I have a challenge for you this weekend that will help you think about business and opportunity in a whole new way.
Go for a walk by yourself or with a friend in your local downtown area.
Every business you pass by, ask yourself these questions:
1) How does this business make money?
2) Roughly how much money do they make per day, month and year?
3) How many employees do they have and what do these employees cost the business each hour and week and month?
4) How much did it cost to start this business? What's the minimum amount of $ you would need to make it happen? How much does that big garbage truck or other piece of equipment cost?
5) How much rent do they pay for this location or how much was it to buy this building?
6) How much profit might this business generate for the owner each year?
Observe ALL of the companies around you.
Restaurants, bars, coffee shops, retail stores, professional services, banks, hotels, movie theaters, barber shops, tree trimming businesses, waste management companies, etc.
If they are in business in your town and they have been there for a while, they are making money and providing value.
Then answer the following two questions:
1) How would I run this business more efficiently if I were the owner of it?
2) How would I create more revenue or reduce costs and how could I operate this business just a little bit better?
If you walk around the world with this mindset, you’ll discover an infinite amount of opportunities.
You will start to understand which businesses are good businesses (i.e profitable, easy to operate, sustainable, simple) And which businesses are bad businesses (i.e painful, low margin, high-turnover, complex, tons of moving parts, etc)
And you will learn a ton about where you want to spend your time and which opportunities you might want to pursue.
Go do this and then respond to this email with what you learned or saw this weekend or next week.
I do this everywhere I go.
I do it with both in-person and internet businesses every day.
I do this exercise with friends and family members and it starts great discussions on business and operations.
And it's how I find my own opportunities!
I truly believe that the goal for all new entrepreneurs should be:
- Gain financial freedom
- Maximize the probability of achieving #1
Why don’t more folks think about opportunities with more weight added to #2?
Don't get distracted from the main goal!
I generally think that 95% of entrepreneurs should forget about technology because you have a few big fish and a lot of sophisticated fishermen and focus on small business (small fish everywhere and really crappy fishermen).
Your goal should be to be like water. You want to find and take the path of least resistance to get wealthy. And you want a high probability that even if you don't make it big, you can still live a good life.
Because when you have financial freedom your world opens up. You can start doing what makes you happy.
And you can positively impact a lot more people with project #2, 3, 4 etc down the line. You're only in a position to try to change the world if you have financial freedom or you can raise money from folks who already do.
So why don't more folks think about opportunities with more weight added to #2? The odds part. The risk. The probability.
The amount of small businesses in America that absolutely print money and still do business like it’s 1995 is astounding.
Why is everyone trying to fish for sharks against Stanford and Harvard grads and venture capital and big tech?
Sure you can hit it very big. And we see the folks who did that all over the internet. But what about the other 99.999% who tried but couldn't achieve #1?
I think business operators should think more like poker players.
How can I maximize my gain and minimize my risk? How much cash do I really need to try to win on this hand?
People don't need as much cash as they think to be free.
$100k a year in mostly passive income is enough for most folks.
Just not having to go to a job that they don't like would change everything for most people.
So why don't we look up from our computer screens? Solve normal problems for normal people in the real world for a few years and you can get wealthy.
I believe that innovation can happen in really small ways.
I'm getting wealthy right now by applying out-of-the-box software to self storage facilities. I'm one of about 100 groups of folks doing exactly this.
Am I trying something new? No.
Am I innovating? Sure. Maybe a little.
Am I taking on serious risk? Much less than the new idea folks building an app no one wants or needs.
Am I copying off of others? Sure.
Am I trying to educate a market? Definitely not.
I'm fishing in a pond (small self storage facilities) with tons of small fish (20,000+ of them in the USA) and a ton of crappy fishermen (60 year olds who don't use email).
So my ask of you:
Yes, you can learn from the true innovators. Pay attention to silicon valley and how they do business.
But look up from your computer screen. There is likely a small business 5 miles from your house that prints money with no new ideas.
But for some reason, nobody wants to buy that business.
Nobody wants to start that business.
Because there is a little bit of sweat that is required. It's not easy. It might take a little bit of physical work (god forbid) in the early days.
And so the fish are just sitting there.
They may not be large enough fish to make it on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine.
But they are big enough fish to change your entire life and the life of your kids and their kids.
Why wouldn't you throw your line out there?
If you like this mindset, I talk a lot about it in my book. If interested, you can order it here.
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P.S.
When SEO works, it really works.
I'm proud of the team at Bold SEO and it's been awesome to see what we're doing for small businesses.
Selfishly, it's also been great to see what they are doing for my own businesses.
Below is a screenshot of a text that Barrett (my partner at Bold) got from one of Bold's clients.
If customers find you via Google search or Google Maps, a link building strategy can work wonders for you.
You don't need to use Bold but use somebody to build links for your business!
If you'd like to learn more about why link building is important, read this. You can check your own domain authority vs your competitors with this tool.
A few posts from this week:
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Thanks for reading.
Onward and upward,
Nick Huber
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