Learn how to build, scale and sell a successful business. Your true success will be based on how well you track what you're doing, and how quicly you make adjustment.

1. How to Build, Scale, and Sell
a Successful Business

2. Entrepreneurial Life Cycle
• Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics…
• Of the 100% of businesses that are established, about 80% will
make it though their first year
• About 65% will make it to year 3
• 40% will make it to year 4
• 55% will make it to year 5
• 50% will make it to year 6

3. Entrepreneurial Life Cycle
• 45% will make it to year 7
• 40% will make it to year 8 and 9
• 35% will make it to year 10
• 32% will make it to year 12
• 28% to year 14
• 25% to year 16

7. Entrepreneurial Life Cycle
• So within the first year of opening, about 20% of business
will fail
• Within their first 5 years, 45% will fail
• Within 10 years, 65% will fail
• Within 15 years, 75% will fail

8. What’s the Reasons
So Many Businesses Fail?

9. Top 10 Reasons Businesses Fail…
• Per the Small Business Administration, the top reasons businesses
fail include…
- Lack of Experience
- Insufficient Capital (Lack of Money)
- Poor Location
- Poor Inventory Management
- Over-investment in Fixed Assets

10. Top 10 Reasons Businesses Fail…
• Per the Small Business Administration, the top reasons
businesses fail include…
- Poor Credit Arrangements
- Personal Use of Business Funds
- Unexpected Growth
- Competition
- Low Sales

11. Top 10 Reasons Businesses Fail…
• These can be Summarized as…
- Ownership and Management Issues and Poor Decisions
- Lack of Capital and Credit
- Inability to Grow
- Inability to Handle Growth
• So now you know how many businesses fail, but most importantly
you now know WHY they fail… and what to prevent

12. How to be Successful Using
S.T.O.R.M

13. How to Build and Grow a Successful Business
• When you know why businesses fail, it’s much easier to grow a
successful business… and avoid the pitfalls so many fall into
• Firstly, you’ll need a good strategy to base your business on, one
that’s proven and can stay with you through your entire business
live cycle
• This strategy should be designed to help you get started, grow,
scale, and insure your business is ready to sell down the road… if
you wish to sell it

14. How to Build and Grow a Successful Business
• We follow a business growth philosophy we call S.T.O.R.M
• Strategize
• Test
• Optimize
• Replicate
• Maximize
• This same strategy can help you overcome pitfalls and find true
success, to be one of the 25% that’s still around in 15 years

15. Strategize
• Every business starts with an idea
• In the beginning of your business you’ll need to strategize on what
you want the business to be, and what it will become
• You’ll first need to think about your end goal… what is it?
• Will you want to build this business to sell, to go public, to have a
family member take over?
• Knowing this will help you get an idea of the direction you’ll need to
go

16. Strategize
• EVERYTHING you do in your business should actually start by you
having the end-goal in mind
• This is essential with you knowing where you’re going, and being
able to develop a plan to get there
• But you MUST know where you’re going to have a plan to get
there
• So create your company Mission Statement,
which outlines why your business will exist…
what its purpose truly is
• This way your entire team as you grow can
clearly see and understand your vision

17. Strategize
• Most businesses start with a concept, and idea, of a product or service
that people may want or need
• So in this stage you’ll want to figure out are you selling something that
people truly need
• To know this you’ll need to ask… what problem does it solve?
• Offering a product or service that truly fulfills a need and solves a
problem is one essential aspect of success
• If you have this, you have an awesome based to build your business on

18. Strategize
• The easiest way to succeed in business is to sell pain killers, not
vitamins
• This means to be a true success you must find people who are in
pain, or that have a problem that needs solved
• And your product or service is the solution that fixes that problem…
that relieves the pain
• This is much more affective than finding something that just
improves something that already exists, or enhances life without
solving and real problems

19. Strategize
• On the popular show Shark Tank, so many people say that once
they sell X amount of units, they can grow at X amount of pace
• But very few actually have a solid plan to sell X amount of units…
they don’t property account for the difficulties in getting to that
initial stage
• Overlooking those details is the number one reason most
businesses fail as outlined per SBA… Ownership and Management
Issues and Poor Decisions

