Transcripts
1. Course Preview: Well, hello and welcome to the God of business planning for small businesses course. My name is Norm and I will be your guide on this introductory informative course. Walking with you together through the steps and process of planning and building your successful small business. We will kick start this course by defining your personal goals and objectives, identifying the outcomes you want out of your business. What type of business to start? And do I start a business in the first place? We will then transition into finding your target customers. Craft the unique selling proposition their CFO wants, and analyze your pockets to make sure there's a demand for your product and services rather than with the your time, money, and effort going after products with no demand and customers to purchase. After that, we will focus on executing your plan, starting from finding your suppliers, being a white label or sale or drop shipping, then moving into breaking down your cost structures and making sure that you are not losing money. Then we will look into different options for hiring your team when the budget to take some of the pressure away from your back and keep your focus on growing the business. You will also learn how to build an efficient operational process for running your business. We will end this course by talking about planning for your marketing. Price your product correctly, position your brand effectively and beautifully present your brand visually. At the end of this course, my promise to you is that you will have is strong and clear understanding, but how to plan for a small business and creating a practical and actionable plan to execute it and put your business on the right track. However, before we start, let's be clear on few things to save you time. And husband discourse is not designed to talk about the legal structure that go into building a business or funding investors. In my personal opinion, it is too early to consider. It's matters right now. Discourse is also not designed to teach you how to make a quick buck in a short period, get rich. Quick schemes are not within my expertise. Instead, discourse is designed to be on your site as a guide to take your idea from inspiration and transform it into a tangible business that you can't personally built and profits, assuming that you have to work. I had designed this course as a foundational course for my integer granted courts, where I teach you how to take your business and transform it into a successful brand. And my introduction to marketing course, where I teach you how to take your brand marketed and groped. However, we first need to make sure that you got the right foundations. Course, Countries, tons of practical examples, visual guidelines, checklists and exercises that you can apply it to real life projects and businesses. We don't talk theories, only practical strategies and tactics that deliver results if you are new to business or struggling to find the right guide, that could help you simplify and clarify things out so you can make the right choice and kick off your project. Then welcome, this is the right course for you now getting, and let's begin.
2. Defining Your Personal Goals: Welcome back in this video, we would spend some time OK about you. That's right. Okay about you, your skills, your available time and your goals. The first questions that we need to be asking ourselves is, how much money can we afford to invest in a business? At the moment, the amount of money that you have would define the type of business that you will be able to start. This. You can begin your journey from a simple online storefront, tow a truck, a pop shop or go for retail store each type of assets on by assets. I mean the tools you need to build your business. We require a different amount of money to be invested. If you feel that your current situation does not allow to invest a lot of money and you still desire to start a business, then it's wise to begin small with an ally stores and expand. If you believe that you have a vision for a bigger idea and need more money, then you might need to start looking for the financial partner. The second question is divided into two, a small question which are how much free time can he spend on? What kind of skills can you bring to your business? If you are any full time job and have some creative skills, I would like to make a transition to create in your business. Then you may begin freelancing by taking few side projects building your client lists. Then, once you feel that you can't make enough money, you can complete the job if you have the time. But you feel that you like the essential skills for creative work or the skills to start a business from scratch. Then you might begin your journey working with the franchise E, where they provide you with the complete business system so you can focus on doing the job . If you are more as a creative person, I'd love to do your work on your own. I don't like to deal with client at business work. It's fine, too, but you should give in mind that to build a business, you still need to find a team that does extra work and also find a business partner who does the business part of your business. If you are more into teaching and helping people, then your status you should be navigated toward building information products or building a consulting business is the third questions that you should be asking yourself is, What is your drive or what is your wife? Is it because you have a great idea that you believe in and won't approve? Or is it because you care about your family and want to build a better future where you can spend more time and happy moment together or isn't because you find that you just like your current job and finding meaningless? Or is it that you hit working for others, taking orders and you want to be your boss? It doesn't matter what your driver's what matters, that you have strong one. Why? Because of this drive, you will stay up all night and do the extra work. When things get hard and complicated, you can learn everything about how to build the business. But without a strong drive and purpose, you won't be able to push forward. The fourth question that you need to be asking yourself is, how much money should you earn per year to cover your living expenses? And how much extra profit do you need to make to have a kind of lifestyle that you want. Let's be specific here. Lay down all the essential expenses, their research for what kind of lifestyle would you like to have in the next year? And how much does it cost you to leave that kind of last time? Just be realistic. It's not to dream big, but we want to be practical, right? Deciding on how much money you need would make you focus your work and time on achieving those goals. There are sounds off ways to make money, but if they don't align with your gold, they will be considered as a waste of time and energy. The fifth question should be what your contingency plan is. What if it doesn't work? Is there an extra money? Can you go back your ledger? We know that starting in business might be risky for you. So let's first think like a good planner and plan for situation like in case things don't work out. Now that you have those five questions in mind, I need to take into consideration the following First of all, keep a steady income source, which allow you to pay the bills if you have a full time job. They keep it until you build your next idea and client list. If you don't have a job at the moment, then try to find part time or freelancing opportunities. Trust me. With this approach in mind, you can eliminate 90% of the mental pressure. Always get the bills out of the way point number to maintain your body and help many small business owners. I think that they need to spend 16 hours a day working, then neglect their body and hills. On the other hand, I want you to do the opposite. I would like to take good care of your body. That means finding time for having our day to exercise it healthy food and get enough sleep . Without so's, your body will fail to focus and function. So does your business and point number C. Try your best to not read off your business and dreams. With your family and relationships, you need to see the bigger picture, which is that you want them to be happy and you are doing this because you want them to be with you together. Try to plan for time to spend with your family. Communicate with them your vision and ideas and make sure that they are on the supportive sites. Okay, So for your fears assignment, take some time to think and write down the answers to the following question. Why do you want to start a business in the first place? Put it in another way. What makes you sure they're starting a business will get you to your knees. How much money in total or monthly? Canny. Invest in building your business. How many hours a week can you put on the side to spend on your business? They find your stable income source. How would you pay the bills for the next year? Do not expect your business to generate income as soon as you might think. Define your core and best skills. Are you a designer and engineer? A sales person? What type of business income lifestyle do you want? Are you looking for a full scale business or probably some freelancing with a little extra income would be great. How much should you earn their year to make a living? What is your backup plan? What if all your work does not pay off? Can you find another job to pay the bills. Do you have extra money in the back to keep you going? First, there was a different idea. Building a business does come was rewards and risk. In this course, we will do our best to minimize our risk on maximum our reward. But always keep in mind that you still have to think and plan for your backup plan. Take your time and do the homework. It's OK if you don't have all the answers at the moment. Also, keep in mind that throughout this course our main objective is not to create a final must to follow plan. Things will change all the time. The main goal off those exercises is to have a clear and general idea about how to create a business and train you to be a more goal oriented, instead, off following a random path with no process and practical outcome in mind.
