RYB 850: How To Simplify Your Business and Reduce Overwhelm (Friday Jam Session)

By Scott Voelker •  Updated: 07/03/20 •  7 min read

Welcome to this week’s edition of our Friday jam session. This is always one of the highlights of my week. I love hanging out with some awesome people and answering some great questions. You can become part of our Take Action Crew by visiting takeactioncrew.com. We get together virtually single Friday, and it’s a total blast! Today we’re going to talk about how to simplify your business and a few ways on how you can make that happen. Let’s get started! 

How to Keep Your Business Plan Simple 

In the beginning, it’s all about simplifying. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t need to be complicated. It comes down to understanding what your business looks like and where are the drivers that you need to focus your time and energy on.

Where are the things in your business that are the best use of your time? If you’re in the beginning stages, it’s easy to focus on consuming content and get lost on what your first steps should be. If you can put the blinders on and see where you’re going, then nothing will get in your way. 

Start by asking yourself where your business is going to be in twelve months from now. Make sure to set realistic expectations. What is the level of success you’d like to see? Make sure you have a detailed picture. A great tip is to reverse back to see how to get there. 

Of course, you need to start by getting your business up and running. The problem I see is as people are building up their business, they keep consuming information that isn’t focused on what they are doing right now. Avoid shiny objects and stick to your path!

Content is King

I would always start with the content. It takes 3-6 months for it to index, so you need to get that going. Pinterest will help drive traffic there, too, while you wait for the content to be indexed. 

Once you’ve figured out your long term target, work backward to get small targets done first so you can reach your long term goal. It’s all about taking it one step at a time. 

Growing Your Business 

I am adding Pinterest to all my brands moving forward. Most of the time, you’ll find that it’s a helpful platform, but always be sure to do a Pinterest audio first to make sure its worth your time. 

At the same time, you should be planning on how to get your first digital product ready to go. I wish I would have focused more on this aspect in the early stages of my businesses in the past. 

The most common questions that you should be asking yourself when you’re starting a business include: 

Implementing a digital project is a great way to move the process along a bit quicker. 

Should I Set Up a Timed Popup On My Website? 

If you add a popup to your website always give visitors a few seconds before a popup comes up. Once you set up a timed popup on the website, you want to make sure they don’t see it again for 30 days if they come back to your website. This will make sure they aren’t getting spammed with your promotions and signups. 

How Can I Transfer from Etsy to a Stand-Alone Online Store?

Don’t abandon Etsy. Instead, I would find a way on how you can grab the customer’s email address and direct them to your new website. Let Etsy work for you but have other assets in place as well. 

12 Month Plan For Your Business 

It really will just depend on your market and how much time and effort you put into it, how long it’ll take you to see substantial growth. You’ve got to be consistent and incorporate the following aspects that will help feed into each other. 

You just need to make sure you’re creating content that people are searching for and using Pinterest and your lead magnet to help grow your reach. You can build an email list pretty quickly too. 

How Many Visitors Should I Expect Coming To My Website 

If you can get 100 visitors per day within 2-3 months, that’s really great. It may depend on the season and your type of business. 

Always start with one product to give visitors and see if another one makes sense. You need to have one product before you can focus on more. It’s important to focus on doing things well, not adding a ton of products that you can’t manage. 

I recommend implementing ‘just in time learning” – what do you need to learn to get the task at hand done? This will help you stay focused on your current path.

How Long Should It Take To Complete Tasks For My Business? 

Each task is pretty easy to get done if you set aside time for it. You could have a WordPress built up in an afternoon. 

From there, you’ll move on to content creation mode. You’ll find long-tail keywords and write articles to post on your website. Then it’s time to focus on Pinterest to help drive traffic to your blog. Then you’ll implement an email list and your lead magnet. Each step will be a little different but could be done a week at a time. Just make sure to prioritize content creation first.

Once you start to actually do stuff, you’ll be able to look at the data to see what works well and what you should improve on. A lot of times, you’ll learn by doing something and taking action. When you notice that something is working, always do more of that! 

Thanks For Being Here!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Friday Jam session. To join us next week, head over to takeactioncrew.com to sign up. We’re here every week at 10 am Eastern time and would love to have you here!

Thanks For Tuning in!

