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Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster, and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. There are so many scammers out there trying to tell you that you can make easy money. Don't get fooled. Making money online isn't magic. It's not luck. And it's definitely not about finding some secret nobody knows about. But let me tell you what making money online actually is. It's a skill. Scratch that, it's a set of skills. And just like any real skill, whether it's writing, coding or bricklaying, it takes time. It takes practice. It takes effort. So be on the lookout. If somebody tells you that they have a shortcut to instant wealth online, they are lying to you. Today we're going to break down the scams to avoid so that you don't waste your time and money like I did back in the day. What actually works, the real way to make money online and 3 low risk. Not zero risk, but low risk business models. You can start today. Let's get into it. Welcome Back to the $100 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. Let's get one thing clear. Business is not a single skill. It's a collection of skills. Sales is a skill. Marketing is a skill. Managing money, hiring operations. I can go on and on. They're all skills you need to improve over time. And like any craft, you need to learn them, you need to practice them. You need to get better over time. When I first got started in this whole business and entrepreneurship journey, I made a lot of mistakes. Even when I started my software company, Webinar Ninja, over a decade ago, which grew to 30,000 users, it got acquired by Proprofs. I didn't know everything, but I knew enough to get started and, and every day I built upon that foundation. If you're not willing to do that to get started, to learn as you go along, you're not going to make it. Listen, business is simple, but simple doesn't mean easy. Listen, putting a basketball in a hoop is simple, but to do it at the highest level, where you get paid really well, is not easy. And the same goes with business. All right? We're going to get real and honest about the scams you need to avoid, right? I'm going to call out the BS so you don't fall for it. Here's the first red flag that you need to be careful of. Just copy my system and you'll make 10k a month. No business works exactly the same for everyone. If you're selling a system instead of a skill, it's a scam. You are unique. Your business is unique. The customers you're going to attract are unique. Not one thing is going to work for everyone. This is why through this podcast, I'm trying to teach you skills, things that you will use in your own way with your own experience. Next red flag no work required Passive Income on Autopilot There is no such thing as true passive income. From day one. You need to invest time, effort, money to have some level of passive income in the future. Even most passive businesses like online courses or memberships or even real estate take a ton of work upfront to set up. But this whole set it up in a few days and forget it and make millions of dollars Idea scam Next red flag. Buy this course and make money immediately. If making money was that easy as buying a course, everyone would be rich. Learning is great, but without implementation, it's worthless. And it's all about the implementation. I could tell you firsthand from selling coaching and courses and all kinds of programs and products. People that implement the program or implement the product are the ones that succeed and most people don't implement. So the course itself is not going to make you rich. Is how you apply it to your business and your products and your services is what's Going to make all the difference. Another red flag drop. Shipping is the easiest way to get rich. It's not. Margins are razor thin. Competition is insane because you're dealing with commodities, products that you could buy anywhere, and ad costs are through the roof. If it's pitched as an easy business model, it's probably not a profitable business because you need to put in some effort to get that profit. Real businesses solve real problems. Scams sell shortcuts. So anytime you see somebody telling you this is a shortcut to do this, this is a hack, don't believe it. So what actually does work? Let's break it down. Let's strip down what a business is to its core fundamentals. A real successful business does three things. Just three things. Okay? Number one, it offers something that people already want. Okay? Very simple. You sell something that people want, whether they need it or want it or desire it, they are willing to buy it. Too many people are offering things that people just don't want and they're struggling or they're kind of meh about. You want a business, you want a product, you want a service that people actually want or need, because this is going to make your whole life a whole lot easier. It's going to allow you to push the boulder down the hill and not up the hill. The second thing a successful business has is it sells for a price lower than the value it provides. Timeout, Timeout. This is everything right here. Now, this doesn't mean sell things cheaply. It means the value that you offer is so valuable is so good that the price is kind of not that important. All right? So you sell something for a price that's lower than the value it provides. So, for example, why do people have an iPhone? It's $2,000. Because they see more value than $2,000 worth in the phone, so they buy it. They say, that's a good buy. I will buy an iPhone because I value it more than $2,000, and therefore I'm happy to pay 2,000. Do. When it comes to luxury goods, this is even more important. Do you think somebody who buys a Bentley cares if the car is 450,000 or 500,000? No, the difference between the 50,000 is not that much. Because owning a Bentley is more valuable than even half a million dollars to them. The way they make them feel, the way it feels inside. Whatever the experience you're having at the end of the day, when you sell a product that is more valuable than the price, this is when you win. Number three, it does all this profitably meaning after all your expenses, paying yourself, paying employees, your vendors, all your bills, you still have money left over. You're making a profit. That's it. That's business. You don't need to be first to market. I wasn't first to market with Webinar Ninja, my webinar software. You just need to do something better or more unique than somebody else. Okay, when I say better or more unique, this could just mean serving a specific audience that's underserved served. For example, if you want to get into the travel business, be a travel vlogger. There's tons of vloggers that are serving how to travel on the cheap, how to travel for, you know, $20 a day. An underserved market are people that want to have luxury travel, wanna spend a little money and have a memorable experience because they don't know how many times they're gonna get to go to that country or have that experience. Making money online is about offering something people will pay for. That's it.

