Introduction, Business Basics
Porter Gale
Lesson Info
1. Introduction, Business Basics
Lessons
Introduction, Business Basics
1:21:03 2Naming (with Guest Mike Pile)
1:03:46 3Legal (with Guest Alon Rotem)
1:00:35 4Creative (with Guests Jesse McMillin & Michael Dubin)
1:18:24 5Culture & Innovation (with Guest Mike Del Ponte)
1:28:26 6Web Basics (with Guest Joe Fletcher)
1:06:06Email Basics (with Guest Adam Peddicord)
1:00:07 8Communication Planning (with Guest Karen Halstead)
1:14:57 9Partnership Marketing (with Guest TJ Sassani)
1:09:26 10Experiential Design (with Guest Craig Min)
1:12:18 11Social Media (with Guest Rachel Masters)
1:17:45 12Public Relations (with Guest Paul Owen)
1:09:02Lesson Info
Introduction, Business Basics
It's great to be here, everybody. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the course first, and then we'll move into it. This first module is gonna be an hour and 1/2. But what we're doing, as you can see on the course cover, we've developed a program where we're actually taking you through 12 modules over the three days. So today we're gonna go through business basics, naming, legal and branding and creative. I'm gonna bring on three experts. I'm also going to be doing a Skype call with Mike he CEO of the Dollar Shave Club, which is gonna be really exciting this afternoon, and we'll have a couple of breaks. And then day two and day three, you can see those there. So, first of all, I love all of your business ideas, and it was finding when you were going through them. I love t shirts. I think my mom could use your online tech service. So I'm gonna be calling you next time. She has a problem. I'm gonna call you yoga. I love yoga. Breast cancer projects. You and I have talked about that...
. Definitely worked on that and very excited about your business and all your social media projects to soap. Definitely give me thoughts on questions that you have and stop me if you want to talk about some of these ideas. So here's our agenda. For day one, we're going to the business basics. We'll take a quick break. Then we'll get into naming. We'll take another break will have legal another break and then branding and creative and a wrap up in a Q and A. So keep your questions for me. The e book that we mentioned earlier is something that we put together specifically for this class. So it is actually 79 pages, and what I did was I looked at entrepreneurs that I thought were really interesting. Had great stories included all of their profiles. There's tons of resource lists is in the in the course book, a lot of exercises and then questions that you should ask with your team things that you could think about for each section and also a reading list and also some quotes. So it's a very dense book with a lot of great information in it. Module one Business basics. Well, first, I just want to talk a little bit about what is a brand. I think a lot of people, when they start thinking about a brand, they'll think it's a logo. It's a corporate identity, and it's actually much bigger than that. I see Tracy's shaking your head. Yes, a brand is really the summary of all the thoughts and feelings that people have about your product or your service. So every single touch point from how somebody is talking on the telephone, the follow through in a packaging, how they're getting T shirts, what all the materials look like. Everything kind of comes together and is builds whole feeling of a thought in the brand. So that's why we have so many modules, because it's actually not simple. You really need to consider it and think about everything that you're doing. So the foundation or the business basics in this module, what we're gonna be talking about are all the things that you should be asking and thinking about as you're starting your business. One thing that I used to say with my team at Virgin America was fighting mediocrity. That was a quote that I used all the time, so that could be quote number one for our people. But what that is, it's really trying to raise the bar and everything that you're doing. So in your taste, your company and your tech company, the yoga business. How can you raise the bar and do anything better than the competition? Just giving you an idea of the resource lists that are in the book. So module one, there's a couple of people in a couple of resource is that I would highly recommend. Dave McClure is a San Francisco venture capitalist. He actually has a company called 500 Startups. He mentors a lot of people. He has probably 20 slide share presentations on slide share. Fabulous information. Today with technology, there's so much that we can learn at our fingertips. And so he actually had a presentation all about the one page business plan, the one page marketing plan. We're gonna be doing that today. Seth Godin is also another author who is a thought leader of business author. I highly recommend looking at Boots, trappers, Bible. It's all about kind of an entrepreneurial mindset and how to stay focused and passionate because obviously being entrepreneurial is a great path to be on, but you need to have focus and commitment. And you don't want to go it alone too, right? You want to connect in with a community? You want to see what other people are thinking. The next two websites are definitely communities for entrepreneurs with all sorts of ideas and tips. Again, so much is out there now. We didn't have this, you know, 15 or 20 years ago where we have lots of contact and ideas. Angel list for people that are seeking funding in the start up space. It's a site that matches startups with potential funders. So that's one that might be interesting to look at. Kickstarter crowd sourced fundraising. We're actually gonna be doing a module on that tomorrow, which is quite fun and then app. Sumo is another one where you can actually get a lot of APS and kind of hacker tips to business. So email templates, productivity templates, all sorts of things where they're low cost but made for the small business owner. So this is just an idea of some of the types of resource is that are in the book. Each section has about 20 or 30 resource is so in Module one, we've got quite a few exercises we're gonna go through and the exercises air at the end of the section. So sit tight. I'm gonna have you guys do something called the funnel test. And don't worry, it's not beer bongs or anything like that. We're gonna talk about your mission. In your vision. We're gonna talk about what a brand book is. We're gonna do the one page business plan, one page marketing plan and then I'm also gonna talk about requests for proposal and why that's important to know how to do that. Jeff Shaking is said, You've probably done quite a few of those with your company. No way to fake hustle. Start off with a quote from a good friend of mine, Gary Vander Chuck, who is a social media enthusiasts. He has a company called Wine Library TV. And this is something that I just want you guys to think about that on this road. What you really need to do is think about are you truly passionate about your business? I recently wrote an article for Huffington Post about venture money and what made a company successful when they were getting venture money and a lot of the veces were saying they look for passion. They look for so much passion that you could actually walk through walls, right, that you just like unstoppable. So a couple stories about passion just to keep in mind. And I want you to think about your businesses that you're starting and really ask yourself Now, are you passionate about what you're doing? Jessica here in the middle. She's got the scissor. Jessica used to work with me at an ad agency about 15 years ago. And when I was at Virgin America, I called her and I said, I've got this great company and working out. You should come and work on my online team. So she came in. She said, You know, I actually I'm really passionate about Pallotti's, and I'm worried that this start up, I'm not gonna be able to focus on my passion. And I thought, Well, okay, well, that's honest, right? So she declined the opportunity. Here I am, looking on Facebook several years later, and she had opened up her own studio. So Jessica obviously made a commitment. She turned down opportunities focused on what she wanted to do was a six year process for her, but she now has her own studio and she followed her dream. So that's the type of passion that entrepreneurs need to have You need to decide. Are you ready to put this as a priority? Isn't something that you really want to focus on a couple people that we're gonna be talking about today. This is Kara Goldin. She started a company that went up against soda companies. She has three or four Children and she decided she wanted to have products that were not sugary, so hint. Water is her company. She started it out of her home. Edo is thes CEO of yes to Carrots. Now, a funny thing about Ito. He has worn the color orange every day for the last six years. Right? That's passion, right? He did that because it's obviously his company color, but it reminds him of where he began and where he started. And he also thinks that that color is going to make people happy. Get excited. So again, it's an example of passion for a brand passion for a company. And you'll also be have an opportunity to win some of his products today. Okay, so here we go. We've got some questions. We're