MBA2691 Why It's Easier Than Ever To Make Money Online

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I got news for you. You are out of excuses. If you're listening or watching to this right now and you still haven't started an online business, let me be absolutely blunt. You have no excuse. It's never been easier than right now and I'm gonna prove it. I'm not saying it's effortless, but I'm saying the friction, the cost, the skill gaps, the gatekeepers, they're all gone. And that means the only thing that's between you and making money online is you. You are getting in your own way. We're going to talk about why and what to do about it in today's episode. Let's go. Welcome back to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business real quick. If these episodes help you in any way, hit the Follow button on this podcast app. It helps us to keep bringing you practical business insights three times a week for free. Thanks. I want to start with the tech because a lot of people get overwhelmed with the tech thinking that it's super complicated. First of all, back in the day when I was starting out, I'm just talking about like maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago. Building an online business required knowing how to code or paying someone a lot of money who knew how to code, setting up clunky websites and payment systems that didn't really work perfectly, dealing with merchants accounts, banks, SSL certificates, a lot of legalities, managing emails manually through confusing platforms. And good luck. If you wanted to set Up Automations didn't exist. Today. You can build a complete website with sales pages in minutes with simple tools like Shopify or Squarespace. You can collect payments instantly with Stripe, with no merchant account, with no setup fees needed, with really no out of pocket expense. You can automate your entire business and customer experience with tools like Zapier and Make and Auto. You need customer support. AI bots can handle that for you. Marketing, we're going to get into that in a second. But the point is that you don't need a team. You don't need thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. You just need a browser, really an idea and a little bit of grit. That's all it takes. And I'm telling you, starting up an online business today is so simple, it's so easy, it's almost too easy. And therefore people don't do it. Next, let's talk about AI. You can now write sales copy that converts using ChatGPT. You can generate full scripts for sales, videos, ads, landing pages in seconds. It's absolutely ridiculous. You can create product ideas, you can test them, you can refine them. You don't need to guess anymore. It's there for you. It's easy. You can use voice cloning to create a podcast off a script. You can even create an entire online course using AI influencers. This is absolutely game changing. I mean it doesn't stop there. You can create your own logos and branding and branding guides with just a few prompts. I mean, remember when you had to hire a copywriter or branding agency? Now you just need a good prompt. Remember when design was like a major bottleneck? I remember this like about 10 years ago, if you wanted to get something professionally designed, it would cost an arm and a leg money that you didn't have when you're starting out, otherwise you'd look really cheap. And now you have tools like Canva and Looka and Midjourney, they let you design whatever you want, like a pro. And they have AI tools that you could just tell the AI what you want and it will generate it. Even if you're colorblind and never open Photoshop, you can do this. I know this because I'm somewhat colorblind with a few col colors and I'm able to create great design with these tools. And here's the kicker. You can sell products that are generated by AI. We're talking about ebooks, templates, lead magnets, even mini courses. There is no excuse. Now you might be asking, is this cheating? Well, in my opinion, AI functions like Somebody in your company doing the work for you. You come up with the ideas, you come up with the direction, you come up with the strategy, and then they do the legwork just like any other founder would do. That has lots of employees that can do the work for them. Now you have AI. You have an army of tools that can create things that just pop in your head. This has leveled the playing field in a way that we've never seen before. Now let's talk about the next gift of the modern online world, and that's education. If you want to learn how to build a funnel, it's on YouTube. You can find out in a couple searches, right? Want to understand email marketing? There's a free 30 day crash course somewhere. It's everywhere, right? Content is available at your fingertips. If you need inspiration, if you need guidance, there's podcasts like this one, the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. There's my first million. There's Diar of CEO by Stephen Bartlett. There's Ali Abdaal. You name it, they give you exactly what they've done in their own businesses, like we do here, and just give it to you on a silver platter. There is absolutely no excuse that you don't know something because you can find out. It's okay not to know, but you can find out and educate yourself. I'm telling you right now, there is no need for you to sign up for a $10,000 mastermind. Trust me, I've paid and been a part of these types of Masterminds before. And ChatGPT is better than any mastermind I've been a part of. Honestly, the $20 a month I paid for the paid version of ChatGPT is well worth it. $20 a month. It's crazy, but the key here is not just to consume, but to do. And this is what I love about AI. It encourages you to do because you're producing content.

