"The $100 Startup" by Chris Guillebeau

• Freedom is what we’re all looking for, and value is the way to achieve it.
• Value is created when a person makes something useful and shares it with the world.
• Contrary to conventional wisdom, success in entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily related to being the best at any particular activity.
• To succeed in a business project, especially one you’re excited about, it helps to think carefully about all the skills you have that could be helpful to others and particularly about the combination of those skills.
• Here is the not so secret recipe for microbusiness alchemy: passion or skill + usefulness = success.
• The basics of starting a business are very simple; you don’t need an MBA, venture capital, or even a detailed plan. You just need a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid. This can be broken down as follows:
• Product or service: what you sell.
• People willing to pay for it: your customers.
• A way to get paid: how you’ll exchange a product or service for money.
• It helps to have an offer: a combination of product or service plus the messaging that makes a case to potential buyers.
• The initial work can be a challenge, but after the typical business gets going, you can usually take a number of steps to ramp up sales and income.
• It helps to have a strategy of building interest and attracting attention described here as hustling.
• Instead of just popping up one day with an offer, it helps to craft a launch event to get buyers excited ahead of time.
• Build something the people want and give it to them.
• There’s no fail-proof method; in fact, failure is often the best teacher.
• To start a business you need three things: a product or service, a group of people willing to pay for it, and a way to get paid. Everything else is completely optional.
• If you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at other things too. Many projects begin through a process of “skill transformation,” in which you apply your knowledge to a related topic.
• Most important: merge your passion and skill with something that is useful to other people.
• Where do ideas come from?
• An inefficiency in the marketplace.
• New technology or opportunity.
• A changing space.
• A spin-off or side project.
• When thinking about different business ideas, also think about money. Get in the habit of equating “money stuff” with ideas.
• Ask three questions for every idea:
• How would I get paid with this idea?
• How much would I get paid from this idea?
• Is there a way I could get paid more than once?
• Value means helping people.
• If you're trying to build a microbusiness and you begin your efforts by helping people, you’re on the right track. When you get stuck, ask yourself: How can I give more value? Or more simply: How can I help my customers more?
• Freedom and value have a direct relationship: You can pursue freedom for yourself while providing value for others.
• A business ultimately succeeds because of the value it provides its end users, customers, or clients.
• Many business owners talk about their work in terms of the features it offers, but it’s much more powerful to talk about the benefits customers receive. A feature is descriptive; a benefit is emotional.
• Overall, the more a business can focus on core benefits instead of boring features, the more customers will connect...and purchase.
• Think more about what people really want than about what you think they need.
• You don’t need a lot of money or special training to operate a business.
• Six steps to getting started right now:
• Decide on your product or service.
• Set up a website, even a very basic one (you can get a free one from WordPress.org).
• Develop an offer (an offer is distinct from a product or service).
• Ensure you have a way to get paid (get a free PayPal account to start).
• Announce your offer to the world.
• Learn from steps 1 through 5, then repeat.
• If you’re not sure what to do, think about any of these ideas:
• Can you contact your customer list with a special offer or incentive?
• Can you introduce a new product or service to complement your existing portfolio?
• If you’re a coach or consultant, can you offer a special deal for clients who prepay?
• Is there a new way you can attract subscribers, clients, or customers?
• But one way or another...just do something. Friedrich Engels said: “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” Choose the ounce of action today.
• Homing in on what customers really want from a business is critical. Simply put, we want more of some things and less of others. If your business focuses on giving people more of what they want or taking away something they don’t want (or both), you’re on the right track.
• When all else fails, ask yourself how you can help people more.
• At the end of the day, they [people] want to be happy, and business that help their customers be happy are well positioned to succeed.
• There is no “consulting school” or degree. You can start a new business as a consultant in about one day, if not sooner. Follow these two basic rules:
• Pick something specific as opposed to something general. Get specific about what you can really do for someone.
• No one values a $15-an-hour consultant, so do not under price your service. Charge at least $100 an hour or a comparable fixed rate for the benefit you provide.
• Building a business around a passion can be a great fit for many people, but not for everyone.
• You can’t just pursue any passion--there are a number of things you may be passionate about that no one will pay you for.
• You must focus continually on how your project can help other people, and why they’ll care about what you’re offering in the first place.
• Sometimes a false start precedes a successful microbusiness.
• You usually don’t get paid for the hobby itself; you get paid for helping other people pursue the hobby or for something indirectly related to it. This point is critical.
• You may just not want to combine your hobby with your work. Some people find that it’s better to keep their passion separate from their work.
• Reality check checklist:
• Instead of just during your free time, would you enjoy pursuing your hobby at least twenty hours a week?
• Do you enjoy teaching others to practice the same hobby?
