Proven Formula for Building a Million-Dollar Business: 6 Steps with Donald Miller

this is your sign to start that business like if you could take black entrepreneurialism as a stock I would probably put all of my money on all of it because I feel like it's a community that is figuring out they probably should be dominating the entrepreneurial landscape in America and before we hop into Today's Show be sure to like comment and subscribe now let's jump into the video so Donald I'm I'm gonna shut them and ask you a direct question from the very beginning um and thank you again for being on the show but you are a wealthy uh white guy who has made millions of dollars and you have over 200 coaches inside of your Mastermind and you're teaching them pretty much how to make millions of dollars and how to do masterminds high value masterminds but one thing that I've learned from just knowing you that has always shocked me is that you're the only white guy inside of this Mastermind and I'm like I'm confused right now because that's that's different I I gotta ask you what are you teaching why are you so passionate about you know um black people minority people making millions especially as a white guy I just got to ask I'm sorry well um it's a great question and I don't know if I know the answer to totally except that's just where curiosity he takes you sometimes and friendship takes you right yeah but yeah we have 200 coaches uh they're it's a pretty diverse group we we have some African-American coaches you know probably like 10 and then Latino's 10 and then about 50 50 women men we don't intentionally make it out anybody who's willing to pay us to become a coach can can become one uh but they all teach masterminds and then I teach a I teach one Mastermind and it's a black owned business cohort and uh this was this happened about a little over two years ago when George Floyd was murdered uh I didn't want to do the standard white thing which is go on Instagram and say that this makes you sick so I said Hey We're Not Gonna I told my team We're Not Gonna Instagram anything about it what we're gonna do is start a black owned business cohort and we're gonna you know everything we do is gonna be with action not with words and what I did and Anthony you know to be brutally honest I was really kind of like going I'm gonna go in and save the day and we get in there and I get in this black own business cohort and within like it felt like minutes we just became a family and I I learned you know as much or more from them than they ever did from me we've been meeting for two years and we have seen significant growth in the businesses that that are in that cohort uh we started with about six of us at that first dinner and there's probably 15 to 20 now who you know some of them show up some of them don't but we you know at any given meeting we'll have about 12 and uh it's everything from you know the Cupcake Collection to personal trainers to coaching businesses to uh Brown mama bear is a kind of ministry slash business from a woman named Shannara who's who raised three daughters in a white Community beautiful beautiful stuff uh you know uh all sorts of stuff The Entrepreneur Center here in Nashville Tennessee it's been really really incredible and I I think that the the only thing that I can figure of like why did I was I drawn to that specific Mastermind was I just grew up I grew up uh feeling like I was marginalized even though I was a white person I you know I grew up my dad wasn't around and most of my friends had dads uh we were very poor and many of my friends were sort of upper middle class and so I just kind of felt like I never really belonged and so I think there's a sentiment in the black community especially amongst entrepreneurialism where they feel a little bit like Outsiders and I and I just identified with that uh I I think I also now believe two years in that like if I were gonna bet on a stock like if you could take black entrepreneurialism as a stock I would probably put all of my money on it all of it because I feel like it's a community that is figuring out that um that they probably and I hope I don't get in trouble for this down the road they probably should be dominating the entrepreneurial landscape in America and their their creative ideas have been burdened and hindered by both you know some systemic racism but some self-belief and self-doubt yeah and I'm seeing it radically changed and I'm kind of going okay this is a like how can I buy into this I don't know in any percentage of any of those businesses but I'm always joking that I mean quote unquote joking that I want to right like when you're ready for an investor you tell me yeah and but then I also tell them don't get an investor you don't need one so it's kind of like bad you know contradictory advice but anyway um you know I you and I were talking earlier that you have about a 20 chance of becoming a millionaire that is by by having a million dollars in your name if you're a white person yeah it's like a 21 if you are Asians uh and it's it's like two point something percent if you're Latino and two point something percent if you're black so as somebody who loves America if you wanted to say hey what would be the best thing to sustain a robust economy in you know the American economic ecosystem I would say it's 10x the number of Latino and black millionaires like that is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of making this country financially strong and then there's this massive influx that could happen of creativity Innovation entrepreneurialism that is largely untapped and it's amongst a people group two different people groups the Latinos and and the African-Americans here in America so part of it is you know I hope I have a little bit of compassion but really I'm probably somewhere on the Asperger Specter and I'm just going look this is the bottom line this is the best opportunity we have As Americans and it's being overlooked so I you know I I personally love it they're they're like family our biggest you know struggle now is we get together for three hours at a time we get like eight minutes worth of work done and then the rest of time we're eating food talking about food or gossiping you know I I just want to say man I appreciate your heart um I've always been a fan of of you um and I just love what you're doing and how you're helping people build Brands and build businesses and when