many questions as you ask you're never going to get the true answer to your question until you test it right then and there until you test the solution that you create right and that's where an MVP comes in so an MV p is essentially a streamline version of your product or service that includes only the essential features needed to test your concept with real users so I want to highlight this only the essential features right you don't need to add in anything extra and just your core essential feature that's all that needs to be in an MVP the main goal of the MVP is to quickly assess Market interest and gather feedback before committing to a full scale launch so by developing an MVP you essentially avoid spending excessive resources on features or services that people might not resonate with instead you focus on solving the singular core problem effectively it can be something very small but if it's at least the MVP's tailored to solving one problem and solving that problem really well that's all you need and so whether you're creating software for a product based model or you're offering a service to a consultation or agency your MVP will provide valuable insights into what works what doesn't and what your customers truly need and want right so this iterative process allows you to to refine your offering gather user feedback and pivot if necessary all without the risk and expense of launching at full scale so this is largely if this is pretty much a must for all product based business models with service based business models you'll still have to do an MVP but you wouldn't necessarily go spend too much time on it you can probably get away with one or two kind of sample tries of it right one or two MVPs that you create and then test it out with a product based model you definitely need to have at least I would say three to five MVPs that you do because each time you create the MVP you're going to get feedback on it and then change and possibly modify things as you know new and more and more people decide to test what it is you're doing as you get more feedback and as you potentially pivot into something completely different right and once you've pretty much already CH chosen your business model you've done your market research you've created your MVP so now you know your solution is you know working and you decide to go all it into this into you're creating an actual standard solution a big solution you need to understand the revenue streams for how you're going to make money with that business model right so once you have the business model and an MVP or at least a clear idea what you'll be offering if you're a service-based business your next crucial step is to understand your revenue streams so establishing how your product or service will generate income is key to ensuring the sustainability and profitability of your business for product based models Revenue could come from subscriptions onetime sales licensing fees or premium models where you provide basic features for free and then charge from premium functionality so you'll largely see right if we're taking a look at for example we saw that photoshop and stuff changed from a one-time fee to now a subcription model right and then for example Microsoft Windows and word and stuff those are licensing softwares right you pay licensing fee for those for Google for example it's a Freeman model but you can upgrade so Google drive if you want more storage you have the 15 gabes for free if you want more you upgrade and that's kind of Thee premum functionality for service based models your most common Rue streams will be either hourly billing retainer agreements so monthly or however you know just any type of retainer Project based pricing or even performance-based fees how well you do you take a certain percentage of so D diversifying your revenue streams when possible is also essential for instance if you offer a core service you could also provide an add-on at an additional cost in case of a SAS product for example you might introduce different pricing tiers related to to your software but it's the important thing here is you need to consider the scalability of each Revenue stream and how they align with your long-term business goals because you need to make sure that your revenue streams meet the needs of your customers while also helping you predict cash flow and making F decisions that will drive growth over time now the main reason I bring this up is because when I first started my business I was actually do billing hourly for all the projects that I was doing and this ended up down the line becoming a big problem the main reason being as we got more and more clients we started needing more and more Personnel to actually take care of these projects and we sometimes had to use the same person for numerous projects and even though they were spending let's say the same amount of time on both for one they could be doing better work and the other they could be doing worse work so what ended up happening is you would let's say have 80 hours on one projects 80 hours on one project the quality wouldn't necessarily be the same and down the line this was causing us problems so we changed to a project fee essentially now basis and by Project based pricing what we have now for example if we take a look at I'm recording this on August 18th so and already 18 18 days has gone by in August and if you take a look we're already at let's see 50,000 there 105,000 so $113,000 of Revenue and this came from four clients we have one client here that paid us $55,000 for the project and another that paid $25,000 this $8,000 was a change order and this $25,000 is another new project but nevertheless this way instead of building hourly we now build on a project basis so we estimate how long that project will take us and what we need to do and we build them an amount in accordance of that we no longer do it hourly the main reason here is because we now have a very good estimate as to how long it's going to take us we have a standardized system that we always use and we make sure that before we on board the client we know that it's going to take us this amount of time we take a look at their internal systems we take a look at the data beforehand so before we even onboard them we know how long it's going to take us to help them and hence why before we even start working with them we know which pricing tier they'll fall into hence why you see the price discrepan is here we have a couple models that we have a couple tiering models that we have that people can actually go into and based on their needs how long the project will be the price increases but in this case we also have what are called change orders so in case we do a project and let's say they didn't like something or they need something else changed maybe they forgot to include something in initial S so so the statement of work we have an offer of essentially a change order where they pay you know a smaller amount of money to just have one thing either changed or added one small thing either changed or added but in this case when you take a look at this right so you'll see $133,000 in about 18 days but this isn't all profit right this is revenue and I