12 Fundamental Business Model Secrets – powered by Happy Scribe

Boston Cage is a weekly podcast that releases the origin stories of business owners and entrepreneurs as they become uncaged trailblazers. In each episode, our host, Essay Grant and guests construct narrative accounts of their collective business journeys and growth strategies, learn key success habits and how to stay motivated through failure. All while developing a Boston Cage mindset. Break out of your Cage and welcome our host, Essay Grant.

Welcome back to Boston Cage. So this is a bonus episode. And as things progress with Boss and Cage, I always want to kind of keep everyone in the loop and kind of post these updates. So moving forward, when I do these individual bonus episodes, they’re going to be more like micro courses. And what I want the listener to do is to listen to this and take notes, take actions on what I’m about to present to you. Because the goal is part of the whole Boston Cage story. And Boston Cage brand is to help entrepreneurs help business owners on their journeys. So this particular one is not the first one that I’ve done. It’s going to be the first one I’m going to do in this particular fashion. And I really want you guys to really take heed to what I’m about to say. So I’m going to kind of just talk about the topic. The topic is The Twelve Fundamental Business Model Secrets to Help with Your Growth Strategy. And so, as the story goes, when I first got introduced to business modeling, becoming a consultant, becoming a strategist, I’ve been doing this thing for about 20 years.

So about maybe ten to twelve years back, a friend of mine by the name of Scott Wise had introduced me to the lead in Canvas. And I’m sitting there and I’m building my business. He was building his business. And he presented to me this book and I looked it over and I looked at the content. I’m like, it makes it very transparent and very simplistic enough so you can kind of really comprehend the components of any business that you need to have to make that business run effectively. So when you start to break down like the Canvas, you have to think about it more. So from a standpoint of a single document versus multi page document, like a standard business plan, obviously both of them could be utilized, both of them have their places in business. But it’s so much more easier to kind of fill in the blanks for a business model and then use that to then jump off of business and use that to then start developing into your business plan. If you do decide to go down that road, if you’re looking for equity or if you’re looking for capital, stuff like that.

So here we go. Twelve, right? So the first one is going to be Value Proposition. And what I want you to understand about Value Proposition is every business that is created, you’re essentially creating that business to apply value to a particular customer segment, right? And that value should be associated with some kind of monetary value or in some shape or form. So value proposition is more so like a promise that you’re going to deliver value or deliver a solution to a client. In the case of Boston Cage, I kind of give you guys a little insight to what our value proposition is like. We’re here to help entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses through the storytelling of other entrepreneurs and other businesses, what hurdles they have overcome over the years. And in addition to that, as Boston case has grown, we added the book club. And the book club is essentially a value proposition to help people learn and read and get more insights that other entrepreneurs are reading. In addition to that, we’ve added the Boston Cage Academy, which is probably, I think, the first time I’m really making the announcement of it.

It was kind of like behind the scenes things I was working on. But the Boston Cage Academy is definitely active and is live, and you can definitely check it out at Boston Cage comACADEMY. So the value proposition of that particular platform is what we’re doing right now, taking videos like this and breaking them down to smaller buckets so people can really comprehend exactly what they need to do, how to do it. In this academy, we record videos, we do step by step tutorials, we do Facebook groups, we do Q and A. So that way, if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to leverage marketing strategy, or you want to level funnels, or if you want to leverage email marketing, not only do you have access to what platforms that I’m using, you may have access to what other platforms other people are using, you’ll have access to multiple different platforms, right? So you may have a lifetime deal, you may have a free deal, you may have a pay to play deal, or monthly subscription deal. But the goal is here is to explain these platforms, do live tutorials, explain exactly how to use them, why they use them, what the results should be when you use them.

And that’s what the Boston Cage Academy came to be. So that’s the value proposition for that. So the takeaway from number one that I want you to do is what is your value proposition? And I want you to look at it from the standpoint. You know, if I’m talking about branding, there’s multiple different sectors to branding. There’s an individual brand, right? There’s a business brand, there is a product brand, and there’s a service brand. What I’ve just done is just tell you about maybe one of our services, right? So like one of our products, like, that’s the story behind the Boston Cage Academy or the story behind the Boston Cage podcast and what those value propositions are for each one of those particular sectors. So you want to look at your products and services and figure out what is your value proposition, what is the value that you’re delivering to your customer segments and how are you delivering. So that’s number one. Number two is the unfair advantage. And the unfair advantage is one of the things that people always say that there’s so much competition in the market. No matter what market sector you get into, there’s always going to be competition.

