Start Your Day RIGHT! Energize & Succeed | Best Tips

Hello, Believe Nation! Welcome to another edition of the Evan Carmichael Show. This show is all about helping you build your business up, taking that dream that you have and making it into a success. I'm excited today. Today I'm doing another mailbag episode. I'm gonna be talking about setting routines for your business, how much to pay for rent, what I would do if I had to start over from scratch, and should you start a business on a loan or not. I just want to get to your calls. Talking to you is my favorite part of the show. All right, so I got a question from one of my loyal newsletter subscribers, Colin, who wrote in to say, "Do you have any routine advice for the nocturnal?" Now I'm a big believer in setting up routines. I'm a huge fan because as entrepreneurs you can find that one day you're on top of the world, you're killing your goals, you're out there hitting it hard, and then the next day you're up and you're sluggish and slow and you don't know where all that energy went. Then maybe you watch a or maybe you call into a radio show, or maybe you have this great meeting, and that gets you energized again and believing in yourself, and then you're on fire. But that may not happen until 2 in the afternoon or 9 at night, and then you don't have a lot of time left in the day. So I'm a huge fan of starting off the day with a routine that sets you up for success, that gets you motivated and energized and wanting to go out there and kill it today for your business. So a caller wrote in to say, do you have advice for the nocturnal? Because my advice was for morning routines. Colin, this is a fantastic question. I'm just a big believer in whenever you wake up, whether you're starting your day at noon because you're staying up till 4 in the morning or you're starting your day at 6 in the morning, setting that routine from the start. There are a few key elements that I'm a huge fan of. One is gratitude. I start the day with gratitude. If you're waking up at noon, start your day with gratitude. That could be something as simple as writing down— I have a little pad next to my desk. I write down when I wake up 3 things that I'm grateful for, and I also send a quick text to my wife with a little cartoon happy face or something, just to say that I'm thinking of her because she's out the door before me. Starting the day with gratitude and love may sound cheesy, may sound hokey, may sound like not a practical business strategy, but it really helps the day. If you're starting the day with gratitude and love, it just puts you in the right framework to be able to go out and achieve massive success with your business. The next thing is music. I gotta have music. Put music on that gets you moving, that gets you bumping, that gets your head bouncing around. It's so important because music can instantly change your state. You may be in a state of being depressed and down on yourself and lacking in confidence, and you put a song on and it gets you all energized and ready to go. So again, this applies whether you are a morning person and you're waking up at 6 AM when you're starting to go and kill it, Or if you're a nocturnal person and you're waking up at noon, start with the same strategies. The third biggest one is remember your whys. Why are you doing this? Why is this so important to you? There's a big why and a little why. The big why is that big overarching huge goal that you have, this big mission you want to go out and accomplish. And the little whys are the kind of day-to-day things that customers are giving you feedback saying, "You helped change my life," saying, "Thank you so much." When you get that positive recognition and reinforcement, It helps make you want to keep going. It helps you continue to believe in yourself. And so having that routine, even if you're a nocturnal person, you know, if you're waking up at noon and you work until 4 in the morning, don't get your day started at 8 at night because you get energized, right? Start at noon. Start with gratitude. Start with music. Start by remembering your whys. Start by setting up a routine for yourself that gets you energized and motivated and wanting to start the day and go out and kill it. I want to get to the calls. I have Denise on the line. Denise, where are you from and how can I help?

I'm in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and I've been talking to you for a couple of months about juggling my for-profit, my nonprofit entity, and the nonprofit snagged a big deal, a television deal, to do a show about our nonprofit. And I don't have a clue how to set up the deal so that we serve the nonprofit, but Me and my partner have been bleeding money on this for 20 years. We want a fair deal and a percentage instead of just a salary. But any suggestions on how we set this up? What's a fair percentage for the nonprofit? What should we take? There's going to be a lot of money because they're going to take us to network television, but I want to set up the deal right now.

So they're doing a deal about the nonprofit?

