Welcome to Module Three, this is all about establishing you Inc. Just like I've established Robin Inc. and this is that mindset shift that I mentioned earlier in Module One, thinking about your career and everything you do as one thing, right? some departments are going to make money, some departments are going to spend money. I hear that children department can be quite expensive, but everything needs to align to really design your perfect life around you. Now, by identifying your main goal, you can reverse engineer it now and achieve that goal by aligning your time, your capital, and most importantly, your energy and thought leadership really acts as that lever are that catalyst to make goals happen. Do you see how that makes sense in respect to people Thinking of your life as a business. So let's break it down.

And this is where that multitrack recording spreadsheet I've created really comes in handy. So if you haven't downloaded it yet, go ahead and download that. We're going to talk about things like your overarching business plan, your p&l, which is your profit and loss statement, and your budget departments, like marketing and branding, assistance, or employees, either virtually or in person, and most importantly, metrics to measure your success because if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist when you're talking about business. So let's start with the basics. You can start by building your business by pulling in best practices, what components on building your thought leadership platform should be outsourced at this point, right when looking at it from the vantage point of being a business. This is where my rule comes in very handy as well.

Choose the top five things that you are best at And you love to do and outsource the rest. In my business and personal world, I focus on doing what I love and what I'm great at doing and I consider worth my time. And then I outsource everything else. So ask yourself, what do you do in your life right now that that you really shouldn't be doing, it's a waste of your time. I'm going to get a lot more granule into this on module 10. When we dive into time management.

Now imagining a p&l for your life, when you invest in yourself and your business. It's important to understand where that money is going and how you're going to get it back. You can't just willy nilly, like spend money in places right? You have to consider your personal budget as part of your overall thought leadership business. Because even if your corporation or company is paying for a lot of the things that you need to pay for as a thought leader, you still are going to foot the bill for some things and you're really blurring The lines anyway between being an individual and being a brand when you become a thought leader or a speaker. So ask the same question for every task or revenue stream.

Should this be outsourced? When it comes to building a new keynote deck for myself, and a brand new talk, I know my time is much better spent rehearsing than making the slides beautiful. So I focused on what I'm great at doing. And I hire a designer for $60 an hour on Upwork to create a template design for my slides that and touch them up so that they look very professional. Why would I waste my time spending say five to 10 hours on a slide deck and in the end, it's still gonna look like an amateur slide deck because I just don't have a designer's eye. This way.

The designer does it for me and I have time back in my life. When I need a new website, even though I used to be a website designer a decade ago. When I first got into health tech, now I spent 500 to $2,000 every couple of years to redo my website because I know it is not worth my time, the templates between WordPress or Weebly or whichever ones you want to use. There's a learning curve with that. And I'm so out of practice, I know that I don't actually have enough practice to be able to do it efficiently. So I invest the money in and hire someone to actually do that for me.

They can do in one hour what I what can take me five or 10 hours. And that's really what it comes down to is flexible thinking puts a solution focused mindset equals success. Because whenever you adapt to new technologies or opportunities or careers, you need to be flexible in your thinking. And that combined with the solution focused mindset is going to help you survive and thrive during this massive job shift going on. No pay attention to your own excuses for not doing something differently than you've already, then you've always done it before. Those are excuses are always barriers for change.

And they're created in your mind a lot of the time from fear or change, fear of change or fear of the unknown. And just like time stress needs to be considered, is the stress of doing something worth it. About three years ago, I sold my car, I decided the stress of parking in the Bay Area, driving in traffic, going to gas stations, worrying about car insurance, the DMV, all those little things that go into owning a car, not worth my time and stress. So I sold my car and I only use either Caltrain or rideshare services, or I walk everywhere, and that has had a significant impact on Robin Inc. Because time is currency and has an opportunity cost when time passes and you haven't moved forward on doing anything productive. You've wasted an opportunity to build your business. Right?

Go back to that question, would I do this in my business life? And if the answer is no, why are you doing something at all? I want to talk about real risk. When I began my career, I was Oh, I've always been the kind of person who had two or three jobs at once. I just like to do a lot of different things. And I was working six or seven days a week, sometimes 10 to 14 hour days and really putting in that massive effort.

