Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 45 - This Entrepreneur’s 4hr/Month Business
Synopsis:
Imagine taking nearly the entire summer off while your business keeps running—and growing.
In this Peaceful Profits success story, Icelandic-American entrepreneur and author Bjorvin Benediktsson shares how he streamlined multiple ventures into a single, high-ticket offer, automated his marketing, and built a business that requires just four hours a month to manage.
With insights from the Peaceful Profits coaching program with Mike Shreeve, B reveals how he increased pricing confidence, attracted committed clients, and designed a truly “peaceful” business model.
Transcript:
Peaceful Profits Review: This Entrepreneur’s 4hr/Month Business
[00:00:00] Jessica: Hello, Peaceful Profits nation, Jessica here with an exciting client spotlight episode for you today. Today we are talking to our client Bjorvin Benediktsson. Did I get it right? But we just call him B. B is an Icelandic. Icelandic American author, entrepreneur, and educator. He helps creative people transform their skills into income, grow their online business with digital products and systematize their marketing to free up [00:00:30] their time.
[00:00:30] Jessica: He's been a marketing strategist and mentor to multiple businesses, serves as a venture advisor at the McGuire center for entrepreneurship at the university of Arizona, and has been a guest speaker for four At Phoenix startup week, SAE Institute, Madrid, and the 10 West impact festival. That's amazing.
[00:00:50] Jessica: He's also the founder of audio issues. com or audio dash issues. com, where he has taught thousands of music producers how to make a bigger impact with their music. [00:01:00] Since 2009. And he's also the CEO of Arizona baking company, which sells uniquely Southwestern mesquite chocolate chip cookie mixes, which reminds me, I haven't gotten any of those yet.
[00:01:12] Jessica: His latest book, you get what you give teaches creative people, the mindset that takes the sleaze out of marketing and selling the success strategies for overcoming imposter syndrome and the entrepreneurial principles needed to launch a profitable business. Welcome B.
[00:01:28] Bjorvin: Thank you. for having me. This [00:01:30] is exciting.
[00:01:30] Bjorvin: Yeah.
[00:01:31] Jessica: Very excited to have you on and talk through all of this. We've talked a lot over since you joined the program and I feel like we're catching up again. So this is awesome. So to start out, I would love for you to tell me about your greatest recent business. When can you just tell us what's been going on in your business lately?
[00:01:50] Bjorvin: It's funny to talk about it as a win from a business standpoint because it's almost the absence of business, but it's now August [00:02:00] 12th and I took almost the entire summer off. Amazing.
[00:02:04] Bjorvin: I went to Iceland for a month. I have a daughter, she's 18 months. Now I have an actual purpose in life. Not just like twiddling my thumbs, throwing things at the wall.
[00:02:15] Bjorvin: It's easier for me to put importance on what I want her to experience and being half Icelandic means that I feel like she should learn Icelandic and understand the culture. So being in Iceland for a month [00:02:30] was a huge, and I worked I I, because my business is online. I basically did minimal maintenance work.
[00:02:40] Bjorvin: My assistant took care of, most of the social media stuff. And I had a couple of affiliate promotions where. It was just a handful of emails that I sent, a few hours. So I had a four hour work month. That's
[00:02:55] Jessica: incredible. Congratulations.
[00:02:58] Bjorvin: So that was, [00:03:00] that's, I think it goes back to like why we do, I don't think anybody goes into entrepreneurship or business so that they can work themselves to death.
[00:03:08] Bjorvin: I think there should be a higher purpose and and Mike says it in a variation of this of you want to work to be able to live and do what you want to do, whatever that is. And so it was great to go to Iceland for a month. And then we traveled a little bit around the state here and I just got to do a little bit [00:03:30] of, just ha I had my lifeline in case things went wrong.
[00:03:33] Bjorvin: Spoiler alert, nothing never really wrong. So that's fine. And so that's, the biggest win was like, having the business so that you can do something like that.
[00:03:45] Jessica: So I remember that when we first started our calls, when you first joined the program, that was a big goal of yours to be able to take that time off and be able to spend summers in Iceland or, wherever your home base is in Arizona, but you also have family in Iceland, right?
[00:03:58] Jessica: Being able to do that. [00:04:00] So what has changed since you. How have things changed or what was able, what have you done that's been able to allow you to do that?
