Work For Your Business Assets Not Your Liabilities

Are you creating a business asset? Or is your business a time-sucking job that keeps you chained to your keyboard working feverously for the biscuit it tosses you once in a while?

Sounds harsh? Yes, I agree.

But is it true? Way more often than we’d like to admit.

It doesn’t matter if you’re making $2K, $10K, or $50K per month if your business requires you 100% of the time to run, you’re building yourself a job, not an asset. Been there, done that.

Business Asset: A business system or investment that puts money in your pocket without you having to trade your time and money to get it.

The Cash Flow Quadrant

Ages and ages ago, I read Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant book. In the book, he talks about the 4 ways people make money, Employee (Has a Job), Self Employed (Owns a Job), Big Business (Owns a System), Investor (Owns Investments).

E/S: The E and S on the left side of the quadrant trade their time for money. They are limited in what they can earn by the amount of time they can work. E’s and S’s also will stop earning money if they stop working. They value security, but ironically this is the least secure side of the quadrant because they only earn money when they can work.

B/I: The B and I on the right side of the quadrant are not trading time for money. These business owners have the ability to make money while they sleep. They have systems in place that leverage either other people or money working for them. B’s and I’s are willing to take a risk and invest time and money in building assets that will hopefully pay off and give them the freedom they value.

Here’s a video where Robert Kiyosaki explains the overall concept.

Are you creating business assets; systems that leverage either people or money to make you money?

If you’re a coach who relies heavily on 1:1 meetings or group coaching sessions to get paid, no. You are still trading your time for money because you only have so many time slots available each week. You’re in the S category, not the B or I quadrant.

Last week I wrote about creating the 9 recurring revenue business models as a way to smooth out your cash flow and create some consistency in your business. This is a great first step, but a subscription model that requires your time to maintain it is technically a liability, not an asset…unless it runs by itself or you can get someone else to maintain it. Creating a subscription business model changed my cash flow, but it changed my business when I hired someone to do a lot of its work to maintain my clients’ sites.

Creating a subscription business model helped my business, but it really changed when I hired someone to do a lot of the work it takes to maintain my clients’ sites.

Three steps to move from E/S to B/I by creating business assets that generate income:

Our goal is to create a business that requires less effort, steady cash flow, that leverages time, money, or people.

Leverage Time by Serving One-to-Many:

Moving from one-to-one to one-to-many is an easy way to leverage your time and generate more income.

Most coaches or consultants start out doing 1:1 coaching with their clients and move into group coaching to leverage their time and help more people at once.

✓ Does it require less effort from you?

Yes: The more people you can help in the amount of time you have available to work, the more money you can make with the same amount of effort.

✓ Does it provide steady cash flow? 

Possibly: If you were to put those clients on a contract with a monthly retainer you will have a steady cash flow until the contracts run out and you need more clients.

✓ Does it allow you to leverage your time, money, and other people? 

Somewhat: You have created monthly recurring revenue and they are serving more people with the same amount of effort, but you’re still trading time for money and you won’t get paid if you stop working.

Leveraged Lead Generation:

Remember the days of having to wait a week to watch your favorite show? On-demand TV made life so much easier. Now you can watch your favorite show whenever you feel like it. Leads can be the same way if you build a converting lead funnel that drives your traffic to the sale.

There are a few overall ways of generating traffic.

1. Production Traffic – I call this muscle marketing. Driving traffic with blog posts, engaging in Facebook groups, creating podcasts, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, guest blogs, email marketing, live social videos, etc. Unless creating content is your passion, it’s an exhausting, never-ending cycle of churning out one piece of content after another.
2. Paid Traffic – Driving traffic with paid ads.
3. Passive Traffic – SEO (search engine optimization), local business listings, and client reviews that drive traffic to your site from the search engines.

The key to all of these traffic generation techniques is that you have to have a converting funnel so that the visitors you send to it will opt-in and become leads.

✓ Does it require less effort from you?

Yes: Once your funnel is in place and converting well, you can adjust the flow of leads as you wish by simply turning on and off your traffic and spending less or more money on ads.

✓ Does it provide steady cash flow? 

Yes: A well-converting funnel will provide a steady stream of leads for you which will result in a steady stream of clients or customers if your sales funnel is strong and you have a great product or service.

✓ Does it allow you to leverage your time, money, and/or other people? 

Maybe you can leverage money via paid ads to drive traffic into your funnel, get clients, and leverage your time since your ads can run in the background.

If you’re using the funnel to book 1:1 or group coaching clients you’re still trading time for money to do the actual work, so it’s not passive income. That’s where digital products come in!

Digital Products:

Creating digital products that teach your clients to do something for themselves can create passive income for you, and moves you into the B quadrant.

✓ Does it require less effort from you?

Yes: Once your product has been created an unlimited number of people can use the product without you.

✓ Does it provide steady cash flow? 

Maybe: Yes, if your digital product is generating steady sales through a highly converting sales funnel or if it includes an ongoing monthly subscription membership.

If it’s a one-time purchase because you’ll constantly be needing new clients, it is unlikely to provide steady cash flow without you or someone on your team steadily promoting it.

✓ Does it allow you to leverage your time, money, and other people? 

Yes: You can leverage money via paid ads to drive traffic into your funnel and learning management system. You’re also leveraging time because you only had to teach the information once to benefit many. You can leverage other people by hiring a community manager to help students who have questions.

Freedom = investments and businesses systems that provide steady cash flow each month without a lot of effort from you.

Financial freedom is when you have enough passive income cash flow from business or investment assets to pay for your lifestyle.

Most entrepreneurs start a business seeking freedom from the 9-5. They don’t want to own a job that owns them. Have you built a business that owns you? Let’s brainstorm some ways to create assets instead of working for your liabilities.

I help service-based businesses, like coaches and consultants, create systems that become business assets. We focus on three things:

1. Finding a way to serve your clients at a higher level with less effort
2. Generating steady cash flow
3. Leveraging money, time, and/or other people to grow and manage your business

Would you like help creating a lead generation or sales funnel or an online training course? I’d love to invite you to book a free discovery call.

Let’s Get Your Business Assets in Gear!