5 Things You Need for Business Startup Success

Here are the questions for this GPS Business Podcast Q&A:

Do I need to get capital or a loan to start a business?

Depends on the kind of business – if you are producing or manufacturing or selling products that you have to make then yes you will need start-up capital.

What’s the best way to start making money in a business?

This is a great question because every single business coach in the industry today never talks about this. They refer to profits (when they mean revenues) and wave a few numbers around, like ‘6 figures’, but no one addresses the important issue of revenue and cash flow. I do, it’s the foundation of my business training because you must make money in your business or you will be out of business. 

When is the best time to start a coaching program?

What is coaching and how do you define it? 

Coaching individual or group is always a good way to work with clients.

You can offer coaching services at any time, with both individual or group coaching.. 

Biggest mistake people make – charging too much and making programs that are too long. And offer a price point customers can afford – group coaching is less expensive than individual coaching and a paid master class is also a low cost option that generates revenue, educates your audience and is an opportunity for you to offer training and information and share your expertise.

Don’t shame yourself because you do not have 1000 people in your group from the outset. Everyone begins at the beginning and having fewer people at the outset is a blessing because you get to fine tune the program with their feedback.

How do you handle difficult clients?
Depends on what they do – I do not tolerate abuse or criticism and if that happens I fire them and block them from purchasing

If they attack you verbally or online, there are legal remedies for that. Do not tolerate it.

Get an attorney to write a cease and desist letter especially if they threaten to defame or interfere in your business. 

Have a very clear Terms of Use and procedures on your website so you can refer to that with difficult clients.

And once the situation is handled be sure to block them and no longer allow them to buy from you. You do not need to have these kinds of clients in your business.

What kinds of services should I offer in my business?

Coaching or mentoring is a great option and everyone knows what that is. But don’t build your business with it, coaching I 

Programs, courses, and masterclasses are also very good options for cash flow and to give people opportunities to learn from you. 

A paid masterclass or launch or challenge is a good source of cash infusion. 

Take someone through a transformation that you have gone through as a case study.

One on one coaching or sessions is a good place to start. Don’t believe the ‘hours for dollars’ people who teach you to trade hours for dollars but just charge a lot more with a ‘raise your rates’ philosophy.

Other great services to offer is consulting and contracting, which offer your expertise and skills in a specific area. 

Many people define these areas in the wrong way so let’s clarify what they are. 

Price point for individual sessions?

It’s an insult to charge too much or more than your market will pay. If people tell you your price is too high, it is too high. Lower your price or change your audience. What do others in your space charge? Charge a little less

How can I show my customers that I am an authentic resource for them? 

Share your story and experience because that is your point of connection

Focus on your point of resonance – how do you want them to resonate with you?

Be mindful of where they are now (where you once were) and how you are relevant to their situation

Be honest about your experiences and how you relate to them and their experiences. Above all they want to be understood and to have someone relate to them. 

That is it for this week's Q&A and if you want to submit a question use our email support@enlighteninglife.com and put GPS podcast QA in the subject line. 

Visit gpsbusinessacademy.com for more business resources and the expert business 'advice, resources, and training' you need to make your entrepreneurial dreams a solid business reality. 

I just made my final $239 payment for B-School and I could not be more relieved. Every month I have been dreading having to pay for the program that I haven’t accessed in months and that I have my regrets about signing up for. I tried the B-School experience because I wanted to learn some new marketing techniques and to see if I could improve my business processes. Since I have been online since early 2004, I have experienced a lot of changes in the online world. I was open to learning new strategies and applying some new procedures in my business. B-School is one of the most aggressively marketed online business programs and I was curious to see what it was all about. 

Although I thought the $2499 tuition price was very expensive, I thought that the marketing training alone would be helpful since Marie Forleo has access to some of the top internet marketers in the industry. 

I had read a lot of reviews about the program, all of them positive and glowing which made me somewhat suspicious. The old adage, ‘you can’t please everyone’ applies to all businesses and I wondered why I could not find a single negative B-School review. So I did a little digging and it seems that Marie and her team don’t like negative reviews. In fact, they have a clause in their terms and conditions, which you must agree to before signing up for B-School, which specifically prohibits you from posting critical reviews of the program. 