Yep, it's going to be a television show exclusively about the, the nonprofit. So how do we pay ourselves back for all the money that we've poured into the for-profit and the nonprofit trying to get something to happen?

How do your profit and nonprofit work together?

Um, not really. I've just been juggling two causes. So I set one up as a for-profit and I set one up as a nonprofit, and I'm committed to both and invested in both. Now the nonprofit snagged a big deal, but I have partners and to pay in the for-profit front. This is what I keep calling you about. How do I, how do I cross that bridge and share the money with everybody even though part of it's a for-profit entity?

Do you take a salary from the nonprofit?

There's been no money to take a salary from anywhere. I've been bleeding money for both of these for years. Now, now the nonprofit has a big deal on the table.

Yeah, so why not take a salary from it? Why not take some money from it?

I want to, but I want more than a salary. I have sweat equity partners to pay back, so I can't— I don't feel good about just paying myself. I want to pull some money to pay off prior, you know, equity debts in the, in the profit or the nonprofit. Well, right now the only thing attracting money is the nonprofit, so I'm trying to keep both of them going forward, but you can't really pull money out of a nonprofit to pay off your for-profit debts.

Yeah, no, you can't. That's not really legit, especially if they're not related, right? I mean, there's nothing wrong with you getting paid to run the nonprofit. You deserve that. You're putting a lot of love into it. It's been years of sacrifice, and you went out and got this great deal, and that's amazing. And so there's nothing wrong with you being paid. If you look at any nonprofit, you look at the CEOs, you look at the founders, they're getting paid. To run those organizations. It's not like you're taking millions and millions of dollars out, but you need to get paid to be able to continue living. But pulling money out to support partners in a for-profit business that has nothing to do with your nonprofit is really sketchy. You know, if you're going to have people eventually donating to your nonprofit, that's going to cause a lot of concern.

So I just have to be okay with— I get a salary right now because this is taking off and the for-profit partners have to ride with me until we have a profit?

I would try to think of, is there a way that you can use the exposure from the TV show to then potentially also help your for-profit company out? You know, if you become— I don't know if you watch Shark Tank?

Seen it, yes.

All of those 5 main investors, they get paid to be on that show, but they make a lot of deals and money afterwards. They get book deals, their companies get a lot of exposure, And so if your TV show may not be Shark Tank level yet, you know, you could work towards that. But if you're getting a lot of exposure and you're on camera and they're showcasing everything that you guys are doing, that raises your profile, which can help your for-profit business.

Right, right. And they're interested in doing the show on the for-profit business, so I believe, you know, a year from now they'll both be flush. But it's this interim where I've got money and my other partners don't, and I can't really support all of them out of what I get. So I'm just— I'm feeling like it's not fair for me to have this yet, this beautiful income yet, and I've got to get past that.

Yeah, it's another limiting belief, you know. It's, uh, you deserve it. You did a lot of work to get this nonprofit up and running, and it has nothing to do with those partners in the other business. You know, if they were helping you with the nonprofit, then they deserve a salary as well for helping get this show off the ground. But, you know, they shouldn't be necessarily jealous of what you're doing, and there could be an opportunity there for you to take the successful TV show, you know, with the nonprofit and turn that into another TV show with the for-profit, and that's a way that your partners can get paid back as well. I love that you have a sense of you want to do the right thing, you want your partners to get paid off, you're not just you know, in this for yourself, and you feel a sense of obligation to others, which is an amazing quality in an entrepreneur, because a lot of people don't necessarily have that, and they're just in it for themselves. But the, you know, the flip side of going— taking that too far is not having enough self-worth and feeling like you deserve this, right? Like, yes, a nonprofit can be run like a business and can make money. And yes, as the owner and the founder, you deserve to get paid for bringing success to the nonprofit, right? So you deserve that. You've done a lot of work, you're helping a lot of people, and you should feel proud.

Thank you, thank you. Your advice always changes things.

Alright, Denise, good luck and keep me posted. I'm here every 2 weeks.

Thanks, okay, bye-bye.

