The Blueprint To $5,000/Month As A Beginner (2024)

and it's live I just launched a business which is going to earn $5,000 a month and I'm going to show you my exact 10-step blueprint so you can do the same with any business in my 35 years of business I built 19 companies and invested in 79 startups and I've made more money than I'll ever need I've been offered tens of thousands of dollars to share this knowledge but instead of charging I'm going to give it to you for free so sit down grab a pen and a notepad and take the next 5 minutes to

learn what I'm about to teacher because if you you can't I've got some news for you you're probably not going to make it and thanks to Shopify for sponsoring this video this video will cover 10 steps in total taking from idea to revenue to reinvestment and growth so let's get started by coming up with an idea so the first part of building any business of course starts with what we probably would call an idea but I prefer to call it a concept an idea can be a bit flaky and actually have no Direction a concept

is an actual physical thing so in this particular example we're going to make a close Ming brand as our first step into building a business to be honest the process I'm about to give you you can learn to use this process for any business absolutely anything but today I'm going to Anchor it in a clothing brand product it's one of the top things that people ask me they want to launch a clothing brand business so let's launch one today for real I'm going to actually launch this business today using this blueprint to try and help

you not just hear what I'm saying but see how to do it so we've decided we're going to do a clothing brand first thing we need to decide is what are we going to call it now naming a business is really tricky and I sometimes say to people there's two Frameworks for naming a business the first is something abstract so think like Google a brand new word a brand new thing that doesn't exist that makes it very easy to trade mark and hopefully means things like website addresses are available the other way to go is

something that matters to you it can literally be what we call what's written on the tin bake beans so if you're selling baked beans it's bake beans written on the tin and that's the brand right you can keep it really simple for this particular example I'm going to run with something called what's your dream because that's my tagline most of you probably know that for new viewers here maybe you don't I go into the street and I ask people what's their dream I've even got a book with the title what's your dream in it so

why not anchor your business in something that matters to you now I've seen businesses get launched with people's personal names so David Oggy launched one of the largest agency businesses in the world he named it after his surname name David ogy so now ogy if you ask anybody the word ogy they think of the agency but of course that was once his name so you can anchor it in something personal like your name you can anchor it in a word you can just make up to give it a meaning or you can do what I'm

going to suggest that we do for this particular exercise anchor it in something I asked people every single day good news is and we're going to come on to this stuff a bit later I already own the trademark for what's your dream trademarks a very important part in this first stage you can have an idea I've seen many people launch a business on the back of an idea but because they didn't do a a concept they only did an idea they've gone to Market it's launched and then they find out it's actually owned by someone

else so right we decided we're going to do a clothing brand we' picked a name what's your dream we've made sure we own the trademark so now why are we launching this business it's very important to make sure that any business you do has a purpose in my opinion that's how new businesses are going to beat existing incumbents if you think about big Brands today that are out there and I could name many of them Nike Umbro whatever it is your company comptition what is their meaning why are they there so I think the future

of any big business is to actually decide what you're going to do of your profit what are you going to do you going to invest in your people are you going to make sure that you back sports are you going to ensure that you back going into the gym you're going to back people eating healthy what is the reason your product exists now for my real life example that we're going to launch today this clothing brand I'm doing it to fix the education system I want every time we sell a hoodie or sell a t-sh

shirt whatever we decide to do and I'll go through that in a minute when we sell them the profit that we make after all our costs is going to fund people's dreams just like yours so I've anchored it to a purpose now there's a couple of reasons why that's really powerful one it will allow people who work with you to get excited about the business Beyond just making profit we need to make profit so we can pay people well we're not a charity we don't want to be I think a charity model can actually leave

you in a hole that won't allow you to scale so we're a for-profit business that does good now your staff will want to work there the second thing is is people will probably want to buy from you so if you're listening to this video right now and you have a dream by buying our hoodies buying our tops you can fund your dream or you can fund someone else's dream and won't the world be a better place if we're helping people do what they love if we're funding dreamers right think of the problems in the world

that can get solved if we actually fund dreamers so in this first stage this concept stage it's also important to start securing all the URLs and website addresses because again you don't want to have a brand even if you have the trademark where you can't control the messaging on it so you want to make sure you own the X handle the YouTube handle the Instagram handle the Tik Tok handle it's all free you have to secure all these things to make sure that your business has the longevity and the ability to Market in all levels

for free now we have a concept we have an idea we have a product we have our why we have our purpose so now we move on to stage two of the blueprint so stage two of the blueprint is in the case of a garment business is find a supplier right but any business you need to find Partners doesn't matter what you launch I launched a creative agency so I needed to find people that were good at Creative Design I even partnered up with brands that had too much work and could give it to us