Really? Aside from violating the US  Constitutionally protected free speech, it also violates the Consumer Review Fairness Act which specifically empowers consumers to provide reviews of products they purchase, positive or negative, and also specifically prohibits sellers from limiting customers’ ability to review their products. 

So this B-School review is my lawful assessment of my B-School experience and is provided within the terms of the Consumer Review Fairness Act, as well as my expertise in the areas of business, economics, finance, technology, and law, which are all areas I have education, experience, and authority. Any attempt to intimidate, threaten, or harass me for this review will be responded to with civil and criminal prosecution.

Read the rest of the article on the blog at gpsbusinessacademy.com 

Thinking about starting a business? Here are 5 things you need to do for a quick, successful startup. Monday Motivation is you business training resources with tips, tactics, and training to start your business the 'cash flow to profit' way, with Jennifer Hoffman, the iconic business expert and cash flow catalyst with the intuitive advantage.

5 things you need to do for a quick, successful startup

1.  Implement a cash flow plan from the start. You do not have to provide expensive courses, programs, and coaching. In fact, it’s better that you don’t. Instead, focus on high volume, not high prices. You’ll create a better cash flow stream with more consistent and predictable revenues, and you will provide affordable solutions for your customers. It goes against every economic principle to think that there are throngs of people wanting to pay thousands for your programs. It’s fine to have a passion and a vision to ‘help people’ but you are in business to make money and earn a profit. If you do not have your revenue and cash flow as prominent goals you will not make any money in your business.

2. Start small and build up. Houses are not built from the top down, they are built from the bottom up. Every house starts with a hole in the ground (for a basement) or a concrete slab on the ground. Don’t focus on high prices or high value clients, there are not that many people who will pay you thousands for your solutions.

3. Do your marketing diligently. Marketing is not sales but marketing leads to sales. While you cannot sell to your audiences all of the time, you do need to promote your products and services regularly. Whether you launch using webinars or live or online events, marketing is an important part of your business.

4. Stop fearing the competition. There is no competition on the internet. That’s why we focus on building your platform in the GPS Business Academy programs, and not your niche. If you think you are not making as much money as others, don’t be fooled. There are a lot of deceivers out there, not being mean here but it’s the truth. The people who tell you they make millions probably do but what they do not tell you is 80% or more of those millions are spent on advertising. No one ever shares their profit margins. Look at their engagement numbers on their social media sites too. Someone with 5 million followers who only gets 36 comments or likes on a post has paid for their following and their numbers are fake.

5. be confident in what you know. People will follow you because of a shared experience, relevance, and resonance. They want to know you are authentic and you understand them. When they are in a tough place they don’t care how many millions you make, that’s like telling someone who is thirsty that you just had a glass of water and it was great. Give them the water, let them experience you as a teacher, mentor, and friend. That begins the journey to loyalty, not showing them your million $$ house.

And the most important thing – focus on your cash flow. You cannot manage a business if you are not making money and while everyone likes to teach all about business strategies – like building your list, creating a course, creating different revenue streams, it’s all part of a ‘hit and miss’ strategy that never really addresses the core steps to start a business that reaches an audience and generates revenue on a consistent basis. 

Authenticity is the name of the game. You are authentic in your story, your experience is your expertise, don’t doubt yourself and no one else will doubt you. Be confident, your story is your ticket to business success, market yourself with clarity and confidence, and focus on cash flow because you are in business to make money.

Visit GPSbusinessacademy.com for more information about our 90 Day Business QuickStart program and other resources for your business.

I have been wanting to talk about this topic for a while because of a troubling practice I see with many coaches and business owners in the online space regarding how they are using contracts as an extortion tool to force their clients to pay.

A few months ago I received an email from a group called ‘Team Irvine’.  This is the company of Dr. Shannon Irvine, who practices neuroscience. The email demanded payment in full for a contract I was a signator to, claiming I was in arrears and if I did not pay up immediately I would be subject to collections which means that would be reflected on my credit report.