[00:04:11] Bjorvin: A lot of it has, because the type of business model that the quote unquote help industry has is like you structure it. There's low ticket, there's high ticket, there's things in between, of course.
[00:04:25] Bjorvin: And I never was I never did like real high ticket stuff. [00:04:30] So it allowed me to think through what a high ticket offer what is I didn't want to be the type of guy that just promotes the same course and just increases the price and no added value. Like I, now I've restructured a lot of the stuff that I already have.
[00:04:45] Bjorvin: And now I use that as support the support program. And then I add handholding feedback one on one, coaching onto that. And that just increases the [00:05:00] perceived value of what I have to offer. And so that's helped me a lot, giving me confidence to be like, yeah, no this is what it costs because I, you also have to think through, what kind of lifestyle do you want?
[00:05:12] Bjorvin: What do you want out of it? What in numbers does that mean? Like how many clients do you need? If you're going to sell a. 7 book or 50 program. And you want to make real money. That's a lot, that's a lot of selling on a hustle. And it's exhausting. I'd rather [00:05:30] take a handful of really committed, high level people that like want to invest in themselves and like willing to take the time and aren't just Dabbling it, it acts as allowing yourself to become the person to serve other people at a higher level make, it's an interesting sort of paradigm shift that allows you to be like, Oh I'm going to serve, I'm going to serve people that are like committed, that aren't just gonna.
[00:05:57] Bjorvin: Dabble and take a look at your [00:06:00] stuff and then not do anything with it. They meet you at the highest level and are willing to do the work. So that the offer stuff in the prop and the program and the Peaceful Profits program is very like life changing. I can, I'll just say that. It breaks your imposter syndrome of no, you just have to think about your offers from a different perspective, but you have to guarantee your results.
[00:06:23] Bjorvin: And so you have to really know what you're good at. What you can help people with and what you can [00:06:30] what you can do over and over again you being successful, if you're successful by a fluke, that's really hard for you to turn around and help other people achieve that.
[00:06:39] Jessica: Yeah.
[00:06:39] Jessica: Yeah. So you created a high ticket offer. You didn't really have a high ticket offer before you came into the program.
[00:06:45] Bjorvin: No. And I, no, not, no not at all, actually. And now I just, it's just easier for me to sell high ticket offers and because you don't need to sell that many of them, you don't need that many clients.
[00:06:58] Bjorvin: And because I did all the [00:07:00] groundwork on all the sort of low and medium ticket offers, I actually have all that to fall back on. And I can run. I can, I can repackage and create another front end offers. And I have a lot of front end offers, which is great. So I have like highly diversified income streams, which is great.
[00:07:19] Bjorvin: And I recommend that for everyone to have. One thing that you do at a high level that like really makes it worth it. And then everything else can like pad, [00:07:30] pad your income in that way. Whether that's courses, books, or, small membership sites or
[00:07:35] Jessica: stuff. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I noticed on your journey as you've been going through the program is.
[00:07:42] Jessica: Is that you came in with a lot of different business ventures. And like you just said, you have lots of different things going on. I listed off several of them in the beginning of this. And so how have you been able to streamline things or just create more, a more peaceful business? What are the kinds of things that you're doing to [00:08:00] make sure that.
[00:08:01] Jessica: All of those are still running. And, but that they're more peaceful business for you.
[00:08:05] Bjorvin: So going back to the offer and because I'm still working on that, like I'm still tweaking that because like when you're do coaching and when you're do like in depth help with other people, You learn from them as much as you were teaching them how to do stuff.
[00:08:18] Bjorvin: And that, that you put that back into the program or whatnot. And I see that with you guys all the time, adding stuff and things like that. But what Peaceful Profits helped me With [00:08:30] was getting over my sort of split personality disorder because I was trying to be this mentor business coach on this play and this side, and then be this audio engineer, mixing authority on this other side.
[00:08:44] Bjorvin: And I just recently, I just decided to abandon the sort of personal brand business coaching mentorship thing. thing and just assimilate that and assimilate that knowledge and that value [00:09:00] that I can bring to the audio musician and producer audience, because, the audio industry is an industry.
