Do you feel the Urgency to become an Entrepreneur now?
The number #1 reason to become an entrepreneur right now in the 21st century is because the world has changed irrevocably. The twin waves of globalization and technology are changing the economic and employment landscape for every profession.
You will not escape. This is already happening.
In Yuval Noah Harari’s fabulous book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, he says:
“The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by any particular state or ethnic group. Much like the Late Roman Empire, it is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests. Throughout the world, more and more entrepreneurs, engineers, experts, scholars, lawyers and managers are called to join the empire. They must ponder whether to answer the imperial call or to remain loyal to their state and their people. More and more choose the empire.”
If you are a person who has business ideas in your head, you can become an entrepreneur right now and avoid being ‘left behind’ by “the empire.’ To visualize the rapidly changing world, think back to the past twenty years on earth and the impact the iPhone, Amazon and Facebook have had on business and culture. Now think forward to consider where we will be twenty years from now. If you think the ‘rise of the empire’ is unlikely to affect you and the way you live your life, you are missing your opportunities as an entrepreneur.
The dangers of waiting to start your business
Both globalization and technology help you start a global business, and reach out to a global audience of potential customers and clients from anywhere in the world. This reality is incredibly liberating and exciting for anyone who has dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. You are free to get started on the work you want to do.
If you wait, you may face a situation where you are scrambling to start your own business because you have run out of options. If globalization and technology, replace more traditional jobs and transform your local labor market, you may find your ability to get the kind of challenging and valuable work you seek is no longer available. There is no issue with starting a business at any point in your life. But it’s more fun to do it when you are feeling comfortable about your future, and you can make good decisions based on your own timetable.
Waiting to start your business also puts you up against issues you may not understand. You may face increasing competition as more global markets develop, tighter financial markets as lenders become more selective, restrictive legislation from overzealous lawmakers, and personal inertia from the debilitating effects of your own procrastination.
But if from the beginning, you think of globalization and technology as resources you can use, you can rapidly move forward on your plan to start your own business and live your life dream.
Globalization as a resource you can use
If you are thinking about your business ideas and trying to get started, you likely feel compelled to deliver value to the marketplace through a product or service you know people want or need. Just like big businesses that must make decisions supporting the goals of shareholders who are based all over the world and expecting economic gains, you have to make decisions to satisfy your own hopes, dreams and economic plans.
To deliver your product or service to the global marketplace, you may end up hiring, for example, a Latvia-based graphic designer to create your logo, just as a big company moves an entire factory offshore to make parts for their product. The process is efficient and straightforward. Once you look at the best offers you receive for a project, the quality of the test work and prior reviews, are you going to look at the person’s location to determine whether or not to give her the job? Maybe some of you will, but it’s possible many of you will not. You’ll participate directly in the global economy by hiring the most qualified, accessible person you could find.
This type of decision-making is happening right now all over the world. You may even be directly affected if your work has been impacted by offshoring or outsourcing. As difficult as cutting jobs is for a business, managers look at what’s best for their company.
The value of global competition
As an entrepreneur, you may find yourself in the same position. But in the long-run being forced to compete on a global scale is typically beneficial to the work force. What would be the quality of the NBA brand if the league did not recruit the best players from around the world? Do we as fans, as an audience and customers really want to miss out on seeing the best in the world play the game? And do we want to miss out on becoming the best in the world through our exposure to the best competition?
In business as in basketball, competing with the best can only make you better by compelling you to improve your skills to keep pace with your competition.
Or get out of the game.
Although the reality is competition can force you out of a particular organization that does not necessarily mean you are completely out of an industry. Many tech companies were started by people who were not necessarily the most successful where they were, but could not get their ideas taken seriously until they went out on their own. You can find an angle for your product or service that creates its own market and finds its own customers in the marketplace. The experience, although painful in the short-term, will ultimately be a huge boost for you if you stay with your plans.
Technology as your primary tool
And you do not only get better on the basis of your personal skill. Your ability to use technology to your advantage is a major factor in success and the other major driver of changes in the new economy. As a rising entrepreneur, you can employ technology tools to support your business in every area from accounting, to design and email management and marketing. The new technologies allow you to produce high quality work at a fraction of the price the work used to cost. This is called reducing barriers to entry. You can enter into the global entrepreneurial workforce by using technology to ensure your product can compete.
Technology is even more certain to take direct aim at employment by humans. Technologists are all over the world. Every company must compete with bright minds in Russia, India and South Korea who can severely disrupt a business enterprise overnight. This fear does not only apply to hackers or pirates. All over the world bright minds are engaged in developing new software and innovative ideas designed to disrupt the functioning of traditional business. Since the Internet is global and most people have access to its possibilities, there is no reason to believe the technology will stop at anyone’s border.
We adapt to technology (not the other way around)
Lately some people are getting a little concerned about the influence of companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. In less than twenty years, these companies have fundamentally changed the way we shop, communicate and decide where to eat. Those companies were built with rules set only by the people who built them. And we are adapting to how they are making the world.
As an entrepreneur who uses these online platforms, you have to approach your business decisions on their terms. In medieval times when ‘ancient you’ was farming a plot of land, a new landlord could come by and tell you now submit to his demands or face dire consequences. If you did not have a Knight or some other defender to help you, you were forced to do as you were told or lose your land, or at worst be killed. You effectively had to play along to get along.
The same is true today of technology’s key consumer-facing Internet platforms. In today’s world, if you do not behave on Amazon or Facebook as required, you will lose access to the site, which may mean the end of your business or your social life. Most people are not willing to take that risk. Although it’s technically possible for a new company to rise up tomorrow and replace the big names on the Internet, you have to manage your business in the world you see before you today. You will both have access to a global market through the mega online platforms, and you can lose access just as easily. Your goal is to hang on while remaining true to your vision for your company.
Your business or your job
As globalization and technology define our world, opportunities for continued employment are dependent on these twin pillars that are out of your control or the control of governments. Most people will have to try and get into a job without any hope of staying in the position for a long time. At the same time, millions of jobs go unfilled because the education system, and popular thought, cannot adapt quickly enough to the changing demands of the job market. If the teachers are not trained, the students will not be either.
Where does that leave you?
If you have a business idea in your head, you should be feeling it’s time to take that idea into the global marketplace. Globalization and technology are already here and the world economy is changing right now. The global GDP, or gross domestic product is currently valued at the $78 trillion, with a T, mark. You can take your business idea – your product or service – and deliver it to the market and take your part of that soon-to-be $100 trillion dollar pie.
But you have to get started. The time to become an entrepreneur is now when the field is wide open, your product or service idea is needed, and the available tools and resources provide access to the global marketplace.
Do you feel the urgency?
Struggling with how to get started? Download my book Life Dream: Seven Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship.
Disclosure: book links in this article are affiliate links to Amazon.com meaning I may be compensated if you click on the link to go to the Amazon.com website
Why the World Wants You to Be an Entrepreneur
If you have always wanted to start your own business, but were afraid to because ‘no one you know is doing it,’ you may be surprised to learn that your instinct to be an entrepreneur is in line with global economic development programs.Multi-lateral organizations, like the United Nations, that were founded to help create a world of peace and prosperity, include an emphasis on entrepreneurship in their agendas. When you consider that most of the world’s people live in countries that are struggling to create a strong economy, this commitment to entrepreneurship signals that people who want to start a business are on the right track.
Entrepreneurship is recognized as a ticket out of poverty and an opportunity for innovative, creative, hustling people to separate themselves from the pack and focus on self-reliance and personal economic development.
Even though many individual countries prefer to emphasize government control, community commitment and self-sacrifice.
Why does entrepreneurship hold a favored place?
According to the OECD’s report on Youth Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship can “foster job creation, economic growth, poverty alleviation and formalization of the economy. And has the potential to “spur innovation, increase competition and encourage social cohesion by acting as a mechanism for the disadvantaged and socially excluded.”
The United Nations calls for entrepreneurship to “create jobs, drive economic growth and innovation, improve social conditions and address environmental challenges.”
In other words, entrepreneurship has a huge role to play in getting the world in working order.
So where does that leave you? One person with an idea and a dream and maybe even a plan to bring a product or service to the global marketplace that you think will deliver value. The commitment to entrepreneurship leaves you at the absolute forefront of delivering on these great goals. As you begin to start your business, you can think about the broader global goals that you can contribute to just from your own enterprising efforts.