Alright, take care. Yeah, and for everybody listening, it's awesome to have a conscience. I believe you need to have a conscience. It's a conscious to your partners, a conscious to your customers, a conscious to, to anybody who's involved in your organization. But you also have to think of yourself. You also have to have self-worth. You know, you deserve to get paid for what you're doing. And if one business isn't working out, you know, you're going to try your best to make that work, but you shouldn't be sacrificing something from another business to go help your business that's struggling. So have some self-confidence. Know that what you're doing is valuable and you deserve to get paid for what you're doing. Next up in the mailbag is a question from one of my YouTube viewers, Sally, who wrote in to say, "I don't have money. Would it be a bad idea to get a loan to start my own business?" This is a huge question and one that so many entrepreneurs face as they're trying to launch their business, right? You don't have enough capital to start, what do you do? My answer, yes, it is a bad idea to start a business on a loan. I'm a huge believer in that you should not be spending money until you're making money. Because everybody can spend money. It's easy to spend money, right? If I give you $100,000, you could find 100,000 different ways to do it. Anybody can spend money. The hard part is to earn money. And if you go out and just start a business with no background and no financing, you're probably going to fail, right? Most businesses will fail, right? 80% of businesses in America fail in 5 years. That's probably going to be you. Those are the numbers. So how do you avoid that? You avoid it by not going out and taking a loan because you might be in debt for the rest of your life paying this off. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to go with the wrong product or service. It won't be perfect. You won't have the right marketing strategy. You won't have the right pricing strategy. You won't have the right partnerships and alliances set up. There's going to be so many mistakes that you're going to make that that could sink your business and leave you in a huge hole with debt. So that's the negative. So what do you do? How do you get out of that? Instead, I recommend going out and actually modeling success. So find a company that you love. I don't know what industry you're in, but find a company that you look up to that has 10 employees or less, an entrepreneur. Say, I want to be like that person, and go work for them. Go get a job working for them. If you're getting a job, it shouldn't be just to give you a paycheck. It should be to help you learn and understand how an industry works. Instead of paying to go take a class or go to university or take this training course, you're getting paid to learn about the business. You're getting paid to make mistakes. You're getting paid to make contacts. It's so important. And then when you're ready to go and launch your own business, you already have a lot of your ducks lined up. So find that company, offer to work for them, and then get as close to the entrepreneur founder as possible. Don't just do what you're hired to do. You want to go in and get as close to the founder as possible, take on as many projects as you can, know as much about the business as possible, give yourself as much exposure and training because that's going to set you up for success when you go and launch your own company. There aren't too many entrepreneurs in the world who will say, "Yeah, I don't need any extra help. We're good. We're fine. I have all this work, but we don't need people to help us out." If you're a dedicated employee, employee, and you're taking on extra work, and it's not about getting paid to do it, right? You can get a salary to do it, and that's fine, but take on extra work weekends, evenings, volunteer, right? The whole point of this is you're learning about the business, and the entrepreneur founder will want to help, right? If they see dedicated employees who are trying to learn about the business and provide value back, then, then they're going to give you more responsibility. The second thing that that does is it also teaches you if you like the business or not. A lot of people will start a company and they're, you know, you look at it from the outside and say, "Wow, that's such a cool idea. I could make a lot of money there. I could have a big impact there." And then they get into it and they realize, "Ah, you know what? This isn't for me." You know, it was maybe more of a hobby or just an idea, but I'm not a huge fan of doing this. If you've taken out a loan and started this business, you're out of luck, right? That's a huge problem that you've just run into. Where if you go work for somebody else and you look at that entrepreneur and you could decide, do I want to be like that person? Do I want that person's lifestyle? Am I actually enjoying the work I'm doing? Or was it a case of just the grass looking greener on the other side? So go get that job to learn from somebody. At the same time, you start part-time. Find a low-cost, easy way to get started where you're not investing a lot of, a lot of money. Just to get your feet wet, just to understand how your customers work, even if it's free or even if it's at cost. Again, I don't know what your business is, but you want to just build up momentum, build up experience, build up a database of customers, build yourself up so that when you are ready to go and launch full-time, one, you've got the experience from working at the job, and two, you have the experience from working with some customers, understanding what they like, what they want, what they're buying, and having people to be able to sell to for when you launch. It's way less risky and way smarter than just jumping all in, cashing in your retirement savings, or taking out a loan to launch that business. It's so important because again, so many companies fail, and I don't want that to be you. I want to share an example that I think will help you. There's a vegan