Your First Business

Foreigners. Ryan Daniel Moran here. And today I have a challenge. Today I am going to do something that I deem fairly difficult and it is answer the question, how do I start my first business? In case you missed it, there's a new feature over at the blog@freedomfastlane.com and it's a place where you can ask me a question and you can submit it to me up here on the podcast. And if you just go to freedomfastlane.com there's a banner on the right side, click on it, it'll take you to a survey and allow you to submit a question for the podcast. And today I'm going to be answering one that I get all the time. I've gotten it all the time for eight years and it is how do I start my first business? I feel like I've answered this question a hundred times, but today I'm going to attempt to throw my unique spin on it so that it might offer a little bit of a different opinion, a different perspective.

You may be used to. Now this is important for us to talk about because if you're familiar with my wealth triad, there's basically three parts to the triad, and the first part is how are you making your money apart from trading your hours for dollars. So in other words, a business or some sort of cash stream, an income stream that is not directly tied to the amount of hours that you're putting in. So it can be something. It can be a business like I have where you sell products on Amazon, or it can be a business where you're an info marketer. It can be a business where you have a brick and mortar business, a brick and mortar business that's automated and systemized. It can be flipping houses, it can be anything that is not trading your hours for dollars but is separated from the amount of hours that you would normally spend. Then that's the first part of the triad. The second part is to invest that into a high yield income stream that's an investment. So for me it is single family houses or real estate investment trusts. You can also do angel investing, private investing, and then the third part of the wealth triad for me anyway is I take the profits from triad number two and I invest them into long term dividend paying stock. And I never touch that. That is to grow over years and years and years and years and years. But that first part is how do I separate my hours and my dollars? How do I unhook the connection between the hours that I work and the dollars that I make? And you do that by starting a business. And before we go into how to start your first business, I want you to realize the concept that everyone is already an entrepreneur. I was once having a conversation with somebody. We had slightly different political views. I'll let you guess who fell on which side of the aisle. But that other person said, ryan, not everybody can be an entrepreneur. To which I fired back. Everyone already is an entrepreneur. Everyone already is an entrepreneur because we are compensated according to the value that we bring to the marketplace. For some people, the only way that they are compensated for the value that they bring to the marketplace is by working for someone else's business. You have made the decision to sacrifice your own business in favor of supporting somebody else's business. And you are therefore part of an entrepreneurial machine in some fashion, Assuming you are working for the private sector and you aren't working for the government or being having your life paid for by the government, you are having your life paid for as a result of someone else's entrepreneurship. You are trying to hopefully increase your value in that. In that enterprise. And therefore, you are looking to maximize the value that you're getting from the marketplace. Therefore, you are an entrepreneur. So we all make a decision to be compensated from our efforts.

And that really is what entrepreneurship is, is being compensated according to our efforts. So an entrepreneur. If an entrepreneur is someone who is compensated according to the value they bring to the marketplace, then we are all already entrepreneurs.

Now, there's this other part of it where people say, okay, I'm ready to actually own my value as an entrepreneur and go out on my own and see how much unique value I can create on privately in the marketplace apart from somebody else's enterprise. And the question that I get from that person is, usually, I want to have a business, but I'm not really sure what to do, which really means I want to be independent or I want more money, but I'm not sure how to get there. Well, the first thing we need to do as we're starting a new business is get better at asking this question. Because when I hear people say, I want to have a business, but I'm not sure what to do, they have not clearly defined what they want out of that business. So a more empowering question or a better question that leads to some clarity, because it's really hard for me, as somebody who's consulting with somebody or one of my students, to say, well, this is the business that you should be in. That's impossible. Where I can help is when somebody says, this is the business that I'm in. Can you help me grow this or get this started? Yes, absolutely. And we'll talk about that a bit when we talk about channels in a few minutes. But when somebody says, I want to have a business but I'm not sure what to do, all they've really figured out is I want to be independent and any path is good enough to get me there because I want more money, but I don't know how to get there. So in order to really get any good advice, we have to refine the question a little bit to I want to have a business that blank, but I'm not sure what to do next or first. I want to have a business blank. I have a business that blank that serves this market, that sells these products, but I'm not sure what to do first or next. So if you can get to the point at the very least of defining the business that you want to be into, then it's much easier for other people to guide you along your path to entrepreneurship. Specifically myself, if we ever meet or you come to one of my events or you listen to the podcast, it's a lot easier to start making decisions once you have this primary question down. I want to have a business that blank, and what I need to do next is blank. It's a very empowering perspective and a very powerful step forward from just saying I want to make more money, but I don't know what to do first. So you want to have a business that blank or an income stream that blank, and I'm not sure what to do next? That is a much better question. Well, here are some other questions that I recommend to new entrepreneurs, new business owners who are looking for that sweet spot. If you don't know yet the answer to what type of business you want to have, here are some questions to get you thinking about it. You see, so many people spend so much energy and time looking for the next wave, the next hit, the next thing, when a much easier question is simply, where do you currently have unique value to the marketplace? Where do you specifically offer something that is of value to the marketplace? And if you don't know the answer to that, then I would ask the question, where do you have unique knowledge? Where do you have unique knowledge that 90% of the world does not know? In your job, what are you compensated for? What is the real value that your company is paying you for? If you work for someone else, what is your unique positioning in that enterprise that allows you to create enough value for them to continue to pay you.

