“I'm at rock bottom financially. What business should I start?”
I took this title from a video by American entrepreneur Alex Hormozi, who in his early thirties earned over a hundred million dollars and now tells how exactly he achieved this and gives free advice.
At first I was skeptical about Alex's materials, as they smacked of info-gypsyism, but with each new speech (and it's hard to find anything shorter than 20 minutes from this guy) I began to trust his words more and more. I am writing this article based on his 24-minute video entitled: “I'm Broke, What Business Do I Start?”. Here it is:
I'm going to retell in my own words everything that Alex shares in the video, and also apply his advice to my own work. Especially since I'm currently working on developing and launching a new service in my Projectorate.
And, if Alex is to be believed, the scheme he proposes literally guarantees me the first five clients as a result of its application.
So, let's go.
1. What kind of business is it?
The first question that needs to be answered is what we are going to do. What kind of business? The answer to this question consists of three components:
Understanding someone's pain that we could eliminate. For example, a mother of four children spends a lot of time every day preparing and feeding everyone food. Pain? Pain!
Profession. What we have done in the past. What we do now. We use the profession we have mastered, and do not try something new.
Passion. What we are interested in in life. What we read, what we follow, what we look at.
When choosing a business, you shouldn't be afraid to make a mistake. It doesn't matter what we get as a result of the first attempt, because it is already extremely important. In the process, we will gain experience and feedback from clients, which will begin to adjust our course and lead to new ideas.
And then, after a while, our friends will look at us and say, “Wow, how lucky you were to choose the right direction for your business right away!” And we’ll smile to ourselves, because in reality, it was a long, iterative story.
So, I'll try to answer this question for myself. I'm going to sell interface audit. What's the pain here? There is an interface that I've poured a lot of resources into, but for some reason it doesn't bring the results I expected. For example, the site should sell, but visitors don't buy anything on it. I'd like to fix that.
My profession is precisely an interface designer. Nowadays, this business is called by all sorts of names. Most often, it is a UX designer. But my profession is actually much broader. I did this in the past, since 2005. I do it now. It suits me perfectly.
Passion. Here's the problem. I consider myself a professional in my field, but I don't have any passion for it. So I'll just put a dash here and move on.
2. Who is my client?
Who do I plan to provide the service to? And here there are three options:
The same as me. You can build a big business by simply solving a problem for yourself and then finding people who could benefit from that solution.
Those I've helped before. It seems like it happens that you help someone with something, without even attaching any importance to it, and they like it so much that they pay you for it. And you're like, “Wow, was that even possible?”
Those who, in our opinion, are clearly underserved. Those who need a certain kind of service, but for some reason no one provides such services.
Moreover, the third option is potentially the coolest and the least common. And, according to Alex, it is often resorted to by entrepreneurs interested solely in money. In principle, they may not care what they do if they see a free niche with underserved potential clients.
But the first and second options are the most common.
After we have determined who our client is, we create his portrait. To do this, we need to specify at least three things from the list below:
Age
Floor
Profession
Problem
Interests
If we had to fill a room with people who would most likely be interested in our service, who would they be?
The narrower our target audience, the fewer people. But at the same time, it is easier for them to sell something for higher checks. Because the solution to the problems will be as targeted, narrow, and effective as possible for them. And as a bonus, there will be almost no competitors.
So, who is my client? Well, it is more often men than women. Simply because over the last 20 years of work, they have been the ones who have approached me for interface design services. Perhaps, the same story will be with the audit. Age – 25+. Profession – entrepreneurs, developers, marketers. It is difficult for me to define the problem and interests, but, according to Alex, three points will be enough.
And these are either the same as me (it is hard for me to audit my own projects, it is as if my mind switches off and does not want to work when I try to critically look at the result of my own work) – I often turn to specialists for criticism of my interfaces, or those whom I have already helped before (I was often thanked for the audits that I did spontaneously, in between, during conversations on various projects). I am not sure about underserved. After all, there are dozens of companies on the IT market that do interface audits.
3. What benefits will clients receive as a result of working with me?
Here we also go through the list:
How my clients' lives will change easier?
How much guaranteed the result of my work?
How much fast will they get what they want?
What are they will feel when they get what they wanted? When will they find themselves in the outcome scenario they dreamed of? And, most importantly, will they find themselves in it in the way they themselves would like 🙂
Phew. If you order an audit from me, you can find a problem (or several) that prevent the interface from achieving its goals. Or make sure that there are no problems and that you need to look in another direction. You can bring new users to the interface and not be afraid that they will run away.
The result is a document with a report. It may contain several dozen points, but I will definitely highlight the most important one, which, in my opinion, will make the biggest difference for the entire enterprise. The report is guaranteed to list the functional requirements for the interface, the information expectations of the target audience, comments and recommendations for their correction, as well as a conclusion. This document literally guarantees that the interface was carefully checked by an external expert with a high reputation in his industry.
The audit is carried out very quickly: within a few working days.
What will clients feel as a result? If critical errors are found during the audit that prevent the interface from performing its intended functions, clients will feel happy that the problem has been found, can be fixed, and a new version can be tested and new results obtained. And if the audit shows that everything is in order with the interface, clients will feel relief that there is one less place to look for problems. Confidence, calm, hope.
