My first A2.0 business

[Papi Knox]

I've outlined all the tasks I'll be doing as I build an Alpha 2.0 Business.

My goal is to establish a business that earns approximately $107,142.86 per year. After tax that's $75K. Granted I don't get to pocket it all, it's a start towards my financial independence.

This is gonna be a fun ride since I've done this before, but now I'm approaching it with a proven system much of which BD and others I've worked with recently. I haven't invested in BDs course on this, but I'm sure it's not too far off of this. It's unlikely I'll burnout like I did so amny times before with little to show for my extreme hard work.

Here's what I'll be doing the next 90 days.

Most tasks are at least 25-minutes of work that will build up to hundreds of hours of establishing a new location--independent business.

1— Budget the time and finances I can invest towards this project every week for the next 12 weeks
2— Decide on the niche of customers I'll reach
3— Grab my domain name
4— Choose my initial offerings
5— Upgrade my WordPress site with a template that better suits my work and product image I want to have
6— Setup my sales pages for each product I offer.
7— Choose the shopping cart system that I'll use for all sales
8— Connect shopping cart to my payment processor
9— Connect my Wordpress blog to my new site
10— Double check the top social media tools my niche uses on a daily or weekly basis
11— Read Guerilla Marketing by Jan Levinson while applying it's daily tasks with full commitment for the full 30-days
12— After 30 days, make a list of things i don't like/want/know how to do and create ways to outsource them regularly
13— Budget outsourcing for urgent and important tasks
14— Delegate, Automate, or Eliminate all important and non-urgent tasks
15— Start a new budget of my time and money now that I have a lot more responsibilities on my plate
16— Upgrade my copywriting by diving back into Ben Settle's work
17— Marketing 2.0 Study new materials that will help me multiply my current marketing efforts
18— Reflect and focus. My life's changed over the past season, now it's time to reflect and focus on what I want to accomplish next in my business (assuming I haven't reached a $75K post-tax, annual business)

That's the plan, which of course will change as I go, though I will have to do all these tasks to reach my goal of establishing the foundation for a business that earns $75K post-tax (or about $107,142.86) per year on demand.

If you see ways to improve this process, tell me know. I'll be updating this thread with my accomplishments as I tackle each task.

I will most likely never sell this business, but I'm building it so that I always have that option. Ideally, I'll repeat thsi process with smoother success each year on a new business opportunity. Until I have multiple investments serving my bank accounts with processes that I can easily duplicate or scale for more revenue.

 

[Mad Pirate Carl]

I never was able to figure out steps 6, 7, and 8 myself, so opted for PayPal with guest payments directly integrated with the PayPal API on one site and then my other site is a Wix site and I just dropped and linked PayPal onto it. If you decide to do Direct Merchant Account payment processing, let me know how you do it. I need all the boring details. This is one of those technical things people just don't talk about on the internet.

 

[Papi Knox]

I never was able to figure out steps 6, 7, and 8 myself, so opted for PayPal with guest payments directly integrated with the PayPal API on one site and then my other site is a Wix site and I just dropped and linked PayPal onto it. If you decide to do Direct Merchant Account payment processing, let me know how you do it. I need all the boring details. This is one of those technical things people just don't talk about on the internet.

I did the same. If I can find another way around it I will take it. I do have an account with Stripe so that's an option. I'm more interested in an intrnational option since my aim is to be mobile 2020, and I don't want financial restrictions that inhibit my ability to earn and manage my finances simply, while I travel abroad.

I'll talk more about this when I get that step, and we'll see.

 

[Papi Knox]

GOAL— Earn 107,142.86, after tax where I live it'll be about $75K (the A2.0 income goal)

STEP 1— Budget the time and finances I can invest towards this project every week for the next 12 weeks

I set my pomodoro for 25-minutes and came up with the following.

TIME— I will work two hours a day for 5 days a week for a total of 10 hours per week. I choose these days every Sunday evening for the following week. I can always work more than two hours per day or 10 hours per week, but this is a good start to gain consistent traction that I won't flake or drop. I'll use my pomodoro app to track my time as I go.

