Topics Covered
- Creating an irresistible offer
- The importance of building a team
- Using Facebook ads to acquire new customers
- Improving customer experience to increase profit margins
- Finding the right balance in pricing that appeals to customers
Preface: This post is a comprehensive roadmap for entrepreneurs looking to start or scale their online business.
Key Lessons to Help You Build a Profitable Online Business
I spent the last 5 years building an 8-Figure online business.
It’s important you know this because I’m going to give you advice, strategy, and wisdom from someone who’s done it.
Most likely, you’re someone who is looking for encouragement, mentorship, inspiration on how to do it yourself, or maybe even “know-how” so you can have similar results and success.
If you know me personally, you know I hate mentioning how much I’ve made because it has something very internet marketer about leading with sales.
However, for the purpose of the wisdom in trying to give you, I have to lead with facts so we can establish pretty quickly that I know exactly what I’m talking about.
From 2018-2023 I dominated the online world with my ads running all across the internet (we’ll talk, later on, how I used Facebook ads to accelerate my business growth which led to making 1 million in a month).
I’m going to talk about how I built the business, things I would do differently, how I almost went out of business, how I scaled my business, and how I positioned my business for success.
The 3 most important things that has allowed me to scale from $0 to 8 Figures has been creating an irresistible offer, building a team to deliver excellence and Facebook ads.
Grab a piece of paper or pull out your notebook, let’s begin.
Part 1 – pick a lane
People always ask me what’s the hardest part about building an online business and I always tell them it’s all about picking the lane you want to occupy and dominate.
When we talk about an online business, there are so many things you can build.
There’s Ecom, agency, retail, speaker, podcasting, online courses, and that’s just a few to get you started.
The fastest way to a million dollars or by serving a million people is by picking ONE thing you want to focus on.
Notice how I didn’t say easiest way, get it out your mind right now that this will be easy. If you can do that, you’re already on a path to success.
Most people spread their focus therefore, a spread focus means low effort into one thing that can lead to massive success.
For the longest time I told myself, I can’t pick one thing or I’d be limiting myself from other opportunities to make more.
But doing more things had the adverse affect. I juggled so much that I couldn’t give 100% effort.
I know what you’re thinking, I can do it all. You can do it all, but I’ve learned when you decide do it all, the advantage goes to the person that’s focused on doing one thing.
This may sound harsh but when you’ve never experienced massive success, doing more feels good because it keeps you busy and that’s not necessarily a win. It feels like a win when you haven’t yet reached your full potential and built a business worth focusing on.
Most people will glide over what I’ve said and think they’ve reached their peak personally and professionally. But most people will never surpass that ceiling, they’ll always operate below it as long as their focus continues to be split.
You’ve tried it your way Superman, now try it a different way.
After helping 10,000 business owners these last few years, here are the common threads of the people who had success.
Step 1: pick a lane to focus on.
Start by picking an industry to serve
Start by picking a problem to solve
Start by providing a solution that’s useful
Start by learning everything you can about it
Here’s a document I put together to help you narrow down your ideas, you can have it completely free (click to get access now)
Once you pick what you’re going to focus on, move on to step 2: create an offer.
Creating an irresistible offer
One thing most people don’t know is that your offer is just not what you want to sell but it’s also how you sell it.
For example, you may be in the beauty industry right now and you’re probably telling people that you sell skin products.
Okay I got it, it is appealing but not as appealing as, “I sell natural skin products.”
Can you spot the difference?
- I sell skin products
- I sell natural skin care products
- I sell a natural skin care products system that eliminates acne in 3 simple steps
Creating an irresistible offer consistent of a few things
- What you sell
- How you want to position it
- The benefits or promise of it
It’s not just good to know that you sell skin products. There’s millions of people that sell skin products.
Creating an irresistible offer or a product that sells is about positioning what you sell in a way that’s attractive to your customers.
The first step is to write a list of all the things your customers want to achieve by purchasing your product or services. Then the next step is to look at this list and ask yourself, how many of these things can I accomplish with what I’m providing.
The next part is extremely important, build your customers dream offer that’s attractive to them. (It’s really important to understand selling is not about you, it’s about the value that your customers get from your offer.)
You can take a simple offer like “skin products” and transform it to an irresistible offer by letting your customers know what they’re buying into. If you can show them that they’re not just buying a product but they’re buying into a change of lifestyle or transformation, then making the sale becomes easier.
Example:
When you buy these skin products…
- you also get added to our community
- educational emails on how to improve your skin (dieting, exercise, routines)
- exclusive discounts for future products
What we did in the example above is what’s called value stacking. We solely focus on making the offer so irresistible it’s hard to say no and instead we make it an easy yes.
Questions to ask yourself
- What do I sell?
- What is my offer?
- What type of transformation or lifestyle change will it provide my customer?
- What could make my offer an easy yes?
Part 2 – Simplifying and Building a Delivery Process and System
Once you know what you want to focus on and you’ve created an irresistible offer, the next step is to build out a delivery process and system.
Most people neglect the delivery system because they’re just so excited to sell their products.
If you want to stand out and increase your margins, then improve the delivery process.