“Remember, I'm here for you, I believe in you, and I'm rooting for you! Now it's time for you to take action and go rock your brand”! 

Take-Aways From Today’s Episodes

  1. How to Keep Your Business Plan Simple (2:00)
  2. Growing Your Business (15:03)
  3. 12 Month Plan For Your Business (22:15)

Quote: 

“Just In Time Learning – what do you need to learn to get the task at hand done? This will help you stay focused on your current path”. 

00:01 Guess what time it is Friday jams way. Hey, Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome to the rock, your brand podcast. I'm your host, Scott Voelker a serial entrepreneur on a mission

00:12 To help you. This show is designed to teach you to inspire you, to motivate you, to take massive action and build a future proof business. So whether you're just starting out or taking your existing business to the next level, this is your home. Now, if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's rock your brand. What's up.

00:37 Hi, everyone. Welcome to this Friday jam session. Super excited. You're here. And if you haven't heard me say it before, I'm going to say it right now. This is probably one of the highlights of my week because I get to hang out with some cool people every single Friday and answer some really awesome questions. Now you might be asking Scott, how do I get my question answered? Well, all you need to do is become part of our take action crew. How do you do that? Very easy head on over to take action crew.com. It's totally free. And we do it every single Friday and it is a blast. So what you're about to listen to is one that we did last week. So this way here, even if you can't attend, you can always show up here to the rock, your brand podcast, and listen to our live jam session.

01:25 All right, guys. So sit back, relax and let's jam. All right, guys. Welcome back to another jam session, man. I am excited because today we are going to be diving into a topic that was discussed in one of our past coffee talks and it was Scott. How do I simplify my business? I feel like I'm going in a hundred directions. I feel like I'm busy, but I don't know if I'm really productive. How do I simplify my business? And the one thing that I want to be very clear here is that as your business grows, it can become more complex or in the beginning, it's not even complex. It's just what business model, what market, what niche, what sub niche, you know, am I doing all the right things? Uh, is my content good enough? Like you have all of that stuff that kind of gets in the way.

02:16 So you're really complicating the process when in the beginning, it's really about simplifying that process. So no matter if you're listening to this and you're like, you know what, I'm just starting and I'm just overwhelmed. And I'm thinking that I got to do a hundred different things. You don't okay. You do not. If you are listening to this or watching this and you're like, well, Scott, I just feel like my business is growing. Um, I was at six figures now I'm at seven figures and now I feel like my business is even more complex. And now I feel busier than ever and more overwhelmed than ever. How do I simplify this? So I think either side, either place of where you're at, it does come down to really understanding what your business looks like and where are the drivers? Okay. Where are the things in your business or in the start of your business?

03:08 That is the best use of your time. Right? We can sit here and be busy every single minute of the day. Right? We can go, Oh, I'm gonna work on that. I'm gonna work on that. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. But does it really, really move the needle or does it really push you closer to where you want to go? Right. The one thing I would say is if you're in the beginning stages, okay, you can get into that overwhelm of consuming content and not knowing because you're consuming so much content. You don't know what is the right thing to do. Right. And that's partly why I decided to create this, the playbook. All right. If you're listening to this, you can't see it. I'm holding it up once again. Okay. Um, and the reason why I did that is because if you can just put the blinders on and look and see exactly where you're going, then nothing else is going to get in your way.

04:03 So number one, you got to get rid of distractions and you got to get very, very focused. Okay. And to simplify, then all we're doing is we're looking at the big picture then we're looking at. And so let me just kind of back up. If we're going to look at this at your business, where is your business in 12 months from now? Right now. Where is your business? In 12 months. Okay. If you could just fast forward right now, where is your business in 12 months. And don't tell me you have a business now that's profiting seven figures. Like, you know, we all know that your expectations aren't real then. Right. So we can, we gotta set real expectations. Okay. So what is, what is the level of success you would like to see in 12 months in your business? What does the traffic look like?

04:50 What does your email list look like? Do you have a digital product of your own? Do you have physical products? Do you have affiliate sales coming in? What does your business look like? You need to have that picture. Okay. So that's the 12 month, right? So you're like, okay, that's 12 months. How do I get there? Let's reverse back. Let's go. Okay. Well, the first thing that I need to do is I need to get my website up and running. So that's like project number one, target number one. Okay. Big target little targets. Okay. So all we're doing is we're reversing back. The problem I see people making is as they're building, okay. They start to still consume a lot of information that might not be really focused on what they're doing right now. It's something off to the side and then they get distracted and get off course.

