Ways to increase revenue for your small business for Personnel

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[Music] foreign [Music] thank you so much Amazon business and welcome everyone really glad you're tuning in I am excited to speak with you today this is going to be an action-packed session and my hope is that you'll go away with several tangible immediate things you can do to increase profit in your small business so with that in mind I'm going to give you a short two minute introduction and then be prepared to take some notes now if we haven't met before my name is Chris guilbeau I am a writer traveler entrepreneur I have pretty much always worked for myself uh never really had a real job from the age of 19. uh one of the things I started doing actually in the Dark Ages this was 1999 2000 uh Amazon actually had an auction site so I sold some stuff on auctions.amazon.com among other things and that kind of began a whole journey for me that you know continues to this day I feel really fortunate because even though I don't actually have a proper job I feel like I have the world's greatest job because I get to work with awesome people and connect with just a wonderful community of folks all over the world many of whom are you know starting small businesses or our solopreneurs or you know kind of beginning to experience experiment uh in this world so I read a number of books I've got some case studies of Entrepreneurship some other stuff I produce a daily podcast I've been going every single day for more than two thousand days now uh it's less than 10 minutes long totally free I also get a chance to speak to groups around the world I produce an event called the world domination Summit every year for the past 10 years in Portland Oregon and one of the things we just did recently was we set a world record for the most people in dinosaur costumes so that was fun maybe another time I can tell you more about that but for now let's talk about five ways to increase income let's get to it and for each strategy I'm going to give you the how to as well as an example of someone who used it so we'll do a little bit of a case study maybe a tip or two so I hope you'll take some notes here and I hope that you will apply at least one of these so first things first Here Sell different versions of a core product the goal here is to duplicate your success by reaching new customers now what do I mean by that well here's the example in this story a Washington state government administrator had a father with Alzheimer's and this guy wrote down 200 questions and recorded his dad's answers and he just wanted to like remember all this so he turned those questions into a book that he self-published through Amazon's Kindle Direct publishing platform now this self-published book did really really well in the first few months it was out it earned more than twenty thousand dollars a month so then he thinks okay what would be you know the logical extension to a book that's titled dad I want to hear your story and he goes on and in fact creates other versions of the book for moms and for grandparents you know for other family members I eventually created kind of a general generic version it was really easy to do that because you know he already had the questions like most of the questions were the same he already had that first version so in doing so this allowed him to reach a lot more people and uh results you know pretty good almost four hundred thousand dollars in 2020 when he started this project uh it's a little bit less than that now but it's still a multiple six-figure business you know again something that he's doing on the side so one tip here don't just add infinite variations like color choices to an existing product you might think well I've got something I sell I'm just going to put it in a bunch of different colors or something that's actually more work for you without bringing in new customers so to understand the difference there ask like would this attract a different group of buyers you know in this example you can see like clearly what a little bonus here sell the same thing in another Channel okay so this guy's name is Jeffrey and in addition to selling through Amazon he now sells on his own website as well it could be another third-party platform like wherever you're selling is there another Channel where you could sell the same thing to reach new customers all right number two lots of things can be sold as a product or a service okay so let's talk about kind of going from one to the other if you visit like a home improvement store let's say lots of different things you can buy lots of different ways you can buy the same thing you can buy raw materials if you want to make some bookshelves you can buy raw materials you can buy finished goods you can buy something in between like a kit for example so some people want DIY other people are like you know just give me the bookshelves some people are like okay maybe I want the kit but I want someone to come to my home and assemble them for me so it might seem obvious but there are many ways to productize a service business or add a service option to a product business so here's our example in this story a recruiter and corporate coach she's from the UK she spends a lot of time with professional and executive level job candidates that's what she does for her day job and she notices that a lot of these people even though they are Executives and very well skilled they actually need help with their resumes like they're not super great at that and so her main business like her primary service business is she provides high-end coaching and you know this is not inexpensive it's actually you know her Service pricing starts at around 700 you know and goes up from there which makes sense considering you know what she's doing is personalized coaching but in addition to that she then went on to create a series of resume templates like actual templates you could just kind of go and download and then she sells these templates passively with no client time no direct contact needed and this allows her to help others at scale it brings in several thousand dollars a month on top of everything else she does now it's a different type of customer who wants you know meaningful coaching or Consulting that high-end service compared to someone who wants a template so if you're focused on you know one of the other consider what it would take to create the different option and you could also go the other way and create a service from a product business you know and in that example the service will usually be much more expensive than just buying the product remember some customers may want what you offer like they have the need that you have the solution for but they don't necessarily want it in the same way that you're currently offering it so consider how you could go from a product to a service or vice versa all right number three write and sell an owner's manual for your business so what do I mean by that if you have built a business model that works for you we've had a lot of stories like this that I feature on the podcast it's pretty common document the process like go through and write down every step you know of running this business whether it's e-commerce something totally different and then sell this blueprint to others in some cases like some of the stories we've seen the teaching income or the income from selling the owner's manual can actually exceed the income that the person earns to the actual business which is really interesting so a couple stories in this story this is Donna Nicole the voiceover couple they do voiceover work for Major Brands and Studios they work with Nike Netflix lots of other big companies and in their Studio work they focus on Brands who are looking for authentic black accents African-American accents other accents from the African diaspora that's their voiceover work but they also like in addition to doing that voiceover stuff you can book an hour-long consultation with either Don or Nicole for 150 they're trying to help people who want to break into the industry so they offer tools and resources for them a couple other quick examples here as I said this is a common model and this one here on the left a Las Vegas wedding officiant does much the same thing as the voiceover