Defined as the percentage of customers that cancel their subscriptions in any given time period, churn rate is an essential metric that can make, or break, the success of your SaaS business.   That's why it's so critical to master churn analysis. No SaaS company can hang on to all its customers forever. But by understanding the nuances of why your customers churn, you can find more effective ways to reduce it.

Churn: The Reality Of Any SaaS Company

<ul><li>A good churn analysis provides a set of detailed insights on the factors affecting your churn rate.  </li><li>Churn analysis should deliver a full picture of your customers’ needs and evaluate whether your company is meeting them. </li><li>The cost of getting new customers can be five times higher than the cost of keeping existing ones. Excess churn is terrible for your bottom line. </li><li>Reducing churn means playing the long game. Lots of little improvements add up to better overall performance. With churn, the laws of compounding are on your side.</li></ul>

The Importance Of Churn Analysis

The basic formula to calculate churn rate is very simple: Number of customers cancelling their subscription per time interval / Number of customers at the beginning of that interval x 100

How To Calculate Churn

Churn should be viewed as a prime opportunity to learn and improve.   Churn analysis allows you to evaluate strengths and weaknesses in your existing processes, while improving your ability to deal with, and prevent, future churn.  Losing a few customers may seem insignificant at first. But churn is a metric that compounds over time. That’s why it's a good idea to conduct a churn analysis whenever you notice something out of the ordinary with your churn rate.

Why Analyzing Churn Is So Important For Saas Businesses 

Customer cancellations directly affect your MRR. To clarify this, you can calculate a metric called churn MRR rate , which provides a percentage for the impact of churn on your business.   First add up the MRR of lost customers over a given time period, then divide this number by MRR for the same time period.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

The cost of attracting a new customer is always more than maintaining an existing one. LTV is the total value of your customer over the entire length of their relationship with your company.   It's common for new SaaS companies to focus too heavily on acquiring new customers rather than keeping the existing ones, which can be a fatal mistake.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

This metric tells you how much you need to spend to acquire a new customer. As we already learned, it typically costs more to acquire a new one than maintain an existing one.   A high churn rate means you’ll have to spend more money on acquiring new customers, which pushes up your CAC.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Unlike regular churn, this metric is one to aspire to. Net negative churn means that total revenue from your existing customers surpasses the revenue lost to churn.  Basically, your existing customers are spending enough extra money to offset the losses from those who churned. You can reach a net negative churn rate in several ways, including by upselling to existing customers, customers renewing their subscriptions or upgrading their plans.

Net Negative MRR Churn

When preparing a churn analysis, it's important to think about churn in relation to both your business and your customers. The following suggested analysis methods will help you achieve this.  Before starting your churn analysis, it's important to ask yourself: what problem am I trying to solve? This will help guide the analysis process and avoid wasting time on doing random searches in the data.

How To Do Churn Analysis

Analyzing churn by cohort is a good way to begin your churn analysis. In cohort reports, you segment your customer base according to a specific time period.  Cohort reports are useful because they produce numbers which are not influenced by new customer acquisition.   They also allow you to easily spot patterns in your customer base. You can easily compare different cohorts to figure out if seasonal trends affect your churn rate.

6 ways to analyze churn: Be Cohort

In this approach, you group your customers according to the length of time they’ve been with your company. Analyzing churn by age is invaluable for identifying patterns across your entire customer base without getting bogged down by too many cohorts.

6 Ways To Analyze Churn: By Customer Age

You can gain important context by examining your customers’ locations. For example, local tax regulations, payment processing methods, and payment gateways vary according to country. It’s essential for SaaS businesses to comply with these rules.  If your customer base is widely spread around the world, you might be losing customers due to a lack of local payment options or lack of compliance with regulations. This is an urgent problem to address.

6 Ways To Analyze Churn: By Geography

Analyzing churn by behavior can reveal important patterns related to certain features of your product. Perhaps customers churn right after they use a specific feature. In that case, your product and engineering teams should dig in further to identify the issue and create a fix.  On the other hand, if certain features help to retain customers, then you should focus on further improving and promoting those. Churn analysis of behavior is also a good opportunity to gain a better understanding of customer engagement.

6 Ways To Analyze Churn: By Customer Behaviour

There’s a critical difference between voluntary and involuntary churn. Voluntary churn happens when a customer deliberately cancels or downgrades their subscription.  Involuntary churn is often due to expired or declined payment cards, lack of funds, incorrect payment information, or poor payment routing . The unfortunate customer is left none the wiser. In fact, they’d likely have stayed with you if it weren’t for involuntary churn.

