[Allie & You] How To Choose The Right Direction For Your Business With Ryan Levesque

Hi everyone. Welcome to Ali and you'd the Business Success and Lifestyle Show. I am Alyson Maslin. My friends call me Ali. I'm a business growth mentor and what I'm so excited about is introducing you to people that are rocking it in the business world. But hey, the road is not always easy. So if I can share with you tools, strategies, inspirations to help make that road a little bit lighter, that's what we're all about. My mission is to help you break through and reach your biggest dreams in your business and your life. And today I am so excited because we're going to give you exactly the tools that you need to choose the right direction for your business. Whether you have a business already and you want to take it to the next level or you're right at the starting gate. So Ryan levesque is the Inc. 500 CEO of the Ask Method and the Ask Method Company and the number one national best selling author of Ask which was named by Inc. As the number one marketing book of the year. Wow. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes and Entrepreneurial all over. And over 250,000 entrepreneurs subscribe to his newsletter and get all of his tidbits. You're definitely going to want to do that. He is the co founder and investor of Bucket IO, a leading marketing funnel software for entrepreneurs. His latest book, choose which we're going to talk about today, which is. Oh my God. So fantastic. This book helps readers avoid making the single biggest mistake when starting a business and we don't want you to make that mistake. But the book guides people through answering the all important question, what type of business should you start? So Ryan, welcome to my show.

Allie, it's so, so awesome to be here. So great to be talking with you. We were just together in person and it's a lot of fun to see you in your home HQ environment and connect like this. I'm pumped to get started.

Yeah, I am too. And I'm really glad that we're getting to know one another and I've been hearing all about your work for a long time and once I got your book and read it, I thought, oh my gosh, I absolutely have to introduce you to my audience here. So you have a pretty impressive background and I know you, you've got a big business now, but can you tell a little bit more about, you know, a little bit more of your history and your journey in starting in the business world?

Yeah, you know, absolutely. And I don't know if it's Impressive. But it's certainly. Well, I'll tell you the path that we took, you know, so for me and first of all, thanks so much for having me here. Super excited to be sharing this, talking about the book and all the cool stuff. For me. When I first started my business, I had a simple goal. My goal, I said to myself, if I can make $10,000 a month, if I can make $10,000aMonth, that's like, I would work another day of my life. If I had $10,000 a month of income coming in through my business, passive income coming in month after month, I could retire. And just this past year, you mentioned Inc. 500, we just passed $10 million a year in our business and it's been 10 years in the making to make that happen. I. But it just goes to show you how. Thank you. People see that, but they don't see is like what you said in the introduction, that there's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes. There's a lot of the backstage stuff that people don't see, they don't hear about. When my wife and I were living in a 400 square foot apartment with a mattress on the floor, no furniture, lawn chairs in the living room, they don't know about those days, right? But that's kind of how it all started. Ten years ago, I was working a job and. And I realized one day, said, I'm living in a box, I'm working in a box and I'm taking a box to get from my home to my office. I was in a cubicle. I mean, I just said, I don't want to be in a box for the rest of my life. And I had some friends that were kind of quietly making money on the Internet. And one friend in particular who had never had a job in his life, he's one of these people who started an e commerce business when he was in college, paid for his college, paid, graduated, kept running the business, never had a job. And he came to visit me out in China, which is where I was working. And I saw what he was doing and he showed me what I was doing and I was inspired. I said, you know what? I don't want to be living out of hotels, traveling on an airplane, working in a box, like, there's got to be a better way. And it started me down this path of building an online business and along the way made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of failures. But we managed to start 23 different businesses in the last 10 years, 23 different markets and what I've learned in that process, and which is what choose is all about, is that some of those businesses took off in a huge way and were wildly successful, and others didn't really ever take off or they failed. And I was fascinated to study what was it that separated those that were successful from those that weren't. And that kind of started the underpinnings of this most recent book, choose, which is how to make the single most important decision before you start your business.

Yeah, and I, you know, that's the thing. I mean, so many people just, oh, I have a passion, and I'm going to launch this thing without really getting clear, is this the right match? And you personally experience that. And even though those lessons are valuable, if you could avoid them, that would be.

I don't want people having to do it. I don't want people having to have the ramen noodle and bologna sandwich days like we had to have, and the, you know, only shopping at Walmart because that's all we could afford. Like, I don't want. Big question. I see people ask all the time, a lot of my friends, people who haven't started their business, they asked the equivalent of, do you have to give up good in order to go for great? In other words, most people that I talk to, they've got a pretty good life. Like, there's very few people that I talk to who are looking to start a business or expand their existing business who are living in a cardboard box on the side of the road. Right. Most of us have, like, a pretty good life. And it's scary to think that we could be putting that at risk to go for what it is that we really want in life, to go after great. And that's what this book is all about. It helps you not have to go to those, you know, those depths in order to build a business that not only feeds, you know, fills your bank account, but I like to say it fuels your soul as well. Right.

