The following is an excerpt of David’s interview in Top Coaching Techniques.
Ingrid: Hey David, you mentioned that you have a couple of balls in the court – a couple of different businesses. When you have your own business, how do you stop that from encroaching on your whole life?
David: That’s a very good question and what some people say is, you really have to devote six days a week, minimum. I was reading that Dick Smith and other people say, ‘Get stuck into it and have no life.’ Now, I don’t actually believe that’s necessary. You can actually start a business with two days a week. If you have a job already, you don’t have to just quit and go on and start something new. Again, take the guy making chili in his backyard – spend two days a week starting to develop the business and then get a small profit. Make a small profit and then you start expanding it. So, you may initially be working two days in the business, and then you expand it to three, and then four, and eventually do it full time. But, as I said, you start making systems out of the business and start hiring – for example – a high school student. Then maybe someone else who’s more qualified for another role, and build it up. You don’t have to be working in the business. That’s a job, not a business.
The following is an excerpt of David’s interview in Top Coaching Techniques.
Ingrid: Know what David? I’m going to put my cynic hat on here. That is, what about all that paperwork and guff and BAS statements and paying the bills that come for you, if starting your own business?
David: Yeah, there’s a lot that comes with it. One of the traps that people fall into is, they start working in the business and they take on something, and then they find that really, this is just another job where they’ve got ten times more responsibility. Ten times more work and less pay than before. So what’s really important is, once they get started in the business, you start setting up business systems so the business starts running itself. Start bringing on employees and people to help so that you don’t just have a job anymore, but it actually runs as a business instead of a job.
My first product was an accident. I didn’t know about internet marketing, I didn’t know about products, I didn’t know that that’s what I really needed. I was just a coach… just a coach. I gave a speech to a conference and the speech turned out really well and I’ve had the presence of mind to ensure that I had the rights to the recording. I didn’t really mind that they had the rights to the recording as well, that I made sure that I have the rights to use it however I want it and the speech happened to turn out really well and I thought, we’ll maybe I can sell this thing so I set a price of $39 which hasn’t changed in, oh my goodness, eight years now. It was August of 2002 and it’s firstfiftyclients.com and I sold it as… it wasn’t even a download; you could just listen to it online for three months and then eventually I made it a download and eventually I made it a CD but that’s how I stumbled upon it. We’re going to be more deliberate about how you create your product and this is a going to be a lot simpler than getting to speak at an international conference, you don’t need that.
The following is an excerpt from the book Get Paid For Who You Are.
Thousands of people are every day turning what excites them into a fun and productive business which lets them either quit their day jobs or create an additional revenue stream in their lives. You could be one of them.
What might your life look like?
for a moment, imagine yourself sharing your gifts or interests or skills with the world and then…
and then… and then… (are you ready?) …imagine it happening without requiring your time or
physical presence. imagine that while you’re out on a walk, shopping, or taking
A yoga class, someone is downloading your ebook in australia. Imagine that during a month-long holiday with your family and friends in Costa Rica, people across europe buy 2,000 copies of your new “how to” Cd and publishers are reaching out to you with book deals.
What I’m talking about here is how your life could be if you take advantage of the exploding revenue possibilities by starting an internet-based business as your primary or secondary source of revenue. The lifestyle i’m describing is so new and such an unusual concept that we need a new term to describe it. What do you call people who share their gifts with thousands and then automate that sharing so they are free to work or play, travel whenever they like and live wherever they wish? Perhaps we simply call them… free.
The following is an excerpt of a transcript with a client.
Client: Around the newsletter, I actually started the freebie, and I’m kind of designing that from what I felt. It was a little tough but I did a draft.
David: Alright, very good. I like that you said that you did a draft. This is really important. I get into this too. I’m like, I don’t want to start it because I don’t know how to really do it well. Well, do something, do it badly. At least you have done it. In the next time that you do it, you’ll do it better. This is a key point around creating your product as well which I may see more about later that if you just think, “Oh, I have to create a product that I can sell and it’s going to be amazing” then it’s putting a lot of pressure on yourself. It’s your first one, for most of you. So you just want to create something and maybe you don’t even anybody but you’ve done the first one then you can create the second one.
What kinds of products are we talking about? You could do a book, I don’t recommend it. You could do an e-book, you could do a special report that’s like 17 pages. You could an mp3 which is an audio file, just a simple recording. You can someone interview you and sell your interview for $9.95. There are many different things you can do. You can create video now online. If you don’t know how to do it and many of you do now because of Ezra; he’s getting into that. It’s so simple. You can go on Facebook now and if you’ve got a webcam, you go on Facebook and you click a couple of buttons and it records video and puts it on your Facebook account. That’s really not difficult to do. What I suggest you do to get started is you create an audio product, and we’ll get soon into how to do that.
