- Hey there.
Dan Martell here.
Serial entrepreneur, investor and creator of SasS Academy
and this episode, I'm gonna share with you the five best
business ideas to grow and most profitable this year.
Or I'm gonna show you guys how to identify the ones
that have the lowest cost to start,
the hightest gross margin, or what's called low COG,
cost of goods sold, with a relatively straightforward
go-to market channel strategy for you.
Be sure to stay to the end where I'm gonna tell you
how to get access to my free mini course.
There's no cost.
I'm not selling anything.
It is my Idea to Exit programme where I teach you
how to, if you wanna build software,
develop no-cost product development, help you fund your team
and also build a marketing growth engine.
So let's get started.
(upbeat music)
So I get asked all the time from different entrepreneurs,
wantrepreneurs, people starting off, in the comments below,
"What business should I start?
"I wanna start a business.
"I'm entrepreneurial.
"I know whatever path is not for me.
"I quit my job.
"I need to not go to university.
"I need to just start."
I get asked all the time.
And I'm always thinking... And some of them just wanna know,
"How do I make money fast?"
So here's the deal.
I'm gonna share with you what I would do
if I was in your spot.
I'm gonna give you five of the most...
As it is this year, okay, this strategy works right now.
Five of the best ideas for you to invest in.
So if you don't know, my background is, yes, in software.
I've built five technology companies.
I've exited the last three.
I've invested in 40 plus other software companies,
but I've also invested in real estate, eCommerce,
local services, consulting businesses.
You name it, I have experience in it.
I've looked at the business models, the P&L,
I've helped scale the management teams.
I've built a marketing strategies and sales teams
for those different industries and verticals.
And it is something I absolutely love.
And as I've gone through this,
there's always this question of what business
is the least riskiest, the highest profitability, et cetera.
And I'm gonna give you my answer, okay,
of 20 years of building and growing,
becoming a multimillionaire, investing millions of dollars
in other companies, and growing my own companies.
I'm gonna take it all back and I'm gonna share with you
exactly what I think are the five biggest opportunities
for you to take advantage of right now in the market.
Number one, online courses.
Now, I know if you've watched other people's videos,
look, I'm not that guy.
I'm not gonna pedal an online course.
I'm not.
There's all these fake gurus out there.
I'm not saying do any of that, okay?
I'm talking about legitimately taking your knowledge,
something you know how to do, and package it up
so somebody else can buy that from you,
and you're not involved in delivering it, okay?
And there's some incredibly, very ethical people out there
like Ramit Sethi from I Will Teach You Be Rich,
even though we both agree, he's a good friend of mine,
that, that is probably one of the most scheme-y internet
names and book titles ever.
That and Four Hour Work Week, definitely
Tim Ferris are budding heads against which one
is the most scheme-y.
But here's the deal.
Is Marie Forleo, Amy Porterfield, Brendon Burchard,
there are so many people that have truly mastered the craft
of creating online courses.
Here's why it's incredible.
You already know how to do something
that you take for granted
that somebody else would actually love to learn
how to do for themselves.
It doesn't matter if it's taking photos,
if it's installing a cement driveway.
You name it.
The niches exist.
I have friends that teach jewellery makers
how to build jewellery businesses to dance studio owners
be more efficient in their business, productivity,
lifestyle, relationships, whatever it is.
Here's why I think it's powerful.
Is that A, the cost to produce those trainings today
is almost zero.
Literally, if you have a laptop and basic software,
you can do it for free.
The hosting of those for many in their premium solutions,
the payment gateway
to take a credit card, et cetera, they're free.
Engaging in a community to get customers to buy it is free.
You can partner with other people that have an audience.
And the gross margins are as good as software, okay?
90 plus percent gross margin in a business is amazing
and that's what's available to you.
So don't discount what you know and say,
"Well, nobody would pay me for this."
Go get the books.
Go read.
Go educate yourself,
but there's an opportunity for you this year
to launch an online course
and start selling it.
And it sounds like a crazy idea and it sounds like
what all these internet gurus are trying to sell to you,
but I'm telling you I have friends that...
I have a woman I met the other day for lunch,
she does online teacher prep courses, okay?
She's a teacher.
She left teaching full-time five years ago
and now makes $900,000 a year creating lesson plans
for other teachers.
This is available to you.
If you're watching this video, you're hungry,
you're motivated, there's a reason why you're here.
I'm telling you that this is an opportunity.
So online courses to me
is one of the first ones that's approachable.
Anybody can do it if you have any skill
from learning how to play guitar
to being more productive.
Number two, direct to consumer products, okay?
Or eCommerce.
Some people call it drop shipping.
I actually don't know anything about this industry
other than the fact that I'm an investor
in a company called Pila.
Pilacase.com, go check them out.
They make a biopolymer...
