From Solopreneur to 7 Figures: How to Scale Through Diversification

Looking for a new revenue stream? Here are some ideas to get you thinking about building a 7-figure business with some ways you can start right away. Here’s how to scale through diversification in any business!

Do you ever wonder how all those successful solopreneurs turned their idea into a 7-figure business in just a few years?

You hear about them all the time. You get in your car and turn on your educational podcast du jour. The usual suspects: Entrepreneur on Fire, Online Marketing Made Easy, Perpetual Traffic. Each one packed with more useful content than the next.

And then you hear those words for the hundredth time: “I created a 7-figure business” and the question bounces around in your brain: “But how is that possible?”

Even knowing what you know about creating online courses and online marketing in general, it seems daunting, even impossible, to think that your quasi-successful $20,000 launch could ever turn into a 7-figure business. You must be missing something.

Multiple Revenue Sources

The secret that everyone assumes you know, but nobody actually says out loud is the fact that successful entrepreneurs are not just talking about the sales from their last launch. They are telling you what their income was, over time, from multiple different sources.

Some of these revenue sources are not even available to you as a consumer, so why would they mention it if you are not in their target audience?

To illustrate the possibilities that diversification can open up in your business, let’s take a very common example.

Let’s take a business that creates online courses, and run it through the diversification mill.

Let’s see what we can come up with for other revenue sources:

Income Stream #1: Online Courses

This is your bread and butter. What you are known for and what you are most likely to mention in a podcast interview to get that regular entrepreneur to buy into.

Income Stream #2: Group Coaching as a supplement to the online course

Inevitably, people who take your courses will want more access to you. A great way to do this in a scalable way is to provide personal coaching help to a group through a Facebook Community.

Income Stream #3: 1×1 Coaching

This is a premium service only available to those who can afford it. Is it starting to add up for you yet?

Income Stream #4: Corporate Clients on a project basis

You have expertise that larger companies will want to take advantage of and have no interest in going the DIY route. Your time is very valuable (and scarce), so the markup for corporate clients has got to be worth the time.

Income Stream #5: Podcast sponsorships

Start a podcast to drive traffic to your content, and stay for the sponsorships. Once you reach a certain level of notoriety and popularity, sponsorships can be quite lucrative.

Income Stream #6: Affiliate marketing for other’s products

You have built an audience and a community that others will want to tap into. Turn your community into gold by offering to pitch other people’s products to your audience and get a cut of the sales.

Income Stream #7: Speaking engagements

As an expert, your presence and expertise is valuable at conferences and other audience engagements. Set yourself up as a speaker for hire and monetize your public appearances.

Income Stream #8: Book sales

You have a unique message that publishers would be very interested in propagating, especially if you have proven that your message resonates with large audiences. If you are a writer, this is a great way to generate passive income.

Income Stream #9: Merchandise

Got witty quotes, or catch phrases? Put them on a T-shirt or a baseball hat and sell them on your website.

Income Stream #10: Blog/Video monetization through ads

You are already blogging and/or creating videos as part of your outreach efforts. Turn on those ads and watch the revenue flow in.

And the list goes on.

The truth of the matter is that thinking of a single business model is only the beginning and it can open many doors.

As your business grows and you start to build a team, let them handle the heavy lifting so you can start thinking of your next revenue stream.

Are you ready to make your first 7-figures? Your move.

Keep reading:

Transformational Leadership That Gets Big Results

How Sarah Kauss Grew S’well into a $100M Company Combating Plastic (interview)

5 Reasons Why Online Traffic Should be a Priority for Your Coaching Business

I think the only people who love the word “traffic” is online entrepreneurs.

I posted a poll on my Facebook page asking my community whether they wanted to learn more about “How to get Massive Traffic” or about “How to Validate your Business Idea,” and my mother-in-law (bless her heart) chose Idea Validation only because she hates traffic!

She’s not even in my target audience, but you gotta love the family support!

In the online universe, traffic is a beautiful thing and we always want MORE of it!

Every time someone hits your landing page, it’s like a breath of fresh air. It tastes like opportunity.

Unfortunately, many in the online space do not prioritize traffic in their business.

Why Traffic?