I saw you on your Instagram promoting your your new book um how to grow your small business I remember dming you and I was like Hey sir I would love to have you on my show because here's the truth I feel as if African Americans black people are some of the most creative people in the world but we don't have ownership of our creativity right and I think that we lack we lack ownership because we've never been taught how to build a business I think majority of the time not all I'm not saying for all but I think a lot of us we've been taught how to survive but not how to own and to build ownership and pass it down and when I saw your book and I know your heart for all people black people white people everyone I said sir I got to get you on the show and so I I did some research man there are literally I couldn't even get the actual number but there's over a hundred thousand books written on how to start a business how to write off this how to write off that I'm curious to know what did you see missing in that space that Donald Miller could bring to the conversation of how to build um a business which you've you've built multiple businesses multi-million dollar businesses what did you see missing I mean what and what will we get from this book that I'm reading uh on how to build a business hey fam quick question and we'll get right back to the show are you tired of worrying about your money are you tired of hitting fees and long waiting times for your paycheck look no further you see with my friends at chime the number one most loved online banking app you can say goodbye to all that and say hello to stress free finances now with time you get paid up to two days early that means no more waiting around for your paycheck no more worrying about unexpected fees like some of these other Banks and no more credit checks or large security deposits time is all about providing you with the Financial Freedom we all deserve don't take my word for it I want you to try chime out today and see for yourself why is so loved by many of our friends visit anthonyoneal.com forward slash charm or click the link in today's show notes to get started and take control of your finances speaking of your finances let's get back to Today's show that's helping you peace out uh what I saw that was missing was an easy step-by-step plan to turn your business into you know a machine and here's what happened to me I um well two things happened Anthony early on um one is I was a speaker and a writer that's how I got started and I literally saw myself as a writer I did not see myself as a business person I had a book hit the New York Times for 42 consecutive weeks I mean dream come true and probably I I I'm going to share numbers with you I probably like cleared half a million dollars or something on that book I paid off my house with that book and uh because I I knew I was I knew I shouldn't have the money I was smart enough to know don't let me have access to this money so I just paid off my house where I couldn't get to the money well I sold that house and I sold it in order to buy a different house and right as I sold the house my current house uh the other house fell through somebody else bought it wow and so I lost that house it was a heartbreaker but I'm sitting on about 350 000 so I'd put 350 away probably spend 150 on a kayak and a Toyota Tacoma stupid stuff like that and um and uh I said there was an opportunity to do a short-term investment that a friend of mine and I were going in on together and I went in and one Monday morning uh the news came back I lost every single penny so I had I had five thousand dollars to my name 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list all that money was gone I had just started dating the woman who is now my wife so it was it was it was even more emasculating and and identity crushing you know you know you're dumb with money everything dark that you could possibly say to yourself I was saying there was also a small tiny voice in the back of my mind maybe it was God I don't know but the voice was saying this is literally the best thing that has ever happened to you in terms of your career literally the best Miller and I started to believe that voice and say okay I don't know how that voice is true but it's a point of light at the end of the tunnel and I'm going to walk toward it what I what what that season did for me is it did the number one foundational thing that everybody listening to me needs to do and I don't know if you can even do it without without you know that emotional sort of punch but it was take ownership so I have to take ownership of my future of my business of my money everything and I let my manager go I let my literary agent go my assistant happened to be kind of resigning at that time she gave me like she gave me a wonderful six-month Runway and instead of hiring a new assistant I hired somebody that I thought could run a business now I didn't know or help me run a business I didn't know what sort of business I was going to get into but I knew I'm getting that money back I'm getting that 350 000 back and if you're an entrepreneur you know that 350 000 in your hand literally means 700 000 that you have to make because you're going to give half of it to the government yep so I I did that and started a business it was a conference business uh you know kind of self-help uh life plan stuff and I really enjoyed that in order to grow that business I created a marketing framework that I soon realized is bigger than anything I've ever done I wrote a book on that that book sold I think now like 850 000 copies and all of a sudden I'm sitting on a marketing framework education business that you know every small business owner needs to know how to clarify their message that scaled so big I had 30 employees and at now that's that's Point number one is I I fell apart hip-hop rock bottom and and learned to own it then when that business hit about three and a half million a friend of mine named Bill was kind of a mentor and still is a good friend and he he had scaled up his father's company into the billions and he helped small business owners like me figure out what they need to do and we were standing in my driveway and we'd met a dozen times we were standing in my driveway and I just sort of jokingly said but I was also testing it I was testing him when I said it I said I'd really like to own a 100 million dollar business someday well the first