But even with that competition, there’s an individual or individual business that can step up and shine because they have an unfair advantage. A good example of unfair advantage would be trademark, right? Having a trademark allows you to kind of own a particular brand or a particular name that no one else can use. So let’s say your name is a functional name. Let’s say your name is Ladders or Windows and Doors’right. Let’s say that’s your name. Well, if you can get that trademark, which would probably be impossible for Ladders indoors, but if you can get that, then nobody else in that industry could particularly use the ladders indoors, or they can’t use Windows and Doors because you have a trademark on that. And if they infringe on it, then you can legally then say, hey, you need to cease and desist. So that’s an unfair advantage for that sector. In addition to that goes back to the branding. If you look at your four products, right, and I’m seeing you as a product, your company as a product, your product as a product, and your service as a product, if you look at these four different individual brands, each one of them could have their own unfair advantage, right?

So me, as SA Grant, like, I’ve branded myself to where I have an unfair advantage, that there could be another Essay Grant, but there would not be another Essay Grant that’s associated to Boston Cage. So you can see how this compounds together. Like, Boston Cage by itself is a brand, SA Grant by itself as a brand, but the union between the two becomes a fair advantage, becomes a variable. So Essay Grant may not be trademarked, could become Essay Grant, but Boston Cage is going through and becoming trademarked so that I have that leverage to say, okay, you know what? You can’t be Boston Cage. You could be SA Grant, but you can’t be both. That’s part of our unfair advantage. In addition to that, like, my story and what I’ve developed and what I’ve created and who I’ve interviewed also cannot be replicated exactly the same way I have replicated. It cannot be delivered the same way I’m delivering it. Even if someone studies the way I’m doing it and practice it, they’re still going to be uniquely different than I am. So that’s the unfair advantage. That’s just like the tip of the iceberg.

But you want to figure out what is your unfair advantage, because you could be in a market sector with hundreds if not thousands, maybe even millions of competitors. You just have to figure out what your value proposition and association to your unfair advantage works best for you and works best for your customers and makes you stand out more than anyone else. So the takeaway for this is like what do you have that your competitors cannot copy or replicate, right? Again, it could be systems, it could be processes, it could be automation, it could be logos, it could be identity, it could be brand, it can be so many different things. And I think people just kind of like they hear unfair advantage and I don’t have unfair advantage, I’m just like everyone. But no, you’re not like everyone else. Everyone is uniquely different and what you need to do is figure out what’s that unique factor and play to it. Number three is customer segments and relationships. So this is like kind of goes without saying, anyone that’s in sales or any admin level person or any C level person, they understand customer service and customer relationships, right?

So again, this is just top level stuff, but you have to kind of figure out who your customers are. In the beginning of this podcast, I was talking about who my customers are. So I’m talking about small business owners and entrepreneurs that are looking to get a leg up on marketing, business strategies, growth strategies, and brand development, right? So anyone that’s in that sector space, I can talk to them and talk to their pain points and give them solutions because not only have I done it before, but I’ve done it for other people as well. So I’m talking to that customer segment. Now, the type of relationship that I have with those people, it can be variable relationships, right? You can have a B to B relationship, right, which is business to business. So prime example, Cerebral 360 is my marketing agency. That company could then partner with another company to help them create a website or to help them rebrand or create a logo that’s more of a B to B play, right? Or you can have B to C, which is more so like the solopreneur to the business. So I have my corporation and then someone contacts us and they say, hey, I like what you’re doing, I like your podcast, I need you to help me with some growth strategies.

And I had a call like that recently, like the name of Sir Evans. He was actually on the episode, I think it was season one. And he contacted me, he was like, hey, I just want to talk to you about some branding, some brand development, some brand strategy. How could I work with you? Okay, so that’s more of like a B to C, but it could then easily grow into a B to B as we develop that relationship and we develop his brand and get that platform that he’s standing in to grow and prosper in addition to that, there’s like POS point of sale to where you don’t really communicate with your client. They just kind of find your product, they’ll purchase it, and they’ll just kind of keep moving forward. And I’ll look at that more so as like Amazon now, obviously Amazon has customer support, and they probably look at it more as a B to C business to consumer. But in reality, it’s just point of sale. I’m pointing at something on the screen and I’m purchasing it. The customer journey is there, but the reality is there’s no real person to person contact.

There’s no real communication. For me, to them, it’s essentially a bot to a person or algorithm selecting the products for that person based upon what they’ve done before. So just understanding that, okay, if I’m going to create a business, I’m going to create my value proposition, I’m going to establish my unfair advantage, and then I’m going to talk to that customer’s segment and I’m going to build a relationship with them. And I would say, probably more than likely you want more of a B to B or a B to C play, right? So the takeaway for this one is like, who are your customers and what kind of relationship do you have with them? Is it A B to B? Is it a B to C or a POS? And keep in mind, these are just three of them. There’s many others, but these kind of give you like an overall viewpoint to kind of establish the first line to say, okay, you know what, I’m more of a BTB or more of a BDC. And then from there, you can kind of dive in a little bit deeper. And there’s times where we can kind of go into deeper roles and talk about that in more flushed out manner.

