← The Amy Porterfield Show
The Amy Porterfield Show
Solopreneur to Six Figures: The Simple Plan That Scales
00:31:29
The Solopreneur Blueprint I Wish I Had 16 Years Ago
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Hey there. Welcome to the Amy Porterfield Show. As a solopreneur in today's landscape, your greatest opportunity isn't to do more, it is to do less. But do it better. One signature offer. One ideal customer avatar that may be evolving over time. And the systems that keep your content, your messaging and your strategy clean and scalable so you can deliver world class experiences. My good friend Laura Belgray reminded me of a story that I had completely forgotten. I mean it was many, many years ago, so in my defense, that would be hard to remember. It was like 16 years ago. But she said the other day, Amy, do you remember what you told me when we first met? So to take you back. Laura is my longest standing entrepreneurial friend. I met her about a month after I quit my 9 to 5 job. I was getting on a plane to go to my first Mastermind session that I had signed up for and she was going to attend as well. So we ended up sitting next to each other on the plane and we started talking and she asked me, why did you join the Mastermind? And I said, well, I just left my 9 to 5 job and I want to create courses online and, and I really need to build this business. My husband's trying to become a firefighter right now, so he's not bringing in any money. It's on me. And so I've got to make this work. And then I told her and this is what she reminded me of. I told her I've got to make a hundred thousand dollars in the next year. That's what I got to do if I won't have to go back to my 9 to 5 job. If I could just make a hundred thousand dollars, which essentially would replace my salary in my 9 to 5. Now at the time I now that she told me the story, I was like, oh, I remember that vividly. So because telling her that, it felt like I was telling her I need to make $5 million. Like that's how much it felt to me especially. Cause I had never built a business. I had no idea what I was doing. Like when we all start our business, we're very clueless, right? And so I was just a ball of nerves. I think as solopreneurs we put way too much pressure on ourselves. So a solopreneur to me is someone who does not have a team. You might work with contractors here or there, nothing really consistent, but you're doing it all. You're wearing every hat and usually that's in your first two years of business. You're usually a solopreneur. I just had a thought, like now with AI, you don't have to feel as though you're a solopreneur, but that's a conversation for another, for another episode, and we're going to talk about AI here today. But anyway, I put so much pressure on myself and I just remember that felt like so much money, but it just, in my mind, it had to happen. Now. The good news is I made $180,000 my first year out, but then I made $150,000 my second year because I still was confused, didn't know what I was doing. I made less money my second year, which is very not normal for building a business. But there I was. And so I just look back at those years and they were just scrappy. So when someone asked me, Amy and I get this question all the time, Amy, if you had to run your business as a solopreneur again, but knowing what you know now, what would you do? And this question lights me up because as I mentioned, it takes me right back to those scrappy early days, but with a twist. Now I've got years of hard won lessons and the kind of tools that I wish I had back then. Honestly, it's one of my most favorite questions because I think, knowing what I know now, I think I could add so, so much value to someone who's just in their first few years of business. And so that's exactly why I took this question and I turned it into a masterclass for my Momentum members. My Momentum members are members in a membership that already went through Digital Course Academy, and now they've moved on to Momentum, where together we create and launch our digital courses. So shout out to my Momentum members if you're listening to this. It might just be a great refresher, but if you saw it in September when I delivered it in the membership, you got the whole slide deck and layers of the training and strategies and all that. So I'm going to do an abbreviated version here on the podcast. So if you're a Momentum member, keep listening. If you want a refresher. But to my podcast listeners, this is going to be exceptionally valuable for you if you're a solopreneur right now or if some days you just feel like a solopreneur, like maybe you actually have a team, but you're like, maybe some days I feel like no matter if I have a team or not, I'm doing it all. I'm wearing every hat possible and it feels overwhelming. So if that is you. Then this episode is for you. So let's dive in. First, I believe that simplicity is what truly scales a business. In fact, it's such a core, core belief for me that I've made it one of my core company values. Keep it simple. We have four values. That is one of them. Keep it simple. Because I believe I have built this business, this 120 plus million dollar business, I have built it on simplicity. Not always, not every year, but on average, I would say I have a simple business and that means I have few offers. I'm very clear on my one ideal customer avatar and I have very clear channels of how I reach her. So to me, that's simplicity. But when you're building a business solo, what does simplicity actually look like? My first two, three years of business, nothing looks simple, for the record. So when I think of simplicity for a solopreneur, this is how I think about