Hey! Welcome to Lessons from a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.
Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited that you are here. If you are interested in starting a online business, if you want to be a coach or a consultant more specifically, if you're into the service-based business online and you want help building that business so that you are not spinning for the next year, year and a half, trying to figure out all the things on your own. If you wanna be up and running in three months, if you wanna do some serious work, I want you to join me in my beginner business bootcamp.
I'm opening doors, um, this week. It is for a small group of less than, I don't know, it'd probably be 10 to 12 people so that I can have my eyes on your business and I will specifically help you narrow down your niche, your offer, your messaging, how to get clients, how to convert those consults into clients, all of the things. And we will deal with a lot of the thoughts that you're gonna have, a lot of the imposter syndrome, the who am I, all of those things. And so if that is something that you're interested in, you can go to twitter club.com/business and sign up for that wait list and it will send you a link with all the information for how to sign up. I cannot emphasize this enough that you can do it on your own or you can go into these kind of courses that are, you know, big courses on online business that will leave you confused for years.
The whole point, the reason I started this bootcamp is because I saw so many people do this kind of stuff, like start their businesses and then focus on all the wrong things. All the things that make you frustrated and keep you stuck. And I would see people spend year after year not actually making any money. And so I wanna bring my knowledge from having a multiple six figure coaching business for the last four years and being in masterminds where I paid $25,000 to be in those masterminds with other people that had really successful coaching businesses. All of the things that I've seen, it can be boiled down to very simple steps. And I want you to get on your way. I want you to stop spinning and actually launch that business. So if you're interested, like I said, go to twitter club.com/business. I would love to have you in the group and it ties in very well with the topic today.
The reason I wanted to talk about online business is because I realized I have talked about this topic a lot in the membership. If you're not familiar with the Quitter Club, it is a monthly membership that I have where we do all things thought work and we work on your career and we help you create a dream career. Now in the club we have a monthly entrepreneurship call, which I love and it's for people who have side hustles or businesses or wanna start businesses 'cause there are so many of you that are kind of in that in between like I'm an employee but I would love to work for myself or I've been in business and I just need some help. And so I coach in there once a month and we talk all things business. And so I get a lot of these thoughts that we coach on and I realize I hadn't talked about it on the podcast and so I know there's a lot of you that have these same thoughts.
I figured I should bring it here because it's really important for you to spot these thoughts for yourself so that you can push past them.
So here's the thing. If you've been around at all, you know like
I talk about this very openly, I love online businesses. I think it is one of the best opportunities that we have had in a really long time. I think we're in a very lucky time period in history where you can start a business with almost nothing. Like very little. You don't really need capital, you need your time, you might need a little bit of capital, but not anything what it was like before back in the day before the internet, which isn't that old like in the last 20 years before that, if you wanted to start a business mostly like a small business, it was much more difficult, especially because it was often like a brick and mortar type business.
You would need a large amount of capital to start that. You would need loans, it would be a lot more scary. And so there was a big obstacle kind of an impediment to starting that. That's no longer the case. Now those businesses obviously still do exist and if you want to do a brick and mortar business, you would still need to kind of have that investment or you know, there's product-based businesses that require a lot of maybe upfront capital in order to create and manufacture a product. But there are also online businesses. And so you have access to millions of people that you otherwise would not have had access to. Like back in the day if you wanted to market to people you would have to do it through like mailers or you know, radio spots or yellow page ads or TV spots. And that was usually tons of money.
So most people didn't have money for advertisement. Now I know we all like to rag on social media, but you have a tool that lets you access thousands if not millions of people. Like even if we're not talking about big viral accounts, like you can access hundreds of people. Like imagine if you had a small business and you could get up in front of a hundred people like back in the day. That in and of itself was a huge feat. Now we think like if I don't get in front of a million, if my reel doesn't hit, you know tens of thousands, it's not a big deal. But it is because you don't need that many. We're gonna talk about that. Um, but when you really just step back and think about it, it is fundamentally like groundbreaking that any person, a stay at home mom, a doctor in you know Indiana or a college kid in South America or a grandma in India can start a business online.
