By Sunday evening, the video had less than 100 views. Not surprising for a new channel with a small handful of subscribers.

But then, some time during the night, YouTube’s algorithm picked it up. When I checked in on Monday morning, the video had 3,300 views and the channel had gained a few hundred subscribers. A day or so later, it hit 10,000 views. As of this writing, it’s sitting at 14,000+ views, and the channel has more than 1,200 subscribers.

Content is a Solopreneur’s Best Visibility Tool

For years, I have been advising my clients to create more content. Even before you have something to sell, you should be putting long-form content out into the world. I talk about why in this video, but here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

• Content (and the engagement you receive) points the direction your business should go. If your readers/listeners/viewers react well to content about ridding your garden of tomato worms, but when you post about aphids on your rose bushes you get crickets, that’s a clear indication where your followers need help.
• Creating content teaches you how you think. It helps solidify your ideas and opinions in a way that learning or even thinking cannot do.
• As your body of work grows, your content reach compounds. Blog posts you published years ago will continue to reach a new audience. Older YouTube videos will suddenly pop up in someone’s feed, introducing you to a new fan.
• Content invites collaboration with others. It’s not just for your potential customers. Content also helps others in your niche (or related niches) know what you’re about. It’s how you get invited to speak, or co-author a book, or participate in a summit.

I define long-form content as anything that requires more than three or four minutes to consume. It’s a blog post like this, or a podcast, or a YouTube video. It’s not an Instagram or a LinkedIn post.

Over the last few months, I’ve become increasingly convinced that while all long-form content is good and useful for your business, when it comes to discovery, there is one channel that cannot be beat: YouTube.

YouTube (which is owned by Google) has the algorithm dialed in perfectly. If a viewer shows interest in a topic by clicking on and watching a video, YouTube will show them additional, similar content that other people like them have watched.

If you’ve ever clicked on a random video about golf-ball collecting, only to see half your YouTube feed transformed into golf-memorabilia related videos, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The husband and I refer to it as a punishment, as in, “I accidentally watched a video about window washing, and now YouTube is punishing me.”

As creators, this is good news. When there is a clear system in place, we can leverage it to our advantage.

But as the views climbed on my debut video, some people started to question the system. They thought maybe I have some magic sauce for turning up the YouTube dials. They wanted to know, “What does she have that I don’t have?”

I call them the “Yes, buts.”

Yes, but…

“Yes, but you already have a name on YouTube. That must have helped.”

I do have another YouTube channel, but my research suggests the algorithm doesn’t care. Each channel is treated as its own entity, even if it exists within a Google account container among several other channels.

The only potential connection here would be if you start a brand new channel on an equally new Google account. It seems in that case, YouTube really does hold back on promoting your content, while they wait to see if you’re human.

I have an old Google account, so that’s not a concern. More importantly, my other channel wasn’t exactly crushing it. My best performing video there has 447 views, and the channel itself has 384 subscribers. There’s no reason to think YouTube prioritized this new channel because of the previous one.

“Yes, but you promoted your new channel to your list.”

Of course I did. I’d be stupid not to, but it had very little impact. Here are the numbers:

• On Saturday (when the video dropped) I emailed a small portion of my list—less than 300 people—with the link. 44 people clicked through to the video.
• On Monday (when it blew up) I emailed my entire list—4,227 people—with the link. 52 people clicked through to the video, and 77 clicked through to the channel page.
• Total clicks through to the video from those two emails were less than 200, and some of those were undoubtedly duplicates. Kit only shows totals and doesn’t offer details about unique clicks, so I have no way of knowing how many people saw the video based on my email alone.

What I can see is this.

YouTube’s analytics tells me where traffic is coming from. 87.8% (or 10,500 views) came from YouTube recommending the video. Fewer than 10% of views came from outside of YouTube.

“Yes, but you talk about making money. Of course your video blew up.”

True. I do talk about making money. Could that be the reason?

Now I was the one who was curious. I wanted to know if videos in other niches could take off the same way, so I went looking. I specifically looked for smaller channels in niches unrelated to business. I was on the hunt for videos with far more views than the channel history or subscriber count would predict, and it only took a few minutes to find them.

I found Thuja Hill Homemaking, a channel with 1,830 subscribers. Six months ago, she posted a video about thrifting for a fall and winter wardrobe. That video has 8,200 views.

I found Class Act Cats, a channel with 1,430 subscribers. One year ago, they released Cat Introduction Gone Wrong: Solutions That Work. That video currently has 20K views.

I found Tracy Lynn, from Declutter in Minutes, who has 18K subscribers. Three months ago she posted a video titled 5 Things you can do right now to downsize FAST. It has 113K views.

I found Love Marbie, who describes herself as Martha Stewart meets Oprah Winfrey. Her channel has 24K subscribers. One year ago, she published a video titled “Make Your Home Feel Like a Luxury Hotel,” and earned 193K views.

These are just a few examples. I found similar results on dating channels, crafting channels, makeup channels, and gardening channels.

This tells me that my assumption is right. YouTube is a useful discovery tool for reaching a much wider audience.

The trick is in how you harness the beast.

The System I Followed

I have to preface this by saying I am not a YouTube expert. I don’t have contacts at Google, and I am not privy to any proprietary information about how their algorithm works.

But I do follow a lot of smart people who talk about YouTube, since it’s something I want to get better at. Here’s what those smart people recommend:

• Competitor research. What content is driving views for others in your niche? Make similar content (but obviously don’t copy them).
• Thumbnails are 99% of the system. Click-through rate is everything for YouTube. If your thumbnail isn’t scroll-stopping and click-inducing, your video won’t work, period.
• The hook. Once they click, your main job is to get the viewer to stick beyond the first 30 seconds.

If you do these things well, YouTube will reward you by showing your video to more people who are similar to those who have already watched, commented, and liked it. YouTube will keep doing that for as long as the video continues to pull good numbers.

What those “good numbers” are is anyone’s guess, but here’s what Google says.

Half of all channels and videos on YouTube have an impressions CTR [click-through rate] that can range between 2% and 10%.

Also on that same page, Google says:

YouTube will recommend a video to viewers if the video is relevant to them and if the video’s average view duration indicates that viewers find it interesting.

Here are what my numbers looked like:

On Monday, March 31, the click-through rate for my video was 6.5% and the average view duration was just under five minutes. I suspect this is why the video took off like it did. Because the click-through rate was in the acceptable range, and the view duration was solid, YouTube showed the video to more and more people.

Understandably, as the audience widens, it becomes less targeted. My click-through rate and average view duration began to drop. At the time of this writing (Saturday, April 4) the CTR is 6.2% and the average view duration is down to 4:46.

The video is still actively being shown and getting views, but I can see it’s slowing down a bit.

Doing Everything Right is Not a Guarantee

Now, let’s talk about the second video on my baby YouTube channel. I published it on Saturday, April 4. At the time, the channel had just under 1,000 subscribers. In the first three hours, it received about 200 views.

I emailed my list with the link, and 23 people clicked through to the video.

As I write this, this second video is doing objectively better than the first one:

• The CTR is 6.6%, slightly above the 6.5% the first video earned.
• Average view duration is 6:54. This is a full two minutes longer. Remember, YouTube’s business model is advertising. The longer someone stays on their site, the more money they make. So this should be a big green light for the algorithm gods.

But the video sitting at just under 1,000 views. Still good. I’m not complaining at all, but it’s not the juggernaut the first video created. 

Will the algorithm give it a boost like it did for the first video? Maybe. And maybe there are other things at play here. It’s Easter weekend, for one. Or maybe the topic isn’t as broadly appealing. Who knows?

The point is, you cannot predict which content will hit the mark, and which will sink into oblivion. But that should not prevent you from continuing to publish content. If anything, this experience is encouraging me to produce even more content.

Cindy’s I-am-not-an-expert YouTube Advice

I still believe in posting lots and lots of long-form content. It’s how I am growing my business, it’s how my clients are growing their businesses, and it just works. Maybe not every time, but in the long run and with consistent effort, it does work.

If you are publishing content for visibility, YouTube is the platform that is stacked most highly in your favor, but only if you…

1. Do your research and post videos similar to what your potential viewers are already watching.
2. Pay special attention to the thumbnail and title. They have to walk a fine line between “compelling and scroll-stopping” and “click-bait.”
3. Script your videos with the goal of longer view times. Higher average view duration = more recommendations from YouTube.

Finally and as with all things: Treat it like a science experiment. Pay attention to what works, so you can do more of it. Look at what bombs, and (obviously) don’t do that again. That is how every content channel, product offer, and business works.

And, if you’re thinking all of this sounds a bit like the golden age of blogging, when we were optimizing our titles and keywords and images so we could hit the first page of the Google SERPs, you’re not wrong.

It might be a different medium, but the same rules apply if you want your content to be seen by a new audience.

Go publish something.

The post Case Study: How to Get YouTube to Recommend Your Videos (Even if You Have Zero Subscribers) appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

The whole thing is a Ponzi Scheme, except in this case, it’s not money we’re losing. It’s time. We’re told that if we just spend time implementing all the AI goodness, we’ll get it back ten-fold.

Turns out, rather than saving us time, keeping up with AI is helping us waste it.

I’m not the only one giving LLMs the side-eye, either. A UC Berkeley study found that generative AI use in the workplace didn’t make work more efficient. Instead, it created more work.

In our in-progress research, we discovered that AI tools didn’t reduce work, they consistently intensified it. In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so.

ActivTrak’s 2026 State of the Workplace report has this to say about AI use:

The data is unambiguous: AI does not reduce workloads. Among a subset of 10,584 users comparing 180 days before and after AI adoption (Data Set B), time spent across every measured work category increased between 27% and 346% — with email up 104%, chat and messaging up 145% and business management up 94%. No activity category decreased after adoption.

I tried to love it. Really, I did.

That’s what the data says, and I’m aware that I sound like a curmudgeon. So what about real-world impact for micro-businesses like ours? Here’s what happened when I tried to add those magical tools to my workflows. 

The Rube Goldberg Machine

I created an automation to allow new subscribers to “time travel,” so they didn’t have to wait until the following day to receive the next email in a series. After all, they just opted in for something important to them at that moment. What’s the point of making them wait 24 hours to get the next piece of the puzzle?

This is possible in Kit, but it’s a bit convoluted. After chatting with Angela Wills, we agreed there was probably an easier way. So I fired up Gemini, explained what I wanted to do, and asked it for suggestions.

It called my current setup a “Rube Goldberg machine,” (it’s not wrong) and suggested a method that would be easier to set up and maintain.

The only problem was, the settings Gemini recommended don’t exist in Kit. When I called that out, it apologized, and offered a workaround. The workaround also does not exist.

After several hours and multiple failed attempts, I ended up back in my Rube Goldberg time machine. Turns out, Gemini doesn’t know how to build a better mousetrap.

The Business Health Dashboard

Another task I like to assign to AI—with mixed results—is spreadsheet formulas and light coding.

For example, I wanted to build a business dashboard with a stoplight feature to show which areas of the business are healthy, and which need attention. It would compare recent data entries to a baseline, decide if the trend was up or down and for how long, and then display the appropriate emoji.

ChatGPT was able to build this for me, but not without many hours of back-and-forth dialog, with me relaying error messages and Chatty trying again. It was always apologetic, and wrong at least 17 times before it finally got it right.

I’ll give the point to ChatGPT on this one, but it did leave me asking if all that time and effort was worth the result. I suspect that like the workers in the UC Berkeley study, my work had intensified for no good reason.

The Line Art Ask

I wanted a simple line-art drawing of a person on a path. In front of her is a fork in the road. The right fork leads to her goal, the left fork leads to some glittery, shiny, distracting things before winding around and rejoining the main path somewhat behind where she is currently.

The point was clear (to me at least): A visual representation of what chasing shiny objects really costs.

I spent the better part of an afternoon going back and forth with Chatty before finally giving up and drawing it myself on my iPad.

The Failed Time Stamp Query

Maybe the most frustrating example was a meeting summary I asked Notion’s AI agent to produce.

I gave it the transcript in table format. In the left column was a timestamp, and in the right column, the section of transcript from that part of the call. I asked Notion to create a list with each timestamp and a single, concise sentence about what was covered during that time.

Notion could not parse that out. It repeatedly got the timestamps wrong. It added more, removed some, made up topics, and generally made a mess of the whole project. After six or so attempts to refine my prompt with more explicit instructions, I gave up and wrote the list myself.

There’s a pattern here. Step 1: Waste a bunch of time trying to get AI to do something that should be simple. Step 2: Give up and do it myself in 10 minutes or less.

You’re doing it wrong, Cindy

Maybe it’s an IO error (idiot operator, for those not in the know), and better prompting could solve the issue. It’s also possible I’m using the wrong tools, and learning one more of the 8,439 “now with AI” apps would give me better results.

But that’s my point. I don’t want to spend time learning to write better prompts or finding and learning yet another tool. I just want to get the work done.

These and other failed attempts cost me time I could have spent on more meaningful tasks, like engaging with my community, creating new products, coaching, or even just hanging out with friends.

Was it fun to play with ChatGPT’s illustration skills? Sure. But my job is not to prompt an AI to make line drawings. My job is to help coaches and course creators eliminate the overwhelm of running a solo business online.

Fine-tuning prompts and testing new AI tricks does not add value for my clients or customers.

How I’m actually using AI today

As with most things in life, AI is a mixed bag. I’m not saying I never use it, or that you should never use it. While most of it is arguably useless for solopreneurs like me, I have found a few time-saving applications.

1. I use it to summarize meetings and pull out action items. The big benefit here is that I can stay fully attentive to my coaching clients or mastermind partners, while Notion takes notes. Just don’t ask it for time stamps.
2. Gemini helps me find relevant research. I could spend days sifting through studies and other primary sources. Gemini handles that in an instant, and all I have to do is verify. In fact, it was Gemini that found the Harvard Business Review article linked at the top of this post.
3. AI helps me draft difficult emails. If I need to release a client, respond to a chargeback, or blast off a takedown request to someone selling my courses as theirs, AI keeps the emotion out of it. In that situation, I care less about preserving my creativity and style, and more about just getting it done.
4. AI makes it easy to conduct complex searches. I wanted to find a reasonable daily budget for my upcoming London trip based on my preferred travel style. I also didn’t want to wade through 187 forum posts and travel vlogs, so I asked Gemini.

Then there are all the ways we were using AI before it was branded as AI. Apps like Grammarly and Descript have always used AI engines to make our work easier, and I continue to use these and other tools.

The boundary I draw is around creativity and in-depth insights. If I outsource the most valuable parts of my work to an LLM, then why would you read or watch or buy anything from me?

My friend Debbie Gartner calls AI-generated work “the average of the average.” That’s not a goal to reach for. I don’t want “average” in the content I choose to consume, and I sure as hell don’t want to produce it.

The post How I’m using AI in 2026 (and where I draw the line) appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

I don’t sell AI Agents or custom GPTs. I don’t teach how to use AI. I don’t promote AI tools.

Someone asked me recently what my “AI stack” is, and I had to answer honestly: I don’t have an AI stack. 

I rarely use it beyond the simplest of use cases. Most recently, I asked Gemini help me reserve and pay for a campsite in the Coronado National Forrest. The government’s website is shockingly bad at explaining the process.

Not exactly cutting edge, is it?

I realize I’m a bit of an outlier. Every email that lands in my inbox these days seems to be some variation on “how to get rich/work faster/sound smarter thanks to AI.” Clearly, AI sells.

So why am I not jumping on the revenue train?

Because AI is not as useful for solopreneurs as we are being told.

Myth #1: If you’re not using AI, you’ll be left behind.

I’ve heard this from so many people, and frankly, I’m over it. It’s like saying, “If you’re not keeping up with the latest innovations in weed control, you’ll be left behind.”

Sure, lawn-care specialists and even passionate homeowners can win the dandelion wars by staying up-to-date on weed management. For the rest of us, that old-school WeedWacker® gets the job done, and you don’t have to pay a subscription fee to use it.

Reality: Unless your business model is to build and teach AI, you’re not behind.

Myth #2: AI will make your work easier/faster/better.

This is what all those emails in my inbox want me to believe. That I can click a button or spin up a Custom GPT and shave my work down from hours to mere minutes (or seconds, if I grab the upsell, too).

But does AI really make your work life easier?

It’s true that corporations can cut entire departments now that AI can parse spreadsheet data 1000x faster than Gary in accounting can manage. But for solopreneurs like you and me, it’s the opposite.

Rather than saving time, AI helps you waste it.

Instead of publishing useful content, we waste time learning to create mildly entertaining videos that don’t add value for our audience.

Instead of learning more about our niche and expanding our expertise, we waste time keeping up with the latest AI trends that don’t affect us and that won’t stand the test of time.

We especially waste time by letting AI do our work for us. The work that people (real ones, not bots) trust us to produce.

Last week, I saw someone post on LinkedIn: “When every brand sounds the same, sounding like yourself is a competitive advantage.”

Along with six AI prompts you could use to, you know, sound more like yourself.

I can’t get over the irony, or the fact that the poster and her followers couldn’t see it.

On the surface, it looks like pasting in a smart prompt and letting AI do all the heavy lifting is saving loads of time. I’d argue that it’s setting you back. It erodes trust (yes, we can tell you wrote that post with AI), and it strips away your credibility.

In other words, it’s causing harm to your brand and reputation that will require many months or years to fix. Is that really worth saving a few hours?

Reality: Spend less time leveraging AI, and more time building up your expertise, relationships, and business assets. That’s where you have a sustainable advantage.

Myth #3: You can build an empire of AI agents while you hide behind your laptop and make millions!

Ah, but you don’t need expertise and relationships when you have AI!

Promises of AI-staffed agencies and AI-written publishing empires are everywhere. We’re told to “use these prompts and let ChatGPT create your products, write your sales pages, and design your listings. All you have to do is copy and paste!”

None of that passes the sniff test, and platforms are cracking down on AI-generated content to quell the flood of low-effort, low-quality submissions. Amazon’s KDP program limits the number of titles you can create. Etsy requires disclosure of AI usage, and has banned sellers for using purchased or templated prompts for product creation.

Other platforms are following suit. Valve (Steam) requires game developers to disclose the use of AI. YouTube and Amazon have similar requirements. Shutterstock does not allow AI-generated images on the platform at all. Spotify recently deleted 75 million AI-generated tracks.

AI bans aside, this type of content is by definition a race to the bottom. It’s so lacking in personality and engagement that it can’t stand out on its own. There’s nothing to differentiate your prompt-driven data dump from the next prompt-driven data dump.

That means the only way to stand out is to produce more. Sheer volume is the only distinction. When what you create becomes a commodity, its value plummets.

Reality: Commoditizing your creative, expertise-driven work, whether it’s content creation, product development, or idea generation, is a race to the bottom—and who wants to claim that gold medal?

My take

Now, lest you think I’m nothing more than an old woman telling kids to stay off my lawn, here’s what you don’t know:

For most of 2025, I didn’t publish a single thing without first asking my bestie, ChatGPT, how it would land with you.

Would you nod along? Be confused? Click the buy button?

I never let Chatty write for me, but I allowed it to shape what I published. I bought into the fallacy of myth #2, believing that AI would improve my work. We had long conversations about my ideal audience, how I work, my experience, my opinions, your experience and opinions, and the current state of the online business world.

And you know what I found? ChatGPT is a lousy business partner. 

After nearly a year, it didn’t know me, my style, or my audience any better than it had in the beginning. It offered suggestions I would never follow, using language I would never use, and that you would never accept as having come from me. 

What’s worse: It’s a yes-man that will agree with anything you say. So much so that it convinced Allan Brooks he’d discovered a new mathematical theory. I’ve tested it myself, feeding it nonsensical business ideas only to be met with enthusiastic agreement and encouragement to follow my ideas. 

But there’s a bigger problem.

Use of LLMs (large language models like ChatGPT) has been proven to degrade our ability to think. A study at MIT in 2025 showed reduced neural connectivity in brain areas associated with memory and creativity, and long-term erosion of critical thinking skills.

Scientists call this synaptic pruning. You might know it as “use it or lose it.” Turns out your brain really is like a muscle. The less you exercise it, the weaker it becomes.

Outsourcing your writing, thinking, and problem solving to your favorite AI is to your brain what sitting on the sofa all day eating ice cream is to your abs. It might be fun today, but we will most certainly pay for it in the future.

Bottom line: You want to stand out? It’s time to stand up.

Are your competitors using AI? Probably. Is it making them better coaches, course creators, or mentors? No. It makes them all sound like carbon copies of one another. It’s the Stepford Wives, reimagined for 2026.

The good news, if you’re still reading, is that the Stepford Wife content flood is making it easier for you to stand out. You don’t have to build another AI agent or buy another bundle of prompts. You just have to stand up and be yourself.

Not the version of you that ChatGPT spits out in 3.29 seconds. The real you. The one with the opinions and the typos and the questionable grammar. The one who isn’t just mimicking what others are saying in a cadence that sounds suspiciously like everything else they read today. The one who has real expertise and who actually puts some thought and effort into your content.

The one who has a face and a voice and a unique style, and who isn’t too timid to use them.

Are there good uses for AI in 2026? Of course. Next week I’ll tell you about three ways I do use AI in my business to save time, and how you can use it, too. I’m not a total luddite, it turns out.

Meanwhile, if you’re a solopreneur who uses AI in your business, drop me a comment. Tell me how AI is adding genuine value to and driving revenue for your business. I’d love to know what I might be missing.

The post 3 myths about AI that will kill your business appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Recently, I’ve discovered that consistency is a trap, and it looks like this:

• You’re still showing up just like you always have, but your KPIs have plateaued. Views, subscribers, revenue—whatever you track—haven’t moved in months. Or worse, they’re moving in the wrong direction.
• You’re bored. You’re doing the same things day in and day out. You’re doing the things that got you here, and that you used to be excited about, but now they feel rote. Like a classically trained pianist being forced to play chopsticks day after day.
• Your attention is increasingly drawn to shiny objects that promise the world, but are really just a distraction.

Does that mean I’m abandoning my consistent support for consistency? Not at all. 

When consistency matters more than anything else

Consistency alone is the goal in only one situation:

When you’re new, and just building up your entrepreneurial muscles.

That’s when showing up is more important than being innovative or thought provoking. Publishing a blog post every week, launching new products each month, connecting with other people in your niche on a daily basis—all of that creates momentum, and momentum doesn’t care if your video is perfectly polished or your email lands in someone’s trash.

It’s the effort that matters most, not the results.

Consistency at this stage is for you, it’s not for others. It creates routine and structure and builds your muscle memory. It reinforces that you are a business owner rather than a hobbyist. It also builds confidence in yourself, your ideas, and your ability to follow through on your plans.

Along the way, something good happens. Those consistent habits compound. You gain traction. You make a few sales, develop a few friendships, traffic ticks up. It’s slow at first, but the momentum builds as you maintain a consistent pace.

This is where the benefits of consistency shift. It’s no longer about muscle memory and “putting in the reps.” Now it’s getting real results, and the numbers continue to trend upwards. You keep doing what you’re doing, because it’s working.

Shout out to consistency!

How consistency becomes complacency

Then one day, the momentum slows. Not a lot at first. In fact, you probably don’t even notice it right away. It’s never a catastrophic drop. More of a slow decline. The emails that used to result in 100 sales now account for only 95. Then 89. Then 70.

You’re still showing up in the same way, doing all the same things, being consistent. It’s the results that have changed.

That’s when you know that consistency alone is no longer enough. You’ve turned a corner from consistency into complacency, and you’ve begun to coast.

Don’t get me wrong. Coasting can be fun. The only problem is that it’s all downhill.

Escaping the consistency trap

Ok, you might be thinking, if consistency isn’t the answer, what is?

It’s simple: Increase the pressure. Aim for better instead of just consistent.

When you’re queuing up your regular weekly email ask, “How can I encourage more people to click through to the sales page in this email?”

When you’re writing your next blog post, consider how you can improve your on-page SEO so it ranks higher in the Google search results. Do you need a stronger headline? A better keyword? More images (or fewer)?

Look back on your YouTube thumbnails and find the style that enjoys the highest clickthrough. Update the others to match, then split test your next few videos.

In other words, make the shift from “consistently showing up” to “consistently improving.”

That classically trained pianist didn’t get to Carnegie Hall by playing Chopsticks consistently. They got there by mastering Chopsticks, getting bored, and then reaching for Rachmaninoff.

Where do you need to stretch beyond consistency alone, so you can stop coasting and start climbing?

The post The curse of consistency appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Now it’s your turn. Let’s find the levers of scale in your business that will encourage it to grow with the least amount of effort and input from you. 

First, ask yourself this: What are the systems I already have in place, and what is their purpose?  Think of your business systems as existing in one of three buckets. Ask yourself:

• What do I do to be more visible? This bucket holds activities such as content creation, interviews, affiliate outreach, strategic partnerships, and paid ads.
• What do I do to grow my community? This bucket is for list-building activities and other community-focused strategies, such as building a Facebook group or Substack newsletter.
• What do I do to make more sales? In this bucket, you’ll find things like email sales funnels, discovery calls, tripwires, and anything else with a call to action that leads to a sale.

Don’t worry if your list feels incomplete. Scaling is a loop, not a ladder. You’ll revisit and refine your systems again and again, each time finding new areas of improvement. 

Your next step is to note down the data points for each system that indicate if it is effective or not. For example, the number of email subscribers is an indicator of overall email list health, while the conversion rate for a single lead magnet tells you if that specific resource is doing its job. 

Each month in Six-Figure Systems I host several live, group coaching calls. If you’re confused or overwhelmed by any of this, bring your questions to a call, and I’ll help you create a plan that fits your business goals. 

Now that you have your systems list and some data to lead the way, ask yourself: What system, if it were fully optimized, would give me the biggest increase in revenue?  Do you need to book more calls? Increase your podcast frequency? Speak on more stages? 

Don’t just pick one at random. Make sure you also understand why that choice would make a difference, and what you hope to gain from it. 

If you’re not sure, a good place to start is with your sales process, but with a big caveat. You must have enough traffic/data points to accurately determine the efficiency of your sales systems. 

