MBA904 5 Businesses You Can Start Today

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Hey. Oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that gives you the business lessons you need to build the business you want. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba. And in today's lesson you will learn from five businesses that you could start today. Yes, I'm talking about right now. These are five businesses that I know that no matter what budget you have, you can make it happen. If you have a laptop and an Internet connection, you could do this. Now the point of today's lesson is not only to give you some ideas of some businesses you could start, but also to break down that you don't need much to get started. My biggest regret in business is not getting started sooner. The sooner you get started, the more experience you're gonna have, the better you're gonna get as an entrepreneur. So the lesson of today is to get started. And here are five ways you can with no excuses. Many of these are businesses that I've done in the past. So I'll share with you some examples from those businesses and I'm gonna give you the exact introductions of how to get started with each one. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Before I jump into today's Lesson five businesses you could start today. Or I want to let you know that I have a very special, special announcement I want to share with you at the end of the episode. This is something I'm so excited to share with you. Something that means so much to me and I think you're really gonna love it. So hang on for that announcement. Okay? Five businesses you could start right now. And I can say this because I've started these businesses, I know what it takes and it's even easier now than it was when I started them. So let me start with business idea number one. A service agency. I ran a service agency for years and actually it was one of my favorite businesses because one, my overhead was so low. My staff, my team, it's the person you're listening to right now. I worked from home and I fulfilled service based jobs. Now in my service based business, I was designing and developing WordPress websites. I was also doing things like logo design, I was doing things like creating people's banners on Facebook and YouTube channels. I even did some business card designs as well. Now, did I go to graphic art school? No, I did not. But it's something that I was okay at. I wasn't great at it. I was okay, but for the most part my taste was better than my clients. So they appreciated it and paid for it. And you could start any kind of service based business today. You could be a designer, you could be a developer, you could be a writer, you could be a voiceover artist. All these things you can do from the comfort of your home. You could develop packages that you could sell to your clients. I used to have different tiers of different kinds of websites that you could buy from me. And I had a simple three page website. It was a homepage, a contact page and a services page where just basically detailed what I offered. Now, I know you're thinking, that's great, Omar, but how do I get clients? Well, it's going to require a little hustle, but it's not possible. I was doing this living in New York City, the most competitive place on the planet. But I got a lot of my clients outside of New York. You know, it's the Internet. I can get clients around the world. I joined a lot of business discussion forums, Facebook groups, and just was really helpful there, giving people business advice, doing what they call a website breakdown, where people would send their websites and I would critique it for them, tell them these are things I would change and eventually they'd look me up, discover what my website is, and they'd Say, hey, I love your services. And I was reasonably priced. So, you know, people would hit me up with requests to buy some of my packages. But I also hit the streets. You can go to your local businesses around your area. There's still a whole lot of local businesses that don't have a website, that don't have a web presence, that need work on their social media pages. Maybe they need a new cover art. One of the techniques that really helped me is I actually did my research before I went to that local business, found out they don't have a web presence. Whether it's a website or a Facebook page that looks great and I would design it for them. I would do like a quick mock up just in Photoshop or something and then I would present it to them and say, hey, I notice you don't have a web presence. I'm a web developer. I have these services. Here is what your website would look like, here is what your Facebook page could look like. And they'd be pretty shocked that I actually put in the work and do that. And they're like, wow, this looks great. I would love this. Now they can see what they're actually getting and you can tell them, hey, this is what it costs. I can implement this for you. All I need is some details and it's an easy sell. So having a service based business is very low cost, but requires a lot of hustle. But you could do it. You can be a business owner really quickly and you might be thinking, hey, what if I can't do any of these things? What if I am not a skilled designer or I don't know how to be a great voiceover actor and do voiceover, you know, samples or work for people, no problem. You can manage the process. You can find other talent that is willing to do it at a lower price and you make the difference. It's called arbitrage, right, where you may charge, you know, $100 for a logo, but you can, you know, get that logo created for $40 and you make a profit of $60 in that transaction. And you're getting paid basically to be the middle person. And there's plenty of sites like Fiverr or Upwork or Freelancer where you can get talent from around the world to do projects for you. Now you might be thinking, hey, so