going to start talking about one of the first things that you really need to think about our trends in the marketplace. And what trends do you have that are supporting your business idea? Now, obviously, Dan, with your company technology, we've got a lot of trends. More people are going online. They're having multiple devices, right? That's probably getting more complicated. We've got Androids and IPhones and we're trying to upgrade. So lots of things. Their health and wellness trends, air supporting the yoga businesses, fitness A lot of businesses are getting into subscriptions. There could be a subscription model for T shirts. We also have other trends, like aging demographics. So all these things are really important to think about now in your business, you might think, Well, why can't I just focus on what I'm doing and keep my head down? What I found over time is that if you research and if you keep yourself apprised of all the things around you, that's when you're gonna find those Ah ha moments. You're gonna figure out how you can do things better and different than the competition. Richard Branson. A lot of his businesses, obviously virgin, and most of you have probably heard of Richard Branson always said, Be a consumer champion. Put the consumer first. So if you're not out there thinking about what the consumers doing with your product with the competition, how can you put them first positioning again? This is a really important thing. When you're thinking about your brand, how do you want a position? Your company? Now, when you're launching a company, there's really two ways that you can do it. You can either do it different or better than the competition or lower priced. So you need to decide. Am I gonna price cut and go low, or do I want to try to go the branded route, do something different and better. So when you're thinking about this taking Virgin America as an example, our whole position was that we wanted to innovate and create an airline that people actually loved. It's a crazy idea to think about an airline that people loved right most people would think about, Oh, I lost my bags. I had a horrible flight that gave me peanuts, but for us. We decided that was it. Our business model was gonna be an airline that people love. So every single touch point, we looked at it. We thought, What's the consumer going to think about the mood lighting? What's the consumer gonna think about the seats? Right. So you have to keep that in the front of your mind. And if you have a clear position for your company, it's much easier to think about execution. How will you test your idea? Well, today, we're lucky that we can actually do more testing online. It was much harder, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, there's a lot more opportunities for testing things you contest. If people like an idea, you could do a B testing on a website. You can start looking at what's effective, what's not effective, So I would encourage you to think about even photographs with your calendars. You could test people's response. Which images do they like? Better. So I always think about that. And if you're asking partners, know how are you gonna test your core purpose? This is another thing that I think it's important. It's thinking about the higher level. What are you really trying to do in the one thing that's never going to change now, Dan, your business, your core purpose, maybe ease of use and getting people away from that frenzy when they have technology problems. Google's organizing information. Disney's making people happy. Zappos. It's not about shoes. It's actually about creating happiness. I don't know if you've read that book, but Zappos. Their whole position is about creating happiness. And what they found is that in their culture because of this, they have happier employees, people that are more motivated and customers that come back. They found that having a higher purpose actually elevated them beyond shoes to this great amazing rand. So think about that. Are you really trying to achieve something that's a little bit higher, Jeff for you with T shirts you might actually be giving people and experience of the the band there, remembering this entertainment moment there, remembering kind of that experience. It's not just a T shirt, is it? Right? Okay, the barriers very important to think about what the barriers could be in your business. For example, Karl with him water. I was talking with her about that. How do you think it ISS when you're manufacturing a product and you're the small bottler and you've got an order that's coming through on a big plant and you're going up against the Coker, the Pepsi? Do you think you're gonna get priority treatment? That was a big, big challenge for finding bottlers who would actually support her production line. Virgin America. Some of the barriers that happened in the airline industry and thankfully, Dan, you don't have to worry about fuel prices that much in your business. But for an airline, things like fuel prices devastating when fuel would spike all the sudden, our costs of operating would go through the roof. Swine flu? I don't know if you remember a couple years ago swine flu crazy for the airline. People stopped flying. So you have to think about Is there anything on the outside that's gonna impact my business? Now, with yoga, there could be a new type of exercise that comes in that people get very excited about Zumba Zumba, right? So think about that. Maybe there's a lawsuit. Maybe you have a name that hasn't been trademarked. Know what your barriers are so that you can turn them into opportunities and be prepared scaling and growth. Another thing that's really important is to think about how am I going to scale and grow now, Since I did have pre phone calls with a couple of you, I dio you know, we talked about this a little bit. Your business, Dan, it's just you. You obviously have the videos that you're gonna be able to scale over the Internet. But you need to think about this, Jeff. Manufacturing plants. What happens when you get that huge order? And you're like, Oh, no, I need to do 10,000 T shirts now. And I'm only ready for 2000 or 3000. You're ready for you. Ready for 10. Perfect. Perfect. That doesn't surprise me. So think about what you're going to do when you're going to scale, right? What happens when you get to the point? You when you need a new employees to help you with all the content or you need someone to help you with partnerships going out to get new yoga companies into the brand. What do you have that you can automate? Write down anything you can think of that you can automate their your videos air they all online? You ready to automate him and keep him out there? Yep. Yeah, especially for my side. I think spending the time on the front end to have the procedure down so that when things do pick up your pretty much ready to go in just the thing, it's sort of just taking care of a way. You know, if you spend that extra time, if you do it sloppily, then it's gonna be a whole bunch of issues down the road. So you want to take the time to do so? That's right. And when we talked to Mike from Dollar Shave Club, when we talk about his video, what happened when he got tons of website hits, he wasn't ready and his servers went down. So you need to think about that. The growth that could happen and be ready for it. Okay? Things to consider. Obviously, manufacturing economies of scale lots of times. There's a positive aspect of growth to where you can have lower costs. So that's a good thing. Um, and then staffing distribution. This is another thing that sometimes people think I'm just gonna market it, but you need to think about distribution to Jeff. You probably are out there selling really rapidly. I know that right now, your business to business. But you've mentioned to me that you want to do a consumer facing brands, so you obviously are gonna have to think about pop ups or retail location online. What's the distribution channel that's gonna happen for you? For us again using Virgin America as an example. We had this great product, but we didn't have a lot of the online retailers see orbits, the cheap tickets, those types of things lined up when we launched. You can't sell through those channels if you're not there. So what are all the distribution channels that can help you with your business partners? I am a huge believer in partnership strategy. I think that collaboration and innovation coming together is really kind of the new way to do business. In the past, a lot of innovation was Singley focused, but now partnership be cost effective. They bring new ideas to the table. For example, Michelle, I bet if you brought a bunch of yoga instructors together or studio owners together a brainstorming session with them, he probably learned so much about what people in the community are looking for and also figure out ways to get your idea out there. You know, much faster process how to run a fair request for proposal. I'm just going to quickly go through this. But the reason I bring this up is because sometimes when we're making decisions about partners, there is a payment that needs to happen. Maybe it's somebody that we're hiring. I have always recommended to people that you triple bid now, a lot of times he might have a limited amount of time. You know, I'm just gonna do this, But if you start