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Here's another reason it's never been easier. The platforms that you have access to want you to succeed because they profit when you profit. Let me give you an example. Stripe. Stripe is a payment processor. There's no monthly fees and all they do is take a small percentage of your sales when you make a sale, right? It's like 2.9% and 30 cents, I believe, for every transaction. Very reasonable. So you don't pay anything monthly. You don't pay a one time fee, you don't pay a setup fee, nothing. When you make money, then they will take a small percentage of that sale. You can set it up and sell your own products instantly. Like within 10 minutes you're up and running. Now here's the crazy thing. Stripe has their own products as well that you can sell to your customers. Things like Stripe Connect or Stripe Capital, which is their debt financing product. Like if somebody wants to get a loan and Stripe is able to offer that loan to your customers, and you get paid by Stripe by literally doing nothing but offering it to your customers. You tell your customers, hey, do you want to use this service by Stripe? And Stripe takes care of all the legwork, all the legalities, all the approvals and takes on all the liability. And all you do is just offer this service to your customers and get paid. I mean, they're virtually throwing money at you. And this is just scratching the surface. I went to the Stripe Tour conference that was taking place in Sydney and there's like 50 new features that Stripe has come out with to help you make more money. And that's not an exaggeration. Literally over 50 features. YouTube. If you want to publish videos on YouTube, as you start growing, getting more subscribers and get more views, you start to qualify to be part of their ad campaigns. Meaning you become a YouTube partner and you share ad revenue with YouTube. And that's not even considering the other private partnerships you can have with companies. If you run an ad in your videos, Instagram and TikTok give you discoverability. And it's free and you don't have to pay for reach if you make great content. The algorithms have changed now where even if you don't have a large following, if you have a great video they will continue to show to other people regardless of how many followers you have. I seen this for myself with TikTok, where a couple of my videos went a little viral and I got 100,000 views on a video that allowed me to get an extra 5 to 6,000 followers on TikTok. Amazon KDP lets you publish books with zero upfront costs. You could become a best selling author on Amazon and sell physical books that ship to people's doors without you worrying about any upfront costs. They take a percentage of of the sale. In other words, distribution isn't the problem anymore. If you make something great and talk about it, you will be discovered. You don't need a huge audience, you just need a clear offer and a path for people to buy. And all the facilities are there for you. I want to take a quick sidebar to talk about something that you might be thinking about. If you're in a particular country that doesn't offer some of these services or any of these types of tools, maybe you're in the Middle east or like from Egypt, for example. A lot of my family's still from Egypt and live there. Or you're in Africa or maybe you're in Eastern Europe and some of these facilities are not available. Well, there's a way to get around this. Establish a business in a country that does allow you to use these tools. And there's a lot of countries that allow you to do this, to establish a business, a separate entity than yourself in their country. And you could do this remotely online, you could set this all up and this allows you to then have a bank account in that country, all that kind of stuff and that business is established in that country. And for obviously you're gonna have to abide by the laws and the tax rules and all that kind of stuff and speak to a lawyer about that. But for all intents and purposes, your business would be for example, establish in Estonia with an Estonian bank account which is part of the eu, and you can conduct business and sign up for these types of services as if you were in Estonia. So there's so many solutions for any situation. Now let me give you some simple business models you can launch right now with minimal effort. Number one, one of my favorites is digital downloads, right? Things like templates, planners, notion dashboards, checklists, swipe files. These types of things are easy to create and deliver to your Customers, you can use tools like Canva or Gumroad or any kind of tool that allows you to create and sell these types of products. What I love about it is you make it once and you sell it forever. Right? Great leverage, great scale. AI powered services is a great option. Like you can offer AI enhanced tools or branding audits or social media post bundles. Anything that allows them to look better in their work or life is going to be easy to sell. You could charge $49 to $500 depending on your value, depending on what you're offering to people that need your services. Some people might just need their CV or their resume to be polished up and you could do that for them. Next, mini courses or workshops. Record a 60 minute Zoom training on your topic of expertise. Use platforms to sell these like we talked about Gumroad and there's all these other platforms that you can use to sell these products and services. You could sell it for 27 to $97 with a clear promise. Paid newsletters. You can have niche breakdowns. You can do stock research, which is so easy. Now with AI you can deliver productivity hacks and this is quite a simple, easy way for you to deliver great value. You could start with free and then upgrade people to a $5 a month plan to get exclusive content. You can use things like ConvertKit or Beehive to deliver this newsletter. So simple. Or you can start soft by just doing consulting and coaching one on one calls based on your unique experiences and skills. You do career coaching, fitness coaching, parenting, business ops, you name it. Okay, people need help with a lot of things. You can use Calendly plus Stripe to charge for your time. Simple. No product needed. Just you and Zoom. You don't need to invent the next Uber. You only need to solve one problem for one person in a clear way. That's all you got to do. And that brings me to the real reason why you don't have an online business yet. It's not the tools. It's not the lack of opportunity. It's not the economy. It's not even the competition. It's your mindset. You think you need more time. You think you need more clarity or more research or more credentials or more of something that you think you need. But what you really need is to take action. That's the one thing you haven't tried yet. You haven't actually done the thing that you want to do. Start, test, ship it, learn, repeat. That's all it takes. And you don't need to make a million dollars in Your first month, just make your first dollar and then 10 and then 100, then 1,000, then 5,000, then 10,000. Then before you know it, that million dollar mark is in reach. Momentum builds belief. Belief fuels action, and action builds wealth. This is the formula of my life, this is how I got to where I am today, is that I understand that nothing happens without taking action. Listen up guys and gals. This is the gold rush of our time. Except there's no need for pickaxes and panning for gold. Just good wi fi courage and some sweat equity, right? The doors are wide open. I know because I know what it was before. Will you walk through that wide open door? Will you take the opportunity, make a decision? Because any action needs to be proceeded with a decision. So take that decision, make that decision and make it happen. Because in 10 years someone's going to ask you, why didn't you take advantage of the easiest time in history to make money online? I don't know how long this window will be open for. This is why I'm encouraging you to take this opportunity now. And listen. I'm going to tell you what I needed to hear when I was starting out. There are far less capable people out there that are doing better than you. You can do this. It's not rocket science. Far less skilled, experienced, smart people have done what you want to do. So go ahead and do it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The only regret I have in my entrepreneurial journey is not starting earlier. They say the best time to start a business is yesterday. The next is today. So don't waste any more time. Decide to start and start taking steps to start taking action to move forward. I'm here to help you along the way with this podcast with all our resources at the Hundred Dollars mba. If you're not part of our newsletter, sign up because we send incredible great free templates and guides and lots of stuff that you're going to need along the way on the journey. You got our support, but you need to decide to make it happen. Thanks so much and I'll check you in the next one. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscrib subscribe to this podcast, hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode. From athletic stuff like a full court pickup game Swish. To athletish stuff like a half mile stroll. Get those steps in. Head to sierra or sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic. Sierra's got it.