20. Strategize
• This is why having a Business Plan is crucial… it outlines clearly where
you’re going and the plan you’re going to take to get there
• Once you have a Mission Statement, then you can develop a basic plan
of attack
• This should be a Massive Action Plan, or your MAP to get to your end
goal
• With these things you’ll know where you’re going, and how to get their…
basically you’ll have your Strategy
• Not having this is why many of the 20% of business failures happen

21. Strategize
• Make sure that getting access to money is one of the first things
you strategize about!
• After all, it’s one of the most common reasons for business failure
per SBA
• Start building your business credit RIGHT AWAY… it can supply you
the startup capital you need
• And you can get it regardless of other factors
such as personal credit

22. Strategize
• Getting vendor credit immediately, store credit within 90 days, and cash
credit within 120 days is essential to your success
• You can then use that credit to grow your company… instead of relying on
personal funds or profits alone
• And, if you have collateral, cash flow, or good credit, that opens up even
more funding options for you
• You will need money to grow, and if your only source is personal money and
credit or cash flow, you’re looking to grow at a snail’s pace

23. Testing
• Now you know where you’re going, and how to get there
• Now it’s time to start testing your concepts and ideas to see
what works… and what doesn’t work
• They key here is to TEST SMALL and to TEST CHEAP!!!

24. Testing
• I’ve seen businesses fail due to spending $50,000 on Pay-per-click
advertising… and not even getting 1 sale!
• I’ve seen business owners build 100 person sales teams to sell products and
fail miserably… because they never tested sales scripts and sales processes
before they scaled
• You need to test as cheaply as you can and on as small of a scale as you can
to find out what works

25. Testing
• Is your product and service well-received by consumers, do they like it?
• Does it work, does it help solve a problem, what feedback are you
getting?
• What’s the best way to advertise and get response… what’s the best
headline and message that gets people to respond?
• What’s the best media to advertise and get the best
results?
• Chances are you won’t known this early on, and
you’ll need to test to get answers

26. Testing
• For us, the message of… How to Get Credit for Your EIN That’s
Not Linked to Your SSN With No Personal Credit Check… works
very well
• Here’s how I know…

28. Testing
• We’ve found that using marketing on Facebook to our
existing prospects, is a lot more successful than
marketing to other demographics
• How we know….

30. Testing
• Give out information, and use sources like YouTube, other social
media, webinar attendees, to get a gauge on message and topics
your prospects want to know more about
• Use media that you can test small, and cheap, like Facebook and
Pay-per-click advertising to see what works
• What message works, what ad body, what images, you can find out
all of this just by testing small

31. Testing
• For us… How to Get Credit for Your EIN That’s Not Linked to Your
SSN With No Personal Credit Check… gets about a 30% more
response rate than…
• How to Get Credit for Your EIN That’s Not Linked to Your SSN
• 5 additional words get us 30% more leads

32. Testing
• This is why you test, and test small and cheap
• Does Facebook get you better response than PPC, or is direct
mail better?
• What words in your headlines make all of the difference?
• Test and find out!

33. Optimize
• Once you have your game plan mapped out and you’re executing
by testing small, then you’ll start to know what works
• Once you know what works, then it comes time to optimize what
you have preparing to grow and scale
• Optimization is crucial to grow, otherwise you’re building on a
busted foundation and your operation will crumble
• Remember one of the four core reasons for failure per SBA…
• Inability to handle growth

34. Optimize
• Optimization means many things
• Firstly, you must develop system for ALL that you do
• When it comes time to sell your business MOST of the value will come in
the systems you have
• Your business must operate just as well without you
being involved as it does with you being involved
• This means you’ll need to grow where YOU aren’t
the business
• You’ll actually need to get to a point where you’re
working ON the business, not IN the business

35. Optimize
• This is only possible if you optimize to become more efficient,
using outsourcing and systems
• For example, here’s a system on how we manage leads…

