hey guys welcome to Silicon Valley girl
today we're going to talk about seven
steps to starting an online business I'm
gonna share the best practices that
worked for me and I started my first
company back in 2011 and by the way this
video is brought to you by the great
courses plus
[Music]
tip number one figure out the product
that you're gonna sell and I know you
want to over complicate everything
because we all want to change the world
and build something really exciting like
back in 2011 when we had an idea to
start a company and I started a company
together with my boyfriend back then a
husband and we started a company of
study abroad booking platform the idea
was to build an Expedia for booking all
of those experiences but the problem was
that we were still studying at the
University we were 21 years old and we
had $300 like building an Expedia with
that budget and that experience is
impossible but what we thought is that
we needed to start with something really
really basic like something that we can
sell tomorrow and something that we
could sell tomorrow was actually our
expertise because I was traveling to
learn languages before and I thought
that I can just start helping others and
we decided to build like a basic landing
page and start helping other people and
$300 was spent on actually registering
the company getting a bank account and
building that landing page a lot of
beginner entrepreneurs make this mistake
when they're like oh I cannot roll out
the product tomorrow
I need a sit-down like really write down
a business plan and calculate everything
and then maybe create a great website
and then you know talk to friends and
pitch my idea but before rolling it out
to the market I need to make sure it's
perfect
that's super wrong like don't do that
because the problem is you might spend
like two years building something coding
something working on something and then
you roll it out to the market and the
market is like we don't need that like
we never needed that because sometimes
we just come up with really bad ideas or
sometimes we just trying to solve the
problem that only we experience so my
advice to you just go ahead roll it out
to the market hear all the bad words
about your idea pivot change it but this
is the only way to build a great company
tip number two you don't have to go all
fancy and hire an expensive developer
there are so many tools online that you
can use I love to use tilde to build
landing pages and now it takes me like
20 minutes to build a landing page there
is fix com another tool that I just
found is called click funnels
clickfunnels allows you to build like
basically everything like a profile for
all of the users and materials they can
download and allows you to build funnels
there are so many things that you could
do with that but it's a little on the
pricier side tip number three start
collecting people's emails are you gonna
thank me for that because when we
started were like oh our landing page is
just gonna be selling a product cuz
that's the end goal right but the thing
is you're gonna start paying for ads
you're gonna start paying for influence
or product placements and you don't want
to just lose that money I would build
the business in a way that the first
step you're collecting an email or a
phone number second step yourselves
something cheaper and the third step you
upsell them to something bigger and like
collecting emails is a crucial point
what I use is get response it's a very
very powerful platform that allows you
to create drip campaigns and a drip
campaign is that something happens on
different events in different dates like
somebody signed up there's an email
somebody bought there's an email
somebody didn't buy there's another
email like you can build all of those
different schemes and stuff another
service that we use is called send grid
but it's mostly for transactional emails
tip number four figure out how you're
gonna collect pavements because guess
what the goal of your business is to
actually make money there are a lot of
services you can use my recommendation
would be PayPal and stripe stripe is
super easy to connect if you're from
Europe or the u.s. PayPal is really
worldwide
there's also Braintree but I don't
really like them because we used to use
them and once asked them for like from
better terms to use it and they said
they're gonna give them to us and they
gave us some different terms and we
ended up paying 20% more so but that's a
different kind of story but I would
recommend stripe and PayPal for
collecting payments tip number five
pricing your product if there is a thing
that we entrepreneurs tend to
underestimate what we're doing and I had
this problem but then I actually realize
that the things I'm talking about it
like private consultations on my courses
I actually worth so much because I'm
saving so much time to other people and
it took me like years to learn that
so don't under price yourself but also
if you're doing like if it's your first
business if you're just
trying out different digital marketing
tools I would stick to a price twenty to
thirty dollars this this way you're
gonna be able to become profitable
faster because if you're selling like a
five thousand dollar product again this
is something that happened to us our
average trip is like two thousand
dollars and it took people ages to
convert like if we invested like a
hundred thousand straightaway it would
have taken us years to get that money
back so we started to roll out really
basic products like a landing page where
I sold my own consultation and stuff so
really start with twenty to thirty
dollar check and this way at your unit
economics are probably gonna work and
you can always raise your price like
you're starting your Facebook Ads you
see that unit economics works that you
