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You & Your Dream Business

I want you to bear with me and pretend for a second to spend disbelief and close your eyes close your eyes, I see some of you peeking and cheating, and if you're watching online, close your eyes, I can't tell if you're peeking, but clothes on. I want you to imagine that it's, a sunday night and sunday nights are usually the nights where we feel really stressed out. We feel not too excited about the upcoming work week, we feel stressed out about all of the two duis we have two d'oh, possibly finances, all of the yucky stuff that that sunday night tightness in your chest kind of feeling that is brought on. I want you to imagine that things are different that instead you're in bed, relaxing you are excited about the next day instead of feeling like, oh my gosh, not another monday, you're feeling excited about the work that you're going to do the next day, so every day feels like a weekend day and you have had time to spend with your friends and family over the weekend. You don't feel that...

guilt about havea spent enough time one work have they spent enough time with friends and family? Do I have a balance instead feels like things are just working out and you're going to sleep without all of those thoughts racing through your mind about life is hard, life sucks do I have enough money in the bank to pay the bills? Am I going to enjoy my work this week? All of that kind of stuff and then you wake up the next morning and instead of thinking I wish I could sleep for another three hours or I wish I cannot wait until I get home tonight and get back in my pajamas and get in bed you know that feeling on monday morning when you're like, I can't wait for that instead you're excited to get up and do your work you're excited to move forward you're excited about the people that you work with you love your customers you love the work that you d'oh you are not stressed about money because it's coming in on a regular basis I want you to imagine that that that could be your life in a year from now, how does that feel? That feels like the dream right kind of like the dream okay, you can open your eyes so before we get into the details of how to create and sell digital products, I kind of wanted to talk about my journey and why I am the person teaching this course I started selling jewelry on etsy in february of twenty ten and I was doing this because I was trying to find some sort of creative outlet and I was doing so many different things I was scrapbooking I was knitting I was making jewelry I was cooking I mean, you name it I was probably trying it out and jewelry was the thing that I felt like I really enjoy this and I could do it over and over again so I started selling jewelry and pretty shortly after I set up my shop and got my listings up I was having makers come to me and sending the emails sending me messages I'm at sea saying how did you do this? How are you taking your product photos? I want to get my lighting the way that you have it or how do you write your product description so they don't sound so robotic or how do you market you're at sea shop? How do you do this? And I started spending a lot of time with creatives helping them set up their own shops on etc and I was really enjoying it and I thought I really like this part of it and I'm spending more time on it than I am the jewelry and I'm having more fun with it so let's try this out for a little bit and I was helping a lot of people one on one and I thought how can I help more people in the same amount of time? So that's when I started blacksburg belle and I started that in august of twenty ten and I was just blogging about any topic that multiple people were coming to me for so if multiple people are saying I'm really struggling with my photos than I did a block post on improving your product photos if people were coming to me saying I need help with blogging that I would write a bunch of post on that and I really didn't know how I was going to monetize anything at that point so that was a little scary but at the same time I knew that I would figure it out then I came up with the idea teo offer a digital course and group coaching and the first time I opened this up was in december of twenty ten so pretty shortly after it started blogging and I thought this is kind of the tester to see if people would be interested in this kind of thing I can actually make any money from this if it's gonna work and I opened up twenty slots and all twenty thought slots sold out and that's when I thought I can actually work people are lying to me that they make money online they actually do and I could do it myself so that was the first moment where I was like oh yes thank goodness thank goodness I have set up something that I can mama size then I spoke at the etc success symposium in february of twenty eleven and at that point, I had already sold out my group coaching program, and I didn't really have a lot to offer people who watched that talk and wanted to work with me because my individual sessions had sold out my group coaching had sold out, and I thought there are so many people saying, I really liked your talk, I want to work with you, so I was trying to figure out what's the next thing that I'm going to offer and that's when I came up with archer poseur and that was a one stop shop for makers and artists in in particular, when I have started my etsy shop, one of the things that I couldn't find was a resource that included everything. So I had to go to a million different places I had to go find somebody who could help me with product photography and find somebody who could help me and was knowledgeable about at see, I had to find somebody who could help me with web design because at that point in time I didn't have ah five thousand dollar budget for somebody to build me a website, I couldn't find it all in one place. I thought, this is what I'm going to create, this will be a great