why don't people just go to Freelancer or Fiverr or whatever? Yeah, there's plenty of people that go there directly, but there's a lot of people that don't know about them and don't Want to go back and forth and deal with that hassle, they rather just have you do it. That's where the service and service based business comes in. You get the point. You can get started with this right now. All right, business idea number two. And this is one of the oldest professions in the book. No, we're not talking about what you're thinking. We're talking about being an author. Yes, you could write a book. And writing a book today is so much easier than the past. Now with self publishing, Amazon makes it so easy with their self publishing platform. With Kindle you could basically publish a book and go through the whole process in a week. So if you have any ideas you want to put down on paper. Figuratively, Right. If you're an expert or you're not an expert, you just know something. You are experienced in an area. You know, I don't think I'm an expert teacher, but I was a teacher for 13 years and I have some experience in that area. I think I could write a book in that and just share the things I've learned as a teacher. And I think a lot of the stuff I share in that book would be so helpful for new teachers because they haven't got started in that career yet. I'm a few steps ahead of them. So you don't have to be the expert to write a book. In fact, a lot of the times it's better for you not to be an expert because you're only again, a few steps ahead of them. So you're relatable, you're not going over their head with your information. Right now, a book doesn't have to be 500 pages long. It could be a hundred pages. Heck, how about books that are like 80 pages, 60 pages? As long as the info is valuable, people will buy it, people will recommend it, people will review it. And all you need 20 Write a book is a computer. Really, you don't even need any kind of software. You can, you can use Google Docs and create a document and then convert that into the Kindle format over on the Amazon system. You can even with Amazon, sell paperback books. They have a system where they will print books as people order them. So you could be a published author in no time. Now I know there's not a lot of money in books, but that's just the beginning. You could sell other types of services later on, whether it's speaking at an event, whether that's coaching, you can be selling courses, things like that. And we'll talk about that in a bit. But being an author is a real profession. These days. Some people write a book every six months. And as they write more, as they have more books out there, the more popular they become, the more they sell from their old books. Because people find out about them from their new books and say, hey, does this author write any other books? I like this person's style. And with Amazon, they really give you a platform so you're found. It's quite easy. And of course, you can build your own website and do your own content marketing to grow your audience. And, you know, you can, you know, give away samples of the book, you know, whether it's the first couple chapters to grow your email list and then you can let them know how to buy the book or tell them about the next book you're going to be coming out with. You get the point? This is a great opportunity, a great way for you to start a business right now. Business idea number two, that you can start immediately, and I just mentioned it a second ago, selling online courses. Now, this is gonna require a little bit more work than writing a book, a little bit more time, but it's definitely doable. If you have a smartphone right now, you can definitely shoot a high quality video course without investing in any kind of camera gear. Yes, you can get a fancy camera and a fancy mic and you can do all that kind of stuff, but you don't have to, you don't even need to be on camera. You don't even need to use your phone or your camera if you don't want to. You can do a screen capturing type of video where you capture your computer screen, Whether you're using PowerPoint SL or you are actually just showing a tutorial of how to use a other piece of software or something like that. There's plenty of people that do tutorials on Photoshop, Sketch, how to use Basecamp, all that kind of stuff. And they're just using their mic over their screen, over what they're recording on the screen, on their computer. Very simple. Now, a lot of people kind of think, oh, online courses, really? Do people buy these things? Yes, it's a huge industry and a lot of people think, well, there's YouTube. Why don't people just YouTube how to do things? Well, because a lot of people on YouTube do not know how to teach. It's not concise. They have to jump around from one video to another. Do it like a treasure hunt to learn how to do something. Now, YouTube is great for one thing, like let's say, for example, how to tie A Windsor knot, like with a, you know, dress tie. But if I want to learn how to dress smart on a budget, I want a cohesive course. I want to get in and get out. I want to learn this thing with some sort of time constraint. So ideally I would love a 90 minute course on that topic. I'd pay 200 bucks for that, no problem. People pay $200 for a whole lot less. They pay $200 for a night out or they pay twice as much for a weekend away. Courses are incredibly valuable. They can change your life. They can really improve the quality of your life. And brevity is so important in our day and age. People want to learn something and just get on with their life. They don't want to be wasting their time going from one video to another in that distracting zone of YouTube where they're going to get distracted with some other video that is not on the topic that they want to learn. So courses are great and you can, you know, sell them very easily with all these great