Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / How to Be Boss

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How to Be Boss · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  Hi, everybody.
• 0:00
  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady, and I wanna invite you to enter the small biz check
• 0:05
  podcast, giveaway contest, for the next 30 days starting today, you'll have the chance to win
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  amazing prizes if you subscribe to the podcast.
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  All you need to do is take a screenshot after you subscribe to the small business chat
• 0:17
  podcast and tag me small business lady on Twitter or Instagram.
• 0:22
  Once a week.
• 0:23
  I'll select a winner, and you have a chance to win one of my autograph books become your own
• 0:27
  boss in 12 months or fix your business, or you might even get a chance to win one of my
• 0:31
  limited edition small business chat podcast t shirts.
• 0:35
  Don't delay.
• 0:36
  Subscribe to the small business chat podcast today.
• 0:39
  3, 2, 1, 0, ignition Left off.
• 0:47
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:50
  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert Melinda Emerson.
• 0:56
  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 1:00
  you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
• 1:04
  Now here's the small biz lady herself.
• 1:08
  Melinda Everson.
• 1:10
  Hello, and welcome to the small biz that podcast.
• 1:14
  I am Melinda Emerson, small business lady, your host.
• 1:17
  And I am so excited to welcome you to what we call one of our small business lady diary
• 1:22
  shows.
• 1:23
  Now today, I'm gonna be talking to you about how to be a boss.
• 1:27
  You know, so many people out here wanna be their own boss and really don't know exactly
• 1:34
  what is involved in this.
• 1:36
  And for years years years before I became the small business lady and started giving people
• 1:42
  small business advice.
• 1:43
  I used to get phone calls and went a little something like this.
• 1:46
  Girl, I wanna quit my job today.
• 1:48
  I wanna be like you, Melinda.
• 1:50
  I wanna start my own business.
• 1:51
  I wanna put my shingle on.
• 1:53
  I wanna tell people I'm open for business.
• 1:55
  How can I do it?
• 1:55
  How do I get started?
• 1:56
  What do I need to do?
• 1:58
  And I would immediately stop the my crazy girlfriends that would call me.
• 2:01
  And I would say, listen.
• 2:03
  You love Prada.
• 2:05
  You can't quit your job.
• 2:07
  You have 2 brand new cars outside and a $4000 month mortgage.
• 2:10
  How are you gonna quit your job?
• 2:12
  What's your husband gonna say?
• 2:14
  You need to just take a deep breath, maybe go for a walk, go take you a bubble bath, but you
• 2:21
  need to really think about what it is going to take to be your own boss because it is not as
• 2:30
  glamorous as people make it look on Facebook or any place else.
• 2:34
  And so I wanna caution all of you that if you're interested in being your own boss, I
• 2:39
  will tell you how to do it, but it's not for everybody.
• 2:43
  Some people need to keep their good jobs, right, or otherwise, who's gonna hire you.
• 2:47
  But if you wanna do it, I will tell you how.
• 2:50
  So here's here's where we're gonna start.
• 2:52
  Whenever someone approaches me and tells me that they're interested in being their own
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  boss, The first thing I asked them is do they have a life plan?
• 3:02
  Do they know what they want?
• 3:04
  And do they know why?
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  Because sometimes people just need to go get another job.
• 3:10
  They don't need to start a business because it's hard to start a business.
• 3:14
  It's like there's a lot of upfront hazing involved in running your own business.
• 3:21
  So you really wanna be clear that this is something you're really ready to bite off
• 3:26
  because it's hard.
• 3:27
  You know?
• 3:28
  If you love to shop, you love to eat out, you love to go out for drinks, all this kind of
• 3:32
  stuff.
• 3:33
  Or let's see.
• 3:34
  You got a latte a day habit.
• 3:35
  Right?
