Auto news on Youtube Sep 27 2017

Welcome to the second module of the three prong series on cycle menus

This module is broken up into three parts

and this is the last part where we will finish the module by walking through the steps of building a cycle menu. As

We have learned in our considerations and menu planning sections cycle menus are about variety color

texture and visual appeal, among other important factors.

So a great way to play in your cycle menu is to truly visualize it using component cards.

These cards as you can see in our example on the screen are double-sided with the item description

and crediting information on one side and the name and picture of the item on the other.

We've provided a template of the component cards with the materials on our training web page,

Or you can feel free to develop a version of your own.

This method of planning is a great way to develop your cycle menus, step back,

evaluate and tweak as needed. So grab your cards and a big table and let's get started.

Once you've gathered everything, you know what recipes you want to use, and have the crediting information available

you want to start plotting out each day each week of your cycle menu.

First work on the main part of your meal.

Determine which entree or entrees you want to serve each day.

Once you've completed this step, you'll want to take a step back and evaluate your decisions.

Is there a variety within the week and throughout the cycle. Are adjustments necessary to provide more diversity,

familiarity, or novelty

In our example here, we're planning for a k5 school and plan to serve one entree to all students each day.

You can see here that we've laid out our entree component cards for the week. On Monday

we're going to serve an Asian chicken broccoli bowl,

Tuesday will be bean and cheese burrito,

Wednesday hamburgers,

Thursday yummy mac and cheese, and on Friday a huge favorite; pizza.

A quick look at our component cards will show us if we're meeting our minimum crediting requirements.

We're working on a five-day week

So we'll look at the five-day week meal pattern and focus on grains and meat meat alternate components.

Here you can see that the minimum daily requirements for the

k5 age grade group for both grains and meat meat alternate is one ounce equivalent,

while the minimum weekly requirements for both components is

8 ounce equivalents.

A look back at our component cards shows us that we have met the daily and weekly minimums for our choices.

Remember too the other considerations of menu planning

Do we have enough variety in this menu? Are we varying our options to meet the needs of our student population

and our staff? If not we may want to make some changes, but for now let's stick with this menu and continue on.

The next step is to think about any side dishes that you might be offering.

When dealing with a menu that involves several different entree choices you will need to determine if these items will pair with a specific

entree or if they'll be available to all students, regardless of what they choose.

Side dishes may include a spanish-style rice to be served with enchiladas or

maybe a hearty whole-grain rich breadstick to go with lasagna.

Once you've determined your side dishes and where they should go you'll want to again step back and take a look at your menu

evaluate the flow and make adjustments where needed

For our menu

We've decided to add a few side dishes during the week.

On the day that we serve burritos we're offering tortilla chips and homemade salsa.

Our burgers will be paired with sweet potato puffs and the mac and cheese will come with a whole-grain roll.

Next we have our fruits and vegetables.

Though all components are important these two may have some of the most requirements surrounding them.

First you'll need to determine how you want to serve your fruits and vegetables.

Do you want to provide alternating items each day individually on the serving line or

do you to provide a salad bar each day either with the same offerings daily or with changes?

Start placing your fruits and vegetables into your menu or start to build your salad bar.

Remember to think about variety,

flavors and their compatibility together, different textures, freshness of items, etc.

Once you've made your decisions and placed your items in your menu, then again step back and evaluate.

As you're building each time you step back to evaluate you're looking at the cohesiveness of the menu as a whole;

each day and then for the week. Are you hitting all those points that we discussed in our menu building basics?

Do you have variety,

familiarity, novelty? Are there different colors, textures, and shapes? Are you providing things that students prefer?

Have you brought in any of your local items or seasonal products?

Here we've chosen our fruits and vegetables for our sample menu.

Looking at our component cards. We can see that

We are providing two kinds of fruit each day; one canned and one fresh, and one vegetable.

Try to choose fruits and vegetables that will complement your entree choices.

Keep in mind, there are several requirements surrounding these components; in particular our vegetables.

Let's look at the five-day menu grid again.

Not only do we want to consider our daily and weekly minimums,

but we need to ensure that we've included each of the vegetable subgroups in their minimum quantities.

Let's take a look at our proposed menu.

For our proposed menu

We plan to offer a half a cup serving of our fruit choices and three quarter cup serving of our vegetable choice.