Because there is, there may be some answers in there. If you've been spending 10 years in the same industry, if you've been spending 10 years at the same job, you have some unique value to the marketplace that 99% of the world does not know. Is there a way to take that to a more global marketplace that isn't just someone else's enterprise and get compensated for that specifically? You see, I work with a lot of Internet entrepreneurs. I work with information publishers, Amazon entrepreneurs, coaches, and a lot of them get their start by buying information products. For example, I have this thing called the Tribe that I where I train people to have Amazon businesses. You could call that some sort of information training, right? Well, the reason why so many people invest in information products isn't because you're going to learn a system or you're going to learn a loophole or learn something short term, like something's broken and you can take advantage of it for profit for a while. The reason why people are successful after doing or going through an information product is because that information gives you some sort of unique value to the marketplace. So let's take an example where you're learning to be a sales copywriter, an advertisement writer. This is something that I consider myself fairly good at doing. And yet there are hundreds of courses out there on how to write really effective copy sales messages. So what is the reason why people buy a course about how to be a good copywriter, how to write really, really great copy? Well, because if you learn that skill and you do it well, you will be able to provide unique value to the marketplace, a skill that very few people in the world possess. Which is why some copywriters make 20, 30, $40,000 for writing one sales message that they wrote themselves. My first business was I had websites and I got them to rank on Google because I figured out how the Google algorithm worked and I figured out how to get a lot of traffic from that channel. And again, we'll talk about channels in a few minutes. Well, that was that ability to get websites to rank high in the search engines was my unique value to the marketplace because very few people knew that skill. Especially eight years ago when I started doing it. When people ask the question about why systems or strategies fade. For example, again, right now I have Amazon businesses. I teach people to have Amazon businesses. The reason why people ask me, is this going to get over saturated or is this going to get harder or is this going to all go away? They're asking the wrong questions because systems and channels don't fade so much. As much as people just stop developing unique value in the marketplace, you see what work is. Work is simply the continual development of unique value in the marketplace. That is what you do when you're working on a business or when you're growing a business. You're continuing to develop unique value in the marketplace because that is what you are compensated for. So rather than ask the question of does something work? Hey, does that system work? Does that strategy work? Start asking the question, what unique value will that help me to develop? Because you are compensated by developing unique value. I know that doesn't sound sexy, I know that doesn't sound good, but that's how business works. You're compensated according to the value that you put into the marketplace. And the more unique the value, the higher the value. The higher the value, the higher your compensation or the more your profits. For example, when you have 10,000 people enter the Amazon Marketplace, and I'm going to be doing a podcast coming up on my predictions for where the Amazon Marketplace is going and what it looks like for new entrepreneurs to enter into that marketplace. I'll be talking about that soon in an upcoming podcast. But for now, there's this question of thousands of people are entering the Amazon Marketplace. Is it still a good business? That's a ridiculous question. Of course it's still a good business. What you're really asking, is it just as easy to develop unique value? And the answer is no. But as long as you are looking at how do I develop unique value? You will always be successful. So if you consistently develop unique value in your business, you will continue to increase the amount of compensation that you receive. For example, five years ago there was a big push into doing something called local marketing. I was a big proponent of this. This is a fantastic opportunity to be in five years ago, and it was basically helping local businesses rank on Google and get more clients and customers. And it was a fantastic business to be in. And people like me who were really good at getting websites to show up in Google, had a very unique value proposition. Hey, I can get you to rank on Google. Very few people can do this, and as a result, I'm going to charge you a whole lot of money. What happens as more and more people develop this skill? Those who don't consistently develop their uniqueness will start to become less valuable because now your uniqueness is going down because more people are learning the same skills. If you are not staying ahead of the competition or if you're not developing other strategies that other people do not possess, then your uniqueness and your value goes down.

