Ever wonder how people are able to generate 1000's of dollars each month, yet have the time freedom to travel and live life on their own time and terms? It's because of leverage. There are a lot of ways to create leverage, but my favourite way is through systems inside of my business like automation, lead capture, funnels, and processes. Here I am sharing with you how this works and why you need to implement this strategy in your business so you can scale your ROI without spending more time on strategies that are just keeping you busy and stuck.
I started blogging back in 2015 when I learned about the concept of building a brand and using attraction marketing to find my tribe and build my network marketing business.
My brand and my business has evolved since than, and although I am a top leader in my network marketing company, I recognized the potential there is in diversifying your financial portfolio and differentiating offers that are congruent with your brand. I felt really limited in who I could help by only offering my Social Media Expertise to my team, and feeling like I was turning away people who could really thrive on what I had to teach even if they weren’t the right fit for my partner company.
I mean, why wouldn’t you create an opportunity through your business for more people to win? What I love about building a list is the ability to create community and share with my tribe what is working best for me in order to help them create success too and duplicate what works. I also love attracting my tribe to me rather than chasing after people and cold calling.
So many people are struggling to figure out this social media game, and understand the true leverage that comes from systems. Understanding how these systems work in our business not only give us the ability to leverage our time, but it gives us a bigger opportunity to reach more people and have a much bigger impact...without leaving it to chance or algorithm updates...and without hosting events or cold market prospecting.
There are many opportunities to create valuable content and generate leads on Social Media..but what I still love about list building and blogging is that you own it. It’s real estate that you can control, and a place where you can archive your content and your resources. You then use social media as a vehicle to drive traffic to your blog and landing pages so your audience can opt in to your offers. In this training I'm going to share with you the 5 main reasons why you'll want to create a system for growing your list, and I’m going to share with you how to create the framework I use in my business for leverage and automation.
Look, it’s one thing to have followers on social media, it’s a whole different ball game to have leads in your inbox and having a way to turn cold leads into hot leads. What email marketing does is it helps you separate the people who need you from those who don’t, and turns cold leads into customers and team without having to physically prospect or go out and apply the 3 foot rule (yah you know what Im talking about) Too often in old school methods, we are casting such a wide net hoping for results, and it takes a long time to sort through who is right for you and who isn’t. This strategy I'm sharing with you, done correctly and consistenly, will do that work for you... if you give a ton of love and value to your community. You have to give before you can get! This same principle applies in more traditional networking, but again this is a much more leveraged way of connecting and it doesn’t limit you to your geographical area.
Another massive benefit that most people don’t realize is that linear incomes are a thing of the past and we are living in the Gig Economy where people are looking for a side hustle...or a few. Sure there are some business models that operate better when you specialize, but many businesses today can be used create multiple congruent offers that can be set up once and used multiple times for your specific niche, thanks to technology. In my business I have my social marketing business, I have courses I offer in addition to coaching, but I also have affiliate programs and systems I use, love, and recommend. I’ve diversified my income, but my brand is still the same...I teach people how to create time freedom and financial security with social media, and elevate their lifestyle through everything I offer. When you build influence and you build your brand, having a system will help you house your offers, and having a list will help you share your different offers with a click of a button. How freaking cool is that? Am I blowing your mind yet?
If you want to build influence you need to increase exposure to gain credibility. Most people need to be exposed to your brand and your offers a minimum of 7 times before they are ready to take action. So this system will nurture your relationships and build their exposure to your offer even when you're not physically present. These strategies will position you as an authority and give you credibility. That’s what branding does when you do it correctly...And when you set up a well oiled system for your business, you can have so much more than a steady income, but you can have a money making machine working for you 24/7 in all time zones! As long as your have a strategy in place for driving traffic to your website consistently.
Since I started branding myself
Creating these results has helped my team duplicate my success to create their own. And I’m sharing this with you so you can see how this strategy will help you!
Now just to be clear, this takes work. It is not a short term, get rich quick strategy. It is a long game, but a game plan that can shorten the long game. And if you do more than dip your toe in and you jump into it with both feet and show up every day, you will likely create results faster than I did, because you now have the blueprint and I’ve shortened your learning curve. You’re welcome!