6 Ways To Analyze Churn: Voluntary Vs Involuntary Churn 

Your business’s approach to taking payments and optimizing for payment acceptance is a vital aspect of driving overall revenue. Even the world’s best sales team can’t overcome a poor payment acceptance workflow.   Your payment acceptance rate is the proportion of successful payments out of the total payments attempted. Here's how to calculate it: Payment Acceptance= No. of successful payments / No. of attempted payments.

6 Ways To Analyze Churn: Payment methods

Customer retention rate is the proportion of customers you've retained over a specific time period. It's the direct opposite of churn rate. For example, if your retention rate is 80%, your churn rate will be 20%. Here’s how to calculate customer retention rate: Customer Retention Rate= (No. of customers at the end of the period - No. of customers acquired during the period/ No. of customers at the start of the period) x 100

Net revenue retention rate (NRR), also known as net dollar retention, is expressed as a percentage. It incorporates several types of customer activity, including upgrades, downgrades and churn.  NRR tells you how much monthly or annual recurring revenue you’ve retained from current customers across a certain period. It requires the data of MRR(Monthly Recurring Revenue)

Gross Revenue Retention Rate Vs Net Revenue Retention Rate

NRR(Net Revenue Retention Rate) can be calculated as:  NRR= Starting MRR-Contraction MRR - Churn MRR + Expansion MRR/Starting MRR x 100 GRR(Gross Revenue Retention Rate) can be calculated as:GRR=(Starting MRR-Downsell-Churn/Starting MRR

Calculating NRR And GRR

To truly understand the nuances of churn and calculate its impact on your business, it's vital to take a holistic approach that considers all the metrics mentioned above.  Customer retention is especially important, as it’s the flipside of customer churn. Improving retention rates not only cuts down your customer acquisition cost, but also helps you improve on the less tangible measures, such as customer satisfaction.

The Importance Of Cross-Referencing Metrics 

Discover easy to implement strategies to reduce your churn rate

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Ultimate Guide to Reducing Churn

6 essential ways to analyze churn, the key metrics that matter, and why you can’t afford to overlook the role of payments in churn.

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Economics

Churn analysis: 6 ways to measure churn in your SaaS business 

<ul><li>Gathering feedback is one of the most powerful, yet often underutilized tools to reduce your customer churn.</li><li>The best way to gauge customer satisfaction is to gather feedback directly from your user base. </li><li>If you don’t regularly seek customer feedback, you won’t understand what you’re doing well, and what you need to improve. </li><li>Ultimately, reducing churn stems from how well you can understand and solve your customers' problems.</li></ul>

The Criticality Of Customer Feedback

If you connect with customers at the point of cancellation, using a short survey and open-ended questions, you can hone in on why they churned. If you run these surveys for every churning customer, you’ll start to see patterns emerge. You’ll begin uncovering insights for the following key questions.  <ul><li>What are the main reasons for churn?</li><li>Do churn reasons correlate with any customer persona? If so, how?</li><li>What can be improved to reduce churn (product, support, messaging, etc)?</li></ul>

Why Customer Feedback Is Crucial: Discover Causes of Churn

In any business, there are always shortcomings and areas for improvement. If SaaS leaders choose to ignore this and don’t listen to the voice of the customer they serve, they’re likely ignoring the problems that their customers are experiencing. These issues can continue to manifest and increase your churn until it’s been identified and rectified. You can run a variety of data analyses to identify where you are losing customers, but that will not tell you why they are leaving. You can only get that by checking in with customers regularly, particularly after they churn.

Why Customer Feedback Is Crucial:  Proactively Address Future Churn

The very process of asking people their opinions can induce them to form judgments that otherwise wouldn’t occur to them.These so-called measurement-induced judgments can influence later behavior of a customer, as it positively impacts their perception about the company.

Why Customer Feedback Is Crucial: Improve Customer Sentiment

Feedback insights based on customer segmentation offer unique perspectives: <ul><li>Recently Churned Customers</li><li>High Lifetime Value Customers</li><li>High Engaged Customers</li><li>Disengaged Customers</li></ul>

Tactics For Applying Feedback to Churn: Who To Ask

<ul><li>During Customer Onboarding</li><li>During the offboarding process, when customers decide to churn.</li><li>Inside the app, while the customer is using the product.</li><li>A quarterly check-in.</li></ul>

When To Gather Feedback

<ol><li>Start reactivation campaigns after making notable improvements using the feedback.</li><li>Start upselling and cross selling campaigns.</li><li>Build a more informed help center.</li></ol>

