Now that we have the mindset stuff out of the way let’s get to work!
So let’s review what you will putting into place the rest of these six weeks:
- The formula for an Info Product Business
- The products to sell to make an Income
- The emails to write to build trust
- Where to get the traffic to get sales
The idea is that if you have those four things in place, you have a real business
You don’t need anything else.
You don’t need special software (software can help you do some things better, but you generally don’t NEED it to do this kind of business)
You don’t need any gimmicks, tricks, or anything else.
You need:
A place to find people who need what you teach
The products to sell that the people you teach will exchange their hard-earned money for your training
The emails to write to build trust so that people trust you and WANT you to teach them and they WANT to pay you to teach them.
That’s it.
People, Emails, Products (or training, coaching, etc.)
That’s it.
Everything else is window dressing.
If you don’t have the people, you don’t have a business.
If you don’t write the emails – not just fluff, but the right things to the right people – you don’t have a business.
If you don’t have anything to “sell” them (aka: something they WANT to give you their money for) – you don’t have a business.
You have to have all 3.
If you master 1, you have nothing.
If you master 2, you have nothing.
If you are a PhD in studying the internet and know more about SEO, likability, Facebook Ads, traffic generation, writing sales copy, or anything else you know more about than I do . . .but if you don’t have people, emails, and products . . .
you have nothing.
So let’s talk about the formula first.
To make any money at all, you have to create training, coaching, or products that people WANT to exchange their hard-earned money for.
You can’t just create stuff and HOPE that people might want it.
You have to create what will change lives AND convince them to exchange their money with you, in exchange for YOUR training.
Think about it, YOU don’t willy-nilly make payments for products you don’t want or need, do you?
Then why should any of your prospective clients?
They shouldn’t!
So what has to happen for people to WANT to exchange their money for your training?
Three things:
1) You must be talking with people who need and want what you help with.
If you teach married people how to communicate with each other, you aren’t going to write a book about gardening and try to get gardeners to believe in your marriage training.
No, you are going to write a book (or record a product or create a coaching program) for people who want to communicate with each other better.
2) You must build trust so that they trust you to give them what you say you will.
And they way you do that is with the words you write (or say).
And if you don’t know how to write words that inspire trust, you have to learn. I will teach you.
But it’s important that you recognize that if you don’t know how . . . you can’t communicate such that others will want to give you their money.
They must trust you, and if you don’t know how to write in a manner that inspires trust, you must learn
3) You must create products (or coaching or training) that people WANT to buy.
Now, I am going to be direct for a moment.
You are here for one of two reasons:
Either you know how to do all three of those things but you aren’t doing them.
Or you don’t know how to do all three of those things so you aren’t doing them.
I am going to assume that you don’t know how to do them, and if you think you know how to do them, you may be doing them wrong and that’s why they aren’t working.
Look, that might seem arrogant or something, but it’s not.
You enrolled in this course so that you could get results. But for some reason the way you have been doing it hasn’t been working, so I am going to start from scratch on all three things.
Now, I know that I could have jumped from that list and just started teaching, but I know from experience that sometimes people think they know how to do something because they have learned it one way from somebody else.
And then they skip over that part of the lessons.
And then they don’t get results.
And the reason is that they didn’t learn all the parts the way that they work best together.
I don’t want that to happen to you.
I want you to learn all the parts, and I want you to understand WHY you need to study all the parts.
That leads to the way the next six weeks are going to be structured.
By the end of the six weeks you will be able:
- to write emails comfortably, day in, day out
- to write sales letters that get results, day in, day out
- to create products that people want to buy, day in, day out
- to find prospects who want to join your list and follow you
Now, that is a lot to accomplish in six weeks.
But without all those components, you have nothing.
And you’d rather do this in six weeks rather than one year, right?
So that means that it’s going to be fast-paced, super-charged, and hard work.
The way I am going to lay it out is that each day I will teach you or give you an exercise that through the doing of it, you will lay one more brick so to speak on the foundation and the walls of your business.
Let’s say there are 20 steps to creating a product.
