The 90 Day Business Challenge: Going From $0-$10K
It used to take a lifetime of hustle and hardship to finally become successful.
In fact, if you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth, your chances of ever leading an abundant life were slim to none.
Today, however, almost everyone (or at least a massive group of people) stand a chance at becoming successful and shaping their own fates.
The internet, and more recently web3, have created pools of opportunities for everyone, no matter your race, skin colour, age, or sex.
As long as you can access the internet, you're able to build a success story most would have deemed impossible only a few decades ago.
However, a lot of people don't know where to start.
With the introduction of the internet, we're not only faced with new possibilities, but we also find ourselves facing a whole heap of new problems.
One of the biggest problems entrepreneurs face is the overconsumption of information, which leads most down a road of immobility.
I decided to create a simple, 90-day challenge that will help a lot of people transform their lives within the next three months.
What is this challenge?
The 90-day challenge is a simple and effective exercise that spans over a three-month period, where you start a business and scale it to $10K per month in revenue, and beyond.
The challenge is structured in a way to cover all aspects of building a business, while trying to eliminate the common problems and misconceptions a lot of entrepreneurs face.
See, starting a small and successful business isn't a massive challenge - it's our perception of reaching such a goal that creates the barriers we inevitably face.
This challenge will guide you along the right track you need to take in order to scale to $10K per month and beyond.
I've broken down the challenge into 5 key aspects one must consider when starting a new business.
Who is this for?
No matter who you are, this challenge can help you go from where you currently are to a small business owner within the next 90 days.
If you're someone who's been on the fence about starting a business or a side hustle for a while, but not sure where to start - this will help you out.
If you're an existing entrepreneur looking to start your next business, this can help you streamline the process of picking and building a business.
Finally, if you're someone who's been ominously chasing success for a while and keep running into brick walls, this will show you a much simpler and faster way to do it.
What you'll realise is that everything we talk about is not, in fact, time-bound, but things you'll have to inevitably carry on doing after the 90-day challenge is complete.
However, I've given you rough estimates for how long you should be spending on each aspect of the challenge to help you out.
The 90-day business challenge:
Now, let's talk about what the challenge really entails.
Mindset training
Starting a business, almost all entrepreneurs jump straight into the business itself and forget all about the driver of the business - themselves.
The reason for many of my own failures in business is the fact that I never took the time to rewire my mind.
Think about your goals in life, then think about the person you currently are today - is this person capable of achieving said goals?
In many cases, if you're being honest, the answer is going to be a hard no.
We're all a work in progress, and that's the first thing you need to understand and accept.
No one is ever perfect, and no one will ever be perfect - however, we can get close to it, as long as we embrace a growth mindset.
I'm not going to explain what a growth mindset is because I've talked all about it previously, however, the basics of developing a growth mindset is becoming a life-long learner.
Over the next 90 days, you're going to be venturing into something you may know nothing about.
The only way to succeed is by taking the time to learn about your chosen business, and how it all works.
You'll then need to be at peace with the fact that your lack of knowledge, at the moment, will inevitably lead to some devastating failures down the line.
Without these failures, being successful is pointless - as soon as one mistake occurs, you won't know what to do, and everything would have been for nothing.
Look at failures, simply as part of the bigger picture.
Failures are only lessons, at the end of the day. Real failure occurs when you decide to ultimately give up.
Every failure you encounter is making you strong and more capable of doing the things you need to do to succeed down the line.
The reason why many businesses fail after they've been handed down over generations is that those who find themselves in a position of success have never actually gone through the hardship of building, failing, and repeating which builds resilience and mental fortitude.
Work on embracing life-long learning, on managing risk and failure, and on ultimately enjoying what you do because living your life in misery is not worth it after all.
Your big idea
Now that we've got the mindset aspect out of the way, we can finally dip our toes in the water.
The first thing we're going to have to figure out is the business we're going to pursue.
Throughout my blog, I've spoken about various different businesses one can start and succeed with.
Some of the most popular businesses I've touched on are:
However, there is a ton more you can try.
It's possible to reach $10K per month as a freelancer, and it's also possible with most of the side hustles I've spoken about in this article here.
It's completely up to you which business you decide to pursue - as a beginner, I would most likely avoid things like SaaS businesses, even NFTs as they both require a lot of technical work and a lot of startup capital.
Aside from these business ideas I've mentioned, there is a ton more you can find by simply searching online.
Choosing a business doesn't mean finding a completely new, untapped opportunity that no one has ever tried before.
If you're looking to start a completely new business, then it most likely won't be possible within a 90-day window.
Instead, you should be looking for lucrative opportunities that have proven product/market fit.
Selling physical products online, as long as you meet a certain criteria, has proven demand.
Selling online services most definitely has proven demand.
Businesses are always looking for support with marketing, sales, software development, copywriting, and so on.
It's important you don't overthink this part of the process, picking an idea shouldn't take any longer than a day, however, it's something you will most likely be doing for years and years to come.
With that said, give yourself a week to figure out what business you want to pursue, and let's move on to the next part of the challenge.
The business plan
Once we've figured out what business we want to pursue, we need to write a business plan.
The business plan will be our guide, our roadmap over the next 90-days, and beyond.
Many entrepreneurs start a business then don't know what to do after, they don't have a map to guide them from A-Z.
This is why creating a business plan is so crucial, it'll help us figure out exactly what we need to be working on over the next 90-days.
