No audience? 5 steps to grow your business from 0.
I know many of you have no audience right now. And I often see comments saying, "I need to wait to grow my audience to start my business." No you don't. I know you know this, but every single business on the planet starts with no audience. So you absolutely can start a business without an audience. So today I wanted to go over some key things that you need to know and are often overlooked and ridiculously simple about starting a profitable business without an audience. So today we're going to dive into these five things. Number one, necessary numbers. Number two, magnetic messaging. Number three,
create a pipeline of prospects. Number four, authentic relationship building. And number five, daily revenue generating activities. As you may know, the entire mission behind this channel is to make entrepreneurship available to everyone. So a small thing you could do to support that mission is hit the like button so we can reach more people in the algorithm. And if this resonates with you and you get something out of it, be sure to take a screenshot and share it out on your Instagram stories. Tag me and let me know what
your takeaways were and I'll be sure to reshare on my stories. Before I get into the details, you're probably sitting there going, "Who are you to tell me this?" So I figured I'd give you two examples of people I've worked with that have grown from absolute zero. First and foremost, an amazing grandmother who is a self proclaimed non-technical person, who absolutely crushed it. So let me share her story. Cheryl Thompson generated $27,000 in just under 30 days with her online course, where she helps women who are overwhelmed and uncertain become confident real estate investors. Most important piece here is that she started with no niche, zero social media, and zero business clients.
The next example is Geoffrey Setiawan. He grew from zero audience and no business to $1 million in core sales in 18 months and became one of the go-tos in his niche, which is all about helping men who are on the brink of divorce save their marriages or save their relationships. And just to be clear, this was without using paid advertising at all. It was completely organic strategies and growth, a lot of which I'm going to share in this video so let's get into it. Number one is necessary numbers. So if you're familiar with the show Shark Tank, and maybe Mark Cuban, who happens to be one of my favorite entrepreneurs, recently he said that the biggest key to building any business, it doesn't matter what you're doing, and he would know, is relationships. And this is something that I have been harping on for a very long time
and it's how I built the entire foundation of my business before I did anything online. Now, if you do the math on this, I want you to really think about it because oftentimes we think we need to get millions and millions of followers in order to have a viable business. When in reality, let's just say you meet one new person a day for the next 365 days. That is 365 potential clients for your business. Now do the math on how many clients you actually
need, and that's probably way more than you need. But if you put your effort into building one new potential relationship and client relationship every single day, that creates momentum. And that's what Mark was saying when he was speaking to one of the candidates on Shark Tank. He said, "If you just focus on building relationships, that is what creates momentum. That is what creates a tipping point. That is what builds your authority over time, because the more
people who know what you do and what you're good at, the more people are going to talk about you as the expert and tell the people that they know, and it builds this ripple effect." Even if you were to take that a step further and build five new relationships a day, and I'm going to share exactly kind of how to do this a little later, that leads to 1,825 potential leads in the next 12 months. That's a lot of business. That's a lot of impact. And it doesn't require doing a ton of different things or trying to build a massive audience. It requires being strategic, thoughtful, and intentional in where you're building relationships and how you're building them. Now, in order to determine how many clients you
actually need in order to build the business that you're dreaming about, let's just bring it back to an equation I've shared before. So it goes a little something like this, it all centers around your conversion rate. Now, you need to figure out, "Out of all the conversations I'm having, how many of these people am I able to convert?" You may not know this number in the beginning, but as you start to grow and as you start to get clients in the door, you're going to understand, "Okay, how many conversations did it take to get me that one new client and one new sale?" When you know your average conversion rate, you then can reverse engineer how to hit your goals and create consistency in your business.
So for example, if you want to get two new clients a month and the average conversion rate is 20%, you need to have at least 10 conversations on a monthly basis to achieve that target because whatever number of clients you want, times it by five, and that's a 20% conversion rate. So if you speak to 10 people, you should be able to secure at least two clients. That tells you how to get consistently two clients a month for the next 12 months, and also how to grow from there, because you know your average, so then it's about if you have more conversations, you're going to get more clients in the door. Simple as that. So necessary numbers are important to focus on,
not vanity numbers, not growing a massive audience, necessary numbers to create a business that fuels the kind of life and the kind of impact that you want to have. Step number two, magnetic messaging. One little question you want to ask yourself is, "If I don't know who I want as a client specifically, how am I going to know where to find them?" Oftentimes we start looking for clients and trying to find leads and all of these things, and we go, "It's not working," but we don't even know who we're looking for. So there are three key factors that I've identified over the past however many years and thousands of clients that I've worked with that indicate success and being able to reach the people who need to see your messaging and are most likely to convert into paying clients. One specific ideal client at one specific place on their journey where they're most likely to invest seeking one specific transformation. This becomes your north star. This becomes your grounding force and the guidance for every piece of content you create and every conversation you have so you don't feel the need to make all of the content and be everywhere. You're able to focus on the
activities that lead to the most return for you and generating the most leads for you. And you're able to keep your focus on only what actually works instead of trying to do everything. So in order to identify those three factors, we like to use something that we call our transformation statement. And I want to share a really quick example here. So we have a client named Deanne and she teaches crochet. When she came into our authority accelerator program,
she was a little lost in how possibly she could create a course that people would actually pay for. She actually said, "Everybody told me that no one would ever pay $500 for this program." Well, she was right, they actually ended up paying more, but it was because she wasn't selling a crochet course. She wasn't talking about tactics. We had to really help Deanne identify who specifically she was serving. Oftentimes it's a mirror for your own journey.