have to take out my cost my expenses right I have to pay the team so at the end of the day while this might look like six figures my profit is not six figures in half the month right so that's why it's important for you to understand the revenue streams and how you'll be potentially making money in a business and I always talk about Revenue but what's really important are your profits how much are you actually taking home how much are you putting in your pocket that you can use later right and last but not least let's take a look at our action items so when it comes to actually choosing a business model well the first thing you need to do is you need to choose between a product based or service based business model and the thing that's really going to help you do that is your self assessment so your strength weaknesses and your unique advantages which is your location your network and your experiences combining all of those will allow you to actually form the decision of okay do I want to do a product based or a service based I mentioned before I would recommend for 90% of you to do a service based model it's easier to start faster to get running and you can instantly get money straight up front sure the ceiling is low but it's a lot easier and that's the main thing here for a product based business it's actually a lot harder you're going to need a lot of capital upfront but as I mentioned if you're part of the 10% who has that overwhelming unique Advantage either through a network when you know somebody who can help you or through your experience maybe you've worked for a startup before or even let's say through your location you're located at let's say Tech Hub or something like that you can definitely do the product based route as well so I don't want to discourage you from anything it's just for many of you I I believe a service based model would just be a lot more beneficial and for those of you who are able to do a product based hats off to you then then once you do choose your business model either a product based or service based business model you need to analyze the market so you need to research your Market to understand that your competitors overall trends that you're seeing and most importantly you need to identify the primary pain Point your business will solve so this is extremely important the paino over here I talked about how when it came to Beauty right people were insecure about maybe their looks or whatever the case it is so it's really easy to look at the paino in a beauty Niche but as software Engineers whenever we're creating problem s to whenever we're creating solutions to problems it might not be too evident as to what the pain Point really is so it's really important for us to double down and really find that paino so we can use it to create our own solution and once we hone down on a paino and we have a business model whether we're going to do a product or a service we then need to create an MVP a minimum viable product so once we create the minimum viable product we need to ensure that it only focuses on the core problem nothing more nothing less so it doesn't matter if you're off offering a product or a service you still need some sort of an MVP and you need to keep it so focused on solving that one specific problem effectively and efficiently without adding any unnecessary features that's just going to confuse the client right and once you actually have these set up once you have your business model and you created the MVP and you sort of know the pain point of your targets your pain point of your Target customer you then need to start looking into acquiring your first 10 to 20 clients so this is probably the most important section of the video here so I urge you to pay careful attention here but without further Ado let's let's just get right into it so getting your first 10 to 20 clients right off the bat what I recommend is you need to leverage your network okay the best way to get your first few clients is to utilize your network and there's really the big three as I call it in your network so you have your inner circle right so these are your close friends family and trusted colleagues so what you need to do is reach out to these people these these are the people you know well and can easily approach for support or feedback or any referrals and while they might not always be directly in your target industry they might not be your Target customer they can probably most likely connect you with somebody who is right and when you're talking to your inner circle do not be afraid to ask for big favors okay these are the people who are closest to you take advantage of that take note of who helps you and sure you can pay it back to them tfold on but for these people really go out of your way to ask for help or ask them to do something for you this is your inner circle right they wouldn't mind asking that of you so you shouldn't mind asking that of them this is what the inner circle is all about everybody's got each other back and then once we kind of go out outside of our Inner Circle we then have our professional Network so these are mainly our co-workers clients if applicable right and acquaintances these are people you've probably worked with or just met professional and you have direct insights or Connections in your field so these people can provide referrals introductions or they can potentially become clients themselves so once again you should most definitely reach out to these folks as well you should definitely reach out to your Professional Network now with these people you got to be a little bit careful with regards to asking for big favors but you can still kind of do so given the right time and last but not least we have the extended Network so these are essentially all the individuals you met through event social media or just Mutual connection who aren't really close to you but they're still valuable contacts and you have them in your contact phone book right so this group can include influencers just industry leaders people you've engaged with in communities right or even the shop owner down the street that you usually buy from and they can help amplify your message and connect you with potential clients through their own networks or once again they can potentially become your own clients but with these with these sort of individuals when you're reaching out to them you got to understand that they are in your extended Network so I'll get into how to discuss how to actually reach out to those specifically later on but these are really the three tiers of how you're going to be acquiring your first few clients right you're first going to run through your inner circle if you don't get any luck there you're going to go to your Professional Network if you don't have any luck there then you're going to go to your extended network if you do what I'm telling you you will 100% find at least 1% from one of these right now the second point I want to talk about when it comes to getting your first 10 to 10 10 to 20 clients is the most important so I call this grabbing life by the horns and the most underrated and overlooked method for acquiring clients is meeting them in person now you'll realize I'm