So as a result, more people entered this space, prices start to come down, and the people who are really, really good and have stayed ahead of the game still make gobs and gobs of money in this industry. But those who bought one info product that got spread around and never developed beyond that point, they got eaten by the sharks. This is how business works. But I don't look at so much as a competition. I look at it more as the development of unique value. Can you develop unique value beyond the other people who are entering your space? So let's recap until this point. Analyze right now what unique knowledge or value you bring to the marketplace. Because if we can take that into the, into a broader marketplace that isn't just a job or just isn't one client, as I like to put it, if you work a full time job, you basically have one client paying you for your unique knowledge. If we can bring that into a greater marketplace, then we have some opportunities that we can possess. Especially if you have some sort of unique value you bring to the marketplace, that is that most of the world does not understand.

If you can provide that, then you have some insight into where your first business takes shape. It starts to allow us to answer that question of I want to have a business that blank, but I need to understand what to do next or first or whatever it is. And things seem to stop working because they lose their uniqueness. But as long as you continually develop unique value, you will always be relevant in the marketplace. For example, my ability to market products on Amazon gives me a unique advantage in the marketplace and I get to share that with my students. And so I get a twofer because I have a unique value of promoting my businesses and people pay me to learn that uniqueness so that they become more valuable too. And now my job is to continually stay ahead of the curve and get better and better at marketing and bring more people into my trainings and my events and my tribe in order to pass that on to other people. Which by the way, the tribe is going to be opening in a couple of weeks. We'll talk more about that towards the end of the show. So you might need to spend time developing your unique value. And you get this in the form of mastermind groups, from training, from info products, from listening to tapes, whatever it is.

You can spend time developing your unique value once you recognize what that unique value is going to be. For example, somebody who knows that they want to have a business flipping houses or an income stream to flipping houses, but Then they're not sure what they need to do next. They might want to upgrade their unique value of how they acquire homes or fix them up or sell them or whatever it is that they're going to focus on. So once you are clearly defined on what the business is that you're in, you can be very clear about how to upgrade your value. Upgrade your unique value to the marketplace and spend your put your energy there so that your compensation is greater and that becomes your job. Increasing your unique value to the marketplace on a continual and ongoing basis by who you surround yourself with, by what you are feeding your brain, by the risks and opportunities you are pursuing within that business. All of that work is really developing your unique value in the marketplace. It comes in how you're getting new clients. It comes in how you position your company for sale. How do you continually build that unique value so that you're compensated in at a greater form? The second step, once you have identified where your greatest unique value to the marketplace is, which can either be developed or it could be inherent to who you are. For example, Taylor Swift, some would say has unique value to the marketplace because she has unique natural ability and that she is compensated for that, and she should be. Whereas someone like myself had to develop a unique value in marketing Amazon products in order to create the amount of compensation that I now receive. Or I had to develop marketing chops before I could get clients who now pay me ridiculously large amounts of money to write their copy or do some marketing for them. So you can either develop them or they can be innate to you. The important thing is here where I will, I will rant about this forever is that we all have the same ability to develop our unique value. Not all of us are given the same unique values, but we all have the same capacity to develop them and market them and get compensated for them. Which is why I say we're all entrepreneurs one and second, why I don't agree with market manipulation via government forces. But that's a story for another day. The next step is looking at how do we package our unique value or position our unique value for sale or for consumption where we can get compensated. For example, if you realize that you have unique value to the marketplace because you can teach people a different type of spin on working out. Putting together an info product that allows people to purchase your knowledge in downloadable form is a perfectly viable way to take your greatest unique value and position it into the marketplace. If you are like myself and you love teaching from stage and talking in front of microphones, then you might want to consider having an event where you teach your unique value to other people. Or for some, it's an implementation service where you can take whatever skill you do best. You realize that by taking clients on where you can focus only on that unique value, you can quickly create value for other people in a way that's easy for you to do it because you have unique value around that skill and you can take on clients. In fact, some would argue that having a service based business is the fastest way to get profitable because you can go to clients rather than selling it as a product. And a client might pay you $1,000 a month where you'd have to, you have to have 20 sales at $50 to make $1,000. I hope that made sense. Some will argue that if you could take your unique value and position it as a service rather than a product, you'll profit faster. And I've seen that be the case in.

Many instances, not every case, but in many cases that, that is, that is what is so. So take your unique value, look at how you can position it for consumption by someone else who is willing to pay for it, and develop how we deliver your unique value to those who are most willing to pay for it, whether it be an info product, your unique value, for example. In my case, my unique value is the fact that I, I know that I can source yoga mats and market them cheaper than most people and better than most people. And therefore I make a profit selling yoga mats on Amazon. That's my unique value that I continue to develop. And the way that I bring that to the marketplace is by implementing the fact that I can go to a supplier and by implementing my marketing strategies on Amazon so that I get more customers.

That is how I package my unique value and deliver it to the marketplace. I also have training products and hold events where people pay me for consumption of a different unique value. Specifically other marketing strategies or investment strategies or how to be more handsome.