• Do you like the ins and outs (all the details) of your hobby?
• If you had to do a fair amount of administrative work related to your hobby, would you still enjoy it?
• Have other people asked for your help?
• Are enough other people willing to pay to gain or otherwise benefit from your expertise?
• Are there other businesses serving this market (usually a good thing) but not in the same way you would?
• Only when passion merges with a skill that other people value can you truly follow your passion to the bank.
• Not every passion or hobby is worth building into a business, and not everyone will want to have a business that is based on a passion or hobby.
• You can establish a specialized consulting business in one day--the more specific the better.
• It’s usually easier to operate a business while roaming the world than it is to start one. Be sure to spend plenty of time getting set up before you hit the road.
• As much as possible, keep your work “in the cloud” by using online services such as Google Docs and Dropbox. This way, you can access it from anywhere and don’t have to worry as much about keeping your data with you.
• Change your password frequently, and don’t use the name of your cat as the password.
• You can start from anywhere, but as a general recommendation, Latin America and Southeast Asia are two of the easiest and most hospital regions to begin your nomadic adventures.
• As you roam, maintain a balance between adventure and work. Remember that most people work regular jobs and travel only once in awhile, so be sure to take advantage of sightseeing and experiencing the local culture. But similarly, don’t feel bad about needing to devote more hours to work whenever needed. It’s OK, the work allows you to travel.
• Become your own publisher:
• Find a topic that people will pay to learn about. It helps if you are an expert in the topic, but if not, that’s what research is for.
• Capture the information in one of three ways:
• write it down
• record audio or video
• produce some combination of the first two
• Combine your materials into a product: an ebook or digital package that can be downloaded by buyers.
• Create an offer. What exactly are you selling, and why should people take action on it?
• Decide on a fair, value-based price for your offer.
• Find a way to get paid PayPal.com is the most ubiquitous method, with the ability to accept payment from users in more than 180 countries.
• Publish the offer and get the word out.
• Cash in and head to the beach!
• As you focus on getting to know “your people,” keep this important principle in mind: most of us like to buy, but we don’t like to be sold. Old-school marketing is based on persuasion; new marketing is based on invitation.
• When you’re brainstorming different ideas and aren’t sure which one is beast, one of the most effective way to figure it out it simple to ask your prospects, your current customers, or anyone you think might be a good fit for your idea.
• Since you’re trying to build a business, not just a hobby, a better method is to ask if they’d be willing to pay for what you’re selling. This separates merely “liking” something from actually paying for it.
• Questions like these are good starting points:
• What is your biggest problem with X?
• What is the number one question you have about X?
• What can I do to help you with X?
• Generally speaking, it’s good to keep surveys to less than ten questions or so. To get more overall responses, ask fewer questions. To get more detailed responses, ask more questions.
• Sometimes, deciding not to pursue a promising project or deliberately turning away business is one of the most powerful things you can do.
• The customer is often wrong.
• Creating a “possibilities list’ helps you retain ideas for when you have more time to implement them.
• Keep in mind the most basic questions of any successful microbusiness. If you don’t have a clear yes on all of them, go back to the drawing board.
• Does the project produce an obvious product or service?
• Do you know people who will want to buy it?
• Do you have a way to get paid?
• Score your ideas according to these criteria:
• Impact: Overall, how much of an impact will this project make on your business and customers?
• Effort: How much time and work will it take to create the project?
• Profitability: Relative to the other ideas, how much money will the project bring in?
• Vision: How close of a fit is this project with your overall mission and vision?
• You can often follow a fad, craze, or trend by establishing yourself as an authority and simplifying something about the process for others hoping to benefit from it.
• Get started quickly and see what happens. There’s nothing wrong with planning, but you can spend a lifetime making a plan that never turns into action. In the battle between planning and action, action wins.
• When you’re just getting started, how do you know if an idea is marketable? Well, you don’t always know for sure--that’s why you start as soon as you can and avoid spending much money.
• Here’s how you do it:
• Select a marketable idea
• Keep costs low
• Get the first sale
• Market before manufacturing
• Respond to initial results
• Seven steps to instant market testing:
• You need to care about the problem you are going to solve, and there has to be a sizable number of other people who also care.
• Make sure the market is big enough.
• Focus on eliminating “blatant admitted pain.” The product needs to solve a problem that causes pain the the market knows it has.
• Almost everything that is being sold is for either a deep pain or a deep desire.
• Always think in terms of solutions. Make sure your solution is different or better.
• Ask others about the idea but make sure the people you ask are your potential target market.
• Create an outline for what you are doing and show it to a subgroup of your community. Ask them to test it for free in return for feedback and confidentiality.
