part [5 of 6]:
(The Profit Without Worry System)
let’s talk about the Profit Without Worry approach to finally create your own path to success.
Create your profit system. Change your business for good.
Published on April 5th, 2020
by Michelle L. Evans
In part 4, we discovered:
The fundamental challenge faced by business owners when they’re at Business Owner v1.0 is that they’re lacking the foundations needed to build a business. This shows up in many different ways: not knowing who your clients really are, not knowing what your clients really want to buy and so much more.
Then, there’s the issue of having clarity around what your business model is. There’s no single business model, but a lot of the breakdown at this stage comes as the result of using tactics designed for a different business model that are ill-suited to the one you’re actually running.
To get to Business Owner v.2.0 including financial stability, you need to do the work of setting the foundation, and this is where Profit Without Worry comes in.
Before we go any further, yes, this is a ‘system’, but it’s not THAT kind of system. There’s not a single thing in this approach that’s not based on proven marketing and sales fundamentals, and whether you ever choose to work with me or not, they can still work for you. And that’s my goal here. To demonstrate the steps needed to create the foundation to get you to v2.0 of your business. All with no hacks, formulas or big money masterminds required.
Now, let’s talk about the Profit Without Worry approach to finally create your own path to success.
Pillar 1: Audience Reconnaissance
Purpose: Listen, learn, and gather insights to test.
“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” - Seth Godin
There are so many people in the online space giving (bad) advice to create your offer and sell the heck out of it, but in my experience that’s absolutely backwards.
Where’s the research?
Who’s the audience?
Is there even a desire for this offer?
Creating something without that research requires you to push, hype, make promises and sell, sell, sell. There’s no proof of concept. There’s no built in audience. There’s no demand for your offer.
So you have to work hard to convince anyone out there with a credit card or PayPal account that they need to buy from you.
What a waste of time and effort!
Instead, find a problem your audience wants to pay to solve, then create an offer to solve it.
This is a fundamentally different way to approach the game. One where you put your AUDIENCE and the journey they need to go on at the center of your strategy.
This involves asking questions. Listening. Observing. And crafting an experience that meets their needs. (You know, not just slapping something together that you decide to sell and then hoping for the best.)
Listen to a quick excerpt from one of my students, Annette Bond as she talks about what diving into her audience journey did for her business, confidence and ability to create with intention.
Pillar 11: Content experiments
Purpose: Test out ideas, let your audience tell you yay or nay, and then only build out what gets a response.
It makes me so frustrated when I hear online marketing celebrities talking about creating a perfect opt-in, blog post, video, webinar or marketing funnel to grow your business and they don’t talk at all about how to actually discover what the heck that perfect content is!
Here’s the truth — you’ll NEVER be able to create that perfect piece of content yourself. You and I — we’re way too close to our own subject matter. We just know too much.
It’s actually called the ‘curse of knowledge’ and can really hold us back if we’re trying to make something that’s perfect for our audience.
Instead… I say go for imperfect. Go for tests. Go for just good enough. Go for quantity over quality, at least in the testing phase.
Oh, this is hard for a recovering perfectionist to say. But I say this because I’ve made this mistake…
I went full-time into my business in 2012 and I listened to the ‘experts’ tell me that I needed content that was ‘so good people would think - wow, if she’s giving THIS away for free, what must her paid stuff be like???”
Ever heard that one before?
Well, I took that advice to heart. And I invested over $1500 in creating an eBook that was over 100 pages long.
It was chock FULL of GREAT information (at least I thought so).
It was SUPER valuable. Full of all my best stuff.
And it was LONG.
Guess what? NO ONE WANTED IT.
I tried to give it away as a lead magnet, and people ignored it. I tried to give it away to friends and former colleagues… the kind ones told me “Sounds interesting… but I don’t have time to read it.”
You know what all these people were really telling me?
I don’t see how this is relevant or interesting to me and my life.
Why? Because I did my content creation TOTALLY backwards.
Instead of focusing on ME and what I wanted to create, I should have been focusing on my audience and the questions they wanted to answer.
When I made the switch and stopped trying to be PERFECT before sharing content, everything changed. I was able to quickly see what people responded to and what they ignored.
But I had to be willing to TEST instead of trying to pretend that I knew everything. Testing isn’t about trying to flash your brilliance at the world and create that perfect piece of content — it’s putting your ideas out there and seeing how they land with your audience.
When done the right way content is a two-way conversation with our audience. That means we need to be willing to put our ideas out there to see what our audience wants more of. Ultimately, that’s how we build content that resonates and gets the results we want.
Pillar 111: testing/mini offers
Purpose: Test out an offer as quickly and inexpensively as possible to find out what will people pay money to buy and WHY.
