We’re going to discuss Lean Startup Concept and how you can set up your business for yourself. There are three types of people that this blog is meant for.
- The first person is somebody who wants to set up their own business that isn’t dependent upon the employer.
- The second type of person is somebody who already has a small business or their current business is impacted by the Corona situation and wants more options in life.
- The third person is somebody who has no commercial interest. However, they would be interested in setting up their own brand because their brand or message is something that will outlive them.
Structure of Business
When you’re off from the planet, you don’t want only your kids and grandkids to remember who you are and what contribution you made. So it’s essential to start setting up your brand, even if you have no commercial interest.
We’re going to discuss the basic structure of your business which is three-tier. We’ll be talking to you in straightforward language and then collating that with some of the more complex terms used in business, but it doesn’t mean anything complicated. If the business were very complex, all the high-school and college dropouts would not be doing business.
Components
The first component is your message, and the third component is your business house. When I say your business house, it doesn’t mean a big building with many employees and a big board in front. A business house is a collection of products and services that you bring together to solve the problem of somebody in the market.
The Message
So, the first part is your message, and that’s where it all starts. What happens is when you have a message and when you share that with people, some of the people may get attracted. They’ll begin to hang around. They’ll contact you and will be interested. You can figure out what their interest level is, using some tools and techniques. Then what happens is that some of these people take a journey with you where they come to your products and services to solve a problem. So at the end of the day, a business is about solving problems. And what you do is you attract the people whose problem is to be solved, using a message. What is it that you’re trying to do? Whom are you trying to do it for? How do you intend to do with that? That is your message.
Then the people who choose to join you in that journey and hang around you are what we call prospects. Some of them will take this journey all the way from your message to your products and services. This journey is called conversions.
What is Important in Business
Most people think that products and services are the most important part of a business. They want to do business, but they don’t know what products and services to offer. They want to do a business, but they don’t know how to set up their office, hire employees, where to start, etc. That’s the least important part of the puzzle.
Some people say that conversions or basically selling, they aren’t very comfortable in doing any kind of selling because it makes them uncomfortable. And usually, when they try to sell to people, it makes them uncomfortable as well. They don’t want to be in a situation where the customer and seller are not comfortable. They don’t want to cause any discomfort to anyone. This is the second least important part of the puzzle. There is no discomfort involved, and the whole thing is on auto-pilot.
Now, the important part of this whole puzzle is your message. A lot of people say, why is messaging important unless you have a product to sell, you cannot do business because money doesn’t change hands unless you have products to sell. But if you look at the last 200 years of history, which includes almost the entire Industrial Revolution, you will see that any big company or any big brand that has been there in the last 200 years history has always been driven by a message or a philosophy. If you look at an interview that any business owner, billionaire, CEO, or chairman of a large group of companies, anybody who has ever given an interview has talked about their message or philosophy.
Why Big Companies always talk about their Message or Philosophy
You look at TATA, Ambani, MDH, The Virgin Group, Elon Musk and his company, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Microsoft, Apple and Steve Jobs, any interview in print, or on TV or YouTube, they always talk about their message and the core philosophy that is what drives a big company or a business. But to a middle-class listener, we never listened to the message. We barely hear the philosophy; it doesn’t even register in our brain. What registered in our brains is how many fleets of aircraft does The Virgin Group have, how many offices does TATA have, and how many different products Ambani has? What is the turnover? How rich is he?
If I were to ask you about the last five interviews of any five big business CEOs or chairman of the board that you have listened to, what do they say about their message or philosophy? You will probably not remember. However, all the businesses are driven by some message or philosophy because it’s the message that attracts your potential customer whose problem you want to solve.
Why is Selling Easy Today
The message is the most important part of this whole puzzle. In fact, in the information age or the optimization age, the conversions/selling and business house are so easy that you can go head-to-head with any multi-thousands crore brand today and have similar results, which means you could compete on products and services with any 10000 crore rupee company and have similar results.