Here’s is an overview of some of the issues and what the policy items may mean to you as an entrepreneur:
Job creation
Entrepreneurship can create a job for, at least, you. Now you may already be in a job, so your ‘side hustle’ ends up creating a second job. If you outsource work to a virtual assistant or use an e-mail service provider or web hosting company, you are creating even more jobs. When you think about getting your business started, think about all the other people who stand to benefit from what you’ve created. You don’t have to create two million jobs like Wal-Mart, one is a great place to start.
Economic growth
When you provide a new product or service to the marketplace, you are adding to the economic pie, not subtracting from it. The economy grows and expands because each new product builds upon the last one. You may think adding something will replace something else so jobs will be lost and growth will stagnate. But that’s not how it works. When you bring in your new product or service, you are filling a gap in the marketplace. Which means you are increasing the value of the market. Sure some products are created that wipe away old ones, goodbye phone booths. But for the most part, new innovations are additive and we all want to keep the pie growing.
Social Conditions
Are you one of the people who is frustrated by your current job in the familiar economy? Do you find your time spent wasted commuting, or attending meetings that do not make any sense? How much would your life improve if you were in charge of your own business? When it comes to improving social conditions, global organizations might be thinking about alleviating poverty for millions, (and you can think about that too), but you are more likely hoping to improve your own lot in life. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You cannot help others to have a better life if you have not managed to create one of your own. So go ahead and focus on improving your world and your immediate world around you before you jump to fixing everyone else.
Innovation and competition
Take a look at all your favorite products. Are there any that were not first invented by entrepreneurs? I once tried to think of an every day popular product that was invented by government, I could not think of one. Maybe a weapon of war, but hardly a product used by all people to have a better life. If you are thinking about a product or service that can provide value to the marketplace, you should go ahead and bring it on. The world needs a variety of ideas and interests to keep moving forward. Our progress comes from people like you who are available to risk, sometimes everything, to make lasting change. Competition helps you get better and better. We should have open markets so you can continuously see all available products and improve your own production and practices. You would not want to watch the Olympics with just one country right? So why would you want to participate in the global economy all alone?
Environmental challenges
You may be thinking that tackling the grand problems of the global environment is outside the scope of an aspiring entrepreneur. Well not necessarily. You can do your small part simply by participating and ensuring your business is part of the solution to building a healthier and cleaner world.
Big, lofty pronouncements on strategic multilateral goals may sound foreign to you. But when you look closely at the ideas that are being expressed, you may find that your own thoughts and plans are in direct alignment with the global agenda.
Over the years, the mandate for organizations like the United Nations has grown (along with the bureaucracies) to deliver a more, universal message around activities countries can do to boost their economy, health and well-being of citizens. One of those initiatives that receives attention is entrepreneurship.
The reason this is interesting is because entrepreneurship is often about individual achievement and financial independence. Yet most countries do not support those specific concepts except when it comes to growing the economy and encouraging innovation, then entrepreneurship becomes a favored goal.
The fact is, most countries know that entrepreneurs are needed to support economic growth and development. Without people who are willing to take risks, come up with ideas for products or services or deliver new products or services, human beings would not progress.
From Edison and Tesla and the commercialization of electricity, to Bezos and the “everything” store, entrepreneurs have led development, not governments.
If you are one of the people ready now to pursue your entrepreneurial dream but lack the confidence to get started, you can find inspiration, assistance and guidance from global government agencies that actively promote the idea of entrepreneurship to build a better world.
Your entrepreneurial dreams are not a weakness or bad idea. The dreams are critical to making the world a better place and improving the economic well-being of all.
Struggling with how to get started: Download my book Life Dream: Seven Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship. (Disclosure: this link is an affiliate link to Amazon.com meaning if you use the link to go to the Amazon website I may receive compensation.)
Entrepreneurship and the Reasons Why People Hate Their Jobs
The world seems to have two types of entrepreneurs. The people who are driven from day one to start a business and never do anything else. You know that kid selling lemonade at a construction site. Then there are the people who go to work and talk endlessly about wanting to quit and start their own business. Of those people, some will indeed quit and walk away. The majority will not.
The Future Billionaires?
(picture credit: marybettiniblank at pixabay)
The majority who do not quit are usually not staying at their jobs because they are in love with the work. In fact, this crowd is split off from another type of employed person.
The people who love their work or attach some kind of passion to it – artists, athletes, doctors, teachers, fire fighters, pastors, veterinarians, designers, scientists – are also the people who knew they were going to do that profession from the beginning. You know the kid who wanted to dissect your dead dog. So they do not quit either.
You, the majority, did not have an early passion for anything – entrepreneurship or another career. But now, faced with a life of drudgery in the workplace, you have the passion to quit and start your own business.
Among the many reasons to become an entrepreneur is to look at all the reasons why you hate your job and figure out if entrepreneurship will help you overcome these obstacles. Here is one top ten list of the reasons people hate their job from Forbes magazine in November 2016.
The chart below lists the reasons, my take and why entrepreneurship will help you break away. Want the podcast version? Click here.
| 10 Ten Reasons People Hate Their Jobs | My Experience | Entrepreneurship’s Answer |
| 1. Not respected/valued | This is absolutely my number one. In the workplace I got tired of arguing with people who clearly were not smarter than me, and having higher-ups up people I had to deal with jobs they could not do. | You are valuable the minute you start working as an entrepreneur. By definition, you identify a product or service that is needed in the global marketplace and you deliver it to waiting consumers. That’s adding value from day one and you are recognized by the global consumer marketplace in the form of the dollars they pay you. |
| 2. Lack of proper tools, information, equipment or operational requirements to do the job | Yep if you work for a company where every request is a ten-page requisition form it’s hard to get anything done. Then you’re the problem because you did not get anything done. | As an entrepreneur, you start out by building efficiency into your processes from day one. Because you probably start with limited funds, you will look for the best and most productive tools to help you get the job done. You set up and guide the operational processes to ensure the work is complete. |
| 3. No compassion for personal life or outside obligations | Heart-breaking. Missing everything from funerals, to weddings to your child’s baseball game because some manager proclaimed that you “had” to be in the office. The worst feeling that your life is passing you by. | As an entrepreneur, you set the work hours and the days off. Flexibility is the name of the game. You can reschedule anything (after weighing the consequences) and give yourself the time you need for the most important people in your life. |
| 4. Immediate supervisor is a tyrant, unqualified or both | Yep, I’ve met them all. They are so evil we will not speak their names. | Entrepreneurs have no immediate supervisor – problem solved. Just remember though as you grow your business and people report to you, do not be like the people you ran away from when you had the chance. |
| 5. Lying | This is shock for people who are just starting out. At every level, people will lie. They will lie about getting the job done, they will lie about results, and most importantly they will lie to you about your value or worth to the company. | Entrepreneurs have all the company information in front of them. You know your own processes, revenue numbers and resource needs. Sure people you deal with may lie (people get ripped off all the time) but you at least can run your business with honesty and integrity. |
| 6. Lack of transparency, visibility and confidence in leadership | Middle managers assume the senior executives have no idea what they’re doing. They see decisions made that destroy whole divisions of a company and no one cares. They also see a lack of decision-making that will limit the company in the future. | As an entrepreneur running your own business. You will plan for your future. Your goal is to build and grow your business to increase revenue and secure a long-term future. You will have the vision and the ideas that will ensure the company is viable. |
| 7. Office politics | Strategizing, manipulation, more lying, back-stabbing – it’s all about getting ahead of the next guy. | When you build your company, set-up the human organizational structure to suit your vision. Make roles and responsibilities clear and give people incentives and opportunities. You can cut down on office politics if you provide people with a reason to feel secure. |
| 8. Underpaid and overworked | Job requirements change, but organizations are slow to recognize those changes on employees. As the company becomes more (or less) successful, you end up doing more work for what works out to be less money per task (or hour). | As an entrepreneur, you will almost certainly be underpaid and overworked to begin with (surprise). You’ll be doing everything yourself and have no income. But you’ll be able to measure exactly when that tide starts to turn. As revenue rolls in, you get the enviable task of raising your pay and lowering your workload to match your company’s success. In other words, it’s the opposite of working for an organization. |
| 9. No progress with projects | People love busy work. Everyone needs to justify their existence so the longer a project drifts along with no outcome, the better it is for everyone who is doing it. Except you – who saw it could have been finished in one day. | As an entrepreneur, you will not only set the projects but the deadlines too. Everything is goal-oriented and requires specific outcomes. You cannot afford to drift or play. You need resolutions and then the ability to move on to the next item. |
| 10. Fear and paranoia | People are afraid to say what they really want to say out of fear of getting into trouble and being disciplined or fired. | You set the tone for your business culture. When starting out as an entrepreneur there’s no one to talk to so you shouldn’t get into too much trouble. As your business grows, you can encourage people to be contributors to constructive conversation and create a safe but satisfactory work environment. |
Do these reasons and experiences sound familiar to you? Do you see how entrepreneurship provides an answer to these daily workplace woes? In a 2005 Gallup poll, 57% of Americans prefer to start their own business rather than working for someone else. You can clearly see why.