05:42 It's kind of like, you're going down the road and you're like, all right, I know I gotta go that way. And there's a couple of bumps in the road and you're getting over them and you might have to make a little bit of a left turn. And then you got to come back over and go on the right. And so you're going right then you're driving. You're like, you know that road over there. I know it doesn't go that way. But man, if I go down that way, I might might be able to fly to the next desk part of my destination, you know, is it worth it? It could be. But really, you know, if you stay on the road, you're going to get to your destination. We know it. Right. So you can't get off track. That's why it's so important that you commit to the process and to your target.

06:25 Okay. And do not get distracted with shiny objects. So the reason why people get overwhelmed or they get confused or they're not getting any progress is because they're jumping all over the place. Right. So in order to simplify, it's really about figuring out what it looks like. So I'll give you an example. If I'm starting from scratch right now. Okay. I'm going to be saying, okay, number one, I got to find the market. I'm going to spend some time finding the market. Once I find the market, then I'm like, okay, I got to build a website. Cause I want to start getting traffic from Google in the next 12 months. And what does that look like in the next 12 months? I would like to get anywhere from maybe 30,000 to 50,000 visitors per month. That's the goal. That's what I would like to do.

07:10 Okay. So that's a, that's a traffic target. I want to build an email list. I want to have an email list of 10,000 people in 12 months. Okay. And I know that that's going to help me. I also want to, as I'm building up that content, I want to start getting traffic from Pinterest. That's another chunk, right? That's another piece. Okay. So I have three pieces there. A fourth piece would be like, okay, the other thing I want to do to kind of shortcut this and maybe get to revenue quicker is I want to build a digital product. And that could be just an ebook or a lead magnet that leads to an ebook. It could be templates. It could be downloads. It could be anything. Right. But those are the four things that I want to focus on. Right. And so everything that I'm doing is going to be driving towards those things.

07:55 I'm I, am I focusing a little bit on Pinterest? Am I focusing on building the email list? Am I focusing on putting out great content and getting it indexed? Yes. Am I going to be messaging my email list on a regular basis? Yes. So it really looks like content creation, right? Finding content, building content, creating content, right. Taking my email list, letting them know about the content, communicating with them, building a relationship with them, letting them know who we are and what we stand for, or you know what we're doing, right. Pinterest is going to start building that channel to drive traffic back over to our website, our home base, and then eventually build a digital product that I can offer my email list. And I can also put on my website and I can also create pins on Pinterest that can drive over to a lead magnet that would lead people to my digital product.

08:42 And then by that time, maybe I've got traffic coming in from my website and I'm starting to get affiliate sales. I might be turning on egoic ads or media vine ads or ad thrive. And I'm going to start generating ad revenue. Okay. That's the picture right? 12 months. And that's all I'm doing, right? I'm not worried about chatbots. I'm not worrying about LinkedIn. I'm not worrying about any of the other shiny objects right now. YouTube could be a play in there, but right now the immediate thing for me, it's not because to me, it's a little bit harder unless I am going to be the one creating the videos. If I'm not, then I can't do that. Right. So, uh, so I'm not going to make that a piece of it. Now I may add that in because that will then add to the content side of the business.

09:28 Right. And it will potentially drive traffic. Right. But a faster way of doing it. It's Pinterest to me right now. And then my content is going to be getting indexed in the next three to six months. Right. So that's how I look at that. Now, if you're already up and running like a Thailand, by the way, already had a website, she didn't really have an email list, but she had a website. It was getting like a hundred a month and she's, I just, I want to get more traffic. I know I need to, I need to build my email list and I need to do Pinterest. Right. And I think she's also got some Instagram stuff. So all she focused on was building your email list day one. Cause she already had a business. She knew if she got the email list, she could get in front of her audience quicker.

10:11 But she's also building content on the side that now she's up to like 2,500 visitors per month coming to the website, 10,000 email subscribers, which automatically raised everything up sales, um, followers, uh, people on Facebook, um, just all of that stuff. She has a Facebook group now, uh, in the DIY space and about 1800 people, 1500 people, something like that. And they're all building these projects, which also leads to her products. Um, so all of that stuff, right. But she focused on her business was already up and running, but now she wanted to add these other components. So she's not jumping all over the place. She's like email list, number one for her because she knew that she could get immediate results. Right. Still building the assets on the back end, right. With the content. Right. Um, doing very little on YouTube, but a little bit but more on Pinterest and the Pinterest side of things.

