Primoz Bozic

Helping online entrepreneurs build a 7-figure online business

Primoz Bozic

Why I joined a $25k business mastermind

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A few months ago I made the biggest investment I ever made in myself:

I joined an elite 6-month business mastermind from Derek Halpern from Social Triggers, one of my favorite online entrepreneurs.

The mastermind cost $25k for 6 months, which is definitely a lot of money.

Most people wouldn’t spend that kind of money at the stage of the business I’m at. They’d probably think I’m crazy for doing it.

But I’ve always believed in aggressively investing in yourself, so this investment was a no-brainer for me.

In this post, I’ll share why I joined this mastermind, what the experience was like, and most importantly if it was worth it or not to spend $25k on it.

Let’s dive in!

First, how do elite business masterminds even work?

In a nutshell, I’ve found that most elite business masterminds include a few things:

  • In-person retreats (where you spend a few days together with the mastermind, learn about new strategies that you can use to grow your business and get personalized feedback from the group on your business challenges)
  • VIP days (where you get to spend a whole day with the host of the mastermind and do a complete strategic overview of your business)
  • Group coaching calls (regular online check-ins to see how you’re doing and to get help with the month-to-month challenges you’re facing in your business)
  • 1on1 coaching calls (on-demand coaching calls that you can use to work on your sales funnels, sales pages, product development, etc. – on as needed basis)

Most people will either join an elite mastermind to get access to new knowledge they don’t have yet, to meet entrepreneurs at similar stages of their business, and to get direct help from an expert that’s hard to get anywhere else.

3 reasons why joining an elite business mastermind was a no-brainer for me

When I heard that Derek was starting an elite business mastermind, I immediately knew I wanted to be a part of it, no matter how much it cost.

I saw this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to get personalized feedback on my business from someone who rarely does any 1on1 work, so I immediately jumped the gun.

I knew that making this investment in myself would pay off many times in the future. It was just a matter of time.

Here are the specific reasons why joining an elite business mastermind was a no-brainer for me:

#1 – I wanted 1on1 access to a top expert in my industry

I always made it a point to learn from the best people in the industry.

That’s why I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on online courses from Ramit Sethi, Selena Soo, and Derek Halpern over the past few years.

That’s why I fly to the US multiple times a year to connect with other top influencers in my industry.

But even though I already had mentors that would help me out when I needed their help, I felt like I really lacked a 1on1 business coach that would sit down with me, take a look at my whole business and tell me what I’m doing well and what I can do better.

I wanted to eliminate the guesswork from my business and have access to someone who’s been there and done exactly what I wanted to do – built a multiple 7-figure online business.

I knew that if I could have someone as experienced as Derek look at my sales page, sales funnel or growth strategy for my business, that could easily help me double my online business this year.

I also knew from the past that many successful online entrepreneurs made similar investments early on in their careers.

One of my mentors Ramit Sethi regularly talks about how he joined an elite mastermind from Jay Abraham and how he flew in all over the country 1x/month just to meet with him for 45 minutes.

Another friend and mentor of mine, Selena Soo talks about how she hired a high-end business coach relatively early in her career as well so she was able to rapidly grow her consulting business.

For a long time, I wished I would be able to do the same – and when this opportunity came up, I knew I was ready.

#2 – I wanted to learn how to become a true master of my craft

Over the last year, I realized that what many top online entrepreneurs actually DID to create their online business is very different to what they TEACH in their online courses.

Yes, the techniques and strategies that they share in the courses generally work pretty well, but they ONLY work well if you PRACTICE them, not if you just “know” them.

For example, if you take an online course on copywriting, but only write five 1,000 word blog posts in a year, you’re not going to become a master copywriter or really grow your business.

But if you use the same copywriting course to rewrite your sales page 17 times (while getting feedback on your writing from your audience and from a coach), then you’ll make a huge step towards becoming a great copywriter.

This is the part of the story that most online gurus leave out.

Why?

Well, it’s pretty simple.

If you told people that building an online business isn’t easy and that it’s very unlikely that you’ll actually be able to do it over the course of 4 or 8 weeks, and that it will take you years of practice to build an incredible online business…

…Then that’s not as sexy as “you could be earning thousands of dollars a few weeks from now!”.

I noticed that a lot of online entrepreneurs hate talking about their process and hard work because they think that nobody is interested in the process, or is willing to do the work.

While that might be true for most people, it’s not true for me. I always wanted to hear the TRUTH.

I wanted to find out exactly what people did to become incredible at what they do. I wanted to find out how they practiced on a daily basis to get better, no matter how boring the process might seem to some people.

Because deep down I knew that that was the real secret to success, and not just another tactic or strategy or hack that I could use.

By getting 1on1 access to Derek, I knew I could talk to him about what he actually did to become a great online entrepreneur and develop his strengths like creating viral YouTube videos.

I knew it wasn’t luck or talent, and that it was practice.

Joining this mastermind would help me get to the bottom of it – and then help me learn how I could become a more masterful entrepreneur myself.

I knew that would be the secret to scaling my business to multiple 6 and 7 figures, and I’d only need to do the work to get there.

#3 – I wanted to experience what a $25k mastermind is like so I could create an elite mastermind in the future

I always had a dream of running an elite business mastermind myself.

But before I did that, I wanted to know what excellence looks like.

I wanted to experience what joining a high-end mastermind looks like, so that when the time came, I would know exactly how to run my own, in my own way.

I always thought that was the right approach to life.

If you want to sell a $1,000 online program, you should join a few of them to see where the bar is set. If you want to charge $500/h for coaching, you should hire a coach that charges $500/h to see what the experience is like (and so on).

It gives you the lay of the land and also gives you the opportunity to create something incredible in the future.

So what was the experience like?

So far I’m about half-way through the 6-month mastermind I joined:

  • I’ve done a full VIP day with Derek to look over my whole business
  • We’ve done a 2-day in-person retreat in NYC with the whole mastermind
  • We’ve done a handful of monthly accountability calls

The VIP day with Derek was absolutely incredible, and probably my favorite and most valuable part of the experience.

First, we sat down and look over my whole business model and business strategy and created a plan for 2018, which was awesome.

Then, I asked Derek all the questions I could ever think of related to his business – from how he started it, to how he comes up with viral video ideas, what he does on a day to day basis, etc.

This really helped me understand why he’s so incredibly good at what he does, and how I can get better at skills like creating viral content, storytelling or writing better sales pages.

The 2-day in-person retreat in NYC was also amazing.

During the retreat, Derek essentially walked us through how he runs his business – from coming up with new ideas, to doing the customer research to building and improving the actual products.

He also talked to us about what he’s focusing on in his business right now, and what the thinking and strategy behind it is.

As the icing on the cake, we spent quite a lot of time focusing on our own business challenge through “hot seats”, which was helpful in getting clarity for what to focus on in my business next.

Just for these two parts, the mastermind was 100% worth it for me. There’s just nowhere else where you can have deep conversations about your business with a world-class expert, and see the behind the scenes of how he runs his business.

Even when I worked with Ramit Sethi for 2 years, I didn’t get this kind of direct access to him – and it’s truly priceless.

The last part of the mastermind that I’ve experienced so far were the monthly accountability calls, which are essentially mini hot-seats where you can get help with your current business challenges.

This part was good as well, though not as valuable as the longer, in-person meetings.

The one part of the mastermind which I haven’t used yet is the 1on1 coaching calls, which will be useful over the next few months as I develop and launch new online programs, and flesh out the strategy for my business until the end of the year.

We also have another retreat coming up in NYC soon, which I’m really excited about.

Was spending $25k on a mastermind worth it?

So all in all, was joining this mastermind worth it and a smart financial decision?

For me, the answer is HELL YES.

Even though this is by far the biggest investment I’ve ever made in my business, it’s also one of the most valuable investments I’ve ever made, and exactly what I needed at this stage of my business.

Joining this mastermind has given me the clarity that I need to take my business to 7 figures, as well as the business knowledge that will help me better serve my students and clients.

I do believe that once you hit the low multiple six figures with your business, a high-end mastermind like this can be a phenomenal investment and a great use of your time – especially as it becomes increasingly harder to find people that you can continue learning from in the online business world.

I also believe that the overall format of the mastermind with in-person VIP days and retreats works great, and it’s something I want to do more of with my coaching clients.

At a lower price point, a mastermind like this could be a great investment for someone who’s running a 5-figure business and wants to get it to 6 figures.

So who knows… Perhaps later this year I’ll create one :).

-Primoz

My theme for 2018: Don’t be an asshole

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I have a single sticky note on my computer that says this:

Don’t be an asshole.

This sticky note has nothing to do with anuses…

Or “being a stupid, mean, or contemptible person”.

(The definitions you’ll find in a dictionary).

And it has everything to do with growing your online business in 2018.

In fact, this single sentence is so important to me that I decided to make it my theme for 2018.

I wrote about why I did that (and what it means) in this post.

This one sticky note could literally change your life.

