Primoz Bozic

Helping online entrepreneurs build a 7-figure online business

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How I Got Featured on Forbes

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I always dreamed of being featured on Forbes.

In my mind, it was one of the most elite online publications where only the best entrepreneurs get to share their advice with the world.

It was something I aspired to, but for a long time felt out of reach.

Until last week, when it finally happened.

Last week, an article with my advice got published on Forbes:

5 Secrets to Finding The Perfect Mentor

I opened my inbox and saw this e-mail pop up:

I rushed to click the link and binge-read through the whole article:

And I loved it.

As I was so excited about it, I emailed it out to my readers:

And at the end of the email, I asked my readers if they’d like me to write about how the opportunity happened:

When I checked my email the following morning, I woke up to a flood of emphatic YESes:

So I was left with no choice but to write the full “behind the scenes” of how I got featured in Forbes!

In this article, I’ll talk about how it all happened, from start to finish. I’ll talk about what exactly I did to land an article with Forbes, what my thought process was like, and what I’ll do differently next time.

Without further ado…

Let’s dive in!

STEP #1: Build relationships before you need them

I’ll be honest with you.

Before landing the opportunity to be featured in Forbes, I spent YEARS building authentic relationships with other entrepreneurs in my industry.

I did that without any expectations of getting anything in return, and I surely didn’t expect one of those relationships to bring me a Forbes opportunity.

But in my case, that’s exactly what happened (more on that soon).

It’s not a lone case either.

My features in Business Insider, Entrepreneur.com and Entrepreneur on Fire all came through building relationships.

Now if you’re thinking “that’s great for you Primoz because you had those relationships…”

STOP.

A few years ago, I was a 20-year old from Slovenia with no connections, and I had no-one to talk to about my business, PLUS I was an introverted, shy and socially awkward guy.

If you think about it, I had no business building relationships with the top experts in my industry.

And yet… I did it.

It took a lot of time and hard work, but I did it.

And you can do it too.

So if you’re at the stage where you’re dreaming of getting big opportunities for your business but have zero relationships built, that’s something you’ll want to start doing as soon as possible.

The good news is that I documented my whole process of building relationships with influencers in my industry, and published it on my blog so you can use it too.

You can find it in the guide below:

The Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People

Having the right relationships makes getting amazing podcast, guest post and media opportunities 1000x easier, and in my opinion, that’s the best place to start.

Note that I’m not sharing this with you because I’d want to discourage you or make you feel like an opportunity like this is “far out of reach”. It’s because I want to show you the REAL behind the scenes, rather than making things look easier than they are.

Ok, now let’s move on the first real step of my journey of being featured in Forbes:

STEP #2: The introduction

This whole journey started out with a very simple e-mail I got from a friend of mine:

The behind-the-scenes context:

A friend of mine connected with an editor at Forbes who focuses on covering millennials and entrepreneurs.

As she has a lot of friends who fit that description, she reached out to 15 of her close friends and asked them if they’d be interested in being featured in Forbes.

As you can probably guess, I was one of her friends :).

And of course, I said YES!!!

If you’re thinking “I could never get an introduction like this, so does that mean I’ll never be on Forbes?”, slow down.

As mentioned above, this opportunity came out of building relationships (which you CAN get started with doing today).

There are also other avenues which you could use to get opportunities like this (through online publicity courses where members get exclusive opportunities, through meeting writers in person at events, or through cold-pitching), though those are beyond the scope of this post.

And regardless of whether you can get an opportunity to write for Forbes or not… The principles and the process I talk about in this post can be applied to pitching any publication out there :).

STEP #3: Take fast action

I have a confession to make.

In the past, when I received big opportunities like this, I had a tendency to freeze.

I’d start doubting myself, feeling like I’m not good enough and becoming more and more paralyzed.

Because of this, I procrastinated moving forward. I avoided the opportunity.

As a result, it became harder and harder to take advantage of it (because you don’t want to follow up 2 weeks after you get the opportunity).

I hate to admit it, but quite a few opportunities slipped through my fingers because of this.