Day by day I will give you each of those steps.
And say there are 40 steps to writing persuasive, compelling copy.
Day by day I will give you each of those steps.
And EVERYTHING is sequential.
If you skip ahead because you feel you are falling behind, it won’t work.
It’s like trying to learn calculus before you learn to count.
Now, in a perfect world, each lesson would take 60-90 minutes.
Just long enough to be challenging, and short enough that it’s easy to do.
But real life isn’t perfect.
Building a $50k business is going to take more than 60-90 minutes per day.
And this program is going to simulate real life.
It’s going to simulate the way I run my own business.
And that means some days will feel impossible.
Some days will take two or three days.
Some days you will be able to do two or three days’ worth of work.
So there is no getting behind . . .it just might take you longer if it takes you longer to do each step.
But I can’t just exclude a step because it might take you too long to be comfortable.
Maybe that’s one of the things that’s happened to you before, you weren’t given all the steps because they might take too long for your comfort.
So you skip them and you . . . fail.
Much of the lesson material will be exercises – things for YOU to DO.
Some of the lesson material will be watching or listening to pre-recorded audio or video lessons I have already made.
If I have taught a great lesson on a particular topic, there is just no reason for me to re-teach it live just because that would feel better.
Right there – That’s a lesson I want YOU to learn for YOUR business – you only ever have to teach any one thing ONCE.
Once you’ve taught something, all future clients learn that thing through your previous teaching, not you re-teaching it all over again.
So where I’ve already taught on something, I may give you the link to watch or listen to it.
Please don’t skip these because you think you know it, or it takes too much time.
Time is part of the process.
When I was learning this business, I spent a lot of time studying.
I still spend time studying, learning new things.
And I’ve been doing this for years . . .
So bear with me and trust me that what I ask you to listen to IS important.
So . . the ideal lesson will include one to-do component from each category . . .
and you need to do all the to-dos before moving to the next day.
Let’s go over the model now
In order to make money, lets say as an example, $50k a year, people have to exchange $50k with you in exchange for your training.
Now, you probably aren’t going to make one $50k sale per year, it’s probably going to be something like 500 people giving you $100
or 250 people giving you $200 or 10,000 people giving you $5
or 300 people per month giving you $14.50 a month or 100 people a month giving you $40.
Now, before I tell you there is an exact perfect price point and everyone in the world should be selling at that price, there is none.
There is no perfect price point.
Now, depending on your niche area, somewhere between $97 and $500 is probably about right for good, solid training.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a $37 product.
Or a $1,000 product.
But in all reality, right now, it doesn’t matter.
Because whether you sell your product for $37 or $97 or $500 or $1000 the steps to creating it are EXACTLY the same.
So we are going to focus on creating an amazing product first, and over time, you can decide what price feels best, sells best, and so on.
But perhaps you need something to hold onto in your mind for your personal formula.
So you can make a temporary decision, like a working decision.
The way to think about this is like this:
$50k a year is $1000 a week.
Which of these price models feels best to you:
10 people investing at $50 each week and 35 people making a $15 membership payment each week
or 8 people investing at $50 each week and 3 people investing at $200 each week
or you can look at it from a monthly perspective . . . $50k a year is about $4,166 a month
so does that look like 40 people investing at $50 (this can be 40 coaching clients at $50 a month OR 40 people buying a $50 training or a combination)
and 140 people paying $15 a month for access to a membership
Or does that look like 12 people buying at $200 and 40 people buying at $50
So you can see that the key is not the exact pricing, or exactly how many you sell, but the total of what is sold has to add up to $4,166 a month, or $1,000 a week.
But in any case, you have to learn to create real products.
Over the course of the next six weeks, I will teach you
Next, is people.
You have to be able to communicate with folks in a way that both leads them to believe you are trustworthy and that they trust you.
And you have to be able to write in such a way that they see you as knowledgeable
Would YOU have enrolled in this program if you didn’t think I knew more about it than you do?
And you have to be able to write in such a way that people will WANT to read what you read.
