Adrian Nantchev's Blog, page 4

How can I have more money? - 87/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.The basic principle is that you need to solve more problems for more people, as you will be paid in proportion to the size of the problem(s) you solve. The more of a problem it is for society, then more people will pay you to solve it for them.Elon Musk wants to get a man onto Mars and set up inter-planetary life and colonies, he is also looking at making solar energy viable and creating an affordable electric car. Bill Gates took computer mainstream and got a computer on every desk in the world. Both of them have changed the world by solving a big problem.All business is about profit, and profit is achieved by putting your customers first and when you put your customers first you are seeking to find their problems and solve it for them in ways they cannot solve it for themselves.How else can you be of service to someone?How else can you help people? What else can you do for them? What else can you do for people?  Business exists to serve people for a profit, which is your just reward for helping people. There is no right or wrong answer, only what you can think of and what the general public will accept and buy.Think about how your products and services will be sold 10 years from now, and do it now instead. Push yourself to be of more service to more people.Question of the day: what problems are you solving for people?

How a business can go mainstream?

This is an excerpt from my book: Attention Avalanche: 3 Steps to endlessly create meaningful content to attract, engage and convert more customersThings fail to become the 'next big thing', unless 2/3 of the people you know are talking about it or unless it solve a problem for target audience that is desperate for a solution as they have searched and searched, but it has been in vain. So they are now desperate to try anything - including something that they may have never seen before.Define your audience through answering a series of questions. At the end of the book is a link to download a customer persona template that I have created and use for my businesses. You can create as many customer personas as you want. Your first customer persona could be yourself, therefore you could target people just like yourself, and because you know you extremely well. When you do not know what to do, just do something to get momentum going! The more you do for your audience, the better.Define a target audience and understand 100+ of their problems and solve them. That way you are bringing immense value to their life and they respect you more so. When you know what kind of person you want to target, you then need to understand them inside out.Be 3 inches wide and 3 miles deep. Leverage your specialised knowledge about your products and services and talk about it with the world.Additionally, it is worth understanding that we are in the business of solving our customer's problems, and the bigger their problem is then the more you will be rewarded to help them resolve it. The bigger the problem(s) that you solve for your customers, the more they will reward you. If you solve a small, insignificant problem that is afflicting a few people, then you will be rewarded with small compensation and gratitude. As you identify your audience, endeavour to solve big and pressing problems that they have, not only will it help them to pass the "so what?" test, but they will respect and appreciate you a whole lot more.Please, understand this: people like to buy, but do not like to be sold to. When you are selling weed killer to your customers, do not talk about your ingredients or the chemicals inside it, but instead talk about their crabgrass, why it is a nuisance and how to kill it. Join the conversation that is already happening inside your customer's head. Educate, entertain and help them achieve their dreams whilst articulating your vision and purpose behind your products and services.Question of the day: How are you becoming mainstream?

Why is money NOT the root of all evil? - 86/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.Recognize that when you have more money it amplifies the person you already are- for example: if you are kind then more money will make you kinder, if you are anxious then money will make you more anxious.This saying is a bible verse and it can be found at 1 Timothy 6:10, which according to the King James version goes like this: "for the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves with many sorrows". This does not mean that money is inherently evil, but when you are all consumed with chasing money whilst ignoring your emotional, physical or spiritual needs, then that is where the pain comes from: the lack of those needs being fulfilled.This verse was written at the time when Paul was uniting the 1st century congregations and staving off falsehoods that would have lead early Christians astray. He wrote this urging people to stay committed to the Christian cause, congregation and Christ. Discouraging people from seeking wealth on the grounds that if they fail to achieve wealth they will be hurt, not necessarily physically, but that they be disappointed.Without going into too much religion, Christianity, like other collectivist ideologies has had a tendency to demonize anything that would make people individualistic or anything that the common person cannot attain easily, whether wealth, status, prominence or talent, etc.Money is important and do not let dogmatic views get in your way. It is all down to moderation and your approach to money, if money is all consuming than this bible verse will be fulfilled because when you trip, fall or make a mistake in your journey to riches, then you can suffer and you will be hurt. You cannot let your desire for money to be all consuming, but you have to recognize that as money is important whilst working towards achieving more of it, if you do so desire.You only need to get rich once, when you are rich you just need to protect it. That is what this bible verse is also talking about how when you lose your money- just how it is painful when you lose the house you've built and lived in for 50 years because of a storm. It can be painful because all you are focusing on is money, when instead you may want to focus on the journey and the adventure.This is why you have to start a business with a passion and a purpose because the money is the result, and a symptom, of your activities and its successes. This way you are working for a purpose and not for the money.Question of the day: do you believe that money is the root of all evil?