Working for an organization can put a strain on your physical, mental and emotional health, while limiting your professional and social prospects. You could be limited in reaching your potential and fulfilling your personal dreams. In 2017 Gallup found that 70% of Americans were not engaged with their work. In other words – they hate their jobs.
Now of course, there are people who love their corporate jobs. Every year we are told about the best companies to work for, these types of companies are celebrated. But you know whenever something is celebrated, you know it’s rare.
If the vast majority of people hate their current work and want to start their own business, and the global marketplace is changing rapidly and using technology and globalization to completely disrupt traditional workplaces then maybe it’s time for more people to go into business for themselves.
If you work for yourself, you can address all of those issues on your own time and with your own effort. Entrepreneurship will not be easy. You could end up lonely and struggling as you try to make your business work. But if you stick with it, you are more often than not in a great position to provide yourself with a lasting entity that provides value to a global marketplace just looking for your talent.
TIRED OF THE DAILY WORK GRIND?
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Check Out one or all of these free resources from Ready Entrepreneur
LEARN: Enroll in a FREE COURSE Three Forward Steps to Start Your Business Today. Start on your business immediately by learning the practical strategies you can implement now to set you on the road to lifestyle freedom.
READ: Life Dream: 7 Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship by Case Lane. This book is an inspirational global guide to setting yourself on the road to lifestyle freedom. Download at Amazon.com
LISTEN: Want to think like an entrepreneur while commuting, working out, shopping or other listening safely activities? Check out The Ready Entrepreneur Podcast on iTunes
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Are you a businessperson or an entrepreneur?
People often ask the question:What is the difference between a businessperson and an entrepreneur?
Some would say the businessperson is the blue suited MBA with a briefcase, process workflows, five-year strategic plans and a corporate AMEX card.
The entrepreneur is the disheveled garage dweller testing concept after concept in a bubble of failed experiments and idea frustrations.
Others would say difference only depends on where you are in the process. If you are bringing a product or service to market, you will transform from one image to the other…from entrepreneur to businessperson.
The entrepreneur is often considered the idea person. You are an entrepreneur if you create a product or service idea that you want to place in the marketplace. When entrepreneurs get started, they have to think of the business aspects of their idea. After all, it’s not possible to put the product or service into the market unless you think about the specific business activities you need to do.
A businessperson is often seen as the manager with the numbers, holding meetings about strategy, and dealing with taxes and lawyers. The business is the entity built after the entrepreneur’s idea is commercialized.
When you start a business, the entrepreneur often has to do everything. There is no divide between the two titles – businessperson or entrepreneur – when you get started, especially if you are bootstrapping which is the practice of paying all your own bills without external financing.
Over time, perhaps as you professionalize your business, or you open multiple businesses, you transform into the more familiar business image that Wall Street loves.
If you start a business, based on your idea, you are both an entrepreneur and a businessperson.
An entrepreneur is often defined as: a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.
A businessperson is defined as: a person who works in business or commerce, especially at an executive level.
If you did not start the business, but you work for it in a management role, you are the businessperson.
You can call yourself an entrepreneur if you take the business idea and turn it into a company that delivers products or services to the marketplace. You eventually hire businesspeople to run the operations, administration, production, distribution and marketing for you. As you continue to develop ideas and create new opportunities for your product or service, you remain the entrepreneur.
That’s the achievement you want to be able to be the entrepreneur hiring businesspeople to help you run your business. At that point you have the life dream you wanted to achieve when you got started.
What do you need to make it happen?
TIRED OF THE DAILY GRIND?
WANT TO REACH YOUR LIFESTYLE FREEDOM DREAM?
Check Out one or all of these free resources from Ready Entrepreneur
LEARN: Enroll in a FREE COURSE Three Forward Steps to Start Your Business Today. Start on your business immediately by learning the practical strategies you can implement now to set you on the road to lifestyle freedom.
READ: Life Dream: 7 Universal Moves to Get the Life You Want through Entrepreneurship by Case Lane. This book is an inspirational global guide to setting yourself on the road to lifestyle freedom. Download at Amazon.com
LISTEN: Want to think like an entrepreneur while commuting, working out, shopping or other listening safely activities? Check out The Ready Entrepreneur Podcast on iTunes
WRITE: Send me an email to contactcase@readyentrepreneur.com and let me know the entrepreneur challenges you are facing. Or fill out a very short survey by clicking this link. (I ask the same question – tell me what you need to get started).
CONNECT: Discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase@readyentrepreneur.com
Prepare to Pitch Investors in under Five Minutes: Tips for Rising Entrepreneurs
Are you ready to pitch your business idea in under one minute?
You have one minute. One minute to convince someone with money to give you money for your business. Have you prepared?
Rising Entrepreneurs have an opportunity to directly pitch angel investors and venture capitalists at events like the Funding Post Investor Roundtables held all over the country. Here are some tips to make sure you arrive prepared and give your business an opportunity to get funded.
Want the FREE Pitch Investors in under 5 Minutes Cheatsheet CLICK HERE
Attending a recent Funding Post Investor Roundtable and listening to about thirty pitches, it was clear some people had prepared, maybe some people had not or maybe some were just a little nervous.
In all cases, the opportunity was presented and available to anyone who wanted to get a business idea in front of potentially interested investors (for a fee). Entrepreneurs signed-up to pitch for either one minute or five minutes, followed by questions from the investor panel. Watching the event and speaking to both investors and entrepreneurs, here are the key tips for entrepreneurs who want to try this next.
If you have one minute:
- Show Them the Money!
Every entrepreneur must be able to explain how the business will make money. Funders are investing in enterprises that will bring returns, fundamentally the return on their investment. Without quickly stating exactly how this will be possible, you could lose the investors’ interest.
- Explain the Problem you are Solving
Successful entrepreneurs find gaps in the marketplace. Consumers are searching for solutions to help them with their problems. You must be able to make it clear to investors how you are filling a gap.
Even if you are creating a new version of an existing product, you must be able to explain how your vision is solving the gap created within the existing marketplace. Make the gap and the solution clear.
- Highlight why you are the person to solve the problem
Investors may quickly recognize the business opportunity, but since they don’t know you, you have to convince them you are the best person to solve the marketplace issue. Like most people, investors want confidence around their decision based on the information you are providing.
How did you come up with the idea? Who are you working with? Do you have advisors or mentors on your team?
You can convince them your business is ready to take control of your market, because you have the ability to exploit your advantage.
- Clearly state the name of the company
Seriously, pronounce this one word or phrase, the name of the company, clearly for future recognition. At least investors can remember you by that name. If they hear a great pitch, but not the name of the company, you make it harder to follow-up or find you in the program, and you will miss a great opportunity.
All this in one minute?
Yes, you can make these points in under one minute, but you have to practice. Put yourself in the investors’ shoes, would you invest in you after your pitch? If you have doubts about how you sound, imagine how the investors feel.
Here’s how to prepare to pitch to investors:
Create your response to points 1 – 4. Write out and organize your points first, without thinking about time.
Read the answers aloud. Does your response make sense? Have you stated how you will make money, the problem you will solve and why you can solve it? If yes, you have the fundamental information together, now work on getting those details under one minute.
Time your response. Use the timer on your smartphone. Turn it on as you read your response, how long is it taking?
Based on the time, edit, edit and edit again. Cut out extraneous words. Tighten long phrases. Use everyday language. Make the message short and concise.