Apply it to your online business and you’ll…

  • Make more money than ever before
  • Help more people than ever before
  • And be the happiest you’ve ever been

It’ll help you make 2018 the best year in business ever (and it’s not even close).

And no, I’m not making this up.

Read on, and you’ll find out all about why you should put that sticky note on your computer as well.

But first, let me ask you something.

How many ideas did you have last year that never saw the light of day?

How many business ideas did you think of pursuing, but never explored?

How many blog posts did you think of writing, but never wrote (or published)?

How many products did you think of creating, but never tested or launched?

Think about it.

In fact, ask yourself a few more questions.

How many emails did you think of writing (to your friends, clients, mentors or readers) that you never wrote (or sent out)?

How many podcasts, guest posts or publicity opportunities did you think about pursuing, but never did anything about?

How many influential people did you want to connect with, but never did?

If you’re like me, just thinking about these questions will make you sick in your stomach.

It’ll make you want to hide the answer to these questions, because you’re ashamed of it.

For example, I have a note on my phone that includes 186 blog post ideas:

That’s a 10-page Google Document full of ideas (or exactly 2037 words of ideas).

These are just the ideas from the last 5 months (when I got a new phone).

There’re hundreds of more ideas scattered throughout my phone, notebooks, and computers.

How many of these blog post ideas did I actually end up writing?

Maybe about 10.

That’s a lot of blog posts that I’ve never written.

A lot of blog posts that could have brought more readers to my online business, and helped my existing readers live a lot better lives.

And it’s not just blog posts.

I’ve had tens of ideas for online programs that I never got around to creating.

I’ve had tens of podcasts that I could go on or reach out to but never did.

I even had a few guest post opportunities for major publications that I never wrote or submitted.

All of these things would help me further grow my online business.

And yet they didn’t, because they never saw the light of day.

And if you’re reading this, I bet you’re in the exact same boat.

You have your own wall of shame of ideas that you never acted on.

And you know that if you did, your business would be in a very different place than it is today.

So the question is…

Why?

Why do we have so many ideas that we never follow through with?

The easiest thing to say would be:

“I didn’t have the time”.

But come on. We ALL know that’s not true.

I know that if I had time to watch the whole Game of Thrones season, to spend more than 15 hours a week in the gym, and to spend more hours than I’d like to admit on emails, social media and reading travel blogs, I had more time to write as well.

If it wasn’t time, was it energy?

Was I so burned out and exhausted that I couldn’t physically make myself act on ideas?

To be honest, no.

I had plenty of times when I felt perfectly fine, but still didn’t act on my ideas (and instead invited friends over for the evening to lose myself in board games).

So if it’s not time, and not energy, then what the hell is it?

For me, it’s…

Perfectionism.

This might come as a surprise to some, because I’m generally known for “making things good enough and moving on”, and “executing on ideas fast”.

But that’s because of the ideas that people SEE come to life.

With those, I’m able to break away from perfectionism and launch them – fast.

But nobody sees the ideas that I don’t execute on (or follow through with) – but me.

And the reason why these ideas don’t come to life is pretty simple.

I don’t let them.

Sometimes, we’re our own worst enemies.

I don’t write blog posts because I think they’re not interesting enough.

Because I don’t think anyone will read them.

Because I don’t think they’ll make a huge impact on my business.

And obviously, the better alternative according my brain is to just spend time THINKING about blog post ideas and writing them down into my little note document.

I don’t create or launch new products because I’m afraid that nobody will want to buy them.

Because I’m afraid that I’ll spend hundreds of hours on them that will go to waste.

Because I’m afraid that they won’t work as well as I would have wanted them to.

Again, the better alternative according to my brain is to spend time PLANNING new products, rather than actually testing and launching them.

Luckily, there’s silver lining to all of this.

When we DO follow through with our ideas, magic happens.

You might remember how I started my first online business a few years ago (productivity coaching for online poker players).

I had this idea for “The Quick Guide to Skyrocketing Your Poker Productivity” at 6am in my parents’ apartment.

I woke up, I logged into a poker forum, and I wrote it.

A year later, that single idea I acted on has helped me bring in over $38k in coaching and freelance revenues – more than DOUBLE the average annual salary in Slovenia.

Or, you might recall a story of how my business idea of teaching online entrepreneurs how to write Ultimate Guides came to life.

I had an idea to do this, brought it up to a few friends, and got my first paying clients for it within hours of thinking of the idea.

Then, I sent out the idea to my email list and got a total of 7 paying clients for 1on1 coaching (and over $20k in revenue).

A year later, my Ultimate Guide System has brought in over 6 figures to my online business.

The crazy part?

I had this same idea to teach entrepreneurs how to write Ultimate Guides back in 2015, but never acted on it because I didn’t think it would work out.

Another random idea was The Top Performer Club, my group coaching program for online entrepreneurs.

Even though it took me more than 6 months to test out the idea through my email list, the 3 emails I sent out about it ended up bringing over $18k in coaching revenue to my online business.

It’s crazy to see how most of the big breakthroughs in my online business can be traced down to these small moments of courage…

…When I gave myself permission to stop worrying and just act on my ideas.

It’s scary to think how much more my business would grow if I acted on even more of my ideas.

Which begs the question…

What if we could follow through with our ideas ALL the time?

What would that do for our business?

How much faster would we be able to grow it?

How many more people would be able to help?

And how much happier would we be because we’d know we’re really giving our business EVERYTHING we can?

I know that for me, the answer is A LOT.

My business would grow a lot faster, I’d help a lot more people, and I’d be a lot happier.

But there’s also a trickier question that we need to address.

Is it even possible to follow through with our ideas ALL the time?

It’s easy to dream about the perfect world, especially in the beginning of each year when we’re all excited and motivated.

It’s much harder when the reality hits us and we actually need to do the work, especially when times get tough, life comes in the way or we fall off track.

And let’s be honest, no matter what technique I would use, I wouldn’t be able to write 186 great blog posts last year PLUS launch 10 incredible online programs last year.

Unless I cloned myself. Which would be super cool, but unfortunately I don’t know how to do that yet.

So it’s safe to say that following through with all of your ideas is pretty much impossible, and while that’s something we could strive for, it’s something we’ll never ever really achieve.

Especially since acting on our ideas successfully usually sparks MORE ideas for what we could do.

Luckily, there’s something we CAN do instead.

We can follow through with (a lot) MORE of our ideas.

And we can spend less time THINKING about them and REFINING them.

We can spend less time THINKING about writing that blog post, and actually sit down to write it.

We can spend less time EDITING that blog post, and publish it to see what our readers think about it.

We can spend less time doing the work that NEVER sees the light of day…

…And spend more time creating work that DOES.

And that’s what I’m committed to doing more of this year.

I’m committed to making more of my ideas come to life, even if all of them are not “perfect”.

Because I know that as I do this, I’ll open myself to finding ideas that ARE amazing, AND I’ll help more people in the process (rather than just keeping the ideas for myself).

There’s just one problem.

Following through with your ideas is a lot easier said than done.

I mean, think about it.

You’ve probably had times when you made the exact same commitment to yourself.

You said you’d stop being a perfectionist, and put your ideas out into the world faster.

In the moment, it felt great…

…But in the end, you didn’t actually do it.

A few days later, you forgot about it, and went back into your old habits.

THINK, THINK, THINK.

PLAN, PLAN, PLAN.

REFINE, REFINE, REFINE.

…over and over again.

So how will 2018 be different?

That’s where this little sticky note comes into play:

I got the idea for this sticky note through a conversation with my client that struggled with the exact same issue.

She spent months and months creating and refining a blog post that never saw the light of day.

This felt crazy to me, because I read her blog post and though it was awesome.

I asked her:

“Why don’t you just publish it?”

And of course, her response was predictable:

“I don’t think it’s any good.”

“I don’t think anyone will read it.”

“I think I need to spend some more time on it.”

She was her own worst critic, and her own worst enemy.

As I listened to her thoughts, I thought to myself:

“Wow, she’s focusing a lot on what SHE thinks about her blog post… And is completely ignoring what her READERS would think about it.”

Then I recommended her to make a sticky note like this one – and put it on her computer screen.

She finished her blog post shortly after that.

Here’s the truth:

Your readers don’t care about your blog posts not being perfect.

Especially if you’re just starting out with your online business.

They CAN’T and WON’T be perfect. (as you’re still learning how to write great content).

But what your readers DO care about is your IDEAS.

They want to hear your ideas, and implement them in their lives.

Just like this blog post that I’m writing right now, which by the way is an idea from about 6 months ago.

They don’t really care if the grammar in your blog posts isn’t perfect.

They don’t really care if your powerpoint slides for your online program has a typo.

They don’t even care if your ideas are 100% refined or not, as long as they can actually hear them.

That’s because they’ll take your ideas, and apply them to their own lives, in their own ways.

But if they never HEAR ABOUT your ideas, they can never do that.

They can never SEE them in a post that’s shared or social media, or HEAR them in a podcast where you talk about them.