Why is money important? - 85/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.There are few good reasons why money is important:Money takes the sting out of being poor, which means that money can create a better, more comfortable life for you and others around you.Having money allows you to do the things you've always have a want to do and also money magnifies the person you already are: if you are a kind person, then money will make you kinder, etc.Money is a protection from rainy days. Money helps you when things are difficult, or when there are emergencies.Passive income frees up your time to do what you want to do, and it means that you are not worrying as much about having enough money for things, whether consumer goods, holidays or emergencies.Money makes things possible. When someone complains that money is bad or it is better to be happy rather than have money- then that means they are broke, could be struggling and/or seeking a scapegoat to explain why they do not have much money in their life. Money makes things possible in your life, whether for you, your family, a charitable cause you want to champion, etc.Question of the day: How important is money to you?

An easy way to scale a business with content marketing

This is an excerpt from my book: Attention Avalanche: 3 Steps to endlessly create meaningful content to attract, engage and convert more customersThere is one metric that I believe that no one is talking about when it comes to content creation and reducing your customer acquisition cost to $0.00. What I call the cost of discovery, which is the time, money and effort needed for you to learn, create or build something, so as to make it easier for your customers to know what you know or achieve something that you have already achieved.By shortening their cost of discovery to learn or achieve something, you are rewarded in some way. This is also why it is your prerogative to create more and more content so as to shorten as many peoples' cost of discovery to learn what you know, thus you can capture their attention and earn the sales sooner.The more advice that you give to your customers, the shorter it takes for them to learn something and the more you can charge for it. If they are desperate to know something, or it is something that took you years to master or build, then you can charge more.Share your knowledge with the world, which will help you to become a recognised authority in your field - create more content that you consume. Share the information, advice and concepts that you take for granted. Encase your products and/or services in content that is relevant to your audience, passing their "so what?" test and has a call to action to your checkout.Question of the day: how are you using content marketing to scale your business?

How to create a target audience?

This is an excerpt from my book: Attention Avalanche: 3 Steps to endlessly create meaningful content to attract, engage and convert more customersDefine exactly who you are going to target and this is done by creating a customer persona. As you are creating your customer persona keep in mind that you want to target 1 kind of person, yet be able to solve 100+ of their problems, so they can see you as someone meaningful and of great value. The beautiful thing about business is that people do not care for what you are doing, thinking or believe in, as they only care for themselves, whether their problems are solved and not and they do not care for excuses. So, the more solutions you provide to your audience, the more they are going to value you.A customer persona is you answering a series of questions in order to build a clear picture as to who your audience are. Initially the answers can be fictitious, or even based on yourself - but over time it is best to have the answers based on research, feedback and questionnaires.The customer persona is defined by a series of questions and you can find your own template to use and answer at the back of this book in the resources page. Here are some of the questions with more information to explain the rationale behind them and to give you a sample as to how complex it can be.Background:Job: Their job can define what their priorities and skills are. If someone is working a high paying job and has been for some time then they may be more likely to be career focused, as opposed to things like family.Career Path/industry: People will want to talk about different topics as they are in different industries, with little overlap. I am an author, so I will want to talk and consume a lot of interviews, analysing fictional works (as I also want to write fiction) and business & marketing research. People in different industries will consume different kinds of content and material.Company: The company they work for can determine their skill set and may determine what kind of information, futuristic technology, projects they are exposed to and hear about.Family: To some, but not everyone, family is important.Education: I have a university degree, but I pride myself on the fact that I have written books - because everyone has got a degree, but how many authors do you know? If someone has spent 2-7 years studying a certain subject, whether all the way to bachelor's or even PhD, then it indicates that they have a lot of expertise and passion in something so as to have stuck with it for so long.What's their core? (blue collar, ultra rich, Christian evangelicals, etc) Now, this is an interesting concept, because this in part explains how Donald became the President in 2016, because he managed to find a commonality between large amounts of people that would be willing to vote for him. When you can identify a lot of people, yet they all have something in common, then you are more likely to have a strong, yet broad, appeal, which does translate into awareness, trust and profits. What kind of person will have all these attributes that you  are listing, yet could come from different background?You can download a customer persona template here: www.nantchev.com/resourcesQuestion of the day: How are you creating your target audience?