not going to talk about ads I'm not going to talk about cold email because to be honest all these gurus are lying to you okay they sit there tell you about cold emails they tell you about ads but they don't tell you that the only time you should run ads the only time you should run cold email is when you're already at least making $5 to $20,000 a month from your offer right right so it's when you know your offer is doing well it's when you know it's working if if it's the first time you're doing something you just throwing money at advertising without even knowing how to create a good ad you're just going to sink okay and when it comes to grabbing Life by the horns you cannot afford to be timid shy or afraid of rejection you need to remember the doctor patient analogy so this is something I always like to use and this is something that really helped me when I was starting off you need to imagine that you're a doctor and you imagine you spot a tumor on a patient's x-ray okay so patient comes in in your office they take an x-ray and then you spot a tumor you would do everything in your power to help that patient recover because their health is on the line right and what you need to know is think okay if I would do that for my patient if I was a doctor as a business owner you need to treat your prospects the same exact way you need to approach them with the mindset that you have a solution to their problems right your offer is the relief to their pain it's their medicine it's their life-changing medicine that's going to save their lives so you need to do everything in your power to ensure that they hear about it because just like the doctor you have the tools to help them overcome their pain and potentially save their life excuse me got to give a quick water break but let's go ahead and actually see real world examples of client acquisition using grabbing Life by the horns and right off the bed let's talk about my case right so boo how I got one pretty much my first 25 clients I would say which came from grabbing Life by the horns as I call it so as I mentioned before a majority of my clients came actually from in personal client acquisition most came from me pretty much wearing a suit and a tie and pitching businesses in person initially I just approached local businesses that I was already familiar with as a regular customer so places I frequently visited and believed that could truly benefit from my services so anywhere that I was kind of like a regular an and I thought okay I think these guys could potentially benefit from my services I just went in and gave it a try so I had my suit and a tie I had my business card with me and I had my company website on a QR code on the back of the business card and I had a portfolio of case studies like a physical kind of binder of a few case studies that I had worked on beforehand a few companies and I remember one of my most memorable approaches was pitching my services to a bakery and if you're wondering a bakery that was exactly my thought too because I never thought that a bakery would utilize my services I was always going going for since we were doing B2B I was always going for a lot bigger companies more so retail stores clinics Health Care Facilities right home healths hospices and things like that businesses with a lot of money primarily businesses doing over $10 million a year right and the main reason that actually sparked this idea of me approaching a bakery is because every time I went to buy a bread or pastry the owner would always give me an extra piece and I always understood it as you know Goodwill he was being generous but one day I would always ask I'm like okay why is it like every time I come in you give it to me as well and I noticed if I came in a little bit early in the day I wouldn't necessarily get it but if I came in at night when they were about to close I would always get it and he told me he's like well if I don't give it to you I'm going to throw it away anyway because they're making way too much so the problem was the bakery couldn't get an accurate forecast on demand and thus would overproduce goods and would have to discard them at the end of the day so they were losing pretty much hundreds of dollars every single day due to overproducing Goods be it breads pastries anything pretty much that people would come in to purchase and I realized I'm like wait we could potentially help them because uh we of course we do data analytics and I realize we can potentially forecast the demand for them so I pitched my services I said okay we can do free work for you for one product right we decided it was going to be bread as that was the most popular product and if you pretty much see success with it let's go ahead and do a paid contract for the rest of the items the rest of the pays that you have and the owner agreed so we ended up actually working for free we did a free demand forecast for the breads it ended up actually being perfect and they ended up saving a lot of money through that and then we did paid work for the rest of the items but there was a very important lesson learned here it was that opportunities are all around you every single day you just need to be sharp enough to recognize them and bold enough to seize them in my case the opportunity was that I was a regular at this place right and I just happen to remember that the one time conversation that I had with the owner he told me that you know they always throw away Breads and other Goods because they make way too much so I knew that was a problem it was a pain point that I can solve and I was bold enough to actually go in in person and offer a solution to that right so two things had to be two things had to happen me spot the opportunity and two me bold enough to seize the opportunity so this is exactly what I why I refer to it as grab Life by the horns there's always opportunity around you you just need to see it and actually seize it so that's just my example let's take a look at two bigger examples so ones that led to billion dooll companies so the second one that I want to talk about is Ben Chestnut if you don't know who Ben is he's the co-founder of MailChimp now many of you probably know MailChimp now as the email marketing platform but it actually originally started as a web design company and after realizing that email marketing was a common paino for small businesses chest not began offering a simple email tool and it's actually quite interesting to see that in the case of Ben Chestnut who made an email marketing solution his first customers didn't come from ads or cold emails so imagine a person makes his literal business is all about sending cold emails because that's the problem he sees and he doesn't get his first customers from sending cold emails himself how ironic is that right but what he did to get his first few customers was he visited local businesses in Atlanta where he actually lived and he met those owners in person and demod mail chimp and pretty much showed them how it could help with their marketing efforts and these in-person meetings got MailChimp off the ground right so they had a plethora of businesses that they met with demoed and these businesses became customers of theirs