We need to remember on Friday that we need to offer one and a half cups of the salad option to credit as that 3/4

cup vegetable serving.

Finally you're going to add any of those extras that round out your menu.

You may be offering a treat like a whole grain-rich cookie or maybe you're offering little cups of freshly popped popcorn

to celebrate a new movie premiere. Add those to the days that need them and

don't forget your condiments whether you're providing specific condiments to complement your entree choices each day,

or you provide the same condiment options every day

You'll want to include those in your cycle menu development so that your nutritional analysis is as accurate as possible.

For your knowledge and in case the state ever has to do nutritional analysis themselves, this is a great tool to complete.

One great choice that we'll incorporate in our proposed menu, is a flavor station

You can offer students herbs and salt free seasoning

to add flavor without increasing the sodium.

And let's go ahead and offer a treat and add a whole-grain rich chocolate chip cookie.

Don't forget to add your milk. Remember that you must offer at least two different varieties of milk at each meal.

Now you have your first cycle menu completed and of course, it's time to evaluate it again.

When you first start building cycle menus, you're definitely going to be doing a lot of that;

looking at the menu, considering all the elements of menu planning to determine if your menu meets each item,

having others look at the menu and evaluate it...over and over and over.

But once you have a solid menu, and you feel comfortable with the process

later menus may simply be small adaptations of the first, or you may determine a system

or a skeleton menu that you can work from. For instance you may decide that Mondays will be meatless entrees,

Tuesdays and Thursdays will always be some sort of chicken,

Wednesdays will be beef, and Fridays will always be some sort of pizza.

From there, It's easier to start filling in the blanks and building.

When you evaluate your menu, you want to not only look at those menu planning basics

but you need to look at the big two requirements of the program.

So you'll need to evaluate it for crediting;

meaning does it meet the daily and weekly minimums, are the vegetable subgroups represented, etc. and

Once you've determined compliance and crediting,

then the menu should be evaluated for nutritional value to make sure that each week fits into the ranges for

calories, saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium.

By doing each of these checks you're preparing yourself in the best way possible for your administrative review.

So not only are you planning a menu that will end up making your life easier when it comes to ordering, planning, serving.

It will make your life easier when it comes to your administrative review as well.

So here we have it; our completed menu for the first week of our cycle.

Of course in this example

we've only planned a week,

but when planning your own cycle menu you may want to lay out several weeks at a time or plan each week one by one.

This method of planning your cycle menu allows you to visualize the items, they're fit with one another, and the variety offered.

But the best method is the one that works for you.

Now that we've created our menu. We can evaluate it to ensure that it meets crediting and nutritional guidelines.

Let's take a closer look at evaluating the crediting.

Your best bet is to use the USDA weekly meal planning worksheets.

These will show you if you're meeting minimums with all of your components. In

addition these worksheets are the same ones used by auditors during your administrative review,

so you'll be ahead of the game when the information is requested.

Here is a quick snapshot of the weekly meal planner, but let's go through this exercise together.

So here we have the USDA meal planner.

You can see that. This is an Excel workbook with several different tabs across the bottom.

Luckily, there are instructions for this menu planner menu worksheet

Which are on the first tab.

If you've never used it before these are great instructions to go through to learn what you need to do on each tab.

But we're going to go through and look at our one-week meal plan

So the first thing that needs to happen is

We need to enter all of our meals on our all meals tab.

So I'll show you an example. On

Monday as you know we're going to be serving the Asian chicken and broccoli Bowl as our main entree.

So we're going to type that in to the meal planner on the first row.

Now it asks us to enter our crediting information and from our component cards

We know that the asian chicken and broccoli bowl

has two ounce equivalents of meat/meat alternate and

It has two ounce equivalents of grain.

Now this menu planner does ask of the grains offered how many are whole-grain rich?

But as you know currently the requirement is that 100% be whole-grain rich,

so we know that we're serving all whole-grain, so we're going to put that 2 ounces of the 2 ounce equivalents are whole-grain rich.

Now also on this

line it asks us how much total fruit is being offered and

As we mentioned we're offering a half a cup each day, and we're doing the half cup mixed fruit on this day,

So these are drop-down menus, so we're going to select 1/2 a cup.

