Coach Yu shared with us today to elaborate on the key term of proximity. Proximity incorporates being in the place where the people that you need to meet are.
As a business owner, you may be aware of how important it is to network, but also the big difference between networking and figuring out who you need to connect with. The first step is reframing the questions, What do I need to know and/or do, to Who do I need to know that will do it? Changing “what” to “who” will be your escort to change!
To be in proximity of those that could potentially steer your business in a direction towards success doesn’t solely call for the necessity to remain close to those that could be beneficial to you. It also comes from contributing or offering help without expecting anything in return, just a genuine act of service.
Have you ever asked yourself how could you improve the life of someone in your network, with no hopes of getting anything in return? It’s a game changer! As Coach Yu calls it, UMOD.
Unexpected Moment Of Delight
Remember: Little unexpected favors to show you care become large benefits in the future!
Those little favors are a guide to what is known as the “real option”, which becomes the building step that you may be seeking to grow in a positive acceleration. What is the “real option,” and in what other ways can you effectively network to reach it?
To find out and hear more about the key assets and benefits of networking, listen to the full session above!
When entrepreneurs latch onto an idea and are ready to move forward with that idea, one of the most important factors to consider is can you create a moat for your new idea. This often-overlooked step can be a make-or-break situation regarding the success of a new company.
For this week’s show, we will be discussing with a panel of experts the importance and strategies to create a moat around your new company.
The idea of building a moat around your company makes reference to the water moats built around castles that can protect the inhabitants from invading forces. Or, in this case, other companies trying to take market share from your new business.
Bill Gross, founder of technology incubator Idealab, has created over 150 companies with more than 45 IPOs and acquisitions. He has also performed extensive research on failed startups and has created a list of 5 factors that can be used as moats in the success of a new company.
Idea – Novelty/Differentiation, “Truth” that no one else sees, competitive moats
How to protect your startup– and yourself– from major losses in early stages competitive, legal and otherwise.
(Recorded Live on Clubhouse May 19, 2021)
In this week’s show, we discussed the often overlooked simple to complex steps in putting an idea into action– insulating your company and minimizing risk, fittingly called “building a moat around your startup!” We opened the floor up for audience members to ask questions and share ideas on protecting their early ventures from small mistakes that can have big consequences. Expert advice on implementing strategies early on that pay off in the long run.
Moderators: Colin C. Campbell, Michele Van Tilborg, Jeff Sass
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A continued discussion on customer funding and obtaining it through memberships, payment cycles, and customer modelling.
Last week we welcomed best-selling author ofMastering the Rockefeller HabitsandScaling Up,Verne Harnish, to the stage to discuss ‘customer funding your startup’. This week, we handed the mic over to the audience who shared their tips and asked questions for funding a startup. We want to know– What would you do differently? What have you learned along the way? Also, the differences between customer funding and crowdfunding, the right time to seek funding, and what kind your startup needs.
Moderators: Colin C. Campbell, Michele Van Tilborg, Jeff Sass, and Rachael Lashbrook
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This week Coach Yu brought some helpful tips and tricks about Facebook and how to work its algorithm. Many of you are probably aware of the range of algorithms that exist on the internet whether it is on Netflix or popular social media applications like Facebook, Linkedin, and Pinterest
Facebook is the leading social media platform that relates to other algorithms in which it has a collaborative filter. When people communicate publicly, edges are created and connections are built between objects. Facebook is aware of who you are talking to and what that message entails.
However, edges are based more on posts than people, so it will focus on what you’re posting more than who you are talking to. People are persistently sharing their location or even a hot new item that they have recently purchased.
It’s essential to understand what people are doing to more efficiently advertise posts. When we understand their behavior we can create more accurate posts and messages for them to connect and engage with, and most importantly, target it correctly.
Relevant content drives engagement and that is the key component for better and bigger reach and therefore better chances for conversion. That’s why is very important to also create a variety of assets with slightly different visuals and messages, to test and analyze what does and does not work for your audience.