Going into number four channels. Now, channels is probably one of my favorite out of the twelve because it’s the way you communicate, it’s the way you contact individuals. It’s where do you develop your content, what platforms are you on? So this one could be everything and nothing at the same time, right? You can be talking to anybody or talking to nobody. And it goes back to figuring out who your customer segments are and what relationships do you have. So for me, obviously, I have a podcast so that’s one of my channels. I’m communicating through my audience, through a podcast of individuals that essentially need this information. They want this information. This information is definitely helpful and useful for them because I’m talking directly to them about problems they may have had or by people that I’m interviewing or telling them stories that they may have had or they’re experiencing right now. And they’re figuring out how to if you could overcome this and you became successful three years after that or five years after that. Well, let me get a little notebook and write down some notes kind of take heed to what that person is saying, because that little nugget, that one word, that one sentence could change the way you’re thinking.

Because if you’re thinking internally again, you need to bounce those ideas off of someone else. And that’s the philosophy behind communicating on channels. So there’s Facebook, there’s LinkedIn, there’s Instagram, Tik, Tok, Twitter, email, YouTube. I can go on and on and on all the different platforms that you can communicate your value proposition through. What you have to figure out is where is your customer segments? Where is your customer avatars? And a lot of you, you may have Facebook, you may have Facebook pages, you may have Instagram, you may have Twitter, but you’re not looking at the analytic data. You’re just creating content with the assumption that you know who your target audience is. But in reality, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even Pinterest, they’ll tell you exactly who your community of people that are actually on your products or on your page are. They may not give you their name, but they’ll tell you their sex, their age, and their region. That’s more than we’ve ever had access to before where we are in technology today. So think about that. If they’re giving you all this information, then all you need to do is apply this information to your communication channels to talk to that audience, to make it a little bit more transparent, a little bit easier for you to start converting.

Okay? And a good example of this is saying that, okay, let’s say I’m talking about hearing AIDS, right? Let’s just say that’s my general product is hearing AIDS, and I’m communicating on Facebook and Instagram, and I’m making it hip, and I’m making it kind of like more postmodern, and I’m doing a little bit more edgy. Well, the reality is that communication vehicle and that device and those language and those terminology, I just use them more so to like, Gen Xers and YGens. It’s more of like a younger generation up until maybe like late 30s, early forty s. And keep in mind that entire generation, let’s say from 18 to 40, they don’t use hearing AIDS. So then why am I communicating to them on that particular channel in that fashion? And hence why you probably don’t have any conversions because you’re talking to the community, but you’re talking to them in the wrong language. So then you want to kind of figure out, okay, if I’m talking to more so people that were essentially born in the 60s or born in the 50s or essentially born in the 40s, then I need to speak to them.

I need to look at the need to look at the need to think about their psychological aspect of when they grew up. What did they see? You have to think about it. It was more black and white than this color right now. So putting things in perspective to look at old TV shows, right? Listen to old radio spots, look at old ads, so that way you can kind of touch into their psyche and communicate with them on a level to where it’ll bring them back to when they were younger. Because ideally, people as a whole want to live forever, right? That’s part of creating legacies, and you always hear the story. But when I was younger, I used to all of that comes back to them going back to the youth. So you want to pull into that psychological aspect and communicate to them on that channel based upon those principles. The takeaway for this one is, what channels do you use to connect to your customers right now? And I want you to list them out, like, create a list of these channels, because then you can kind of see what’s the value that you’re getting back in return.

If you have ten channels, are you converting on ten of them? Maybe you’re converting on one. Okay, so if you’re dividing up your time between ten channels, then you probably need to figure out which channel is really working for you and put some more time, more bread and butter into that channel. Communicate a little bit more, a little bit more. Focus on that channel, make that channel work, and then step into other channels as well. You can have all the channels up and running, but if you’re not really putting time into them, I think we all know by now the algorithms are not in our favor, right? They’re in the favor of conversions for their ad platforms. Number five customer challenges. So this goes hand in hand with everything we’ve been saying, right? Customer challenges, like your value should deliver a solution for a customer’s challenge. So identifying the customer’s challenge, we’re just talking about hearing AIDS, for example. So if I’m saying that, hey, it’s hard for you to hear, what is that challenge that you’re going through? It’s difficult for you to play with your grandkids. It’s difficult for you to hear somebody on the phone call, what’s this FaceTime thing?