and best of all these early customers didn't just help trust not build the business right they also provided the crucial feedback they needed that shaped mail chimp's development later on and the fact that trust not actually built personal relationship with all the clients because he literally had to go in person to deal with these people it allowed them to it allowed him to have direct conversation with the folks and this means that any time he could just ring them up on a cell phone or just go in person and ask about what worked what didn't and what features they actually needed and wanted right so the lesson here is that don't underestimate the value of personal Outreach in the beginning right it can be the key to gaining your first customers and also setting your business up for sustainable growth later on because these same customers will not only Val validate your business but they'll also give feedback on how you can improve it and the third example as you guys might be familiar with it is Alexis ohanyan so the co-founder of Reddit right and not many people know this but in the initial stages of the company Alexis actually went to college campuses Tech meetups and conferences to talk directly to his target audience about their platform they didn't run any ads and they didn't do any other marketing other than just going in person to certain events and talking pitching Reddit as a space for open the discussion and community building and this was essentially the entire point was to encourage potential users to adopt early right and the initial user base which actually came from these in-person engagements created what Reddit is today the initial user base not only contributed to the growth of the platform as a whole but also drove product improvements based on feedback so before it became really popular and a lot more millions of people started using it the first initial couple hundred folks they really honed in on improving the product and all that feedback Ohan used to create what redit is now today so while you have millions and millions of people using it the entire backbone of it was really probably constructed on the feedback of maybe a couple hundred or thousand people and the lesson here once again is opportunities are everywhere you need to spot them seize them and you need to use personal Outreach to land your first few clients and build lasting businesses right a lasting success I can't stress this enough but in person iners Outreach is so extremely powerful well yes we're we're in the digital age now everybody's on social media but nothing beats that in-person contact with somebody and especially nowadays where a lot of people are always on the phone they're always on social media they don't really understand the importance of in person right the actual importance of what in person meetings can do and person client acquisition can do and the third thing that I want to talk about when it comes to acquiring your first 10 to 20 clients is is credibility hacking so once you actually start using grab Life by the horns Outreach strategy you'll naturally begin to acquire clients so some of these clients you might work with for free to gain experience others you'll probably charge the very nominal fee and a few you'll manage to charge an amount that you're truly happy with but no matter how much they pay or don't pay these early clients are gold right because they help you build something crucial credibility and this is where what I call cred cred ability hacking comes into play so what what do you have now you have a handful of clients right from whom you under promised and overd delivered so this is once again an extremely key Point here that I want to emphasize I'll get into this later but for any client that you get be like if you're going in person or just asking your network or anybody you're pitching you always want to under promise but overd deliver to really Shu the clients and make them think wow this person did an amazing job I it was a steal for me right and this opportunity to pretty much showcase the work you've done and how it's impacted them and the way you do this is not through the typical testimonials that you're familiar with but what I call the podcast style interviews so the goal here is to move beyond the standardized oh it was great working with them testimonial that you see right you you want to dive deeper you into actually having maybe a deeper conversation with them something that feels authentic and valuable and not something that's like scripted and just okay here I work with with this person it was really good this and that right and this should be pretty easy for you to set up because you personally acquire these clients and likely developed a relationship Beyond just a professional one so you should definitely leverage that and what I would highly recommend you do is you essentially you conduct an interview where you talk actually with these clients about the specific work you did for them you ask them how they felt before working with you what challenges they were facing and how your work helped solve these problems right and you just want to let the client pretty much tell their story and you respond in kind you disc the results you were able to deliver and how it positively impacted their business the key here is to make the conversation feel natural and engaging not scripted and this creates a compelling narrative that potential clients can relate to and trust and the real key here is that this doesn't only give you social proof it also positions you as an expert who cares about solving your client's problems if you're spending that much time let's say an hour hour and a half on interviewing a client for a testimonial that just goes to show that hey this person car this much about their clients especially if you know them on a firstand basis if you know some of their Hobbies because you've been talking about them about you know outside of a personal relationship if you know that much about your clients then everybody can see that connection they'll be like wow at least it's like these guys are friends have been friends for like five or 10 years and I want to emphasize this again these interviews are more than just testimonials they become trust building content that showcases your ability to deliver Real Results so if I if I were to explain what regular business does right they acquire a client they get a basic review they make the review public and they hope more customers come in from that review right and often times if they get a bad review they're going to lose a customer from that so where else what you should be doing is you acire your client you under promise but you overd deliver and then you do a podcast style testimonial and what this allows you to do is what I call free value hacking and also leads you to get new clients but free value hacking is essentially when you now have your podcast style interviews right your podcast style testimonials each I would say about an hour long if you can get it longer that's perfect but I would say now we it's a sweet spot and you've C you've captured a lot more than just feedback right like the entire hour isn't about just the testimonial