Taking Action: What To Do With Feedback

Feedback: Your Hidden Power To Proactively Kill SaaS Churn

<ul><li>A study by Bain and Co. found that a mere 5% reduction in churn can lead to a profit increase of 25-125%. That’s a massive gain for a little amount of work.</li><li>One of the biggest reasons that customers churn is that they don’t know how to use your product. They end up getting no real value from it. It’s a waste of their time and money.</li><li>That’s why it’s so important for SaaS companies to invest in customer education. The better you educate your customers, the more likely they are to stick around.</li></ul>

Reducing SaaS Churn: Customer Education

When it comes to improving your product’s onboarding, there are two main things you need to do:1: Define your product’s Aha! Moment: It’s where your customer realizes the amazing value your product provides.2: Reduce time-to-value: You need to direct your customers towards your product’s Aha! Moment as soon as possible. The sooner your customers see the value, the more likely they’ll stay around. To reduce your time-to-value, you need to create an onboarding flow that takes your new users and guides them step-by-step.

Customer Education Idea #1 — Onboard New Users

One of the most effective ways of reaching customers, particularly if they aren’t logging into your product enough, is via email.While most SaaS companies already realize the value of marketing automation with email sequences, few have done the same with customer education.The two things you need to consider when creating an automated email sequence are:<ul><li>Who are you sending the emails to(personalization)? </li><li>What are you sending(useful content)?</li></ul>The greater the level of personalization, the more effective the emails will be.

Customer Education Idea #2 — Send Automated Email Sequences

<ul><li>The ultimate goal of this email sequence is to get these customers to start using this feature.</li><li>The best way to do this is to make them aware of what the feature is, how it helps them, and how to use it.</li><li>Setting up automated email sequences is a great way of improving customer education while simultaneously saving a lot of time and effort on your part.</li></ul>

The Content Of Your Email

<ul><li>Most SaaS companies have a blog where they post regularly. But most companies only think about their blog as a marketing tool, not as a tool for customer education. </li><li>Your blog posts don’t just have to market your product, they can also contribute to customer education.</li><li>Focus on key problems that your product can solve, and then explain how your customers can solve them.</li><li>The key is to produce content that teaches people how to use aspects of your product to solve a particular problem.</li></ul>

Customer Education Idea #3 — Create Educational Content

An academy is essentially a course that helps customers learn how to use your product and become experts. Academies often delve deeper into the product than knowledge base articles do. The great thing about an academy is that it makes you seem like experts in your field. You aren’t just offering a useful product, you’re also teachers and guides. That will elevate you above your competition.

Customer Education Idea #4 — Launch An Academy

When faced with an issue or a feature they don’t know how to use, most customers will try to find relevant documentation to help them. Your knowledge base is often the first place they’ll look.89% of millennials, who are one of the biggest purchasers of SaaS software, prefer to search online for help rather than pick up the phone.You need to make sure your knowledge base is up to scratch, well organized and easy to understand.

Customer Education Idea #5 — Update Your Knowledge Base

These five inspiring customer education ideas will help you improve customer retention and reduce churn for your SaaS product...

5 Customer Education Ideas to Reduce SaaS Churn

Questions we ask ourselves when we're about to enter the world of work or start a business.<ul><li>How do I make myself employable?</li><li>How will I find my dream job?</li><li>What skills am I lacking?</li><li>How should I deal with clients?</li><li>What are people more interested in - my technical ability, or how I think?</li></ul> The mindset you need to start a creative business and keep it going is the same you need to tackle any new creative challenge.

The mindset required to start a creative business

If you intend to start your own studio, don't. Not yet. First benefit from other's who have done it before you. Find out about their successes and failures. Learn from their mistakes.<ul><li>Get a job. Gain experience from being around other professionals. Make yourself indispensable by showing how you add value to the company. Think about how to improve processes, add services and find new areas of revenue.</li><li>Be a thinker. Think about the writing, user experience, and the project's overall impact.</li><li>Be a sponge, not a Hoover. Ask questions, listen to the answers, and put them into practice.</li></ul>

Prepare yourself (You don't know everything just yet)

When the time is right, start small. This will allow you to take risks and learn what works. <ul><li>Do your homework. Write a thorough business plan. It is a valuable guide that forces you to think about where your work will come from. Make an effort to understand a profit & loss sheet, planning pipeline and cashflow forecast.</li><li>Plan to grow. Write an operation's manual to detail who does what and how often. Plan all the roles a bigger agency will need, then do them all yourselves.</li><li>Find 'your way'. Establish what your studio's vision is.</li></ul>