it. You've got one offer for one ideal customer avatar. That offer, you're putting them on a clear path and you're delivering that offer exceptionally well. Before you ever layer in anything else into your business, you're keeping it simple. When I have people join my programs that have been in business for a while, usually the number one thing I notice is they have too many offers, way too many things going on. So it doesn't only happen to solopreneurs, for the record. So if I were building my business as a solopreneur right now, the first thing I would do is I would create one signature offer that delivers a real transformation and it is a complete experience for my ideal customer avatar. Now when I say one offer, I'm talking a course or membership in my Milli Club. And in my mastermind, I have women making millions of just with a membership that could be your whole business. And so a course, a membership or a coaching program essentially is what I mean when I say one signature offer. That's all we're going to focus on in the beginning. But let me back up a little bit. When you're starting a business, most of us are going to get on social and we're going to start posting and we're going to start experimenting with content and experimenting with messaging. Everyone should do that. So when you start thinking, I want to build a business, I want you on social media and I want you to start playing around with messaging to see what lands and see who you attract and start thinking about who you want to attract. So in the beginning, that is all kind of like I'm just trying to figure it out. So I do think we all need a moment for that. But that doesn't mean you can't start building something fairly soon. And so I'm all about posting on social and. And starting a podcast or a video show or a newsletter or a combination of those in order to get real organic content out there and drive real organic traffic. So that's just a given, no matter where you are in your business. I think we all need to be doing that. But putting that aside, the real big first step is I want you to create that signature offer. Now, to come up with this offer, I wouldn't just kind of guess. And if I. If it was today, I would be using AI as an employee AI, ChatGPT specifically for me would become my right hand. And so that's why I'm, like, so jealous of people that are starting a business today. I've heard so many different statistics around how easy it is to get to a million dollars today using AI. I don't know if that's true. I couldn't just do that overnight, but so many people are saying that. So if I was a solopreneur today, I would become very proficient in AI and use it as my marketing team, use it as my customer experience. I would use it as my assistant. I would learn AI agents so it can do things for me. I absolutely would do that. And I am doing a lot of that even now with my big team that I do have. But as a solopreneur, you do not need to be a solopreneur anymore. You can have a sidekick, and her name is AI, my sidekick, her name is Porter. So if you want to name yours, you could do that as well. Okay, so I would do research about the business I want to create first. I'd get clear, like, who do I want to serve? And I collect all the data I can about the person I want to serve. And if I was posting on social, I would collect all the comments that she's posting. Any dms. If I was growing an email list, questions she was asking me anything, I could click collect that I had about my ideal customer avatar that I want to serve. I'd get all that information together, I'd feed it into ChatGPT, and then I would collect other data like one of my competitors. If they're attracting the audience that I want, I would absolutely go look at their comments or what people are saying about their podcast. I would read their book reviews, all of that to start learning about the challenges and desires and what's missing for this ideal customer avatar. And I plug it all into AI and I'd create a really smart prompt, essentially saying here's all the information I've got, here's who I want to serve based on all this information. Where are the holes? What am I missing? Ask me any questions you need me to answer because I would ask it. Then I want you to create an ideal customer avatar guide, like a two page guide of who my avatar is. And I would also ask it to share with me the challenges and maybe the gaps in the market and the opportunities of serving this person. So I would do some deep research, specifically deep research on ChatGPT about my ideal avatar and about just the market that they're in and kind of how they navigate that market, how they're showing up. And so I would ask for an analysis of sorts of. And so once I got that, I would start using that to create some social media content, some ideas for that, and then of course some ideas for my first program. And I would ask like what transformation is she craving and what kind of program would be perfect for her. And I would just pitch and catch for a while to get really clear on where do I start. It's not going to be the end all, be all. You might have to kind of experiment a little and play around. But that's how I would be using AI in the beginning, to start with my first signature offer that I want to create. So essentially AI would become my sidekick and I would use it to the best of my ability and I would make a goal that I'm just going to get better and better at using it. So that's number one. But the second thing I would do, and this is something we've done in my business, is I'd create a story bank for my business. So this is so important because story isn't just a nice to have thing in your business. It's the engine of your brand. It's