Well, I wish I had this back then because I was, you know, I wasn't doing the ramen noodles. Mine was coffee. I was, like, taking my purses out for change to have enough money to get a cup of coffee. So. So I needed this book back then. So I'm glad that you all have the opportunity to get this now. So what do you love most, though? Just about business in general. Like, what excites you the most about running your company? Ryan.

You know, so I think I could describe it as all coming down to one word. For me, it's all about momentum. Now, one of the things I've learned in life, like I found that the best drug to be addicted to is momentum. What I mean by that is this. I've learned that if I'm making progress in my life, if I'm making progress in my business, and it doesn't always mean like growing the business, you know, top line revenue, it can mean reaching more people, it can mean improving a product that we've created and making it better. But. But as long as we're getting better, as long as we're improving, as long as I'm growing, for me, I feel so fulfilled. And the extension of that is when you work with clients who are growing. And I get to serve entrepreneurs. I get to work with people who are launching and growing their business. When I see people grow, taking these baby steps and seeing people make their first sale for me is magical. Cause I don't know about you, Ali, but for me, I think most people like, remember our first sale, the first thing we ever sold online, like that moment, like, I remember the day, I remember where I was standing. And to see people have that experience and experience that momentum in their business for me is like, that's what gets me up every day. I don't know about you, but you tell me what excites you.

Yeah. No, you know, I do truly believe as human beings, we need to be growing and evolving all the time. And that makes so much sense to me because the opposite is being in limbo, being stuck. And that is the absolute worst feeling. You know, that's where people get sick. That's where you get depressed because, you know there's so much more here, but you just can't get there. So absolutely just keeping that momentum going. And I do remember the first, when I was in college, I. My big strategy was just say yes. Yeah. Oh, I can do that. I could do that and then somehow figure out how to do it. And I got $10,000 to create these greeting cards for MCI. And I had never seen so much money in my. I was like, oh my God, it's that easy. Oh my God. I found out afterwards, like that didn't happen again for a long time. But I know what you're talking about. And that's the possibility, and that's the possibility you're giving people with the knowledge that you share. So I love it. So before we get into to the book and some things like that, what do you. What was like the same. What do you feel like is the single biggest mistake that you See business owners making before they start.

You know, it's funny, it's my first book, Ask, which was a number one bestseller. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Ask is all about asking the right questions of your audience to understand what your market wants, who they are, what their emotional hot buttons are, what their needs, wants and desires are. And so it's a book about questions. And in that process, what I've learned is that in many ways, the quality of our lives is determined by the questions we ask ourselves. In fact, questions are the language that the mind naturally uses for any sort of self talk. We're always asking ourselves questions, am I doing this the right way? Should I go here or should I go here? Did I mess up when I talked to that person? Gosh, why did I do that? We're constantly asking ourselves questions. And so you can change your life by changing the questions you ask yourself on a daily basis. Now, when it comes to starting a business, what I found is that there's one fundamental mistake that people make over and over again and it's asking the wrong question. And that question is about what people often will ask themselves. What? What, what should I create? What should I build? What product should I start? The reality is what is an important question that comes down the road. But the first question that you should be asking yourself isn't what. It's who. Who am I gonna serve? Who's my audience? Who's my ideal customer? Who's my market? Who's my niche? The what will come later. But it all starts with who. Because here's the thing. You don't have a business until you have what you don't have a bit. It's not about having a website, it's not about having a product. It's not about having a team. You don't have a business until you have a customer.

Customers.

That's when you have a business. And so you got to get that who. Right now the problem is all the most of the conventional wisdom and material out there is all about what. It's all about what you should build, what you should create. There isn't a whole lot out there about how to really get that. Who you know, who's your whole. And that's what this book is all about. It's all about defining who your who is so that way you can proceed in your business with clarity and confidence in the right direction.

Yeah, because when you're aligned with your who, it totally changes the game, right? It completely changes your experience. You're excited to get out of bed in the morning because you know you're going to be connecting with the who, right?

So, and we've experienced it, right? It's like you, you've talked to people, you know, in your regular life. There's certain conversations you have with people that light you up and you're like, man, if I could talk with people like that, like all day, every day, life would be awesome. And then you've got those other conversations that you have where you just cannot wait to get out of it. Right? Now you can sell the same thing, but the difference being to one person or the other can transform whether you'll be successful or unsuccessful.

Yeah. Gosh, you know, the thought of that our brain works in questions. I hadn't actually thought of that before.

It's fascinating, right?