time ever I looked into Bill's eyes and I could tell Bill didn't think it was going to happen and I said Bill be honest and he he just he took off his glasses now this guy had never said a critical word to me he'd always been encouraging because he knows what small business owners mostly need it's you can do it you can do it you can do it yeah um but he looked at me and he said Don if you want to go to 100 million you're going to have to quote professionalize your operation that's so good right and I do have you ever heard that I've never heard anybody say that but as soon as he said it I mean it hit me in the chest and it rang true like a bell for the next five years wow and so what I did was I started uh researching and creating systems and processes that would allow my business to more or less run extremely well so that we weren't burdened or bogged down with putting out fires and struggling to find cash and always feeling like a hamster on a hamster wheel um and there ended up being six of those systems and processes that worked we tried roughly 570 that didn't work six of them worked and this book is those six and when I installed slowly and through fits and fall starts and through two steps forward one step back as I installed the systems and processes my company went from three and a half million to 17 million and our profit margin went from probably 30 percent to 64 percent so it worked and then I realized wait a second you know I've got a marketing business but I know all this stuff that entrepreneurs need to understand about how to get this thing going and make sure it works really well and that was the Genesis of the book and so the very first page of that book I talk about bills saying to me you've got to professionalize your operation and this is how we did it and there are basically you know six parts to it you've got to overhaul your leadership and cast an economic Vision most people cast a vision but they don't cast an economic vision you've got to overhaul your marketing and clarify your message you've got to overhaul your sales even if you're a solopreneur you have to learn how to sell in such a way that it's it's non-sleazy it's very uh consult consultative oriented then uh so leadership Marketing sales your product optimization you've got to figure out what you're selling and how to sell it for more and so I talk about that in the book how to take what you're already selling and sell it for more and you do that of course by adding value and there's hidden value everywhere that we're not seeing I just talked to somebody who charges 250 for a product and we changed a few things just a few things about that product and now she charges ten thousand dollars for the same product no sir no and I can tell you I can tell you the story you'll go that makes sense no so so you got to get your products right then you've got to get your management of your overhead right and then you've got to get your cash flow right so those I teach I teach in the book six Frameworks on how to get those six parts right and if you if you reverse engineer it those six things leadership Marketing sales overhead and operations product optimization and cash flow are the six reasons most businesses fail and when I say most literally 65 percent of businesses yeah 65 of small businesses crash and how long do you know like is it within the first year three years in the first year it's 25 within five years it's 45 within 10 years it's 65 percent and they all they all fail for the same reason they ran out of money ran out of money that's it so you can't run out of money out of money and then your book helps us helps us really put the systems in place first so you're building correctly throughout these 10 years to go from zero to whatever that number is that's right the first five Frameworks leadership Marketing sales product optimization and management right the first five Frameworks help you make a ton of cash and then the sixth framework helps you keep it on because it's it's cash flow and and you know you can dive into any one of those but you know sometimes I'm criticized because I talk so much about making money the reality is you know I've got a 17 million dollar business my wife and I live off 150 000 a year we're probably the fourth or fifth highest paid person in my company now the company that the profit that the company makes goes into Investments so yes I I have a lot of money but I don't spend it right we spend 150 000 a year and the money that I make is actually put into Investments now I got married late I got married at 42 became a dad at 49 I'm now 51. so let's be honest this is the money that my wife and her next husband will enjoy but at the same time I'm sure he's going to be a great guy you're a better man than me because I'm gonna put it in my will you cannot remarry with my money hey my wife for putting up with me my wife deserves Mary whoever she wants hey man you was a good man by the way she hates these jokes she doesn't think they're funny hey man Miss Miller I feel you studies are showing nearly right now currently in the year 2023 that nearly 70 of people live in paycheck to paycheck when you dive deeper into the study study reveals that out of that 70 a large portion of those are people who make over six figures these are people who are they've been paid to the paycheck because of inflation because of job loss but a lot of people say man we have an income problem and here's here's the truth we don't really have an income problem we have a lack of utilizing our gifts and skills problem you have the skills you have the talents that God put on the inside of you and I want to ask you this question I was be very honest are you utilizing them correctly or are you just going anywhere getting that check coming home and not really utilizing your gifts and skills to build wealth to pay off debt well listen I am hosting a free a 100 percent free Master Class here with the next few days and I'm teaching people how to build a personal brand how to use the gifts and the skills that God put on the inside of you and turn that into an extra thousand five thousand dollars a month to go towards paying off debt to go towards you know building an emergency fund to go towards building a dream home but I'm gonna go even a step further what if you can use the same principles I'm going to be teaching for free you make an extra one thousand five thousand but what happens if you could