Take your Business to the Next Level with These Explosive Ideas with Steve Strauss: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like this old marketing. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to take your business to the next level with these explosive ideas. To drop these value bombs, I brought Steve Strauss into EO Fire Studios. Steve is often called America's leading business expert. He's an attorney, influencer, and USA Today's senior small business columnist. He's the author of 17 books, including Your Small Business Boom.

0:34Zoom. Today, Fire Nation will talk about how the way to get rich is to duplicate what you do. There's physical and digital ways to make money. Any great entrepreneur can figure out a couple of them and they keep replicating what they do and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Steve and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lance is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. AI technology is transforming the way we do business in the media landscape is fragmented.

1:05The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for an easier, safer way to manage passwords than a million Post-it notes? Welcome to LastPass, the most accessible and easy-to-use password manager on the planet. Visit lastpass.com slash fire for a free trial and get started today. Every login lives in LastPass. Steve, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. JLD, great to talk with you, my friend.

1:47And I love that question. My answer is don't follow your passion. Okay, you know, and here's what I mean by that. Look, we're all told to follow your passion. And in a sense, of course, that's great. if you're going to become an entrepreneur if you're going to run your own business if you're going to quit the grind and take a risk you want to do something you love I get it look you did it when you launched this podcast I've done it in my life my career, my business but your passion doesn't necessarily pay the bills I mean if your passion is 18th century Flemish architecture hard to create a business around that so you have to have your passion but you also have to have a market It's those two things that will create a successful business.

2:35Yeah, do something you love. Love that. We all love that. But make sure people love it too, and they're going to spend money to buy what you know and what you sell. That's my take. So I'm going to have to correct you, but by correcting you, I'm actually showing that your point is even more prescient and correct than people might otherwise think because I had no passion for podcasting. I had zero passion for communication. I had zero interest in microphone none of that I knew one thing I had to surround myself with the right people if I wanted to be successful and a podcast was the avenue to get me there now let me be honest my passion for podcasting has bloomed over the past decade like years 2, 3, 4 I woke up one day I was like whoa I actually really love podcasting I had to get good at it before I loved it I had no passion for something that I was terrible at which I was day one And that's a great takeaway, Fire Nation.

3:31The passion can come with time. And can I just add one thing to that? Yeah. What you did know is that there was a market for a daily podcast about entrepreneurship, right? So that is, you know, the interesting thing here. There has to be a market for what it is you want to do. So true. So, so true. And that's one thing that I always say is, are you creating a real solution to a very specific problem? And if you are doing that, you have a chance of winning. Now, I love the stories behind the titles of books. I mean, there's a whole story behind my title of The Common Path to One Common Success.

4:05We talked about it a little bit in your column and some other times that we've chatted as well. Why did you decide to call your new book Your Small Business Boom? Give us the story behind that. There's two parts to that. Well, one is my bestselling book is called The Small Business Bible. So my agent said, well, you know, we need something kind of alliterative to that. And so we kind of were playing around with different ideas. But how did we get to the word boom? Well, you know, look, as we all know, COVID changed everything. Some businesses, too many businesses went out of business, but others pivoted and even others boomed.

4:44I did a series of interviews myself last year with some PayPal merchants who really succeeded during COVID. One of them was this woman who owned these infrared saunas in New York City. Well, overnight, she had to close all of her saunas because of COVID. What did she do? She pivoted, and she started creating infrared blankets that she sold on home using e-commerce, and she makes more money now with her e-commerce blankets than she ever did with her physical locations. And I thought to myself, I've met so many entrepreneurs over the years interviewing people as I do for my USA Today column. And what is it the ones who are great at it do right?

5:25What were they doing differently, especially during the pandemic? And I thought, God, I've learned so much over the course of my career and in the last year. What if I took the very best ideas that I've come across from very famous entrepreneurs and not so famous entrepreneurs and put them together in a really easy to understand, digestible, usable way? Because that's what I'm good at. And, you know, teach people how they can boom even and especially actually almost post-pandemic. So that's the idea. There is ample, huge opportunities right now. And let's look how you can take your small business and take it to the next level, whether it's a single solopreneur business or 50 employees.

6:09Let's boom it. That's the idea. Fire Nation, I really want you to understand is that when you're trying to build a brand that has to mean something to you. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, this isn't Steve's first rodeo. I mean, he is now the author of 17 books, but everyone has a meaning. Everyone is building upon the brand prior to that. And now one thing that I want to move into, and this is going to sound a little harsh, but it's just the reality is sheep. So many people in this world are sheep. Not you, Fire Nation. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you were sheep. Sheep follow the masses.