11:02 I think she said, she's getting about 4,000 clicks to our website from just Pinterest. Right. So that's what she's been doing. And we've been able to follow this process with her inside a brand creators Academy. Okay. So again, that is my long winded answer to the question. How do you simplify? Well, number one, you got to get dialed in and you got to get focused on what you're doing and stop jumping all over the place. That's number one. And number two, figure out your targets. What's your year target and then work back. What is your 60 day? What is your 30 day? And then work back from there and say, okay, what are my tasks going to be this week? And what is my one or two targets this week? And then I'm going to aim for those and I'm going to get those done in the next week.

11:46 I'm going to do it again. And I'm going to keep reevaluating, but I'm only going to be focusing on those pieces. That's it. All right. So hopefully that made sense. Let's see. What do we got for some questions here? Some live questions. All right, here we go. Uh, uh, K yeah. Kay's one of our members as well. Good morning. She can't wait to listen to our BCA members on the podcast. Yeah. And I'm going to try to do more of that by the way, um, people that are in, uh, the Academy, I'm definitely gonna be highlighting more. Uh, Karen says, I sent you an email, Scott. It contains my lead magnet. Thank you page with an upsell. Yeah. And we're going to be breaking down. That's again, another thing that we do inside of brand creators Academy, like I said, is we do these reviews or these audits on the websites or a funnel.

12:31 And in this case, um, this is Karen's and I may even do Karen's here on a coffee talk, why you might ask, well, because number one, I want to, I want to help her and I want to help everyone else that can listen in. And normally we would do that inside of just brand creators Academy. But why not share it here and show you guys another example of what we do inside of BCA? Why? Well, because maybe you want to join on July 6th when we opened. Right. So I might do that one. I do have a website review that we're going to do on Monday as well. Um, this coming Monday. So depending on when you're watching this or listening to this, we're going to do a full website review of, um, of someone's website. And this way here, you can see how I go through it, how I point out things that can be tweaked or improved or things that are great.

13:19 Um, and I'm going to be able to share that with you. And that's another thing that we do inside the academies. We do what we call a website Wednesdays, and we don't do it every Wednesday. We usually do one a month and we'll have everyone submit their website that wants to review, and then we'll sit down and we'll review them in front of everyone. And they're very, very helpful. Um, okay. So, uh, let's see here. Okay. So Derek says, what do you think about blocking content until they sign in with an email? Uh, I don't necessarily, I know that model, uh, and what Derek's talking about is this, um, I could have people sign up with their email address to basically get access to a piece of content. And then every time I post a new piece of content, I could make it. So they'd have to log in.

14:07 Um, I don't like that a hundred percent because it's another barrier for them. Then sometimes they can't remember their password. They gotta do forgot password, all that stuff. If you're on a paid level, different story. Right. Cause now it's a paid wall. Um, but not for free. I don't like that. I think once they're on my email list, I wanna be able to communicate with them and I don't want to frustrate them getting in. Um, so I don't like that as much as just once you get them on your list, you, um, you just give it to them. Uh, let's see here. Uh, yeah, Justin says, if you are overwhelmed, you will just give up exactly. That's why we have to simplify, simplify what we're doing. And I literally just broke down in that little, that little rant there that I did on how I would build another business from scratch.

14:54 The only thing that I'm adding in there right now. Um, and I've always done this in the past, but I'm adding it now kind of into our there's two things that I'm adding into, how we build a brand moving forward. Okay. Um, the one thing I'm adding is Pinterest. So most of the time, unless I do the validation through the Pinterest validation process, and I see that there's not much of a market there for us, then I just won't use it. But most of the time, I think you're going to find that and it's growing. Um, but that's one thing I'm always going to be adding now pretty quickly, as far as in the beginning of starting this, it's going to be build a website, add a Pinterest account, start driving pin traffic or pins from the Pinterest over to our website. And then also on our website, we would then point them over to Pinterest.

