How To Build A Wealth-Generating Business
Wealth-Building Is A Team Sport
Here’s a look at some of the people you will need on your team in order for you to succeed as a small business owner.
And by “succeed,” I don’t mean just barely scraping by, struggling to pay your bills.
I’m talking about “succeed” as in running a thriving, profitable, wealth-building business.
You cannot build a business like that by yourself.
Here’s the kind of team you’re going to need to assemble.
Marketing Person
This is you.
Don't try to outsource this.
You need to learn marketing or you’re going to keep spending money with people, groups, and organizations that tell you that they’ll help you find clients and grow your business when they really won’t.
If you haven’t already wasted money this way, don’t. The most likely scenario is that you’ll pay your consulting fee or membership fee and never make that money back.
If you have already wasted money this way, then you know I’m telling the truth.
You MUST learn marketing.
Knowledge of marketing is just not optional if you plan to be successful in business.
Marketing is not magic or rocket science. It just requires commitment, over time.
Looking for shortcuts and “easy” buttons is how you’ll end up spending a lot of money and getting no results.
There are no shortcuts in marketing. You have to put in the work…consistently, over time.
Educate Yourself
Here are some books that will teach you what you need to know about marketing:
Once you have some foundational knowledge about marketing, you will be in a position to be an informed consumer when it comes to purchasing marketing services.
Just remember that your Marketing department is the revenue center for your business. Ignore it at your peril.
It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is, if you are not able to consistently make enough of the right people know you exist, you’re going to go out of business.
It happens every day.
Sales Coach
This is the person that you may need to help you close deals.
Your marketing program is what gets people to contact you.
But if you don’t know how to engage those people properly, you will mess up deals that someone who knew what they were doing would have closed.
Adjust Your Mindset
Sales is not a bad thing, unless you’re selling poison.
If you’re offering a product or service that legitimately helps people, then selling is just you presenting the right people with the solutions that you offer to their problem.
Your ideal client has a problem they need solved and you’re not doing them or yourself a favor if you cannot comfortably and confidently present your solutions to them.
If you think selling is a bad or unscrupulous thing, you are not going to help a lot of people who need your help and you are not going to make a lot of money that you could have made.
If you need help in this area, hire a sales coach.
Messaging Coach
You have to be able to speak about your business so that your value proposition is clear.
If you cannot clearly articulate how your business makes your ideal client’s life better, why would that person pay you money?
You MUST be able to speak clearly and effectively about your business.
If you need help with that, hire a coach.
Graphic Artist
Every aspect of marketing your business will require graphics of some sort.
You’ll need graphics for your blog posts and social media posts.
You’ll need thumbnails for your videos.
You’ll need graphics for any of your print materials.
Maintaining a relationship with a graphic artist is going to make your life a lot easier.
You can get away with using Canva until you can establish such a relationship, but designing your own graphics is a time-consuming task that is not a CEO task.
Your Time Is Your Most Valuable Resource
The more time you spend doing non-CEO tasks, the more money you will lose because it will take you longer to do an inferior job.
You’ll make more money by paying someone to do a great job quickly so that your marketing materials can go out into the world and bring you clients.
All those incomplete graphics designs sitting on your computer are not helping you make money.
Even worse are the graphics you do complete that do not look professional.
That stuff harms your brand and costs you money.
Web Designer
This is another non-CEO task that most business owners should not be taking on.
Your website is your storefront to the world.
If it looks bad, people will drive right by.
If you don’t know anything about web design, you won’t know if your site looks bad or not.
That’s going to be a recurring theme throughout this article. You don’t know what you don’t know, so if you’re doing everything yourself, you may very well be doing harm to your brand across multiple categories.
You can save money by using SquareSpace as your web platform. SquareSpace provides templates that you can choose from to design a professional-looking site.
That said, I’ve seen people use SquareSpace to create really bad looking websites that were so bad, I didn’t even think it was a SquareSpace website.
That’s the kind of thing that can happen when you really don’t know what you’re doing.
Nobody can know everything and that’s why you have to build a team in order to be successful.
Video Person
"72% of people prefer video over text when learning about a product or service." (Wyzowl)
"The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video." (Forbes)
“54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support.” (Hubspot)
Consumers have spoken.
You have to incorporate video marketing into your business if you want to be competitive. It’s just not optional.
Video marketing is another place where you want to make sure you work with someone who knows what they’re doing because of how powerful video is at sending a message.
You don’t want poor quality videos sending a bad message about your business. That would be completely counterproductive.
What’s a poor quality video?
Exactly.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
That’s why it’s important to work with someone who knows what they’re doing.
You’ll get better quality videos in less time and without the frustration that comes with trying to do something you’re really not qualified for.
Paying for videos that actually bring you clients is a better return-on-investment than making DIY videos that take up your time and produce no results.
Photographer
Like your graphic artist, this is another professional you want to establish a relationship with.
Your smartphone is a wonderful tool, but so is the oven in your home.
Just because you have an oven doesn’t mean you’re qualified to cook professionally.
If you’re not a culinary professional, there’s a whole body of knowledge that you do not have regarding the preparation and presentation of food.