They can never READ the blog post that you never wrote (or published) for them.

They can never APPLY your ideas if you don’t create that online program that will help them put them into action.

Your readers cannot care about the things they never hear about.

So by not putting your ideas out into the world, you’re not just letting yourself down.

You’re letting your readers down.

You possess all of this knowledge that could help them change their lives, and you’re not sharing it with them.

And that makes you kind of an asshole.

You’re putting yourself first, not your customers.

Not cool.

At the end of the day, running an online business isn’t about you.

It’s about your customers, who NEED to hear what you have to say.

So every time you catch yourself keeping your ideas for yourself, remember that you’re doing this to help people.

And then share your ideas with the world, even if they’re not perfect.

Because doing that is infinitely better than not sharing them at all.

That’s what I’m doing, and that’s why I have that post it note on my screen.

I encourage you to make one too – and send it my way. I’d love to see it.

In 2018, all I ask you is to do one thing…

Don’t be an asshole.

Share your ideas with the world.

-Primoz

CASE STUDY: How this binge eating expert 5x-ed her opt-in rate (and doubled her email list in a weekend)

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Meet Maria:

Maria is an ex-professional powerlifter (now she’s more into calisthenics), and she’s really freaking good at helping people overcome binge eating.

A few weeks ago, she published her Ultimate Guide to Stop Binge Eating for Good, which instantly made a big impact on her business:

  • She was able to 5x her opt-in rate from 5% to 24%
  • Within 48 hours of publishing her guide, she got an additional 125 email subscribers to her email list (which doubled her existing email list from 125 to 250 subscribers)
  • Her new email subscribers were 7x more engaged than the previous ones

Because I loved Maria’s story, I asked her to write all about it – and she did!

Maria, take it away!

How my Ultimate Guide helped me 5x my opt-in rate, doubled my email list and sent audience engagement through the roof (in ONE weekend)

Creating an ultimate guide is a big piece of work. I had a lot of reservations before creating one:

  • Did I have time to write one, around all the other things in my life?
  • Was it going to be worth the effort?
  • Was anyone going to give a shit?
  • If I gave away so much content for free, would I run out of material that I could monetize later?

Why I decided to write an Ultimate Guide

In the end, I decided to write an Ultimate Guide (To Stop Binge Eating For Good). Here’s why:

Establish myself as the go-to expert

When I first started trying to publicize myself and my site, I’d send outreach emails, but it dawned on me pretty quickly that influencers had no reason to listen to me. All this knowledge was in my head, so even though I knew I was good, no one else knew. I felt the ultimate guide would give me a stronger voice than a single, cold-pitch email ever could. It would give influencers and prospects a reason to listen to me.

Add massive value

I wanted to give people as much help as possible. Having been there myself, I know how miserable it is to be binge eating, and I’m genuinely driven to help others in a meaningful way. The ultimate guide is a great way to do that.

Great content stands the test of time

Rather than clickbait bullshit that lasts three seconds, I wanted to create a strong piece of content that will still be helping tons of people, many years down the line. I wanted to do the work upfront, and reap its benefits for years to come.

Link, link, link

Like a giant FAQ, I wanted to create a single resource where I could consistently link people who were struggling. This would save time in the future, and still deliver the value my audience crave. Although I know nothing about SEO, I’d also heard that long, useful content would probably be a good thing for my ranking, and it was something my site was sorely lacking.

So, with those reasons in mind, I wrote The Ultimate Guide To Stop Binge Eating For Good. But what I didn’t see coming was the dramatic increase in engagement I’ve since achieved.

Before and after: how the Ultimate Guide increased audience engagement x7

Let me set the scene for you. Before I wrote the ultimate guide, I was stuck on 124 subscribers for months. My opt-in rate was around 5%.

During those months, I tried to get guest posts. I got two, but gained no new subscribers from either.

When I managed to score an interview on the Summer Tomato podcast, I knew this would be a great opportunity to drive traffic to my site, so I wanted my opt-in to be strong.

With hours to spare before the podcast went live, I finished my ultimate guide and made it my opt-in. It was worth the mad rush: my email list doubled in one weekend.

I was away with friends over that weekend, and it felt very cool to see my business “working” while I was away.

By using the ultimate guide, my opt-in rate went from just below 5% to 24% (that’s nearly x5).

Let’s quickly think about why this happened.

My audience are people who have been binge eating — often for years — and have no idea why they are doing it, or how to stop. Imagine you are in their shoes for a minute. So you’re really confused about why you keep binge eating, and you desperately want to stop.

Now you’re given two options to choose from (both are free):

  1. 6 Essential Tips To Stop A Binge In Its Tracks (this was my previous opt-in)
  2. A 65-page Ultimate Guide To Stop Binge Eating For Good

Which would you choose?

You’d pick option number 2. Of course you would.

My opt-in rate quintupled because a 65-page Ultimate Guide promises to answer so many questions my audience have about their own behavior, and how to change it. For someone struggling with binge eating, this kind of promise is irresistible.

But the ultimate guide still wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to deliver an experience to my subscribers, and show that I give a damn about each and every person who signs up to my email list.

So, after they sign up, I send them the ultimate guide and eight weeks’ worth of onboarding emails, which take them through the guide in detail.

The first email they get sent during onboarding asks them to respond with the number one thing they’re struggling with right now.

Before the ultimate guide, I only got 3 responses to this email from the 124 subscribers I had. As soon as I released the guide, I got from the additional 125 subscribers I got in that weekend. That’s engagement x7.

My inbox became flooded with emails answering my question.

Subscribers going through this new onboarding system are opening my emails 80% of the time. (Admittedly, there haven’t been that many going through since I automated it, but I’ll take 80% anytime.)

 

But it goes further than this. People are responding, saying the most amazing things to me:

Messages like this are why I’m dedicated to building this business.

Why the Ultimate Guide made my audience way more engaged

Personal stories open people up

An ultimate guide is a great place to share personal stories. When you open up to people, when you give them the gift of your own vulnerability and struggles, when you tell them “you’re not alone in this”, they give you the gift of their stories and struggles in return. That’s how deep and meaningful relationships are formed. But you have to be the one to take the first step.

Sprinkling personal stories and vulnerabilities throughout your guide helps your audience open up to you in return.

Expert generosity

By going into such depth in one guide  — from the neuroscience behind what’s going on in the brain before a binge, to specific action steps you can take to stop binge eating forever — not only do I demonstrate that I’m an expert who can be trusted, but people can clearly see the amount of effort I put in for them.

When you go out of your way for people, when you deliver massive value in one convenient location, when you give it away, completely free of charge, people want to thank you, and do something for you in return. That’s just human nature.

People are going out of their way to thank me for my generosity.

Remarkable content instills excitement

Websites on binge eating seem to be separated into a few camps. One camp talks about eating disorders in a very clinical way (usually these are health service or psychotherapy websites). Another camp speaks in a very spiritual way (these websites are often bright pink and have flowers everywhere). Another camp sits within the fitness industry, and often tells people they need to count calories, go on a diet, and use willpower to get through (and yet all the research suggests diets are the cause of binge eating in the first place).

My website, and my guide, are different from anything I’ve ever seen in my niche. I don’t use flowery language telling people they are broken. I don’t dwell on the clinical side of having an eating disorder. My ultimate guide cites scientific research, but it also uses fun analogies, personal stories, and hand-drawn images (which I personally drew). It teaches mental toughness and resilience; it has solid, actionable steps; and it gets sweaty at times, because that’s how I roll. Finally, it’s positioned on a website with photos of me being a badass in the gym (because that’s also how I roll).

It blows all the other binge eating content that I’ve seen out of the water.

In a word, it is remarkable.

Hand-drawn images are one of the things I love to do, and it helps to make my content truly remarkable.

When you give people something different, something new, something remarkable, you give them excitement. You give them hope.

Think about the last time someone made you feel excited, hopeful, gave you something to believe in, or just spoke to you in a way that made you feel completely understood.

How did you feel towards that person? Did you like them? Did you want to get to know them better? Did you want to listen to what they have to say?

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”

An ultimate guide can help you to become that person for your audience.

What’s next after the Ultimate Guide?

My business is growing, and the ultimate guide has been an excellent way for me to build an engaged audience. I also know that my onboarding system is going to continue to engage new subscribers in the future.

I have no background in business, but I’ve learnt a lot in the past ten months. Now that I’ve written an ultimate guide, things feel clearer. It feels like I’m getting somewhere, and making a dent in other people’s lives.

All the concerns I had before writing the guide have been placated. It has already been worth the time I spent on it, and I know it has many years’ more value left in the tank.

I no longer fear that I won’t have enough material to monetize later, because when you write a big guide like this, you begin to see that there is always more to say; the process of writing an ultimate guide helps you to find those words, both now and in the future.

