Q&A - Gurus, Starting From Scratch & Being Blunt

so ladies and gentleman welcome back to another YouTube video we are doing the first-ever QA now if you want to go ahead and get your questions answered all you have to do is number one turn on post notifications that's probably the most important thing because I choose questions within the first couple hours of my youtube post go on labs so like not a YouTube video with like a little post feed community thing but enters I went ahead and created some different questions some related to business outside business SMA etc etc every Thursday evening I will be doing this post so as I said if you want to get your question answered soon for on the you turn on post notifications and said I have everything here on my phone stick around to the end of video and we'll be announcing today's giveaway for the gadget clothing line so let's get straight into it first things first and I'm gonna pop it up here we have Joshua MacNeil if you were starting back at 0 and you only had 60 days to raise your income or the worst would happen what smart and hard-working news would you do next to set yourself up to be on the path main five to ten thousand dollars a month so if I was starting from back at zero and I only had 60 days to raise my income first things first very simply I would have a source based business because I'm keeping the entirety of the profits and the issue is it's not how much you make it's how much you keep and if you've got other business models you might invest pretty much guaranteed you invest some money and ads you won't really know what you're doing and that's your own money and then you are gonna go ahead and you might move a little forward and then he might you'll move backwards as you move a little forward you might move backwards what you want is you want a high ticket service so quite simply if I was starting from beginning I'm looking at a cash flow based business a service business so for me that finish breaks it down to having an agency now within an agency what is your specialty I start off my agency as a creative agency doing photo video right and I had retainers where I was charging from a/k/a months to 2500 pounds a month and that was kind of like my average retainer at that point and you know you get two three four or five of those and you're doing very well these days I pivoted in my agency for the past two years basically exclusively has just just unpaid traffic if your expertise is in email marketing copywriting sell a bundle with the emails or sell a weekly email marketing service and I think email has gone a lot of slack over the past few years there are companies and people out there who are spending five thousand ten thousand fifteen twenty thousand a hundred thousand dollars a month on ads and they're collecting and even more than that and they're collecting all of these emails but then those emails are doing nothing if you make money from that list that's pure profit because you've already paid to collect those leads they're just sitting there kind of not doing anything so I wouldn't do something like that or potentially I would if I was it depends on who you are I would have some sort of agency where either you have some sort of sales agency so you and then you can also recruit some closers you and some closers can go ahead and close for people that said I think of the ones I'm about to mention that's the one I'm least bullish about because like I've brought on quite a few salespeople recently for both the agency and the education company and like like I'm looking for people who represent the brand like I'm not looking for salespeople like I'm not looking for like hard for closers you know because like we have a epical and moral code of grow your agency we want people who don't even think of them as salespeople they think of them as what they are to us which is just like you know team members who are there to like support and help our existing students and new students etcetera etcetera but and as I'm growing a little bit sad change point is I would have an agency the reason that I don't teach anything else when I could very well teach you how to have an online education business how to sell info process telco treatment has like to be very blown between myself and my clients like I move a lot of volume a law a lot Multi multi six figures in volume per month for myself and my clients so I'm very very well versed in that reason I love teachers because as you said if I have 360 days I would focus on having an agency and I would get under the realm of your running paid traffic for them you're doing the email marketing you're doing their social media marketing and distribution you're doing their content creation you're doing their YouTube SEO gross and thumbnails anything along those lines okay anything where you can charge at least 750 to $1,000 per month all the way to $10,000 per month and I said you can land those clients and keep just a ridiculous amount of margins even if you're working with a contractor to deliver the services for you so hopefully that makes sense and actually now that I'm rereading the question I would do that that's what I would do but that actions that I would take is outreach outreach outreach because if you have 30 to 60 days quite frankly so many people are so worried about like signing what happens after signing a clamp but the point is because they focus so much about what happens after signing clam which is obviously super super important they never get to this point like you know you look at this timeline the signing plan here it is here and you know there's rest of timeline they're worried about like all of this so they