Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tim Peakman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Tim, appreciate you sitting with us today. Maybe we can start with a topic that we care deeply about because it’s something we’ve found really sets folks apart and can make all the difference in whether someone reaches their goals. Self discipline seems to have an outsized impact on how someone’s life plays out and so we’d love to hear about how you developed yours?
After spending 16 years in the British military, I naturally developed a healthy amount of self-discipline. But at that time, I didn’t appreciate how uncommon this was and how much it would help me in my future business ventures. This self-discipline allowed me to be better at time management, self-care and effective prioritisation.
Ultimately, when you’re in the military (or any large organization for that matter) you report to someone, or you have somebody telling you what to do all the time. So there is a large element of external motivation. When you leave that organisation to go it alone, nobody is looking over your shoulder. You have to develop your internal motivation techniques and ultimately, your self-discipline, if you are to hold yourself accountable.
Having ventured into the world of online business over a decade ago, I relied on my military self-discipline and work ethic to get stuff done. Initially, I was building my first online business whilst still serving full-time in the Royal Air Force, so I naturally had to work evenings, weekends and even before I went to work.
Fast forward 10 years and I have continued in the same vein of relying on my self-discipline. We all have our down days and varying levels of procrastination, but ultimately I get the essential tasks of my business done. But a lot of this comes down to planning and being ruthlessly protective over my time.
For example, I plan the year, the quarter, the month and the week – so that I know the essential tasks that need to be completed daily for my online business to grow. If I complete my daily tasks early in the day, I can legitimately feel good about taking the afternoon off. If I complete the weekly tasks early on in the week, I can take the rest of the week off. And so on.
There is no such thing as 9-to-5 when you are building a business to fuel your lifestyle, you get to choose how long you work and how to prioritise your time. My recommendation is to spend time in the design stage of your business, what does your ideal day look like? How much money do you need to survive and thrive (it’s probably less than you think)? How many hours do you want to work, a day/week/month? Once you are clear, spend that time implementing your vision and be ruthless in protecting the time allocated to living your life.
I set out to build a business that fuelled and served the lifestyle I wanted, not the other way around. Subsequently, my mission is to build a business with a minimum of moving parts so that it can be as bulletproof as possible and I can prioritise time with loved ones and doing activities I enjoy. I didn’t want to follow the path of most who leave a 9-to-5 just to start a 24/7 and be subservient to their business. By fostering self-discipline in every aspect of my life and business it allows me to fully relax, and enjoy my life without the guilt of continuously having to be productive.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
The statistic that 4 out of every 5 businesses fail within their first 3 years of trading, is shocking to most. Many businesses evolve from their original starting point – and this is true for me as I have been through several iterations in my journey in search of a business model that suits me, my skillset and my lifestyle.
I now operate a one-person business model. It’s so lean that I scrutinize all my expenses and have to justify every task. Ultimately, if the tasks that you are conducting in your lean startup are not directly related to growing an audience of online contacts or increasing the amount of revenue coming into your business – cut them.
There may be a day in the not-so-distant future when I will have to make my first hire and get someone to take some of these tasks off my plate. But until then, I am simply learning what works and what doesn’t by taking action. Then reviewing and doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Simple as that.
As they say in the military “no plan survives first contact”. This means that you can have the best plan in the world, but the likelihood is that your plans will change when you start taking action. This is the same in online business. You have to remain flexible and review performance regularly.
I am simply sharing the journey of my successes and failures, with the hope that others in the same boat (building a one-person business) will find value in what I’m sharing and help them along their journey.
What excites me the most about building a knowledge-based online business in this day and age is how much you can do with recording and automating. For example, when you create content in video form, whether that be free content on YouTube, or paid content within your programs, that content will live on indefinitely helping others, until you change or update it.
As you’ve probably guessed, I am very much on the content marketing train – meaning that you can market your business for free, just by publishing content and without the use of advertising. Whilst an organic content marking approach is slower, paid ads are an element that you can delete from your business model to become more bulletproof. Let me explain…
I’ve seen other businesses rely heavily on paid ads on platforms such as Meta or Google, until that platform increases their cost for advertising and forces the business owner to review how they market their brand entirely.