So this is now Deanne's transformation statement. "I help women struggling with stress and anxiety go from feeling like they've lost their sense of peace, calm, and creativity, to calming their minds and bodies using mindful crochet so that they can manage overwhelm in a healthy way while also nurturing their creative spirit through therapeutic crafting." And after Deanne sold out her program, she commented and said, "All that work you got me to do on my transformation statement paid off. I read it to my potential clients and they got their credit cards out, so yep, this is just the beginning." So when you get clear
on your messaging, it becomes magnetic to the right people who are ready to invest and get the transformation that you are providing to them. Remember, people pay for transformation, they do not pay for information. In addition to this, getting super clear on your messaging up front makes everything else so much easier. And this relates to what I was saying in last week's video, the more you understand who you're serving and what you want to be known for, the more the algorithm can support your growth to reach the right people. This is how Geoffrey, who I mentioned earlier, has turned 27,000 subscribers, and remember, he started at zero, into now nearly $2 million in revenue in his business. Step number three, create a pipeline of prospects. So a big misconception and a common mistake,
especially when you're growing a business from zero, is you think you need to constantly be making more, more, more, more, more connections. When you focus on the necessary numbers, as we did in step one, you know that you don't need to reach everybody, but you are aware of the numbers that you do need to reach in order to hit your goals. So let's just say you meet one new person a day for the next 12 months, and you convert 10 of those people into paying clients. Well, that is 36 clients a year, roughly, and that
means that that's three new clients a month. That very well can sustain a very profitable and manageable business. But in order to actually create that kind of conversion, we need to focus on building a pipeline. It's not constantly about finding new clients and new leads. It's also nurturing those people who maybe haven't taken the time to invest yet. But if you focus on building those relationships and meeting, let's say one new person a day who could be a potential lead for you, that gives you an entire bank of potential clients. So let's say only 36 convert, that still leaves you with hundreds of people that are interested in what you do and know what you do, but maybe they just weren't ready to invest at that exact time. But if you continue to show up for them, nurture them,
share your expertise with them, eventually you're the person that they're going to invest in. So a very easy way to do this is first and foremost, start with your offline network. This is what I did when I was starting my business prior to having social media. I reached out
to all of my family and friends, and I let them know that I was looking for social media clients and that what I could do for the clients was help them increase their revenue through social media strategy. From doing that, maybe there wasn't an immediate response, but over time, all of a sudden, I was getting people sending their friends, sending their families, sending their network and connections to me, which led to a full roster of clients as time went on. So start with the people you know. Start with your offline network, your offline audience.
Start with friends and family. Start with past clients if you've had them. Start there and start planting seeds with all of those people, even if you just send an email to them or hop on a quick phone call and say, "This is what I'm doing." You would be shocked at how quickly you'll get your first clients in the door, just from that strategy alone, and has nothing to do with being online. It's all about casting a net. Not everybody's going to be ready to work with you right away, but if you create a net, and what I call a pipeline, meaning that you have all of these people that you've created connections with and had conversations with, like I said, right now, they might not be ready, but as you grow and as you get more clients and client results in the door, more likely than not, they're going to come to you when they are ready.