never get to even sign and cleanse so they're worried about stuff that doesn't even apply them because you know they're sending out like a couple emails a week or a couple loons a week okay so I would literally just do outreach for eight to nine hours a day and that is all I would do next question is what are the top three to five potential pitfalls for SME owners I'd say the top three is not doing enough outreach quite simply a number two is thinking that it's all about tactics and not looking at other areas of your life and like if you are an agency owner and you're not like in the position that where I was in where I was in school now is but also building my agency or you're not in a position where you have a job and you're building your agency and you know to be honest especially in kind of the times we live in right now with everything going on most people kind of have the whole day free if you have the whole day free you should be sleeping 9 hours a day seven and a half to nine hours a day like I sweep nine hours day most days and that's running three companies that's running three companies while managing projects in Nepal the schools are building just ton of different things and go to the gym everyday meditating I still having a good social life so if I can get nine hours of sleep a day I don't see why you couldn't so that's number two not focusing on your health and everything outside of the business and number three is at the end of the day after you've done your outreach not sharpening your song and not becoming an expert in your niche okay and not learning to speak your Nicias language and you know just immersing yourself into the psyche of the business owner that you are selling okay I'd say those are really the three pitfalls next question is how can I learn the entrepreneurial way of thinking also how to get [ __ ] done I've done the motivation I'm really willing to work but I don't know where to start or how I should start the entrepreneurial way of thinking well you said you're willing to work but why aren't you working you know quite frankly like it doesn't it's never the person who has the most knowledge or smarts it's the person who just keeps chipping away to every single day like you know from the age of 14 to 17 like you guys know I read a book a week I was meditating I was going to the gym I was chipping away at it and I didn't even know what I was chipping away at I just knew that I was chipping away at becoming a better human which is when I found a online cash flow based business model that could scale you know like that was the biggest blessing in my life because I was able to scale and you know I slumped down and I was able to scale in a slump down but you know it's gone me to where I'm at today so there is no entrepreneurial way of thinking to be honest the only thing that I'd say an entrepreneur thinks differently is they think in systems if they're a good entrepreneur they look at themselves as a machine as a car and they think how can I be as streamlined as possible how can I eliminate all distractions or as many distractions as possible how can I stop doing the things that like like just even things like going and getting your groceries like I understand everything the second law in this world but like even if you're making two or three grand a month like I genuinely think you have to be an idiot to go to the store and get your groceries and bring it back I think there has to be something wrong with you a delivery fee for most places someplace to do it free if you spend beyond a certain amount but delivery fee for like Waitrose or a kado which is like someplace in London it's like three pounds or five pounds or I said if you do it off-peak of all times they do it for free so like an entrepreneur would look at a situation like that and be like is me going to the store shopping in the store and bring it back you know and I might take sixty or ninety minutes is that worth me saving three pounds in delivery fee of course not they respect their time so you know I would say those are really the only things that set an entrepreneur apart from not most people next question what is top three processes that helped you gain more time and help you scale your agency top three processes I'll give you something a more granular the onboarding process yeah two years ago I came to minitor onboarding process since then to be very blunt it's been copied a hundred different times maybe you guys know with my clients either you send a link and within the space of 90 minutes and there's also a 30 minute video in there which is basically an indoctrination and it's a polite way of me being like this is how we do it at this agency and if you don't like it you can kind of [ __ ] off to be honest in a very polite way because then day you're still in a service-based business so that I implemented that two years ago and prior to that one boarding was such a stressful annoying thing so that is a very granular example the other top three processes I'd say in 2019 when we start running a lot of ads for the agency and building out the case of a phone which by the way if you're making less than 20 grand a month profit don't you dare run a cold ad for your agency you just don't do it it's not worth it if you're making less than 20 grand a month spend two three four dollars a day depending on how big your audience sizes for your retargeting for either your Instagram or your website your website traffic but yeah just running because for me that then literally mitigated any need for outreach we still did outreach in 2019 but 70% of our leads came in through cool dad so yes I was I spent a lot of money it made a lot of money