Photography is no different.
What you think is an acceptable image may be deficient and brand-harming in ways you don’t realize because you don’t know what you don’t know.
A common place where people are unknowingly harming their brand is with a poor headshot.
Your headshot is your first impression to the world 24/7/365.
And most people use a headshot for five or six years, minimum.
That’s a long time to be making a bad first impression on a whole lot of people.
Saving a few dollars by not hiring a professional can cost you opportunities that you’ll never know about because no one is ever going to contact you to let you know that they didn’t reach out to you because you had a poor profile photo.
Build a relationship with a photographer who knows what they’re doing. It will make your life a whole lot easier.
Copywriter
Copywriting is using writing to persuade or influence.
You need this for your marketing materials. All of them.
Effective copywriting is the difference between lots of people reading your stuff and no one reading your stuff.
It’s also the difference between people reading your stuff and doing nothing, and people reading your stuff and being inspired to pay you some money.
You can spend a few years learning how to write copy, or you can hire someone who already knows how to do it.
Remember to think in terms of return-on-investment.
You pay people to immediately deliver results that it would have taken you months or years to produce on your own.
Social Media Manager
If you find social media to be a hassle, you’re not going to be good at it, which means you’re investing your time to produce poor results or no results at all.
This is another example of where you’re better off paying someone who knows what they’re doing.
A good social media manager will help you get all the marketing benefits of social media, without the headache of having to do it yourself.
Accountant
Doing your own accounting is not a CEO task.
You are not going to be as good at managing your accounting and taxes as someone who does it all day every day and has been doing so for years.
Hire a competent professional. It’s way cheaper than the alternative.
Accountability Partner
Running your own business can be a lonely pursuit.
You really need to have someone who can understand your plight and help you stay on track, especially when things get difficult.
Your family and friends may not be a good support system for you because most people have never run a business, so they just don’t understand.
They don’t know your plight and they often cannot offer you meaningful support or advice.
This is where your accountability partner is an invaluable resource.
You can brainstorm together. You can push each other. You can learn from each other.
Choose someone who is going where you’re going and moving at a compatible pace and with a compatible level of motivation.
You don’t want to drag someone along and you don’t want to be the person that someone else feels they’re dragging along.
If that other person is serious and they feel like you’re dead weight, they will cut ties and leave you where you stand.
Trust me, I’ve done it.
I encourage you to do the same thing.
You cannot get where you’re going carrying somebody on your back, which leads to my next point.
Your Inner Circle
I’ve written before about the importance of auditing your inner circle.
Who you hang around and what you read will determine where you are in five years.
Core Reference Books
Business books can get you by until you can afford a business coach, which is another professional you should have on your team.
Books will only help you, though, if you have the discipline to learn and apply.
If all you do is read and don't apply what you've learned, you might as well have spent that time watching TV.
Good business books are references that you read and re-read and re-read because as you're applying what you learned the first time, when you go through the book again, there will be more tools in it that you didn't see before.
You don't need to read lots of books, you just need to get everything out of the books you do read.
Here’s one of my favorites: The ONE Thing
Hiring Coaches
Putting education into action also applies when you are able to afford a coach.
If you're not going to apply any of the advice your coach provides you, you're wasting your time and your money.
This is why good coaches cost what they do.
Price weeds out the people who are not serious and who would waste their time.
They deliver results that are worth their fee, but they can only do that with serious people who will apply what they've been taught.
People who have to pay a sizable coaching fee tend to follow the advice and get the results they were looking for.
People who invest little will do little and then complain that coaching is ineffective.
That's why good coaches cost.
It weeds out the people whose work ethic, excuse-making, and lack of discipline are the reasons they're not getting what they want out of life.
No coach wants to waste time and energy dealing with those people and price is an easy way to screen them out.
It may sound harsh, but if you ever get into a position of coaching adults, you will understand.
Opportunity Cost
This is why you have to hire people.
Your favorite successful business person has a team.
If you’re out here trying to do everything yourself, you’re going to fail. That’s pretty much guaranteed.
The money you think you’re saving by not paying people who know what they’re doing is a false economy.
The money that you’re “saving” is only part of the equation.
How much money are you not making every month during the years that you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re trying to figure everything out on your own?
In Economics, that’s called “opportunity cost” and it can be expensive.
How many opportunities are you missing out on by “saving” your money?
You Only Get 24 Hours In A Day
If you assume just two years of experience for someone to achieve basic competence in each job I’ve listed above, how would you ever be able to amass that knowledge?
You hire people who already have that body of knowledge so they can apply their years of experience to give you the exact solution you need in five minutes.
All that time that you didn't have to invest in trial and error is where you get your return on investment from hiring a professional who can get you where you need to be today instead of in two or three or five years…or never if you go out of business before you can figure things out.
This Applies To Big Dreams Only
Some people are content just making enough money to get by.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone is entitled to their own definition of happiness.
But if your goal is to build a wealth-generating business, you will never be able to do that if you’re too cheap to hire people.
There’s just too much work to be done that requires specialized knowledge.
If you try to do it all yourself, you are going to fail. There’s no question about that.
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