Okay, we've never had that. So like taking a moment to understand that and really understand the amount of opportunity there is I think is important. I also think it's important to see how quickly you can have a business up and running. I think a lot of us think that we need to do all of these things that we don't actually need to do. Like all of the fluff pieces, all of the websites and different social media platforms and branding and making things look super pretty. None of that is needed for a business. Um, and when you really boil it down to what you actually need and like how to find customers, it can be very straightforward. It can be a couple of steps and knowing who you wanna sell to and you can be up and running in a weekend truly like you can have things set up so that you're ready to sell your services.
And that's another thing like so many of us before really never had a ability to sell our expertise. And so many of us have so much expertise in so many things, not just in things that we have degrees in. There are those but just in life things, right? So many people are just looking for some help. They just want someone that's a couple steps ahead of them that has done something and maybe did it easier, figured out a way and they're looking for someone to help them. And it's not even just that like I look at, there's, I'm always so fascinated with the types of online businesses there are, right? Like from people just teaching you how to play guitar in your home or somebody teaching you doodling. There's a really great online business that I see where she just teaches you how to doodle properly.
It's like it's drawing but it's like, you know, we all do the kind of the doodling while we're listening out on a meeting. She helps you kind of learn how to doodle to take notes better. It's fascinating, right? Like you don't necessarily have to have some like groundbreaking business where you're like you're curing cancer. It's just simply something that you know how to do. You know how to make 10 minute meals great. Maybe that's something you can teach. You know how to plan out your week so you stick to your schedule and the kids aren't all over the place. Like wonderful. Maybe that's something you teach like there is just so much opportunity. So this is why I love online business. I honestly, I have seen the effects not just for me but for so many other people and how it has created an ability for people to leave corporate America for people to create their own wealth, for people to have their own schedules, to be able to work from anywhere, to have more freedom, to be able to stay home with their kids, to be able to take some time off when they have a child like to be able to make up for so much that lacks in corporate America.
I think that it is a really viable alternative. It's not to say that it's the alternative for everybody. And it's not to say that it's better. You know me if you're here, you know that my whole thing is that it'll be 50 50. So it's not like you're gonna do it and it's gonna be rainbows and butterflies and every day is fantastic and you're gonna love it. No, you're gonna hate 50% of it and that's okay. But it does create certain opportunities that aren't available in let's say corporate America. The other thing that I think is just incredible about it is I do think now having been on this side of it, it's fascinating to watch people as employees because with entrepreneurship there just is no glass sailing to what you can earn. It's how you can learn how to scale it. And when you know that there is that possibility and you see people that can create these really large businesses that will change their lives, that they would never have had that opportunity as an employee.
It life-changing, it's, it's very profound. Like I see so many women who may not have had the degrees or the types of jobs that would have afforded them really high paying jobs and they're making insane amounts of money online or people that may have come from disadvantaged communities and they didn't have the same networking and pedigree and degrees and they're now making hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. And really being able to support their own communities, their families, it's pretty incredible. So that's why I am like typically a really big fan of pushing people to consider it. I'm not saying you have to do it. And again, I'm not gonna be the person that blows smoke up you're behind and tells you like it's so easy you're gonna throw it up and all these people are gonna come flood. No, it's work but a lot of you are doing a lot of work anyways, right?
So it's like which one do you, do you wanna put in the work to build someone else's dream? Do you wanna put in the work to make someone else richer or do you wanna put in the work and build something where maybe in a year, two years, three years, five years, you've created a sustainable business that affords you kind of the lifestyle that you want? You pick your heart, right? They're both gonna be hard. What do you want? And I think for so many people they do want it. There's so much alluring. But as soon as they sort of give themselves the ability to think about it, the doubt starts creeping in. And a lot of what I hear, and this is sort of what I wanted to cover on this podcast, is the way that you've all convinced yourself that it's not possible for you is some variation of, well there are already too many coaches, the market is too saturated or I missed the boat on it, right?
