Sustainability: An important note on building a core business along with your freedom business products and services.
One thing thats important to note during this whole information product virtual business creation process is to spend time on that front/core of your business from time to time. You certainly can “go mercenary” with your freedom business product, but having a core really impacts your ability to promote or drive any sort of campaign behind your product when you eventually do create it. Let me explain.
Developing a core model allows you to grow and change but keep continuity. Think about how the big wigs do it…Tim Ferriss doesn’t actually say “have a blog” or “have a homebase”…but he did it with the 4 hour work week (his flagship muse) before the book launch…he had a huge community, he even held competitions for who could create the biggest mini communities on Ning…and in his book he phrases it as “becoming an expert”…and the path to get there means going to colleges and talking, recording your sessions for future productizing, citing those accomplishments to get on tv or into publications…basically creating a following through these efforts, creating credentials to launch big, to be a phenomenon and gain your initial wave of true followers…he and we digital creators do the same through our blogs and media involvement. (although just recently in a Q/A with Tim he stressed doing offline promotion) It’s for this reason why I think its vital to create this core, homebase, “front” to your freedom products…otherwise you are dust in the wind…you have no backing, you have no connection or credentials living anywhere. Balance this with the soft launch and mock testing of your product and service ideas, the more you are involved and mention your possible and growing product the more you’ll realize it’s going succeed or fail and the quicker you can move on to the next idea. You can still pull off automated income without that core, but it will probably be much harder to sustain.
Real life example
I’ve “platformatized” my IT business even when I thought I couldn’t. I’m going to be taking IT support for entrepreneurs and small business owners to a different level. The field or search term “tech support” right now is riddled with useless forums by users who “kinda know what they are talking about” who ask weakly worded questions and then go back and forth for 20 forum pages trying to find a answer. Other solutions for small businesses owners are to go to company support sites where no one is willing to step in their shoes or post on craigslist, as I’ve aptly found out. I hope to rip that all apart…answer questions for free, with superior quality answers and keep myself in the game of creating products or services people find valuable to use when dealing with their technology struggles.
It will be different than hunting for clients, the whole negotiation process and freelancing type thing. I struggled with this in my conversations and recent readings of Ramit’s blog (iwillteachyoutoberich.com) because he continues to talk about living a great life by going the path of freelancing. I struggled because, yes I could go back to freelancing and up my rates, use some of these lifestyle design tactics to get bigger clients or be more well known and then charge more, but I’d still be doing the hard work day in and day out, and not building something I could use to sustain income later. There’s some mix of that freedom in freelancing but not really. Maybe I’m way off but Ramit isn’t freelancing? He built a resource, wrote a book, and now is running programs like earn1k.com so he can create community and continue to sell his book. He did his front work, now he manages it and sees the paychecks…I don’t think he’s freelancing and I don’t think he would take a consulting gig from a mom and pop.
I don’t mean to say you can just sit down and write a book, or make a product, you have to go through being educated on your topic first, through the experiences of trying to make it happen, but why not start that process knowing you’ll be building something to easily maintain and move you ahead, not simply put more money in your pocket. Money isn’t the goal, time and freedom are.
It may take a little time, it may just mean putting in the effort to make sure my responses are completely coherent with citations, research and ample instruction for non technical minds. It’s what I do..I’ll actually enjoy that part of it. I’m not taking Lifehacker or Dell by storm, this core structure isn’t supposed to take over my life, but instead keep me involved with the products and services I want to build out and test. It’s more than a “bio” page on your ideas, it’s that “personal brand” thing people keep talking about. This part isn’t the autopilot income, but it’s the center of quality, it’s the becoming an expert and gaining experience while the gears of creating products out of these experiences are turning and burning for freedom income. For those office workers, and I can’t believe I’m making this analogy but it’s like the “corporate office” for your business. It’s vital. I see that more and more as I try to justify creating a product that I could give to the world. I think this piece often gets looked over in the myriad of other “virtual business” coaching, training, pitching type websites. They bring you along on developing an idea, breaking into a niche, and perhaps launching a product or bla bla various tactics in doing all that along the way, but it all falls apart for me if I don’t have continuity from my trials and errors. How about you?
The literal grunt work.
itarsenal.com was just a portfolio, un-SEO optimized, stock site on the web. Non blog. Probably similiar to something a lot of you have now, or the offline equivalent of a resume. Now, the site is a resource, and it’s a hybrid portfolio but that’s not its focal point. The focus is on a call to action for anyone and everyone (although niched to Mac small business/entrepreneur users) to go there and ask any type of IT question and get a great response back. The questions will be posted on the blog, as will the thorough answers…each post can be promoted depending on it’s worth.
I don’t expect flocks of people to actually send me questions, but instead I’ll answer the questions I get daily, or go out and find from my small business clients and friends. It’ll use various social medias, and present any public acknowledgements to qualify an expert level status as merited and to be further used in freedom products. (not that hard) These posts can be SEO optimized, shared, turned into a product later, built on, guest posted like Ramit’s recent guest post on Tim Ferriss’s blog (those two are buddying up for exposure and it makes sense)…other calls to action on the site provide actual services to pay for like the traditional consulting and design work or products already built. I’m not giving up clients and real work altogether!!
All these tasks will be made easier with the use of the tactics already covered on automation and outsourcing too. In the end it’s about providing great content to keep me in the game of providing great products to sell either loosely or tightly connected with IT Arsenal for passive income. At the very least its giving me fresh problems to provide solutions for. It’s becoming my mental glue.
Warning: Don’t get hung up like I did on making this core/front site similar to a product. I wasted time on trying to make it super niche with keywords or game planning about how to drive people to it. Products, services, ideas that are fresh for mock testing and trial launching are much more important as they actually have potential to bring in money. Let them retroactively shape this creation. Do the basics. I wasted hours on trying to craft my “core” site and in the end realized I neglected acting on my current backup product, the only thing besides freelancing that will bring in money. Dumb!
So…developing my freedom product has also developed or platformatized my core branding, creating a homebase. I’d suggest anyone living out lifestyle design do something similar in their niche. It doesn’t have to be as involved as I made my site, I just so happen to be in the IT field. All your nitty gritty details don’t need to be on display there (thats what blogs like this are for) but it can constantly host your campaigns and brightest ideas…until one lights up, like my friend David Walsh’s recent Source Control, which was recently linked up on entrepreneur.com!
What do you think? Do you have something similar, am I nuts? Leave a comment.