Here’s the problem. I am not a client or a customer of Dr. Irvine. I have never purchased anything from her and I never signed a contract. I replied to the email demanding proof of this transaction and letting her know that it was illegal to send harassing demand letters and if I learned that they accessed my credit report or reported me to a collections agency I would be seeing them in court. I also let her team know that her demand letter was illegal and violated the tenants of contract law.

Her team replied saying it was a glitch in their email system, that they were trying to fix the problem and that I should ignore the email. Ignore it? Without finding out if they were reporting me to a collections agency and accessing my credit report? I don’t think so.

And I could ignore it but what about those people who were being harassed by Dr. Irvine’s team, who were in arrears on their contract payments and who faced collections? What were they going to do? What was their defense against this illegal demand for payment, even if they did sign a contract.

Why should you listen to my opinion about this? Because I was a paralegal for 10 years, 3 of them for a prominent contract lawyer who is the best in the field. I learned a lot in that job and it has saved me a lot of headache, time, and money. I know an illegal contract when I see it and further, I know an illegal collections attempt, which this email from Dr. Irvine represented.

read the rest of the article on the GPS Business  Academy blog at gpsbusinessacademy.com

A website is essential for today is the first exposure that a potential client or subscriber has to you and to your products and services. So you want their experience to be easy, memorable for its content and not its frustrations (people remember these things – let me share my Ruby Tuesday story), and you want them to return.

With so many websites on the internet, over 2 billion, there are many people who offer similar products and services and you want your visitors to stay on your website as long as possible.

The longer they stay on your website the more likely they are to buy (provided you have something to sell and they can find it).

Here are the 5 ways to make your website easy for customers to use:

Be intentional in the path you want to take them through your website and provide proper navigation with buttons, links, and clear explanations. Do not leave people hanging on a page and no way to go anywhere with either a top menu or a clickable link to take them back to the home page.
Note: be careful with re-direct links, those links that take your visitors away from your website. They won’t be able to get back and you may lose them – the internet is a big, busy place. Once they are re-directed to another site they are no longer on your website. Is that what you want them to do?

Give them clear options to purchase in the content. NEVER say ‘email me to schedule an appointment’. Have you looked at what happens when you click an email link? It opens a browser window and not an email address.
and use links and scheduling applications to get them to talk to you . If you offer free intro sessions, make them easy to set up. NEVER use email or phone to set up your appointments – waste of time and you will miss appointments. If they are on your website at 2AM and they want to purchase something or connect with you, they need the buttons, links, and tools to be able to do that.

Do not write too much content in descriptions, you can always write a short sentence and direct them to another page for more. And avoid too much navigation to get information or to purchase. They will get frustrated especially if they arrive at a dead end and cannot get back to your home page or another page on your website.

Be sure to include information about yourself, write a good ‘about you’ page. You would be surprised how many people read your bio. They want to get to know you. Make your bio focused on your story or how you got started in your business. Be sure to write your ‘hero’s journey’, no one wants to hear a sob story. Let your story be focused on the products and services you provide so you establish relevance and alignment with your audience. This inspires and encourages them to become paying customers.

Publish your prices – your visitors do not like to have to fill out forms and set an appointment with you (or a sales service) to talk about how great your program is, only to have sticker shock because you are much more than they can afford.
Price is important and you insult your site visitors if you say it isn’t.
How many of you own a Ferrari? That’s my point.
If you are so uncomfortable with your prices that you do not publish them, you should be charging much less.
As my grandmother said, “if you have to ask the price you cannot afford it.”

It is very important to ensure that visitors to your website don’t get confused and frustrated because they won’t be back and they will tell everyone about their terrible experience.

And if you are clear about how you want your website visitors to navigate your website and you make the process easy, clear, and intentional for them, they will spend time on your website, enjoy the content, become a repeat visitor, and refer you to their family and friends.
Get more tips, tools, and tactics to start, manage, and grow your business at gpsbusinessacademy.com/

Does the word marketing fill you with fear?
Do you dread the word sales in the same way and get stuck in that process?

