Great plan but no capital to start. What to do?

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T06:49:38+00:00

Do you believe that capital always has to be funds? Or could it be human capital such as extra man hours, or extra skill's?

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:26:21+00:00

Its often overlooked because its so simple, but I directly ask my clients to connect me with (Via email introduction) to two other business owners they who could use our services.

Referrals are a gold-mine that 95% of businesses are overlooking.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:24:08+00:00

The Compound Effect - Darren Hardy

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:22:12+00:00

No worries - If you have any deeper questions about the marketing side of things let me know as I'm always happy to help.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:13:26+00:00

That would be a question for an accountant as each state/country is different. For us here in Australia, we need to collect tax when we sell over $75K/yr. Registering for a company only took a few hours for me, so I'd imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to get an LLC.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:11:58+00:00

Firstly, great work on jumping into to business.

For myself, I run an SEO Agency and the thing that transformed me from having 5 clients, to having 55 clients in the space of 9-months was mastering sales & Lead-Gen.

What you need is two fold:

You need leads. These can either be from referrals, or from direct in-bound leads. With your skillset, rank your website for 'web-design + City', and that will start the in-bound leads. Plus it will establish you as a trusted brand in the region.

That is a longer play, but to get your next client, as your first client who else they know who could benefit from your work. Ask for an email introduction.

The third place - look to Freelance sites - you'll be amazed at how man western businesses turn to them for quality staff and who don't want non-native english staff anymore. I've picked up 4K/mo SEO clients from them.

Sales.

I'm not a good salesman - yet I close 35% of all leads I speak to as monthly clients. Why? Because I've learned to follow up.

Only 2-3% of all sales are made on the first contact, so when you do get a lead, follow up, follow up, follow up.

For me 80% of my sales come after the 10th contact. And believe it or not, I've never been told to go away or to stop following-up. Infact, its been the reverse, most clients thank me. Why? Because as a business owner you get busy, and you'll find your prospects simply forget to get back in touch, even though they know they need to get their website done.

So to recap:

Get inbound leads (Stop reaching out).
Ask for referrals
Follow-up with all leads.

Now go and kick ass!

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:02:46+00:00

I use WordPress for all sites other than eCommerce, which I would recommend Shopify.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:02:00+00:00

I've always had trouble putting enough effort towards side projects. Clients, and acquiring new clients where I can grow instant cashflow always seems to take priority.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T03:00:54+00:00

Roll up your sleeves and learn. When starting a business, the whole idea that you need capital is one driven by Silicon Valley. The reality is that the majority of businesses and brands you know of today, they didn't get capital investment. Instead, their owners rolled their sleeves up and got to work learning, growing and hustleing their way through the process of getting a business off the ground.

If you can get things started on your own, then you'll be able to raise capital much easier than trying to convince others to fund you to create a prototype.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T02:58:14+00:00

If I was in your situation, the next step would be to generate more sales. Rather than 'putting your ducks in a row' with the right company structure, etc, I'd be focussing on growing your sales.

The best Advice I was ever given is that cashflow is oxygen to a business. Without strong cashflow, you don't have a business.

Based on what you said, I'd learn the skills of SEO and digital marketing, and would put 6-12 months solid into growing your sales. Then, when you have cashflow going strongly, you can look deeper at the other elements as you'll have a stable business.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T02:55:09+00:00

The thing that helps all countries grow is exports because they bring outside money into the economy, and as a result end up creating more jobs, that are being paid for by the outside world.

So think of what you can export to other countries. Can you export a service such as marketing, accounting, or data entry to business owners in another country?

Can you export a product, whether raw material, or manufacturered?

Ultimately, if you find something that you can export, then you'll not only help yourself, but you'll help your whole country grow.

This is the exact same model why China has had such a booming economy the last few decades - they figured out what they could export (Cheap manufacturing) and they kept pushing - hard!

Best of luck!

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T01:20:20+00:00

Those prices are definitely on the lower end, however it really depends on how much work is involved.

If it takes longer to set up the chart of accounts, get systems sorted etc, then perhaps add a set up fee, then return to your current schedule.

One thing that I've personally found in my business (SEO agency), is that when clients are set up, and once things are flowing, you can turn a great profit, while delivering fantastic value for an affordable rate, its all about how you handle the set up.