3. Find Your Customers: we'll come back. I hope that you have spent enough time thinking about your current situation. In this video, we will be to camp out. What makes a successful business ought to understand your customers and provide them with a compelling and target offering. First of all, let's define what the business is. A product is not the business. A product is only a small part of the business. You can start a business with the product, but you cannot build a complete business with just a brother. For a business to be successful, it should be designed to be functioning as a complete system, starting with the customers and market research products ideation for the manufacturing, marketing and product distribution and sales. All of those component should work together to deliver received daddy for a specific segment of customers in exchange for their money. Therefore, if you wish to influence and ask your customers to change their money with you, you should deliver a product or service Is that they must need or have a strong desire to acquire. And products that provide value to customers is a product that gives people the option to save money or services that provide and deliver expertise so people won't have to go through all the hard thinking and hassling or products that provide lifestyles, high social status and prestige. Some of those values could be packaged in physical product, while others could be delivered as services or educational content. Regardless of whatever your expertise are, you can always find the best approach to package your brother. On the other hand, you understand which type of customers are you trying to serve? Many new startups. Entrepreneurs gets this part wrong and try to communicate to everyone. There are two times of consumers, the others consumers who are more interested in discounts and deals. They are interested in finding the next big promotion. They shop at places such as Wal Mart and Amazon. Their primary interest is to feel smart about every purchase they do and mostly interested in low prices and discount. If you are starting out as a small business, so stop of consumer should not be your main focus to serve. On the other hand, you have the more sophisticated, last start oriented consumers who are more interested in beautiful design, excellent quality brands and services that allies and speak to their lifestyles and values , providing account for 365 days a year. My devalue your brand and pushed them away. Keep in mind that those two types of different mentality have nothing to do with their income or social status. It's just their personality and shopping mindset. Also keep in mind that many factors and believe name is your customers shopping options, and those limitation will affect the way they see and interact with the world and your services. Take, for example, people who leaves in well developed countries with better infrastructures and basic needs. They have more time to focus and enjoy a better lifestyle. They already have the tools to get a better education, more developed distribution and payment channels with advanced commerce platforms. Contrast that with less default places where people still struggle for sale, daily life basics and needs with much lower income at bursting power. For you as an entrepreneur, this should be one off your priorities. To think about creating services for is a developed area is quite the opposite off. Let's devote one with limited environment. Regardless, a pall except you might be your customers might be enabled to use it or buy it in the first place. The second factor is that you need to think about is your customers lifetime? Different people usually gather to get her into groups, depending on their shared lifestyle for instant. For people who like to be bohemian, they were specific type of closing with specific kinds of bathrooms and colors, speaks and communicates through a particular kind of language. They like to hang out in bohemian style restaurants and purchase from bohemian stores with specific type of visuals. Unlike people who are more into a bold and colorful lifestyle, have a different view and mind, set off the surrounding environment and like to hang out in specific kind off environment. A situation. The third stature that you need to think about is people, pain points, fears and beliefs. Some people pain points is being lazy. They know that they have to make some changes, but still not motivated. What other people 10 points is that they have little to no time, and some other people, fear and believe are poverty on the idea that they have to be stuck with it for the rest of their life, and some group of people fears is dealing with depression, low self esteem and finding happiness. Once you understand your customers pain point and fears, then you will be able to create products and services that directly committee case to their personal concerns, believe and lifestyle all well designed to fit his or her environment. Let's look at simple scenario was in the fitness industry. A married, an overweight woman always find her husband spotting and looking at young, healthy and sexy woman. Imagine hair fantasizing about the picture that one day she might run into capture. Your husband flirting with six occur, fearing that her marriage will end and live would be very miserable. Whatever she thinks about this image, chief is angry, and she was to hit her husband in the face. On the other hand, there your problem is, and she lacks a self confidence, always being disappointed and her. She also might be aware that she needs to make some changes to your body, and it's at this point that she becomes motivated to find a solution. If you are as an interpreter, your have done you Homer and your target audience research correctly. Here is where you put coming place for people who cannot control their eating habits and always be lazy. Their best solution is to look for a strict one on one coaching program. Since money isn't the main issue, a personal coach might be the best option to look for or people who still want to lose weight. But face a problem with money, then a monthly membership or a mobile phone app might be a better solution. Usually, this type of people does understand the value off working hard and be self motivated, and typically are willing for the straight offs for the sake of saving money for people who are motivated and always seek for a solution. And Steve cannot wrap their minds around the full process, a step by step plan process was the complete video instruction or a group. Coaching will be a better choice. To put them on the right track and give them motivated for people was less time and a lot of responsibilities. You can reach them differently with different services, always keep in mind. Usually people don't care about specific product brad or service. What they care about is to make the transformation achieved. The result they need as fast as possible with this time money and hard work. This is why you should always be. Customers need focus instead of limiting yourself on being a product focused. Once you understand what does your customer won't. You need to know how to motivate them toward reaching that goal and shows them the way to access that solution through your offering. Some people are motivated by power. They want to be proceed as the strongest, fastest, most significant must excellent. They care, think and speak differently from people who are motivated by social life, creating relationships and being in social groups. And those people are entirely differently from people who are driven by energy, hard work and achievement for your business to succeed, you need to find a community with a group of people that shares the same goals, pains, habits and interest. Then communicate with them on a personal level. Once you find your target audience, give them what they want and need, and the money should follow. Combining all the above information. You should be able to come up with your unique selling proposition on business mission, which is for a specific audience. I will provide a particular service that offers them a specific value. Also, keep in mind that doing that research would make your life so much easier. When it comes to marketing, you will know was their interest, their habits, where to find them and how to communicate with them correctly. Okay, so let's sama, right, Let's keep in mind those idea A successful business is not Althea Broke, but the complete system. People would spend money on products and services that helps them to save or game money, time, effort and prestige. People will be limited by their environment income last tile and believe there are two types of consumer, the average and sophisticated. Don't try to talk to both at once. Narrow down your customer Sigman. Start from specific problem in mind, then come up with solutions. Focus on your customers, pain point, fears and behaviors and last but not least unique selling proposition should be your specific target audience and your offer. Okay, so now we get to your homework for this week homework. I would like to split it into two parts. Part one is I would like you to research a specific group of community around a shared problem you can choose your industry or any industry that you're interested in. This is how to do it. Go to Google and start searching for keywords such as I am frustrated with. I'm sick off. I'm afraid off I'm territories. I hate to how to and following was keyword off your area of research. Look for communities with article that have a high readership and comments goes through the entire articles on Highlight. The main key areas that we talked about try not to judge isn't is their fears and frustration. What makes him said are ashamed. What kind of problem do they have and how it affects their life? Then five images that described this situation try to visualize it. It would make the process much easier. If you are studying in last time Business then considers a visual language. How do they look any specific colors or batters? And how do they communicate? Once you gather all of that information, you can move to part to obsess Simon, which is a clear plan off your target audience and how to deliver value on benefit to them . This plan will include what type of people do you want to serve. What are their limitations? What are their frustrations? Fears and pain points. What does motivate them? Where can you find them? How can you reach out of them? What is your unique value proposition for this group? What is your offering? A mission. Why should they care? Take your time and do this part correctly. This research and planning will save you so much time. Money. When it comes to product creation and marketing, make sure you don't want a pdf file and go through the assignment. If you have any questions, please leave your question secured A section I would get back to you as fast as possible. Get for now, Have some fun. And I was you is the next figure.
4. Analyze Your Market: was come back and this video, we will learn how to to a market research study and spy on your competition. Look for profitable businesses and find your nation. Okay, great. So now that you found a common language to come to get with your customers and you are both on the same page, it's time to move one step further and do some markets research. But before we do that, let's think about frustrating and heartbreaking question, which is, should I fall on my passion or instead full of the money? The answer should be both. Unity creates services or products that combine your passion with a profitable at marketable idea. Otherwise you won't be able to go far, or you might be stuck with a hobby or not profitable business, which is okay. If that is, you are looking for for you as an entrepreneur to win in the long run, you should always be thinking like a successful long term investor. Sit back, look at the bigger picture, then ask yourself, Does this idea worth my time, energy and money? Let's take this simple scenario. Imagine yourself as a friendship if who just immigrated to the United States and wanted to start your fast food restaurants. And you have no clue or information about the fast food industry in the United States. What should you do to know that your idea worth pursuing it or not? Well, you can go out and start asking it looking around, or you can be more sophisticated and use the poor of the Internet to your advantage. Let's start searching, starting from the bigger picture, then narrowing down into the small details. Our first question would be, How large is the fast food industry in the United States? Big One off the top five search result and you should be able to get a good source off information and this research. We see that the fast food industry is a $200 billion industry, which is a quiet, large industry with his 30% plus growing market share. For a hamburger focused, which is the large enough for you to capture a small slice, make sure to pick other resources and double check information. And as you can see that the fast food industry is a growing industry and the numbers almost matches, our second question would be how much does the average American consumer spent on fast food ? As you can see that the spending habits off the every American is $100 a month or $12.50 per meal, their ages must be young, between 18 and 29 years old. Must consumers are with a household income off 75,000 year, which is quite the opposite of what you might expect. Keep in mind that all of that information is on average and not as specific as you may want . Use them as a guideline to have a better understanding off your market. Our third question would be What is the profit margin in the fast food industry? Profit margin means how much profit can you make each burger resale? Don't worry about this concept yet. We will explore this question in more specific details when we talk about the basic accounting later in this course. So the result is fast food restaurant with US frozen bulk food with high customers turnover which caused them let's to make and enjoy a higher profit margin when the other hand. Food trucks don't have to worry about trend and high overhead costs, which makes them gain a higher overall profit. A higher profit margin would make your work worth the effort that make. It's faster to you to reach your monthly break even point and enjoy the extra profit. Our fourth and last question for this exists I would be, which are the best cities to start a result in the United States. You want to