Are you too busy to work on getting more traffic?

Or perhaps you believe that getting just enough clients to fill your schedule will get you more money, more flexibility, and more happiness. The online stuff is just gravy, so it sits in the backburner.

You’d be surprised to hear that the exact opposite is true.

When you neglect to create an online community in favor of having one-off clients, you are putting your business at risk in multiple ways.

What does traffic have to do with it?

You may be wondering “What does traffic have to do with creating an online following? And what does creating an online following have to do with the success of my one-on-one client work?”

In one word: everything.

When we talk about “generating traffic” we are specifically referring to you creating valuable content that attracts your ideal client, and posting it on your website (or other social media portals).

The worst thing that can happen is that someone finds you, gets your content, and never comes back.

Once your ideal client has become aware of your existence through your amazing freebies, or simply happened to land on your website, you want to make sure to hold onto them for dear life.

Your goal should be: for every person who becomes aware of you, direct them to your mailing list or to your Facebook group.

As you can see, generating massive amounts of traffic will inevitably lead to you creating an online community with you as the expert at the center.

In this article, I lay out 5 ways that creating an online community (by way of prioritizing traffic to your site or content) can springboard your business in ways you never imagined.

Ready? Let’s go:

1. Have a waitlist of clients

In any service or coaching business, you always run the risk of clients falling off the face of the Earth.

In most cases, it’s not as dramatic as that, but it does happen that clients get busy, deprioritize your meetings, or simply choose to go a different way.

Suddenly, your calendar opens up and you are left scrambling to fill the gap.

If you have prioritized generating great content, driving traffic to it, and growing a community, you should have no problem reaching out to your own tribe and establishing a waitlist of ideal clients who can’t wait to jump at the chance to work with you.

And just like that, you will never be afraid of losing another client ever again.

2. Establish yourself as an authority in your field

Put yourself in the shoes of your next ideal client.

They found you because their friend recommended you, and they hope you will work out.

Some of the time, potential customers who find you through word-of-mouth will hire you simply because you are the lowest hanging fruit: they didn’t even have to research other options, and they will just “give you a try” and hope for the best.

Other times, these same referrals do their due diligence. They will visit your website and that of your competitors. They will check out your Facebook page or Yelp reviews.

What happens next, you will never know because you never find out.

That same discerning customer found this other business which seems to be a little more “legit.” They have a huge following on Facebook, they have a lot more 5 stars reviews than you do, and it seems like other people are talking about them.

As you can see, this customer you never even knew was considering you made a judgment on the value of your services based on popularity.

You heard me: popularity.

When you have a fired-up online community, you become the authority in your field that everyone wants to work with.

You don’t want to be the business that gets passed up. You want to be the one everyone gravitates towards.

Traffic does this for you. An online community does this for you.

3. Charge higher prices

Consider the same scenario as above.

This potential customer is comparing you against someone else who has a larger following and a better-looking website.

Which of the two options do you think the client will assume is more expensive?

Hint: not you.

When you have an online following, you raise the bar in terms of expectations.

The rationale behind it is that: if so many people like her, then she must be the best!

And people will pay more for the best.

The larger your online following, the more your potential clients will be willing to pay for your services.

4. Be featured by other inspiring entrepreneurs

This is a bit of a circular reference, in that it is an opportunity afforded only to those with a large following, and it also helps you build an even larger following.

When you have created an online community that swears by your content and your services, other entrepreneurs will want to talk to you to tap into your audience.

This is a normal practice among entrepreneurs: help each other out, and grow each other’s audiences in the process.

When you first start out, you may be hurting to be featured in other people’s forums so your audience can grow. But once it’s made it to a certain level, you will attract feature opportunities like bees to honey, further cementing your authority as an expert in your area.

5. Open up unimaginable opportunities

This is the hardest benefit to describe because you don’t know what it will be.

When you put yourself out there and start engaging with other entrepreneurs and potential clients, your future opens up to a world of opportunities that you cannot imagine.

Many of us go through life calculating the ROI on our investment before we actually put our money down.

The truth is that most times it is impossible for us to know what the return will be on an opportunity we have never jumped into in the past.

