YouTube video (Hey Sabri) in which Sabri Suby answers a viewer asking where to focus limited time when starting a business. Sabri advises spending roughly 80% of effort on revenue-generating activities—getting clients and sales—testing offers with a minimum viable product/offer before building out backend systems, and postponing nonessential branding or website work until there is paying demand.
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Hey guys. This week on hey Sabri, I'm going to be answering Keelan Alrikinson's question. I'm sorry I butchered your name. They've written hey Sabri. I aimed to ask this question today and was pleased to see this video answered part of it before I asked. But first let me say I'm glad to finally find some content that sells it straight and not fluffed up like most so called gurus. You're definitely on track to become remembered as a modern Hopkins and Schwartz. Thank you for your kind words. My question is this. I'm a father and husband working a 9 to 5 who spends every spare moment devouring persuasive psychology, copywriting and marketing information I can rip my teeth into. I'm in the process of raising my own business from the obscurity of mere existence into something that would not only replace the grind, but provide a stronger tomorrow for my loved ones. In your experience, where should I double down and focus most in building this beast, given that I'm still starting out with only a few clients under my belt and maintain only limited time between work, family, study and getting this business off the ground? Great question and I have the answer for you. The area that you want to be focusing 80% of your efforts is in revenue generating activities, that is getting clients in the door. Because if you're trying to transition from being a 9 to 5 employee to building this business and building this beast, the thing that you're going to need to be able to do that is money and clients, right? And nothing happens until something is sold. So you really have to sell some stuff, bring some clients in the door, bring that revenue before anything else matters. Because if you don't have money coming in, then it's not a business, it's just a hobby. And what I see far too often is that people spend so much time and energy for not only waiting for like the best idea and the most opportunistic time for their to enter into the market and start their business. But then once they do that, they then spend an enormous amount of time in developing the back end of the business, creating the product or service that is that they plan on selling. And they might spend months, even years people spend on this stuff and then they go out to the market and they try to sell it and they figure out no one wants it or they find out that it's very difficult to sell it and they've just wasted all of this time and energy on developing this product or service that hasn't been tested my strategy on really testing this and just short cutting that whole time feedback loop down is first to develop, you know, a minimum viable product, or a minimum viable offer as I like to call it, going out to your marketplace, right, and try selling this and seeing what the appetite is for that. And then once that you know that you can sell it and there is indeed an appetite and the market is starving for what it is that you have, then and only then do you go and develop the back end and make sure that you got a world class product and a world class service. Because you know that you're investing that time to something that you will be able to go out there and sell and people will give you their hard earned cash for in exchange for. And when you're in your dungeon, you're toiling away on mastering this thing and getting it perfect, then you know that it's all going to be worth it because then you can go out and then you can just spend 80% of your time on selling that and bringing clients in, getting money and hiring a team to help you with the fulfillment of whatever it is that you're selling to your marketplace. So don't get caught up in all the noise. Do not spend time developing, you know, logos and company business cards and websites or any of that crap. You don't need any of that to begin with, right? You might need a basic one page landing page as a website, but the thing that you need is clients. So you really want to spend all of your time and energy on going out there and getting clients, bringing them in, delighting them, and going out and getting more clients. I hope that helps you. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. We're dropping a video like this almost every single day on YouTube and if you've got any questions, leave them in the comments box below with heysubri and I'll do my best to get in there and get that answered.