I can’t really hear what’s going on. If you’re talking to that community of people, identify those challenges, make a laundry list of these challenges, and then apply your values to figure out which one of your values to solving that challenge for them. And then you’re connecting those dots. Okay, so what I’m doing is I’m doing a live consultant with you going back to that story with me and Scott. We used to do these literally for dozens of clients. We would set them up and say, okay, where’s your business? That we would do an entire consultant call back then was in person, right? And then they would buy and purchase a lean model canvas from us that we will build out for them and fill in all the blanks and all the components of their particular business and say, okay, this is where your holes are. This is what you’re missing. This is what you need to do more of. And then they would have a game plan to move forward and they could take that game plan and either work on it themselves or they could hire us as an agency to then develop and fill in those voids.

For them, it was a win win for both us and for the client, right? So think about it from that standpoint. What’s the problem? And then we’re going to talk about number six, which is the solution. But before we get to that, what I want you to do for takeaway for number five, for customer challenge is what are your brand and customer challenges? So you’re talking about the customer, what’s their challenge? And for you, for your brand or your company brand, or your product or your service brand, what’s the challenge? Right? And you want to put these on a sheet, like two columns and list out all your challenges for you personally for a brand or you personally for your company. Your problems may be leads. You may not have enough traffic, you may not have enough conversions. So then you want to figure out, okay, how do I fix these? Like, what am I doing actively on a day to day basis to make this work or to make modifications to make changes? Do the same thing for your customers. If you’re a plumber or a roofer, well, you know, by default, part of your problem is to keep people safe, right?

Part of your problems is to keep people dry in their houses. So going that basic and then putting on the obvious on top, obviously there’s roof maintenance, right? There’s plumbing maintenance, there’s all these different things to keep your pipes working, to keep your roof from leaking. Those are essentially challenges that people will be presented with year round. So then you can say, okay, here’s my solution for that. Maybe you can kind of create a video course and say, hey, you want to buy into like active solutions to how to maintain your roof, how to maintain your plumbing. Or maybe there’s a service that you can set up and say, hey, twice a year, three times a year, once a quarter, whatever it is, we can come out to your house and check your pipes or check your roof. That’s solving the problem without having to sell. You’re just identifying the issues that they have been presented with in their life or they may be presented with at some time, or you’re using case studies to say, hey, other people have been presented with the same exact issues in your area because you have the same house, the house was built in the last 2030 years, and this is what happens with a 30 year old house.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s all the problems and here’s the solutions that we have and here’s the price to go with those solutions. And you kind of see how this starts to form together to make your life a lot easier because you’re using growth strategies to create a system to keep your pipelines full. Number six, customer solutions. So we kind of talked about that a little bit with the customer challenges, but with the customer solutions, you have to fine tune them, right? And it just kind of goes into honing into your audience and understanding what their problems are and then applying the right solutions. Okay, we talked about roofers, for example, but imagine a roofer that just focuses on gutters, right? He does not really install roofs, but what he does do is install gutters to roofs. So he is piggybacking on the roof market by fixing the gutters. So he’s applying to a real solution, right? He’s saying, hey, if you do not want to spend ten to $30 to $40,000 on a new roof, one of the things that we do to help save your roof and maintain your roof outside of touching the roof, is making sure you have gutter guards, right?

That’s like a sub niche of that same spectrum. But by having a gutter guard by default, what are you going to have? You’re going to have less rain that’s sitting in the gutter, which could potentially help with less mosquitoes, less leaks, because again, it leaves back up. Then they’ll end up on the roof. So you can kind of see how you can kind of depict this story. You want to be able to tell them the story about what can happen, what has happened, and how you could then prevent that from happening. In addition to that, then you can say, okay, in addition to the service of the gutter guards, what we also do is we do leaf blowing from your roof, right? That could be an additional service in addition to the gutter guards. So you’re protecting the roof by two external services that’s going to maintain the roof. But you’re not even doing anything with roof. All you’re doing is blowing off leaves and you’re maintaining and updating gutters, right? So you can kind of see, like, this solution could definitely plug into that market, but we’re not installing roofs. So you have to get very clear and very precise with your solutions based upon the customer problems.

And you have to think outside the box to figure out what variables can I do that’s cost effective and have enough margins to apply. All right, let’s go down to number seven. This is another one of my favorite ones, right? And I’m doing it right now. So you can look at my clock. It just turns 07:00 A.m.. I think I woke up around 06:00 and I was like, I’m going to do this video. I was amped up. So I was like, I’m going to come out here and I’m going to drop these twelve nuggets, right? So number seven is key activities. So in any business, you have to understand you just can’t set it and forget it. Even with automation, even with systems in place, you’re going to have to kind of have someone touch and maintain the systems. Because the prime example with systems is like a lot of times they’re connected through APIs or they’re connected to plug ins or software talks to software. Things break all the time. Facebook may have an update that may block out your automation, right? Your email campaign may be, oh my god, we’re not getting more leads because your funnel is disconnected from.