This reward can take the shape of growing your audience, meeting amazing people who will change your life, or open up the chance to travel opportunities.

Jump In. Make Yourself Known.

The benefits of jumping in and making yourself be known in your industry are simply impossible to predict or to measure, and that is the definition of a wild adventure.

Does this article make you want to prioritize traffic and build a community? Leave us a comment and tell us what you are going to do in your business today!

You might also like:

Seth Godin on Leadership in the 21st Century

How to Make More Money: Do This One Thing

How to Turn Your Coaching Gig into a Passive Income Goldmine

Why People Buy: How to Take Advantage of Buying Triggers

Why do people buy something?

Ever wonder why people buy anything?

What is the trigger? What makes them say to themselves “I must have this NOW”?

If they have been wanting it for a while, what made them finally add it to their cart?

If they just learned about it for the first time, what is it that made them act impulsively rather than research more alternatives?

You might think it is because the product is so good, and your pitch is so tight, that they are persuaded to buy.

That’s the kind of control we wished our product had in our customers, but it rarely works that way.

Need. Opportunity. Urgency. Scarcity.

The key to someone buying right then and there lies in the intersection of these 4 concepts: need, opportunity, urgency, and scarcity.

If you are in front of the deodorants section at the store, and you remember you’re about to run out and won’t be coming back to the store for another week, you’ll pick it up.

The Need: you are the kind of person who wears deodorant every day.

The Opportunity: you are at the store right now.

Urgency: the day when you wake up and have no deodorant is fast approaching

Scarcity: you don’t have new deodorants piled up in your closet. This is a scarce product in that you cannot obtain it with extreme ease.

This equation applies to anything you are selling.

Many of us focus so much time and money on making a great looking product and trying to convince people that they should buy it, that we forget that our customers make those decisions all on their own.

To better illustrate how this formula may apply to your business, let’s consider another example.

Suppose you are selling a fitness coaching program for working mothers.

Why should they sign up?

Sure, you are probably the best coach in the universe and you have the most revolutionary coaching program; but how does that translate into your ideal customer’s needs? And how are you creating the opportunity, urgency, and scarcity?

The way you would do this is by conducting a launch.

A launch is a marketing campaign designed around selling a particular product, and it is not restricted to only releasing a product for the first time. You can have a launch for the same product over and over again.

Here are some ways to take advantage of these triggers and get people to buy:

Tap into an existing need.

You are not trying to convince working mothers that they must work out (I don’t know about you, but nobody has ever been able to successfully convince me to do that); instead, you are looking for working mothers who have followed exercise regimens in the past, but somehow fell off the wagon, or mothers who know they should be working out and are waiting for a sign they should take action.

A need is very hard to fabricate. The need must already exist.

Put the opportunity in front of them.

Through advertising and social media posting, your offer must make it in front of your target audience’s eyes.

Your launch provides the opportunity for your customer to bump into your offer, creating the “I’m at the store right now” feeling.

You control the scarcity factor.

Your launch is a project: it starts on one day and ends on a specific date and time.

By making sure that your product is not available to everyone at any time; you have full control over the feeling that this product is not abundant. It’s only here right now. Take it or leave it.

There is an easy way and a hard way to create urgency.

The easy way is by simply stressing that your cart will close promptly in 2 days, which will get potential customers to feel the fire under their tail.

The hard way is to present your product as an imperative they cannot afford not to take on.

The latter method requires expert copywriting and a deep understanding of your customer’s journey and immediate needs. If done right, the results can be overwhelmingly positive.

The next time you are getting ready to launch your product, consider the 4 axes and make sure to provide an irresistible offer for your ideal customer.

Was this article helpful? Leave us a comment with your thoughts!

How to Make More Money Online: Do This One Thing

How to Make More Money By Simply Updating Your Website

We’ve all seen them: the websites that look like they were made in 1999 and never updated, or the ones that started by having a blog, but no new posts have been made since 2013.

We may think that that vendor is either doing so well they don’t have time to focus on their online presence, or they are doing too poorly to spend any money on it.

Rather than finding out the hard way, we decide to go with the professional-looking service. Their website has all the information we need, a sample of their work and even a contact form.