be looking for the top growing area in term of your industries. You just try to step away from declining or none growing areas. Okay, so now that you have an idea about growing cities, let's start to narrow our research down to the micro level. Let's visit yet that come or travel advisor that come, or any platforms that provide relevant information about your specific industries, such as nearby places, prices and customer reviews. Let's first do a quick search for a fast food restaurant in Texas cities, and as you can see, that's 300 restaurants index. A city would be competing with you on fast food. You should study and compare each group on price and category, since most of them would be competing with you on customers. Fast food spending. Now let's narrow it down to sit are part, and the result will be that to third or fast food Restaurants are located in this area. Your job is to go through some of the most restaurant and read customers, refuse, search and find for patterns of what people do like and dislike. Look for underserved area usually has to do with the quality of the product price, customer service or the environment. Now that we have a clear view off your market and competition, it's time for more in depth research. Peak some of the best and worst places according to customer review on the list and plan for a visit. In this case, I have chosen Borba's. You should plan on studying their location. And how do people release them, the environment and the mood of the place You should be able to understand for which type of people it display designed for their best selling products. Taste and price. How do they sell it in store experience, or do they reach their customers by different distribution channels? How do they advertise to their customers? Cuba's does advertise on you, which is quite smart. This is where people do expect to look for restaurants. On the other hand, they don't do any Google or plates as I like the pizza hot, where they spent tons of money or displaying advertising. Now that you have a basic idea about your industry, markets and competition, let's do a simple study on the average household income for a different type of people of this area. Once you can understand the household income off a specific group of audience, you can design offers and product that fits their bursting power. OK, but you might ask, Why should I do all of this study and hard work? And the answer is easy. If you get into the same industry in a different market with a condition where the market is already saturated, you have to compete with sold off established restaurant with a high advertising budget and low profit margin. While you are starting out with a small budget, you will stand for a very little to no chance to survive. Now that you have an idea about how to make a research off your industry, you should also understand what that off products or services usually have a high demand in the market. If you are into information product or consulting thin. Thes are some off the high demand categories healthy or gang food at fitness Relationship Dating. Advice on better six life. How to make, save or invest money on expensive hobbies. With the other hand, If you are more into consumer goods for a like commerce than you have, customize closing makeup and healthcare, it's care and food, electronic devices, kids and baby Julie on that Dole toys. You should always be looking and studying for the best selling products in your industry, then combining your skills and talent to come up with services and products that are marketable within your market based categories. This does not mean that you should not try your unique ideas. I'm just trying to show you what does the market looks like With all of that information in your hand, You should be able to decide whether you take the chance and keep going with your idea, or change your mind and exit. With no money invested here, you should also be thinking narrowing down your service to fit the specific needs in your gallery. For example, if you're in the gallery of photography, then you might know it down the wedding for the graphic, or better to narrow each other to wedding photography to a specific age of people or a unique style that you will be identified with instead of competing with everyone, you should be focusing on and be targeting your needs toward a specific group of audience and mirrors their image and needs. They're where the money is, and people will be more willing to change their money for quality and well designed product that fits their specific needs. Keep in mind that you can always begin with one product. Expand into different offering over an extended period, or you can also start with various offering. Find your audience. They narrow it down into manageable and clear business. In the end, your goal should be to avoid closure and undefined products that does to everyone and ends up helping no one also be aware or seasonal businesses and products such as soft drinks, all of the gifts and ice cream. And how would you manage your sales and cash flow once the season's end? Okay, so that was a lot to take in. Let's summarize this part First. You should be looking for a profitable industry that combines your passion with a marketable business. Second, think like an investor and fully refers. Third, understand your industry on deep level fourth. Study your competition. Fifth, don't fear some competition. Some competition means that there is a need for your idea. Six. Try to avoid declining, saturated and unprofitable businesses. Also, when you are starting out. Tried to prevent an entirely new idea. A new ideas required Changing consumer behaviors, said his heart and requires tons of money for marketing and consumer education. And last but not least, try to find a simple locals to start. Practical idea. That's reflect your skills. Okay, so now we read your s time Important. For your assigned for this week, you will need to study an industry big and industry that you are interested in or your industry reserves. A gross and the categories Wolves industry in your country. Find four related businesses. Study to businesses that you admire and the businesses that it's like. Can you find any gap or missing opportunity? Sir, Take your time and do the research. Have some fun. If you have a question, please leave your questions. It's a Q and A section The kids were now I would see you in the next video
5. Finding Your Suppliers: Welcome back in this feed, you would be OK about a different kind of suppliers and how to find the best one. That's face your business need now that you have a clear idea. But your target customers at your market style to move one step forward and start looking for suppliers that provide you with the products or material that you need looking for suppliers depends on many factors. Some of the most critical element that you should be looking for our how broad on diverse or narrow have focused you want to be. By that, I mean, are you planning on delivering different types of product for different kinds of customers , or only focusing on and small and specific knees that can be supplied by one manufacturer? The other factors that you want to be looking for is how does your suppliers strengths support your weaknesses from lean and efficient manufacturing, invent Torri quantity requirement, toe warehousing and shipping to the in customer. The third and forest factors that you should be looking for are the quality off the product and customer service. Seen some of your suppliers with the in factory with the end customer. Therefore, you should consider the quality of representation and circus. Keep in mind that different types of players to have different kinds of benefits and $3 such as a requirement off I inventory versus on demand manufacturing with a high price. Let's look at different type of suppliers and compare the up and down sides of each. If you are more of a creative, artistic designer time, you could use suppliers such as brimful dot com for customized printing or work with shape ways dot com for innovative product that requires two D printing the upside of such as the players are you need little or no cast reinvestigate best. You only need to provide your files. You can sell off flying or when many online store platforms all the process, are automated. Once you connect your words that your supplier, they will take care of the manufacturing and shipping process you can sell worldwide. Moreover, there is no inventively required since all the manufacturing it made to order the downside of such suppliers are the Brice tend to be higher than a whole, says a player. They also provide a limited collection off protects. You might not find your desire product, you have a limited personal branding on some of the products. Moreover, usually it's difficult to deal was return and exchange. See the products are already printed. The second out of suppliers on drug shipping suppliers. Those suppliers provide you with tons of different products like the previous type of suppliers. Drop shipping suppliers, also requiring little or no guys to be invested. Once the brook is ordered, you collect the money and they cut their expensive territory from your people or mustard colored car. Unlike on the master plan, you can find a massive amount of products. This kind of supplier is typically used to still all light on platforms such a shopper fighters got was completely automated process. They take care of the warehouse quality, control, shipping and billing. They also require no inventory. The downside of, says the player, that the price is still higher than a wholesale supplier, and all of the products come was different manufacturing blending, which means you won't be able to brand thes product using your business friend. The third double supplier is whole, says supplier. Each industry does have different suppliers who are focused on a specific category. You can Google your industry plus suppliers, plus your area the upsides off such supplier that they take the risk of importing locus products from countries such as China and save you the hustle and worries about product quality and shipping. You can find a wide range of products that fit your industry. Must also supplier can worked actually with Amazon and B A. Because you can buy at a low price, you can sell with a reasonable profit margin retail stores. The downside is that you will be taking some risks or buying in bulk, which means that you also have to spend money on space and taking care of your inventory. Those products also come with different manufacturing brands, and mostly you will not be able to use your business. Brent The four step of suppliers is going directly to factories. If you need to manufacture specific product was your privately and those type of supplier are the times that you need to be looking for? You could use their pre design templates combined with your business branding or come up with a completely new designed or engineered product. You can negotiate a low price with a high quantity order which allows you to sell in bulk to other retailers and wholesale stores. The downside is that you need to invest in design your templates or mold with large quantity inventory. Also, you might face a problem with manufacturing quality or on time delivery. The fifth stop of suppliers is offshore suppliers from countries such as China. If you want to compete on a large scale and decrease your manufacturing costs to the fraction off what you make in your country, they're looking for China might be your choice. Please make sure that before you make any order to check and other factory. In this case, the supplier does exist for eight years with a gold plus, which means that they invested in their business credibility. Check if there are any certificates in case your industry or country requires, such once you find a goose a player, your job is to contact him and confirms a follower minimal or the quantity or m o que the price for a higher quantity. Their payment terms. Moreover, check for the lead time. How long it takes him to produce your order. Also, try to negotiate for some samples at CNN Chick. It's a quality meets your needs. My advice from personal experience since I have seen in China for the last 13 years and work was many foreign business owners. Approach is to look for 1/3 party agency or come and visit different manufacturer and check for their existence and quality. Since a lot of those manufacturers tend to be scam me or supply was low quality products. You can also applies to certify that come where they help you to find the perfect suppliers for your brother. The six type of supplier is still manufacturing sales. Manufacturing requires you to invest a significant amount of capital in advance, which tend to be risky if you are starting out. The upside is that you can't control the quality off your production in this modern age. They should be your last option unless all the numbers, markets and risks supports this option. And lastly, if you are into service businesses such as photography, you don't have to buy all the tools to start your business. You can start with the basics. They look for suppliers who can supply you with the necessary tools and products to accomplish your job. Okay, so is that said for supplier. Let's look at the Cree Summer When you are looking for suppliers, you should start searching by your collects category. You finding your quality standard. Think comparing different suppliers. Process within the range off your required needs. Also try to avoid high inventor. Inventor equals two. Did cash in your warehouse. I always compare the trade offs off pizza players. Find suppliers that serve your end point sales channel. Don't over squeeze your suppliers profit. They will come back at you with a low quality product for out Sure are sourcing. Always look for a local partner or a trusted third party agency. Always research, compare and order and juice quality over price. Okay, guys. So for your assigned for this week is to find and compare suppliers big an industry that you are interested in or your industry find. What are you going to a Great. Are you going to be online or offline? Find at least streets players research and compare the trade off. Benefit of expired compares the price of its supplier and how it affects your profit margin . So says it guys for this week. Please make sure you don't know the pdf file. If you have any questions, please leave. Your question is a Q and A section. I will see you in the next video.
