22 – Now is the time to start an online business

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Ryan: I’m Dr. Ryan Debell. Thanks for tuning in once again to the Health Fit Business Podcast. This is episode number 22 and on this episode Anthony and I talked about why now is the time to start an online business in addition to what you’re currently doing whether that’s running a gym, whether that is being a practicing clinician, whether that is being a trainer, whatever it is. Now is the time because there is so much opportunity and their barriers to entry are so low. So in this episode both Anthony and I give concrete examples of how we each have created our own online businesses that do not require us to be spending a one to one correlation of time to value delivered or revenue generated for example if you have to spend one hour with somebody and you can only earn or generate X number of dollars and provide value to that one person that requires a 1:1 ratio versus if you did something that allow you to multiply yourself that allows you to provide more value and generate more revenue with less of your time. So now is the time to do that because there are so many opportunities. It’s so easy to do it. And we will talk about how Anthony did it with PureWOD and Perfect Keto, how I did it with Movement Fix workshops as well as my recorded events and digital products so you guys can get an example of physical goods as well as digital goods. And also before we get into the episode, we are humbled by how many of you guys ordered the Daily Domination Journal. We are ecstatic to be shipping that before January 1st. We are crossing our fingers that you will get it if you preorder it, you will get it by January 1st. That is our goal. We will do our best to deliver on that. If you have not already preordered and you are waiting to order make sure to healthfit.biz/journal because our inventory is getting low already and we’re gonna have to reorder more very shortly. So if you want some from this first batch make sure to get yours at healthfit.biz/journal. Okay, let’s get into this episode.

Ryan: Okay, it’s recording. Do you wanna start? So you put this in?

Anthony: Yeah I’m available. It’s not the same not being by Dr. Debell. It’s different. I used to that, I wanna feel you. I wanna feel you next to me and hear your voice in my ear not into my headphones.

Ryan: Do you want me…

Anthony: Welcome. Welcome everyone.

Ryan: To the Health

Anthony: To the Health Fit

Ryan: Biz

Anthony: Ness Podcast. I’m your host Dr. Anthony Gustin. This is another addition two weeks in a row where we’re not by together. It’s kinda trip me out. I don’t like it.

Ryan: Alona is just cracking up next to me. This is also the second podcast where Alona has been sitting there next to me laughing all the time while I was recording.  

Anthony: Crunching on Cheetos.

Ryan: Yes she’s enjoying Jalapeño Cheetos.

Anthony: Oh such a luxury of having such a great metabolism and genes like her to munch on Cheetos all the time.

Ryan: Well, she also works out a lot.

Anthony: Maybe if I work out with her intensity maybe I could eat Cheetos…

Ryan: Well, maybe you should come up here and work out in the garage.

Anthony: Yeah. I need to get there. Anyways…

Ryan: Yup. So what are we talking about on this episode which is episode 22.

Anthony: Twenty something.

Ryan: Twenty two.

Anthony: Twenty two. That means we have twenty listeners, right?

Ryan: I think we have more than that.

Anthony: We gain one each episode.

Ryan: So what are we talking about Dr. Anthony Gustin for episode 22?

Anthony: Talking about how now is the time to start an online business, how easy it is relatively speaking and why I think anybody who wants to do it should do it.

Ryan: What do you mean relatively speaking?

Anthony: Relatively speaking. So you wanted to start a business twenty years ago, thirty years ago, fifty years ago. You had so much red tape to cut through and so much headache. It was a lot of expense and little capital and you can only reach people in your communities you’re isolated for location. It was, it was not easy, right? And so now, anybody has the tools or should have access to those tools to be able to learn how to do it immediately. So if you have any idea you want to execute on it there’s no reason not to with an online business.

Ryan: The barriers to entry are much low.

Anthony: Yeah. There are essentially nothing.

Ryan: And if you do something that’s like very unique you can reach like a probably a million people who also have that unique interest that you without how things are currently, you know, technology would never have been able to access.

Anthony: 110% Dr. Debell. Another thing though, I wanna highlight before we even talk about how easy this is, is that people I think have a getting business is bad, even capital is bad with the kind of media we have now surrounding us and I think that yes people can be devious with their intents behind growing large corporations but I think if people have online businesses this can free you up to actually have much more time to focus on getting better skills with other things for instance. My example would be, when I was in my clinic a hundred percent of the time when I was seeing patients I was not getting better as a clinician. I was getting experienced and that was great. But as far as I was learning new skills, applying new knowledge those are not happening because I was, I had to be there to generate revenue a hundred percent of the time. So all of my time had to go towards patient care so I could generate income.