itself and these interviews are packed with valuable insights into the unique and common challenges that these businesses specifically faced and how you help them solve right and how you help them solve this problem and this content is actually valuable not for the reason you might think it's not only it doesn't only hold immense value because it's a testimonial that showcases how good your services are but it also highlights not only your success but it offers actionable information that other business owners in the same industry can benefit from for example if let's say I interviewed the owner of that Bakery right and then another Bakery happen to see that interview and maybe they're like oh wait I am also producing way too much bread how can I actually help solve this problem because no Bakery owner is going to ever think of hiring an anal like data analysts to do that right just no Baker is going to think of that Baker is probably going to try to eyeball it or hypothetically you know test it themselves or maybe they'll just consider okay it's fine if I'm losing $50 or $100 on that a day right but if somebody sees that on an interview the baker must might be like oh I didn't know I can think of a do I didn't know I can do it that way right because it's so out of kind of scope for them in a sense that they'll be able to get free value from it and this is where the free value hacking comes in right the entire Point here is to repurpose your testimonials these podcast style testimonials into educational content that provides free value to potential clients right and these are what are known as lead magnets so we'll get into this potentially in a future video but these lead magnets is essentially free pieces of content that you have that you use to get more and more clients and this this is extremely this is probably the best lead magnet that you can have is because not only a do you have a testimonial that vouches for your business but B it can potentially help pretty much any other industry or any other business owner that has a business similar to who you were interviewing right and here's how it's going to work the businesses you've helped most likely face challenges similar to those experienced by others in the same industry as them okay so whether it's improving efficiency boosting sales or enhancing customer retention this is specifically what we were doing so this is my example right so in our case whether we were improving efficiency boosting sales or enhancing customer Attention our conversations were always full of valuable lessons that could help other businesses improve their own operations right and by repackaging these lessons into digestible content whether you want to do it through blog posts short videos or infographics you position yourself as a knowledgeable expert who understands the specific pain points of that industry in my case specifically I had these interviews actually I didn't publish them anywhere but I had these interviews and I also created actual PDF files so case study breakdowns of these and what I would do is whenever I would pitch other people in person I would hand over the PDF document and I would have the file I would share with them other through an email or something like a Google Drive Link where they could watch the interview and see what it is that we're talking about and a lot of the times even if we didn't end up working with the person they took so much value from that interview that applied it to their own business and couple months down the line they you know asked us oh hey we actually looked at the interview we we implemented it and we're now up this much money or we had this success and we're really happy to see that because down the line these people can always become our clients so offering this free actionable content not only attracts potential clients but also builds trust and showcases our ability to deliver results and last but not least when it comes to acquiring clients if you've actually followed the steps so far you've already likely secured at least one paying client right and you need to actually now leverage that relationship by asking for a referral and to incentivize them to actually give you that referral you can offer them something of equal value so you can offer like a discount you can do a gift card or you can have as an example a free month of your service right and this simple request can open doors to a new client within that Network and it can help your business grow through Word of Mouth alone to this day with my business it's grown completely through word of mouth and iners client acquisition I have I have sure I have done ads I've done cold email but that was only after I had a certain offer I was testing and actually I didn't get too many clients from cold emails or ads because I was always testing something new right I didn't want to go through the hassle and had the money to spend so I wanted to test that with the money that I had but nevertheless 99% of my clients have come through inperson and word of mouth and that's actually the highest highest paying clients as well interestingly enough and Beyond the referrals what you need to do is you need to consider forming strategic Partnerships with other B2B businesses that you've helped for instance if you've let's say developed custom software that automates invoicing right you could partner up with a bookkeeping or an accounting firm and by bundling your automation software with their own Services they add more value for their clients and you gain new customers and a percentage of the revenue right and in return you pretty much expand your reach you gain access to a new client base and you don't have to worry about spending any money or going through the hassle and time of finding these clients on your own right so this creates a win-win scenario where both businesses benefit from the partnership while growing their customer base now when it comes to the action items for your actual finding your first 10 to 20 clients here is what you need to do so first and foremost you need to leverage your network okay and we talked about the three the big three right Your Inner Circle your Professional Network and your extending so you need to reach out to your close friends family and trusted colleagues you need to ask for any referrals if you can any support and feedback about what you're doing and don't be afraid to request big favors these are the people most willing to help you always keep that in mind afterwards you need to reach out to your Professional Network so you need to reconnect with any former co-workers clients acquaintances School buddies from University whatever the case ask for introductions referrals or even consider them as potential clients if possible then you need you need to look at your extended Network so any influencers industry leaders or Mutual connections you Mentor event social media or online communities you need to actually use them to amplify your message and connect you to other potential clients okay and once you actually leverage your network once you find these people that you can reach out to you need to adopt a doctor patient mindset okay so you need to approach potential