OPENING

 

Welcome to The Million Dollar Equation Podcast — a podcast about the easiest and fastest way to build a million dollar business — based on the best selling book, The Million Dollar Equation. If you love business, each episode reveals all of the core fundamental essentials for growth. Now, here’s your host, Richelle Shaw.

 

—

 

RICHELLE SHAW

  

Hey! so everybody always asked me, “So what actually is The Million Dollar Equation? What is it? What are the pieces of it?”

 

12 years ago, I wrote this book called The Million Dollar Equation. I had it sitting in my notebook — in my computer, and like, you know, it’s kind of, “Hmm, how did I build my million dollar business so quickly? What did I do? And so I started writing down the things that I did.”

 

The new Million Dollar Equation is coming out late 2022 where I kind of moved some things around in it. But the original 2012 version is still phenomenal. So let me explain to you what The Million Dollar Equation is, right? So it is 1 GS + TM + MC. Those three are — you need to have one great solution.

 

So when you look at your business, what problem are you solving? What is it? This person came to me and she sells candles, right?

 

And I’m like, “Candles? That’s kind of tough.”

 

So I said, “What’s your great solution?”

 

And she’s like, “Um, it gives light?”

 

And I’m like, “Well, Thomas Edison kind of fixed that for you. Because the light bulb kind of goes does that, right? What else does it give?”

 

So you need to when you’re thinking about your solution. You need to think about not the tangible item. But what problem does it truly solve? For people, why would they buy it? Why would they buy it from you? And then it goes with the next piece, right.

 

1. What is your target market? So in the book, and on the podcast, I’m going to really deep-dive into the target market, because most people think that they know what a target market is. But they’re not really clear, right? It’s not just a geographic area, it’s not just a group of people, it’s not just a gender, right? It is a combination of, of 10 to 12 things that makes your target market really, really great. And, of course, it is the group that needs their problem solved that you created in step one.

 

And step three is MC. This is the piece that we’re kind of moving around in the new book, and it’s at the very end, but in that MC is when I was rebuilding back my million dollar business.

 

I realized that random implementation got me random success. And I wanted to make sure that I was scheduling success and scheduling everything that I wanted to happen. And I created an annualized marketing calendar — which is now the MD action plan.

 

You know, when I first started, it was just like, “Okay, what promotion am I doing?”

 

But now, 10 years after helping folks implement The Million Dollar Equation and implement it in my own business, I found that there’s way more than just when the promotion is coming. So we’re going to go into that in the podcast and in future episodes.

 

After that, we go into step number four, and that is FU. If you’ve ever heard me speak, you know I kind of have a potty mouth, right? The FU is the follow up. What are you doing to make sure that every single person that comes into your sphere of influence — into your ecosystem — that you are following up with them?

 

Whether it be online or offline or from your website. If they came to your website; if they after they came to your website and they didn’t give you their email address? How are you following up with them? And if they’ve come into your store, how do you make sure that you know who that person is, and that you’re following up with them? There’s a whole chapter about what that follow up should be.

 

Then we go into my favorite parts — really, the core part of building your business inside of The Million Dollar Equation. That is the 3 R’s.

 

First R is retention of every single customer. So imagine if every customer that you ever did business with was still doing business with you, 2 years, or 5 years, or even 10 years later, right? Would your business look different? And of course it would, once you understand who they are and how to keep them for life.

 

So the retention section of the businesses is really important. Then, if you haven’t done such a good job at the retention, the next part is reactivation. So you should have some type of an alarm bell that goes off every single time someone should come back to you, or should buy from you again. For example, if you’ve got a restaurant and somebody comes in every single morning for breakfast, and all of a sudden, they stop coming, an alarm bell goes off, and you say, “Hey, I wonder what happened to Johnny? He used to come in every single day for breakfast.”

 

You should have those alarms set up inside of your business so that you know when somebody should come back to give you money. And then, the last R is a referral system.

 

You need to have it. And it’s more than just, “Hey, would you mind referring to me?”

 

It is a calculated process of getting people to refer you automatically. So, I detailed that if you are going straight to your customer or if you want referral partners, that is also included in the book.

 

The next step of The Million Dollar Equation is probably the reason why the majority of people buy the book. And that is… A quick story — I read this book about a chiropractor who was building a million dollar practice. And then, he would sell his business. So he’d go into brand new market, he’d buy an existing business, he built it up to over a million dollars. And then he’d sell it.

 

He just kept flipping them, and flipping them, and making more and more money. And so someone asked him a question.

 

And they asked him, “Okay, what’s the one way that you built up the company?”

 

And he said, “Well, first I did the math. And I figured out that I needed 70 new patients every single month.”

 

Then they said, “Well, what’s the one thing that you did to get 72 new patients?”

 

He said something that changed my life. He said, “It’s not the one thing that I did to get 72. It’s the 72 things that I did to get one patient, every single month.”

 

I thought “Oh, okay.” It finally clicked.

 

So when I was rebuilding back my telephone company, I didn’t just do one thing. I did 72 things. And I even pushed it even further. So in the book, it’s 85 W, and I go through 85 different ways that I used to rebuild my telephone company through different ideas that I’ve given my coaching clients over the years to help them build their own million dollar business.

 

After that is also a piece that is moving in The Million Dollar Equation 2.0 that’s coming out at the end of this year. And that is the three ways to grow. I’m understanding that there’s only three essential ways for you to grow your business. The first one is to go get a brand new customer who doesn’t know you — who’s never seen you before.

 

This is where most entrepreneurs spend the majority of their time and money and trouble. They’re trying to get an offer that converts; one that’s profitable; one that works. But really, they’re forgetting two other ways.

 

So the first one is to get a brand new customer. The second way is to get your existing customer to come back more often. Remember the reactivation? Yes. So you need to have something in place so that existing customers come spending more and more money with you. How do you do that?

 

Let’s say, you are an accountant and you only do taxes. You only get paid from that customer one time a year. What if you start doing bookkeeping? Now, that customer is paying you monthly and you get to make way more money. How can you grow and grow your revenue?

 

Then the third way is to increase every transaction.When they come to buy something from you, it’s not that they’re just buying this pin, right? You get them to buy 10 pins, and that’s where cross sells, up sells, and down sells come in.

 

I always like to give the example — if we’re in an offline world, where is the milk when you go to the grocery store? Where’s the milk? The milk is at the back of the grocery store. Why is that? Because they want you to walk all the way through as you’re going to get the milk so that you can throw other things in your cart.

 

And then, when you get to the grocery register, they double down and they have Vit-A-Zine and they have licorice and magazines and all of these things that you could throw in your cart so that they can increase the transaction size.

 

Amazon was one of the first ones to do it online. And they said people who bought this also bought this, right? With this method, you’re increasing your transaction size and making it so that you are growing your business right with the three R’s. So once you put all of those things together, that is The Million Dollar Equation.

 

During this podcast, we’re going to spend a lot of time putting it all together and connecting the dots for you. There’s also a section where I’m going to answer live questions. You can send those in so that I can answer it for you and really help you get there. I feel like I want to inspire the world and to build their own million dollar business. 

 

It doesn’t matter if you are young or older — male or female — it doesn’t matter. For me, it was absolutely free. It was the number one thing that changed my life. It was being able to own my time on the way that I got paid and controlled every aspect of my life. So I can’t wait to share some time with you. Of course, if there’s any feedback, if there’s anything you want me to know, please reach out and let me know that too. But let’s go change the world and make some money! All right, thanks so much.