Ryan: And then by the end of that time doing that you’re tired so you’re not even… you’re wasted after hours.

Anthony: You can’t go read new stuff. You can’t apply new things. You can’t get better at any kind of craft where you had to trade your time for your money like that. And so the beauty of  online business, what you can do is free of load of hours so you can provide yourself with more time to learn, to apply new knowledge, to do anything that you wanna do which I think is amazing. And so, people say, oh online business where you’re just trying to take people’s money. I think that’s ridiculous because people have the choice to do whatever they want online. If you are providing good value to somebody they will trade you money for and that’s how some online business works. And so you are providing someone else value and they’re providing you value with money so you can not have to trade your time for money as much and so you can do whatever you want hopefully trying to improve yourself for others.

Ryan: You know, even another angle is when thinking about that is if you don’t rely solely on trading your time for money you can make better decisions when you do. What I mean is if you’re relying on that it almost compromises you like let’s say for example you will need to see someone like five times but you rely on having like a very busy in person schedule. You might push that beyond what they really need.

Anthony: How is that?

Ryan: By having like other things going on, you don’t have to do that. So isn’t that in fact even more moral I guess you could say.

Anthony: Yeah and I think that people think, well I wouldn’t do that for money. But I think people have the an inherent bias towards having to have a, meet an overhead or whatever. For an instance like right now my patient load is very very low though when I work with people one with one when I want I don’t charge at all for it. So it’s just, it’s not like I don’t let people pay me. I don’t ask for anything. That removes some kinda subconscious of the patients be like, oh they’re just trying to make money or you be like or I have to be busy because this reason I have to pay for my schedule whatever like that. By having online businesses allow me to just enjoy it. Get better at the craft and really just care a hundred percent about getting that person better.

Ryan: Do you think people think of online businesses as being scammy?

Anthony: I think so.

Ryan: That’s so weird to me. That isn’t Amazon an online business? It’s essentially ecommerce.

Anthony: Right, right, right. Again I think it’s just providing value but…  

Ryan: That mean they’re awesome. I mean there’s definitely like…  

Anthony: I think there are a lot of charlatans that are online now just like they used car salesman so people trying to get into the systems and have people just pay for money in really tricky ways like some membership sites are a little silly. They are just trying to have people forget that they have a credit card on file. So I think their examples of that. Their ridiculous. But I think if you wanted to and you have a specialized knowledge now is the time for so many reasons.

Ryan: You know what’s funny too? Like it’s easier to operate an online business than it is in person business in a lot of ways like I just had to pay, you know like. It was my birthday, right? Remember how I was so tired…

Anthony: Yeah. Happy birthday.

Ryan: You remember how I was so tired last time? I guess it happens every time it’s your birthday. You have to renew your license.

Anthony: Oh yeah yeah yeah.

Ryan: So it’s like I’m paying all these money to renew my license. I don’t have to do that with an online business.

Anthony: Well, yeah. The amount of people you can help, provide value to, they exchange the money to you that’s put up businesses is, what’s the world population are now? Seven billion? How many are like in the internet? Like four billion? So four billion potential people versus let’s say your clinic in Lindwood or mind in San Francisco has access to only helping this many people and only helping that many people I can personally see or if I hire staff to see them or whatever. It really limit the amount of people that you can impact and you can market too.

Ryan: Especially too if you’re sort of niche like you can’t necessarily do as well as you could locally because it may not be that density that want that.

Anthony: Agreed. So I mean yeah so you can market to whoever that you think you’d be able to help easy. Super easy. You can target that very very easily. So for instance, as an example to this stuff that the start capital now versus where I was before. I think the biggest thing that’s free is the knowledge base to do any of the stuff into setting anything up. So if thirty years ago if I needed to know how to file an LFC or how to do my taxes, or how to do any of this kind of accounting stuff I would had it like, where would I go?  The city clerk’s office? And ask them like what form would I fill out. I never have time to do that but right now, say I have a busy schedule if 9 p.m. I’m about to go to bed I can just Google something like that. Get all the information, step by step for whatever to the business that you wanna do. So all the information is for free, accessible from anywhere from an internet connection. So I think that the accessibility to knowledge is the biggest key that kinda unlocks this time to start an online business which is now.

Ryan: Yeah. You can just, it’s so easy to figure out how to do it. So should we get some of the specific examples of how we did it?  

Anthony: Yes sure.

Ryan: And what we’ve done. So why don’t you tell me about yours, Anthony?