In other words, don’t assume your sales page is to blame for a lack of sales if only a handful of people have ever seen the page. Unless it’s getting regular traffic and has seen several hundred visitors, you simply don’t have enough data to make a smart decision. 

Okay, got your system picked out for optimization? Great! Make a note of the system, what you hope to improve, and your goal for it, like this: 

“I want to increase the number of course sales I make through my automated funnel to add $1,000 in revenue monthly.”

• System: Automated funnel
• Improvement: number of course sales
• Goal: An extra $1,000 each month  

Lather, rinse, repeat

This is where the fun begins. And yes, it really is delightfully addictive to discover how the systems of your business cause money to flow, as if through a pipeline. Clear a blockage here, see the improved flow there. 

Master this way of looking at your business, and you’ll be seeing potential time savers and money makers around every corner. 

With your system and goal in mind, it’s time to get clear on how your system works and which inputs have an impact on your outputs. 

Let’s use that automated sales funnel as an example. 

The output is the number of sales made. That’s what we want to increase. That output is directly impacted by several inputs: 

• The number of subscribers in the funnel (more subscribers = more sales)
• The number of people who click through to the sales page (this is independent of the number of subscribers)
• The sales page conversion rate (number of sales / number of page visitors = conversion rate, e.g. 12 / 147 = 0.0816, or just over 8%)

In this simple example, we now have three actions we can take to potentially increase sales: 

Add more subscribers to the funnel, through ads, social media, influencer outreach, SEO, etc. 

Entice more people to click through to the sales page by improving the email calls to action.

Encourage more people to purchase by improving the copy on the sales page.

Deciding which one to tackle is your first job, and just like Sarah’s decision about adding a membership vs onboarding a new coaching client, I’ll encourage you to choose the one that requires the least amount of effort. 

Running ads, building up a whole new social marketing workflow, or boosting SEO sounds pretty time-intensive. Let’s save that for later. 

What about the number of people who click through to the sales page? That’s potentially an easy fix, so let’s start there. 

First, you’ll have to know what the current number is. You can get that data from your analytics package, or from your email platform.

Right now, you may be asking, “What’s a ‘good’ click-through rate?” It’s honestly better to only compete with yourself here, but if you want a baseline to start from, Constant Contact has some insights for you:

Based on this data, if your click-through rate is less than 2%, there are probably some improvements to be made simply by adjusting calls to action. 

Sales page conversion rates are also important. You can make that calculation by dividing the number of sales by the number of page visits and multiplying by 100. Unbounce gives us the baseline numbers to aim for here: 

Changing up your page headline, copy, call to action, and even the images on the page can all have an impact on conversion rates, so there are plenty of opportunities for improvement here. 

The key is to be systematic about the changes you make, analyze the results, and then do it again. You’ll learn more about this approach to business growth in Systems for Solopreneurs, available exclusively to Six-Figure Systems members.

That’s how healthy businesses scale. 

What’s next? 

You just identified the best move to reach your next revenue milestone. This is where some people get stuck. They can see the problem, but don’t know how to fix it. 

That’s exactly why I created Six-Figure Systems. It helps you not just find your levers of scale, it also gives you the concrete steps to optimize your most important systems, with plug-and-play resources designed with solopreneurs in mind. 

If your visibility systems are weak, the Visibility Toolkit, The Six-Figure List-Building System, and Creative Connections all make attracting a bigger audience easier. 

If it’s your sales systems that are underperforming, take a look at Sales Pages That Convert for help optimizing your sales pages, or Selling With Email for making better, more effective offers. 

For optimizing your fulfillment systems, I recommend starting with either The Coach’s Toolkit or The Course Creator’s Toolkit. They’ll give you a framework for setting up repeatable processes that keep clients and customers happy. 

Finally, if your C-suite could use a little polish, we have goal setting, pricing, and SOP workshops to help. 

In addition, each month we offer live Q & A calls, mindset coaching, and a brand new workshop to help you better optimize all the systems that make up your business. 

See everything that’s included and join today by visiting SixFigureSystems.com.

I’ll see you on the inside!

The post The Solopreneur’s Guide to Working Less & Earning More Part 2: Your Turn appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

My client, a successful business coach earning north of $400k per month, had a simple business model: Run Facebook ads to an automated webinar. The webinar’s CTA was to book a discovery call, and the discovery call was the sales vehicle for her $8,000 flagship course.

She managed her ads in a Google Sheet, and the first time I saw that spreadsheet, everything clicked for me.

• Spend more on ads = more webinar attendees.
• More webinar attendees = more discovery calls.
• More discovery calls = more sales.

That was the spark. The real revelation came a bit later when I realized every business—mine, yours, the laundromat down the street—can take advantage of the same systems optimization plan.

And I don’t have to run ads to make it work.

I can optimize my content to increase traffic to my lead magnets.

I can optimize my email campaigns to get more eyes on my sales pages.

I can optimize my sales pages to create more sales.

Every system can be optimized in its own way. I don’t have to add another social channel or create more courses or pump out 17 pieces of content every day. I just have to make strategic improvements to what I’m already doing.

That’s how I work less and earn more, and how you can, too.

To begin, I’d like to introduce you to Sarah. I think you and she have a lot in common. 

Sarah’s story

Sarah runs a coaching business. She is good at what she does, and she’s successful in her business (meaning she earns a full-time living), but it’s not without stress. Some months she feels like she’s barely scraping by, and some are far more abundant. 

For the most part, Sarah is a true solopreneur. She has contractors for occasional projects, but no permanent team members. Everything from email scheduling to client onboarding is on her personal to-do list, and she’s mostly okay with that—for now. 

Sarah has a lot of systems in place to help potential clients find, follow, and ultimately hire her. I asked her to list them, along with their purpose. 

• She’s podcasting weekly to increase visibility.
• She’s appearing on other people’s podcasts, also for visibility.
• She sends a weekly newsletter to engage with her audience.
• She posts on Substack and Medium several times each week to attract a wider audience.
• She’s active on Instagram and LinkedIn, mostly because that’s what everyone says to do.
• She hosts a free Facebook group to engage in real time with her potential clients.
• She has a variety of lead magnets and follow up sequences (funnels) to convert subscribers to clients.
• She invites potential clients to book a free discovery call, which is how she sells her coaching programs.
• She has several courses for sale, but she’s not doing much with them right now.

Are you thinking Sarah is spreading herself a little thin here? Because I was, and it only got worse…

When I met Sarah, she told me she wants to scale her business, and is considering adding a membership to the mix. But here’s the thing: she’s already working more hours than she wants to work. A membership will only add to the workload. 

Sarah believes, like most of us, that if she wants to earn more money, she has to work harder. Do more. Create more. Offer more. It’s always more. 

But what if more isn’t the answer? Coaches who scale learn quickly that the real gold is found when they go deeper, not wider. 

My advice to Sarah might sound odd, but I told her to ditch the membership idea. 

Yes, I know. Recurring income and all that. But a membership is work. More time and energy than she can imagine will go into setting up, launching, and marketing a brand new membership. 

Understanding ROI

You’ve probably heard the term ROI. It stands for Return on Investment, and we most often think about it in terms of money. If I invest $10,000 in a coaching program, how much will I earn as a direct result of that investment? Ideally, more than $10,000, right? That would make for a good ROI. 

But there’s more to consider than money when thinking about ROI in your business. There’s also your time and energy. 

If Sarah goes ahead with her membership plans, she can reasonably assume she’ll spend at least a few weeks getting ready for launch. She’ll need to set up a platform, create a sales page, write emails and social posts, create graphics, build an onboarding sequence…the list of tasks is looooooong, and that’s without creating any new content or training for members. It also doesn’t take into account ongoing maintenance and marketing tasks. 

Sarah told me she’d love to onboard 100 members at $50 per month. That’s $5,000 per month, and at first glance, that seems like a sweet deal. But is it? With a conservative estimate of 80 hours to set up and launch a membership, Sarah would earn $62.50 per hour. 

Sarah currently earns $300 per hour of coaching. The math speaks for itself, don’t you think? 

Ongoing, this number would go up, of course. She’s not going to spend 80 hours managing a membership every month. But she will easily spend 20, which makes her hourly rate $250. That’s much closer to her current hourly coaching rate, but it also assumes the membership maintains those 100 users, which is not a given. 

Once we calculated the expected ROI on a membership, Sarah decided it isn’t the right move today. She does still want to scale, so we looked at how she could instead earn an additional $5,000 per month doing what she’s already doing, simply by optimizing a system or two. 

Systems are the levers of scale

Let’s take another look at Sarah’s existing systems, but this time with data: 

• A weekly podcast that averages 1,000 downloads per week. 
• Monthly podcast guest appearances that sometimes result in a trickle of new email subscribers.
• A weekly newsletter sent to 6,000 subscribers, and that is her primary call-booking vehicle. She currently books four discovery calls per month. 
• Substack and Medium accounts with a few hundred readers each. 
• Instagram and LinkedIn accounts that seem to be growing, but Sarah doesn’t have any data to know if those followers turn into email subscribers. 
• A Facebook group that’s growing, but doesn’t result in discovery calls. 
• Lead magnets that range from ineffective to somewhat effective in converting site visitors to email subscribers. 
• A discovery call process that converts at 25%. 
• Courses that sell “occasionally.” 

Sarah’s primary offer is a $10,000 coaching program. For her to increase her income by $5,000 per month, she’ll need to onboard one additional client every two months.

Working backward with the data, we can see two ways to optimize and sell more coaching programs: 

First, let’s look at the close rate for Sarah’s discovery call system. Across all coaching industries, discovery calls typically close at 30% to 35%. Sarah is converting just one in four calls, leaving lots of room for improvement. 

If Sarah raises her close rate from 25% to 35%, she will sell an additional five coaching programs per year, for a $25,000 annual increase in revenue, with no additional calls or marketing required.

Another option is to increase the number of discovery calls booked. Since one client requires four calls at her current 25% close rate, she would need six calls per month to sell one additional program every two months. 

Her primary call-booking system is her email newsletter, which she sends to 6,000 subscribers every week, and which results in (on average) one call booked per week. Given those numbers, Sarah can take several approaches to increase the number of calls booked: 

• She could increase the number of subscribers. 
• She could increase the number of emails she sends. 
• She could improve her calls to action. 

Keeping ROI in mind, which of these options offers the best opportunity for Sarah to increase her revenue by $5,000 each month? 

Here’s my take. 

Sarah should do two things. She should both improve her discovery call process to bring it more in line with current industry standards, and she should work to improve the calls to action in her emails. 

Why? Because these two approaches have the potential for helping her reach her goals without adding more work.  They are her levers of scale. 

She won’t have to create new lead magnets, or increase her social posting to grow her list. She won’t have to write twice as many emails as she’s currently writing. 

Scaling isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing better. 

In part 2, I’ll invite you to look at your own business with through this systems lens. Don’t worry, it’s easy once you get the hang of it. I’ll see you next week.

The post The Solopreneur’s Guide to Working Less & Earning More Part 1: Sarah’s Story appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

I also heard from one client who said, “I know I should be creating more content, but my network and email list is so small, I feel like no one is even listening.”

She’s not wrong. No one is listening at this point. But that’s not a reason to wait. In fact, it’s a reason to publish more.

The only way to grow an audience is to extend your hand and introduce yourself. To say, “Here I am, this is what I do, and I’d love to talk to you about my ideas.”

That’s what publishing content is all about. It’s how you introduce yourself to new people who might want to get to know you better. You can’t wait until you already have an audience, because publishing even when no one is listing is how you get that audience.

The state of online content

My client went on to say, “But Cindy, there’s a ton of information out there already. Me publishing more feels like shouting into the void.”

Again, she’s not wrong. There IS a lot of content already out there.

• This blog post is one of 7.5 million that will be published today. (And yet, here you are reading it, so there’s that.)
• YouTube is worse. Every day 20 million videos are uploaded.
• Even book writers aren’t immune. Amazon’s KDP platform sees between 2,000 and 4,000 new books uploaded every single day.

When you add AI into the mix, the stats become even more disheartening.

• A 2026 study found that more than 20% of videos shown to new users are classified as “AI Slop”—videos with AI-generated scripts, stock footage, and cloned voices.
• A study by Amazon Web Services found that 57% of all internet content is generated by AI.
• 50% of digital marketers create content using artificial intelligence to complement their efforts.

If the internet is literally flooded with content, with more appearing every single day—and most of that is generated by AI—why am I still banging on the content drum?

Because all of that is not the bad news you think it is. In fact, it’s very, very good news for you, for me, and for my client.

This is your content marketing cheat code

I believe we’re seeing a shift in marketing.

Where once it was about volume—bigger audiences, bigger email lists, bigger launches—what’s been missing in the rush to do more is actual personality. Yours, to be specific.

The cheat code you’re looking for is you, with all of your imperfections and half-formed thoughts and controversial ideas. It’s your unique perspective and the way you connect two random ideas and the way you tell a story.

The answer to audience growth isn’t simply more content. If it was, I’d be sharing my latest prompts and AI tools that let you publish 3,245 pieces of content every hour at the push of a button.

While that might feel like how you compete in an LLM content-scape, it won’t work. At least not to build the kind of business you and I want to create.

What your customers are craving now isn’t more information. They have enough to last them several lifetimes. What they’re desperately looking for is connection to someone real. Someone who didn’t just engineer a smart prompt and let the LLM take it from there. Someone who actually put some thought into their words.

Someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about, and who cares enough to say it.

If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

~Derek Sivers

Your customers need your controversial opinions and your hard-earned insights. Give them the things no one else will talk about because the AI gods didn’t say it first. Share your messy, disorganized, half-formed ideas. Let your customers know you’re human.

Anything else is just adds to the noise. It’s a waste of your time to create it, and a waste of your readers’ time to consume it.

What if you’re not confident in your content-creation skills?

My client had one more objection.

She told me she’s “not a good writer.” As if she should have been born with that skill.

Here’s the thing: The way you get good at writing is to write. The way you get comfortable on camera is to be on camera. There is no shortcut. There’s no fast-track, and no AI tool will save you from the “I’m not ready” feeling.

You simply have to stand up and do it.

I know that’s not what you want to hear. It’s not what I wanted to hear when I was new. I wanted the comfort of hiding behind the screen until everything was perfect.

I’m sorry to say, that doesn’t work. You have to hit the publish button when you still have the butterflies in your stomach. You have to be willing to put out cringe-worthy content.

If you’re not willing to do that, you will never grow that audience. You will never compete with the flood of AI generated words. You will never stand out in that crowded space.

You must start before you’re ready. It’s the only way.

What to do now

“Ok,” you might be thinking. “I need to start. But where, exactly?”

First, choose your format. You have three choices here:

• Written (blogs, for example)
• Audio (podcast)
• Video

Which one feels the least overwhelming? Don’t overthink it. Don’t worry about what your audience wants at this point, or where they’re hanging out, just ask, “Which one of these feels like the best fit for me?”

Next, choose a platform. This is easy if you picked video. You’ll start a YouTube channel. For audio, it’s a podcast.

If written words is your choice, you have a few more options. You can publish on your own website, or if you don’t have a website and want something quicker to get online, choose Substack or Beehiiv or Medium. Again, don’t overthink it. Choose one and move forward.

Now comes the hard part. What will you create?

Here’s a list to get you started:

• Something in your industry you disagree with
• A tool or strategy you personally use
• A story about how you got started
• Resources you recommend
• A mistake you made
• A plan you’re, well, planning
• A question you can answer
• Something you wish you’d done sooner
• A different way of thinking about a common problem

I recommend planting an idea garden so you never run out of things to share.

Finally, make a promise to yourself and to your audience. Choose a day (I like Tuesdays, but any day will work) and commit to publishing something on that day each and every week. No exceptions.

The first week will be hard. You’ll say, “I’m not ready. I’ll do it next week.”

Ignore that voice! You won’t do it next week. You’ll just keep putting it off and before you know it, another year will have gone by and you’ll still be telling me, “But I can’t because I don’t have an audience yet.”

Do this: Click the publish button starting this week.

Right now even, before you talk yourself out of it. Next week and every week after that it will be easier, until you can’t even remember why you were so intimidated by the thought of sharing your ideas with the world.

One last thing: When you publish that blog post or video or podcast, drop me a link in the comments so I can share it with my audience, too.

P.S. I fired ChatGPT

I’ve been thinking about this shift in the content marketing space for a while, and last week I realized something.

While I never let an LLM create my content for me, I was letting ChatGPT have too much say in what and how I write. So I fired it.

Just for fun, I ran this post through my AI engine—the one I’ve “trained” on my ideal customer, my products, and my voice. Here’s what it had to say:

• The piece is too long. Chatty thinks you have the attention span of a gnat, and that you won’t read longer pieces. I know that’s not true.
• I’m not explicit enough. ChatGPT tells me that you have to be hit over the head with an idea in order to understand it. I know better.
• The call to action isn’t strong. Of course it’s not, but again, it is implied. I’m trusting you, the reader, to decide if you want to hear more from me or not. You’re smart enough to figure out how to do that without me saying it.
• There’s not enough emotional punch. I should, in fact, poke harder at your insecurities to make you see the high cost of not publishing content.

And the LLM engine offered to rewrite my piece. It made sure to throw in lots of “it’s not this, it’s that” and plenty of one-word sentences (for punch, you know).

I don’t write like that, but ChatGPT does. Those are exactly the kinds of things that would de-personalize my message and make it sound like more AI generated words. 

My goal isn’t to sound like everyone (and everyTHING) else. It’s to build real relationships with real people. I hope that’s your goal, too, because that’s what will make your business stand out in 2026 and beyond.

The post How to thrive in this modern content marketing landscape appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

That’s more than 2,500 emails written. Probably somewhere around one million words.

But it’s time for a change. Daily email isn’t working for me anymore—and probably not for the reasons you think. I do still believe that daily email is a powerful way to build community and create engagement.

So why the change? Because this email-forward system is hiding my best insights behind a “paywall” where only an elite group can access them. If I want to have a bigger impact, reach a wider audience, and build relationships with more solopreneurs, I need to publish in public more than I publish in private.

Over the past few months, I’ve been paying close attention to how others in the online space work—especially those who serve a solopreneur audience—and one thing I’ve seen over and over again is a reshuffling of content priorities.

People I admire and trust are shifting from daily email to weekly, long-form newsletters, with supporting content published more frequently on social channels. I’m reverse engineering their success.

The Fundamentals

Back to my 2026 content publishing system. The core pieces are simple:

• Weekly blog post + newsletter
• Weekly YouTube (not yet launched, but watch for it)
• 3X weekly LinkedIn and Instagram (previously this was the daily email content)

Why LinkedIn and Instagram specifically? Because LinkedIn has the business/entrepreneurial audience I’m looking for, and because Instagram has the coaching audience I also want to reach.

YouTube, of course, has everyone.

So those are the parts I’m focused on this year. Let’s talk about what I’m trying to do, and how these pieces fit together in service of my goal.

The Goal

Bottom line: to build a bigger audience.

Most business owners, me included, don’t have a supply problem. You don’t have too many people on your waitlist and not enough hours or products to serve them.

Instead, you have a demand problem. There aren’t enough people clamoring for your services and products. The only fix for that is more visibility. There are a lot of ways to build visibility. You could choose to run ads, create strategic partnerships, rent billboard space in your city, write a book, or any number of other ideas.

I’m choosing content. It’s easy, I enjoy creating it, and it’s cost effective.

The Flywheel

Like any well-oiled system, my goal is to get more out of my content efforts than I put in. That’s another reason I chose the platforms I did. They’ll allow me to build a kind of flywheel that works harder as I apply pressure (publish more).

If you’re not familiar with the term, a flywheel is a mechanism that needs a lot of energy to start, but once it’s moving, it requires very little to keep it going. Think of a bicycle. When you first start peddling, it’s difficult and slow going. As you gain momentum, it gets easier. Pretty soon, the lightest touch will keep you moving, and a slight increase will make you go faster.

That’s a flywheel in the physical world. In the content publishing space, it looks like this:

• LinkedIn and Instagram act as teasers for long-form content on the blog and YouTube
• Blog posts and YouTube will invite email sign-ups and social sharing/commenting
• Social sharing and commenting helps to get my short-form content into more feeds

The Tools

The tools I’m using aren’t changing, but because I know some of you are going to ask, here’s my current publishing tech stack. As you can see, I keep it pretty bare bones.

I use an app called Ulysses for all my writing. This is a Mac-only app, but a similar tool for Windows is called Scrivener. I chose this tool because it keeps all of my writing in one app, instead of in scattered Word or Google documents. It also allows me to publish directly to my blog with the click of a button.

My blog runs on WordPress. Some people have asked why I’m not publishing long-form content on Substack or Medium, where there is a built-in audience. I did experiment with both of those platforms in the past few years, and while I think they have a place in some publishing flywheels, they’re not the right choice for me. I’m prioritizing brand authority, and that means publishing on my owned spaces whenever possible.

I use Notion for planning. I like this tool because it lets me easily create Kanban boards and calendars for tracking ideas, statuses, and publishing schedules. Previously I have used Trello and Airtable, and even Google Calendar, but I find Notion to be the best option for me.

Leave me a comment on LinkedIn if you’d like a full tutorial on how I’m using Notion in my business in 2026.

My email platform is Kit. It integrates well with all the other tools I use, and it’s so baked into my systems now I can’t imagine changing.

I create all my graphics in Canva.

I use LinkedIn’s and Instagram’s own tools for publishing. I don’t use AI repurposing tools, third party schedulers, or any other apps to help manage social media. I just don’t see the need for them.

The Process

As a fellow solopreneur, I know you have a lot on your plate. Everything, in fact. Every email, every support ticket, every strategic plan is all on you. It’s a lot, and we have to be focused and use our time well if we want to get it all done.

Here’s how I manage it:

I plan my content in 90-day sprints. That’s not new, it’s something I’ve done off-and-on forever. I start with the long-form content (this blog post, for example) and brainstorm 15 to 20 topics. That leaves me room to kill the ones that sounded great in the moment, but don’t hold up down the road.

A critical part of this is keeping what I call an “idea garden” where I throw random ideas that come to me. You know when you’re reading an article or watching a movie and think, “Holy crap, that’s a great metaphor for business!”

I plant that stuff in my idea garden, and it’s there when I need something to share on my blog or on YouTube.

From there, I begin booking out my content calendar in Notion. There’s no real strategy here, and I don’t plan out all 90 days of content at once. I leave room for what I feel like creating to lead the way, I just don’t leave room for not feeling it at all.

Once I have the long-form content mapped out, I can fill in the blanks with short-form social posts. These are in support of the long-form content, so they’re easy to develop.

Because I like to batch my work, I tend to write everything at once. For example, it might take me a few days to write and edit a longer blog post like this, but the LinkedIn and Instagram posts that go with it will all be done in one sitting.

Batching keeps me from dragging out the process. It keeps me focused. And it prevents me from getting sucked into the apps. My content is scheduled, so I don’t need to be there.

Where Do Promos Fit?

Daily emails have one huge advantage over a weekly newsletter: There’s always room for a quick promo.

In fact, with a daily email cadence, I was able to map entire weeks to a single promotion, either for myself or an affiliate partner. Obviously, with a weekly schedule, I can’t do that.

I’m promising one email per week to new subscribers. That means if I suddenly show up with a daily inbox drop, they might get annoyed.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t ask for permission.

Here’s how it works. When I plan a promotion, I give it the full treatment. Daily emails, or even multiple emails in a single day just as the offer is expiring. The trick is to let people opt-out—not opt-out of my newsletter (they can already do that at the bottom of every email), but opt-out of that specific promotion.

This is one of the reasons I love Kit for email marketing. They make this kind of tag- and behavior-based automation easy. All I have to do is add a line to my email that says something like, “If you know for sure [the offer] isn’t for you, click here. You’ll still get your weekly dose of Systematic, but you’ll no longer receive emails about [the offer] during this promotion.”

Drop a comment on this LinkedIn thread if you’d like to see a full tutorial on selective opt-outs using tags.

The Experimental Nature of Business

You might have noticed that some of this has yet to be implemented. In fact, I’m kind of planning as I write this, and that’s OK. Business (and life, too) is just one experiment after another to see what brings you the results you want.

That’s a core philosophy in everything I teach, and it’s at the heart of Systems for Solopreneurs and Six-Figure Systems.

Whatever your goal—more clients, chewier chocolate chip cookies, better click-through rates on YouTube—the way to achieve it is to design an experiment, implement the process, and see what happens.

I’ll keep you posted on my results, and if you’re craving a “daily dose of Cindy” and you’re already missing our daily email chats, then head over to LinkedIn or Instagram and connect with me there.

In the meantime, if you need some help deciding what to focus on next to grow your business, grab my free worksheet below. It will help you diagnose the systems that are underperforming and prioritize the projects that will have a real impact on your bottom line.

The post My complete content publishing system for 2026 appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

When I sent an email about it, several people wrote for more clarity. They wanted the steps to follow.

Before I give you that, I just want to say that this isn’t about being more productive. You already know how to be busy. Breaking a big project down into smaller, doable action steps is about finishing what you start—even when it feels overwhelming and hard and like it will take forever.

This is how people who finish projects think.

Here’s my process:

Step 1: Choose the project.

That sounds like a “well, duh!” moment, but hear me out. So many smart, hard-working solopreneurs are drowning in a sea of projects. Everything is a priority, and they’re juggling them all without getting anything done.

But not you. Because you will choose the one best project that will move your business forward.

Make it something that:

• Is hanging over your head and taking up mental bandwidth, and you just want it out of your way, already.
• Is actively blocking progress somewhere else (e.g., you can’t begin promoting your program until you’ve collected testimonials).
• Is tied directly to revenue or business growth.

Step 2: Identify the outcome you’re after.

Clarifying exactly what “done” looks like is harder than it might seem.

An ambiguous example from my own project list is “Systems for Solopreneurs podcast.” Looking at that on a to-do list gives me instant overwhelm. What am I even supposed to do to move that project forward?

So the first step I take is to write a statement that begins with, “This project will be done when…”

In this case, my project is done when: “10 episodes have been recorded and scheduled, and a repeatable workflow is established with another 90 days of content planned.”

Now I know where I’m going, and I can break it down further.

Step 3: Brain dump the deliverables.

