5 Strategies I used to make my first Million.

5 Strategies I used to make my first Million.

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My entrepreneurial journey has been  a wild one, as it is for most people,   and last week I shared a lot of the advice and  lessons I would've given to my younger self when   I was first getting started as an entrepreneur  and you can check out that video here and here,   and thank you so much for all of the amazing,  in depth, kind comments on that video. It was   really fun to read through them and I thought  this would be cool to do as a follow-up,   which is essentially sharing the five  fundamental strategies that I use to   get to the first million in my business. I remember every stage of my business really   clearly in how it felt and how overwhelming it  felt at times. And to be sitting here today and to  

have experienced the rapid growth over the last  couple of years in particular, to get to now an   eight figure business. I feel like these five  fundamental strategies still play a key part,   no matter how much the business has grown, I still  lean on these every single day and they help me   stay consistent and they help me stay focused. If that's something you're excited about hit that   like button and help us reach more people in  the algorithm. This channel is totally dedicated  

to reverse engineering entrepreneurial success  and making entrepreneurship available to   everyone. So a small thing you can  do is just hit the like button,   be sure to subscribe for new videos every week. Now I remember vividly when I hit that first   million, it was in my fiscal year between 2016  and 2017 and I couldn't believe it. I was so   excited. I now had a seven figure business. It was  happening and I realized that up until that point,  

it felt like I was kind of like in the wash cycle,  in a washing machine. And then I finally just sort   of settled and I found my foundation, my balance,  my core, and I realized that growing the business   from there was not about adding more things.  And honestly, growth came out of simplicity   and subtraction. I really do say that a lot and I  believe it, that subtraction leads to success.   So, these five fundamental strategies, like I  said, still play a big factor in my business   to this day and they are a core of how  to grow a business that feels healthy,   peaceful, and sustainable. So these are the five  strategies that we're going to go into today.   Number one is creating scale. Number two is  metrics that matter. Number three is investing  

forward. Number four is outsourcing. And  number five is embracing uncertainty.   So number one is creating scale. So my  journey to becoming an entrepreneur,   I started as a journalist. I then became a  social media consultant and freelancer, and then  

I dove into and fell into, this whole online  world. I was working as a freelancer for about   four or five years and I was paid on a one-to-one  basis. I was paid by the hour and when I talk   about creating scale, this was a key component  to being able to grow my business because it   allowed me to detach my time from my income. You only have so many hours in the day. If you're   working with clients one-to-one, or you're doing  one-to-one services, you're essentially trading   your time for your money. So inevitably,  you're going to run out of time and you're   going to hit an income ceiling. I realized that  very quickly. It led me to being super burnt out,   super exhausted. In order to create a truly  scalable business, the key really is that  

your expenses stay where they are, but your profit  continues to grow. Your revenue continues to grow   and it doesn't require more of your time,  more of your energy and most importantly,   it doesn't require more resources to grow. So there were two very key factors in creating   scale in my business. I started with YouTube,  which I fell into accidentally, and I realized   very quickly that it was an incredible platform  and medium to continue to reach people without   doing any extra work. Because YouTube is a search  engine and its own by Google, which is the largest   search engine in the world, you are set up  for success. With every video that you create,  

we think about them as little evergreen sales  machines and evergreen lead machines because every   video you create is then placed into the algorithm  and YouTube then uses its internal traffic sources   to push that video to the right people and to  be discovered in search by the right people.   So those videos are all out there in the  world, working for me day in and day out,   which allows me to do attach my time from  income. When you look at a different platform,   like let's say Instagram, for example. The shelf  life of an Instagram post is quite short. So   it works for you in the immediate future  but it stops working after a while. Whereas  

YouTube videos, I have videos that are like  four or five years old that still generate   quality traffic and leads for me, every single  day, that turn into clients. Again, that's not   requiring any more time or resources for me. The next piece of that was when I really   discovered this online world and I discovered the  power of YouTube, I realized that there was this   huge need for online education and the online  education space is booming. And so I decided,   okay, instead of just repeating my strategies over  and over again, and working one-to-one with all   these clients, what if I was able to package my  knowledge, my expertise and my strategies, into an   online course. Because I had so much demand from  people when I started sharing my content online,  

that I just physically couldn't work with all  these people and I wasn't really at a place   where I wanted to hire anybody to help me. I  kind of wanted to stay solo at the time.   So, I packaged my knowledge into an online course  and since then, that is really what has created   such rapid growth in my business. Not even just  in terms of income, but in terms of impact because   my clients now don't have to wait for me, or my  time, to get the results and the transformation   that they're looking for because they can study it  at their own pace and then I'm there obviously to   support and provide guidance if needed. So YouTube and online course creation,   those two things combined really allowed me  to detach my time from income and I have a   whole playlist on how to create an online  course that sells and you check that out   in the description below, but that really is the  first key strategy, all about creating scale.  

