 Five years ago, I created a 10 year plan for authentic business and I want to bring it back to your attention because I do feel it tracks pretty well. And you might say 10 year plan. You know, I don't even know I have 10 years to live now. So here's the problem with most business plans. They are most business plans as you probably know you maybe have written something yourself or or seen friends, right them. They are way too fantastical. Basically, I'm going to go from zero to $100,000 in the next year with no prior experience. It's, you know, and it doesn't take and doesn't and it never works out right like would you rather have a 10 year plan to succeed or have fake plans that 20 years later you're like well nothing ever worked. So let me share with you the 10 year plan for authentic business success, which in my opinion is a spacious enough structure. It allows most of us who are heart based solopreneurs to actually make this thing work. Now I'm not saying it's going to take you 10 years to make your your first dollar. No, no, no. By year two, you open up and running you'll be up and running with at least a part time income. And by year four, you'll have a full time income. Now you might say, George, I don't have two years to get to a part time income I don't have four years to get full time income. Okay, but if you look at how long it's taken you up to now how many years has it taken. Right. Most people don't realize. Oh, okay, I have been doing this for five years and I don't even have a part time income, or I've been doing this for, you know, eight years and I don't even have a full time income. This is so true for so many people that I've seen who are solopreneurs and it's like, if they only followed a more step by step 10 year structure they probably would have made it work faster than their, you know, going here going there with this strategy and that following very charming and persuasive mentors and coaches who are leading them on paths that are not very sustainable or fulfilling or ethical or heart based. So here's the 10 year plan. You might say that this is more of a 10 stage plan that's probably more accurate to say it because some of you are going to take longer in the first two years of this plan, and maybe shorter in the coming years or some of you, depending on if you have you know care taking family care taking or you have another job or whatever this may take you longer than 10 years but it's still worth doing so. And some of you might be able to shrink this plan to a five year plan or a four year plan, because you are, you have practiced very much integrated very much the joyful productivity methods which I find to be the foundation of business success authentic business success is joyful productivity. Okay, so without further ado, here is the 10 year plan. Okay, year one is authentic content marketing so in the first year of my recommendation again if you're following this plan right from the beginning. Then my recommendation for the first year or for the first stage of your plan is to focus on creating content, because you are exploring. What is your voice. What are your interests really. What are the topics you love to talk about that people actually want to hear you talk about or see you write about. Right, because the, the old saying about your calling in life or your, your career calling I should say is that intersection between your interests and abilities, and what the world is hungry for at this time and of course that always changes. And the world's interest the world's hunger also changes for different things. So that's why the first year in the first stage, you are getting accustomed to experimentation. The first year is not about getting a great brand. It's about buying your core message, understanding your niche. It's too early for that. It's too early for your brand. It's too early for your niche. It's too early to clarify what your, what your product and service is supposed to be. I really believe that not believe it because I've seen a lot of people flail around spending thousands of dollars on creating a brand or a niche or website or whatever and they're like, Okay, I've evolved. I never really did enough market testing to realize people don't really want to pay me for this thing. I spent $10,000 on what right so the first year is to enter and practice the mode of experimentation, and the best way to experiment is with content because it's free. You know, no one's going to charge you for posting on Facebook or on Instagram or on YouTube. In fact, you might make money doing it. But so the first year, be as prolific and experimental as you possibly can to try out different ideas, all the different things that you have and start with your Facebook friends. I don't know you have 30 Facebook friends. How many Facebook friends do you have? How many Instagram followers do you have 20 followers, whatever, start with your family and friends. Where else are you going to start? Really, where else are you going to start except with your family and people who already know you, your colleagues, your classmates, etc. start with them. You can have them on Facebook or wherever you want to do social media and then start posting there. And if you don't mind spending a little bit of money in the first year, practicing how to get your content out to more people, then learn Facebook ads, Instagram ads, those are the two easiest and cheapest ads platforms to learn to get your content out to targeted types of people, how to share your values or share interests and see which of your content areas get the most interest. So that's year one is authentic content marketing, learning it, practicing it, being as experimental and prolific as possible. Year two, or stage two, is to now get into providing services and probably one-to-one services, getting individual clients basically. Now, why is this year two? Well, it's because I want to get you up and running with making money as soon as possible. And the quickest