Keep editing until you are under one minute. You’d be surprised how much time 60 seconds really gives you. Keep re-writing until you get this right. You will get cut-off if you go over one minute so leave the extra details out of the story.
If you have five minutes, all of the above plus:
The five minute presentations featured more detailed explanations of the business, and slide decks to support the information.
Assume the investors are going to ask you for your pitch deck. You want to incorporate all the information from points 1 to 4, plus the details behind all those points.
But stick to clear, concise details that people can understand. If you have a technical solution and want to attract a certain type of investor, you can tailor your deck to that language. For everyone else, make your points clear and straight-forward.
Include your contact information. Do not miss a chance to put your name, company name, website, phone number, e-mail, social media sites – all this information should be in your deck. You do not have to mention it, but make sure it’s there for investors to find later.
- Speak to your audience, not to the screen
You are pitching to the investors in front of you, not to the screen behind you. You should know the information in your deck and not need to read off the screen to make your pitch. You do not have to read the slides verbatim. Speak to each point on the slides. But address the investors directly.
Questions from Investors
Whether you pitch for one minute or five, you may get a question from an investor, any question.
At a minimum, you must be able to answer the following questions about your business:
How your business makes money
How much money you are asking for
Why you want money at this time
Your credentials and those of your advisors and mentors
Technical details related to anything you said in the presentation
Answer as many questions as you can. If you absolutely do not know the answer, ask the investor if you can follow-up. This is a great way to ensure ongoing contact with someone who has expressed some interest in your idea.
Questions from entrepreneurs:
Does it matter how I’m dressed?
No one mentioned the entrepreneurs’ look as a factor. You are doing the presenting, so dress how you are comfortable. It’s only one minute so the information you deliver is more valuable than your personal look.
What if I’m shy?
Put on the investors’ shoes. You have asked for their valuable time and you want money for your business. You have to be able to speak about your business. If you are terrified, you may have another person make the presentation, but investors want to hear from founders so at least be in the audience for follow-up questions or one-on-one contact.
Summary
As an entrepreneur, you want the opportunity to speak directly to investors so you can raise money for your business.
Practice your pitch to investors. You may end up attending dozens of events before you receive one dollar. Look at those presentations as an opportunity. You want the practice. You want to be able to clearly state what your business can do. You want to hear the types of questions investors will ask. And you want the exposure to as many investors as possible. So keep attending events and practicing your pitch.
Know your audience. Read the program and have an idea who will be listening to your presentation. Watch for investors who have an interest in your field or industry. Even if they do not ask you a question during the event, you can follow-up afterwards, or offer to send more detailed information.
If you’re serious about taking your business to the next level and want to reach out to investors to participate in your world-beating idea, make sure you are prepared to let them know how ready you are to work with them.
You have a great opportunity to bring your idea directly to the people who have the money to fund it, take advantage of every second you get. Good luck!
Rising Entrepreneurs: Is Advertising Worth the Cost?
How to Measure Your ROI when Making Marketing Decisions
Big Words vs. Your Business Numbers: Bad advice and wild declarations could be preventing you from maximizing opportunities for your business. Here is a straightforward process for determining, for yourself, whether you are making or losing money from your marketing decisions.
Do you listen to – just about everybody – as you try and build your business? Are you wondering who is right and who is wrong about spending ideas like buying advertising on Facebook or managing your own website?
How should you decide what to do?
One option is to decide based only on numbers – the actual profit – you could make from your decision. Even if your business has no customers or profits, you can be disciplined about evaluating every decision along economic lines. Make your calculations against a long-term vision for your business. You do not have to worry about making money tomorrow, only about making money.
When you hear someone say a particular business decision is “expensive,” you have to determine, for yourself, if the statement is true. The word ‘expensive’ is relative to your own costs and profit goals.
You have to do your own assessment. Taking someone else’s statement at face value may be costing you your opportunity to be successful with your business plans. If you are a rising entrepreneur, you may be missing an approach for directly making money if you take advice without knowing your own numbers.
What is expensive to You as CEO?
Entrepreneurs must understand whether or not your business spend is making you money – or you may soon go broke. When you spend money on your business, you have to learn how to measure the return you are getting from your investment. Another person’s declaration of what is or is not expensive should have no effect on you, if you truly understand how you make money.
You must be able to calculate your ROI – return on investment – for your spend. An ROI greater than 100% is the minimum goal. You want to earn back every penny you put in, and more. But the question is: 100% of what measure? The calculation of ROI is relative to your objectives.
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Your Business Must Make Sales
Most entrepreneurs have something to sell – either products or services or both – into the global marketplace. You offer solutions to problems, conveniences, value, opportunities, short cuts and other benefits to consumers who want or need what you have to offer.
You want your business sales to return greater than 100% of the cost you pay to run the business. For example, authors want to receive more than 100% of costs returned as royalties from book sales.
To determine if the spend is getting a return consider: how you earn revenue, the timeframe when you will recover costs, and who you expect to eventually receive the payment from.
To illustrate, we will use the example of purchasing advertising from Facebook or Google to promote your business. When you make the decision to purchase advertising do you expect to eventually sell to people who see your ad, click on it, or convert by taking a specific action?
These are the factors you must consider – where is the revenue eventually going to come from?
To determine your parameters for calculating your return, ask yourself a few questions: Why are you buying ads? What do you expect the ads to do for your business?
If you cannot answer those questions with exactness, meaning exact dollar figures, you may be pursuing a blind advertising strategy for your product or service.
Entrepreneurs buy advertising to reach an audience. Facebook or Google advertising allows you to target people who may be interested in your ad because they fit a specific demographic or interest group connected to your product or service. For example, if you write thriller books, you can target all the thriller fans who have claimed the interest on a digital platform.
To Calculate ROI on Advertising:
Set-up your Ad
This example will focus on calculating your ROI for advertising spend only. You will not find the information on how to do a Facebook ad or use Google Adwords. If you want information on technical features such as creating or placing your ad, tweaking the ad, or writing better copy, put a note in comments to request a future article.
When setting up your ad, you will want a measure of performance. For example, people create an ad to prompt a Call-To-Action (CTA) – an activity they want the ad viewer to do. The CTA is aimed at fueling an end goal for your business. You are then able to measure performance based on how many people do what you want them to do.
The value of the return starts with your reason for creating the ad.
Let’s use the following illustrative example: You have a brand new product that no one has heard about, but you are interested in targeting potential customers who may be interested. You can create an ad campaign with ads that have a CTA to click to enter an e-mail address and receive an incentive from you such as an introductory product supplement or important research information related to your new product.
For this campaign, two measures are important – how many people click the ad, and how many people enter their e-mail address to receive the incentive.
Calculate your expected profit from selling the new product
To apply real numbers to the calculation of your return, you must determine your expected profit. If, as a result of the advertising campaign, you were able to sell the product to everyone who executed the CTA, what would you earn from each sale?
More generally, determine how you expect to drive sales through the money you are spending. If you set up a website, buy supplies, take a competitor to lunch, attend a conference – how are you creating sales for your business? The same thought process must be applied to your advertising.
Once you know the potential profit you expect to receive, you can determine the return you need to achieve it.
What is the expected profit from the sale of the product?
Know Your Costs for Each Outcome
In our advertising example, you must know the ad spend for each successful CTA by a potential customer.
One note: This article is only about recovering your cost for specific spend such as advertising, and not all the other potential costs you can have when creating your product or service. For this example, this calculation does not include the costs for creating, producing or distributing your product or service, the cost of your time, materials, outsourcing, or web services. The actual total cost of the product or service includes more than advertising spend or another targeted expense. But we are not going to consider the ROI on your entire production and distribution process.
The purpose of this article is to help you weed out facts from hubris when listening to third party advice about your business decisions. You have to know your own numbers to avoid having people persuade you to take action that may be against your best interests.
With your advertising expenses, you should know exactly how much money is being spent, which means you can track the value of that spend directly to your results.
Tracking Your Results
Using our earlier example for digital advertising, you must decide which result statistic matches your overall strategy.
From earlier, if you decided on measuring how many people click on the ad, and how many people enter an email address, you have the important statistics you want to analyze. The people who enter their e-mail are conversions.
You want to pick one of these measures to track against the money you are spending.
Conversions are the number of people who acted on your CTA – such as those who entered an email address or went to your website. For many advertisers, the number of conversions is the statistic that matters.