What kind of assets do I create? - 84/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.An asset is anything that puts money into your pocket whether you work or not. This book is a good example of an asset, where I did the work once (wrote a book and put it onto Amazon) and then I'm getting paid every time someone buys a copy of my book- Amazon does everything else and they even send me the money automatically.There are few different kinds of assets that puts money into your pocket automatically- there are literally infinite ways you can achieve this, but there are few core examples:Dividends from stocks.Equity investing from crowd funding.Royalties from intellectual properties.Businesses.You can buy a stock of certain companies that pay what is called a dividend, which is like a reverse membership fee for owning their stock. With enough of these kinds of stocks in your portfolio, you can earn passive income from them. You'd want to pick companies based on the principles of value investing; where you look at the intrinsic value of a company and estimate whether it is underpriced or overpriced. You want a good company that is underpriced, because you'd want to own the company for the long run.There is also the option of crowd funding where you are loaning your money to different businesses around the country that need to for growth or for start-up liquidity. Sometimes it is a loan and sometimes it is a equity investment, where you own a part of the company. Back in May 2016 I bought a few shares in a property business down in the south of England  via a crowd funding website, and I'm receiving around £1 a month in rental income- this is next to nothing, but it is a good proof of concept. I personally like crowd funding, as it is rather unutilized and there are no broker's fees, but there may not many investment choices available and a lot of them tend to be removed from the market, because they get their funding.A rather simple asset you can create is to package your knowledge and sell it online, in the form of books, videos, eCources, etc. People will pay good money for the knowledge you have in your brain right now- no matter what niche, subject, industry or field it is in, there are enough people in the world that will consume what you have to teach.One of the best assets you can have is a business, because its performance is totally down to you; which means that you have total control over the rewards you get. When you start a business and it grows, not only can you receive an income from its performance, but you can also float it on the stock exchange and sells shares of it- thus becoming rich that way.You and I need a totally separate business activity/entity that takes around 15 minutes a year to manage and puts money into your pocket: these are your investments such as dividends an crowd funding, this could also be your books, because if your main focus if you business and you are marketing your intellectual properties, then they will sell on the side.Question of the day: What kind of assets are you accumliating and compoudning?

How to be discovered online

This is an excerpt from my book: Attention Avalanche: 3 Steps to endlessly create meaningful content to attract, engage and convert more customersWhen you know why you are doing what you are doing then you need to identify and understand exactly who it is you are going to target and who you want to attract to your business.Once you understand what you are doing, it is then up to you to understand who you are going to target and aim for. Do not just think about having a target audience, but instead think about their psychology and understand them inside out. The more you understand about your audience, the better you can communicate and connect with them, as it is better to be clear rather than clever about the kind of content you are creating.Segment the general public and niche down so you know who exactly you are going to target. Understand this: you do not need to create the perfect product, but instead create the perfect products. Most people like tomato soup, but some love spicy tomato, whilst others love creamy tomato. Go three inches wide and three miles deep in your approach. Be something magical to a few people and by doing so you will mean the world to them, as opposed to just being a fleeting fancy that someone may subscribe to, watch one or two videos and then completely forget about.Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese general, military strategist and philosopher, who wrote the 5th Century BC book The Art of War, once said: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle". In business, just like in battle, you need to know who your customers as (as well as competition), so as to increase the chances of your success. Therefore, by knowing your target audience inside out you can appeals to them and always creating content that resonates with them perfectly.

Why do I need to have my money work for me? - 83/101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers

This is an except from my book: 101 Entrepreneur Questions and Answers.Remember earlier when I said that you want to do the work once and get paid forever? I use that philosophy as a way to have my money work for me and thus I am the master.When you have your money work for you, you are leveraging it to make more money passively, such as investing your money in property and then earning a share of the rental income. You are using your money to make more money for you- you are leveraging money as an investor that allows other people to do more, thus they can pay you back, plus interest.Having your money work for you means to create passive income, which is income that will come to your pocket whether you work or not.When you have passive income, it frees up your time to do what you love to do. There is a report that says people only spend 15% of their life doing what they love, so if someone were to live to 100 years old, then he'd only be spending 15 years doing what he truly loves, all the others he'd be working, sleeping, at school or too young to enjoy life.Passive income frees up your time to do what you love.Question of the day: Are you happy with where you life is going?