But a few weeks ago, something in me changed, and I decided to never let an opportunity slip out of my hands again – and I haven’t since.

Instead, I started to seize the opportunities right away.

In this case, that meant putting all non-urgent work off my plate and immediately diving into the research phase of the pitch the next day.

STEP #4: Do your homework

The last thing you want to do with an amazing opportunity like this is half-ass it. Sure, you want to act FAST, but that should never be an excuse for being lazy and skipping the necessary legwork.

The first thing I did as I started working on my pitch was to do some basic research on the writer.

Here’s what that looked like:

I googled the writer

Damn, this sounds like stalking already :D. But for the purposes of this article, let’s just call it “doing your homework”, ok?

So yeah, whenever you want to pitch someone, the first thing you should probably do is Google them.

Whenever I’m googling someone, I’m usually looking for their website, interesting articles they wrote, interesting articles that were written about them, their interviews… Etc.

In this case, I noticed she wrote for a handful of different websites and browsed through a few of her posts to get a feel for what she writes about:

I checked out her Forbes contributor profile

After that I checked out her Forbes contributor profile, and read her bio box:

I noticed that she has a website called A Millennial’s Guide to Life, so I went on to check out her website and read some of her recent posts.

A post that caught my attention was “How I got an article published in Forbes”, so I read through the whole post and took notes on what I liked about it.

I looked through her recent blog posts

After checking out her website I went back to her Forbes profile and looked at some of her recent articles:

INSERT PHOTOS

As I did that, I noticed that all of her articles seemed to include a few tips about a specific topic (like “5 Simple And Fun Ways You Can Make Extra Money This Fall”), or a few steps to achieve a specific result (like “You Can Create a 6-Figure Business With These 8 Simple Steps”).

I also noticed that most of the articles followed a similar structure.

Here’s an example from “How to get over your fear of self-promotion”.

They began with a personal story:

Then they introduced the expert:

And finally, they included the specific tips from the expert:

The “tips” were usually 1-2 paragraphs long, so I knew I could follow a similar framework in my own article when I wrote it.

I also looked at the topics of the blog posts to get a feel for what she usually wrote about:

I noticed that a lot of advice was targeted at entrepreneurs (and a lot of them included X tips / steps), which helped me come up with my own ideas for the article that her audience would love.

I looked through her most popular blog posts

As the final (but DEFINITELY not the least important) step of my research, I took a look at some of her most popular posts from the “Popular posts” section:

This helped me get a feel for what kind of content tends to take off on Forbes, so I tried to tailor my article ideas and writing to have the biggest chances of making the article a success.

While going through this process did take quite some time, I don’t think you can ever afford to skip this part of the process.

Not only will doing your homework increase your chances of getting your pitch accepted, it will also increase the chances of your article getting a lot of traction.

One thing I didn’t do… But should have

I’ll admit that I made one mistake with doing my homework for this opportunity because I wanted to make sure I take advantage of the opportunity while it’s still there.

I shouldn’t have just looked at the writer’s most popular posts, I should have also looked at the most popular posts within the #lifehacks section on Forbes, where she usually publishes her work:

This might have helped me come up with even better content / structure ideas that I could then work into my pitch and article (as I’d be learning from the absolute best examples)

STEP #5: The Pitch

Once the homework is done, the fun begins!

I took some time to write a super detailed pitch, which I’ll share below (it’s a LITTLE bit on the long side, but I’ll explain).

In hindsight, this pitch could have been a bit shorter and to the point, and in the future I’ll try to make my pitches more concise. Still, since the pitch got accepted I must have done something right :).

Here’s the pitch break-down:

The introduction:

First, I pre-wrote a brief introduction that my friend could use to introduce me to the editor. I tried to use her voice and make her life as easy as possible.

The key thing here is that I kept it focused and brief, and I also included a link to my website through my name (this is a small detail that many people miss, but editors will really appreciate it as you save them some Googling time).

The media bio:

Next, I included my media bio with my past media appearances, which gave me some extra credibility and showed that I was an established expert already.