You will have to decide which measure optimizes returns for your marketing strategy. How are you going to continue to motivate customers – with great products, added value, more information or other incentives?
Based on this overall plan, you must set your goal for the ads. What is the connection between your marketing and the potential for a sale?
For example, an author may give away one free book in a series, in the hope the potential customer will buy the next book in the series. Perfumers give away free samples in the hope you will buy the whole bottle. Cruise ships throw in the drink package to tempt you to take the cruise. When was the last time you got through Costco without sampling a new food or drink?
Make the connection. This goal is speculative. You have no idea if someone will eventually end up buying your book or perfume or food. Nor do you know if they bought the product or service only because of the advertising. You’re guessing based on past performance, research, habits for people in your industry and other concepts. Maybe you can clearly see a bump in sales after you advertise. But there are no guarantees. You will want to generate enough ongoing interest to keep the new customer engaged on some level.
Calculate Your Return
Go back to the expected profit and our advertising example. If you assume that your advertising will lead a customer to buy your product, perhaps within one year, you want the expected cost per conversion to be less than the expected profit per customer.
To calculate the return, divide the total amount spent and total number of conversions (number of successful CTAs or email addresses received). This will give you the cost-per-conversion. Then you can assess the value of your marketing.
For example, if your expected profit on each sale is $2.09, and cost-per-conversion is below $2.09 you can feel good about earning the money back. If it’s above $2.09, you may need to tweak the ads or target audience to try and get that amount down.
You should always know your expected profit from your product, and the cost-per-conversion so that you can automatically see if you have the potential to earn more money than you are spending on your ads.
Ideally, you want to minimize the cost-per-conversion number as much as possible. You really only want to pay $0.01 (one cent or less) per conversion. [This means if you were spending $10 a day on advertising, you would need 1,000 conversions a day, which would be awesome, but you see the challenge].
The key is to understand what each conversion means to you. When you look at your overall campaign, focus on the number you originally determined to use as the basis for a return. If cost-per-click is not a factor for you, do not bother tracking the number. Only worry about the number you want to use to track performance. Other numbers remain interesting to your overall results, but not important to determining your return.
If you set an ROI number based on conversions you only have to worry that conversions are performing. Do not get obsessed with clicks if your conversions are delivering.
To determine your long-term prospects for earning your money back, you can also track how many products you would have to sell to break even. For example, based on the above numbers, if after one month, you have 500 people on your e-mail list, but no sales, you need to sell at least 144 products to earn your ad money back. [Note the math: Spending $10 a day for 30 days = $300, potential profit is $2.09, $300/$2.09 = 143.54 – rounded up).
You can envision selling 144 products over the next year, so the prospects still look good. But if after a year of the same monthly spend and you still have no sales, you would need to sell 1,723 products to break even. Now you may be a little worried.
However, if you have 6,000 e-mails on your list you can work on marketing to your list and try and earn the money by promoting the next product to your existing ‘warm’ leads. You can think of new incentives and ideas to show your customers the value you have to offer and how you can help them find satisfying solutions.
Be Wary of Big Talkers Making Pronouncements
The next time you hear someone say “Advertising is expensive,” remember to do your own math. You have to determine “by what measure?” and then apply the measure to your business.
Using our ongoing example again, if next year, cost-per-conversion goes from $2.09 to $4.09, and you receive fewer conversions with the same ads, then you can agree ads are getting too expensive for your business model. But you cannot know exactly what your risk is until you have run your own numbers.
You must decide:
Why you are creating the ads?
What you want to achieve through the ads?
Which product or service you plan to sell and what is potential profit?
Decide on your own definition of “expensive.”
If you have an opportunity to reach an audience, and good marketing ideas, do not let the moment pass you by because someone else has found the prospect daunting. Pursue your own advertising strategy based on the options that work for your business.
–$–
Case Lane founded Ready Entrepreneur to help people who struggle to get the information they need to start a business and fulfill their lifestyle dreams. Ready Entrepreneur works with aspiring entrepreneurs, wantrepreneurs and rising entrepreneurs who are frustrated, confused by the technology solutions but thirsty for the information they need to grow the business. Case shows you how to access the resources you have to tactically develop a business that can be competitive in the global market and deliver market share, profit and cash flow. Please feel free to visit her blog to find unique articles and resources that support this vision.
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How do you define Real Success as an Entrepreneur?
When people set out with a goal, like to start their own business, the achievement is clear. When the business opens, the goal has been reached.But many entrepreneurs do not feel successful at that moment. Doubt quickly creeps in: What if the business has no customers? What if only the launch went well? Most new businesses fail. Owning a business is only a dream.
Fear soon overtakes you and you press on until you reach the next milestone moment. And that moment…whenever it comes…it hits you like a bright burst of sunshine.
Perhaps it’s the day you first realize that you have control of your own schedule and can really go to your friend’s wedding for a week, and not just one day. Or maybe it’s the day when your child asks if you are coming to the game and you do not hesitate in saying: “yes of course I’ll be there.”
You don’t check the calendar. You don’t ask permission. You just know, you can be part of that moment.
The average person spends 2,080 hours a year on the job. This is only one-third of your entire year. Yet it feels like so much more. Your employment and the commitments associated with it take so much of your energy and fill many worry spots in your brain. When you are finally free of someone else’s all encompassing agenda, you can take that time back.
That’s when you have achieved success.
The word success comes from the Latin, succedere, which means to ‘come close after.’ This definition seems to be an unintended origin for such an important word in our language. After all, to ‘come close’ is not to succeed at all in our culture. Coming close means you didn’t win. It’s like what they say about winning a silver medal at the Olympics – you’re the best of all the losers. People don’t say you’re the second best in the world – okay some will – but they’re thinking…You lost. You lost the gold medal.
Society measures success by those who win the awards, contests, and at making money. Regardless of whether you credit extraordinary ability, hard work, luck or circumstance – success means you are popular, wealthy, recognized, honored, and so on. In all circumstances it is the opposite of failure, of being a loser or a nobody in a world searching for approbation.
As an entrepreneur, it does you little good to try and cling to that broad meaning of success. You’re never going to know exactly how much money everyone else has. So if you try and run the money race, you’ll be a rat on a spinning wheel. You’re also never going to know if you’re the most popular person in your world – or in your neighborhood, in your genre, your industry – because it’s a big world and there are so many products or services. You could be number #1 by one measure today, and find out you’re #93 by a different measure or # 1,993,000 tomorrow.
What was the number one movie at the box office last week? What about number one year to date? What about in China the world’s biggest market? What about number one in terms of uninflated dollars? Who is number one? What is number one?
The only way to know if you have achieved success is to create the definition for yourself and stick to your idea of what success means to you.
Success has its more positive meanings. For individuals who are pursuing goals and objectives, success to is to achieve the result or accomplish a particular purpose. If you left the 9-to-5 grind to start your own business, success could mean getting away from all the reasons you wanted out of the job in the first place. Just as you left the formal workforce and went out on your own to live on your terms, you should define success as you see fit as well.
Aspiring entrepreneurs can define their own success by setting goals and working to achieve them. For some, the objective will be to create an online product available for sale, for others perhaps getting the first 1,000 names on an e-mail list, or 100 attendees at a webinar. Each goal is its own measure of success of your success. Real success, tied to you – the entrepreneur’s faith in moving forward and achieving even more.
Those who do not set goals tend to drift, uncertain of where they can establish their footing and begin to change their outcomes. Sometimes the idea of the goal itself prompts those who are afraid of their own success, to curl up and avoid any semblance of working on achievement. These people are unlikely to be entrepreneurs. Unlikely to be striving for a weightier outcome.
As you consider your own world, where are you positioned going forward? If you are tired of the 9-to-5 grind and hoping one day to have control of your own schedule, then you are likely leaning towards a life as an entrepreneur who works to make her own magic happen.
Being an entrepreneur is not an easy task. The best thing is your opportunity to live your life on your terms as you deliver value based on your singular ability. The worst is the risk you take on for the privilege.
Those that shy away from the entrepreneur’s life are likely unable to fathom having no regular paycheck or daily routine to fall back on if the project does not turn out as imagined.
But those who embrace the life are quite prepared to risk the initial disruption to give themselves an opportunity for long-term gain. Because when the work is done, and the business is thriving, the entrepreneur at the helm is truly in charge, not just of a business operation, but also of her own life.