6. Building Your Team: Welcome back in this video, we will be talking about a different type of hiring people on how to find the perfect team to grow your business. Now that you have a clear understanding off your idea, your target customers, your market and your supplier, it's time to start looking for your talented team. Also, when you are starting out, you might be the only person that does all the heavy lifting. With time you need to learn how to delegate, free up your time and focus on the big picture, which is growing and scaling your business. Creating a successful team requires you to war with different types of people and that verse expertise to accomplish your business calls. Let's talk about different types of hiring, and how can you use them to your advantage? If you are starting out on a small budget, you can always look for interns, since those students are looking to trade their time and effort in exchange for education and real life or experiences. Keep in mind that asking entrance for help requires a massive effort from your side on educating on one on one coaching, since they have very little or no work experience the upside of interns that they can help you to deal with dye consuming and must do work, such as replying to a lot of customers. Email making appointments, taking notes and so on was a very low cost. The second type of higher is hiring virtual assistance for a small project and so skills at the low cost. You can hire an assistant, directory a block article, prepare a presentation file or did a bunch of photos for your current projects. Keep in mind that you are still in charge or being completely clear on direct with your requirements, unless you want to receive something entirely different from what you desire. This type of firing is perfect if you are going to write a bulk off articles, or is it a boat off photos that takes a lot of your time with the limited budget? The theater of hiring is freelancers. Freelancers differ from virtual assistant that they are professional and trained in more advanced skill. If you are looking for a freelancer, make sure to check out if they are currently active by looking on how many projects they are working on right now. Also make sure to check their previous work and pour for you. Don't hire a specific freelancer unless you are confident that their style fits your taste . Also, be looking for a freelancer who agrees to work on project based expenses instead off pay by the hour, especially with creative project. They tend to spend much time looking for inspirations. You don't want to pay for that unlimited time. Always keep your but it in my after all, you don't want to over pay for a freelancer for working hours that you cannot see you should be paying for the outcome result. Hiring a freelancer is an excellent choice. If you are going to publish An article on websites such as Force and Entrepreneurs has come . The forest type of fire is offshore, full time or part time virtual assistants. The upset of this type of hiring is that you can build a virtual team around the globe with a fraction of the cost that you would pay for the full time or in house team, and it also allows with more freedom and flexibility. The process or firing a virtual assistance is as similar to hiring in house staff. You need to write and defined the following brief description off your business objectives . Specific and clear description of job requirements. Specific description of requires skills and tools, plus your working hours in case you operate in different part of the club. A specific description of deliveries. Also make sure to check their past work and perform you. Moreover, last but not least, make an interview. Tries them. Make sure to educate them about your business and industry. If it all goes fine, keep working with them. If not, then it's OK to ask them to step down. They moved to find different ones. The fifth time for firing people is to look for part time in house staff, such as an accountant to take care of your books and find for Texas or part time graphic designer. That takes care off your website images and so on. After all, if you need someone to work eight hours a week, there's no point in hiring and paying him or her for eight hours a day, five days a week, depending on the type of business that you want to create. Each position and skills required different kinds of jobs, starting with the highest salaries, which are professionals and knowledge workers, such as professional designers, photographers and managers. Second come administrative workers, such a assistance, customer service and so on. The third top off workers are the labor work stuff, such as waitress, office cleaning goes delivery and so on. Each of those three positions come with different skills and knowledge, and he or she are typically paid according to the value that he or she brings to a business . This value might be in bringing relationships and connection making sales and so on. Keep in mind that you should always be looking for team players that align with the business vision, culture and values. Also, keep in mind that at the end of the day, it's all about your business, which means that your numbers should make sense. So make sure that you have a clear idea for what are the critical position or skill that you need to look for. And Madison was your budget Okay, so let's go through a brief summary. You should be looking for staff that shares the business vision and who are willing to work well with your entire team. Avoid only looking for high expertise you can always find professional, but shared culture and values are there. Also know that you will be trading your time on educating and mentoring local staff versus bringing high skills. Top salaries. Professionals also try to avoid any non professional friends and family members. You are not a charity, it's a business. And unless you are pretty sure that they can a complete the work without any observation ship trauma, there's the all of it. Also make sure that the monetary value that your business can generate should exceed amount of money that you pay for your team time and skill. Otherwise, it would be all of the business or cutting out on your staff. It's all business. Okay, guys, so we restore your homework part of this week. Your homework is to start planning and looking for your team. Start by the finding of business must tow work. Define your core skills on the best position you can do personally at the moment. Determined you. We consider things that take you much time to do. You don't enjoy and come up with weak results. For example, it could be taking great brother photographing. Maybe it's something that you need to delegate course separate jobs and work into ST categories one time, such as building a website multiple times a week, such as writing block article or full time position, such as customer service. Separate jobs into professional, administrative and labor. Separate jobs in two different locations in house or all stores. Studies Celery Strange in your area. Estimate a monster cost for your business to keep running, then start looking for staff. That's fields those position. It's okay if you don't have all the answers right now, make sure to do your base to have a general idea about how much is it going to cost you to hire your team? If you have any questions, please leave it in the Q and a section of this course. Have fun and I will see you the next video.
7. Planning For Your Operational Process: a little game and we'll come back in this video. We will be talking about topics that is not mentioned. Many business planning course, which is preparing for your business process. Have you ever being a subway store? Happy Stat will welcome you, then gives you a few seconds to look at the menu board. Then ask you, which kind of bread would you like? Moving toward your favorite type of meat resembles your desire sauce and end up wrapping your sandwich and ask you for the payment. So those are the main steps that each order and customers have to go through to complete an order. And because of this simple and straightforward process, Subway can build a fast food empire. In a typical situation, this process would work fine and ends up with excellent welcome. But what happens when the flow of customers increases and lot more of staff have toward together toward a specific results? In many situations, you start to get where outcomes defected, products and inefficient workflow staff starts to stressed out, and bad things keep happening, which caused customers delay and the satisfaction. This is why businesses always tried to automate and simplify a vast part of the process to save time, decreased defects and lower costs. Each successful process begins with a clear input that most toward a specific and desired upward, with consistent, lean and efficient steps. The successful process also deals with a bottleneck or a busy area by splitting this area and to multiple points off support. A successful process also tends to build each step on the top of the previous one with as straight and minimum moment as possible, which allows efficiency and consistent results. In some cases, that might be the dog off. The project manager off your business is making sure that from the point you receive an order to the point that you make yourself all of your staff working together towards share specific outcome, which is the customer desired outcomes. On the other hand, the wrong process, then to be complicated with um balance step, which calls for the waste of time materials and a lot of bottlenecks which decrease your production productivity, a bad operational process also tend to be inconsistent and does not fit together toward their beatable and predictive outcomes. Take, for example, a design agency that higher street before designers work on a specific project without the proper communication on process, each designer individually will create an astounding part of the whole. But when things come together, the outcome might be a disaster. Keep in mind. Successful process Many monies and group or the small steps into a hole. Assigned each group to a staff, a department or ultimate entire face. All of those steps at parts work together to produce a repeatable and scalable business. Once your plan and optimize your process, you can't beat it and scale your business. It's by planning carefully. For this process, you will be able to take yourself out of business day to day operations and focus more when growing your business. Keep in mind that by offering your customers with customized product, you will break the flow off your process. The crease time efficiency, increase your production costs, materials and Venturi, and it becomes much harder for you. This kill your business regardless of what type of business or process you just tow work with. Always keep in mind to start small. Once you nail down your process, then decide whether you want to stay small. Grow big orbit and scale. It's your choice. Let's look at another case study for painful that come painful. That come is an on demand customized design printing supplier. Let's break down their process. First, you have to create a new account. Once you sign in, you can click on creating a new order. A new window will pop up and ask you to choose your product templates. Then you move next into choosing products, size and features. The software will ask you to upload your design pile. When the upload is finished, a product woke up will be generated automatically. Once he moved to the next page, you will be able to adjust your quantity and your retail price. In this example, I'm using ordering a product sample process. In other scenarios, your customer will be able to order the finished design from your website, but for now, let's keep it simple. Once you're finished with your specific design, you will move next to import your shipping address and payment. Mrs. And once the transaction succeed, you will receive a confirmation email and be able to check the process off your order directly on their website. Those are the process that the customer should go through to create an order. Now let's look at the other side of making your order once painful that come receive your order. An inspection staff will check for the quality of the printing pile and decide toe whether think the order or reported problem to be fixed. Then your product goes through the production line, bending on the complexity off the product. It might go through different steps, staffs and machine. Once the product is made, it will be packed. Get ready for shipment, then ship it out your location. Once it's Chip, you will receive an email with the tracking information to full up with the order. Those are the steps that principle that come has to go through to finish the production specific product. Those process are repeatable, scalable and efficient. OK, so just to get you know, guys that I don't want for grateful, that's come. I was able to drugs that information through making an order and screw following their YouTube. I might be missing few steps, but I think that you get the idea behind in a professional process. Okay, so that was a lot to take aim. Let's look at grief summary. You have to create a consistent workflow and process for your business. Minimizing grouping and eliminating unnecessary process will lead to faster and more efficient business. Scaling product customization decreases time Labour's on material efficiency and last but not least, optimize your time to work on the business and not in the business For this week. You will have to assignments to work on. Your first assignment would be study a business process. Visit Starbuck subway or any instance service professional, for example. It could be instant photography for I. D cards and passports. Have a seat and observed at least five separate orders. Brought it flow from star Dwayne map down the process steps, including Tommy staffs numbers and ended in customer traffic. Once you finish your first don't work, you can do your second part of your homework, which is least all the steps required for your customer to place and receive an order, list all the steps needed to create your product, then combines those lists and create one efficient and consistent process. Take care for now. Make sure to have fun, and I was here in the next figure