During these two hours I will be go through the steps of the plan I outlined, as well as, writing/editing/designing/proofreading/scheduling new posts for the site itself. So this is development work and maintenance work so I don't fall short of the committments I've made to myself and the audience I'm building.

MONEY— I will invest $25 per week or up to $100 per month to help me reduce the time it takes to earn consistently with the platform I'm building. This amount won't affect my daily/monthly living. I will only spend on specific things that are necessary to commit to at the time. If there is nothing worth investing immediately, I'll move the money to a separate account to grow for future purchases that may exceed my monthly budget of $100

ENERGY— I have health concerns so energy is rarely consistent. That said, I will work when I physically can work. When I am down and in bed, I will aim to at least accomplish one pomodoro of work (25-minutes). This "tiny" will keep me focused on the ultimate goal and how it fits into my Mission. Doubly, it affirms how I want to help 20-year old males develop themselves and have independence and freedom for themselves. what I'm doing is bigger than me, and though I won't sacrifice myself for it, I will invest what I can without overdoing it and burning out along the way. Worst-case, I take a break for a few days or even weeks, and explain my unexpected hiatus to the audience. Before that ever becomes an issue, my customers will know about my health concerns. So it won't come as a surprise to them.

Finally, I am doing a lot of work on my health 80% of the time. Only 20% of my focus is on building this business, so in time, my current health concerns wwon't be as debilitating, and they may even be fully eliminated. We'll see.

 

[Papi Knox]

GOAL— Earn 107,142.86, after tax where I live it'll be about $75K (the A2.0 income goal)

2— Decide on the niche of customers I'll reach

OK I set the pomodoro and for 25-minutes broke down my niche with an exercise I used to teach lazy email marketers. I wrote down the respective, top five hopes and dreams, fears, and biases of my niche. Then I wrote a summation of how that person feels in a given day and week of their life.

As i did it, I remembered I did this target market work last year for when I was refocusing my email marketing. I still have those notes, and it validated the work I'm doing now. I had the same audience in mind then.

My people: Black Males in their 20s living in the US. They think they're idiot frauds who can't do much and they're at the point of doing destructive behaviors like drugs, alcohol, pron, and unsafe sex when they do get laid. They work generic service and retail jobs such as bank clerk, barber, waiter. They're suicidal if not directly, then indirectly, but no one helps them out, even when they over-emote it to their friends and family.

They didn't have consistent leading men to teach them how to navigate themselves and the world. They want freedom, but don't know how to say that and what options they have to claim it.

Done.

Awesome. Next step ... Grab my domain name

 

[Papi Knox]

3— Grab my domain name

GOAL— Earn 107,142.86, after tax where I live it'll be about $75K

I've been flagged for fraud as I tried to buy my domain. So I'm being verified, which may take a few more days to resolve. We'll see. The money's spent so I'm locked-in to this process.

Tomorrow I'll send them the documents they request. In the meantime, I'll work on successive steps if possible, and focus on new content for the site.

 

[Papi Knox]

My target market is wrong. I missed a big issue which is they aren't willing and able to do what it takes to help themselves (on average).

This is a sign of a challenge I have where I undersell myself in business because I want to help as many as possible and for some reason I devalue my worth.

I need to think BIGGER with my market. Bigger as in they make more money and are more sophisticated with their willingness and ability to get after it with the materials I can offer them. I need to think on this more. Before divining deeper. Until I have a solution, I'll create content.

LESSON: Don't seel yourself short like I tend to do myself. You can't expect millions, if you only ask for pennies on the street.

 

[Mad Pirate Carl]

Good thing you caught that issue early. Some of the questions I ask of my ideas are: Is the target audience willing to pay money? Is the target audience able to pay money? How much money is my target audience able to pay?

One of my ideas was a fund raising howto manual for small non-profit corps. The answers for those questions were: No, No, and $0. I quickly shelved that idea.

 

[Papi Knox]

Ugh been there. Similar niche. UGH!

So easy to think small.

What ways are you practicing to keep you thinking BIG!?

 

[Mad Pirate Carl]

I only spent a few minutes on the idea before I side lined it. Asking those three questions easily and quickly eliminated it as an option.

