Transcription
In this video, I'm going to give you the playbook that I use to earn a six-figure salary on a part-time schedule just by sharing what I know. I'll give you the three must-have systems. I'll tell you how they all work together to create a profitable business for solopreneurs like me and you. And I'll give you the two biggest mistakes that I see solopreneurs making that actually causes them to lose money.
By the way, if we haven't met yet, my name is Cindy and I left my last full-time day job in 2011 to strike out on my own as a virtual assistant. In my years as a VA, I worked with six- and seven-figure online business owners. I wrote sales copy. I created course materials. I wrangled their technology. I helped out with their customer service. I was a Jane of all trades. Finally, I left the virtual assistant world behind to branch out on my own and create training for solopreneurs like you so you could get a peek behind the scenes at how a profitable online business actually runs and what those solopreneurs are actually doing with their time.
One thing that they do differently is they keep things simple. Despite what it might look like, their operations are very, very simple. They have three systems that you can replicate starting with visibility. Most of the people watching this video right now, probably you, never heard of me before today, maybe, or maybe before a couple of weeks ago. I was invisible to you. You are invisible to most of your potential customers, too. So your number one job as a small business owner is to be more visible. Back when I got started online, we didn't call it visibility, we called it traffic, but it's the same thing. And there are three ways that you can create traffic or visibility in your business. We call them the three B's.
The first B is you can build it. You do that by creating content. You start a YouTube channel or a podcast or write a blog or a Substack. Any of those things allow you to build an audience organically. The second B stands for borrow. That is when you work together with another small business owner and you borrow some of their visibility. I do this in my business by creating collaborations with other creators or by being an affiliate for someone else or by guest posting on their blog or appearing as a guest on their podcast. There are a lot of different ways that you can borrow traffic or borrow visibility. The third B stands for buy. This is when you purchase ad space either on Facebook or Instagram or maybe Google or you purchase an ad spot in a newsletter or you purchase a solo send to someone's email list. All of those are ways that you can buy traffic.
One thing that all of these systems, all of these the three B's have in common is you have to be willing to be visible. If I could give you one piece of advice about that, I would say dance like no one is watching. Be your beautiful, creative, amazing self. That's what the world needs from you and that will make it easier for you to stand out even in the most crowded of niches. So here's what you need to do. Choose how you're going to be visible to your potential audience and give this at least 50% of your time. At least 50% of your working hours should go towards being more visible to your potential audience. It is the most important thing you can do.
The next system that I have set up in my business is list building. Now I know email gets a bad rap. There's a lot of people who don't like email. There's a lot of people who call every email that lands in their inbox spam. I get it. I really do. But you should know as a small business owner that 90% of Americans over the age of 15 use email and 99% of them check email every single day. They're in their inbox every single day. 58% of email users check email first thing in the morning. They pick up their phone. They're reading their email probably before they even get out of bed. Now you might think they're checking social media, but it turns out only 14% of social media users are checking social media first thing in the morning. That makes email so much better than social media for marketing your small business. Not only that, but the return on investment for email has always been right around $38 per $1 spent. So for every dollar that you spend, every dollar of effort you put into email, you're getting $38 back on average. That is a phenomenal return.
You can think of your email list like this. It's a way to move the sales conversation to a more private room. So if you think about visibility as being a billboard on the highway for a car dealership, maybe, email is you sitting down with a salesperson to actually talk about buying a car. One of those is a lot more likely to end in a sale. Now it doesn't take anything fancy to build an email list. You need two things. The first thing that you need is an email platform. That can be anything. I personally like Kit, but you could use MailerLite or AWeber or Constant Contact, any number of applications all do the same thing. They all have pretty decent deliverability. Don't spend a whole ton of time trying to figure out which one to use and comparing options. Just pick the one that you like and go with it. That's the first thing you need. The second thing you need is a lead magnet. A lead magnet is what you are giving new subscribers in exchange for their email address. I have three rules when it comes to creating lead magnets. Rule number one, it must be quick to consume. It must also be actionable. They have to get something out of it, not just pure information, but actual action steps that they can take to make some problem that they are facing better. And the third thing is it must move your new subscriber one step closer to paying you. That means it needs to have a call to action. It needs to have some way that they can pay you after they have downloaded or accessed your lead magnet.
So how does this work? You're out on the internet. You're spending 50% of your time creating content online. All of that content must point to either your lead magnet, I'm going to say 95% of it should point to your lead magnet, and or a sales page somewhere. There should be a call to action in all of your content. Either to your lead magnet or to a sales page, preferably to your lead magnet. Remember you want to move that sales conversation into a more private space. Now this next point may sound really obvious, but you have to actually email your list. And this is a mistake that I made for a long time. I had an email list. I had a couple of hundred people on it. I never emailed them. I never emailed them because I thought I didn't have anything to say. I didn't email them because I thought somebody else had already said what I was going to say only better. I didn't email them because I didn't want to bother them. I didn't email them because I hadn't emailed them in so long and now what was I going to say? Don't do that. Email your list at least once a week as a bare minimum. More is better. I have gone years with emailing my list every day, but if you can do once a week, you're going to be in a really good space with email. Email really is your most profitable tool as a solopreneur. It's your community and it gives you access to that community's inbox every time you send an email. It is not dependent on some social media algorithm. It cannot be taken away from you on the whim of a faceless corporation. And if you treat your email list well, they will return the favor.