6:43They just blindly follow the masses. You believe that entrepreneurs should do the opposite of being sheep. Tell me more. I do. You know, do the opposite. It comes from this classic Seinfeld episode where the gang is sitting in the coffee shop and George orders tuna on toast. And then he says to the waitress and Jerry and the gang, you know what? Nothing's ever worked for me when I order tuna on toast. I'm going to order the exact opposite of tuna on toast, you know, chicken salad on rye, which may or may not be the opposite. And as soon as he does that, this beautiful woman at the counter turns and smiles at him.

7:24And Elaine says, oh, go talk to her. And he says, oh, you know, I can't. I live at home. I'm bald. I live at home with my parents. And Jerry says, you should do the opposite. And so George gets up and says, my name is George. I live at home with my parents. How are you? And she says, well, hello. Great to meet you. And next thing you know, they go out. The idea is doing the opposite sometimes really works. You know, look, the Great Recession 10 years ago, the conventional wisdom was it's a bad time to start a business. But who started during the Great Recession? Uber started during the Great Recession.

7:59Venmo started. Instagram started. There is ample, as I said before, opportunity. When everyone else is retrenching, you don't have to retrench. That creates an opportunity. If you think for yourself, the conventional wisdom is conventional. I tell the story in the book, in The Small Business Boom, about Bill Walton when he went to UCLA, my alma mater. And he got there, and the very first day of practice, he's this highly recruited guy. Coach Wooden said to him, and Coach Wooden may be the greatest coach of all time, said, kids, we're going to learn how to tie our shoes. And Walton said, I couldn't believe it.

8:37What? What is this old man trying to show me? But he was doing the opposite. And what the coach knew was how you tie your shoes is important because your feet are how you play basketball. But it's maybe even more important than that because the little things make the big things happen is what Walton learned from this great coach. And what we can learn, little things make the big things happen. So sometimes you think you have to do these great big things to do the opposite, to make a change. No, a couple little changes in the right place, and you can really maybe take your business to levels you didn't even expect.

9:07So that's the idea of doing the opposite, right? Don't be a sheep. Think for yourself. Don't be conventional. Be a little unconventional. That's why we're entrepreneurs, right? That is literally the idea that I became or the reason that I became an entrepreneur. I've always been a little contradictory is a good word for it. In fact, I don't know if you've ever taken the Enneagram, Steve, but I, out of one to nine, am a challenger. I just like to challenge. And I don't challenge just like to pick fights, but just because I think so much can happen when we don't just agree with everybody, but we actually challenge what they believe.

9:43Even sometimes I kind of agree with the person. I kind of want to see what their defense looks like to learn more. John, don't you think that is the makeup of a typical entrepreneur, right? If you don't like to challenge things, you're going to end up working for other people and that's okay. There's all kinds of people in the world. Some people are employees and some people are athletes and some people like to challenge things and they become entrepreneurs, I think. So true. Now, one thing I want to move into is passive income. I mean, we all want to make money while we sleep. I mean, that is the dream.

10:12And I can tell you that dream can become a reality. There's a lot of my revenue streams that make me money while I sleep. What are your top three ways for small business people to do just this? So I'm sure Fire Nation has heard some of these before. But for so many entrepreneurs, look, most small businesses are one-person businesses. They're solopreneurs. 80 % of all businesses are one-person businesses. And so that can be really a challenge for any entrepreneur because if you're not doing the work, maybe the work doesn't get done. If you have a physical store and the store closes at night, well, what are you going to do?

10:47So going where customers are, where are customers now? They're all online. So a couple of ideas, of course, e-commerce on your own site or on Amazon or eBay. Look, selling on Amazon, becoming an Amazon seller is really kind of an amazing way to make some money. First of all, everyone's going to Amazon. Amazon is actually one of the biggest search engines out there. And Amazon creates all these amazing tools for entrepreneurs and small businesses to succeed. So if you're to create an Amazon store, they're going to give you the tools of these, you know, look at some of this great business for your small business.

11:25That's kind of amazing. Same thing with e-commerce. You can, you know, sell on your store, but maybe you don't want to go digital. Real estate is kind of an amazing way to make money. What I love about real estate as a passive income source is that you don't need 100 % of the money to buy a piece of property. You could buy – let's just use the example of a$100 ,000 building. All you need is 10%. $10 ,000, you can buy something that's worth$100 ,000, and you can leverage that whole$100 ,000 into making a whole lot more money. Now, what else can you do that? If you want to buy stock, you have$10 ,000.