[00:09:07] Bjorvin: The music industry is an industry and it means people, people make money and things and money changes hands. People need to learn the business side and marketing side and storytelling and inbound marketing. All the things that I love talking about. So that just allows me to create that, top level offer where I solve bigger problems and more problems to the audience that I [00:09:30] already have.
[00:09:30] Bjorvin: Now. That might, there might not be as many of them as opposed, more people will buy a 5 book than a 5, 000 coaching program, obviously. But it's it allows me to. To not trying to be two different people at the same time and trying to build another brand or another list or whatever.
[00:09:50] Bjorvin: I just, I get to talk about what I get to talk about and people that don't want anything to do with how they'll just self select out and that's fine with me. [00:10:00] Yeah. One of the things that you learn in this, on this journey As an entrepreneur in general is that you actually get to choose who you work with and you don't and if you like hate If you hate your business because it's such a chore job it's it's up to you to change it and you have the power to do that and it might be scary and there might be you might have to cut your losses somewhere, but I think it's taught me a lot about where I can offer value and where my like You [00:10:30] where my combined skillset lies.
[00:10:33] Bjorvin: Like I don't want to be this mixing authority all the time. I want to be the mixing authority. I want to, what's the Dilbert creator, Kevin Scott Adams. He says I'm not a great cartoonist. I'm not a great business person. I'm not a great this, but combined I'm like a singular like unique person.
[00:10:50] Bjorvin: And that's, I want to combine my things into something serves people at a high level.
[00:10:56] Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. I think [00:11:00] combining your personalities, that's a very good analogy for you to combine your split personalities. Cause I, I do remember in the beginning, when we talked to you had the coaching business, like the business coaching, but then you had the audio on the side or both of them going.
[00:11:16] Jessica: So you've combined them all into one, which is amazing. And you have, so now you have You have the book, right? That's leading in, but then you were just telling me also about your, you created another offering on the front end as well.
[00:11:29] Bjorvin: [00:11:30] I've been, so there's this constant, there's this thing called equalization in in the audio industry, music industry, it's, you change the frequency responses of instruments and things like that.
[00:11:40] Bjorvin: And EQ is complex. It's like a very audio engineering sort of thing. And but I, like I'm familiar with that. I know it very well. I know how, I know what frequencies sound like. I can tell you when things have too much, a certain frequency when it comes to mixing, because that's just, that's my training.
[00:11:57] Bjorvin: So I wrote a book on [00:12:00] EQ. Years ago, and then I expanded on that book with a course and then, a book plus a course increases the perceived value. You can sell that at a higher level. And then now in partnership with a company, I created an EQ plugin that sort of translates the frequency spectrum into, the jargon that we all use as audio engineers, when something sounds harsh or something sounds muddy.
[00:12:24] Bjorvin: Or boxy or things like that. And so I just created a plugin that just tells you, here's where [00:12:30] those sounds are. So it makes you, it makes it so much easier, faster and it's intuitive to, to make your music sound better. It's just that's become like one of my best selling front end offers because it's software education and reference material that, that gives, helps people save time and all that.
[00:12:51] Bjorvin: Yeah. And I launched that in May and which made about 25, 000. 25 to 30, 000 in a week.
[00:12:59] Jessica: Amazing.
[00:12:59] Bjorvin: [00:13:00] So that was the ads.
[00:13:00] Jessica: Yeah.
[00:13:01] Bjorvin: Facebook ads. No, just the launch to the
[00:13:03] Jessica: launch, just to your list.
[00:13:05] Bjorvin: Yeah. And now it's, it's I have retargeting ads running on that. And then, I do a lot of inbound marketing, both still do.
[00:13:13] Bjorvin: The lead magnets through the site and stuff like that, because I can't be bothered to hunt all that down and change that. And then I sell the mixing book as well. Huh. And then that all leads to, either, either you buy the, It's like EQ plugin and the EQ [00:13:30] stuff or the other handful of front end offers, courses, programs that I have, or if you want to take it to the next level and actually become quote unquote successful monetarily or create an authority for you online or know how to work the inbound marketing and creating those marketing systems online that, you, everybody in the Peaceful Profits program and Peaceful Profits in general is very good at, and so it's just like the step value ladder of people get into [00:14:00] your ecosystem. They get to know you better. They trust you enough to buy your food. Yeah. cheap products and then until you help them more and to the point where it becomes obvious that you're the person that they can, that you can help them with the next step of their journey.