So keep in mind you always have to kind of maintain double check and a lot of email reminders will do that for you. If you have those email reminders set up for those systems that you’re using to say, hey, if something’s broken, if something’s not working, at least notify me. So that’s a key activity that I know, that I do pretty regularly and I have my VA’s look at as well. But generally for any business, like whatever your value proposition is and whatever the problems that you’re solving for the customers, each one of those need to have key activities. So if you’re driving a truck, right, let’s say you have a truck company and you’re moving around, you’re doing logistics and you’re delivering well, the key activities for that is maintaining the truck, maintaining the wheels, maintaining the oil. Those are things that you cannot go without not doing. You cannot pay attention to that because if a truck breaks down, then essentially your business breaks down. It’s the same exact principle whether you’re in a physical business or whether you’re in a remote business, whether you’re a solopreneur, there’s maintenance for any business. So you have to maintain whatever it is that you started, whatever it is, is making you money and keep maintaining that for forever, right?

So then you can put people in place to maintain it for you. You can put systems in place to maintain it for you. You can put automation in place to maintain it for you. But you have to understand that the key activities, it’s a key activity for a reason. The key takeaway for this one would be what key activities are you currently doing to expand your value proposition? And I want you to really process that question. What key activities are you doing to expand, not to maintain? What are you doing to expand your value proposition? And I gave you an example of that earlier, talking about the roof, talking about the gutter guards and what’s the key activity that they can use to expand. We talked about leaf blowing off the roof, right? So that’s essentially a new service that they’ve added on. But there’s maintenance that comes with that new service. You’re talking about leaf blowers. With those leaf blowers you’re going to have new employees possibly. You’re going to have to probably have new insurance possibly, right? You’re probably going to have to maintain those machines, whether it’s oil whether it’s gas machines break down, you have to have a cost overhead to buy a new machine.

So those are all key activities that you’re going to have to look at when you’re looking to expand into that new value proposition. So you can kind of see how these compartments can start to connect and start to build a clear puzzle. So number eight, key resources. Key resources is I look at key resources and I’m just trying to figure out the easiest way to explain them. Key resources could be software, right? Going back to your systems, like utilizing software to maintain my value proposition could be associated directly to a software platform. QuickBooks, for example, is a key resource. Like how am I sending out invoices? Well, if I didn’t have QuickBooks, then I would have to create an invoice or somebody on my team to create an invoice or an accountant or CPA would have to create an invoice email or mail. Imagine mailing an invoice. Imagine the debacle that would cause the lag of payment, right? So just think about that. If I had to mail out my invoices, you’re looking at essentially give or take whatever state or whatever country, somewhere between three to ten days for that check, for that invoice to be delivered.

Once it’s in the mail room or at that mail location, someone has to check the mail, which people don’t check the mail every day, right? Then once they get that, then they’re going to have to look at it and then they got to process it. Now you probably heard of net 30, net 60, net 90, even before because again, the further up the food chain, the larger the companies are. They have their own processes in place, so all these things come into factor. So again, you may not get paid for 120 days just because of how long it takes for that invoice to come in, come into the system for someone to open it up, someone to review it, someone to approve it, someone to then release the funds, then someone to submit the funds. It’s a damn nightmare. So think about QuickBooks. QuickBooks kind of solves that problem, right? Or venue, for example, solves that problem. Or obviously there’s PayPal as well too. I wouldn’t recommend using cash out, but obviously there’s all these different new services that are key resources that you process payments a lot faster. Stripe is another good example for like course graders.

So now you don’t have to worry about waiting for someone to get a check or waiting for someone to essentially open up their email, like right then and there they can make a payment and you can process the payment. So think about that at scale. I’m just talking about the money. I’m just talking about cashing out. But if you’re using a key resource, it could be for anything, right? It could be for any aspect of your business. Something that if you do not have access to it. It would probably be a nightmare or take manpower or take time away from you doing something that’s more important, like building your business or making more money doing these steps and procedures. So these key resources help to compound time, make things easier for you and your corporation. And they also plug into your system that you’re creating and developing to make your company run. The takeaway from this one is like, what are your key human resources? What are your key financial resources? And what are your key intellectual resources? And your human resources essentially is your employees, right? And you’re not trafficking people. I’m just saying humans could be a key resource as well.

Like, my VA is a phenomenal VA, right? And it’s a team of VA, essentially like five to ten of them at any given time based on projects we’re working on. That’s a key resource for Boston Cage. So that’s my key resource. My key financial resource, I give you an example of that would be essentially QuickBooks. And the key intellectual resource, we talked about that, right? It’s books and practicing. What I’m doing is creating all these different content. So essentially, I am that intellectual resource behind the boss of Cage brand. And again, my key activity, I want to be able to maintain these. So how am I maintaining my key? Humans will have to make sure that they’re happy, make sure that they’re paid, make sure they have things to do right, and make sure that generally they’re all going the right direction and they’re growing. And my financials, I have to look at my numbers to make sure that my software is working right. Payments are being made. That’s a key thing that I need to do to make sure that key resource is up to par to where it needs to be. And on the intellectual side, I need to continue to keep learning, continue to keep educating myself, continue to keep interviewing new people, hearing new stories, hearing new inspirations.