Of course, you aren’t going to start today and suddenly build 10000 crore company, but if you were to approach a hundred people with your product, and they were to approach the same hundred people with their product, you have an excellent chance of out-selling that multi-crore rupee competition because of the age that we are living in. So those barriers don’t exist today, but still, 9 out of 10 businesses fail today because they’re set up by the people doing business for the first time. They miss the most important part, which is the message.
How do we build our message together
Your message is going to bring or attract different people who think like you. Your message goes out in the market and people come looking because the message attracts them. The message may be focused on their problem that will attract them. Or it may be focused on your unique perspective in life that will attract them. And once you do that, any products or services you recommend, they will buy. Some of these products or services don’t need to be developed by you. If you try to build complicated products and services to service the market, two problems happen. First, it costs a lot of time and money that most people do not have. Secondly, those products and services enter a market that is already glutted with other products and services. There is so much stuff in the market today that you cannot compete if you’re in making stuff. It’s challenging to do that. So, don’t be in the making-stuff business, be in the servicing-a-community business where all these things (products and services) can be put together.
What are some other products and services that you could sell to customers?
The ideal structure of a recession-proof business is that we keep working for you even if a Corona lockdown happens. There are three components.
Hard Product/Service
The first component is a hard product or service, which is like a traditional product or service, you could be providing professional services if you are a lawyer or a doctor, you could be providing allied services, which is helping people improve their sales, you could be assisting individuals in getting more peace of mind using meditation, which is a huge market today, you could be helping people become healthier by the use of yoga, which is also a considerable market.
Digital Product/Service
The second component of your product and service portfolio is going to be a digital product and service, which is digital, downloadable advice from you, which could be in the form of a PDF, which could be in the form of videos, audios, templates, where people can get some benefit in their life by downloading your advice or a step-by-step method to do something that gives them that benefit.
High-Ticket Consultation
The third component is high-ticket consultation. This is a market set that has the budget to afford your products and services or a budget to afford you and your personal time. They ask you to give them one hour of your time. They want you to come into their company or house and teach them this stuff, and they are happy to pay you whatever your rate might be at that time. You can charge anywhere from 5,000 rupees to 35 lac rupees per hour for your consultation. There’s a method to get there, you can’t start from day one, but this is the product and service of an ecosystem you offer.
Why the affiliate marketplace
Now, if you’re currently starting and do not have a hard product or service, instead of wasting your time and money building products and services that may or may not be successful in the marketplace. You could pick up products and services from the affiliate marketplace where they pay you to promote the product and services. Also, the customer pays you to recommend them the right products and services; you get paid from both ends. All you do is pick a hard product or service up from the marketplace and deliver it to the customer, and both parties thank you.
How does it work for me?
The way it works for me is I consult for sales and marketing acceleration. I help companies improve their sales and marketing. During the sales marketing acceleration or automation, sometimes they require certain software to do the job for them. At this point, I have an alliance with five or six different software companies that provide the software which does that job. What I do is I tell the customer, it would be best if you hand off the job instead of a human to machine and these are 5 or 6 software that I recommend. I tell them that I’m a promotional partner or an alliance partner with these software companies. If you can end up using a product, you will be using it at the usual rate, but they probably pay me something at the back end, if that’s fine with you. But if you don’t like that, you can do anything you wish to use in yourbusiness. Eight times out of 10 say you’re a consultant. You have to install it. You’ve to make it successful. I don’t care what you do as long as it’s within my budget. I don’t care what brand you use. What happens is, that I end up installing a software product or software license at their location. I get a small payment from the software company, in addition to getting the payment from the customer whose problem I am resolving.
If I were to build this software from scratch, it would cost me millions of dollars because these companies are million-dollar companies. I would not be able to do it very well because I’m not a software engineer. In my product portfolio, I have hard products and services, and I have high-ticket consultations. You can get my consulting, and I will teach you how to do it. In fact, I will come in for four to five days in a row and help your sales and marketing people understand how to do this job better. Then I’d recommend something that will put the whole thing on steroids and get you 100x return for a little bit of licensing fee. You can go and buy any software you want, but I have 2 to 3 software that I highly recommend, but beware that while I’m recommending them, I have something to gain from them. In 7 to 8 cases, they say we don’t care as long as you are the one installing it and you are the one getting the results.