Start small, but plan for growth

<ul><li>Hire the best you can. People are your most valuable resource. When the time arrives, hire the best people you can afford. Each recruit should fit your values and bring something new with them. If there are people you admire but they're not a good fit for your team, find ways to collaborate with them.</li><li>Create a new normal. Always push boundaries and then adjust to the new normal.</li><li>Never (ever) stop learning. Don't assume things will always stay the same. Actively push change and be curious and experimental in your approach.</li></ul>

Embrace change

Tips to help you become an effective and self-reliant graphic designer

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Career

Being a Graphic Designer in the Modern World

How to start a design studio – a beginner’s guide

The Fastlane is a state of wealth that is characterized by abundance. In the Fastlane, you don’t trade your time for money and are in complete control of all the wealth-generating factors.
The Fastlane lifestyle is for the people who want to retire young and don’t want to follow the conventional get rich roadmap that involves maxing the 401k, being frugal, and retiring at 65. Being on the Fastlane requires that you turn your back on what society says about wealth. Otherwise, you will never get rich.

The Fastlane

"The Millionaire Fastlane isn’t about being retired old with millions, but about redefining wealth to include youth, fun, freedom, and prosperity."

The get rich slow strategy that is championed by society is a losing game. It is anchored on your time, assumes that everything will go according to plan, and doesn’t involve getting rich at a young age.If you want to get rich, take the Fastlane road.True wealth is authored by three fundamental F’s:<ul><li>Family (relationships). Wealth is strong spirited familial relationships with people.</li><li>Fitness (health). Fitness includes health, vibrancy, passion, and boundless energy .</li><li>Freedom (choice). Freedom is the ability to pursue your dreams and do what you love.</li></ul>

True Wealth Isn’t Having A Bank Balance

The roadmap to wealth is made up of four key ingredients: <ul><li>Your roadmap. The roadmap is the guiding force behind the decisions you make </li><li>Your vehicle. Your vehicle is you. No one can drive you to your financial destination</li><li>Your roads. Roads are the financial pathways that lead to wealth. You can be an engineer, a plumber, a truck driver, etc. The roadmap guides your actions and the consequences of those actions create your financial life</li><li>Your speed. Speed refers to execution or your ability to go from idea to implementation</li></ul>

The Fast Roadtrip To Wealth

Sidewalker mindset:<ul><li>Debt perception: Credit allows you to buy things now. </li><li>Time perception: There is enough time and you could be dead in two weeks anyway.</li><li>Education perception. You don't need to learn.</li><li>Money perception. If you have money, flaunt it</li><li>Primary income source. Whatever pays the most, you will chase it</li><li>Primary wealth accelerator. Luck</li><li>Wealth perception. The one with the most toys wins</li><li>Destination. “I live for today and I’m not bothered about tomorrow”</li><li>Responsibility and control. Indulges in the victim mentality</li><li>Life perception. Life is too short to plan ahead</li></ul>

The Three Road Maps To Wealth: The Sidewalk To Poorness

Slowlane mindset:<ul><li>Debt perception: Debt is evil.</li><li>Time perception: Time is abundant</li><li>Education perception. Educations is important as it helps earn more dollars</li><li>Money perception. Each and every dollar must be accounted for because money is scarce</li><li>Primary income source. A job is the primary source of income</li><li>Primary wealth accelerator. Compound interest</li><li>Wealth perception. Savings, investments, and 401K</li><li>Destination. Comfortable retirement in the twilight years</li><li>Responsibility and control. Works to provide for the family by relying on others.</li><li>Life perception. Settle for less, and give up on any dreams</li></ul>

The Three Road Maps To Wealth: Mediocrity- The Slowlane

Wealth = (Primary Income Source: Job) + (Wealth Accelerator: Market Investments) When in the Slowlane, you mindlessly trade your life for a paycheck.

The Slowlane Roadmap Equation

"The ultimate insanity is to sell your soul Monday through Friday for the paycheck of Saturday and Sunday. Yes, give me $5 today and in return I’ll give you $2 back tomorrow. 5-for-2. No? Why? This is a smoking Deal!"

"Time isn’t a commodity, something you pass around like a cake. Time is the substance of life. When anyone asks you to give your time, they’re really asking for a chunk of your life."

"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows."