In the media bio, I talk about a few things:

  • I start with a story that makes the writer interested in me
  • I mention the kind of business I run and who my clients are so the writer can understand my business (or know how to present me to her readers)
  • I talk about things like working with Ramit Sethi and having 5-figure product launches to establish extra credibility
  • I also list all the past media coverage I’ve had, to show that I’m an established expert

NOTE: If you’re reading this and you’re thinking “I don’t have any / as much media attention as you yet…”, there’re two things I’d like to mention:

First, when I got featured on websites like Business Insider and Entrepreneur, I didn’t really have a “media bio”. I didn’t even know those existed, and I was never in the media before. My pitch was literally “I went from earning $7/h to $400/h out of Slovenia”. So to land big media, you don’t necessarily NEED a ton of previous media coverage.

Second, you don’t have to START at a publication like Forbes. You can take a lot of insights from this post to pitch smaller websites first, build up your credibility, improve your media bio and THEN pitch a bigger website like Forbes.

So don’t let not having a media bio (yet) hold you back!

Relevant links:

When a writer at a publication receives a pitch, the first thing they’ll do is google you.

The googling can sometimes be quite a time consuming process, so I decided to include relevant links to some of my past work / features just to save them some time.

It’s small details like this that make you stand out from the sea of other pitches, and make the writers really love working with you.

Building rapport:

I inserted a quick line sharing what I enjoyed from the article that I loved on her website to build rapport and show that I’ve done my homework.

I could have shared more details here, but as the pitch was already becoming pretty long I decided to make this section shorter.

The article ideas:

Ok, now we’re getting to the MEAT of the pitch:

If you pay close attention to my article ideas, you’ll notice that I broke down each one of them into 3 steps:

  • WHY this is a good fit for Forbes
  • WHAT I would write about in the article

The first part is there to show the writer why they should consider the idea, and the second part (the bullets) gives them an idea for what to write about and helps them visualize the finished article.

As you look over the ideas, notice a large number of links that are scattered throughout them. This is again intentional as I’m giving the writer extra resources that they can reference if they need them.

Again, almost nobody does this and it’s a great way to stand out.

You’ll also notice that the bullets are short, sweet and easy to skim – rather than long walls of texts people sometimes tend to write

Looking back, I definitely could have made the “WHY” section more compelling. I could have taken the extra steps to research similar articles on Forbes and made a stronger case why these topics would be a great fit for Forbes (whereas I focused the “WHY” section mostly on myself).

I believe that the ideas #2 were a good fit for Forbes, while the third idea might be too niche uninteresting to the Forbes audience in its current form.

I also could have tailored the bullets a bit better to the article format (for example, with idea #2 that ended up being accepted, I could have simply made the bullets about the “tips” rather than my ideas.

The wrap up:

In the final few lines of the email, I do a couple of things.

I start with the call to action and specify exact next steps (rather than just saying “what do you think?”).

I also mention that we could do a profile-based story that could become a big hit on Forbes, in case she’d be interested in that.

And in terms of the pitch… That’s it!

STEP #6: The waiting game

I heard back from the Forbes writer on April 12th (a month and a half after I sent out the pitch, on February 26th).

This is quite a long time, and in the meanwhile, I didn’t really think about the pitch. I see a lot of people really slow down after they receive a big opportunity and stop pushing themselves after they do.

I’ve done the same thing myself in the past, but then when I saw how long articles like these take to get published, I stopped worrying about things I can’t control and just focused on my work.

And over the past few months, as I worked on putting myself more and more, I learned how to use opportunities like this to actually build momentum and chase more and more opportunities (it becomes an addiction!).

STEP #7: Writing the article

As soon as I saw that my article idea was accepted, I got to work.

The next morning I put together a rough draft for the pitch.

You can read the FULL rough draft here.

It’s too long to fit on this page ;).

After I wrote the first draft, rather than sending it to the editor right away, I ran it by a few of my friends:

I asked my friends for feedback on my article because I didn’t have a lot of experience with writing short articles like this, and because I wanted to make the article REALLY good.

