In earlier stories section, you might have seen a common pattern with other affiliate agents that have built a successful business on the Hefe Platform. If you didn't catch it, let me make it clear now. They knew their market.
Skills that Pay the Bills
Market is a fancy word for the area or kind of business you are focusing on initially. Usually it the kind of work you are already doing today using your skills that presently pays the bills. If you are a homeowner or in construction, you know homes and know what people need. If you are a student or a parent, you know learning and tutoring. If you are a day worker, you know where workers hang out looking for jobs. You can also drop a printout flyer with each of the bosses coming to pick up day workers. This little bit of knowledge will help you get early success quickly. Before you know it, you could be earning a few hundred dollars a week by focusing on one market in your area.
If you don’t know any markets or have skills that pay the bills, make friends that do. Because as the old saying goes… “Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME.”
Assuming you know will lead you no where quick. And don’t assume your buddies know either. Keep asking everyone and anyone for help. Even if they tell you the same thing and it is hard to listen, there is always a golden nugget there to be found.
From there, once you get sustainable traction, you can branch out into other towns and locations in the same market. Or extend into other related markets in the same area by learning the business. Day laborers can do more than work for bosses; they can take on homeowner work, hauling work, etc. Just like a student tutor can take on other work like filing papers, collecting signatures, etc. These are called "adjacent markets" in business-speak.
The big point is to have razor focus on a single market that you know well until you are a master of that market. Bouncing around will never get substantial success in any given market, and you will never earn good money resulting in you giving up. Focus is everything.
Business Basics
As an affiliate agent, you own and run your business. Beyond the basic platform rules and policies, you accepted when you joined our affiliate program, we take no part in telling you how to operate and grow your business. As your network earns, you manage those proceeds as you see fit. It is your responsibility to know how to run an affiliate business properly and legally.
The requirements of setting up a business is different in each city, county, and state. You can visit your local Small Business Administration (SBA) office, City Hall Website, or running a simple Google search will enable you to understand the requirements, steps, and process. The paperwork is usually straightforward, and the fees are minimal. Whatever you do, don't get stressed out about these steps. Like we learned with Hit-Lists, it just another list of todos to get done.
In many cases, you don't need to get this paperwork in order until you are earning a decent amount of money as you are running an untraditional business that may not have established regulations in your area. Then it becomes a matter of taking advantage of the tax system to your benefit.
The concept of "Earn-Spend-Tax" which enables you to write off many business-related expenses. Instead of paying for that $70,000 Ford Raptor out of a paycheck where the government has already collected taxes from, you pay for it with pre-tax money. Reducing the amount of money left over for the government to tax. Employees live in a “Earn-Tax-Spend” world, meaning the government takes the money before they had a chance to spend it. With the “Earn-Spend-Tax” model of operating, you are buying that truck for 30-50% less than what you would pay as a regular employee collecting a traditional paycheck. Think about that a bit.
Bear in mind that the government wants you only to use that vehicle for business purposes and have another personal vehicle for non-business trips. As an affiliate, you are always working, so the lines gets kind of grey. Likewise, I know more than a couple of folks who own very expensive supercars and hotrods that they use as a marketing asset to attract attention and generate business leads at Cars & Coffee events. Since the vehicle is a marketing asset, it is an entirely acceptable write-off in the government's eyes. As always, consult a CPA for what you need to do to keep it legit. They probably make you log every trip as the IRS requires.
Keep it clean.
The biggest thing you need to is make sure you keep your affiliate income money separate from your day-to-day personal expenses. Route your Stripe deposits to a clean checking or debit account, which will only have business-related expenses. If you don't want to go to your local bank, you can setup a Greendot account online in minutes. Keep all your receipts. Again, a local CPA will be able to help you figure all this out when the time comes.
Now, I am not saying you need to know everything and do everything right away to get started. You don't need to know how to operate a business to be a successful business person. You can learn as you go or hire folks to help you. Just pace yourself and put together a separate "business checklist" of things you need to do, learn and take action on.
No such thing as a dumb question.
As you enroll businesses onto the platform, ask many dumb questions to those local business owners. Those questions become a conversation starters that enables you to build strong relationships with the very people you are onboarding into the Hefe platform. And they will be happy to explain the ropes and mentor you. Ask them to mentor you. While they might not want to spend more than 90 seconds being sold by you about the Hefe Platform; when you strike the right emotional cord, you might find yourself on their private plane flying to fancy dinner in another city that evening. The last time I did it, I found myself in Phoenix hanging out at a sports event listening to this wealthy individual lamenting about his wife always taking his private jet when he needs it, so he was buying a second one. It's amazing when you stop selling and start listening, the world opens up for you. Real business people love helping grow new business people, freeing individuals from the bondage of a paycheck.
Once you master the art of setting up a business, it becomes a powerful tool in onboarding folks with skills to start building their own small garage-based business. You become the trusted expert in your local community about what it takes to start and operate a business. Pretty soon, your local network of friends are the kind of friends you want and might not have right now.
Now I glossed over a lot of business basics. I am not worried, nor should you. As you follow the rabbit hole down, what you need to do will appear, and you will handle it like everything else in your life from now on. Like a Boss, a Jefe running your own business on Hefe.
Focus makes your plan simple.
Razor focus is something I stressed above. Being razor focus makes everything simpler and faster. Say you start getting house cleaners on the platform and going house-to-house in your community with a simple flyer. It will take a bit of time to figure what words you need to say to get folks to trust you and adopt the cleaners you enrolled onto Hefe. Maybe it is the price, perhaps it is flexibility, late hours, so forth. Something you need to say or do in the right order will enable you to close the deals and get people onto the platform.
Once you figure out the pattern that works, only after you figure out how to close consistently can you add additional services on the follow-up visit (you should be visiting customers on occasion). You will remember that house that has a broken driveway, or needs paint, etc. When you do your follow-up with them to help them adopt Hefe, you can point out how easy it is to post something and get it done for a reasonable price.
But you can’t get there until you get somewhere. So keep your plan simple. Don't get ahead of yourself. One step at a time. Now let’s get to the final lesson; 10 Start Small and Win Big.