It asks if we're offering any fruit juice and as you know the requirement is that you can only offer

half the amount of juice for your total amount of fruit for the week, but we're not offering juice on this day

So we're not going to put anything in there.

And then it asks how much total vegetables were offering so from our component card

We know that the broccoli counts for half a cup of dark green vegetables,

And we're also serving three-quarters of a cup of steamed vegetables on this day, so because it asks for total amount offered

We're going to put 1 1/4 cups.

So we'll select 1 and 1/4 cups.

Moving to the right it also asks us for how much fluid milk we are offering.

We're offering a variety

But it just wants to know how much is

Offered with the meal so because they choose one or the other we're going to say that one cup

Is offered. As you can see here it's in cups and it's just asking us for how many cups, so one cup.

So what you'll need to do for your menu is enter each of your entree items that you're serving

going down the line on the all meals tab. If you're serving several entrees,

within one day,

you will need to enter each of the entrees along with the amount of vegetables fruits and milk offered in

Total to students on that day. So for instance, if you had another entree option

You would enter it here in line 2 you would give the meat/meat alternate and grain crediting information and then for the fruit;

Unless that entree option had fruit incorporated with it, the total amount offered would still be a half a cup,

But the vegetables would be different. If that entree item did not include vegetables in it,

then the number of cups of vegetables that would be offered if a student chose this

entree item would just be that 3/4 cup steamed vegetables, which we're allowing all students to choose.

So again we'll do that for each of the days that we're serving and because we're doing just one week

We'll go ahead and do it for all 5 days.

So here you can see that we have completed all five days of our entree items

with our meat/meat alternate ounce equivalents, our grain ounce equivalents and the total amount of fruit, vegetables,

and milk that we'll be offering.

Now that's just the first step.

Once you have all of the information in the all meals tab,

You're going to want to populate that information into each day.

So here we are back with just our Asian chicken broccoli bowl. On

the bottom of the workbook you'll see that there are different day tabs.

So we need to populate the entree or entrees that we're serving on Monday into the Monday tab.

Clicking on the Monday tab you can see

That there are drop-down menus, so this is important;

You need to make sure that you put all of your entree items into the all meals tab

So that it will populate in the drop down menu, so that you can select it.

So on Monday, we're serving the Asian chicken broccoli bowl

and when we select it it populates the information that we included on the all meals tab

into the Monday tab.

Now moving to the right there's more information that we need to put in the daily tab.

So we need to enter the types of milk varieties that we're offering;

so we're actually offering the

skim fat-free unflavored and

we're offering skim, or fat-free chocolate so that's the skim fat-free flavored.

This tells you that you are meeting the requirement for the day of offering a variety of milk.

Moving even further

And going down a little bit

We're going to need to put in the subgroups of vegetables that we are offering. So you can see

that it is separated into the different subgroups; dark green, red orange beans peas or legumes,

starchy vegetables and other.

So on this day

with our Asian chicken and broccoli Bowl

We're offering broccoli

And we know from our component card that we are offering a half a cup and broccoli is in the dark green subgroup.

So we're going to use the drop down menu to choose

What dark green we're serving; broccoli, and

the quantity,

half a cup.

Now if you were serving several different types of dark green you would include them, listing them below,

and at the top

there is a largest amount of dark green vegetables to select on Monday

So this is the largest amount that a student could select on any given day or on this given day of

Dark green vegetables. Because we're only offering the one our largest amount is half a cup.

Moving to the right, on this day we're not offering any red orange, beans peas or legumes, or starchy vegetable.

Our mixed steamed vegetables would actually be considered "other",

so we're going to go to the other subgroup, and we're going to enter in what we are offering. Now because it's a mix

it's not a specific

Vegetable that we'll be selecting

so we have to go to the bottom and

Select other unspecified and the amount. So again, We're offering 3/4 of a cup and

because it's the only other subgroup that we're offering the largest amount that a student can choose is 3/4 of a cup.

Now because we chose the other within the other subgroup we need to

Indicate what is being offered so if we scroll down to the bottom,

There's a space for us to enter, actually type in, what's being offered:

steamed vegetable mixture.

So we've completed the first tab

Monday, with all of the information, and we'll want to do that for each of the additional tabs,

Tuesday through Friday, if you're a five-day school week.

Once you do that,

You'll be able to see if you are meeting your crediting requirements.

