How To Start An Online Business That ACTUALLY WORKS in 2021 - Start a Successful Online Business!

How to start an online business that works, one that works for you instead of you working for it. Now, the sad fact is, is that most online businesses that are started fail. And even the ones that don't fail, more often than not, the owner ends up stuck in a business that's plateaued that ends up being more of a job than a business that they own that they are ultimately free of. Now, my name is Rich Sheffrin, and if you don't know who I am, I am the guy that originally coached with Ryan Dice when of Digital Marketer when he was first starting online, or Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels when he was just starting online, or Todd Brown of Marketing Funnel Automation, or pretty much every guru out there started out by starting with me. So I think I'm very well established to actually be talking to you about starting an online business. In fact, I've been running my own online business for 20 years. And before that I had some offline business businesses. In addition to that, I've helped some of the biggest companies grow. But that's not why you're here. So we're not even going to talk about that. So what I want to share with you is something more meta or something more global than what you're going to hear on most other videos that talk about the businesses that you should start or what type of businesses are the hot business right now. Because the truth is, is that businesses that succeed are not started because they're the hot business. Right? There's no advantage to you picking a hot business and then competing with all the other people that chose that hot business. So we're going to take a step back from there first, right? And what you have to understand is that business is the biggest game that you're ever going to play for money in your entire life.

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I had this client a long time ago. He was a professional tennis player. I would be an idiot to bet money on a tennis game with this client of mine who's a professional tennis player. It makes no sense. But as stupid as it would be for me to bet against this professional tennis player that I would beat him in tennis. It's much more stupid to play the game of business without an advantage to play the game of business like you would bet on a game of tennis. And the reason why is, is that the, the business that you start is going to be the biggest bet that you ever make in your entire life. It has the potential to be worth much more than the real estate you invest in. It has the potential to be worth much more than all the income that you've ever made from every job that you've ever had. Or it could actually go the other way and actually cost you a lot of money. So when people go out there and they sell you on an opportunity of a business, you got to take a step back and really ask yourself, is that business right for me?

Right.

Certainly. If you wanted to get married tomorrow, you could go to a pickup bar, wait for the most desperate person to walk in, and then propose marriage to that person. And while that might be a recipe to get married, it's certainly, certainly not a recipe to have a actually good marriage.

Right?

And you want to be married to a. To a business. And when you first start out, you don't want to be married to it, but you will be. And so therefore, it better be something that you enjoy and it better be something that you have an advantage in, right? It's the biggest bet that you're ever going to make. So when it comes to actually having an advantage, how can you tell? Well, before I tell you these steps, a couple things I want to tell you. One, one, if you are watching this right now, which obviously you are, please press the thumbs up. Please press the subscribe button. Please press the notification so that you know, every time I put a video out here, because every time I do, I try to give you the best information I can about what it really takes to be successful online. So that's first. Also, I've created a bunch of points here that are going to be where my name is, right there, there, there, there, wherever. Rich Efren. But what will be. There are a bunch of different points that I want to cover. And then last but not least, I'm gonna tell you a place. Actually, it's in the description below. But I'm gonna give you more information on how you can get a free training from some of the biggest names in Internet marketing. Everyone from Russell Brunson, Dean Graziosi, Neil Patel, Eric Hsu, Molly Mahoney, Todd Herman, James Von Elswick, Perry Marshall. And the names go on.

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But I'll tell you about that after this video. So now let's get to it. I want to make sure that you don't take anyone's bad advice. And before I give you the very last points here, before we dive into these points, we're going to make this your idea here. What I want to tell you is a model, okay? The best models have you do the least amount of work to get the most amount of information. Now, we're going to get into some of that in a minute. But I just want you to understand that you want to. When getting a business online off the ground, you can do it in a way where you go service to product, right? So you. You sell a service that, when you sell that service, it causes you to create the product that you're going to sell. So this way you actually get paid all the way through. And if you can't sell the service, then you know not to create the product. That's one. I was sharing some information earlier, and my good friend Nina mentioned to me that one of the smartest things I said in that conversation was, is that you don't get rewarded for the effort that you put into your business. It doesn't end up being that way. You. There's no extra reward for effort. And so if there's not an extra reward for effort, don't you want to do this in the easiest possible way? And so what I'm about to share with you is the easiest possible way. All right? So when I talk to business owners or entrepreneurs or people that want to be entrepreneurs, I ask them to consider these things when they're telling me their idea first. Who's your target?