You just lost a customer without even knowing it. It happens all the time.

What needs to happen on your website…

Now, suppose we did not move on so quickly. We found your website first, so we will call you first. You think you won? Think again.

Your website has set the expectations of the pricing for your service. We are calling you because we don’t want to go with the fancy “expensive” one.

See how quickly a negative online experience can turn into you making less money?

Where did you go wrong? You are sure you are charging market value and you actually provide a really good service. Why are people turning you away? Why are THEY so cheap?

Little did you know, your website was attracting the cheapskates all on its own.

If your website and online presence are not top notch, then neither are your prices expected to be.

How do you charge what you’re worth?

Here are eight ways to prop up your brand so you can charge what you are worth:

  1. Have a professionally designed website that follows all usability standards: your work portfolio, testimonials from past customers, and a responsive design (make sure it looks good on mobile)
  2. All email addresses (if listed at all) should be @yourdomain.com. Let go of those @hotmail.com accounts.
  3. Have a company logo and matching color scheme that is used consistently across the site
  4. Have all your social media links on the footer or header of your website, and make sure you are updating them regularly with fresh relevant content.
  5. Have a contact form and reply to requests immediately.
  6. Do your research: ask your customers about their experience on your site, and look at competitors’ websites to identify what they are doing that you are not and vice versa
  7. Request testimonials from your raving fans, and have them post them to your Facebook page or other review sites relevant to your industry
  8. Never lash out at bad reviews. Respond with grace and offer a discount if they are willing to give you a second chance. Make sure your offer can be seen by anyone reading the review. You will come off as the big person, offsetting the now seemingly unreasonable former client.

Your professionalism is what sets you up for success before you even come in touch with your potential customers.

If you feel your online presence is playing against you, it’s time to start calling some designers.

6 Killer Strategies to Price Your Product Properly: Make Money Your Mindset

How Your Money Mindset is Affecting Your Bottom Line

You are a budding entrepreneur and just created your first product! This is great news! You break out the champagne, and you celebrate! This is a big deal! Now you are going to need some strategies to price your product properly.

Let’s begin.

How to Choose a Price You’re Really Worth

It’s time to put a price tag on your dear firstborn product baby. You don’t want your baby to be rejected, that would hurt too much. So you rationalize:

“Nobody knows who I am.”

“Why would anyone buy from me?”

“I don’t even have one lousy testimonial.”

“How will people know whether it works or not? They are taking a risk by buying this.”

“If I put a higher price tag on this, people will think I am full of myself and that I think I am all that.”

“Maybe I should put a small price tag on it, just to get people to buy it.”

“I could also offer some discounts.”

“Maybe I could send it to my friends for free just to get people to give me feedback.”

Sound familiar?

Many entrepreneurs go through this dance, and they all learn the hard way that the conversation you are having with yourself should have absolutely no bearing on how you price your product.

It is your product’s value to the customer that should dictate the price, not whether you feel you have enough experience or not, or whether you feel people are going to think you are full of yourself for charging a higher price.

These are natural feelings, and they all revolve around your money mindset.

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The Importance of Money Mindset

Money mindset is a set of beliefs we have about what money means to us, what it says about us, and who deserves to receive it.

To figure out whether you have a positive mindset about money, ask yourself a few questions:

  • When you charge money for a product, do you feel the urge to give that money back?
  • If you put a high price tag on your product, does it make you feel like it is really not worth that much?
  • Do you feel that people should keep their money in their pockets and just learn how to Google stuff so they don’t have to pay you for your product?
  • Do you feel better when you give free advice than when you charge for it? Like helping for free is the right thing to do, and charging for it is icky?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you are in the same boat as a lot of other entrepreneurs are and you may have some trouble pricing your products correctly.

The Negative Consequences of Negative Money Mindset

An unintended consequence of this negative money mindset is that pricing your product too low will attract the kind of client who expects lower quality, but is willing to take the risk because it’s what they expect for a low price point.

This is because, as consumers, we all associate low prices with low value.

The truth is that the price of your product says more about your client than it does about you; you probably always thought it was the other way around.

It’s the same as when you give products away for free: their value diminishes to, well, nothing.