Anthony: Right. So the first online business that I had actually was the Paleolithics. And I consider that an online business until people started asking me to sponsor like products or sell like this. And so what happens is, and I’m not afraid to talk about this like some bloggers are. So people sometimes would give me, let’s say a pack of whatever, protein bar, and I do the same thing from marketing with PureWOD. They say here’s a couple hundred dollars and just go ahead and use it and write a review and let us know what you think and that’s just a trade for attention. So they’re buying the attention of my audience. So I thought, “Wow! That’s pretty awesome!” I can just make a post and make this money whereas otherwise I would have to be in my clinic and be super I can’t do this in my own time. They can help impact other people. So that was kinda the first phase where started learning if I wanna have this grow well then I need to learn about social media marketing. I need to learn about billing an audience. I need to learn about how to build a website. These are all things I didn’t know a few years ago that I learn for free online. And so the accessibility thing is huge. I needed probably a lot of those skills into opening and starting PureWOD which is, I started for five hundred dollars as initial sort of cost, all the fees to incorporate plus the initial product to run everything like that. And again, I didn’t know a lot of this stuff beforehand but I learned it all for free. It just took time to learn about it. And so the impact, I wasn’t, I didn’t have to go door to door to sell stuff. I could click a few buttons on Facebook and target some people that are really into this nutritional sort of target, and grow my rich and mentally on that platform because there’s so many tools that, whether they be Facebook ads, Google ads or Shopify platform that you can do e-commerce on where you can expand and do things that are just or completely impossible even five years ago or ten years ago. And so I leveraged a lot of that and now I shipped to over thirty countries and with last month we did we crossed over a million dollars of revenue all from the fact that there’s just, the tools are there. They’re so easy and accessible by anybody. So I’m not some mastermind business person. It’s just that put the time in to learn about it and all those, all the learning and application of the tools came back to me and then now I’m able to reinvest at how people grow, expand my skills stt, and keep providing more and more value and solving more more problems. If I was just in my clinic, again, the last six, eight, ten months would have been just working on people maybe ten, twelve max a day or is now hadn’t shipped to tens of thousands of people. So I think that the reach is completely different as far as possible when you are online.

Ryan: Well, and then another thing that was cool about that is you could, you took that knowledge and experience with PureWOD and then you were able to figure out other products to make.

Anthony: Right. Yeah and so…  

Ryan: So now you have a new line.

Anthony: It’s just the great thing about the online business, well, is that the skills are so transferrable that you can learn something you can apply it over and over and over again. Whereas, sometimes if basically in a day to day clinic or in person business those skills are not always transferrable as far as what you learn ‘cause you’re not like, let’s say I learn something in the chiro business but that would help a coffee shop. Well, if I had open a coffee shop there’s like a five year lease and I have to have this equipment. Not the case if you wanted to do that in testing else online. It would test the business for fifty dollars on Google ads for instance. And so cost of entry is so low that you can see opportunities clearly when you have kind of this skill set that’s transferrable among different types of businesses. Does it make sense?

Ryan: Yup yup. Exactly.

Anthony: So obviously mine was like a product based business and I keep launching products because that’s what I’ve built up for, skills wise and I think your approach is being completely different than that.

Ryan: Well, my first thing I made a few call is like an online business but it was doing a live events. Would you even consider that?

Anthony: I would say it is because that’s where people find it.

Ryan: That’s where people find it. People also pay online through the website. So yeah, I started doing those in this year. I just did my twenty ninth event this year.

Anthony: Of the year?

Ryan: Of the year. Twenty nine this year.

Anthony: Mad man.

Ryan: And that was, that’s when I was in London was number twenty ninth. And I get, you know what? I joked like the first time I did one was like, “Man that’s come a long way!” Not, both in the content in the way I present but also in what happens behind the scenes to make the events happen.

Anthony: Right.

Ryan: And the cost for something like that is I mean it’s essentially zer… like live events are fixed cost. So there’s a certain cost to do the event and everything but beyond that is just profit. So like the flight, hotels, et cetera. It doesn’t change necessarily based on how many people attend versus let’s say a product based thing like PureWOD. Each bag costs some amount. So the start up cost is much less in like a live event business. More of the cost comes in from like marketing the event and the travel for the event. But so essentially if I don’t do the thing, I don’t do the event there’s no loss.

Anthony: Let’s compare and contrast this to if you’re doing live events and you had to do them at your clinic. How many could you do realistically even if you tell the entire population of Lindwood?