• 3:36
  Those are things that are gonna have to get, you know, curtail for a minute until you can
• 3:41
  build your business back up, or, you know, you could build your revenue back up because,
• 3:45
  listen, it takes listen, guys.
• 3:48
  It takes 18 to 24 months for a small visit to breakeven.
• 3:52
  Let alone replace your corporate salary and and your benefits and all this kind of stuff.
• 3:58
  So you have to be prepared to live without a paycheck for a while.
• 4:03
  And most people are not prepared to do that because most people are living way, way, way
• 4:06
  above their means.
• 4:11
  And so I wanna walk you through what I call my Emerson planning system as couldn't think of
• 4:18
  something as cool as the hedgehog concept.
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  So that's why it's named after me because that's the best I could give you.
• 4:22
  But, you know, in my book, we come here on Boston 12 months.
• 4:25
  I actually break this down, but I wanna give you just sort of like a a a smidgen of it just
• 4:31
  so you could really think it through.
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  Because the the first thing I want you to do is think about what you really want out of life
• 4:38
  and really get clear about it.
• 4:40
  You know, I have a life planning journal that that helps people kinda walk through What do
• 4:46
  you like to do?
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  I mean, because sometimes the thing that we're trying to do, the thing that we went to college
• 4:51
  to do is not the thing that we like to do.
• 4:54
  And So you've gotta get clear about that.
• 4:56
  But then you've gotta get clear about other things, you know, like, what kind of skills do
• 5:01
  you have to run a business?
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  You know, because sometimes, you know, do you have enough discipline to work for yourself?
• 5:08
  You know, are you fit to work from home?
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  There's lots.
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  Of things and decisions that you have to think about on this journey that we call
• 5:19
  entrepreneurship because it's not easy.
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  So The first thing I want you to do is just really, really get clear about your personal
• 5:26
  agenda because sometimes you just need to get an agenda of your own because we as women in
• 5:31
  particular, we are good at being on everybody else's agenda, but our own, we'll get on our
• 5:36
  kids agenda.
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  We'll get on our husband's agenda.
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  We'll get on our mama's agenda, what our mama thinks we should be doing, you know, because we
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  always wanna make our mamas and our our parents proud.
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  And so you need to make sure that you are working on your true destiny first.
• 5:53
  You're calling, figuring out what that is.
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  And then you gotta figure out how to build a business that's gonna allow you to live your
• 6:03
  dream life.
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  Because at the end of the day, We run businesses so that we can make money so that we
• 6:08
  can do whatever we want so that we can live our dream life so that we can go on 4 or 5
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  vacations a year send the kids to private school or make enough money to buy our own
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  island.
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  Like, whatever it is, you just have to think about, you know, things like how much money do
• 6:22
  you have to make to be happy?
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  You know, these are some of the decisions and things that you gotta make up front.
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  Because once you know that, you can then figure out what you want to do next in terms of a
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  business.
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  So Okay.
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  So let's say you you did this self assessment and you still believe that running a small
• 6:47
  business is for you.
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  Let's say that you still think that, and that is true.
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  Okay.
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  Well, the next thing that I want you to think about then is How you gonna pay for it?
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  You know, what is going on with your money?
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  For example, what is your credit score?
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  How much liquidity do you have?
• 7:07
  How much credit card debt do you have?
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  Right?
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  These are all things that are gonna determine how fast you're able to launch your business.
• 7:17
  Because I gotta tell you guys the truth.
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  Okay?
• 7:20
  The money to start your your business is gonna come from your right or your left pocket.
• 7:25
  Banks do not loan money to start up businesses.
• 7:28
  So your personal net worth is gonna be where you get your startup funds from.
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  Now depending on the type of business you're starting, you could go after venture capital
• 7:39
  funds or investment.
• 7:40
  I gotta be honest with you.
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  You could take it could take you 2 to 3 years to taste venture capital money before you
• 7:46
  actually get it.
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  I mean, certainly, there are other options you could definitely pursue crowd funding and
• 7:52
  things like that, but he let me tell you about that.