8. Know Your Numbers: Welcome back in this video, I will walk us through some accounting basics. I understand that mass might be frightening for some people, but please don't fear on Do your best to stick with me till the end of this video. I promised to make it as simple as possible. If you are an entrepreneur, you must know your numbers. Otherwise you will be out of the business pretty past. The first concept we will be talking about is the cost of creating your product, and it's called cost of goods. How much does it cost you to produce one unit? Let's go back, go our burger example, and calculate the cause that are involved directly in making one burger. First, we have to calculate the cost of the raw materials your suppliers usually provide you with the information off your wholesale price. Then it's only a matter of dividing the cost. It's small pieces. Keep in mind that in some products such as Burger, this God is as close as possible to the average cost. Seems each slice of tomato my difference in weight and site, and you don't have to do the math for every separate burger you only do it once, and that's it. This cost Onley changes when your supply inform you about significant changes in prices. Once you add up all the materials cost together, you should come up with a total materials cost per unit for your brother. Take a note off this number on December it carefully. The second cost that we need to calculate and add to your materials cost is the direct labour cost that is involved in creating this product. Say, for example, that you hire one staff for $6 an hour. Take seems three minutes to make one burger from start to finish. Therefore, it takes him one hour to make 20 burgers. 60 minutes. The violent but three burgers equal to 20 burgers to calculate the labor cost off. Making one burger is only a matter of simple algebra. For 60 minutes, it costs $6 for three minutes because X amount. Now it's all the matter off. Simple cross multiplication X equal to six month supply by three divided by 60 which equals 2 18 divided by 60 which equal to service cents per burger. Feel free to use the same formula and change it with your numbers to find a total cost of goods. Simply add materials cost to the direct level cost, and you should come up with a total cause of goods, which equals to $1.40 per burger. What does this number tells you? It says that you should never sell your product at a price lower than $1.40 per burger unless you are planning on losing money. It also tells you if your cause of good is higher or lower than than the industry average. Now let's assume that we are going to sell this burger for $2. Which brings us to the next concept, which is called profit margin. Profit. Margin is how much money do you make on selling one burger profit margin equals to your price minus your cost. Of course, in this case, profit model equals two $2 minus $1.40 which equals to 60 cents, and that's equal to profit margin of 30%. In this scenario, certain person is pretty awesome. Normally, your profit margin in this industry is that around 69%. But for the sake of making this example easy to understand we are going to stick with just number profit. Murder is equal to price minus your cost of goods. This is one of the most important formula that you need to keep in your mind. You only have to do it once, but it's critical for your business. Sex is here is a list off some other costs that you need to consider what? Calculating your cost of goods. And it varies depending on your industry. Materialist costs that is, labor costs shipping fees If you provide free shipping all my stores and create guards transaction piece such as paper, Amazon and credit cards, insurance fees, your state tax or European VAT tax. And for that, maintain 20 feet. If you're cuts of good is much higher compared to your competition. It means that you need to go back and re negotiate your suppliers deal. Find defensive player or change some of your component of your product. Otherwise, consider any more value to your products so you can offer it at a higher price. The second accounting concept that we need to talk about his cross profit, unlike the profit margin, is where you calculate the profit margin selling one unit of product dress profit is the profit that you make on your total sales. Say that you sell 50 burgers a day. We sell for $2 for each burger, and it cost you $1.40 per burger. Therefore, we sell $100 worth of money with a total cause occurs to $70 and we end up with 30% in gross profit. Trust profit comes in handy when we have to calculate the total profit for a specific period or estimate the total profit off different product with different costs. In this example, we can't generate better dress profit by up selling your offering and introducing list costly product at a higher price point, as we have seen in the last example that the profit margin offsetting one burger is 30%. But what if we combine it with a Coke, which caused 20 cents, and we can search for $1 the profit margin when a single cup of cocoa is 80% which is excellent. If you bundle Bowers product together, then you will end up with it over. Cause off $1.60 and the full retail price of $3 which equals to 46% increase. Perfect. That is 16% hired that all these selling a burger. Now, you should be able to reason why they try to Upsell you when you make an order at Mantle mode. This is because the money is in his drinks. They make a very low profit margin on the burger. Now that we have calculated all the cost of making your brother, must people stop here and yet still end up with the loss. Why? Because you still haven't calculated your fixed cost. Think off your dick Scott as the underlying expenses that you need to make payment for your business to be able to operate and function. The first fix, Scott, that you need to think about Israel. Even if you are going to perform from home, you still need to consider renting one off your house room as a fixed cost. When you are looking for a lease you might be looking for. How much should you pay Fairmont? Also, this critical there is something more important to consider. A few plans approach as a distribution for your products and services. You should always be thinking concerning the trade off between space versus traffic. If your product required high foot traffic for sales to happen, they're looking for an about in place to rent for the sake of being cheap will drive you out of the business. I see this problem happens all the time. When the business owner tried to save money on rent and find a place was very little traffic. And I asked him, What is the point of owning his door? Was low traffic and bad environment in the first place? On the other hand, if you need a lot of space who are a functional reason and you feel that you can do your marketing on social media or hire a separate sales reps, then finding a place on the last floor off a shopping mall will make sense, since you will value space over traffic and people once they arrive at the gym, were required more quiet and focused environment. Another problem that I see with many stores is a problem with space efficiency. When you rent a space, you should make sure that you are using the space to get the best return on your investment . Avoid Western your space with a lot of decorative and non functional areas. Yes, you still want to have a peaceful place was a fantastic environment, but it's not in our gallery. It's a business, and you should measure your space efficiency on the return per square meter or square foot in this scenario against these at Starbucks makes an excellent use of space. If you find that's renting store might be expensive, you might consider operating from its track or pop shop on this occasion. Your timing and location are flexible. You'll also end up with much lower overhead costs, comparing to a retail store and last but not least, if you still find that all the above to be unnecessary or unable to afford, you can always start an online store at your fixed cost would be your month subscription. In this case, it would be $39.99 a month. Keep in mind that each step of products require different kind of audience. Make sure to find a platform that fits your product now that you calculated your ring, other things that you need to be aware off as dicks Cons are your utility bills and your employeessalaries. Those are the salaries off your most critical employees. For example, your accountant or you waitress. Without them, your business won't be able to operate. Here's at least off the fix cars that you need to think about, and they very depending on your industry. This list include friends salaries two of these insurance property taxes, machinery costs on maintainers expenses. Okay, so now that you have an idea about your cost of goods and fixed cost, it started to have look at your marketing expenses. Many small business entrepreneurs this miss or underestimate marketing costs. But if you want to sell products, then you have to do marketing. And it's usually which caused a certain amount of money. Let's look at an example of how to look at your marketing expenses. Let's assume that you launched a Facebook campaign. It runs for three days. It cost you $100. You were reached 1000 people. 