fc_250Rich Schefren who is one of Alex Jeffreys‘ mentors and to some very successful business people online and off the internet gave a guest presentation the other night to Alex Jeffreys’ class.

Boy did he make some powerful statements, this is a guy who is really on top of his game and his presentation and business skills are second to none in my opinion.

As this Blog post is being filed into what I call my online journal for myself and others to look back on to see where I have come and remind myself of what I have learnt I thought it would appropriate to share with my readership some of what was covered.

Rich Schefrens’ approach was to break down his presentation and give an overview of a broad range of the functions needed in business:

A Business by Design

First he described how a business model should be structured – points being

  • Know what you want – what does your business need to do for you?
  • Know what your customers/prospects want – its no good making a product unless you know there is a market for it
  • Be clear/develop the purpose of your business
  • Use the simplest business model possible

The diagram below is a breakdown of how a business should function, typically all these functions in a new business are carried out by the owner/founder – as you grow the business, you must move yourself outside as many of these functions as possible so the business works and grows itself freeing you up to do other things.

This really struck a chord with me as I have been a busy fool trying to do too for a long time, throughout my life.

With such an approach there are the affordability issues of paying for someone elses services not to mention finding the right people – but as a business that is online this should be achieved incrementaly once the business is working properly.

Clearly it won’t always be as simple as this, particularly as you must have the right people for the job and you must have non negotiable standards – i.e things done in a certain way, etc.

Rich Schefren - business design

The approach suggested is that each of these boxes change colour as responsibility is handed over to someone else eventually taking yourself out of the operational structure of the business – simple but smart.

Your Entrepreneurial Ability

  • You have to be recourseful in business as opposed to searching for recourses – I took this as a statement that you must be inclined to come up with your own systems more often than not rather than looking for someone else to take the lead and provide you with the next best thing.
  • Cause and Effect – look into detail into why you cuase or fail at anything and keep doing it so you can put your efforts into things that work
  • Highest and best use – score yourself on how you use your time
  • Ability to systemize – use process mapping to systemize everything

Ability to learn and Apply

  • Purchase something because you need it now, not in case you might need it later
  • When you do something link to something else to make a connection
  • Rapid learning – speed read, speed listening, speed watching

Ability to Create Killer Products Rapidly

  • Use your prospects desires, beliefs etc to decide on an appropriate product
  • Focus on pain and problems – design the product to resolve those problems
  • Use Amazon as a research tool to see what people are saying about products in your Niche to find out what they are missing
  • Get good at one presentation format so it is second nature

Ability to Partner

  • Fastest path to growth - an example would be create good JV partners
  • Understand what other marketers need and how to help supplement what they do etc  I took this as if they need to have
  • Easiest way to get the big players attention is to Blog about them, like I am doing now – this goes without saying

For all those who are not on Alexs’ program and are online entrepreneurs or even striving to be I would strongly suggest looking at joining The Founders Club that covers all the above and much much more.

This is not an affiliate link nor am I personally trying to sell anything here, the internet is full of hype and information overload and special offers but opportunities like this do not come round often, all I will say is have a look at the Founders Club and look at some of the other student blogs linked to this blog to see what people are saying about this.

Resources of this quality do not come around often.

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