No more asking permission to take a day off, or missing events held during a week day, or dealing with difficult people who have limited stakes in the work. Instead, you establish the world you want to work in and live to that standard every day.
Being an entrepreneur, your own boss is the goal, but it’s a destination. To get there you must travel a journey of ups-and-downs. And you must stay focused on where you want to be and on the value you have placed in reaching that location.
Define what real success looks like to you.
Then move forward with that vision as your guide and umbrella on the road to your lifestyle dream.
You can set typical business goals such as revenue, profit and customers. But you also set personal goals like going to the events you would pass up in the past, or making sure you attend everyone of your child’s games or recitals. Or reading all the great classics, one after another for a year or two. Or traveling to the top of the Eiffel Tower or to walk on the Great Wall. Whatever it is that your dreaming about doing one day – make that the definition of your success.
When you achieve each activity you have only dreamt of doing, you have reached success.
And when you are able to achieve these activities, because you decided to become an entrepreneur and take control of your own life, you have exponentially achieved even more.
You have made yourself the focus of your own success story. And that is the greatest success of all.
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They said Doing a Webinar was Easy…27 Tech Tools later I figured it out…
For those of you building an online business using the available tools, and your own brainpower, hang with me for this one…Online entrepreneurship is made possible by the technology. Processes that used to have huge barriers to entry have been broken down and handed to the average person who can take a shot at building an audience from anywhere in the world. Each year, more intuitive and accessible tools are released into the marketplace, the work becomes much simpler…
…until it’s not.
Why are some of the most popular online product creation processes so tedious to complete?
I discovered this cold reality yet again when I set out to create a webinar.
Right now, many online gurus are singing the praises of webinars. Web-seminars. Short ‘classes’ or training sessions designed to deliver a spurt of knowledge to seekers who are prepared to put aside at least 45 minutes, sometimes two hours to hear the information. Webinars are generally free to attend, but almost always spend at least another 30 or 45 minutes offering products related to the subject for sale.
Webinars help many online course creators deliver their products to a large audience. And for the most part, from what I have seen, the time is well spent. The ‘teachers’ do deliver valuable information.
As an online entrepreneur in the business of delivering information, webinars seemed like the next important step to take in growing my business. And having watched dozens of presentations, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it would take to deliver one of my own. So I set out to do just that.
What I discovered was the further verification of a hard truth about online entrepreneurship that I first realized when I worked on formatting my first self-published ebook.
As straightforward as the technology appears, the process is another story.
I have followed other how-to systems, and become frustrated because too many ‘teachers’ who are providing ‘how-to’ guidance online, skip the details. And by details, I mean the real specifics. The actual step-by-step pitfalls of D-I-Y online anything, that forces you to create an elaborate project plan, access multiple tech tools, keep a dozen browser windows open for weeks, back track on each of your processes (because a detail was missed), and try not to fall into despair.
The reality of putting a webinar together is a long, twisted march through dozens of apps, none of which you can really test for compatibility with your style, and a great deal of patience as you dream of someday reaching the webinar pinnacles the gurus have been cheering about.
So for those of you who are going to make the move and try and make it work by yourself, here are the realities to watch out for. I will explain as much as possible, the real story behind the magical revenue source of creating a webinar.
Full disclosure: This article is not an endorsement of any specific technology tools. All the tools I use came from recommendations, usually from watching webinars. The links for ConvertKit,EasyWebinar, LeadPages and Teachable are affiliate links meaning I receive a commission for clicks through to sale. All other links are included for some of the other tools that were used in the process as described. The PDF version of this blog contains links to all of the products.
THINGS TO BE AWARE OF WHEN CREATING AND SETTING-UP A WEBINAR
My basic assumption here is your overall intention for creating a webinar is to do what the bigwigs do: collect email addresses through registrations and send reminder emails, appear on screen for a worldwide audience, present a slide presentation, deliver an offer, follow-up with other e-mails, build authority, an audience, a connection to those who are looking for the information you have to deliver.
So here’s how it goes…
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Set-up a Project Plan – MS Excel
You have to plan to track every step of this process. To keep track of all the activities I had to do to create my webinar, I used Microsoft Excel. Why? I just have not set aside the time to learn all the new project planning tools that people say are fantastic. What I need is to be able to make a long list, easy to edit, broken into specific groups of activities, with highlights or other indicators that I can follow at a glance. I can do this very rapidly in Excel. Ancient, I know, but it works.
Whichever tool you decide to use, each time you think of an activity to include, put it in your project plan in the correct chronological order. There is nothing worse than getting down the line with one piece of the project, then realizing you have to go back and do something else first.
Keep reading to better understand this pitfall.
Write a Presentation – MS Word
To begin the process, surprise, surprise, I watched a few webinars. Specifically offerings from four different gurus of the craft (Alanna Kaivalya, Amy Porterfield, David Siteman Garland and Casey Zeman. Now I do think all these people are awesome in their fields, but I did not purchase any of their webinar courses. However, I did end up getting Casey’s product as you’ll see later).
The webinars on webinars focused for the most part on what to put in the presentation – words you have to use, slides to include, and so on. Once finished with their advice, my work began.
The assumption is you want to do a webinar because you have something to say, specifically teach, that you believe will help people get over a particular problem they may be having. None of the gurus really said this, but you should probably plan out what you want to say – in detail. Now this might not apply to everyone, no doubt some of you are already teachers so you have a set script, or maybe some like to wing it.
I decided to write a full word for word script using old standard, Microsoft Word. When doing the webinar, the script becomes a guide for making sure I do not forget important points.
Create an Offer for Sale – Screenflow, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Audacity, Calendly, iPhotos, iTunes, MS Word, MS Powerpoint, Pixabay, Scrivener, Slides Carnival
Before you can create your actual webinar presentation, you have to know what you’re going to offer to your audience so the information about the offer can be in the presentation. I realize that sounds obvious, but believe me that unless you think through the details and put it all in your project plan, you will miss something.
Some gurus do say you do not have to make an offer to the audience, but I am quite certain I have never seen a webinar that did not end with an offer. If you just plan to deliver the training with no offer, you can skip this part.
My offer is a mixture of video training, an ebook, audiobook, consultation call so without going into details, a variety of tools were used. For the most part, I already had the products created to include in the offer, but if you don’t you may have to begin from scratch.
Again without the details on how to create bonuses for your audience, which could really go on and on, there are a couple of things to know about why these tools were used: if you’re giving an ebook, you can just give a PDF copy, but if you want to provide .ePub (Apple, Nook) or .Mobi (Kindle) files you need to convert the document using a tool like Scrivener. If you record a video in QuickTime, you probably want to convert it to MP4, and you can use Screenflow for that. Same with recording in Audacity but wanting to output to MP3.
The basic advice here is that some tools listed were used in this case only to create ‘universal’ files that the majority of online users will be able to download and use. But there are other tools and services that can do that type of work on a one-off basis. You may also not need to convert files at all if you create in another software.
Set-up the Offer for Sale – Amazon Web Service, Google Docs, LeadPages, PayPal for Business, Stripe, Teachable
You are not finished with the offer yet – you have to decide where to host it, and how you will get paid. And no, you have still not created your webinar presentation. You have to finish with the offer because you want to be able to create slides showing people how they can access the offer and what it looks like to sign up for the offer.
For hosting the offer I used Teachable, which is software I already use for hosting online courses, and within Teachable I have a custom payment gateway requiring Stripe and PayPal for Business (not regular PayPal).
As part of storing the offer somewhere, you need a Sales Page so your audience can access the material. Remember this is the Sales Page to sign-up for the offer, we are not on the webinar yet. I did consider a combination of LeadPages to create a landing page with the documents stored in Amazon Web Services or Google Docs. But I decided on Teachable to avoid using the extra services or having to set-up a more complicated payment system.
Once I had the offer set-up, I could take the screenshots to be used in the presentation.
Create the Presentation Slides – iPhotos, Microsoft Powerpoint, Pixabay, Slides Carnival
Okay now you can actually make the webinar presentation itself. Doing presentation slides is dependent on how you want to present your webinar. Although I intend to do the standard slide presentation, you can actually do a webinar where you just stay on screen and talk. Or you can stand in front of a flip chart and write or draw in real-time. Apparently that can work well if you have compelling information or a gripping presentation style, or preferably both. My approach is to say hello to the camera and then go behind the slides with the details in the presentation.