Let me break it down with an example of a $100,000-a-year business making 20% net profit;
The total operational costs of running this business are calculated at $80,000 a year. This cost includes an annual $10,000 budget for ads to acquire new customers.
If, over the next few years all things remain the same, but the ad costs triple from $10,000 to $30,000, (an increase of $20,000) this company is no longer making any profit. The increase in ads has wiped out the business’s net profit margin of $20,000 – and without significant changes or cuts, this business may no longer be viable.
If your business strategy only relies on ads to acquire customers – ad increases are a risk to the profitability of your business. I focus on content creation to acquire customers to remove this risk entirely and make my business increasingly bulletproof.
If you are inspired to build a stable business and are committed to creating content for the next 5 to 10 years, then content marketing as a strategy might be for you.
I relate to building an online business like going to the gym. Small investments of prolific quality output over time will amount to success. It’s that word “consistent” that is key if you want to witness organic growth both in the gym and in business. There are always shortcuts and quick fixes – but their impact on your long-term success is likely to be minimal.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
If I were to advise on three qualities, skills or areas of knowledge that have been most impactful in my journey in the hope of inspiring and helping others, they would be:
1. Have a basic understanding of how to operate a laptop, current software and have access to the internet as much as possible. I remember my early days in military training when I took a course on how to “drive a computer”. At the time I thought it was a bit of an overkill, but my computer literacy has helped me no end as more and more tasks, projects and ways of communication migrated online. Ultimately, if you want an online business, you have to increase your online literacy as much as possible.
2. Understand that everything is “figureoutable”. You need to develop the innate ability to go and find out the answer whenever you come across a challenge. You will get stuck. You will come across challenges. So it’s super important to develop your level of resourcefulness and understand who to ask or where to look to find the solution. You won’t get very far on your own if you wait for others to tell you what to do. Just remember that everything is “figureoutable”- take the initiative and invest the time to find out how, or invest money in someone to help you figure it out faster.
3. Get super clear on your message and how to get it out there to the world. In the case of online business, getting your message out there is all about having an online presence. This is marketing – and if there was one single piece of advice I could give to anyone starting an online business, it would be this: “Get clear on your message, what problem you solve for people and how to get in front of those people”. You may have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about you, or you can’t clearly communicate how it solves a problem, you will be the world’s best-kept secret. And this isn’t helping anyone.
I like to keep things simple, as overwhelm can easily show its face in the game of online business. So I’ve searched for 10 years to find the online business model with the least moving parts. And I believe I’ve found it.
Start with 1 message, 1 solution, 1 offer and 1 product to get your clients the no.1 result they desire. Once you’ve achieved this, then you can start to build out multiple offers, but only once you have helped people get results. That’s what it’s about at the end of the day – helping people achieve their goals.
Online business is simple – yet it’s far from easy. All you have to do is build an audience online and sell them what they want in digital form. If you can serve people digitally, you have a 100% remote, online business that you can operate from anywhere in the world.
If you follow what I teach, you will see it’s an organic content marketing business model that focuses on YouTube and Kajabi – two awesome platforms that help me build an audience, understand what challenges they have and offer them help with those challenges. The biggest challenge for many in setting up an online business is the tech overwhelm. Helping people overcome this is now my primary focus.
How would you describe your ideal client?
So if you’ve read down this far, well done. You’re someone who has attention to detail and sees things through. The chances are that something I’ve written about in this article has resonated with you and you are thinking about or already have started an online business.
You’re probably the type of person that feels like they have something to share with the world. You have experience in a chosen field that you find people naturally asking you to help them with. You are curious about how to make this into something bigger, maybe an online business? But you have no idea of where to start, how to build an online presence, or are simply overwhelmed with all the technology or platforms that you need to become competent in.
A good place to start is to watch my free workshop on how I’ve built my online business and how you can start to make your first $1,000 of online revenue. I call it my Online Revenue Workshop and you can get access to it on-demand for FREE.
Simply go to – https://www.timpeakman.com/workshop
I also have a bunch of free training videos on my YouTube channel to get you started.
Here’s my channel – https://www.youtube.com/@timpeakman
I hope this article has helped you and given you some inspiration if growing an online business is your goal.
Enjoy the process, no matter the outcome.
Tim
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.timpeakman.com/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@timpeakman
