How to launch a digital lifestyle business

Now it's time to bring your idea to life. Also known as executing your concept. Also known as the hardest part. Miguel shares the main steps to get started with your Bliz.

There are many typical mistakes that most first time entrepreneurs are bound to commit when they start a business. In this lecture Miguel shares 6 tips based on his experience that are critical to maximize your chances to making it.

Here is a story about failure for not following the tips from the previous lecture.

A startup is not a lifestyle business but the process from idea to launch is quite similar. In this lecture Miguel shows a diagram that illustrates the typical path that takes a founder or founders from an idea to a successful business.

Every sound business should have clear answers to these questions. If you don't then you already know where you should do more work before you launch.

YC (YCombinator) is one of the top startup incubators in the world and one of the hardest and most prestigious. To apply you need to fill in a questionnaire. Miguel goes over it to help you see what the experts look for in order to choose the candidates with the best chances of succeeding.

Jason Calacanis is a top Silicon Valley investor and has his own test to determine if a startup is on the right track.

Coming up with ideas is fun but coming up with good viable ideas is an art and like all arts it's hard to master. In this lecture Miguel shares a system to come up with good ideas for businesses.

By now I hope you've realized Miguel loves spread sheets. They can be used for so many things among them helping you choose business ideas!

Some times coming up with ideas is not the most effective way of finding the best. The best business idea is the one that people are willing to pay for. How do you know before you build the product? .. ask them!

We have an idea, a plan to build it, what's next? you got it.. build it!
Miguel goes over the main steps to build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

Choosing a good name for your company or product is crucial to aid in its future success. Coming up with names is almost as fun as coming up with business ideas but almost as hard if not harder because all great names are already taken! Miguel shares some criteria you should follow to come up with great names.

If you take the process of choosing a name for your company or product seriously you should come up with hundreds of options. Now it's time too choose a winner but how? well, Miguel shares a great system that involves a spread sheet of course!

All online businesses need a website which means they all need an Internet address. That address is called a domain name and finding a good domain is almost as hard as coming up with a good name in the first place. Why? because most good domain names are taken. Miguel shares some tools and tricks to find good available domain names and where to buy them.

This will happen very often, too often unfortunately. If the domain name you want is already taken Miguel shares some of the options you have to obtain it.

Here are the steps required to launch your online business website.

The cheapest, fastest way to launch a website is by installing Wordpress. Miguel shows you step by step how easy is to launch a Wordpress site.

Installing Wordpress is easy but we need to do some preliminary house keeping before we start adding content.

Plugins are used to enhance the functionality of your website. In this lecture Miguel shares some indispensable Wordpress plugins that will make your site so much more powerful.

We've worked on the back end but your prospect clients will only see the front end, the facade, the store front. It needs to be attractive and luckily Wordpress makes it very easy to change the look of your entire site with a few clicks by using templates.
In this lecture you'll learn how to install free templates, where to buy premium templates and we will also set up the basic pages Home, Blog, About, and Contact.

The default Wordpress menus need to be changed. In this chapter we'll go over how to create new menus, install widgets to add more functionalities to our site and finally creating and adding a logo and a favicon.

If you want to look professional you will need an email address with your domain name in it. Miguel shows you how easy is to set up an email account with your domain.

The backbone of most online business is their email list and to build one you need a way of collecting emails and sending email blasts or newsletters. Here is how you do it.

The simplest way to validate a product is to build a sales page or landing page. Miguel shows you how to build one in a few clicks.

A great product won't sell unless people get to see it. You need traffic to your landing page and in this lecture Miguel discusses a few strategies to get your first visitors and buyers.

There are many ways you can validate a business. Being strategic about how you land your first customer can save you lots of time, money, and headaches. In this lecture Miguel shares how he managed to land a great first client by being very strategic.

There are many stories of founders validating ideas by being clever. Here is one.

All businesses have similar parts. If you plan to run a business you'll need to understand these parts like a doctor must know how a human body works.

Grumo Media like all businesses has the same moving parts. In this lecture Miguel shows how Grumo's business parts operate.

Another way to understand how all businesses work is by creating a business model canvas, In this lecture you'll learn about all the parts that make up a complete business model canvas.

Miguel likes to simplify things, in fact he makes a living from simplifying complex concepts into short and engaging animated demo videos. In this lecture you'll get a simplified explanation of the previous business model canvas.