Ryan: Right. That’s what I mean like there’s so many people in that geographic area that would be, that would come to something like that. But because of the internet and doing it online there’s like pockets of people in all these different cities and all these different places. So because it’s an online based thing, you know let’s say there’s twenty five people in this city in a certain time of the year that are willing to go to something like that. I’m able to go do that and meet and work with all these people. There’s no way I’ll be able to do that if I was just doing it locally. I don’t think that, I’m not sure that would even be possible just by the nature of it. So that is, again the start up cost was very low for that. It was really more just like…  

Anthony: It was your time to create a content and educate people that you had a workshops that were worth going to that would help them.   

Ryan: Exactly. That’s exactly right. And then, my most, my more recent endeavor is making those even more accessible to more people.

Anthony: With the digital products, right?

Ryan: The digital products. So I had two events recorded, these are two-hour events, and I was able to make that available via the internet. And it really doesn’t take that much. I mean like you said it’s pretty much just Googling and learning and testing and trying it. I didn’t have any idea how to do this. But there’s someone out there who makes like plug in for a website that allows you to do this. And it’s just a matter of testing it, figuring it out, looking at the FAQs, going to Youtube watching the stuff. You don’t have to go pay someone $10,000 dollars to like set up a fancy system for you. And I just, so I recorded the content  that I was already doing but making it available for people who aren’t in a place where they could go to a live event and maybe some people don’t want to spend a whole day. They don’t have the ability to spend the whole at the live event but they could do it, you know, they could watch an hour here and there. And then the most recent thing I did was record my full day event and so make that available too. But the nice thing is like you said it’s very transferable because when I was already doing well for a live events that could transfer to a digital media format. So it’s not like I have to go create this whole other business like you said with your coffee shop example. I don’t have to go set up this biggy labyrinth thing. It’s taking what I already have and finding ways to make that information and that value available for even more people.

Anthony: Right. And so I think probably people would have seen right now. I don’t even know when I would start.  

Ryan: Yeah. I thought that way too. You thought that way too because I remember you didn’t know.

Anthony: Right. I think the best way to do this and I think we both did this was think about what you would want to spend money for online and just Google how to do that the other way. So you obviously in the past, I could probably know you’re making a content and doing the workshops but I’m sure like, did you buy anybody’s workshop or anything online? About movement and about crafting stuff like that?

Ryan: Yeah and I took a lot of live events also.

Anthony: Exactly and so..

Ryan: And then when I did that I was like I think there’s some ways that I think and the ways that I would use this material that nobody else is doing quite like that and that made me wanna do it. So that’s where it really came in for me. But yeah, sort of me going and…

Anthony: Whereas I wanted a product that didn’t exist and so I figured out and I just researched how to do that and that was completely free.

Ryan: That was PureWOD.

Anthony: Yeah. People underestimate the amount of information that is out there. So think about, I think it could even go as a  challenge, challenge for the week we could throw out there earlier which is: think about ten things that you’re buy like if, let’s say you’re under maybe thirty five, forty, I would assume that you buy the majority of the stuff that you buy on the internet. Is that a fair assumption?

Ryan: Do you think that’s true?

Anthony: I mean I buy ninety five percent, I buy my groceries online. I use an app for my groceries. I’d never buy things in store unless I need them like right now. Like Princess, I needed labels to print to me out today. And I went on Amazon Prime Now and I got within an hour and didn’t go anywhere.

Ryan: What?

Anthony: Yeah. Don’t you have that in Seattle?

Ryan: I didn’t know… You ordered something on Amazon and got within one hour?

Anthony: Yeah remember I told you also about my Apple TV where I ordered an Apple and got it delivered within one hour?

Ryan: What’s that Prime Now? Is that what’s it’s called?

Anthony: Yup. Prime Now is the Amazon one. You look at that big flyer on grocery store and wherever.

Ryan: Oh yeah that’s right. Oh man, you’re gonna be jel, well no you won’t be jealous because you wouldn’t even go.

Anthony: No I use Instacart which is an amazing app that I don’t get paid for that I should because I recommend it so much. So if you have Instacart in you look it up. Yeah you just order your full grocery cart online and somebody goes shops for you and brings it to you and that’s how I do my grocery shopping.  

Ryan: How do they, you pay them a certain..

Anthony: I pay a hundred thousand a year for that service.

Ryan: That’s all you, it’s a flat rate for the whole year?

Anthony: It’s a hundred dollars for me to save by hundreds and hundreds of hours.