Because again, much like the listener, I’m actively learning as well. We’re all learning for different reasons. But for me, it’s like I’m plugged in to the data that I die. I want to be able to touch and communicate with as many people as I possibly can until my last breath. So that’s part of my maintenance. I’m going to be doing this so I have no teeth missing the leg and gimping around, just to be straight up and be honest, right? So let’s just go into number nine, key partners. So we talked about the key activities, we talked about key resources. And number nine is key partners. Key partners is a goal. Mine. Because like I said earlier, if I didn’t have that partnership with Scott, would I be having that conversation with you all now about something that I learned 1012 years ago? So that partnership opened up my eyes to new philosophies, new theories, new processes new systems, right? In addition to that, you could have partnerships like affiliates, like Prime Example, like Tycoon. He’s the Kindle cash flow king. That’s his thing. He’s been doing it forever. He’s been doing it before, since Kindle started.

So being able to be an affiliate to his program, well, obviously I can create my own program to talk about Kindle, but why would I recreate something from 100% from scratch when I can kind of give an overview and say, hey, if you want more detail, more insight, here is a partner of mine that has dozens and dozens of courses, from audio courses to not just audio, but like how to create audiobooks, how to create physical books, how to create Kindle books. And he has all the information about that. Then I would then say, hey, after I teach you what I need to teach you, which is the bare basics, then if you want to take it a little bit more advanced and take what I’ve taught you and scale and grow and magnify it even more, then I would recommend you take this course. And here’s why. This is what this course has done for me. I know this guy, and I’m going to tell you the story and I’m going to tell you what has done for me. And then you’ll be able to go over to him. So that’s a key partnership.

And obviously if it’s an affiliate deal, then every time I send someone to him, I would get payment as well too. So it works for me, it works for him, and it’s the best interests of that particular student at the same time. So that’s what you want to have key partners with. Going back to the roofers example, well, if I am a roofer roofer, and I’m doing installations and doing roofs, I may not do drains, I may not do leaf blowing. So now this new sector of this new key activity for this new value proposition for this new company, instead of them being competitors now, they could essentially be partners, right? So you have one company that’s installing the roof, and then you have another company that they’re going to refer you to that’s going to maintain your drains and your gutters and blow the leaves off your roof at the same time. It’s a win win situation. So they give you a brand new roof, and then they have a maintenance package for your roof as well too. So they’ll then give the referral to the maintenance company. They probably get 20%, 30%, maybe 50% of that revenue.

But then that company is getting new leads from the roofer every time the roofer installs a roof. And that’s what that key partnership should look like. There should be push and pull back and forth, much like networking. If you’re going into a networking group, which I’m a part of as well, through Success Champions, I tell everyone, all the members all the time key partnerships goes back to my statement about Triangulation is that you need to figure out where you are in a triangle. If I’m a graphic designer, who would a graphic designer work well with? Graphic designer work really well with a web designer. And who would these two people work really well with? Well, these two people work really well with a videographer or photographer. So once I talk about networking, I want to bring these three sides into my networking group. There could be other triangles going on at the same time, but my core triangle is going to be these three people because I’m a graphic designer, that’s a web designer, and that’s a photographer. And all three of us are sharing equally minded, equally particular clientele’s. But there’s no really overlapping or stepping on feet.

We’re all sharing the same referrals. So then you become an ecosystem. That’s what key partnership is really about. So my takeaway for this one, I want you to think about it like, do you have key partners? And if you do, who are they? And if you don’t, then you need to start thinking about, okay, how can I scale or grow if I had an opportunity to have a key partner in a particular sector of my value? If I can add on additional value without adding on additional cost, that’s where that sweet spot is. So you can take your business from here to here overnight just by plugging in two additional key partnerships. Number ten, cost structure. So call structure kind of goes back to what we talk about with key activities. With the financials cost structure, you have to kind of figure out what’s your overhead. I don’t say you need to go extremely anal, but you have to kind of understand, like, what’s your overhead, right? You have to understand if you’re a work from home person, like, what’s your overhead for your electricity? And you don’t have to do this every single day, every single month.

