Your Online Business Can Work... Even if You Can't

Welcome back!

This was a rough week for me personally, as what started off as a minor sore throat on Tuesday had me completely bedridden by Thursday and unable to think or do any meaningful work.

Thankfully, I’m now on the tail-end of this, but am still pretty congested. Luckily, it wasn’t COVID or I might still be in bed... 😷

In today’s email I want to touch on what went right for me this week and what went wrong, and why planning and systems can make all the difference when life throws a wrench in your plans.

Since the end of February, I have been planning for a mid-March promotion of my OB Foundations Membership. I haven’t done a major promotion to bring on new members since the beginning of the year, so it was time.

Initially, I had intended to do a couple of webinars this week, but with all the changes surrounding Facebook ads (including iOS 14 updates), I wanted to leverage my audience on YouTube first. (Incidentally, I’m currently using Facebook Video View ads to build a warm audience on Facebook that I will use for my next major promotion - more on that in future posts).

I’m always a firm believer that you should leverage your free assets first, before spending money on ads. You want to validate your idea using a warm audience of fans that already know and follow you. If your offer doesn’t work on them, then chances are it won’t resonate with a cold audience that you are spending real dollars on.

So that’s what I decided to do this week. Here was the plan:

1. I always like to lead with value. I’ve loved the idea of a “challenge” launch model, but have never tried to conduct a challenge launch personally. So with this launch, I wanted to do an “impromptu” challenge model. The plan was to do a live video training on YouTube each day on Monday through Thursday, then a smaller training on Friday followed by an offer to my membership program.
2. The offer is for a quarterly membership, with a 33% discount. In other words, pay for two months and get one month free.
3. This promotion was to be sent to everyone on my email list except for current lifetime, annual and quarterly members. I wanted my monthly paying members to have the opportunity to get the best deal on their membership so it was sent to them as well.

Unfortunately, when I got sick on Tuesday, it derailed my plans. I was able to push through the training on Wednesday, but could not do the training on Thursday. And the Friday training/sales pitch was terrible because I could barely get through a sentence without coughing up a lung. My thoughts (in my mind at least) were incoherent, and I was exhausted and found myself breathless at times.

But in the end I made it through, and some sales have trickled in.

I also was able to add 22 new members to my Private Facebook Group, which is a win. I did this by taking down the trainings on YouTube and directing people to the Facebook Group to access the replays.

What really worked for me with this promotion is that I had pre-written and pre-scheduled the emails, as well as all of the sales pages BEFORE I got sick. So when I became bed-ridden, emails were going out and sales were being made.

That’s a good feeling. 😊

As I write this, there are still 2 days left in the promotion. And when you are doing launches and promotions, historically speaking, the majority of sales come on the last day or two of the launch.  🤞

Lessons Learned This Week

Although this week did not go as planned, it shows the power of online business. This was a “live launch”, meaning that I was required to show up and do the trainings this week. Had this launch been evergreen, everything would have been pre-planned and scheduled and the fact that I had gotten sick would have not made a difference.

The lesson to be learned from this is that, number one, you should strive to get your business to “evergreen” as soon as possible. But to do this you will need to make a lot of offers and run a lot of promotions. As you start to figure out what works and what doesn’t, you can put the winners on evergreen and ditch the losers.

As I write this, I realize that making an offer “evergreen” is a lot easier said than done. And in today’s new reality with Facebook ads, the days of putting in a dollar and getting back 3 are a lot harder to come by. (That’s not to say it’s impossible - I know of a lot of people that are still having a lot of success on Facebook, but you have to use the right strategy).

This (building a business that works even when you aren’t because you are sick or traveling or just feel like taking the day off) is the gold standard of online business, and something that we should all be striving for.  But it takes time and effort and lots of determination. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t going to happen fast.

You can do it.

Would you like to join OB Foundations?

OB Foundations is my monthly membership in which I share everything I’m learning (and have learned) about how to build, grow, scale and legally protect your own online business. Whether you are thinking about writing a book, creating a course, or just building your own website to get started, OB Foundations can help you.

When you sign up, you get immediate access to my LOCK it Down™ (legal) Protection System, as well as my OB Foundations Business Builder™ Framework. You will also get access to monthly coaching calls and a community of other like-minded entrepreneurs looking to change the world one person at a time.

Our normal monthly fee is $97/month, but now through tomorrow night you can join for 33% off when you sign up for the next three months. We offer a 30 day money back guarantee and you can cancel at anytime.

My Next Online Project...

I’ve made very public the fact that my family and I are moving to Portugal in July - in less than 4 months!

As part of this journey, I am starting a new “niche” website to document our process, why we are moving to Portugal, how we are getting our Visa, things to watch out for, etc. This is as much a blog to document our journey and share what we are learning as it is to keep our family updated on what we are doing overseas.

And since I love to experiment and try different things when it comes to online business, I will also be exploring various ways to monetize this new website.

This week I secured the initial domain name, and as I start to build out the website, I will share more details here. But right now it is just a namecheap parking page...

❤️ My Favorite Things

The following links may contain affiliate offers. This means that if you choose to purchase a product using one of the links below, my website will receive financial compensation. Although it won't cost you anymore to purchase through our link, it will help our blog continue to produce regular content. Thank you for your support!

🎤 Podcast - My former business coach Rick Mulready conducted an interview with Gert Mellak, who founded SEOleverage.com. This interview helped to remind me how important SEO is to our overall marketing plan.

📱 Productivity App - Coinbase. I realize I don’t talk a lot about Crypto, really at all. But I’m starting to learn more and more about it. Coinbase is a great place to start. Use this link to open an account (affiliate) and get $10 in Bitcoin when you make your first trade.

🖋 Quote of the Week

"You can decide that mediocrity is no longer acceptable for you. You can claim your greatness. You can choose to become the person you need to be to create the extraordinary life that you truly want. Your life can be filled with an abundance of energy, love, health, happiness, success, financial prosperity, and everything else that you’ve ever imagined having, doing, or being."

Hal Elrod and Robert Kiyosaki, The Miracle Morning

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