4. What bad things will clients get rid of as a result of working with me?
Here is the same list, only in reverse:
How much will the lives of customers be improved? more difficultif they don't contact me?
Which risks appear if you don't work with me?
How much slowly will this have to be done without my participation?
What are they will feel when they get a completely different result than they wanted?
Without an interface audit, it may happen that every day its users do not get what they expected and leave. But they could stay and achieve their goals (and help achieve my client's goals).
You can, for example, invest in advertising, bring several thousand people to the interface, and lose them all because something doesn't work or doesn't work as intended. Or because the interface doesn't have enough information to make decisions.
I can't say how slowly someone else does an audit.
Often, the interface audit conducted by my colleagues consists of putting elements in their places, working on ergonomics and aesthetics. These things are also important, but only after all issues with the two previous stages have been closed: functional requirements and information expectations. The sales interface of, for example, a horizontal bar may be ideal, but not work only because it does not indicate the weight it can withstand, and there are no contacts with which you can quickly ask someone a question about this very weight. My audits are free of this drawback.
Often, when creating a new business, an entrepreneur does not have answers to these questions. What to do? Let's start asking our clients! What problems do they face? For how long? Can they describe how they feel in such cases? Can they tell what, in their opinion, the ideal solution to the problem looks like? What do they hate to do? And what do they love and would like to do more and more often?
A simple heart-to-heart talk with the client will be much more useful than independent guesswork and speculation.
5. Combine all of the above into a sales proposition
I'm helping %target audience portrait from point 2% get %all the good stuff from point 3% without %all the bad stuff from point 4% by using %secret sauce from point 6%!
Since we have many points, we can constantly engage in combinatorics and go through various options, constantly improving them and checking which ones work best.
“I help entrepreneurs ensure their interfaces are achieving their goals by identifying just one recommendation out of dozens found during an audit.”
“I help marketers make sure that the interface can be filled with traffic without the fear that it will drop off due to missing information or non-functional features and that money will be wasted.”
6. Bonus Point #1: Secret Sauce
We make a list or a set of steps that need to be taken in order to get the result. A list or a checklist – if the order of its execution is not important. A set of steps – if you need to adhere to a certain sequence.
Okay, so. I'm preparing a document with the audit results. And here's what I do for that (I get a set of steps):
I fix the purpose of the interface
Based on the goal, I derive a set of functional requirements. That is, I make a list of functions without which the goal is unachievable
I describe the target audience and where it comes from
Analyzing competitors
I analyze the interface statistics (if any)
I record a list of questions from the target audience, without answers to which they will not be able to make key decisions and will refuse to achieve the goal
I list all the comments found during the audit on different browsers, devices and viewport sizes.
I am writing down recommendations for eliminating the comments.
I would like to highlight one of the comments, the most important for the whole matter.
I formulate the audit conclusion
If you have managed to collect such a list or set of steps, you need to give it a name. It is advisable to use rhyme or alliteration.
Damn. Nothing comes to mind except “Interface audit using the Proektorat methodology”. But the main thing is to start somewhere, right? “Ten-step audit from Proektorat”. “Audit using the ten-step method”. Hmm. In general, I think the secret sauce should appear not at the moment of creating a new service, but after some time and a certain number of satisfied clients. I'll keep you updated 🙂
What is the result? «I help marketers and entrepreneurs make sure that the interface can be filled with traffic without fear that it will drop off due to missing information or non-working functions and that money will be wasted, with the help of a ten-step audit from Proektorat! And what – reduce it by five times – and you can submit! 🙂
7. Bonus point #2. How to get the first 5 clients?
You need to find representatives of your target audience. For example, start with friends and acquaintances and unravel this tangle from there. The task is to talk to these people. During the conversation:
Greet the interlocutor
Make a compliment
State the formulated sentence from the fourth point
Ask if the other person knows anyone who might find this proposal interesting
The fourth point is key, because it is one thing when we knock on the door ourselves, and quite another when it is on recommendation. You can start a conversation with a new interlocutor: “Hello! I was recommended to contact you by such and such…” And after such a start, the chances for a successful result are much higher.
And you need to do this either 4 hours a day, or until you communicate with a hundred people in this way. Either-or. Alex assures that if you do this, you will definitely get your first five clients.
Well, I'll try to follow the instructions right after I finish writing this article!
Phew, thanks for reading to the end! I wrote this material, first of all, for myself. After all, by retelling some material to other people that we consider useful, we ourselves begin to understand it better. And we also bring benefit to others.
I know that people here don't like links to Telegram channels, so I won't give you mine today (if anything, you'll find it in my profile). But I'll still advertise it. Every day I write about freelancing, interface design, and promoting services in the IT sector. You can judge how I write by this article.
And here is what I would like to ask you about. Above I referred to the videoin which I show my interface audit process. I would like to shoot as many videos like this as possible. And now I am at the stage where I am ready to audit interfaces for free (or rather, the payment will be my opportunity to shoot such videos with your permission). Therefore, if you have any interface and you would like me to audit it, drop a link in the comments and be sure to include the interface's purpose. And from me – a document and a video with the results. By the way, these are not only websites, applications and other information systems. These are also posts, advertisements, banners, and even your short bio in the profile. All of these are interfaces with their own purposes and they all work according to approximately the same principles.