So if we go all the way to the end of the workbook you'll see that there is a weekly report tab

Here you'll see everything that you entered.

It will show you Monday through Friday since we're on a five-day week. First

we see our vegetable subgroups and the amounts we have listed here,

the requirements for the week here, and

whether we are actually meeting the requirements here. So if you get a green "Yes" you know that you are meeting their requirements.

Going down again, we see our meat/meat alternate component;

Each day is listed,

Our weekly total is here, the requirement is here, and we can see that we have met the requirement with our green yes.

Scrolling further down we can see our grains;

With each day listed, our weekly total and the weekly requirement.

Now keep in mind that USDA has provided flexibility for the

maximum requirement for both meat/meat alternates and grains so even though we have a red "no" here on our

maximum grains, that's ok because that's not something that is a requirement at this time. Now going down to the bottom,

we can see that we've provided

One cup of fluid milk each day with the total of 5 for the week

Meeting our weekly requirement and that we offered a variety. So

This is a great way to see that your cycle menu has met your crediting requirements.

Next we want to evaluate this menu for our nutrients to determine if we're within the required ranges for calories,

saturated fat, trans fat,and sodium.

You may use an approved nutrient analysis software if you like.

In most cases, if you're meeting the meal pattern for your age grade group, you're most likely within the nutrient standards.

To find a USDA approved nutrient analysis software visit the USDA FNS site.

There are also self evaluation tools out there that you can use.

We found to to be very useful. The first was the UC Davis successful menu planning evaluation tool.

This will actually take you through each aspect that we've discussed from looking at whether you have the proper

components and are meeting your minimums to whether you've incorporated USDA foods and have provided a varied enough menu.

Another great tool is a smarter lunchrooms

self-assessment.

Smarter lunchrooms really looks at the ways that we can make small changes in the environment

Within our sites to help students make the healthy choice.

This evaluation tool looks very deeply into not only food choices for your menus, but your overall environment as well.

Now after we have built the menu and evaluated it to death, we need to determine if any tweaks are needed to meet the

requirements. do we need to switch out any menu items, flip-flop items to give it more variety

or a better flow, or do something different to make it more interesting? If so,

then go ahead and do that and if you do you'll want to go ahead and evaluate it again for compliance.

Now that you're done plot your cycle out on the district calendar; make sure you take note of where holidays fall

and think about how you might need to tweak the menu for that.

Are you set to do a fish fillet dish on Monday, but have that Monday off?

Will the quality of the fish really last from a Friday delivery to a Tuesday service?

If not, maybe you want to trade out that day.

Is there some special celebrations going on that you want to celebrate? Maybe Dr Seuss's birthday?

Think about those instances, and where and how you will deviate from your cycle menu,

and how to build that into everything associated with your menu planning, your ordering, your storage etc.

The beauty is that the cycle is flexible and you can mold and bend it however you need to.

Now you've worked really hard on this menu, so the last thing that you want to do is simply put it in place without any

rollout, promotion, or fanfare.

You want to let people know that things are changing for the better.

First think about when you want to roll out your new menu.

It's best if you can leave yourself some time between creating the menu and implementing it.

You want to be able to let people know that change is coming,

get them excited about it, and make the most of the work that you've done.

Who are your target audiences?

Sure students are ultimately going to be the ones consuming items from the new menu,

But who else is important to about the change?

Who do you need to get on your side?

Once you've determined your audiences think about those major areas that will interest those audiences.

Finally how do you want to approach the task of getting that information out to them?

Make sure that your administrators know what you're planning even before you start planning it.

No one can throw a wrench in a project like an admin who finds out they weren't told that something was changing in their school.

Get them on your side from the beginning, and they'll be a very important ally.

A great idea for introducing your new cycle menus to the school is to take them to a staff meeting.

Ask for about five to ten minutes to present the changes to all staff at once.

Get them excited about the changes so that they will talk to their students with excitement.

Talk to teachers one-on-one in hallways or staff lounges.

Engage them, "Hey did you hear that we're working on a cycle menu

that's going to allow us to provide more fresh seasonal options to students?

You'll have to tell your kids to check out the harvest of the month days. They're going to be lots of fun." or

Don't just tell teachers about the amazing things that you're doing, involve them in it.