clients with the confidence of you having the solution to their problems you can't feel rejection and you need to cheat your offer as a relief they need just as a doctor would with a patient so always keep that in mind and with anybody that you're meeting I would highly recommend prioritizing face-to-face meetings over virtual ones because face Toof face meetings build stronger relationships and also shows them your energy and expertise while demonstrating how your solution can help solve their problems and people whenever they usually meet in person they get to trust you a bit more because they think okay this person went out out of their way to come physically to this location despite their busy schedule right and once you've actually met your clients in person and you've already landed a few clients and you've done work with them you need to do what I call The credibility hacking okay you need to leverage your early clients by conducting podcast cell interviews you need to dive into the specific challenges they faced how you helped them and the results you delivered and you need to keep it conversational unscripted and engaging to build trust with future prospects right so by unscripted you can have a few key points you want to just bring across or maybe like five to 10 bullet points of okay what challenges you faced how you help them this and that but in general you want to have things unscripted so if it little gets maybe a little bit off topic maybe they want to talk about how you know they had a vacation or something no matter as as long as it's an engaging conversation it'll be really actually beneficial for you especially if other business owners are seeing it because whenever a business owner sees a completely scripted testimonial where you're asking questions and you're getting the perfect results back it's a bit iffy and they they realize okay there's something suspicious about this and once you have your cability hack right you need to repur content with free value hacking you need to turn the insights from your podcast style interviews into educational content be it through blog posts videos or infographics okay and you to share these actable lessons that other businesses in the same industry can benefit from and you position yourself as a valuable resource who can help them these are known as lead magnets okay and this is there's a lot of other lead magnets you can do but in my opinion this is probably the best deep magnet that you can do and of course last but not least you need to ask for referrals and form strategic Partnerships so don't hesitate to ask your satisficed clients for referrals okay and you need to sweeten the deal as much as you can with incentives so the the the more the sweeter the pie right in this case the more they'll do from their end to get you clients so if you offer like a big discount or gift card or free service to encourage them to spread the word the word they will do so okay and when it comes to strategic Partnerships you need to identify complimentary businesses and you need to form Partnerships to offer bundled services for example if you developed custom software partner with an accounting firm right or marketing firm to expand your reach and you can share revenue and client access this is a bit of situational but in this case if it's such a you know situation where you can benefit from that definitely look into that as it can once again just completely help how you get clients and just reduce the workload on your end okay and once you've actually done these action items right and you've gotten your first 10 to 20 clients we then get into the continuous Improvement section now I mentioned in the beginning right how when we get our first 10 to 20 clients we want to position our business for either a being autonomous where it's just like a printing money for us or B where we can potentially exit it okay so it doesn't matter which one you really want it's going to be the same exact process you need to go through continuous Improvement and if you remember back when we first talking about the first section we talked about building our house okay so let's talk about well now we've actually finished building our house so let's imagine that you finished building your house and you moved in but over time you begin to notice that some areas be better maybe a draft comes in through a window or the layout isn't just doesn't flow as well as you'd hoped initially right something's off so to keep your home comfortable you rely on the feedback from everybody else living in the house if someone mentions that the kitchen feels too cramped or the lighting is insufficient you make changes based on their input okay and this process of gathering feedback and making adjustments is essential for maintaining and improving the space over time and the same exact concept applies to your business and that's where customer Fe back Loops comes into play because right after bat just like how you built your first house if you're going to build a business it's probably not going to be perfect the first time around there's going to be changes you're going to want to make there's going to be improvements you're going to need to make so your customers are kind of like the people living in your house they experience your business from the inside and notice things you might not so by regularly collecting their feedback through surveys or just interviews one-onone calls with them you gain insights into what's working well and What needs Improvement but it's not just about listening it's also about creating a loop where feedback is actively turned into action okay when customers tell you something isn't meeting their needs you take that information make changes and then check back in to see if those changes solve the issue this is extremely important and this continuous loop actually helps ensure your business remains aligned with what your customers truly want and if you integrate this into your business strategy you're not only going to make improvements but you're going to build trust and show your customers that you actually care about them which in hindsight they're going to spend a lot more money down the line so just like keeping your house in top shape regular attention to customer feedback ensures your business remains strong relevant and able to adapt to changes needing over time now with that once we've actually gathered feedback and implemented necessary changes our next step is refining how we operate dayto day so process optimization focuses largely on streamlining our internal workflows to enhance efficiency and reduce waste so whether it's automating any repetitive tasks you might do or improving communication between any teams that we might have or refining our product development cycle process optimization ensures that our process excuse me our business runs like a well old machine right and this stage is really all about making sure every component of your business is working and sync by constantly reviewing and fine-tuning your operations you minimize inefficiencies and free up resources that can be better spent on Innovation and growth and continuous process improvements also help you adapt quickly to