I can tell you, I didn’t always have a business that looked like this. I loved the concept of working smarter not harder, but I hadn't really figured out exactly what that meant until now. When I got started in network marketing, I was told I was going to have an e-commerce business, because I had an online store. What I didn’t know was that I was actually going to be building a direct sales business and placing a lot of orders for people and doing a lot of drop offs because no one wanted to pay the high cost of shipping.
I invested a few $1000 over the years in products to demo, many of which were thrown away or outdated after time. I was out doing home parties, hotel meetings, networking events most evenings and weekends and I was away from my family a lot. I was told that this was just a short term sacrifice for long term gain, but I can tell you, the sacrifices became greater the more I grew my business, and I felt like I had traded one hamster wheel for another. My home business became a “I'm never home business” and the more I wanted to scale the more I had to be out building my business.
So turned to social media to expand my network and I started hosting online events, networking inside groups, and direct prospecting. Which was great, because atleast now I was working online, but I was still racking up a lot of time doing things manually. And I was still restricted with time zones and other people’s busy schedules. My business relied on me being present for every single transaction so I felt like I was trading time for money.
What I've discovered since is that true leverage comes from using systems and tools, not being the tool that delivers the message to each person individually. There just aren’t enough hours in a day to get in front of enough people to create the massive momentum you need to create quick success in network marketing when you aren’t leveraging tools and systems. Or any business for that matter, because money follows eyeballs! And online systems allow you to work from anywhere, and make facilitate sales even when you're not physically present.
Now when it comes to building a business online, or any business where you rely on a partnership or a service, here's the thing you have to remember: there is only so much control you have over your financial security and the security of your future. This is true for any business, but especially when in comes to being affiliated with a company. Companies change, we change, economies shift and businesses shut down...so I will encourage you to be smart about setting up your brand online and securing your financial future. If you know my story, you know I was with a company for 6 years, and as I grew, our visions we're no longer aligned and made a choice to transition to something more aligned for my lifestyle. Thankfully I had already gone down the personal branding path or I would have lost all my income. But I didn't because I built a list and cultivated those relationships. Your network is your network, and it's the one thing you can always take with you regardless of which profession you're in.
So now that you know exactly why this is so crucial to your financial stability, let’s dive into what you need. Whether you just want to create landing pages to build your list and direct traffic to share your offers, or whether you want to house your offers and have a place to create value and archive your work...owning your own www real estate is going to be a game changer for you. This strategy will allow your business to grow with you in any direction and to expand your future endeavors.
I would love to set up a system like this for my inbox. Please send this tutorial to my inbox so I can come back and implement this strategy for my business.
I use wordpress and highly recommend it as your platform to any other membership site. For me, I want to own my site and I do whatever I can to avoid using systems or programs with monthly fees that are also limited in their functions. As your business grows and evolves, many of these platforms don’t allow for these transitions, and you than have to do a lot of work to transition it later. I did this when I built my first flash website on Wix and than had to export everything to Wordpress. It’s doable but it’s messy and time consuming.
With wordpress you own it and it can grow with your brand with a variety of different plugins and themes available. With wordpress you can have a professional site but you can build it yourself for a fraction of the cost and quite quickly with some of the tools I’m going to share with you. Ofcourse if you are strapped for time, you can also have a designer build a wordpress site for you, since that’s what many of them use.
Now a lot of people have websites that merely serve one purpose, which is to store information about their business and services. What I want to show you is how to leverage your website to provide content that will help you educate your leads into why they want to do business with you and than help you convert them into customers and partnerships...all without you having to physically facilitate each sale. Everyday people buy products and services from my blog that I have never met in person because of the value I provide in the marketplace. Again, how freakin cool is that?
You need your website to work a lot like an ATM. It needs to be a money producing machine, and that’s why you need the tools I’m recommending so that you can set this system up to work for you around the clock. Yes it costs money to make money. If you had a brick and mortar business you would need to pay way more to keep the lights on and pay the rent and employ your staff to do a lot of this work that these systems will cover.
Success is never free my friend, and the rent is due daily!! But lucky for you I have spent tons of time and money testing different platforms and programs to learn what works the best together. These products I recommend have the best benefits, amazing support, cost effective memberships, and the ability to grow as your business grows. When I think of building this system and platform, it's a lot like building a house. You need a real estate, a foundation, licensing, framework, and interior design before you can invite your guests to come and stay.