turn it into a six-figure income or maybe a seven figure income within the next couple of years well if you are ready to take control of your money if you're ready ready to utilize the gifts and the skills God has given you to build a legacy to build wealth for yourself can you meet me I want you to go to Anthony o'neill.com forward slash save my seat again that is anthonyoneal.com forward slash save my seat or you can click the link in today's show notes it's 100 free come join me let me show you let me show you how we my team and I built a seven figure brand and how they can put a thousand dollars in your pocket for the next 30 to 60 days I'll say so man but I gotta ask this question though because I'm gonna get back to the book because you're helping us right now you're giving us encouragement man and we're going to be dropping his book in in the show notes you guys um make sure you get it we're going to help him get to New York Times bestseller again get him another 47 weeks on New York Times bestsellers list um uh but how is it possible that someone of your status can live off a hundred and fifty thousand dollars because I have people who who say they can't live off 150 000 yeah well it is it is a trick so let me let me tell you what I really mean by that okay um we built a house it took us five years to build it and it is beautiful it's it's a wonderful place I mean I never ever uh the house that I live in is uh the the the the house that I grew up in that my single mom and my sister and I grew up in that we bought for 30 she bought for thirty thousand dollars uh that how two of those houses will fit in our garage and let me just say this we don't have a big garage that's it's literally like we were just that poor so the idea that I could that you know is the art the house we grew up in was less than 800 square feet and it was a three bedroom wow so you know it was you know basically our closet is bigger than my bedroom but we but that that I say that to say I never ever ever ever in a million years thought that something like this would happen to me until I realized you know I don't want to I don't want people to be mad at me but until I realized how easy it is to actually grow a business and and I I think if we say it's hard and it's such a burden you know you got a mind see yes there are setbacks yes there are failures yes there's all that but if you just wake up every day and keep working on it it's gonna it's gonna break through and if you keep learning from your mistakes it's going to break through and so uh you know after I learned that that everything kind of took off now let me answer your question we live off 150 000 but what the money that it took to build the house and the money that it takes to maintain the house is not part of that so I would consider that an investment okay and in the market where I live Nashville Tennessee we are we are earning you know a lot of money every year on the equity in our home now I don't I personally don't believe that your home is where you should actually invest all of your money but at the same time in this market uh it it's it has just it was the smartest thing I could do to beat inflation okay and we crushed it yeah so every dollar that inflation came up my home was being worth more and I wasn't taking that as a loss so now so when I say 150 000 150 000 pays for our food our dry cleaning pays for our gas pays for our you know we have a nanny pace for our Nanny pace for our milk pace for that stuff but it doesn't include everybody's biggest expense which is a mortgage yeah so the truth is we're probably at something like 225 okay and then the rest let me just walk you through can I walk you through the five checking accounts please everybody needs to needs if you're driving right now um drive toward a bank so you have five checking accounts yeah so this is the final of the framework this is the part that teaches you to keep your money okay the first checking account is an operating expense account that is where all of your money for your business goes in and out of it goes in and out of that account um now you're going to pay yourself into a second account and that is your primary checking account it's your personal checking account and let's say you pay yourself 60 Grand a year because what you've got right now is a side hustle yeah so you're gonna pay yourself 2500 bucks every two weeks okay now there's a third account and that's called the tax accounts the account nobody likes every dollar that you pay yourself you have to match in the tax account absolutely so if you're paying yourself five thousand dollars a month you got to put five thousand dollars a month in tax account that is how you keep from being surprised by a tax bill yep um it's also that tax count also operates as a rainy day fund because if you ever run out of money you can pull money out of the tax account and spend it on the business which then is not taxable yep so so now you've got three accounts those three accounts every entrepreneur needs to have right now yes now there's a fourth account that's called business profit and what you want to do is you want to boil over the top of operating expenses you want one month of operating expenses in your operating expense account if that's ten thousand dollars great let's say that you check your operating expense account you've been paid your taxes have been paid and you've got 20 grand in your operating expense account you want to take ten thousand dollars and put it in taxes and ten thousand and put it in business profit now business profit is also your money so you're you're being paid for your in your primary checking which is your salary and you're also being paid in business profit however you can't spend it yet according to my system yeah you need six months and you teach this all the time you need you need six months of overhead in your business profit account now once you have sixty thousand dollars in business profit account let's say that you check it one day and you've got 80. you're going to open a fifth account and that's called investment holding so twenty thousand dollars because you've got eighty you've got six months of overhead and you've got twenty thousand extra you're gonna move that into investment holding and not match it in taxes because this money has already been paid the taxes on this money's already been paid now the game is get as much money into investment holding as