idea, and so I put together the membership site I thought of it in march. Of twenty eleven and launched it in april of twenty eleven and I was working around the clock to get this thing launched if you can imagine I hired a professional photographer to come in and teach photo tutorials I hired a web designer to come in and teach designed tutorials I hired one of my best friends of all time my from heart made to come in and teach about etc because she's really knowledgeable about that and then I did the marketing stuff and that became our chip in your head when I first launched it in twenty eleven I made about eleven thousand five hundred dollars from that launch and I thought, okay, this is getting better and better like I can really make money from this I can do it so I decided to close my etsy shop in august of twenty eleven because I was having so much more fun on the other stuff and I was enjoying it a lot more and I was only spending about five percent of my time on my jewelry shop and I know that that's not enough to make it successful and so it was kind of fallen by the wayside and I decided to shut it down and when I did that I had enough time tio right my first steve book which is marketing for creatives and I launched the first edition of that in october of twenty eleven and I was trying to look back on the numbers and I don't know I made between three and five thousand during the first week of launching that meet book and now I continually have feels from that I usually have about a sale today which it's pretty great for something that you write once and you're just selling over it over and over again it kind of feels like extra money when I have feels from that in particular and then I launched our troop manure again in january of two thousand twelve and I pretty much doubled how much I made the first time so I made about twenty one thousand five hundred dollars from that launch and included in that membership were a bunch of courses and as I would as I would teach those courses I would also launch those because I've already putting together be content for it so I would launch them and extra people could sign up to take that particular course so I was able teo kind of monetize it in two different ways which is really awesome for something like a digital product or an online course so I will give you more examples of that that's just a little piece of my business I have done a lot more than that and during that time I was doing individual consulting and other things but these were the main things in the beginning that really got me started into online digital products and information products and got me excited about it and made me think I can make a business out of this and do it long term and really enjoy it because I was loving it and that was one of the biggest pieces for me because I had left a full time job that wasn't the right fit for me and I did not want to build another business that I didn't love so quickly will go over what we're going to cover in this this particular course we're going to talk about why you should sell digital products and this doesn't mean that you have tio if you're a maker does not mean you have to give up your other products at all and we're going to talk about why adding digital products will actually help your handmade business and it does that's a really good thing for people who are like, well, will this work for me? I also have case studies of creatives who sell digital products. I interviewed eight different women who have successful businesses and they either have a percentage of their business. Our digital products or their entire business are digital and information products and I wanted to do that because I have one business right? So I wanted more examples to be able to use during this course I thought it would be helpful for you guys to hear from multiple different perspectives and for instance, I interviewed somebody who is a painter, and now she makes eighty five percent of her income from selling online painting courses. She had her first six figure year last year, so if you're thinking I'm an artist, can this work for me? Yes, it can we're going to talk about dealing with the fraud complex because I've heard from a lot of my audience that we may our thinking about selling digital products, they get nervous because they think, am I good enough? Am I enough of an expert? And so we're going to talk about that one how to pick the right products to create and sell because you want to try to pick the best product that is going to sell well, so we're going to talk about how to narrow that kind of stuff down. We are going to cover logistics and planning for your product creation so what's going to go into ah product that you want teo, create intel, we're going to talk about pricing because that's another big one when it comes to digital products information product, how do I price that? I get that question all the time like I create it and then I get to sell it over and over again, so how should I price that it's? Not as if I'm making something and I know how much it cost with the materials and how much time it took and then I have this special equation and you don't have that when you're creating digital products we are going to go over creating digital products from scratch so I'm going to show you guys how I would create an e book how I would create worksheets and so you can see how easy it is because I am not an expert at illustrator in design photo shop I am not an expert at that stuff but I create a lot of my products within these programs so I want to show you how easy it is in an hour and a half you're going to say and you're gonna be like I can do this I can do it we're going to talk about getting your products in front of the right people the ones who want to buy your stuff because no matter what if you don't get your products in front of the right people it's not gonna work so that's a big part of them creating a loyal customer base