100 of those people will click on your aunts. And let's assume that you have a great product with a high conversion rate off 10% which means that then people will buy your product. By the way, this is a very high conversion rate. But for now, let's keep the number of simple, which means that it's going to cost you $10 in marketing expenses to acquire one customer. So that sounds cool, right? Not yet. Let's look at the other side of the equation. Let's look at your product. It's going to cost you $5 to make one unit, and you decide to sell it for $10. Since result in units, your total sales should be $100 right? You should be happy to pray even. But wait, not too fast. Let's find our gross profit, which equals to $100 in revenue minus $50 in production costs, which equals to $50. Let's obstruct your grass profits from your marketing costs, which equals to $50 minus $100 on which equals two negative $50. Wait, what just happened? Oh, you just left $50. Imagine if we haven't managed to control our budget. We got too excited and we spend one side dollar on Facebook, and without doing any customers or market research, we will end up with a negative $500 as a loss in this scenario to at least break even. You should work on creating a fantastic marketing plan with the conversion rate or 15% or raise your price point to $15. Or maybe bring your cause to $0 which is impossible unless you are selling it useful, brother. When you calculate your marketing costs, you should always keep your profit margin and the number off your requires sales to break even at this framework to calculate your return on investment. Now that you have all those numbers in mind, it's time to find your profit. Profit equals toe daughter revenue minus does it cost? And that's including cost of goods, fixed cost and marketing expenses. You should always keep track of those numbers. Otherwise you will end up with negative cash flow, high dipped and bankruptcy. Combining all those costs will bring you to the net profit bottom line, which is your total sale minus your total cost plus taxes. If your revenue exceed is your cost, then you will end up with a positive net profit. If your income is less than your expenses, then you will end up negative and loss must start ups have a negative income for the 1st 2 or three years and some things up to five years to break even. This is why I told you at the beginning off this course, try to keep a stable income source at the moment. Okay, so let's combine all those concepts into one small example. This calculate the required amount of the investment for a simple burger truck. Let's assume that you buy a cooking equipment for $27 it's only one time payment. We rent a food truck for $2400 a year, and it's going to cost you $37 a year to maintain. You decide to hire West back for $5 an hour. He will work eight hours a day, which equals to $1200 a month and 47 $400 a year. Your total fixed cost would be 21 sound, $800 for the first year on 19,800 for second year, assuming that you would continue using the same equipment, let's find your break even for your first year in business. Your total fixed cars is 21,000 and 800. Let's look at Gaza. Good. $1.40 per burger. Your price will be $2 per burger. Your profit margin would be 60 cents per burger. Your break even point is 21,000 and $800 a year, divided by 60 cents, which equals to 36,324 burgers. Spare year that equals just 3027 burgers and 101 burgers. Bear day, which equals to dwell burgers an hour if you operate for eight hours a day. Whoa, that's a lot. You should be very good at sitting burgers. Your burger should be awesome. Keep in mind that I'm assuming that you have already found great occasion and you do not need any extra marketing effort. So what can you do to reach faster to your break even and make more profit? Well, first you can find location where customer Kraftwerk, Higher prices. Second, you can rent a cheaper truck to reduce your overhead costs. Or you can work on your blood cost and find a way to bring it down. And you can improve your dress profit by abstaining and crossing in different products. Okay, so now you have it. After all, it's not that complicated. Do it for once, then visited every three months or half a year. At least you have a clear idea about your numbers, and you will know that you are operating in the green Zone off your business. So let's summarize. You should always get the late your gusts of goods, your fixed costs and you break even. Numbers your profit margin inquisitive price minus your cost of goods. Your profit equals two total revenue minus total cost. You should always be looking for ways to increase your gross profit with upsetting and cross sitting. Always work or reducing your taste and overhead expenses. Avoid competing with low prices, especially when you're starting out. Do not underestimate your marketing budget. So for your assignment for this week, you need to create a cost breakdown. Take one off your brother or research any products that you're interested in. List and calculate the cost of goods, materials, direct labour, shipping, transaction fees and so on this and calculate over it costs. Website Rains, salaries, including yourself and your space. How much is it going to cost you to be in business for one year? How many units should you sell for a month to break even? How much should you spend a monarchy to reach yourselves? It might be from 30 to 50% off your profit margin. Please think this part seriously. Do it slowly. You don't have to rush it. Have some risk. There are a lot of tools that will come in the next article. Use them for your benefit. If you have any questions, please leave it in the Q and A section I will see you in the next video.
9. Planning For Marketing, Positioning And Sales: Hello, everyone. And welcome back in this lecture we will be talking about The basics of marketing was shining on pricing. I decided instead of talking about Facebook or instagram techniques, things that you can find everywhere to zoom out connects the point for you and look at the bigger picture. When you are starting out in new business, you should keep in mind that you have to work your target audience along street main steps , starting with yourself. Introduction on Building Awareness People first need to know of your existence and who you are. The second step is providing engaging content that tricks interest toward your offering and explains why you have the solutions to a problem. They want a soul and how it can transform their lights on. The serious tip is making sure that you are trustworthy and guiding them through the process off taking action regardless of being offline online B two B or B. Two C. Those core steps will apply on Lee. When you understand your customers, how do they think where to find them and how they communicate? Then you can influence and talk to them. If you did your customers and marketing research. Right now, it's time for your hard work to pay off for each off those three steps. You create different types of content to communicate a specific message and go. Keep in mind that at the end, all of that effort should end with sales. To simplify this process, let's look at a typical marketing funnel, as you can see that it starts with a wide range of content creation. Examples of media that can bring awareness are paid advertising influences, marketing, PR, marketing, social media content marketing and awarded Moss. Just to be honest with you at this tape, you might be feeling that you are talking to yourself and no one is listening. This is fine. It happened. People usually ignore or over calculate risk for newcomers. Also, keep in mind that there is no one specific channel can't get into your sales. What's matter is being specific with finding your audience Influences. Marketing and word of Mars tend to be more direct and efficient, since these people have already built a relationship with their audience. Goal at the end of this step is to introduce yourself and build trust through word of mouth or customer generated content. Also keep in mind that you need to be able to stay in contact. Was your audience. Give something in exchange for an email address or captures their pixel on your website. This will allow you to stay in contact and move them once they're forward toward interest and end up. Was taking action the most important concept to keep in mind? It's that regardless of what kind of techniques that work for your business, we should always plan on building in complete marketing system instead of individual components. Say, for example, that you plan to use influence of marketing clicks at advertising and bloggers content marketing as a way to build awareness and bring people to your website. You should already have installed Facebook's and Google as pixel and three targeted campaign. So once they leave your website, your product and offering will keep appearing in front of their eyes all the time. If they have an interest, they will search for YouTube reviews Black past interviews. This is where bloggers and influence and marketing will come in handy. They should be able to find another blocks, some social proof positive reviews on testimonials about your products. If everything is OK. They should hit back to restore or west side and make a purchase. You should make sure to install Upsell and cross rail system in place so that you can make more return on your marketing investment. Also, give your mind that this process does not happen overnight. Customers usually might need to see your brand name for 5 to 10 times in different type of content format before they make a purchase. Keep in mind that to create sale, you need to generate a lot of strapping. Say, for example, that you create a piece of blood content that reaches around one selling people. Only 10% of those people will read it and be aware of your brand and all the 20% off that 10% my show some interest and, at the end, only 124% off. That 20% might be motivated to place an order, especially if you are a new brand with little to no social proof. Also keep in mind that you should focus your marketing spending on gross and exploiter, such as influences, marketing or making more sales and profit such as free standard shipping and flash sales, and he's changed for social prove interviews and not on harmony, not targeted Instagram or Facebook followers. You should also start creating your yearly marketing calendar plan for your industry best during season Special Holy Days, which you would be offering special and different promotions, such as 20% off, 40% off for free shipping. Also, make sure to research for the best time for the industry to introduce new product lunch so that you can plan for complete marketing campaign. In between, you can always keep on creating content such as instagram, Facebook or blocks to build awareness drug new customers. When you are planning for a new product line lunch, you should always keep an earning goals date and marketing budget in mind. You also have a clear strategy on how would you reach that goal Now that you already have done your target ordinate research, we should have a clear idea of where and where to contact him. At the end of this video, I will share with you a simple guests today that walks you through the process on how to make your first early cells. For now, keep in mind the idea of being organized, well planned out and goes oriented. Let's look at the brand that did a great job with marketing envy. Empty watches. They communicate with their customers through Social Media. Page, as you can see, says there is no direct sale message. Beautiful last tell imagery that speaks to a specific type of audience, which drives tons of traffic to your website. They also come to care with their audience and brings traffic through content, marketing and blogging. Once people learned on their website, they make sure the captures their email address in exchange for discount coat. They also collect your pixel information so they can keep re marketing through email, marketing campaign, Google and Facebook retargeted ads. They also spend a good amount off marketing budget on YouTube influencers to generate protective use, which strives more social proof and sales. For now, don't worry about spending all their budget on trying everything. You can start out small and focused, then gradually build toward a complete system. Let's talk for a while about your sales channel and go to market strategy by how can your customers buy your products in the first place? The first type of shadows is building a brand with your website. This will give you the power over others. More businesses. On the other hand, you might think that this strategy might be costly for hosting and Web site design. Gladly, there are alternative. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on professional designer, you can start out with Shopify Store for $29 a month at versus a pre designed template for $50. Then hire virtual assistant to install a just the start according to your needs. The dance I was using Shopify or your website is that you need to do a lot off the marketing work with driving traffic your Web site. But keep in mind that traffic is something that you can always buy through social media or bloggers or the other hand, if you start your business with an Amazon store, then you can leverage the power of Amazon marketplace and brand value, which provides your store with a sense of stress and security. Customers understand that if there are any problem with the shipment, they can contact Amazon directly, which is enormous for new businesses with no history. The second kind off distribution channel, which is online or offline retailers. Those retailers allow you to reach a massive amount off targeted traffic and take care of some sales while you are focusing on creating a new book. But you still need to do some marketing and drive some traffic is their stores. Depending on your industry, you can search for the buyers, exhaust retailers and contact them directly for further information. I am in the process of creating in your course about old stand to retailer. If you are interested, the third type of distribution and sales channel is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing allowed other people to sell your product and earn commission when each sale they made. When you are planning for your sale channel, always consider your pressing strategy and make sure that you leave enough profit. Since other readers and distribution we got up to 50% off your retail price. A good strategy is always to work your pricing backward. Start from your retail price in mind. Calculate the cost, then add your wholesale profit. You should leave enough profit for you and your business to operate in your wholesale pricing in double that price to get your retail price. Also keep in mind that unlike Derek stealing, we collect cash directly from your customer, which keeps you with extra cash float to pay for the operation off your business. Some retail stores require nest searches 60 days to pay you back, which makes you short on cash for paying your suppliers on other business expenses. This is one off the main reason why small businesses go bankrupt when they have a problem collecting their receivable. Now let's talk a little bit about positioning and pricing. When you position your business, you should always be thinking in terms of the C value on whether or not your customer believing it. For example, if your customer is a type of food, don't care about branding quality and last down. Then he might consider it watch as a community product. They will look for the lowest price possible and be influenced by discounts and promotion. If you are the one who provides him with this watch, then you will be positioned as the law and business. On the other hand, if your product is positioned toward a specific function or features and provides benefits for a specific type of people, then your customer will receive it more as it must have product. The same concept applies if your product refers to a specific type of last time where people emphasize beauty and style more than the price off, the product is still finally. If your product is more oriented toward lecturing and high status pliant, then those people have already done the research and they expect to pay a high price in exchange for power and prestige. If you are the one who provide them with this watch, then you will be positioned as a high in print. Also, when you're a pressing A product, always do market research to find the Bryce trains that people are willing to pay for your proceed value in the case off M V Empty watches on because nowadays the market is transparent, with all of them marketing effort and power. They failed to make people believe in the high end positioning. In my personal opinion, they failed to bring creative and unique design to convince this group of origin that the watch worth it. They got tons of negative feedback about the quality of the watch, unlike Cassius Watch, where they spent a lot of energy on creating quality design products. M V Empty spent a little or no time and budget on building and creating something unique. Instead, they spend all of their prophet to create excellent marketing for a law aquatic brother. When you are pressing your product, make sure that we have different offering and pricing point. Always keep in mind to have a group of products that have a low price for entry so people can try your product than Upsell and upgrade with time. What you should avoid is to have bad differences between each product, which speaks to entirely different types of audience. You can also see this type of pricing is a subscription based business model where customers can easily join for free or at little as a few dollars in months. They move them up the ladder from there. Just keep in mind when you are pressing your product, you don't need always to compete on price. Not every customer is interested in low rates and remember that you are not your customers . If you cannot afford your product, that doesn't mean that your customer warm paid a high price for its value. When you are pressing your product, you just think about and visualize what type of customer will use your different kinds of products. How to monetize your products, diversify your revenue stream and make the most out of the customer lifetime value. Let's look at the case study. Harry's is a successful brand for providing men with good quality locus shaving tools. Let's look at how they make money. The first type of revenue activity is stealing an individual product, which is also called, um, bundling someone who was looking for a quick solution, such as a businessman on a short business trip or someone who was interested in trying to brand experience without investing so much money in the print he might go for such a solution. Price of the individual product should be relatively high to encourage the customer to upgrade to the next step of offering, which is product bundling or grouping different products that works together and offering as baggage. The price should always make that deal seems like a no brainer Compared to the um, bundling plan. Remember that year is your chance to increase your trust profit by offering locals product that are valuable to your customers, someone who might be interested off giving it gives might be interested in this kind of offering or someone who tried individual products and want to try more apparent products in both situations. Harry makes sure toe upset and close. They have different products. Why? Because they understand that this is a one time purchase and the customer might not come back. They want to make the best return on their marketing expenses. The third type off revenue stream is a subscription based model. This model is designed toward Harry loyal customers. The ones who already dried Cherries and become more as a consistent client source are the best type of clients with they bring a predictable and consistent revenue. Jerry's You don't need to spend extra marketing expenses, and they have higher left I'm Betty. Each type of business has a different kind of business model that works best for that type of customers. You should always study and research your industry in competition. Okay, so let's now talk about some of the difficulties and reasons with little or no sales, especially when you are starting out. Here is the list of the most 10 problems that you might be facing first and foremost people are afraid of buying your price when you are new to the market and no one knows about you. If you ask too fast for purchase, people would be reacting like, Are you kidding me? Therefore, when you are starting out, your primary goal should be toward focusing on building trust and removing risk. As we said, you should go out and make those for sales. Serve your first customer. So will that they will come back and leave great reviews. Once you have your first reviews, then things get easier. Also, make sure that your website is secure and you provide a clear payment and return policies. The second problem you might be facing is that you are talking so much about how awesome you are. Instead of focusing on spotting the life on your customers, make sure to give a few free giveaways or samples. Ask people to try your products, take selfies, then pose those images on your website and social media. People like to see how others feel about your business. The third problem that you might be facing is your customers cannot afford your products. If you did your customers and markets research correctly, then you should not encounter this problem. I see this problem often happened, was created people where they tried toe over price their product for the sake of being artist. ICS always make sure to understand your market and target audience purchasing power. The force problem, you might face is that there's no urgency to buy your brother, which means that people are not highly motivated to buy it, regardless of home values, right? People will always think that it's okay to come back later on by. If you remember that what we talked about in the Who is your customer video, you should always look to create products that solve an urgent and specific problem and your time and effort with people who are searching for a solution. Otherwise, your product will be considered as a nice to have but not emergent. The fifth problem. You might face that your product offering is complicated, inconsistent and frustrating. People just don't get it. The six problem much of the small business face is a lousy presentation business. The entrepreneur did not take the time to make beautiful for the grumpy, a worried and product description, and the grab a 1,000,000 fold brand story. I talked more about branding in my Brandon course here on enemy. So if you're interested, you can attend that course. Or I think, in other classes that issue it's solid understanding of business. Brendan. The Sevens problem that you might face is being on the wrong platform, talking to the wrong audience. When people go to Amazon to buy specific product, they expect a different type of products and offering them people who shove on eBay or Etsy . The A's problem that you might face is too many negative reviews. As we said, you should make sure that you make your customers extra happy. Was your ship products? If there are problems, then you don't delay a response. Contact directly. Fix the problem, and as them to adjust, they refuse. Problem number nine that you might face with Noah Sale is that you might be playing business instead of actually doing business. You might believe they're sending a couple of photos on social media, and the beautiful website will do the job that is called playing business. It happens all the time, so instead, you should always be seeking method. Divide yourselves, rips and getting your product is a market, and last but not least, is believing and relying on your friends feedback instead off facing reality, going out, looking for a paying customer and making the sale. Okay, so now that Reese the end of his figure and either promised, I wish there was your small and straightforward business history off a friend of mine that she's thankfully agreed to alarm me and shared with you the main point off. Looking at this project is to look at a low budget, limited business skill example and how she managed to get off their plan. So as he might have figured out, here's Erika Molony for Here product, which is talking back. She's a graphic designer, and she came up with the idea that almost all tote bags look down and none fashionable. Why not come up with a small brand that is targeted towards the specific brother? Create unique and beautiful design, then sales those back at a low price compared to more expensive friends here. Positioning its electorate is nine product at an affordable price. To keep long story short, she did her marketing research. If there are any similar product, where do people shop for just type of product. What kind of people are interested in buying such products and what is a present point? Then she came up with a serious of designs and started validator idea by directly asking her friends will own retail stores and have an opinion about the fashion industry. They advised her to keep those colorful design and style, but to also keep in mind that she has to come up with a more subtle, serious collection that fits people everyday closing. So she listened to the markets feedback at add more designs. Keep in mind that until this moment she did not invest any huge amount of money. Yet all of those designed that you see are more cops. What? She had a clear idea about that science Tiley. She started looking for suppliers. See, she lives in China. I would like to sell worldwide and because you wanted to keep it at the part time project, she decided to work with painful that come so she can focus on design and marketing while principle that come does the manufacturing and shipping process. At the beginning, she only printed out a few samples to try out the quality off the printing materials. Once she knew about the supplier, she moved toward their distribution and started listing here. Website on a Shopify store for $29 a month, was a pre designed thing for $49. Their marketing strategy was pretty simple. As straight to the point. The photos of herself with the back for some images on Instagram follow artists and fashion blogger to follow her back, then re aesthetically too small to midsize influences. We're staying to 20 thousands off floors, and message was that simple and straightforward. She tells him that she likes their feet, and she would like to send a free back in exchange for a shut out on the post on her feet for social. Many ignored a message. Some other agreed to work with their since they love your product that when things start to work out for her other influences. So her product that became interested in working with their keep in mind that till this point all of her marketing