To create the presentation, I was surprised to realize my first challenge was finding a suitable slide template. Who knew? Apparently using standard templates in Microsoft Powerpoint looks way to 1990s, so I had to find something sharper. The best free options I found were at Slides Carnival, but there are other services with good templates.
For creating the presentation, the gurus recommended a mix of words and pictures. Too many words and your audience reads the slides and ignores what you say. Too many pictures might look like elementary school. The decision also depends on your style. If you wrote out a full script and plan to be behind the slides you can read from your script. If you plan to give away the slides to your audience, you want to present more words because they will not remember what the pictures mean. You decide.
Oh and the pictures. Mine came either from my personal collection in iPhotos, which required exporting the pictures to my harddrive to put into Powerpoint. And I used free images from Pixabay, which has many theme-related pics. Selecting the right pictures can take hours by the way – just so you know.
Select a Webinar Service – EasyWebinar, GotoMeeting, WebinarJam, WebinarNinja, and Zoom
At this point, you have your completed presentation and the offer ready to deliver. You can now figure out which webinar hosting service to use. Using a combination of the recommendations I heard the gurus mention, and the services I have seen people using in other webinars, I compared EasyWebinar, GotoMeeting, WebinarJam, WebinarNinja, and Zoom. By compare, I mean I looked at their websites, watched whatever free videos they had about how to use the product, and looked at the prices.
The webinar service you choose will partly inform what you have to do next because the steps are dependent on the types of features the service provides. Since I went with EasyWebinar, I also used their features, so you may not have the same approach.
Create Registration and Thank You pages – Amazon Web Services, Handbrake, QuickTime, Screenflow
Before going out to the world, you need to have the registration page set-up. A thank-you page is optional. For this you should include either photos or a welcome video, but again that’s optional. If you create the video – QuickTime, Screenflow – you may also have to host it somewhere, like Amazon Web Services. That was where I initially hosted videos that were accessed by pages set-up in EasyWebinar. But I’ve changed my registration page from a welcome video, to a photo, to just the sign-up form.
Since you do not know how your audience is accessing the videos, it’s best to allow maximum efficiency by compressing the file. Handbrake is a free online tool, which is usually recommended to do that.
Set-up Email Integration – ConvertKit, EasyWebinar
You almost certainly want to be able to collect the email addresses of anyone who signs up for your webinar. You can follow-up with people about their interests and try and draw them into your permanent audience. Most people use a stand-alone email service provider that is integrated with the webinar host. My service is ConvertKit, which integrates to EasyWebinar. But that’s just the beginning.
You have to think through the workflow. What is the path you want your potential attendee to follow once they have registered for the webinar? Watched (or not) the webinar? Purchased (or not) your offer?
Map out the workflow. If your webinar software has built in e-mails, make sure you know when those will be delivered so you know when to set-up your own e-mails in your email management software. Use tags that you want to attach to email addresses to note ‘who does what when.’ This process takes a bit of time because you have to know how your webinar host works and your email service and how they work together. You also have to write all the emails. You have to know what you want to say to your audience at different steps in the process.
Practice your Webinar Delivery – EasyWebinar, Google Hangouts, YouTube
Assuming you’re still with me and are ready with the energy to broadcast your webinar to a global audience, it’s now time to test the process. Actually a few tests.
Test live – Schedule a live webinar in your webinar software, maybe invite a few friends to tune in, and go ahead and run the presentation. If you are using EasyWebinar, then you are also using Google Hangouts and You Tube (really the same thing but requires two open windows). You must practice to make sure you can actually be seen and that your webcam and microphone work (I’m assuming you have the hardware but if you don’t that’s another discussion).
Test registration – Sign-up for your own webinar to check how the registration and thank you pages work. Also see how the emails are delivering.
Test Automated – First, you have to create the evergreen video. If you are running your webinar ‘evergreen,’ meaning people can sign-up and see it whenever they want, you want to make sure that you have a clear, clean recording set-up in your system.
You can use the recording from one of your tests, but make sure it’s not the one where you are pretending to be live or chatting with your friends when they were helping you out. As you do the test, you should go through the features to make sure it’s working correctly, and all the e-mails deliver as you expected.
Practice delivering the entire webinar. Don’t just do the first 15 minutes. Make sure you know that you are capable of speaking non-stop for 45 to 90 minutes, including answering questions on the fly. And from wherever you plan to deliver the webinar, make sure you have peace and privacy for all the times you will be on live. You do not want to be halfway through when airplanes start passing by overhead.
Once you feel ready about your complete delivery and all systems are working…you are done.
Except. No one has signed up.
You still have to market and promote and get people to register and show-up and follow-through. But that’s probably another 27 tech tools, so I’ll leave it there for now, and come back later with my follow-up.
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If you are an aspiring entrepreneur who would like to begin the process of breaking away from the daily grind and becoming an entrepreneur, you can enroll in this free training course and get started on your business today.
Questions about getting started as an entrepreneur contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com.
Can Entrepreneurship be Taught?
Who are the entrepreneurs in the world, the people who start businesses? Could it be the most clever or the hustler or the cheapskate or the visionary or the lucky or the hardest working or the liar or the cheater or the privileged or anyone who isn’t you?Or is it really just the people who had an idea and decided to see if they can put it into fruition?
And if it is those people then is that not a gift in itself, or can entrepreneurship taught?
Whether or not the answer to the question is ‘yes,’ entrepreneurship is being taught at schools everywhere and in business school programs. People believe you can learn how to be an independent businessperson and start your own business. But if you read the biographies and autobiographies of famous business owners, you will almost certainly come to realize that none of them took any special courses in how to be an entrepreneur.
They had an idea. And put the idea into action. They took risks, used persistence, ignored naysayers and defied the odds to keep going when others told them to stop. Can those behaviors be taught?
The answer is still ‘yes.’
The answer is ‘yes’ because one way to understand how to do something is to see what others do and emulate them. If the ‘secret sauce’ for successful entrepreneurship is not giving up on your business idea, people can be taught the concept that perseverance is a key to being a successful entrepreneur.
For people who want to start their own business, many simply do not know how it’s done. There is an information gap when it comes to explaining what it really takes to get a business going. Even the books about entrepreneurs do not really give you the details. A book may say an entrepreneur started with ‘nothing,’ but then suddenly the person is able to buy a storefront – how did that happen?
Or the person has one, two or ten friends who are on their exact same wavelength and work with them day and night to get the business going – where does one meet such people?
Or there are favorable laws that can be exploited in a particular jurisdiction or a relative who left behind an old truck and a recipe or an observation that triggered a bright idea.
When successful people write their own stories, you get the version they want to tell you that is a little bit entertaining, maybe glamorous, and always an idea about how they want to be viewed by others. You do not get the whole story. The blanks need to be filled in.
Typically, ‘the blanks’ the boring part is all about the work required in the average day for a rising entrepreneur. From the beginning of a business idea you must figure out how to bring the idea to market. Often you will try and fail to bring the idea to market and you will have to change your approach. If you begin with no money, you may have to work all day at a paying job for someone else and then work on your business all evening and weekends. That kind of effort rarely makes for dynamic page-turning in a biography.
The rising entrepreneur may have to approach people who can help advance the business. You may contact people every day and never receive a response. People may be short with you, bored with talking to you or tell you your idea is ‘stupid.’ You hang up and call someone else. Successful people are unlikely to want to recall those rejections either.
You might have to attend meetings where someone will only speak to you for five minutes, after you spend five days getting ready to meet them. You may make a presentation where the person asks a question you never thought of and then thinks you’re an idiot because you cannot answer it. You go to the bank and ask for a loan and get turned down because that lender, that day, did not like your idea. You move on to the next bank, the next day.
You will not go out partying with friends, you will not drink, do drugs or smoke. You will not take vacation or go to the movies. If you have a car you will use it for the business. You will eat, because you need food for nutrition, but you will not see the insides of any fancy restaurants. Possibly for years.
If you are on your own you will do these things while maintaining your housework, laundry, and other mundane household chores so that you remain a civilized person operating at a level of dignity.
If you are an entrepreneur, or even an entrepreneur-in-training, you will keep doing this until your business is a success.
Is managing this life until you are successful an academic skill or possible only if you have certain personality traits?
