t]The Alpha 2.0 Business Model requires you to eventually have 2-4 small, location-independent businesses that don’t require employees nor extensive time to manage. I get a lot of questions regarding how to spread your time across these 2-4 companies.
Here’s how this works.
First, if you’re starting from scratch and you don’t have any businesses of your own yet, the last thing you want do is to start two or three companies all at the same time. That’s insane. Even I couldn’t make something like that work. Starting a business, even a part-time one, is a decent commitment of time, resources, energy, and emotions. Starting more than one all at the same time would require superhuman levels of these things, which is certainly beyond me and probably beyond you as well.
Instead, you start your first Alpha 2.0 business and focus completely on that. You can have business #2 and #3 in the back of your head or in some notes, but you don’t focus on those at all right now and instead focus on #1.
You keep focusing on Alpha 2.0 business #1 until you get the point where you hit your first key monthly income goal. This phase is called the “startup phase.”
That monthly income goal can be whatever you want, based on your business skill, age, desires, schedule, and how hard you’re willing to work. It could be $500 per month, it could be $2500 per month, or more. It’s really up to you.
Once you hit that goal, you’ve got a decision to make. You can either keep going with business #1 and get that income higher (which is perfectly fine), or you can put that business on “maintenance mode,” doing just the bare minimums to keep it running at that current level of income, then start business #2.
At this point, business #1 would be in maintenance mode and business #2 would be in the startup phase. You would then focus most of your time getting business #2 up to its initial monthly income goal.
Once business #2 reaches its income goal, congratulations, you now have two Alpha 2.0 businesses spinning off money every month. It’s a good place to be.
You now have another decision to make: keep going with business #2, or put business #2 on maintenance mode and go back to business #1 to optimize its income. A third option would be to start business #3 (if you wanted three businesses) but I would not recommend doing this until at least one of your first two businesses are optimized.
If you choose to optimize business #1, you would put business #2 on maintenance mode, and then enter the “optimization phase” for business #1. During this phase, you would do things like:
- Streamline processes
- Update content, improve service delivery, and/or add new products
- Optimize and improve websites
- Optimize and improve marketing techniques
- Add new marketing techniques
- Outsource more items
- Bring on new staff if needed (virtual assistants and subcontractors, not employees!)
- Remove processes or products that aren’t working
- And so on
By spending 6-18 months optimizing a business, you can jack its income to very high levels. I spent about 18 months optimizing my Blackdragon business a while back and it resulted in me quadrupling its average monthly net income while the average amount of organic traffic on most of my sites went down (as is the case with pretty much all manosphere sites these days). When I optimized my consulting business a while back, I increased my income while cutting my average work hours almost by half.
Once one of your businesses is optimized, you can then put that business back on maintenance mode and go optimize your next business. Or, you can start your third business (if you want three or four, which are not required as long as you have at least two).
Once all of your businesses are optimized (or at least most are), you can enter an optional third phase for one of them called the “scaling phase.” This is when you take your optimized business and scale it way up with a massive marketing blitz, pouring massive amounts of new customers into your newly-optimized business so you can blast your income up to very high levels.
This means that all of your Alpha 2.0 businesses will always be in one of four states:
- Startup phase
- Maintenance mode
- Optimization phase
- Scaling phase
Regarding scaling, it’s really important to take the time to optimize your business first before you scale it. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with a huge mess when your disorganized business grows into a monster. Many business owners make this mistake; they scale a business that’s already a mess, and just end up with an even larger mess. Not smart.
It could take a year or more to optimize a business that is already making a decent amount of money, so you need to be patient and not rush this stuff. Also remember that at this point, all of your businesses will be making monthly income already, so you’re already in a good place no matter what you do.
Keeping in mind the minimum income requirement of the Alpha Male 2.0, $75,000 per year (US Dollar equivalent), it may be very possible that you’ll hit that $6250 per month figure by the time your #1 business is in the optimization phase and your #2 business hasn’t been optimized at all. You may decide (based on your goals) that $6250 per month is plenty of income and you don’t really want or need anymore. Then you can forget all this optimization and scaling stuff and just put both of your businesses on maintenance mode. Perfectly fine… as long as you’re making at least $6250 per month on average. (Remember, making less than $75,000 per year will not make you long-term happy unless you are an odd exception to the rule.)
How much time will all of this take? That depends on many factors, including:
- The margins of what you’re selling
- How hard you work (i.e. the number of hours per week you put into your business)
- How well (or poorly) you niche yourself
- How hard you market/sell
- How well (or poorly) you market
- How high your income goals are
- How many businesses you want
You could have a startup phase in which a business goes from zero to $1500 per month in 6 months or two years. Your optimization phase could be anywhere from four months to two years, per business. Your scaling phase (if you want one, and they’re usually optional) can go for as long as you want.