• 7:55
  The the average crowd funding campaign generates only $10,000.
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  So unless you have two thousand people on a email list from day one that you know you can
• 8:06
  market your crowd funding campaign to, And unless you really have a product based business
• 8:11
  that's sexy, like, something people really want, crowd funding most of the time is a great
• 8:15
  way to get distracted from actually running your business.
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  So If you're not gonna crowd fund and you're not gonna go after venture capital funding, you
• 8:22
  know, you could also enter business plan contests and things like that.
• 8:25
  But, again, you know, the sexy businesses and the really good presenters win those kind of
• 8:31
  things.
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  So if that's not the kind of business you're starting, then you gotta figure out where your
• 8:37
  your money's gonna come from.
• 8:38
  So the first thing I want you to think about is how can you curtail your your your lifestyle?
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  You know, Can you cut back?
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  Can you start saving 30 to 40 percent of every paycheck?
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  And I want you to not have a heart attack.
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  I'm being dead serious.
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  Can you start saving aggressively?
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  If you are married, do you have the ability to start living on 1 paycheck.
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  These are the things you're gonna have to do not only to save money to launch your business,
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  but also to cure your addiction to your paycheck.
• 9:13
  Right?
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  You know, because the reality is money is gonna go out out out before it starts trickling back
• 9:20
  in.
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  And so you have got to get clear about the kind of investment that you're gonna make.
• 9:26
  So when you think about your business, you've really gotta have, like, 3 pools of money.
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  You gotta have your money to to launch the business, to make the initial investments, you
• 9:35
  know, get your corporation, get your website, get, you know, open your business bank account,
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  like, all this, like, stuff you gotta do.
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  But then you gotta have the money to actually operate the business at least a year.
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  So your initial working capital, you're gonna have to have.
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  So you need money to start, you need money for your working capital, but you still need to
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  have emergency savings.
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  You still need to have money to manage your life and to manage your household.
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  It's gotta be a different pot of money, especially if you're the head of house or or if
• 10:04
  you're single or if you're married to a spouse is not feeling your business.
• 10:08
  I mean, you know, you really have to make sure that everybody is completely bought in before
• 10:14
  you just launch this business because you are putting your entire household in some kind of
• 10:20
  financial risk.
• 10:21
  So you wanna make sure that you're very clear about how much money you need, but you also
• 10:27
  wanna be clear about how long you're gonna pursue this business, particularly if you're
• 10:31
  married to a highly skeptical person, you need to come at them with facts and figures like
• 10:37
  they are a bank.
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  And you need to make sure that you lay out for them the opportunity, how much money you're
• 10:42
  gonna need.
• 10:43
  You also wanna give them a timeline of how long you're gonna pursue this business and Here's a
• 10:48
  trick.
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  I really want you to give yourself 6 months longer than you really think.
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  So if you think it's gonna be 2 years, tell them two and a half.
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  Think it's gonna be two and a half years, tell them 3 years, but you need to give them a
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  timeline for how long you're gonna pursue it before you pull the plug because they're gonna
• 11:06
  act supportive of you, but they're also gonna hold you to your timeline.
• 11:10
  So you wanna make sure that you're gonna tell them, okay, I'm gonna make this an investment
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  over this amount of time, but you also wanna pull in your kids too because your kids can
• 11:20
  sabotage a business as fast as an unsupportive spouse can't.
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  So you wanna make sure that you sit everybody down and almost have a family meeting and talk
• 11:29
  about this business and talk about how this business is gonna allow everyone to do more and
• 11:36
  how it's gonna benefit the family.
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  But how everybody's gonna have to sacrifice.
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  And if you have children, I'm a big fan of giving your kids like little jobs to do in your
• 11:46
  business so that they kinda get invested.
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  And you also just wanna make sure that you're always communicating with your spouse.
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  Don't keep everything bottled up.
