As with life, you have friends you can talk to and share your hurts and pains, business is the same way, you want to try to find people you can be around that are business minded and will be honest with you. People you can consistently talk with to shoot ideas out to them and get responses that are real and true. The more people you get to know the better. That is how the whole board of directors comes into play. It’s a fancy name for some people getting together to brainstorm their ideas and come up with the best plan possible. Although sometimes some of the board of directors I have met, you could also call them the Bored of Directors J.
As you read this book make sure you write down all of the ideas that pop into your head so you can remember them, but also remember to take action on the ideas. If you don’t act, you won’t see a difference. Acting RIGHT NOW will ensure you will see results, otherwise the information goes by the wayside and you won’t reap the benefits. This is the benefit of you being a small company compared to a corporation, you can act fast. So let’s get started.
Planning Stages
When planning to build a web site to sell a product or for any purpose, you need to do some research. Marketing research, Keyword Research, and if you don’t have a product, then you will need to do product research. Let’s start with the product research first.
Product Research
For product research you want to be looking at what interests you, something that you do all the time that you take for granted, but others don’t know or they don’t know how to do it well, or you just know how to do it better. If it is something you like, or like to do, then you will succeed just because of the passion you have behind your future product. Even if you are not a professional at it, but love to do it, then you can learn everything you need to know right on the internet to become a professional.
The Conceptual Marketing Masterminding Chart will help you organize your thoughts for success. Fill out as much of it as you can and then refer back to it as you get more ideas and as you do more research.
Conceptual Marketing Masterminding Chart
| Things You Like To Do | Product | Pain | Pleasure |
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1. Fill in the things you like to do business wise. Mine was computers, web sites, managing businesses and helping people.
2. Products- Try to find a product that fits into the category of what you like to do. A solution to a problem.
3. Fill in what the pain or problem the client may have, and then the pleasure.
Here is an example of what one would look like.
| Things You Like To Do | Product | Pain of the Client | Pleasure of the Client |
| Computers | Sell PC’s | Cost/Will it Last/Warranty/Compatibility | Fast/ reliable/Support |
| Web sites | Sell Web Site Design and Creation | Cost/Functionality/Not Optimized all the Way | SEO Optimized into NATURAL Rankings |
| Managing business | SEO Project Management | Spending money with not the expected results | Less money with guaranteed results |
| Helping People Succeed | How To Start A Virtual Administrative Business | Spending money with none of the expected results | Excellent SEO for clients web site.
A Successful Virtual Admin Business. |
| God | Help People Succeed | Loss/Poor/Divorce | Meeting Grace and Love |
If you have to create a product then you will need to spend time in development, improvements, different phases that take time. During this time you can take advantage of moving some of the administrative tasks on to someone else so you can focus on the revenue producing project. This is hard for most people to do, for one because of money, and the other is, it’s hard to let go of something you know how to do and you like it a certain way, but this is not the best solution for you. One of the main practical business laws is the 80/20 principle. Spend 80 percent of your time on the 20% of the business that is going to make the revenue come in, in other words, your product.
How can you do this? We have found that a Virtual Administrative Assistant is perfect for the job. You don’t have to hire full time or part time, do it per job if you like. Whatever the case, they are trained and ready to go to work for you in a moments notice. Let them do your billing, emails, appointments, take phone calls, and much more. If you were to pick a VA I would definitely pick one called The Admin ProfessionalJ. I am just a little partial of course. Really though, even if you don’t go to her, you need to find one that will meet your needs and personality traits. You are probably thinking at this point, why would I hire a VA when I am starting a VA business? Well that is simple, at some point you will have so much work that some of the work won’t pay as much as the other, or you could be typing instead of sifting through emails, etc. Your time is worth more then the lowest paying job you have, so delegate it out to where you can take on more work that is higher paying or helping another VA get off the ground while you bring in the profits. Remember, anytime you are building a business, you need to think BIG! Always keep your vision for the business bigger then where it is currently. If you keep it big, it will become big.
Let’s get back to the product research. You need to push to get the information on paper. That is a big mistake a lot of people make. If you don’t get it on paper then you really don’t have anything except thoughts. Put it on paper and you have a vision, a dream, a product in the making.
Next you want to go out on the web and do some research on the products you have on the list. Look at the competitors’ sites and see if you can find a niche in that category that you can offer that they aren’t.
Start learning about the product more, learn everything you can about it, find audio files and listen to them on your mp3 player or burn them to a CD and listen to them in the car. Become an expert in that product.
**Note – keep track of all of your competitor’s web sites so you can visit them later for your “breakthrough keyword list”.