12:03You're going to buy 50 shares of Disney. But what if you only needed 10 % to buy it? That's kind of amazing. You can only do that in real estate. So there's physical ways and digital ways to make money while you sleep. And any great entrepreneur is going to figure out a couple so that they can keep duplicating what they do. So I think, Fire Nation, you really need to realize that you can pick your lanes and start going down the path. And then guess what? there's opportunities for you to really dive deep when the ones start working that are going to be providing you with that passive income that you're going to be generating over time.

12:39And for me, I mean, you can look at our income reports. We have over 13 passive income streams that are coming in now. Some bring in a few dollars a month, some bring in a few hundreds, some bring in thousands, some bring in tens of thousands of dollars. And we've just always put more energy and focus into the ones that really started gaining traction and momentum. So is there anything else you want to talk about when it comes to passive income, Steve? What you just said is so important. Great businesses create multiple profit centers. The problem for so many small businesses is that they create one profit center, maybe two.

13:12They figure out a couple of ways to make a buck and they do that and they're great at that, but they do it to death and they don't create more. And the problem is when part of your business is down, you need other parts to be up. Amazon started out selling books and now what do they do? They sell everything. Or Starbucks. They only sold hot coffee. Now they sell all sorts of things. Why? Because you need multiple revenue streams so that when part of your business is down, the other part is up, money is coming in all the time and you don't have to worry about the quote unquote business cycle as much.

13:42When you do it the way you're doing it, John, the way I like to do it, the way I'm recommending people do it when I talk about it in the book. So we have so much to talk about here today, Fire Nation, that I really want you to realize. We're going to be talking about some big, big ideas about how to find bigger, higher paying clients. We're going to talk about the different digital tools that are out there for you entrepreneurs. And for those people that are solopreneurs and want to keep a one-person business as what they do, we have some stuff for you as well. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, picture this, you're at a party and someone asks you what you do as a marketer.

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16:08Every login lives in LastPass. Visit lastpass.com slash fire for a free trial and get started today. That's lastpass.com slash fire. So Steve, we're back and many people listening would simply love to find bigger, higher paying clients. I mean, hey, if we're going to trade time for dollars or if we're going to work with clients, we want them to be big and high paying so that we're getting a good return on our time investment. How can we do so? Each chapter of the book is a different strategy. That's how I organize the book. And this idea of getting bigger, higher-paying clients is a strategy. I've used a lot of them.

16:49This is the one that I have used myself the most in my own business that's been really incredibly successful. And the idea is this. Look, so many small businesses sell either to the public or to other small businesses, and that's fine. But the problem with selling to the public or to other small businesses is that they generally tend to have smaller budgets. But if you start to target higher-paying customers with bigger budgets, you are, as a nature of that, going to make more money because they have more money to spend. So who am I talking about? I'm talking about corporations. I'm talking about governments.

17:33I'm talking about high-net-worth individuals. And the secret is, and this is a great boom strategy, if you pivot your business and start to target customers, clients with bigger budgets, corporate clients, boy, it can change your business really in significant ways. And then once you do that, what's the benefit of that? Well, then you can co-brand with their brand, and all of a sudden you're working – like in my case, I started working with Microsoft. The first big corporate client I got, that's when the light bulb went on over my head. It's like, oh, selling to chambers of commerce who are nonprofits, they don't have a whole lot of profit.

18:13Working with Microsoft, I can co-brand with Microsoft. I can tell other people I work with Microsoft. All of a sudden, I started getting more work from other corporate clients because that's an impressive client to say you work with. So it can duplicate itself and really geometrically help you make a lot more money and have a lot more fun and even maybe work less. How about that? That sounds pretty good to me, Steve. And I mean, Fire Nation, I really hope you realize that this is a roadmap that has been proven, that's being used by people right here today and now. So before we do move on, anything else you want to add on this topic?

18:49There's two ways to find corporate clients. Either you find them or they find you. Now, the ideal way is if they find you. And how will they find you? That's because you've created such a valuable brand that it's out there and people hear about you. or your social media presence is such that people find you. They do a Google search or they're on social media or they find links and they find you. And all of a sudden, they go to your website or they go to your social media pages or they hear about you and they see, oh, you've worked with Microsoft or, oh, you've worked with X, Y, or Z. And all of a sudden, they're going to want to work with you too.