Raising your prices will start attracting clients who expect higher quality. These clients appreciate the value of what they just paid a premium for because people show up differently when they have skin in the game.

Don’t disappoint them, and they will keep coming back for more.

The 6 Strategies to Price Your Product Properly

Here are 5 strategies to get over your money mindset issues and start pricing your products what they are worth:

1.) Be aware of your money mindset hang-ups.

Start by asking yourself the questions above and be aware of the conversation going on in your head. Then do everything in your power to convince yourself that pricing your product should have nothing to do with your feelings. You may not cure your money mindset right away, but you will not let it sabotage the value you are putting of your product.

2.) Think of what you have to give to your audience in terms of abundance.

When you create your first product it is as if you have just created the one thing all your dreams were made of. You have put your heart and soul into the creation of this new product baby, and you want to make sure it is successful, happy and makes you proud.

The problem with that mentality is that it makes you believe that nothing you could ever create could ever compare to how you feel about this one.

Let it go. You have so much more to offer to your audience. When you have only one product, pricing seems like such a big deal; but when you think about all the other revenue streams you are planning on creating, this product is simply one piece of the puzzle.

Put a price on it, release it, and move on to the next one.

3.) Have a multi-tiered offering.

Take your abundance mindset and create products that satisfy different pricing points. If you are starting out, think about what your audience needs RIGHT NOW and start there, then build all your other products around that core value and create a value-packed product suite.

4.) Do your research.

How much are others charging for the similar products? What value are you providing that others are not? What is everyone else providing that you hadn’t thought of? Your price should be competitive in the marketplace, and the only way to find out is by knowing your competition inside and out.

5.) Remember that your pricing can (and will most likely) change.

It can be paralyzing to even think you could price your product wrong. The great news is that you have full control over it, and yes, you may botch it the first time, or the second time. But as your audience begins to use your product and starts providing you with feedback, you will learn how to find that sweet spot. Find a price you are comfortable with, one you can confidently explain to anyone who asks and prepare to learn from the experience.

6.(Bonus Tip): Stop trading time for money.

If you are a consultant or run an agency, you might be tempted to do ‘hourly pricing’ but I would advise against that. Many people generally think that if I charge x for this many hours, the buyer or client will know that I’m putting a lot of effort into it. But what you haven’t considered is that your hourly rate must always include your expertise, your years of experience, your energy — all the things you bring to the table.

Hourly pricing can also get you stuck in your business growth. How can you scale your efforts when there are only 24 hours in a day? You can’t.

A better way to think about pricing is ‘value pricing’ which comes back to our discussion again on money mindset. Think about the ‘value’ you offer your customers and clients. What is that worth? That’s up to you decide. Trading money for time is a mindset that you’ll need to break away from quickly if you want to scale, grow and become the business leader you are meant to be.

Some Final Thoughts — How to Make More Money Today

Understanding where you are in your money mindset journey will help you become increasingly more comfortable with pricing your products and with their value.

It’s time to let go of those negative thoughts about money, and start welcoming it into your life. Are you ready to start charging what you are worth?

Have you ever thought about your money mindset and how it affects your bottom line? Let us know in the comments section!

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How to Turn Your Coaching Gig into a Passive Income Goldmine

You did it! You created a business and now are a full-blown entrepreneur with clients and all. Congratulations! But now you find yourself working more hours than you ever did in your full-time job, you’re not making nearly as much money, and you’re wondering if perhaps it’s time to end the experiment and go back to work.

Not so fast.

There is another way of doing business that does not involve the trade of time for dollars.

This mysterious force is called Passive Income, and it can help you scale your business so that you do not have to work so hard for every single penny earned.

Why Passive Income is so Vital to Long-term Success

Passive Income is not just an idealist’s dream. It is a reality that the most successful entrepreneurs have figured out, and it is time for you to discover how it can help you.

But first, I will dispel the popular myth that generating passive income is easy. Just because the word “passive” is in its name, does not mean it is without effort.

Setting up a passive revenue stream requires knowledge of the subject matter, grit to not give up despite roadblocks, consistency of content and action and humility to understand when you need help. And even after it is set up, it requires maintenance and reinvestment.

