Offline Freedom or Offline job?

You certainly make a good point here...

I think a lot of people create another job for themselves when they start offering marketing services to business owners.

I've seen Todd's stuff before...

Another angle is to find a chiropractor (or virtually any other business) with a winning marketing campaign, acquire rights to the campaign, and license it out. Of course you could also create the campaign, test it, get case studies, testimonials etc., and then license it out for royalties and in many cases an upfront licensing fee. Finding businesses to license it to can be delegated/systematized as well.

You can also systematize other types of joint ventures, re-activations campaigns and other marketing services. The key to avoiding the long hours and having a lot of money and no time to use it is putting policies in place and leveraging the time and effort of others. Anything that can be policized can be put on "autopilot" thus not requiring your time any longer (or very little of it).

Joshua

Or you can have 1 large Chiropractor paying the fee that 10 small practices might generate.

Define your desired lifestyle then find clients that can provide the income to support it...not the other way around.

~Dexx

You guys have some great ideas. The whole power of the internet was it's unique ability to make millionaires because of the scale and magnitude of your potential customers.

Now the trend has been to "narrowcast" back down to the local market. That likely takes the "millionaire" potential out of the equation. Unless of course you can nail a system for let's say "dentists" and can replicate it into 50 other markets.

Now you're onto something, exponential growth!

Horizontal vs. vertical drill down. This is part of the traditional (I know I know... boring) academic study of marketing. The verticalization can be industry specific or geography specific.

You're thinking very dangerous (and quite wonderful) thoughts there Vincinzo "Hat Man" Oliva (love the hat).

And yes, it's a real job if it's to be done right - which begs to the question about all the incongruent sales copy surrounding the entire "offline gold" business, and the legitimacy and ethics of the ones espousing the "great riches and retirement in 58 days" crap.

Anyone with any experience in selling any level of services to any business at any level knows that is a load of crap.

This past year has been one of massive transition for me on a personal level. I have been working on shifting away from the consulting side of my business, and want to get more into product development and marketing of my own intellectual property.

Clearing the deck, so to speak, so that I can get out of the dollars for hours grind - even at the top level it requires too much management, and I am far too much of a control freak (because my name is on it, so quality is paramount) to just hand it over to hired management.

I have been actually "doing it" for clients for so long, but I am ready to start "teaching it". So I am attempting to go through this exercise right now... how to take a horizontal experience set of services, with a corresponding model for service delivery... and turn it into a very narrow, vertical presentation to be applied to a specific vertical market... and then the worst... picking the high value, high return market.

Building Strategic-level Marketing systems for IT Service Providers... et al...

But it's not a matter of sales or fees... it's a matter of lifestyle design now. I am simply out of steam in the project management arena, and want to spend more time with my kids and travel with them, promoting, speaking, etc...

But both are very viable models, depending on how much commitment someone chooses to make to the level of service delivery, and of course... how competent they are in that service.

You have good point. Working offline for others you lose control of the platform - the virtual real estate , you are are working on someone else's asset. Ideally I like to keep control of my virtual real estate, and keep what I build. In the long run owning and controlling your own platforms/sites give more opportunities for outsourcing, leveraging and joint venturing etc, you are free to develop your own site anyway you wish.

Of course building sites for offline clients is also a viable approach. In the end it is down to the individual to develop their business according to their own strengths.

Hey,

Thanks for sharing this with everyone!

You are right in the sense that many people start online businesses in the hopes to quit their 9-5 jobs and have the freedom & happiness that they want.

Living the Internet lifestyle is very achievable. Many people(including myself) spend more than 40 hours a week building their online business. Now granted I don't have to spend that much time it's not so much work to me because I love what I do.

I think if you are taking the online route you need to find somethhing you have a passion for, you should just follow another persons foot steps. You can work any number or hours building your online business you just have to be consistent.

Thanks again!

God bless,
William Veasley

To me the answer to this questions is you have to start out with it as an offline job, with the possibility to make it offline freedom if you choose to do so.

Let me explain the plan that I am starting to implement to develop my offline marketing business. This is how I plan to take it from a job to freedom.

In the beginning I will do the work myself using different software packages that help with the process. I estimate that I can easily handle 10 clients on my own. 10 clients paying me $2,000 a month each is $20,000 a month.

Now I can afford to hire an employee to start maintaining those clients by teaching them what I do. So now they can do the maintenance work to keep that listing in place. I can then start getting some more clients and once I have a couple more, I can hire another person to start keeping track of those accounts.

I can then start and free up some time to go do the things I want to do and have that freedom we all want. After I have 4 or 5 employees (with each serving 10 clients who pay a minimum of $2,000 a month, meaning they bring in $80 to $100k a month) I can hire a manager to oversee everything.

I plan to pay the employees about $3,000 a month, and the manager about $5,000 or $6,000 a month. So assuming I have 4 employees and one manager, I will be making on the low end $80k a month in sales. Take about $10,000 out for expenses like office space and software fees, plus $17 to $18k a month for salaries, and that still leaves me with $53,000 a month in profit.

Now I have a business that runs on auto-pilot while earning me over $600k a year. It will only get bigger from there if I choose to hire more employees.

Interesting post in right time. I have just finished reading MJ's book and I have to say that I am very disappointed, but that is another story.
Regarding Vincenzo's dilemma, I guess it's all come down to gold old Micheal Gerber and his dissection of business system in E-Myth. Every significant outcome requires a lot of work. Creating business system is the only way to get freedom and work as much as you want. Otherwise, regardless of type of business, constant work is required for constant income stream.

Systemize, systemize, systemize. It's the only way you can be efficient enough and have an employee or outsourcee replicate you.

I like to think of it as working on "My Own Terms".

Sure you have to work it like a job, but you do it on your own terms.

I have multiple employees with very, very scalable, replicable systems.

I can assure you that running the business isn't "hand's off". Overseeing takes a lot of time.

You think the CEO of a big corporation is "hand's off"? There's all kinds of systems and management beneath him or her.

There's a reason they're paid a lot of money.

If someone thinks they're going to go into the consulting business, and not actually do any work while bales of cash just magically appear in their Paypal account, you probably ought to keep looking elsewhere.