TES 033 - 7 Keys to an Online Business

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there, Mel Abraham here, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy where we teach you how to design a business and create a life, a life of financial freedom and peace of mind. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. And in this one we're actually going to do a continuation of answering a question from the last episode. Marie from St. Lucia asked a question question about business plans and using business plans for online businesses. And what I did in the last episode, as you recall, was really talk about business plans in general and give you the fundamental and the foundational framework and outline for a business plan. In this one, we're going to talk about some specific elements that I think are necessary when you talk about an online business versus a bricks and mortar business. And I would integrate them in that context. So right after this brief introduction, we're going to come right back and we're going to finish the second part of the answer to Marie's question. And just like every other episode, this episode comes with a downloadable tool template or guide. So make sure that you get the full value of these episodes by downloading the guide each and every week. And for this episode, just Simply go to melabraham.com session033 and if you're not by your computer, you're at the gym, you're driving, you're doing whatever, you're not there where you can get it. Now go ahead and text and text mylegacy one word, no spaces. 38470. That's mylegacy to 38470. And we'll make sure that we get you the download link so you can get the tools and get the full value out of this episode. We'll see you back here right after this brief introduction.

Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Solution where highly successful entrepreneur Mel Abraham becomes your entrepreneurial mentor. Here, Mel reveals his business building strategies and even gets a chance to answer your questions. Mel Abraham A CPA by education, but an entrepreneur by exhilaration and a true believer in the entrepreneurial way of life. It's through entrepreneurship that we create community, support society and live our dreams.

It's where possibility meets reality again and you can have the life and lifestyle you want. One of freedom and peace of mind. Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur's Solution where it's time for you to be bold, dream big and live life your way.

Hey there. Welcome back. I'm Mel Abraham, the author of the number one best selling book, the Entrepreneur's Solution. And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solutions Show. And as I said, we're going to go back into the question that Marie asked from St. Lucia about business plans. So why don't we do this real quickly? Let's listen to her question again, just in case you didn't hear the last episode or you weren't on the last episode.

Hi Mel, this is Marie, the outset. I'm calling from St. Lucia. I'd like to know how to make an online business plan. I have had businesses before, but physical businesses. So I want to know what the key things I have to know about online business plan and how to go about doing that. Thank you very much.

So that's a great question, Marie. And you know, in the last episode we talked about just the process of business plans. And as I said that to me it's much more important to.

Go through the process of creating a business plan than the actual document itself because the process that you have to go through requires you to really understand all the elements of your business. You're capturing what the company background is, who, what the vision, the nuts and bolts, the structure, all of those elements that are around the company that need to be captured and thought about versus just going out there with an idea. We start to detail out our offering, our products and services, the bundles we might create, how we're serving needs in a marketplace, what are the benefits that that are created? What are the distinctions and the uniques that we bring to the marketplace that set us apart from the industry or the other competitors, the other alternatives that our consumers, our customers, our clients might have? We define the market, we don't go at it broadly. We find the market that we want to participate in. We understand the type of market it is, wholesale, retail, consumer business, broad based, diversified niche, what kind of market it is. We also show that we understand the industry and the market in a way that we understand what are the dynamics, the dynamic changes that are going in to the marketplace now and how we're going to participate in those changes, support them, or benefit from those. We know where the market is, we know where our customers are geographically, we know how to reach them. And we talk about that and how we're going to deliver this and what the future growth is and how we're going to connect with them at a deep level to build intimacy and build loyalty. And we talk about that in our traditional business plan or the process we go through. We understand our strategies, we detail out in a lot of detail what our strategies are, what our timelines and milestones are, what the tactics are to make those strategies come true. We, we talk about all of those elements in the strategy section, in the implementation section, and execution section of the plan. And then we look at the team. The team are the ones that are driving the bus. These are the ones that the management and all the key players. We want to know who they are, we want to know what their backgrounds are educationally, work experience, their successes are, what roles, what are their core functions that they're going to serve, what roles are they going to play and detail all that out. So we've thought it through and, and then we want to understand the financial side of it, the money side of it, understanding where this might go financially, what could this grow to financially over a period of time, doing forecasts, what are the risks associated with it? What are the costs associated with it, how are we going to finance it? And then look at it and say, great, what if things go wrong? What does it look like? And start reworking it. So that's a traditional business plan. Focus. All of this applies, Marie, all of this applies to an online business. If you really want to put together a business plan, or at least go through the process of it, the more detailed, the more clarity you have, the better off you'll be. But when you talk about an online business, there's a couple of concepts, about seven things that I want you to consider to make sure that they're in the process, the analysis process, and the business plan process. So let's look at the business plan, some of the business plan elements. Now, this is not a complete plan. This is simply the aspects that I want you to integrate into your complete plan that are unique to online businesses.