Number two, metrics that matter. If I didn't study  our numbers in my business every single morning,   I would not be where I am today. I say that with  the utmost confidence and certainty. Because for   a long time, I shied away from numbers. I shied  away from analytics. I felt like I wasn't good   with numbers and it was really just a way to sort  of self sabotage my own success and growth.   The more that I fell in love with knowing my  numbers and knowing the metrics in the business,   the more growth I was able to see, and the  more I was able to control the growth because   I knew what was working and I knew what wasn't  working. So this is the very first thing I do,  

every single day when I wake up, and it  puts my mind at ease and it allows me to   sustain and create consistency in the business  and it's why our business is wildly consistent,   month-over-month and year-over-year and we  don't experience a ton of peaks and valleys.   So what are the metrics that I look at every  single day? These are them. Number one is traffic.   How much traffic are we accumulating on a  daily basis? How many leads is that turning   into for the business? And how many clients are  actually enrolling out of those leads? From there,   how many client results are we getting? Is the  program working? Are we creating transformations   because without proof and credibility and  results for your program or your offer, you   don't have a sustainable business. That's huge. The next thing is what is the revenue that we're  

generating? In addition to that, how much cash are  we actually collecting on a daily basis? Because   there's a difference between revenue and actual  cash in the business. If somebody buys a $500   product, but they pay on a payment plan, you have  $500 of revenue, but you have $250 of actual cash   collected, which is very important to know, to be  very on top of your finances so you can grow.   And then finally, how much profit  do we have? So after all expenses,   how profitable is the business and how can we use  that profit to create runway, a safety net, and   the ability to have a safety blanket, as we want  to scale and invest back in the business. Knowing  

my numbers, like I said, put me in the driver's  seat and it allowed me to not be a passive   part of my business anymore and it was a really  big key to getting to that first million and truly   continuing to grow beyond that. Those metrics  don't change and they really are the keys to   that level of growth. What it does for me, is it  allows me to make decisions from a really clear   place because I know exactly what is going on in  our financial picture and I know exactly what is   necessary to invest in and what we can and what  we need to maybe hold off on, or maybe what isn't   necessary, because there's things that we can do  internally to fix things instead of maybe hiring   out or outsourcing or anything like that. The other thing that my metrics really taught   me were that the biggest thing that matters in  your business is profit. Revenue really doesn't   matter because if your expenses are a hundred  thousand dollars a month and you're bringing in a   hundred thousand dollars a month, you're breaking  even. You're not actually creating profit and  

sustainability in the business moving forward. So  your profit allows you to create, as I mentioned   earlier, that runway and runway is if the business  shuts down tomorrow, how much do you have in the   bank to be able to pay for your expenses? Pay for  a team, if you have one? And keep you afloat until   you figure out how to get more cash in the  bank. It is the thing that allows you peace   of mind when your head hits the pillow at the  end of the night, in growing any business.   What it also really did for me to know my  numbers was it allowed me to realize what   was working the best and to double down on  those activities that I wasn't trying to do   everything. It really simplified the business and  I shared in a recent video about how to monetize   yourself and the six business models. You can  check it out here and here. I shared that 98%   of our revenue and profit is coming from my online  program. And 2% is coming from other activities  

like affiliates and AdSense, brand deals and all  that stuff. So knowing what was working the best   and knowing how to grow that and sustain it, has  helped us create that level of consistency.   Number three, this is a biggie, and it's really  tough for a lot of people and I'd love to hear   your thoughts on this in the comments. Investing  forward. So what I mean by this is when I first   became an entrepreneur, I had no idea how much  it was going to cost and that there are a lot   of expenses that can add up quite quickly. I used  to have this mindset where I felt like I was just   throwing money out the window when I was investing  in things, like we went from this organic strategy   that really built the business as I talked about  earlier. We really used YouTube and social media  

and email marketing to grow our business  without ever spending money on advertising.   But once we got to a certain point, I realized,  okay, we have a very credible product and we   should be investing in paid advertising to be able  to impact more people and reach more people. So   spending money on paid ads was a whole hurdle for  me because it felt like I was throwing money away   and what I quickly realized is that it  was actually moving the needle forward.  