Once you’ve done some testing and start to understand what your audience wants and doesn’t want (based on your engagement rates), you can boost (promote) the ones with the best performance to go beyond what the organic algorithm has provided. Facebook will use its data and will reach similar audiences that have engaged with your content. That’s why you need to build a relevant organic audience if you want to make the most of the collaborative filter.
When you boost posts it helps extend what is already working organically, meaning when people are organically sharing your content Facebook will favor your algorithm. On the point-based system ‘shares’ are worth more than any like or comment, as ‘shares’ count as a new post and become an object to carry edges.
Top 3 key things to analyze:
Engagement rate: Is negative feedback good or bad? What matters the most?
What similar people are doing: How does the collaborative filter work?
Time decay: How powerful, and for how long, is an object?
To learn more about this topic listen to the audio file above!
Founder of EO, Verne Harnish is back to discuss often overlooked alternatives to VC fundraising models
(Recorded Live on Clubhouse May 10, 2021.)
Verne Harnish joined us for a follow-up show to talk about raising money for a startup using customer-funded models to scale. He shared insights into when it works, who should use it, and how to obtain customer funding.
For this week’s show, we are excited to have a returning guest, Verne Harnish. He is a bestselling business author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up.
This time he’s here to discuss customer funding for start-ups and how the various incarnations of those models can be used. Customer funding is one of the best ways to fund your company without giving up equity. It also shows value to your marketplace.
There are a number of hugely successful companies that use membership and subscriptions to fund their businesses. Costco memberships bring in $3 billion dollars of profitability and that money is used to fund their business growth. Amazon collected $25 billion dollars in 2020 from Prime and other membership fees. Tesla collected a $1,000 deposit from 450,000 customers when it launched the Model 3. That provided the company with $450 million dollars in working capital to deliver on the company’s model 3 promises.
Memberships can also help a company through hard times. When Harley Davidson motorcycles were faltering in the late 1970s/early 1980s, they turned to their loyal customers and officially launched the Harley Davidson Group (H.O.G.). This membership program brought in millions of dollars to help revitalize the company and continue the close bond with their loyal customers.
In addition, the old software model was sometimes based on the idea that a large customer would fund the development of some new software, and then the developer could spin that off into a new product release.
Also modifying payment cycles can be a way to have customers fund your growth or improve your cash flow situation. If you are charging your customers a monthly fee, offer to have them prepay for the year with a discount or other incentives. This gives the customer a better deal and provides capital to your company.
This week Coach Yu was all about assessing what is working and what can be improved by setting up your website for success with SEO and auditing.
As Coach Yu points out, people usually think websites are just something you need to put up, like web pages or brochures, but you should think of websites as applications. An application has input and output, meaning there are things that you tell it, then it stores it down in a database and gives something back: room for improvement. Your websites should always focus on their main transaction (or purpose), which will depend on your business goals.
Recently, Google said that 70% of traffic now comes through phones. When a website is built the right way then it is responsive to mobile. Google says the most important thing in ranking is mobile index which is now considered primary despite it having been secondary a couple of years ago.
What does mobile index mean? It means site speed and easy-to-find content. How do you increase site speed and easy-to-find content for a higher mobile index? By categorizing your content with title tags and links.
It starts by being clear about what you do because you can have a fast-loading website with lots of content, and have some links, but if you don’t convert then there’s no point in having a great website.
Now that your site is set up with speed, title tags, and links so that it can succeed and is closer to ranking well in mobile indexing, the next question is, how do we audit our website?
We first need to look at all the factors that may be affecting its ranking and performance, starting with the strategy. Let’s define strategy plainly: a unique combination of goals, content, and targeting.
It is so important to have a website strategy that aligns with your business goals. What are your business goals? Whether it’s to drive this much in sales, at a certain cost per lead, cost per sale, or ROIs, you still need to be very clear about what you need your website to accomplish.
You must be able to answer these questions:
Who is my ideal customer?
Who are my employees?
Who are my competitors?
Who are my competitors’ fans?
These goals combined with your target audience will set the rules for your content. Your audience will determine what content you should or should not use, where you should use it, such as in emails, social media, or websites, and when you should use it, depending on the stages of your marketing funnel.