• The first time you make a sale in a new business, no matter the amount, it’s a very big deal.
• Freely give, freely receive.
• Define the mission statement for your business (or your business idea in 140 characters or less. It may help to think of the first two characteristics of any business: a product or service and the group of people who pay for it. Put the two together and you’ve got a mission statement. Focusing like this helps you avoid “corporate speak” and drill down to the real purpose of the business as it relates to your customers.
• Understand that what we want and what we say we want are not always the same thing.
• A good offer has to be what people actually want and are willing to pay for.
• Most of us like to buy but we don’t usually like to be sold.
• The very best offers create a “You must have this right now!” feeling among customers, but many other offers can succeed by creating a less immediate sense of urgency. Providing a gentle nudge to encourage immediate action separates a decent offer from a high performing one.
• The way we make purchasing decisions isn’t always rational. All of us place a subjective value on goods or services that may not relate to what they “should” be.
• Three tools will assist you in making it [your offer] more compelling: the FAQ page, an incredible guarantee, and giving your customers more than they expect.
• The additional purpose of a FAQ is to provide reassurance to potential buyers and overcome objections. Your mission is to identify the main objections your buyers will have when considering your offer and carefully respond to the in advance.
• The specific objections relate to an individual product or service, so it’s hard to predict what they might by without looking at a particular offer. General objections, however, come up with almost any purchase. These objections usually relate to very basic human desires, needs, concerns, and fears. The core concern for each of these objections relates to trust and authority.
• You must create customer confidence in order to overcome objections.
• As you craft the offer, think in advance about the objections...and then flip them around in your favor.
• As much as possible, connect your offer to the direct benefits customers will receive.
• As with everything else in life, it’s important to keep your word with launches.
• If you admit to a flaw, weakness, or limitation in your product, this will probably help instead of harm you. This is because when we are evaluation a purchasing decision, we like to consider both the strengths and the weaknesses. If a product developers personally tells us it’s not perfect--”and here’s why”--we tend to trust him or her more.
• Without timelines, customers may evaluate the offer and agree that it’s interesting, but fail to take action because there is no need for them to do so right away. You don’t want to pressure people into buying if they’re not ready, but you do want to instill a sense of urgency.
• Thirty-nine-step product launch checklist
• Ensure that your product or service has a clear value proposition.
• Decide on bonuses, incentives, or rewards for early buyers.
• Have you made the launch fun somehow?
• If your launch is online, have you recorded a video or audio message to complement the written copy?
• Have you built anticipate into the launch?
• Have you built urgency into the launch?
• Publish the time and date of the launch in advance.
• Proofread all sales materials multiple times, and get someone else to review them as well.
• Check all web links in your shopping cart or payment processor, and then double check them from a different computer with a different browser.
• If this is an online product, is it properly set up in your shopping cart or with paypal?
• Test every step of the order process repeatedly. Whenever you change any variable, test it again.
• Have you registered all the domains associated with your product?
• Are all files uploaded and in the right place?
• Review the order page carefully for errors or easy-to make improvements.
• Rad important communications out loud.
• Have you or your designer created any custom graphics for the offer, including any needed ads for affiliates or partners?
• Set a clear monetary goal for the launch.
• Advise the merchant account or bank of incoming funds.
• Create a backup plan for incoming funds if necessary.
• Can you add another payment option for anyone who has trouble placing an order?
• For a high-priced product, can you offer a payment plan?
• Clear as much email as possible in addition to any other online tasks so you can focus on the big day tomorrow.
• Write a strong launch message to your lists of readers, customers, and/or affiliates.
• Prepare a blog post and any needed social media posts.
• Set two alarm clocks to ensure that you’re wide awake and available at least one hour before the scheduled launch.
• Schedule your launch time to suit your audience, not you. All things being equal, it’s usually best to launch early in the morning, East coast time.
• Soft launch at least ten minutes early to make sure everything is working. It’s better for you to find the problems than to have your customers find them!
• Write the first three to five buyers to say thanks and ask, “Did everything go OK in the order process?”
• As long as it’s possible, send a quick personal note to every buyer in addition to the automated thank-you that goes out.
• Most important: ask for help spreading the word.
• Write to affiliates with a reminder about the new offering.
• Write to journalists or media contacts, if appropriate.
• Post on twitter, facebook, linkedin, and any other social networks you already participate in.
• Write the general thank-you message that all buyers will receive when purchasing.
• If applicable, write the first message for your email follow-up series that buyers will receive.
• Outline additional content for future communication and plan to schedule it after you recover from the launch.
• How can you over deliver and surprise your customers with this product? Can you include additional deliverables or some kind of unadvertised benefit?
• Is there anything special you can do to thank your customers?