They don’t have to be in order, and you don’t have to capture everything at this point. Just get it out of your head and onto paper.

Personally, I use notecards for this, but you can use a legal pad, a Trello board, a mindmap, or whatever tool feels right to you. All you’re doing is making a list, so don’t overthink it.

For my project, my list includes:

• Create channel artwork
• Write description
• Decide on format
• Write intro and outro
• Decide cadence/frequency

There’s more, of course, but this is a good sampling of the kinds of sub-projects you’re after.

Step 4: Ask, “Where do I need more information?”

It’s impossible to know everything you need to know to complete a big project. There will be things you need to research or to gather more info about. In my case, I wanted to understand the pros and cons of YouTube vs audio only, and how I could effectively leverage both platforms with a single show.

You might need to know your best course format options, the best email platform to use, or optimal pricing for your coaching program.

In most cases, you’ll want to complete your research first. It wouldn’t make sense for me to create channel artwork for an audio podcast if I end up going with YouTube. I need that answer before the rest of the projects can be completed.

Beware of this step! As Mark Manson says, “Learning more is a smart person’s favorite form of procrastination.”

Here’s how to avoid research-based procrastination.

First, write down the questions you have (e.g., Can I easily connect Teachable to Kit so I can email my students? Will this email platform let me send a welcome sequence on the free plan?)

Next, give yourself a reasonable boundary. I like a time-based limit like, “I’ll spend 60 minutes finding the answers to my questions, and then I’ll decide.”

You can also choose to stop researching after you’ve found three credible sources or after you’ve had a phone call with a trusted mentor or friend and received their recommendation.

Step 5: Organize your brain dump of small projects.

Here’s where you begin putting things in order. Since you can’t know (no one can) what else might come up throughout the process of completing the big project, don’t worry about getting everything just right at this step. Focus on the next two to three action items.

The “next” action item is the one that unblocks everything else. If it’s not done, other things can’t move forward.

In my case, I’ve already done the research to know that YouTube is a better choice as the primary channel, with audio coming in second, that means I can make the channel artwork and write the description based on what YouTube requires.

I know these are my next steps because I can’t begin publishing videos until they’re done.

Step 6: Create a “done when” statement for the next step you’ll be doing.

My channel artwork is done when I have the artwork installed on my YouTube channel.

Here’s a critical rule of thumb to keep in mind: These smaller, doable projects must be something you can finish in a single, 60- to 90-minute focus session, without stopping to make big decisions or spend more time researching.

Step 7: Begin completing these small, distinct projects, one at a time.

As you complete each one, return to your original list. Is there anything else that came up that needs additional research before you can continue? Are there any other small projects you discovered? Add them to your list.

Now ask again, “What’s the next step?” Remember that the next step is the one that’s holding everything else up. 

Give that next step the “done when” treatment, and make sure it’s finishable in a single, focused working session. Then you can add it to your to-do list. 

Step 8: Rinse and repeat until you reach the “done when” point for your big project.

When you do, finalize it.

• Physically cross it off your list (so satisfying).
• Archive your project files and notes.
• Delete your research bookmarks and emails.

When you learn to chunk down big projects into small action items, three things will change:

1. You’ll no longer feel overwhelmed, no matter what’s going on or how much you have to do or how impossible and confusing it feels.
2. You’ll move forward faster than you did before. Like a runner who focuses only on one landmark at a time, you’ll find that small steps add up to big gains very quickly.
3. You’ll become a more confident decision maker who gets things done.

If you’re not sure which parts of your business need attention, grab my free worksheet below. In less than 10 minutes, you’ll know exactly which projects are most important, and which ones can wait.

The post From Overwhelmed to Done: A System for Completing Big Projects appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

That uncomfortable tightness in my stomach. The low-level feeling of dread. That panicked voice in my head asking, “What day is this? What am I behind on? Where have I dropped the ball?”

For years, that was my wake-up routine. No one else knew how much I struggled. It wasn’t obvious from the outside, but inside? I was a knot of anxiety from the minute my eyes opened until I crawled back into bed, exhausted.

I’d quit my day job to chase time and financial freedom, and by all accounts I had it. I was working from home, earning triple my previous salary, and I truly did love the work, so what was the problem?

I was running a business entirely in my head.

Every task, every project, every “can you do this?” from a client was a yes, but I was keeping it all in my brain, in a big bucket that was constantly on the verge of overflowing. The only way to prevent disaster was to keep every project and task top of mind, all the time.

Clients told me I was more productive than anyone they knew, but the truth was, I was muscling through every day, terrified of missing a deadline or letting someone down.

All because I didn’t have good systems in place.

I blamed myself. I said I was just lazy. I called myself a procrastinator. I clung to that version of me even when my husband called me out on it, insisting there was a better way to run a business (he was right).

The turning point came when I shifted from service provider to course creator.

Suddenly, I didn’t have someone else’s deadlines to keep me on task. It was just me and a list of projects with no priority or urgency. That’s when I realized my previous “just put out the fires as they appear” system wasn’t going to cut it any more.

I thought I had a productivity problem

At first I thought, “I need a productivity system.”

I read Getting Things Done and Deep Work and Eat That Frog. I tried (and discarded) dozens of to-do apps and calendars. I switched project management software like it was my job. I BuJo-ed. I time blocked. I joined the 5AM club.

None of it helped.

Not because they’re not useful systems, but because what was broken in my business wasn’t a project plan. It was bigger than that. My entire business system was in chaos.

I wasn’t lazy or unfocused. I simply hadn’t defined the repeatable workflows that make my business run smoothly today. I was constantly reinventing the wheel, following every new trend and tool that crossed my desk, when what I should have been doing is building better systems.

How I finally stopped chasing and started leading

My anxiety-filled business was entirely reactive. What I desperately wanted was proactive. The difference is stark.

One is stressful, the other calm.

One is chaotic, the other is predictable.

One saps your energy, the other gives you time freedom.

And the shift from reactive to proactive is simple once you see it.

It’s sitting down to record episode number 137 of your podcast because it’s Thursday and that’s what you do on Thursdays. It’s ignoring all the Black Friday hype because you’re confident that you have everything you need to run your business like a pro. It’s identifying smart ways to boost your email list instead of wasting a month on some hot new strategy before abandoning it in favor of the next shiny thing.

Simple. But not easy.

Four core systems every coach and course creator needs

To fix my chaotic, reactive business, I started by identifying the big buckets of activity (systems) that keep my course-based business afloat:

• Visibility
• List building
• Sales
• The C-Suite

Visibility is everything you do to get in front of your ideal audience.

That’s the content you publish on your blog or podcast or YouTube channel, the interviews, speaking gigs, books, ads, and even comments you make on videos or social posts from others. Anywhere you are exposed to a wider audience counts as being visible.

List building is inviting that audience to come back to your house for a deeper conversation.

You can think of visibility as attending a party. There are lots of people there, you’ll talk to and connect with a few of them. Share a few laughs, maybe leave them with something to think about after the party ends.

List building is inviting them back to your place for a more intimate conversation. This is where they can really get to know you outside the loud, chaotic party atmosphere.

Sales is how you solve a problem.

That’s a bit different way of thinking of sales, so let me clarify. When we make an offer, it’s rarely just a “Hey, this will be fun” kind of thing. That kind of sales is reserved for companies like Joker Greeting or Hasbro.

In the coaching and course creation space, sales is service. We are solving a problem our audience is facing, in a way that only we can solve it.

For me, the problem is the chaotic, stressful nature of solopreneur-based businesses. You might be solving the kids who hate math problem, or the mid-life confidence problem, or the feeding a family on a budget problem.

When you’re clear on the problem and confident in your solution, selling is just a matter of making sure people know you have the answer.

The C-Suite is how all of that fits together to form a repeatable, predictable, profitable business that doesn’t suck the life out of you or make you wake up in a cold sweat like I used to.

This is the way you think, how you problem solve, how you make incremental improvements over time to build something real and sustainable.

It’s not chasing a new app or strategy. It’s not beating yourself up for being lazy or unmotivated or “knowing what to do and not doing it.” It’s analyzing the data, identifying the next best move, and implementing the changes that make a real difference.

Instead of just throwing shit at the wall and hoping something—anything—will stick, the C-suite systems help you build strategies that work for you, not for someone else.

These core systems—visibility, list building, sales, and the c-suite—are behind the success of every course creator and coach who isn’t struggling, who isn’t hustling to make rent, who isn’t juggling a day job while they build their side gig into a full-time income.

When you get them firmly in place, you’ll find that:

• You don’t constantly question what to do to grow your business. You already know and you’re eager to get it done.
• You won’t spend time testing new apps and strategies, because you have a system for deciding what you need to move to the next level.
• You aren’t chasing paychecks and hustling for sales. They come effortlessly through the systems you’ve built.

The Swamp of Overthinking

When I explain this very simple systems flywheel, my clients nod along. I can see their eyes light up as the connections are made. Their business feels do-able again.

But then, they wander into the Swamp of Overthinking.

How much content do they need to publish?

How many emails should they be sending?

How often should they make an offer?

How long should their course or coaching program be?

These are the questions that will kill your business. It’s a bad habit left over from the days of believing that this or that new course will save you. You believe you need someone to tell you exactly what to do.

Here’s the truth: No one, not even me, can tell you exactly what to do to grow your business. And here’s a hot take: You don’t really want me to.

The only way that kind of micromanagement is successful is in the franchise world. If you want to be told exactly what to do and when and where and how to do it, buy a McDonald’s franchise. They excel at that shit.

For the rest of us, the only answer is, you get to decide.

That’s what the C-Suite systems are designed for. They let you choose your next steps with confidence, based on your personality, your lifestyle goals, and your audience. You won’t need someone else to tell you exactly how many times you should email your list and exactly how long that course should be.

Your own data will give you the answers.

Anyone who offers a proven, checklisted system is giving you—at best—a starting point. It’s not a prescription and should not be treated as one. Think of it like a faded, coffee stained recipe card handed down from your great grandmother with gems like “add a spoon of cocoa after the mixture has boiled for a while.”

It clearly worked for her, but you’ll need to experiment with the timing and measurements to make it your own.

Your business is the same. You get to take a recipe and make it uniquely yours. I might tell you to email your list every day. I think it’s a good practice, and it’s worked for me for years.

It might be a good fit for you. It also might not. You get to test it and decide for yourself.

The pathway out of the Swamp of Overthinking is clear, but scary:

Just move. Do something. Take action and see what happens. Then do something else. See where it takes you. Do you like that direction? Do more of it. If you don’t like that direction, backtrack and try again.

When you find yourself overthinking, remember that’s what happens when you don’t have decision-making systems. Your brain fills the gap with anxiety.

What’s your next move?

Here’s how to be the kind of business owner who knows exactly what to focus on next—not because someone told you, but because your systems make the next move obvious.

First, map out your business. Do you have:

• Consistent visibility?
• A list-building system that works?
• Something to sell that solves a problem and a way to sell it?

If you have all of those pieces in place, kudos! You’re on the right path.

Now ask, which of these is not working at peak efficiency? Maybe you have a podcast, but you don’t do a great job of promoting it. Maybe you have a lead magnet, but it doesn’t convert as well as you’d like. Maybe you have a great offer, but the sales page kind of sucks.

Identify the next best place to put your efforts, then block off the time on your calendar and get it done.

I made a printable you can use to assess and pinpoint areas of your business that need the most attention right now. It’s free, and you can download it below.

The post Why most solopreneurs struggle appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

I also have a hard-and-fast rule that AI doesn’t create my content for me. I have other uses for AI that I’ll tell you about another time, but for content creation, I have a zero-tolerance policy. When you take the time to read or watch something I’ve created, you deserve to hear from me, not ChatGPT.

For the past few years I’ve had a more-or-less regular content publishing schedule:

• Monthly courses or workshops for Six-Figure Systems
• Weekly long-form content of some kind (podcast, YouTube, blog)
• Daily(ish) emails
• Swipe files for affiliates

That’s around 40,000 words per month, if you’re counting. The length of your average romance novel.

Here’s my four-step system for keeping the content flowing while still having a life.

I decide ahead of time

I used to sit down at my desk and ask, “What will I mail my list today?”

That still does happen from time to time, but it’s rare. Today, I’m much more likely to plan out my content in advance.

I know what I’ll be promoting that month, and I build content around those promotions. I put everything into a Notion calendar, where it’s easy to see what’s coming up. I also have drafts in my writing app, where I keep notes and talking points.

When I sat down to write this newsletter, for example, I already had the four step process I’m telling you about written down. All I had to do was flesh it out and add the intro and outro.

It took me a long time to figure out that planning is a separate activity from creating. Those days when I started a writing session with “what am I going to write?” were a waste of my time. They slowed me down.

Which brings me to the second step.

I block creative time on my calendar

I run my life by my calendar. It might surprise you to know that I don’t even keep a to-do list. There’s no Todoist or Asana or TickTick in my toolbox. If there’s a task or project I need to do, it goes on my calendar as an appointment.

And those appointments never get booked during my creative time. That time is sacred.

For me, creative hours are 6AM to 10AM on most days. With rare exceptions, I don’t book appointments during that time. I don’t take phone calls. I don’t do admin work (like bookkeeping or file management).

Another thing I don’t do is look at my phone, listen to podcasts, read books, or watch YouTube. Not during my creative time, and not even before my creative time block starts.

I find that if I start the day with “just a quick check in on YouTube” my entire day spirals out of control. Even my husband doesn’t get a pass here. He knows this is my time to do my most valuable work, and he respects that.

I start with a template

Even knowing ahead of time what I’m going to create, and without unnecessary distractions, it can still be hard to sit down and stare at a blank page. That’s where a template helps me get started.

I have templates for most of my content creation, because most things I write have a specific structure. This article, for example, has an intro, and outro, and four sections. Most of my long-form content shares a similar structure, so I start with that in my template. I also have the “PS” as well as notes at the top about when to publish, if there’s a sponsor, and who should receive the email.

I find that having that information already in the document helps me avoid blank page syndrome. It feels more like just filling in the blanks than creating something from scratch, and there is—in my mind, at least—a lot less pressure when I think of it that way.

I use a timer that ticks

I am, like most of us, easily distracted. Staying on task is hard when there are so many interesting (and sometimes terrifying) things happening. There are emails to respond to, news feeds to be enraged over, reels to scroll through, and it seems like my phone wants to notify me about everything.

How do I ignore all of that so I can get the words written?

First, I turn off every single notification. I don’t need to hear a chime or see a number pop up every time I get another email. That thing would be dinging all day. Every single notification is disabled on my phone, on my laptop, everywhere.

But the real workhorse for keeping me focused is a simple timer that ticks. I use this one. It’s the ticking sound that reminds my brain I’m in focus mode, and that’s what keeps me from hopping over to check my email, or doomscrolling through Reddit, or even deciding now would be the perfect time to clean the bathroom.

When I hear that timer, it’s like a beacon that keeps me focused on the task at hand.

I’m not perfect

I’d love to tell you that this system never fails. That I never face a blank screen or drop the ball and miss a deadline, but I’m human just like you.

Sometimes I ignore my calendar. Sometimes I can’t resist the latest episode of my favorite podcast first thing in the morning. Sometimes I take my phone to bed and find myself scrolling Instagram at 6AM.

For the most part though, this simple system helps me create more of what really matters in my business.

James Clear famously said, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

If I set a goal to write 40,000 words per month, I wouldn’t achieve it without the system to back it up. If I didn’t have a scheduling system, a system for protecting my creative time, a system for staying on task, and a system for structuring each piece of writing, I’d waste a whole lot of time just getting to the starting point.

So while I don’t perfectly live up to my content creation system, I’m definitely more prolific than I would be without it.

The post My AI-free workflow for fast content creation appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

At the time, I was a virtual assistant, and this conference was the gathering place for my ideal clients: online marketers.

“No new clients,” I admitted, disappointed.

Here’s what I was too impatient to recognize: I was sowing seeds. They weren’t ready to harvest yet, but they would be soon.

Not long ago, I was talking to a coaching client about content marketing. She has risen to my challenge and is consistently publishing blog posts, a newsletter, and LinkedIn content. After a few weeks, she wasn’t getting as much engagement as she wanted and was disappointed in the results.

I asked what her specific concerns were:

• Too few likes and comments made her worry she was wasting time on LinkedIn.
• Too few newsletter signups made her think her content wasn’t appealing.
• Too few new clients made her think the entire exercise was pointless.

“Shouting into the void,” was the phrase she used on a particularly rough day.

What the numbers say

The first question to ask when things aren’t going as planned, is “What does the data say?”

I hear from clients and customers and friends all the time that their marketing isn’t working, but when I ask for the numbers, they often say, “it’s just a gut feeling.”

I’m sorry, but your gut feelings are useless here. Show me the facts, so we can make a plan to improve it.

Looking at my client’s content marketing data, we could see that her LinkedIn engagement was in line with other creators in her space. She might have felt like it should be better, but the reality is that she’s right on track.

Newsletter subscribers? While there hadn’t been a huge influx of new subscribers, her list was growing, if slower than she’d like.

(As an aside, why do we think that list-building is supposed to mean 843 new subscribers at a time? Real list-building looks more like a quiet summer drizzle than a raging monsoon.)

Finally, I asked her about her newest client. Where did they come from?

LinkedIn.

Uh, huh.

How to know what’s working

All the heart-centered, creative entrepreneurs might not like what I’m about to say, but fire up those spreadsheets my friend, and start tracking what matters:

• Opt-in page conversion rates and email list growth
• Sales page conversion rates
• Churn rate (if you have a membership or recurring coaching program)
• Revenue (how much do you earn every month?)
• Cost per lead (if you use paid ads)
• Lead source (is Instagram really working for you?)
• Content reach (how many people see your blog or listen to your podcast every week?)

You absolutely cannot make good business decisions without knowing these key performance indicators (KPIs). They’ll tell you if you’re on track and exactly which areas of your business need attention if you’re not.

Don’t overcomplicate it. You don’t need a fully automated Notion dashboard to know where your clients are coming from. A Google sheet will do. Choose a few meaningful stats to start with, and be consistent with tracking them.

If you’re not sure what you should be tracking, here’s a useful guide I created to help you decide. Or, if you’re a nerd like me and you just love data, here are 28 things you might want to track.

Knowing your numbers will help you make strategic, data-focused decisions that don’t depend on gut feelings.

And remember…

Sow seeds now, harvest later

I did not come home from that long-ago conference with a new client. I also didn’t come home from the next one with a new client. But the third one?

That’s the year I came home and quit my day job—something that never would have happened if I didn’t show up and sow the seeds first.

If you’re showing up and it feels like no one is listening, keep going. Track your stats. Look for trends. Adjust as needed.

P.S. If you could use some support, here are a few ways I can help:

• ​Join my Six-Figure Systems community and get instant access to an entire library of system-focused resources to help build, grow, and scale your business. You’ll also get live Q & A calls, mindset coaching calls, and monthly Action Labs to build momentum.
• Work with me 1:1. If you’re ready to nail down the systems that support your business growth, let’s talk about how I can help you avoid the overwhelm and frustration so you can spend more time doing what matters: teaching and coaching.
• ​Schedule a one-time, “Get Unstuck” call. Bring me your biggest frustration about your existing business systems, and we’ll solve it together. You’ll walk away with an action plan to get you to the next step.
• Need something else? Email me at cindy@cindybidar.com. I read and respond to every one of your emails, and I genuinely would love to hear from you.

The post Why business growth feels slow (and what to do about it) appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

That question got me thinking about all the tools and trainings and apps that make up my business. Why did I invest in them? Why do I spend time and energy on them? Most importantly, are they doing their jobs?

I look at it like an employee evaluation for my business systems. It’s a chance for all of those things I’m spending time and money on to defend their existence. Some will get a promotion. Some will…well, let’s just say their keycard might suddenly stop working.

Either way, my business improves when I intentionally review and re-evaluate my employees systems.

I’m asking this question about every piece of my business right now.

It’s a business-development framework

I have an opt-in form on my website home page for the CLEAR Framework. I “hired” that system to grow my mailing list, and it’s doing its job. Twenty-three new subscribers in the past few days is proof.

The home page opt-in gets to keep its job.

Those new subscribers move directly into a 35-email sequence that promotes Six-Figure Systems. I hired those emails to sell, and they are not living up to their end of the deal.

By asking “what did I hire this system to do?” and “is it doing its job?” I’ve identified an area in need of improvement, and I know exactly what to do about it.

Those 35 emails will definitely not be getting a raise.

It’s a decision-making framework

I ask this question before investing time and money, too.

This morning a last-chance offer from a creator I admire landed in my inbox. It’s a course I’ve been interested in for a while, and I almost clicked the buy button. Then I asked, “What am I hiring this course to do?”

It turns out, I already have another program I’m working through that I hired to do the same thing.

Do I need two? Nope. Decision made.

I take the same approach when I’m tempted to play around on TikTok, launch a new branch of the business, or create a new course.

“What am I hiring this to do, and is that a position that even needs to be filled right now?”

How to use this question in your business (and a word of caution)

1⃣ Step 1: Take inventory. How many “employees” does your business have? Make a big list. If you get stuck, it can help to think in terms of the four primary systems:

• Visibility systems are things like content marketing, ads, social media, and interviews.
• Sales systems include everything that brings money in the door, like course development, sales pages and funnels, shopping carts, and abandoned cart sequences.
• Fulfillment systems are everything that helps your customers and clients gain access to what they purchased. These are your course platform, new client onboarding system, help desk, and membership community.
• Operations systems are the back end. This is your bookkeeping, SOPs, and even big picture strategy.

2⃣ Step 2: Ask the question. For each system you’ve identified ask, “What did I hire this system to do, and is it doing its job?”

Your Instagram account is a system. You probably hired it to drive traffic to your opt-in form. Is it doing that? How do you know?

3⃣ Step 3: Decide what to cut, and what to improve. If you don’t know what you hired a system for, or if it’s not doing its job, it’s time to make a decision. Will you work to improve the results? Or will you dump it and move on?

Only you can make this decision, but don’t cling to something out of a false sense of loyalty or wishful thinking. It’s business, not your grandma’s wedding dress.

One extra word of caution: Don’t let the sunk cost fallacy trip you up here. Just because you’ve been paying for that expensive shopping cart for a year doesn’t mean you have to keep it. If it’s not doing the job you hired it for, let it go.

P.S. If you could use some support, here are a few ways I can help:

• ​Join my Six-Figure Systems community and get instant access to an entire library of system-focused resources to help build, grow, and scale your business. You’ll also get live Q & A calls, mindset coaching calls, and monthly Action Labs to build momentum.
• Work with me 1:1. If you’re ready to nail down the systems that support your business growth, let’s talk about how I can help you avoid the overwhelm and frustration so you can spend more time doing what matters: teaching and coaching.
• ​Schedule a one-time, “Get Unstuck” call. Bring me your biggest frustration about your existing business systems, and we’ll solve it together. You’ll walk away with an action plan to get you to the next step.
• Need something else? Email me at cindy@cindybidar.com. I read and respond to every one of your emails, and I genuinely would love to hear from you.

The post Intuitive business growth, thanks to one simple question appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

And every day, we bring home more.

More clothes, more toys, more fitness gear, more kitchen gadgets. And then we buy bigger houses with bigger closets and bigger garages to hold it all. Eventually, we buy a bigger car so we can haul some of the excess to a bigger storage unit.

Your business has the same problem, and there’s nowhere to store the digital clutter. That stuff just lives rent-free in your head.

Things like the membership platform you grabbed at a sweet launch price but never set up. Or the Pinterest templates still waiting for you to open an account. Or the 53 “someday” ideas sitting in an email folder.

None of those things are bad. But together, they take up mental space.

They create overwhelm.

So what’s the fix?

A minimum viable business

The minimalism movement pushed back on our endless quest for more by encouraging us to focus on what really matters.

…minimalism is intentionally living with only the things I really need—those items that support my purpose. I am removing the distraction of excess possessions so I can focus more on those things that matter most.

It’s not just good for your home, though. It’s also a good way to look at your business.

What is the least amount of “stuff” you need make money? That’s your minimum viable business. And I promise, it’s a whole lot less than you might think. In fact, it’s only three pieces:

• Something to sell
• Someone who wants to buy it
• A way to get paid

That’s it.

No YouTube channel required. No Pinterest templates. No fancy funnel, all-in-one software, or new app that promises to run your business and make you a margarita you can sip on the beach.

Minimum viable businesses thrive on simplicity. An offer. A buyer. A way to get paid.

You might add more later, of course. You can launch a podcast, start an Instagram account, build a quiz funnel or a custom GPT. You can even rent a billboard on Route 66. But those things are add-ons, not essentials.

Treating add-ons as critical part of your business is where the overwhelm begins to build.

Strip your business down to the basics, and suddenly, things feel manageable again.

Maybe your minimum viable business is a coaching offer, the person you met at a retreat, and a Venmo link. Maybe it’s a tiny course, the 45 people who opted in after your last podcast interview, and a buy button you created with the help of PayPal.

You get the idea: Make a thing. Find a person who wants it. Tell them how to pay you.

Bottom-up vs. top-down building

If you’re a DIYer like me, you probably got this backwards at first.

I saw what other successful people had and I tried to replicate it. All at one time. I made a website and a blog and got the social channels and the shopping cart…all. the. things.

But I skipped the most important piece: The foundation.

No clear offer. No buyer. No way to get paid.

It’s like building a house by starting with the paint colors and curtains before you bother laying the foundation.

That’s top-down building. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t have any substance.

Bottom-up builders take a different approach.

An offer, a buyer, and a way to get paid.

There’s no overwhelm, because all you need is to be clear on what you sell and who you sell it to. What if instead of chasing more strategies and tactics, you turned all your attention to your minimum viable business?

Doing more does not equal earning more

My friend Jonathon is a dating and relationship coach. His offer is a private coaching program, and every action he takes either makes his program better, or gets it in front of his audience.

He doesn’t spend any time thinking about launching a new website or starting a Substack or opening an Etsy shop. He’s not fiddling around with a new membership platform or juggling 13 social media accounts. He’s focused on what he knows is working, not on chasing new strategies.

He’s also not overwhelmed.

I will be the first to admit this takes practice. It’s easy for me to believe the reason I’m not yet earning seven figures is because I’m not doing enough. That the only way to earn more is to do more.