The Fastlane mindset: <ul><li>Debt perception: Debt is useful as it allows one to grow their system</li><li>Time perception: Time is far more important than money</li><li>Education perception. Learning is important for growth</li><li>Money perception. Money is everywhere. It reflects the value you create</li><li>Primary income source. Business systems and investments</li><li>Primary wealth accelerator. Making something out of nothing</li><li>Wealth perception. Build business systems for cash flow and asset valuation</li><li>Destination. A lifetime of passive income. Life is what you make of it.</li><li>Life perception. Dreams are worth pursuing no matter how outlandish</li></ul>

The Three Road Maps To Wealth: The Fastlane Roadmap

The Fastlane is a business system while the Slowlane is a job. In the Slowlane, you trade your time for your employer’s cash while in the Fastlane, wealth is driven by a business system. The Fastlane wealth equation looks like this: Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value Asset Value = (Net Profit) X (Industry Multiplier) The Fastlane Roadmap is engineered for two purposes. It’s engineered to create a passive income stream to the excess of your expenses and lifestyle desires, and to make financial freedom a reality, exclusive of age.

The Fastlane Is A Business, Not A Job

"Instead of digging for gold, sell shovels. Instead of taking a class, offer a class. Instead of borrowing money, lend it. Instead of taking a job, hire for jobs. Instead of taking a mortgage, hold a mortgage. Break free from consumption, switch sides, and reorient to the world as producer."

"You could own the best hotel in the world located on the best beach in California, but if customers are treated like inconveniences and requests go unfulfilled, they won’t return."

<ul><li>Rental systems. Real estate is an example of a rental system that produces a recurring monthly income</li><li>Computer/software systems. The internet and software programs have created more millionaires than any other system in history</li><li>Content systems. Content systems are systems of information. They include books, blogs, and social networks</li><li>Distribution systems. These are systems that move products to the masses. An example is Amazon</li><li>Human resource systems. Systems that are run by people. Sometimes they can work in conjunction with other systems</li></ul>

The Five Fastlane Business Seedlings

The more lives you affect in an entity you control, in scale or in magnitude, the richer you become. To exploit the Law of Effection, your business needs to make an impact of either scale or magnitude, or both. Within our Fastlane wealth equation, “scale” and “magnitude” are implicit to our “net profit” variable. NET PROFIT = Units Sold (Scale) X Unit Profit (Magnitude)

The Law of Effection

<ul><li>To get to the Fastlane, you need a well-oiled and ready vehicle and that vehicle is you. You are the one responsible for making the journey.</li><li>You can’t pay yourself first if you don’t own yourself. To own yourself, create a corporation that divorces you from the act of business.</li><li>Success is not made up of a single choice but hundreds of them.</li><li>The easiest way to start making better decisions is to start changing your perception.</li></ul>

Your Vehicle To Wealth

1. Worse Case Consequence Analysis (WCCA). Analyse potential consequences before making a decision. 2. Weighted Average Decision Matrix (WADM). Weigh the various decisions and see which one is better.

Tips For Making Better Decisions

<ul>
<li>The commandment of need. Businesses satisfy the needs of people. Don’t chase money. Rather, look at how your business will help other people.</li>
<li> The commandment of entry. As entry barriers to a business fall, or lessen, the effectiveness of that road declines while competition in that field subsequently strengthens.</li>
<li>The commandment of control. Play in an organization that you control or you will be at the mercy of someone else.</li>
<li>The commandment of scale. Increase scale and magnitude in your business.</li>
<li>The commandment of time. Your business should detach you from your time.</li>
</ul>

The Five Fastlane Commandments

The Fastlane is a conglomeration of information that creates potential speed. You understand the Fastlane roadmap and its wealth equation. You’ve dumped the Sidewalk and the Slowlane. Ideas are nothing without execution. Execution divides winners from losers. Execution is a process. Ideas are events.

The Importance Of Speed

An excellent book on how to create insane wealth and live a great life. M. J. Demarco shares the secret to becoming a millionaire at any age. And it is not the kind of advice you receive from financial gurus, parents, or friends.

Is the financial plan of mediocrity -- a dream-stealing, soul-sucking dogma known as "The Slowlane" your plan for creating wealth? You know how it goes; it sounds a lil something like this: "Go to school, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to the stock market, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich." The mainstream financial gurus have sold you blindly down the river to a great financial gamble: You've been hoodwinked to believe that wealth can be created by recklessly trusting in the uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the housing market, the stock market, and the job market. This impotent financial gamble dubiously promises wealth in a wheelchair -- sacrifice your adult life for a financial plan that reaps dividends in the twilight of life. Accept the Slowlane as your blueprint for wealth and your financial future will blow carelessly asunder on a sailboat of HOPE: HOPE you can find a job and keep it, HOPE the stock market doesn't tank, HOPE the economy rebounds, HOPE, HOPE, and HOPE. Do you really want HOPE to be the centerpiece for your family's financial plan? Drive the Slowlane road and you will find your life deteriorate into a miserable exhibition about what you cannot do, versus what you can. For those who don't want a lifetime subscription to "settle-for-less" and a slight chance of elderly riches, there is an alternative; an expressway to extraordinary wealth that can burn a trail to financial independence faster than any road out there. Why jobs, 401(k)s, mutual funds, and 40-years of mindless frugality will never make you rich young. Why most entrepreneurs fail and how to immediately put the odds in your favor. The real law of wealth: Leverage this and wealth has no choice but to be magnetized to you. The leading cause of poorness: Change this and you change everything. How the rich really get rich - and no, it has nothing to do with a paycheck or a 401K match. Why the guru's grand deity - compound interest - is an impotent wealth accelerator. Why the guru myth of "do what you love" will most likely keep you poor, not rich. And 250+ more poverty busting distinctions... Demand the Fastlane, an alternative road-to-wealth; one that actually ignites dreams and creates millionaires young, not old. Change lanes and find your explosive wealth accelerator. Hit the Fastlane, crack the code to wealth, and find out how to live rich for a lifetime.