getting into a process where you actually are running RFP said are very thorough. You might have lower costs come in because you can start negotiating things. You can save money. You can put together real selection criteria of what you're looking for. Um, and also, when you start bringing in other advisers when they want to know, why did you pick which partner you've got all the documentation. So running a fair RFP is is really important. Okay, Now we're gonna dive into some of the branding exercises that I want you to think about and use these as filters for the rest of the class. Okay, so the funnel test is basically a little test that I put together. Ah, lot of companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars figuring out their brand positioning. They'll hire multiple ad agencies, will have internal teams lots of back and forth. For example, there's a tech company you can probably guess which one. But it's rumored that there three brand pillars or the three core attributes that they use are simple, beautiful, an innovative. You can probably guess. I know Michelle and Tracy. You're both both thinking about it, Okay, why do we want to have three core attributes? It's memorable, actionable, right? And it's also something that we can do so in your company's. I want you to start thinking about your company right now. The photography, the breast cancer, the cancer work, probably causal, health oriented and empowerment. But think about that. I also want you to think about the tone ality. Do you want to come off as friendly? Do you want to come off his bold, athletic right? There's all sorts of words, and that word could be a very different trans different look for different companies. Edo with his orange. He's friendly, right and accessible. So here is the final test. He's have your three core attributes in the center. You'll see that where the three Attributes come across is the sweet spot and then the tone ality. And then down at the bottom, we will put either a mission statement or the brand strategy. So to give you an example, I want you to be thinking about what your company idea is or your mission in 15 words or less. So this is gonna be a homework assignment for you guys for tonight. I'm not gonna put you on the spot to do it unless anyone wants to volunteer. But we'll put that down at the end of the funnel. And then I want you to think about do your core attributes actually circle down to what you're trying to accomplish. So Virgin America. Now I know for the global audience you probably haven't flown on the airline, but probably some of you here have Virgin America tried to do everything differently, right? We had pink lighting in the airplane. We had kind of a purple monument at the front leather seats. Everything that we did was innovative in the category who had great food. We had food on demand where you could press the seat back and get food so you don't have to wait for a cart. We tried to be very hip and appeal to a tech savvy audience. We were the first to have in flight WiFi. We were consumer focused. Everything that we did, we thought about what was the consumer doing? So those were our three pillars were trying to be hip, innovative and always about the consumer. Now I mentioned before that Richard Branson. His businesses are always about the consumer, so that made sense to have that be a very strong part of our DNA. We wanted the airline to be confident and friendly. Obviously, in the airline industry, you need people to feel safe. You want them to feel secure when they're flying. You can't be this totally crazy, irreverent brand, right? You need them to feel like they could be on the airline and be happy. And the mission was to create an airline that people love. Now with that, what we learned in your one the brand strategy that we implied and that we used with everything that we did was a visual demonstration of the cabin. So everything we did, we tried to demonstrate to people what the cabin experience Waas. So our mission was to create an airline that people love. The strategy was to demonstrate it by the cabin, see the difference between those two things. The reason that we did that is because when people came onto the plane, we recognized very quickly that there was an ah ha moment. People walked on, they started taking photos. Was like, Oh my God, this is different, right? So we wanted that to be how we brought people into the brand. So I want you to think about what ISS the doorway in to your company. What's the way that we can bring them into your brand? What is it that they want to see? They want to talk about what's the thing that they're going to tell their friend about? Jeff. I actually have been lucky enough. I've seen your T shirts already, and I would think that people probably talk about they're very soft, like I think you're using like a special cotton right, like there's definitely, like a higher and appeal. So what's the talk value with your product? What do you want people to be talking about? The designs, the product quality kind of help make some, feel any thoughts on them? You know, we we always talk about that. We What we do is we make people feel and look as good as they are. And we do that through their favorite T shirt. That happens to have a brand logo or a rock and roll ago. And so you know, it's It's favorite, its current. It's hip, it's relevant. Um, but you know it At the end of the day, well, we love to talk about is not the attributes soft and all that, but it's really how makes you feel and look and so more benefits as opposed benefit focus as opposed to attribute for great, Great. So when you're looking at this, can you think of three kind of core attributes for your company? Um, I like hip. That's I mean, that's certainly I mean all the hit. Sometimes hipsters die s O. What we do is something that's timeless. Um, and this is great. It's a timeless, I think is certainly one of my favorite, because it is. I mean, this would be the type of thing that if the house was burning, you grab the passport, the dog and the cat on dure favorite t shirt type of thing. So, um, I need to think about what the 3rd 1 would be, but I think timeless. And, um and ah, favorite, um is ah, Is is this the type of thing? But, you know, you pick it out of the dryer and where it again, as opposed to even putting it back in the drawer. Great. So tomorrow I am going to ask a couple of you to share what you've come up with with your final test for your companies. So I love that. That's great thinking. So the next thing I want you guys to think about is you probably have some sort of business plan that you've been writing. Maybe it's multiple pages. Have a feeling down that yours? How many pages is your business plan? You know, I think I did a pretty good job being to the point. It's a sink. So it's a couple of pages, but it sort of really list that the core core pieces of info here. All right, Michelle of the business page. Okay, Good. Good. Might minus a page. Okay, Tracy. And there is to say, it's a rambling mess of probably about 15 pages. That's all right. That's all right. And I have all these ideas in my head, and I'm trying to figure out how to get them down on paper. So right now I'm in the process of writing, and so this is perfect. Okay, So good. So what I want you guys to Dio is actually think about If you were condensing everything down toe one page, how would you do it? I want you to pull out the most important things with your company and the way that I've built this this chart. Actually, I talked about Dave McClure, who had the slide share presentations. He has a great presentation all about the one page business. Plans have stolen a little bit of this thinking here, but in the start up world, a lot of the start up world in San Francisco is all about getting new members quickly. Right? It's all about how do we get more people into our company into our business. So looking at kind of three buckets of people with your brand, you've got your visitor. That would be somebody that would be coming to use your product. Once you've got a contributor, maybe they're coming multiple times or they're buying multiple calendars. They're buying services from the your site, Dan multiple times. And then we have your distributor who is actually helping you bring business into the company. Right? So I want you to think about in your businesses. Who do you have in terms of visitors, contributors and distributors? Very, very important, because what you need to think about is, once I have them coming in for trial, how am I gonna move them over to being a contributor? How am I going to get this person to be loyal? How am I going to get them to be a fan? The reason this is so important is because it's always cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to buy or get a new one, right. So those people that come in you want to make sure that it's a great experience and you want to move them in through subscriptions, loyalty programs, e mail, anything that you can do to keep things sticky so that you can build a relationship with them. I think that often in business we get very transactional. We just think about that one transaction, and what you need to think about is the relationship. Relationship is a brand play, right? A transaction is a price play. So how we gonna move them across? Distributor's. Obviously, based on what the