course platforms. There's teachable, there's teachery. You can do live courses. If you want to do webinars, Shameless Plug, you know, you can use Webinar Ninja, for example, my software. But it couldn't be easier. You really just gotta get down and do the content again. You don't have to be an expert, you just need to be a few steps ahead. And it doesn't have to be long. In fact, the course, if it's short but it's impactful, people will love it and recommend it. All right, business idea number four, affiliate marketing. Now unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there on the Internet that have given affiliate marketing a bad name. Some people are using affiliate marketing as the same thing as multi level marketing mlm. And that's not the same thing. Affiliate marketing is recommending reviewing a product and then giving your affiliate link, whether it's on Amazon or somebody else's platform or product, and you getting a commission for recommending sharing that product with your link. Now there has been some legitimate seven figure businesses in our space that has been built around affiliate marketing. One of them that comes to mind is Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. He publishes his income reports on his website and you can see how much money he makes just off affiliate commission. Obviously it's taken him years to get to that point with great content on his website, with a great podcast. He's done a lot for the community. But the point is he started somewhere and I would definitely niche down when it comes to affiliate marketing. So if you love fishing, start a fishing blog. And you can start very simple by having an Amazon Associates account. And that's basically an account where you can use Amazon links and get paid commission with when people buy things off Amazon using your link. So you can do reviews on fishing rods if you're into fishing or fishing gear or whatever it is, right. I've been reading a lot of blogs about how to learn the piano. This is something I really want to learn. I want to learn how to play the piano. And one of my first steps is buying my first keyboard, right? And there's lots of blog posts about what is the best keyboard to start with. What are the different ranges of keyboards depending on your price preference or price range. So these people that have these blogs also do YouTube videos comparing the different keyboards. And there's one in particular that I really enjoyed their reviews. And they say, hey, thanks for reading my review. If you enjoyed it, click my affiliate link. They say, click my affiliate link. It's not going to cost you anything when you buy from my affiliate link, but it's going to allow me to fund my business. And I'm happy to do that because they've helped me. So it could be in any niche. Now, obviously, the larger the purchase, the larger the amount of the product, the the more money you're going to make. Because usually affiliate links or affiliate commission is a percentage of the sale, but volume also is something to consider. Now, Amazon Associates is kind of like the place to start or the most well known affiliate program. But there's products out there around the world. So many products that have an affiliate program that you can join and you can review and you can recommend them. My only piece of advice is, you know, obviously you can't give great reviews for everything. You gotta be opinionated. You actually gotta be honest about your reviews. And most of the time, the things you're gonna review are not black and white. Like, yes, this is great, or this is horrible. It's usually like, hey, if these are your needs, then I would go with this one. But if these are your needs, I would go with this one. So all you really need is a simple website and some time to do your research, and of course, a publishing schedule. Whether you're gonna be writing blog posts or creating videos or whatever it is, you gotta make sure that you're publishing content so. So people can find you and click on your affiliate links. Gas, snacks, tolls.

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All right, one more great business idea. You can start right now, you can start today. And that's coaching or consulting. This is another business that I did for a very long time in the past where I opened up my time to coach people. I did group coaching, I did one on one coaching. And again, I wasn't really doing things very, very high level. I actually prefer to do things where I'm just trying to get people started, where I'm a few steps ahead of them. And I want to say, hey, these are the pitfalls I went through. You need to avoid these things. They would share, you know, some of the challenges they're having and I'll be like, yep, I went through those challenges. I'll tell you exactly how I went through them, how I overcome them. And I would set up live calls using a webinar or using a meeting software. And I used to do small groups of, you know, five, six people. I would charge a monthly fee and we would meet, you know, once a month. You can meet once you twice a month, once a week if you want to. I remember doing once a week at some point. It's so valuable because it keeps people accountable. It helps people learn from each other. You know, the group coaching. As a group, people hear what other people are going through and how they can, you know, improve and you give them advice and that advice could be applicable to them as well. You could do one on one coaching, which is also great. And again, it doesn't require any overhead. And one of the ways I got clients was I just blogged about different topics that I would be able to coach people on. People found me through Google. They saw that my rates were pretty reasonable. My group coaching and my, you know, one on one coaching. And I had those two options and people felt like, hey, if I can afford the one on one, I'll go for it. If they're on