How to increase the chances of your content going viral?

This is an excerpt from my book: The riches are not necessarily in the niches - the cash is in the community, as there are enough drop shipping businesses that have saturated many Amazon and Alibaba categories. There are enough publishing businesses that are creating small books for Kindle and CreateSpace on a whole variety of different topics. There are enough YouTube channels talking about gadgets, games and make-up. The supply of content, whether it is on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere is exponential and has been so for the past few years, yet demand has moved little, or remained static. How can you increase the demand for your content? How can you increase your community's demand for you and/or your products and services? It is down to trust and passing what is called the "so what?" test.The "so what?" test means that your content has got to intrigue, grab the attention of and mean enough for your audience in order for them click and consume it. You have to persuade people enough to give you their time and attention, which this can only be done if they care more about the information, topic or if your content creates a big enough knowledge gap (which will be talked about later in this book) that drives them to know more. Your content has got to be compelling enough to persuade people to stop what they are currently doing, so as to consume your blog or video.People talk about "create compelling content" but that is too vague, meaningless and not very actionable. The benchmark that I feel that is much more practical is to create content that is very VRINE.VRINE stands for valuable, rare, inimitable, non-substitutable and evergreen. As you create content that people care, talk about, love and share then it is compelling by default. Do not publish something unless passes these with flying colours.Use this benchmark as you are deciding what and how to create your content; rate each of them on scale from 0-10, then you would want to ensure that it is at least a 7/10 for each of the words. Because you do not want to publish sub-par content that no one cares about.V - Valuable. Your content has got to "add value" to your audience. It is has to enlighten, reassure, educate, entertain, etc. If you do not add value then your content is pointless or misleading, because you have to deliver on the information that you are promising them that they will learn if they click on your video or begin reading your blog. I have always found the phrase "add value" to be too vague, so it is better to focus on solving real world problems and providing solutions to your audience and customers, otherwise, they will derive no value from your content and go elsewhere. As you understand who it is you are serving, then you can create and provide exact value to them by solving exact problems they may have. When you are providing value then you are increasing the chances of your content passing the "so what?" test, therefore helping them to view your content as compelling.R - Rare. The rarer and/or more scarce your content is, the higher the intrinsic value that your audience places upon it will be. If you were to take a picture of a flower that blossoms only once a year then that picture would be quite rare. Content has to be rare for people to care about it, otherwise if it is something common then people will not care about it as much. If your advice can be found anywhere and everywhere online, or it is the first thing that appears on the Google search result, then people do not care for it as much, as there is plenty of competition that is giving away the same, similar or better information and advice onlineI - Inimitable. Your competition can imitate your content and attempt to steal your market share. A picture of the same flower that blossoms once a year but in the background of one of your selfies, whilst holding today's newspaper, then you are making it rare and inimitable. If you are talking about a topic that anyone can talk about too, then you need to differentiate yourself more so. This in turn spurs you to add more value, thereby making it harder for your competition to imitate and you are adding more value to your audience.N - Non-substitutable. If you want to travel somewhere you have different choices: car, train, plane, etc. If you cannot drive, then a substitute would be to get the train. If there is no substitute for your content or solution, they your audience will value it even more, because only you can solve their specific problem or have a solution. When there are alternatives to their problems, then they may go elsewhere. If you can provide a unique solution or have a unique angle to something, then people will care about you more so.E - Evergreen. Throughout the year people will search for different things online, therefore some keywords and content are seasonal. For instances the phrase "Christmas gift ideas" will be searched a lot from October - December, but there may not be as many searches in June or July. However, something more evergreen such as "how to drive a car" will be searched for consistently throughout the year, meaning that it is resulting in consistent traffic and awareness. By creating content that is consistently searched for throughout the year then you are more likely to get predictable traffic, engagement and sales. Your content has to be created and positioned in a way so that it is searched for throughout the year.Question of the day: How are you increasing the chances of your content going viral?