New Challenges making your business more resilient over time now this you might not worry have to worry about about initially but as you get your first few clients especially as you maybe start running out of time yourself and you need to hire more and more people you need to make sure that you optimize your processes you you got you want to make sure that you reduce turn and just reduce any waste and and you want to increase the operational efficiency from the get-go this is something you should have in mind from the very beginning don't leave this for later now as you improve your process and respond to customer feedback it's essential that you also focus on skill enhancement both not only for yourself but also for your team because the business landscape is constantly evolving okay and you just stay ahead because as you know if you don't stay ahead and you just stagnate your competition will eat you up they'll beat you so you need to constantly update your skill set and expand and learn more things and you need to do this for yourself and your team so this could you know as a software engineer this could mean that you need to learn new technologies you need to master new tools that come out or it could also mean you need to work on your soft skills so maybe you got to work on your leadership or decision-making abilities as a whole and for your team it could it could just mean you know providing them opportunities for professional development maybe some training certifications or just mentorship okay but by investing in skill enhancement you ensure that everybody in your business is equipped to handle any new challenges that come your way you're not going to get caught up by any surprises and it this not only improves the quality of your work uh which you know down the line will get you more money but it also boost team morale and engagement which just leads to better performance across the board so there's really no lose here it's just all wins so you got to keep your skills sharp and evolving with times because it's crucial in maintaining Competitive Edge and ensuring the longetivity and growth of your business and actually since we're on the topic of that one of the most crucial factors for long-term success in business is the ability to adapt so as you gather feedback optimize your processes enhance your skills you must also be ready to Pivot and evolve based on external factors so this could be your any Market shifts new technologies that come out or changes in customer needs okay and adaptation is about staying flexible and responsive to the everchanging environment in which your business operates this means being proactive right so we talked about the proactive and reactive in this case this means being proactive when you see Trends emerging and being agile enough to actually adjust your strategies when unexpected challenges arise so whether it's modifying your product to better meet market demand changing your Market approach to align with shifting C consumer Behavior or exploring new revenue streams you need to make sure that your business stays relevant and it's actually still resilient to Changing Times and businesses that Embrace adaptation they're not only able to survive long enough but they're also able to thrive in it so they get they make a lot more money year over year and this just ensures that you're not caught off off guard and five years down the line six years down the line you don't go bankrupt and to kind of hold everything together and connect everything you need to make all your decisions based on data so all your decisions need to be data driven decisions because making decisions based on on Extinct loan can be extremely risky and you need to make sure that your choices are Guided by solid data and metrics and me running a data analytics firm I can tell you that so many businesses overlook this aspect be it your customer Behavior market trends sales performance or operational efficiency you need to use actual raw data to inform you of your next steps okay instead of guessing what your customer wants or how your product is performing you need to rely on hard evidence to guide your business strategies so not not only does this approach minimize uncertainty but it also allows you to make confident decisions that can help you later on make a lot more money and by consistently leveraging data you identify patterns predict future Trends and you measure the success of your efforts with precise precision and this once again not only helps improve performance but increases the likelihood of achieving sustainable growth and datadriven decisions ensures that every move you make is calculated and aligned with your business goals keeping you on the right track for continuous Improvement so if I to discuss the action items for this one there's really a couple things that you need to do when it comes to customer feedback loops you need to regularly gather feedback from your customers be it through surveys reviews Direct Communications so it could be email text one-on-one calls whatever and you need to analyze this feedback to identify key areas of improvement if somebody if you realize a few customers are complaining about a specific thing then you should probably most likely try to improve that specific thing okay and you need to actually Implement changes based on feedback you're not just going to let it enter through one year and out the other you need to actually Implement changes based on the feedback and follow up with the customers to ensure that their needs have been met but with regards to process optimization you need to review and evaluate internal processes for efficiency and I recommend doing this on a monthly basis you need to identify and eliminate any bottlenecks that you see or any rep rep repetitive tasks that can be automated or streamlined should be done so as soon as possible and continuously adjusting your workflows to ensure smooth operations and improv productivity is the key to staying ahead of your comp ition and always being successful in my case we have an audit every single month of taking a look at our processes and making sure that everything is as good as possible if we see something that's lacking we immediately try to eliminate that bottom leg and address it as soon as possible next up comes to skills enhancement so you need to identify areas where you and your team lack and you need to either go do training you need to have Team workshops you need to bring in a mentor maybe a consultant or some or somebody to help you further develop your own own skills and your team skills and you need to regularly update and expand your skill set to stay competitive in your industry and once again we do this once every three months we we'll either do a training a workshop or we're bring in a cons consultant to discuss a new skill or maybe a new mainly Rel to soft skills we're worried about hard skills most of them you can learn on your own but when it comes to soft skills it's always better to just have another human there talking about it explaining it and just showing it in person fourth we have adaptation so you need to stay in informed about your the any market trends that's happening emerging