Blog Report: 8 Steps to a Successful New Business in 10 Months or Less

Blog Report: 8 Steps to a Successful New Business in 10 Months or Fewer

LaptopLauraBlog [read me!]

A wonderful article published by Tim Ferriss and Michael Ellsberg discusses 8 Steps to Getting What You Want Without Formal Credentials (link to full article).

Lessons learned from this article are many-fold.

I am treating it like a short book and offering a book report here. In part to help readers who come upon this and want an abridged version of the original article and in part for my own better processing of the knowledge.

I am not claiming that what follows was my original content: I am summarizing the sage words of Michael Ellsberg! (Sought-after speaker and author of The Education of Millionaires)

A quick summary is as follows:

MONTH 1

  1. Pick a desired industry or new field of learning
    • Cost: $0

      MONTH 1-2

  2. Showcase your learning
    • Read 1 professional, business, or how-to book related to your chosen field per week and write a blog post describing what you learned.
      * Choose a mix of ‘classic’ as well as off-the-beaten-path books you discover through your reading and research.
      * Make sure the books you choose are authored by active practitioners in the field, not abstract ones written by theorists or wanna-bes.
    • Cost:
      $3.95+ / month blog hosting
      $12ish / book (or better yet, get for free at the library)
    • Time Needed:
      2 hours to set up blog
      10 hours/week to read 2 books
      10 hours/week to write 2 good blog posts
      *(by the end of 2 months you will have 16 posts)
  3. Learn & implement good networking
    • Following the advice in this article on networking:
      • Find 3 business owners per month you already know (off or online)
      • Have convos with them about what their challenges are
      • Do your best to start being of service to them, specifically by connecting them with others in your network and helping for the purpose of helping without expecting anything in return
      • By the end of 2 months, you’ll have 6 new fans (and business owners know other business owners)
      • Do Not: go looking for who can help you and sell them
    • Cost: $0
    • Time Needed:
      20 hours/week for the first 2 months, then ongoing as much as you can

      MONTH 3-5

  4. Within your growing community start working for free
    • Offer small, light services to people in your field.
    • Tell them you are training to become X and been studying the craft (link to blog) and want to offer free services as you build your practice. Zero dollars expected but in future would ask them to refer you if they like your work.
    • Cost: $0
    • Time Needed:
      20-30 hours of delivering services + networking to get more free clients
  5. Develop case studies of your work
    • When not delivering services or networking, blog about your experiences of the services you are providing.
    • Notate lessons learned, successes, mistakes, and more.
      (Be sure to ask permission before using client’s name or business and show what you have written before making it live). If they say no, obscure personal data so no one can tell who the client was.
    • Cost: $0
    • Time Needed:
      10 hours/week
  6. Develop relationships with mentors
    • Reach out to the authors of the books you did book report articles about earlier.
    • Ask to interview them for your blog.
    • Cost: $0
    • Time Needed:
      10 hours/week

      MONTH 6-7

  7. Learn sales
    • You have to be at selling products/services or ideas/vision.
    • Read SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
    • Find someone in your growing network who sells something, the bigger the price the better, and ask if you can sell it for 0 base salary. Maybe commission, maybe not. (You’re doing it more for practice than money!)
    • Goal:
      Practice/experience selling face-to-face with pre-qualified prospects, no trying to find people to sell to
    • Cost: $16 for the book (and maybe earn some commissions even)
    • Time Needed:
      20 hours of studying the book + practicing with real prospects
      20 hours: keep doing the same as step 3

      MONTH 8-9

  8. Sell and deliver your services within your social economy
    • Now you have all the skills and know-how.
    • Time to earn clients in your own business.
    • Meet individually with 10 biz owners from your growing network and share what you have accomplished since starting. Use your newly acquired non-pushy sales skills to get them as paying clients or as sources of genuine referrals.
    • Cost: $0
    • Time Needed:
      40 hours/week networking, sales meetings, delivering on services

      MONTH 10+

  9. Rinse and repeat
    • Keep going!
    • You can build things to a point where you can work remotely and even higher others to do some of the workload.

Summary

I really love this blog article because it lays out exact steps for what to do to become an authority and build a client base in 10 months or less.

And it seems to me that running a podcast along side of this could kick it into even higher gear with growing an audience as you learn and practice.

Plus, a podcast increases the appearance of credibility, especially if you can make the claim of top of “New and Noteworthy” on iTunes.

What else would you add to these steps? Tell me on Twitter