Bring them in for a special taste test of items, give them a sneak peak of what students will have choice of.

Teachers have the ear of the students whether they're students like them

or not, they listen, and when a teacher makes a bad comment about the lunchroom or cafeteria food it can derail

everything we're trying to build, so get them interested and invested in what we do.

Of course we also want to think outside of the school.

We want students and staff to get excited about our new menus, but we also need buy-in from the parents.

There are several things that can be done to involve them in the process.

First, consider sending out an announcement before a news cycle menu is rolled out.

Write a short story for the principal's newsletter or send a "hey guess what" type of flyer home to parents.

This will make them aware of the change, but also hopefully them interested.

Make up tasters for an upcoming parent night or open house event.

Station yourself where you'll be accessed by the majority of the parents and provide food and

Information about the amazing things that you're providing for their children.

Have a bring your grandparent to lunch day.

Parents are big influences, but grandparents have a lot of power too.

Make it a fun day with one of your best dishes.

If you have the time and inclination

You could even develop a menu advisory committee made up of parents interested in their children's health and well-being.

This group could provide practical advice about student preferences.

Last but not least we want to make sure that our student population knows

what is coming up and get them excited about the changes.

A great way to get student buy-in is to let them be involved. Have the art class create some posters, banners,

or signs to announce the new menu. If there is a marketing class,

maybe they can develop an advertising plan make announcements on the PA system or even broadcast on the school

television station, if one exists.

You might also have a contest to name certain dishes, within reason of course.

Set up specific Do's and don'ts for names and then let them get creative. Use the winning names when serving those dishes.

When first starting a new cycle menu, don't be afraid to provide samples of products or recipes to give students the opportunity

to try before they buy.

Finally ask for feedback.

Set out a table where students can vote on favorites or make anonymous suggestions.

This concludes module two of this training series.

Please proceed to module three: Procurement, where you'll learn procurement basics,

cost saving tips, and how to expand the use of USDA foods and seasonal produce in your cycle menus.

For more infomation >> Cycle Menu Series: Module II Part 3-Build It - Duration: 28:52.

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Product Launch Page: How To Build A Launch Page With FREE Resources - Duration: 18:21.

Hi, everyone!

My name is Robert from ThemeIsle.com and in this video, you're gonna see how to build

a product launch page on WordPress.

I'll show you a step-by-step guide going from a completely blank canvas to a finished

landing page.

Best of all, I'll do it using only free resources...

If that sounds like your kind of tutorial, keep watching.

Before jumping into the actual guide, I want to show you a quick look at our final result

after we build a product launch page with Elementor.

You can always improve on the final design with more elements and styling.

But that's just a basic look at what you can do with Elementor in well under an hour

of work.

Let's get started!

Before you start to build a product launch page on WordPress, your first step is to actually

install the Elementor plugin...

While the Pro version does offer several helpful features, I'm going to use the free version

in this video.

As for the layout, I'm going to use the free version of our Hestia WordPress theme,

but you can use whichever theme you prefer, though.

Just make sure it's one that allows a full-width template!

Templates allow you to change the basic "canvas" that you build your product launch page with.

For example, most WordPress pages include a sidebar.

That's good for a regular page…but not for a product launch page.

You want your landing page to be the only thing grabbing people's attention.

There are two ways you can go about this.

With a Full-width template, you can build a completely full-width landing page, but

your normal WordPress header and footer are still active...

...and, with a Blank canvas, you build your page from absolute zero.

Not even your WordPress header and footer appears.

Both methods are a viable route to build a product launch page with Elementor, but I

prefer just using a full-width template so that the navigation structure feels more cohesive

across the entire site.

That's what I'll be using in this video.

To select your own template, go to Pages → Add New

and choose from the drop-down in the Page Attributes box...

For this WordPress Product Launch Page, I will choose the Page Builder Full-Width template

and then I'll give it a name like Product Launch for example...

Remember that you can change the permalink to something different, short and SEO friendly

like a keyword, your product name for example... and then click Save Draft to apply the new

template (it's important that you do this before

you start editing).

Then, hit the big Edit With Elementor button.

You should see the blank canvas from which you'll build your launch page.

Ok, I'm going to show you how to build a product launch page using Elementor from the ground up.

But you definitely don't have to start from a blank canvas.