It was investing forward. I also had to look at things like   buying equipment and investing in software and  up-leveling the tools that we use in the business,   as an opportunity to move forward and to  create more growth, as opposed to losing   money and this comes up all the time. Like I  said, we had a very organic strategy for long   time, and most of our revenue still comes  organically, which means free traffic.   We have gone from spending $10 a day on ads at the  very beginning, to we now spend anywhere between   500 to $1,500 a day on ads in the business, which  is a big investment when you really add it up and   you think about it. And so that was one key  thing and recently my laptop of seven years,   which I loved and had duct taped together, it  broke on me and just died. So I had to get a   new laptop and then my camera recently broke.  The monitor completely fell off and cracked and  

so I had to get that fixed and that was a couple  thousand dollars. So there's always going to be   things, whether it's planned or unplanned, there  are investments and expenses in your business,   no matter what. So how do you invest  forward and how do you shift that to   be a strategy that can actually work for you? One of the ways I was able to do that is actually   through the sponsor of today's video. This  is very full circle because I switched to BMO  

when I was rapidly growing my business  because I wanted to work with a bank   that really respected entrepreneurs, valued  them and supported them in all the right ways   and this is going to sound so naive, but when  I first was getting started in my business, I   didn't really realize that you could actually earn  rewards and points and really see the benefit of   spending on things you need in your business. And so they have the BMO   World Elite Small Business Credit Card. The  beauty of this is whether I am fueling up   with gas to go to a meeting, or I am investing  in new gear and equipment for shooting videos   or working in the business, or I'm just spending  on my internet or cell phone bill, which is high,   because I'm an online business, I'm earning  four BMO rewards points for every dollar spent   and then I earn 1.5 rewards points for any  dollar spent outside of those items. And that  

adds up over time, especially when you are  spending thousands of dollars a day on things like   ads. I'm then able to use those rewards points  to reinvest into things that really matter.   Plus they get it and they make it really easy  because even picking the right credit card   can feel like a very overwhelming decision. So  they waive the first year's annual fee, which is   the value of $149. Expenses add up quickly and  it's just a reality of running a business and   like I said earlier, it's all about knowing that  you're investing forward and that you're not just   throwing money out the window because sometimes it  can feel that way, especially when you're getting   started and you're not seeing big revenue  and big profit. So a huge advantage to this  

credit card is that in the first three months,  if you spend $5,000, you get 50,000 points and   you get an additional 20,000 points if you spend  $35,000 in the first 12 months, which is pretty   feasible when you're starting a business. The fourth strategy is outsourcing and this   can also feel extremely daunting and I have been  there. I didn't know who to hire, when to hire,   what to do. And now I have an amazing team and I  love them so dearly. But when I was first getting   started, it was trying to figure out where do I  actually start? And who should that first hire be?   I can tell you in working with thousands of  entrepreneurs, now going through it myself   and having a team for as long as I have, the best  first hire is really for that administrative busy   work, because that's a natural part of running a  business. You're going to get bogged down in these   sort of must dos, in order to keep things running  along in the operations but that isn't always what   you should be focused on as the founder. So a big activity that I did, in order to  

figure out how to outsource and the strategy  behind it. And I still do this to this day,   is I regularly do time audits and I really look at  how am I spending my time every single day and am   I prioritizing the things that I really have to  do and that nobody else can do. And if I'm not,   I'm actually not benefiting the business, or my  team, because I am getting bogged down in the   work that isn't pushing the needle forward and I'm  ultimately creating a little bit of a plateau.  

So outsourcing is massively important and  played a huge part in being able to get   to that $1 million mark. And it's not like  I needed a big team. I really needed to hire   one person who could take lot of that admin  stuff off my plate. So the first thing to do   is to really recognize on a daily basis, what am I  doing and how much of that could I use help with?   Things like your calendar, scheduling meetings,  getting the right Zoom link, all of those things   add up. Posting to social media, creating  content, creating graphics, editing videos,   the things that you don't need to be doing  and that are revenue generating activities.  

And so another thing to keep in mind here is I  have four daily priorities and these are the only   things that I focus on every day and everything  else is now outsourced. So those four daily   priorities to focus on are number one is sales.  Are you actually bringing in clients? Are you   generating revenue? So often in, I don't know why  this happens. People put that at the bottom of the   list when it needs to be at the top. Sales run a  business. If your business isn't making money, you   don't have a business. So sales is number one. Number two is quality control,  

making sure that you have the best  product and offer on the market and   you're really intently listening to feedback. Number three is social proof. Like I said earlier,   client results drive and sustain a business. So  are you getting results? Are your clients happy?   Are they unhappy? What can you tweak? What  can you evolve? And making sure that you're   collecting that proof, that what you do works  really well because that leads to more sales.  