But entrepreneurial success has little to do with working harder, and everything to do with digging deeper and doing better.

The post The real reason you’re overwhelmed appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

And if predictability feels like a pipe dream, it’s going to give you the levers to pull and the settings to tweak that will get you there.

Here’s the thing: Our systems maps are needlessly complex. Here’s a small piece of what’s going on in my business.

And that doesn’t even include all my side hustles, courses in development, new platform testing, and dozens of other time and energy sucking projects.

There is an endless supply of platforms and strategies and social apps and marketplaces where you can sell your templates, and somehow we’ve bought into the idea that we have to be everywhere.

We’re continuously on the hunt for more. But what if less really is more?

Fewer offers = easier to scale

A few months ago I read 10X is Easier than 2X, by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. They make a compelling point that doing one thing really well is better than doing lots of things half-assed.

I mean, would you rather your heart surgeon studied hearts for the entirety of their career, or that they also practiced dentistry and law, managed a roofing crew on the weekends, and were studying for their real estate license in the evenings?

I’ll take option one, please.

Why then, when I want to grow my business, is my first reaction to branch out? To do something new?

Instead of going broader, I should be going deeper.

Experts have the time to perfect their processes, and because of that, they reach a more engaged audience. What’s more, they have earned the right to charge higher rates.

Fewer platforms = less time managing them

This is a big sticking point for a lot of people. We think (have been told) that we have to be everywhere. Instagram. LinkedIn. Facebook. Podcasting. YouTube. Paid ads. TikTok. Snapchat. Etsy. Gumroad. Udemy.

Every one of those platforms comes with its own learning curve, its own processes and standards, and its own maintenance schedule. Or put another way, its own endless hamster wheel of management.

Is it worth it? That’s a question we don’t often ask before launching into something new, like another social platform or marketplace.

Now, this doesn’t hold true if you’re Gary Vaynerchuck or Alex Hormozi. When you have a large team whose job it is to take every piece of content you produce and turn it into 3,497 other pieces of content, it’s easy to be seen everywhere.

When you’re a company of one though, it’s better to focus on producing the best quality content you can on a single platform. Maximize your reach there before branching out into other platforms.

Fewer funnels = easier to optimize

A while back I moved my email list from Active Campaign to Kit. I had dozens of funnels set up in the old platform, and I worried that it would take me weeks to move them all.

Once I looked at them, I discovered most of them could simply be eliminated. I ended up moving one single funnel, and there wasn’t even a blip in my income due to missing funnels.

Looking at my Kit dashboard now, it’s much easier to navigate because there’s less clutter. I don’t have to chase down broken links and mixed messaging when someone enters a funnel that hasn’t had an update in a while. My potential customers are no longer confused by old branding.

One funnel. One thing to maintain. One place to check when things go wrong. One thing to improve to generate more sales.

Headspace isn’t free

You might be thinking, “But Cindy, these things are minor. Extra funnels? A few more courses in your shop? They’re not hurting anything, and maybe they’ll make a sale or help a potential client.”

You’re not wrong. Those unnecessary courses and funnels and platforms (probably) aren’t hurting anything at all. You can just leave them be.

Years ago my friend Tracy told me that the reason she was giving up an easy-going client wasn’t because of the time it took to complete the work, but rather that it took up too much space in her head.

I think about that often when I let go of business clutter like unnecessary funnels and slightly off-brand courses. That stuff does take up space in my head, and that space is much better used for deep thinking and strategic improvements, rather than surface level additions that don’t serve me (or you) well.

Questions for you

I want to invite you to take a look at what you can subtract from your business, instead of what you can add.

Which offers bring in the majority of your revenue?

Which platforms bring you the most new clients or sales?

Which funnels or lead magnets are building your list?

What if you just let the rest go? Give your brain a break. Take the time you spend managing all those extras, and put it into building your main thing.

That’s what I’m doing. I hope you’ll join me.

If you could use some support, here are a few ways I can help:

• ​Join my Six-Figure Systems community and get instant access to an entire library of system-focused resources to help build, grow, and scale your business. You’ll also get live Q & A calls, mindset coaching calls, and monthly Action Labs to build momentum.
• Work with me 1:1. If you’re ready to nail down the systems that support your business growth, let’s talk about how I can help you avoid the overwhelm and frustration so you can spend more time doing what matters: teaching and coaching.
• ​Schedule a one-time, “Get Unstuck” call. Bring me your biggest frustration about your existing business systems, and we’ll solve it together. You’ll walk away with an action plan to get you to the next step.
• Need something else? Email me directly at cindy@cindybidar.com. I read and respond to every one of your emails, and I genuinely would love to hear from you.

The post Subtraction is a superpower appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Imagine the blandest, most buzzword-laden (and completely meaningless) “goal,” written in a way we thought sounded smart (it didn’t) and that no one would ever look at again. That’s what continuous improvement meant to every department head.

Mine typically went like this:

“After having reviewed the data regarding the 2009 fiscal year LTL shipments, it’s clear that expediting expenses can be significantly reduced [cue the passive voice] by utilizing personnel in a more strategic manner…”

The whole exercise was completely meaningless. Department heads spent on average about 10 minutes on their goals, and who could blame us? We were too busy putting out urgent fires to plan for future improvements.

But over the past few weeks, I’ve realized something. That poorly executed goal-setting exercise set me up for future success in my own business.

It showed me how different systems (departments) worked together to produce an output (the finished part). It taught me how to use data within a system to identify potential problems and areas of improvement. And it taught me how to design and test solutions to make meaningful changes.

Continuous improvement for coaches and course creators

You might be thinking, “Ok, Cindy, but I don’t run a factory. I’m a one-person show with a few courses and coaching clients and I’m just trying not to work 70 hours a week so I can enjoy my life a bit.”

Me, too!

Let’s break down three real-world examples of systems that already exist in your business, how to know if they’re broken, and what to do about it (no buzzword bingo required).

Your client attraction system

Also known as visibility, this is everything you do to attract a new audience to your products and services. It’s your social accounts, your content, your ads, books you’ve written, stages you speak on… anything that puts you in front of your ideal clients is part of your client attraction system.

Unless you have an audience, you can’t make sales. Simple as that. Client attraction or visibility is typically where we focus as marketers. This is why you’ll see so many people selling courses about how to use Pinterest, or start a YouTube channel, or launch a podcast.

They’re all aimed at improving the client attraction system, but they have a fatal flaw: They assume you need more TACTICS when what you might actually need is just better SYSTEMS.

Here’s how to know if your client attraction system is broken: Your audience isn’t growing. You’re not getting new followers on LinkedIn, your views on YouTube are dropping, or your podcast stats are flatlined.

That’s the point where we often think, “I have to do something new!” And then we run off and buy that Pinterest course, because that MUST be the missing piece, right?

Except, what if we just improved the existing system?

Learn to make better, scroll-stopping thumbnails. Write more compelling LinkedIn content. Improve the SEO for your podcast. Those things are easier to do, and can have a bigger impact than starting a completely new project.

Back in my shipping department days, I didn’t try to move the loading docks to the other side of the building to improve downtime. Instead, I cleaned up the one dock that had turned into a storage space and suddenly had 25% more space to load trucks.

Improve what you have, before taking on more and bigger projects.

Your sales system

This is how you make sales. It starts the minute your potential client becomes aware of your solution to their problem, and ends when they have made a purchase.

This system is critical, because it’s where you can easily lose a new customer.

In our Six-Figure Systems Q & A call this week, I talked about how some companies make it difficult for us to give them money. The Atlantic wanted me to fill out a four page (!!!) form to sign up for a free trial. Some marketers insist on having a phone number (hard pass from me) before I can create an account. Some make me create an account to access a free course.

All of that adds friction, and makes for a bad first impression. (As evidenced by the fact that I’m throwing The Atlantic under the bus right now.)

Where is the friction in your sales system? Where do potential customers and clients drop off, never to return? If you have data on email unsubscribes and abandoned carts, use that. It will tell you exactly where the trouble spots are.

If you don’t have that data or you don’t know how to access it, put on your customer hat and walk through your sales process as someone brand new to your world. What’s confusing? What is harder/more time consuming than it needs to be? What frustrates you?

Fix those spots, and your bottom line will improve without having to create new products, host a holiday sale, or recruit more affiliates.

Your fulfillment system

This is the process for delivering the goods. It’s how you onboard new coaching clients or members, and how customers get access to your courses.

Sadly, this is the one that gets the least attention, and I get it. What’s there to improve here? They’ve already made a purchase, and as long as you deliver the goods, that’s what matters, right?

Not. So. Fast.

What about repeat sales? A great customer experience leads to higher lifetime value. A poor customer experience leads to refund requests.

What about the cost of support? A smooth onboarding process where the customer or client is able to access everything they need means happy customers and no support tickets. Broken systems make for frustrated customers and time and money spent responding to tickets.

What about word of mouth advertising? A delightful customer experience means they’re more likely to talk about you in a positive light. Bad customer experiences mean terrible reviews.

Again, the data tells the story here, and it’s easy to read.

What’s your refund rate? What can you do to make it 1% less?

What’s your membership churn rate? What’s one thing you can do to improve it by 1%?

What complaints or requests do you hear from customers? Pay attention, because if one person is asking, you can bet that many more just quietly go away without saying a word.

Quick-win action steps for improving your business today

Last week a customer replied to an email I sent. It’s part of the new member onboarding sequence, and she was confused about something I wrote in that email.

This was the perfect opportunity for me to improve my fulfillment system, and it took me about three minutes. I simply updated the email to address her concern, and to clarify it for future members.

In the past, I would have answered her question personally, but not updated the email. In other words, I wouldn’t have improved the system. Don’t be me.

Here’s my assignment for you:

The next time a customer, team member, or affiliate expresses confusion or frustration over something in your business, don’t just answer them. Fix the system.

Business growth really can be as simple as that.

If you could use some support, here are a few ways I can help:

• ​Join my Six-Figure Systems community and get instant access to an entire library of system-focused resources to help build, grow, and scale your business. You’ll also get live Q & A calls, mindset coaching calls, and monthly Action Labs to build momentum.
• Work with me 1:1. If you’re ready to nail down the systems that support your business growth, let’s talk about how I can help you avoid the overwhelm and frustration so you can spend more time doing what matters: teaching and coaching.
• ​Schedule a one-time, “Get Unstuck” call. Bring me your biggest frustration about your existing business systems, and we’ll solve it together. You’ll walk away with an action plan to get you to the next step.
• Need something else? Email me directly at cindy@cindybidar.com. I read and respond to every one of your emails, and I genuinely would love to hear from you.

The post How incremental improvements create more profits in your business appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

I was a hard-working virtual assistant with a dream client. Said dream client was a high-ticket business coach (think $40,000 programs) pulling in somewhere north of $400k per month.

Her coaching programs included luxury retreats to places like Costa Rica, Italy, Hawaii, and Portugal. As a team member, I was invited along. Like I said, dream client.

Here’s the bit that changed my business, though.

This client did all her lead gen through Facebook ads. The ads promoted webinars which led to discovery (read: sales) calls. Part of my job was tracking the effectiveness of the ads.

Enter, the spreadsheet.

Each day I’d record the previous day’s ad spend along with the number of clicks, webinar attendees, calls booked, and sales made.

With those numbers, she could track the exact cost of customer acquisition, in other words, how much she spent to sell a single coaching program. As long as that number was lower than the cost of the program, scaling up was just a matter of adding more money at one end of the spreadsheet. The bigger the ad spend, the more revenue she earned.

Let me tell you. The Amalfi Coast was breathtaking, but that spreadsheet blew my mind wide open. It was my first glimpse at the power of a system, and how it can impact my business.

That spreadsheet was so much more than just columns of numbers. It represented a series of levers, and each lever controlled a part of the system. Move a lever, and see the results in the related data.

The audience lever determined the click-through rate. Show the ad to fans of Marie Forleo or Tony Robbins, get a better click through. Show it to a more general “online business” or “entrepreneurial” audience, and the click rate would drop.

The conversion lever controlled how many of those who clicked the ad would go on to sign up for the webinar. It was impacted by the copy on the landing page. A tweak here, a word change there, and you could watch the conversion rate climb or fall.

The sales lever was impacted most by the team member who took the call. If it was Jenny or Diane, the close rate increased. If it was Don or Sarah, not so much. Funneling more calls to Jenny and Diane improved the bottom line.

What that spreadsheet meant for my business

I’m not selling $40,000 coaching programs or running Facebook ads to evergreen webinars, but I learned a lot about my business from that spreadsheet.

I learned that a smoothly running, profitable business is made up of a collection of systems that all work together. The outputs from one system—a website visitor, an ad click, a call booked—create the input for the next system.

I learned that each system can (and should) be separately optimized for peak performance, and that when you look at a business as a collection of smaller systems, that becomes much easier to manage.

I learned that successful businesses identify and track their KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators. This data is the health meter for each system in my business. I use it to course correct and improve. In Six-Figure Systems, I teach you how to do this in A License to Print Money.

Maybe most importantly, I learned that better systems management means I get to design the business and the life I want, instead of doing what someone else (read: a boss) has dictated.

The better and more efficient my systems are, the more free time I have, and the more income I generate. It really is that simple.

The BIG systems misconception

My friend Jonathon says, “I just want to be a better coach. I don’t want to learn to be a better business owner.”

I get where he’s coming from, but I think he’s missing the bigger picture: Creating good systems means he has the time and energy for being the best coach he is capable of becoming.

Another friend feels like systems stifle her creativity. They keep her boxed in, unable to follow the fun side-quests she enjoys so much.

I understand her concerns, too. My counter-argument is this: No system (well, unless we’re taking about physics, maybe) is written in stone. You get to change them up if they don’t work for you, but the only way you can know if they’re working is to create and track them.

The “fly by the seat of your pants” approach to business won’t give you the data you need to make better decisions. You’ll be too busy re-inventing the wheel every time you create a course or edit a YouTube video to plan for and implement new ideas. You definitely won’t maximize your earning potential, because you won’t have a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not.

The map is not the territory

To openly steal an idea from Alfred Korzybski, systems are not checklists and templates. Those documents are the instructions for how a system works, not the system itself.

Here’s why that matters: Thinking that a system is just a checklist might make you believe you have to create them, and that’s pretty overwhelming. The truth is, you don’t have to create systems in your business. They’re already there. You’re already using them every single day.

What you have to do instead is learn to recognize them and make them better.

Putting this to work in your business

Now that you know what a system is (and is not) and you (hopefully) have a good reason to clarify and optimize your systems, where do you even begin?

Right here.

Consider your most recent business screw up. That thing that broke yesterday, or last week. I know you’ve got one, and I’ll share mine in a minute so you don’t feel bad (because we all screw up sometimes).

Now, with that mistake in mind, ask yourself, what is the system that resulted in that mistake happening?

• A broken affiliate link is a part of your larger email writing system.
• Poor audio quality is a part of your podcast recording system.
• A missed appointment is part of your scheduling system.

For me, it was a Zoom call reminder that didn’t go out on time, which meant that those who signed up for a training call didn’t receive the access details. That’s a part of my reminder scheduling system.

Once you know which system is involved, ask yourself, what can I do to prevent this failure from happening again in the future?

Will you test all the links in your email before you hit send?

Will you adjust your microphone settings?

Will you create reminders for important appointments?

Personally, I created a recurring project in my task manager to set up call reminders on the last Friday of each month.

That step of identifying and solving a problem is systems optimization. The more you optimize, the more efficient and profitable you will be.

One more thought

Don’t let the size of the screw up fool you. It’s easy to think that a broken link in an email isn’t going to make a huge difference in your bottom line. It’s a tiny little leak. No big deal, right?

Except it’s not just one tiny little leak. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of places where you can tighten up your systems, make them more profitable and more efficient.

Identify them. Fix them. Move on to the next one. That’s how you improve and grow.

P.S. If you could use some support, here are a few ways I can help:

• ​Join my Six-Figure Systems community and get instant access to an entire library of system-focused resources to help build, grow, and scale your business. You’ll also get live Q & A calls, mindset coaching calls, and monthly Action Labs to build momentum.
• Work with me 1:1. If you’re ready to nail down the systems that support your business growth, let’s talk about how I can help you avoid the overwhelm and frustration so you can spend more time doing what matters: teaching and coaching.
• ​Schedule a one-time, “Get Unstuck” call. Bring me your biggest frustration about your existing business systems, and we’ll solve it together. You’ll walk away with an action plan to get you to the next step.
• Need something else? Hit reply or email me directly at cindy@cindybidar.com. I read and respond to every one of your emails, and I genuinely would love to hear from you.

The post That time a spreadsheet stole my heart (and changed my business forever) appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

I have a friend who, for a long time, resisted systematizing her business. She didn’t like spreadsheets and schedules. She said that level of organization went against her core values of freedom and independence.

It cramped her style. Harshed her mellow. Rained on her parade.

Another friend, we’ll call him Chris (because that’s his name), isn’t anti-system. In fact, he uses them every day to manage his busy, one-man coaching business. The trouble is, all of his systems are documented and stored in the worst possible place: his brain.

He would love to be better organized. He knows it would save him time and money. He just doesn’t know where to start.

Both friends suffer from the same ailment, but in different ways.

Among my clients and students (and friends, apparently), System Resistance is an epidemic. If I’m being honest, I’m not immune to it either.

If you’ve ever said:

• “I’m a creative! Systems are a buzzkill!”
• “I’m too busy to document my workflow. I just need to get it done!” (This is my personal strain of System Resistance.)
• “I don’t know how to create a system.” (This seems to be the most common form.)
• “I like to ‘go with the flow’ and not be tied to a dry, boring checklist.”

You might be suffering from System Resistance, too.

Here are some symptoms to watch out for:

• Easily preventable mistakes that make you look unprofessional, such as broken links, coupons that don’t work, and missed appointments
• Inconsistency in publishing, emailing, and launching
• Inconsistent branding that makes your site visitors and potential buyers wonder if they’re even on the right sales page
• Missed deadlines
• Difficulty in or resistance to outsourcing (a.k.a. “It’s faster/easier to do it myself” syndrome)
• Time wasted searching for that file/invoice/password/email you misplaced

And if you’re shaking your head right now and saying, “Systems aren’t for me. My brain doesn’t work that way!” then let me ask you this…

• Do you make a list before heading to the grocery store? Does it save you time and money? That’s a system.
• Do you follow a packing list before heading off on vacation, so you don’t get 300 miles from home before realizing you forgot your phone charger? Also a system.
• Do you separate your whites from your colors? Get your oil changed on the regular? Pay your bills on time? System, system, system.

Clearly, you’re already using systems in your life. You’re probably using them in your business, too. What I’m suggesting is that you make them better. It’s worth the effort, I promise.

Systems make everything easier, faster, and more efficient

• You’ll make fewer mistakes. If you think it takes too much time to document your systems, ask yourself how much time you’re spending to fix preventable mistakes.
• You’ll waste less time. One study showed that the average knowledge worker (that’s you, BTW) spends 10+ hours every week just looking for stuff.
• You’ll make more money. Create a system for writing a sales page or an email funnel or a webinar pitch. Base it on your best-performing example to date, and not only will you save time, but you’ll earn more.
• You’ll build a loyal customer base. They’ll know exactly what to expect from you, and they’ll buy again and again, and share your resources with others.

And you know what you get with all that added time, money, and happy customers?

Freedom. That’s what.

Action steps to begin systematizing your business

Listen, I’m not saying you have to run your business with the precision of a Marine Corps drill sergeant, but there’s a reason call centers have scripts, pilots have checklists, and cars have maintenance schedules.

Systems just work.

AND, they don’t have to be complicated. Start small and simple.

1. Consider your weekly schedule. What’s one thing you do every week, and that you sometimes (a) make a mistake with or (b) spend more time than you want to spend because you’re “reinventing the wheel.” This might be writing a blog post, sending out invoices, or reconciling your accounts.
2. Block off at least an hour in your calendar to document a system. Noting each step of a process will make the work itself take far longer than is typical, but you’ll only need to get this detailed one time.
3. As you work through the task or project, write down each step. Place special focus on things like decision making (“How do I classify business expenses?”), organization (“Where do I file client intake forms?”), and consistency (“What call to action do I want to include in my blog posts?”).
4. Consider creating templates. Blog posts, emails, sales pages, podcast scripts, and client feedback can all be made more efficient and effective with a template.
5. Boom! You’re done! Celebrate your win, and start planning how you’ll spend those hours you’re going to save by not having to start from scratch with each and every new project.

There is one last thing though, and this is what separates systems ninjas from systems beginners.

In order for your systems to work, you must use and maintain them. It’s not enough to write them down, stash them in your Google Drive, and never look at them again.

When you sit down to publish a blog post or onboard a new client, the first thing you must do is open up your checklist or template. Don’t lie to yourself and say, “I’ll remember.” You won’t.

What’s more, you’ll begin to make changes—small ones at first, like how much time to block off after a meeting, or what color to use for your sales page headlines. Before you know it, those checklists and templates you spent so much time creating are as useless as a muffler on a Tesla.

Once again, you’ll find yourself storing everything in your brain as those carefully crafted systems devolve into chaos.

Here’s what to do to ensure that doesn’t happen: Every time you complete a project, pull up your documentation. Use it, update it, and run your business like the systems ninja you are.

Systematizing Q & A

Which tools should I use?

You can use Google Docs, a spreadsheet, tools like Notion or Airtable, a project management system, or anything else that strikes your fancy. I’d recommend starting simple. Don’t try to learn how to use Asana while you’re also learning how to systematize.

What should I systematize?

Anything you do repeatedly:

• Content creation
• Client onboarding
• Product development
• Advertising
• Outreach
• Social posting
• Collecting testimonials

You get the idea.

Where can I learn more about systems?

Sam Carpenter (literally) wrote the book on systems, aptly named, Work the System. I highly recommend reading it if you’re new to systems and how they can improve your business.

If you’d like copy-and-paste systems designed especially for online entrepreneurs, that’s what Six-Figure Systems is all about. It’s even in the name!

The post Systems = Freedom appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

The company representative got up on the stage and introduced himself, then said, “Can everyone hear me?”

One person, near the middle of the group, said, “No!”

To which the speaker responded, “Then move closer.”

He placed the burden on his listener to hear him, rather than on himself to be heard.

We sometimes do that as content creators. We expect our audience to come to us, to find us, to seek us out. We expect them to search for us, to subscribe, to remember to check the podcast feed or blog page, to open our emails.

We put the burden of listening on them, when we should be putting the burden of being heard on ourselves. We need to be better at amplifying our message.

The good news is, we can easily get help. Let’s get into it.

The Dream 100 List

I first heard of the Dream 100 List in Russel Brunson’s Traffic Secrets. The idea is simple: Identify at least 100 people who can amplify your brand. You’ll call on them to share links, invite you to their podcast, tag you on social media, ask you to keynote, or promote your products as an affiliate.

They might be:

• Podcasters
• Influencers
• Conference organizers
• Bloggers
• YouTubers
• Social content creators
• Organizations
• Authors
• And yes, even competitors

The only requirement? They must have an audience that closely matches yours. It won’t make sense to include Amy Porterfield, who teaches online marketing, if you have a fishing site. You might admire Amy, and there might be some overlap, but not enough to make it worth the effort.

There’s just one small problem with a “dream” 100 list though: It focuses on the wrong thing, the dream.

Think smaller for better results

When I mention this idea to colleagues and coaching clients, they’re often quick to list all the celebrity podcasts they can think of: Mel Robbins, Joe Rogan, Cal Newport, Pat Flynn.

Wouldn’t it be great to get in front of Mel’s audience? That’s dream-worthy for sure!

Here’s the problem with that. Pitching a guest appearance on Mel Robbins’ podcast, asking Marie Forleo to sign up for your affiliate program, or offering your new webinar to MindValley is going to frustrate you.

These are brands with serious gate keepers and an endless supply of potential guests and partners. If you haven’t perfected cold fusion or written a New York Times bestseller, it’s unlikely you’ll make it past the intern who’s charged with triaging email.

So what are up-and-coming content creators like us supposed to do?

We think smaller. We look for people with audience sizes that say Toyota, not Rolls Royce.

Instead of pitching a guest post idea to the National Organization of Women, offer it to the blogger you met last month in a Facebook group. Rather than applying to speak at Social Media Marketing World, look for local opportunities. For every Mel Robbins, there are many thousands of smaller, less competitive channels you can approach.

“But Cindy, that will take for.ev.er!”

Yeah? How long do you think it’s going to take to write that New York Times bestseller so you can get on Mel Robbins’ podcast?

I’ve noticed something recently. Maybe it’s just a human tendency, but what I hear most often is that people are looking for the big splash opportunities. They don’t want to add 10 people to their mailing list, they want to add 1,000, and all at once, please and thank you.

Meanwhile, they’re ignoring the potential for incremental (and even exponential) growth.

Laddering your way to the top

My kitchen has 12-foot ceilings, and I have to stand on the counter to clean above the cabinets. Maybe in another life, I could leap from the floor to the counter, but in this life, I need a ladder.

I need a ladder to reach bigger audiences, too. Thinking smaller isn’t about playing small or not believing in yourself, it’s about strategically building momentum, using one step to make getting to the next one easier.

Who are the people and channels and organizations who can (and will) help you get to the next step? That’s who you want to add to your “Dream 100” list.

Action steps for today

Here’s how to start your “Dream 100” list.

1. Open up a new Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet (I use Google Sheets).
2. Create columns for name, website link, type of business, and any notes you want to include.
3. Scour the internet. Find your amplifiers. List them here.
4. For each person or channel, consider how it makes sense to work with them. For a podcaster, it’s an interview, for a non-profit, it might be a training webinar or a speaking opportunity. Make a note.

Once you have your list (and it will never be “done;” you’ll keep adding to it as long as you’re in business), begin reaching out to everyone. Offer your guest post. Pitch an interview. Apply to speak.

Spend time on this project every week, and you will see your audience begin to grow—slowly at first, but with consistency comes momentum. 

The post How to amplify your message appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Solopreneuring is hard.

I know that’s not what the floppy-hat wearing, hammock-lounging, margarita-sipping boss babes on Instagram want you to believe, but you and I both know better.