It's actually this right here.
So this phone case cover is made, not out of plastic,
this thing, if you put it in the ground,
it will actually decompose in
14 days, two weeks.
This will decompose.
It's made out of flax seed.
So I'm an investor in this company
because the team was amazing.
It's a little outside of my wheelhouse
for usually what I invest in 'cause I'm a tech guy,
but I'll tell you why I invested.
Because A, their growth is crazy, their margins are crazy
because they know how to do proper supply chain,
but guess what?
As I dug in under the hood, in direct to consumer eCommerce,
I realised that it's not just them that are making
an incredible business,
or creating an incredible business around that.
It is just part of the new trend to go direct to consumer,
to build something that you're passionate about,
that you wanna see exist in the world, and sell it directly.
And the social media is your distribution, okay?
And you can literally,
today,
buy somebody else's white label version of your product,
create a brand that you believe in, and tell that story,
and sell it directly to consumer, okay?
It's never been easier.
The margins are there.
Is there some start-up cost?
Yeah, I think most people
that are in this space say it costs
about five grand or whatever to get going,
to get your first batch order to start selling.
But then you plough that back in.
Another friend of mine, Derek at Tuxy,
he does the world's best onesie.
He lives in my hometown.
He's an amazing dude.
Same thing.
He went on Shark Tank, which is...
Or, sorry, Dragon Zed, which is the Canadian equivalent
of Shark Tank, and he ended up raising a bunch of money.
So direct to consumer products and eCommerce
is, I think, for those that are more artsy and craftsy,
and you want a physical thing, an incredible opportunity
for you to make a lotta money this year.
Number three, software.
Yes, it is my world.
It is my passion.
It is everything that I believe in.
The reason why, I'll tell you real simple,
is I grew up in a very chaotic environment.
I don't know if you guys had any struggles in your life,
but for me it was really challenging.
And when I discovered programming and software at 17,
what I loved the most about it, it was predictable.
It sounds crazy, but when I wrote the code,
it always behaved that way.
And when I started getting
into subscription revenue businesses,
there's something that I loved
about the predictability aspect of every month
I got the same amount of revenue
if I kept delivering the value that I promised
to my customers.
So for you, software.
There are so many opportunities to build browser extensions,
or...
And check out my stuff.
Google software my name.
You will find a tonne of stuff on me talking about
how to start a software business.
And I just think that with the world of an upwork.com,
and there's so many other sites now
where you can hire a contract developer, okay,
in another part of the world and pay 'em $20-25
bucks an hour to build something, ideally for yourself.
And I talk about that, kind of where to find the right idea.
And then sell it to other people just like you
that have that pain or that frustration.
It could be as simple as connecting two systems
and saying that's $10 bucks a month.
It could be as simple as building a tool like...
I had a guy build a tool back in the day
that just took images and resized it
for all the different social media sites, right?
So you upload an image and it would resize it
for Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, et cetera,
based on the different dimensions of those platforms.
There are so many opportunities to use software.
Software is literally eating the world, okay?
That's a Marc Andreessen quote,
"Software is eating the world."
It's going to continue.
The market's growing by 30% year over year
and the most beautiful part that I love
is the reoccurring revenue, and the 89% gross margins.
Those are great businesses, okay?
So if you're software curious and you're interested,
be sure to check that one out
because it's something that's been core to my whole life,
my whole foundation, my whole wealth has been built,
on top of technology, and building software companies,
investing in software companies.
And I still think to this day, more than ever,
it's an opportunity for you.
Number four, leverage coaching.
So if you're kind of curious on the training, software,
online training world, this is a different approach
to the same problem.
It's taking you and your expertise and coaching other people
to get those results, okay?
So the way I think about it is the market has a problem,
and you make promise, and in the middle there's a process,
and that's what you're helping people do as a coach.
Leverage coaching means doing it as a group, okay?
Some of you guys will be like, "Well, I don't understand it.
Like, "Why would you do it as a group?"
Here's what I know.
The fitness world is going to group classes.
The Barry Bootcamps, the CrossFits,
the Fit Body Bootcamps, et cetera.
People want groups
because there's a level of accountability,
there's a level of community,
there's a level of competition,
they're all important aspects
of getting results and performance
and it's happening in the coaching world as well.
So I actually know a woman.
She is not a CTO and she runs a leverage coaching programme
for the top Fortune 500 CTOs in New York City.
It's $100,000 to be a part of the membership of that group.
Why would people pay that?
One, if you're the CTO of Facebook, Netflix, et cetera,
100 grand is a rounding area.
It's not that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
Why?
Because you get to be part of a group of peers
that are facing similar challenges as you.