And number four is profitability. Like  I said earlier, it's vitally important   to your peace of mind as an entrepreneur, and  so making sure that you're keeping a close eye   on your expenses and on how profitable you are. And number five is embracing uncertainty. This   strategy might sound a little woo, woo, but it has  been something that I still really have to focus   on and maintain every single day because what I  realized is like I said, I've been through this,   but I also work with so many entrepreneurs on a  daily basis at so many different levels in their   businesses. I have seen a pattern that you start  and you are this hungry solopreneur. You're so   driven. You're doing everything. You're learning  everything. And then, you become this intermediate   entrepreneur and you have social proof. You have  credibility. You have an offer that's working.   You have maybe your first hire. And then you  become the CEO. You have a team. You're really  

focused in your genius zone and then you become  the owner. And when you're an owner, you're at   a place for the whole business and kind of run  without you. That's an amazing place to be.   But at the same time, every part of the journey  is vitally important and I always say new level,   new devil. Because there are new hurdles and  roadblocks at every single stage and a big  

piece of embracing uncertainty is knowing that  you cannot control what you cannot control and   you can only control what you can control. So,  like I said, the metrics and how you show up,   the people around you, can't control people, but  you can control the energy, the culture and the   values of the team you build around you and also  who is in your personal circle, which has been   very important and I am all about quality over  quantity because you kind of are like an athlete   as an entrepreneur. You have to show up as your  best and your healthiest version of yourself,   in order to really be there for the business and  for the people that are keeping the business going   and for the clients that need you. A part of this was really around investing in   things like therapy because I needed to keep my  mental health in check and I've had issues with   burnout and anxiety and I really needed to learn  how to maintain my wellbeing in order to be the   best version of myself for my team and my clients  and as the business group. I've said this before,  

I said it last week, that entrepreneurship is  one of the best practices in self-awareness,   and it will show you your demons and it will show  you your strength, and you have to be willing to   recognize your strengths and your  weaknesses, and to work on the things   that aren't serving you anymore. And when you reach every new level,   there's going to be things that  you have to release and let go of,   personally and professionally. Knowing that I had  that support was really important and also really   investing, not financially, but  investing into relationships around me,   that felt like they were quality, supportive  and uplifting, to also keep me in a place of   high vibration and positivity and abundant. A big piece of this for me is really maintaining  

a positive and optimistic mindset,  regardless of what's going on around me.   So doing things like TM meditation. I do that  every single day. I did a course a few years ago   and it has been a game changer for me. So, that's  TM meditation. It's a very specific kind.   Another big part of my mindset, which is why I  created this separate channel is affirmations. I  

knew that I had to reprogram my brain in  a lot of ways around my money mindset,   around how I thought about myself and my  self-worth. And so that's why it was really labor   of love for me to create an entire affirmations  channel, which thank you for all the kind   comments and DMs I've gotten about it because it's  apparently helping a lot of you, so you can check   that out in the description below as well. But I think the biggest thing to really   talk about when it comes to embracing uncertainty  is that you are your biggest asset, especially   when you're running a business. If you're not  healthy and you're not well, then nothing else   is going to really feel healthy or like it's going  to last. I'm all about building a legacy business,  

which means it's built to outlast you. And  in order to do that, you really have to be   okay, be still, be at peace, be present. And of  course you're going to have days when that's not   the case, but for the most part, trying to stay  even keel, so you don't get knocked around by the   emotions and the ups and downs is so important.  So investing in yourself and understanding and   embracing and surrendering to the uncertainty, but  knowing that you're okay, regardless, is the best   strategy that you can use above all else. The rest of the stuff, yes, it's tactical,   but this, so important. I will never in a  million years say that entrepreneurship is   easy because it is certainly not. It is a  journey and you really got to be up for it,  

but I wouldn't trade it for the world and I  would love to know what your takeaways are   and what helped you from this video. I was thinking about maybe making a video that was   more tactics driven in the steps I would actually  take to get by first million. Let me know in the   comments, if that would be helpful for you. But I  really appreciate you being here and like I said,   the whole mission of this channel is to demystify  entrepreneurship and get real about it and also   make it available to everyone. So a small thing  you can do to support that is hit the like button,   be sure to subscribe for new videos every  week ,and be sure to check out this video   next. I will see you in the next one. Thank  you so much for are being here. Bye.

2022-02-26 16:08

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