From the desk of Razvan Rogoz
Dear friend,
Here’s the question I’m asking you to ponder today – are you having a job or are you having a business? I’ve met quite a lot of solopreneurs, people who work by themselves. Some are very successful. They live the life of their dreams. They are enjoying all the perks of showing the middle finger to their boss. Others are more stressed and pressured than when they were working for someone else.
And now I’m asking you this – as a coach, trainer or self-improvement entrepreneur, are you owning a job or are you owning a business? To make this clear, I’m going to ask you where are you spending most of your time, earning money now or earning money in the future? This is a trick question though so don’t rush with an answer.
Let’s say I’m starting a new business. Selling on customers, giving coaching sessions, trading my time for money is all a way to earn money now. It is cash-flow. It is a J.O.B. no matter if I want to name it like this or not. It may be a high paying job but I’m eating what I’m hunting. If I’m making the sales, I put food in my belly, if I’m not, then I guess it is time for fasting. Most coaches and trainers are in this category. They are getting paid by customers for services delivered, paid at point of delivery. This means that I’m coming to you, I’m getting one hour of coaching and I’m paying you $100 at the end. Simple.
For most people, this is kind of a big deal as most self-improvement coaches, trainers and entrepreneurs live in the constant fear of not having customers and most of them are not in a position to say no to a paying customer. Of course, there are a few that are overly booked and charge $1000/hour or some that will simply say no to you but these are outliers (an outlier I’m going to teach you to be!). Since most give free sessions hoping that they’ll convert to a paid one, money in the pocket, now, is kind of a big deal.
But the problem is that this is not sustainable. Look, I get it – you’re doing what you love. You’re helping people. You don’t have to wake up at 06:00 and drive one hour to work. You can earn money by responding to emails in your underwear and nobody will ever know this. You can cook pasta and talk with your clients.
At the end though it is the same thing as a job. You work and you get paid. You spend the money. You start again. Any excess money you have, you spend. Your cashflow is directly tied to your ability to deliver on your services, in the moment, so if you want to take a vacation, if you want to say “screw it” and leave to Cambodia, then you’ve got no income whatsoever. It is a job even when you’re doing it in your underwear.
Then you have the other dimension, money in the future. This is income that comes again and again without you having to do something. If I design an mobile application, I design it once, launch it once and it is going to keep selling as long as it gets traffic. If I write a book for Amazon, that book is going to generate sales no matter if I do something or not. If I create an YouTube video to sell myself, that video is making me sales even when I sleep so I don’t have to pick up the phone and go through my sales pitch again.
You invest 50 or 100 or 200 hours into creating an asset and then that asset works for yourself. Yes, you do need traffic but for all intents and purposes, assets are the closest thing you’ll get to future, recurring income if you don’t want to invest your money on the stock market.
This is how wealth is generated. This is how you help your market. I don’t care how hard of a worker you are. There’s only a limited number of hours you can deliver in any day. You can be fully booked and yes, you’ll swim in money but you’ll have no time and as soon as you stop working, the pipe gets clogged too.
But … and there’s a big one, you can’t focus on the second one exclusively either. You can focus only on creating assets but who is going to pay the bills? Future income is future cash-flow. You’re not benefiting from it now. You’re going to get paid but in three or six months. Someone needs to generate cash-flow in the present moment too. That’s why the smart self-improvement entrepreneurs balances short term cash-flow with long term one.
A 50 – 50% distribution is good enough. This means that you spend 50% of your time to earn money in the moment and you spend 50% to build assets for the long term.
But you know what is the key, operative word here? Recurring. You want to build a business and a life based on recurring income. When you’re selling coaching, you want someone that comes back again and again so you don’t spend time prospecting and selling again. We can all admit it, getting customers is a huge pain in the rear-side and it is a lot easier to nurture someone to keep returning than to replace him with a new customer. When you’re creating a tool, you want ideally to be paid again and again for it. This means that you’re not selling it for a one time fee but for a membership.
Let’s take the example of Ulysses. This is a word processing software designed for people in the creative field. I can’t buy it. I can rent it. I’m paying every month a small amount to use it. This is the nirvana, this is the heaven of monetization, to have a tool you create once and then people keep paying you for it for as long as possible.
Or let’s take the Calm app. You can’t buy it. You can only get a subscription and this works great for those who are selling it as they know that each month, a new paycheck is coming from all the subscribers. All the need to do is improve the app and to market it so they gain more market share.
The future is subscription based. This is 2017. The era of “you pay for it once and you own it forever” is outdated. Now we’re living in the era of value on demand. You need something, you rent it. You stop using it, you don’t pay for it anymore. When you pay for Netflix, you’re not buying the movies but only access to them, for 31 days. Since most people can see very few movies in a given month, they end up paying more in the long term than if they’d just buy the movie directly.
The future is based on recurring, subscription based income and this is a solution that works for everybody. You can do this by creating an asset and selling it (like a book on Amazon) or creating a membership tool where they have access for as long as they keep paying. Or better yet, you can combine both. You can write a book and use it to sell access to your membership tool. The possibilities are endless and I’m here to help you transform them into reality.
So here’s the deal. I’m here to help you. If you can afford me and I like what you’re selling (as I’ve promised myself to promote only stuff I believe in), we’ll work together to make the above a reality. I’m helping you create the strategy and the sales funnel in order to make such a recurring income a reality. I want you to have $4000 … $8000 … $16.000 … $32.000 in recurring income each month by helping you sell either a fixed priced asset (traditional model) or a recurring income asset (new, subscription model). Both are amazing tools and I suggest you start with a fixed priced asset as subscription based ones tend to work best when you are well known. It is easy to sell an eBook and then a membership site but it’s difficult to sell a membership site directly. Subscriptions require a different psychological set-up, one based on credibility, one based on who you are and what you’ve done before.
By doing this, I’m giving you the dream of future money, coming in, constantly. At the same time, I’m here to help you with your current income, because you do need to have a healthy cashflow while you’re building your future business too.
How?
Let’s talk. I’m gifting you a 30 minute complimentary phone call, the only thing you’re ever going to get for free from me (I’m a big believer in charging for everything I do and I’m helping my customers profit by thinking this way too). In this 30 minute call, we’re discussing how this can happen and we’re coming to an agreement in which we both feel like it is Christmas and like we’ve got some great gifts from each other.
Click Here To Book Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call
So, click the link below and schedule a call for whenever I have a free spot available (spots fill up fast and if you don’t act now, you may find your next spot in 3 – 4 weeks).
Click Here To Book Your Complimentary 30 Minute Call
Best regards,
Razvan Rogoz
The Self-Improvement Copywriter