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Money & Investments

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Books

10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONIs the financial plan of mediocrity -- a dream-stealing, soul-sucking dogma known as &quot;The Slowlane&quot; your plan for creating wealth? You know how it goes; it sounds a lil something like this:&quot;Go to school, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to the stock market, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich.&quot;The mainstream financial gurus have sold you blindly down the river to a great financial gamble: You've been hoodwinked to believe that wealth can be created by recklessly trusting in the uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the housing market, the stock market, and the job market. This impotent financial gamble dubiously promises wealth in a wheelchair -- sacrifice your adult life for a financial plan that reaps dividends in the twilight of life. Accept the Slowlane as your blueprint for wealth and your financial future will blow carelessly asunder on a sailboat of HOPE: HOPE you can find a job and keep it, HOPE the stock market doesn't tank, HOPE the economy rebounds, HOPE, HOPE, and HOPE. Do you really want HOPE to be the centerpiece for your family's financial plan?Drive the Slowlane road and you will find your life deteriorate into a miserable exhibition about what you cannot do, versus what you can. For those who don't want a lifetime subscription to &quot;settle-for-less&quot; and a slight chance of elderly riches, there is an alternative; an expressway to extraordinary wealth that can burn a trail to financial independence faster than any road out there.Why jobs, 401(k)s, mutual funds, and 40-years of mindless frugality will never make you rich young. Why most entrepreneurs fail and how to immediately put the odds in your favor. The real law of wealth: Leverage this and wealth has no choice but to be magnetized to you.The leading cause of poorness: Change this and you change everything.How the rich really get rich - and no, it has nothing to do with a paycheck or a 401K match.Why the guru's grand deity - compound interest - is an impotent wealth accelerator.Why the guru myth of &quot;do what you love&quot; will most likely keep you poor, not rich. And 250+ more poverty busting distinctions...Demand the Fastlane, an alternative road-to-wealth; one that actually ignites dreams and creates millionaires young, not old. Change lanes and find your explosive wealth accelerator. Hit the Fastlane, crack the code to wealth, and find out how to live rich for a lifetime.

MJ DeMarco is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. MJ DeMarco has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. MJ DeMarco's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

MJ DeMarco

The Millionaire Fastlane

<ul><li>Use small plates: When money comes into your main operating account, immediately dispense it into different accounts in predetermined percentages for profit, owner pay, taxes and, consistently operating expenses</li><li>Serve sequentially: Always move your money to the profit account first, then to your owner pay account, then to your tax account, with what remains to expenses</li><li>Remove temptations: Move your profits account and other accounts out of arm’s reach to make it difficult for you to access your money</li><li>Enforce a rhythm: Do your payables and pay your bills twice monthly.</li></ul>

The Profit First Diet

A great business is one that has healthy profits. And as business gets healthier, taxes will increase.Profitability isn’t an event. It’s a habit. Profitable habits practiced consistently cause a company to be financially healthy. Forming the right business habits from scratch prevents you from forming bad habits that can be difficult to break in the long run.