how you stand out in a crowded market. It's how you connect with your audience on a human level and even shape the products that you create. So essentially here's what I would do. You could either create a custom GPT for this or maybe put it in a project in ChatGPT. But essentially I would start feeding it one GPT, feeding it all the stories that I have now. I have a newsletter. I don't know if you've seen my newsletter. It's my most favorite thing right now. I'm obsessed with it. It comes out every Tuesday. So if you're not getting my Tuesday newsletter. That's where I tell all my stories, good, bad, and ugly. It's amyporterfield.com newsletter. It's all about online marketing. But I start the newsletter with a story. And so now I have many newsletters that I've sent out over the last few months. It's only been out for a few months. And so I collect all those stories as PDFs, I upload them into this story bank, and then I upload all my podcasts and ask it to strip out all of my stories. And then all my courses. I'll upload all the PDFs from my courses, the transcripts, strip out all the stories, and essentially I would have this GPT create my story bank so that anytime I wanted to, you know, create a story around a specific topic or a lesson I wanted to teach, I could then pitch and catch with ChatGPT to say, what story do I have related to this? Or I want to talk about this lesson. What story would go with it? And so it just makes it so much easier because I like to start each podcast with a little story. Like I told you about Laura Belgray asking me that question. And, and sometimes, and it's true, I'll sit here on camera and I'll just sit here and sit here thinking. I don't know what story to even talk about. Sometimes my mind goes completely blank. Does that ever happen to you? Like, there is nothing in there. And so I have this really weird thing. I just thought about where when I'm eating something and Hobie will be like, what does it taste like? Or do you like it? When I think about what it tastes like, I could taste nothing. Is that weird? Has that ever happened? If you are thinking, I'm a wackadoo right now, maybe it's just me, but I thought about that because sometimes when I sit here to think, okay, what story am I going to tell on my podcast? Nothing but my story bank. If I go to it and say, today I'm talking about solopreneurship and I want to address this or that, then I can see all the stories that I could potentially tell. And then once you've loaded it with everything you already have and you. You already have stories, I promise you, it's a discipline, it's a habit that you get into of pulling your. Pulling stories out of your head, essentially. Like, you have to kind of get into that rhythm. It's become easier as I've been doing it for the newsletter. But anyway, once you do that then as new stories come about, you can start putting those into your story bank as well. And so I would do this because I believe story stories are the best way to connect with your audience and build your brand in a really personal, unique way. They're also a great way to teach lessons. They're a great way to grab attention. And I just have never been great at storytelling. So I've made it my mission that I am going to get better at this because it just makes my lessons more interesting. I could grab your attention and really add value. So anyway, I would start a story bank. So if I was a solopreneur, that's one of the things I would start right away. So you can start using it when you create that signature program. You can start using it in social media. You can start using it for when you create your courses and all that good stuff. Hey, real quick, before we continue, a quick word about our sponsor. I've got to tell you about a.
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Okay, let's get back to the episode. So I do want to do another caveat here that I don't know if you thought about this when I was talking about a story bank, but also a testimonial bank is something that we're creating in the business right now, and I'm sharing things we're doing in the business now. But if I had AI back then, I would be doing the same thing. So as a solopreneur, anytime you get a Testimonial, create a ChatGPT for this and feed it. So you could create a custom GPT or start it in projects or whatever. I'm being vague about that because there's very different ways you could do this. If my friend Rick Mulready heard me right now, he's like, amy, hold on. I'll tell you exactly how to do it. But I'm being vague because there's different ways to do it. If you put all your testimonials starting from the get go when the first one you get and then hundreds later, you can also then do some searches for. I need a testimonial about a single mom who built her very first course and made over $10,000. Boom. And those are like in my testimonial bank. So start thinking about ways to first collect all your data, feed it into AI and then how are you going to use it from there? So anyway, that's just a little tangent for you. And then to stay on this AI thread for just one more minute, I probably should do a whole episode of all the ways I'm using AI right now because it changes so rapidly in our business. But one more thing, I would absolutely use AI AI for writing my copy. Now I've already said this before on the podcast, but I'm going to say it again. When I write my newsletter, I do all the initial writing, but sometimes I do a whole download. So I will do, you know, just voice activated download into AI of the story I want to tell or the things I want to teach, or the research I want to do. And, and I'll probably talk for a good 10 minutes. I just go on and on and on. And