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So I want to give you three low risk, not completely no risk. There's no such thing as no risk businesses, but low risk businesses you could start today. If you're starting out, you probably don't have a ton of money to invest. And that's okay because you do have one asset, which is time. And here are three businesses you could start with low financial risk, but high time, commitment and effort. And hey, you want this, right? This is going to change your life. And you're going to get to do something that will give you full autonomy over your time, your money, money and your future. So let's get into the first one, coaching and consulting. If you have a skill or experience in something, people will pay for your help. Now you might think that, hey, the experience I have, the skill I have is not that big of a deal. It is to somebody who has zero idea of your world, of your skill, of your experience. If you know a little bit about how to post effectively on Instagram, that's a really incredible skill to somebody who has no idea how to use Instagram, doesn't even have an Instagram account. But they have a business and you need to promote it. Some examples are business coaching, fitness coaching, career counseling, negotiation lessons, anything anyone is willing to pay for so that they can get better at whatever they do. So how do you get started with consulting or coaching? Pick a niche, pick a specific audience that you can help solve a problem for. Next, offer a free session. This could be like a live webinar to a group of people. This allows you to get testimonials and social proof that you can actually provide value. All you gotta do is ask on the webinar. Hey, in the chat, can you tell me what your number one takeaway was? What was your favorite part of today's session? How did today's session help you in any way? Next, charge for clarity, not complexity. Help people get results, not just give them advice. When I was a teacher in a former career, I started coaching on the side. People needed help setting up their websites and their branding and I started small. I started charging what I could and, and I built a client base. People want to get somewhere, they want a result and I helped them build a website that got them clients. As long as I get them a result, I win, they win, they give me a testimonial, I have a profitable business on my hand. The second type of business that you can start is a service based business. This is where you do the work for your clients. Some examples are like copywriting, graphic design, video editing, social media management. The reason why services is so compelling and actually one of the easiest things to sell is because it's done for you. It just solves the whole problem for the client. They don't need to learn how to write better. You just write for them. They don't need to learn how to put together some graphics so their website looks great. You create the graphics and put it on their website. Well, when I started my Service based business 14 years ago, I actually started on a marketplace. Marketplaces like Upwork or Fiverr. I only did this to get my first few clients so I can get some testimonial, get some work and a portfolio that I could put on my website. Once I secured those clients and had some testimonials, I was able to just get clients through my own website. I ran simple ads with Google Ads that just drove traffic to my website and got me clients. You want to specialize in a specific skill, don't try to be a general freelancer. The services that I hire in my own business are very specific. Graphic designers, developers, copywriters, they do something specific very well. And another quick tip is as you get more clients, raise your prices because you're getting more experience, you're getting better, the value offer is more. I used to raise my prices after every new customer. So for example, let's say I charge $2,000. The next time I had a client I charged 2,500, the next time 3,000. At some point I had a ceiling. And when you hit a ceiling, you know, now it's time to hire other people to do the work for you. An example is a friend of mine started editing podcasts on for small creators. Within a year he was making six figures because podcasters need editors, they need somebody to edit their podcasts. And he positioned himself as somebody that is for the creative market. The third type of business that you could start is a digital products business. This is where you create once but sell forever. Some examples are like online courses, ebooks, templates, memberships. How do you get started? Well, teach what you know. Turn your knowledge into a sellable resource. Pre sell before you you build. Make sure people actually want your course before you build it. So maybe you can sell the course before it's available so they get like first access. You just need a sales page and an outline of what the course is all about and the results that you are looking to achieve for your clients, for your customers through the course. And once the course is out, keep improving it based on the feedback you get. A good example is my program, the hundred dollar mba. We pre sold the first version that we built and that way we were able to know the demand is there for our course. I then spent a few months creating the program and I was able to deliver to my customers and get feedback immediately. By the way, I'm not here to sell my program. I wanted to create this video so that you make an educated decision about how you want to move forward with your business education. The point I'm making is don't build something and hope people buy it. Sell it first, then build it. Making money online isn't about luck. It's about strategy. It's about skills. It's about patience. Choose a real business model, not a get rich quick scheme that somebody tried to sell to you. Focus on solving real problems for real people and expect to work hard before you see big results. I think that's fair enough. Because here's the thing. The people who stick with it, they win. The people that look for shortcuts, they quit. So if you're in it for the long haul, you're already ahead of most people. And if you want a more detailed, step by step guide on what it takes to quit your job and start an online business, the reality of it, then we have a detailed guide that you can download for free. It's called the Escape plan. Just go to 100- MBA-NET and you'll see it right there on the homepage. It's absolutely free. 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 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've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode. Building a portfolio with Fidelity Basket Portfolios is kind of like making a sandwich. It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics, and managing it as one big juicy investment. Now that's pretty good. Learn more@fidelity.com baskets Investing involves risks, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member NYSE SIPC Member.