We know about launches that flop, servers that crash, and designers who ghost you mid-project. We know that what we’re passionate about is 5% of what we do, and the other 95% is bookkeeping and trying to figure out why the contact form on your website still isn’t working.

We also know it’s better than any job we’ve ever had. That’s why we keep showing up, even when it’s hard.

I see that some of you are struggling though.

I looked into my crystal ball (a.k.a. my gmail account and the Six-Figure Systems community) and I see that solopreneuring is, in some cases, starting to wear thinner than Uncle Bob’s combover. I also see that there are four primary causes for your frustrations.

Here’s how to fix them.

Overthinking

Overthinking is the mental equivalent of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Every day, you wake up in the same place, ruminating over the same choices, and making no progress toward your goals.

Here’s what overthinking can look like for solopreneurs:

• You’ve rebranded three times in the past year, and this one doesn’t feel quite right either. You’re thisclose to going back to your original idea.
• You’ve spent months learning, and every book and course and webinar seems to contradict the one that came before it. You’re constantly in search of the one that will finally make everything clear.
• You’ve changed course platforms multiple times, investing $$$ and time in learning the ins and outs of each one, yet they all fall short.
• You’ve recorded your course videos six times, and each time something isn’t quite right. The lighting is weird, the volume is too low or too high, your shirt clashes with your background, one of your slides has a typo… you get the idea.

The solution to overthinking: Take the next step.

The problem with high-achieving, overly-ambitious entrepreneurs like us is that we don’t allow ourselves to ever get it wrong. Mistakes are something we can forgive in others, but never in ourselves.

That kind of perfectionism leads to overthinking. The only way out is to accept that the next step might be (probably will be) the wrong one, and to take it anyway.

Tell yourself, “It’s good enough for right now,” and then keep moving.

Your branding is good enough. It’s time to stop messing with your messaging and start putting yourself in front of potential clients. Are they your perfect client? No. But you can’t know who your perfect client is until you work with a few less-than-perfect customers.

You’ve learned enough for now. It’s time to pick one path and start implementing. All of those contradictory bits of advice you’re hearing will begin to make more sense once you start moving and can see the bigger picture.

Your course platform (and that recording) is good enough. Finish creating your course, get it uploaded, and start selling it. Your community will care less about the quirkiness of the platform than they will about the results you provide, so start providing them.

Bottom line: All platforms, strategies, and brands work if you stick with them. What’s keeping you stuck here isn’t substandard resources or imperfect branding, it’s a lack of implementation.

Take the next step.

Meaningful feedback

Showing up and getting to work is great advice. But how do you know the work you’re doing is the right work, or good work, or payment-worthy work?

That’s where meaningful feedback becomes more valuable than a couple dozen eggs.

Feedback helps keeps you from leaping before you’re ready—or worse, putting off your launch when you are. Feedback helps you fill in the gaps to make your course or membership more useful. Feedback can even help you come up with attention-grabbing titles.

Yet so many of us work in a digital vacuum, with no one to offer advice but the cat.

The solution to not enough meaningful feedback: Cultivate a circle of business besties.

Even better, cultivate a circle of business besties who will actively poke holes in the ideas you love the most. Any friend who can look you in the eye and say that your idea for hop-through toad wash franchise is “Brilliant!” is not qualified for this important job.

Look for those who will tell you the truth, and invite you to stretch your imagination and comfort zone a little bit.

No business besties to call on? Consider joining a mastermind group, a paid forum, or hiring a coach.

Right now, you may be thinking, “But Cindy, I can’t possibly share my toad wash plan with anyone! What if they steal it?”

First thing you need to know is that ideas are about as useless (and abundant) as grains of sand. It’s not the idea that matters, it’s the implementation of it that counts. Anyone who would steal an idea (if that’s even possible; see my next point) is unlikely to do anything grand with it. Even if they do, your implementation will be different and better.

Ideas are also everywhere, and with very few exceptions (the iPhone comes to mind) they have mostly all been done before. That’s a good thing, BTW. It proves viability. It’s when no one has done a thing that you need to be concerned. There’s a reason hop-through toad wash franchises are not a thing.

Stop worrying about someone stealing your ideas, and get to work implementing them. If you need feedback (and you do), cultivate your circle of business besties to support one another.

Time management

Call it a lack of motivation, or discipline, or procrastination, or whatever. The fact is, time slips away from you. One YouTube short turns into 30, and before you know it, an hour is gone and you still haven’t written that email. (It’s not just me, right? Right?)

It’s not only YouTube though. It’s the laundry, the grandkids, lunch with your sister, a doctor appointment, or just a lazy kind of day.

The problem with time management and entrepreneurship is simple: There’s no accountability.

Sure, you want to create a course or write a blog post or launch a podcast, but there’s no real deadline. No one is waiting on you to get it done. It won’t hurt to wait until tomorrow to start. Or next week, or next month, or, heck, why not wait until fall? I mean it’s practically summer and the kids are going to want to go to the beach, so why start now?

Sound familiar? I’ve worked with clients who have been letting themselves get away with this kind of loosey-goosey time management for years, and you know what? They eventually give up on business completely.

Now listen. There’s nothing wrong with deciding entrepreneurship just isn’t for you, and hanging up your “boss babe” floppy sunhat once and for all. Kudos to you for recognizing you’re just not that into running a business.

But if you are that into it, there’s only one thing to do.

The solution to time-management struggles: Treat your business like a job.

I know, I know. Your business dream exists because you don’t want a job, but hear me out.

As I write this, it’s 5:49 PM on Saturday evening. Do I want to be writing this post on a Saturday evening, or would I rather be sitting out on the patio enjoying another beautiful Arizona sunset and sipping a glass of wine?

I’ll give you a hint: +

But it’s my job to publish content about online business building. That’s how I get paid. Instead of waiting to feel inspired or letting every little thing distract me from doing what I’m paid to do, I am treating my business like the job it is, and I’m sitting my butt in the chair until this draft is done.

As someone famous once said, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

Some of the ways you can treat your business like a job include:

• Have set working hours. Yes, I totally failed at this one today, and that’s ok. I am a work in process, too.
• Create a regular publishing schedule. This post is due on Monday, which is why I’m working on Saturday evening.
• Have a dedicated office space. Working from the patio sounds great to me, but the reality is I get nothing done. If I’m out on the patio with my laptop, know I’m scrolling Facebook, not actually working.
• Set implementation intentions for yourself. A simple way to do this is to time-block your calendar.
• Create and stick to your deadlines. If you have trouble with that, work with an accountability partner or coach.

But maybe it’s not that you don’t manage your time well. Maybe it’s simply that you don’t know what to actually do with your time.

Lack of Direction

Back in 2009 or so, I had the idea that I was going to start an online business. I had zero money (recession, remember?) so I watched every free webinar I found. I read blogs and signed up for email lists and soaked up all the knowledge I could find.

Every day, I’d sit down at my computer and “work on my business.”

And every day, I’d do exactly nothing. Not because I wasn’t motivated. Not because I didn’t have the time. Not because I didn’t want it badly enough.

I simply didn’t know what direction to go. For all the information I’d consumed, I still didn’t have a clear path.

The solution to a lack of direction: Start with your why.

I’m not talking about a Simon Sinek, change-the-world level of why, but rather your personal reason for starting a business. Typically, it comes down to one of four things:

1. Money, as in, you need some. I certainly did.
2. Autonomy and time freedom because you’re sick to death of your nosy boss peering over the top of your cubicle wall.
3. Service to others who need your expertise.
4. A creative outlet—or in other words, a self-supporting hobby.

Each of those reasons dictates the direction you should go, and can even eliminate the overthinking that comes from having too many options.

If your why is that the car needs a new set of tires and the bank wants their mortgage payment and you can’t cover both, the direction you take will be very different than if you simply enjoy creating pretty designs in Canva and have discovered it’s possible to get paid for them.

I used to think I needed a “hero’s journey” style why. I was embarrassed to admit I started a business for the money, but that’s exactly where I was in the beginning. I needed to pay the mortgage, and I was concerned about the security of my day job.

Once I figured that out, direction was easy. I needed money, and the fastest way to get it is to work for other people, so that’s what I did. The direction I needed to go? Outreach to potential clients and networking with others who could refer me.

If you’re struggling with direction, consider your why. Be honest with yourself about what’s driving you, then forge your path based on that reality.

Frustration is part of the process

I wish I could tell you that running a solo business is all beaches and blue skies, but honestly, you’re going to run into plenty of frustrations on whatever path you choose. Contrary to popular belief, the struggles don’t make the journey less appealing. They make it better.

Hit me up in the comments and tell me what you’re struggling with right now. Not only would I love to hear from you, but I’d also like to understand what’s most frustrating for you, so I can create better resources to help.

If you’d prefer not to share publicly, feel free to email me at cindy@cindybidar.com.

The post Top solopreneur challenges and how to fix them appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

This is more like sewing a scrap quilt. There are no rules. No directions. No restrictions on what colors to use, or which patterns to follow. There’s just you, and a pile of fabric options. You can use all of them or some, it doesn’t matter. It’s your quilt, after all.

The plan is simple. Just sew the pieces together in a way that seems to make sense and that appeals to you. Sometimes it works, and sometimes you have to rip it out and start over. In the end—if you are persistent—you’ll have a beautiful quilt that keeps you warm and that you’re proud to have made.

Business is like that, too. Instead of following someone else’s instructions, you can simply make up your own. And you know what? The end result is a whole lot more satisfying than painting by numbers.

Let’s get into it.

Step 1: Do something

Now, the exact “something” here is going to depend on where you’re going and why. If you’re starting an Instagram account because you want to drive traffic to your blog, that’s a different thing than if you’re trying to get your book on the bestseller list.

In the first scenario, you’d probably want to work out a posting schedule, some calls to action, maybe get some photos lined up, or even record some reels. In the second, you might start reaching out to podcasts for interview spots, or research how Amazon ads work.

The point is to figure out which thing might move you in the direction you want to go, then do that thing.

Right now, it’s ok if you’re just guessing what might work. Maybe you saw someone you admire do a similar thing and you want to give it a try. Or maybe you think, “Oh! That sounds interesting and fun. I’ll do that!” Either way, make a plan, and get to work on it.

DON’T MISS: The business education money can’t buy

A word of caution though: you should be prepared to do that thing for longer than you think, initially.

We’ve been sold a lie that everything should be fast and easy. I’d love it if it were true, but it’s not. Creating anything of value takes time. Overnight success only happens after months of work that went largely unnoticed.

Pick your something and get to work at it. Do it consistently and frequently over time, then move on to step two.

Step 2: Evaluate the results

Did the thing you tried work? I don’t mean did it make you rich or thin or get you on the Today show, but did it move you in the right direction, even slightly?

• Is your number of Instagram followers trending upward?
• Is your mailing list growing?
• Did you sell more books this month than last month?
• Did you book one or two or five podcast interviews?

Any of those things indicate positive results. They’re evidence that your plan is working. Congratulations!

If, on the other hand, you still have five email subscribers and no engagement on Instagram, then your hypothesis didn’t pan out. Your plan didn’t work, and that’s ok, as long as you followed the plan.

If it didn’t work out because you gave up on day 12, that’s a different kind of evidence, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute. First, let’s cover the final step towards inevitable success.

Step 3: Choose your next move

It’s decision time. Based on your results, is this action something you should stop doing or continue to pursue—perhaps even increase?

Back in 2012, as a brand new business owner in search of clients, I did two things as a part of step 1:

• I started a blog
• I posted ads on Craig’s List

Early on, two clients found me through the blog. Zero clients came to me through Craig’s list.

What did I do? I stopped posting on Craig’s List, and continued with the blog. In other words, I followed the evidence and continued to do what was working, while letting go of what didn’t work.

LISTEN TO THIS NEXT: How to decide

I didn’t decide that this business just wasn’t for me because Craig’s List didn’t work. I just crossed it off my list of possible marketing channels.

I also didn’t close up shop because I “only” had two clients. Instead, I took that as evidence that more clients would follow, and—spoiler alert—they did!

I didn’t just stop there, either. I took that time I’d spent on Craig’s List and redirected it into other things. I went back to step 1 and chose something different to try next.

I did that over and over again. The result of that simple three-step process is success every single time. It can’t not work, if you follow the process.

But there is one more important piece to consider. One that can cause your entire plan to crumble before you ever see evidence of success.

Make intentional decisions

Back in step one, I asked you to do something. I hinted that the exact nature of that “something” was less important than just doing it, and that’s true… to a point.

But imagine for a moment that your goal is to have a thriving coaching business. Maybe you’ve taken a course on marketing, or you follow some successful coaches in your niche, and they all say the same thing: Facebook lives are the key to finding clients.

All the top coaches are going live every week and making great connections and yes, even landing clients.

The only problem is, you hate being on camera, and the thought of doing so live is terrifying. What’s more, you really dislike social media.

What do you think the odds are that you’ll show up consistently to do something you dislike? They’re bad enough that not even the most optimistic gambler would bet on you. 

A better choice is to follow this piece of advice: Make decisions for who you are, not who you aspire to be.

If who you are is an off-camera, social-media averse coach, don’t try to force yourself into a business mold that doesn’t fit. That’s a path to failure, not success, and it doesn’t matter how many people have proven it to work. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s all that matters.

Success comes when what you do is in alignment with who you already are. Do that, and follow the steps above, and you will 100% guarantee your success.

Don’t believe me? Make a list of all the things you’ve successfully done. Things like:

• Convince your spouse to marry you
• Save for a downpayment on a house
• Raise kids who are kind and loving and who make the world a better place
• Plant a garden
• Graduate from university
• Get a new job

Every one of those successes followed these three steps. You did something, you evaluated the results, and you chose your next move based on those results. Consciously or not, you followed the steps, and you were successful.

Imagine what can happen when you use this approach intentionally to grow your business.

The post How to succeed at anything in just three steps appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

There’s a whole lot to love about a course-based business. You have loads of time freedom, since most courses are self-study. You can serve as many students as you want, so your income isn’t limited. The startup cost is low, and there’s no inventory to buy or track. And, you never even have to show up on camera, which is perfect for introverts like me.

Why would you trade that in for a business model that typically requires 1:1 time with clients, the possibility of video calls, and a much less flexible schedule?

Math, that’s why.

Let’s look at one of my courses as an example. Tiny Course Empire was my best selling course. It launched with a $37 (discounted) price tag, and within a few days had sold more than 500 copies. By the time I retired it, that course had almost 1,600 students, and earned nearly $70,000.

That’s not bad for something it took me just a few weeks to write and record.

Here’s the thing. Selling 1,600 copies of anything can feel like a monumental task, especially when you consider that the average sales page has a 4.3% conversion rate. That means to sell 1,600 copies of Tiny Course Empire, 37,000 people had to see the sales page.

That’s a lot of eyes on the page.

How many visits would it take to sell 70 coaching spots at $1,000 each? Just over 1,600. What about seven at $10,000? Only 162.

It’s not just math though. There are also many people in the world who simply prefer hands-on help, and who struggle to implement what they learn from a course. Even if 1:1 support isn’t needed, the accountability the comes from dropping four or five figures to hire a coach is a powerful motivator. (Ask me how I know.)

Ok. The math checks out, and your people need you, so how, exactly do you go about turning your courses into a coaching program?

Let’s get into it.

A coaching reality check (a.k.a. some people don’t need a coach)

Ask yourself, is coaching a thing in your niche?

I know it seems like everyone and their goldfish offers coaching these days, but not every niche is “coach worthy.” Common coaching niches include:

• Business
• Career
• Health/wellness
• Life
• Mindset
• Financial (with some caveats—see below)
• Relationships
• Writing/publishing

Some niches would be a hard sell, however:

• Crafting (think knitting, crochet, or pottery)
• Hobbies (no one needs a jigsaw puzzle coach)
• Anything time sensitive or urgent (tornado coaching is not popular)
• Most things that are a one-off (I’ve never seen a Best Man Speech Writing coach, but I have seen plenty of divorce coaches)

Assuming you teach in a niche that’s a fit for coaching, let’s move on to the next question…

Do you really want to be a coach?

Even with all the upsides of coaching, there are more than a few downsides—especially when compared to a course-based business.

First, there is the selling. With courses, you can point people to a sales page, and they’ll either choose to buy or they won’t. As a coach, selling typically involves a sales call. You will need to make the offer, state your price, and wait for a response. And some of those responses—maybe even most of them—will be no’s.

That’s an uncomfortable proposition for a lot of people. If getting on a call with someone and pitching your coaching program sounds icky and makes your palms sweat, coaching might not be the right move for you.

Another big thumbs down for some is the time commitment. On a continuum of passive versus active income, courses land closer to the passive end, while coaching lands much closer to the “trading time for money” side.

If you’re in a season of life where you value time freedom over other things, then coaching might not be a good choice.

What qualifications do you need?

Let’s cut to the chase. If you teach a thing successfully, you are qualified to coach on that thing. You do not need a certification of any kind from anyone to offer coaching.

The exception, of course, is if you are in a licensed or otherwise restricted field such as medical, legal, or investing.

That said, coaching is more than just telling someone what to do (that’s more rightfully called consulting). Coaching is more about asking the right questions, guiding your client to finding their own answers, then supporting them in the implementation.

I recommend picking up a copy of The Coaching Habit, by Michael Bungay Stanier. It’s written for managers and leaders in a corporate setting, but you’ll learn how asking thoughtful questions will serve your clients far better than handing them a checklist of tasks.

How coaching enhances your course offers

If coaching isn’t just “telling someone what to do,” and if you’ve already done that anyway (it’s right there in your course), then what does coaching bring to the table for course creators?

Coaching offers a way to support your clients as they put what you teach to work in their lives.

Think of it as the difference between reading a chemistry textbook and attending university courses with lab time. One will give you all the information, and dedicated students may even walk away with a solid understanding of the subject. But the opportunity to interact with the instructor, ask questions in real time, and get hands-on help is something no textbook (or self-study course) can offer.

The bottom line

Coaching can be a fantastic add-on to a course-based business. If you love interacting with people one-on-one, if you enjoy facilitating real change for your clients, and if selling doesn’t make you squirm, then it’s an avenue you should consider.

One last thing to keep in mind. You don’t have to be a PhD level expert to offer coaching. In fact, that level of expertise can be harmful to a coaching program, since it makes you less relatable.

Ryan Levesque said it best in his book, Choose:

An expert can be nothing more than a learner teaching other learners. To a 4th-grader, the 5th-grader is a genius. You just need to stay one step ahead, not necessarily light-years ahead.

Regardless of which path you choose, either coaching or course creation, both, or something else entirely, success is available to you. It’s inevitable.

Next week, I’ll tell you how I know—and how you can know it, too.

The post From course creator to coach appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

You get paid to help people achieve their goals and solve big problems, all from the comfort of your own home office. What’s more, coaching can take any format that works for you and your clients. You set your own hours, work with only the people you love and care about, and—bonus!—it’s pretty lucrative, too.

But—you knew there was a but—coaching is not without its drawbacks.

A full calendar is one. For those of us who cherish long, uneventful days and the time freedom they bring, back-to-back coaching calls can be anxiety inducing.

That full calendar creates another issue: You will quickly run out of time, and no additional appointment slots means no additional clients and no increase in revenue.

Behold, the income ceiling.

What’s an ambitious coach to do?

Scale with courses, naturally.

In fact, coaching and courses are two sides of the same coin. With one, you serve a single client in a very personalized way. With the other, you reach a wider audience and can better leverage your time.

Courses mean a bigger reach and more impact

How many 1:1 clients can you serve in any given month? For me, that limit is about four. I’ve had as many as 10, and honestly, that was pretty overwhelming (see that calendar shot above if you need a reminder).

The thing is, it’s not just call time. It’s email updates and project reviews and accountability and lots of other commitments I make to my clients. Over the course of a week, those four hours start to look more like 12.

Now, you can arrange your coaching offers in any way you like. You don’t have to do calls (my friend and fellow business coach Angela Wills doesn’t), you don’t have to connect via email, you don’t even have to make a long-term commitment. You can offer one-off sessions or VIP days instead.

RELATED: Coaching Without Calls

Regardless of how you structure your coaching program though, you will have a cap on the number of clients you can successfully serve. That’s just math. With courses, there’s no cap.

Yes, you’ll spend some (not inconsiderable) time creating a course:

• Writing the lessons
• Recording and editing video
• Creating worksheets and other add-ons
• Producing transcripts

But those are one-and-done projects. Once your course is complete, you can sell it an infinite number of times without any more work on your part.

In other words, there’s no limit on your income or the number of clients you can serve.

A signature course multiplies your income without increasing your hours

Courses come in lots of different sizes and shapes. I’ve created tiny, bite-sized courses and larger, weeks-long cohorts. They also sell for a wide range of prices—everything from a single dollar (more on that in a minute) to $8,000 or $12,000 or more.

Let’s do a little math, shall we?

Imagine you have a coaching offer of $1,000 per month per client, and imagine that offer includes weekly calls. You have a limited number of clients you can serve. Let’s say your comfort-zone number is ten. That’s 10 x $1,000 = $10,000 per month.

Pretty sweet, right?

Now imagine you create a signature course based on your coaching program, and you sell it for $2,000. You’ll only need to sell five per month to reach the same $10,000. Here’s the kicker though: There is no extra time required to serve those clients.

You won’t have five calls on your calendar every week. You won’t have emails to respond to or projects to review. You could, in fact, sell 20 of your courses per month, or 30, or 100, all without impacting the number of hours you work.

As a coach, you can’t possibly impact that many lives in a single month. As a course creator, you can.

A tiny course makes a great low-cost lead magnet

I’ve long been a fan of tiny courses. These small, focused offers help solve a single problem quickly, which makes them an ideal introduction to you and your style of coaching.

Peter Boyle taught me that tiny courses also make fantastic list builders. His strategy is to offer a high-value, low-cost product instead of a more traditional lead magnet.

RELATED: $1 Product Challenge

Here’s why that’s a smart strategy: According to Rejoiner.com, existing customers are as much as 14 times more likely to buy again, versus a new prospect. That dramatically increases the value of your mailing list, and makes selling any other offer—whether it’s a 1:1 coaching program or a signature course or something entirely different—much easier.

You probably aren’t going to retire on $1 offers, but with a strong back-end, that tiny course can keep your courses filled and your calendar blissfully empty (if that’s what you want, of course).

Several tiny courses turn into a Tiny Course Empire

I started creating tiny courses in 2018. For several years, I created two courses each month. Pretty soon, I had a catalog of small courses, and I discovered something that changed my business:

That collection of courses had turned into an empire, with multiple streams of income and list-building leverage.

• A monthly membership (recurring revenue FTW!)
• Course bundles (three related, tiny courses = one signature course)
• Giveaways to build my mailing list
• Bonus offers to encourage sales
• Worksheets and videos as content upgrades

Is your coaching program a good fit for “courseifying”?

When I was a virtual assistant, I told myself that my services were so specialized, so personal, that I couldn’t possibly turn them into courses. I let that thinking hold me back for too long, and I have heard coaches make similar statements.

Here’s what it really takes to turn your coaching program into a course:

A repeatable process that achieves a predictable result.

That’s it. You’ll know you have a repeatable process if you:

• Have checklists or worksheets you use in your coaching
• Say the same things or offer the same advice to most clients
• Ask the same questions of most clients
• Offer the same or similar results to most clients

It’s true that some coaching is truly client led, and courseifying those types of coaching programs is more difficult (although still not impossible). But most coaches have developed those repeatable processes over time, even if you don’t recognize it as such.

This works in reverse, too

What if you’re not a coach? Maybe you’re a course creator wondering if coaching is something you should add to your business. I’ll talk about the pros and cons of pivoting in that direction in next week’s post.

Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it!

The post Scale your coaching business with courses appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

And she makes it look easy and sexy and fun while she’s at it.

This is the live launch strategy she (and others) teach, and while it’s true some people make a whole lot of money in a very short timeframe with this kind of product launch, there are hundreds or maybe thousands of others who simply can’t pull it off.

I’m one of them.

For one thing, I don’t sell $2,000 courses. To put that much time and money into a launch, there better be a huge payoff at the end. The sub $100 products I sell simply won’t support those launch party budgets.

But there are other reasons I’m not a big fan of live launching in this way, and much prefer an evergreen model instead.

Evergreen = Less Stress

As I said, Amy Porterfield has been seen everywhere recently. That kind of activity is great for sales, but not so good for your stress and anxiety levels. If you’re running back-to-back live webinars, and you depend on those to drive sales, can you imagine how it feels when Zoom flakes out and no one can hear you?

Or what if your shopping cart decides to take a sabbatical just as you’re pushing out those “cart is closing” warnings? Or your website goes 404 thanks to too much traffic (which actually did happen to me once during a big sale).

Because evergreen launches happen on a much smaller scale every single day rather than a huge surge of traffic all at one time, you’re less likely to run into these kinds of stress-inducing scenarios. Not only that, but they’re a lot easier to recover from.

Smoother Cash Flow

I’ll admit I’ve been a bit envious of the people who end a live launch with $50,000 or $100,000 or more in the bank after a short 10-day sales cycle. That’s what makes live launches so appealing.

The thing is though, for every launch that pulls in $30k or more, there are hundreds of others that barely exceed four figures. That means you either have to launch again quickly, or you can’t pay the bills. If you’re on a once-per-quarter cycle and your launch brings in $5,000, you’re going to be stretched pretty thin before your next opportunity.

Evergreen launch funnels are different. You’re probably not going to earn $30,000 in a weekend, but because you’re making sales every day, you don’t have to deal with the crazy income valley that inevitably follows the peak.

Room to Optimize

Ask anyone who’s ever had a launch flop (as I have) and they’ll tell you that the worst part of it was that by the time they knew it was bad, it was too late to do anything about it.

Yes, there’s value in the post-mortem. You can use that information to launch better next time, but it doesn’t help you pay the mortgage today.

In an evergreen launch though, you have room to pivot. If the third email in your funnel isn’t getting opened, you can change the subject line for all future subscribers, or even remove it completely. If your sales page isn’t converting, you have time to revise it. Even if the product itself is a dud, you can revise, repurpose, or even move it to another part of the funnel.