you can yeah yeah so psychologically what we've done is we've it's all psychological you know strategy here but the psychology psychologically what we've done is we've separated our money from the businesses money you said Don isn't it my business it is but the business eats cash too and it's very hungry so you need to protect the business at all costs because the business is what pays you yes so you've got to protect that operating expense account you've got to protect the tax account because you know I have a dear dear friend who just called me recently and said Don they've shut down the government has come in and shut down my operating expense account because she didn't pay state taxes so the state came in and shut it down and I said how much money was in your tax account she said I didn't have one I was just paying it out of my operating expense again so it's very important that we separate that money she's fine by the way we were able to get her through it and she's fine um so but the real key is when you ask yourself how successful is your business I have one question for you how much money is your investment holding account because that's the real money yeah now here's the here's the trick here's what old white people know Come on talk to us um what they what old white people know and more and more African Americans are figuring it out and the more African-Americans figure this out the better off our overall American economy is and that is this investment holding you can spend it if you want to buy a bass boat spend it if you want to buy a house what I did with it is I bought a house because I knew in the luxury Market in Nashville this thing is going to make a ton of money but now that the house has paid off what I do with that is I put it into stocks I put it into equity and other small businesses I put it into products if you will CDs treasury bonds stocks I put it into products that make me money without me having to work does that make sense yes yes so you want even if it's listen even if it's 50 bucks go buy a treasury bond come on and just get that money away from you now here's what happens you make an extremely conservative five percent on the money you invest I'm I probably make eight to ten and anybody and I'm not an investor so you know there's other people making a lot more yeah but but you make at least five percent so if you put a hundred thousand dollars into Investments it is making you five thousand dollars a year yeah now at the end of the year you got 105. at the end of the next year you got about 111 yep you know so and so on so we all know the power of compound interest so um I have a a a group of interns that all just graduated from Tennessee State and I you know we're sitting around the conference table and I said to them I said to them I said look you're driving down the street your car you're about to throw a rod in that engine you know it's it's gone these kids are you know they're just at a cop barely out of college and I and I said you see a Toyota 4Runner and it's ten thousand dollars how much is that how much does that truck cost and they looked at me like didn't you just say it cost ten thousand dollars I'm like how much does it cost they said ten thousand dollars I said wrong because in order to get that ten thousand dollars as an entrepreneur you had to put ten thousand dollars into taxes so you had to earn twenty thousand dollars to get that ten thousand dollar truck and I said how much does it cost and they said 20 grand I said wrong let's say you took that ten thousand dollars and you put it into Investments well you're gonna get five percent on that investment which means in 20 years that ten thousand dollars turns into twenty thousand dollars so the opportunity cost on your truck is 10 000 extra meaning 20 years from now that Toyota 4Runner is going to cost you thirty thousand dollars take an Uber now here's what really blew their minds is that let's say that you keep doing this and I know everybody listening is like this dude is talking about money you have no idea how much money you were going to have 24 months around you really don't know right and you might have to manage it and I would say just be prepared and if you can manage the small money this way then when it gets big yes you start you start rolling in it right yeah so what happens is somebody like Warren Buffett you know he's got let's say he's got a hundred billion dollars in Investments he has actually more than that yeah but let's say he's got 100 billion dollars how do these guys how do the one percent of the one percent get this money and create this wealth disparity in our country and there's a massive wealth disparity and by the way it's a problem but how does it happen well if he's got a hundred billion dollars in his investment that he took out of his investment holding and put it into stocks and all that kind of stuff he's making five he's making five billion dollars a year to do nothing to do nothing now five billion dollars a year is what he's making now you say well Don you know um why doesn't he take it out well here's why he doesn't take it out it doesn't take it out for two reasons one if he takes money out of the market he had he gets paid he has to pay taxes so you and I pay taxes on what we make Warren Buffett only pays taxes on what he spends that's so there's a the tax code is not fair in the sense that if you make money off money you don't pay taxes on it but if you make money off work you do isn't that horrible now you say well why is the government doing that well the government does that because the billions that he has in the market are actually Capital that corporations can use to create jobs facts now what Warren Buffett does let's say he wants 100 million dollars now if he takes 100 million dollars out of the of his stock portfolio two things happens one is he signals to all the other people who have invested in his company that he doesn't believe in his company he's taking money out and then they start taking money out and then his company implodes so now he's invested he's incentivized to leave it in the market right and what does it do in the market it creates compound interest and he just gets richer and richer yeah not only that if he takes 100 million out he has to give 20 million dollars to the government yep so what he does is he goes down to the bank and he says look I've got a hundred billion dollars right over there see