Mini offers are one of the best ways to put your ideas to the test. Now, if you asked an expert with a ‘proven formula’ they might tell you to not waste your time and just skip this step completely.
Don’t do that!
Mini offers are baby offers that help you get insights into what people want to buy. They’re key because they help us find out if we’re attracting the right kind of people —the kind of people who are interested in buying from you.
You may have your entire plan laid out but you don't have the deep insights about who would buy this, why they buy it, what they get from it, what they find valuable. Without that intelligence, you really don’t know the likelihood of success.
By gathering audience insights about what specifically people love about your offer, it gives you the confidence that you’re on the right track and the words to explain what people find valuable about your offer.
One of the biggest pitfalls people run into with mini offers is spending too much money creating the offer. Your goal should be to spend the least amount possible to get it out the door.
Remember, a mini offer is simply to test for interest. It’s NOT your final product.
If your mini offer doesn’t get great traction, it’s okay. In fact, it’s GOOD you know that before you pour time, money and effort into a big launch. By having a mindset that focuses on the fact that this is simply a test, you can avoid spending too much time wringing your hands and instead focus on making some tweaks to improve your offer.
When done right, these baby offers will help you gain insight AND make back most (if not all) the money you use to test your content and audiences while leaving you feeling confident that people will buy from you.
[We get to mini offers at 21:45]
magnetic proof accelerator
Purpose: Gather powerful proof — results, testimonials and real-life examples
Nothing can replace a GREAT client testimonial. The right testimonial can sell your offer faster than any fancy marketing strategy.
Whether it’s a friend recommending your offer to another friend or a happy client providing a video you can use on your website, client testimonials are VITAL to creating the foundation for a profitable business.
Why?
Well, people KNOW you’re going to make big promises and say great things about yourself. They automatically trust what you say much, much less than if they hear it from a client or a friend.
There are countless statistics that show a large majority of consumers read reviews before making a purchase. You want to make sure you have social proof to back up the value and effectiveness of your products or services, because most people ARE going to do some homework on your business before they buy.
As a result, you need someone outside of your business who can vouch for you. Who can say YES, this person/business is LEGIT and they can get you results.
When you’ve got testimonials like that, magic will happen to your business like:
Revisit Cialdini’s Persuasion Pillars: the podcast with the summary wrap up is here --- social proof is the first one.
Pillar v: profit engine creation
Purpose: Create a marketing funnel once all the pieces are in place.
Now that you’ve finalized your offer and you’ve got proof that it works, it’s time to create a repeatable, evergreen system that’ll run 24/7.
A strong profit engine serves multiple purposes:
#1. Attracts the right audience with content they’re interested in so they get warmed up to who you are and how you help them. Knowing who you serve is critical to your business so you need to be willing to dig deeper to define your audience and understand what they desire. Your profit engine should clearly articulate the problem you solve for the audience.
#2. Invites the audience in to learn more from you. Your next step is to invite them to learn HOW you plan on solving their problem. No hard sell, no commitments, just sharing information and being of service to them. Consider how you can invite them in — what types of resources, opt-ins or helpful tools are you offering? What are you giving them to signal that YOU are the person who they want to follow?
#3. Sets the stage as to why they should buy from you (aka: your unfair advantage). People entering your profit engine will want to know: why you, why your offer and why now. One of the best ways you can do this is by sharing stories about your business and how you’ve helped past clients.
#4. Gives them a clear next step to buy. When someone is done with the profit engine, you don’t want to leave the hanging. If you’ve created content that moves them from one step to the next, then you need to end with an option for how they can continue forward. The next step can be to get on a sales call with you, buy from your sales page, attend a webinar or in-person event to purchase, or any other options that move them into a purchase decision.
Your profit engine also provides you with a quantifiable way to monitor your metrics and improve or update the content as needed.
Pillar v1: repeat
Purpose: Continue learning and testing and perfecting.
As business owners, we should always be curious and looking for ways to improve.
The repeat pillar isn’t so much of a concrete step as it’s a mindset. Just because your profit engine is up and running doesn't mean you're done for good. Once everything is in place, keep testing, keep going, keep finding out what else your audience needs/wants/where you can serve them better.
Every test you do will help you learn more and go deeper with your audience.
The next time you’re tempted to compare yourself to someone else, take a look in the mirror. You are you. You own a unique business. You have an unfair advantage.
Working the six steps of the Profit Without Worry system helps you build a foundation for a business that’ll last. A business that feels like you and lets you serve in a way that’s real, not manipulative or icky. A business that you can be proud of, which is why you started your business in the first place.
And that’s why I do the work I do. It’s why you do the work you do, so let’s skip the copycatting and unethical business tactics and get back to basics.