Marketing and sales have been so over hyped and misrepresented in the online industry.
Let me begin this discussion by advising you that marketing is not sales although marketing is related to sales
And sales is not marketing although you need some kind of marketing effort to generate the interest required to make a sale.

Marketing means ‘bringing your goods and services to the attention of the market’
Think of the market as an audience that you are showcasing your products and services to.

What do they need to know about your product or service to be interested enough to want to know more
How do you let them know that their lives are enhanced by your product or service?

Note: you cannot market to people who have no interest in what you offer, no matter how much marketing you do

Example: vacations
5 kinds of vacation venues – all in one, cruises, hotels, adventure trips, camping
I am not interested in camping so I do not include those in my options
No matter how wonderful it may sound, I won’t consider camping.

That’s why information and education are the heart of your marketing. You'll quickly let people who have no interest in your products and services that you are not a good resource for them. And you will know who is and who is not your customer.

You can use marketing to create an interest when you focus on information and education first, instead of leading with your sales pitch

Sales is the process of offering goods for sale. Sales are an essential part of your business.

Your marketing begins the path to the sales form and the purchase process.

You market with eventual sales in mind but your marketing has to be honest, clean, and clear – no bait and switch. Listen to the example of how I got switched to a $500 per month membership from a $27 digital product (and yes, I demanded and received a refund).

Marketing is not a one-shot effort, it is a process of informing your audience about who you are and what you offer

Forget passion – you cannot market your passion but you can market why you are passionate

Your story is important but it will only appeal to the people who share the story or an interest in it.

Passion out of control – vegan client who tried to ‘convert’ me

Think of marketing as information and education, letting potential customers know there is a solution and you have it but first, you need to share that story so you create relevance with them. And once you have done your marketing, providing information and education, they will be ready to buy and you will have a loyal, long term client who will become a repeat buyer and a source of referrals.

Should you involve family in your business?

You have a business and family members want to get involved or you want to give them an opportunity to use their skills with your customers

Key decisions and things you must do before allowing family members to work with you in your business.

1. Know what it is they have the skillset to do
2. clearly define the role and make it legal

What to do to ensure your business success

1. always make a contract and make sure you keep control of your business
   Implied contracts count too

2. does this person have skills that complement your business or add value to your customers?

3. what do you want them to do in your business (you must keep control).

4. are they an employee or consultant/contractor? Figure in tax costs too as an employee you pay their taxes

5. do you get along with them enough to have them in your business? Key question: do you trust them, how far, and with what

What to avoid

1. let family members practice on your customers
   Hear about my former admin who let her 16 year old son practice making websites with her customers (including me), with a terrible outcome and cost me 2 weeks of time (and it's why I fired her and refused to pay the invoice)

2. involve your young children in your business especially when it's not a fit and does not make sense
   Unless you have a family focused business or you are marketing to families, don't call your 5 year old your 'co-ceo'
   Hear about the 'business coach' who allows her 5 year old to disrupt marketing calls and

3. allow family members to join your business and become substitutes for you just because they are ‘family’
   Make sure your family members who are involved in your business understand your customer service practices and

4. allow them to ‘give advice’ that dictates your message, shifts your business and alters your business strategy

5. do not give them access to your financial documents, checking account, or payment accounts and never give them check signing or withdrawal permissions unless you absolutely trust them with those processes. If they have that kind of access make sure they purchase a bond that protects your financial and business assets. There’s a good reason for that.

What do you do if family members ask to join your business? First treat them as you would any other potential applicant. They need to have the right skill set and to be qualified to work with you. To do that you need a clear job description and make sure they are a fit. If not, say no.
And if you do bring in family members, do it because it’s a good fit, you are comfortable with that decision, and you have very clear energy boundaries that you can maintain. If not, say no.