If you'd rather use one of Elementor's professionally designed templates, you can

access them by clicking the Folder icon in the very bottom left and selecting Templates

Library or just simply click on the Add Template button.

Many of the templates require Elementor Pro, but you can still find plenty that are available

in the free version and you can also import templates like these in your own Elementor

library after downloading the ready-made About Our Business and Contact Us templates...

In addition to benefiting from professional design, these templates can also save you

a ton of time.

If you see one that you like, I definitely recommend using it.

Otherwise, let's forge ahead with our blank canvas.

Before you get started, it helps to know where you're going.

That is, you want to have a basic idea for the structure of your launch page before you

start dragging over Elementor elements.

For example, here's a rough sketch of what a basic launch page looks like...

If you look at the sketch, you'll see that there are roughly four sections.

The main headline section...

The "Feature list" section...

An about section... and n email opt-in section...

Elementor lets you create individual Sections that you can add your elements to.

For this example launch page, we'll use four different sections for each of the elements above.

Before I start diving into the landing page example, I think it will be helpful to give

you a quick tour of the actual Elementor interface.

The interface is comprised of two core elements:

The sidebar is where you'll add new elements and edit existing ones...

... and the visual preview which is where you can preview your final design exactly

as your end users will see it.

"Elements" are basically design blocks.

For example, a button is one element.

An image is another.

And so on...

To actually build a product launch page with Elementor, the basic process goes like this...

You drag over an element from the sidebar...

Then, you customize the element in the same sidebar interface...

Notice that the sidebar now has three different tabs.

Content...

Style... and advanced

where Content is the most important tab.

Here, you customize the basic content and function of the element...

In the Style tab, you can change colors and typography and in the

Advanced tab you can add custom margins and padding...

as well as other advanced settings.

Custom margins are especially helpful for changing your elements' positioning.

Alright, now that you know the basics, let's build a product launch page with Elementor!

To create the headline section, first click on Add New Section:

Then, select your column setup.

I'll use this two-column option for this example, but your choice depends on your desired design.

Let's make the larger right column an image and use text in the left column.

To add an image to the right column, just drag over the Image element:

Then, select your image in the sidebar interface:

To add text to the left column, you can use a combination of the Heading and Text Editor

options:

To change the alignment and positioning of your elements, you can always go to the Advanced

tab and manually change margins and padding:

I used custom top margins for both headings in the example.

If it fits your goals, you can also add a button by dragging over the Button element:

And that finishes up our basic heading section!

Next, on our list, we need to create a feature list section that tells people the key features

of our product.

Thankfully, Elementor includes an element that's absolutely perfect for this.

To use it, let's first create a three column section to house our three features:

From there, we can use the Icon Box element under the General Elements section:

Put an icon box in each column.

Then, all you need to do is customize the text and icon for each feature:

And that wraps up our feature list!

Easy peasy.

The Image Box element is also another good option for this section if you'd like to

use your own images instead of icons.

And that wraps up our feature list! Easy peasy.

Next, up, let's build our "About" section.

This one is pretty flexible as far as design goes.

If you're not sure where to start, a good option is an offset two-column design:

On the left side, let's put an image by dragging over the Image element.

Then, we can use Heading and Text Editor elements to write some basic about text.

And we're almost done with our launch page!

Building an email opt-in section is a little tricky with the free version of Elementor

because it doesn't include a dedicated form element.

If you purchase the Pro version, you can create all types of forms just by dragging over the

Form element.

But to create an opt-in form with the free version of Elementor, we'll need to get

creative with a third-party plugin.

I'll use the free OptinEngine plugin in this video, but you can use any plugin that

lets you insert opt-in forms with a shortcode.

First, you'll need to create a form in the OptinEngine interface:

Then, create a new section in Elementor and add the Shortcode element:

Paste the shortcode of your OptinEngine form into the box:

You won't see your form in Elementor's interface quite yet.

But once you publish your page, you will see the form on the front-end.

And that's pretty much it for our basic product launch page!

In the end, here's another look at our final product:

the colors could certainly be enhanced. I'm not actually a professional designer!.

But all in all, we were able to build a product launch page with Elementor without looking

at a single line of code.

And that's pretty awesome!

If you want to make it your main page, all you need to do is set up a static homepage

after publishing it...