it and they're like yeah we see it he says can I borrow 100 million against that 100 billion and they say heck yeah like you're good for it and then he pays four percent interest on the 100 million that he borrowed instead of 20 tax on 100 million he took out so he is literally these people are not evil they're literally just like going it's I don't have to you don't have to be smart to figure that out you're just like well wait a second if I pull that out I pay 20 million if I pull this out I pay like what eight grand they're like yeah well then I'm gonna pull this out for eight grand so we do have to figure out as a country how to incentivize really wealthy people into what I would do is I'd create an SBA a small Business Association fund and what I would do is I'd guarantee five percent interest if Warren Buffett puts his money in this fund so now we're competing with the stock market but small business owners would have access to his capital and he would not be charged any taxes on that capital in fact he'd make money on it then the rest of us would be able to get to that money right but Warren Buffett is not a bad guy he's just a guy going look you know don't call me bad because I'm rich all I'm doing is like not doing anything with my money literally that's all I'm doing is not doing anything with it like we should all be doing so what I love doing and this book talks about it is if the rest of us can learn how to do that which they don't teach in school yeah if entrepreneurs can learn how to do that then you and I can start rolling in millions too if you get into it it's really really fun but the the key is though you've got to build a business that will make enough money so that when you check your investment holding account it's going up and then you can go find those products those financial products that you can you can buy to make money without without uh work so I have four I did not have the investment holding account and I'll be honest on my own show well well the investment holding is it's a temporary account right like you're putting money in it and when you go and so and you're gonna have to choose like do you want to put the fifty thousand dollars into the stock market or do you want to say wait a second you know if that gets to 250 I might be able to buy equity in somebody else's small business or I might be able to buy a duplex yeah or whatever uh you know you you kind of play that game with it but the money doesn't stay in investment holding because cash in the bank is not making you enough money to to compete with inflation so you know that that money you know you do what you want with but ultimately at the end of the day and I mean at the end of a very short period of time you end up having a portfolio that is you know making you money without and then as long as you're working and making money and getting your salary and living off that salary you are getting rich yes sir so what I say is don't buy the bass boat or the albino tiger or the parakeet that can say cuss languages in foreign language you know don't buy that with the money you make buy it with the money your Investments make okay so five toys and have fun and go on that culinary vacation in Italy where you're eating your way across whatever buy that with the money your Investments make because the next year that money is replaced year after year after year after year and you that's how the that's how the wealthy live that's how they do it thank you Donna thank you I'm sitting here I'm like this is what we need this is the conversation that black people the black community the minority Community we need to hear and thank you for literally bringing that conversation to the table because I mean it's it's learning and and I know people are thinking like well wait he said his investment count was able to build his home there's a whole strategy for that and we got to bring you back on the show to talk about that you know well but the other thing is like the only way any of this works is if your business is making money that's good and so you've got to focus on just the work the work you know what am I doing to make money to get money to flow down the assembly line yeah through the five accounts into investment holding yeah and once you figure that out you know then you've got a money making machine your business exists to buy products that make you money without working you know they say that the number one one of the number one Rising companies small types of businesses right are content creators and these new influencers online yep your book how to start a small business and when I think about that person that's me you know I'm a I'm a brand I'm a personal brand I'm a content creator I teach people how to pretty much get out of debt and how to build a you know um a personal brand will your book help someone like me who has a story or journey and I want to launch a Content creation business or a online Digi digital educational course yeah chapter two is going to help you uh Define your authentic message and and you know in the I mean we all know AI is going to disrupt things yes and so um I don't think it's going to disrupt things as much as people think right uh however it's going to create some really fantastic content yeah what AI will never be able to do is have a fun loving personality that people trust I'm sorry people do not trust a computer they trust a person so if you are an individual content creator and you learn to be authentic and to be differentiated in the market and to be yourself uh then I think you've got a competitive Advantage moving forward ah man listen I appreciate you one thing you said in your book that I want to do before we end the show here I wish we had a two-hour show with you um uh but you said something that was good I want to ask you what do you mean by this you say uh and I'm asking this question I wrote it down in my notebook why are small businesses too big to fail yeah there well there are 33 million small businesses in America now if if they average two employees which is probably average there's a lot of solopreneurs out there but so let's say they average two employees that's 66 million jobs wow now if 65 percent of them fail within 10 years how many millions of jobs does that mean in terms of turnover in the economy and the sad thing is you know of that 65 percent you know probably 20 percent either didn't have a good product or the economy you