Brewing up a business

Hello Fastlaners,

The title, which I borrowed from a book by Dogfish Head Brewery founder, says it all: I brew beer for a living. I make it, I taste it (the least lucrative yet best part of the job), I sell it, I buy other brewers’ beers as well and retail them at the shop. They say it is every man’s dream to own a bar - well, at 26 I run a beer shop and a microbrewery, close enough?

There’s a growing market here in France, microbreweries and craft beer bars keep popping up everywhere and...

Brewing up a business

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Organizational Structure for E-commerce Brands

What's the first word that comes to mind when u see this photo? View attachment 19285
I created this with the idea that you have significant capital and resources. And obviously a single person can fill multiple roles.

For me, the word is "bottleneck" because if I want to launch a new brand, 99% of blue ones I do myself. The red ones are employees and the green is a 3rd party.

I'm sure a lot of you do the same thing... food for thought...

from Organizational Structure for E-commerce Brands

Flipping cars, appliances, and other assets.

Hi Everyone,


I have never bought or sold anything for a profit, and I definitely do not want to go about doing so before doing a lot of research and asking around for advice.

I found a used, low-mileage (19,000 miles), 2012 BMW 335i with a Dealer Trade in Value (per Kelley Blue Book) of $24,000 to $27,000, and private party was even higher than that. If I can get it for $23,500 (very likely as I have been talking to the dealer selling it), would I be able to make a profit out of it? The...

Flipping cars, appliances, and other assets.

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Describe your first sale as an entrepreneur!

I love reading stories of how people got started, especially the turning point where people make their first sale and get hooked.

Let’s see if we can inspire other forum members to make their first sale.



What’s the story of your first sale?

How did you feel in that moment?

What changed from that moment onwards?

What has it lead to?



In hindsight:

What would you have done LESS of?

What would you have done MORE of?

What one piece of advice would you give someone about making that...

Describe your first sale as an entrepreneur!

from Describe your first sale as an entrepreneur!

Bangkok Chiang Mai or Cebu Meetup

Hi I am relocating to Asia from the US. I am currently in HK but going to be in Thailand in the Philippines. If anyone is in these locations over the next month let me know and we could meet up.

from Bangkok Chiang Mai or Cebu Meetup

The 4 Hour Work Week Vs. Millionaire Fastlane

Preface: As part of this post, I was dying to include the video of Donny Deutsch (MSNBC, "The Big Idea") interviewing Tim Ferriss. I'm not sure if I saw it live on television or on the web, but if anyone can find it and post it, I'd really appreciate it; it's kind of hilarious how Deutsch, basically, tells Ferriss that he's full of sh*t.

One of the things that I most appreciated in MJ's book was that it seemed to be the first business/motivation book I've read in the past few years that...

The 4 Hour Work Week Vs. Millionaire Fastlane

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Growing A Web Design Business From Zero

Hey everyone,

So I'm creating this thread to track my progress growing my web design business from zero.

First off a little background on me:

I'm an 18 year old high school student, and I have never made a single penny online, so I'll be learning a lot as I go. I started learning to code back in December 2017, and so far I have taken the courses on @Fox 's gold thread on web design that he recommended, along with the Fox Web School course, so I have a decent...

Growing A Web Design Business From Zero

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harrygr

harrygr is a Harry of Warrior Forum. Check to see what harrygr is saying about Internet Marketing.

from harrygr

How to conquer a mountain

Looking at this discrepancy closer, I think we can safely assume that in most of the cases it is not the external resources that dictate the success of a person but the internal ones. The quote written at the beginning of this entry depicts this perspective very clearly. In order to adapt this look on life, we need ...

from How to conquer a mountain

Forced Deadlines and Being Uncomfortable: Moving to China in October 2018

I work best under pressure and an opportunity has come up for me to move to China for 4-5 months from October. I'm aiming to start an e-commerce business while I'm out there (starting with FBA and expanding when I return to Europe). Very few people get the opportunity to converse with their suppliers in person, look around factories, examine the product and ship directly from China to Amazon warehouses, etc and I want to make sure I take full advantage of it. It's not without its challenges...

Forced Deadlines and Being Uncomfortable: Moving to China in October 2018

from Forced Deadlines and Being Uncomfortable: Moving to China in October 2018

Slowlaner from Germany trying to escape

Hello dear readers, thanks a lot for letting me participate in this forum and for all the great content provided. My name is Michael from Munich, Germany and I am 32 years old. I read TMF and it is honestly one of the best books I ever read (three times). More than once I was shouting during reading "Damn, who is this guy, he is so right!!". I really also appreciated the very direct language, making it also painful to read because all of my failures are laid out in front of me. Just recently...