Remember, to create an exact duplicate of the WordPress Product Launch Page in this

video, all you need is the free version of Elementor,

our free Hestia WordPress theme,

and the free OptinEngine plugin, or any other shortcode-based opt-in plugin.

For more infomation >> Product Launch Page: How To Build A Launch Page With FREE Resources - Duration: 18:21.

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How To Build A Business - Broken Down And Explained... - Duration: 10:42.

hey hey how you doing this is Erin Chen hope you're doing well if you're

watching this video right now then you're probably doing a bit of research

on YouTube about how to build a business okay so you want to build a business you

don't really know how you're searching for for ideas some strategies well I'm

about to share that with you over the next few minutes in this video okay so

who am i if this is the first time that you're watching one of my videos my name

is Erin Chen I'm an online entrepreneur been building businesses online for the

last nine years eight of those nine years though I failed really miserably

okay had a lot of failure was hitting roadblock after roadblock so I know a

thing or two about not doing very well when it comes to the world of building a

business okay so over the last year though I had some tremendous success in

my business was able to generate over a thousand sales so if there's somebody

that can give you some advice on how to get started and how to avoid some of the

pitfalls that comes with building a business that I'm probably the right

person to do that okay so what are the next few minutes in this video I'm going

to share some of those strategies with you and I'm gonna tell you exactly how

you can get started today if that's what you want to do okay so first of all it's

important to understand some of the options out there okay in terms of

building a business right and I'll just kind of tell you my story because I

think this will hit home with a lot of you guys especially if this is the first

time that you're building a business okay building a business is actually not

that complicated to get started it's actually very easy all you really have

to do is decide what type of business you want to build that's the most

complicated part you know initially of the whole process right and you have to

decide whether you want to do something online or offline that's the major thing

that you need to think about and the way that I started is I enjoy cooking very

much okay and I decided that I wish aliy nine years ago I would say nine ten

years ago now I decided that I wanted to start a restaurant so I saved up a lot

of money I worked really really hard and then before I open the restaurant I

did a bit of research and I kind of laid all the things out you know what did

what did I need how much money was I gonna need to spend you know what kind

of food was I gonna you know have in my restaurant and all that kind of stuff

right and I I did the calculations and it worked out that I needed roughly

about three hundred thousand dollars okay three hundred thousand US dollars

that came up two at the time it came up to about 1 million over

wringing of my money right because I'm from Malaysia ok and so that was a ton

of money ok and I was thinking to myself well there is no way that I'm gonna be

able to come up with a million ringgit three hundred thousand dollars by myself

right you know I had a I had a third of that money I had a hundred thousand

dollars in the bank at the time which was pretty good actually I had saved up

really hard for my job right but I literally had to put all of that into

you know the business and I had to take a loan from the bank a business loan I

had to take a loan of 200,000 put in 100,000 and it was just a lot of money

right because if you build a traditional business you know like a restaurant a

brick-and-mortar business way you've got you know an office or you have some sort