bakery here in Toronto called Bunner's. And it's a new bakery and it was started by an entrepreneur named Ashley. And I first met Ashley in the basement of a church. The church was having a bake sale and she was there selling her gluten-free butter tarts. And I was thinking, gluten-free butter tarts, I gotta try these, these sound amazing. And so I went to go see her and a lot of people when they're first starting a bakery, they want to have a bake shop, right? They want to invest in a kitchen, they want to invest in a retail storefront. That costs a lot of money, and she could have gone out and taken out a loan and tried to launch it up, but she probably would have made a ton of mistakes and would have failed. So she started the smart way. She started on evenings, on weekends, in church basements, at bake sales, and she learned what recipes did well, what people wanted to buy. She learned— she learned how to build a list of customers who could then continue to repeat and buy from her. She learned how to improve the process of making her cupcakes and her muffins and her butter tarts. She learned. And then as she gained customers and as she started making money, she then opened up her first location and it was a big success. She had her first location, that did well. Then she opened up her second location, so she's got two now. Then she loaded a cookbook, she sells wholesale, she's won all sorts of awards for the best new bake shop, best dessert shop, having the best muffin in the city of Toronto. And that's not even vegan, it's not best vegan dessert shop, it's best dessert shop, best new bake shop in the city because she gained a lot of experience starting part-time, starting evenings and weekends, starting to learn the model, learn the market, learn the customers. So don't start your business on a loan. Please don't start a business by cashing in your retirement savings. It's so risky. Your chances of failure go up dramatically because you're going to make so many mistakes. Instead, go learn from somebody who's done it. Go learn from them, get the experience, get the track record, get some connections, make your mistakes while getting paid, and then start part-time. Find an easy, low-cost, cheap way to get started. Make your mistakes early that's not costing a lot of money and slowly build up to the point when, when you do launch full-time, you're going to be a huge success. Next question up is from Tor who wrote in to say: "if you were starting your business all over again from scratch with the knowledge you have now, but no one knew who you were, how would you start getting organic traffic to your website and start branding yourself?" This is a great question, and I think about it a lot. I often think about if I was starting up again, how would I kick my own butt? What would I be doing differently? And my number one strategy would be I would be all in on YouTube. And so that's what I'm doing right now. If I had to pick one social media platform to brand myself, to get my message out there, It would be YouTube. One, because it connects to people better. If people see your message on video, it's gonna resonate way more than just seeing a tweet or a picture on Facebook. And the content lasts so much longer. I'm still getting views and engagement from videos that I put up years ago. I'm not getting that on Twitter, right? If it's over a day old, it's gone. People forget about it. So I would be all in on YouTube. YouTube has gotten me sales, it's gotten me speaking opportunities, it's gotten me Newsletter subscribers has gotten me a lot of momentum. So that's the first one. Second thing I'd be doing if I was starting over from scratch is looking at alliance partners, right? The fastest way to grow is to find people who are already connected to your target audience and find a way to partner with them. So if I was trying to build buzz about my website, I would look at who else is targeting my audience, who else has a popular website, who else has a popular blog, who else has a popular YouTube channel. That I could partner up with and do a guest video for them or do a guest blog post for them. If you're looking at YouTube, a service I would recommend checking out that's totally free is called FameBit, F-A-M-E-B-I-T.com, where it's basically YouTube collaborators. You can post your channel and say, hey, here's my channel, I'm looking for collaborations in this genre, and other YouTubers who have an audience will submit proposals and you can do guest posts. Guest videos on each other's channel. I've gotten a lot of new subscribers to my channel by doing that and giving me more exposure. Think about who already has your target audience and how can you partner up with them to reach their audience and get them to introduce you to them. The third thing is media. Find media outlets who are again targeting your target audience and instead of trying to go after your customers one at a time, at a time, at a time, you can use the media to spread your message to thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions. When I was first starting up, and this is what I would do all over again, I made a, a list of all the media who covered small business entrepreneurship because that was my audience. And every 2 weeks I'd write a new story for them, and every 2 weeks I'd get picked up by at least one outlet. And so I was guest on radio shows, on TV shows, I was in newspapers and magazines. I used a paid service called PR Leads and they, you know, send leads from reporters who are looking for experts. And as a result, I got into the New York Times, I got into the Wall Street Journal, I got into Forbes, and so I got picked up a lot. And again, that helps you reach a lot of critical mass really quickly. So that's what I would do, Tor. If I was starting up all over again, brand new from scratch, I would go all in on YouTube, find alliance partners to connect with, and then use the media to help spread my message and get people to my website. I want to get to the calls. I have Tim on the line. Tim, where are you from and how can I help?