Technologies changes in customer Behavior right especially nowadays in this world we're living in with potential for World War III and all the craziness happening you want to be just updated and understand how that's potentially going to impact your own business so you need to regularly research your strategies and you need to be prepared to Pivot when necessary and you need to embrace flexibility and you need to look for opportunities to innovate when faced with challenges or disruptions so God forbid something major happens the Black Swan event and you know you you need to be able to prepare for that and you need to possibly already have a plan B for that right and then last but not least data driven decisions you need to collect and analyze key data points so this includes your customer Behavior sales metrics market trends Etc and you need to use data to actually guide all of your business decisions you need to ensure that every single step is backed by evidence and you need to monitor the outcomes of your decisions and adjust your strategies based on the results that you get so with that that pretty much covers our action items for our last section and just to give a quick rundown of everything right we talked about the prerequisites what you need to do so self assess your strength weaknesses your unique advantages your network location and your experiences and you need to understand those to kind of choose the business business model right and the business model that you're going to choose either a product based or service based if you have the unique advantage of potentially doing a product base do that but I would highly recommend most of you starting a service based either creating custom software for other companies or just doing a consultation type of thing as I'm doing using the code to kind of build a software that supports the service but the revenue comes from delivering that service and you need to actually identify the market demand you need to Target the specific pain points of the customer to understand what it is that you'll be doing for them and always you want to test things with an MVP a minimum viable product don't go gun ho spending all your time and energy into creating something that you're not even sure will work you first want to test things with just an m that targets the core problem right and of course you want to understand the revenue streams to better understand how you're going to be making money and any pricing things that you can do to potentially just increase your upside always then we talked about how to get your first 10 to 20 clients as always leverage your network is the best way of finding the clients and in my opinion the best clients you'll get are also from your network because there's most likely people that you know yourself so you know their personality you know what they like what they don't like we talked about three the big three right the inner circle the Professional Network and extended Network we then talked about grab Life by the horns the most important section in this entire video grabbing Life by the horns strategy of meeting your clients in person I gave the examples of myself as well as two other individuals who use this iners client acquisition strategy and we briefly T touched upon the the doctor patient analogy how you need to be a doctor and your client is the patient you always need to be caring about them and in this sense your offer is the relief so you need to make sure they know about it right and we then talked about credibility hacking once you finish the work for your clients to a podcast style interview and this could be an hour long maybe even longer but it's not just a test quote unquote a regular testimonial of oh hey this is the work they did for us it was great working with them blah blah blah this is more so an actual conversation and people should be able to realize that hey even though you know this is between a business and their client these people talk as if they're friends these people have a relationship outside of a professional one people should be able to spot that instantly because that builds trust in other business owners as well okay and what you'll need to do is actually utilize these podcast style interviews for free value hacking so you'll offer them as lead magnets to people you can post them on social media YouTube or whatever the case or just even have them on a one-on-one setting to Showcase to people if you don't want it to make it public but the point here is that people that maybe run the same type of business or people that are in the same industry as the client that you helped they'll be able to get a lot of feedback and a lot of help from watching that case study or watching that pod podcast style interview last but not least you should ask all of your clients for referrals and you should incentivize them the more value you offer the more incentivized they will be to get more clients for you and of course look into strategic Partnerships as well something not a lot of people talk about especially if you are a SAS business or even a service based business if you can partner with another business to you know give you a new client base that you might not have gotten beforehand do so is it's really not going to hurt you in the long run and then last but not least we talked about the continuous Improvement of how you should always constantly always ask your customers for feedback to only not only improve your product but also your own service right your internal side and external side and you need to always optimize your processes your internal processes to make sure everything is smooth communication is not a problem and as your team grows the efficiency stays the same or even increases and it's not a hindrance you then need to address the skill enhancement right you need make sure your team is always improving their skills they're always improving they're not stagnating such that your competitions will come and beat you and take you out of business and you need to be adaptable you need to adapt we're living in times where anything can happen really with potential World War numerous other Black Swan events you need to have that adaptability in case you know something happens something major happens God forbid you're able to react to it and at least have a plan in place or a plan of action that you can go forward with and last but not least you should always always always look things through data always follow data never based on Instinct sure Instinct can be helpful and beneficial but you should always confirm it with data data is King here so any decision you're going to make especially any big decision take a look at the hardw data to see what it says about your customer behaviors market trends and sales operational efficiency and so on and so forth and with that that's pretty much everything I wanted to discuss I hope you enjoyed this video please make sure to like And subscribe I spent a lot of time on this a lot more than I initially thought I would but if you have any questions feel free to drop a comment in the uh comments below and I'll be sure to address all of them as always thank you for watching and have a good one