I also partnered up with software companies who gave us the software so you might need to find Partners in the case of a product company we need to find the supplier who's going to make the product now a lot of people will tell me it's really hard to find a supplier it's not it's really not now the truth is to find anything to do anybody to do anything in this day and age is hard in general because people are busy the good people are doing their own businesses the good people are busy you have to

really do a methodical process to get a supplier so for example first of all list out exactly what it is you need from your partner or your supplier be as detailed as you can so let's say in the case of our particular product launch we want high quality hoodies I'm going to get on to why high quality is important in anything you do doesn't matter if it's a product business or not high quality in my opinion is where you should always start if you look at any successful business they start high quality and they go

down the food chain you look at Apple they start with an expensive product and they get cheaper you look at Tesla they start the most expensive car and then they start to do cheaper cars I think it's an Untold hack if you want to build a really successful big company start highend and come down you very hard to go low end and come up some brands have tried to do it and fail it's much harder now in the case of say a manufacturer there are loads of portals out there that actually allow you to order

goods Alibaba for example example of course online and Google you can find a million suppliers and different platforms that will allow you to order product in the particular case for my example today this genuinely happened I'm not just saying this for the video but I literally said right I'm going to make hoodies and t-shirts did a post on LinkedIn I did a post on Twitter I did loads of emails to people I know I said do you know someone and literally while I was waiting for all of that to happen I went to the local

coffee shop near me I was having a coffee and I was talking to the guy who serves me coffein I said I'm looking to make really high quality hoodies that I can perhaps sell to show people in a video how to start a garment business the guy behind the counter said that guy over there who's drinking coffee that's what he does he has a massive manufacturing plant he can help you so that's it I went over to him and said look hi my name is Simon squib I'd like to make some hoodies how much you

charge how does it work this guy then stepped me through the whole process he went back home came back to the coffee shop with samples to show me there and then he didn't know me so it wasn't because I'm famous he helped me he just helped me right and of course he was hoping for an order it is easy to find what you're looking for if you're looking for it you will never hit a Target unless you know the target you're going for and then started to get into negotiations with the supplier now this is

where I want to make it useful to you right I'm assuming you've got no money but if you've got a little bit of money it does make it easier so if you've got $4,000 then under the model I was originally doing you can go bu 200 hoodies or you can go buy the computer you can go buy the soft W whatever it is you need to make your business work if you've got a little bit of money in my opinion is $4,000 gets you mostly what you need to start any business but I'm going to

assume you don't have any money so what you can do and I didn't need to do it in my case because I've got $4,000 but what you can do and I did discuss this with my supplier is it possible that you give me the merchandise and then I sell it and I'll pay you even more than the asking price you're asking for right now for your product now my supplier said yes to me now I know when you hear that you might think well it's okay for you Simon maybe they trust you maybe they can

do a credit check on you you'll be surprised if you don't ask you don't get but you can ask the supplier to back you and you can ask the supplier to be your investor invest $4,000 in you have an equity stake in your business that's another way to go now ideally you have the money to do it and I always love the story of Brands like Airbnb when they launched their product they didn't have the money to do the tech development so they went and sold seral boxes Obama reels at conventions where Barack Obama was

at and they made money from those serial boxes to pay for their Tech development of course they also rented out their spare room the irony right at the end of the day how can you get the money to pay for the product that's going to make you money you got to be inventive about it you got to wake up not be lazy maybe even go and clean some cars go clean some windows do someone's Garden get that $4,000 and stop making excuses now if you can get $4,000 and you've got the first stage right you

know exactly why you're doing it you know exactly what the product is you know exactly who you're targeting now you can make a sample now a lot of people when they launch a business they go too big too quick I launched one of the most successful marketing agencies in the world in the end I had a couple hundred people working for me but at the beginning I just had one person working with me and I paid them based on the project that I'd won right so I think with the Garment business this is how I'm

doing it I've ordered 200 pieces and then I'm going to sell 200 pieces for a profit and then I'm going to take that profit and I'm going to buy 400 next time instead of 200 and once I've sold 400 and with that profit I'm going to buy 800 I'm going to show you how to sell in a minute I'm going to show you how to Market and brand a business in a minute but I want you first of all to understand the economics the first few steps do not have to be big steps if you