You're always thinking, okay, what should I say? How should I position this? Is this the right decision? Is this the right move? Yeah, that's true. Because it's always trying to solve something, right?

It is. We're always trying to solve something. And when you teach yourself to rethink about the questions, first of all, be self aware of this, right? So a fun exercise for anyone watching this after this is after you finish this interview, after we finish this interview, and you're moving on with your day and going on to the next thing in your life. Be aware of the questions you're asking yourself. Right? Just kind of imagine yourself as that observer looking at yourself from up above saying, oh, I just asked myself a question. And then think about what questions might you ask yourself to create a better life for yourself and you unlock an entire world of possibility. So cool, Fun side tangent, but yeah, you're absolutely right.

Yeah, no, that's so fascinating. I'm going to be more aware of that now, of the questions going on in my mind. And it's true. Change your life with different questions. So in your first book, Ask, you show business owners how to find out what markets they, you know, what their market wants. So what led you to write this new book? Choose.

Yeah, you know, so what's cool, when you write a book, it's like you write a book, it reaches hundreds of thousands of people. And some of those people write you nice letters and send you sweet emails and messages. And they say, gosh, your book changed my life. But you also get another kind of message and letter too, which is people who write into you saying, hey, I read your book, I did exactly as you teach, and it didn't work. And when you get messages like that, it kind of breaks Your heart, right? First of all, you start to think, well, where did I go wrong? You know, self doubt creeps in and you know, what did I mess up? Did I miss something? But then it led to sort of want me to. It led me to want to investigate it a little bit further, what was going on, right? And what I found was that the people that were following what's come to be known as the ask method to the letter, which thousands of businesses use now, the ones that use that methodology and still failed, it all came down to one critical mistake. And that critical mistake was the fact that people were following the process to the letter, but they were choosing bad markets to execute it in. And the metaphor I use in the book that I think is really helpful. It's like when you start a business, it's like tossing your boat in the river, right? We all start our business because we want to achieve something, whether it's more freedom, more impact, legacy. We all have different reasons for why we want to start our business. And so that business is like the river. You expect it to take you to where you want to go. And I saw these people that were spending all this time getting the best possible boat that they could afford, hiring the best crew, the best equipment, they put their boat in the river, they're rowing 18 hours a day, right? But if you put your boat facing the wrong direction or you put your boat in the wrong river, whether a river that doesn't have enough water or maybe too much water and swallows you up whole, you aren't ever going to ever get to that destination. And so I found, and I realized that in Ask, I was teaching people how to figure out exactly what your market wants to buy. But what I wasn't teaching people was how to select a good market, how to choose a market that's going to set you up for success, how to find that hidden river that has the current behind you, that's going to propel you forward to your destination, as opposed to the river that's too small, too big, or the river that's going to take you to a place that you don't want to go.

So really the books go together well. And would you say for people that have not read your first book, it's almost like you want them to read this one first.

This is the prequel, you know, I released. So the reality was it was I was teaching. What I learned is I was teaching people multiplication when I didn't yet teach them how to add or subtract. And so even though this book comes After Ask, it's the prequel, it's the book to before you can ask, you first need to choose.