Why are Digital Products/Services the way to move forward today
Then you can have some digital products where you don’t need to be involved in dealing with anybody. You can have a website or an Instamojo store where people know about you, or hit your Facebook page and go to your Instamojo store. You can sell them a course, templates, or an entire step-by-step method, how to implement one, two, three, and four items. And you don’t need to be involved in the sales; people can download it themselves.
Digital products are quite exciting because they stay up during the Corona Virus time. While you cannot go to work and you cannot sell your products and services during Corona Virus time, Digital products can stay alive even during these times. You don’t have to be personally involved because people are going to your website and buying, watching, or downloading these digital products from there. All of this is your business house.
Business Message
Now, let’s talk about your business message. It is the most important thing in the puzzle. People want to solve a problem, but hundreds of people in the marketplace claim that they can solve a problem for the prospects. How do they know whom to hire, whose services to buy? People buy from people or companies who seem to be in the best position to solve their problems for them. Not only do they want a solution for their problem, but they also want the best solution from a person or a company that they can truly trust, which is where your message comes in.
People usually ask their friends for any advice before going to do something or going somewhere. That’s because they can connect with them. Similarly, if people can connect with your message or philosophy, which could be as few as three sentences, they’ll immediately see you as a friend and the best possible person to take advice from when solving your problem.
How do you craft your philosophy?
Basically, your philosophy is composed of three layers. The second layer is called your personality. Your personality type will attract certain people with similar personality types because it gives them a good feeling that this is the best person to solve their problem.
The issue with personality type is that most of us don’t even know what our personality type is until we’re 30-45 years old. Especially when it comes to going into business, then we start to have all kinds of questions. They know their personality type, but they don’t think it will be helpful in any type of business. However, your personality type is honed and crafted by incidents in your past. If you’ve not figured out what your personality type is, or if you have a personality type and you don’t know how to have it connect with other people, you start with incidents in your past.
How incidents of past may help you discover your personality type
There always have been some incidents in your past being a child or when you were growing up or even when you are an adult. There have to be some incidents that give you an indication of what a personality type is or your overall philosophy in life is or should be. From those incidents, we start recognizing our personality type. We start accepting our personality type. We grow into our personality by the time we’re 25, 30, 35, 40, or 45 years old. Some unlucky people are unable to grow into their true personalities, even till the age of 60 or 65. That’s a whole different other problem. But if you don’t know your personality type or don’t understand how it would relate to other people, then look at some of the incidents that have happened in your past. That could be an excellent indication of what your personality type could be, and what your relative aspect could be, or what your philosophy could be.
So I’ll give you some examples. There are defining incidents in my past which helped me understand my personality type. What happened was I was good at following the system. The society said you have to be good at studies, so I was good at studies, went to good schools, and got a good education, all thanks to my parents. When I passed out of my school, not only did I top my entire national board in 2 out of 5 subjects, I got admission in India’s number two ranked medical college on my first attempt. I was in the top 50 students who got selected.
That was a very prestigious thing, and till then, I’ve been following society’s system. I started feeling something was off somewhere, and it was not making me happy even though I was good at it. To get advice, I spoke with somebody who was senior to me and whose advice I would have otherwise respective, but when they gave me what they thought was good advice, it did not resonate with me. They said that this is the profession you’ve chosen, and if you cannot stay loyal to your domain, you will never be successful in life. At that point, I had a straight disconnect. Then I understand why everything doesn’t seem to be alright and I don’t seem to be super happy despite all my achievements. It’s probably because everybody’s part of that system that wants you to be a certain way. Despite being good at that game, if it doesn’t make you happy, you have to look at other things. When you look at other things, these people are going to stop you from making that decision.