We each have to take our own journeys in online business, but if you care about the quality of your email list, if you want to build a solid, engaged audience, if you want to do the work up-front so you can reap the rewards for many years down the line, then I highly recommend writing an ultimate guide. And there is simply no one better to teach you how than Primoz, the Ultimate Guide System founder himself.

-Maria

***

Maria helps people stop binge eating, stop emotional overeating and become the best version of themselves. You can read her Ultimate Guide to Stop Binge Eating for Good here.

If you’re interested in using Ultimate Guides to grow your email list and get your first paying customers, you can now join Ultimate Guide System – a one year program where I’ll teach you, step by step, how to create incredible Ultimate Guides and finally get your online business off the ground in 2018.

-Primoz

CASE STUDY: How a fitness blogger from Slovakia grew his email list by 1,000+ email subscribers in just a few weeks

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Meet Martin.

Martin is a fitness blogger from Slovakia who used Ultimate Guides to get from 426 to 1,001 email subscribers in 3 days:

A few weeks later, he has gained over 1,000 email subscribers from his Ultimate Guide, as well as his first 5 weight loss 1on1 coaching clients that helped him earn his first $1775 with his online business.

When Marting shared his story with me, I knew I wanted to share it with my readers as well. I asked him to write all about how he did it, and he shares it in the post below.

Martin, take it away!

HE PROMISED, HE DELIVERED!

HOW PRIMOZ HELPED ME GET MY FIRST 5 PAYING CUSTOMERS AND MADE MY BUSINESS A REAL THING!

Do you ever get this feeling like you are trying everything to take your business off the ground (or grow it) but nothing seems to get you the results that others have?

If so, this post has the power to change that.

How do I know?

Because of just a few months ago, I was in the same place. I had a blog with some email subscribers but without any customers. (I was even ashamed to call my blog a business without customers).

But after writing my Ultimate guide, everything changed.

If you’re curious, I’m going to show you the whole story about:

  • How I struggled with my “business without customers” before I wrote my Ultimate Guide
  • Why I decided to write an Ultimate Guide again even if I’ve failed with it before
  • What was the key to my success with writing my Ultimate Guide
  • My promotional strategy and the step-by-step process how I created it (and how you could too)
  • The exact emails and messages I sent to bloggers who then shared my Ultimate guide
  • How people could sign up for my coaching program (how my business started to generate revenue)
  • The results I’ve got since I’ve written my Ultimate Guide

Let’s begin…

HOW I STRUGGLED WITH MY “BUSINESS WITHOUT CUSTOMERS” BEFORE I WROTE MY ULTIMATE GUIDE

I’ve started my business two years ago after I found an online blogger that talked about it. Back then I was reading all of their emails a doing everything they said.

It wasn’t bad but something was missing. I’ve built a product, launched it and got no customers. Then I rebuilt it from scratch and confidently launched it again. This time results really shocked me – I’ve got no customers again! I remembered how frustrated I felt. I knew I was making a huge mistake – somewhere – but I didn’t know where.

To try and fix it, I joined an online course about building an online business.

The course was great, it helped me rebuilt everything and after 6 months of everyday full-time work, I’ve had 236 email subscribers. But even if it helped me fix some huge mistakes in my business and set up basic systems, I still didn’t have that one little thing we all crave when we’re trying to build our businesses from scratch – the first paying customer!

And with 236 subscribers and two big failures in the past – just thinking about spending weeks on creating a new product made me feel anxious.

At that time it was too much for me. I’ve spent last 24 months working on my business without earning anything.

I didn’t know what to do next. I did some guest posting but it felt like it’s going nowhere. Sometimes it brought me, 14 subscribers, sometimes 0.

And then I learned about Primoz’s system for writing Ultimate Guides.

WHY I DECIDED TO WRITE AN ULTIMATE GUIDE AGAIN EVEN IF I’VE FAILED WITH IT BEFORE

I heard about Primoz for the first time when I was watching case studies in an online course I joined. His story was similar to mine so I started to watch his journey closer and I joined his email list.

After I’ve read about his approach to writing Ultimate Guides, I thought this could be a turning point for my business, but I still had some concerns.

Why?

  1. Because I wrote an Ultimate Guide with 7,000 words in the past and it got me less than 50 subscribers. What if I‘ll spend weeks and weeks writing another Ultimate Guide with the same results? Why would it be different this time?
  2. And because I already bought an online course about building an online business (which is one of the best ones out there), which wasn’t enough to get the first paying customer for me. How could Primoz’s help make a difference?

But I trusted him. He didn’t go to Ivy League school. He didn’t have friends from Silicon Valley. He didn’t come from New York, San Francisco or Chicago but from a Slovenia – a little less-known European country (just like me). And he still somehow made it.

If someone knew what it takes to go from the place where I was to the place where I wanted to be – it’s must be him!

That was very relatable for me, so I decided to highly respect every piece of advice from him and do whatever he told me to do.

I started with learning about his process of creating Ultimate Guides and I decided to get every step (from picking the right topic to creating monetization strategy) right and to trust his process.

What I loved about him was his dedication to my success. He really CARED! We spent two weeks just to get the topic right. I felt like he wouldn‘t let me work on the topic which my audience wouldn’t love.

Back then I thought: “OMG, why you don’t like my topic? I think it’s good enough!” (But it wasn’t.)

I started out with “The Ultimate Guide to Weight Loss that Lasts”, but he helped me change my topic to “Ultimate Guide to Losing Your First 10lbs”.

Now I’m so happy that I’ve gone the extra mile and listened to him.

The next great advice he gave to me was about the promotional strategy – which was (after picking the right topic) the key part of my success with my Ultimate Guide.

HOW I CREATED MY PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY (AND HOW YOU CAN TOO)

When I first saw that the next step for creating my guide was a promotional strategy, I didn’t believe it could work for me.

I thought promotion is easy for people like Primoz, who know people like Selena Soo, Ramit Sethi or Navid Moazzez.

But I didn’t know anybody like that. I didn’t have a relationship with gatekeepers. I didn’t regularly chat with influencers.

The promotional strategy sounded reasonable, but back then I couldn’t imagine that some of the big names in my industry would be willing to share my Ultimate Guide.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to stop there – so I threw away all of my fears of wasting time on something that may not work for me – and I told to myself:

“Okay, maybe it won’t go well. Maybe – even if I’ll do everything right – it won’t work for me. But the only way to find out is to try it out and see what happens.“

(That reframe from “what if…“ to childish curiosity worked like magic.)

And so I started working on it…

HOW I CREATED MY FIRST PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY

STEP 1: Create a new text document

The first thing I did was that I created a text document and at the top I wrote:

“Here I need to create my promotional strategy.“

Then I thought about it:

“What’s the point of the promotional strategy?“

“To get my Ultimate Guide in front of as many people who are in my target audience as possible.“

So I wrote the question:

“How could I get my UG in front of the biggest target audience? Be creative.“

This question helped me remind myself what I’m trying to achieve everytime I opened the document.

Action step: Prepare a text document

STEP 2: Brainstorm promotional ideas

The Second thing I did was to brainstorm random ideas for how I could get my Ultimate Guide in front of the right people and reach as many of them as possible.

My ideas were:

  • Write to some bloggers and ask for advice on sharing the guide and hope that their offer sharing it
  • Start to add value to some bloggers now and then after publishing – ask them for share it
  • Find sites that have an “interview section” and have done some interviews with other bloggers. Then offer them an interview with me
  • Ask close friends and target audience to read it and write a deep thoughtful comment
  • find ways to mention bloggers in my Ultimate Guide and then tell them about it
  • Add value on forums and then mention my Ultimate Guide

I liked some ideas were better (mentioning bloggers in my guide) and some I rather cut out (I didn’t think that asking friends to read the 25k-words guide was an effective way to promote it).

But the point here is to see that there are so many options for how you could promote your guide. So be creative here and constantly ask yourself:

“How could I get my UG in front of the right people and reach as many of them as possible?“

Action step: Spend at least 20 minutes on brainstorming the promotional ideas (I recommend you to do this exercise twice and not on the same day.)

STEP 3: Choose 3-4 ideas that could bring you the best results and focus solely on them

I’ve got the greatest results from these promotional strategies:

  • Mentioning bloggers in your Ultimate Guide and then letting them know about it
  • Talking about your Ultimate Guide in the places where your target audience hanging out – forums or Facebook groups
  • Asking readers who read your guide to share it and send a link to their friends

Action step: Choose 3-4 options which could be the main parts of your promotional strategy

STEP 4: Prepare for every one of these options

Now that we have some idea of what our promotional strategy could look like, we need to prepare for every one of these ways.

Below, I’ll share all the steps that I used to successfully ask bloggers to share my guide with their readers.

HOW TO MENTION BLOGGERS IN YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE (AND LET THEM KNOW ABOUT IT)

The questions I had about this process were:

  • Which bloggers should I mention? How many of them?
  • Where could I mention them? What’s the best way?
  • How could I reach out to them so they would be willing to share it?

