From Brick and Mortar to an Online Business in a Digital World

Key Takeaways

hey everyone it's neil patel here for another q a thursday video i'm here with adam lodolce from viewership hello everyone and this week's question is this is from dr brian thomason and he says i'm in the process of creating a digital product while keeping my brick-and-mortar business floating a lot of the time i feel divided between the two i feel like i'm moving at snell's pace due to distraction and based on his username maybe he's a doctor or he's some type of maybe in the medical field i guess he's a doctor he's guessing go with that yeah that works it could be dr neil patel could be dr dre i like the doctor he's the only doctor i know that's not a doctor yeah for sure or you know there's a lot of phds that could be a doctor yeah for sure all right dr neil what's up all right so dr neil says i'm kidding i've been there you're spread thin you got a business that's making your money but you know it's not your long-term vision because if you're in a brick-and-mortar business you're trying to create some sort of digital product it's probably because you're not happy with your brick and mortar business and you want to move away or you don't see the future there if that's not the case and i'm wrong please let me know leave a comment and if that's not the case then you should just be focusing on your brick and mortar business and do more brick and mortar businesses and expand them my buddy jeff just recently created a brick and mortar business called ever bowl and everbowl produces like acai bowls and juices really healthy clean food in places and in regions like cities where they don't set up like these fresh juice in places because like oh there's not a lot of rich people and just like why should it only be where all the rich people get all these fancy you know healthy food options why can't it be for everyday people he's like i want my mom to eat healthy i want my kids to eat healthy we don't have as much money we can't afford you know multi-million dollar homes so he set it up and he's crushing it i think he has like 13 stores now in like a year and a half or two years killing it and healy does brick and mortar and the way he gets uh he grows his brick and mortar business i know this is a bit off topic but if your brick and mortar is working the way he gets it is he just lets people come in and he gives them free food for a week right or the first day whatever it may be just seriously he doesn't ask him for a yelp review or anything he just gives away food for free so he goes like the digital marketing way in real life right yeah something for free yeah when i'm over and he's like look if i have amazing food and i'm helping out people in the community yeah they're gonna keep coming back and that's how he's built his businesses and usually within three months of him setting up a store he's profitable and already recuperating his money beast that's amazing yeah brick and mortar business everyone thinks brick and mortar is ugly it's not sexy it doesn't work anymore it works but if you don't think your brick and mortar is the future and you don't like it by all means create that digital product all right i can't tell you what to do if you feel you're spread thin you don't have enough time because you know what the chances are you have time you're making time for tv making time for friends making time drinking and eating out if you really believe in something you can figure out time sleep less i know i'm sounding like a prick but i'm telling you the honest truth it's what people had to go through when my mom and dad moved to america my mom was a teacher she had a degree she couldn't get a job as a teacher because her degree wasn't as good in the united states you know what my mom did and i'm not saying her degree is better or isn't as better you know i'm not a professor i'm not here to judge degrees but i'll tell you you know what my mom did she took my sister and i put us in a stroller we didn't have a car she pushed us a few miles to a school she taught there for free she brought us along she did that for six months pushed us home and then was home cooked dinner for my dad my dad of course did household chores he helped out as well clean made sure we did our homework wasn't getting paid at the same time if you really want to do something you will figure it out my mom did it for six months with no pay she figured out the time to take care of my sister and i take care of my dad and work for free you can do it if you really want to and i and i believe in you i think you can do it so just go and put in the extra effort if you don't want to and you have the cash go and hire people to help you out whether it's interns young people who have done digital products spend the money hire quality people whatever it is but the excuse of there's this divide you don't know where to spend your time if you think something in future spend it on there but if you need to keep running your brick and mortar business so you have the income by all means keep doing that but you can't make an excuse that there's not enough time because you know what there really is it's just question of are you willing to make the time if you don't have the time start using apps like rescuetime where it'll tell you where you're wasting time how you can be more efficient so you can get more of the important stuff done that you want in life done yeah and just i can relate to this i have a lot of clients who come to me looking to build a youtube channel create content and they're like i don't really have the time to create videos and i have this concept i always say it's called net content creation which is net is no extra time so try to work in your content creation and things you already do so let's say dr brian thomason you're a chiropractor i don't think you can do this if you're a doctor but if you're like let's say a chiropractor set up a gopro so between uh you know appointments whatever kind of came up in that appointment maybe you could talk about a learning point that came up with ways to deal with a client and do it it's only three minutes right to create a quick video or create even you could use your phone to record some concepts and suddenly that's an audio program right creating content doesn't have to be like sitting down in like a quiet closet somewhere typing like a book or anything yeah it can be just throughout the day i always tell neil before every shoot i'm like we need to get the videographer in the in the car don't i say is every time i come to la so that we can get some of this content of you in your car right so trying to find ways where it doesn't actually add extra time to your schedule is going to really help you get stuff done the other thing too is if you believe the future's in the digital product but you don't have enough time to write a book adam mentioned creative video but here's another trick if you want to spend more time on the digital and not the brick and mortar business why don't you just make a landing page sell the digital product say it's gonna launch soon you'll have the income coming in that'll buy you some time so then once the income comes in you can focus a lot less on your brick and mortar business and then start creating the digital product business there's so many different ways to accomplish this you just have to get creative pre-orders are pretty awesome getting paid before you create the content it works people don't do it i sold over a half a million dollars of my book before it even came out and i understand you guys are gonna say oh it's because you have a brand you've done all this stuff sure but that doesn't mean you can't sell 10 grand you can start somewhere you don't have to sell a half a million dollars worth you can sell something so that's it for this week's q a thursday video hopefully i didn't demoralize you i believe in you doctor i forgot his name dr brian thomason dr brian thomason you're awesome you're amazing i believe in you keep pushing forward you can figure this out you're smart you're a doctor you're smarter than i am thank you for watching if you want your question answered in next week's q a thursday video leave a comment below i'll do my best to answer on the next week's video either way i'll at least respond to your question and answer it there in the comments and of course like comment share subscribe thank you very much