Two Words: Fully Automated

This is the biggest benefit in my mind. You don’t have to be online at all for an evergreen launch funnel to be working—and making sales—for you. Once it’s set up, it just runs on its own, with very little real-time input on your part. Maybe you’ll send out some social promos about your lead magnet, and maybe you’ll write a new blog post now and then to add to your funnel assets, but overall, evergreen launches are completely hands free.

Compare that to a live product launch where, even if you schedule everything ahead of time, you still have to show up for webinars and live streams, and you still have a large influx of new customers to support, and I’ll take the automated version every time.

Made for Tiny Teams and Lifestyle Freedom

My business—and maybe yours—is tiny. It’s just the husband and me. We don’t have project managers and social media VAs and operations managers and copywriters and graphics people and Facebook ads strategists and any number of other team members required to manage a big live launch.

Without a team, those “all hands on deck” launch cycles are tough to pull off. They’re exhausting when you DO have a team to rely on, but without a staff, you’ll find yourself working more hours than you intended.

Evergreen launch funnels have no deadline. You can piece them together as you have time, and simply pull the launch trigger when you’re ready. And because there’s a slower flow of traffic rather than 20,000 people all hitting your sales page at one time, there are a lot fewer tech and support issues as well.

Capturing Live Launch Excitement in an Evergreen Funnel

With all that said though, it does take a bit of creativity and a few clever tools to give an evergreen launch the same sense of excitement and urgency you get in a live launch.

In my course, The Six-Figure Evergreen Launch System, I lay out the exact steps I follow to configure evergreen launches for my courses. They’re a fantastic follow-up to my low-key live launches, and they continue to make sales on older products every single day.

If you:

• Have a back catalog of great products that don’t get enough exposure
• Plan to add more products to your offerings
• Have a growing community of subscribers, many of whom have never even seen some of your best products

Then you can definitely benefit from adding evergreen launch funnels to your sales strategy.

Click here to learn more about The Six-Figure Evergreen Launch System and to enroll.

The post 5 Reasons Evergreen Launches Outshine Live Launches appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

You’ve probably seen this play out in real life in a variety of situations.

Twenty percent of your clients account for 80% of your revenue.

Twenty percent of church members make 80% of donations.

Twenty percent of the words you know make up 80% of the conversations you have.

The Pareto principle holds true in affiliate marketing, too. Twenty percent of affiliate marketers drive 80% of the sales to any given product. 

Flip that around, and you can see that 80% of affiliates are divvying up the remaining 20% of commissions. In other words, they’re not exactly killing it in their affiliate marketing efforts.

What separates the two groups? It might just be one of these four big mistakes.

Choosing the Wrong Program to Promote

One of the first experiences I had with affiliate marketing was a guy on the Warrior Forum (remember that?) who was promoting some expensive make-money-online training. He hadn’t actually taken the training because he said he couldn’t afford it. He also wasn’t making any money through his online business.

He didn’t seem to see the irony of that. All he could see was that the product paid $1,000 in commissions for every sale.

Even as a brand newbie, I knew he’d chosen wrong.

The best affiliates know the most successful promotions involve:

• Products they’ve used or at least reviewed and can honestly endorse
• Products their audience needs and can make use of
• Products their audience can afford

When all three of those criteria are met, you’ll have much more success than if you promote products based solely on how much commission you might earn.

Selling Instead of Serving

This isn’t just semantics. It’s a mindset shift. So many people I talk to mention that they’re worried they’ll come off as pushy or too salesy if they make an offer.

Here’s how I see it. My job is all about creating better systems so micro-business owners can earn more and work less. I spend most days poking around inside landing page builders and email platforms and other tools. I buy and study the training that others create so I can learn what’s working in copywriting, content and email marketing, and other strategies.

Then I test and tweak and test some more, and finally, I distill all of that information into recommendations for my audience (you!). If I send an email (or three) or write a blog post or share on social media about a tool I’m using or a course I recommend, it’s not because I’m hoping to earn a commission, it’s because I know it will help you grow your business.

The best affiliate marketers aren’t trying to sell you something. They’re helping you to make better buying decisions about the tools and resources you need.

Inconsistent Action

I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, even to myself, but consistent action is really at the core of all success, whether business or personal, and that goes for affiliate marketing as well.

It’s not enough to promote an offer one time. Sure, you might make a few sales, but you’ll never make it to top affiliate status with a haphazard approach.

Not Casting a Wide Enough Net

If all you ever do is blog, or send email, or post on social media you’re going to have a hard time breaking into that 20% group.

Top affiliate marketers make use of all the channels, because they know that if a product is worth promoting, it’s worth doing a bang-up job of it. A typical affiliate promotion might include:

• A blog post (like this one) or even two or three.
• A few emails sent out over a few days or a week.
• Some Pinterest pins to promote the blog post.
• Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter posts.

But that’s just the start. High-earning affiliates also know there are lots of other ways to generate interest, drive clicks, and earn commissions, and they use them all in conjunction with one another to maximize their results.

In Karon Thackston’s newest course — Affiliate Advantage: Success Secrets For Making More Commissions — she outlines specifically how she constructs affiliate promotional campaigns for maximum commissions.

In just 5 video sessions, you’ll be able to follow in Karon’s footsteps and craft your own campaigns that:

• Find buyers on multiple platforms so you have greater audience reach.
• Respectfully remind your followers about various features / benefits of the product you’re promoting so they fully understand and want to buy.
• Create a sense of urgency (without being spammy) to boost (and even double!) your sales with a last-minute rush.

In order to introduce you to Affiliate Advantage: Success Secrets For Making More Commissions, Karon has given me a generous coupon code. Take 20% off right now when you use promo code AFFILIATE.

The post Why 80% of Affiliate Marketers Struggle appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

A couple of times each week, someone emails me to ask, “What are you using for your course delivery?” or “What theme do you use on your website?” or “Which email provider are you using?”

There are a ton of pieces that all have to fit together to make an online business run. In the past, I’ve written about how to choose your tech stack, based on your goals, your budget, and your technical comfort level.

Today I’m going to dig into my personal choices, why I use each one, and what role it plays in my business.

WordPress For Website Management

What it does: 

WordPress is what handles the display of content. Every word you read, every video you watch, every comment you leave on this site or any other that I own is displayed through WordPress.

Why I chose it:

To me, it’s not a choice. I know there are many other website builders out there (Wix, SquareSpace, GoDaddy, and others) but they all fall short when it comes to scalability, flexibility, and portability.

Where to get it:

Download WordPress for free here, or contact your hosting provider to ask how to install it on your server.

Thrive Plugins for Sales Pages and Opt-In Forms

What it does:

Thrive Themes offers an entire suite of WordPress plugins including a quiz builder, an LMS, a countdown timer, and a split-testing tool for optimization. The two I use the most are Thrive Architect and Thrive Leads.

Thrive Architect is the page builder I use for all my sales pages. It’s a drag-and-drop editor that features dozens of templates you can start with—that makes it easy to create nice looking pages even if you’re not a designer. It installs alongside your existing theme, so there’s no need to change what you’re already using for your blog.

Thrive Leads creates opt-in forms, pop-ups, and the welcome bar you might see at the top of my website. It connects to my mailing list provider.

Why I chose it:

I find Thrive’s plugins easy to use, their support is responsive and helpful, the forum is active, and they are continually improving their products.

Where to get it:

Get the entire Thrive suite of plugins for less than what other page builders charge.

aMember for Product Sales, Affiliate Management, and Content Protection

What it does:

aMember’s primary job is to act as my shopping cart, meaning it’s the middle-man that links buyers with either PayPal or Stripe for payment processing.

Why I chose it:

I’ve been using aMember with clients since my early days online, so when I decided to launch my own product sales it was a natural fit. I didn’t have to learn something new, which was a big benefit.

There are other reasons as well, such as:

• Low annual cost. aMember is self-hosted, which means you buy the software rather than paying each month as you do for other carts. There is an $80 annual fee for continued support, but that’s minor when compared to the monthly fee for something like SamCart.
• Affiliate trust. aMember has been around a long time, and it’s trusted by affiliate marketers. Since my affiliate program is an important part of my business strategy, that’s critical.
• Built-in content protection. With other carts, I’d need another piece of software (such as Wishlist Member) to manage product access. aMember handles it all seamlessly.

Where to get it:

Order aMember through their website here, and be sure to take advantage of their free installation service.

Memberoni for Course Delivery 

What it does: 

Online courses and membership sites often use a learning management system (LMS) to help organize course materials and make it easier for users to navigate. There are hosted versions (think Teachable or Kajabi) and self-hosted options (WP Courseware or Thrive Apprentice).

Memberoni is a theme (not a plugin) that incorporates some of the features of an LMS into any WordPress website. For example, Memberoni:

• Creates the course menus that you see in the right sidebar of all my courses.
• Keeps track of which courses members have studied.
• Adds the download buttons for all course content.
• Handles the layout of the dashboard pages.
• Integrates with aMember to control access to course content.

Why I chose it:

I tested several options before landing on Memberoni. First I “rolled my own” with Thrive Architect, which made a really nice looking page, but it just wasn’t scalable. There was too much manual work involved in creating layouts and building course menus.

I also tested WP Courseware, but I didn’t love the way it looked. I tried LearnDash, but I couldn’t get it to integrate with aMember. LifterLMS looked good, but I didn’t love the price.

I finally landed on Memberoni, which looks great, integrates easily with aMember, is endlessly customizable, and doesn’t cost a small fortune.

Where to get it:

The Memberoni theme is only available to members of The Membership Academy. Go here to see all the other benefits and to join.

Kit/ConvertKit for Email Marketing

What it does:

ConvertKit (now Kit) is my list management tool. It’s where 99% of my emails originate. I can also send email through aMember, but I reserve those emails for customer and affiliate updates. I never send promotional emails through aMember.

Why I chose it:

ConvertKit integrates easily with my other tools (aMember and Thrive Architect/Leads), plus it offers incredibly powerful automations and tagging. That means I can build complex funnels based on how my subscribers interact with my content, which products they’ve purchased, how engaged they are, and more.

Where to get it:

Send unlimited emails to as many as 10,000 subscribers on Kit’s generous FREE plan.

What runs your business?

Leave a comment below and tell me about your top tool choices, or hit me up with any questions you have!

The post How did you build that? appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Tools to Use

There’s nothing fancy going on in this funnel build. It’s a landing page, a thank you page, and an email follow up. I created it using my two favorite email marketing tools:

Thrive Architect. This is the best page builder available today. The interface is intuitive, it includes dozens of templates to give you a great starting point, and you can choose not to pay a recurring fee for it, which makes the price super appealing. Check out Thrive Architect and all the other plugins they create here. I recommend you pick up the whole suite rather than buying just one piece at a time, but if you are on a budget, start with Architect and Thrive Leads.

Active Campaign. I cannot tell you how much I love this platform for email marketing. It’s every bit as powerful as the more expensive tools like Infusionsoft and Ontraport, and it comes with none of the confusion. Get a 14-day trial here and see for yourself, or go here to register for the Active Campaign training I mentioned in the video.

What questions do you have about building funnels? Drop them in the comments below and I’ll help you get it sorted.

The post How to Build a Funnel with Thrive Architect and Active Campaign appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Sadly, further conversation often reveals that they’ve been in that “getting ready” state for months, and sometimes even years! What’s the hold-up? Quite frequently it’s one of these 5 myths about digital product creation.

Full disclosure: I am guilty of ALL of these. It took me almost 8 years online before I finally gave myself permission to create and sell digital products. Don’t be like me. Banish these myths today, and launch that amazing product already. The world is waiting for you!

Myth #1: Digital products have to include a full multi-media experience.

Slide decks, video lessons, worksheets, checklists, Facebook groups for live support, interactive software–the list of things you CAN add to your digital product is long. But do you really have to have all those bells and whistles?

A while back I asked the community over at MastermindHub.com whether or not they actually watched video training. In most cases, the answer was no. Just like me (and like you, I’m guessing) buyers are queuing up the video and listening with one ear while doing something else.

Unless you’re demonstrating something on the screen, or using examples in a slide deck that have to be seen to be understood, feel free to skip the slide show. Chances are, your customers won’t even miss it.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Don’t like slide decks? Don’t use them. Most digital product buyers don’t like them either, and would rather have an audio download for listening on the go. via @cindybidar” quote=”Don’t like slide decks? Don’t use them. Most digital product buyers don’t like them either, and would rather have an audio download for listening on the go.” theme=”style2″]

Myth #2: It’s easier to sell ten $100 products than it is to sell 100 $10 products.

Like all good myths, this one sounds logical. Ten buyers is fewer than 100 buyers, so it must be easier, right? Not always.

There’s a lot of room for error when your price is $10. Most people are happy to part with $10 without much thought at all. That means your sales page doesn’t have to win any copywriting awards, and you can stop being such a perfectionist and just get it done already.

Not only that but if you’re brand new, it can be a lot harder to make a $100 sale–or even to say it out loud (you know it’s true)! Take some of the pressure off and give yourself permission to price your products on the low end of the scale. You can always raise your prices later.

Do resist the urge to pump too much into a low-cost product though. If you try to sell a 16-module course that teaches would-be authors how to get on the bestsellers list for $27, you’re likely going to get very few sales. That’s because we often relate price to value, and a low-cost product that promises big results can be seen as having less value than similar offers.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”It’s not always easier to sell a high-ticket digital product. Lower prices can bring big rewards if you do it right. via @cindybidar” quote=”It’s not always easier to sell a high-ticket digital product. Lower prices can bring big rewards if you do it right.” theme=”style2″]

Myth #3: It has to be perfect before you launch.

Most people don’t consciously think to themselves, “I have to make this perfect.”

But there is often a tiny voice in our heads that encourages us to reformat that document or add another case study or include one more lesson. If you let that kind of thinking take up residence, you will never release anything.

Here’s the truth. No one is more critical of you and your products than you are. It’s unlikely your buyers will flood your inbox with demands for more case studies.

If you find yourself always aiming for A+ work, take a tip from Brooke Castillo, as heard on Amy Porterfield’s podcast.

“B-minus work can change people’s lives. Work that you don’t produce at all, does nothing in the world.” Brooke Castillo

Myth #4: “I’m not quite ready yet.”

I hear from people all the time that they’re almost ready to launch their business or start a podcast or create a new product, just as soon as they decide what theme to use on their website.

WHAT?

We are not carving on stone tablets. In this digital world, change is as easy as uploading a new file. Don’t like your website theme? Upload a different one. Still think you should have included that case study? Go ahead and add it!

Bob Sparkins (formerly Jenkins) said it best: Take action, revise later.

Myth #5: You have to launch with lots of fanfare and an ad budget to match.

Webinars. Video funnels. Podcast interviews. 30-day challenges. Facebook groups. Retargeting campaigns. The list of things you can do to launch a product is longer than a CVS receipt.

But you don’t actually have to do any of them.

While it is true that the more you do in terms of marketing, the more traction you’ll gain, trying to do all the things is exhausting, especially if you’re just getting started and you don’t have a team of VAs to help.

Instead, pick a few key elements, and focus on those channels. For example, you can:

• Create an email campaign for your list. Not just a single email, but four or five emails over several days that highlight the features and benefits of your product from several different angles. Even if you have a very small list, this will often give you the biggest bang for your metaphorical buck.
• Share on social media. And remember, social posts are fleeting. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Tools like Meet Edgar and Smarter Queue can automate the process for you.
• Write some guest blog posts. Getting seen on websites with more (or just different) traffic from your’s is an easy way to get more eyes on your offer. Hit up your friends and colleagues and ask for a spot in their editorial calendar. Most bloggers are more than happy to turn over the reins for a week.
• Partner with others. Create an affiliate program and invite your colleagues and even your competitors to promote your products for a cut of the revenue. You get to borrow their audience and their influence, and you both make money.
• Build a funnel. Future email subscribers will want to know about your product too, so create a juicy freebie that relates to your product, build an opt-in and thank you page, and

Remember too that your new product doesn’t have to earn a million dollars in its first week to be successful. By creating a sustainable marketing plan with funnels and long-term assets that bring in new customers over time, you’ll continue to profit from your product long after your launch is over.

The post Busted! 5 Digital Product Creation Myths That Hold You Back appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Of course, you’ll never have a completely leak-free funnel. You’ll never convert every blog reader into a VIP client (wouldn’t THAT be nice!) But you can patch the holes, minimize the leaks, and greatly improve your overall conversion rates—and your cash flow.

Leak #1: Poor Message to Market Match

No matter how amazing your new teriyaki beef jerky is, if you launch it at a PETA convention, it’s going to be a tough sell.

Knowing your ideal client is the single most important indicator of your business’ overall success, so of course, it plays a huge part in hitting your funnel sweet spot as well.

Reams have been written about how to identify your ideal client avatar, but here’s what you need to know:

• Her pain points
• The words she uses to describe those pain points
• Why it’s so important to her to resolve them

When you get those three things nailed, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to create a message (or a training program or webinar or even a blog) that speaks directly to her.

Leak #2: Weak Calls to Action

If you’re emailing your list, and you want your reader to do something (like click a link or register for your new webinar) you can’t afford to be coy about it.

Don’t simply create an anchor-text link with your program’s title and hope she’s curious enough to click it. Maybe she’s on her phone and the link isn’t properly underlined. Maybe she’s scanning (aren’t we all?). Or maybe she’s just distracted (again, guilty!).

So make it obvious. Tell her exactly what to do (and why):

• “Create your free account for instant access”
• “Download the checklist to get started”
• “Watch the video training to see how easy it is”

Leak #3: No Next Step on Thank You Pages

So your new fan has opted into your mailing list and is happily watching your awesome free video. Well done! But…now what?

Don’t just leave her hanging there with nothing else to do or learn. Give her the next best step, right now, while she’s fully engaged with you and your content.

Ideally, the next best step is a product or service at a slightly higher price point than the one she just downloaded. The next step from a free opt-in might be a $17 product, while the next step from a $47 product may be a $97 product. Other options (there are dozens) might be:

• Book a free discovery call
• Join your Facebook or LinkedIn group
• Fill out a survey
• Share the offer on social media
• Watch a recorded webinar
• Check out your most popular blog posts
• Subscribe to your YouTube channel
• Claim a coupon code

Pretty much anything goes here… except just letting her leave empty-handed.

Leak #4: Exit Signs. Exit Signs Everywhere!

Speaking of leaving empty-handed, here’s something every website owner needs to remember: Facebook does not need your traffic.

If you’re devoting valuable website real estate to social media icons, you’re inviting your visitors to leave the page and never return. One marketing company refers to those eye-catching icons as “candy-colored exit signs.”

Don’t invite your website visitors to leave so soon! Instead, move those social buttons to the bottom of the page, and use calls to action (see Leak #3) to strategically drive visitors to your social accounts when it aligns with your goals.

They don’t have to be social media icons either. Anything that takes your readers’ attention away from the goal (the opt-in or the buy button) is an exit sign. That goes for your website menu, related content, or even links out to other sites in your testimonials.

Leak #5: Not Enough Nurturing

It’s rare for couples to get married on a first date—or even after 3 or 4 dates.

And if every email you send to your list is a blatant sales pitch, you’re doing the online marketing equivalent of proposing to a virtual stranger.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Give your prospects a chance to get to know you before you pitch that high-priced product.” quote=”Give your prospects a chance to get to know you before you pitch that high-priced product.” theme=”style2″]

• Send informative, useful emails
• Invite them to join your Facebook group
• Send additional resources such as downloadable PDFs or video training
• Introduce yourself with a “my story” email

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t sell in those first few “getting to know you” interactions. You do want them to learn to expect sales messages. Not only that, but it’s your job as the expert to help your community make good buying decisions. Just make sure you’re adding value to the conversation, not just flooding their inbox with “buy now” buttons.

Leak #6: Poorly Targeted Follow-Ups

If you’ve ever clicked on an ad for a cute pair of sandals, only to land on a catalog page filled with winter boots, then you’ve experienced a poorly targeted follow up in person.

Your potential clients are moving through your funnel because you made a promise to them to provide the information they’re looking for, so don’t renege on that with a digital bait and switch.

Leak #7: Requiring Too Much Information Too Soon

That initial entry into your funnel is a leap of faith for your ideal client. She doesn’t know you very well. Maybe she’s read a couple of blog posts, or perhaps seen an ad on Facebook or YouTube. At most, she may know a few people who say good things about you. So don’t force her to give up too much personal info on that first encounter.

Sure, you may, at some point, need her phone number and her mailing address and the name of her first crush, but not today.

Today, all you need is an email (and a name, if you like to write polite emails).

Want to know what else you can do to increase your sales and plug those pesky leaks? Uncovering Hidden Cash: Simple Strategies to Boost Your Cash Flow and Improve Your Bottom Line is the answer. Inside you’ll find more than 100 ideas you can put to work today on your blog, in your emails, and even on Facebook.

Uncover the hidden cash in your online business, starting right now. 

The post 7 Marketing & Sales Funnel Leaks You Can Fix Today appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

The answer is in the numbers.

I get asked all the time what numbers I track–probably because I’m always going on about knowing your numbers. Honestly, it depends on your goals.

For example, I don’t track social followers. Right now, I’m not actively trying to grow my Facebook page or Instagram reach, so don’t spend any energy keeping track.

I am putting a focus on sales though, so I do track my daily sales figures, email list growth, and affiliate income.

Focus on the Right Things

In an interview with Matt D’Avella, James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) claims that too much focus on the numbers can be detrimental. He likens it to sports.

In every sport, the goal is to get the best score, but the players don’t spend all their time looking at the scoreboard. Instead, they focus on playing their best. When they do that, the score takes care of itself.

That’s true in business as well.

When you focus on doing the right things and doing them consistently, the score (your personal success factor, whatever that is) takes care of itself.

I think something is missing in this oversimplification though.

The score is what tells you if you’re doing the right things at all, or if you’re way off base (just to keep that sports metaphor alive). If you’re not paying attention, how will you know if you’re winning or not?

If you never look at the score, how can you possibly know if your blog is driving traffic or if the only person reading it is your sister? How can you know if your sales page is converting well or if only a fraction of a percent of your visitors to buy? How can you know if your email list is growing or shrinking? If they open your emails or just hit the delete button?

All of those things are directly dependent on you doing the right things consistently over time, but it’s the numbers that indicate how effective your actions are.

On the football field, the players have coaches to tell them what plays to make, and how to improve their performance. It’s the coach’s job to know how each action can be improved. In business, even if you have a coach to guide you, it’s still up to you to understand how your actions affect things like your profit margin and your cash flow.

You Control the Input, Not the Outcome

There are two types of numbers every business owner must know: Lag indicators and lead indicators. I believe what James Clear is saying is that we often put too much focus on the lag indicators, and not enough on the lead indicators.

In a nutshell, lag indicators measure the results, lead indicators measure the actions that drove those results. Here’s an example.

Let’s say you want to grow your Instagram following from 1,000 to 10,000 by the end of the year. You log in every morning and take a peek at how many new followers you gained yesterday.

That’s your lag indicator. It tells you what happened. You can’t go back and change it. It’s just a snapshot.

The lead indicator, on the other hand, is whatever action you took yesterday to gain new followers. Maybe you followed a few new people, commented on a few posts, or shared your Instagram with your blog readers and invited a connection. Those are the actions that matter and James Clear is right on this bit.

If you spend all your time studying your lag indicators (the number of followers you have) and no time at all looking at or focusing on your lead indicators (the actions you take) then you won’t reach your goal.

But it’s also true that if you spend all your energy on the lead indicators without paying any attention to the lag indicators, you may not get the results you expect. You can double-tap every photo in your Instagram feed, but will it result in more followers? Probably not, so counting up all those hearts doesn’t make sense.

Lead and lag indicators are partners. Prioritizing one over the other will slow your progress. You want to use them in tandem for the best results.

Choosing The Right Lead And Lag Indicators

Deciding where to put your focus can be one of the toughest choices for small business owners to make. We want to do all the things, to try all the strategies, to enjoy all the growth.

But there are only so many hours in the day, as they say, so something has to give.

Start by deciding on your goals. This is your lag indicator. Do you want to earn $100,000 this year? Have 10,000 YouTube subscribers? Get 30,000 visits to your blog each month?

Whatever your goal is, make it concrete. Notice I didn’t ask if you want to increase your revenue or grow your subscriber list or blog more often. None of those things can be measured, and lag indicators must be quantified. Otherwise, how will you know if you’re succeeding?

Once you know your goal, then it’s time to look at what actions affect that goal. This is your lead indicator. These are the things you do to drive that lag indicator number in the right direction.

For example, my goal this year is to grow my email list by 500 people every month. I track that growth every day by making a note of what my current list size is. It takes about 3 seconds to log into Active Campaign and jot the number down, and that lag indicator tells me if I’m on track or not.

But that number isn’t what’s driving the results. That’s just a measure of what happened. 

To reach my list-growth goal, I need to also pay close attention to the lead indicators–or the actions that create the results I’m looking for.

Lead indicators for list growth might be:

• Booking podcast interviews
• Blogging frequently and consistently
• Participating in bundles or giveaways
• Updating links on my social profiles
• Hosting a webinar or a challenge
• Creating new opt-in incentives
• Updating old blog posts with new content upgrades
• Sharing my best opt-in offer on social media

If I’m not quantifying these lead indicators, setting goals for their completion, and taking the action required, then I won’t reach my list-growth goal. My lag indicator–the number of subscribers–will show it.

Now it’s your turn. Tell me in the comments below what numbers you track in your business and why.

The post Tracking Results: How to Know Which Numbers Matter, and Which Ones Don’t appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Two years ago this month I released my highest paying client ever.

While the money was fabulous (not to mention the luxury travel), I knew that at the end of every day, I was working to build her business and not my own. It wasn’t sustainable, and let’s face it. I had a job.

I’d kind of dabbled at product creation before, but when I let go of that regular paycheck, I had a choice to make. I could either find new clients to replace the one I fired, or I could go all in on creating training products and rebuild my business with a whole new focus.

I knew I didn’t want more clients. I wanted to create a different kind of freedom, so I pivoted my business and took everything I learned as a virtual assistant and turned it into training products for other online business owners.

Now, two years later, business is thriving. I love what I do. I only wish I’d done it sooner.