All businesses parts can be identified inside the business model canvas and in this lecture you'll see you Miguel's company Grumo Media looks like agaist this model.

Small or big all companies have their own particular business model canvas. In this lecture we explore the business model canvas of three large corporations.

Once you identify and understand the moving parts of your business you should sit down and list all the processes required for them to function properly.

Now that you have all the processes you need to document them, delegate them, and automate as many as you can. Why? it's the only way you can scale your business efficiently beyond yourself.

Miguel shares all the processes required to run his entire online animation studio. Of course, they are all listed on a spreadsheet. How many steps does it take to do what you do?

Miguel takes process documentation seriously and you should too. How seriously? well, watch this lecture and you'll see.

Marketing is essential to bring in sales. In fact is the art of getting noticed.

There are many ways of doing marketing. In this chapter you'll learn 19 different marketing channels and which ones Miguel has implemented to drive traffic to Grumo Media.

It's important to realize that the typical customer never buys the first time they hear from you. There is a process that it's best illustrated using the sales funnel diagram. All busineess in the world have a sales funnel and understanding your own business funnel is fundamental!

There are many ways to create awareness and interest through marketing efforts. In the Internet the coolest, cheapest way to get traffic is by implemeting inbound marketing techniques.

It's important to understand the difference between traditional interruption marketing and the new cool kid in the block.

Miguel shows with exquisite detail how inbound marketing drives all the traffic he needs to run Grumo Media.

Google Analytics is an awesome free tool to understand where all your visitors are coming from. Miguel shows Grumo Media's traffic analytics so you can understand how he tracks his visitors.

Ok, inbound marketing is awesome, but how do you get started? well.. watch this lecture for starters.

Dan Martell is a very successful Canadian serial entrepreneur and also a marketing genius. In this lecture Miguel introduces his marketing Authority Engine. Basically and awesome way to implement inbound marketing to the highest level.

Pay attention to this lecture because it shows step by step how Dan Martell's authority engine is implemented.

Inbound marketing consists in creating and publishing great content on a regular basis. This takes a lot o work so it's important to be organized and having a consistent schedule.

The holy grail of content are positive testimonials from happy clients. Miguel emphasizes the importance of collecting testimonials from the get go.

If you want to really grow and grow fast you'll have to learn to spend money in advertising your content. In this lecture Miguel shows how Brendan Burchard spends buckets of money to make more buckets of money.

When you run a business your time is the most precious currency you have. In this lecture Miguel talks about how much time you should spend in marketing activities.

I recorded this lecture as an answer to a question posed by student Marlon Kwasnik.
Marlon wanted to know what kind of direct marketing strategies I've implemented to bring more business.
In particular, he was looking for ways to speed up the process of getting those difficult first clients faster since inbound marketing can take several months to start showing tangible results.
In this lecture I try explain what direct marketing is, different channels it can be applied, and most importantly how I implemented direct marketing at the very beginning in a very strategic way to land my first clients.

This is an odd lecture just as its very own creator which is me of course!
In this lesson I introduce the concept of algorithmic approach to attain success at anything by sharing the actual algorithm I employed (and you could employ too!) to validate Grumo Media and land a fabulous first client right from the get go!

Marketing is about creating awareness and interest to drive traffic to your site. Then sales takes over and converts that traffic into customers, paying customers!

There are a series of steps common to most sales processes. Miguel goes over them in this lecture.

If you are selling services like Miguel then you'll have to do countless of sales calls. Learning how to conduct a proper sales call will be critical to the success of your business.

Luckily you don't have to reinvent the wheel and in this lecture you'll learn some of the best strategies to close more leads on your sales calls.

Most service businesses have a dedicated person in charge of nurturing relationships with the best clients. In this lecture you'll learn the responsabilities of this person - the account manager.

Leads are the nectar of your business and they need to be cared for, tracked, and nurtured. Also you need a system to do so. In this lecture Miguel shares how he handles leads for his business.

If you provide services then you'll be required to have your clients sign a contract before you engage in business with them. Well, turns out dealing with contracts is a nightmare so Miguel deviced a semi-automated system to make this process as painless as possible.

***WARNING! This lecture requires basic javascript and HTML programming skills.***
In the previous lecture I showed you the overall workflow we use at Grumo Media to deal with our animation contracts at the beginning of each project. In this lecture I show you the actual script required to email a copy of the contract to the client as soon as the Google Form is submitted.