The Health of a Business

<ul><li>Paying yourself should always be your priority even if you’re in debt.</li><li>Practice the one more day technique. Hold off on purchasing something and test how much you need it. You’ll feel rewarded when you see yourself saving more by going without certain items.</li><li>Modern-day success is not about earning the most revenue, hiring more employees, and having the biggest office spaces. It is about generating the most profit through the fewest employees with the least expensive office space.</li><li>You cannot add new debt as you pay the old debt off. Pay your smallest debt off first.</li></ul>

Tackling Debt

<ul><li>95% of your company’s profitability depends on what goes on beneath the surface (after the sales), and not the sales themselves.</li><li>Serve your clients with the same or very similar problems, using your one consistent solution to solve the problems.</li><li>The key to being efficient is repeatedly serving a consistent core customer need.</li><li>The more you focus on improving efficiency, the closer you’ll get to achieving double the results in half the time.</li><li>Focus on one area of your business that benefits your best customers and challenge yourself to figure out how to get twice the results for half the effort.</li></ul>

Money and Efficiency

The benefits of accountability groups:<ul><li>Having accountability partners can make a potentially challenging experience bearable</li><li>Enforcing a plan or a system with others ensures that you are more likely to do your part</li><li>When you regularly meet with an accountability group, you get into a rhythm that makes it easier for you to stay the course ad achieve your goal</li><li>Keep the accountability groups honest! Let your accountability partner(s) not be your friends.</li><li>You must be accountable for the process by any means necessary.</li></ul>

Accountability Groups

Innovation in business and efficiency comes from big, bold questions.

Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

Mike Michalowicz

Profit First

Being a company of one requires you to build your work around your life, not the other way around.The four recurring characteristics of companies of one are:<ul><li>Resilience</li><li>Autonomy and Control</li><li>Speed</li><li>Simplicity.</li></ul>Companies of one should be normalized because you will always be better than anyone at looking out for your own best interest, even in a large corporation.

The Company of One

For companies of one, making the business better is a greater priority than making it larger.A business remaining small can be a long-term plan and not just a stepping stone to a larger establishment.

Staying Small In the Long Term

<ul><li>Introverts can make great leaders for companies of one.</li><li>Companies of one are required to have knowledge of varied subjects and possess multiple skills to achieve their goals.</li><li>A company of one needs to know how to gauge what potential customers think of their products and services.</li><li>Resilience is key in helping a team reenergize when the business faces a setback.</li><li>A leader of a company of one will find himself learning how to say no as a strategy to keep his priorities in order.</li></ul>

Companies of One: What’s Required to Lead

<ul><li>How to prioritize existing customers or transform them into repeat customers</li><li>Make your business idea vision as small as possible such that you can take action now with little or no investment</li><li>Growth as a business or an individual won’t require you to do things you don’t want to do.</li></ul>

Things to Consider When Growing a Company of One

“In saying no to anything that doesn’t fit, you leave room to say yes to those rare opportunities that do fit—opportunities that align with the values and ideas of your business.”

A customer’s success is the business’s success.Exceeding the standards of customer service by treating customers like they’re extremely important and adding personal touches gives the customer a positive emotional experience, making a company stand out.The company of one’s ability to establish close and personal relationships with customers makes it possible for them to benefit from word of mouth. Customers love to be rewarded for loyalty.

The One Customer

“For companies of one, the question is always what can I do to make my business better?, instead of what can I do to grow my business larger?”

It is easier to sell to people with whom you have already built a rapport. It will not be embarrassing to talk about your product to people who genuinely care for you and your journey. This is the power of building strong long-term relationships.Customers are interested in who the business owner is as a person. Empathy makes your customers feel you care about making them happy more than you care about making a sale.

The Hidden Value of Relationships

“You can pursue any passion you want, but you shouldn’t feel entitled to make money off it. Passion in work comes from first crafting a valuable skill set and mastering your work. This is great news, because it means you no longer have to beat yourself up for not finding your true, hidden passions. Instead, you can simply get to work.”

“If you don’t think it’s possible to do better, or you don’t care if it is, there’s no point doing your own thing. In that case, it’s fine to work for someone else—they’re already established and have people handling the jobs you probably don’t want to be doing anyway.”

What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale a new start-up, but rather, to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better—and smarter—solution is simply to remain small? This book explains how to do just that. Company of One is a refreshingly new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth, for any size business. Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that wants to scale as soon as possible, but as a small business that is deliberately committed to staying that way. By staying small, one can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion. Company of One introduces this unique business strategy and explains how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. Instead, he now works for himself out of his home on a small, lush island off of Vancouver, and lives a much more rewarding and productive life. He no longer has to contend with an environment that constantly demands more productivity, more output, and more growth. In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own.

What if the real key to a more fulfilling career was not to scale up but to work for yourself and become a successful and sustainable company of one? The New York Times bestselling author of Deep Work Cal Newport calls this book a “must-read for any entrepreneur who prioritizes a rich life over riches.” Company of One offers a refreshingly original business strategy that’s focused on a commitment to being better instead of bigger. Why? Because staying small provides one with the freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life—and avoid the headaches that come with traditional growth-oriented business. Having personally discovered the benefits of cutting out the corporate hierarchy that constantly demands more, author Paul Jarvis explains how you can do the same. With this groundbreaking guide, you’ll learn how to set up your shop, determine your desired revenues, deal with unexpected crises, keep your key clients happy, and find self-fulfillment every step of the way.