business is, there's gonna be all sorts of different people that could be distributor's Dan. We talked a little bit. I know that you're going towards a target that's a little bit older. Um, forties, fifties sixties, right? Sort of the demographic, it's It's those that sort of have an interest, a passion for the technology. But it just so overwhelmed at how fast it moves. And they love this new thing that they have in their laps or on their desks. But they have no idea how to use it, right, so you might have a potential partner where let's think about where do we know that that group of people is always going to be right? There may be a conference there Could be a community of some sort. So who are these partners that you can look for? Jeff? Obviously, in your business, you've got distributor's. You've got partners that are probably introducing you to musicians to rock bands. But maybe you could give me an example of a distributor in your business model. Well, I left left to right. I mean, I think the way I look out the way you frame it is ah, visitors. Somebody who gets a T shirt is an end user. And where is it A contributor would be Somebody who wears it loves it passionate. And they tell their friends. Or they say, You know what? There's a company that might be interested in and such And then a distributor. We actually work with thousands of promotional marketing firms across the company that represent corporations rock band, so on and so forth. And then they actually are out there representing us. And ostensibly being are extended salesforce. Great. Great. Tracy, how about yourself? I know that you have the calendar, and if I'm putting you on the spot, you can always pass to so well, I mean, it's That's kind of why I'm here. Yeah, good learning from you because I have a lot of ideas. And, um, I just I'm trying to kind of focus it. And it's also with that is also, um, you know, kind of also narrowing down exactly what my messages. So that's I guess why I'm kind of passing the buck here is that I'm still figuring out exactly what it is that my messages good, and that's that's a totally acceptable and fine answer. So thank you for that, Emily. Um well, when we were talking earlier, something that resonated with me that she said about her company was that she wants Teoh Teoh. Have women feel comfortable in their skin after they've gone through a traumatic event. So I think that that's a great I mean for you. Yeah, toe, um, to kind of start activating people. The last thing that I would say on this is the revenue again. It's another thing that I want you guys to think about with your one page business plan, the different revenue opportunities based on the different person and the different group in the brand. OK, so and again on the brakes, we can talk more about this, but when you focus in, you can actually come up with a lot of really concrete and good information. Okay, Brand book. You guys are gonna all get a sample brand book. One of the clients that I advise Zo Ze has a brand book that you guys will get. Why is a brand book important? Well, think about Virgin America. They've got 50, employees, probably 1000 different companies under the Virgin halo. Have you ever seen the red not look like virgin Red? It's consistent around the globe, right? Brand books can help. You have a consistent look and feel it could help you explain to people what the company is all about. So I'm gonna give you one of those. Some of the things that could go in it would be kind of your purpose. Your mission, your vision. Ah, boilerplate. Your boilerplate. We're gonna talk about that in the PR section, but it's basically, you know, your description of your company and what you're all about. But going through process and putting together one of these books is actually an exercise that gives you a lot of clarity. Your values. I was lucky enough to interview Dick Costello, the CEO of Twitter for my book. They have 10 concrete values at Twitter every single week. He brings one of the values to the company meeting and talks about that and reinforces it. So I want you to think about your values. There's obviously health and fitness, wellness, empowerment, kind of ease of use a lot of those values happening in these businesses. But you're gonna want to know what you stand for. Right here is an example of a mood board and a boilerplate, and again you'll have this brand book to bring home with you. But the mood board is also important because think about a collage when you're just pulling images. Three or four photos. The feeling the look what a picture can communicate with your company. Dan, your mood board for your business is going to be completely different than Tracy's, right? Okay, all right. Moving into another one of the challenging exercises. This is a one page marketing plan now, because I've been doing marketing for 20 years, I can tell you that it has completely changed. When I started, we used to do marketing plans. They were annual calendars. We'd said there and we think, Okay, what are we gonna do on a quarterly basis? What are we gonna buy for TV? What's the print ad? It's not that way anymore. Today, marketing is non stop. It's what do I need to do tomorrow? What lovers can I pull? What's working in terms of getting new customers, its data oriented, It's online oriented, And so the exercise that I want you to go through and don't let this be overwhelming. We can talk about this to, like offline, but think about what is your cost per acquisition to get a customer. So what's your C p A. To get a customer? Sometimes in media, people refer to costs per click where they're CPC. I actually think it's better to bring it all the way down to cost per acquisition, so CPC would be if you were spending money. And it was how many people are clicking on your site, right? How many people are coming toe? Look at your site, but you wouldn't actually know how many people are. Am I getting toe by a T shirt? How many people are actually using the service? You need to start thinking about what your cost per acquisition is. Otherwise, you'll never be able to budget and figure out How much can I spend to get a new customer, right? So giving you this example? I've put a couple of numbers in that are airlines specific because that's what I was most recently working on. But taking email marketing, we are going to do a whole module on email, but email marketing, getting someone in getting their email database. I think it's actually one of the most important things for a small business. So I want you guys to think about that. But with email, what's great is that you can see very specifically what your cost is for email based on your sends and what revenue you're generating back. You have complete control of the metrics and knowing what the power is of it. You can look at all sorts of things. Open rates apt at rates. You could be testing it all the time for Virgin America. About 30% of our total revenue was driven off of email. People forget about the power of email. It's somebody basically saying Hi, I want to give you my information so that you can come and be part of my company. And I can buy things from you. Another example again. We'll talk about this, But these air I want you to think about all the different channels in the different way. You could get a customer, so could be an event. Could be one way you could get them. Another way that we were getting customers was natural search or paid search. So s C O R S E M. Okay, now for us, for the airline industry, natural search would be if I'm typing in Virgin America if I'm typing in flights and you wanted to come up on a Google ranking? I knew that as long as we were bidding under $8 that was effective. The way that we had set that was that are online travel agencies. Were you following me? Online travel agencies, orbits, kayak. Any of the people that were giving you a lead would charge us $8 to get a customer. So I knew if I could bring somebody to our website direct without the online travel agency, $8 was my my highest bid. Okay, so what? I want you to start thinking about in your business, All the different channels. And how can you bring in customers? So thinking about Edo, who has the skin care products? When he started, he had Home Shopping Network. That was one channel he had target. He's got CVS and Walmart and he also has direct on his website. All those channels are gonna have different costs. So I want you to start thinking about Dan. You've got people there coming direct to your site. That's gonna be one cost. You might do something where you go to an event or you go to a trade show, and what you would need to do is analyze How much did I spend? How many new customers said I get? Divide them out and you've got your cost per acquisition right again putting these CPS in place and you're gonna learn as you go, you're gonna change your numbers. But then you need to think about all your conversion metrics. You need to think about what are the events and the different things that you can dio the other thing not to get complicated, but when you're layering on social media when you're layering on all these different elements. I want you to start thinking about them in an integrated fashion. So, social media, what do we also want to think about? We want to think. Is there a way we can turn it into a conversion event and get somebody's email? Is