15:40 So that's what we do there. And the other thing that I would add in now pretty quickly as we're building our content for our brand is I would start to plan out my first digital product. And that would be a book, a guide, um, of some kind of something like the playbook right here. Um, so again, um, that's what I would add. So, you know, I'm building traffic. I mean, basically what we're looking at here guys is how do I get traffic? Okay. What are some simple ways to get traffic? What can I focus on? And then how can I turn that into revenue? And generally I'm looking at eight to 12 months before I start to see revenue and that's okay. Um, but if I can speed that up a little bit okay. By using a digital product, uh, then I would do that.

16:24 So that's why that's becoming part of this. And actually we're incorporating that now inside a brand creators Academy, we have a training we're going to be doing here probably in the next month. Um, so pretty, uh, pretty cool stuff. Uh, let's see. Oh, Debbie. Um, hi Scott, how much is BCA? BCA is a $99 a month or you can do a year for, I believe it's nine 97. Um, so you can save basically get two months free again, right now we're not open, we're open on July 6th. Um, but just to kind of throw it out there, guys, um, you know, that is, that is the, uh, the investment, um, for being part of that. Um, I will say this too, uh, we're giving away also recordings from a brand accelerator live, which was our two day two and a half day live event and all the recordings with all the speakers and everything is there.

17:15 Um, that is also offered, um, as a little bonus inside a brand creators Academy. Um, and that's over, that's a $300, uh, cause the recordings are $300 right now. Uh, let's see here. Um, okay. So Salomon says how much, how much time should you give yourself for each step? Like website opt-in creation, et cetera? Um, well again, I look at these as little mini projects. So to build the website is easy. Um, as far as like getting it set up and getting WordPress installed, like you could literally that done this afternoon. So the first thing we got to do is we've got to build that. Okay. And then from there we've got to develop our first piece of content. So then you almost immediately move into content creation mode. Um, and that looks like finding keywords long tail keywords, and then either writing the articles yourself or having someone write them for you.

18:10 Once you do that, then we talk about, should we build an email list first or should we do Pinterest next? I would probably say Pinterest. Then we do Pinterest, right? We set that all up and get that stuff going. Then we drive traffic over to our blog. Then maybe the email list comes in and then we talk about, okay, what's a good lead magnet. Do we do a contest? Do we do an actual digital, uh, uh, lead magnet? What does that look like? Well, maybe we're going to build one. It's going to take maybe a week to build one. So each step is going to be a little bit different, but I think every single step can be done a week at a time. Um, so anyway, that's my answer to that. Um, Mike, uh, in 12 months, I'd like to have steady traffic to my webpage, some free and paid digital content and an engaged YouTube audience.

18:58 I think that's totally possible Mike, but it is going to take consistency and just showing up. And then also, I mean, obviously you're going to be tweaking things along the way. You're going to see a piece of content that did well and then you're going to do more of that. Right? The other thing is guys, once you start to actually do stuff, you're going to be able to look at the data and go, Oh, that did good. We're going to do that again. And it works really well when you see like in Pinterest, something does, well, you do more of that, right? If you see a blog post starts to get some traffic do more of that, right? If you see that an email that you wrote had a really good open rate on a subject line, do more of that. Right? So a lot of times we learn by actually doing and that will almost tell you what are the next moves?

19:46 Uh, yeah. FOMO, fear of missing out is a real distraction. Yeah. Octavio, this is true. But I think, you know, now since being in BCA, there's only a handful of things that you need to be focusing on. And if you keep focusing on these things that we're doing right now, you're going to be much better than saying like, Oh, I wish I was doing that because everyone else is doing that. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't think that that's a problem for you. Um, stay, stay, stay with us and you're going to be just fine. Um, Derek, the shiny objects were, we already purchased get shelved, but then you mind your mind drifts back to how to integrate it into what I am working on, but it turns out to be just a distraction again. Exactly. So learn from that. If that happened to you, then go, Oh, when I started thinking about that, don't do it distraction.

20:32 Right. Or does that thing help me in these four areas? If it does great. If it doesn't forget it. Okay. It's discipline. A lot of it has to do with discipline. At what point would you start a membership? It depends. Um, I would say not right out of the gate. Right. I think you got to build an audience. If you're going to do a membership, you got to have an audience, right. You have to have an audience of some kind. You have to have people that are willing to pay monthly for something. Um, I've ran, uh, three memberships. Um, and I ran one that was in the digital photography space and I ran that for almost seven years and I didn't start that until about two years after I had already, you know, kind of started building that audience. I launched a, a full, a digital course, uh, digital eBooks, um, all of that stuff before I ever thought about doing a membership.