Just look at, like, an annual review, get an average and figure out, okay, this is what my annual cost is for my general expenses, whether it’s going to ship something out, whether it’s creating something, whether it’s paying for VA, whether it’s buying software, licensing softwares, or subscriptions, add all those numbers up and then you can kind of see, okay, you know what? Per year I’m spending, let’s say $30,000, right? My annual revenue is $35,000. So you’re only really bringing in $5,000 because you’re spending $30,000 to make that 35, right? So you just have to understand, okay, how do I scale that? Like, you want to scale that because you don’t want to be at 5% out of you don’t want to be 5000 out of 35,000. This just makes sense. So you have to figure out, do I bring in new key partners to add on additional services so I can then get referral fees or affiliate deals, right? Or do I add on new offers that essentially I already have access to. It just goes back to a question that we had in a network group. I have all this content. I have all these ebooks that I’ve created, or I’ve had all these written documents or the blog posts.

What do I do with them? But that’s a good thing for you to take all that information and bundle it up and tell a story and put it into a course, or put it into an academy, or put it into a group, a paid group, like something behind a paid wall. That way, all the content that you’ve accumulated over the period of time could then be reused and recycled for a whole new target audience. But now you have all of it in one sitting versus being diversified on all these different platforms. Follow me on YouTube, follow me on Facebook, follow me here, follow me. Take all the best of the best, collage those suckers together and put them in one environment. And that’s one thing that you could definitely do that has a lot of value behind it, because there’s years of content, years of information, and apply a cost to it. So understanding your cost structure is essentially understanding your value. What’s your return, what’s your margin like, what’s your overhead? The first thing I want you to do is for the takeaway is, what are your monthly operational expenses? Just start at the monthly level.

And then you can either go micro, you can go down to the daily level, or you can go up to the annual level. But start at monthly. Look at your monthly reoccurring costs. Look at that. And then say, okay, this is my monthly recurring cost, and this is how much money I make per month. And then the difference in between, like, that’s the money in the bank. So you have to figure out, okay, if my money in my bank is not outweighing the money that I’m spending, how do you fix that? And this model could essentially get your mind to wrap around where you have holes. Next, of course, we’re talking about money. So your revenue streams. So you’re figuring out your cost structure and you’re figuring out your variables of, like, what about my monthly reoccurring costs look like versus what I’m making every month. Then you have to figure out your revenue streams. And I just gave you guys like, a really good one, which is like, take the old content that you have sitting around that has a lot of value, that’s still evergreen content, and collagen together and make a course or make an academy or make it behind a paid wall.

That’s an additional revenue stream, right? So we’re talking about company revenue versus product revenue versus service revenue. Well, that’s why I was talking about multiple brands before, all brands under one umbrella, much like Amazon, right? And then you have just Beto, and then you have prime and then you have the echo dot, let’s just say like that’s one, linear of those three variables of product, service, company, person. So for you, think about your business and see where you are currently. Right? Now if you’re just a company and you’re not a personal brand, my question would be, why not become a personal brand? Especially if you have a storefront. Storefronts are like built and designed for personal branded people. Especially if you’re local, okay? You’re like the local hero. You walk around, you shake hands, kiss babies. It’s almost like you’re running for office, right? So you have to make yourself into a brand to help your business grow. In addition to that, in that business, figure out what your products are and figure out what your services are. You usually have one or the other, but the likelihood of having both is where the real money comes into play.

So you figure out, okay, if I’m selling coffee, coffee is my product. My coffee store is my company brand. I am the owner is the brand of the coffee company. But the part that you’re missing is maybe add a subscription service for the coffee. It didn’t cost you anything to really develop that, right? So now you have all four of these elements. It’s as simple as that. You’re adding on a subscription and say, hey, you guys are local people. You come in here so regular, not only will we give you a discount, not to say punch cards, but you can do a digital at this point in time, right? You can have someone scan a QR code or scan a barcode to get their cup of coffee. Maybe they have unlimited cups. Maybe they have one cup per day, maybe two cups per day. Maybe you could have different price plans. You could have one cup per day versus unlimited cups per day, right? That’s basic versus pro. And there are people out there and companies right now doing these things because they understand the principles behind these four different brands. So just adding on that additional service then now you have all four of them, much like we talked about with the roofers.

And again, if you don’t want to be the additional service, then partner with someone. That’s where your key partners come in. You want to pull those key partners in to say, okay, you know what, I am the company, I am the individual brand and I have a product. But you have that service brand. Let’s pull that service brand in. And now you have all four without having to create it, right? So with revenue, you want to think about the key takeaway for this one is, does your value proposition create a revenue stream? In addition to that, where is your missing of the four components of four brands? Again, company brand, individual brand, product brand, service brand. If you have all four, great. Now only thing you have to do is figure out how to scale and monetize and make sure that that system works. If you don’t, then you need to plug in either a key partner or create that additional brand to get that ecosystem to work, much like the example I did earlier with Amazon. Another example of that would be Apple. You have Apple, Steve Jobs, iPhone, itunes, or any other variables of their many other products.