Ryan: You know why this business exist is someone was like, “man wouldn’t be nice if I just didn’t have to go to grocery store?”

Anthony: Exactly. And this is the entire point like somebody was pissed because they had to go to grocery store so they started the business where they realized that people wanted that and so anybody can do this right now. Yes, it’s kinda ridiculous to think like, “oh online business is like Facebook. I can’t start Facebook.” Probably not, right? But I don’t have a Facebook either, right? So but you can start an online business that generates enough passive income where you can invest that time into improving yourself or getting better at providing value to other people. And I think that’s the most important part that people should be focusing on when they’re building an online business. It doesn’t have to be Uber, it doesn’t have to be Facebook. It is billion dollar companies. Think about when an extra one thousand dollars to most people would mean to that amount.

Ryan: It probably, you know it would take so much pressure off them. So what are we suggesting? Are we suggesting everybody tries to start an online business and not be in the clinic?

Anthony: No. We’re suggesting thinking of ways, if you’re especially super busy and stressed out either financially or timewise, an answer to those problems which is 99% of people I think their problems come down to you know, finances or time, is starting a super easy online business that generates some passive revenue.

Ryan: Because think about this, if you’re very very busy five days a week, tired doing kind of you know essentially a lot of the same things over and over and over. What if you could free up one day a week by doing that.

Anthony: Yeah like use that one day to read an extra book or something.

Ryan: And then those other four days that you’re working with people, you probably enjoy more and do a better job anyways.

Anthony: I believe so. I believe that’s true. I was in the hey day when I was doing on my, the most training I was because I think eleven hours Monday through Friday and then usually six hours on Saturday. And after some months of that like I was useless it’s so hard to act as clinician like I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t operate well.

Ryan: You’re quality goes down. Quality of care goes down a lot.

Anthony: Yeah and I’m not complaining that I was busy at all but I think that people, you don’t need to equate, like more is now is better especially from like a gym on their standpoint, a personal trainer even a student studying like if you don’t take some rest, if you always pull an all nighters you would definitely have a law of diminishing return type of thing going on.

Ryan: I think one of the issues is people think that the more people they see in their clinic or that they’re working with defines their success. And I don’t really think that that’s true.

Anthony: Yeah I think that’s something that we’ve been taught from an early age or like even members at a gym or whatever?

Ryan: Right like “oh yeah I see you know, oh I’m averaging you know two hundred visits a week or a hundred visits a week or something.” It’s like is that better than if you did less and you have more revenue streams or you charge more for your services?

Anthony: Yeah. You were having a better impact because you are more focused on what you are doing.

Ryan: I think we have to reframe how we define that.

Anthony: Yeah maybe I should be another episode.

Ryan: Defining your success?

Anthony: Yeah.

Ryan: Oh I like that.

Anthony:  I think it should probably episode 23.

Ryan: Let me add that to the sheet.

Anthony: Yeah I do. Yeah I mean that’s definitely huge. And so what is success to you? I think that, again, it comes down to probably either time like having time or more revenue coming in so that’s why I think that being able to provide that value to people is huge. We can also breakout people want they can reach out and we can do all these little  things like the tools we use like how to outsource for very very affordable manner, how to grow online, how to advertise online. These can all be different episodes obviously, but just the fact of how easy it is to learn online I think it is one takeaway people should get from listening to this episode.

Ryan: I agree. So we are well beyond our usual time. So what’s our challenge? We gotta wrap this up.

Anthony: So we have a challenge as a question from Doctor.

Ryan: Yeah what is it? You mentioned earlier. Think of ten things that you buy on the Internet, right? And maybe frame yourself in a why was this made, who made this, who decided you know what was the problem that they’re trying to solve. And then try to generate five ideas of your own on problems and how you could solve them or how you could use some of you’re already doing and deliver in a different way.

Anthony: Yeah or five, yeah five things that you want to exist that don’t  I think it is a good way. That’s kinda how I’ve gone about it.

Ryan: Let’s do it that way. I like that too. Five things that should exist but they don’t as you always said.

Anthony: Yup.

Ryan: Alright so

Anthony: We have to say from Doctor

Ryan: What? Get after it.

Anthony: Yeah that’s right. We’re done with that one.

Ryan: Thank you guys for tuning in to this episode of the Health Fit Business podcast. If you found it helpful, please share with someone that you think it would also help and leave us a five-star rating on iTunes. Make sure also to go to healthfit.biz and sign up for the email notifications to which you can find right on the homepage so that you get all the updated podcasts and blog posts sent directly to you. Until then, we will see you next time.

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