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so, and if you don't choose appropriately, I mean, this can be devastating, right, for your revenue, for the growth of your business. And you might be asking the right questions, but then like you wake up one day and say, this is not, this just doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel good, you know, and so there's two elements. There's the introspective process, which I want to talk a little bit about, and then the extra perspective process. So when you're looking externally, you're analyzing the, the market you're either in right now or thinking about going into to help decide if it's the right move for you. And for that I teach something in the book that are seven factors. There are seven factors that we identified when we did the research and looked at each of the 23 markets I've gone into, the markets that my closest high level clients have gone into. And we looked at what separated the ones that were successful from the ones that failed. We identified that there are seven factors, seven tests that you can do that tell you if your market is a green light, a yellow light or a red light. So that's the external piece, but I want to talk a moment about the internal piece, right? Because it's not just about finding a market that's going to succeed. It's also about finding something that's going to serve you, that's going to light you up, that's going to get you out of bed, that's like, I know you love what you do and you can see it. And everything that you put out there, you see your passion. And what I found in this process of research is that there are four different types of entrepreneurs, four different types of entrepreneurs that are motivated in slightly different ways. And when you start with self discovery, when you start with identifying what type of entrepreneur you are, it gives you clues as to what type of business you should start and how to build a business that's going to serve you. So very quickly, the four types. Mission based is the first type of entrepreneur. Mission based entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs who are, I like to say they've got a cause that they'll die on the hill for, right? So it's like they've got something that they are wrong in the world that they want to make right. Whether it's, you know, eliminating, getting clean drinking water to everybody in the world, eliminating, you know, the diseases Associated with not having access to clean drinking water or eliminating bullying from elementary schools. There's a wrong in the world that they want to right, and that's the mission based entrepreneur. Now, it's in contrast to the passion based entrepreneur. Passion based entrepreneurs are different in that they have something positive that they want to move the world towards. So oftentimes they've got something that they love, whether it's music or art or gardening, Something that they are just so passionate about that they want to transform into their vocation. So, you know, I tell Charlie's story in the book. He's a traveling musician, traveling with his band, loves the guitar, Decides to make a little bit of extra income on the side teaching guitar lessons online. Stumbles upon the ask method to understand his audience at a deep level. Takes his business from $10,000 a month to $2.2 million per year, transforming his passion playing the guitar into his vocation. So passion based right? Now, the third type of entrepreneur is kind of the most an entrepreneur in the most classic sense of the word, and it's the opportunity based entrepreneur. Now, opportunity based entrepreneurs aren't necessarily drawn to a mission or a passion, but they're the type of person that kind of looks around the world and says, how is it that nobody has solved this problem before and they decide to pursue that opportunity. The fourth and final type of entrepreneur is what we call the undecided entrepreneur. That's exactly where I was when I was starting my first business. The undecided entrepreneur is someone who, if you know, you want to start a business or you know, you want to be your own boss at least, right? You know, you want to do your own thing, but you're just not quite sure what that thing is for someone in that situation. What I prescribe is to start what I call a practice business. And that's exactly what I did. A practice business. Just like when you learned how to drive a car, right? First car that. Just out of curiosity, what was the first car that you learned how to drive in or the first car that you had? Like, like, oh, my God.

We called it the speed wagon. It was the speed up station wagon. They used to use my dad's company for deliveries. And I, Ryan, I was horrible. I knocked an entire Wendy's sign out of the cement parking lot. In the parking lot. So, yeah, that was my first call.

And you underscore the point perfectly, right? It wasn't your dream car, it wasn't your forever car. But what did it teach you? You learned how to drive in that thing?

Yes.

In the same way that when it comes to starting a business, there's certain skills that we need to learn. Whether it's setting up a website, creating a product, writing an email, doing an interview, whatever it is, all these skills we need to learn. And just like when it comes to learning how to drive a car, learning those skills are transferable for life. And so the skills that you learned in that beat up old station wagon and knocking over the Wendy's sign, right, That's a lesson that you've taken with you here today. So if you're in that place where you're like trying to like spinning your wheels, which is where I was, what do I start, what do I create, what do I do? Just pick a practice business. It doesn't have to be forever. You learn the skills and then you can take that with your next thing that you might discover. And I like to say, you know, motion breeds clarity. Motion breeds clarity. And thinking about what you want to do, talking about what you want to do is not going to get you closer to your goal. Just take action. Doesn't have to be perfect, just get it going. And you'll find that in the process of getting it going, you'll discover things that you didn't realize along the way. So four types, I'm curious Ali just going through them, is there one of those types that resonates with you more than the others? Are you a combination of more than one? I'm just curious to know what you.

I want to ask you, can you be a combination? Because I saw a little bit in so I'm definitely mission based. I'm all about giving back. We have a whole, a big.

Give.

Back component of our company. But my probably mine is passion. I'm really, my passion is, I mean I love business and I feel that business can change the world. So I am just passionate about helping business owners break through because I really feel like that's where, that's what's going to make the global change. So I don't know, it's a little bit of the combination, a little bit of both.

What I love about it, I can totally sense your passion energy and I talk to so many different entrepreneurs and I usually like to kind of play that game myself or I try to kind of guess where I think they are. And you definitely have that passion based energy now what's important. So I imagine you probably attract a lot of passion based entrepreneurs as well because they're drawn to that energy now. One thing I will say is this, there's no one type that's better or worse than the others. It's just what you are. It's like, are you left handed or right handed? It's just different.

But.

But there is a shadow side to every single type that you do need to be aware of. So if you're mission based, the shadow side to mission based, mission based people, the challenge that they struggle with is they're so drawn toward wanting to change the world. Sometimes the struggle can be to charge adequate money for the mission that you're behind. So they're so drawn to wanting to eliminate bullying or eradicate dirty drinking water that, that they struggle with the idea of charging money for that thing. So be aware of that.

Yeah, for sure. And I was a homeopathic physician for 20 years. And so coming from that healing world and especially with healers, a lot of times, well, I'm helping people feel better. I need to. So it's definitely something I had to learn. And I've also helped my clients a lot with. But also your opportunity base. I was thinking about that too because I'm always looking at, okay, what is the market that's not served? Or what is the. What is a new way of doing this that someone else is not, you know, approaching it in that way?