• Don’t forget to celebrate.
• Start thinking about the next launch. What can you build on from this one?
• Many customers will support you for life as long as you keep providing them with great value.
• A good launch blends strategy with tactics. Strategy refers to “why” questions such as story, offer, and long-term plan. Tactics refers to “how” questions such as timing, price, and specific pitch.
• A charlatan is all talk, with nothing to back up their claims. A martyr is all action with plenty of good work to talk about, but remains unable or unwilling to do the talking. A hustler represents the ideal combination: work and talk fused together.
• Being willing to promote in an authentic, non-sleazy manner is a core attribute of micro business success.
• Take the time to make something worth talking about.
• The more you focus your business on providing a valuable service and helping people, the more your business will grow.
• Strategic giving is about being genuinely, truly helpful without the thought of a potential payback.
• Getting to know people, helping them, and asking for help yourself can take you far.
• When you’re thinking about how to get the word out and build your business, think about hustling first and paid advertising later (if at all).
• Make something worth talking about and then talk about it.
• Busy entrepreneurs can easily become overwhelmed with all kinds of projects and tasks that have nothing to do with making money.
• Putting the focus on income and cash flow--measuring everything else against those standards--ensures that a business remains healthy.
• Many aspiring business owners make two common, related mistakes: thinking too much about where to get money to start their project and thinking too little about where the business income will come from.
• Spend as little money as possible and make as much money as you can.
• Spend only on things that have a direct relationship to sales.
• A business should always focus on profit. Always remember, no money, no business.
• Borrowing or investing a lot of money to start a business is completely optional.
• Three key principles to focus on profit.
• Price your product or service in relation to the benefit it provides, not the cost of producing it.
• Offer customers a limited range of prices.
• Get paid more than once for the same thing.
• Some people will always choose the biggest and best, even if the biggest and best is much more expensive than the regular version.
• Having a high-end version creates an “anchor price.” When we see a super high price, we tend to consider the lower price as much more reasonable...thus creating a fair bargain in our minds.
• Offer a limited range of prices: not so many as to create confusion but enough to provide buyers with a legitimate choice.
• Experimenting with price is one of the easiest ways to create higher profits in a business.
• If you’re not sure what price to use for something, try a higher one without changing anything else and see what happens.
• The longer a microbusiness is around, with customers and onlookers saying good things about it, the more the word will spread.
• The not-so-secret to improving income in an existing business is through tweaks: small changes that create a big impact.
• Increase traffic. Increase conversion. Increase average sale price.
• Ironically, people who pay for high-end products tend to be better customers all around.
• Another easy thing many existing business can do to add a new revenue source quickly is to create a service from a product-based business or create a product from a service-based business.
• When your clients complain about the price being too low, you should listen.
• Maintain a practice of regular rate increases so that it becomes normal and expected.
• Remember to price on the basis of value, not time. Customers pay for what you deliver, not how long you spend at lunch.
• People follow you (or your business) because that’s what they’re interested in--you. Talk about yourself and your business.
• As business models go, buying a franchise that is based on someone else’s company is usually a bad idea.
• As a business grows and the business owner begins itching for new projects, he or she essentially has two options for self-made franchising:
• Reach more people with the same message.
• Reach different people with a new message.
• The goal of a partnership is to grow beyond what each person can create on his or her own.
• As your project grows, take some time to look at each aspect of it, especially any public communication that customers review while making a purchasing decision. Answer these questions and think about how you can improve. The goal is to fix little problems and identify small actions you can take that will reap significant results over time.
• Every morning, set aside forty five minutes without Internet access. Devote this time exclusively to activities that improve your business--nothing that merely maintains the business. Think forward motion...What can you do to keep things moving ahead?
• Don’t confuse advice for permission. You don’t need anyone to give you permission to pursue a dream.
• If you've been waiting to being your own $100 startup (or anything else), stop waiting and begin.
• Sometimes the best advice is none at all. If you know what you need to do, the next step is simply to do it. Stop waiting. Start taking action.
• The quest for personal freedom lies in the pursuit of value for others. Get this right from the beginning and the rest will be much easier. Always ask, “How can I help people more?”
• Borrowing money to start a business, or going into debt at all, is now completely optional.
• Focus relentlessly on the point of convergence between what you love to do and what other people are willing to pay for.
• Remember that most core needs are emotional: we want to be loved and affirmed.
• Use the process of skill transformation to think about all the things you’re good at, not just the obvious ones.
• Find out what most people want, and find a way to give it to them.
• There is no consulting school. You can set up shop and charge for specialized help immediately. Just remember to offer something specific and provide an easy way to get paid.
• The biggest battle is against our own fear and inertia.
• Don’t waste your time living someone else’s life.