Terms of Use in your Business

These are guidelines for operations

Let customers know what to expect when doing business with you

Protects you from legal liability when enforcing a policy or in the cast of customer legal action

Can and should include:

1.  A Privacy policy – this is required by some countries and institutions and is required by most state and federal law

Should state how you handle customer data and that you do not sell or share it

1. Copyright policy – affirms your copyrights to your content

3. Download policy – states how customers may download your digital products, that they can only save it to their personal computer or digital media devices, they cannot share or post it, no sharing with others, and not using it in their own programs or business

4. Refund policy – when and how you offer refunds

You are not obligated to offer any refund for any reason

Must have a well defined refund policy – do not offer 100% refunds

If you do not offer refunds you must state it here and on every sales page

5.  Your Guarantee - be very careful in offering a guarantee of results or services as you cannot guarantee results. Also be careful how you offer a guarantee in conjunction with a refund

6. Hours of operation – state what your business operating hours are, be sure to include your time zone too, for example: 9AM to 5PM US Eastern Time

7. Service level agreement – when you’ll respond to emails and communications, how you will handle customer support issues and other interactions with your customers

8. Disclaimer of results – state how testimonials are not typical results, be clear that you are not guaranteeing results

If you are offering coaching for mental or emotional issues, you must state that it is not a substitute for professional mental health services

If offering coaching for health or wellness, you must state that it is not a substitute for professional medical treatment

Your terms of user or terms of service are an important part of your business legal documents and they should be posted where customers can see them and agree to them, where appropriate, so they have a clear understanding of what they can expect from you and your business and it protects you from unreasonable customer expectations and provides a clear definition of your services.

Profit and profit margins are the most important business metric yet no one teaches them (except me) and no one talks about them in the right way

Revenues are not profits – anyone who says this is not an experienced, educated, and authentic business coach. 

  -- Revenues are money that comes into your business via sales

  -- Profits are what is left over after expenses

Profits formula is Profit = revenue – expenses -  this is accounting 101

Revenue is dependent on sales and how you market your business

Expenses are what you spend in and on your business

            Expenses include your salary, cost of running your business, equipment, utilities, and more

Expenses are fixed or variable – marketing is a variable cost, your course platform is a fixed cost

Profits are what is left over after expenses

Sell $100 with expense of $99  your profit is $1.00 This is your COGS – cost of goods sold. It is an important metric in your business as it tells how much you are spending per sale – you want this number to be low so your profits are high

Profit margin is the percentage of profits you can expect based on sales. You want this number to be high. In an online business with few overhead costs and good management of your expenses, you should expect a profit margin of 50% or more

Here is the business information and background for this Profit Case Study:

$3.2 million in sales

$1.5 million spent on ads

$170,000 in profit

$1.93 million in incidental costs (fixed and variable)

That’s a .05% profit margin and it’s terrible for an online business

What can you expect?

$497 course price x 100 people   is $49,700

Costs:  $97/month for the course platform   $200 marketing

Administration costs for help at $40 per hour, 20 hours is $800. I manage my administrative staff and they work on very specific tasks, which means they do work they enjoy and have the skills for and do not spend time on 'busy work' that eats into my budget.

That’s a total of around $1000 in expenses (remember the course platform is a fixed cost which covers all courses in the platform, not just this one)

$49,700 - $1000 = $48,700 in profits that is not an unrealistic number if you have done your pre-sale marketing correctly, meaning you are nurturing your audience, posting on social media, and creating interest in your upcoming launch and sale.

I corrected my math here since I had originally said that there was about $1 million in administrative costs (outside of marketing and ads) but there is actually $1.93 million in uncategorized costs that could represent a host of expenses including administrative, design, support, etc. 

In closing, this is not a profitable company. Sure it makes money and it sounds good to say “I made $3.2 million in sales” but when you look closely at the numbers, the expenses, and the profit margin, this company could use some expert advice on how to better manage its profit margins and a profit audit to determine why its profit margins are so low.

Your top 10 questions answer with strategies and tips to overcome your anxieties, doubts, and fears so you can get your business started. Here are the questions I answer in this Q&A podcast:

1. How can I go from my job to starting a business and replace my income (plus some)?

2. Should I offer discount, free services,  or trade?

3. What’s the best social media platform to use? 

4. How do I stay motivated?

5. How do I make money in my business when I’m just starting up?

6. What is the best pricing model?

7. What tech should I be using in my business?

8. What are your time management strategies?

9. How to budget your time

10. An annual strategy for time management

Visit the GPS Business Academy website at https://gpsbusinessacademy.com