way to make money is to provide one-to-one services. The quickest way to make money is to get one person at a time to say, yes, I will pay you $300 a month, $500 a month, whatever it is, I will pay you to do something for me. Now, why would they pay it you? Because they've seen you for a whole year, posting content, sure, on different things, but there's certain things you post that really resonate with them, right? They say, oh, wow, that was interesting or, oh, I didn't know you were good at that. And now in year two is where you approach your fans and say, hey, I am really happy to now be taking on clients and who wants to be one of my few clients. I just want you to imagine, after a year of posting content prolifically, consistently, and experimenting with your authenticity, you now have at least 20 people who are fans of your content who would probably be willing to pay you at least $100 or $200 a month. Really, I mean, really, right now, a lot of you watching this already have 20 people in your life, friends, colleagues, fans, blog readers, you know, podcast listeners, newsletters, subscribers, whatever you already have. Like I said, friends and family starting there who would say, you know what? Sure, I'll pay you $100 a month. Sure, I'll pay you $200 a month, $500 a month, whatever it is that they can, they're willing to spend with you. 20 people, go and look, you have 20 people right now who are happy to pay you $100 to $500 a month to provide some useful service to them. Now it might be different for each person. I mean, you're still exploring, right? In the beginning stages, you're still exploring what that service is, but there are 20 people in your life right now who are probably willing to pay $100 to $500 a month for you providing some service for them. So imagine if 20 people paying you $100 a month, that's $2,000 a month, $2,000 a month, year two, like I said, part-time income in year two, or some of them are willing to pay upwards of $500 a month for your services. That's if 20 people were paying you $500 a month, how much is that? That's $10,000 a month. That's definitely more than part-time income for most people. Okay. So that's year two, year three. You can now, now that you've gotten your one-to-one clients, individual clients, and you've gotten experience, you've gotten experience working with them. Now in year three, it's time to experiment with having a group program. What I mean by group program is, well, just like it sounds, it's instead of one-to-one clients, individual clients, you're serving one person at a time. Maybe you're serving 20 people, but you're serving one person at a time. You are now serving 10 people, 30 people, 50 people at a time, and they get to interact with each other too. In other words, in year three, a group program means you become a facilitator of relationships, your facilitator of connections between your clients, and designing a program and designing a group interaction such that one-to-one equals three. When we get together, the energy and the ideas and the interactions are more beneficial than if I were to work with you one person and one person and one person. So a group program is, you know, there are so many different ideas. Later this year, I'm going to be launching an online course about how to design and create a group program, how to launch a group program, because I've been doing that since 2010, really. So anyway, year three, it's time for you to create a group program and imagine you have one-to-one clients now and now you have a group program. Essentially, your group program is a nice way for your one-to-one clients to graduate and become more like maintenance mode with you. So maybe one-to-one clients, they're paying you $300, $400 a month. That's not unusual for some people that's considered low cost for a one-to-one client, individual clients. So let's say your one-to-one clients are paying you $400 a month. Again, that's super reasonable these days. That's one-to-one clients. And now your group program members are paying you only $150 a month. So instead of paying you $400 a month one-to-one, now your group members are paying you $150 a month. And you could have 30 members, 50 members, however many members. So imagine if you had, okay, I'll just be conservative. You have 20 members paying you $150 a month. That's $3,000 additional income for you. You had 10 one-to-one clients paying you $400 a month. That's $4,000. And now you have 20 members paying you $150 a month. That's $3,000. So now you're making $7,000 a month. Now year three, for some of you, it's year three. For some of you, it's stage three and it took you a few more years to get there. But still, it's fine. Now part of year three or stage three, I would recommend that you also consider publishing a book. Because by this point, you know, year one, you started creating content. Year two, you continue, and I should mention each of these years or stages kind of layers on top of each other. So year one, you're creating content, you start there. But year two, you continue creating content, continue honing your skills of being more and more authentic and interesting and relevant with your content and learning how to distribute it to more and more of the right people. So year two, you're continuing. And then year three, you're continuing content. And year three, now you probably have enough content to publish a book. So you'll notice what I do is I publish a book every year based on the content that I made in the previous year. So year three group program and maybe also a book if you wish to play with that idea. All right, year four, or stage four is when you now launch, create and launch online courses. You've seen me do this, of course, you've seen me do this many times. In the past 13 years, I have launched, I've lost count, but somewhere around 50 online courses in the past 13 years, possibly more, but I'm just gonna say 50 confidently. And so here's what year four is like online courses. Now, why