Like maybe with influencers or whatnot. It's like Instagram like yeah, back in the day when Instagram started or when YouTube started, like all these people became YouTube Instagram stars, but now it's done or you know, some version of that. Well now everybody's a life coach so I can't really be a life coach. And I hear this all the time. And so I wanna put this to rest because it is such a ridiculous thought. It's trash and it is not true and you have to bury it because I'm gonna explain why not just because I think this, I want you all to truly understand how young the internet is in the grand scheme of things. It is an infant, it's a baby, nothing has happened yet, okay? And it will continue as we see now with like the, the rise of AI and and then it'll be the next thing and the next thing and it is moving very rapidly.
It will continue changing. And so when you have this thought of like, oh I missed the boat, there's already too many people. What you're basically saying, if you think about the thought, it's basically saying like anybody that's ever gonna have an online business has already started one and then the rest of the internet for the rest of our lives, that's what it's gonna be. There's no room for new players. Like do you see how ridiculous that sounds? Right? Because it's not true. First of all, if we take a step back and we look at any business, right? Imagine saying like, well I can't open up an Italian restaurant 'cause there's already Italian restaurants. Of course there are, there will always be and then there will always be new ones, right? Just because there is someone in the market doesn't mean that there can't be another person.
But even beyond that, when I look at the internet and I see like how much it's going to change and I see how many people start out in one way and then completely shift to something else or leave the industry like I see so many people that do coaching for a couple years and then decide to go do something else, right? It's fascinating to think that like it's only the people that were quote unquote lucky enough to start in like 2015. They were the ones that can start, nobody else can start sub absurd. Going back to like the understanding that like technology is gonna continue to change. One of the things I really realized when I was starting the podcast, I remember I used to have that same exact thought. I kept thinking there's already so many podcasts and at the time now there's like even more.
When I really got into it, it was just the cusp of like big businesses coming into podcasts. There really wasn't many when I first started. So it was still like individuals doing podcasts. You know, Spotify wasn't in the game and all of these like, uh, mass produced podcasts where it's like, you know, crime podcast, those weren't really there that much in 2018. It started with like Serial was there and I kept thinking like, why would somebody want my podcast? Like there's so many other podcasts out there, right? And I mean as a caveat, one of the things I was gonna say, and I'm just gonna address it here, is because I think that what we don't realize is that it sounds so cliche and it sounds so cheesy to say like, but you are unique. You know, like it's your voice. But it truly is.
I remember when I was grappling with this idea and thinking like, well who would want my podcast? 'cause there's tons of podcasts about career change, there's tons of podcasts about mindset, there's tons of podcasts about lawyers, you know, like being unhappy. I kept thinking like someone's already done it, why would I do it? Right? And I sat on my idea for podcasts for two years. I think about that now. Like how much more, how much further I would've gotten if I had started two years ago when it really, when podcasting was still even more of a smaller industry. But I didn't because of these thoughts. And I remember when I actually, when after I started it, I was, it was more of like, okay, whatever, there's a bunch, but I guess I'm just gonna throw in my um, name into the hat too. Or what is it?
What's the saying? Throw my hat in the ring. Um, and I did. And what I've learned in that, that journey is that people resonate with your voice. Different people resonate with different voices. Like there is room for multiple people. I know when I started doing it and you guys are so lovely and so many people reach out and like they tell me how much the podcast speaks to them and how it's just the way that I break down certain things. And I know that because I experience the same thing. Like I'm teaching thought work that is taught by a lot of coaches and I know I listen to like a handful of coaches who are teaching the same thing, the people I learn from and there are hundreds of other ones and I listen to some of them and I'm like, nope, don't resonate with them.