The best way to illustrate the process is by walking through a specific example, so bear with me for a moment while I name you honorary Personal Fitness Coach. Congrats!

You are fit, you have a myriad of certifications to back up your knowledge, and you take on private clients (you do particularly well with the senior demographic). You could fill a book with advice for men and women on how to keep up their stamina in their golden years.

Your current business model is based on a pay-per-visit paradigm. The more clients you have, the more money you make.

Then you read this article and the wheels start turning. You are ready to put that passive income machine to work.

How to get your passive income machine to work

Here’s what you do:

1. Build an audience

Create a website with a blog

Start posting 1 article a week with great advice, and always make sure to offer a freebie at the bottom of the post that expands on what your ideal customer has learned from the article.

If your article is about how to properly exercise your back muscles, your freebie may be “The 10 Most Harmful Exercises You Are Probably Doing Right Now” (or maybe something more positive, but with a zest that makes them want to find out more).

The freebie leads to a sign-up page where your ideal customer will provide their email address in exchange for their freebie.

Email your list at least once a week

Send 1 email a week to your mailing list with more great content. One week you talk about the benefits of drinking green juice every morning, and another week you talk about the latest trend in elder care. Ask your audience questions, let them reply by email and keep the conversation going. They’ll get to know you, like you and trust you.

Create a Facebook group

Create a Facebook Group to keep your audience in one place and keep providing them excellent content. People sign on to watch you live as you give more advice for their health. They comment, “heart” and like your posts. Your members interact with each other and answer one another’s questions.

Go live on video

Go on Facebook Live and on YouTube Live to give advice and answer questions from your audience in real time. You may be a thousand miles away, but it’s like you are just next door.

Multiply your content via social media

Create pins for Pinterest that lead to your freebie, videos and blog posts. Complete strangers start to find you via Google searches and Pinterest, click on your link and sign up for your email list.

Now that you have their attention, it is time to prepare for giving your audience even more value and even more of you.

2. Prepare to Launch Your Premium Offer

For you, the fitness coach, this will be a membership site.

The site includes videos with select exercise routines for the whole week, dripped every Monday morning. The package will include access to all your content in one place, worksheets to create their perfect healthy menu (including a shopping list), and access to an exclusive Facebook Community where you will be answering questions live every single week.

For this premium package, your audience will pay $49/month ($588 annual).

Set up your launch

Your new membership site launch consists of a webinar, which you will present 5 times at different times of the day to tackle different time zones and different schedules.

Tell your email list

In order to fill the seats for your webinar, you start by making your current audience aware of the upcoming date. The best way is to engage them through a 3-part email sequence where you provide content around the webinar and build up to providing the registration link.

Update your freebie Thank You pages

Update all your freebie Thank You pages to inform your audience of the upcoming irresistible webinar and a form where they can sign up.

Post on all social media outlets

Consistently post on Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram to drive your followers to your registration page.

Run ads

Create Facebook Ads to attract your target audience to your webinar registration page.

3. It’s Showtime!!!

On your webinar, talk about something your audience is desperate to find out or learn about: “The Celebrity Secret To Staying Fit After Retirement.”

During the webinar, deliver your pitch. 1% of attendees will sign up. Some will sign up after the webinar is over.

Let’s do the math: for every 100 people who watch your webinar, only 1 person will sign up. If you had a goal of earning $25,000 on this launch, you will need 4,250 people to hear your message.

4. Rinse, Repeat.

With the huge milestone behind you, you celebrate your accomplishment, congratulate yourself and those who helped you get there, and the clock resets for your next launch in 3 months.

Nobody said getting passive income was going to be easy. In fact, it is not something you can just do and walk away from, no matter what other gurus may want you to believe.

But once the process is in place, you will be able to scale, reinvest, and seek out larger returns. Not to mention the natural growth that comes with being known by more potential customers.

This is just one example of how to turn your current coaching gig into a passive income generator.

As a bright and resourceful entrepreneur, you will find the parallel between our fictitious coach’s journey and your own business. Use this as a jumping off point to create your own passive income opportunities.

Have you ever tried to create a passive income source from your business before? What has worked and what hasn’t? Let us know in the comments below!