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  Don't hide things.
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  If you have a setback or something, communicate it so that they can be empathetic and
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  supportive because it is really, really important that your spouse always stay plugged
• 12:07
  in and bought in.
• 12:08
  So and the money is where all stuff starts to break down.
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  So you wanna make sure that you've done your homework that you're really clear about what
• 12:17
  the investment's gonna be so that, you know, before things blow up, they're gonna get tight.
• 12:24
  So you wanna make sure that your your your spouse is is in it to win it with you because
• 12:28
  let me tell you something Nothing can kill a business faster than an unsupportive spouse.
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  I it matter of fact, it can kill it faster than a bad marketing plan, honestly.
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  Now the third thing you wanna think about as you think about becoming a boss is what skills
• 12:44
  you have versus what skills you need to run your particular business.
• 12:47
  You know?
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  So you gotta look at your computer skills.
• 12:50
  Do you know how to run a website?
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  Do you know accounting software.
• 12:55
  Do you know social media, all the social media platforms?
• 12:58
  Do you know how to buy Facebook ads or link?
• 13:01
  You know, do you do you know how to leverage LinkedIn to look for sales leads if you're
• 13:06
  gonna be a b to b business?
• 13:08
  Like, these are all things that you need to learn before you even think about quitting a
• 13:14
  job.
• 13:15
  And because sometimes you might be able to take classes and things, like, while you're still
• 13:19
  working.
• 13:20
  So You wanna make a sort of like a list of what kind of skills you need to have to run your
• 13:27
  business.
• 13:27
  You should be talking to other entrepreneurs Matter of fact, depending on what kind of
• 13:31
  business you wanna start, I'm a big fan actually of going and working part time for a
• 13:36
  business like the one you wanna start.
• 13:37
  Like, one of the things that I did before I left my television station to start my business
• 13:41
  was I actually worked for another production company for a year so that I could learn how to
• 13:46
  price things and how my proposals need to look and how to schedule stuff.
• 13:50
  And you know what I mean?
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  Like, how to manage customers.
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  These are things that I no idea how to do.
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  I was a television producer.
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  I worked at television station.
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  I wrote scripts.
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  I put them in the computer.
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  You know, the anchor read them on the teleprompter.
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  I had no idea how independent productions work, and I needed to learn that.
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  So I actually worked for another company.
• 14:08
  If you wanna open a restaurant, you should go work in 1.
• 14:12
  If you're gonna open a daycare center, you should be around children.
• 14:16
  You should like children.
• 14:17
  Right?
• 14:18
  You should not start a daycare business because you heard that kind of business makes a lot of
• 14:21
  money.
• 14:22
  Uh-uh.
• 14:22
  That's a great way to start a business that you hate, and that's bad for business.
• 14:26
  Trust me.
• 14:27
  You wanna make sure that you have some experience in the business that you wanna start
• 14:32
  because if you don't, That's a great way to learn a super, super expensive lesson.
• 14:39
  Now once you get clear about the skills that you need to ascertain as you're starting your
• 14:45
  business.
• 14:46
  The next thing you gotta think about is who is going to be your customer?
• 14:51
  And this is where I see a lot of people get off track because what happens is people get
• 14:56
  excited about the wrong thing.
• 14:58
  They get excited about their website.
• 15:00
  Get excited about their logo.
• 15:02
  I've even seen people get excited about the invitations to their grand opening event.
• 15:08
  And if you ask them who is their niche customer?
• 15:12
  They can't tell you.
• 15:13
  Or they'll tell you something like, oh, well, everybody can everybody likes cake.
• 15:18
  Everybody can eat burnt cake.
• 15:19
  Well, no.
• 15:20
  That's not it.
• 15:22
  You need to know who you're paying customer is.
• 15:26
  Because let me tell you something.
• 15:28
  If everybody can use your product or service, nobody's gonna use it.