I just, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just their voice. Maybe it's the way they talk. Some people are super like fluffy. Some people are very direct. Some of us you know, resonate with harsh. Some of us resonate with super flowery language. Some of us don't like cussing, some of us need cussing. There's just so many variations of it. And I realize like after doing this that like, I don't know what it is about me, but I know that the way that I talk about these topics resonate with some of you. Some of you like listen to this and you're like, oh for the first time I kind of understand all this mindset stuff, right? Great. There's a lot of other people that listen to me and I, people have told me this too, like don't like my voice. They're like, she's not for me.
Great. They can find someone else, but there's so much room because there's 7 billion people on this earth. There's, I mean even if we obviously like bring it down to like in this country and you're talking about adult aged people, you're still talking about like a hundred million people, 150 million people that are available to listen to someone. They're not all listening to the same person. There's room to resonate with different people. So that was an aside, but that's one of the points I wanted to make. But what I was saying is that like I remember when I started the podcast and I really thought I missed the boat. And I was like, ah, if I just started three years ago then you know, there was more of an opportunity to go viral kind of for podcasting. Like to get discovered on Apple Podcasts. There was more of an opportunity to get featured by Apple podcasts 'cause there wasn't a lot of like celebrity podcasts.
And I kept thinking like that was why I'm not successful. Like if I had just done it, those people were so lucky. And I remember thinking the same thing about Instagram. I was like, well all the people that started on Instagram like a couple years ago where it was first starting out, like they're the ones that got to build really big audiences. And what was fascinating was like I was, you know, still gonna do it. And I was like, okay, whatever. We're gonna do it the hard way. But I remember like at one point being like, well there's gonna be a new technology, there's gonna be a new app. And now that I'm in the game, now that I have the podcast up and I have you know, the marketing things, like I'm primed to take advantage of the next thing that comes up. Like there's gonna be other people that are gonna think like, I wish I was in the game at that time, right?
And so I sort of had that thought and lo and behold TikTok came around and I didn't even jump on it early enough. Like I was just like waiting, waiting, waiting. And then when I jumped on it, I got like 160,000 followers within like the first six months that I was doing it. And I actually stopped posting there. But that's a story for another time. But I remember thinking like, oh of course. 'cause like I was ready to go. I'd already had my podcast established, I had my messaging established, I'd been posting on Instagram, I'd gotten over all of my fears about being seen, I'd gone through all that. So by the time I was ready to post in like 2020 or 2021, um, when TikTok was kind of rising, it was an easier thing for me. Whereas most people were still like, why would I create a TikTok account?
You know, like I still don't know what I'm talking about. And I really take that thought process even as I'm going forward. I have no idea what's gonna happen, right? With AI and with all these apps and I'm certain there will be another app that will come, right? And when you think about it that way and when you realize how young this industry is and how quickly it evolves, honestly the best thing that you can do is to just get started and to be on that forefront as it moves to learn about it. I was talking to someone when I was coaching about this very idea of like ai, like it's fascinating. I already have a business so I'm not prone to do this. But for so many people that wanna start a business, if I, if I didn't have my business, what I would do, I'm gonna give you business um, ideas right now that you're, you're welcome to steal.
I would very heavily be looking into how to create a business using AI and that could be a million different things. But looking at like what services can you create using chat GBT for other people that maybe don't know how to use it, how can you use it in a way to create templated things to be able to sell online? There's so many different possibilities. Like I would be in AI, Facebook groups or Reddit groups learning like how other people are building businesses because it is the wild, wild west. It's like a new frontier. And so there will always be like, you know when there was the gold rush, like the people that made a lot of money or the people that were selling the shovels and the pick axis. That's the same thing with any industry, right? Like when AI now in chat gt, you don't have to be the company that's creating the new ais, but you can be someone that's like, hey, like I'll give you an example when websites usually be just WordPress and you needed to have like coding experience, right?
But then companies like Wix and Squarespace came about, right? And they were like templated kind of websites. Now they already made it easy so that most people could just use that. But there's a lot of people who don't have the time and energy to wanna learn that. So what happened was there's an entire industry of people that learned how to create like Wix websites on Wix, which is like kind of a template drag and drop. But you, they learn how to manipulate certain things, they learn how to use certain templates and then they sold that as a service. They just became kind of a Wix website developer. And so if you wanted a quick website within a day, you would pay them and they would set it up on Wix for you, right? There are so many opportunities like that. There are so many apps, there's so many things that people need, services they need help with.