Our delivery process consists of a few things:
- How do I deliver my offer to my customer (are you shipping it, is it a digital download, are they getting it in their email, etc)
- the less steps it takes to deliver your offer, the easier you make the sale, the more you improve your bottom line
- the easier it is to be found, the better (anything front facing which includes your website and social media should be clear)
Shipping
When it comes to shipping the easier you make it for your customers, the more sales you can make. I’m almost always amazed when I get to the check out experience of a product and the shipping and tax make up almost 25% of the cost of the product. You may make some sales but you’ll never make the maximum amount of sales if your customers perceive your shipping as costly.
Customer service
When it comes to fulfillment, customer service becomes your number 1 sales driver. This can be either the first or last touch point for a prospect or customer. It’s important that even after you make the sale, you treat the customer with patience and respect. If you treat the customer as a one time transaction, you’ll not only lose out on future transactions from this customer but also other customers if you provide bad service.
Tools
When it comes to the tools you use to operate your business, choose tools that enhance the delivery of your goods and services.
As you begin to grow as a business, there are so many tools you can choose to operate your business.
Simplicity is the best rule of thumb.
So often, we begin switching tools that begin to overcomplicate our business internally and slows us down from delivering our services to our customers.
Also, if you use too many tools that are costly, you can ruin the process of your experience with your customer.
Simplify the main thing
When entrepreneurs begin to make money, what happens next is they tend to make the process of getting more money difficult by adding more complexity to the business. When you should do the opposite by making it simpler for your customers to purchase from you.
Part 3 – Price and profitability
The main question people always ask me is, “How much should I charge?”.
Whenever you have a price question you really also have a value question, meaning is the value of what I’m providing worth the price?
Here’s what I’ve learned about pricing as I scaled my business to the first million in 10 months.
- Price is a constant variable which means it’s okay if it increases or decreases over time as you test (and you should test!!)
- If you have low price and high volume this means you have an opportunity to increase price until profit begins to minimize.
- If you have high price and low volume this means you have an opportunity to decrease price until profits begin to maximize.
The best way to set your price is by starting with the first price you have in mind. Do not overthink this!
If you’re really struggling setting price, something that can help is looking at your industry to see what’s comparable and what other people are charging for it. This can help you come up with a range to start testing. It doesn’t mean you are locked into this price forever. If you’re worried about this, start off by mentioning this is an “early bird” price.
My second million I made in my business took me 4 months because I found a pricing sweet spot that allowed me to keep 50% margin after all the expenses including marketing.
The pricing sweet spot is an intersection where customers can’t believe the price because it feels too good to be true and you’re satisfied with the margin.
Part 4 – Building a team
This is the most important thing I’ve learned about building a team. Building a team is not about looking like a company, we should only hire for what we need right now and not because we want to look like a company or anticipating future demand that’s not there yet.
After validating your idea and making sales or taking pre-orders, then we can move forward to hiring.
In other blogs to follow, I’ll write in greater detail how to hire talent but for now, I’ll focus on the purpose of building a team.
- If you want to hire, first take a look at what you can afford to pay. Do not hire if you can’t afford to pay.
- If you are ready for help but can’t afford to pay, you need to focus more on creating a profitable business. Look I get it, you want help right now, but the most important thing is to become a profitable business of one.
- In the beginning, paying people is all the incentive you need when hiring, do not overthink this unless you’re bringing on someone as a cofounder capacity.
- Hire for need and skill not popularity and not people who want to be you.
Part 5 – Facebook ads
When someone tells me how much they’ve grown their business without facebook ads or that they don’t use Facebook ads, I’m always crying inside.
All I hear when they say that is, “I haven’t yet tapped into the full potential of my business.”
When you look at any industry, the best companies all use Facebook ads. So when you say you don’t but the best companies do, it shows me there’s a disconnect.
Being dependent on facebook ads is not a bad thing, understand the goal of business is to make the most amount of profit and here’s a vehicle that can shorten the time for you to do that.
Most times diversifying across too many platforms actually lead to a lack of focus and dominating in one area.
Facebook ads HELP you:
- Acquire NEW customers
- Warm up EXISTING customers
- Get back in FRONT of people
If you are not running Facebook ads, you are missing out on the biggest opportunity for growth in your business.
I once remember hearing an entrepreneur say they were running a newsletter after a few years that did $400,000 in profit. Then someone came a long and bought them out. The company that bought that newsletter went from doing 400k a year to 4 million in profit a year.
Why? They didn’t change anything but improving the marketing.
How did they do it? They utilized Facebook ads.
This isn’t a singular story, there are so many stories that are like the one mentioned above.
If you want to acquire new customers, run facebook ads.
These platforms have done all the hard work for you by putting millions of customers in a singular place.
Now, all you have to do is utilize these platforms and use them to your advantage.
I only started teaching facebook ads because for years that was my secret weapon behind so many of the successful brands I launched.
I took 14 years of Facebook ads knowledge and put it into a 6 week curriculum. Click here to learn more about it.
Follow the Framework
I remember my mentor used to tell me, “follow what works.”
I’m not saying anything you’re not capable of doing.
I used to want to do it my way because I thought my way was the right way. I used to go down a youtube rabbit whole and try to mix and match so many different ideas and strategies.
If you truly want the success you seek, follow a proven framework. Look for people you admire and have done what you want to do.
Leave a Reply