body is only on sending free samples. No other marketing expenses once influence, have received a product. They began to say, therefore words to her P, and then she started to make her first sale. She also made sure to keep in touch with their first customers. Make sure that there seems their product. Also make sure that they are happy working with her and encourage them to spread the word and make repeated sales with incentives and promotions. She also developed small block that jokes about her industry. And did you get her customer about the use of her brother? She asked me to help her with that. I just took everything she want to talk about and hired a good lawyer on fiber dot com for $15 pair article. The whole concept off. Their idea is that she took a commodity product that is proceed as a $2 product and increase its perceived value so she can price it at a higher price. Let's look at the upset and daughter off her business. She has a unique, clear and focused idea. She has a low overhead cost and marketing budget is low. Hair process is scalable and automated. She does not have to build any of injury. Where's the downside? Because of the outsourcing? She is concerned with the quality of the product here. Casper Unit is very high, which make it's very difficult to get into retail stores. She has no control over here. Product production at any time here supplier might eliminate this product line and risk your business. She has insufficient control over packaging and branding. She also has to find a more cost effective marketing plan to decrease their customer acquisition cost or introduced different products line, which she can upset and increase their cross profit. She still has a lot of 14 to. She also knows that this idea might work or it might fail. She tries to avoid high risk and heaves about it under control. Since this is here first experience into a business, keep in mind that most of the small businesses start as a side project or as a hobby, then slowly move towards a full time business. Okay, so let's summarize that keeps those main point in mind. Think off marketing as a complete system. Always measure your marketing results, work on building trust and authority, collect reviews at customer generated content, focus on marketing and selling instead of playing business. Fine consumer willing to pay a price be consistent was your positioning and last but not least, provide some product was low risk and price as low to entry over. Okay, guys that waas a lot. Take some rest and they moved toward your assignment. You're a Summit for this week. Would be study competitors Marketing strategy Paige ST That competitors follows their marketing funnel from product reviews on social media and email newsletter. How do they communicate with their customers? Studies The content, strategy and image style Hold was a rich clients and make sales. Does their work was influencers retail stores, or sail directly from their website studies, their business positioning on different pricing strategy and, last but not least, what are their revenue stream activities. Use all of that information for your benefit and come up with a plan for your business, marketing and sales. Make sure to get some rest first costumes, a Pdf file and they come back and do it. Yes, Simon. If you have any questions, please leave it in the Q and A section I will get back to you as fast as possible. The governor I will see you is an Xbox video
10. Design Your Visuals: well, it comes the last module in the force module relocate visuals and design logo design principles, colors and photography. Logo design. Most of the customer would be attracted or brand visually. Logo is the face of a Brandt, a well designed great logo with kid great appealing Brandt image while poorly designed logo will break the print image. This is why it's essential for us to understand the reasoning and the principle behind creating a successful logo. Let's first identify what is the logo. Logan might be a symbol award mark or both of them combined. A local also can be a little mark. A little monk is the first letter off your brand name. Now let's understand what makes you create local. A great logo identifies your brand mission instead of describing your business. The Swiss symbol at the tills off microphone. Identify Nike as an action friend. We clearly don't see any shoe or sport product in their logo, but we identifies their logo. I support and action brand a great location, administration or logos. I describe what the brand does. Great logo is simple, bold, easy to read. And remember, Facebook logo is simple, easy, clear bold, which make it easier for us to remember and understand you. Very complicated, busy logo. Very hard for us to read, and we won't be able to remember. Second, look for us. There are a street of local phones. The first type of phone is surgical. Sir. Phone means that the letter habit tours at the end of the letter. Sarah Phone stand for classical traditional, stylish and elegant. The second time for this sensor. For this time, phone doesn't have the juice at the end of the letter. Sasser phone stand for modern, informal and simple and the third hour phone transcript stand for casual, lose, playful and flow third logo. That action oblique phone logo with triangular shapes tend to be more aggressive and more in action. Why rectangular books You logo tend to be more solid on both. Why Circular or Kirby local tend to be more peaceful, friendly and joyful. Number four Lola Gutter people perceived colors as symbol that describes psychological and emotional mean In choosing our color. We have to think about two points. The first is culture point color, and some culture might have different meanings and other culture. For example, let's look at the color wife in the Western culture, what might mean marriage and happiness when the Asian culture it means death and sadness. The sick infected we have to think about while we're choosing on color is our surrounding environment. From the first day we come to life, our brains start to analyze the environment around us and start to connect colors with emotion and a science simple to them. So when you look at white way, think pure, and when we look at hot fire, we are Saira and orange as warm colors. So when you look at the picture of full, you would receive it as a war environment. This is why brand used worm light to light their store, which creates a feeling off warms and inviting environment before we enter. A market is very important for us to understand the culture and the environment of that market. It's also very important to understand we should not use the color just for the sake off liking or loving that color. But we have to choose the color that sends the right brand message of our brand to our audience. Now there are also some general guidelines for choosing a color. These guidelines are commonly used in some industries, but always remember they're only tools and they're not rules. My advice to you is to always understand a psychological and environment on meaning of colors for that specific target audience. Thes guidelines are yellow. Describe optimism, worms and clarity. But Orrin described friendly confidence and cheerful Red is the ball and exciting color. What purple is creative and imaginative. Color blue if was trust and strength. While green is beautiful, healthy on growth and finally grand black are simple and elegant. There is really no specific color or specific phone type for specific industries. As you can see, it all spread our fashion friends what each breads on farm on its own color. What he sees as are a is more elegant. A stylish diesel is more a bold brand, while H and M is more casual brand. As we said, the entire image of your brand should be consistent with our positioning and how the brand identified cell for the market and what is the personality of our brand? My advice to you, it would be, is to study your competition, say their color, stay their style and then come up with something different that make you stand out from the competition. We don't want to copy the competition. We want to be different from the competition. Number five Stand out. As you can see, the market is full of brands and advertisement. It's very hard for the human brain. Treat all this data so our brain will fit there all the noisy and unclear information and only focus on the bold, big, clear information. Always consider your logo, designed to be shown on a big scale medium scale on a small scale. Try to look at all these logo and see which logo is bold and clear, and it bumps into your eyes and wished loco is busy and unclear that your eyes will ignore it. Successful brand logos all well designed to attract your eyes and finally, number six. Be consistent. Remember that your local should be seen in many places. It might be seen in busy place, such as market or from long distance like advertisement on the street or on your product or in your social media page. Keep it simple, bold, clear and relative to your brand. Positioning on personality summarizes chapter, a great logo identified our brand and does not describe what it does. Simple, consistent and bold logo are easier to stand out, be remembered and understood.
11. Capture Your Products Photography: photography. After designing our logo and choosing on color, it's a time to choose our image. Stock images and photography plays an important role in communicating our message with our customers. They are suitable for the grumpy. First is product Photographic Brother Photographic could be shown with model or without a model for brothers. After quite a model, try to show the entire model on the product. In this way, people will be able to lend your product to their entire body. Keep your images simple, was clean background and always provide multiple angles off your product. Remember that these for the purpose is to sell your brother. Your website should be providing the customer with retail store experience. Customers should be able to inspect the product from old ankles, read all the important information and be able to raise the product to themselves as they are trying in the store. Avoid complicated, unclear or too much acting poses. Since exaggerated bosses might be distracting, it might ship the focal point from the product to the model. Remember, our goal is to sell the product so the product is the focal point. If you feel that the brothers don't have to be related to the entire body, then you can only shoot for that again. We need to shoot the product from different angle, and we need to be careful with our lighting. At our background, we need a clear, clean background. Avoid busy or complicated photos. The photo job is not to be a poster. The photo job is to be bold, clear and clean. And, as you recall, our photo have to be consistent with our brand message. It's all about our personality and the desire with trying to satisfy in hacking that's ice cream. The pictures are designed to make your desire to eat ice cream while this photo lack design and they don't communicate the message of a brat. The second hour for the grand three storey going for the roughy see start of photograph is usually used in advertisement or designing posters. We're not trying to show the product directly, but we try to use the product as a hero of the story or a tool for the hero of the story. To accomplish a specific mission or to inspire specific type of lifestyle storytelling images Great tool to express and shows the Brad image and related to the customers. My advice to you used to hire professional photograph for its these days. Hiring professional photograph Israel Not expensive. You can always communicate with fruit. Answer To take the photos that you need. Please pay attention to the visual of your brand scenes. Visual are the first element that interact was your customers.
12. Congrats, You Made It To The End!: Well, congratulations. You have made it to the end of the class. I hope you learned a lot of cool stuff. If you have any question with the glass, please feel free to leave me a message. I will do all my best to get back to you ASAP. If you have any comment or feedback, please leave me review and I will do my best to improve it. And if you like, or enjoy the class, I would appreciate if you recommend it to your friends or shared with the community. My real purpose is really to deliver high quality education than brings value to you and to the community with affordable price. I wish you all the best in your journey of building your own successful brand and looking forward to senior in the future classes. The gift for now. Bye bye.
Nour Boustani, Branding & Marketing Strategist