make them too big you won't climb up the ladder right so I'm making 200 units I'm going to allocate the $4,000 which is all we're going to spend in this whole process this whole blueprint I'm going to give you today we're only going to spend $4,000 now we have a product supplier now have a minimum order quantity we now have the money to make that order now it might seem strange that I'm inserting this particular point a little bit late in the process but now you need to be really clear on your demographic who's going

to buy this product and why you know if it's a service business what companies are going to work with you and why why do you want to not work with certain companies like for example when I launched my agency business I didn't want to work with tobacco companies I didn't want to work with sin Rel businesses my decision I'm not making any judgment on other people and what they want to do I didn't want to work with those businesses I actually wrote down who was not my customer and that helped me Define who my actual

customer is because most people when they launch a business they don't actually know who their customer is and they definitely try to be too broad they'll say I want anyone who's between the age of 18 and 60 to buy my product or services or I want any company to use my product and services no I said I wanted Fortune 500 companies to use my agency and in the Garment business I'm going to pick a dreamer demographic graphic which in my opinion is people before University just before they go into University up to the age of

30 now that doesn't mean to say that people over the age of 30 don't have dreams they definitely do I meet thousands of people every month that have dreams and they're over 30 but for this particular exercise for this particular business for this particular product I have decided to pick the 18 to 30y Old bracket because it helps me to find in the fashion case what is fashionable to that age demographic what's important to that age demographic and if I design something that's for everyone then no one will buy it I can always end up

designing something later for the older demographic and again this applies to any business you do so being really specific somewhat selective and very very careful in your demographic breakdown will help you ensure success so we're now together launching a fashion brand called what's your dream that's going to service the 18 to 30y Old dreamers and the profit we make after our costs is going to fund those dreamers got it because the next step is going to get complicated and I want you to understand the foundation you need for any business we understand what we're doing

why we're doing it how we're going to do it and we've got our partners lined up so the next step is designing the product now for some people this stage is really easy perhaps you're a designer you know exactly what you want and what I probably say is I'm saying design the product because we're launching a fashion brand but maybe I'm also if you're talking about a service business or a product business in general I would say you're also designing a brand right you're designing the meaning of the business just by visually seeing your imagery

people should be able to associate with what you do so we're really not just designing a product we're designing a brand now I have a little bit of an advantage in this particular case because my wife is a graphic designer so to keep my cost down she's helping plus I work with penguin on this book they actually designed what your so I already have a general image that I like and I know works for my brand but I think that you'll be surprised how many people can help you with this stage if you don't have

the talent yourself and if it's really important to get deep into this a couple of hacks in the fashion business you can actually go to an existing fashion designer and say would they like to do a collaboration right so example is kanyon West worked with Adidas right and they did a collaboration so he was the designer they were the distribution partner it went pearshaped and maybe that sounds too highbrow to give you as an example but you'll be surprised how many designers might collaborate with you they might do the design with the promise that they

can get 10% of the profit you make so you can get yourself a designer and help you with your business so again I'm lucky I have a graphic designer as my wife so she can help me with it but the people who made my hoodies the high quality manufacturing partner I had for this they also offered to do the designs to help us right so there's loads of different ways to get the product designed and it's important to get that right now because you have the demographic in mind you know exactly who you're targeting you

should remember to design for them and I'll tell you what we did to make sure we designed for them and by the way I don't think we've got it right at the time of making this video I don't think it's perfect yet it will still make $5,000 a month profit easy and we haven't even got it right yet so you don't need to get this perfect from day one and sometimes shipping something that's 80% good is better than never shipping it at all I'll show you what we've made so that you can see the evolution

literally in a week from the first idea to the second idea so this is the first designs we did very simple in fact in this particular case printing one side not the back side uh actually reduced cost in this particular example I think for version one this is what we thought would be popular and matches the brand we already have and this this is therefore what what we what we initially created and we made 200 of them now I'm going to go into Marketing in a minute but very quickly while we're on the design when

we put these units into the market and shared them with different people we got quite negative feedback quite quickly people saying that they didn't really like it now what was interesting is anybody in my community who saw the top loved it because they know our mission and they feel align to it and they want to ask people what their dreams are and help people with their dreams but as a fashion product outside of our core fan base people didn't like it and they'd make comments like it it doesn't look nice they don't like the the

the sentence it doesn't resonate with them it feels a bit corporate merchandise so we took that feedback which was instant as soon as we made the tops and put them out in the market and we redesigned it and we made new ones and these are the new ones we made we went from this product which by the way once you've made one you can feel the quality and you can see if it's good enough matches what you want the demographic to feel when they hold the product this is what we had right so one-sided printed