Right.

And you should be able to answer this in two ways. One, who's your target market? Like, what are the people that you're going after? And then once you can describe who your target market is, the next step is to actually dive a little bit deeper and figure out what the actual person can you define your ideal customer?

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John Lee Dumas, who has a wonderful podcast called Entrepreneurs on Fire. I was talking to him the other day, and he talks about finding your perfect listener for your podcast. What would that person want?

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It's the same here. What does your target Persona, the target avatar, the target person prospect that you're going after? What is it, right, that they're looking for? What is their experience? Who are they, how old are they, what's their life like, etc. Okay, so who's your target? What specific problem are you solving? Obviously, you need to be solving either a problem, right? Or helping someone achieve a goal that they haven't been able to achieve, which is also a problem. So what problem are you solving?

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What's the market size? How big is the market? And then what's your business model? Whoops. Let's see. What's your business model? There it is. What's your business model? In other words, how does your business. How is your business going to get customers? How Is it going to get them to spend money? How is it going to get them to spend more money?

Right.

And what is the process of how your business creates whatever it's selling and how is it finding these people? This all comes together to be your business model, and then what ultimately is the solution you're offering? Because at the end of the day, the better the solution you provide, the more different that solution is than what's out there currently, the more likely you are going to be to succeed. So those are the first five, and these are five about your idea. So when you're thinking about your business idea, these should be the five that you want to answer when you're considering an idea.

Right.

Now, me as a business coach who, who's worked with literally tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and is responsible for quite a bit of growth online. People tell me business ideas all the time. And so these questions allow me to know whether or not the entrepreneur is on the right path and going to build a business that ultimately they can get free of, or are they going to be the type of entrepreneur that doesn't get get there, that either gets stuck somewhere in the middle or actually never succeeds at all, which is a damn shame. So, first thing is, do you have or have had the problem that you're solving? And the reason I asked this question is, is that it is so much easier to sell to someone who you have great insight about, and it's a lot easier to have insight about something that you've struggled with or continue to struggle with than not having that experience. So it's a plus sign for you if you've had this problem or you still have this problem and now you're going to solve it for yourself and you're going to solve it for others. But being able to articulate the problem will give you so much power to your audience, right? Because they will say to themselves, this person gets me or this describes me. And it's much easier to do that if you've actually experienced it. If not, that's where great copywriting comes in. All right, number two, is the problem severe, urgent, and consequential? The sad reality is most of us procrastinate most of the time. Most people don't solve their problems. We only solve the problems or we're only highly motivated to solve the problems where they're severe. It's a big problem, right? It's urgent. We have to solve this problem as soon as possible. And if we don't, there are consequences. I was sharing in a live stream earlier today that my very first product was teaching people how to beat a drug test. Because if you think about it, when someone types in how to pass a drug test in Google, what do we know about them? One, we know they have a problem. You don't type in how to pass a drug test unless you, you have a drug test coming and you think you're going to fail. If you fail that drug test, right, there are going to be consequences and you generally aren't just searching to know. It's because you have a drug test coming up rather soon. So that's a problem that's severe, it's urgent, and it's consequential. Number three is the problem frequently experienced. And by frequently I don't mean that the person keeps having the same problem. But in the market of your prospects, what percentage of them will have had this problem at one point and what percentage of them as a group of the overall are currently experiencing? Is it 10% at any given time? Is it 20%? Is it 90%?