But it requires you to like be the one to discover where is the pain point? Where is the problem? How can I solve this problem for people? How much would they pay me to do this? And how many would I need in order to make a business? And that actually leads me to the next point because in all of this discussion about like whether it's too saturated or whatnot, I think a lot of us really overestimate how many customers we need, how many clients we might need in order to have a sustainable business. And I think when you really understand what the numbers are, you can see how the fear of not having a vague audience is overblown. So let's just break this down really quickly. For most of us, if we're gonna go into like a coaching business or a consulting business or even a service-based business, like you're gonna build websites, you're gonna use ai, let's say you're gonna create copy for people, whatever you're gonna do, for most of you, you're gonna do one-on-one work.
You're gonna do higher packaged type things where you're doing more kind of high touch VIP type businesses. You don't have to do lower cost businesses where you need a bigger audience. Like if you were gonna do that where let's say yes, you wanna sell a hundred dollars product. If you're gonna sell a hundred dollars product, you would have to sell a lot of it in order to make a sustainable business. So you'd have to grow your Instagram or TikTok or whatever. By the way, even that you don't have to grow it like an insane amount. Like let's think about it. If you were selling a hundred dollars product, let's say you created some kind of course or some kind of PDF to teach people something, if you were selling it at a hundred dollars, you'd need a thousand people to make a hundred thousand dollars in a year.
I'm just using that as 'cause it's a easy marker. But let's say you wanna make a hundred thousand dollars, you don't have to have millions of people, you don't have to have millions of followers, you don't even have to have hundreds of thousands of followers. You need to sell a thousand of 'em, right? Are there a thousand people that need that product? That's what you have to sort of ask yourself. But the thing is, is that for most of you that you're not gonna sell a hundred dollars product, you're gonna sell a thousand dollars product or you're gonna sell a $2,000 or $5,000 package, right? You're gonna sell, let's say you're gonna set up someone's website. Like if we go with that, that example, let's say you do that for $2,000. If you do that, you need 50 people, you need 50 customers throughout the year in order to make a hundred thousand dollars, right?
So if you divide that by quarters, that means you're making 12 websites every three months. That's what you have to find. They're not staggering numbers. It's not that difficult to find 12 people, 12 businesses that might want a website, right? That would be willing to pay you. And so when you start realizing that, the reason I say this is because I think people think, oh I need to get on Instagram and get tens of thousands of followers. You really don't. I know coaches who have very high six figure businesses, like 400, 500, 800,000 million dollars businesses that have like 4,000 followers on Instagram. And that's the only social media presence, right? You just need the right followers, you need the people that are actually interested in what you're selling. You need to learn how to target them. That's what you need. But you don't need to like get on there and go viral.
You don't need the vanity metrics. We're not getting on TikTok or whatever just to get a bunch of people to follow us. We're not trying to be influencers. We're trying to run a business. And so when I say this, the reason I want you to truly understand this is because I think there is just so much room. Like when people talk about coaching, it's fascinating to me when they say things like, oh you know saturated, I have a fairly large audience, not really compared to most coaches, I don't on social media I do, but like my email list is not that large. But I think about it and I'm like, if I help, I would say like a hundred, 150 people a year between the club and my other programs. And let's say we even throw in all of the people that listen to the podcast.
Let's say we say like I help a thousand people a year with their careers. They're gonna listen to me, they're not gonna go to anyone else. Okay, fine. Okay. How many more people are miserable in their careers? How many more people are looking for help to figure out what they wanna do? How many people don't come to me because they wanna wanna on one coach? How many people don't come to me 'cause they actually want help with like resumes and how to like transfer their skills? There are so many people that are looking for so many different things. Even if we think about the bigger gurus, let's say you think about like, um, one of these Instagram stars that, for my example, because of people I know, let's say coaches, if like some of these coaches that are making tens of millions of dollars or even more, let's say they have like 150,000, 200,000, 500,000 followers and they are selling, let's say, I don't know, 10,000 people into their programs every year.