quality was good but people didn't NE neily like this so we switched to a more subtle branding give about take now it might seem now like we've switched the name of the product but we haven't we went deeper when we actually gave the first product to people we asked what is the mission of this product and they said well it's to ask people their dream we're like no it's to fund people's dreams and we do it without any expectation of anything in return so then when talking to people from the first product what they thought

of it was like well what does that mean I'm like what it means give without take we learn very quickly to iterate and change the messaging now we still own what's your dream it's still part of the book but this is the essence of what the brand is about it's about helping people we always said in marketing it's sell the sizzle not the steak this is the sizzle right and it feels less like merchandise and on the back we want everybody to become a Founder so we decided to put founder on the back now this

time when we showed this product to people they loved it now some people still didn't like it in the 18 to 30y Old bracket for different reasons everyone's got different fashion tastes but the concept that people buy this and they fund Founders and they can be part of a Founder community and the messaging is give about taken it subtle meant that people wanted this top so now we have what we call product Market fit we have an idea of a product and the market wants that product so number four on the blueprint is build the

store we have to build a platform think about it almost like a physical location where people can go and buy the product and it has to be frictionless so what I'm going to do is I'm part of a Shopify and I'm going to build a Shopify store right now and I'm going to show you how to do it if somehow you don't know what Shopify is it's a Commerce platform that allows you to start grow and manage a business Shopify is really really easy and the setup can look so professional um it really is a

simple drag and drop features so it means no coding so don't let anyone sell you that this is really hard to build it's not um if I can do it anyone can do it in this section you can list your products look how beautiful looks it's just so simple you need to come up with a good description for your product so in my case I'm going to introduce the give without take hoodie by influencer Simon squib A Perfect Blend of comfort style and purpose crafted from 100% organic cotton this hoodie is as soft on your

skin as it is on the environment every purchase supports Simon's mission to give back we proceeds going Direct direct ly towards funding dreams and helping aspiring entrepreneurs achieve their goals it's important that you really emphasize why people should buy right so in this now we've made the mission clear the quality clear and the purpose of the business oh I really like this theme this is really cool now you can pay but I'm I'm going for this free one for now got to keep your cost down when you're first starting a business you can see it

already looks like a store it's so simple I'm not techsavvy at all so if I can do it you can do it I'm just going to change the text here and add the official give without take logo so I'm just going to upload that looking good A lot of people think you need to do fancy product shots I don't think it's really that hard these days to take pictures but anyway any business that's selling a product I tell people don't overthink it too much right better to get it live 80% perfect and update it over

time and make it perfect from day one and never launch now this is really important you keep an eye on this and look it's laid out super simple right here are your analytics you need to be consist stantly checking these as this is what will let you know what's working and what doesn't work use these tools so I managed to get shopified to give you a free trial as well if you go to shopify.com you can have a free trial of this it's easy go do it now number five is actually planning distribution now in

of course a garment business that means retail shops that means online stores and we're lucky enough in this particular video to be sponsored by Shopify that's a great platform to get your product out there in the world now I actually ask Shopify to sponsor this video to show you that you could also get these Partners to sponsor you sometimes your distribution Partners can be your sponsors they can help you fund your partnership with them can be a part of sponsorship and can help you get your product out there now distribution can come in many forms

I'm going to talk through different ways that you can get your business out there if you've got a Service Company distribution is super simple you just get one happy customer and you ask them to recommend you right that is a distribution model I love it when people build up email lists around their personal brand because you can email people to buy your product buy your service it's low cost it's a distribution model I always think the lwh hanging fruit with any business is always getting your friends and family to buy your product of course in

the hoodie case I can literally get my wife to buy a hoodie I can get my team to all buy a hoodie I can get all their friends to buy a hoodie right I've got a team of 15 that help me make these videos if they all sell three we've sold 60 70 hoodies just in our small Network within our company portfolio now if you've got product Market fit you can of course scale this up now but distribution can start small everybody thinks distribution has to be from day one you're in all the waitr or

you're in all the tesos or you know whatever you don't need it to be big straight away moving it forward with a small group of people first can create a community which I think is a power up in any marketing having a community that then promote you is more powerful than you promoting you I'll quickly show you behind the scenes of what we're doing right now we're packing 100 hoodies to 100 people we're including a book we're including some sweets you can see how we get these hoodies out to influencers to Partners and distribution can

come from their awareness of the product we also managed to secure some free spots at carfest and other festivals around to distribute and sell our product now a lot of these locations if you ask them will have spare spots most Sunday markets have a spare spot sometimes you can do Revenue shares sometimes there's an amount of money to put down to actually have those Market stalls but it's worth asking sometimes for small businesses a lot of these places will let you start for free you never know one of my favorite distributions of course is social