did we wait till the year four to launch an online course because an online course to be able to sell enough course course, get enough students for online course, it takes a rather large audience. Now, not a large audience. I would consider myself as having a small audience. Yes, I do. I have only 8000 Facebook fans, I have only 5000 email subscribers, my email list is very high, high open rates, almost 50%, open 50%, half open rate of 5000, which is quite unusual. But when people look at when my, at least in my industry, I consider myself having a very small audience. But with an online course, I'm going to say you're going to need, probably, at least, I'm just going to say 1000 email subscribers is pretty, pretty safe to say, okay, you have enough people to sell enough courses to probably make it feel worthwhile to you, I would say. So, year four online courses. It's taking all the knowledge that you have been giving in your one to one clients in your content in your one to one clients in your group program, and maybe your book and taking a bunch of that knowledge and, and organizing it into different topics. You can publish it as online courses, online courses, meaning a series of videos, maybe there's some worksheets or workbooks or exercises. It's usually videos, a bunch of videos, maybe some audios, or some people who are shy with video can just publish online courses just with audio, and then probably usually some kind of exercises or worksheets or something like that. So, online courses now allows you to scale your income truly, because up to now you've done one to one clients that's income is not scalable, how you can't serve that many one to one clients at the same time, right. 20 is even too many for most of you, right. Most of you maybe 10 or 15. That sounds reasonable. A group program, you can't really scale because your group program promises some inner interaction with you and you need to facilitate the connections such that you can have 1000 people in a group program. I mean, maybe one day you can have enough staff but realistically group program, I don't know, maybe 100 people is a good maximum, you know something like that. And then with online course though. Now again, unless you have staff and you can scale up but with online course, even as a solopreneur, you can sell 1000 people 1000 students in an online course and it doesn't really take you much more work other than answering more questions from your students, but online courses are much more scalable, even for the solopreneur. So that's a year four or stage four, year five, or stage five is now focusing now you have online courses which are products that could be sold to many more people year five is now you're scaling the sales of your online courses using ads and automation ads you hopefully you started learning ads in year one with some Facebook Instagram ads. Now you can make that even more effective you can add in some LinkedIn ads you can add in maybe Google ads YouTube ads etc. So scale the sales of your online courses in year five and add in some automation like with Zapier and with other AI tools you're automating when people buy your online courses they get certain emails and there's certain ways for them to engage with one another in a fairly automated way kind of thing or you're automating it so you don't have to be facilitating every connection with among your students right. So year five scaling with ads and automation and then year six. Now that you have gotten a bunch of students for your online courses. Okay, and you've run your group program now for several years. So year six is where you focus on training mentees mentees are people who are learning your method, your knowledge framework, your exercises, learning from you how to facilitate the kind of transformation that your products and services for members and students and clients. So year six your training mentees because at this point, you've gotten enough, you know, group program members online students where you can't take everybody as individual clients anymore. Maybe it's been a, you know, in a while. Now you need to refer people who want to work with you to others who are learning your methods. I'm grateful to say that I have been training mentees since at least 2018 2017 2018 is when I started referring clients to my mentees. So year six training mentees. So year seven is when you start focusing on hiring your assistant or assistance, because now, because, okay, I should say mentees, they usually come out of your group program, or your one to one clients, your mentees, naturally, because they, they were clients first and they become mentees. So year seven is where you're training assistants and your assistants might be even be some of your mentees. So many of your mentees are great as assistants because they know your stuff super well. They are a fan of your knowledge and your framework and your presence in your business. So your seven you're training them to start taking over some of the systems in your business, hiring your systems and that's really where I find myself. I've been actually taking longer than 10 years for the plan, because I've been, I've been on year six training mentees for several years actually. So I'm like taking my sweet time here year seven hiring assistants I really have been doing that now for a couple of years as well. So I'm like year six and year seven are kind of melding for me but it really has been that flow, I get mentees first and then for my mentees I will first I get group program members and then mentees and then, and then assistants and now I've got several part time assistants who are working on different areas of my business. And then year eight is larger joint ventures now why is this so year eight, what I mean by larger joint ventures is now that you have assistants who are running different parts of your business. You can scale with partnering with larger organizations and businesses, larger meaning businesses that are