Um, I'm trying to run their numbers right now. Like yeah, let's say they're not even doing 10,000, but let's just say a lot of them are selling like programs that are one, two, $3,000 and they're selling, we're gonna go with a round number of 10,000 people, okay? And they're making 20, 30 million, okay? Those are huge businesses. 10,000 is nothing in the grand scheme of like I just said, like if you think about America and you think about adult working age people and you think about, let's say your demographic, like for all of us, let's say like for me it's women and it's maybe women between a certain age and there's college grads. Okay fine. Even if you keep reducing it down, you're at like 50 million people, you know 20 million people and we're talking about 10,000 of them are gonna buy a coaching package. I just want you to see the how big the market is and how few people are actually being serviced by coaches and consultants and stuff.
And so I think it can be daunting to when you're on social media, especially if you're following these accounts because you're interested in that, it is easy for your mind to kinda get warped into thinking everyone is doing this. There's already so many because you are interested in that. But I promise you that most people have never even heard of coaching. Most people have never considered like hiring a coach or consultant or whatnot because they haven't been exposed to it, they haven't been educated about it. That's not what they're following on Instagram or TikTok. And it's really important to see that because there's so many people out there that are suffering. I think about this, I think about like the people that I help, it's so minuscule compared to the amount of people that wake up up every day and hate their lives and hate work and dread Mondays and can't make it to Friday.
And you know, think they have a toxic boss and are angry all the time. And that's like 70% of corporate America. There are so many people that need that help. And if I was to think back in the day, which I did think, and I'm super glad that I just ignored my own thoughts and pushed through, but if I was to think like why would anyone listen to me? There's already so many people talking about career change, then I wouldn't have helped the people that I helped and I wouldn't have the business that I have. And if you don't wanna start a business, don't start a business. I'm totally okay with that. But don't stop yourself from starting a business because of some excuse that there's already too many people or it's too late. That's just categorically untrue. It's false. And so do not hide behind that excuse.
You can decide it's not for me. I don't want the risk. I don't wanna put myself out there. I'm too afraid. Whatever. I like my paychecks. I am a good employee. All of those super valid. The fact that so many of you want to do it, but you're telling yourself you can't because it's too late or there are too many people is unacceptable. It's absolutely unacceptable. We will no longer be accepting that you can cancel that immediately and never bring it up again because that is just not the truth. So if you have it in your heart to think about a business, this is your permission to do that. It is not too late. There are not too many people. Your voice is needed. There are people that need your help. You're not trying to get millions of people. You can create a very sustainable business finding 50 clients in a year or even less.
And so if that is something that you've wanted to do, do it. Stop waiting. There will be new technologies, there will be new things to jump on. There will be new things. You'll likely pivot, you'll likely learn a lot and figure out other easier ways to maybe make money or whatever. And like learning those skills is so valuable and is the point because you can then apply that to any other business. Like if once you learn niching and marketing and reaching people and how to convert sales and all of that stuff, like it doesn't matter what the business is, you can use those same skills on any business. So I think it's one of the best skills that you can learn, learn. 'cause you can always figure out a way to make money after that. But regardless, I want you to give yourself that opportunity to get in that game.
'cause it's just beginning and it is pretty freaking awesome. And if you want help building your business, then I wanna help you. I wanna help you get started and I wanna help you eliminate a lot of these thoughts that you have that keep you stuck. And I want you to actually be out there targeting the people that you want to help and getting your gifts and genius out into the world. So you can go to quitter club.com/business and sign up to get all the information and join me in my beginner business bootcamp. And even if you decide not to join me in that, I want you to give some serious thought about going into business for yourself because it is pretty freaking awesome.
All right, my friends, I hope this was helpful. I'll be back next week with another episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working. Like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome… and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching, tools, and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.