Once you’ve got all of that figured out, then you can properly evaluate your website and start understanding where there might be particular issues in need of improvement.
Another way to audit your website is to check your title tags. Title tags are something that people don’t seem to know much about or how to use to their advantage.
Title tags are the title of a page, which needs to be the most accurate representation of the content contained in order to work. If someone does a search and that page title with the meta-description shows up in their search results, the content of the page must fulfill their request or they will click back to the search results, which will absolutely penalize you in ranking and indexing.
What’s more important than the title of the page? The content itself and whether you get people to that page. Ask yourself, does this page deserve to rank high? Is my content relevant? Are my title tags accurate?
There is such a thing as over-optimization. For example, you may try to overdo your SEO by adding some extra words just for the sake of easy-to-find content and ranking, but one, Google knows better and two, you may come to find that your ends do not justify your means and your ranking did not improve at all but on contrary, the opposite.
It is vital that you get your strategy right before you look at your tactics because it’s not a technical issue, it’s a strategy issue. You need the blueprint of the architecture before you start hammering. No matter how fast you are at hammering and laying roofs, you need to know the structure of what you are building.
If you want to hear more about this topic, listen to the full session above. You will also find great insights from Coach Yu reviewing and auditing a few websites on the spot!
Since its launch, Clubhouse has become a phenomenon with its users and entrepreneurs alike. And now we are starting to see those users ask the question…’ how can I make money on Clubhouse’. In this week’s show, we will talk to a number of entrepreneurs that can show you some of the possible ways to make money on Clubhouse.
Authentic Conversations and Connections
One important aspect of using Clubhouse is that it provides a contextual conversation. As people talk on the platform, they can give you a pretty good summary of who they are through their own words. Each time someone shares on Clubhouse, they’re sharing something about themselves, about their values, and about their life. This provides an opportunity to have a more in-depth and meaningful conversation with them. Be a collector of stories. People will discuss their wants, needs, and wishes through this platform. These insights might provide the connection that could lead to potential monetization. Document their story and make sure to weave that into the conversation in DMs with somebody because it shows that you were listening.
Each time someone shares on Clubhouse, they’re sharing something about themselves, about their values, and about their life.
But don’t pitch yourself. Have a 10 to 15-second clubhouse pitch that will intrigue listeners. Something that will have them checking out your profile and maybe contacting you because they think you might be able to help or solve a related issue.
If you would like to meet a speaker and possibly make a connection, be the first one to the room when things are just getting started. An opportunity might present itself as the speaker takes stock of the room.
Monetization
Since Clubhouse is still in its’ infancy, the monetization side of the platform is just getting started. But there look to be many possible ways to make money on Clubhouse. Here are some of the suggestions from our entrepreneur guests.
Professional moderators As Clubhouse grows and so do audiences, professional moderators should be in good demand. Just like the panel moderator at a convention, the ability to set up, market, and moderate a panel of experts to an audience could be an important position.
Production Creativity Just like a radio show or convention panel, Clubhouse chats can benefit from creative expertise and assistance. Whether it’s audio engineers, producers, sound effects, logo designers, recording for your podcast, or production assistance, there are opportunities that will emerge.
And just like traditional and other social media, there are a number of possible business models that can work on Clubhouse as well. Such as Subscription models, sponsorships, membership fees, coaching, tips, grants, and direct selling when appropriate.
Sharing stories, building a brand, and making an income on the new audio-only social app with Adrian Chenault, founder of Contact Mapping
(Recorded live on Clubhouse April 30, 2021.)
How can we make money on Clubhouse? Adrian Chenault, the Founder of Contact Mapping is aiming to help us humanize our ‘friend lists’ to grow and connect on the audio-only app in a meaningful way. We discuss methods to build authentic connections and networking opportunities that lead to money and profit via Clubhouse. It’s all new and we’ll start the ongoing discussion to figure out what works today.
Moderators: Colin C. Campbell, Jeff Sass, Michele Van Tilborg
Speaker: Adrian Chenault
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