So it's about putting yourself out there as the expert that you are, sharing what you're ready to do and serve people with. And as you do that, people perk up, they pay attention. And when they're ready, they'll work with you. And most importantly, you want to start building a list, because that list is your most valuable resource in your business, as I mentioned in prior videos. A simple thing that you can do is just create a spreadsheet, put first name, last name, contact information. So that if somebody isn't ready
right now, you at least have their contact information and you can create a thread of conversations with them and continuously reach out. You can share value. If you create a piece of content that you know would be relevant to them and can help them solve their problems, that gives you an opportunity to reach out to them, reconnect on the conversation, reinvigorate the conversation, and that can lead to clients. It happens all the time in our business. We have people who come to us after two years since we've had our initial conversation saying, "I think I'm ready now." So patience leads to profitability. It's not always about growing
your audience, it's also about nurturing the audience that you have, and going back to people that you've had contact with in the past and nurturing the relationships you currently have in your network, because you don't know who people may know that they can then send to you. So some very basic tactics to focus on on a daily basis, now going from offline to online, is you can go into Instagram comment sections. You can search specific hashtags for your industry. For example, if we're talking about Deanne, if you searched crochet, creative crochet, crochet project on Instagram, you're going to find all of these people who are interested in crochet. And out of all of those people, if you go in and you like their content, you comment on their content with value, people start to take notice, that starts to build your network and your pipeline of potential clients. You can also do this with YouTube comments,
with channels that have the exact same audience as you. There are so many channels out there who don't often look at their comments. And if you can go in there and provide value, don't be a spammer, but provide value and answer questions and help people. Entrepreneurs are problem solvers. We are here to serve. So if you can come from a place of service, it's going to be reciprocated. Whether that person joins your community and starts to follow you from zero today, or they take notice six months from now, you're at least still planting all of these seeds, which as I spoke about earlier, builds momentum and builds your audience. You know what doesn't? Doing nothing. And another really great resource is Facebook
groups. And I want to touch on this more in a second, because you might be thinking, "Oh no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to reach out to people," because unfortunately, reaching out to people has gotten a really bad name, but we do it in a way where it's authentic relationship building. So let's get into that right now. Number four, authentic relationship building. Not a lot of people, not a lot of business owners take the time to do this, and it's such a missed opportunity. Even people with massive audiences don't take the time to do this. I to this day still do this on a daily, weekly, monthly basis because I know two things that are facts, curiosity leads to cashflow and relationships lead to revenue. Say it with me now. The reason that outreach oftentimes doesn't work and feels icky, I get it, is because it often looks a little something like this. "Hello ma'am/sir, would
you like to buy my jewelry product?" "No, I would not." There has to be an authentic reason why you are actually touching base with that person, and it often starts very simply by providing value. So if you happen to look in a Facebook group or in the YouTube comments or on Instagram and search hashtags or search accounts that have a relevant audience to who you're trying to work with, all you need to start doing is, like I said, going in and providing value, liking people's content, sharing people's content. That puts you on their radar, first and foremost. Now, is this going to get you rich overnight? Absolutely not. But like I said,
it's all about building that momentum and building your pipeline. So by doing this, you authentically become a part of their community. You authentically get on their radar. The next step is to take it into a private conversation. This isn't a conversation to sell,
and this is where most people go wrong. This is where curiosity has to come in. You need to know your ideal client better than anybody else. This is why I still do this exercise all the time. And I ask these particular questions to random strangers on the internet that I happen to come across doing this same work on a very regular basis. And it leads to such fruitful, helpful conversations for me to continue to make the impact I want to make and have a really solid program because I'm never not learning about my clients or potential clients. So the questions that I like to ask are these: "What's your biggest frustration about blank? What's your biggest fear about blank? Where do you feel like you need support right now? If you could wave a magic wand, what would life and business look like if you had X solution?" And here's the magic of this: There's no pressure. Not every single person that you connect with or reach
out to is going to be a perfect fit for you or a perfect ideal client. And that's actually a good thing because the more you learn about who isn't a fit, the more it becomes super obvious who is. And so having these conversations and reaching out with these questions, once you've started to build a little rapport and authentically built a relationship, you go really deep with people and it builds an incredible amount of trust and reciprocity and authority. In addition to the fact that because most people don't take the time to build these relationships and they just blast on social media, hoping somebody will listen, it really does position you as somebody who's human and actually cares about connecting and understanding the people you're serving, not just trying to rack up vanity metrics. And this, my friend, please hear me on this,
this simple activity, like I said, you could do this for one person a day, this simple activity is so much better to spend your time on than throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping a piece of your rando content hits. Makes sense? I think so. And to add on to that, what's amazing about doing this exercise is you have a never ending content idea notebook, because when you ask these questions, you understand what your ideal client's struggling with. And if you can create content that addresses that, it, again, creates this incredible authority. And you're never going to have to guess how to create content or what to talk about online, because you actually hear it from the person that you're trying to serve. So then it makes your content strategy better, more effective, more efficient, and you don't feel the need to just hope that something works and lands and waste your time spending hours on content that's not really going to do anything for you or your business or your clients.