you know in 2019 we had our best year ever where the agency by far signed the biggest class we are after 2019 I genuinely just feel like such a agency owner in his prime I just feel so confident as an agency owner and I think 2019 was really what solidified that so I would say onboarding generating leads with cold ads which by the way I said I don't recommend you do I guess the more the point that makes sense more is finding what works for you doubling tripling quadrupling down on it and finding a way to remove yourself from it if you can last process building a really good team whether you know whether that be you know you have a contractor and you're paying them per month per clan which is how my team started or at least my media buyer started and now obviously you've been a full-time for almost a year and a half no almost two years actually so yeah I take those three things right there next question is what's your opinion on investing my opinion on investing is it is an incredible thing to be wanting to reach a certain amount with your business this year in terms of actual cash I'll be investing probably a million plus so yeah I've been stockpiling loan capture than staying very liquid because I knew something like what was going on I didn't think that it would be this sort of global pandemic I don't know if I'm not saying I'm getting demonetized but I didn't think it was gonna be that I just thought that was gonna be some sort of financial recession stemming from some sort of a [ __ ] in the armor you know that 2008 was caused by toxic debt like there was a real reason for it this time there's no real financial reason behind it but obviously the implications of it are you know aren't too great so you got a law on a lot of companies who are dirt cheap right now a real estate to me isn't super intriguing at the moment if this was F roles were reversed and it was 2008 now I would be buying up real estate but for me I see far more potential in stock market than I do with real estate by the way I am NOT a licensed professional this is just my opinion just my opinion okay that's my appear on investing is you make your money in your business you long term you multiply your wealth with investing but also I think so many people are just so so dumb when it comes to investing it shocks me they're like some people genuinely think you can make a fortune with real estate you can but it shocks me that some people are so dumb and can look at themselves in the mirror and genuinely lie to themselves that sounds starting from zero the best place for them to start is with real estate do actually have no moral compass is my question to these people the way you do it is you make money in your business and then you siphon that off and invest in real estate stock whatever you want and then that is your long-term play okay because at the end of the day your business I hope is making you more than ten percent a year whereas with your investments you can expect for the most part six seven eight nine ten maybe 15% maybe 20% cash on cash I said depends on whether you're gone you know you're using leverage that's not gonna pay the bills you need an actual business so for me unless you are making 50 grand a year don't even think about it don't even think about it okay you've got your priorities all all out of whack okay I think if you're making at least 50k here start putting aside some money into the stock market into high-yield dividend stocks and just blue chip companies and and and and this should all be a long-term play okay yeah that's my opinion on investing it's nowhere near as sexy as some people have you believe it's not a real business your business should be always be your business and if you have a high paying job awesome take as much money of that as you can and have it start working for you but know that if you invest today you're not really gonna see any fruits of your labor for 5 10 15 years 5 10 15 years from now you're gonna be super thankful that you started today but in a year from now you're gonna Bob Mac these investments they're really kicking in ok so you know I've had so many people over the years ago you should invest this is that I'm like okay cool you invest and you know you make your 10% a year that's very cute I'm just gonna focus on my business where the cash flow is obnoxious and I'm gonna sit on my cash and I'm gonna wait for the right time and I would say I also don't recommend you wait for the right time I just I knew we were coming ahead in market I knew something like this would happen so I just want to have a lot of cash on hand and you know now I'm set up investing a lot of money and yeah basic about it that's my opinion on investing is focused on your business take that money and then transfer into investments that's your long-term play but your business should always be your number one focus how do i attain monastic levels of focus flow and focus very very simple you eliminate as many distractions as possible this is my man I never cracked a phone I never broke a phone practice phone until I frickin came to Cape Town I've cracked two phones both are still working but this is my second phone right here and on this phone has strides Trello bear which my note-taking app ahora an uber and that's it it's 1:45 right now and I've actually even started extending now I'm in Cape Town and I'm just like I'm in a good place focus wise like I've even extended I'm trip I'm not checking my phone until 3:00 p. m. so my main phone is only turned on from 3:00 p.

m. until 8:00 or 9:00 attempt it depends what time I go to bed whether that's the nine o'clock and 9:00 p. m.

or 11 p. m. we're sorry 9:30 p.

m. or 11:00 p. m.