know shifted on them and it was a legitimate reason to fail the other 45 percent did one of six things they didn't Define three economic objectives which I teach you to do in chapter one okay they didn't clarify their message okay which I teach you in chapter two they didn't understand how to write a million dollar sales pitch which I I teach you in chapter three by the way I just spoke to 250 sales reps in in Las Vegas and I said um listen I know you guys have all attended sales training and I know it's really boring and I know that you're not convinced it can make you money so here's what we're going to do raise your hand if you have a client sitting the fence 250 hands foot up I said open your laptop we're going to email them right now and we wrote an email 250 different emails to 250 different clients and I put on the big screen I put a formula for writing that email and I said hit send and we closed 2.4 million dollars by the end of the day by the end of the day now wait a minute now is that formula inside this book it's inside the book there's only one chapter in the book that's printed in color because I wanted to color code that formula so to better so people could better understand it and that's chapter three chapter four is how to optimize your product how to take that 250 product and sell it for 10 grand uh then chapter five is managing yourself and a group of people and basically you run your company on five meetings and then chapter six is the five checking accounts that I explained earlier how to grow your small business by the way is the name of the book I keep forgetting to say listen Donald I'm curious man from your expertise you've helped people like like myself uh mignon Francois uh who is my I call her my spiritual mother yes she is she was just on the show here a couple of weeks ago the owner of cupcake Collections and she said you uh you've been mentoring her and I gotta ask you this question she's been mentoring me I think it's more how that works you know um someone's starting a business today during this recession time some people are scared they're scared of their job they're scared of what 2023 is going to look like I'm curious from your seat to people like myself I've been a small business owner now for going on two years what would you say to that person who just started the business and they're seeing this recession they're seeing the news saying hey things are going to shift inflation is crazy high they're a little discouraged and then also they just started so they're gonna get your book but they're like okay I'm gonna read Facebook I'm gonna apply it but am I going to be okay this year am I going to be okay next year what's your thoughts from sitting in your chair okay well you know two things one one just really quick the international monetary fund which is a pretty good uh litmus test for what's gonna happen in the economy is saying mild at best recession for the United States say that fun uh say that again international monetary fund they basically study Global economics and they're saying for the United States probably uh a mild recession so the fears are so far unfounded uh but that doesn't mean it's not going to happen right the other people who are saying mild recession are the the economists at amazon.com they have a team a building of economists that attempts to predict the future and they are saying mild economic recession that is recent that has changed a little bit uh inflation you know the answer to inflation is charged more you know that's it do it now I know it's I know it's scary and you think people are going to buy your thing but you're gonna have to charge more um the other thing that I would just say and let me you know chapter one of the book basically says you need to create a goal for a a measurable number of products to sell within 24 months and you need three of those okay so we're gonna sell we're going to sell you know 700 wedding cakes we're gonna sell you know uh five thousand uh you know dozen cases of uh of cupcakes or five thousand dozen cupcakes uh and we're going to uh you know increase our corporate cupcake retainer delivery program from 40 businesses to 600 businesses within the next 24 months the human brain can only prioritize three things at a time okay and so when you actually say here the the three ways now there may be 25 ways that you make money but here are the three ways we make the most money and our goal is to and I I I'd say our goal is to 100 have a hundred percent increase in each of those you're going to be okay because what happens is you begin to reverse engineer the success rather than just go I want more money if you wake up and say I want more money and by the way when I say I want more money I want more money for my business my business needs cash it's I don't get to spend it I make 150 Grand a year which is great but you know that's what I make so I need money for the business and for my investment holding account so but if you are if you're wake up saying I want more money you're not going to get it but if you wake up and say I want to sell 700 wedding cakes you're gonna get it that's cool does that make sense that's good so it's got to be broken down into these bite-sized things and when then when you're at you know when you're 12 months in and you've only sold 300 wedding cakes you're at about 80 percent of your run rate yeah so then you got to go you know what I need to create a press release I need to put wedding cakes on my end cap I need to get involved in a wedding uh you know conference business or you know I need to buy a booth somewhere I need you start reverse engineering the success based on your three economic objectives yeah I have never seen a business establish three economic objectives and those products need to be highly profitable and in the band I've never seen a business uh not succeed some of them don't reach the goal but they they make a truckload more money when they actually get focused on what they're on how they make money it all goes down to the thing that I practice and I tell this to my team as well that if we aim at nothing we'll hit that all the time yeah you know but if we aim at something we may not hit the target but we'll dag on we'll get close you know and um man thank you thank you Donald thank you where where can we get your book how can we get this book in y'all we not just one this year I told you all there's two things that I really