are spending less money there you're
actually making you can start raising
your price until the demand is still
there tip number six is actually how to
attract your first customers start a
Facebook campaign start targeting people
who have the same interests for example
you're starting an agency that helps
build websites for entrepreneurs go
ahead and target Gary these followers or
at I love as far as like you know where
entrepreneurs are already and Facebook
YouTube Google allows you to target them
another way is to actually go to
influencers like if you know some
smaller influencers you can always just
DM them on Instagram or just shoot them
an email that you want to collab this is
how influencers make money so they want
to collab with you interest depends on
whether their prices are reasonable or
not but I would say like I've talked to
a lot of entrepreneurs they said that
30% of their traffic is coming from
their own social media 70 percent is
coming from with targeting retargeting
Google ads or whatever so I would
recommend if you don't have your own
community start with targeting and
retargeting people before moved to tip
number seven I'm gonna share a course
with you that's gonna help you start
your online company because I know
sometimes you're like oh my god I'm not
ready yet I have I don't have that
experience I haven't studied the
economics I want to do my MBA first and
then maybe I have an idea of starting a
business you don't have to do an MBA or
you don't have to do a master's degree
in economics to start a company you just
need a great idea and you need this
mindset you need to be ready you need to
be ready to risk to dedicate your time
to spend your time for free cuz we
worked for free for like first couple of
years we didn't get a lot of money with
our first client we got like 300
Bilderback basic website with a second
client that we enhanced the website
because it got more money and we got a
third client in six months after
studying the company so like three
clients and six months which is not a
lot but she went to Australia for like
eight weeks the commission was really
good because the way we work is we get
commission from schools and we were able
to rent a table in a co-working space
for $200 it's all like crawling but it's
really slow at the beginning so just be
ready for that and again you don't need
some extraordinary knowledge you just
need to be passionate about what you do
and I found this course that's called
the entrepreneurial toolkit which
actually teaches you every single step
like how to find the right idea what's
the methodology how do you think about
what idea is gonna work for you how do
you identify the market how do you
market your product like every single
step is discussed there and you can find
this course on a platform called the
great courses plus the great courses
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you're gonna find it there the great
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Valley Girl viewers a free trial so go
ahead support me click the link below
and get your free trial and go ahead and
watch the entrepreneurs toolkit course I
think it's gonna help you a lot with
starting a great online company and my
final tip is tip number seven and if you
don't have an idea yet if you don't know
when you're gonna start like start with
this tip number seven is building your
own community I am hanging out with so
many bloggers homemaking
hundreds of thousand dollars a month not
because they're great entrepreneurs but
because they have a great community of
course they're great entrepreneurs but
the community came first so building a
community around yourself if you're a
professional at something like maybe you
are a CPA maybe you're a marketer maybe
you're a developer maybe you're a
photographer like there are so many
things you're probably doing start
sharing your knowledge to your community
you can do it on Instagram Instagram is
the easiest platform to start but it has
less organic reach YouTube is a little
tougher in terms of like you needa edit
videos and stuff but it offers amazing
organic reach there is Facebook there is
LinkedIn there are so many platforms
start something now start building your
community and imagine if in six months
you have like a thousand people
following you you already have your
potential customer base to whom you can
market with whom you can test your ideas
you can be like all guys if I created
this product would you buy it and they
will give you instant feedback and it's
gonna be free you wouldn't have to pay
for it so start building your community
now it doesn't matter if you have an
idea it doesn't matter if you have a
company it doesn't matter if you have a
business that was it from me for today
guys and I know at the beginning you
need a lot of support and you need a lot
of like moral support and marketing I
hope this video was helpful for you and
I wanted to offer it one more thing
write down the comment below with your
idea like what you're gonna do or maybe
you're already doing something if you
are then share your website or Instagram
profile and I'm gonna run them with pic
like with a randomizer I'm gonna pick an
idea and I'm gonna promote it on my
Instagram I currently have over three
hundred thirty thousand followers on
Instagram and imagine those people are
gonna hear about your idea so you're
gonna get instant validation like if you
get requests in your DMS this means the
idea is worth something so don't
hesitate comment down below and in a
week I'm gonna pick a person I'm gonna
announce it on my Instagram lingual
marina and I'm gonna also post a
community tap here I'm very excited
about this and I hope it's gonna be a
great opportunity for somebody who wins
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