I’ll answer all of these questions, but first – let’s took a new way of mentioning them in your guide:

If you‘ll try their product or implement their advice, and then you’ll honestly write about how it helped you and how you admire their work, you‘re adding a lot of value tot hem in terms of esteem, respect and appreciation. So if you do it in the right way, they would love to read about themselves and share it.

Now let’s talk about the questions above:

WHO COULD SHARE IT? WHICH BLOGGERS SHOULD YOU MENTION? HOW MANY OF THEM?

To find out who would be the best fit for my Ultimate Guide (and who wouldn’t), I spent a week searching for bloggers, how big their audiences are, and what they talked about.

I created an Excel Document:

(For better understanding I translated some of the text to English, and deleted some notes so you could see what’s there)

When I was searching for bloggers I always looked at my outline (what I would be writing about), but at the same time I was thinking about creative ways for how I could add other bloggers that have a great audience in my Ultimate Guide.

Then I created another spreadsheet like this one for forums and groups.

After I had enough bloggers and had notes about them, I started making decisions about who I want to include and who not.

My recommendation for you:

Don’t try to include as many as possible, because your Ultimate Guide would look like these lifestyle magazines where you had 5 pages of text and 95 pages of ads.

I had 55 bloggers and 12 recipe sites in my spreadsheet, but I included only 7 of them. You could mention more butfocus more on your readers than a number of bloggers here.

Do it, so your reader will think:

“Wow, Thank you a lot for including this tool, solution, site.“

Rather than:

“I’m curious how much they pay you for all these ads.“

Action step: Find the bloggers in your industry that could be a great fit for your Ultimate Guide. Then create a spreadsheet and fill it with notes about them.

WHERE COULD I MENTION THEM? WHAT’S THE BEST WAY?

It’s easy to say:

“Just mention bloggers in your guide and let them know.“

But how could we mention them so it would add real value to them in an authentic way?

To find out, I looked at the Ultimate Guides written by Primoz and the ones he recommended (from Peter Nguyen, Selena Soo, Rusty Gray).

I noticed that it’s all about getting advice or trying a product from someone else (it could be a physical product, a tool, a book, an article, an advice, a course), implementing it or using it – and then honestly writing about your experience.

But I noticed something else:

He gave everyone an individual attention. He didn’t just mention them, he went the extra mile and told his readers what exactly has helped him.

Here’s what I take from that:

The blogger you mention has to feel special when he reads it.

THE 3 GREAT WAYS HOW TO AUTHENTICALLY MENTION BLOGGERS IN YOUR GUIDE

There are 3 great places to mention other bloggers in your Ultimate Guide:

#1 – Including the bloggers in the “common barriers and solutions” part of your Ultimate Guide

Regardless of the topic you cover, I’m sure you could add “the most common problems / barriers“ part – and then position bloggers and their work as a solution for these common barriers.

For example, my topic was “what to do before you start with weight loss“, so in my case, it went like this:

  • If you are ashamed to go to the gym (that’s the barrier) – here’s the site which offers home-workout videos (solution)
  • If you are (or want to become) a vegetarian (it’s barrier because it could stop them from taking action) – here’s a great source of advice on how to be fit without meat (solution)
  • If you don’t know how to replace salty snacks (barrier) – I tried this recipe for you from this site and it was amazing (solution)

These specific barriers are a great way in which you could feature bloggers in almost every niche. You could mention websites which focus on specific problems and barriers your audience has.

This is how I featured one of the bloggers in my Ultimate Guide:

Look how much attention I give to them, so they’ll feel special (and that’s just one blogger).

I subscribed to their home-workout videos and tried their product to experience it – so I could then write about it’s pros and cons. I really thought about all the benefits that this solution could bring and then described them to my readers. Some of these sections in my Ultimate Guide were 1-3 pages long.

That’s exactly what it means to take an extra mile and stand out.

Action step: Choose the bloggers you could add to “the most common barriers and solutions“ part of you Ultimate Guide

#2 – Including the bloggers in the “useful tools” part of your Ultimate Guide

In Tim Ferriss’s book “The Four Hour Work Week”, Tim has done a great job with including “the tools” part at the end of every chapter. These tools made the guide more valuable to the readers because they didn’t need to find them by themselves.

You can do the same thing with your Ultimate Guide.

In my case (weight loss topic) I added:

  • Links to my favorite recipe sites
  • Links to my favorite recipe books
  • A link to a printable shopping list (infographic)
  • A link to printable summary of healthy and unhealthy food

(Remember: I didn’t just include their links. I’ve written an analysis, summary or review for every one ofthem.)

Here’s a screenshot of that part in my Ultimate Guide:

Again, notice how much effort I spent on each of the bloggers to really make them feel special. In the example above, I bought their book, carefully picked out the best recipe, bought the ingredients, took a photo of them, then prepared them and made 20 photos of the meal so I could pick the nicest one.

And this was just about two recipes from one blogger. Then I also wrote a short review of what I loved about a whole cookbook and why it’s different than thousands of others.

Action step: Choose the bloggers you could add to “the useful tools” part of you Ultimate Guide and think about how you can go the extra mile for them.

#3 – Including the bloggers whose advice you follow and writing about the results you had

I’m sure you have a few bloggers in your industry that you admire. And I’m sure you’ve implemented some of their advice and got great results from it.

If not, do it now! Read something interesting from them, take action, and then mention the blogger as a great source of practical, useful advice with proof (a screenshot, a photo) of how it helped you. It could take time, but it’s worth it.

Action step: Choose the bloggers you WANT to mention and find out which of their specific techniques or articles could you implement. Then think about where in your Ultimate Guide you could mention them (look at your outline) and – of course – publish the results you’ll get.

As you could see, all of these 3 options are not only the great ways to authentically mention the bloggers but are the awesome opportunities to add value to them.

This type of recommendation based on your own positive experience:

  • Cannot be purchased
  • Is not easy to get
  • And is so powerful, that if you do it right, the bloggers will love you, or – like in my case – send you a personal “thank you letter” (along with their newest book).

Action step: Personally use every product you want to mention. During the process take screenshots or photos of your experience.

HOW COULD I REACH OUT TO BLOGGERS SO THEY WOULD BE WILLING TO SHARE MY GUIDE?

If you know which bloggers you could mention and where in your guide you could include them, only one question remains:

“How could you reach out to them so they would be willing to share your guide?”

When I write to the bloggers I don’t know, I always start with something about their work and what specifically I liked about it (or how it helped me).

Here’s an example of email I wrote to bloggers. (This type of email got me 6/7 responses and all were positive. It’s 85% rate, so not bad.)

Subject: (Something along the lines of “NAME, I’ve included you in my guide – is that okay?” – I always recommend you to change some words in every script you use.)

Email:

Hey NAME,

A few weeks ago, I bought your cookbook [NAME OF THE COOKBOOK], tried some recipes and they were amazing.

For example, your recipe for [SPECIFIC RECIPE YOU’VE TRIED] looks hard to prepare but it was actually fun and all members of my family loved it and asked for more!

I seriously appreciate all the hard work you do to create such a useful source of recipes.

And this was one of the reasons why I included you in my Ultimate Guide about weight loss, which I’ve just published.

What’s the guide about?

After tens of interviews with women struggling with weight loss, I found out that one of their main barriers is [SOMETHING RELATED TO THEIR SOLUTION].

And as I wanted to help them overcome this barrier, I included [THEIR PRODUCT/SITE/TOOL] as a solution to that problem. You can find it on the link below

[LINK TO THE PART THEY’RE INCLUDED IN]

I‘m writing to you because this guide will be shared by many other Slovak sites (and many people will see it). So let me know if it’s ok to include you in the guide, and if you’d like me to add, remove, or change something.

I would be happy to do it :).

Here’s a link to guide, where you can check it out:

[LINK TO YOUR GUIDE]

Best wishes,

-YOUR NAME

***

Action step: Prepare the emails you’ll send to the bloggers that you mention in the guide.

***

At this point, your promotional strategy will be ready.

Now you need an action plan with steps for launching your Ultimate Guide to get the results that you want.

STEP 5: Write down everything you need to do BEFORE and AFTER publishing your guide

When my promotional strategy was ready, I divided the implementation into two phases:

  • What I need to do BEFORE publishing
  • What I need to do AFTER publishing

In my case it looked like this:

BEFORE:

  1. Ask bloggers for advice on promoting my guide (you‘ll never know what new opportunities it could bring to you)
  2. (Write my Ultimate Guide)
  3. Pick a date for publishing the guide
  4. Two weeks before publishing date, start adding value in forums and groups (set the reminders and reserve time)
  5. One week before publishing write a thoughtful comment under the posts of some of the bloggers from the Ultimate Guide
  6. Publish it according to the planned date

AFTER:

  1. Write to the first five bloggers about the guide(and wait three days for feedback)
  2. Write to other bloggers about the guide
  3. Share your guide on forums and in Facebook groups
  4. Write “Thank you” emails to the people who shared it
  5. If some of the bloggers don’t reply even after 1-2 weeks, send them a follow-up message on Facebook (I highly recommend this. Many of the bloggers I emailed just didn’t notice my email before I messaged them on Facebook.)