21:27 I don't think it's a great idea right out of the gate, uh, Camilla, uh, Scott, I know you have already said that you recommend WordPress, but I haven't ever heard you talk about Squarespace. Have you used it and would you recommend it? I have not used it, but I've heard decent things about it. The problem is, is everything we do is on WordPress. That's all I've ever used. So, um, I also see WordPress as being your own thing that I can take anywhere I want. I can pull it down from a host and put it up on another host. I'm not quite sure on Squarespace that you can do that. You might be able to pull your content. I'm just not sure how well it would be received on another platform. Uh, let's see here.

22:08 Uh, what is, uh, what are realistic goals to set like visitors and subscribers in 12 months? Well, I mean, subscribers on an email list, depending on how you build it. I mean, you can build an email list of 10,000 people in a month. Um, we've done it. Um, actually we were just shy that we were 9,332 subscribers. Uh, and we built that in a brand new market. We actually showed the entire process inside BCA and other little shameless plug. Um, and we actually, we actually shared the brainstorming session with our members, deciding what lead magnet we were going to use for our giveaway. Um, and that's all in there, but realistic goal like visitors, um, visitors to your website, I would say to get a hundred visitors per day is probably looking at around two to three months. Um, and then from there it will start to grow, but then you're also going to see, it might flatline a little bit or the season it's going to dip a little bit.

23:01 Um, but I would say I would shoot for a hundred visitors on anything per day on Pinterest. We can probably do that in about 30 to 60 days, maybe even a little bit sooner. Um, but visitors in 12 months on the website, I would say I'm hoping for between 30,000 and 50,000 is about what I'm looking for. Do you recommend offering one product only for 12 months? Uh, again, I mean, Salma, it just is going to depend again, this is another problem where people, they try to plan way too far down the line, start with one, right. Start with the one product and then see if another one makes sense. I'll give you an example. Like we didn't think about doing Pinterest training. When we first opened brand creators Academy, we started seeing that there was a need for it. There was also something that we were using.

23:54 So then it became a product now. Right. So it didn't, we didn't set out to say we got to have two extra products and we need to have this. It just happens as you build, but you got to build right. We got to build in order to see what is next. Um, if you don't have one product yet, then don't worry about that. You got to build a product then. Right. Um, why did you decide to offer one product and open four times a year? Are you planning to incorporate more in the future? No, we're gonna probably stick to only four times, um, opens. We may have some little secret opens. Um, you know, for an example, if you joined the Pinterest traffic workshop, we actually opened it up to them, uh, two weeks before, like right now, before, um, we, uh, we actually are opening July 6th, so we give them a little bit of a behind the scenes access if they want to.

24:46 Um, and that's just another way to give them a little bit more than someone that hasn't actually purchased something. Right. Um, it also just makes my job a lot easier. I only have to worry about four launches per year to open this thing up after that, I can focus all on that. The other thing I can do, and this is why we did the Pinterest traffic workshop. I can pull one of the trainings that we do inside of BCA, and I can open it up to the public or maybe, uh, you know, maybe a week and I can offer it for, I don't know, 150 200 bucks. And then from there, those people could then be interested in joining BCA. You see? But I didn't start that way. Um, but the reason we did that is because we wanted to only focus on four opens a year, geo what's up, man.

25:32 Scott, should I have my lead magnet popup on my site within one second? Or should I wait longer before showing the popup? What's the best practice? Yeah. We talked about this actually on one of our BCA calls here this last Wednesday. Um, yes, you want to, uh, I would give it five seconds. Um, and what geo is talking about is as you go on the website, if you're using hello bar or convert kit, you can set that to be a timed pop up. So the popup will come on after someone's been on the site for about five seconds. The important thing here is, is once that happens, you want to set it so they don't see it again for 30 days this way here. No, one's getting annoyed every time they come back to your site, they see the same pop up the same popup.