then I'll say, okay, so based on that story I told you, help me write a story in less than 250 words or whatever it might be. It gives me something that's practically my own words because I literally just told it the story and then I clean it up on my own and have a great story. So it always comes from me, but I'm always going to use AI if I can. And, and Jenna Kutcher recently told me that she thinks Claude is better than ChatGPT for writing copy in her voice. And Michael Hyatt told me the same thing. And I'm in a mastermind with Michael Hyatt, where he's teaching AI and he says he really loves Claude. It gets his voice better. So I haven't moved to Claude, but probably this weekend I will for kind of what I just said about how I like to feed it my copy. And so I would definitely be teaching it my voice. And I would be feeding it social media posts that worked really well for me. I'd be feeding it social media posts that totally crashed and burned. I would be feeding it the subject lines, email subject lines that worked, the email, subject lines that didn't. And I would just use AI to be my copy assistant. But I really do believe people will say if you only use AI, you're going to water down your message. I agree. And if you feed AI and you continue to train AI, it can do some amazing things in your own voice, meaning you could get out more content that is valuable to your audience in a way that could reach the masses. If you are putting it on social or you're doing it in a course, which is one to many. So, I mean, your reach and your ability to create a lot of content, both of those are super valuable. And AI helps you do that. So there you go. Okay, so let's get off the AI conversation for a moment. Let's go back to you're a solopreneur. What I would do. So I'm creating content. I'm starting the podcast or the video show. I am zeroing in on who my ideal customer avatar is. I am getting ready to create my signature offer. It will not be your end. All be all. So, oh, this is so important. If you're multitasking, come back to me. So let's say you create your first signature offer and it's a really big deal, right? It's a lot of work. Whether it's a coaching program, membership course, whatever you want to create, you might have it for a year or two, and I want you to stay in it as long as you can to really optimize it. But usually when we put something really great out there, it's going to inform our next smart move. And usually the next move is bigger. So my first course was, my first successful course was all about Facebook marketing. And so Facebook marketing led to teaching Facebook advertising, which then eventually led to I had created those two successful courses and people asked, how are you creating courses? Which led to me teaching courses and then teaching webinars and then Digital Course Academy. So I would say Digital Course Academy has been my bread and butter for many, many, many years. But I Started with one signature offer that led to that eventually. So we need to get our things out there, our programs, products, services so they, they can inform our best next strategic move that you'll eventually where you'll make your bulk of your money. So that's why it's so important to take action. Okay, so once you get your offer dialed in and you set up your AI support, let's talk about launching this offer. Even in today's market, with all the shifts in buying behavior and the growing skepticism out there, I'd still use the exact structure I use in Digital Course Academy. So shout out to my brand new students in dca sending you all the success vibes so you can get your course created now into the world. But now, now we have to talk about AI again. But now with AI supporting you behind the scenes, you get to show up in even bigger, more human ways. So what I mean by that is if you're using AI to help create your email copy, to help create your social media, pre launch post, to help, you know, inform your webinar, if you're using AI for all of that and you get it done, you have more time to be present during your launch and up leading up to your launch. So what I think is really important and at the time of this recording, I'm actually promoting Digital Course Academy. Like by the time this episode goes out, Digital Course Academy will be closed. But I'm in my launch right now and it's so cool that I could be really available in my bootcamp. I, I could be reading a bunch of comments, replying to people, making little videos. I'm live in five different webinars over a few days and I'm doing special pop up trainings and I'm doing live Q&As. I'm available for all of that because we've already locked in all of our launch assets. Now I have a team, right? If I was a solopreneur, I would use AI to lock in all of my assets so that I can ensure when my launch is happening, I am more readily available to my audience. I am live and I am there with them. So as a solopreneur, if you use AI to be your sidekick, then you get to stay in your zone of genius longer and you get to be more available for your audience. And in the beginning your audience is going to be small. So if you are showing up for them, if you're answering their DMs, if you're sending them videos, like personalized videos, if you're answering all their questions in social media. If you're there for them, they will remember. I have students who have been with me for 16 years and they remember me replying to their emails way back when or me chatting it up with them on social media. And so I love that they remember that in your students or your potential students, customers. And your audience will remember that as well. So the more present you can be, especially in a launch, which is where