there a way that we can get them from social media to our website? Everything that we're doing? If you start thinking about your customer as bringing them into your brand starting a relationship with them, you're gonna have a much greater chance of having success. Okay. Any questions on this? You guys great. Michelle, Um, I do have a question with a yoga website, a community website. How would this relate to a content site? I'm basically thinking of my readers and my my readership like my customers. Sure. Well, what you need to first think about is your business model And is your business model going to be one words and ad revenue model, and if so, then your cost per acquisition. You've got two things going on. One is getting new readers because you need the readers to sell the advertising. Right? So how are you going to bring them into your your site and reading the content. So that's one kind of acquisition and then the other is that going out and getting the advertisers you're gonna be getting them. So you have to figure out How much does it cost to get them? How do I bring them in? So you've got kind of two channels that air going at the same time? Thanks. So Kelly see eyes photographer, and it's saying, I'm having a difficult time tying this into trying to get my art out there. Can I branded that? Can she brand her art? Or is she branding herself? What is the brand for someone who is an artist? Sure, Um, you know what I think in in that situation? I would probably recommend branding her rather than her art, because it's likely that her art would change over time unless it's a one kind of look and consistent feel. If she's always gonna be a wedding photographer, then you maybe it's, you know, sticking with that. But I've always found that branding the person behind the business, uh, if it's something that is variable like that is probably a better route to go and a question border from Amanda K. For photographers. Again, As you know, Ah, lot of our audience is photographers and other small business owners. Do you suggest having your branding words that you were talking about earlier actually written on your website, or is it just keeping them in mind? That's a great question. Um, actually, I don't see those as forward facing. They're really behind the scene. And so those words, the brand filter the final test that's really for you. So strategically, everything that you're doing is implemented in the same way. But I wouldnt see your mission or your vision on your website. But that look and feel, what I'd want you to do is say, OK, I said, I'm gonna be friendly. Is this website friendly? A website that's friendly probably has type. That's easy to read and easy to get through. Dan Question. Maybe you're gonna talk about this a little bit later, but in terms of marketing yourself, should you market yourself mawr as an eye personal type of brand? Or should it be more of a we where you sort of when you say we it feels as though your brand is a bit larger and there's more people involved, and I think that there's positives and negatives to both. Maybe it's accustomed thing, but that's one thing I would love to sort of figure out what I internal voice is gonna be. Yeah, well, let's talk about that for a second because you already have a name where your name is my online tech guy. Right, So you've got a singular name, So you've already started to put yourself in that. But I do think that you need to be leery of hanging too much of your hat on yourself. Because when you're growing and you have multiple people that letter helping you because you're not gonna be able to do all of the business by yourself, you're gonna need to have Dan number two or Dan clone, right? Or Danny Danny, who over the whatever the names are, um and so you're gonna need to think about that. So I do think that you need to start using that you have a team, that you have a process that you are training people on Dan's process Dan's way of doing things. But give yourself that flexibility. So don't just hang yourself on your hat on yourself. All right. No question. Yeah, we've got, I think, one more than we can move on. Um, Shrew me is saying, How long should we be spending on a mood board in a brand of book? I can see where it could be quick and dirty or really involved in studied. Um, well, I think it depends on your resource is and your you know, your time allocation. But for the small business person, I do think that, you know, even doing a mood board where you're just taking images from a magazine and kind of laying them out and looking at them, it could be an exercise that could be just for you, right? If you're not at the point where you're hiring an ad agency and you're getting tons of creative done, I don't think you need to spend tons of time and money on it. But I do want you to have an idea for yourself so that you know where you're going. I have also seen people that once they've done a mood board or they've started to say this is my roadmap, that it's easier for them to get there because they know what they want to do. They know what they want to be. And so the act of creating some of these items actually gives you forward momentum and motivation. So my answer would be don't spend tons of money on it, but take the time to do it and maybe bounce it around with a couple of your close friends to This is what I'm thinking. If I had a company that looked and felt like this, what would you think? Great. So go to go the scrappy route. Don't spend the money on it, but try to get it done. That's right. We're gonna move on. So this, I think, goes in line with that question prioritizing. I think one of the hardest things an entrepreneur has to dio is to prioritize. And so I have given you all sorts of exercises already this morning and you're probably like, Oh, no, I'm overwhelmed. What am I gonna dio? Actually, I want you two to streamline and think about what are the three most important things that I should be doing. I think that often as entrepreneurs, we think too small we get stuck in the weeds and that you need to start elevating and thinking bigger. So Michelle, for example, might be easy to think about the one yoga studio that you could go work with. Or where can I go where I could meet 1000 yoga studios all at once. So how do you think about the big things to drive the business forward rapidly? So what I want you to think about now is prioritizing. And are you using your time wisely? Because all of you, your time is very valuable. I did hear you say that we had a virtual assistant that was in the community, but little things like figuring out what can I outsource? What can I empower someone else to do for me, for example, with some writing, Every once in a while I'll hire someone to interview somebody for a blawg, that type of thing. But think about when I start getting to the point where the business is growing, how am I going to scale? What can I do where I can hand it off? This is also important to think about. What are you best at? I'm not great at accounting. Thankfully, I have someone that could work on my books for me, right? I know that, Jeff. You have a business partner who probably you split kind of priorities. One of you focuses more on design. One of you focuses more on business. But you need to start thinking about that. And you need to think about Are you trying to do too much? The simple, clear ideas are the ones that are going to succeed. Especially now when there's so much going on and so much competition and so much out there. So think about keeping things clear. All right, So we did talk about this a little bit earlier, about faster, cheaper or doing something different. And so I am gonna put you guys on this spot, and I want you to tell me what about your company and Tracy? Don't worry. I could see you looking at me. Don't where you got you can always pass. But what about your business? Are you doing that? You think is different because the different parts is what's going to be part of the brand. Jeff, you wanna give me some thoughts on that? Sure. Well, I suppose er's two different buckets in ways. Answer that one is Why are we doing what we're doing into Is, was the product different? So I guess the first is that, you know, in an increasing digital world, it's a lot talking about social media and businesses that are all working online. Um, there's very few tangible branding things that matter. And so that's why you know, we saw that there was a niche to actually take advantage of that. And, you know, as it relates to branded wearables, there's a chasm between great brands and inferior branding. So we saw that, as in each to take advantage of from a product perspective. You know, as I said, I mean, our vision and mission is to make people look and feel as good as they are. You do that through, you know, the best fitting softest, um, best designed T shirts that you can put on your yourself and, uh, at the end of the day, you know, the simple, clear aspect is making people look and feel as good as they are. Great, Dan. So let's hear about your business. If you're going in and you were working with a client, what is going to be different or better about your service or your website. Yeah, well, I mean, it's it's true that there are many other sites out there that have videos, and there are some bigger companies out there that offer tutorial videos and do stuff. But