What does it mean to validate a business? For me, your business is validated if someone pays you, for your business idea, for your product or for your service. So you'll be able to make your first dollar in this business if you haven't already and you get to leave with your very own lift magnet. What is the lift magnet? Sometimes, when you go to people's page and they say, well, I'll give you this free download, this free audio, this free checklist if you give us your email address. The value is in their email address so when you leave this challenge, you will also have your own freebie, something to exchange for their email address. So that's cool. I think it's cool because I didn't know about freebies for a while. So how important they are for building your list and being able to help people clarify what you do in a way that they can digest it easily. I think that's pretty cool and I'm really excited.
So we already have people in there sharing what their business idea is and the cool part is how I set up the challenge is you'll have enough time to validate. If one of your ideas don't validate, then you have enough time to pick another idea to validate it, you'll have a validated business idea by the time you leave the challenge, so that's exciting too. One of the things that I wanted to come on here and talk about is how do you know if it's a good idea for you to be starting a business? How do you know if your skills, your hard-earned skills that you've already learned, whether it's a service like being a coach, helping someone with their résumé, helping people with their books, helping people structure their networks, helping people do an assessment in their business. You already know how to do those things already but what you're not sure of is if it will support a business for you.
What I want you to think about is, is this skill something that you're good at? Is it something that people need? You already kind of have an idea of who needs it already and you kind of don't love it. You don't have to love it. One thing about passion is you don't just always start out passionate. Just think about those arranged marriages where they don't know that other person, that marriage is arranged, but they grow to love each other and respect each other just because they keep investing in it and that's what you would do with your business. It would turn into a passion because you would continue to invest in it but you may not be sure if your idea or you may not even know if you have an idea. You may not even know what you're good at. You may not even know. You may be thinking…Well, why would I even start a business? What would I even do? I don't know how to do anything. We all have superpowers, right? But the thing is, our superpowers don't work on us. They work on other people so I would ask you to do this one thing to see if you could be an entrepreneur or someone that has a side hustle. (1) Ask your friends. Ask your family, what am I good at? What do I know how to do? One of the things that my sister told me that I was good at. She said that I ask really good questions and you can put that on the scale of like, oh, you just nosy. I'm not nosy. I just I need the information from you so I can process it and give it back to you in the best way that you need to receive it in the form of a business idea, a conversation or a prayer. So what are your friends and family tell you that you're good at? Ask them what it is and (2) do you want to make extra money? This is the part that's important so it's not about the money so don't think of this extra money, this extra earned money about that money but you've been wanting to invest more, but not investing for investing stake. You want to invest more because you want to be able to retire and live out of the country. So you want to be able to earn more money to be able to live out of the country when you want. When the world opens up, you want your vacations to be bigger and more and see better places, better quality places. That is why you want to earn more money. You want to be able to send your kids to college paid for because that wasn't something that you got to experience from your parents. It's your reason that it’s gives you something to strive for. So I would think, what do I want to do with the money that I would earn from this additional stream of income and I know you guys have all heard that we should have seven streams of income and here in this life of COVID, it makes it hard to trust and believe in our main stream of income, that's our job, right? Like I said before, I worked part time for Southwest, but because of COVID and because of my respiratory issues, I haven't been back to work and that's a stream of income that I can't verify or validate or count on anymore. Being able to even use your stream of income to replace part of the responsibility of your job is it's huge, it's powerful, it's pretty exciting that you will have the power to do that for yourself and last but not least, I just want you to know that just because you decide on a service that you provide, like coaching or being a consultant or providing assessments or you make a product. I have two people in our community that she's crocheting like home goods and crafty, cool things. Someone that makes these amazing personalized candles, that you can have your own candle light. You can white label but just because the way one is making candles today doesn't mean she has to make candles a year from now. You don't have to lock in to your business or your side as a living entity. It is fluid. It grows as you grow. If you want to pivot, you can so know that you are not locked into a business or side hustle because you decided to start it or try it out. And that's what's cool, right?
How do you know if your hard-earned skills can be or should be a business or a side hustle? Ask your friends what are you good at. What am I good at? What do I know how to do? Why do you come to me? Am I really good at being handy? Am I really good at helping people, get their to-do list, to be able to give them a good structure of like, well, do this, you know, doing triage on their list of things as your friends and family, what are you what are you good at? And then decide what you would use the money for. So not so much, I want to make a thousand dollars. I want to make five hundred dollars. Think about the bigger picture as in what you would want to use the money for. Pay off your kid's college, pay off your home early, buy another investment property. What would you use the money for and think about it and this should be something fun, something exciting, something engaging, something that moves you forward and get you excited about watching that and then knowing that you're not locked in to a specific business, or side hustle just because you started it. And last but not least, entrepreneurship is a vehicle for healing. It's a vehicle for health. It's a vehicle for legacy. As an entrepreneur, I didn't start out wanting to be an entrepreneur. I just needed something to do. I needed something to help me have purpose, something to use the skills that I already learned in the military. I had did multilevel marketing a little bit, and just being able to use those skills that I already knew how to do and it just kind of happened but those skills helped me transition, helped me with the work part of the emotional part of my transition from the military because it gave me something to do. It gave me somewhere to be and allow me to talk to people. It allowed me to be able to listen to their conversations and hear them in solutions. I would hear them. Tell me what they needed or what they had or didn't have, and I was able to listen, I'm able to listen to them and know how to solve their problems and you know how to do that, too, right? So I know that entrepreneurship can be a vehicle for helping and healing and also being a part of helping out of your community so consider it.