36. Optimize
• When a new lead comes in, our team works with that lead,
and moves them through opportunity stages
• By moving them through these stages, we then implement
automatic follow up…

39. Optimize
• It looks confusing because it IS confusing… but proper follow up is essential to
success… so why would we want to rely on our sales team to do it properly when our
system can GUARANTEE it gets done with minimal work from anyone
• This system is one of many we use with our software Infusionsoft
• Others include
• Billing follow up for collection
• Voice blasts checking in on prospects and clients
• Email follow up to ALL prospects providing quality information
• Managing our sales process
• Managing sales we have and client training
• And more

40. Optimize
• Another great way to optimize is using sites like oDesk.com to hire
contractors CHEAP… for less than $3 per hour
• They can be trained much of what you do now, freeing up time for
you to work ON your business not IN your business
• You can use them for web design
• Graphics work
• Video and audio production
• Virtual assistant tasks
• And much more

41. Optimize
• You’ll also want to optimize your marketing campaigns
• We get very good results on Facebook
• But by using their tools such as custom audiences, look-a-like
audiences, and pixels… we’ve been able to TRIPLE our
response rates
• Now THAT’S optimization!

42. Replicate
• Now that you know what works, and you’ve optimized it,
now it’s time to SCALE your business
• So now you’ll want to replicate what works, and fine tune it
as you go
• Now instead of spending $5 per day on Facebook, it’s time to
start steadily increasing your spend to $10, $15, $20 per day
• You won’t want to do this until you’ve optimized

43. Replicate
• I love a show called Bar Rescue
• They find failing bars, and make them successful
• And in every show they show them some things, then pack the bar and do a “stress
test”
• This test always shows the holes in their systems, and proves that they can’t
replicate without optimizing first
• These stress tests are always a disaster, and usually end up where they close down
the bar and ask everyone to leave
• It’s all about stressing their systems until they fail, to figure out how to make them
succeed

44. Replicate
• When you optimize first, then you can more easily replicate as you’ll
have the systems to do so
• And replication is really just about doing slightly increasing what works,
and improving as you go
• Slowly start to increase the volume of what you’re doing to grow, and
keep increasing it… indefinitely, unless you have issues, then you can
scale back and make adjustments
• Scaling is one of my personal favorite parts of building a business as they
truly hard work of proving concept is behind you

45. Replicate
• In this stage you’ll really need to focus on your Distribution Model
• Your product is performing well, and people like it… now you just need to get it out
there
• The faster and more you get it out there, the faster you grow
• So you’ll need to replicate what works, while focusing on improving and increasing
ways to distribute
• Online marketing and offline marketing
• Affiliates and relationships with big partners
• These are just a couple of examples of ways to distribute

46. Maximize
• As you grow you’ll need to focus on maximizing what’s working, while
correcting what isn’t
• You’ll want to maximize on what you’ve learned, to become more efficient,
and more profitable
• You can mainly do this through Metrics
• It’s crucial that you track ALL that you do so you’ll know what areas need
help, and to make sure you and maximize effectively

47. Maximize
• Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are crucial to monitor while
growing your company
• What KEY things can you look at to verify you’re going in the
direction you’re headed?
• Revenue, profits, sales, profit margins, new opportunities, return-
on-your-investment with advertising… these are just a few of
many KPIs you might monitor

48. Maximize
• Hire someone on oDesk to track your metrics, or you keep track
• But you’ll only succeed long-term if you track important metrics for
your company, sales team, advertising, and all other aspects of your
business… so you can improve over time
• Here’s some metrics we track…

50. Maximize
• Your true success WILL be based on how well you track what
you’re doing, and how quickly you make adjustments
• So track EVERYTHING you do, it’s essential
• If you’ve followed this S.T.O.R.M philosophy, you should be well
on your way of creating a business that’s sellable, and lasts the
test-of-time
• And, you’ll be able to avoid the pitfalls that so many fall into

51. Contact Us Today to Discover
How to Build, Scale, and Sell
a Successful Business