P.S.: Ask directly for sharing the guide only if you have already built a relationship with someone.

HOW I GOT MY FIRST 5 COACHING CLIENTS AFTER PUBLISHING MY ULTIMATE GUIDE

After I published my Ultimate Guide, I was able to get my first 5 weight loss coaching clients. Below I’ll share how I did it.

Writing a guide is one thing.

Getting it in front of the big audience is the second thing.

But in the end, it’s all about paying customers.

In my case – my first coaching students.

After I published my guide, I asked myself::

“How would people sign up for my coaching after they read the guide?”

In the beginning, I asked Primoz and he replied with:

He said he “hopes this helps”.

And you know what? It did! Because now I have 5 paying customers in my coaching program. So thank you again!

Here is the process that helped me get those coaching clients:

1) In my guide, I mention – just by the way – that I do coaching (I’ve written about that in many parts of the Ultimate Guide)

2) In the first email that they get after they opt-in to my email list, I say that I know they aren’t opting in because they’re bored, but because they want to change their lives and need help. Then I ask them to reply and answer two questions:

“What’s your main problem with weight loss?”

“What do you hate the most about the whole process of losing weight?”

3) After that, I start a conversation with them, and after a few messages I mention that I offer an individual help if they need it.

4) I have a prepared message, which I’ll send to them if they ask for more details.

That’s all. It’s very simple.

THE RESULTS I’VE GOT SINCE PUBLISHING MY ULTIMATE GUIDE

Now let’s talk about results that Primoz helped me achieve.

Here are the initial results I’ve got after publishing and promoting my guide:

THE NUMBERS:

  • traffic (from 9 visitors to 2,600 visitors in just one day)

  • subscribers (from 426 to 1,001 subscribers in 3 days) (Actually it was +501 subscribers in 33 hours).

  • clients (from 0 to 1). Yes, after two years of full-time work on building my business I’ve finally got my first paying customer!

NEW OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Contribution to “The Fitness Journal 2018″ – which is very popular in our country and was the best-seller last year.

  • One of the major influencers in my nicheoffered me to share my articles in his Facebook group, offered to publish some parts of my Ultimate Guide on their site, offered me write a guest post for themat any time and sent me three copies of their newest book with a personal “thank you” letter.

  • One of the biggest fitness sites and one big media site (which my mom reads, lol) interviewed me about my guide.

And here are the results after a few weeks of publishing my guide:

My subscribers went to 1402 and continue to grow (I still have moments when I don’t believe it).

And I now have 5 paying students which gave me 1500€ in revenue.

With all the new opportunities I expect even greater results coming soon.

I think that writing an Ultimate Guide is like setting the pieces of a domino. And promoting it the way Primoz taught me is like knocking the first piece of the domino down. The best is yet to come!

Maybe you’re thinking that after writing and publishing an Ultimate Guide you’ll get some results and then you’ll have to start all over again. You’re right. But the second time is not the same.

Do you know why am I so confident about the future?

Because besides the subscribers and paying clients, I’ve got some indirect results from the guide too, which we usually don’t talk much about. For me, some of them are more precious than the actual numbers.

Here’s what I learned from writing my Ultimate Guide:

  • I took my writing process to another level, and now it’s much easier for me to write great content
  • I learned a ton of new things about the topic I’m writing about, which makes me more of an expert
  • I’m more clear about my business idea, which gives me a lot of confidence
  • I’m not worried about my future results in my business, because so many things could happen when I write more Ultimate Guides (new traffic, new subscribers, an opportunity to position myself as an authority, improving relationships with influencers, having a go-to resource on the topic…) ca
  • Even though the process of creating an Ultimate Guide is harder than just the regular blog post, it’s actually much more fun and makes a lot more sense to create because I know it’ll be remarkable and remembered for a long time.

MY LAST WORDS:

I’ve spent two years (on a day-to-day basis) buried into “the online business world” stuff. It’s all helped me in some way or another and I kind of like the process. But building an online business without having paying customers could be a really frustrating experience.

You know… The friends and family that are constantly asking you “how’s blog?” / “Do you still do this online thing?” / “how much you earn from it?” / “You’re doing it for so long without earning anything, why not just focus on your real job?”.

After a while, you start to question yourself. You‘re losing your drive and every other day is just a reminder you haven’t done it yet. You’re under pressure and stress, not just from others, but from yourself too. And all of this makes it even harder to concentrate and make progress.

I’m so happy that I finally broke this cycle with my first paying customers. And I hope you’ll be able to do the same.

For those who have some email subscribers but haven’t got their first paying customers (or have just a few), I highly recommend Primoz’s help.

For me, the first paying student was like the first deep calm breath after months of stress and struggle. It showed me that is possible and that I could do it.

And – believe or not – you could too!

-Martin

***

You can read Martin’s Ultimate Guide here (it’s in Slovak language).

If you’re interested in using Ultimate Guides to grow your email list and get your first paying customers, you can now join Ultimate Guide System – a one year program where I’ll teach you, step by step, how to create incredible Ultimate Guides and finally get your online business off the ground in 2018.

-Primoz

What experts don’t tell you about starting an online business this year

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There’s a lot of outdated advice on starting an online business in the industry these days. Here are some extra tips on how to start an online business.

I’m not just talking about scammy internet marketers that tell you that you can make $104,564 over the next 30 days with this “magical new technique”. You know that a lot of these people are full of crap, and you likely aren’t following any of them.

I’m talking about the top online business experts who have actually built their online businesses successfully. Even they (mostly unintentionally) share bad or outdated advice that doesn’t work as well as advertised anymore. Expert digital marketing Fort Collins offers useful marketing solutions.

There are a few reasons for that:

REASON #1 – The advice they’re sharing worked 10 or 5 years ago, but doesn’t work any more

Most of the online business experts started their online businesses back in 2006 or 2007 (with a few exceptions that started their businesses around 2011 and 2012). At that point, the playing field was completely different than it was today.

Take a look at this graph from WordPress:

In 2006, there were 70,000 blog posts published every day. By 2011, that number was up to 400,000. Today, that number is closer to 2,800,000. This means that today, there’re 40x more blog posts published every day than they were when most online business experts started their own online businesses.

As you can imagine, the game changes dramatically when there’s 40x more competition out there, and the simple techniques (like blogging every day) that used to work just don’t work any more. Even some other techniques that used to work 5 years ago don’t work well any more (more on that later in this post).

Many online programs that teach you how to start your own online business have been developed 3-5 years ago, and weren’t updated properly as the industry evolved. Or even if they were created later, they often rely on the data and strategies from 5+ years ago.
While concepts like copywriting are truly evergreen and last for centuries, these growth strategies just don’t work any more (we’ll dive into why that is below).

REASON #2 – The advice they’re sharing worked for their top clients, but doesn’t work for everyone

In most of the online business courses I’ve joined, I’ve only seen a few % of people succeed with them and get massive results like “earning $45,000 in a month”. The large majority of these people already had successful online businesses before joining the online courses, so they used them to grow their businesses, not start them.

If you’ve joined any of the online courses, you’ll notice that these success stories are usually just the tip of the iceberg (while most people aren’t successful with them).

I call this “The Tip of The Iceberg Effect”:

There’re a lot of reasons for why this happens (we’ll cover those another day), but the issue that’s relevant to us is that the course creators often look at what these star students do, and assume their strategies will work for everyone.

The danger of doing this is that instead of looking at strategies that what will work for everyone, they’re looking at strategies that only worked for a handful of people. This means they’re often talking about people who are the exception to the rule, rather than the rule.

Guest posting is one of those examples. The vast majority of people who try to use guest posting as a strategy miserably fail with it, while the top few % of people get incredible results with it (more on that later).

REASON #3 – They set false expectations in their copywriting

The third reason lies in copywriting. Copywriters that write sales pages for online entrepreneurs often come in on a project, get some data about promises they can make (from the tip of the iceberg students and things that worked for the entrepreneur 5-10 years ago), then blow up these promises to make them even more compelling (and get more sales for the online programs).

By doing this, they create a gap between what’s promised to people, and what’s actually possible for most people. I call this the “Expectations vs Reality Gap”:

They make promises like:

  • You can successfully start an online business from scratch in 8 weeks (most people can’t)
  • You can build a business even if you don’t have an idea, you’re not an expert, and have limited time (most people never do)
  • You can double your revenue or email list in 30 days (almost nobody does)

Combine this with some sexy copywriting and “painting the dream”, and you’ll have an incredibly compelling story that COULD happen, but never really happens for most people.

This kind of copywriting gets people to buy, but also sets up people for disappointment when they don’t achieve the results they were promised in the time-frame that was promised. That’s where the disconnect between the promised effectiveness and the actual effectiveness of growth strategies comes from.