the way that I want to separate myself from the crowd, I don't want to necessarily go the cheaper way. I wanna have some. Value added. I went someone who comes to my site to feel that that warm, cozy feeling like, you know, Dan is gonna help me out with this issue. He's always consistent, and he's very personable. He doesn't speak to me in a drone sort of voice and just very to the point, he relates to me. He knows the issues that I'm having right, And he has the videos, believe it or not, that talk about exactly what I want to fix, right being sort of personable and warm, too. My clients And you know, I think that this is a compliment. But I think you have that quality of that kind of that likable. Where did you grow up? Are you Midwestern? Don't know from San Diego, San Diego, but you have kind of like that accessible like that. This is somebody that I would want to have lunch with and talk to. So I think that you have kind of a good energy for that. So I think as the front for your company that you are gonna be very likable. You have to make sure that you have the credibility and that you don't take it too low. Words to, you know, to be too buddy buddy, that you want to be smart and likeable. But I can I can totally see that. Good, um, for my idea for Seattle yoga source, Um, let's see the way that the way that I see it being different, is it being unpretentious, very down to earth. And, um, I would like to really feature um, the sort of story of the history of yoga in Seattle. But now you've got me thinking about thousands of yoga studios to, but, um, I think, you know, I've got ah lot of passion for the stories. I would like to bring in research and educate people so that those people who think Oh, I can't do yoga because I'm not flexible enough right that those people aren't selling themselves short and that they would feel comfortable trying it. And then from there, building trust. Um, you know, I would like to help get the word out for, um have it be seasonally based, you know, retreats that are going on and things like that. Um, So, um, those are just some ideas, I think for Can I ask you one question about that? Do you have a personal story that's also important about why you're passionate about yoga or something that could show people why you're really excited about this business? I do. I've I've done three teacher trainings myself, and I've taught prenatal yoga, and I've studied it for, um, sort of on and off for for 20 years. And it's brought a lot of inspiration to my life. It's help me just to stay healthy. It's given me some practices, just Teoh, you know, that stay focused and, um, through meditation and things like that. So But I would like to, as I said, I think one thing that I would like to do is have it not be to New Agey. Yeah, but have it be, um, you know, unpretentious and nice. Comfortable? Yeah, and approachable, comfortable. Really? Yeah, with all of your company's, I want you to think about the stories that you have with the companies. And the reason why is that powerful brands? What you're actually remembering a lot of the times is how you feel and kind of the stories and the emotions that they bring up. And it's not necessarily the fax or the figures or the transactions. It's oh, I felt welcomed. I felt comfortable, I felt taken care of. And so stories like that can be very, very powerful. And just hearing that if I was, you know, a mom who wanted prenatal note yoga and I knew that you had that expertise is gonna make me feel more comfortable so brand stories and documenting everything in your journey to for the photographers that are online. Those stories are really powerful to I'm sure there's, you know, beautiful images that have stories behind them. If those air included on a website, it can be really powerful for your brand. Tracy. Yeah, and talking about stories. I mean, that's the core of my love. 12 Brand is that I want it to be about the stories of the women that pose and also if it's something, especially since it's pinup. Pinup doesn't speak to everybody. Especially not every survivor, so a one also create a community where they're sharing their stories and other, you know, mediums. I guess the biggest thing is that you know my my business. How it's different is that it's aimed more towards the Gen X is Gen Y's and millennials. So it's younger and it's, I think we need to kind of think about the way that we talk about prevention in a little bit different way because, especially when you're younger, you don't have a great as a great of awareness of your body and also the signs that it's it's telling you that it's sick at someone who is older. So I guess also, what's different about mine is to bring it in kind of a little more inspiring, more accessible way to a younger audience. Okay, great. So what I'm hearing is clarity around your target audience, which is good. I'm hearing kind of your brand positioning. I haven't heard what the business model is yet, so we'll talk about that later on how the revenue is going to be driven other than just the calendars. Yeah, that's very important. This so that will be important to you, Emily. Any thoughts you want to add on that? Um, yeah. So, you know, I obviously right now I'm working for a company, and, um, I'm really enjoying what I'm doing with the social media marketing. Um, but I did have an experience myself that I want to share with other people. And I want to offer my services in terms of, um, promoting health and wellness and inspiring other people that they can achieve anything that they put their mind to. Um, you know, I was on the 2000 Olympic team, but I broke my hand the day after I made the team, and I didn't even know if I was gonna be able to go. Um, so to be able to overcome that and achieve and and, um, really overcome an obstacle that I put my mind to it something that I know that that that happened for a reason. And I need to share that story with others. So it's How do I, you know, how do I, um, make myself accessible as an Olympian? As an Olympic medalist So I guess that's something that I could be doing differently. Um, in connecting with people, right? Right. And of course, now, with social media, I mean, if you think about it, we've only had that channel for 45 years that we can really aggressively connect with people based on stories and thoughts. So that's great. Do we have any questions that we want to go through from the, uh, the audience? Oh, Porter. We always have questions. Okay, good. That's true. Doing a star rest? Sure. Um, some some specific questions. Air coming in about different types of brands. Yummy. Holic says I'm trying to do something a little different Where my main products are pastries and apparel. Ah, friends suggested that. Brand them separately. A yummy holic clothing versus yummy holic pastries. My ultimate goal is to build one yummy holic brand. But I know these products aren't usually paired. Any advice on how I should proceed with that? Oh, my. Well, it sounds yummy. First of all, it's hard to not without seeing what they are. It's actually kind of hard to dio how it fit together. But, you know, if you could figure out the way that they fit together. Maybe it would be so different and unique that it would stand out right, So I would that would be. My question is, where is the overlap of clothing and pastries? I'm not really sure. Maybe they could tell us about that if I was looking at it, just, you know, purely as a straight business, I would have to say that they felt like they were different. But if we could prove that there's a reason for them to be together, it could be very interesting. So, um aholic feel free to jump in the chat room and give us answers to those. I mean, we can come back to it after great we'll import. I did want to share a swell. We asked people online to talk about what they're three core attributes would be, and to give us feedback that we could pass along to you. So I would love to read some of those out to you, Carol G. Embry says. For me, I'm looking to create an environment for healthy people, healthy pets and mainly dogs. For that is my gig, including exercise, sort of like a relationship between the owner and pets as friends is pals, including eating pals. So again, this is kind of when they were talking through their things. So that is what she is trying to create. Great. Great. And, you know, if one of you wants, we could do your funnel up here If somebody wants to Do I think the final Yes. Anyone want a volunteer, Dan? It looks like I see some. All right. Okay, so let's do our three circles our sweet spot coming here. What would be in circle number one? So we're talking about just core values somewhere you're accountable. Words that just represent yes, site friendly, friendly. Now, is this gonna be representing your Is this how you want your tone ality To be friendly is your overall tonality friendly pro baby. So let's just try that one down here. We can change it up, though. Okay? Okay. How about educational? Okay, this is when I wish I knew calligraphy. Right? Educational. It's a good word. Um, would reliable be good fat for consistency sake. Okay. And then I know about 1/3 just yet. Um, reliable, educational friendly, accessible would be a good one. I did think because it's on loan. I think of pain points to with technology that people get high frustration level. So you're you're helping that kind of ease of use illustrations, right? Like so I think accessible. It's a good one. Yeah. User user friendly fire. It's a good one. Okay, so we've got our words coming down. 15 words or less. Your mission statement. Sometimes I call this an elevator pitch. To where? If you're stuck in an elevator and there happens to be the head of the yoga studio and you need toe proactively, say what you're trying to accomplish, what 15 words or less now would my 15 words includes some of the words that we've already written up there, Or should it be different than that? It doesn't have. It could be different. Okay, so it could be something like to provide, um, to provide a friendly educational. Um, let's see. Friendly, educational. A friendly educational experience. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of I guess that's the end of a sentence. But I could I could I could expand it to include the video portion, or, I don't know. I guess that's kind of what I think is it all. Is your business going to all online? Are you doing in person too? Right now, All online. Okay, so it's all online. But then there's a portion of the site that also deals with the one on one where I could be there as a consultant to help them along to, um um, So I might add in here, just a little bit of what you're doing. So I would probably add online technology support online technologies service. And, you know, that could be like the framework. Sure. And then you'd probably want toe make the words a little bit more appealing and fun. But at least this gives you kind of an idea of what? That would be great. Okay. All right. Thank you. That is really helpful. To step through that and see it actually done for somebody. So that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Good. All right. So we got a little bit of clarity from from yummy holic that two different things, basically the clothing, the apparel that they're creating has sayings or drawings that are related to food on them. Like if you're familiar with the Vietnamese soup, huh? There is a shirt that they made with a pun playing on, uh, and something that I can't actually say on their um so you know, it's kind of ah, jokey saying, but it's related to food. And then they also make various food. That is Ah, let's say so, says the food foodie. Apparel is broader, but the food I want to serve our cupcakes and Asian street treats. So all of the, um, peril is Asian theme, right? Right. Well, you know what with with that bit of insight, I think that yummy should keep his businesses together because it does sound like a very fun kind of branded very creative experience. And in my head what I started to see where food trucks pop up stars. I could see how those things could complement each other, But I think what's going to make it a win is where people can actually eat the food where they're having the food where they can also buy the T shirt. Now Hard Rock Cafe. That company actually made a lot of their money at the beginning on T shirts, right? So they successfully brought T shirts and foods together where people then had it as a souvenir. So I would think of the food as the experience, the T shirt as the souvenir and that bring the branding together and have it all be kind of one. So that would be my my advice. But look for unique places where you can find people that are the foodies that are really passionate. I would also try to bring in some of the food influencers, food bloggers, those types of people into it find people that are, you know, writing food reviews, host parties, that type of thing, right? All right. Any other questions? We do have a number of questions. We still have about 18 or so minutes before our first break. So, would you like Teoh keep going with questions? Or would you like to do some more questions? And do you guys have some questions right now or anyone want to go through the funnel as well? Gonna do a funnel? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just a quick comment for everyone online. If you enroll in this course, which is free, just click the enroll button. You will get this the funnel test, little example here That reporter has provided so you can follow along at home as well. If you just enroll on the course page and to condemn with that nothing. Okay, so, Michele Okay. So, um, so this is great. This will help me organize my thoughts a little bit. Um, So I think one of the first pillars is, uh I would say unpretentious just for, um a vibe. Okay, Um, also ah, resource for information. Because I'm I'm envisioning different audiences. You know, teens, guys, you know, people older people interested. And, um, you know, like a athletes who are interested in building flexibility or other people who are interested in getting stronger. Um uh, coming, doing a search and then having this this site come up with information that's reliable, so trusted sources trusted. Okay, I put trusted in because that's what it sounded like you were describing. Very trusted. Okay, Yes. And then, um, for the third, um, friendly, I'm gonna put that as your tone ality again. Okay, That's kind of is there a health or fitness own a health? Um, I think that would be a bit a huge part of it. Yeah, well, I'd also, um, like there to be research. Um, there, But I guess that would be part of the resource would not here, right? Yeah. And you can streamline this down, but I think research and resource trusted. That's kind of your knowledge base. But I think Are you thinking about this as empowerment? Fitness, health? Leave those words striking a chord. Uh, what about community community? But But there needs to be health and fitness up there. Yeah, the health community. Great. And also, I would like it, maybe not to be limited to just what we think of yoga, but just, you know, people interested in bringing more balance into their life too. So I'd like to leave it open to that not limited by just being yoga. Ultimately, um, I'm a little confused because it seemed like when I went through the exercise for you that that the circles at the top describe what you do, and then down below it described how it made you feel. And when I see this, like, unpretentious feels like the tone like it should be with their with friendly. And so I'm a little confused is toe the relationship between the two. These ones I want things to be kind of core attributes with about your company. So the research, I think, is a really, really strong one. Um, health and community, I think, is a really good one. I think, Jeff, you might be right. That unpretentious is kind of friendly. So, um, maybe it's maybe you split them apart. That one is about the health and fitness, and the other is about It's a community where it's people coming together. They might be those might be your bullets. Yeah, you can put unpretentious down by the tone because it's a publication. So there's not really, ah product. Initially when people come in the door, they're looking for information. It's that feeling better, Jeff. It is. But But, you know, um, what I loved is how you always probe and wanted to be specific. And health seems so generic as opposed to Maybe for you, it might be expansion or something. That's that the dives a little deeper into health and the health certainly covers a lot of bases. But at the same time, perhaps it's too generic. I don't know. I think of yoga as, um actually going beyond health to that. I mean, I love your interpretation, but I think of it is very spiritual and that it's really the whole mindset and a way of being compassionate and kind of how you are in the world. Not just a practice. So is there a word that kind of conveys what the yoga part of it means to you? Yeah. I think I think spiritually wouldn't necessarily be a word that I'd want to use for this. Although I do think that that's definitely part of it. Um, but maybe mind body in some way, like the whole mind by my body balance. Yeah, that's nice. That does give us a little bit more clarity, right? Mind body balance? Yeah. I like what I'm coming to get. Great. Um great. Yeah. This is working. Great. When you ask me questions, pull it out. Um, so is now when we start to funnel it down. Now we're gonna funnel down, so we're gonna be unpretentious and friendly, but so give me your elevator pitch. So less than you know, 10 to 15 words. What you're trying to accomplish. Okay, So, um, Seattle yoga source is, um, a resource for yoga practitioners in the Seattle area and a media outlet for studios and teachers to, uh, get the word out about their offerings. All right, We're getting Teoh getting too long. Right? So let's try to condense. Sighed loudly. That Seattle yogurt source is a the trusted resource. The trusted source. The trusted go to source, Leo, go information, yoga information. Right in the Northwest or yeah, in this area. And eventually I see it attracting advertisers and sponsoring events. Okay, Okay. I think that, um, if you have yourself be the trusted resource in the northwest that the events and the advertisers you don't need to say that because that's implied. If you're the trusted resource for these things, that's where you're going to go to get all of them. So I think that that could be more explained in the business. Okay. All right. Good. Thank you. Great word. What I love also is that the internet is charming in as well. So some people were commenting about for you. Maybe