And speaking goes right along with that . . . when you learn the words and the word patterns . . . speaking is the same as writing.
So I will teach you how to write.
And finally, you have to be able to go to places online where people need what you have, and invite them to come to your website and start their journey with you.
I will teach you how to do that as well.
So now that we have covered the model and what I am going to teach you . . .
Let’s talk about the format.
The plan is to give you one element from each component each day:
- Product Creation
- Writing
- Finding people who need what you have
plus there will be a few one-time things that you’ll need to do
Now, I know from experience that it’s easy to think, oh, I like the writing lessons, I am going to skip ahead and do them all.
And then in three weeks, you are a good writer, but you are scrambling to create your product.
Or you create your product, but don’t learn to write.
And if you do that, then you won’t have a balanced business in six weeks, and that means you will have no business.
I say all of this to make it very clear what needs to happen in order for your goals to become achieved!
So now that you know the parts to a $50k business:
Product, coaching, and or membership sales that add up to $1,000 per week
The writing that leads to people trusting you and WANTING to buy your products, coaching, and or membership access
The prospects who need and want what you teach so that you can write to them in such a way they want to buy, and then they buy and that’s where you take in $1,000 a week which adds up to $50k a year.
The smart asses among you may say that works out at $52k a year…well, I have been kind to you and built in a two-week vacation, which I’m sure you will want!
In all seriousness, I really hope you are beginning to see how simple this can be, without taking away from the fact that it is going to be HARD WORK as you do it!
Next, let’s talk about what these tracks are going to look like:
The product creation track will start with instruction on the basics of creating your product, then will be broken down step by step as you do them, you will be creating your product as we go.
This will likely comprise about the first two weeks or so.
At the same time as the writing exercises .
I have a series of step-by-step exercises that when you do each, at the end of the series, you will be amazed at how easy it is to just write, and write easily and write persuasively.
As well as that, we will do some housekeeping type of things
If you don’t have a website, you will create one
please note: this will be EASY the way I teach you and I’ll be around to help you if you get stuck
If you don’t have an autoresponder account, you will get one.
And at the same time as that, we will start identifying WHERE your prospects hang out so you can start inviting them to your site.
This will also happen in the first three weeks or so
So at the end of about three weeks, you will have:
- Learned to write easily and persuasively (and you can use that skill to speak your products, too)
- Learned where your prospects hang out online and start inviting them to your site
- Created your first product (and likely written your sales letter)
So then at about that point, we will work on:
- Adding another product so you have a product funnel
- Turning your daily emails into an automated sequence
- And then the big thing: learning to scale and ramp up and escalate the process of inviting prospects to come to your website and get involved with your daily emails and buy your products.
At this point, perhaps you are thinking, ok, great. that sounds really manageable. . bring it on.
Great! I will.
Or maybe you are thinking, this sounds like a lot of work.
It IS a lot of work.
Maybe you are thinking, that’s a lot to do.
And I must say this: this is what it takes.
And if you don’t have all these things in place, you don’t have a real, profitable business.
And if anyone tells you there’s an easier point and click way . . .
Well that’s what gets people into a place where they keep trying different things and nothing works because nothing is complete.
When you do all the work, you will have a COMPLETE business.
Now, a word about exact income.
In order to make $1,000 a week, you have to sell $1,000 a week.
If people only buy $500 a week or they buy $5000 a week you will make something different than $50k a year.
And when your six weeks are complete, you will have a solid business but you will have to tweak things over time.
You may decide you want to create additional products (highly recommended)
You may decide you want to take advanced writing courses so you can write even better.
You might need to tweak or add traffic sources or increase the number of people you invite to your site, and so on.
You won’t have a set and forget business.
I don’t have one.
That’s a pipe dream.
You are building a real business . . .
which means you’ll have to run it, you’ll have to evaluate sales copy,
you’ll have to evaluate sales,
what sells and to whom,
you’ll have to evaluate your traffic sources and so on.
Having said all that, now you know the model, you have a good idea of what you’ll be working on, are you ready to get started?