media but we're going to get more into that in a minute when we talk about marketing now an interesting thing when we're doing a market test at carfest about how much people pay for our hoodies we we're looking to sell them for 85 our cost of goods is around £35 so of course we have marketing management distri R bution so we have to sell them for £85 to make a profit and when we were asking people at the event what they would pay they were saying around 5055 which sounds absolutely reasonable we analyzed why people

were saying that it's one at a festival some of the demographic were not in love with our mission they didn't know our mission so when we ask them how much they pay they pay a certain amount they'd never tried on the hoodie they' never checked the quality and they didn't know our mission so we failed to prove value but once we explain the value quality and why we were doing it then people were starting to say no problem with £85 so as soon as I tried it on for example no one no one question the

£85 when we actually did the display of all the goods initially we put it all piled up and there were too many tops around it didn't look like a premium product cuz it was all jumbled together like a secondhand shop so we tied up the display we made it look cleaner we made the product look nicer we put the product on wooden hangers and by the way this is true for every single business if you've got a service business and people go on your website which is often the distribution Network and you put your low-end

client work on your website then your pricing will instantly be seen as low-end so on my agency platform we used to always put CNN estate order all the big products where we pay big money will always front and center so value was obvious from day one you want to work with the people that help CNN become famous then we're not going to be cheap are we and I think sometimes people decide pricing based on what the customer said instead of making sure you bring the customer up to the value of your product Apple are brilliant

at this everybody said no one's going to pay ,000 plus for a phone nobody all the other companies no Kia were going down in price they thought people wanted to pay less it's not true you add value you can add on the price if you bring people more they will pay more if you wear this hoodie and it doesn't fall apart in two months people are happy to pay more for it because it lasts longer so you have to make sure that your Communications and your distribution partners are appropriate for your brand if you're putting

this hoodie in tesos then it's probably not going to sell for £85 but if you put it in a premium location with the mission clearly stated with the ability for people to try on the product and realize the quality you'll get the price you want now maybe you don't want to price your product High that's fine there is a whole different economic model around doing things cheap and mass totally get that personally again My Philosophy is always have a premium product and you can always come down in price over time and distribution Partners will determ

whether or not your product is seen as valuable or not so in marketing there are a lot of different methods to promote a business I've done a video on marketing that's got a million views on YouTube already that goes really deep on this subject okay but I'm going to tell you two important things to launch any business there are some things I think you should avoid and in my opinion when you're first launching a business and not everyone will agree with me on this but try to avoid paid ads why because it's very competitive it

can get really expensive and even if you manage to find a niche initially if there's a niche it will make you money I drive sales to your site it will just become a bidding war and it will become very difficult and there's not much of a learning curve in mastering it I think the better way to Market any business is learn to make content and maybe initially if you don't know how to make content which is Bloody easy I'm sure you're consuming a lot of it you just need to look at what's popular and some

respects replicate it like Street content right now is really popular that's what I'm doing it's hugely popular you know sometimes you just need to innovate on what's already out there you don't need to reinvent the wheel but there are two methods in marketing that I think everybody should know in and out and it's really simple influencer marketing and you can be an introvert or an extrovert and do influencer marketing create a list of influencers that you want to work with and even the big ones that you think I can't afford them the way to work

with influences is one align with their purpose so if you came to me with a business and you said Simon this business will help fix the education system Simon this business will help people's dream beam happen I'd be really interested in helping you make it happen and if you're a small business I wouldn't charge you now I do charge big Brands because they' got the money but I do not as a rule charge people who are starting a business money to help them Market their business and you'll be surprised how many influencers are the same

now if there are some influencers out there that still need to be paid and everyone needs to earn a living so that's perfectly normal you can link sales to income so in other words if they sell a hoodie you can give them a percentage of the profit so make a list be bold the strongest people ask for help tell these people why you need their help you'll be shocked how many people will help you now you can also build an economic model in there that will also increase your chances of having even more influencers but

influencer marketing is the most underpriced attention in the market today and despite everybody knowing about it it's shocking to me how many people don't actually try and do it the second thing in marketing if you don't want to go watch my very long video on marketing is strategic marketing so strategic Partnerships are one of the most under underrated ways of getting your business out there so an example I work with Tide banking right now if you sign up with Tide and you get £50 when you spend £100 and I put the link down below now