I don't want a market that is too big, because then you hit the big companies for competition: A CRM is in competition with Oracle, a search engine is in competition with Google, a Social Media platform in competition with Faceboook, etc. (Although, you could niche within those. CRM focusing on small companies doing a very specific task, a search engine focusing on a very specific target, or a Social Media platform for a very specific are of interest.)

Instead, I try to think of global niche markets and products where I can charge premium prices. For instance, one product I am working on is aimed at small to medium sized video production companies. There might be just 50 of them in one city, but globally, there are thousands. I charge $1,500, $2,000, and $15,000 for the three levels targeted at video production companies. If I can get 10% penetration into that global market, I'll do OK.

If your business is online, your potential market is in the billions. It doesn't take a big niche to hit income targets.

 

[Mad Pirate Carl]

This is an article I bookmarked ages ago that could be helpful while looking for a market:
https://tim.blog/2011/09/24/how-to-create-a-million-dollar-business-this-weekend-examples-appsumo-mint-chihuahuas/#more-5754

Tim Ferris' 4 Hour Work Week is also a good book for help.

 

[Papi Knox]

Great material that I'm familiar with. I'll revisit it this week. maybe it'll help.

Here's where I am now.

I have on hurdle to jump to get access to my domain from bluehost. We'll see.

The idea is to continue the work I'm doing, but raise my standard. I'm not talking to people near suicide, but those who can relate to that battle because they overcame it years ago like me. But now they want to dive deeper into the work.

When I have access, I'll upgrade the site and template, and make sure it's "findable" online.

Then I'll add an email newsletter component so I can build my list and sell affiliate products and my consulting.

 

[Mad Pirate Carl]

Linking hosts from your hosting service to your domain name from your registrar is one of the things people just don't talk about.

There should be information from your hosting service in a help document that discusses primary/secondary DNS (NameServers) on your host admin account. There should also be a DNS panel in your admin page for your registrar account. Search for a NameServers if you can't find anything. Enter the NameServers from your hosting service into your NameServers field for your registrar. It will take a few minutes for the change to propagate through the internet. Hope this helps.

 

[Papi Knox]

I'm not sure I follow.

In my case, Bluehost is verifying my identity before they grant me access to my purchase.

 

[Sun]

Thanks for making the effort to document your plan and progress Lenox - this is really interesting!

Any updates yet?

 

[Papi Knox]

Wow yes updates.

LenoxJones.com exists

I am slowing do the rhythm to focus on fitness.

Making money with full-time focus on sales. Using an email system.

I'll write for the site when I get back to my fighting weight, possibly later this month.

In the meantime, I'm going to determine a way to write the remaining 18 months of material in an efficient format.

Stay Tuned.

Thank you @Sun for calling me out on this thread. I appreciate it.

 

[Gulliver]

6-7 I've gone through many different systems throughout the years and run my autopilot online businesses for digital products. I tested each systems and found that the best conversion and less hassle comes with Gumroad and similar out of the box ecommerce systems. I lost lots of money and time with WordPress and woocommerce and it was my biggest expense to pay for dev guys to handle the errors and upgrades etc. Wordpress sucks. Go with webflow. They are more robust and you don't need to bother with plugins and security. It just works and you can deal with your business rather than your website. Then hook into gumroad and you're good to go. When I switched from wordpress to webflow/gumroad I doubled my profits.

 

[Papi Knox]

Cool. I'll look into it

Recently stepped back into this project

Releasing one a week until I can add more energy to my schedule and add extra articles

 

[Lex]

Major thing is marketing. Marketing to a specific target. Rather you’re good at coding or designing or hire someone doesn’t matter. Can buy templates and etc.

Product, whatever it is, presentation is what’s it about. It just a blog, just market. Reply to anyone interested etc and keep the coming back.

You’ve heard it before, have the most beautiful voice but if no one hears it doesn’t mean anything. Marketing and knowing how to target is what it’s about, however in this day and age it’s bout money to do that.

 

[Papi Knox]

You’ve heard it before, have the most beautiful voice but if no one hears it doesn’t mean anything. Marketing and knowing how to target is what it’s about, however in this day and age it’s bout money to do that.

Pretty much

I'm implementing the next iteration this year, and will share more details later.