couple her name is Maria Romano a few months after the death of her husband she was looking for a new start and she decided to get licensed as a wedding officiant so she still does that she still you know conducts Weddings But she also now sells a training course for 177 dollars if you want to learn how that works you can get her training course also she has a 500 option I think it's 477 dollars that includes personalized coaching so you can see she's kind of like using the strategy that we previously talked about with the owner's manual strategy to offer that product and service if we had more time I'd tell you the story of the road roadside Fruit Stand woman she has built a million dollar business in fact selling peaches and teaching people how to operate these roadside fruit stands so pretty common lots of ways to do this uh the results for the voiceover couple not quite a million dollarship they're working on it 4 500 a month from the teaching side of their business and their goal is to build generational wealth for their family so teach what you know and share the roadmap to your current success and don't be afraid of competition don't be afraid of of you know giving away your secrets because you know there's a lot of people out there there's a lot of people who have the same need number four I hear from people all the time small business owners who say things like you know I was worried about raising my price like I wanted to raise my prices for months and months but I was always afraid to I thought my customers you know would all abandon me but I finally did it you know it turned out to be totally fine like nobody cared nobody complained and now I'm making 30 more money you know or whatever it is you know pretty simple thing to do and this story is a therapist who had a high risk pregnancy unfortunately mom and baby were fine but after the experience she realized that there should be much more of a support structure for people in that situation so she then sets out to create that structure uh designing what she calls personalized concierge level trauma-informed support sounds good but one early mistake was she charged too little so in raising her rates up to five thousand dollars she thought clients would object she thought well you know this seems like a fair rate you know to me for what I'm providing but I'm worried nobody's going to take it but in fact you know she's doing quite well she's got lots of clients so maybe a lesson is you know if you raise prices and no one even complains at all it means you probably could have done so you know a long time ago okay but you know perhaps the best time to charge more in your eCommerce businesses yesterday but the second best time is now results you know much more money zero complaints or not that many complaints let's say uh increasing prices again it's not a lot of work and if your conversion rate Remains the Same you know now you're getting paid more I've actually heard from some people who have a situation where they increase the prices and then the conversion rate actually goes up a little bit which is kind of like wow that's the mind blown scenario like I'm actually charging more but conversion rates higher really wish I had done this sooner so the lesson there is perhaps to test okay number five create a membership site or other subscription uh create recurring revenue and ongoing engagement by packaging your product or service in the form of a subscription so many subscriptions out there these days membership sites um we could go through and have a whole presentation on this and I could I could show you dozens of examples but in this one here a travel writer finds the ticket to a thriving membership site she's helping families book airfare and as you can see from the headline I'm not very subtle with these things right the headline is she's making 300 000 a year now this is pretty cool for lots of reasons right first of all three hundred thousand dollars a year but also like wouldn't it be great to get paid more than once well that's what a membership site or a subscription service you know of some kind will do and it can actually work for almost any kind of business something fun to do just to kind of like use a spreadsheet just a really simple spreadsheet you know back of the napkin to run some rough math on what this might look like for you and for your business like based on the number of customers and how much it costs each month just kind of go through and you're like okay if I have X customers and they're paying like this amount a month what would that look like you know it can be really motivating when you realize the potential so again results you know 300 000 a year but recurring revenue is the key thing with membership sites you know the challenges over time there's a lot of churn like people come in they leave you're always trying to fight that but the good thing is like it's very predictable in the sense of if there is a decline then you're going to have advanced warning so if This Woman's business like stops working as well you know she's going to have some time to like work on a new business or try to address you know whatever the fundamental issue is that's why recurring revenue is so powerful now what do these strategies have in common right well of course you know it's all about increasing income you know in your small business but I want you to notice that there are basically three variables here you know or three three points of this triangle you know customers sales and margins margin is like your profit margin if you increase any one of these you know any one of these variables you're going to have an immediate bump in income like without doing anything else so obviously if you bring in more customers you know then that's great but you can also increase sales you know to your existing customers at the same profit margin and you have more income you can you know change that profit margin increase prices like we talked about uh have the same number of customers same number of sales and all of a sudden you're doing better so here's a tip you know over time like you probably want to be working on all of these things like those are good long-term goals and they are kind of interconnected but a lot of new business owners uh and and probably others as well but like I don't want to say it's a mistake but the income nation is always to focus on customer acquisition to say like how can I get more customers you know what can I do to like have more customers more clients and you know that's great but one of the other two variables might be quicker and easier for you might be actually a lot easier to have more sales from the existing customer base your customers have already trusted you they have kind of overcome whatever hurdles they had in making a purchase so they're on your side like they're on your team what can you do to better serve them or how can you increase your profit margin uh you know one way or another so you know I had two goals for this time I mentioned it was going to be action-packed I wanted to give you those five ways to increase profit in your small business and then my second secret goal is just to kind of cheer you on in your role as a solopreneur or a small business owner as I said I love this world like I really think there's no better time to be working on your own and you know building something creating your own security and platforms like Amazon business and all the tools they provide can give you this on-ramp to reach you know literally millions of people so that's super cool and my encouragement to you is like you know just remember why you got into this in the first place like why did you start your business um why did you choose you know to go down this road maybe it was just about money and if so that's fine like nothing wrong with that at all but a lot of people find a connection to something deeper you know something like Freedom or autonomy like the chance to create and build something for yourself to be of service to the world you know while still getting paid which I think are two pretty good things so whatever that is for you uh keep it in mind return to it if you ever get off track I hope we can stay connected and most importantly I hope that you put at least one of these strategies into action today thanks so much foreign