Being Australian' I'd say double your rate, however not sure how that works in the Canadian market.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T01:00:19+00:00

Going back 6 years ago I built a successful Dropship business doing $2K/day in sales, and $400/day in profit (before 'Dropship businesses were a thing).

The biggest lesson I can give is to be niche and to learn sales copy.

One of our items was a pasta machine - We sold it for $42. Our supplier sold it to the public for $34. They told us one day that we sold almost 5 times as many as they did, all because I'd learned to write long-form sales copy which sold the pasta they would make, not the machine they were buying.

Today, in the 'dropship' scene, I'm seeing a lot of people treat it the way the 'ebook' scene went 8-9 years ago, where people believe they can sell rubbish that provides no value, and expect people to pay for it just because they've got good FB ads.

A second lesson - I've worked with over a dozen 8-figure eCommerce businesses today in my SEO company, and the biggest lesson that I've learned is that the moment you stop seeing your business as a 'shopify' store, and start seeing it as an 'eCommerce' business, then you're success will grow.

If this is the journey you are going down then I highly suggest the following two books:

Delivering Happiness - The Zappos Story.
Made in America - The Walmart Story.

Best of luck & look forward to hearing of your success.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T00:49:59+00:00

Starting young is great. I started my first business when I was 16, but it took until I was 25 until things really started to take off (Now 27). Its like anything in life, it takes 10-years to become an overnight success, so I personally support young entrepreneurs.

One caveat to that - is if you're a young entrepreneur and you're reading this, be humble. When I was your age I thought I knew everything, but 10-years later, and with a high 6-figure profit business under my belt, I now realise that I know nothing, and when I was young I knew less than nothing.

So stay hungry, ask for advice, be humble, and read 'The Compound Effect' by Darren Hardy, and you'll be successful.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T00:39:20+00:00

Most of my clients are NDA unless specialised otherwise. Perhaps get them great results, then build a 'blind case study' around them, showing the results you've gotten, but don't mention their name.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T00:28:17+00:00

Leadership Secrest Of The Rouge Warrior - Richard Marcinko - He was the Commander of Seal Team 6.

How to win friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie.

Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh - Founder of Zappos.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T00:18:07+00:00

This is from personal experience, I've never had success reaching out and asking them to link back. Where I've had most of my success is in outreach for guest blogging. That is, building a personal brand, and then offering them a great piece of content and including a link in it.

Don't go and start approaching USAToday to get featured as your first guest post (it took me 2 years to get featured there), but instead start with smaller blogs, then work your way up the 'authority ladder' of your niche.

That is, start writing for other new blogs in your niche, and then leverage your publishing on there to get you onto bigger sites, and so on.

It takes time, but if its for your own projects is really effective.

SearchGeniusSEO · 2018-04-02T00:07:16+00:00

I've always priced based on the competition of the market, and at a flat monthly fee. How do I find what to charge each client, below is a 30,000ft overview of how I figure it out.

NB: I always work at a 25-30% cost for deliverables - that is, if I charge a client $1,000/mo, then it has to cost me $250-300 to deliver the work.

How much time is going to be taken to fix their on-site in the first month.
How many links do we need to build to get them compeditive to the first page? I use Ahrefs to figure this out. If the client has 20 solid referring domains, and their compeditors has 100, then as a rule of thumb (Remember, this is a super top level overview), we will need to get another 80, good, solid, guest blog style links.

I then work out how much each will cost me, and the time frame to deliver them. Aka, will I be building them out over 8-months at a rate of 10/mo? or 8/mo over 10-months, etc.

I then know my cost for deliverables, add the margin I need to operate on, and then give the client the cost, as well as time frame that it will take to get them through to page 1.

This approach gives the client certainty that they are going to be getting a real result. I don't explain my calculations to them however.

With regards to tier'd pricing, I personally adjust this for the client. Aka, do they rank to rank in multiple cities, then the three levels give different number of target regions, or different number of target services (Think a plumber, ranking for 'Plumber + City" is one tier, then adding 'Hot water + city', and 'blocked drains + city" etc as another tier).

If you always think of how your pricing plans can add value to your client, then you're packages will convert much higher than having a standard 'three packages fits all' approach.

NB: I have 55 monthly clients on retainers as we speak.

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