want y'all focusing on is um if you're going to go to Career route Tech and then if you're going to not go to Tech route and you have a job I want you starting a small business on the side and so I want you to get this book for yourself and then buy another so we can give it out to someone else because I do believe and I'll say this respectfully that we are the African-American and even the Latino Community we are some of the most creative people but we haven't learned how to own it build it correctly so we can leave this as a legacy for our kids and what Donald Miller has put together you guys his his first book story brand changed my life and it built it laid down the found the solid foundation for us to build a seven figure business and I'm reading his how to start a small business because he said some things on here that I I'm not okay wait I need some more information there because I want to go from Seven figures to eight figures um and we have those three things put into place of what we're trying to do and so now I'm gonna go and learn what are the things we need to put into place to get to that goal uh down the road so I want y'all to get it but Donald where can we go to get this book and to learn more information about everything that you have and that you're offering to grow not just our businesses but Our Brands as well and our messages well I mean the number one thing I can do to help you is if you get the book how to grow your small business on Amazon it's also available on Audible and I know most business owners then sit down and read a book you know we're driving around yeah from worksite to work site yeah so Audible and then there's actually some editorial comments after each chapter on Audible that I I wish I could have included in the book but they were just more you know the stuff though I was in the studio I just thought oh let me tell you about mignon right and so that that was really fun so there's you actually get some extra and it's a cheaper price okay uh and then that book is going to take you to a small businessflightplan.com and at smallbusinessflyplan.com my team has created uh some online software where every every one of those six steps has worksheets let me give you an example the sales script you can go in and type in a sales script let's say we're trying to sell a wedding cake to a couple that just visited my shop I can type in a sales script a letter an email letter to that couple and it will color code whether or not you're getting you're inviting them into a story or not so it'll highlight the problem that they're experiencing in red it'll highlight your product in purple it'll highlight um the the three-step plan in brown it'll highlight the negative consequences that they don't buy the cake in yellow the positive consequences in blue and in green it'll highlight the call to action and if those parts are not in that email you're not going to close the deal and if those parts are in that email you are going to close the deal so it helps you figure out how to word things in such a way that you close the deal that's just one of the worksheets that's available and it's free when you buy the book just go to small business flightplan.com and you can use all those worksheets and that's what you talk about in your book on providing value if you're going to grow your business you got to provide more value because my business is business to business specifically yeah I know that the more money I make other people the better off I'm gonna do so I don't wake up saying I want to make money what I wake up saying is I want my clients to make enormous amounts of money and if they do they will pay me 12 for a book and then if thousands of them do that you know I get to buy uh I get to put money into investment holding and Betsy and her next husband get a really great life I was just about to say that it's not your Investments holding it's your wife and her next husband is going to have all the life that you've ever wanted don't let her hear this podcast Hey listen you know what y'all living off of 150. her next husband and her will be living off of a million I know it they are they're not they're not going to understand you know oh man well Donald thank you so much man for just your time just your heart and just your your wisdom you literally came on here and you became a teacher you taught all of us you taught me some things I was like wait okay I literally uh took notes in my book I do this on every interview but I did two pages uh worth of notes uh today and I just thank you so much for for you well let me let me also say Anthony it's it's rare where to talk to anybody who has succeeded on your level and understand that they have they have remained grounded yeah and it's the easiest thing to do is to lose your head when you succeed and you have not done it so I don't know who you're surrounding yourself with or what you're doing in the morning or whether your wife wakes up and tells you who you really are I don't know what's going on but it's an honor to spend time with you and if you rub off on me man I'm going to be a better person I'm grateful hey man I appreciate you sir I appreciate you well y'all we're overtime thank y'all so much for rocking with us to the end uh make sure you both get Donald's book his information we'll drop his book we'll drop his Instagram and his website um in today's show notes and make sure y'all go follow them every single day he's literally dropping a quick one minute nuggets to help you get through your business so get the book follow him subscribe to him and I promise you you'll thank yourself for subscribing and following him within a year from now so I would love you all see you all on the next show peace out [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: The Table With AO

Views: 107,853

Keywords: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, how to build a business, make money online, how to start a business, starting a business, starting a business step by step, starting a business without money, starting a business from home, how to start a business without money, step by step start a business, how to start an online business, how to start a successful business, entrepreneur motivation, entrepreneur advice, anthony oneal, anthony oneal podcast, the table with ao, the table podcast, ao

Id: g-5sbejs7f0

Length: 50min 50sec (3050 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023