You need a minimum of two businesses to meet Alpha 2.0 standards, but you could have three (like I do) or even four. This number between two and four is purely up to you and your long-term Mission and goals. You could even change your mind down the road. It’s entirely possible I may shut down my consulting business in a year or two since my other two companies are doing so well, and, hell, I may start up a new third company after that. Once you get your income goals and financial life to where you want them, you can decide to do pretty much whatever you want, including putting all of your businesses on maintenance mode and then just kicking back for the rest of your life, working around 10-15 hours per week forever in a sort of semi-retirement. Or go crazy, work even harder, and scale everything to massive levels if you really enjoy working.
Hey, doing whatever you want is what Alpha Male 2.0 is all about.
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Quick question: Do you have any marketing books for absolute beginners to recommend?
I’m starting my first business while consulting and freelancing on the side, but I’m having a real hard time understanding marketing and how to get exposure for my brand.
Awesome. (I need to make an updated version of that too.)
Guerilla Marketing in 30 Days by Jay Conrad Levinson.
@BD
Great post but the ironic part is that now that I have implemented your dating advice and it works, I have TOO MANY ladies to manage at certain times, which is taking away time to launch a 2nd Biz ugh.
So, my question is, would you say that it is harder to go from 1 > 2 companies than it is to go from 2 >3 one? Assuming I was dating 2-3 ladies still as now.
Is there ever a time in this Biz Growing phase that it could make long-term sense to try short-term monogamy with 1 lady? Like 6 months maybe?
Also, do you find it difficult to work at 100% efficiency while your wife is home? I seem to have a harder time working when ladies are here but if I wanted to live with someone eventually, I feel I will either need to learn how to better or get an office.
Note: I am an ENTP
Thanks!
Thanks BD.
Sometimes, my day job (even if decently paid) is time/energy consuming during the weekdays, and I feel like working on my business only on weekends is not enough to make real money.
Any insights on time management for someone who has a day job in order to apply this model ?
I’ve had that exact same problem over the past 12 years. It’s what we call a “quality problem.”
Yes, but not greatly so.
First company – hardest
Second company – MUCH easier
Third company – a fuckin’ breeze
What do you think my answer to that is?
I don’t, but, I had numerous, strong, clear conversations with Pink Firefly before she moved in with me, that her number two requirement (other than to keep drama to a minimum) is to leave me the fuck alone during my designated work times, and only bother me when she knew it was okay (we have our own system).
She’s abided by that, to her credit (it’s hard for women to do this). But most men aren’t going to have those kinds of conversations pre-move-in.
You need to put in at least 15 hours per week. Sit down once a week and schedule it out. Maybe 2 hours on Tuesday night, 1 hour on Wednesday, 3 hours on Thursday, take Friday off, then work a full day Saturday and take Sunday and Monday off. Or 8 hours on Saturday and 8 hours on Sunday. Whatever works for you; figure it out.
Can one realistically expect to hit the Alpha Male 2.0 baseline ($75,000 per year) with a consulting business in just one year? Assuming you start from scratch.
Thanks a lot! Gonna start reading it today.
With consulting? Absolutely. You could get one client paying you that much.
That’s the strength of consulting; you can get to big money very fast.
Thanks BD, I’ll need to be a little more nitpicking about my schedule.
PS : Hope to see you in London, I may purchase a VIP ticket soon for the World Tour seminar.
just did a 3 day getaway to see the power of location independence, collect my thoughts, and see the pull of having to come back just because of my current location dependence. thanks for posting some business content. Gotta master patience and single handling.
somewhere in there reassuring myself ultimately that will get me there over the long haul instead of crashing and burning all the time from over stretching.
I’ve used with winning in mind from your list with great clear results but in the past I’ve gotten excited and ahead of myself when I see it working. straight out of dagobah training.
I’ll get there. location independence will help make my wildest dreams a reality
Business content is on the regular topic rotation for this blog now. 🙂
Hey Caleb,
Whats your opinion on Dan S. Kennedy and his books?
Thanks,
Jeff
P.S. Love when you post bussiness content on the blog.
@BD,
Ok in the last 48 hours I have 1 lady that I had “the Talk” with and she went from pissed off and dramatic to “I really want to talk about this again with you tomorrow and see if we can make this work and am kinda excited about it now”.
Plus I have another lady that I been seeing for almost 10 months (had talk w/ her 3 months ago) that keeps coming back on top of all the other new ones holy shit its getting intense.
This is the 1st time that I might have 6 MLTRS, FBs, and FWB (2 are possible OLTR someday) and I am getting a lil nervous I am gonna fuck all this up. Its the whole upgrade and downgrade rules with FBs, MLTRS etc that is getting very complicated to me. Just so you know, I would NEVER read a Diet book or even try because I hate too much detail, which is where I struggle with this part a lot. This “quality” part can really sneak up on you and snowball fast. I find myself now hoping they forget abt me just so I can string some women out. Then I had to get a CRM just to manage it all lmao.