I've mentioned it you can even get your company registered for free through them so I work with brands that create a win-win for my audience TI banking have a huge Client List and I say to them would you mind promoting these dream hoodies to your audience who might like to buy one to be a part of the founder community be mind we got found on the back of the tops but also at the same time the money these hoodies generate will allow people to open up a business which allows them to open up a bank

account so it creates a win-win for Brands like that people don't realize that these Brands need Innovation and need Partnerships quite often the way to think about it is okay which partner out there has a database for exactly the demographic that we discussed earlier so who has the demographic for the people you want to work with already and if you have a product that doesn't conflict with them then they will be happy to team up with you especially if there a share revenue and certainly if there's a mission alignment I call this 1+ 1al 11

and I will never stop telling people about this because I see so many people spending money on ads and not enough money spent building relationships with companies that already have all your clients in their email list there is one other strategic partnership that you can have and that's with your existing customers so we've now sold 80 hoodies in the last 8 hours those people we can now say to them if you sell the hoodies we can give you a commission this is called affiliate income so make making your community benefit from selling your product is

another thing a lot of people don't do they're willing to give the money to Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire already at Facebook but they're not willing to give profit or and income to their Community don't make the same mistake I see so many small companies make every single day learn to reward your community for helping you number seven on the blueprint is product launch now in many respects a product launch isn't a final thing a lot of people think they've launched their product that's it it's worked or it hasn't worked Airbnb launched website eight times before

it worked so a product launch is it's very important to think about timing so for example we're doing hoodies it's just coming into Autumn now in England where we're initially launching our product hoodies make sense actually at the festival we were at it was sunny so we sold less hoodies because we were off slightly we were a little bit early just before the Autumn season began so timing is everything you'll see a lot of hit songs for example if you're a singer and you release a song a lot of hit songs initially weren't hits and

then they were released a little bit later at a different moment in time and they were hits t-shirt weather by Circle waves for example go Google it the point is that timing is everything and a lot of the time people will decide whether a product is a failure simply by product launch without actually realizing that it might be timing okay so make sure your timing is right of course in our case we're launching hoodies no one's going to wear them in the summer then be creative in your launch I always am shocked when people launch

a business and it's just like a crappy event and they don't don't really do anything fun I think business and fun need to work hand inand so what can you do when you launch your business that's fun that's on brand for you that's going to be engaging so in our case we go into the street and we say how much would you pay for this hoodie if you can guess the price you get it free do something that relates to your personal brand and that can be enjoyable for you and of course matches the purpose

of your business I still really like things like flash mobs you know like just getting attention I bought a staircase that was went up for sale the first ever staircase in London that went up for sale and it was in all the news the next day because why did this millionaire buy a staircase in the middle of London right so you know Le leveraging whatever you can whatever assets you've got to do something unique to get you PR which is press relations and doing whatever you can to get communities involved in what you're doing and

make a noise I mean we went on the London Underground and put up fake ads when we launched our help bank.com platform and we took empty spaces on the Underground and we put ads in that said we didn't pay for this space so you don't need to pay for help and that got a lot of noise a lot of controversy some people didn't like us for it some people thought it was brilliant it doesn't matter we were doing it for a purpose we're doing it to help people and it got us lots and lots of

media coverage the staircase I bought got us2 million with a free media coverage I didn't need it as a millionaire go spend 22 million pound to get media coverage I got it for free and you can do the same now in a case of something like a hoodie I I think people wearing it naturally is a really good thing to do there was this whole thing where Samsung paid the Kardashians and other people to do a tweet about how much they love their Samsung and it turned out the Tweet said came from their iPhone so

you don't want to get caught out like that you don't want to have someone say they like your product but they don't genuinely like it so the thing to do is what we call social listening once you've done this initial launch you want to understand what person may actually love your mission and your product and then try to get them naturally engaging with it I'm not even wearing my own top today right like what does that say about me I should be wearing it today yeah and I think that's important people naturally need to be

wearing it and I will wear it in a minute just to prove I do love it but I don't want to be too commercial in this video right the point is people will wear it naturally if they like it and they're the people to really double down on when it comes to product launch people that genuinely believe in your business genuinely believe in your service and genuinely believe what you're doing is important and they want to help you do it back those people work with them on the launch stage all right now I'm going to

live the brand because in my case I'm a key person of influence right but you you you need to live the brand and you want to work with people that live the brand and so I will be wearing this everywhere I go that's another reason I wanted to make it super high quality it's why it's got furry lining cuz I want it to be a good product because I'm going to wear it next is building infrastructure now I have a strange way of building a business I don't think it's strange but some people think it's