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What's the number how what percentage do of your prospects in that market are probably experiencing that problem in this given moment? Is solving the problem necessary? You know, is this a nice to get rid of problem or is this a must get rid of problem? The next one really, next question really leads to just a furthering of the previous point. And that is, is that, is this a problem in search of a solution? And what I mean by a problem in search of a solution is that are the people who have this problem, are they doing things to get rid of the problem? Are they in search of a solution? Have they spent money for a solution? Have they tried to fix things on their own? If people are not trying to solve the problem, then guess what, the odds of you selling a solution, probably not that high. Next, is the market proven to spend money? There are some markets where it's very hard to get them to spend money.

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Masseuses spend a lot less money on marketing material than chiropractors, yet a lot they don't do the same thing. But a lot of the marketing can be slightly altered for either group. And so does your market have money to spend so that you can grow your business? If not, it's a moot point. And I've seen quite too many businesses actually be started in areas where the target market does not have money. And that's just a bad idea. Do you understand the market or are you a part of it?

Right.

If you have the same problem, then obviously you are, but maybe you don't have that problem, but you're still in the market. Props for you if you are. The reason why that's so important is something that I've taught for over a decade, and it's very important when it comes to marketing. And here's the quote, and it is that which is most personal. What is most personal to you? What you don't want to share with anyone else is actually most general. Most people share the same problems, but we don't express it. The first person that will express it or express it, even attributed to someone else, will resonate in the market hugely. So if you're in the market, you know what those things are that people experience and what they struggle with and the problems they have. You're in the game to win big. Okay? Do you have an unfair advantage against the competition? And this is where I was talking about how silly it would be for me to play tennis with my old client who's a tennis pro for money. Okay. You want to have the odds stacked in your favor. The only way that you can have the odds stacked in your favor is if you have an advantage. Well, where does this advantage come from? The advantage has to come from you in the beginning, either by your experience, your strengths, your passions. There's got to be something that you bring to the table, right, that allows you to have an advantage. It could be a better story, a better backstory. It could be that you've developed a new way to get an outcome. But there has to be something. And you might not get that advice from everyone. But I can assure you this, that if you're in a business without an advantage, the only way that you can make up for it is working harder and harder and harder than everyone else. And that's a losing game, because you will always find people willing to work harder than you. You will always find people who are better at outsourcing and paying very cheap labor to work harder than you. So if you don't have an advantage, like when you buy an opportunity from someone who's selling you a course on this online business that you can buy and leverage, you have zero advantage. Zero. And you will fail. And, yes, that's probably not what you want to hear, but, like, I'm trying to give it to you straight, and I want to. I'd rather you spend more time trying to figure out what the right business is for you than spending a lot of money and time on a lot of things that are the wrong business for you and potentially rob you of the opportunity of ever starting an online business. So do you have an advantage at the end of the day? You must. Can it be tested quickly and cheaply? I shared something earlier on my live stream today about when I used to be in the baby niche. And what we would do is we'd actually, we would develop a sales letter because a lot of these books that we were writing in the baby niche, there was no one selling an ebook in this in for this topic. So we would actually write up the sales letter. People would press buy. Now they'd go to the next page, which would be an order page, but it would only be the name and email address. And then it would say proceed to step number two, checkouts. And so they put their name and email address in and then they press the next button, proceed to checkout. And the next page would be a just a big image. And it would say, we apologize. We are currently updating the book. We will not charge your credit card because we don't have your credit card. You haven't submitted it yet. However, we do have your email address and we will send you a 50 discount coupon that you can use when we've updated the book. We are currently updating the book. I think I left that out. That is a much cheaper way than developing the product and doing everything else. But there's even a cheaper way and that is in this day and age. There are affiliate products for almost everything. And you could actually sell someone else's product to just see. Can you find the market? Can you get them to click on ads? Do they end up buying? And why not find out all that information before you ever create a single thing. Can it be launched quickly? Is there an easy, cheap and effective way that you can launch this? Can you identify where the market is online? If you can't identify where your market is online, then you can't sell, right? So are there groups in Facebook? Are there channels on YouTube? Are there people advertising under the key words, the major phrases that people type into search engines? Are there special sites where they get lots of traffic?