So, my question is do you offer any phone consultation per hour or email consultations on this part and if so, cost? Or the page link to check it out? I might throw in some questions on Biz/Consulting deal too if it’s allowed?
Dan is one of my mentors and I highly recommend all of his content.
Much more coming. 🙂
Yes but only to men who are in the SMIC program at the Diamond level or higher. Site here.
What would you consider freelance writing and uber driving? Are those jobs or businesses? Both of them are location independent (well, I guess I’m “dependent” on my car for uber driving), but neither entail the stuff you are writing about here.
Business. Alpha 2.0 compatible.
Low-paying, location-dependent business. Not really Alpha 2.0 compatible.
Incorrect. Freelance writing does indeed fall right into what I’m talking about. You could make $100,000 a year doing that (assuming it was non-fiction), and you could outsource it.
Uber, no.
I really can’t wait for your new Open Marriage book.
I’m tempted to buy your current ”How to converting to open marriage” one. However, as far as I know, it’s not your personal experience but from interviewing poly couples only. I’m not sure I can trust and let that more or less outdated info to guide one of my big life-decisions. FOMO is real.
Can we expect a significant touch on your OM-system in your next Alpha 2.0 Lifestyle Course?
Also, the font of this new site (and also the BD) is quite small on my iPad Mini (on PC it looks fine, the old sites look fine too on the same iPad Mini). Could you do something about it?
Cool, I figured that. Just wanted to clarify that. I do want to make six figures doing freelance writing, but it just seems so impossible for me to do that. Last weekend, I got excited about one of my lower paying clients giving me more work to do. What should I do to get me to believe that I can indeed make six figures doing freelance writing?
@Caleb Jones,
What is your opinion on owning commercial real estate as a cash flow business. (primary job is 6 figure, No debt or loans, not married, no kids, and simple lifestyle, age in mid thirties). Do you have a suggestion of an alternative if you were in my position ?
** Off topic- Can you write an article if there was a pill that enhanced you’re cognition (IQ) and what you would do with your enhanced super intelligence. Essentially like in the movie “Limitless” stars Bradley Cooper. (Watch if you’ve hadn’t seen it. Not an amazing film, but a very intriguing “what if” concept.)
Joelsuf,
Not caleb but ill add my .02cents.
Whats your USP (unique selling point)? In otherwords, what makes you different than the million other freelance writers out there for hire? You need to communicate that to prospective clients.
Ive hired a few writers before and when going through prospective freelancers almost all of them just wanted to tell me all the amazing books they read on freelance writing, the courses they completed, the eastern mystic mountain top gurus they mentored under…. Yeah, whatever. What they didn’t tell me is how they were going to help me. How they were going to make sure I was happy…
The ones I ended up hiring and paying big money to were the ones that communicated to me with my needs and interest in mind. They also presented themselves as experts. One copywriter I often use is a publisbed author with two book on amazon about copywriting, has a blog about copywriting, and has been a guest on some podcast. Ive never read his books, his blogs, or listened to those podcast but having those three things combined with his me-focused sales pitch made him come off like an expert so I hired him. He makes a very healthy six figures a year as a freelance writer and thats probably why.
Present yourself as an expert.
Use a sales pitch that shows you understand his wants and needs. Speak in terms of HIS interest.
Charge high fees and make the prospective clients understand why paying more is actually an investment.
Have a good USP.
Target the right clients.
Deliver exceptional value and good work.
Hustle! Do at least one thing every single day that puts you in more demand.
Thats how you will get to six figures in writing.
That’s about right, a significant “touch” but not great detail.
I have seen this site on multiple Android and iPhone products and the font looks large and readable. No one else has complained except for you. So I’m not sure what you mean and/or use a different device or browser on that device.
It isn’t. I make more than six figures from must writing (for example).
Take mental baby steps. Instead of saying “six-figures”, if you’ve never made more than $25,000 a year (or whatever), set a goal for $37,000 a year. Hit that, then go to $50K per year. And so on. Forget about $100,000 for now and baby-step it.
If you set a goal that’s completely outside of your subconscious’ comfort zone, you’ll get too much internal resistance.
Jeff’s advice is also very good.
That’s fine as long as:
1. You have property managers managing all of your properties for you so you can be completely location independent.
and
2. You are very, very good at commercial real estate, which is more complicated and risky than residential real estate.
Probably start with residential real estate first and get good at that before I tackled commercial.
Sounds good. I’m kind of doing that in my thread on the Alpha 2 boards.
And yeah Jeff’s advice is awesome. Think I need to take some time to myself and figure out all that stuff before moving forward. I think one of the things that holds me back is that I haven’t figured out what sets me apart. I mean I have an idea but it isn’t really concrete or definitive.
Caleb, I know you sold a course on this that is no longer available… so, now, what are the best resources for developing an alpha 2.0 biz from scratch, including idea generation?
The SMIC Program. Click here.