It's a market I'm looking to go into next. And finally, we take that delivery of our value and we look at what channels we can tap into to deliver our deliverables, if you will. We look at how can we tie our product or our service or our delivery of value into a channel where there are already customers and money flowing.

So I'm podcasting right now. I podcast because it allows me to deliver my unique value and get leads for my other businesses. And I.

Post that on itunes where it is a channel where people are already consuming podcasts about similar Topics, investing, marketing, management. And as a result, I'm well positioned in the itunes store, where I get leads from my other businesses, like mastermind groups and like trainings and consulting. And voila, I have a business that is how you bring your unique value into the marketplace as an entrepreneur, not as an employee.

Now, if you have a physical product, your channel is Amazon. If you have a digital product, Your channel is ClickBank. If you have a website or a blog, your channel is JVs or affiliates. Or if you're an affiliate marketer, it might be a Google SEO. You see, your entire first stage of business is dedicated to maximizing one channel until you are getting consistent sales and revenue. So pick one channel and figure out how that channel works. Figure out what makes some people profitable in that channel, and focus all of your energy on that. For example, when I was an information marketer and I did clickbank, the big thing was affiliates and the amount of money they were going to make per sale. So if you had the highest money per sale for affiliates, you did really, really, really well on that channel. On Amazon, it's their algorithm. It's figuring out how they rank certain products for keywords. And I've figured that out. When I did Google SEO, my entire business was figuring out, how do I give Google what it wants so that it ranks my stuff higher on their search results so I get more traffic and I can make more affiliate sales or more advertising sales. Right now, I'm podcasting and I've figured out that iTunes algorithm, iTunes Ranking System for its channel is based on subscribers and downloads. So I'm working my tail off to generate as many subscribers and downloads as I possibly can. That's how I'm attempting to maximize my exposure in that channel. Your entire first stage of business is figuring out how to get maximum exposure from your channel so that you're getting consistent sales and revenue. This is how we build a business, a really profitable business. So if you're wondering, how do I go into business, how do I become an entrepreneur? It looks like this. Identify what your unique value is in the marketplace that's either developed or innate to who you are. Put that into a. A consumable material, meaning you put it into.

A way that people can give you money for it, and then you put that on a channel that you can maximize. Now, we're all doing this unconsciously in. In some way. We have people who podcast about real estate investing, and then they bring people back to one of their programs about real estate investing where they sell a product that they've developed out of their unique positioning, which is the fact that they are a real estate investor and they can teach other people how to do it. My friend Jamie Tardy, I was just on her podcast called Eventual Millionaire. The way that she developed her unique value was she decided to interview millionaires and just interview a bunch of millionaires. And by doing so, she developed her unique value by associating with the right people, by learning the strategies that they had that were unique to them, and then put that as a podcast, which is a channel, and brought people back to her coaching services, which is where she makes a lot of her money. That and some courses. My buddy Abel James, who has website called Fat Burning man, one of the top podcasts on itunes, his unique value was in the first of all his story and is able to communicate that story. So a podcast was a great idea for him because he could read the phone book and, and turn everybody, including myself on. And his, his ability to communicate that message was in a unique, an innate, innate, unique value to him. Plus the developed unique value that he had in his story of fitness, packaged that into products, delivered it on a combination of channels between iTunes and ClickBank. We're all doing this in some sort, some conscious or unconscious. Excuse me, conscious or unconscious pattern. I'm getting excited. But if we're intentional about knowing what the stages look like, then we can position our business to be successful from the beginning. So if you've been struggling about what your business idea is going to be, answer these questions. What is your unique value in the marketplace that you've either developed or will develop, or that's innate to you? How can you position that in a way that people will pay for it? And what channel will you use to get it in front of customers and sales and revenue? If you're looking to start your first business, I am going to be reopening the tribe in October. It'll be a good way for you to cozy up to me and to learn directly from me and to take advantage of the channel of Amazon, which is what I'm currently using in my business. And if you've read my income reports over@freedomfastlane.com, you know that it's. It's been very good to me. So that is the channel that I've decided to use. And I can provide some unique value to you by helping you develop that same business if that's a type of business that you want to be in. It's also going to be probably the final time that I run the tribe open to the public. I will be closing it to a private group and I I am right now considering making this the last time that I that I do it in the way that I have been doing it. So if this is something you want to be a part of, stay tuned. Watch your email box over and make sure you're on the newsletter over@freedomfastlane.com Hey, I hope this was helpful helpful in starting your first business. Let me know what you thought over at the blog at freedomfastlane. Com. Leave me a comment. And of course, as always, I appreciate when you leave reviews and good ratings over in the iTunes store. Thanks for listening to Freedom Fastlane and I'll see you on the next show.