I believe this new customer profile template is more useful than any other I’ve come across.

The reason I believe this is because it’s not only one of the more thorough templates I’ve seen, but more importantly, I actually show you how to get the information to do your customer profiling.

That part is incredibly helpful because many of the profile fields won’t just get filled in from your head – you need to find the information somewhere, and that can be tricky.

On top of that, I’ll be giving you several customer profile examples throughout the lesson, so it’s not just theory.

So what is a customer profile?

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Note: These are NOT affiliate links. All of these are services I have used myself or implemented for clients.

Another note: You don’t have to use any of these services, so please don’t get overwhelmed by the list. I’m here to simplify your business, not make you think you need to start doing more. But what’s nice about this list is that there may be an item or two here that can make your life a lot easier.

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Here’s my minimalist office:

It consists of:

• Laptop
• Laptop table with wireless keyboard and mouse (a chiropractor told me I needed to get my screen up at eye level)
• High speed modem (fiber optic!)
• Printer/scanner/copier (for a long time I got by with going to the library to print, but it happens frequently enough, and printers are so cheap, that I bought one last year)

It doesn’t consist of:

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Do you like to be at home alone?

Working away on your latest project?

I do.

Sometimes I get lonely and go to a cafe and pretend the other coffee sippers are my friends and that we have coffee parties together.

But mostly, I like working at home alone. It’s simple.

So if you prefer to run your business without hiring outside help, that’s entirely fine.

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Do you answer all of the emails that come in?

Obviously you answer the really important ones and you don’t answer the spam, but I mean the ones in between, the unsolicited ones you don’t really have to answer, but could and might even get some small benefit from answering.

Here are two extreme ways to handle these emails:

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How many products/services do you offer?

1? 10? 100? 1,000? 10,000?

If you’re interested in minimalist business, I probably don’t have to tell you that less may be a better fit for you than more.

For each product/service you offer, ask:

• Is it making me sufficient profit to continue offering it, or does it have potential?
• Or is it providing me with some peace of mind that makes it otherwise worthwhile?

(Yes, these are the same questions I ask when looking at my expenses and assets).

Here’s how it works for my business.

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If you have $5000 of business expenses every month, you need to bring in $5000 to break even.

If you decrease that to $4000 of expenses, you can go for a hike every afternoon instead of working, or drop that indecisive client, or pay yourself $1000 more.

We spend so much time thinking about how to bring in more revenue that we often forget that minimalizing our expenses is often one of the fastest ways to minimalize our businesses.

Here’s how I go about doing that.

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For most of us, if there’s a chocolate bar in the house, it won’t be there for long, because our hand-mouth coordination is flawless when it comes to chocolate.

Our ability to abstain from food is no match for our cravings – especially our emotional cravings, which often manifest as multiple squares of chocolate falling from the cupboard into our mouths.

Fortunately, there’s a solution that’s quite effective:

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Let’s say you provide some type of service for people – like design, writing, coaching or consulting.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could wake up every morning, spend a few hours serving clients, spend another hour sending out emails to potential clients, and then take the rest of the day to live your life before it’s all over?

Guess what, you CAN!

Doing more tasks doesn’t necessarily make you more successful.

Being all over social media and blogging can be great for some businesses and a waste of time for others.

As I discussed in Part 1, what’s most important is to do fewer tasks, focusing only on the intersection of tasks that make you money and bring you enjoyment/fulfillment.

Here are some examples.

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I believe minimalizing your daily tasks is the most important aspect of minimalizing your business.

That doesn’t mean you only work an hour or two every day (unless you want to), but it does mean you focus on only a small number of achievable goals every day.

Some people will tell you that you need to be everywhere with your marketing – all the major social media platforms, pay-per-click, written/audio/video, and so on.

Or even if they don’t tell you that, you may see some of the people you admire who are everywhere, and therefore think you need to be everywhere yourself.

But here’s the thing.

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