Slowlaner from Germany trying to escape

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Case Study: How to Run a 7-Day Challenge

Today’s post is a case study with Undercover Architect, Amelia Lee.

Amelia attended the ProBlogger Evolve and Mastermind events in 2017, and adapted speaker Jadah Sellner’s 7-Day Challenge model to boost her own lead generation and course enrollments.

Here’s how she did it.

When I attended ProBlogger Evolve in 2017, I was specifically looking for guidance on how to market and run a new online program I’d been piloting. The format of “How to Get it Right” was a six-week program on a launch model, with six weeks’ membership to a Facebook group and weekly live Q&A sessions.

I already had an evergreen premium coaching program where I supported and guided homeowners through their projects over a 12-month period. This six-week program would be a standalone offering that would also give members a taste of the premium program and let them upgrade if they so chose.

During the Mastermind day on Problogger Evolve, Jadah Sellner (previously of Simple Green Smoothies) did a presentation on her signature “How to Build a Challenge” process. She’d had success using challenges as list builders, as well as great conversion tools for selling products and programs online.

I’d considered using it as a lead generator for “How to Get it Right”. But I wasn’t sure whether I’d be giving too much of the course away, or whether I’d need to come up with new content.

During one of the breaks, I spoke with Jadah about my concerns. She asked about the format of my course content (number of steps, breakdown of modules, etc). She suggested sharing the six steps in the first of my four modules. She also suggested I run a live webinar (or something similar) on the last day, and pitch it as a seven-day challenge. I could tell attendees they’d just had a taste of the full program, which they could now join and use that momentum to keep taking action on their projects.

I’d seen people using a Facebook group or page to keep generating leads during their challenges. So I wanted to incorporate that as well.

This is how we built the Undercover Architect Free 7-Day Challenge.

1. We hosted the challenge itself inside our online course platformWe already had a WordPress site with the Access Ally plugin to run our online “Your Reno Roadmap” program. We built the 7-Day Challenge as a course inside there to make it easy to:
   • create a great user experience
   • drip-feed content
   • provide extra resources.

   Members also received a personal login to the 7-Day Challenge site, which gave them a taste of the technology the actual course would run on.

2. The first six steps of my “How to Get it Right in Your Reno or New Home” content became the six days of the free challenge

   These six steps are the first steps anyone needs to do if planning a reno or new home. But they’re often missed by homeowners. Instead of sharing all the content inside the course, I used storytelling and examples to teach the steps. I created a short video for each day of the challenge to present this information. I used my iPad Pro to shoot them in my office (with our rooster crowing in the background), and edited them in iMovie.

3. We provide extra resources for each day inside the online course

   We included links to blogs or podcasts on Undercover Architect’s website, and other online resources. We also created an interactive PDF worksheet to help homeowners relate the learnings to their own projects. (These were created in Canva, and then made interactive in Adobe Acrobat.)

4. We ran ads on Facebook and Instagram to launch the challenge

   We advertised a start date for seven-day challenge It was part of the lead up to launching the program, with day seven of the challenge being the ‘cart open’ day to purchase “How to Get it Right”.It was a great lead generator.I’ve run the challenge twice now, and it’s added more than 1,500 people to my email list, with low conversion costs on Facebook.

5. During the actual challenge, we uploaded each day’s challenge video to the Undercover Architect Facebook page, with a CTA to join if they wanted to access the free resources inside the course website.

   We used ActiveCampaign, and set up an automation that allowed people to opt in before the challenge. They could also opt in after the challenge had started. If they opted in on Day 3, they would get immediate access to Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3, and then be drip-fed the remainder of the challenge.

   (We did this with a lot of “If/Then” settings in ActiveCampaign, and “Wait until specific date”. As an aside, if you’re an Access Ally owner, I recommend joining Nathalie Lussier’s Facebook Group for Access Ally. I got an immediate reply in there when asking a question about how to get this to work in Active Campaign).This meant we could run Facebook ads to each day’s video, and collect email addresses while the challenge was live.

   And each day we sent a reminder to everyone who opted in to visit the course website, watch the video and grab their free resources.