• 15:32
  So you wanna be as specific as you possibly can, I like to tell people, like, you wanna
• 15:38
  figure out how to become the cardiologist for what you do?
• 15:43
  You don't wanna be the generalist.
• 15:44
  You don't wanna be the primary care physician.
• 15:47
  You want to be a cardiologist because cardiologist can charge more specialists can
• 15:52
  always charge more.
• 15:54
  So you wanna specialize in solving your customer's specific problem.
• 16:01
  Because it is about what you are selling is a solution.
• 16:06
  You're not selling cake.
• 16:07
  You're looking for hungry people that love sweets.
• 16:09
  I mean, You've gotta think about your solution and and you have to be solution oriented and
• 16:16
  how you talk about your business has to be around delivering results, delivering solutions
• 16:22
  for people.
• 16:23
  But the thing about it is that people wanna hire people who specialize in solving their
• 16:28
  problem.
• 16:28
  They don't wanna hire somebody who solves their problem once a year, they wanna solve somebody
• 16:34
  they wanna talk to somebody who can help them, who can give them even more information than
• 16:38
  they're even looking That's what they want.
• 16:40
  And so you've gotta figure out who is your niche target customer, and you've gotta figure
• 16:47
  out what is gonna be your geographic, niche if if you're particularly if you're retail or
• 16:52
  something like that, it's it's usually a 10 mile radius around your retail establishment.
• 16:56
  But, look, nowadays, everybody's selling something online.
• 17:00
  You better be selling something online too.
• 17:02
  So if you're selling online, then, you know, your competition is global.
• 17:05
  It's not local.
• 17:06
  So you have really gotta think about how are you going to stand out in the marketplace?
• 17:13
  What are you gonna be known for?
• 17:14
  What is gonna be your specialty.
• 17:16
  And once you know that, then it's time to write a business plan because let me tell you
• 17:22
  something.
• 17:22
  If you figure out who your niche target customer is.
• 17:25
  Do not bother because nobody's looking for another me too business.
• 17:31
  Nobody's looking for a graphic design firm, but is are people looking for graphic design firms
• 17:36
  that specialize in education materials?
• 17:38
  All day, you know, or somebody looking for a video production company, maybe, but how about
• 17:44
  somebody looking for you know, government production, somebody looking for somebody that
• 17:49
  specialized in doing government video.
• 17:51
  Yeah.
• 17:52
  There's no competition between xyz production company and government productions because
• 17:57
  government productions is gonna get it all day because that's what they do.
• 18:00
  That's what they know.
• 18:01
  So that's how you've gotta think about you wanna be specific.
• 18:05
  You don't wanna be so specific that you that you, you know, name your company something And
• 18:09
  then years later, you wanna name it something else, you know, but you want to think about who
• 18:15
  is your customer, why are they gonna buy from you And why are you how are you gonna position
• 18:20
  yourself as the best solution for them?
• 18:22
  You know, people buy things because they are cheaper, better, or faster.
• 18:27
  And so you gotta figure out where you're gonna, you know, put yourself in that spectrum.
• 18:31
  But let me tell you something.
• 18:33
  The last thing you wanna do is compete on price because the race to the bottom is a race that
• 18:37
  no one wins.
• 18:38
  So you wanna make sure that you're adding value, some other kind of place.
• 18:42
  You you wanna make sure that your value proposition is expert driven as opposed to
• 18:47
  price driven.
• 18:48
  Now business plans are really important.
• 18:51
  I know there's all these people out here these days.
• 18:53
  That that will tell you that business plans are not necessary or they are gauche at this point,
• 19:00
  but they are lying to you.
• 19:02
  You need a plan.
• 19:04
  Like, do not spend more time planning your vacation than how you're gonna support yourself
• 19:09
  and your family financially.
• 19:11
  Like, that is crazy.
• 19:13
  Alright.
• 19:13
  So I want you to make sure that you have a business plan.