of like you know a brick-and-mortar facility where you've you've got to pay

the rent and you've got to do construction and you've got to plan the

place out you got a highest staff you have to pay

insurance you have to train all your people you have to get you know the the

kitchen apparatus you've got to you know get all the tools the frying pans the

fridges you know all the equipment the ovens and then all the food that goes

along with it that's perishable and you have to do pay that every single month I

mean that's why brick-and-mortar businesses are so damn expensive you

know and so I thought about it and I was like man I could do it

but I don't know if it's worth it right because not only do you have to pay for

all that stuff and take a loan you also have to have enough money to pay a

rental every single month to last you a whole year because remember you're not

gonna be successful in the first couple of months no no no restaurant businesses

take you at least six months to twelve months for you to even break even okay

on the months so it was a long and hard slog so traditional business if you're

doing traditional business then that's that's kind of how it goes and you need

to have enough money to last you that amount of time okay if you've never

thought about it then well now this is something that you have to think about

okay so I thought about it and I thought okay traditional business is is not

worth it because no matter what kind of traditional business I build whether

it's a consultancy or you know a franchise on my own in a restaurant or I

don't know a faxing company or printing company it's still brick and mortar and

it still all has similar type of costs okay so then I thought about it and I

was like well what about if I went online you know at that time this was

again nine years ago now the online industry was very very young you know

there really wasn't that much that wasn't there wasn't many affiliate

marketing businesses there wasn't much internet marketing you know it was there

but it was very low-key and and you know Google was still very strong at that

time and you know Facebook was was not really around at that time

and so I was like well maybe I can you know figure out how to make some money

online and that's kind of how I gravitated towards the online market I

started in network marketing I built a network marketing MLM business

right and that's kind of my that was my first kind of you know entry into

building a business right and I built basically a network marketing business

online and yes there were costs of course because with every business

there's going to be some startup costs right it doesn't matter what you're

doing okay you have to have some seed money you have to be willing to invest

into your business and with the network marketing I had to invest in that

network marketing company I had to spend roughly about you know a thousand

dollars get into that business and then I had to set up my business online and

with any online business there are ongoing costs right like you have to

spend money on traffic to get your leads you have to spend money on your funnel

building software because you have to have some sort of promotional you know

software that you can build all your websites and platforms off right so you

have to invest in that you have to invest in tracking because you have to

track all your stuff right and so these were the ongoing cost of three and your

autoresponder of course because there's you need to collect leads and you have

to you know have a way to email them and build a relationship with them on a

regular basis so these were the I would say three to four things that I have to

spend money on on a regular basis right so that's what I did nine years ago and

I got started and the way that I learned how to do it to be honest was really

just investing in a lot of courses and you know picking very strategically what

are some of the courses that I needed to invest in and what what are the skills

that I needed to learn. That's how to build a business. Also what are the skills that I needed to improve on and

then I would go on find that information and then if I thought it was worth it I

would have invest money in that business or that cost to teach me a particular

skill set for me to improve right so for example I needed how to send emails well

I needed how to drive I needed to learn how to drive traffic right I needed how

to I needed to learn how to do webinars for example I needed to learn how to do

videos for example yeah and so these were some of the courses that I would

and invest money on and improve my skill set and that's kind of how I got started

okay and then that's how you really start to learn how to build a business

basically you first have to figure out are you gonna do a traditional are you

gonna do it online once you've decided on which way you're gonna go I mean for

me is a no-brainer you know you totally want to do it online okay because with

it online but the cost is a lot lower you can scale your business you can use

technology and software to scale the business you don't have to hire people

if you don't want to you can be a one-man show right or one-woman show

okay and then you can decide on what kind of business you you grow from there

but initially you know that's kind of what you want to do and you want to

decide you know what kind of business do you want to build online you want to

build an affiliate marketing business do you want to create your own products you

know do you want to build an Amazon business or an eBay business I mean

there's so many different things you can do okay so you need to kind of decide on

all those little things and then once you decide on that you have to invest

money and time on the tools that you need to start the business okay and then

invest in invest in training that will actually teach you how to do that stuff

right so I'm just reaching home so I'm just seeing all these different people

that I know I know this person as well so so that's kind of what you have to do

right and and then once you get those things invest in those skills and then

once you learn how to do it that's kind of how you that's kind of how you set up

your business okay and then it's it's really about trial and error at that

point it's really about learning what to do learning from your mistakes taking

lots and lots of action okay and then once you've taken a lot of action you

just kind of track your results and that's kind of you know that's kind of

how you you get going in your business sorry that there's not much light here

it's really really dark I've just come into my garage sorry about that but okay

so I'm just gonna kind of finish up the video here but that's kind of how you

can start a business you know if you really want to learn how to do it okay

and if you want to find out a little bit more about you know what I'm doing and

how I've been able to you know build my business then I'd like to show you

exactly how to do that okay so if you want to you can click on the link right

below this video it's my link it's gonna lead you to my

website I'm gonna talk a little bit more on that page right about how I actually

built my affiliate marketing business so if online business interests you at all

and you want to take this to the next step that I want to show you how to do

that okay that's if that's if you want to do it okay and on the next page

you're gonna have to put in your best email address and I'm gonna send you

actually a free training course I'm just gonna show you step by step how I build

my business online all right so let me know what you thought in the comments

below did this help you at all did you get some aha moments sort of going off

in your head and let me know what kind of business you're gonna build I'd love

to hear about that and let me know about some of your successes because I also

want to know about your successes too alright so I hope you enjoyed this video on how to build a business

today and I'll speak to you very very soon this is Erin Chen

signing out take care