strange my idea is always get out to the market see the demand and then build infrastructure around it now I've got the resources to buy a warehouse right now I mean I bought a bloody staircase I have the resources to go and build out trucks and delivery folks and all the stuff that is needed for a business like this in the long run we're going to have our own stores in the long run but you don't need to do it at the beginning and I don't do it at the beginning even though I've got the

resources to do it why because you want to find out demand first you want to find out the market fit is perfect you want to find out what people are willing to pay for the product long term or what other products they want so you don't want to start building all this expensive infrastructure even if you've got the money until the time is right so what is the infrastructure for this early stage in my opinion it's good product right Baseline second is delivery right so if someone goes into the link in the comments down below

buys one of these hoodies right now which you feel free to do I want it getting delivered to you quickly promptly and professionally so infrastructure for me in the early days is a way of getting your order into my system and then that order getting translated into a delivery in between my personal opinion is you want to package it up so it's nice so in a hoodie's case that's obvious you put it in a nice box you wrap it you put a note in there that's personalized you try to make it as unique as possible

and as nice as possible in a service business that might simply be telling people clearly when you're going to deliver the service when you're actually going to bring them the results that they're after whatever it is that you're doing whatever is a product business or a service business in this stage infrastructure is about delivering on expectation of what you have launched right make sure you have built enough but not too much that it cost you a lot of money to maintain it when you're not totally sure it's going to scale yet so what have I

done in our case and and this is why I wanted to actually launch a business today and not just tell you how to do it because even as a multi-millionaire with all the resources I've got to hand all the knowledge I have I still wouldn't go out there and build massive infrastructure so what have I done I figured out what it cost to post a hoodie with the Royal Mail I went on the Royal Mail website and they're not the best brand in the well but I went on their website and figured out what will

it cost to post one hoodie two hoodies two hoodies with a letter two hoodies with paper wrap two hoodies with ribbon what does it cost to send these out and I've worked out the most cost effective way to do it actually sending two hoodies cost the same as one hoodie so I could do shipping free if you order two right by understanding the infrastructure it's already out there I haven't had to recreate the wheel and build a a logistics system I can literally right now put your hoodie in a bag write a note to you

personally which I want to do for now that might not be scalable and then literally have the post office come and pick it up when it's ready for delivery that's all the infrastructure I've built for this business and I don't need anything else if I've done all the other things I've just told you about the influencer marketing the the the product launch correctly you've got the why right you got the brand right then all I need is that now of course if I suddenly get 10,000 orders a day I need to also think about what

is my limits actually initially I only have now 120 hoodies left I will sell those hoodies before I order more but what I have done infrastructure wise is I've checked with my supplier how long do they need me to order more top for them tops to arrive so it's basically 3 days so I can put up more and I can get more to people if I want without having huge stock on my system and huge cost to buy that stock in advance that's all the infrastructure I need at the beginning and and and honestly like

any business this supplies the same like when I built my creative agency business we had hundreds of people working for us towards the end but when I first started I just had one designer who was a contractor they weren't even on fulltime and I got a client who needed service I would then hire that contractor to do the work and then that contractor became a partner in a business and then I married that partner and then we had a baby together which sounds a bit weird doesn't it but that's kind of sometimes building a business

becomes personal I'm joking a little bit I did marry my first ever graphic design higher in the agency but joking aside you don't need to marry people to make this work the point I'm trying to make here that that businesses start step by step you can get one person initially as a contractor you can get one product and then sell that one product you don't need to overthink it I can ship thousands of products if I want but I don't need to at the beginning let's see what the demand is and I'll scale up based

on demand you should do the same now number nine on the blueprint is sales I I put this as a separate subject from marketing and even product launch because sales is an ongoing process in any business a lot of people don't spend enough time building a system for sales and I don't care what business it is I love Building Sales Systems and anyone can build a sales system everyone should know how to sell in fact I would argue today every business is built on the back of sales if you can sale you can build any

business and anyone can learn sales now I've done a very long video on sales which again you can go watch if you want but I'm going to give you the most important highlights with any launch business right now the first is what is your sales strategy let's take the Garment industry again if we sell one hoodie and we've sold 80 hoodies then we need a system a sales system to ask that person if they'd also like a t-shirt or they'd like a different color hoodie sales doesn't have to just come from an external Source marketing

is better at generating external source of sales sales comes from internal processes so now those 80 people we ask them if they want to buy a different color right we ask them if they want to buy a T-shirt and then we also understand them maybe we do a survey and then we ask them if they wouldn't mind telling their friends about us and maybe we give them a referral code or a free something whatever that is and so sales is a process that people just don't flush out enough and that's why I put it in