a budget, you know, their group coaching is a great, you know, a great option for them, I believe. My first group coaching call, I charged $3,000 for six months and it was once a week. So they got like 24 sessions for $3,000. And I offered payment plans and things like that, so it was very affordable for people. And I did multiple group sessions. I kept the group small, you know, five to six people. And hey, if you do, you know, two or three group sessions a day, three or four times a week, that's a living. And to be honest with you, that was just like my bread and butter. It was easy for me because, hey, I taught for 13 years and that was just my strength. So if you love teaching people, if you feel like you love sharing with people, helping people, you know, coaching, consulting, it's a great, great way to start a business. Now, after I've just shared five ways to start a business today, you might be thinking, you know, thanks, Omar, that was great. But I'm not really feeling every single one of them. I'm not super passionate about any of them in particular. And I'm here to tell you that's okay. You don't need to be passionate to get started. You just need to get started. I know that sounds like a really raw advice, but it's the truth. You just need to get started. You need to know what it feels like to be an entrepreneur. You need to become a better entrepreneur. You have to start the process and start learning from your experiences. A lot of these businesses that I shared with you that I've done, I didn't like, get up in the morning every day and say, this is my calling. I enjoyed it actually, because it was something new and novel. But I knew it was not what I was going to do for the rest of my life. It was just my launching pad. It's a way for me to get started. It's for me to know how it feels to make a dollar without a paycheck. Sometimes people overhype. This whole idea of you have to do what you're passionate about. I'm passionate about being an entrepreneur and this is the first step of me being an entrepreneur by just being, being an entrepreneur, by starting a business, by doing something today. So don't get caught up in that, in your head. Just get started and do something, make some money, get some momentum, build a brand for yourself, build a name for yourself in whatever expertise you're in, in whatever genre you're in, whatever niche you're in. I didn't build WordPress websites for the rest of my life, but a lot of my clients bought my courses. They're $100 MBA members now. They're listeners of this podcast. You know, you evolve as an entrepreneur, you change, you improve, and that's normal. But you got to get started somewhere. So just get started. The whole point of today's lesson is to give you no excuse not to get started. You have to get started now, even if you just see this as an exercise, as like a project you do in school to start a business just so you could do it, give it a good six months, give it a year. These are great ideas you could do on the side while you're in a job. So go ahead and, and get started. All right, that wraps up today's lesson, and I promised you that I have a very special announcement and I'm so excited to share it with you come Monday, January 1, 2018. That's only a few weeks away. About four weeks away. The $100 MBA show is going back to daily. We're going to be publishing a new episode, a new lesson, Monday through Friday, five days a week. We can't wait for it because I personally am so excited as the host of the show because I love the daily format and that's what the Hunter Ombay show was from the start when we launched it in August 2014. This last year, 2017, we transitioned to a weekly podcast. We gave it a try. We wanted to see how we would do with a longer episode format. But we decided that the 100 MBA show really is a short 10 to 15 minute show. And in order to give great value to our audience, we want to keep it concise, we're going to keep it short, and we're going to do it daily. So if you haven't hit subscribe, do it now. That way you don't miss any of our daily episodes come January 1st. We can't wait for that day as you imagine I'm already planning for. We're already starting recording for these episodes. We got some great episodes coming up. Our Q and A episodes are coming back on Wednesdays where you can ask questions and I answer them on the air. Freeride Friday is coming back where we give away a free ride to one of our programs. It's going to be a whole lot of fun. I Can't wait. Hit subscribe and you'll get all the episodes automatically. All right, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things that hold you back from getting started is doubt, is fear, is these random thoughts that come to your mind, like, okay, what if I build this website or this consulting business and no one shows up or no one buys my product or my services, and then you just stop dead in your tracks? Horrible move. Why? Because you could say that about any business. You have to get started. You have to build. And building that website or building that business so you can start bringing in clients is a great exercise in itself. That's how you learn. That's how you become a doer and not a thinker and a talker. Don't be one of those people that talks about all these businesses they want to start but never do start a business, even if it's not the business. So you can actually tell yourself and maybe even the rest of the world, I'm an entrepreneur. That's what I do. And for me, that was enough to get started. For me to be just amongst other entrepreneurs to say, hey, I'm an entrepreneur because I built my own business even though it's small. It's a small consulting business, but I'm a business owner. And just to be able to say that I felt I already won. I hope that helps. And I hope to see you in our next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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