[00:14:15] Jessica: But your premium, your high ticket offer, It's you have one main core coaching offer now, right? Everything is leading toward that. And you've worked all the way through to make sure that all of your front end, various front end offers are leading up to that. And that's the ultimate [00:14:30] thing now.
[00:14:30] Jessica: And not having the split personalities anymore of having multiple like audiences or anything, everything's leading to that one thing.
[00:14:36] Bjorvin: Yeah. And I've been testing that a lot. I've been doing one on ones with a handful of people.
[00:14:41] Jessica: Yeah.
[00:14:42] Bjorvin: And then I've been trying to streamline how I could do it.
[00:14:46] Bjorvin: In a sort of a hybrid, maybe a group situation. Yeah. So a lot of it's like the same structure and content, but but having it be more efficient and more scalable and I think, I also believe that people can people don't Only [00:15:00] after learn from me, they can, they should be able to learn from other people in the group that are at a similar level because perspective, getting different perspectives is great.
[00:15:08] Jessica: Yeah and that of course makes it more peaceful also. When you don't have to be the only person that's the one providing all of the advice and everything. Yeah. Wonderful. Okay. So can you tell our audience, what is the number one piece of advice that you would like to share to others who are working through this process of, I know you, [00:15:30] you talked about overhauling your offers a bit and increasing prices, feeling confident about selling that high ticket offer, streamlining things, just all of that.
[00:15:37] Jessica: All of it. Do you have one, one number one piece of advice that you'd like to share?
[00:15:42] Bjorvin: Yeah, I think so. If you're, if you're a new member of Peaceful Profits or considering joining or whatnot I think you should spend a good chunk of the time on the offer. Really think that offer and audience.
[00:15:57] Bjorvin: And which is basically is [00:16:00] product market fit, right? That's just a different way of saying that because you want to know, because and one of the, one thing that Mike says on occasion is you don't want to hate your audience because it's, it gets miserable. And which is also why I'm like adding for the, obviously fewer.
[00:16:16] Bjorvin: That want to do something other than dabble. I have stuff for the dabblers, but you can't turn everybody into an entrepreneur, and, but having an offer that caters to those that want to be is key to you [00:16:30] not, hating your audience. So I would spend maybe an a lopsided amount on the offer before you start doing all the inbound or outbound stuff.
[00:16:40] Bjorvin: Because if you don't have your offer nailed down or your niche nailed down, you're gonna, it's going to get harder for you to find early success. And it's going to make the program not as enjoyable to go through. And I was lucky because I had an audience and I had, types of [00:17:00] offers. So this was a great way of structuring or figuring out and giving me the confidence to work.
[00:17:05] Bjorvin: have bigger ones.
[00:17:06] Jessica: Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much. That's wonderful advice. So to wrap up, how can our listeners find out more about you and what you're up to?
[00:17:17] Bjorvin: Yeah. I did write a book called you get what you give, like you said earlier, it is a business parable. So anybody who's read, The Go Giver or Built to Sell.
[00:17:28] Bjorvin: So those are business books, [00:17:30] but they're written as a fictional story. So it's almost like a novel. So I thought. that there should be one for musicians. So I wrote that, but it's a business book, but the protagonist is, a music producer. So it's a little more rock and roll than suit and tie, but so that's somewhere to check me out. If you like are interested in that, or you think, I happen to work in an industry that's considered cool. So if you like business or want to know more about business, you get what you give is fun to read. I've been [00:18:00] told I was I got sick of writing it at the end there but that's at you get what you give book.com. If you are interested in audio production, mixing and things like that, there is audio-issues.com that you can check out. I am. I'm on occasionally on medium. I'm on LinkedIn. But if you are also in, if you're if you're younger and have yet to become a junior in college, I also am a mentor at the university of Arizona.
[00:18:29] Bjorvin: So if you [00:18:30] want one of the best entrepreneurship college university programs in the country, the McGuire center for entrepreneurship program at the at the University of Arizona is where you can find me too. And I can be your mentor there.
[00:18:43] Jessica: Wonderful. Thank you so much, B. It was awesome to talk to you again.
[00:18:47] Jessica: And yeah, we will talk again soon. I hope.
[00:18:50] Bjorvin: Sounds good. Yeah.
[00:18:52] Jessica: so much.