at least as large as yours if not larger to bring your courses and your knowledge to their audiences. Now you might already have been doing some collaborations early on, but now in year eight is where you really start to scale the size of your, of your product sales your core sales, if you wish to do so. Now I've already been doing some larger joint ventures for a couple years now I would say for at least five years and doing that. Really for seven to eight years I mean I've been dabbling a little bit, but I never had quite the right systems in place until this year to now, if I want if some larger organization came to me and says hey, we want to sell 1000 of your courses I'm like okay I'm ready. I've got this I've got the automation I've got my some of my systems helping me with various things. I'm ready to sell 500 1000 courses if some organization came to me with that so that's your a larger joint ventures. So year nine is systems documentation now you're getting ready for the the finality of the program the finality of the 10 year plan which is semi retirement, but we'll get there. So year nine you're kind of getting ready for semi retirement doesn't mean you have to be, you know, all out of energy at this point old and ready to die now I'm not talking about that the semi retirement, you could still be your your young self, whether you're 30 or 80, your young self and you get to spend more time doing personal hobbies and less time on your business so your nine is systems documentation. And what this means is you are now working with your assistance to document what they are doing to run your business. And you're documenting all your automation and making sure that things are really really clear so that you can, if, because assistance always, you know, I've, I've had assistance more or less for 10 years off and on, and assistance always leave. For one reason or another, you'll probably notice, and it's because, well, you know, life changes for people. And maybe they decide to build their own business or they get another job or whatever it is, or they get tired of your business they want to try something assistance, just assume that your assistance are going to leave don't assume your system is going to stay with you forever if you do have one that's amazing, and that you enjoy working with them they enjoy working with you great. But in a way it's kind of a good idea to rotate assistance every couple years at least because to bring new perspectives into your business is a healthy thing but you need to have systems documented. So they're existing assistance now that they've been working with you for a year or so. They really should focus on. Okay, now that they've smoothed out the things they're doing for you regularly. Have them write down and record tutorials for future assistance you know hopefully write written instructions as much as possible to little video tutorials as needed to say all right this is how, how to run this business, your business base, basically. And so now that you've got your systems documented now when your systems leave inevitably, and you bring new people in training is easy, because now you've got the systems all written down documented, the video tutorials are all there. And so you can kind of people can come in and out of your business as needed to help you continue running your business. And then finally, year 10. So this is the culmination of the 10 year plan. What I call your 10 is Kaizen forever. And what this means is, well Kaizen, if you haven't heard the term is, it's originally a Japanese term but it's really used now by everyone seems like Kaizen, or lots of people in the systems improvement field and habits field use the word Kaizen Kaizen Small continuous improvement. Basically, there's a Wikipedia article on Kaizen if you want to look it up Kaizen. I love the word and it's again it means small continuous improvement. So year 10 is Kaizen forever. So you're always going to just be making little improvements to your business to your systems to how you manage and lead your assistance and your audience community and your clients and your students and your customers to small continuous improvements. And then because you've already have your systems documented, you've got your assistance, you know, in place and they're following that the systems and continuing to improve upon them. You basically need just need to step into your business, much less often, just to, you know, when you need to show up to present things, when you need to, you know, show up to create another system or to train your systems or whatever because Kaizen forever means you just get to, you have a lot more time now to spend on your personal hobbies and your interests, and your business is pretty much running itself, with the exception of your, your presence as needed to to add the most value possible. Okay, so I hope this is inspiring for you for what is possible. Again, this 10 year plan, honestly, some of you are watching this are probably like, I wish I had this 10 year plan. 15 years ago when I started creating a business and 15 years later I'm still on a part time income you know it's like so many people. They follow this business guru that marketing coach, and they just kind of go here go there they create the systems that don't really feel authentic to them don't feel aligned with their values and with their way of doing things and so their business. I'm sorry if that's been your, been your story because I know, because I have had some of this in my business to have worked many clients like this business happen fits and starts, you know, over the years. And so I'm hoping that with this 10 year plan it's, it's realistic. It's spacious enough, where if you put your diligence behind it, you really can make this kind of thing work. So, I hope this is helpful. And I look forward to seeing if you have any, if you're feeling inspired by this, or if you have any quick questions you can comment below. Thanks so much.