26:12 We don't want that. Right. So, um, you, you definitely want to, um, you want to make sure that you, um, that you don't have it set to immediately hit someone in the face. Uh, tomorrow morning, I was just wondering what my target would be for email subscribers. So SA so thanks for that goal equals 10,000. Yeah, I think that's a good, I think that's a good goal. I do. Um, let's see. K, the 12 month plan you described for Thailand is my plan, but I have another layer to my business, Amazon. So it makes it challenging to balance the two, but doable building my base website and managing Amazon. But I have been able to grow my traffic on my website via content building and increasing affiliate sales. Um, yes, well actually, Kay. Um, Tai Linda actually has the Amazon piece as well. She also has Etsy.

27:05 She has eBay, I think eBay. Um, Oh, she has a Wayfair. So she has other layers there too. And yes, she is focusing on those, but those are kind of like almost they're running themselves in a sense. There's not a lot that she's going to do their extra. Um, so what she's doing is she's just focusing on the other things that she can control. Um, so there is still a layer there for her. Uh, Karen says BCA is worth every penny. Thank you, Karen. I appreciate that. Uh, I appreciate that a lot. Helene, another one of our BCA members, what's up Helene actually, Helene, your hot seat is going to be airing next. It's next? Uh, Wednesday, I think inside of BCA either next Wednesday or the following, don't hold me to that a morning. Yes. Setting goals is important. My issue is that I don't know what numbers are realistic, six months, 12 months, et cetera.

27:58 What numbers should we be hitting on Google analytics? Uh, and when do these numbers trigger using ads? Where should my traffic, uh, be to release digital product? When is a realistic timeline to expect a thousand a month, 2000 a month, 5,000 a month in revenue, that's all going to depend, but I know your market and your market. We identified in the hot seat, Helene someone or two people that are already doing, um, the digital product, the, um, the, the lead magnet to, and also they're getting a lot of traffic. So I would say you can probably, if you were to build a small little digital guide or something, the ultimate guide to ex, um, you can drive traffic to that immediately. So there's nothing, there's nothing holding you back from that. Um, just the knowhow. Um, and we're going to be covering that in BCA, by the way, we're going to actually show you that whole process and how to build it and how to run ads to it.

28:55 Um, but I mean to get to a thousand dollars a month, shouldn't be that hard in your market. I know your market as far as traffic goes and converting that that could take 12 months. Um, but I think it's unlimited. I mean, to get to 2000 or even 5,000 in revenue, shouldn't be that hard. As long as we create the content that people are searching for, you know what I mean? They're right. Searching for. And then from there we do that consistently. We build the email list, drive email visitors over there. We have Pinterest. That's also bringing attention over to these posts and we create a digital product that we can have a lead magnet, a free lead magnet that leads to a digital product that can start bringing some cash in the door immediately, which will also help you grow your email list a lot faster because I mean, Thailand has said this, she built her email list of 10,000 people.

29:46 And from the influx of sales, just from running that she paid for her 10,000 subscribers. So she got those 10,000 subscribers for free. So now all she has to do is send messages to them. Anything she gets in from there is gravy, right? So that's the power of the email list, but I don't think there's a hard set number. I just think that it's gotta be consistent. You have to build these components, but you gotta be doing all of these things together, combined and have them feed each other. Um, and those are like, I guess they're like four, right? It's like content, email list, Pinterest digital product. Uh, let's see, Derek, what do you think about tool element or for creating web pages and WordPress? I keep hearing about it, but don't want to be distracted. Well, it's funny that you say that because the little funnel that we're building on the back end behind the scenes for brand creators Academy, uh, Chris is using Elementor as, uh, the tool to show people how to build some basic funnel pages.

30:46 Um, and the reason why we're doing that is because if you don't have convert kit and you can't use their landing page builder, which they're also going to have a digital product, um, a function inside of a convert kit soon, but Ella mentor will allow you to build these pages pretty easily. Um, so I wouldn't get distracted with it. I would have it be, if you're looking to build a landing page and you want to, you need to build your landing page and you're not using like convert kit and their pages, then that's something that you would focus on learning how to build using Elementor. It's okay to do that then. Right. Just in time learning, what do you need to learn right now in order to get the task done, period. But we are going to be showing Elementor inside of a BCA here.