It's interesting, you know, as an opportunity. If you're opportunity based, the shadow side there is, you need to be aware, be careful that you don't pursue opportunity for opportunity's sake. So in other words, it is something that fills your bank account. So there's profit, but it's not fueling your soul because you go down that path. And you know, some people may have experienced this before where they fall out of love with their business because they say, why am I doing this? This just feels like a way to make money. This isn't something that I feel drawn to. So there's a shadow side to every single one of these types that we need to be aware of and careful about. And once you have that self awareness, it allows you to just go in with your eyes wide open and start a business knowing what your tendencies are and just be aware of what your blind spots are and how to compensate for them.

Yeah, that's so awesome. I do say, I have a saying and it's don't worry, be crappy, don't worry. So your idea of like, just get it out of the gate, you know, and then evolve it along the way is so important because people can get stuck in that analysis. Paralysis, right?

Amen to that.

Yep, Totally love That. And you also talk in the book about the five market must haves.

Yes.

Can you explain what those are?

Yeah. So going back to that conversation we're having about diving into the research and looking at what separated the businesses that were successful from the ones that failed, we tried to uncover what made them different. And if you've ever studied the work of Jim Collins, so built to last. Good to great, great. By choice. I'm a huge fan of his work. I have been for really the past more than a decade now. And what I love about his work is he studies the most iconic companies in the world and looks at what are the factors that makes the successful companies that are successful for the long term different from those who aren't. And so we kind of went into this research project with that same lens. We wanted to look at. Well, what were the factors that separated these successful markets from those that weren't? What we found was that there are these five market must haves, five things that every market needs to have. And I'll go through them. So the first thing is the importance of having being an evergreen market. Evergreen market is in contrast to a fad market. Now, I learned this the hard way. First business that my wife and I started together was teaching people how to make Scrabble tile jewelry. So making jewelry with Scrabble tiles and origami paper. I know you're looking at me like, what?

No, I'm thinking, oh, I want one of those. But go ahead.

So like back in 2007, 2008, when we're starting our first business, there's this huge craze going on, which is Scrabble tile jewelry. And at that time, you're familiar with the website Etsy, right? Etsy.com. yeah. Yeah. So Etsy just started. So it was this brand new site. And for anyone not familiar, I imagine most people familiar by now, but it's like ebay for handmade crafts, right? So my wife comes across this website. We're living in China. I'm the undecided entrepreneur. What business do we start? I'm going around and around in circles every night at dinner. What if we do this and what if we do that? She's saying, pick a damn business, right? So she says, like, take a look. Go on Etsy. There's this jewelry that's selling like crazy. Go online and it's this jewelry made with Scrabble tiles and origami paper. We're living in China. And she says, listen, we're in China. We can get all the origami paper that you'd ever want here in Asia, we have access to inexpensive labor. Let's set up a little. A shop, little factory. We can make the jewelry manufactured here and import it into the United States. And I said, well, you know, I don't know that I want to do that. You know, one of the reasons why we wanted to start our business was to be location independent, be able to travel and make our own hours. Like, I don't want to have to, like, go to a factory every single day. That doesn't sound like fun. So we closed the door on the idea. Then a few weeks later, she says, I want to go back to that Scrabble tile thing. And I said, well, honey, I thought we closed the door on that. She's like, no, no, no. Not making the jewelry. Check out this woman's shop here on Etsy. She's not making the jewelry. She's teaching people how to make the jewelry. So she created this little PDF tutorial that was teaching people how to make this jewelry. And the cool thing about Etsy is you can look at a person's sales history so you can look back and see how many sales they made today, yesterday, the day before. And what we found is she was doing, like, 20 to 30 sales a day of this $25 PDF. And we did the math real quick, and we said, gosh, with everything she's selling, she's making, like, $15,000 a month selling this digital PDF. Now, we bought it. It wasn't very good. So Tylene, my wife, learned how to make the jewelry. We videoed it, took a bunch of photos, made a better tutorial. We start selling the thing, make $1,000 a month, $2,000 a month, 3,000, 4,000, $9,000 a month. We're like, we're gonna get rich. Like, we're gonna get rich. This is amazing. This is great. And then literally the next month, sales dried up to almost nothing. And what had happened was the market became so saturated, we weren't the only ones that came up with this idea, right? Everyone started some of the jewelry. You know, everyone was making the jewelry. No one was left to buy it, and the market just crashed. And I learned the importance of that first lesson. The first market must have. Which is I had gone into a fad market. I'd gone into a market that was a hot fad. And over the last couple years, there's a couple markets that have been hot fads. Like, I don't know if there's any market that comes to mind for you ali like that just. What was a market that was just like huge and just disappears or anything that comes to mind? I've got a couple that I can share.