here as a separate thing it it's not part of marketing okay marketing will create inbound reactive sales is outbound proactive right you need to make sure that if for example in our merchandising range maybe we'll get brand sponsors right so we need someone that's going to go out and talk to Brands and say hey pipe drive would you like to sponsor some T-shirts and we need to speak to 30 Brands to get six meetings to get one client saying yes now I really like love sales and I get really excited about it it's a very

deep subject but I want you to really think about your sales system now you've launched a product it's out there in the world you can be thinking about this now because now you can start to understand who your clients are and who you can sell to at scale once you've got that so for example maybe in the hoodie business we'll go Target all the people that have sold a company and we'll ask them please buy these hoodies to support other people that one day want to sell a company and there's lots of people that have

sold a company and then maybe they will also promote it because a lot of these people have sold compan comp become quite successful on social media themselves so maybe that's our our sales strategy to go to existing successful Founders that got lucky had help were successful have a great life and they now want to give back and help other people do it maybe they even buy a load of hoodies and give it to people that they're investing in give it to people they want to help make their dreams happen so having a sales strategy whatever

it is for you I mean my agency business my service business my sales strategy is I wanted to work with a Fortune 500 companies all the top most successful business business is I wanted to work with those companies because I knew they had money I knew they had power to do cool things and I knew that if I got through to the right person I can make a difference in their business what's your sales strategy be very careful about this don't overlook it last but not least is the financial management and potential growth of your

business now I would say one of my personal weaknesses in business is I don't really care about money and I don't really care about the finance department generally speaking but you cannot Overlook the financial mechanism in which your business will grow what I suggest and this is what I did for the first six years of fluid I didn't take any money out all the profit we made and we made profit every single year I put it back in to Growing the company I hired people got a bigger office made the world better for my team

by having good equipment good software I think people take money off the table too quickly and the reason I made so much money is because I took no money off the table for such a long time every time you take money off the table I literally think you're you're Haring the value of your business a year from now right so understand your numbers and and and and actually it's very simple what does it cost you to deliver the product to the customer and what's your profit margin I've seen many restaurants go bus that are full

up absolutely packed and they gone bust why because they filled up based on what clients said they would pay but they didn't actually work out what it was costing them to run that business so they had a full restaurant but no profit you have to be disciplined about this and so what are your cost of goods what does it cost you be very clear even electricity that you're using at home when you're working on your idea costs money work it out even if you don't like numbers and you don't like accounts this stuff is Common

Sense learn it figure out exactly what it cost you to make that product exactly what it cost to deliver that service write it down stick it on the wall and make sure you never sell below it now cash flow wise the business that I'm launching here with you today sure there's a little bit of a cash flow problem in this business because I have to make the product and then I have to pay to ship it to you and there is a you know in general like it sits in escro different companies do different things

credit cards hold the money but there can actually be a cash flow delay before I get payment right I have to sell all the product before I get all my money back too every business is different in the service business I always recommend to people got the best cash flow business ever because what you should do is charge 50% deposit in advance soon as you sign an agreement to do any sort of service business and that 50% should be your cost and the final 50% payment is your profit but not enough people Implement that now

in product businesses a little bit different but again we made hoodies we took them to a festival people gave us cash we got the money back quite quick right some people pay by credit card the credit card takes 30 days or so to pay us yes and we lose 3% depending on which credit card that is all cost you need to put into your financial system you need to know exactly if someone pays my credit card what's the cost if someone pays cash what's the cost because actually you still got to take the cash to

the bank right what's the cost of getting in the car to the bank to put the cash in the bank right understand every single element don't be lazy be clear because this part of the business if you don't manage it well will not allow you to grow because you don't know exactly what you're making you may have money coming in and not even realizing you're losing money and I see that time and time again sounds like my god really people are losing money and don't realize it yes because they don't spend the time figuring out

exactly what their cost is and being very clear targets are the final thing I'll say if you want to grow you need to set yourself ambitious targets now maybe you don't want to grow maybe you want a lifestyle business which is absolutely fine I believe a big business is easier to manage than a small business and honestly you want to plan for growth and to plan for growth you need to set targets and it makes everyone feel excited if you reach those targets if you don't set a Target you won't hit it I've said it

before I say it again set targets so that you can grow so what is it you want to do maybe that's the thing for you to go away and do now and figure out what is it you want to do I hope you enjoyed today's video and let me know where you're going to set up I really love to hear it I'm have to have some chicken now so I'll see you later