That’s why you’re thinking “why isn’t this working for me even though I’m putting in the work?”. You’re not only seeing the tip of the iceberg results, you’re seeing an amplified version of them. You’re dreaming about building a 6-figure online business in a year, but when you’re actually supposed to build an online business yourself, the reality hits you and you realize that building an online business isn’t as easy as these copywriters make it sound.

The funny thing is that most of these copywriters have never ran online businesses themselves or used the strategies they’re talking about. They just get access to the data of the tip of the iceberg students and then try to sell as many products as possible.

I don’t care much for that type of copywriting. I’d rather focus on things that REALLY work (and eliminating things that don’t), and talking about things as they really are, rather than painting this imaginary dream.

Since I’ve worked closely with over 1,000 online entrepreneurs in the past to help them start and grow their online businesses, I know which strategies actually work for the majority of people, which only work for a few people, and which don’t work at all.

That’s exactly what I’ll talk about in this in this email. We’ll take a closer look at the common strategies for starting and growing your online business, and I’ll share with you what actually works and what doesn’t work as well as advertised.

First, we’ll look at two strategies that are related to finding your profitable business idea, and then we’ll look at 6 more strategies that are related to building an audience for your blog.

Let’s dive in!

STRATEGY #1: Customer research

Every online business course I’ve ever taken starts with customer research. Talk to your customers. Interview them. Email them. Go on Reddit. Google keywords in your industry. Read amazon reviews of popular books in your niche. Go on Quora. You know the drill.

But then, I’ve also seen hundreds of people “stuck” for months in the customer research phase. Either it’s because they don’t know how to find people to talk to, because they don’t feel like they have “enough” research, because they get mixed responses from their customers.

So instead of actually building an online business, they’re running in circles and talking (or thinking of talking) to people about hypothetical ideas. “Would you someday buy an online course around this topic? Would you read about this topic?”, etc.

At the end, they’re no closer to starting an online business than they were a few months ago.

I have a slightly different opinion than most experts have around customer research. I believe customer research should be:

  1. Highly targeted around a specific product or a free resource you’re trying to create, with a clear goal in mind (rather than just general research about your industry)
  2. Done rapidly and intensively, over the course of a week or two (rather than turning into this multiple month process)

That’s because general research doesn’t really help you move forward, you don’t know when you have “enough” of it, and you don’t know what to do with it.

With highly targeted research, you’re always creating something – like a table of contents for your free resource or an outline for your online program – AND you’re getting feedback on your outline as you do this, rather than just talking about hypothetical topics.

The other reason why I’m a big proponent of doing rapid research is that you’ll do your best research with your paid customers once you take them through a 1on1 of group program, and you can actually SEE what’s working and what isn’t for them. You’ll never get the best insights from just talking to random strangers.

So while I do think that customer research is important (especially when you’re developing a paid product or a service), I think it’s usually overemphasized for the beginning stages of an online business. It’s something that becomes much more important and relevant later down the line when you’re already making money.

STRATEGY #2: Finding your niche

A lot of experts tell you that you have to find your unique niche (or positioning) right off the bat. When I ask beginner online entrepreneurs what they do, they usually say something along the lines of:

“I help 25-35 year old male professionals, who are in a relationship but they don’t have kids with…”

This might sound good on paper, but the reality is they’re completely missing the point. They’re talking about this imaginary customer, instead of choosing a simple audience (like lawyers) and talking about the one problem they’re actually helping them solve (get more clients).

Combined with the unnecessarily extensive research, the process of finding “your perfect niche” can extend to months and months of planning, talking to people and looking at your research notes, without making any visible progress on your business.

In reality, most successful online businesses don’t start with the perfect niche. I sure as hell didn’t – my first successful business was as simple as “productivity for online poker players”, and my second successful online business was as simple as “productivity for executives and entrepreneurs”.

These niches were far from perfect, but they were “good enough” for me to get started with building an audience and creating online courses and coaching programs that served my new followers.

It was important for me to start creating content within those niches (to build an audience) and to start offering paid services (to get more feedback to refine my niche over time).

If you’re at the beginning stages of an online business, you don’t need to waste months on finding a super detailed description of your audience demographics. It won’t get you closer to finding your first customers online or growing an audience – it will just needlessly delay that process for months. Even with bad credit business loans you may have financing options.

Instead, you can pick just one simple problem and one simple audience (like the getting more clients for lawyers example), and go out and TEST the demand in that niche it by creating some content around it. This way, you’ll know what people actually connect with and what they don’t, rather than thinking about it at home in a vacuum.

Ok, now let’s move on to other strategies that are actually related to building your email list to a point where you can get your first paying customers from it.

STRATEGY #3: Writing (and promoting) remarkable content on your website

Most of the top online entrepreneurs these days (people like Ramit Sethi, Neil Patel, Noah Kagan and Marie Forleo) started their blogs back in 2006 or 2007. Few of them ever share what they did to build their audiences of tens of thousands of email subscribers, but if you look closely at what they did, it’s simple. They created a TON of content on their blogs.

Since they started out relatively early when “only” 70,000 blog posts were published on a daily basis, they had little to no competition. In those times, even setting up a website to blog on or an email list to capture email subscribers was much more difficult than today, and blogging wasn’t a thing everyone could do yet.

They built their audiences by consistently creating content (some of it was good, some of it wasn’t as they’ll likely admit), and over time they’ve amassed more and more traffic and email subscribers to their website. Since they were one of the few people doing this for a longer amount of time, they soon established themselves as #1 experts in the industry.

Of course they also had other means of building an audience that they used over time – Marie Forleo had her YouTube channel called Marie TV and the targeted marketing done for it was one of the keys for her success. In case you also want to become popular on YT, then make sure to hire the right provider of youtube views for your videos to increase its popularity. Ramit Sethi wrote his book and gained audience, appeared on TV and had a widely popular guest post published for Tim Ferriss, Neil Patel wrote his Ultimate Guides, and so on – but in the beginning, all they did was really just write content.

Over the next 5 years, these entrepreneurs realized it’s becoming harder and harder to build an online business (as more and more people were jumping on the blogging train), and they had to come up with new strategies to grow their audiences. At the same time, more people were starting to build their online businesses, and more and more experts started to make a name out of themselves.

That’s when the experts started talking about guest posting, being on podcasts and creating “remarkable content”, which basically means that instead of creating multiple blog posts every week, you need to create 2-3,000 word pieces of content that are better than the 500 word blog posts, and create them 1-2x/month.

The ideas of “influencer outreach” and “promoting your content” were also born at that time, which basically said that you shouldn’t just spend the time creating new content, and that you should spend as much time if not more promoting it through guest posting, podcasting, reaching out to influencers and asking them to share it, and sharing it in forums and online communities.

These strategies worked great for a while (and still might in untapped industries like a non-English market or an up-and-coming niche), but over time, when more and more people started using them, they lost their effectiveness.

Remember, there’re 2,800,000 blog posts published today every single day, which is 7x more than 5 years ago, and 40x more than 10 years ago. This means that every day, we’re absolutely bombarded with new content.

Every person that writes a new blog post shares it on their social media, and if we were seeing 5 blog posts a day on our Facebook feed 5 years ago, we’re now seeing 35 (or even more, if a lot of our friends are also online entrepreneurs). This means we’re less and less likely to pay attention to any of the content that’s created, and we’re also much less likely to share it with other people.

Because of this, there’s a much smaller chance of our “remarkable” blog posts taking off and going viral, especially if we don’t have a huge following of raving fans yet. If we’re just starting out with our business, we might have an initial spike of new traffic and subscribers when we excitedly release our new website and with the first few blog posts we write, but this slowly dies out.

As far as influencer outreach goes, this strategy used to work in the past when there was less content and less people reaching out to people to share it, but nowadays the major influencers in the industry are bombarded with requests to share their content, and they rarely do it unless it’s really meaningful to them or the content really stands out to them.

They’re also busy sharing and promoting their own content, which has become harder for them than in the past. And since they now have whole teams writing the content for them, they’re producing a lot more content, and they don’t “need” more content from other people for their readers as much as when they published one post every 2 weeks.

And when it comes to sharing your content in online communities, the game is also different than it used to be. In the past, when the communities were smaller and less people were sharing their content (mostly the people that were a part of these communities), you could use the communities to spread the word about your content quickly and effectively.

But today, the communities are fed up with people coming into them and just trying to promote themselves, without actually adding a ton of value to the members of these communities. They see right through it, and often prohibit this from happening.

Bottom line is that just creating “remarkable content” isn’t enough if you’re trying to start an online business, because nowadays everyone is creating “remarkable content”. If you could stand out with it 5 years ago when everyone was still writing 500 word blog posts, you’re now the same as everyone else. And promoting your content not only feels sleazy and spammy, it’s also not as effective as it used to be.

The only exception to the rule is if your content is really drastically unique and different from everything else out there, or if you’ve found a niche where nobody else is creating remarkable content yet. In those cases, the strategies that worked 5 years ago still might work for you (though that doesn’t mean that they’re the BEST strategies to pursue).

