So, what all this boils down to is that, because I couldn’t take the workaholic approach to building a business, I had to find a way to make decent money online while working only about 10 hours per week.
Did you catch that?
I found a way to make decent money working only 10 hours per week!
And it’s REALLY EASY. You don’t need to be an expert of any kind. The skills you need are easy to learn. It’s MUCH easier than being an author, blogging, podcasting, doing ecommerce, selling online courses, running an affiliate business, network marketing, being a YouTuber, and just about any other common online venture.
I now feel 100% CONFIDENT that I can take just about ANYONE, with or without an idea, with or without much free time, with or without specialized knowledge or skills of any kind, and help them build a profitable internet-based service just like mine. All that’s required is 5-10 hours a week of quality effort towards the handful of fundamentals that make this type of business work. I’m pretty sure that almost any service of any kind currently being performed by freelancers can become a successful business just like 100 Covers or BookAds.
So, what’s the business model?
The Lead a Team business model is quite simple. You choose a service you want to offer, hire a team of low wage workers in the Philippines to fulfill that service, and use the secret sauce that I’ve discovered that can turn ordinary workers into EXTRAORDINARY ones.
If that sounds unappealing and uninspiring and maybe even a little intimidating at first glance… KEEP READING.
Like I mentioned earlier, I was cast into leading a team by virtue of being unable to work due to health issues (caused by working too much!). I was not excited nor passionate about it, but rather resentful of having to delegate. I had no idea what I was doing and put ZERO effort into mastering leadership. My team started out functioning fairly well, but as time went on we all became increasingly less happy and less successful together. The more things went wrong, the worse my leadership got. Eventually it all crashed and I let the whole team go.
But when I started building my book cover design site, 100 Covers, I started with a completely new attitude. 100 Covers had a tight budget—offering custom book covers for just $100. So I knew the only way things were going to be successful is if I could turn ordinary, low wage workers into highly-skilled, highly-motivated specialists with big dreams of becoming VERY competent professionals.
To most that probably sounds like an impossible task, but I knew if I could get designers doing covers for ~$30 on average (that my competitors were charging $300-500 for), then I could keep prices low and just destroy them.
Well, my competitors were never really my motivation. Rather, I wanted to make customers REALLY happy—offering a better product than they were expecting for the price they were paying.
Another service of mine, BookAds, had just experienced major problems keeping customers happy, so I really felt the pain of what it’s like to consistently underwhelm customers. It was a powerful motivator to do the OPPOSITE and totally blow people’s asses out of their chairs.
That is what drove me to try to figure out how to turn ordinary workers into badasses with visions of their future greatness in mind when they sit down to work.
And I absolutely did it. I mean, REALLY. None of my designers even had book cover design experience when they started, and in less than a year they all became top tier book cover designers. Like top 10% in the industry. And we’re just getting started. Their skills are still rapidly ascending.
Having accomplished that, I now realize that:
- ) Being able to turn ordinary workers into exceptional ones is one of the most valuable skills a person can possess. In striving to learn this skill, you are mining pure fucking gold. If I wanted to, I’m certain I could buy up any failing fast food franchise and make millions of dollars in short order just by overhauling the mindset, beliefs, and culture inside the kitchen. I most certainly WON’T be doing that, but that’s the power of GIVING A GARGANTUAN FUCK about leading those working for you to their maximum potential—in work and in life.
- ) I didn’t even do that good of a job. I did much better than most, but I could have done MUCH better. I was mostly just experimenting based on some concepts I’m only casually familiar with. I’m at only the tip of mastering leadership and unlocking people’s potential, but my DESIRE AND FOCUS on it easily put me ahead of 95% of those currently in a leadership role of some kind.
- ) The key to making these types of businesses work is the leader having a passion for leadership itself, not necessarily the service being provided. I mean, I like book covers and have a decent eye for what a good one looks like, but that has next to nothing to do with why my designers have quickly become so competent. They are succeeding because their leader is obsessed with helping them become successful, and every communication with them is carefully and intentionally-crafted with their success in mind.
The process is pretty simple…
- Come up with a good idea for a service (I have dozens)
- Figure out a good name for it
- Find a cheap domain that works and buy it
- Get a logo done (I provide it in-house)
- Write the sales copy for the simple 1-page site (I’m happy to write it for you)
- Put a job posting out there (done through my paid subscription to my favorite hiring service, at no extra charge to you, and I’ll write that too!)
- Set up a Slack channel for you to communicate with your workers and share files (free)
- Do a few practice projects
- Do a few projects for beta clients (I’ll get these for you)
- Build the website (done in-house with my web and graphics team)
- Get your first few real clients (I’ll get these for you)
- Slowly bring in business as your first worker or two can handle it
- Slowly expand the team and bring in more business in tandem
It’s really not much more complicated than that.
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING!!!
Yes, if you’ve read this far, I know EXACTLY what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking…
- ) I don’t know how to do anything that can be offered as a service… OR… Why can’t I just do the service myself? Why do I have to hire people to do it?
- ) I really don’t want to be dealing with hiring people and paying them every month and all that stuff. Sounds kind of intimidating. I’d rather just work by myself.
I get it. I used to feel that way, too. But I promise you these are NOT legitimate objections to creating a business like this.
For starters, I honestly believe that NOT being able to offer a service yourself is key. If you don’t know how to do it, you have ZERO RISK of getting stuck doing all the work yourself instead of training a team to do it! This is probably the most common fatal flaw of small business owners. One of the best-selling business books of all time—The E-Myth Revisited, dissects this error marvelously.
When you get mired in doing the day-to-day work, it’s usually easier to just dive in and do it yourself than it is to actually take someone who’s bad and turn them into a BAD MOTHERFUCKER. That limits your workers’ ability to improve, and your business will suffer greatly as you won’t be able to step back and focus on what really matters to the success of a business…
- Hiring and inspiring great workers
- Delivering exceptional customer service
- Crunching your numbers
- Marketing your business
- Actually making a profit
As far as being scared of being in charge of a team and working with others, you are probably suffering from Tiny Dick Syndrome (TDS). It’s a common affliction suffered by both males and females on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic hierarchy. But it’s a curable condition. I suggest you start your treatment by pondering the following…