You have to be tough…with yourself. You have to have an iron self-discipline and will to forsake all the ‘normal’ rituals of everyday life in favor of building your business. This attitude applies even if you have children and a spouse. You have to convince them that changing your daily life now to concentrate on building a business is worth the effort for everyone.
You have to be able to shut out whining and complaining and wishing. You cannot set a deadline. For example to declare, ‘if the business if the is not viable by Jan. 1 we’ll do something else.’ Because setting a deadline could set you up to lose. Or worse, quit just before the business turns the corner. Instead from the beginning, you must decide you will build a successful business and that’s it. You will put your effort into creating the business you want or die trying.
A deadline will emerge on its own because you will find yourself determined to be successful to satisfy all those who may be counting on you to make it big…or to fail.
But if you are the kind of person who gives up, who believes you can in fact end your quest for entrepreneurship, then no amount of courses or books or lessons will help you. You can be told you must keep on going until you have a successful business, but you cannot be taught the personality traits needed to be that person.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, a person who runs your own business and manages your own lifestyle based on individual enterprise – you must be realistic about how you run your life.
Walk away from the daily ritual of a so-called ‘normal’ life, and set your sights on building your business dream. This is what you are being told, not taught.
Now it’s up to you go ahead and implement on that vision.
Additional Resources for Wantrepreneurs
Free Video Training
Check out free training for wantrepreneurs if you would like help to get started.
Check out: free video training series for wantrepreneurs. This training is for those of you who have always wanted to start a business, but need to find the confidence, time and money to get started.
Money Management Tips
Facing money challenges? Download my book: A Better Plan: Spend to Live, Save to Wealth: A Real Life Guide to Building Wealth from Nothing and Living a Life Without Financial Fear
For Amazon (Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/Better-Plan-Building-Nothing-Financial-ebook/dp/B06W5GXLP1/
For iBooks (Apple products): https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/better-plan-real-life-guide-to-building-wealth-from/id1222099554
For Smashwords (all formats): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/705684
Want to discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com
Sign-up for the Ready Entrepreneur Global Group List and stay up-to-date with news, tips, strategies, courses, giveaways and more about leveraging the global marketplace to achieve your lifestyle freedom.
What is Lifestyle Freedom?
When people toss around a term like ‘lifestyle freedom,’ I have to ask: What do you mean?When you think about the term ‘lifestyle freedom’ do you have a definition in mind?
Or more likely, a vision.
Some people equate the term strictly with being wealthy. The ability to do what you want in life, whenever you want, when you want because you have more money than you could spend in a lifetime. If you want a mega-mansion, you buy one. If you want a fancy car, you buy one. And so on. To some people lifestyle freedom is all about the bling.
But I picture lifestyle freedom a little more simplistically. Don’t get me wrong. The bling is great. But it takes time to go shopping for the right mega-mansion, and to test drive all those cars.
Sometimes what you are really after is not all those toys. What you want is more flexibility with your time.
Yes, your time.
Lifestyle Freedom is getting control of your time.
When I worked in organizations, corporations or bureaucracies, my colleagues were always lamenting the things they could not do. For example, attend a child’s sports event because it was scheduled for the late afternoon and there was no way they could make the commute on time. Or go to the doctor on a day’s notice because you want to get something checked out. Or shop on a Tuesday afternoon when no one is around and you can avoid the crowds and the over-filled parking lot.
Or vacation – imagine vacationing off-season so you are not caught with everyone else traveling at the same time, and paying holiday prices.
That’s Lifestyle Freedom.
Lifestyle freedom is also about how you manage your day. Some people work better in the early morning hours, and would love to be in the office at that time, and then leave earlier. Others prefer to work late into the night. But neither can make the adjustment because of the requirement for ‘face time.’
I hate ‘face time.’ That’s the idea that you have to be seen in the office, preferably between 9 am and 5 pm. Your actual results don’t count. Your production is not a factor. Your contribution in terms of efficiency and creativity is not measured. Only that people, the right people, see you between 9 and 5. How many people are suffering through long drives, crowded elevators, boring water cooler conversations and interminable meetings only because of the need for ‘face time.’
Face time is one of the great scourges of the corporate world, but it persists because it is a key factor in the judgment of others. If you and another person are considered ‘equally qualified,’ the one who is ‘known’ will get the promotion because people feel more comfortable with the familiar face. In fact, you may only be considered equally qualified because the ‘known’ one has been around. That person may not have done any actual work. Maybe they played tennis all day. But they played with the right people, so they get the promotion, you don’t.
Is it worth your adult life to continue showing up for a company with those values?
Never having to put up with that scenario again is…lifestyle freedom.
During the year-end holidays, people are scrambling, from Thanksgiving on, to buy gifts, decorate their house, prepare for visitors, and cook, and have no flexible time to do any of it. The most festive time of the year turns into a stressful nightmare of fighting crowds, and juggling schedules. Online shopping has alleviated some of these issues, but you still need time to go online and find everything you’re looking for.
Imagine if you had all day, every day during the four weeks leading up to the holidays, to work on your personal celebratory activities. That’s lifestyle freedom.
When you start a family, you are propelled into near crisis over your daycare options. It’s such a difficult decision for parents to make to decide if it’s ‘worth it,’ to hire a nanny or use daycare for a child, or give up a salary and have one caregiver stay home. The fact people have to make these decisions based on financial resources, and not on how they want to raise their child is crushing for working families.
What you want is to be able to have your children whenever you’re ready, and decide on care as a personal preference.
That’s lifestyle freedom.
How do you Achieve Lifestyle Freedom?
If you have ever felt the inkling to become an entrepreneur, maybe it’s because you want these examples of lifestyle freedom. If you have business ideas in your head and think it may be time to start your own business, now is the time to do it.
Unprecedented advances in globalization and technology have shrunk the marketplace to make all markets accessible to the average person. Tech tools, many of them free, enable laptop entrepreneurs to create from their backyard and enter the marketplace at any point. If you really want to achieve lifestyle freedom by getting away from the difficult and awkward situations that hold you back, and having the flexibility to make your own decisions, entrepreneurship is your ticket.
When you begin thinking as an entrepreneur, CEO of your own business, you will be automatically shaping your lifestyle to fit your plans. You will set-up the business around the activities you do for yourself and your family. Initially you may trade-off more peripheral activities like a distant acquaintance’s birthday party so you can work on your business, but over time you will be able to get back to everything you really want to do.
The key is to make the decision upfront to be an entrepreneur in pursuit of lifestyle freedom. If you make the changes now, within a couple of years, you could be in a position to attend every event you want to attend, plan your shopping and holidays as you see fit, and take those vacations when the timing suits you, and not someone, or a corporation’s agenda.
If you are really one of those independent people who have been thinking, and thinking, and thinking about branching out on your own, you are not alone. But the idea of achieving lifestyle freedom is easier to think about than to do. Many people bail out of making the effort to actually live the life because they are afraid.
People make up excuses like they do not have enough time to work on a business, or money, or confidence, or their business idea will not stick. None of these excuses is true because you have not yet tried to establish the business. At this point you have no idea what will work and what will not.
If you are a thinking entrepreneur, with business ideas in your head, and a dream of lifestyle freedom, begin by actually starting your business. You achieve lifestyle freedom when you set out on the road to entrepreneurship because you begin designing a life that meets all your goals.
Try it now, you will not be disappointed.
Additional Resources for Wantrepreneurs
Free Video Training
Check out free training for wantrepreneurs if you would like help to get started.
Check out: free video training series for wantrepreneurs. This training is for those of you who have always wanted to start a business, but need to find the confidence, time and money to get started.
Money Management Tips
Facing money challenges? Download my book: A Better Plan: Spend to Live, Save to Wealth: A Real Life Guide to Building Wealth from Nothing and Living a Life Without Financial Fear
For Amazon (Kindle): https://www.amazon.com/Better-Plan-Building-Nothing-Financial-ebook/dp/B06W5GXLP1/
For iBooks (Apple products): https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/better-plan-real-life-guide-to-building-wealth-from/id1222099554
For Smashwords (all formats): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/705684
Want to discuss the content of this blog or other ideas? Send me an email to: contactcase(at)readyentrepreneur(dot)com
Sign-up for the Ready Entrepreneur Global Group List and stay up-to-date with news, tips, strategies, courses, giveaways and more about leveraging the global marketplace to achieve your lifestyle freedom.
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