• 19:18
  Like, look, you can go to bplans.com.
• 19:20
  You can go to en loop.com.
• 19:22
  Which is some free business plan software, but use a business plan.
• 19:26
  Like like, you need 10 good pages that are gonna describe how you're gonna get the phone
• 19:31
  ring, and then what's gonna happen after you get the phone ring, and what's gonna be your
• 19:35
  distribution channels for selling your products and services?
• 19:38
  Like, what are gonna be your marketing channels to get the word out that you're open for
• 19:42
  business?
• 19:42
  What's gonna be your price point?
• 19:44
  You know, what is your cost per unit?
• 19:46
  All these things, you've got to think about ahead of time.
• 19:49
  You don't wanna wing it.
• 19:51
  Winging it is a great way to be out of business fast and burn through a bunch of money that you
• 19:55
  don't have.
• 19:56
  Because the thing is is when you are in business, you have 2 things limited time and
• 20:01
  limited resources.
• 20:02
  So you wanna be very specific about where you spend your marketing dollars.
• 20:06
  Who are you gonna spend your money chasing?
• 20:09
  Right?
• 20:09
  So you wanna that's why business plans are really, really important.
• 20:12
  Plus, they allow you to set goals.
• 20:14
  You know, you need sales goals because if you got sales goals, you know how much money you
• 20:18
  gotta make this week.
• 20:19
  You know how much money you gotta make this week?
• 20:20
  You know how much money you gotta make today.
• 20:22
  So these are all the things why business plans are important.
• 20:25
  I cannot stress it enough all these people, you know, they wanna tell you, you know, you don't
• 20:30
  need business plans anymore.
• 20:31
  You just need a deck.
• 20:33
  They are lying to you.
• 20:34
  You need a plan.
• 20:35
  You have to plan for success.
• 20:37
  You know, success is not going to just happen to you, and that and that is really, you know,
• 20:41
  what I want you to think about.
• 20:43
  And then lastly and this is probably the most important thing.
• 20:48
  I don't want you to quit your job to start this business.
• 20:54
  You need to start your business as a side hustler first.
• 20:58
  You need to run your business while you're still working your job.
• 21:03
  Mean, honestly, most businesses you're starting anyway, you can work on your evenings.
• 21:07
  You can do them on your weekends.
• 21:09
  Maybe you want to request flex time from your job so that maybe you can have, you know, maybe
• 21:15
  you work 73 or you work 4 days a week or 3 days a week, and then you have 2 days off.
• 21:20
  You can focus on your business, but you need to figure out how to carve out more time.
• 21:26
  Stop watching TV.
• 21:28
  That's a great one that'll give you more hours in the evening.
• 21:31
  You know, listen to the radio in the morning instead of the TV so you can be thinking,
• 21:36
  learning, getting trend analysis so you can think about how you can better appeal to your
• 21:40
  market.
• 21:41
  You know, there's lots of things we do that waste time and waste money.
• 21:44
  So you need to absolutely curtail both of those.
• 21:48
  But listen, the thing that I wanna tell you is that starting a business is great.
• 21:53
  And if you build a better mousetrap the world will absolutely beat a path to your door, but
• 22:00
  you need to make sure that you start a business with a plan.
• 22:04
  Otherwise, you are just some turkey with an idea.
• 22:08
  And I am the small biz lady.
• 22:09
  You are listening to the small biz chat podcast And I can't wait to see you next time, but
• 22:15
  listen.
• 22:16
  I wanna leave you with one action point for the week.
• 22:19
  I want you to figure out what you want and why you want it.
• 22:23
  Before you really dive into thinking about your business.
• 22:27
  It's about defining your dream life first and then building a business that will allow you to
• 22:33
  live that life.
• 22:34
  Alright.
• 22:34
  I'm Melinda Emerson.
• 22:35
  I'll see you next time.
• 22:40
  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 22:45
  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
• 22:51
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.