Here’s what I wish I’d known earlier about creating and selling digital products. If I had, I don’t think I would have waited so long to take the leap.

How Easy It Can Be to Get Started

I have incredibly high standards. I know that about myself. Maybe it comes from working with 7-figure coaches and getting an up-close-and-personal look at the content they produce. Maybe it’s my own inner perfectionist. Either way, I let those high standards get in my way for far too long.

What I didn’t know was how easy it is to create something that truly serves my community without investing a fortune in expensive sales platforms, training portals, and brand photo shoots.

Microsoft Word documents created from my own internal processes and procedures have formed the framework for the dozens of products I’ve released in the past two years, and I would encourage anyone to get started that exact same way.

Key takeaway: There is beauty and usefulness in simplicity, and my community appreciates that I keep it simple.

How Much I Already Knew

I heard a story one time about why the early VCRs (remember those?) had such poorly written user manuals. The problem isn’t that VCRs were difficult to use. The problem was that the people writing the manuals were so close to the product that they couldn’t see it from the end user’s point of view.

It simply never occurred to the writer that they needed to tell people to hit the stop button before hitting eject. Or that the cables had to be connected to the television in a specific way to make it work.

They wrongly assumed that what was common sense to them was equally common for everyone.

I’m often far too close to my work to see the knowledge there, too. I assume that because I know in my very bones how to connect an opt-in form to an email marketing platform, that everyone else does as well. It’s so simple for me to do, it takes literally seconds.

Surely it’s that easy for everyone, right?

The truth is, not everyone does understand exactly how lead forms work, and what’s more, they often appreciate a step-by-step plan to follow.

Key takeaway: Everyone—you, me, the choir director at church—holds a unique wealth of knowledge that others simply do not possess.

How Much Demand There Is for Simple Digital Products

When I released my very first digital product, my Operations and Management Checklists, I was not expecting the number of sales I got. I sent a couple of emails to my list of 629 people, and in the first couple of days had made 60 sales.

I was blown away.

I had anticipated that this simple little product would sell maybe a handful at best, because I mistakenly assumed that all digital products have to be multi-module courses with flashy sales pages and Facebook group support.

More of my perfectionism and ridiculously high standards at play, right?

It gets better though. Turns out a friend of mine happened to be on my mailing list, and she asked if she could promote my checklists, too. Two weeks later, and we’d made 226 sales for a total of $6,888.

And you know what? That product continues to make sales every week, even now.

Key takeaway: Sometimes the best solution to a pressing problem is the simplest one. Don’t overcomplicate things.  

The Critical Importance of Multiple Streams of Income

When I released my biggest client at the start of 2018, I also released a huge chunk of my monthly income. Like about 50% of it.

Ouch.

I was well prepared though. We had a financial cushion and a plan to move forward on a different business path. While at the time all of my income was directly tied to service work, I knew that—in theory—real freedom comes from not being dependent on any single income stream, and that was what I was setting out to create.

I was starting from scratch though, and it took me about six months to recoup that income.

In the last part of 2019, I released another client (my then largest) rather unexpectedly. They also made up a huge portion of our overall income—this time about 20%—and while it wasn’t a catastrophe, it was definitely uncomfortable.

Here’s what surprised me this time around though. If you looked at our month-to-month profit-and-loss sheets, you wouldn’t know I left that client. There’s not been so much as a ripple in our cash flow because of it.

That’s how quickly multiple streams of income work to fill in the gaps.

Key takeaway: Multiple streams of income smooth out the cash flow, which means no more feast-or-famine style bookkeeping.

How Much Value Those Small Products Really Have

There’s a philosophy I hear people repeat from time to time that claims it’s somehow better to sell ten $100 products than to sell 100 $10 products.

To me, it sounds like they’re dismissing the actual value of those tiny products.

What I’ve found is that not only are small (sub $50) digital products a good fit for the community I serve, but they’re a good fit for me, too. I don’t feel the need to create a $2,000 course. To me that sounds a lot like work, and selling something with that high of a price tag takes a great deal of planning and intention as well.

For now, I’m happy with the plan I have, and my audience responds positively as well.

Key takeaway: Small price tags do not equal less value.

How to Leverage Your Skills as a Freelancer or Service Provider to Create Digital Products

Now, I’m not saying that every freelancer and virtual assistant and service provider everywhere should drop all their clients and start creating digital products.

What I am saying is that creating digital products as a secondary income stream is a smart business move that everyone can make.

The post Creating Digital Products: 5 Surprising Things I Wish I’d Known Sooner appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Here’s the thing, though. Building a list is a great start but building a list of buyers should always be the goal. It makes no sense to continue to pay for an email marketing platform if your email list isn’t earning its keep. That’s just bad business.

Enter the Tripwire Offer

What if you could quickly convert those new subscribers to customers? How much more value would your list-building efforts provide?

That’s exactly how a tripwire funnel works.

Simply put, a tripwire is a low-cost offer made immediately after opt-in. It’s the first thing your new subscriber sees, and it gives her an opportunity to learn more from you with very little risk.

Tripwire offers are typically priced in single or low-double digits, so they’re an easy sell even to someone who is brand new to you and your brand.

The result? A funnel that lets you skip right past the whole “nurture before you sell” phase and get right to providing massive problem-solving ideas your subscribers can actually use.

Why Tripwire Funnels Work

If you’re paying attention to your email open rates, then you know that on a good day, you’re probably reaching 20% of your subscribers. You probably also know that those first few emails immediately after someone subscribes get far better results than that.

A tripwire does even better, because that thank you page is where ALL eyes land. Every single person who opts into your list sees it. And what’s more, they are primed to take action. The problem you solve with your freebie is top of mind, and your new subscriber is actively seeking a solution.

Your tripwire offer is their next best step. It’s the thing they need right now to reach their goals, and you are there to provide it.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Fully optimized, a tripwire will not only fill your list with customers, but will pay for their acquisition as well. #tripwirefunnel #internetmarketing #onlinemarketing #listbuilding @cindybidar ” quote=”Fully optimized, a tripwire will not only fill your list with customers, but will pay for their acquisition as well.”]

How to Set Up a Simple Tripwire Funnel

You can set up a simple tripwire funnel using the tools you already have. In fact, you likely have most of this already in place. All it will take is a few tweaks to your existing funnel.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Create an opt-in offer.

This can be a content upgrade or an opt-in page. As I said, you probably already have one or two of these working for you, so feel free to repurpose something that’s already pulling in subscribers. Just make sure that existing freebie flows naturally into step two.

Step 2: Create a closely related, low-cost product.

Ideally, you want your tripwire offer to be the very next step a new subscriber needs after he or she has downloaded your freebie. For example, if your opt-in offer is a resource guide for fiction writers who want to self-publish, then your tripwire might be a cheat sheet that helps them format and upload their book to Kindle.

Step 3: Create a thank you page with your tripwire offer.

This is the page your new subscriber will see immediately after opting in, and it’s where your tripwire sales page will live. If you already have a funnel set up, you can use your existing thank you page, just add some sales copy for your tripwire offer.

Since this is a low-cost product, you probably don’t need a full-length sales page. A great headline, a few benefit-rich bullet points, and a strong call to action will do.

Pro tip: Include a short line at the top that lets subscribers know that their freebie will arrive shortly. Do not put the download link to the free offer on this page.

Step 4: Add a sense of urgency.

Use a countdown timer to encourage subscribers to take action right now. This isn’t strictly necessary, but that ticking clock or other urgency-adding element can have a big impact on the conversion rate for your tripwire page.

Step 5: Connect all the pieces.

Just as you would with a free offer funnel, connect all the pieces within your landing page builder and email marketing platform so that the user flow is correct. Remember, a new subscriber will see the opt-in page, then the tripwire page, then they’ll receive an email with the link to the download/access page for the freebie.

Step 6: Test everything.

Using a “clean” email address (meaning one that’s not already on your list), opt-in at your offer landing page. Pay attention to the user experience. Are you redirected to the tripwire page after you opt-in? Did you receive the email with your free download?

A Great Strategy with an Unfortunate Name

Admittedly, the name for this technique leaves a lot to be desired. It has a negative connotation, and that can turn people off—especially if you’re already inclined to feel icky about sales and offers in general.

Let’s look at it for what it really is, though: The very next thing your subscriber needs to solve the problem she’s having. As a business owner, it’s your job to provide solutions, and when looked at from that point of view, making sales offers feels a lot better.

Just remember…

[click_to_tweet tweet=”A good tripwire offer has real problem-solving value for your subscriber. #tripwirefunnel #internetmarketing #onlinemarketing #listbuilding @cindybidar ” quote=”A good tripwire offer has real problem-solving value for your subscriber.”]

You can’t just put up any old thing and slap a $7 price tag on it and call it a tripwire. That’s not cool no matter how you spin it.

Real Life Tripwire Case Study

In August 2018, I created an opt-in offer called 51 Opt-In Incentive Ideas That Convert. On the thank you page for that opt-in is a tripwire offer for email templates to use in your follow up funnel. It’s a $27 offer, which is actually a little high for a tripwire given my product pricing, but it’s working for me.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Case Study: How one small tripwire offer earns $5.71 per subscriber. #tripwirefunnel #internetmarketing #onlinemarketing ” quote=”On average, this offer earns $5.71 per subscriber.”]

Here’s the current results as of January 2020:

Total opt-ins for 51 Opt-In Incentive Ideas that Convert: 679

Total tripwire sales: 126, so just under 1 in 5 subscribers take advantage of the tripwire offer.

Total tripwire revenue: $3882.00 (there’s an “order bump” on the checkout page which is why the math doesn’t work, but that’s a subject for another post).

In other words, I’m earning $5.71 for every subscriber who downloads 51 Opt-In Incentive Ideas that Convert.

With that in mind, I could take this offer combo one step further, and create a paid ads campaign to drive traffic to it. As long as I keep my cost of acquisition below $5.71 per conversion, I would be building my mailing list for free.

That right there is pretty powerful stuff, and that’s what a tripwire can do for you.

Get my Tripwire Toolkit to get started building your own tripwires today.

The post How (and Why) to Set Up a Tripwire Funnel appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

When she let it slip that she was earning six-figures passively, I knew I had to get her on the blog to share her secrets with you. 

Enjoy!

If you’ve been in online business for more than two days, you understand the inside joke about making money while you sleep. You might have gone down the same cobblestone path I did two decades ago when “passive” income meant outsourcing everything to someone else: They did the work, you got the proceeds.

Still, even after the Internet became as common as microwave ovens, people on the outside joked about all those ads they saw promising to show newcomers how to generate income 24/7. But those of us who took time to explore, learn, and consistently pursue ways to create a paycheck passively silently smirked in satisfaction.

Yes, you can make money while you sleep. I do it every single day.

No, it’s not spammy, or unethical, or underhanded. I’m helping my followers find resources they want and need to grow their businesses.

Yes, there are some jerks out there attempting to lure unsuspecting people into virtual dark back rooms where you’ll find things that make you go, “Oh HECK no!”

Yes, it takes some work. Passive is defined as lethargic (with little energy), not as unconscious.

Yes, some types of passive income are easier and quicker to generate than others.

No, you don’t have to have a huge email list, an influencer-sized social following, or a YouTube subscriber base that would make Justin Bieber jealous.

If I had to name the three must-haves for making money while you sleep, they would be as follows:

1.Something Desirable

Too often, online business people attempt to sell anything and everything that offers a commission to their lists. If you are unaware of what your list wants, a certain amount of testing might be necessary. For instance:

• Asking your subscribers or social followers to answer a short survey you created free using Google Forms.
• Starting an online conversation in a group or social site.
• Hosting a free Zoom call to discuss what the most common struggles are in your group of people.

You may need to try a few different offers to get a feel for what interests are represented among your people. That’s normal.

But choosing to promote a product or service strictly because you want to make money is never a good idea. It has to have some sort of connection with your audience. If you’re not selecting products or services that your customer or fan craves, there’s no point in promoting.

Not only will that practice irritate your subscribers, but it could also cause them to leave.

On the other hand, when you focus on your people, you might get emails like the one I received today that said, “I have a question about {product name}. I saw it in your email and was tempted, but would love to know _______.”

Tempted is a good thing! Obviously, this ebook caught the attention of this person because it offered what she needed/wanted. That’s vital! The old saying, “You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo” is still true. If your followers have no desire for what you’re talking about, sales will rarely follow.

When you begin (or continue) to build your passive income pipelines, take time to figure out which types of offers tempt your subscribers — then give them more of those.

2.Something Profitable

It’s true, you shouldn’t focus solely on making money. But the products or services you choose to promote do need to provide you with a nice profit or it won’t be worth your time.

Just imagine writing blog posts and/or creating videos (or however you promote) for a product offer you thought was great, then finding out afterwards that your 35 sales of this $19 ebook only earned you about $40.

Instead of being inspired to continue growing your passive income pipeline, you would most likely be disappointed and discouraged.

Take time to review the commission structures of affiliate products — never assume. Then carefully weigh the amount of setup/promotion against the profits.

PRO TIP: You’ll also want to ask when you’ll be paid and whether there is a minimum to qualify for payment. It royally stinks to make sales and then discover that you won’t be paid until you reach at least $150 in commissions.

3.An Automated System

This is “passive” income. Remember, passive means “with little effort.” My definition of passive income is that you set something up once and let it run automagically! While emails are certainly not the only way to promote affiliate offers (or any other offers), they are one of my faves.

I would write 2 to 4 emails, schedule them in my email software and go play pickleball! Done! The email software sends the emails at the right times/days and *presto!* I’m making money while I’m on the court (or sailing at the lake, or shopping with my sister, or…).

You can certainly earn income by asking people to call you, but that’s not passive. That requires your presence to stick close to the phone so you can attend telephone appointments all day. The entire goal of passive income is to free up your time.

My #1 Recommendation

I have long believed that affiliate marketing is one of the easiest and fastest ways to incorporate passive income into your bottom line.

Someone else:

• Creates the product/service.
• Writes the sales copy and follow-up emails.
• Sets up the shopping cart.
• Handles customer service.
• Pays the merchant fees.

With affiliate (referral) marketing, you:

• Make a friendly recommendation to people who know and trust you, and
• Earn a commission.

The problem new and experienced marketers have is finding those little jewels that appeal to their customer avatar and offer great commissions.

And that’s where Passive Income Jumpstart comes into play. I’ll show you my own step-by-step process for investigating and evaluating affiliate offers. Then you’ll be equipped to head off into Cyberspace and choose the best-fit products that you can quickly add to:

• Social posts
• Emails
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Backend funnels
• Opt-in freebies
• Existing blog posts
• And more.

Because you’re a friend of Cindy’s, I’ll drop a coupon code here that will save you $10 off. Click here for full details on Passive Income Jumpstart and use code PASSIVE.

The post No-Bull Passive Income: 3 Must-Haves For Making Money While You Sleep appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

For freelancers, virtual assistants, and other service providers, this is a common misconception. I even said it myself when I was brand new. (I said some other stupid things when I was new, as well. We all did.)

The more I learned about the power of funnels though, and the more mature my business became, the more I realized I did need a funnel, for lots of reasons.

1. Clients on demand. Sure, referrals and word-of-mouth advertising are great. They have that “know, like and trust” thing already built in.

They can also be slow to produce a new client. When you lose a gig and you’re wondering if you should cancel your Netflix subscription next month to save a little cash, wouldn’t it be better to have a ready list of ideal clients you can tap into?

That’s the kind of power a funnel (and its accompanying email list) can give you.

2. The ability to scale quickly. Business is great! So good, in fact, that you’re ready to bring on a team of subcontractors to handle your overflow. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a chicken and egg issue.

If you bring on a new team member or two, how can you guarantee them enough hours to make it worth their commitment? And if you don’t have people lined up already, how can you confidently take on more work?

Enter your email list, filled with clients who want to work with you–and your new team.

3. A built-in audience when you decide to branch out. Got a cool digital product you’re thinking of creating? How about an app that could change how your clients do business?

Your funnel and email list give you the ideal audience to promote your new venture to, so you aren’t always starting from scratch. (They’ll call you an “overnight success” but you’ll know the secret.)

4. Better word-of-mouth marketing. Sound counterintuitive? It’s not.

Move your existing clients into a targeted follow up campaign that includes requests for referrals, testimonials, and other client-attracting social proof. You can do it all on autopilot, which is so much easier than remembering to ask.

5. The ability to earn passive income. This is the big one. If you don’t create and maintain funnels for any other reason, then let this be the tipping point for you.

Sure, there are other ways to grow your income as a freelancer. You can effectively add more hours to your day by building a team. You can (and probably should) raise your rates. You can simply work more.

Or you can build a funnel and serve your subscribers (and potential clients) with well-researched, relevant offers. Not only are you the expert source for the information they need, but you’ll earn some added income through affiliate programs. It’s a win-win for everyone. Seriously.

Simple Funnels for Service-Based Businesses

Don’t overthink this. Here’s an easy funnel you can set up in an afternoon:

• Create a simple checklist or worksheet outlining your most popular service. For example, if you’re a freelance writer and you specialize in blog post SEO, a one-page keyword research checklist would make a great opt-in freebie.
  
• Build a landing page with an opt-in form to collect email addresses. Connect this to your email service provider.
  
• Add a “thank you” page where new subscribers can pick up their download and maybe see a related offer from you (like a coupon or a new client special). There are other things that can make this page even better, but don’t worry about any of that stuff right now. Just get the pages built and the connections made. That’s your first step.
  
• Create a few follow-up messages (also known as a “nurture sequence”) to further show off your expertise and build a relationship.
  
• Stay in touch through regular (at least weekly) email marketing. A quick “newsletter” style email with industry insights, new strategies, tool reviews and any other info your clients need is a great start. If you need inspiration, here are 49 ideas you can try.
  

That’s it. All that’s left is to make sure your ideal subscriber sees your opt-in page. You can do that by sharing it on social media, adding pop-ups to your website, creating content upgrades on your blog, and dozens of other methods.

The post The Untapped Power of Funnels for Service-Based Businesses appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

I used to feel that way. I used to tread very, very carefully when it came to presenting offers on my blog or in my email, but then I came to a massive realization that changed how I do business.

Maybe it will help you, too.

The post Email Marketing: Your Subscribers Need You to Make Offers appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Last week I mentioned to a friend of mine that every morning, the first thing I do is check and record several key stats about my business, much like my former boss did. I track:

• Email list size
• Email click through rate and earnings per click
• Sales for the previous day
• Pending invoices

“You do that every day?” He seemed a little surprised.

Frankly, I’m surprised that he’s NOT doing the same. I’m surprised that anyone who is running a business isn’t doing this and more. Karl Pearson is often credited with saying, “That which is measured, improves. That which is measured and reported, improves exponentially.”

No one seems to know for sure if it was Pearson who said that or someone else, but I can tell you it’s 100% true.

If you want to lose weight, write down everything you eat. If you want to pay off your credit cards, write down how much you owe. And if you want to grow your business, figure out what those key metrics are and then keep track of them. Do it every day, and I think you’ll be surprised at the positive effect it will have on your bottom line.

Here’s the spreadsheet I use.

(Click “File” -> “Make a copy” to add it to your own Google Drive. It includes formulas for calculating EPC (earnings per click), daily average sales, projected annual income and other things. Feel free to edit your copy to match your unique business needs.)

UPDATE: Your Questions

After I sent this out in an email, I had a few questions. You might be wondering, too, so I made you a quick video + I’ll answer below.

A: It depends on what I’m measuring. On the email tracker, I count affiliate commissions earned, even if I haven’t been paid for them yet. I’m measuring the effectiveness of the email campaign here, and commissions earned is an indicator of that. On the sales tracker though, I only count money actually in my account, so this number won’t match what the email tracker says. Instead, I record commissions when they are paid to me.

Q: On the email tracker, what’s the difference between “Sent to” and “Audience”?

A: “Sent to” is a number, “audience” is a segment of my list. For example, if I’m promoting a product, I won’t email those who already own it, so I would note the number of people who don’t have the product, and put that number in the “sent to” column, and note in the “audience” column that this email went out to “did not purchase [product I’m promoting].”

Q: Are you only tracking email promotions? What about blog post links and social campaigns and other promos?

A: On the email tracker, I’m only tracking email promotions. The sales tracker covers everything else. I don’t do enough selling on social media or on the blog to justify having separate trackers for these things, but if you do, I would encourage you to set something up so you can know your stats!

The post How I Track Sales & Marketing Results appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Turns out, opt-in forms in Thrive Leads can have multiple “states.” One state is the default–that’s what everyone sees. You can also have an “already subscribed” state that is shown to people who–you guessed it–are already subscribed to your list.

That means you can create an additional free (or paid) offer that only shows to those who have previously opted in to your content upgrade. Pretty cool, huh? Watch the video to see how it works.

The post More Content Upgrade Tricks appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

That type of quiz is typically referred to as a viral quiz, and it’s designed to get shares. The results are amusing, and they’re often accompanied by a graphic that says something like, “You got: Labradoodle” with a list of traits you may or may not possess.

For sites that depend on advertising for their revenue, this type of quiz is ideal, because they can generate a lot of traffic. More page views equals more ad revenue. If you’re a blogger, this may be a good quiz style to play with.

But for funnel building, where the object is to get people onto a mailing list, there are better options, such as a knowledge based  or outcome quizzes.

Here’s how this type of quiz can help grow your email list.

First, rather than being asked funny or irreverent questions, these quizzes tend to be more serious. Your visitors are after real information, they’re not just surfing the internet looking for a fun little diversion. They need guidance, and a quiz can give it to them.

By asking a series of questions, you can:

• Show them where the gaps are in their skills or knowledge.
• Help them find the next best step to accomplish a goal.
• Get them to think about complex issues in a new way or from a different point of view.

Not only that, but quizzes are perfect for gathering data about your audience.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Design your lead-generating quiz well, and you’ll know exactly what your subscribers need most, and what they’ve already mastered.” quote=”Design your lead-generating quiz well, and you’ll know exactly what your subscribers need most, and what they’ve already mastered.” theme=”style2″]

Knowledge Quizzes Reveal Gaps in Your Subscriber’s Skills

This is probably the simplest quiz to set up, and it can give you some good insight into where your subscribers need your help.

Knowledge quizzes are just like the quizzes you took in school. You’re asked a series of questions, and your result is scored based on the number of correct responses.

This type of quiz is helpful for pointing out what a potential customer has yet to learn so that you can provide the resources she needs.

As the business owner, knowledge quiz responses are helpful to you for creating much needed courses that help fill in the missing pieces in your ideal client’s education. Think of it as a user survey that’s easy to promote.

Assuming your email system allows tagging, knowledge quizzes also let you funnel your subscribers down different paths based on their answers.

For example, let’s say a freelance writer creates a quiz called “How much do you actually know about content marketing?”

It has 10 questions, such as “What percentage of people read blog posts to gain knowledge about a topic?” And “What percentage of consumers rely on email to make buying decisions?”

Since her goal (beyond growing her email list) is to entice business owners to contact her for a content marketing quote, she can use quiz scores to segment her subscriber base. Those with low scores may have a poor understanding of content marketing and its benefits, so they may need some education before they’re ready to hire her.

She can lead those subscribers into an educational funnel with case studies and other data that clearly shows them the power of content marketing.

Those with high scores—meaning they fully understand how well content marketing works—can be offered a discovery call to see how they can benefit from working with a freelancer. Because she knows that they understand and appreciate the power of content marketing, it’s a safe bet that these users will be a much easier sale than the clients she has to convince about the benefits.

But that’s not the end of the funnel. Let’s say that in addition to her done-for-you content marketing service, she also sells courses about email marketing, blogging, and social media. When someone scores high on the quiz but does not book a call after a few emails reminding them of the option, she can move them into another funnel as a “downsell.”

Even better, if she’s carefully collected the answers in her email marketing system with the use of good tags, she can automate which funnels and offers each user sees, matching them up with the next best step.

Outcome Quizzes Help Your Subscriber Make a Decision

An example of this type of quiz might be “What type of coach should you be?” or “Where should you retire?”

Unlike a knowledge quiz, an outcome quiz doesn’t have right or wrong answers. It’s just opinion, which means the final result is based on the “weight” of the score. Think of it as the subscriber casting votes for each possible outcome, and the one with the most votes at the end is the winner.   

The easiest way to plan a quiz like this is to first decide all the possible outcomes. Each question then must be worded in such a way that any of the possible outcomes could be an answer.

For example, if you’re building a “Where should you retire” quiz, your possible outcomes might be:

• Finland
• Arizona
• Ireland
• Northern California

These outcomes will correspond to any products or services you sell.

You can then have questions such as:

• “I prefer the weather to be…” With the following possible responses:
  • Hot and dry
  • Cool and rainy
  • I love all the seasons
  • Snowy and cold

Each response is a vote for a specific outcome, like this:

• Hot and dry = Arizona
• Cool and rainy = Ireland
• I love all the seasons = Northern California
• Snowy and cold = Finland

At the end of the quiz, the software totals up the number of responses for each outcome, and the one with the highest score is the final result.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Your goal for creating an outcome quiz is to provide your reader with a plan to move forward based on his or her results.” quote=”Your goal for creating an outcome quiz is to provide your reader with a plan to move forward based on his or her results.” theme=”style2″]

If your reader’s perfect retirement plan is to move to Ireland, you can start sending information and offers about Dublin vacations. If Arizona is the clear winner, then you’ll put her into a sequence that promotes warm-weather gear, sunscreen, and Grand Canyon tours.

How to Create Your Quiz Funnel

When you’re designing your quiz, keep a few “best practices” in mind.

Short quizzes are generally better, so try to keep yours to between six and ten questions. Keep the length of the questions and answers to a minimum as well. Most people will be on a mobile device, and you don’t want them to have to scroll endlessly just to answer a few questions.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Your quiz funnel should have a goal in mind. What do you want readers to do once they’ve finished your quiz? ” quote=”Your quiz funnel should have a goal in mind. What do you want readers to do once they’ve finished your quiz?” theme=”style2″]

For example, if you sell social media courses on Instagram and Pinterest, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you might create a “What’s your ideal social platform” quiz. But you wouldn’t want one of the outcomes to be Google Plus, because you don’t have anything to offer that person. Instead, you’ll want to design your quiz in such a way that the platforms you do teach are the only available responses.