Hearing the words 'business plan' might make some people anxious - it's not really a fun thing to do, however, it's essential for building a business successfully over the next 90-days.
Luckily, there are existing frameworks that simplify the business plan tremendously; instead of writing out 50+ pages worth of planning, we only need a single page.
Read my article on the one-page business plan to learn about what your plan should entail.
If you'd like a template to fill out, simply submit your email above, and you'll receive it immediately (message me on LinkedIn if you do not receive it).
The key aspects of the business plan are:
- The audience
If you're selling portable blenders, your audience is going to be people who care about their health but are usually on the move.
The audience is the people who will buy your products or services, they're the people your products will appeal to.
Get crystal clear on the audience - the more you know who your audience is, the better you can market to them.
- Your offering/solution
What are you really going to be selling?
If you're selling SEO marketing services, this will help you figure out what you need to make the business come to life.
To start an SEO business, you don't need a lot - you only need someone who knows about SEO on your team, a website, a portfolio, and an outreach/sales strategy to take strangers and turn them into clients.
- The marketing channels
Finally, where are you going to be finding these people you mentioned above?
What marketing channels are you going to be using to attract them?
Will you use purely free marketing channels?
Will you be running paid Facebook adverts?
Or, will you be using influencers to get cheap, quality traffic?
Although these are the basics of creating a business plan, read up my article that explains the full plan, and fill it in with as much detail as possible.
The more you write inside the plan, the clearer you will be in the next phase.
Building phase
Now it's time to start building that business you've picked.
You have the idea, and you have the plan - it's time to start executing.
Depending on the business you've decided to start, you're going to be following a set of actions that all lead to the same result - finding customers and getting them to purchase your products or services.
If you started an eCommerce business, you would focus on finding the right suppliers and building a website where you can collect orders.
If you built an agency, you'd focus on building a small team that will help you outreach, close, and deliver great results for clients.
It's impossible to give an overview for each business because there are simply too many business opportunities one can choose to pursue.
However, it's important that you don't get caught up in the finer details of the building phase.
It's easy to get ahead of yourself and aim for perfection, however, done is usually better than perfect.
Many people, including myself, use the pursuit of perfection as a shield from our internal fears.
Launching a business and spending money on marketing is scary - the chances of success aren't always in our favour, to say the least, however, it's something we have to overcome.
If your site isn't perfect, don't worry, you can always change it over time.
If your outreach strategy isn't fully optimized, use it, get data, and optimize it over time.
If your NFT collection's art doesn't look great, there will always be another chance to create a better collection later on - focus on what really matters, building the community which then add value to your project, despite the art itself.
Give yourself a goal to build your business within 30-days, it's completely possible for most business opportunities.
Marketing execution
Part of your business plan should have covered your full marketing strategy.
While it's important you don't spend too much time building out your business, marketing is where you'll want to spend all your time.
Many people will tell you that a mediocre business with great marketing always beats a great business with bad marketing, and it's true.
No business ever starts out perfectly, however, that's something you can develop over time.
Ideally, you should have started marketing right from the beginning, it's never a great idea to start marketing after your product or service is completely ready.
When my partner and I ran our marketing agency, we were focused on finding clients while looking for those who can help us deliver the results.
Similarly, our NFT collection is far from ready - the art, the video, the smart contract: all these things are still in the works, yet we've started to deploy small marketing efforts so that we have something to work with already.
There are dozens of different strategies one can use to market their business - they're all split into two distinct options:
- Paid marketing
In the age of instant gratification, people are heavily focused on seeing quick results.
This is where things like paid Facebook or Google adverts come in.
It's where paying small or large influencers for a social media post comes in.
Although this strategy is effective, it's oftentimes unnecessary, to begin with.
A lot of people who might start this 90-day challenge might not have the necessary capital to spend on paid marketing.
Instead, they may choose to leverage free marketing channels.
- Free marketing
A few days ago, I wrote an article outlining 6 free and effective marketing strategies businesses can use.
That's a great place to start if you're on a low budget, or simply don't want to spend money on marketing.
In many cases, free marketing channels prove to be more effective than paid marketing channels.
One of the most popular, content marketing, is said to deliver 3X more leads per dollar spent compared to traditional marketing strategies.
While content marketing is slow to begin with, new platforms like TikTok have given people the opportunity to see massive results in a short period of time.
TikTok's algorithm makes it so that anyone, no matter how small they may be, can go viral. You really are just one video away from success with social media.
Aside from social media, there are many other free strategies one can use to grow an online business.
Don't forget to check out my article to learn more.
What's next?
If you've successfully followed along with this 90-day challenge, you should be sitting on top of a business that generates $10,000 per month or more in revenue.
Now while it might be tempting to go and enjoy everything you've built up to this point, this is where things start to get harder.
This is where you need to strap in because you've now got an infant you need to raise and take care of for the rest of your life.
A lot of people believe that once they have that business built, it's all over - no! This is where it all begins to get crazy.
I've written many articles that will help you throughout your business journey - a lot of them about scaling an existing business.
One of the most important things you're going to be doing is, building a team by hiring the right people.
From there, you've got a much better chance at building a long-lasting business.
Start putting more time and attention into building a brand.
Here's another article that might help you scale your operations.
That's the 90-day business challenge. Let me know if you've started it, and update me on how it's going!
Did you find this article helpful?
If so, please leave your thoughts in the comments below - let's get some conversations going.
Share this article on social media and with others, let's help more entrepreneurs realize their dreams!
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Till next time,
Mohamad
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