so simple apps is our software business
where we have multiple plugins for
Shopify one is a simple Facebook
messenger another one is you can install
this plug-in and you get text messages
to your phone and people pay 15 dollars
a month for this stuff and the reason
why we stopped growing it aggressively
is let's talk about how to evaluate a
business opportunity and idea these are
three questions that I asked and I have
our coaching clients asked before going
all-in on a business idea and the reason
why we ask these questions the reason
why we evaluate business ideas at all is
you don't want to be running from
business idea to business idea you want
to be able to commit to something for
three six months a year at a time and
you don't want that time to be wasted
and that is why we ask these questions
to evaluate business opportunities
before committing to them Who am I I'm
Alex Berman I am the chairman of a
digital marketing company we also run a
digital products business and a software
company and have generated over ten
million dollars in sales so here are the
three questions to ask before going
all-in on a business number one is have
I made money with this and that means
before you go all-in on an actual
business concept and quit your job and
decide to commit to something for six
months you want to get at least three
customers for your concept or your idea
that means three people that are
actually paying you money and the reason
why it's three is the first one might be
a fluke you might get your mom to work
with you the second one might also be a
fluke maybe you get a friend but in
order to get the third customer you're
going to have to figure out how to reach
the people that might be interested in
your business and how to pitch your
business in a way that gets them to buy
if it's hard to get three customers in a
week for your business and you do a
bunch of outreach move on it's not worth
continuing to pursue a business that you
can't sell it's just not worth it drop
it and keep going hey we're giving away
the email 10k course to one of our lucky
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which you can do by going to email
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course email 10k you can get that for
free if you have made money if that
works then you move on to question
number two is this interesting to you
personally do you see yourself working
on this business for the next three
months and for this phase you can forget
a lot of the super long term planning
and thinking about whether you want to
be doing this in the next thirty years
this is just do you find it interesting
enough to work on for the next three
months because that is all you need to
get it to the next phase of business
where you can decide whether you double
down again or quit again
I had a clothing company last year
called Albert Halsey where we sold
vintage Las Vegas merch and new Las
Vegas themed high-end souvenirs and we
made money we had our three customers in
the first week which is amazing matter
website built we had the designs it was
really cool it was going but it wasn't
that interesting I didn't see myself
selling vintage clothes for the long
haul or even for the next three months
so I dropped it there it was us throwing
away a business that was making money
because personally I wasn't interested
in growing it and that's totally okay
we're entrepreneurs and life is short
the third question to ask is can we be
amazing at this not only do you want to
focus on a business idea that you can
actually sell and that you're interested
in but you want to sell a business that
you can be amazing at because in the
long run if you're not good at what
you're doing sure you'll be able to make
some money but those customers won't
stick around and your business will
slowly die or you'll be forced to
improve which is a very long slog but if
you can either deliver at the highest
levels or find people that can deliver
at the highest levels then you have a
business that you can keep working on
and that's actually why we stopped
aggressively growing simple apps so
simple apps is our software business
where we have multiple plugins for
Shopify one is a simple Facebook
messenger another one is you can install
this
plug in and you get text messages to
your phone and people pay $15 a month
for this stuff and the reason why we
stopped growing it aggressively is we
realized that unless we added a coding
team to simple apps and aggressively
improved the product and got better we
were going to get buried by competition
so we stopped growing it
we still have customers over there it's
still making money every month but it
has plateaued and if we were doing a
business analysis I would say it's
actually a dog meaning growth has slowed
or become negative and the profit is
just slowly dwindling I give it the
criteria of buy and die which is I
acquired this business actually made
back already two or three times what I
paid for it and now we're just slowly
letting it die and just collecting money
along the way we've generated millions
of dollars in revenue for our clients
and ourselves just from cold email the
problem is if you've tried cold email
it's not as straightforward or easy as
it looks we've put together the cold
email optimization checklist that we use
internally to make sure all our cold
emails are of the highest quality in a
very straightforward checklist format to
get it go over to email 10k comm slash
checklist so those are the three
questions you should ask on how to
evaluate a business opportunity number
one have I made money with this is this
interesting and can we be amazing at
this if you've got a yes to all three
then it's a business worth pursuing if
not keep looking there is an amazing
business out there you just got to go
find it if you want this in more
step-by-step format you can check out
our course email 10k where we go through
exactly how to start a business or how
to grow and improve your current
business by finding customers that can
afford to pay you including
billion-dollar customers and the fortune
500 hundred so check that out email 10k.com
and if you want the steps that we went
through these three questions as a
downloadable PDF you can go to the
description there's a link to this
thanks for watching the video subscribe
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leave a comment down below what did you
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takeaway
let's get a conversation going thanks
for watching I'm Alex Berman