Good morning, Evan. Uh, I'm in Colorado.

All right. Welcome to the program. What's going on?

Thanks. Well, you know, here's, I'm getting ready to, uh, um, launch a new consumer product. And while I was doing my research, I found a guy on LinkedIn who's like a real heavy hitter in the business I'm going for. And just out of the blue, I just contacted him and that started a month-long dialogue, uh, between us. And I can't afford his services, but I'm thinking of offering him an equity stake in my company, uh, as an enticement to, to join me. And I just want to know what your feelings are on it, because this guy is— I mean, he's got offices in London and Singapore, and he could be really helpful to me.

Yeah, so this is a really big question. You know, getting an equity partner is like getting married. Uh, it's It's really important. If you get the wrong person, it can really screw over your company. And it's great to look at their skill sets and what they bring, but you also have to look on the values perspective, right? Like, do you see eye to eye with the type of person you are, right? The things you believe in, the values that you share or don't share, because it's all great at the early stage when you— when there's nothing but potential. But when things go wrong, there's a lot of arguments and fights. And how you're going to deal with that with an equity partner. One thing I would definitely look at is having a way to have him earn in. So is he interested in equity? Have you brought this up, or this is just an idea that you're thinking about?

Yeah, he's actually— he's offered— because he really— I found a real specific niche market, and he was like, congratulations, nobody's found that. So he's excited about the product. We've Skyped a few times, so, you know, actually, you know, face-to-face, I could get a good read on him and, you know, so yeah, he brings a lot to the table and he is interested in an equity stake because he likes the product. So, and like I said, he's, you know, he's very big in the industry. So I'm excited, yeah, I'm more than willing and he, on the face of it, he said his contribution is he'll draw up a business plan and he believes he can bring more investors into the product.

So, and it's great, and it sounds like you kind of already made up your mind on it and now are trying to figure out how to reduce your risk. No, what I would do is structure something where he earns in. So he either buys in and he's paying you cash, or he's earning in and he's bringing you something. So a business plan, great, but I want to see him bring you customers. I want to see him bring you investors, and you can have milestones. And I've done this in the past with other businesses. Where I had a superstar sales guy come in who wanted to be head of sales and owner in the business. I said, okay, great, you know, when you get this much in sales, you get your first 5% of the company. And when we reach this much, you get 10%, and this much 15%, and this much 20%. And that was our cap. So I don't know much you're thinking about giving up, but let him earn in. Like, make him show that he is giving you value, real tangible value, besides just, you know, drawing up plans and presentations. If you think it's in the form of customers or investors or something else, but something that's giving actual practical value and write that into the shareholders agreement where, you know, he will earn this equity when he reaches these milestones.

I like that. That's a good thought because when he came back to me, his charge, if I had paid for his service, was $25,000. And if I had $25,000, I would have spent it.