In that case, okay, so the first thing is this content creation. When we talk about an online business, what is it content or product creation? We need to have a process, we need to have a system, we need to have a way in which we're going to create content or products on A regular basis to get to our consumer. And so this, in this, in my example, what I want to bring to the table is if I look at just myself and the work that I'm doing with entrepreneurs, I'm creating content. What's my content creation strategy and system? A lot of it. Is this what you see me doing right now? I'm coming out and I'm putting product content out there on a weekly basis at a minimum, doing the YouTube videos, I'm doing my podcast, I'm putting out materials, articles and guides and tools and templates to help entrepreneurs. In that context, I've got my book, that's the number one best selling book that's out there. I've got my training program. So what is your content creation or product creation strategy specifically.

That you're going to use to, to take out and sell via the online space, via the online delivery system, if you will? The second piece is this. What's your traffic cultivation strategy? If we're online, I need to get traffic to the website. I can hang up a great website, I can hang up a great shopping cart system, I can hang up everything. But if people don't show up, I'm not going to get any sales. So I want to understand what your traffic cultivation system is. Is it ads, is it Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, YouTube ads, what you know, is it display ads? What is it that you're using to drive traffic, to cultivate traffic, to cultivate that volume to the site in a way that's going to start to drive sales. Now it could be paid, it could be free, it could be you being out there speaking, writing, doing direct mail campaigns. But this is something that we want to clearly understand and some people will call this platform what's your audience like, that type of thing. But traffic cultivation becomes really important in the online space and understanding where that's coming from and how you're going to control that. Once we understand that, then we need to deal with conversion optimization. In actuality, what I want to do is actually make sure that I've optimized my conversions first before I start running traffic through it. What I want to do is get my conversions as high as possible and then let me run the throughput for it because then I can maximize it on the other end. But, but nonetheless, I want to know what your strategy, system or process is to optimize your conversions. Are you testing it? Are you doing, you know, redirects? Are you doing retargeting? Are you doing pixels? Are you doing a follow up sequence? What is your conversion optimization strategy that will maximize your your sales when you start to run that your, your traffic through, through the process? So, so content creation, traffic cultivation, conversion optimization. Then I want to look at after sale magnification. After sale magnification is this, what's your relationship after the sale? Do you do things especially online? Are there things that will drive you for one click upsells that they call it on online. So you go and buy something and it says before you check out. It's that whole concept of but there's more type of a thing. So before you check out, if you want to add this to your order for this one time low fee of X, click here. Do you have that in place? And then say they complete the sale and there are a week past the sale or there's two weeks past the sale. Listen, customers that just bought for you are the hottest customers because they believe in you. They believe in your product, they bought from you and you deliver on it and at a level of excellence that makes them happy. Then you want to go back to them, say what's the pathway, your client path, your consumer path? What happens after the sale for us to get more sales, more revenues and serve the client at the next level? What's the next, what I call when I teach and work with you, what's the next logical sequential step for your customers? What's the after sale magnification system that you have in place then?

Technology utilization, especially with online. You know, back in the day when you were doing business, it was, it was face to face, it was in the store, you'd have to go running on the shelf and grab it off the shelf and you'd have to deliver it all that. But how are you using technology to support you, to leverage your time to deliver this and to automate the process so you can be hands off as much as possible that allows it to track it. I know that when we did my book launch sequence and we set that up, we put in technology that allowed us to track every step of the transaction, every step of the customer's journey from the moment they arrived on the webpage to all the way through the after sale magnification. We knew exactly what the customer was doing. And based upon the choices they made, we would give them additional choices and we would communicate on a regular basis. But we mapped it all out at the very beginning and used the technology that was available to us to allow it to run automated. So I wasn't looking at it saying this customer, I need to send something to or this customer I need to send this to and this customer I need to send that to. I simply set it up from the beginning and allowed the system to, to do the work due to the heavy lifting. So set it up right from the beginning. How are you using technology to maximize your time, to leverage your time and do it in a way that makes it cost effective? Technology like your shopping cart system, your CRM system, We happen to use infusionsoft, you know, how are you capturing the leads and then working the leads from there? All of the technology that I use to deliver the podcast and the YouTube and my products and, and all of the communication that we do is all based on that technology platform. So what is yours? How does it leverage it? Does it scale with you and does it allow you to grow? And who's in control of it? So that's the next piece and then growth integration. What's your growth from here on out? And so we talked about after sale magnification. So if I think that, that they're on one trip and they start with my, let's just take mine. They start with a book offer, they have a one click upsell that accelerates their growth and then they go into a sequence that moves them into.