that practically sell as for you doesn't that sound nice? I interviewed one creative who most of her marketing is just via word of mouth her customers love her products so much that they talk about them so much that she doesn't really have tio so I think that's really cool then we are going to talk about the importance of your launch so you're not going to make it and just hope that people find it we're gonna launch it right way we're going to talk about dealing with success and failure because no matter what you are definitely going tio have failures and hopefully you're gonna have lots of successes too and we're going teo dive into your one page marketing plan which is something I put together so that you can put all of your marketing ideas in one spot and feel that it feels less overwhelmed because I know that marketing can feel like I have eight hundred million things that I could d'oh uh what do I choose? And lastly we're going to talk about the importance of continually selling because one of the things you can't do is launch it and then never talk about it again because then it's not going to keep selling over and over and over again like you wanted teo okay, so does everybody have a no card? Everybody's gonna know card okay, so if you do not have a no card at home, cut down a piece of computer paper piece of card staff work with whatever you have, what you want to do is have a no card that's about four by six on one side during the entire course you want to get one no car during the entire course you're going to write down your biggest ah ha moments so the things that hopefully, I say some brilliant things, and you're like, yes, that is so great. Those things write them down on your note card and don't try to fill it up with as much as you possibly can write down the biggest things, and then on the other side, you're going to write down action items that are going to get you the quickest results. So we're going to talk about a lot of things that you can dio, and instead of going home at the end of the course, or wrapping up the end of the course and thinking, ok, there, six hundred fifty four things that I can dio, uh, what dowe ideo, you'll have a plan right away. These are the things you're going to dio as soon as you get home, or a soon as you finish the course, so you feel like you know what to do, and you don't have that decision paralysis, and I want you to pick things that are going to get you results, so there are lots of things we can do within our business, but not all of them get us really fast results. And one of the ways that I, that I moved my business forward pretty quickly in the beginning, the first year is I was always focused on doing the things that are going to get me results so I wasn't updating my facebook page five hundred times because that's not going to get me the fastest result I was working on creating a really great group coaching program and then launching it to the people who I knew would be interested in it. So I want you to keep in mind the things that are really going to move you forward, because when you get results, you get that confidence, you get excitement, do you see this could work for me, and then you'll do all the other things, all right? The first thing that we're going to talk about and this is in your workbook is your dream business. So the first question I would love for you to answer is, what do you want to change about your business? What would you love to change about your current business right now? Is it? How many hours you work? Is it how much money you make? Is it that you wish you were less overwhelmed, that you had not as many two duis on your to do list each day? Is it that you're not working necessarily with the right people? And you would be you would really love to be working with your dream customer? What is it about your business that you would love to change? And below that, you can jot down any ideas that come to mind when I say dream business. So for your dream business, what comes to mind, and I don't want you to think about anything that anybody else would put tom for their dream business because, you know, like making making one hundred thousand dollars and that's really not an important factor to you don't don't write it down on ly write down things that you're really excited about, you want to create a business that you love to work and everyday that's one of the most important things. So we're talking about what you want to change and jotting down some ideas of what your dream is. This will look like, and I would love to hear from you guys, if you are watching, get in that chat room and tell me what you want to change about your business and for everybody that's here with me, what are some things that you would love to change about your business? Michelle, I want to have a little more freedom. I don't want to feel like tied down to my, especially my computer, because I do a lot of admin work, okay? All right, so what are some of the specific tasks that you wish you didn't have to spend as much time on? Well, I I wish I had mohr systems in place for like, marketing and stuff so it's not I'm not inventing the wheel every day when I sit down okay, I love that we're gonna be talking about creating a funnel for specific products and it's going to be something that works all the time so you don't have to keep doing it over and over again so that's going to be good to help you with that? Okay, so basically I'm still at the very beginning of all of this so I still have a full time job that I don't e o they're not watching us so yeah so that's my whole I mean the freedom of getting to do what I really love and getting to make my own schedule being there you know, for my kids when they have something special at school and so not being in a you know, a traditional nine to five so it's all so new so there's lots to change but yeah, okay, perfect. So the main thing is moving away from the day job, spending more time on your business