Right, okay. Yeah, and so how much are you willing to give up of your business for $25,000, right? $25,000, it's a lot of money, but it's also not a lot of money if you think about where this company will grow. You know, if you're giving up a quarter of your business for this, that means your company's only worth $100,000. You know, is that legit, reasonable? It's a tough decision, but having him earn in is your first step. The next thing that I want you to do— you have a corporation set up?

Yes.

Okay. And you have a shareholders agreement?

Uh, not yet. I just, I'm the only— I registered it and I don't have a board. I'm just the only guy in my LLC right now.

Got it. Okay. What you want to make sure you have is a shotgun clause. And a piggyback clause. And you'll need to, you know, you could, I guess, research it online. I would talk to a lawyer just to make sure everything is ironed out perfectly. But a shotgun clause basically allows one person to buy out another person. So it, in case you guys get to some kind of disagreement and there's an impasse and you can't get through it, you can say, okay, well, I'm going to buy you out at this price, or you get to buy me out at the same valuation. So it makes sure that you can, you can split if you need to.

Right.

Okay. The other is a piggyback clause, which if you ever want to sell the business, for example, he can't block it. He has to come along with it. So I don't know what your end goal is. Maybe, maybe you want to sell to Nestlé or Microsoft or whatever it is, you know, and he may say, no, I don't want to sell. As a minority shareholder, he can block a potential sale. And so the piggyback means you have to come along with it.

I love both of those.

Yeah, I mean, a simple talk with a lawyer will help you identify those issues and make sure those are written in. But that helps protect your risk, right? That helps protect you from having this potential deadbeat partner. That's the worst case, right? You have a deadbeat partner who's just holding you back. And is not contributing anything. So that helps you mitigate that risk where if the upside goes well, then you have nothing to worry about. Everything— everybody's happy.

Perfect. Thank you, Evan.

All right, no problem. Good luck, Tim.

Thank you, sir. Bye.

Great. And for everybody listening, partnerships can be great. You can have a lot of success with them, but make sure you're bringing on the right partner Do your homework to make sure you get the right values, you both believe in the same thing, as well as the vision and mission of the business. And then protect yourself. Have them earn in, don't just give away equity for free. Have them earn in and have the shotgun clause and piggyback clause in your agreement so that if anything goes wrong, you've protected your downside, you don't have a lot of risk going into it. It's scary and exciting, all at once. So Tim, best of luck. The next question I got was from a YouTube viewer called Gabs who wrote in to say, "Hi Evan, I'm planning to start a small business process outsourcing business and my friend has an established call center office. I'm planning to partner up with him. I got all the important things like clients and everything. He has a facility that I will rent and the back office for my campaign. I want to know how much percentage can I give him regarding my gross sales? Thanks." So this is a great question. How much should you pay for rent depending on your gross sales. Now this depends on every industry. Every industry is a little bit different. You know, if you're in the retail clothing business, you're going to have high rent. It's going to be a big part of your gross sales because you need foot traffic, so the rent's going to be expensive. If you're a legal services business, then it's not going to be as expensive, right? Because you don't need as much foot traffic, so you can afford to get non-retail space. What I want you to do is try to stay under 10%. Okay, you want less than 10% of your sales to go to rent. If you're getting a lot higher than that, it's going to be hard to stay in business. Ideally, you want to be in the 5% range or less. Now, that may take a little bit of time as you build up your business, but what I would say is if you're going to partner with this guy, don't make it a fixed percentage because as you grow a company, the amount of rent that you pay as a percentage of your sales should go down, right? The amount of rent that you're paying should be constant, but the amount of sales that you're making should be going up, right? So that percentage should be decreasing. So I wouldn't give them a fixed percentage, right? I would— I wouldn't say 10% of my sales goes to you every month because of rent. You're bringing a lot more to the table, and that's going to cost you a lot more money as you go down the road. I would try to figure out a set rate for how much that rent would be. I would also think, is this really a partnership that you want? If you're bringing most of the stuff, you're bringing the important stuff, right? You're bringing the work, you're bringing the clients. He's just giving you a space to do it in. I wouldn't be giving him a percentage of my business. That's not enough, right? You're— that's something that you can, you can even start from home if you wanted to, right? He's not giving enough to the business to justify a partnership. Now, if he's bringing you clients, if he's giving you a lot more than just a location, then you can talk. Okay, hopefully that helps. I want to get to the calls. I have time for one last caller. Who do I have on the line? Michelle. Michelle, where are you from and how can I help?