Some other training program. And then maybe two months, three months down the road there's a. It's not exactly the same thing. It's maybe 1 degree, 2 degrees, 3 degrees off, but it's complementary to what they've already gone through. What is that integration, that ability to grow by giving them something that's 1, 2 or 3 degrees off, that's complementary and supports what they've already done. And you've heard this talked about by my good friend Brendon Richard. He calls it an integrated product suite. If you look at things like Apple, they have integrated products. I mean, everything resides from that. Itunes store everything from the ipod delivers from the itunes store, the iPhone delivers from the itunes store, the iPad, the computers, all of that. And typically when you meet an Apple person that has one Apple product, they got many Apple products because everything is integrated. So how do I create an integrated product line, an integrated growth strategy that allows me to add on complementary things, 1, 2, 3 degrees off, off center from where they've already purchased and allow that to happen. And then the cool thing is that you can also integrate that into your technology to automate the process. And then the last piece is this customer elevation. How do you elevate the customer from where they are when they first started with you to where you want Them to be truly connected. You have an intimate relationship with them based on trust, based on delivery of high value, based on loyalty in a way that they look at it and say, I like everything this person's doing. I like what they stand for, I like the products, I like how they're delivering it. They've taken care of me every step of the way and I am willing to take.

Time with them and buy more from them and be part of it. So one of the things that we want to do is what is your customer elevation strategy, the customer relationship strategy, to develop that over a period of time to, to create a customer for life. And you know, Shalene Johnson, my good friend Shalene Johnson calls those lifers. Because here's the thing that comes into play. Many times we think about this. A customer, they come in and they make one purchase. It's not about that single purchase, it never is about that single purchase. It's about the long term relationship you create with a customer. And what we call that is this the lifetime value of the customer. In other words, when someone comes into your sphere, Marie, when someone comes into your online sphere, what's their lifetime value? How long do they stay with you? How many products do they typically purchase? How many services do they typically purchase? Over what period of time, at what price point? And I add them all up and I say the lifetime value of the customer. Over a year and a half, maybe $2,000, $5,000, $1,000, $100. Whatever it is, I need to track that, I want to know that. So I have to have the systems in place to do that. Because what I really want to do is maximize the lifetime value of the customer. Because watch what happens. If I know that over a year's time, every customer that buys one thing from me will typically spend about $1,000. So if the lifetime value of each customer is $1,000, then at the beginning stages, when we talk about traffic cultivation, and I'm going to pay ad for ad spend to try and acquire a customer, if I know that every customer I acquire typically spends about $1,000, even if I spend $500 to acquire that customer, I'm still $500 up because it cost me 500 to acquire them, they spend typically a thousand. I'm still net 500 positive. So the answer to the question of what the lifetime value of a customer becomes really paramount because it allows you to understand how much you can put into acquiring that customer. If you don't know what the lifetime value of your customer is, then acquiring the customer, you might acquire them at $500, but they only spend $200. You're losing $300 on every every customer. So we want to one maximize the lifetime value of the customer. We want to track it so we know how we can go out and acquire those customers. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense to you too, Marie. And I hope this helps everyone out there. When you start talking about creating a business plan for an online business. It's all the factors we talked about in the last episode for a business plan, but these are the very distinct or specific elements associated with an online business. So content creation or product creation, traffic cultivation, conversion, optimization, after sale magnification, technology utilization, growth integration and customer elevation. Hope that you found this of help. Hope you found this of value and if you did, do me a favor, share it with a friend. There's a lot of people out there looking to try and develop their online presence, to develop their businesses. Let's give them the tools, let's give them the tactics, let's give them the things that they need to bring their dreams to life. And so share that with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe. That's the only way that I can make sure that I get you all the tools, templates and worksheets and the education and training that you need to really start to drive your business forward. It's your way to tap into my three plus decades of being an entrepreneur and advisor to entrepreneurs and building businesses from mom and pop to hundreds of million dollar, million dollar companies in that context. And remember, if you want to get make sure you download the workbook, the guidebook, the template, the tool that come with tools that come with each and every episode. For this episode you want to go to melabraham.com session033 to download the guidebook here. And if you're not at your computer, you can still get the guidebook by texting mylegacy one word, no spaces to 38470 and if you want to ask a question like Marie did, go ahead and go to askmelnow.com.

Leave me your question and I'll make sure that I get it answered on one of the upcoming episodes. And so that's it. I hope that helps you. I hope that serves you. I hope that you found this of value. Now we want to go out there, build it, execute on it, make a difference, go out there because the world needs you. And until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode, May your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers. Bye.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it at www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episod May your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

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