19:23So if you can create a brand and a presence that people can find, they're going to come find you. And then you really charge more because they're finding you. The other way and the way most small businesses start is that you find them. And how do you do that? Well, it's a matter of doing your work. You get online, you go on LinkedIn, you do some research, you find some companies that you think would be interested in what it is you have to sell. Then you've got to find the right people. And I tell you how to do it in the book, but I'm not here to sell a book. I'm here to help people make more money and have more fun and have a more successful business.

19:56And by targeting these bigger customers, finding them online, finding the right people, and then coming up with a proposal just like you would in business, pitching yourself and creating a relationship. There you go. Find them or they find you. And that's how you're going to get bigger clients. Find them or they'll find you. And Steve, there's a lot. And I mean a lot of digital tools out there for entrepreneurs. We're talking podcasts, webinars, live streaming, and that's just to name a few. In your book, you break down what you think are the best. Break it down for us right now. What you have to do is go where your customers are.

20:30That's really the idea. if your customers are listening to podcasts and everyone's listening to podcasts, boy, there's a lot of value in creating your own podcast. And I'm sure fire nation knows this and has heard it before, but by having your own podcast, you become the expert, right? You, you connect with people in your industry. People start to look to you a lot of value in that or webinars are great. Webinars are an incredible way to take your knowledge, your information, what you know, and share it with many different people, thousands of people. I'm doing a webinar in two weeks with Score.

21:07Typically, we have 3 ,000 people sign up for one of our webinars. Now, how amazing is that? It can be visual. You can interview people. Again, it's a great way to get people to find it. And one of the real values of a webinar or a podcast is that you're getting people's attention for extended lengths of time. And that is a really unusual thing online. Typically, people go to a website and they spend 60 seconds. If you're lucky, you know, a couple of minutes reading an article, you know, people watch a video. They want that video to be over in two minutes. But boy, if you do a podcast, if you create a webinar, you're getting someone to pay attention for 20 minutes.

21:46People listen to podcasts, as we know, generally speaking, all the way through because they're doing other things, maybe, or they're really enjoying the podcast because they have great hosts and great guests like us, right, John? Or a webinar. You know, this is a 45-minute commitment, but people, if they're going to sign up and watch your webinar, they're going to pay attention to it. So those are some great ways to build your brand, to build your expertise, and at the same time, get your name out there. And then what's going to happen? What we were just talking about. People are going to find you.

22:17They're going to come to you. They're going to hire you. We love that. We do love that. And Fire Nation, I really hope you understand that this is the power behind these different digital tools that we now have at our fingertips. Now, we do have a lot of solopreneurs listening, so let's just break it down for them. Can a one-person business actually scale? Absolutely. But ironically, you need a team to do it. So you can be a one-person business, you can be a solopreneur, but you have to figure out a way to get other people to do the things that maybe you're not so good at. You hire a virtual assistant to take some time off, to take some of your workload out.

22:57And when you free yourself up by hiring a virtual assistant, then you're free to market more or sell more or whatever it is you are great at, the reason people hire you. If you're not spending your day doing email and sending packages and all that kind of stuff, you free yourself up a little bit, then you can do more. You know, I am a lawyer, although I don't practice anymore. I came to my senses many years ago, But I had a partner that I worked with when I was just practicing law, and he would always say to me, Steve, you never get rich working by the hour, billing, trading your time for money, whatever it is.

23:34Even if you're making$100,$200,$500 an hour, very hard to get rich doing that. The way to get rich is to duplicate what you do. So let's say you're a writer. Well, if you go on to freelancer.com or any other of these other marketplaces, bid yourself, get some work. You can get so much work that you can hire people to do some of the work for you. By hiring out help, you as a solopreneur can be an entrepreneur, which is you're getting people to help you. You're getting the money. You're charging your clients a little bit more. and all of a sudden, you know, you've scaled a one person business in ways that maybe you didn't think you could do before because you're not doing all the work, but you're making all the money.

24:19One thing that I did have to do a deep dive about when I was actually in law school, I'm a dropout, Steve. So I'm not even a law school graduate. I'm a law school dropout. Thank God. Would have wasted so much of my time. So much of my time. But, you know, one thing that I did think about when I was in law school was like, you know, it doesn't matter how many dollars per hour I'm making because I'm going to be miserable and I'm never going to achieve the type of lifestyle freedom that I want. And that finally gave me the courage to just depart from that. So that was just kind of a little takeaway into a JLD's past year.