we started this conversation in the pre launch, when you go live, when you're on video, if you can be live and present in all of that because you allowed AI to be your sidekick, you're going to see bigger sales. It does equate to bigger sales. The more present you are, the more, the more live you are, the more connected with your audience, the bigger the trust it leads to sales. So I just want you to trust that and find ways to show up, live in those moments so that your audience really connects with you. Okay, so back to our original question. What would I do if I were a solopreneur starting my business today or even just in my first few years of my business today? And we talked about your signature offer, we talked about how AI needs to become your sidekick. And I've given you some ways to use AI in order to free up your time and be more present with your audience. The last thing I want to leave you with also relates to AI. I didn't actually intend for this to be such a heavy AI episode, but I think it's great that it is. But I talked about this on the podcast not long ago and Julie Solomon is going to come on my podcast and we're going to get into it even more because she was the one who gave me this idea. And the idea is that I have one avatar, one customer avatar. But I am supporting her through different phases of her business growth. So I've talked about this before. You know, my ideal customer avatar is a woman named Hank. Yes, we named her Hank. So Hank is who I create for. It's who I serve. But I serve Hank one, who is an absolutely beginner. Hank two, who started her business. Maybe she's making 100, 200K. Everything's messy, overwhelming, solopreneur, but she's in the game. Hank three, she's hit 500K and she wants to have her first million dollar year. And Hank four, multimillion dollar entrepreneur. And I support her through a mastermind. I have. I got this idea that we are serving one avatar, but we are growing with her in an ascension model in terms of how we serve her. So I have been working on a new coaching program to support who I call Hank 2. She started her business, she's making a little money, things are hard, she's a solopreneur, she's got a lot going on. So I have been creating a very special high end coaching program for her. And then Once she hits 500k, I invite her to the Millie Club. Women going for their first million dollar year. And then of course, as I mentioned, once she's making multiple millions, she joins my mastermind if she chooses. So I have one avatar and I have different programs for her as she grows. I am 16 years in. This is 16 years in the making. I don't expect you as a solopreneur to be doing any of that. However, I wish someone told me when I was a solopreneur, what if you have one avatar and you serve her insane or him insanely well? Right now with one offer, you get to know her, you get to know how the program does work and how it doesn't work and you really understand how you are solving a problem for her and get really good at solving that problem and then you can layer in your next offer and maybe that next offer is for that avatar who's ready for the next step. For me, I characterize these different levels of Hank by how much money they make because I help people make money. But for you, it might mean she's a brand new mom or she's trying to get pregnant and then she has a newborn and then she has toddlers or whatever that might be. So you have to kind of decide what her life or his life journey looks like. But it is a cool concept and I am going to have Julie Solomon on the show who's an expert in messaging to talk about that concept a little bit deeper. So we're going to get there. But what I can tell you is you can use ChatGPT to map out all the future versions of your ICA. Wouldn't that be cool? So if you're a solopreneur right now and you know who you serve, ask ChatGPT to build out what would be the next phases of this ideal customer avatar. What would it look like if she's three years ahead of this? Or what would it look like when she finally does have her baby or whatever you're using as your milestones. So I thought that could be a really cool exercise as well. Maybe one looking into. Okay, so there you have it. Just wanted to share that one final little thing about how you could look at your ICA as a solopreneur, you should not have four ICAs like I explained with Hank, 1, 2, 3 and 4. But I do want you to think, what would it look like down the road? All right, my friend, As a solopreneur in today's landscape, your greatest opportunity isn't to do more more, it is to do less, but do it better. One signature offer. One ideal customer avatar that may be evolving over time and the systems that keep your content, your messaging and your strategy clean and scalable so you can deliver world class experiences and you can be more live and present with your audience when it matters most. If you're a solopreneur, I'd love to hear from you. So is there something you learned today that you're like, I'm absolutely doing that, Amy. I'm so glad I heard that. Or if you're not a solopreneur and you're more advanced, was there anything in here that you would take away as well? So you know I'm on Instagram, right? I'm just me, Porterfield. I love to hear from podcast listeners, so if there's anything you learned today or any questions you might have, join.
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Me in my DMs at.
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Amy.
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Amy Porterfield on Instagram.
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All right, my sweet friends, thanks for tuning in today and I'll see you again next week. Bye.