But if you’re in an industry that’s evolved past that point, you’ll have to come up with a new, better approach for growing your audience and customer base.

STRATEGY #4: Guest posting

Over the past few years, guest posting has become a widely recommended strategy for starting and growing your online business.
Some experts have seen huge success with it (which is why they recommend it to others), and I have too (my guest post for Growthlab a few months ago has brought me hundreds of high quality email subscribers).

But what experts don’t tell you is that guest posting is the classic example of the “Tip of The Iceberg Effect”.

The reality is that the experiences that people have with guest posting are more along the lines of these comments that I got from my readers:

“Finding guest posting opportunities was a huge struggle in my niche, as there aren’t many blogs in it. My list size barely changed. My list had a total of 67 subscribers from 3 years and 2 months of work. Nothing seemed to work.”
“I did some guest posting but it felt like it’s going nowhere. Sometimes it brought me 14 subscribers, sometimes 0.”
” I was stuck on 124 subscribers for months. During those months, I tried to get guest posts. I got two, but gained no new subscribers from either.”

Here’s what happens to most people that try to use guest posting as a strategy to grow their email list:

  • Some get stuck with deciding which guest post opportunities to pursue, or finding the contact details for them
  • Some pitch the guest posts, but never hear back from them
  • Some get their pitches accepted, but their drafts get rejected
  • Some get their drafts accepted, but the guest posts never get published (or they get published months later)
  • Some get their guest posts published, but get 14 email subscribers from them

In most cases, they spend months and months chasing guest post opportunities, putting in a ton of work without any major results – or they have one successful guest post that brings them 100 email subscribers, but aren’t able to replicate that in the future.

So if most people struggle with guest posting, why do some people succeed with it (or even swear by it)?

Well, because guest posting can work well if you can get the guest posts published on the A-list websites. If you can land a guest post with Tim Ferriss, chances are it’ll bring a huge flood of email subscribers to your business.

But to reach these A-listers, you usually need to have an existing relationship with them (and you need to be known as a credible expert in the industry already). These guest posts never happen from cold pitches.

It’s unlikely you’ll get there with your first guest post – it’ll take years to build these relationships and your expertise.

The other option is guest posting for B-list blogs or contributor websites like Huffington Post. This can sometimes work well if you happen to land a guest post with a website that has a highly engaged (but untapped) audience, but can be a hit or miss in a lot of cases.

What about contributor platforms like Huffington Post? Well, it feels sexy to put that Huffington Post logo on your website, but the reality is that when you publish a post on those platforms, you’ll usually have to promote it yourself, unless you’re able to create a really great post that becomes a trending one and the platform promotes it for you.

I’ve seen some people successfully build their audiences through contributor platforms, but for every person that did that, there’s 5 or 10 people that never really got anything out of them.

Overall, guest posting can be a great strategy to grow your online business once people already consider you an expert, you have something unique and meaningful to talk about, you have some incredible content on your website to point your new readers to, and you have the right relationships built.

If you can easily score a guest post opportunity at a major website, you should absolutely try to make the most out of it – but if you’re just starting out with your business, guest posting isn’t the fastest or most reliable strategy. There’re just too many outside factors you have to depend on that are outside of your control, and you’ll spend more time waiting than actually growing your business.

I recommend using guest posting as a secondary strategy for growing your email list rather than a primary strategy. Once you already have an email list of hundreds or thousands of email subscribers and have a consistent stream of new readers coming in, feel free to diversify your strategies into guest posting.

This way, you’ll be able to benefit from the eventual spike of new email subscribers, but you won’t need to rely on it in order to grow your business.

STRATEGY #5: Being a guest on podcasts

The pros and cons of this strategy are very similar to the guest posting strategy. You can quickly build your audience through podcasting if you can get featured on the top podcasts, whereas the smaller podcasts are more hit and miss.

In order to maximize your chances of getting on the top podcasts out there, you’ll also need (1) an existing mutual relationship that can make an introduction to the podcast host, (2) a proven track record of your expertise, and (3) something meaningful to talk about.

I can tell you from personal experience that 90% of my podcast opportunities came from introductions from my close friends or from meeting people in person, and they’ve come to me once I was already considered an expert and people knew and trusted me. This helped me skip the 3-month application processes and land opportunities I’d otherwise need to spend months chasing.

The upside of podcasts over guest posts is that they take considerably less time to put together (a great guest post can take 10-20 hours or more of your time, while you can record a great podcast episode in an hour), which in my mind makes this strategy a bit better, as you can become a guest on more podcasts in far less time.

Still, I wouldn’t recommend this strategy to someone who’s just starting out with their online business. If you haven’t showcased your expertise yet, don’t have the right relationships built or don’t have anything really meaningful and unique to talk about, chances of you getting accepted to great podcasts are relatively low.

STRATEGY #6: Media opportunities

Media opportunities like being profiled in Forbes or Business Insider are also very similar to guest posting and podcasting. They can be a great way to further grow your business, but maybe tricky to implement if you’re just starting out with it.

My biggest media opportunities (being featured on Business Insider, Entrepreneur and Yahoo Finance) came from personal introductions and in person meet ups, and they came to me after I already had an incredibly story to tell and the business results and expertise to back it up. Klear Picture advisory is committed to helping you reach your goals and make your dreams a reality.

I’d recommend pursuing media opportunities once you’ve already established yourself as a credible expert, once you’re already making money with your business, and want to get more paying customers for your existing products and services. I’d also recommend pursuing media opportunities if you’re based in NYC (or travel there frequently), as that’s where most media is – and if you meet them in person, it’s a lot easier for you to work with them.

When you don’t have a paid product or a service yet and when you haven’t established yourself as an expert yet, I wouldn’t recommend chasing media attention to grow your audience. The media loves talking to experts, and if they Google you and they don’t find something that SHOWS them that you’re the #1 expert to talk to, they won’t want to talk to you or write about you.

STRATEGY #7: Search engine optimization (SEO)

Another strategy that some experts preach for building a blog audience is SEO. At it’s core, search engine optimization allows your website and articles to rank higher on Google and other search engines, so that when your customers try to find the solutions to their problems online, they find your website. The rightful implementation of SEO can be observed from http://www.pochologonzales.com/pochologist-talks-public-speaking-sales-pr-professionals/ and be implemented, for the website to gain popularity.

While this strategy does work in the long run, it takes a long time to actually work (even with proper execution).

How long?

Well, per this study from ahrefs, 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the first page of Google within a year. The pages on the first page of Google are on average 2 years old, while the pages that rank in the #1 spot are over 3 years old.

Of course there are always ways to “work around that”, but even the experts admit that the exceptions to the rule happen mostly with large, established websites that already have existing followings and are able to generate a lot of buzz overnight.

What this tells us is that SEO can definitely be a great long-term strategy if executed properly (though most online entrepreneurs hire SEO agencies for that purpose, rather than doing it themselves), but in the short run it isn’t the most effective strategy for building an online business.

Especially since there are more and more blog posts published every single day, it will get tougher and tougher to rank high on Google. As a beginning entrepreneur without a large following, your time would be better spent elsewhere.

STRATEGY #8: Paid advertising

What about Facebook Ads, Google AdWords etc.? Isn’t paid advertising something a lot of experts are using to grow their online businesses?
The short answer is yes – but not in a way that you might expect, and that doesn’t mean that you should use it too if you’re just starting out with your online business.

Even the experts mostly use paid advertising to sell more of their online products, rather than for growing an audience (because they can get an immediate return on their investment that way).

For example, if you ever visited a sales page from an online business expert, you might have noticed that you’ve seen Facebook ads on your Facebook feed for a few weeks until the course enrollment closed. This is called “retargeting”, and helps bring potential customers back to the sales pages and increase sales by reminding them that the product is still available for sale.

In that case, using paid advertising makes a lot of sense. But when it comes to attracting new audiences or selling products to people that have never heard of you, paid advertising is usually less effective, especially if you’re just starting out with your online business and people have never heard of you.

Think about it – how often have you seen an ad from someone on Facebook that you’ve never heard of, clicked on it and subscribed to their email list, or bought their products? Me? Not a single time.

Paid advertising can be a great way to boost your business revenues (granted that you know how to do it properly) once you already have a product or a service to sell, but when you’re just starting out, it’s better to stay away from it.

Ok, we’ve gone through 8 different strategies that aren’t the best fit for growing your email list and getting your first customers if you’re just starting out with your business, so I know you’ll be wondering…

“What can I do to build my online business instead?”

Well, I’m glad you asked – and tomorrow, I’ll be introducing a strategy to you that works a lot better than all of these strategies (and I’ll share with you stories and examples of people who have successfully used it this year to jump-start their online businesses).

But before I do that, I’d love to hear from you:

What has your experience been with the above strategies? Have you had the same results and experiences with them as I talked about, or was your experience different?

I’d love to hear from you – let me know by leaving a comment below!

And make sure you stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog post – you’ll love it.

-Primoz