Obviously you need to get your .com address before you can do start implementing any of these tools or strategies. This is your first piece of real estate on the www that now belongs to you. Congratulations! You may already have a domain and if so, that’s great. If not, I recommend you choose one that is going to grow with your brand, and most often, especially if you don’t have an established brand, using your name is the best option. This is something that will always be unique to you. If you can, buy the contract for as long as possible so you can ensure that real estate stays in your name. I use Go Daddy
Hosting is a bit like the licensing you need to build your business. This is essential to building your website to store your data. I personally like to use as many tools as I can all in one place so again I have a membership with Godaddy for both my domain as well as my hosting. Here’s a video from godaddy that gives more details on how hosting works.
Why do you need this? This is a software to create your website on. This is like the foundation and framework for your business, but the amazing thing about wordpress is it’s absolutely free to download and install. By clicking the button below you'll be taken to the Wordpress site to learn more and you can download this FREE software for yourself.
Once you've download Wordpress, you need to upload it to your host. So if you chose to go with Go Daddy like I do, you can simply watch this video and install your new website just like that!
Themes are like the interior design. This is how you make your website look pretty, but with a program like thrive, you can also make it highly functional. This is a tool that is built specifically for wordpress that allows your website to convert visitors into leads. You don’t want people walking into your store front and walking out without leaving their contact info for you to follow up and continue building the relationship. One time visitors to your blog is a shame, so let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. We want people coming back to check out our new inventory over and over, am I right?
Thrive architect is a visually appealing and highly converting theme that makes building your pages super easy. From here to can develop your blog, landing pages, sales pages, and lead capture pages. I would also recommend Thrive Leads to create opt-in forms, lightboxes and ribbons for your offers that will help move people onto your list faster. I have the licensing for both, but you can also purchase a Thrive Membership so you can take advantage of all the features.
And if you’d like a done for you theme throughout your blog, and have it up and running in no time at all, purchase thrive themes. Thrive has made creation and implementation so simple for my growing brand. When we lower the resistance to putting our offers out there with these amazing tools like thrive, we can eliminate the overwhelm that comes from the tasks we need to do to create our vision.
Now of course if you want to build your list, you need software to create and automate your sales system...and turn your leads into buyers! This tool plays a key role in your automation and your relationship building, and is really where the money making magic machine comes into play. You need to have this service to link to your thrive leads opt-in so you can create your list of subscribers and deliver your free offer automatically. We call this your ethical bribe for collecting emails, and it’s very similar to traditional lead generation at trade shows or events. However this strategy is way classier, and you’re giving something to each one of your visitors in exchange for their information. They are basically saying they want to hear from you and quite possibly do business with you.
With this email system you can bring people onto your list and than have your offers and your relationship building emails delivered directly to your contacts with the click of a button. This is what you want to be driving all your social media traffic to, so you can make sure you’re able to stay in touch with the people who want to hear from you. With automation you can also create sales funnels that will work for you again 24/7 as long as you are driving traffic to your website.
I recommend Active Campaign, because it’s simple to use it has multiple features and integrations with different programs, and it works really well with the other tools I’m recommending. This is again, a drag and drop tool that is easy to set up, and will grow with your business. And it’s super affordable compared to it’s competitors for the many features it offers. You could even get the upgraded version and you can build your lead generation forms right from Active Campaign. It also has great features like texting your contacts, as well as keeping track of the people inside your funnels with a contact relationship manager.
Well I’ve taught you everything you need to know about setting up your real estate and business frame work to begin building your list. I’m excited to see which route you go with this...blogging, landing page, or youtube. Once the framework is in place it’s time to get to work and start creating the content.
Setting this up doesn't actually take that much time, but it's usually in the content creation that people get stuck. To help you get started I want to share a few tips for what you'll need before you launch this as a blog.
I’d also recommend having a resources page where you can diversify your income with programs like amazon affiliates, and any other products/programs you use that give you an opportunity to turn an expense into an income.
You’ll need to create images for your banners as well as some pictures for your different pages. I recommend using Canva which has some great templates to help you get started, or you can hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you at a small cost. I would say, if this is not your area of expertise, source this out...it’ll cost you less if you consider what your time is worth.
Outsourcing doesn't need to be expensive. I like to use Fiverr, but there are other great options like upwork and 99designs.
Now you know exactly what you need, it's time to map this out and start taking one step at a time to systemizing and scaling your brand and growing your tribe and community.
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