6. Day seven of the Challenge was a Facebook Live

   I debated whether to do this as a webinar. But in the end I figured there would be less friction if I just offered it as a Free Q&A on the Undercover Architect Facebook page. We uploaded it to the course website for anyone who missed it. During the Facebook live, I wrapped up the 7-Day Challenge, spoke about the launch of “How to Get it Right” (which had been seeded during the challenge) and then answered questions.

7. We then retargeted the Facebook ads to the video viewers and email list from the challenge. We also ran other campaigns during the ‘cart open’ phase.

We’ve now run this challenge/launch format twice for the “How to Get it Right” program. And each time it’s been great as a conversion tool. In the most recent round, 25% of purchasers had only joined our list during the free 7-Day Challenge we’d just run.

We also found with the most recent launch that a good portion of purchasers had done the free challenge both times.

I found the challenge was a great way to provide high-quality, actionable content to the UA Community, and give them a taste of what the online program is like. I also had people emailing me who weren’t ready to join the course, but still appreciated the experience of learning the best first steps in a reno or new build project.

How has this performed against other launches? Well, the last two launches of “How to Get it Right” have certainly been the biggest revenue launches I’ve done. They’ve also been the most structured, with a lead generation strategy and marketing campaign.

With the most recent launch I used the Content Strategy Pat Flynn shared during his Mastermind session to feed the launch into my podcast content. This worked really well too.

I’m now reviewing how I can set up “How to Get it Right in Your Reno or New Home” as an evergreen offering, and how the free 7-Day Challenge will be involved. The thing about homeowners planning their renovation or new home is that it’s not seasonal, and everyone does it at a different pace. So, while the ‘launch’ strategy builds scarcity, it doesn’t serve my audience in terms of them having access to the information in the way they need.

We’re also reviewing whether the 7-Day Challenge will stay on our online course site, or whether we’ll give it a different home. I’ve noticed Pat Flynn runs his mini-courses on Leadpages, as do many other online businesses that release a video each day in the same way. We had a bit of tech management to do with each challenge as people familiarised themselves with the username/password process of logging into a site, and so Leadpages may alleviate this.

But the 7-Day Challenge is a fantastic information asset for Undercover Architect, and super valuable to those who participate. So it’s definitely something we’ll feature in our business in the not-too-distant future.

We’re currently focusing on building another complimentary online program called “Manage Your Build” that will help homeowners oversee the construction of their new home or renovation with sanity, confidence and ease.

I was incredibly grateful for the opportunity to attend ProBlogger Evolve 2017, and for what I learned there. The calibre of expertise, and the generosity of teaching and sharing, was amazing. And to have the queen of challenges herself, Jadah Sellner, give me personal advice on how to structure mine was invaluable.

So, what challenge will you create for your audience?

 

BIO

Amelia Lee is the architect behind Undercover Architect.

Undercover Architect is an award-winning online resource that helps homeowners get it right when designing, building or renovating their family homes.

Amelia has more than 20 years industry experience in more than 250 projects (including three renovations of her own). She brings that experience and expertise to Undercover Architect to teach you how to save time, money and stress in your project, and ensure you create a home that suits you now, and always.

With a blog, podcast and online programs to support and guide you, Undercover Architect provides the know-how you need to feel confident and in control.

Check out www.undercoverarchitect.com and get started on your future family home now.

The post Case Study: How to Run a 7-Day Challenge appeared first on ProBlogger.

      

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any break throughs?

Hey guys, just wanted to see if anyone has had any big break throughs latley?
anyone finally make it?
finally in a place of financial security?
finally sold out your company for a couple mill?
retire 40 years before everyone else?

cheers,
Michael

from any break throughs?

[Progress] Expanding Demand and Gaining Control

The Fiverr business
My old thread was about a Fiverr business, and the business died.
Not completely, but it's no longer sustainable.

I still got a client outside Fiverr, and to me that is very valuable. Because that is a piece of control.

The strategy
I'm pretty good at stay alive. But without a strategy, it's hard to build long term success.
Usually a lack of control is acceptable, as long as I use it to gain more control. For example, Fiverr is a...

[Progress] Expanding Demand and Gaining Control

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Great Example of the Dangers of the Script

I stumbled across this article about IBM's changing HR policy and it immediately made me think of the Script:

Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM

It's a good, but very long article so I'll summarise the main points here.

For years, IBM had a very vocal policy of praising the importance of their staff and keeping them via retraining instead of making redundancies as technologies changed. As a consequence,...

Great Example of the Dangers of the Script

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