Gosh. Yeah. I can't think right now.

One that.

One that clothing, you know, is.

I mean, that clothing comes and goes.

Yeah, yeah. I grew up in that business. And that's tough for a designer because especially for women's, men's. I mean, the shirt you're wearing looks really nice, but it will look nice in three or four years.

Exactly.

That's one of the reasons why, you know. So that's a tough one.

I'll give you a couple. So one of them. Remember fidget spinners? Yes.

Oh, yeah.

So fidgets for is a perfect example. In fact, if you go. One of the things I teach people how to do is in the book is I teach you how to use free tools to analyze different markets. And so if you use a tool called Google Trends, which is a tool that Google puts out, they analyze the keyword search volume of any market you want to look at and they'll tell you how many people are searching. So you can look and see. Go to google trends.com or trends.google.com type in fidget spinners and you'll see that the market was just this huge spike for about five minutes and that drops to next to nothing and goes back to zero. So if you went into the fidget spinner market, like thinking it's going to be this big trend, I'm sorry, you're probably out of business today.

Yeah.

I'll give you another one that affected a lot of people in our world, bitcoin. There was a time just not too long ago where you could not turn the corner without someone talking about bitcoin. This. And I'm doing a big invest in bitcoin. I'm doing a bitcoin newsletter and bitcoin exchange and bitcoin membership site and all these different things, go to Google Trends and type in bitcoin. You'll see that same pattern.

Yeah, I was thinking that was like everywhere. And then it was nowhere.

Nowhere. It's done. And what's funny is if you look at the keyword search volume and you overlay on top of that, the price of bitcoin, the search volume goes up, up, up, up, up, drops off a cliff just in line with the price. So the price of bitcoin went up, up, up, up, up, fell off a cliff and then nobody's talking about it anymore. So you want to avoid markets like that. And it's hard because everyone's talking about it to get excited. So I learned this lesson. And so the next market I decided to go into, I said I'm going to do some research. I'm going to look at what is the oldest hobby in America. What is the long, like the oldest hobby in America? Something that's been around forever. You want to know what the oldest hobby is in America? And every year it's either, the number one or the number two hobby in America.

Hobby. No, I was thinking business. I was like, oh, shoemaker or something like that. But I don't know what the oldest hobby is.

It's gardening. Makes sense, right? Like our parents garden or grandparents garden. Like gardening. It's a thing that's been around forever. So I started looking at the gardening market and sub niches within that because I wanted something that if I built it, it wasn't going to fall apart in a couple months. I wanted something that would stand the test. Yeah, exactly. And so the market that I. So I started looking at niches and sub niches within the gardening market. And the market we settled on was the orchid care market, as in the flowers. So. And it was one of like a dozen different ideas that we had looked at. And, and we'd grown orchids and cared for orchids when we lived in Asia. It's my wife, one of my wife's favorite flowers. So we decided to look at that market. Well, here we are 10 years after we launched that business. We took that business, by the way, from nothing to $25,000 a month in 18 months, took it over to over half a million dollars a year. And here we are 10 years later and that business still makes half a million dollars a year just in the background. It's not even our main thing still running that bit. You can check it out. Orchidsmadeeasy.com we teach people how to care for your orchids. We've got a best selling book, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies. We've got courses, we've got a membership site, we sell orchid jewelry. We have all these things. And why does that work? Because it's an evergreen market. It's a market that's been around. You can look at Renaissance paintings of people with their orchids. It's not going anywhere. Orchids have been around since the time of the dinosaurs. So the first market must have is an evergreen market. You want to market like the market you're serving. As long as commerce has existed, the foundation of the country that we're in in America is. Is entrepreneurship. It's not going anywhere, right.

It's up or down markets, right. Because you need help when things are going well and you need help when things are not going well economically.

Absolutely. So you want an evergreen market. It's the first one. Now, the second one is it's not enough to just be in an evergreen market, because I know some people are like, oh, cool. Like, you know, there are a lot of evergreen markets. You also need to be in a market that's what we call an enthusiast market. Now, that's in contrast with a problem solution market. I'll give you an example. Problem solution markets are markets where people come in, they need to solve the problem, and then they never deal with that thing ever again. Classic example is like a flooded basement, right? Or mold removal, right? Flooding basement. That's going to be. That's evergreen. That's going to be around forever, right. As long as there's water, people are going to have to deal with flooding. But it's not an enthusiast market. It's a market where people, when they have a flooded basement, they solve it. They never want to think about it ever again. They're not signing up for an email newsletter or a Facebook group or a.

Podcast service for that.