And you can kind of do this over and over again. It’s like if you did a chart and put the four columns, you can start figuring out multiple different brands that have this thing that I’m talking about with all four brands and then going into number twelve. Last but not least, I’ve titled it Envision Goals. And it’s kind of like goals are one of these things that you kind of set, but goals are always updating, changing and modifying what vision does as well too. So I’ve kind of combined these two to say, okay, the result of achievement toward the effort is directed towards the result. Sounds crazy, but the reality is, if I have a goal, does that goal and stay in alignment with my vision? If my vision shifts, my goal should shift, right? If I’m aiming for 10 million and I have this one envision for my company, but then there’s a fork in the road and I have a dual envision and they’re both working for themselves. Prime example, I’m adding on a new service to my products and my brands. Now I have a dual vision. Well, the goal for this particular vision, which is on the right hand side, that goal could still be met.

But now this new vision, what’s the goal for that one? It could be a similar goal, but again, if I have two separate products and service, there should be an alignment. They should be differently parallel, but the end result should be the same. But again, the goal should be uniquely different for each one of the platforms. That way you can isolate and figure out your problems at hand. And a good example of this would say, okay, my goal for Boston Kate podcast is that I want to get 1 million listeners. That’s my goal, that branch. But my goal for the Academy is I want to get maybe 10% of that 1 million right? Because again, not every listener may need the academy, but the end result of both the Academy and Boston Cage podcast is to essentially help entrepreneurs, help business owners. Some people love just listening to free content and they’ll learn through that. Some people love listening to free content and they need an extra push. They need a community of people. They need step by steps. They need checklists, they need show notes, they need videos. They need to be able to ask someone questions.

Well again, the results could be the same, but the goals and aspirations of both these branches are uniquely different with the same end result in mind. So that’s something that I want you to think about. So the walkway for this one is like, think about what I just said about the envisions and think about the goals and see if your vision and your goals all lined up with your value proposition. So just to recap, the twelve things that we’re talking about today, and the fundamentals are value proposition, unfair advantage, customer segments and relationships, channels of communication, customer challenges, customer solutions, key activities, key resources, key partners, cost structure, revenue stream, and envision goals. So obviously, with everything that kind of throw up, everything I just threw up on you guys, I want you to kind of relisten to this. Take notes, take action, at least on one of these, right? If you’re missing one of these twelve components, figure out which ones you’re missing and then fill it out, start to answer those questions. And obviously, if you need more help with that, I would say this is where I would plug in the Boston Cage Academy.

If you have personal questions, step by step, if you want me to kind of create more content just on a particular section that we talked about, then I would just say go and look at the Bostoncage Academy, which is at Bostoncage comACADEMY. You will be surprised how cheap the cost can be for something as simple as setting up a subscription to help multiple different peoples. But you can definitely sign up for that, take a look at it, see if it will benefit you. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to me. All my communication devices are always out there in plain and simple, right? Last but not least, in closing, something else that I was talking about recently was reviews. So as I start to do more and more of these videos and more and more of these trainings and these micro courses, as I’m going to call them, and continue to build up the Boston Cage Academy in conjunction with Boston Cage Podcast, I need insight from our listeners. I need insight to is this content helpful for you? Do you want more of this content? Do you want more insight?

And I’ve seen some comments here and there. I’ve seen some reviews that have come up on Apple reviews, but I know we have way more listeners than we have reviews. So my next step is I want to start getting more insight from you, the listener. I want to know what you want, how you want it. If you have any referrals for somebody that you want me to interview, I want to interview them. I want you to hear their stories. I want you to take action on their results that they’ve gotten, that you can do the same once you hear how they’ve done it. If you want more insight on these individual podcast episodes, I want to hear that as well. So in the show notes, on this. I think this is on YouTube live and on the podcast. There’s going to be a link. I’m going to tell you what the link is. It’s called Learnacademy bostoncase. Comreviews. That’s L-E-A-R-N-A-C-A-D-E-M-Y. Bostoncage. Comreviews. Take 30 seconds, 60 seconds. Write a quick review or leave a video review so that I can create more content to effectively help you on your journey to get you to where you want to be, which without doubt, you want to be a boss on Cage.

Again, this is SA Grant. I appreciate you guys. I love this stuff. I love this information. Hopefully you love what I’m delivering as much as I love delivering it to you. Essay Graham, over and out. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Boss on Cage. I hope you got some helpful insight and clarity to the diverse approach on your journey to becoming an engaged trailblazer. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review and share the podcast. If this podcast has helped you or you have any additional questions, reach out and let me know. Email me at ask@sagrant.com or drop me your thoughts via call or text at 762-233-2677. I would love to hear from you. Remember, to become a Boston Cage, you have to release your inner beast. SA Grant signing off.

Listeners of Boston Cage are invited to download a free copy of our host SA Grants site e book, Become an Uncage Trailblazer. Learn how to release your primal success in 15 minutes a day. Download now at www dot boss. Uncaged.com forward slash free book.