And when you're running, let's say, a 50, $100 million P&L,
profit and loss statement for your area of the business,
investing 100 grand or, what, $8,000 a month
to
somebody to be around other people
that can save you that times 100
every month by, "Oh, we switched over to this provider,"
or, "You need to meet this person."
Or even helping somebody hire a key executive
on their team is worth that investment.
So that's an extreme,
but for your specific area of passion,
for your industry, there is an incredible opportunity
for you to facilitate solving problems,
getting them an outcome, following a process,
and doing it in a group format so there's more leverage.
That's why it's called the leverage coaching programme.
More people get access to this, okay?
I have friends that are multimillionaires
because of their leverage coaching programme.
And what I love about it is
it has the same economics as software.
If you set it up right, it's got reoccurring revenue built
into it and it's also got the same margin structure.
It's about 89-85% gross margin
for a leverage coaching business.
So great opportunity, if that.
The first one, if you wanna do an online course,
you're more of an introvert, you just wanna teach it
and have people buy it and not talk to anybody, that's cool.
If you're more of an extrovert,
check out the leverage coaching programme.
Number five, niche enterprise consulting.
So here's how this one works
is you might have heard of consulting.
Maybe you have a skill, maybe you don't.
You can develop it.
The beauty is there is
YouTube and Linda.com and all these different...
You can even teach yourself how to code,
joining a coding bootcamp.
But regardless, here's what I'm gonna say,
niche enterprise consulting is finding some kind of skill
or developing a thing that you know how to do it
and focusing on the niche, but focusing on enterprise.
Why enterprise?
You may not know this, my dad taught it to me.
When I was 21, I had a company reach out to hire me
as a consultant and when they asked me
what my hourly rate was, I was gonna tell them $30 an hour.
And before I told them anything, my brain said,
"Shut up, Dan.
"Don't say anything."
And I called my dad who worked at Siemens,
the big multinational billion dollar company,
and I said, "Dad, they're asking me what my rate is."
And he said $150 an hour and my brain, I'm 21, okay?
Yes, I taught myself how to code and all these things.
I build a few companies that were failed at that point,
but I just didn't understand it.
He goes, "Dan, here's what I know.
"I pay $250 an hour for consultants
"that aren't even as talented, driven,
"or motivated as you are, just so you know."
And I was like, "Whoa."
So they were expecting that higher amount of money.
And I remember I got on the call with the person
the next day.
I said 150, they came back and said could you do 125?
I almost bit my tongue off.
I didn't wanna act too excited and I said, "Yeah, yeah."
That should work.
And I wanted to hang up the phone as fast as possible
'cause I was like...
Of anything I've learned in sales
is you could absolutely sell yourself out of a deal.
I just was like, I gotta get off the phone.
I gotta hang up the phone.
And I hung up and I freaked out.
I remember the freakin' moment, the place, the room,
the details, everything, and I called my dad and I said,
"They took it."
I think my dad was more excited than I was for myself.
And it was an enterprise consulting.
I did portal software, very niche, very specific.
So a lot of you guys
that may be already doing consulting or development,
the reason why you're not able to ask for a premium
is because you're not focused on a niche and a niche problem
or a niche enterprise.
So the bigger the business,
the more money they got to spend, the more used to spending.
And the more niche you go
onto a specific technology platform,
so let's say you focus on just Salesforce, just WebSphere,
just NetSuite, whatever it is.
You figure it out for yourself,
but niche enterprise consulting is an incredible way
to get similar margins, low, literally no cost
other than a decision,
and really build a business.
What I did is I took that consulting, that became Sphere.
I essentially funded Sphere with that money that I made
and then rolled it in and built a company of people like me
and some technology.
So it can be the beginning of something much larger,
but that is a big idea for you to explore.
So quick recap, the five most profitable business ideas
of the year for you to take forward
is one, online courses.
Two, direct to consumer product/eCommerce.
Three, software, SasS, Software as a service.
Four, leverage coaching.
And five, niche enterprise consulting.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this episode,
I wanna share with you my Idea to Exit mini course
is absolutely free.
You can click the link below to get access to that.
In it I talk about no cross product development.
I'm gonna teach you how to build product
without spending any money.
It's super cool.
It's called clickable prototypes.
Click the link to check it out.
Also, talk to you
about how to build a marketing growth engine
that keeps feeding itself and then third I dive
into how to properly fund your team all available for free.
You don't have to wait for it.
It's a three-part video series
where you can watch the first, second, and third.
Just click the link below to get access to that.
And if you like this video
or you think there's somebody else that it could serve,
please feel free to share it with them.
Smash that like button, subscribe to my channel.
And as for usual, I wanna challenge you
to live a bigger life and a bigger business.
And I'll see you next Monday.
Hey there.
I'm Dan, serial entrepreneur.
What do I say?
- [Man Off Camera] Hi, Dan Martell here--
- Oh. - serial entrepreneur.