31:30 Um, soon. At what point should you offer affiliate products? Um, well, I don't like offering affiliate products right out of the gate until I start to get seasoned inside of Google. So I'd say about three months is where I would start to then layer in some affiliate products. Then also I would start to strategically build some posts that are around affiliate products, right? Maybe the five best fishing doors to catch more bass. And then I would send an email to my list about that post and that will help to generate some sales from that post. What are discounts and bonuses for con convert kit? Um, well, um, as far as if you purchase convert kit, they have a 30 day free trial. Um, Chris and I are giving away a bonus. We're actually going to be, uh, creating, uh, a bigger bonus with some more swipe file and copy and stuff like that.

32:21 Um, but, um, they do have a free version and, uh, if you go through our link, we'll give you a little bonus as well. Um, so if you go to brand creators.com forward slash convert kit, and you go through our link you'll, you can sign up for the free account and then just send us an emailScott@brandcreators.com. I'll send you that little, that little package, that little bundle, and then, um, we'll give you that. Um, so it's just, it's a really good system. I've used a lot. Uh, Justin, this is how I simplify my process. Their strategy is straightforward. In fact, you don't even need to do the 60 steps. I've condensed it into four steps. I find underserved topics published lots of new content, substantially update, old content, do internal linking as you create new content. I love it simple. Right? Justin simple. Break it down.

33:11 It doesn't have to be 60 steps, right. Uh, okay, let's go here. Um, let's see. Oh, Mike, I've used, I've used it. You can get more in detailed customization, but you don't really need it to start up. Definitely can be distract distraction if you get lost in trying to make it fancy, uh, maybe after your page is getting more traffic and you want to make it look cool. You can definitely use it to upgrade your page. Oh, I think he's talking about Elementor. Yeah. Uh, GL, uh, when do you show the popup lead magnet to visitors to your website? Do you okay that way? We already answered that question. Uh, okay. Uh, Salma, have you used Shopify it's? Uh, is it not better for physical products? No. We've used Shopify. We have actually Shopify on one of our brands and, um, it works fine. Um, it's more of a shopping cart.

33:58 We don't use the blog feature. We just use it as a shopping cart. Um, okay. Mike says, I simplify by writing about a topic, making it into a video, using it as a video script, creating a pin, using the pin as my YouTube cover and sharing all to all medias. Perfect. There's the process broken down, chopped it up. Boom, done. Uh, okay. Um, Geosys sorry for the repeat question. I got booted earlier. No problem. Okay. Um, okay. This is a good question. What's the best way to transition from Etsy to my own standalone. I'm in the top 1% on Etsy, but a standalone scares me. Well, I wouldn't abandon Etsy. Okay. Etsy is a great platform. Don't abandon it, but figure out a way that you can grab the customer, which I think in Etsy, you get their email address. Um, but find a way that with, with, with whatever you're selling there on Etsy, that you have a way of someone going to a landing page to enter their name and email address, to get something else, whether that's a coupon, whether that's a, maybe a PDF digital download, something like that.

35:03 And then you can capture their email address. But I wouldn't like a lot of people want to abandon like Etsy or eBay or Amazon. Don't abandon them, like, let them work for you, but just have these other assets in place. So that way they're, you're not dependent on them. Right. So, um, I wouldn't say get out of selling on Etsy. I would, you know, keep selling on that to use their platform. Why not? Um, it's a great platform. Um, so no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't jump ship on them. All right. Well, I hope that you enjoyed that Friday jam session. And I said in the beginning, if you want to attend one of our live Friday jam sessions, all you need to do is head on over to take action crew.com. That is where we show up every Friday, 10:00 AM, Eastern time, and you can join us.

35:52 You can ask a question and then, uh, I can answer it and we can go ahead and also publish it here on the podcast. So once again, I just want to say, thank you so much for listening. This is always one of the highlights of my week. And until next time, remember, I'm here for you. I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have to, you have to come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it. Proud. Take action. Have an awesome, amazing day. And I'll see you right back here on the next episode. Now go rock your brand.

Scott Voelker

Over the years I’ve helped thousands of people TAKE ACTION to UNLOCK their true potential on building their ultimate freedom business, by developing the skills to make them resilient, confident and FUTURE PROOF. I’ve clocked my 10,000 hours over the years working in the trenches myself and helping others build and grow their brands. I know the power in TAKING ACTION better than anyone and I’ve seen people lives changed as a result of it...including my OWN!