Of course, you say, I thought you were never going to get to it!
So let’s get started on the first round of work.
If you haven’t already filled out these questions and printed them out for yourself, answer these questions:
Part 1: Your Business:
- What exactly is your Dream Business?
- Why do you believe you should create it?
- How will your BIG IDEA change lives?
- How is it different (or similar) to other web businesses that do something similar?
- What will be included in your BIG BUSINESS dream site?
- Write down anything and everything else about what you dream about in your business
Part 2 (What your weaknesses are so we can work with/around them):
- What challenges have you faced in the past in trying to implement your BIG DREAM?
- If you have never started, why not? What held you back?
- If you have started, but failed or stalled, what happened?
- What do you see as your 3 biggest weaknesses?
- How do those weaknesses stunt your growth?
Part 3: (So you can begin designing your business fast!):
- Who desperately NEEDS what you are going to teach, share, or sell?
- Why do they need it from YOU and no one else?
- Is anyone else doing exactly the same thing?
- How is YOUR solution different or better than everyone else who teaches what you want to?
- How is YOUR solution going to change people’s lives?
- Is your solution simpler or more complex than the existing solutions?
- Do you want to be the LEADER in your business concept, or just go along with everyone else and get by?
- Did you make MORE revenue last year online than the year before?
- Are you already selling your solution in a smaller form, but you want to go big and viral now?
- If so, how many units do you sell each month, and at what price each?
- Do you have an enthusiastic fan base to whom you can tell about your great idea? If so, what is that fan base, and how many are in it?
- If you KNOW you can change lives, but haven’t been able to, what are the top three things that have stopped you from doing it?
- Do you want to follow a proven model, or do you want to re-invent the wheel?
- On a scale of 1-10, how bad do you want to change the world with your solution?
- On a scale of 1-10, how badly do you want to make $50k this year with your solution?
- How hard are you willing to work to make it happen?
- What are you willing to drop or get rid of to make $50k this year changing the world with your solution?
- What will be the three biggest things that would change in your life if you get this viral innovative business off the ground?
- Final question (yahoo!!) – what is going to be the BEST PART about working on this?
Next: Study what you wrote.
How are you going to overcome your weaknesses based on what I shared in day one?
How clear are you on what you are going to teach?
Are you excited about these next steps?
Next you are going to create what’s called a 10 x 10 matrix.
Note: this is critically important, as it will serve as a guide for much of what we do in the next six weeks
Introducing the 10 x 10 Matrix
The very first step in creating products quickly is to create a 10 x 10 matrix.
Your 10 x 10 matrix is going to form the outline for your next few phases of your information marketing business.
When completed, your 10 x 10 matrix will contain 100 lines, each of which can serve as an article topic, a page in an eBook, a topic in a CD series or home-study course, or a coaching program.
Each line can also serve as the topic of an email for your email campaign in your autoresponder.
I know that right now you might be thinking…I want to just create one product right now, I don’t want to outline or design an entire product funnel.
So this feels really counterintuitive, I know.
However, I know from experience that once you have taken the two or three hours necessary to complete this step, to create your own 10 x 10 matrix, everything else falls together really quickly.
I know marketers who have taken months, and even years, to plan their first product, and have still not created it.
The clarity you will have after completing your 10 x 10 matrix is incredible, so without further delay, let’s get started:
Basically, your 10 x 10 matrix will serve as the foundation of the next several steps in building your information marketing business.
So let’s get started with your 10 x 10 matrix
The first thing you are going to do is define the topic for your 10 x 10 matrix, which will basically be your niche theme.
For example, if your niche theme is weight loss, the topic of your 10 x 10 matrix could be “Weight Loss” or “How to Lose Weight”.
If your niche theme is dog training, the topic of your 10 x 10 matrix could be “Dog Training” or “How to Train Your Dog”.
So let’s get started – first by naming your 10 x 10 matrix.
At this point I suggest creating a word processing document (I use Word, for example).
At the top of the document, write the name of your 10 x 10 matrix.
