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Home » The Famous Blog » How to Print Money…by Helping People

How to Print Money…by Helping People

July 23, 2012 - Last Modified: March 29, 2014 by Grant Hensel

Helping People to Make Money

Can I trust you with something? The secret to making money is simple: help people live better lives.

People want better lives, and they’ll pay you for products or services that deliver on that promise. To help you begin developing products like this, let’s explore five core ways to help people.

At the end of the day, bad businesses help themselves, but good businesses help others. Good businesses make piles of cash over the long term.  Trust me; you want to be a good business. 🙂

Help People Accomplish their Goals

Businesses make money when they help people reach their goals. Everyone has goals, and they are often desperate for success.

If you decide to attack this need, make sure you talk to your potential customers extensively. You need to figure out:

  • What their goals are
  • What barriers are preventing them from accomplishing those goals
  • How badly they care about each goal

This information is a good start, but to really build a compelling product you’ll need some firsthand experience. So here’s step one: try to accomplish the customer’s goal yourself! Write down the struggles you encounter and the emotions you feel. These observations can be used to develop your product’s features and marketing message.

Remember, nothing beats actual experience!

Make their Lives Easier

Start by simply observing your customer’s daily lives. Where do they spend the most time or mental energy? What activities require the most work but fail to produce meaningful results?

Take all of the “Easiness Opportunities” you just discovered and start brainstorming solutions. How can you make a task simpler, faster or more enjoyable?

Once you have some ideas, develop a simple prototype and ask the customer to use it. If they love your product and notice that their lives are suddenly easier, keep working, you may have a huge market opportunity! If the reaction is negative, or worse, ambivalent (because you get very little useful feedback), head back to the drawing board and try again.

Entertain or Enrich their Lives

People go on the internet for three reasons:

  • To use a specific service
  • To gather information
  • To be entertained

The ‘gathering information’ and ‘seeking entertainment’ goals fall into our “Entertain and Enrich” category.

Your first job is to understand what is working in these two spheres. Find popular resources or pieces of media and record the number of social shares and engagement each received. People’s willingness to Like, Tweet or comment on something is a pretty good indication that they enjoyed it.

Next, identify elements that lead to more social sharing or comments. Create pieces of informative or entertaining content that emphasize individual elements (like humor, visuals, quotes and so forth) and test which ones are most effective.

Great content is just like a product: you need to continually test, measure and improve it. For more information on this mentality, check out Brian Clark’s Entrepreducer website.

Make them Feel Better about Themselves

Perception is reality.

The market for products that make people stronger, smarter or more confident is enormous. Who wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning and feel a little bit better about themselves?

There are plenty of standard approaches to helping people in this way, but I would encourage you to think creatively and originally.  Products like Slim ‘n Lift are merely cosmetic and don’t address any underlying problems. You can do better than that.

Here’s an example. What if you created an information product that was specifically designed to boost confidence? What if you made an eBook that was literally confidence in a bottle? You could lead people through mental and interpersonal exercises that would help them become more self-assured and ultimately more successful in their endeavors.

I know a lot of people who would pay for that product, if it actually worked. This is the power of a business that helps people.

Make other People Think more Highly of Them

Here’s another huge market opportunity, but you’re going to have to be creative in your approach.

What if you could identify the signals that dictate how people view each other in certain situations? Through careful observation of everything from cocktail parties to interviews to business negotiations, I bet a savvy marketer could identify the cues that make us take people seriously (or not).

What if you could teach people those cues and help them present themselves better? Or, to make your product less superficial, what if you could help them develop personality traits and accomplishments that command respect?

The possibilities are endless once you put ‘helping the customer’ at the center of your business efforts.

The Big Message – It’s About Helping People

People approach business with the wrong attitude. They want to make money.

Businesses are far more successful when they are created to help people instead of themselves. Their products are better, their brand messages are more authentic and I’ll bet their employees are a heck of a lot happier too. A genuine purpose is one of the most powerful drivers of creativity, work-ethic and great customer relationships that you can leverage.

Why are you in business? Who is your customer, and how well do you know their needs? Have you walked in their shoes, experienced their struggles first hand? If not, this is your wakeup call.

Note: There’s another side to this puzzle – creating sustainable competitive advantage.  I’m giving away 1,000 free copies of my eBook, One Question that will Revolutionize your Blog, which has everything you need to know. Get yours while they last!

Image © alphaspirit – Fotolia.com

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Filed Under: Business, Online Business

About Grant Hensel

Follow @GrantHensel

Grant Hensel is the CEO of Viibrant, a website that allows experts in any field to make money and establish their influence by creating online courses. Experts and high profile thought-leaders are encouraged to contact Grant about creating a course. Requests will be handled first come, first served.

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{ 11 Responses }

  1. Mitz Pantic says:
    This is exactly how I started with my website! I started to help people, but at the time I did not know that it would end up where it did...:)
    • Grant Hensel says:
      Nice! Did you have tech skills and create the website to share them, or did you learn most of that along the way?
  2. Raheel says:
    What a great article, man. I really like your approach. That's the way an egoistic and selfish man like me must follow to do good to not only people but myself as well. Thank you so much for opening another window in the dark corners of my mind. It's not money, it's pleasure! Huh?
  3. Peter says:
    Doing business only for the sake of earning a lot of money is very much one type of cheating with the customer which is wrong. A customer is the base for any basic because he is the one who is liable to buy the stuff or products you offer. In such a situation, helping your customer in all the fields related to your work thereby making things easy for them is a good idea.
  4. Mena Jo says:
    Oh I could not agree more with this post. Thank you! Some people start a business for all the wrong reasons. I remember talking to a guy at a party (he ran his own business). It were as though we were from totally different planets. To him running a business was ALL about the money. That poor misguided fool! I get some of my biggest buzzes from receiving a simple 'thank you'. Yes money is important (we all need to live), but being in a position where you can make a real difference is where it's really at. That's soul-lifting stuff right there. Well for me anyways...
    • Grant Hensel says:
      I agree 100%. My happiest memories in business have been the moments when I've seen how what I'm doing helped someone. Cashing checks just isn't that memorable, when it all comes down.
  5. Julian King says:
    Hi Grant, I totally agree with your point of view. From my own experience, we should not start a business thinking about the production costs, the return on investment and other financial ratios. Every successful product has started from assessing the needs of a market segment. Having in mind the needs of many customers with similar needs, it is easier to come up with a product that satisfies that needs and brings value to the buyers.
  6. Elena Anne says:
    With so much of blogging and personal websites solely about self-promotion, which is often shameless, it is refreshing to read an article which extols the virtues of helping other people. Great post.
    • Grant Hensel says:
      I appreciate it Elena, thanks for taking the time to comment. You probably have a lot of happy memories from helping people - your niche seems ideal for that!
  7. Grant Hensel says:
    Absolutely right - thanks for reading Ryan. One of the first steps to any successful business is nailing down a compelling USP. What are you offering people, and why is your offer better than anything else they've seen? At the end of the day, the USP always comes back to helping people.
  8. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi Grant, Money flows to free helpers with ease. Create value. Receive value. Help people. People help you, by sending you money for your product or service, or by sending you cash gifts. Simple, timeless, powerful stuff here. Make money by helping people with their problems, their pain points. Target your niche with SEO. Identify what people need help with. Provide solutions with your content and service. Thanks Grant! Ryan

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