Daily Content Machine

This is the 3rd and final part of our series on Making Your First $1,000.

In the first two episodes, we helped you find your business idea and get paying customers. Making an extra $1,000 is cool, but you know what's cooler? Making an extra $1,000 every single month.

If you want to make $1,000, the first steps are identical to those of starting a business. If you're going to start a business, why not put in the systems to keep the money coming in?

We talk about how to setup a recurring business model, how to scale, and how to break outside of the limited scope you're thinking in.

The last section of this episode is the best: we talk about thinking big. Thinking on a whole other level. Don't teach one person, lead a conference workshop for 50 people. Don't mow one lawn, get a crew together and develop processes and dominate.

Whether it's your first $1,000 or an extra $1,000 that you're looking to make, this episode is for everyone and it's going to really help you blow it out of the water.

This is Part 2 of 3 in our series on Making Your First $1,000.

Now that you have your business idea, we're going to focus on getting customers.

There are a lot of ways to get customers. Many of them are longer term investments and cost money. We're going to start with the easiest. That's word of mouth referral.

The first place to start is with the people you know. These are your friends and family. This group is the most commonly overlooked and that's a huge mistake.

These people are your base. You don't even have to concern yourself with whether your friends or family will buy from you—it doesn't matter. You need to make yourself known to them because that awareness will result in referral business.

It's not about getting your Aunt to buy from you. It's about leveraging your base by making sure your Aunt is aware so she can recommend you to her neighbor.

We've got an EPIC series lined up for you.

Over the course of the next 3 episodes, we're going to help you make your first $1,000.

Today, we're kicking things off by helping you find your business idea. Now, you may be wondering why you have to have a business idea if you just want to make $1,000.

Well, I have news for you: if you make $1,000, you have a business. If you don't believe me, just ask the government—because they're going to tax you like a business if you make $1,000.

It turns out, the first steps to making your first $1,000 are the same steps to building a business. That starts with finding your business idea.

In this episode we talk about the difference between a passion business and a cash flow business, and how getting good at something and making money from it can actually lead to becoming passionate about something.

This was originally a bonus After Show that we decided to share as its own episode.

We talk about positioning yourself around the right people and being someone that a mentor would want to invest in.

You'll hear Matt talk about big numbers in this episode, but remember that you are the average of your five closest friends. Matt says he's the poorest of his five closest friends and adds that, "the only people I surround myself with that don’t make more than I do is my family."

Matt started talking about his mentors (again, this was previously just an After Show conversion for members). I was curious about how he found his mentors, so I asked.

Mentorship is something that is given. If you ask for it, what you're doing is asking for consulting (which is a paid service).

To get a mentor, you have a be a person someone wants to invest their time in and you have to go places where you can find these people.

My friend, James Clear, wrote a very thought-provoking article, titled The Four Burners Theory: The Downside of Work-Life Balance. You should go check it out.

Imagine a stovetop with four burners. Each burner represents one of the following areas of your life:

1. Health

2. Work

3. Family

4. Friends

The premise is that:

In order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners.

And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.

I found James’ article very thought-provoking and wanted to have a conversation about it with Matt.

We wouldn’t suggest taking the theory as law, but it provided some great food for thought. For instance, I find the lack of a “Personal Time” category peculiar. One could argue that would go under “Health” but that seems like stretching it.

Regardless, we really just took the theory at face value as a starting point for a conversation.

I don’t expect you to agree with everything. Certainly your priorities are unique. I just expect you to think. If I get you to think, I’ve done my job.

Thanks again to James Clear for writing such a thought-provoking article.

You’re not going to save your way to being a millionaire.

It’s time to start making money.

A penny saved is not a penny earned.

Now, many people will tell you this. Their argument is, “A penny saved is MORE than a penny earned!”

You may think this is smart, but this is still how poor people think. Poor people save money. Rich people make it.

Here’s how I see it: don’t waste time picking up a penny when you should be making a dollar.

Would you rather save $100 or make $1,000 dollars?

It’s a difference between scarcity and abundance mindset. Creating wealth vs. stockpiling it.

How do you create wealth? You solve problems.

Look around you. There are problems everywhere. Most people are blind to them. Most people only see their own problems—and then they pay someone else to solve those problems.

You need to become a person who recognizes the many problems around you on a day to day basis and makes a point to solve them. Solve the house-on-fire problems. Solve the problems people have to have solved.

Open up your second set of eyelids and start to see the problems around you. These problems are your opportunity.

Matt always likes to say to live like you're poor so you maintain a hustle mentality for your business.

Seeing someone he knew blow $100,000 in a weekend didn't sit right with him.

Celebrating is one thing, but there's a difference between celebrating and having no respect for money. A lack of respect for money is common when you didn't work for it.

In this episode, we talk about respect for money. We talk about the difference between wasteful partying and reasonable celebration.

We also talk about the value of your time, tax tips, living like you're broke, investing your time, and not being loose with money.

Your biggest threat is anonymity. You can't afford to be timid.

You need to sell hard and you need to sell strong. Why when I say that, do some of you recoil? It's because you think "sell" is a bad word.

If you don't believe, you won't sell. If you don't sell, you won't make money. If you don't make money, you won't be in business—which is good, I guess, because apparently you don't believe in what you do.

Belief is key. You must believe in what you sell. If you don't, you won't take the necessary action to succeed. If you feel awkward selling, it's because your focus is in the wrong place. You're thinking about you. Stop thinking about yourself.

Focus on the outcome. Focus on the customer. Your customers aren’t buying your product, they’re buying a better version of themselves. Don’t sell them the product, don’t sell them the features, sell them the benefits.

A common trait I see among successful people is extreme focus on a single goal.

Successful people know what they want. They aren't splitting focus, they're going all in on getting to where they want to be. They have one goal in front of them and all of their energy is going into doing the work.

I don't like to plan for failure. I'd rather put all of my energy into going forward than slow down and create a backup plan. If I encounter a problem, I'll just face it head on.

Even if I fail, what I'm still left with is two hands and a willingness to work hard.

Matt has a different approach. He presents a case for making backup plans in this episode—and even backup up plans for your backup plans.

I think there's room for both approaches. I also think you're going to really enjoy this conversation on whether it's profitable to spend time, energy, and resources preparing for things that might go wrong.

We actually love being interrupted.

That sounds weird because we often talk about disliking interruptions, but secretly we love them.

Push notifications, messages, emails... these are things that we allow to happen to us. If you allow life to happen to you instead of dictating what you will do, you'll never get important work done.

But we like these things to happen to us. Why? Because it makes us feel important.

If you're supposed to be writing, when you sit there long enough, you'll eventually get a notification of some kind. This notification will tell you that someone enjoyed your work, or someone has a question, or someone needs something from you.

This feels good. It feels good to be needed. We want to feel important. But if you want to actually get important work done, you need focused blocks of time. You need time where you can be absolutely certain that you won't be interrupted.

Minimizing distractions is one thing, but I'm talking about eliminating even the possibility of interruptions here. There shouldn't even be a thought in the back of your mind that there may possibly be an interruption during your block of focus time.

We talk about why focused time is important, planning your day, getting into a zone of focus, and minimizing distractions.