No, yeah, exactly. They solve the problem. They never want to think about it ever again. So you want to avoid those markets. And the reason is because in those types of markets, you always have to chase after a new customer. The only way you make money is chasing what you want is a market where you can acquire a customer once, sell to that same customer over and over and over again. So enthusiast markets, what are examples? A classic example is the dog market, right? If you have a dog or, you know, anyone who has a dog, dog owners spend crazy amounts of money on their furry little friends, right? You know, from potty training the puppy to getting a crate, doggy food, doggy bowls, doggy insurance, taking to the vet, doggy clothes, Christmas ornaments, like all sorts of things, right? It just never ends. It's a market where when someone comes into it, they are a consumer in that market for months and months and oftentimes years and years. So that's what you're looking for is an enthusiast market. Third is. The third market must have is you want to solve an urgent problem in the context of that enthusiast market. What do I mean by that? It's not enough to be evergreen, not enough to be enthusiast. You need to solve an urgent problem that people in that market need help with. So in the dog market, you can't go into that market and expect to kill it selling a tchotchke doggy mug. Right. Instead, you want to find what is the $10,000 problem that dog owners need immediate help solving. What's the hair on fire? You know, gotta solve it right now. Problem. Well, there are a couple of them. If you bring a new puppy into your home and that puppy's not potty trained, the puppy's peeing on the carpet, peeing on the rug, peeing on the bed, peeing on your clothes, peeing on the laundry. Like there reaches a point where you say, enough is enough. We've got to fix this problem now. And that's what you're looking for, is that urgent problem. Right. So hopefully, as you're hearing me go through these must haves, I want you to be thinking about your business, your market, and how they sort of relate together. So, evergreen enthusiast, urgent problem, fourth thing, future problems. You want to specifically find a market where, when you help someone become successful solving that problem, the success of that thing leads to another problem. Perfect examples, like in your market, Ali. Right. So if you help someone with this book, like, if you help someone choose the right market. Right. And decide what business to start, the next question is, well, what do I sell? And then once that product becomes successful, it's like, gosh, Ali, I'm doing all the work myself. I want to scale, which I know you help people with. How do I hire? How do I put systems in place? New level, new devil.

Yeah.

And that's what you're looking for, Right? So future problems. Because what happens is this. If you help someone, if you're the dog whisperer, say, and you help someone potty train their puppy when nothing else has worked, the next question they're going to ask you is, you are amazing. Can you help me with this? Become their trusted advisor for life in that area of their lives. You want future problems.

Yeah. Because you're already building relationship with them, they trust you, and so why not have them buy from you rather than having to go find somebody else? Right.

I'll give you a perfect example. I talk about Dana Obelman's story in the book. So Dana and her husband created a company called Sleep Sense. They help parents with newborn infants get their kiddos to sleep through the night. Right. They started the business because they had young kids that weren't sleeping through the night. They couldn't figure it out. They figured it out. Their friends started asking for help. They offered their friends help. And like, one thing led to another, they started this business. Well, fast forward 15 years later, they've been on Good Morning America, the Today show. They've helped hundreds of thousands of families around the country and around the world with their system. Well, what do you think happens when Dana helps a parent get their kids sleeping through the night? Well, they reach out to her and they say, Dana, my kid's not eating. What do I do next? My kids are fighting. What do I do next? She's become the baby whisperer for infants through toddlers. So she's become the trusted advisor not just around sleep, but everything that happens next. So that's what you want. You want future problems. So that's number four, last one is this. You want to make sure you're in a market with PWMs. What does that stand for? Stands for Players with money. Now PWMs, it's a phrase I first learned from the late great Gary Halbert. And what it means is not that you want to be selling to millionaires or billionaires. You want to be selling to people who have proven to spend a disproportionate amount of money in that area of their life. You can't sell the broke people, number one. Right. That's a big mistake a lot of people make is they try to sell the people that don't have any money. And if someone can't put a roof over their head, food on the table, they're not going to buy your online course. Right. They're not going to buy your program.

It's just that's or they don't invest in themselves, right?

Exactly. You want it. That's exactly right. You want to find a place where people have proven to invest in that area of their life. And so you can find evidence when you look online. So I'll give you a few clues as to how to discover this. When it comes to having success in that area of a person's life, what's the level of investment to get started? So on one extreme is it a market like the yacht market where in order to get into to own a yacht you've got to put down a big chunk of change? Or is it like the chess market where you can go to Walmart, buy a chessboard for 10, 15, 20 bucks and you're good for the rest of your life. You just need one chessboard and you could play chess for the next 50 years, right? So one market requires a big investment, another market doesn't. On a business to business standpoint, like for example, I don't know what the costs were involved to Set up your homeopathic medical practice versus a restaurant. Right? Homeopathic medical practice might be, I don't know, tens of thousands, hundred thousand dollars restaurant, you might be spending a half a million to a million dollars before you've even opened the doors, right? Yes.