Number five, daily revenue generating activities. Here's the beauty of all of this, all of this work that you're doing, all of this experimenting and testing that you're doing, is showing you which activities are actually generating paying clients, which activities and what a kind of messaging is interesting to people. This helps you then optimize and narrow down and only focus on those things. So it makes everything you do way more effective and impactful.
Now, the reason I can speak with such confidence about all of this is because I had been in a situation years ago where I was so frustrated because I couldn't crack the code on consistency. And then all of a sudden, I took a step back and I asked myself, "What am I actually doing to get clients every day?" So that became my new mantra and I hope it becomes yours. Every day you wake up, ask yourself, "What can I do today to get a client to work with me?" And at the end of the day, check in again, "What did I do today to generate new clients?" It becomes this litmus test of what you're actually doing on a daily basis and if it's actually helping your business. You'd be shocked, and you might be sitting there right now going,
"I don't think I've done anything to get a new client, but yet I'm not getting clients and I'm frustrated I'm not be getting clients. And I can't figure out why I'm not getting clients, but I'm not doing anything to get clients." This happens all the time because we get distracted by doing the shiny things. We get distracted by making the random content. We get distracted by being on the new platform. We get distracted by doing all of these things that
are not necessary and we forget that if business doesn't have sales, it's not a business. So here are five tactical things you can do on a daily basis to generate revenue. One, reach out to anyone who has engaged with your content or direct messaged you in the last month to see how they're doing and if maybe you could help them. Number two, touch base with any leads that you have spoken to in the past, it doesn't matter how long ago it was, who didn't come on as a client at the time and see how they're doing. Get an update, follow up. Number three, ask your current clients
or your existing network for referrals. Number four, join Facebook groups full of your ideal clients to better understand them and to start supporting them, not selling to them, start supporting them so you authentically can build those relationships. Number five, post about what you do and how you help people very clearly on social media with a clear call to action for people to get in touch with you directly. Simple as that. This is not complicated. This is not rocket science. This does not
require you to be working all day, every day on nonsense without seeing any kind of a return. You've got to get real honest with yourself and ask yourself if you're doing anything on a day daily basis that actually leads to a return. And out of the things you're doing, what's working? That is a big clue on where to focus and narrow down as you move forward. Two truths that we live by in my business, one I just mentioned. If you don't
have sales, you don't have a business. And selling is simply just a vehicle to make the impact that you are here to make. It's not scary. It's not slimy. It's not sleazy. It's only those things if you're selling something that's crap. Okay? Number two, if you do not have a consistent, reliable way to get new clients in the door, you will grow to hate your business. Business is simple. You need traffic, you need a paid offer, and you need paying clients.
To bring this full circle, there is inevitably a tipping point in your business. I talk about it often, but we rely on what we call the flywheel or engine to run our business, and it goes like this. You have your program at the very top and that program needs to be something you're really proud of, and you need to really make it the best on the market. So you have your online course, which is our paid offer. And then you have to make sales. You have to get people enrolled into it.
From there, you need to serve those people with a transformation, create a customer transformation, a client transformation. When you do that, when your clients get results, they know that they then can become your biggest cheerleader and ambassador and tell even more people about your program, which leads to more enrollments, more transformations, and more happy clients who then tell more people. This is how you create the tipping point in your business. It's really not that complicated. Do good work, get good results, and your business will inevitably grow. But don't get distracted by the things that don't support those basics. Don't get distracted by things that don't support client results and getting
clients in the door, because that is the core of how you build a long-term, sustainable, peaceful, happy, profitable business. So bring it back to your necessary numbers. How many people do you actually need in the next 12 months to work with in order to create a business that you're really pumped about? Probably not as many as you think. So do that math and then use that as your guiding light, your north star, of what activities you need to be doing daily to hit that target. And I can't wait to hear your update in the year when you go,
"Wow, I did it. That's amazing." Because there are a bazillion things that you could focus on, but if you're not focused on that, you're going to be spinning yourself in circles and frustrated that you're not getting client. If this gave you a ton of clarity, and this was helpful for you, be sure to give this video a like so that we can reach more people in the algorithm and achieve our mission of making entrepreneurship available to everyone. Now, if you want to go even deeper on this, and you're really ready to take this seriously and turn your skillset and your experience into a highly scalable online course business, that's what I do, it's what I love to do, it's what I eat, sleep, and breathe, then you can check out my free master class diving into exactly that in the description below. And I built an entire playlist around starting a business from zero and if I were to start over. So make sure you check that out here next. Thank you so much for watching. Be sure to subscribe. Business is
simple. We don't have to make it so difficult. Are you with me? I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
2022-04-06 15:15