it was using the word wellness versus health. Um, and so I really, really like that. And thank you guys for timing in first studio audience to what I also loved. What that you said was it's really helpful that your eyes are asking questions. Me questions. And that's what this course is all about is Porter is forcing you. Does not forcing tying your hands and tell you to sit down and ask yourself these questions. So it's that same thing. Well, you know what's nice about this? So is that once you have a simple little funnel like this, if you are starting to discuss partnership opportunities, all the sudden you can start thinking about OK, well, this is what I stand for. Does this fit with the other company? It can be kind of the filter that helps you clarify your decision making on. And it's just a really simple tool. All right. Okay. Throw one other. Yes, something you said earlier I thought was really powerful. And I believe he said that you want to be approachable and because one of the things that it's such a truism is that some people yoga is so fearful. Am I gonna be flexible enough? Am I gonna be ableto do it? And so to be ableto be a resource for people and be approachable, I think is really powerful. And so maybe that's a word that um, because that then opens it up where it could be somebody who's a 20 year veteran or somebody who has always wanted to yoga. But they're fearful of embarrassing themselves or not being ableto fully participating. Well, thank you, cause that's a key part of it, because I I I've heard your friends of mine say that, you know, I Oh, I couldn't do that. I don't look good in yoga clothes, or, you know, I'm not flexible enough, so just kind of, um, demystifying it that way. Great, because he exercise has been useful. I actually want to take us back to the cost per acquisition exercise. And you were single. How does it How does it relate to my business? And so if you guys don't mind Porter just really quick before you move on from that, um, there were a lot of questions. What is the sweet spot in the center? There were three circles overlap. Okay. And how do people use that? Yeah, well, the sweet spot, I always say, is kind of like the magic area. And so if you're doing something that communicates all of your values, um, that is gonna be where your brand is really coming toe life. And so for Michelle when she starts doing stuff where people take away Wow, that was really great research. But it also gave me knowledge about mind body balance, and I felt like I was part of a community. So maybe people are like talking about it. That's where your brand is gonna come to life. So what I always recommend is that people try to think about things that overlap, at least in two of their core values or their pillars. So for Virgin America, maybe it was hip and consumer friendly would be something that we try to find at the same time. If you are on Lee talking about one of your pillars, it's likely that you're starting to get a little off brand. So if you're just talking about community, but you're not doing any of these other things, there might be something wrong, right? So great question. Thank you for that. Maybe there also. You're not fully differentiating yourself as well because you're not getting all those core attributes. That's right, that's right. And so again, these air things, these tools, even though they seem really simplistic, like major corporations do exercises like this because it's also important when you have more stakeholders to make sure that you're all in alignment to that. This is what we stand for. And this is what we're trying to accomplish. And so I think identifying values, identifying your core pillars, all those things could be really great exercise to go through any more questions. I think we could move on. Okay. So let's just dio I'm gonna put you on the spot again because you guys were doing so good. Okay, I want to go back to this one. Okay, So thinking about a marketing plan and bringing in customers, and I'm gonna ask Michelle, do you want to be the guinea pig on this one? Or Dan? Either one. Okay. So what? I want you to think about her. Let's talk about the way that people are gonna find your site. All right? How are we going to come? They're going. They're going to come in through advertising, or they're going to come in through blog's. Well, I think initially, uh, well, so for me right now, I have I have about 25 different story ideas. I'd like to get them written prior to launching so that that part of is just ready to go. OK, so the stories, the content will live on the site. And then, um, I'll need to find ways to distribute those stories and get people to read them and come. Okay, So here's what I would say. Let's that's one of your channels is that you're going to use content to bring people into the business. So the content are you going to write it all yourself and it will be your own sweat equity. Will you initially, uh, okay, so that I would like, But I'm gonna have to find other people to help me out with that, okay, To be so at a certain point, what you need to figure out is that each story, when you're getting bigger, how much does it cost to create a story? All right, so let's say it's I don't know. Let's say for hypothetically we're gonna say is $ to do a story, okay? And if it's $ what we need to do then is to make sure that we're using that story as in as many places as possible. so not only on your blog's, but you need to start looking at. Where else can I put it? I can put it on social media. Are there other content channels where I can also put my blawg? If there's another fitness group where you can get a relationship with them, then you need to start thinking about every time I post content. How many new Web hits my getting on my site? So again, hypothetical. Let's say you're getting 1000 new Web hits every time you put up an article. These air just all completely made up numbers. But then you're gonna divide out Okay, well, my cost per acquisition to get them was X. So, you know, 1000 100 divided by 1000. You've got a pretty low cost per acquisition. And so you decide. OK, that makes sense for me now. An alternative method, maybe doing an event. Let's say you dio yoga dinner or yoga event. Maybe you're bringing together people from various yoga studios, and then you want to get the kind of the word of mouth. Be hard to track this because you're not gonna be able to have a direct metric back to your website. But let's say the event costs $200 right? So they have $200. You've got 10 people coming to do that, maybe their key influencers. So they're important to you. But we track at our website at a certain period of time. How many new users did we get in during a certain period of time? Let's say you got in 200 new users, so your costs for acquisition going that channel again very hard to track is going to be higher. So this is all hypothetical. But it's the way that I want you to start thinking about it cause you need to know what's an effective way to get people into your brand. And what are things that you can dio to convert people and bring them in, Um, email marketing again, a big believer in this and big believer in databases. So we'll be talking about that later on. But even now start trying to capture a database, keep track of all your leads because those leads are very, very valuable. Okay, Dan, I got another idea. That I think would work perfectly is that once you have your content or a great story. You can then be a guest blogged poster for another Blawg. Yes, you go to somebody else that has a yoga blawg. They might have a lot of viewers, and you could have just a snippet of your subject for that piece of content. And then using Google analytics, you can see are those clicks coming from that other blawg so you can get detailed information and a whole new bunch of people who like to read blog's. They like to be part of a community. And now you're adding, with your research sort of twist something a little bit different than what that Blawg has to deal with, that's all I would see that happening. That's a great way toe. I kind of do it another way is also to find your community of people that are influencers in the yoga or the fitness in the health space. So once you have an article, let's say, Emily, we already know that you're interested in fitness, too, and so is Tracy. You would obviously send them an email. Here is my new post. Do you guys mind retweeting it? You start supporting each other. It's almost like building a mastermind group of people that are doing similar things to help amplify your content, because again, this is This is your advertising, but it's in a natural word of mouth kind of way, and so you want to do everything you can to amplify it and make sure that you're getting the most out of it.
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Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Thank You so much Porter Gale I have learned so much you made me view everything in a more professional way seeing how the big boys do it made me realize the steps that need to be taken for success. You are a very smart thank you again for sharing your knowledge I have the title of your book stuck in my head I think is powerful.
a Creativelive Student
This is an excellent course which delivers so much key information to developing your brand. Highly recommended!