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Like if we're trying to target retired people, there's the American association of Retired Persons in the United States, arp, right? They have already aggregated a large older audience. So that would be a great place for us to advertise if we're selling to older people. So what about your business? What are you selling? And can you identify where your market hangs out online? 12. Are there complementary businesses that are already serving the same customers? By complementary, I mean non competitive. But if there are businesses that are already serving your market, then they've already done the hard work of aggregating your audience. And oftentimes you can do a joint venture deal, an affiliate deal, or a strategic alliance where you benefit from all the hard work that they've done. And they benefit from the hard work they've done by being able to monetize more, by getting a piece from you of the business they help you have. So let's go on. Do you have a following in the market or marquee clients in the market?

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If you have a following in the market, it's obviously easier to launch. If you have marquee clients, it's easier to launch it. By marquee clients, I mean clients like the ones I shared with you earlier. If you're in online marketing, you know who those people are. If you don't, you don't. But if since I'm talking to people who want to be online entrepreneurs or online marketers or digital marketers, obviously you want to have, I would want to have clients that those people would know and you would want to have clients that your target market knows. And I think this is the last point here. Is your solution better, faster or easier? And is it different from the competition? At the end of the day, one of the easiest ways to stand out from your competition is be different. You must be different. Different is obvious. You can see that from far away. Faster and easier is often not known until after the product or service has been bought. It should be better, it should be easier. But you might not get the opportunity for them to even know that if you're not different. So those are some of the ideas that I covered in a live stream I just did on how to start an online business that actually works for you instead of you having to consistently work for it. Now, in addition to everything I've shared, my favorite overall approach, just to share this with you, is a service to product. And what I mean by that is like the way I've always done it. So the way I've always created products of my business, I would write a report. That report would be about the way I saw the world that I knew. My prospects didn't see the world that way, but if they did see it that way, they would see the benefit of my product.

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So I would write reports that would help my prospects better, value what it is that I'm offering. Then I would announce a coaching program. I would try and sell said coaching program, and fortunately I was successful based on what I needed to say in order to sell the coaching program told me what I needed to have in the coaching program. Then I would deliver the coaching program and get feedback every step of the way, after every module. Then when I was finished with the coaching program, I would now have a product, that coaching program that I could sell that was created with people so it was better and it was more relevant because I had the guidance of my target market. So now let me tell you about this, this great training that you can have absolutely free. I know this was not my best video, but if you're watching this then you so deserve this. It is this link below. You will also see it in the description so you can just click on it. And this is a basically a dream come true for anyone who wants to market online. I gathered the world's top experts. They all flew into Delray Beach, Florida and for 24 hours we shared everything that we knew about how small businesses and online entrepreneurs could grow no matter how difficult big tech makes it for any of us. And so the link you see below and the link in the description below will give you 10 free episodes, absolutely free. All you have to do is opt in and you'll get 10 free episodes of some of the best training by some of the best marketers online today. So I hope you appreciate this message. Like I said, I know it's not like every other video out there about starting an online business. But take it from someone who has started numerous online businesses themselves, has coached countless others to successful online businesses, and has probably worked with many people who are starting further back with less than where you are starting now. What you need to do is think for yourself. Do not buy an opportunity. Create your own and create that opportunity on something that you can provide that gives you an advantage so that you have the largest opportunity to actually win. You have the largest probability to actually win and you don't go down a bunch of wild goose chases. Most people go out there, they buy lots of products on how to do stuff and then, and only after they've had all these products and still don't know what to do, they start thinking about what they should do. You need to think about what you should do first based on what you bring to the table, based on what you know, and then, and only then figure out how to execute that model. This is Rich Sheffrin to hire Profits and Beyond. I hope you click that link. You won't be sorry. And please make sure to subscribe. Thumbs up and most important, also comment to me. I comment back. I read every comment. I appreciate what you want to know. So tell me what you want to know or what you think of this video. Until I speak to you again. To higher profits of beyond. This is rich Sheffrin. Over and over out.