and building a business that allows you to really choose your work hours. I read anybody else on the share state I really want to work on conversion I can see on my google analytics I have thousands of people on my website every day, but why aren't they buying I need to speak to them better. Okay. All right. We will definitely talk about are they are they getting onto your email list? Um a good chunk of them are they're getting on tearing malice well, of course I want more yeah, but yeah I'm I'm getting no thirty to forty a week okay, so that's a decent amount yeah, yeah yeah, okay as far as offering a product, you would think that more people who are on your email list will buy from you. However the average is pretty low it's I wish I knew the statistics exactly but it's somewhere like two, three, four five percent the low amount. However, if you are really speaking teo your ideal customer that amount is going to increase. I have seen businesses where they're converting a lot more than that into sales and so it's it's possible it's capable yeah. Anybody else? I would like to be able to focus more on one business because I find myself in that place of just being confused too much but I want to do this. I wonder that like how do I make it into one business or just decide on one of my two oh my gosh, I have been there not a fun place to be I know uh I think you start teo figure it out as you move forward which one do you want to spend more time on? Especially if they are multiple passions like you really love both of them it's hard to choose sometimes what you khun dio is you focus on one as your business and then you make the other one more of just a hobby so something that you don't completely give up on but something that you're this isn't how you're trying to make a lot of money it's just something that you're doing for fun you know don't we love to have time for those kinds of things so s so when you're selling digital products and they're selling over and over without you having to do the work then you have more time for hobbies and the bug get up and being able to add more things to your list so that's a positive about being here? What about online it's anybody share? We have lost people sharing online jewels by trish says I want to make more money I want to add digital products totally unrelated to my jewelry biz and I want to replace the day job with my creative jewelry and digital products I wanna work from home scavenger and he says just jotted down my on the index card and it's all about moore's mohr workspace more money so I'm earning a living wage and to doom or teaching with sewing and the craft school that I started now, kobe in texas says, I'm not changing anything because I'm just getting started and I'm figuring out exactly what I can do and what I actually want to do. And finally we have someone to chat who says, ah, girl named michael is her name says, I want to feel like I'm creating authentic products that will serve and delight my customers, and I really need to get riel and start making regular income. Yeah, well, I think that this course will help with all of those different things, and I know michael and trish, so, uh, so keeping in line with your dream business, I want you to keep that in mind what are three goals you'd like to reach in six months to a year? So no matter whether you're in the beginning and you're just starting things, so you want to set realistic goals but also pushed herself a little bit. So what are some goals that you would like tio reach in six months to a year and this is something if you can't think of three immediately, this is something that you can continue to work on. But I think it's really important toe have specific goals that you want to achieve so that you know what you're working towards, because so often we can get lost. In just doing the day to day tasks of our business and then we're a month goes by and we're like how did how did that happen? How did a month go by? And I didn't really achieve anything and there is a page and your workbook and it is page six, page six and it looks like this and this is how you're going to break down those goals so you have this big goal and then you're like okay, well, this is outrageously large how doe I actually achieve this? So what you're going to dio is you are going to put the month at the top, then you were going to put your monthly tasks in the next box then you are going to break those down a little bit further into weekly task and then break those down into super actionable task something thatyou khun just do in one day, so break it down as far as it can possibly be broken down. So let's say you want teo writing a book that is your goal over the next six months so some of the month legal's might be taking an in design course tto learn in design, writing the rough draft of the book and serving your audience to see what they would like then breaking those down into weekly tasks might include in design course modules one through six let's say they're thirty course modules and then breaking that down to writing chapters one through fifteen, writing the introduction and actually serving your audience. And the breaking that down even further or so specifically for the survey party might break that down. Teo designing the survey, writing the survey questions, sending the survey to your email list, blogging about the survey, sending it out on social media. So you wanna have all of those bit written down so that you're getting closer to that particular goal? And what I would do is print out is many of those as you need and do it month by month. Or if you have a planner that you really love you, khun, do it inside of that as well. This is just one option for a way to do that, but you want to take those bigger tasks. The the I mean message of it is. Take those bigger tasks and break them down and then break them down again and then break them down one more time so that it feels like you could actually do it.