The third system that every small business needs is a system for making sales. Not long after the pandemic started, my husband and I were shopping for a car. And if you remember, there were supply chain issues during that time. Ships weren't shipping, docking, whatever ships do. They weren't unloading. Car parts couldn't be had. And the car lots were empty. The car dealerships were certainly visible. We could see them. We were aware of them. They had sales people ready to have a sales conversation. They didn't have any inventory. Their lots were empty. A lot of solopreneurs have empty lots, too. They don't have anything to sell. You may have a an idea that you want to start a business, but if you don't have something to sell, no one can pay you. So what are you going to sell? I have three questions that will answer that for you. The first question is, what problem do you solve? Make it really specific. Do you solve the problem of dirty houses? Do you solve the problem of someone who desperately wants to learn to play the piano and doesn't know where to start? Or maybe you're like me and you solve the problem of overwhelmed solopreneurs who can't manage to keep their business running without ruining their life.
Once you know what problem you solve, the next question is, who do you solve it for? And it's really important that you're very specific here as well. The inclination is to say, well, I solve this problem for everyone. But that's not true. And if you try to make it true, what ends up happening is you solve this problem for no one. So maybe you solve the problem of a dirty house for busy working moms. Maybe you solve the problem of someone who wants to learn to play the piano for retirees who always wanted to learn when they were little and never had the time. Or maybe you solve the problem of overwhelmed solopreneurs for solopreneurs who want their life back, who are tired of giving every minute and every day to their business. And then the third question is, how do you solve this problem? There are three ways that you can solve a problem. There is done for you, there is done with you, and there is DIY. Those are the three options when we're talking about online businesses. Done for you is exactly what it says. I will do this thing for you. I will clean your house. I will run your business. It doesn't stand up in all situations. You can't really say I will play the piano for you. It kind of defeats the purpose. But done for you works in a lot of solopreneur situations. The second one is done with you. That's coaching or consulting. I will walk you through how to do this. I will be there to hold your hand and guide you along the way. I am doing it with you. And then the third way is the DIY method where I will teach you how to do it. It's more hands-off. Think digital courses. I will show you how to keep your house clean in an hour a week. I will show you how to play the piano. I will show you how not to be overwhelmed with your solopreneur business. If you can answer those three questions, then you have a viable product to sell.
How do you sell that? Well, you just need a simple sales funnel. Don't overcomplicate this. All you need are people coming into your mailing list and you've already got that. You've got content out there as your visibility engine. People are joining your mailing list. Now you can email them and say, "Hey, I have this offer. I am offering to clean houses for 50% off or I have a new piano course taking shape. How would you like to get on the waitlist?" Or I have a membership over at Six Figure Systems where you can find out how other solopreneurs are running their business more profitably and with less effort. That's how you sell. You don't have to have a complicated funnel. You don't need tripwires and SMS messages and retargeting ads and bump orders and all of those things. You just need a very simple email series. That's it.
There are two really big mistakes that I see solopreneurs making all the time. And if you make these mistakes, they will kill your sales. It is not an exaggeration. Mistake number one is wanting to add more before what you already have has a chance to work. This is what happens. Someone starts something new. Maybe they launch a new product. Maybe they're launching a whole new business and they begin promoting it and they're not making any sales. And when we go to look at their stats, we see that they've had 10 views on the sales page. It's not that the product doesn't work. It's that you don't have enough data. So don't give up on something. Don't be quick to shift to the next thing until you've given the current thing enough time to actually work. And I'm going to tell you it's going to take more time than you would like it to take. It's It's a sad reality of business that it will take more time than you want it to take. But you have to give it that time to work before you jump to the next thing. Otherwise, you're starting from scratch every week or every two weeks. And that's not a way to build a profitable business. So give your products, give your offers time to work.
The second big mistake that I see people make blows my mind. They make it hard for people to give them money. I know, it sounds crazy, right? But what happens is they try to be coy. They try to be clever. They try to, I don't know, maybe pretend they're not in business to make money. I don't know what they're doing. They hide the buy button at the bottom of a PS that they send once a month instead of being out there and making offers and telling people, "Hey, I have a solution to this problem that you are facing." People need to be told how to purchase, how to give you money. Don't be shy about it. Give them the answer that they need. Tell them how to give you money.
So the sales system part of your business is really very, very simple. Figure out what problem you solve, who you solve it for, and how you solve it, and then start telling people this is what you do. You can tell them in your content, you can tell them in person, you can knock on doors, but most importantly, you can send them emails and say, "I have this thing that you need. Here's how to get it." That's it. That's the entire three-part system for how my business runs. I have a visibility engine that includes this YouTube channel, my blog, my LinkedIn account. Those three pieces are my entire visibility channel. I have an email list where I have sales conversations with my community. I have solutions to their problems of being overwhelmed and frustrated that include courses and my membership at Six Figure Systems. And it's probably important to know I don't run ads. I don't spend all day on social media. I just run these three systems. That's it. That's how my business works. If all of that sounds good to you, then you know what to do. Hit the subscribe button. I am here every single week talking about the systems that solopreneurs are using to be more profitable online. Hustle is out. Systems are in. I'll see you next week.