Now the next step is to think of 10 areas where you could teach someone about your niche, and write out one line for each of these areas (these will be your 10 topics)
For example, if your niche is gardening, your 10 topics might be:
- Basic Concepts of Gardening
- Vegetable Gardening
- Fruit Gardening
- Inside Gardening
- Outside Gardening
- Gardening in Tropical Climates
- Gardening in Cold Climates
- How to Plant
- How to Take Care of Weeds
- How to Preserve Your Vegetables
Of course, if you need more than 10 topics, that is fine, you can have a 12 x 10 matrix, or a 14 x 10 matrix.
Of course, I will continue to refer to it as the 10 x 10 matrix, regardless of the actual size yours ends up becoming.
So at this point, you have 10 topics.
Now, you will create 10 subtopics for each of your 10 topics, which will mean when you are done, you will have a total of 100 subtopics.
In this case, just for an example, let’s start with the first topic Basic Concepts of Gardening, and create 10 subtopics.
Those subtopics might be:
- Soil
- Choosing what to grow
- What months to plant
- What months to tend
- What months to harvest
- How to plant
- How to weed
- How to use fertilizer
- How to use organic fertilizer
- How to protect your plants
And if you were to copy and paste these subtopics into your list of topics, it might look like this:
- Basic Concepts of Gardening
- Soil
- Choosing what to grow
- What months to plant
- What months to tend
- What months to harvest
- How to plant
- How to weed
- How to use fertilizer
- How to use organic fertilizer
- How to protect your plants
- Vegetable Gardening
- Fruit Gardening
- Inside Gardening
- Outside Gardening
- Gardening in Tropical Climates
- Gardening in Cold Climates
- How to Plant
- How to Take Care of Weeds
- How to Preserve Your Vegetables
Then you would create a list of 10 subtopics each for each of the other topics.
This would create your 10 x 10 matrix.
By the way, I realise this exercise may not be easy.
But I have found with my experience that once this is completed; the rest of my product creation goes a whole lot smoother.
You see, once this is completed, you can easily write an eBook, write multiple articles each day, and write emails for your email campaign.
It all comes so much easier when this ‘outline’ is complete.
And finally, for this first real day of work
Here is first of the writing lessons:
First of all, welcome to the writing lessons.
Over the next six weeks, you will be learning from me and doing daily 20-minute writing assignments,
which, if you complete all of them,
will lead you to ‘the next level and beyond’ in persuasive writing skill.
I have been developing and fine-tuning my personal skill of persuasive writing for several years, and believe I have developed a powerful process for increasing your skills as well.
Please understand that not all the writing lessons will feel ‘natural’ or even ‘needed’, but trust me as I lead you through these assignments.
You see, I want you to learn to write persuasively naturally, not stiff as if you are using some formula all the time.
So there is a level of immersion that needs to occur.
Here is today’s assignment:
I want you to write a 300 word article explaining why I should eat an apple today.
Do not worry about doing research, you can have fictional reasons for why I should eat an apple today.
The key here is the persuasive process.
Also, you only have 20 minutes to do this assignment. Set an alarm, and at the end of 20 minutes, set it aside, even if it’s not complete.
Don’t read it today
You are finished for today, that’s all for now.
Quick Recap
So far we’ve:
- Identified the formula for a $50k business
- Identified the working parts of that business:
- people
- products
- persuasive writing
- Answered the questions about yourself and your business so you can begin to see the bigger picture of your business in your life
- Written your initial 10 x 10 matrix as an outline to guide your writing and product creation
- Completed the first writing lesson
So what’s next?
Planned for the next lesson:
more writing, starting to create your product and an introduction to traffic
By the way, this has been one of the five most intense lessons that we’ll do
Many will be much shorter than this, some may take more time, but won’t be as strenuous.
But I wanted to make sure you got a good foundation and didn’t have a little lesson that leads to thumb twiddling!
So, don’t be overwhelmed, just dig in, do the work and then rest up ready for the next lesson!
I look forward to working with you to achieve your goals!
Speak soon
Happy Marketing