I'm from New Jersey and I have a question. I'm starting up an independent consulting for health and fitness and I wanted to know what is the most effective means to reach potential clients?

This is tough because you are in a super competitive industry. I'd be looking at two things. One, you need to stand out, right? Like, what, what makes your fitness program better, different than everybody else? Because there are so many people in that business. What makes your program different? Whether it's a training method, whether you're targeting a certain group, you know, if you're targeting older men or younger women or whatever it is, you need to have a niche that you can go after that's different from everybody else. Is there anything you have in mind?

Well, actually, I'm working with a company, but as an independent consultant. They, they kind of already have the product. It's just my, my job to build my own independent business through the company of, you know, attracting people to come to the— to my website, attracting people to come in and want to buy the product under my website. That's how I make the commissions, is off of, off of people buying the products through me and not through the company directly.

So is it network marketing, affiliate marketing?

Yes.

Yeah, okay. So the first thing I would do there then is, do you use the product?

Absolutely.

Okay, great. Well, a lot of people don't, so that's good. You gotta start building a personal brand, and I would start thinking about showing how you use the product and why it's so great. Most of the people who are selling network marketing, affiliate marketing stuff, they use— they just use the basic website that the company gives them, and they're trying to drive traffic to that. And they usually have very few options of what they can do, where I'd love to see you have your own site where you're sharing how you're using it and the great benefits that you are getting from using that product. Um, you know, you could be sharing fitness tips alongside it, your workout routines alongside it, whatever it is, how you're using it and how people can benefit from it. And start building yourself up as an expert, as a brand in that industry, and you just happen to be selling XYZ product.

Mm-hmm.

So have you done a YouTube video, for example?

I have not. Some of my students, because I am also full-time as a teacher, some of my students have said, you should make a video and put it up. And I'm like, okay, how?

Hey, maybe they can help. That's a good start.

I'm thinking of asking them too, because they seem to have the idea to do it.

Yeah, no, you should. What I would be thinking about is what are some of the major benefits that you got from using this product, and then how can you make that demonstrable, right? How can you show a video that highlights how you're using the product? So not just like a— not just a sales pitch, not just, hey, this product is great. Because XYZ. People can see through that, but letting your passion for the product and how it's helped you improve your life shine through with the video, and not just one video but a series, right? You do one and every week you've got a new one coming out, can help to start build some traction momentum around what you're doing.

I like that idea, one video a week. I like that, thank you.

Yeah, and if you have students who can help and they're young and tech savvy and have the gear and You know, it's a great, it's a great start. The other thing I would do is start thinking about, just like some of the previous callers, who can you partner with that you can help make that connection? So who else, like, who's your target audience, and then who else is targeting that same audience but with something else in your local community, and how can you partner up with them? Because part of what you have to do is also build your your downline, right?

Yes.

Yeah, and so you'll actually typically make more from building a downline than from selling it yourself. And so it's starting by selling yourself and then developing the system that then you can give to other people. And by you learning how to do video, you can show other people how to do video as well and give them the marketing engine to go out and start selling.

Cool.

I'm excited for you.

I'm absorbing all this and it makes sense and I think maybe my students are on track and now that you're saying it, it makes me want to say, okay, I think this weekend I'm going to start by making a video and maybe start with laying out all the clothes that don't fit me no more and showing everybody what they look like now.

We got to wrap up the show but thank you for calling in. Make it happen this weekend. I love it. Get that momentum going. Thank you for calling in. Hey, another great show in the books. Thank you guys all for listening. Thank you to my producers, Christy and Josh. You guys rock! I will see you all again in 2 weeks. Continue to believe, and we'll see you soon. If you want more entrepreneur goodness, check out the link to my newsletter below. See you there!