And I knew just like with everything else in life, the hard part was going to be those first few years, right? But then it was going to get a lot easier. And let me tell you back then, especially and, and then again, when I was turning myself into a professional speaker, it was absolutely terrifying at times terrifying. Every day was hard work and extremely high risk, and I had no guarantee of Success. And even now, as a professional speaker, the reality of my world can be really daunting. Because I live in the heart of Silicon Valley and downtown Palo Alto, which is one of the most expensive areas of the world to live in.

I'm a petite female, right? I support myself without a spouse or a partner have any kind of pitching for things like living expenses, or when times are bad. And every day I compete against men, some of them have multiple degrees, and the only money that I have to invest in myself and Robin Inc, is the money that I make. So if you're looking for a warning sign, or a big red flag, here it is. Everything worth doing has risks. If you're not taking risks, you're not growing or thinking big enough to succeed.

If you want to live up to your own potential, then you must be willing to approach every day a little bit terrified and this journey becomes a thought leader definitely requires risk in your first year, you may not see any direct ROI from the money spent. And in this case, really do not get discouraged. Because even if your income doesn't explode within two or three years, stay with it, because it's the people who stay with it that are the ones who are successful. And you will waste money, it will feel like you're wasting money because not only do you have a huge learning curve on the side, but everyone does. I did even with hardcore research and a deep dive into this world. years ago, I spent money that in retrospect was unnecessary or could have been done more cheaply and even potentially better.

Everything takes more money and time than you think and that you would expect. Always budget in more money and more time so that you are not up against deadlines. If you happen to you You can always put in a slush fund, right? Every year I have, say five or $10,000 or whatever, whatever it is that year, where I know I'm might not use it and if I don't, then it's just kind of like found money. But if I do, then I haven't gone over my own budget. Now, all these things count as business expenses on your taxes, so you are actually getting a little bit more value out of spending money than you might realize or might seem immediately apparent.

Thinking about hiring in my first year as Robin Inc or you know, turning myself into a professional speaker, I use nearly 40 different people. All of them either came from Upwork or virtual assisting companies or companies that handle one specific function like marketing or PR, and I learned a lot. Now, first of all with freelancers, you have to do your due diligence at times I would pay $100 and received amazing work. Sometimes I pay $500 and not so amazing. And even knowing that some of these consultants or anyone you bring on into you into you ink may not work out hiring freelancers are still absolutely worth the money. To this day I use on demand virtual assistance and to do everything from editing these videos that you're watching right now to cleaning up databases or sending out mailings for me transcribing talks even right um, I've even had some do plane reservations, of course as the things that you would normally think of, but editing audio, my audio book as well.

And not all consultants are going to work out just like full time employees at a large corporation are not giving the company their full effort. consultants may not perform any better just because the money is coming from your own pocket. Right so that's why you have That extra room in your budget for those people that don't work out and they don't live up to your expectations. This is the cost of doing business. Right? You are going to likely have to pay somebody else to redo a task.

And that happens. Corporations deal with this every single day. I deal with this reality with a lot of different things that I'm doing you absolutely well, too. And let's talk a little bit about ROI and timeline. This first year you're building this foundation and some parts of your your business are going to take time to grow. If you want to be a keynote speaker that's going to take time and even today when I book say a 15 or $20,000 keynote.

I don't see that money for sometimes five or six months. All right, because they don't usually pay until after you have delivered the keynote and a lot of these big conferences that are paying the big, big bucks. They're booking speakers six months to A year out. Now, when you start out that timeline might even be longer because you have to build your credibility. So even though parts of your time are going parts of your business are actually going to take time to develop does not mean that you will have to wait forever to get things going. I've seen friends launched themselves as thought leaders rapidly.

My friend Monica prophet had been at the beginning of her thought leader journey in the first year or two when we met. She had been really successful in the art world but she wanted to break into the blockchain industry. And she made a major step towards that transition in a period of only 10 days. She already understood the basics of blockchain because she had done a deep dive into studying it to begin with. She just wrote blockchain one on one, the very basics of what blockchain is in our in our 80 page word doc bam, and she she pushed it out in less than a week. And she didn't even have to do any research because it was the fundamentals, the very basics of this new industry that she already had studied in depth.