Paul Jarvis

Company Of One

Company of One

Poor onboarding, engagement and customer service make up 52% of the reasons customers leave in the first 90 days.

Ever installed a new app or signed up for a new service? We’ve all done that before, and the first thing we need to know is HOW to navigate our way through the service and get the value. But when the initial experience is bumpy, new customers can start to disengage or even unsubscribe from the service, FREE or paid. This is why Customer Onboarding is very important so as to boost customer retention, increase customer satisfaction and reduce customer churn.

The First Few Days For Any New Customer Is Very Crucial

It always excites me when I receive a welcome email from the Founder/CEO of a company whose services I’ve signed up to. Many apps provide welcome emails to new users, but it can be adapted in any type of business, not apps alone.It is such an effective way to excite customers and provide next steps. That way, you start to lead customers through a seamless customer journey they will equally be excited to look forward to.

Start With A Welcome Email

Now that you’ve made your customers feel at home, it is time to get them familiar with your services. This is where introductions and inductions make a huge difference. Consider mini tours, scheduled email introductions and other forms of customer engagement to help them become familiar with your platform or services. Start with a high level overview, then find opportunities later for in-depth tutorials and guidance.

Mini-Inductions & Intro Sessions

Whether you’ve got an app, a software or a non-tech service, wizards and templates are a great way of speeding up setup. An accountant can use a budget template to help a new client create their initial budget. Apps can have presets that automatically configure systems and preferences for new users. Think of ways to speed up the initial setup with reusable wizards and templates so the customer’s setup tasks are fewer and faster.

Speed Up Setup With Wizards & Templates

Bombarding a new customer with all information on day 1 is a recipe for disaster. You will end up overwhelming them, they would forget most of what you said, and they will still contact you for support. A better way is to break up and pace out your content and deliver them to new customers using two types of triggers.<ol><li>User triggers - content released to a user when they take an action. Eg. Display an on-screen tip to a customer visiting a specific page for the first time</li><li>Time triggers - eg. Tutorial content sent to new users over the first 7 days of subscribing</li></ol>

Triggered Content

Customers can’t be bothered with reading pages of text especially when videos can relay the message easier and better. This is why instructional videos are more powerful than text-based user guides. Consider creating an archive of short videos and make them available to customers for reference. Eg. An accountant can create a short video clip showing a customer how to create a budget.

Video Is More Effective Than Pages Of Text

If all the previously mentioned activities are setup properly, you should find fewer customers needing your support during onboarding. That said, let customers know how to reach you for assistance as this gives them the additional confidence, knowing that help is not far away.

Reliable & Reachable Customer Suppprt

Many businesses struggle to keep up with customer enquiries, complaints, feedback and special requests. It is impossible to respond and resolve issues within specific timescales and urgency if you rely on emails only. This is why a CRM like <a href="https://mycentreoffice.com">MyCo</a> is great, for capturing customers, automating customer communication and setting up a Service Center to capture customer requests. It also has a 14 day free trial you may want to check out.

Use A CRM/Business Tool With A Service Center

And don’t assume it’s all working seamlessly once you launch your new customer onboarding process. Pay attention to customer behaviour, get customer feedback and continuously find ways to improve the process.

Don’t Forget To Collect Customer Feedback

Why is the customer onboarding process so important? Very simple - to attract, convert and retain more paying customers. It will help you increase your customer lifetime value (CLV) so you can keep delivering paid services to your customers consistently and get paid continuously. This is how businesses win and retain their deserved marketshare.

It’s All About The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

All the things you need to better the most important part of your customer journey. 

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

communication

Communication

Onboarding Matters

It is so easy to lose a customer just after they’ve subscribed or paid for your services.  When this happens, it is most likely due to a faulty Customer Onboarding process. Here is how to setup a seamless Customer Onboarding process that retains customers.

Customers can become frustrated and leave your services even in the first few moments and days of subscribing to your services. Many organisations have proved this including Business2Community…

A Seamless Customer Onboarding process that sells

Find 100+ Business Facts, Ideas & Insights - Curated from inspiring sources like Books, Podcasts & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!

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Feedback: Your Hidden Power To Proactively Kill SaaS Churn

5 Customer Education Ideas to Reduce SaaS Churn

How to start a design studio – a beginner’s guide

The Millionaire Fastlane

Profit First

Company of One

A Seamless Customer Onboarding process that sells

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It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.