Regardless of the quiz type, you will definitely need the funnel basics. That means creating an opt-in page with a compelling reason to take the quiz, a thank you page to deliver the results, and a few follow-up emails to complete the funnel.

The email follow-ups are where you’ll make your offers. Ideally, you want to remind them of their quiz results (assuming your setup allows this) and the options you have available to them based on those results. The more personalized you can make this follow-up, the better your results will be.

If your email system allows it, consider using conditional fields to send your subscribers only the information that’s relevant to them and their quiz results. You can do this by assigning tags that correspond to each response to the contact record.

Are Quizzes List-Building Magic?

Well, maybe not. But there’s no denying that quizzes can be significantly more attractive than a simple PDF download or even a webinar training. After all, they’re easy for readers to complete, they’re fun, and they’re interactive.

And for you, the quiz creator, they are full of information you can use to create better offers.

Want to see one in action? Click here to find out how much you really know about growing a profitable mailing list. When you’re ready to create your own quiz, register for a TryInteract account. It’s by far the easiest quiz building software I’ve used, and you can try it out for free.  

Which type of quiz will you create first? Share your ideas in the comments. I’d love to see what you’ve got in mind!

The post Two Quizzes to Feed Your Funnels and Land New Clients appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”How often should I mail my list, and what can I send them? ” quote=”How often should I mail my list, and what can I send them? ” theme=”style2″]

Sound familiar? Maybe you’ve asked yourself those same questions, too.

Personally, my goal is to mail every day. It’s important to me to create a vibrant community of like-minded entrepreneurs, and to provide them with actionable tips and solid business-building information and resources, and I believe the best way to do that is through email.

But like everyone, I sometimes have trouble finding new things to say (which is why, if you’re on my list, you don’t always hear from me every day).

Then I sat down to really think about it, and I realized that there a lots (and lots, and lots) of things I can share with you that are helpful or thought provoking or funny or money making.

Here’s what I came up with. Now, whenever I need a little inspiration, this is where I turn. Maybe it will help you as well.

49 Emails You Can Send to Your List

1. A how-to email with instructions for completing a task
2. A video review of a new tool or resource
3. Your opinion about a strategy or resource
4. Reader questions and your answers
5. Your product FAQs
6. A teaser and link to your latest blog post
7. A teaser and link to an old blog post your reader may have missed
8. A teaser and link to someone else’s blog post
9. Book reviews or recommended reading list
10. Commentary on an interesting social media discussion
11. A text interview with a guest expert
12. A funny or inspirational video
13. An infographic
14. A “flash sale” offer
15. Pros and cons of a tool or strategy
16. A customer survey
17. An invitation to an upcoming webinar or other event
18. A personal update
19. A resource list
20. A quick challenge to get them motivated to take action
21. A behind-the-scenes look at your business
22. A downloadable PDF or list-magnet
23. A mistake you made (and the lesson you learned)
24. A curated list of related posts from around the web
25. A regular newsletter
26. A myth-busting article
27. A teaser about a new project you have in the works
28. A case study
29. Industry news and current events
30. A cautionary tale
31. The story of something that didn’t work out as planned
32. Something you wish you knew when you were just starting out
33. Industry stats or survey results
34. An exclusive coupon
35. Product or service updates
36. A testimonial or feedback request
37. A self assessment or quiz
38. Best buys in your industry
39. A quick, actionable tip
40. A controversial opinion
41. Links to your current or past interviews and appearances
42. A sneak peek at your paid course
43. A short training series or ecourse
44. Income, growth, traffic or other stats
45. A personal introduction to a colleague
46. Seasonal tips or reminders
47. New product announcement
48. Promo of an older product
49. A list (like this!)

What about you? What will YOU mail your list today?

Share your ideas in the comments, and if your list-building efforts could use a little help, grab my list of opt-in incentive ideas.

The post What Can I Mail My List Today? appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

• How to get started with the right tools.
• What to offer your visitors to entice them to subscribe to your list.
• How to find out what your audience really wants from you.
• What’s working today for list building.
• How to protect your business from catastrophe (hint: build a list).
• And so much more.

Enjoy the interview, and drop your questions in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

The post List Building Strategies That Work for Beginners & Pros appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Generally, more money comes down to two things: later money and now money.

Later money comes from reaching more buyers, and now money comes from making more offers. And the really smart business owners do both without adding any more to-do items to an already busy schedule.

18 Ways to Reach a Bigger Audience

1. Create a non-expiring promo code and email swipe for your VIP affiliates and send it to them to add to their autoresponders.
2. Republish your blog posts on Medium.com with a great call to action.
3. Turn a blog series into a free Kindle book and promote your best opt-in offer inside.
4. Revisit old blog posts and update links, references, and SEO to bring in new traffic.
5. Brag about your subscriber count on your opt-in pages to add social proof and improve conversions.
6. Use viral sharing tools to drive free traffic to your opt-ins.
7. Use the “Ask Pending Members Questions” option in your Facebook group to promote your best opt-in offer.
8. Promote a great opt-in with low cost Facebook ads (and back it up with a tripwire to reduce the cost even more).
9. Upload your YouTube videos directly to your Facebook page (don’t just link) for better engagement (always include a call to action to your opt-in).
10. Use QuuuPromote.com to get your best blog posts in front of more people.
11. Use Thrive Leads to add “content upgrades” to your blog posts.
12. Add opt-in forms in the middle of a longer blog post.
13. Add a signup link to your Facebook page.
14. Enter an existing product in a giveaway event.
15. Use a greeter bar on your blog.
16. Add exit-intent pop-up forms to your website.
17. Create links for your affiliates to promote your free offers.
18. Remove distractions (like other links) from your landing pages.

31 Ways to Make More Offers

1. Add a tripwire offer to an opt-in funnel.
2. Create a follow-up email that promotes your products page.
3. Add your best offers to SocialBee or MeetEdgar for automatic promotions.
4. Add a “resources” page to your blog and share it regularly in your newsletter and on social media.
5. Add a FAQ page to your help desk with links to your products and services.
6. Promote complementary services in your product follow-ups.
7. Create an automated re-engagement campaign to remind subscribers who haven’t opened an email in a while about all the great stuff they’re missing.
8. Use an abandoned cart email strategy to recover lost sales.
9. Get on your competitors’ email lists and pay attention to what they promote, and add the products that fit to your own funnels.
10. Repurpose your best performing broadcast emails into autoresponders.
11. Grab the swipe files from your favorite affiliate programs and add them to your autoresponders.
12. Add a recommended reading list to your blog with Amazon affiliate links to your favorite books.
13. Pitch new projects to existing clients.
14. Promote your best blog posts in your email autoresponders so new subscribers can benefit from your older content.
15. Segment your email list for targeted follow-ups.
16. Add relevant product promos to your free PDF downloads.
17. Pay attention to your email marketing stats then make the necessary changes to improve them.
18. Make it a habit to resend your broadcast emails to everyone who didn’t open the first time.
19. Add an “order bump” to your checkout pages.
20. Promote your bestselling products in your blog sidebar.
21. If your customers have to log in to your site to access their purchases, create a dashboard with all your available products, leaving those they haven’t purchased yet “grayed out” to create FOMO.
22. Split test everything. What “your gut tells you” is probably wrong.
23. Put a link to your latest product in your email signature. Update as needed.
24. Add recommended resources to your product download pages.
25. Add “next step” recommendations to your product autoresponders.
26. Use “canned responses” in your help desk to promote relevant products when appropriate.
27. Create a “Start Here” page on your website with links to the best training and resources (both free and paid) that you have.
28. Beef up your opt-in offer welcome email with additional information about you, your products and services, and a testimonial or two.
29. Add links to your best selling products in your “about me” page.
30. Add a “how to get this course for free” email to your autoresponder with a link to sign up for your affiliate program.
31. Create a messenger bot to reply to messages to your Facebook page with product and resource suggestions.

This is a cornerstone of my training program, Six-Figure Systems. If you struggle to know “what’s next” or you feel like you’re working all the time with little progress to show for it, I invite you to join us.

The post How Can I Make More Money? appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

Admit it. You’ve got 27 tabs open in your browser right now.

You’re collecting articles and blog posts you want to read (but not right now), a YouTube video you keep meaning to watch (someday), and of course Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter all have a permanent place.

Then there are those two adorable pairs of sandals you added to your cart at Macy’s last Tuesday, because you just can’t decide between the pink and the white.

And we haven’t even talked about the other applications that compete for your attention. The Word document you’re creating for your next course. The video you’re editing. The client notes you still need to type up. The Quickbooks file that hasn’t been updated in weeks.

I know you can relate.

So can you really be blamed when, at the end of the day, you finally close the cover on your laptop without ever choosing between the pink and the white sandals?

But don’t worry.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Savvy (and profitable) businesses know the power of a well-timed email reminder about that purchase you didn’t complete.” quote=”Savvy (and profitable) businesses know the power of a well-timed email reminder about that purchase you didn’t complete.” theme=”style2″]

If they’re smart, Macy’s is holding your spot, and they’ll pop into your inbox in a few hours to remind you about those must-have (and probably soon-to-be out of stock) summer shoes.

Why Shoppers Almost Buy

According to the Baymard Institute, shoppers change their minds at a rate of nearly 70% on average. They get all the way to the checkout, and–for a variety of reasons–they just don’t complete the order.

The most common causes?

• Unexpected fees, taxes, and other charges in the cart. This is me every time I order flowers online. How does $69 turn into $118?!
• The site required an account. Seriously. I just want the sandals, not a lifetime commitment.
• The checkout process was too complicated. If you’ve ever bounced back and forth from the site to PayPal and back again (or not) then you understand this one.
• The price wasn’t visible/clear prior to checkout. This is a common technique among internet marketers. I often have to hit the “buy now” button just to see the price, and I do it even when I have no intention of buying.

It’s not just shoes and flowers either.

Remember that promo you sent for your new course that got 722 clicks to the sales page, 378 visitors to the cart, but only 113 sales?

While (I hope) you don’t have a bunch of extra fees tacked on at the last minute, or an overly confusing checkout process, the problem is pretty clear.

Cart abandonment strikes again.

Save Those Lost Sales With an Abandoned Cart Email Strategy

For the distracted fence-sitters in your audience, all it takes is a tiny nudge in the right direction to entice them to buy. That’s what an abandoned cart email is all about. It’s just a note that pops into their inbox saying, “Hey, you forgot something…”

And it’s surprisingly effective.

In fact, one client is seeing a 58% open rate on his abandoned cart emails, and a 20% conversion.

Compare that to a more typical broadcast email, and it’s easy to see that those are some pretty spectacular numbers.

More Emails to Add to Your Abandoned Cart Sequence

If you’re selling shoes or bathing suits or laptop cases, you probably only need a short reminder to lure the fence sitters onto your side of the yard.

But sometimes, a single email just won’t cut it. If your product is:

• High ticket, such as a training program with a $999 price tag.
• A recurring membership–even if it’s a small dollar amount, it’s still a commitment.
• A ticket to a live event that isn’t scheduled until weeks or even months later.

… then you might want to add another email or two to entice your buyers to make a decision.

Consider including:

• FAQs to answer any of those lingering questions your sales page didn’t cover.
• Objection handling to address any doubts about the product or process.
• Testimonials that show how well loved your program or membership is by your clients.
• Case studies that illustrate the results others have achieved with your product or training.
• Deadline reminders to add a sense of urgency when your price is going up or your cart is closing.

Should Your Abandoned Cart Email Sequence Include a Discount or Bonus?

Ecommerce marketing software company Barilliance notes that the most common abandoned cart emails offer a bonus or additional discount as a “bribe” for completing the purchase.

I say, just because it’s common doesn’t make it right.

Frankly, I’d be pretty annoyed if NOT buying earned me an additional 10% off.

Why? Because what about all the times I DID buy right away?

To me, that’s right up there with the cable company offering better deals to new customers than they do to those of us who never left.

Offering a reward for not buying means punishing those who do, and I’m definitely not cool with that.

Legitimate reminders, relevant follow-ups, answers to nagging questions and provable results all have a place in a great abandoned cart sequence. Used well, they can save a significant percentage of sales that might otherwise be lost.

The post How to Boost Profits With a Simple Abandoned Cart Email Strategy appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

That means not relying on a single source of traffic.

Or investing years into a non-portable website.

Or growing your audience on someone else’s platform.

Just like an offline business, you must build your own infrastructure so you can be in control of your income. Without it, you’re one algorithm change away from disaster.

The first business asset you need is your website. No, you can’t get by with a Facebook fan page and an Instagram account. You don’t need a $4,000 professionally branded site with custom page types and pro headshots, but you do need a website on a domain you own.

Coming in a very, very close second, though, is your email list. Regardless of what anyone tells you, email is critical to your long-term success, and here’s why:

[clickToTweet tweet=”An email list is the single best way to consistently reach an audience of fans and buyers who want to hear from you.” quote=”An email list is the single best way to consistently reach an audience of fans and buyers who want to hear from you.” theme=”style2″]

Facebook posts have limited reach. Twitter has the attention span of a toddler who’s badly in need of a nap. And while Pinterest is amazing at driving traffic, it’s not so great at time-sensitive content.

Plus, you still have the bigger issue, in that none of these platforms are under your control. Any one of them can change their business model on a whim—and they do, with sometimes disastrous consequences.

If you don’t want to be a victim to the fickle nature of social media and search results, then building an email list should be your number one priority. You absolutely cannot afford to ignore this.

Your email marketing plan begins with two basic components:

• A tool to collect and store addresses and send email
• A reason for people to join your list

Broken down like that, it sounds pretty simple, right? Well, it is, but so many service providers get hung up on the details that they stay stuck, and never bother to build a list at all.

Maybe they even convince themselves that list-building is simply not important in their business. Sound familiar? Let’s get past that today with a step-by-step plan.

Step 1: Choose an Email Marketing Provider

Your email marketing provider is the service you use to manage your contacts, send emails, and deliver opt-in freebies (or even paid downloads). They fall into two basic categories: Self-hosted and fully managed.

Self-hosted tools are installed on your server (where your website lives) and include Sendy, Dada Mail, and MailTrain.

While some marketers love the self-hosted options, they can be far more difficult to set up and maintain. Not only that, but staying compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act can be tricky. Deliverability is also a huge issue, and it’s entirely up to you to keep your server IP off the “known spammer” lists that can severely cramp your email style. That’s why savvy marketers who go the self-hosted route back it up with a solid SMTP host such as SendGrid.

If that last paragraph is already over your head, then a better choice for you is a fully managed email provider, and there are dozens to choose from.

AWeber is a popular option for those new to list-building. They’ve been in business for years, offer fantastic, newbie-friendly support, and integrate with just about everything imaginable.

If you want to automatically add buyers to your mailing list, AWeber very likely has an integration with your shopping cart. If you want to build a landing page, AWeber will almost certainly connect with your page builder. The same is true for pop-up forms, webinar providers, calendar apps, and even PayPal.

But with all these benefits, AWeber does have a few drawbacks to consider.

First, they are fully list-based. That means if you want to offer two different opt-in incentives you will need two lists inside your account. That’s no problem, as you can have unlimited lists in a single AWeber account. However, if your reader opts in for both offers, that contact is now on two lists, and as far as AWeber’s billing system is concerned, you now have two contacts, not one.

A more flexible approach is to use tagging within the system to segment contacts. As of right now, AWeber does not do this very well. They’re making changes in that direction, but as of the time of this writing, AWeber’s use of tagging is rather limited. Services built from the ground up with tagging at their core handle it much better.

Active Campaign is my mailing list provider of choice. If you’re on my list, you are in my Active Campaign account. While this system is a bit younger than AWeber, I find it much more flexible.

Rather than being list-based, Active Campaign uses tags to sort and categorize contacts. That means your readers can opt-in for any number of offers without being added to multiple lists. Active Campaign instead ads a tag to their record, and delivers the appropriate emails based on the presence of that tag. Unlike in AWeber, you only pay for one subscriber, regardless of how many offers that subscriber has accepted.

Here’s another big difference between AWeber and Active Campaign: With AWeber, you are charged for every contact, regardless of their status. If someone unsubscribes from your list, they are still counted as a contact. So if you’re edging toward that next service level, you’ll want to pay close attention to your unsubscribe counts and delete people if necessary. Active Campaign, on the other hand, only counts active subscribers when calculating your package price.

Other popular options include Mail Chimp, Convert Kit, Get Response, and Drip. I’m honestly not a fan of any of them, for a variety of reasons. Like most things though, the tool you choose will very much depend on your personal preferences. So with so many options, how can you know which is right for you?

First, I highly recommend signing up for a trial where available. Spend some time just navigating around the interface and exploring the email templates and other options. Contact their support to get a feel for how they operate. Read through the help documents and watch the videos. That’s the only way you’ll know for sure if you’ll be comfortable with the service.

Did you notice I didn’t mention Infusionsoft or Ontraport in this list?

That’s because while these providers do offer email marketing as a part of their service, it’s not their only use. More accurately called “CRMs,” or “Customer Relationship Manager,” these services also include shopping carts, membership scripts, snail mail, and a dozen other bells and whistles that fall far outside of email marketing.

As you might imagine, the learning curve is steep with both, and lets not forget the cost. While AWeber, Active Campaign, and others all start at around $20 per month, Infusionsoft and Ontraport will take a much bigger bite out of your wallet. Basic packages run $80 per month for a small number of contacts, and Infusionsoft tacks on a hefty onboarding fee as well.

Step 2: Give Readers a Reason (and a Place) to Subscribe

Whew! Now that you’ve compared all the options and made your choice, you’re finally ready to start building your list, right? Well, not so fast.

It’s a rare person who will reach out and say, “Hey, can you add me to your email list?”

Instead, you’ll need to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Typical opt-in incentives include downloadable PDFs, video training, survey results, white papers, checklists and other useful and quickly consumable information. Don’t try to cram too much into your offer, though. That 89-page eBook and 4-module training course might be packed with useful information, but if it takes more than a few minutes to digest, most subscribers will not bother.

Instead, give them the “Cliff’s Notes” version that they can read through over a cup of coffee, and save the more in-depth info for a paid course.

Once you have your opt-in incentive chosen and created, you’ll need a way to collect those email addresses. At its most basic, you need an opt-in form, such as you see above. Like email service providers, there’s no shortage of options, and they all have their pros and cons.

The least expensive is to simply put an opt-in form in the sidebar or footer of your website. Depending on your mailing list provider, you may even be able to build a simple form in your dashboard and then just paste the code in your website. Easy-peasy.

Also, kind of ugly.

For a more eye-catching look, you’ll want to employ a form builder, such as PopUp Ally, Thrive Leads, or Bloom. (The forms you find on this site are built with Thrive.) This allows you to better control the branding, make a compelling offer, add a graphic, and customize the call to action.

From there, you simply add your opt-in forms in strategic places on your website, such as:

• Above the fold on your home page
• In the sidebar on your blog
• At the end of your blog posts

Even better, offer your readers a landing page with more information about your offer and why they should opt-in. These single purpose pages are similar to sales pages, but what you’re “selling” is your opt-in offer, and the asking price is an email address. Options for landing page builders are extensive as well. Some of the most popular are LeadPages, Thrive Architect, and ClickFunnels, but you can also create landing pages with some WordPress themes, such as Divi.

Whether you choose a simple opt-in form or a complete landing page, you’ll need to make the connection between the form and your email service provider. Most page and form builders make this step easy enough to figure out on your own, but be sure to check the documentation for your chosen tools for complete instructions.

Step 3: Keep in Touch With Your Subscribers

Ok, we’re almost there! You’ve chosen your email marketing service, created your opt-in incentive, and added an opt-in form or landing page (or both!) to your website. Well done!

All that’s left is to stay in touch with your subscribers by sending news, advice—and yes, offers—to their inbox. Remember: You are the expert in your niche. Your readers depend on you to keep them informed. They don’t know how to build a killer website or write great sales pages or design a logo or take great photos. But you do, and that’s why they connected with you in the first place.

So don’t ignore them. Set a more-or-less regular schedule and make sure they hear from you at least once per week.

I’m not going to lie. I’ve been guilty of neglecting my list in the past, and it shows. My list is not nearly as responsive as it could be, had I been more attentive.

Don’t be like Cindy.

That brings up the question of what to send to your list. The first email a new subscriber receives is the welcome email with the delivery of their freebie. That one is pretty self-explanatory.

But then what?

If you’re already stressing over what you’ll mail next, here’s a list to get you started:

• Answer the questions you get from your clients. Every question is a potential email or blog post.
• Stay on top of industry news, and send out an email every time something important happens.
• Watch for good sales you can share—with an affiliate link if you have one, but don’t let it stop you if you don’t. Remember, this is about serving your list, so it doesn’t always have to be directly profitable.
• Recap what’s happening on your blog or in your Facebook or LinkedIn group.
• Create and send an unexpected freebie, such as a checklist or worksheet.
• Make a list of your favorite resources.
• Send a “roundup” of the best articles you read this week about a specific topic.
• Pull out an older—but still relevant—blog post and share it with your new subscribers.
• Curate something fun or useful. Not everything you send has to be penned by you, after all.

Lastly, don’t forget the offers. Your mailing list is not a non-profit enterprise. It’s a tool to help you grow your business—and your income, so don’t be shy about making offers.

Let your readers know about:

• New services you’ve added
• Products they might be interested in
• Discount codes and sales
• Last minute openings in your schedule
• Upcoming price increases (with the opportunity to lock in lower rates now)

Whatever you send your list, though, remember this:

[clickToTweet tweet=”When it comes to email marketing, consistency is the key to results.” quote=”When it comes to email marketing, consistency is the key to results.” theme=”style2″]

Step 4: Grow Your Email List

I’ll resist the urge to pull out that tired old Field of Dreams quote here, but trust me when I say, it’s not enough to simply add an opt-in form to your blog. You’re going to need to also get those forms in front of people who are interested in what you’re offering.

In other words, you need to drive some traffic.

This, for me, is one of the biggest struggles. Maybe it’s yours as well.

I asked some smart people I know what their favorite traffic methods are, and here’s what they said:

Kelly McCausey, of Love People, Make Money says:

Karon Thackston of Marketing Words takes a different approach:

Plus, she’s leveraging other social networks as well:

Melveen Stevenson of MeveenStevenson.com agrees:

While Kathy Pop of Lazer Web Services takes a different approach for her local clients:

As you can see, there are many ways to get in front of your ideal audience. Not all will work in all markets, and what works for you may not work for someone else. Just like choosing an email provider, the answer for you is going to come down to personal preference. Try a few ideas on for size. Give them a reasonable chance to succeed (be consistent with it for more than a day or two, please), and see what fits.

In the end, you’ll find that traffic is much like money. The more you have, the easier it becomes to get more.

What to do if your list growth is less than exciting

It’s hard to get fired up about email marketing and all its many benefits when you’re watching your list numbers increase by only 1 or 2 a week.

Come join us as a Six-Figure Systems member, and take advantage of the many trainings inside that will help you not only grow your list, but to make your existing list more profitable, too.

The post Email Marketing Demystified: A How-To Guide for Online Business Owners appeared first on Cindy Bidar.

The truth is, my business was down, too. In fact, that month we’d had a 20% drop in revenue thanks to a couple of lost clients. We had some new opportunities the following month, but it ultimately took several weeks to get back to “normal.”

But not only did we not stress over a dip in income, we even bought a new home during that time. That’s how stress-free our finances are. And yours can be, too!

Know Your Budget

I’m not an advocate of complicated spreadsheets and tracking every penny. I’m guessing you’re not either, since you’re reading this.

But that’s not to say I don’t know how much our expenses are each month. I do. And we are careful not to overspend, often planning large purchases (and sometimes small ones) weeks or months in advance.

For example, we knew for months that both my husband’s and my cell phones needed upgrading (I was still using an iPhone 4), so we were able to plan for the purchase by setting aside a little money each month. In December we bought two gently used iPhone 6’s without denting our budget at all.

Plan for the Future

Before I quit my job, we had very little money in the bank. We were stuck firmly in the “paycheck to paycheck” groove, and when you’re looking self-employment in the face, that’s no place to be. The first order of business was to build a tidy nest egg.

In the weeks leading up to me and the day job forever parting ways, we ruthlessly banked the cash I was earning with my new part-time business. I had a nice little side gig going, so we were able to put aside about $2,000 each month in a “just in case” fund. I highly recommend you do that as well.

And if you’ve already quit your job without benefit of that slush fund, it’s not too late to start. Yes, you might have to work a bit harder, and yes, your savings might build up a bit slower, but trust me when I say, paycheck to paycheck living is stressful as hell when your paychecks are inconsistent.

If the electric bill has to wait until your client pays her invoice, you’re living too close to the edge for comfort. Make it a priority to build your savings until you have at least a month’s worth of expenses on hand, even if you have to do it $5 at a time.

Cut the Excess

Do you need two new cars? The latest mobile phone or tablet? A new Coach purse? Dinner out every week?

Probably not. And if you can learn to live with (and on) less, you’ll find your stress levels–at least when it comes to money–dropping considerably.

Of course I’m not suggesting that you do without all the modern conveniences and comforts, but I will say that financial freedom comes from making wise choices and practicing a bit of delayed gratification.

Keep the Funnel Full

No matter what business you’re in, the only clear path to financial security is to keep your prospect funnel full. This is a long-term goal and something you’ll need to work on every single day.

You can’t wait until you find yourself with one part-time client to start looking for more. You must be constantly prospecting, even if you’re so busy you simply don’t have the bandwidth to handle another client. Put them on a waiting list, so when someone drops off your client list (as they inevitably will) you have several people waiting in the wings that you can call on.

Income Ups and Downs are Inevitable

It’s how you handle them that will make all the difference in your business.

When you have a job, it’s easy to get complacent about your finances. Broke this week? No problem. There’s a fat paycheck coming in on Friday.

Self-employment doesn’t come with such comforts. That big project you were counting on may not materialize. A favorite client might close her business. Even worse, you may become sick and unable to work.

For a lot of reasons, your income as a self-employed person can be inconsistent (or even non-existent), and the only way to smooth out those valleys and avoid the stress that comes from cash-flow trouble is to plan ahead and stash those pennies away for a rainy day.

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