Now, we had talked about the fact that her writing a book would be probably the biggest difference that she could make in her career change. But Monica didn't want to do it in the six to nine month time range that I've done both of my books then and she didn't want to put in that kind of capital on her very first book, she really wanted to launch herself very quickly, and for a lot less money. So that's where I came up. And I mentioned to her a trick that my friend Sue Lima actually taught me which is to publish a PDF. All that means is write a 20 page word doc. And in Monaco's case, she wrote an 80 page word doc, turned it into a PDF uploaded to Amazon and bam, all of a sudden she has a self published paperback and it took off Almost no time.

She is an artist. So what she did is she took my front cover of the patient as CEO she duplicated it switched out the photo switched out just the the title and and all the words on the front cover. And she had her cover. She didn't even have to worry about thinking, Oh, how do I even design this right now another part of the story that might help when we were brainstorming the content and the title audience and her business model and, and different revenue streams that she could potentially bring in. We realized that being an expert on blockchain at blockchain conferences was not going to get her anywhere the competition is fierce. But if she was the only blockchain expert at non blockchain events, giving blockchain one on one, then she'd be a star and she would definitely stand out.

So that's why she chose blockchain. One on one. And that's why we brainstorm that particular title. It's dummies guide right to and you can do that exact same thing. Now, not only is the content incredibly easy for her to write, but it turns out it's incredibly valuable for a lot of people. And now corporations and startups who want to really understand the basics of blockchain, this brand new technology.

Monica is now the go to speaker for corporates to come out for that intro to blockchain speaker. So what are those basics in your industry? What is your equivalent one to one or dummies for right? And remember, you're teaching people outside your industry because inside your industry, there's considerably more competition. Of course, you don't have to go this route, but it is something to think about. And now when creating a new platform, you can take into account the fact that people pay for packaging and delivery, not the actual content.

So if you write one book, you can create five or more products based on that. Each one more expensive than the last. And these are called upsells. This particular platform, the thought leader formula is one of those five in one or nine in one product. So I did the first five products with this particular platform, but this is a very standard formula in the industry. first product is that workbook or mini book or chapter expert that is that people can download for free by putting in their email address.

The second product is an actual book, whether that is a 20 page PDF that you upload to Amazon in 10 days or if it is a 250 page book like the thought leader formula. That is your second product, it can be anywhere from free to 99 cents to 20 or $30. The third is this online. Line learning program similar to what I'm doing right now. And there's other ways to do it. Of course, this is a higher priced item that expands on the content and packages up into a different medium.

Now these types of programs are priced at anywhere from $59, or maybe even a little bit less sometimes to over $3,000. Or significantly more, and the prices are all over the board. And you can use a subscription model, you can use a one time purchase payment plan model, lots of ways to do this. The fourth product is either an hourly consulting package for corporations or entrepreneurs, for instance, or you can do a package price so you can do some type of project based on your content for a corporation. The fifth product could be that full keynote or workshop on the topic. Typically you can do a five figure speaking fee if you have a book out there.

The sixth product, which I'm not doing right now, but I might be in the future is a community around a specific interest area. So this can be a one time purchase or a subscription model. And while I don't dive into building communities in this particular book, there are a lot of resources that can instruct you on how to launch those types of things. Prices for communities vary dramatically. The seventh product can be that online conference, completely variable on pricing. The eighth product can be an in person conference.

Again, completely variable on pricing on the ninth can be a mastermind conference. This is what's called a hybrid between an in person and an online conference and community. Some of them cost upwards of 5000 to $25,000 a year per per participant. Some are hundreds of dollars, but the average I think, is between five and 25, I have seen some for over $100,000 per participant per year. Now when creating this platform that the TLF platform, I knew I could easily do that five and one, even that diamond one, because a step by step process or instruction manual translates really well across many different content mediums, whether that is audio video, in person, book or more. Now, the free part of the my platform which you can download the workbook on my website for free.

This is a feeder for the TF platform sales funnel, and that leads to the more expensive products and upsells. Right, you see how that works. Now, with the workbook I provide real value upfront in exchange for an email address, which most people think are negligible or no cost, but in reality, that email address is a key avenue for a relationship. Because once I have that email address, I can communicate with you about other products or upsells. Or even just build the relationship over a period of years. And once someone downloads that free workbook, and it actually provides value to their life, they're more likely to trust me later on and want to know more about what I have to offer.