Basis of my Philosophy
So that one incident formed the basis of my philosophy, which was if you want and are willing to work for it, you can be anybody you want in life, in any field you want in life regardless of what your education is, regardless of what your upbringing is, irrespective of what your family background, your social circumstances are. If you choose to do something and you’re willing to work hard for it, and if you dedicate yourself to it, then you can be anything you want in life. That’s the core of my philosophy.
So a minor incident in my childhood started forming that message. It was still in its infancy, but that was the core of it. It may not need to be a difficult incident like the one I just wrote above. It could be a positive incident where some mentor or senior suddenly told you something, and it connected immediately. You have to have that instant connection that you pause and say I could have said it myself. In fact, I resonate with this big time. Or maybe a friend that you are hanging out with suddenly said something that hit home so hard that you are like that is wiser than 20 years of education that I’ve had so far. That one statement really hits it home.
So that any such incident, which could be positive, could be difficult or negative, or whatever that held you locked down and say this is it. Just because you’re one personality type doesn’t mean you won’t attract people of different personality types. It is a part of your overall message. Some people work 18 hours a day and for six days a week. But I work 6 hours a day, and I’m quite an easy-going person. I want to take life easy. I don’t want to work more than five days a week. That’s my personality type. I stay the happiest when I am in that zone.
Third Layer
The third layer is formed by people and the books you read, the videos and movies you watch, the kind of friends you have, and what is it about them that you like the best? Then other influencers you may have had from outside that you resonate with form part of your philosophy. If you’re unable to figure out your personality type from your past incidents what your philosophy should be, look at the kind of books you like to read, the kind of movie, you like to watch. What is the thing about those movies that you like or appreciate? What is kind of friends that you like to have? And what is it about those friends that really attract you to them? These are the things that will help you form another layer of your philosophy. The three forms of my philosophy are:
- You can be whoever or whatever you want to be with the right kind of effort.
- In order to pick up the correct skills that you need to get to the next level, you can pick up and master these skills to about 80% of the world’s standards within a period of 90 days with the right kind of training. It’s called the 80/90 rule. To achieve a certain result in life, whether it is in the financial domain or personal improvement, you need to develop specific skills. You need to become a different person in order to get different results.
- The third part of my philosophy is whatever the system is if you’re not comfortable with it or it does not fit very well after a certain amount of time. You need to change into a new system. But when you try to do that, just expect that the whole system will try to pull you back. Snap out and shift out and escape from the matrix.
Build a Market
These three points are the message that I take out into the market. If I were to compete with the software companies, I’d have no chance because I’m not making the software. But if I bring this philosophy to the table that says whatever you want to do, it will take 90 days of constant effort to master 80% of it. And whenever you try to snap out of your current mental paradigm to a new paradigm, it will always pull you back. There will always be a lot of difficulties, but life is better on the other side when you break through that difficulty. When I take this message to the market, some people resonate with me. When they resonate with me, they get an opportunity to sit down with me, and I have a sales process where I walk them through my parts, and then some of them say I want to do business with you. And when they do business with me, they pay me. They need some software, and I recommend them 2 or 3. But I tell them that the software companies will also pay me at the back end as I am their marketing partner. By that time, they say we like what you do. We like what you think. If you want to be there for me, we don’t care what you do as long as it’s within our budget.
Suddenly, I have a market. I have a market in an area where I have zero expertise because I don’t have a software degree. I have leverage in an area where I am literally a nobody compared to the market’s big names. Hundreds of thousands of gurus teach sales and marketing, and some are bigger than me. But with my philosophy, I collect a little bit of attention where some people are willing to do business with me, and that’s enough for me. You’ll collect the right kind of people who will do business with you because they believe in the same things you do.
Exercise
Now I have a little exercise for you. I want you to write down a few incidents of your childhood that can define your personality. Write down what you think your personality type is and how that would resonate with your message. If not, write down some of the names of your friends. Write down what is the connection between you guys. What is kind of movies you like? What do you watch on YouTube? What type of books do you like reading. Write all that down and try to find your personality type.
Lastly, write down three lines; it could be less than three lines of your philosophy around which you’ll build your fan following and your market. Define what your message or philosophy to the market is going to be? How has it benefitted you in your personal life?