I hate accounting as much as you do, for that reason I'm not an expert nor I want to be, hence this disclaimer. However part of running a business is making money, and making money means paying taxes so you better take your accounting seriously if you want to avoid very expensive lessons in the future.

Grab your popcorn! Here is Miguel introducing you to the exciting world of small business accounting.

I thought they were the same thing but you'll learn in this lecture otherwise.

Single accounting is for lazy people and double accounting is for serious businesses like yours, right?

Ok, this one really had me confused at the beginning. Although cash accounting would seem the obvious way to track transactions it turns out is not the best way!

Fancy names for two types of bean counters. Ok, you better know the difference or you'll never make it.

These three concepts will show up again and again when you run a business so you should understand what they mean or you will suffer.

There are a lot of human entrepreneurs lived, thrived and perished without knowing how to read a balance sheet. Learn how to read one and you'll feel in some twisted way superior to the average earthling. For sure your accountant will be impressed!

All worthy businesses in the world have balance sheets issued quarterly or annually. Don't believe me? here we check the balance sheets from some of the largest public companies in the world.

To make money you need to spend money. Typically most of the money you spend in a service type business will be on paying humans to work for you. Unfortunately banks love to gauge innoncent business owners every time they move money from A to B. In this lecture Miguel shows you how can you pay multiple contractors and save a ton.

Being able to contract people all around the world is awesome cause you can access the best talent regardless of location. But when it comes to paying in different currencies, banks love to give horrible currency exchanges.
In this lecture Miguel shares several options you can use to save money exchanging currency. Note that the best system shown in the video (though TDFX) it's actually about 3% better than shown. I just didn't have the exact data until I made an actual transaction later that day.

In this course I only teach 0.01% of what is there to know on finances and running a business. Here are a couple must-read books that will give you much more to chew on.

As a business owner this question will for sure come up eventually. In this lecture you'll learn what are the advantages and disadvantages for hiring full time employees.

In this lecture you'll learn what are the advantages and disadvantages for hiring contractors. Hint, this is my preference for flexibility but not suitable as a sole strategy for larger businesses.

Hiring is like selling, well more like buying but you can use the same funnel strategy as in sales. The goal is to cast a wide net and then filter down to find the best possible candidates.

At Grumo Media Miguel has hired dozens of contractors. In this lecture you'll see how he has set up his website to collect job applications.

Hiring the best people is hard and you should take it seriously as your business will only be as good as the people you hire. Solution? you need a consistent and robust system to track and rate all job applications. In this video you'll learn how Miguel rates the top candidates for Grumo Media.

Finding great contractors is only half of the equation. The other half is keeping them! In this lecture Miguel shares some tips to help you keep your contractors longer and happier.

If you run a design type business or consultancy you'll have projects. Because completing this projects in time, and within budget is crucial you'll need a system to manage them properly.

This is an optional lecture but I thought I'd share my own experience with the world of project management software. This should explain why I have such strong opinions about this topic.

I've tried them all and none of them fit my needs but it doesn't mean they won't work for you. Here are today's most popular project management tools used by millions!

When you are starting out every penny counts. Soon enough you'll be overwhelmed with all the tools you can use to run your business. Problem is that all the good ones cost money and you cannot afford them all. In this lecture you'll learn how Miguel thinks about spending money on software.

Miguel has run his entire business for 5 years using this spreadsheet. It's simple, free, and it works!

A crucial and inevitable part of managing clients and contractors is giving and receiving feedback. For Miguel this is such and important part of running a business that he created his own set of rules to deal with feedback.

Being able to give feedback properly will either break you or make you into a great manager. In this lecture Miguel shares Grumo Media's guidelines to give feedback.

Well, you cannot give without expecting to receive. Being able to receive feedback properly will either break you or make you, specially is you are a contractor or dealing with clients on a regular basis. In this lecture Miguel shares Grumo Media's guidelines to receive feedback efficiently.

You did it! well, I hope you didn't skip many lectures but if you did don't skip this one because we do a quick recap of all the craziness we've covered over the last 100 lectures!

This is where I thank you from the bottom of my crazy Spaniard-Basque-Canadian heart for taking this course and for existing. Also I introduce you to some other courses I've published in case you didn't have enough of this rambling bug eyed ironman looking human sapiens. Thank you! Gracias a todos!