And this is what's called leading with value. Whatever your industry you're in, you can use the same exact process. So consider what your upsells might look like, what can you offer in exchange for an email address that provides real value to your current potential revenue base? And how will you expand on that content and personalize your approach with each given product or upsell? Now, the beauty of ROI as a thought leader is that it multiplies over time, so you put a massive amount of work upfront and because it's all brand new, and then Have all wet kinds different kinds of ways to sell that content or package that content or expertise over and over again. So that begs the question, if it's all the same information or maybe built upon, why would someone pay thousands of dollars to hire me as a consultant when they can get a free workbook right?

People do not pay for content they pay for packaging and personalization, the real value differences in the package and that personalization, because when someone has a hand to hold, they can grow and learn more quickly. In an online course, it's much more personal than say, reading a workbook and having to figure out everything on your own. Now, as you plan going forward, you need hardcore annual goals. For example, by year two, you might want to have say two salary clients and 10 speaking engagements for the year. Or maybe you want to have a promotion at work, or a successful fundraising round, or a new job or an email list of a specific number of people, or even just the opportunity to travel to five different countries, the options and opportunities are endless, but you actually have to write things down in order to really go for them, right.

So grab that multitask recording spreadsheet, choose two to five goals and put them in that project plan template about a year out. And you should have audacious goals and you should have a plan of attack around those audacious goals are just wishes or dreams. If you work hard and you map out your goals, you'll be able to reverse engineer your success. So not only will you achieve your measurable goals most likely, but you could even surpass them. And this is a plan for a business These goggles require real risk and cost. In my first three years building myself into a professional speaker I spent about $70,000 I thought a vision way to educate myself and set myself up for success.

Can I instead paid for an MBA I might have spent three times that amount of money and taken out student loans. Now at the time when I was spending that 70,000 and it was over a period of three or three plus years, it was absolutely terrifying to spend that money but now I am incredibly happy that I took that risk. So with your project plan template, your next step is to generate that first year budget. Because a once said action is the foundational key to all success. Trying to do a budget is absolutely terrifying. I know I that I if you are not a math, accounting or finance person, and you don't love numbers than this Probably a torturous task for you.

So I've made it simple for you. You just have to start, do not skip this, go to the project mean sorry, go to the budget tab on the multi tab spreadsheet, and really fill it out as much as possible. And these are your action items. First, what's your first year budget? Thinking about? Do you want to write a book do you want to if you do, then maybe you get PR and that's about $15,000 for three months, book marketing company, and these are the bare bottom numbers like they they go way up from there.

Of course, everything is all over the board. But in general, for a first time author if you can find marketing and PR companies who are doing individual first time authors. It's much different than say a full long Corporation if you were a 500 person, corporation or more. These same companies are going to charge double or triple because it's a whole different thing. But you could expect to pay maybe 12 to 15,000 dollars for three months for a marketing company, your website developers anywhere from 500 to 5000. Anything over 5000 and they are fleecing you do not.

Frankly, I wouldn't spend more than $2,000 on, you know, you want a five page, maybe static website. Maybe you want to keynote script writers, that's one to $10,000. Graphic designers can be anywhere from 50 to $100 an hour. Again, it can be all over the board, virtual assistants 40 to $100 an hour depending on the task. You're going to need to buy software potentially hardware like say your smartphone and tablet. And you have to budget in travel expenses.

I'm going to dive into in module nine exactly who pays for what in terms of when you get your speaking engagements. But you're going to have to do some networking and you're going to have to foot the bill for some of your travel and hotel for your speaking engagements. So put some budget in there and with things like hotel While you can go on the cheap, and if you need to do that, absolutely. And stay in a budget hotel around the conference, but most of the time, all of the speakers and attendees stay in that same hotel. So it can make it much easier for you to do things like networking. So keep that into consideration.

That's why I would say three to $400. A night for a hotel room is probably a good number in terms of a budget. And even you may have to pay some conference fees. So give yourself a budget for that maybe two or $3,000 Max, maybe it's just a few hundred. Now you don't have to map everything out right now. As you move through each module, you're going to think of more things to add to your plan.

And that's why I've made it easy for you on that spreadsheet so you can just start to add things. Right now. You're just jotting down obvious needs. You definitely need a website. You definitely need things like designers or marketing companies. If you are writing the book And some of these workbook expenses are going to be covered in later modules.

So that's it for now. I will see you in module four.