All those things you have to think about, for sure. I mean a service business, some of them. You're a consultant, it almost costs you nothing. You got a computer, you got your time and your wisdom and your sharing. But definitely like a restaurant where you've got to have equipment, leases, lots of employees and so forth. It's a much bigger deal.

Totally, totally, totally. So the 5 market must haves evergreen enthusiast, Urgent problem, future problem and evidence of PWMs.

Wow, you have been sharing so much. You've got me thinking as well about this kind of stuff. And every one of my clients needs to have this book. And all of you that are watching this, this is so powerful. It will save you years and years of going down the wrong path and literally potentially saving you millions of dollars and hopefully, hopefully making you millions of dollars too. So I know that you have some gifts and so forth with the book. Can you share some stuff that you got going on?

Totally. Well, listen, for everyone watching this, Ali and I connected at an event that we, that Ali was speaking at, I had the privilege of speaking at and we got to know each other and I said, you know what if we do something really for your audience, for your listeners? And Ali said, all right, bring the heat. So here's what we're gonna do. If you'd like to get a copy of this book, this is what we're gonna do. I will ship you a hardcover copy of this book anywhere in the world for free. All I ask is that you pay the shipping. So the book retails in the United States for $24.99, $33.99 in Canada. I will ship it anywhere in the world just for a few dollars shipping and handling. And to sweeten the pot, to make it like an absolute no brainer, we're also going to include $200 in free bonuses. So we're going to include the audiobook for free. So if you're the type of person that likes to listen on the go, whatever it may be, I'm going to hook you up with the audiobook for free. That's the first thing. Second thing, everyone wants to know, like, what are the niches I should be looking at? Well, again, there are seven tests that I teach you how to go through to determine if Your market's green light, yellow light, or red light in the book. And I give you 20, 25 of the most lucrative niche markets for 2019 that pass all seven of those tests. So if you're looking for a market to go into or you want some inspiration or some ideas, I'm going to hook you up with that. Al, you talked about mindset, you talked about analysis paralysis. I found that when it comes to starting a business, one of the biggest obstacles is what goes on in here. Now, my background, my academic background, what I studied in school, what I did before all this was neuroscience. And so I'm huge into psychology and neuroscience. And so what I Give you are 17 mental hacks to overcome the challenges that most of us run into. Fear of failure, analysis paralysis, self confidence, self doubt. To help you get past those sticking points when it comes to starting your business. In addition to that, you also get all the bonuses, all the worksheets, checklists, examples included in the book in digital format. So you can get started literally today. Like, if you do this now, you can get access to all this cool stuff starting today. We have a special link, though, that you have to use to do this. You get the book on Amazon, of course, but you're gonna pay full price. You're gonna get none of these bonuses. The special link is choosethebook.com alli and that's a L L I E just like you spell your name. So choosethebook.com ali and we'll hook you up with all these bonuses. Free copy of the book courtesy of Alison and love to get this in your hands.

Oh, my gosh. You absolutely have to do this. And everything that you're giving, it's like a whole course, you know, I mean, and this is not something they teach in college, so. And it's way more valuable, right? So we can talk about that all day long. What you would spend for that type of education to be able to get this as a gift for just paying shipping, that's incredible. So can you share that link one more time? And we'll also have that down in the lower thirds there.

Totally. So the link is choosethebook.com Alya L L I E. Just go to that link, you'll see, click the button, tell us where you want me to ship the book. We'll ship it to you anywhere in the world. We'll hook you up with all those bonuses. But do it now while you're thinking about it, while it's on your mind, so we can get you started and get it going. Because like you said, say your phrase again. Don't worry.

Be crappy.

Be crappy. Just get it going. It doesn't have to be perfect. The best time to do it is right now, today.

Don't procrastinate because that is one of the mental blocks that will hold you back if you are on the edge of your seat or you are thinking, should I, shouldn't I? You should. So just do it now. What a gift. And there is an absolute reason that you are listening to this right now, because this is supposed to be in your hands. So anyway, Ryan, this is been fabulous. It's been fascinating and I've been on the edge of my seat and I'm excited about this and I'm excited to share this with everybody that I know and work with. So congratulations on this new book. I know what it takes to get a book out there and it's a tremendous amount of work, but definitely legacy work that you're doing. So thank you for being with us today.

Allie, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for everyone listening. It's been an honor and a privilege and I look forward to connecting with you sometime soon.

Fantastic. And for all of you out there, get out there, elevate yourself because you are absolutely worth it. And definitely go to that link right now and get Ryan's new book choose and all the fabulous gifts that go with it. Okay, until next time. We will see you all soon.

Bye everyone.