The first iteration of the article was really long, and I almost wrote it as the whole article (as I was told to “write some tips in a Google document”, which I didn’t 100% understand).

I got a lot of great feedback from my friends that helped me improve my writing voice and make my advice more pointed and actionable.

I also received an example of the “tips in a Google document” example which helped me understand exactly what the writer was looking for (I can’t share that one publicly, unfortunately, as it’s part of an online course).

By using all the feedback and getting a great example of what the writer is expecting, I went on to finish and submit a much tighter version of my article (though I still made sure it was super actionable and valuable):

The final version of the article I submitted to Forbes.

Notice how I try to go above and beyond for the writer by giving her extra examples to use in the article (in case she doesn’t like some of them) and by giving links to extra relevant blog posts:

I wanted to include specific examples of people in the post to make the article more relatable and useful, and I also wanted to get more exposure for the amazing work of people I know.

While most of the links didn’t get included in the end, some of the examples did, which I was really happy about.

In terms of the pitch, that was more or less it. I sent out the article tips on April 17th and hoped for the best:

STEP #8: Spreading the word

On April 24th, exactly a week after I sent the tips to the writer, the Forbes article with my tips went live!

Because I really wanted this article to be a success for the writer, I immediately found a few ways to spread the word about it.

I shared it on my own Facebook wall:

I sent out an email to my readers about it:

And I also shared it in a few Facebook groups where I thought the readers might benefit from it:

As I shared the post I made sure I only shared it in groups where I thought the members could genuinely benefit from it, and I also always offered to answer any additional questions about the article to add even more value to the community members.

In the future, I’ll spend more time mentioning this article and sharing it wherever I find it relevant, as I do feel like it’s a good piece of content that could genuinely help people.

STEP #9: Thanking the writer

I was really excited that my article got featured on Forbes and love the way in which the writer wrote it, so I sent a quick thank you e-mail to them:

I like doing this whenever someone helps me out to build a relationship with them and express my gratitude, and sometimes I’d also send a gift to them.

It’s a small touch that makes you stand out from everyone else and makes people want to work with you more in the future.

STEP #10: What I’d do differently next time

After every article I get published in the media, I reflect on what I can do better next time.

As I looked at the stats on the article, I saw that it got around 3,700 views within a week of publishing:

This isn’t bad (plenty of articles get less than 1,000 views), especially for my first shot at writing for a publication like this, and I know that the article will slowly get more traction over time.

Still, I feel like there are a lot of things I could have done better throughout my process so I can write a better pitch and a better article next time.

To write an article that gets 10,000 or 100,000 views (and really bring my name out to a lot of new people), the biggest thing I’ll need to get better at is coming up with great article ideas.

Especially on websites like this, people click on (and share) interesting STORIES. That’s how my Business Insider article got over 111,000 views:

I definitely need to get better at finding relevant stories that I can work into my articles that are relevant to more people, and that’s the #1 thing I’ll be working on in the future.

I’m also going to improve my process based on the lessons I got from this experience.

Now I know how to write article tips to send to a writer, I’m getting a feel for what they find important and what they skip on, and over time I know I’ll be able to create better articles and pitches to further grow my online business.

BONUS: My pitch-checklist

I’m a big fan of creating processes and checklists, so naturally, I wanted to break down my process into a step-by-step process you can follow to get featured in publications like Forbes.

Here are the exact steps that you can use to get there:

  • STEP #1: Build relationships before you need them – Use my Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People to get started!
  • STEP #2: Take fast action when an opportunity comes – Don’t wait (or let yourself procrastinate). When an opportunity comes, face your fear and act on it immediately!
  • STEP #3: Do your homework – Always google the writer you’re pitching, their past work, their most popular work, and the most popular articles on their platform. Pay close attention to how they structure their articles and the topics they write about.
  • STEP #4: Write an amazing pitch – In the pitch, make sure you share your story, what you do, include any past media coverage, and share 1-3 ideas with bullet points explaining each idea. Make the editor’s life easier by including all the relevant links.
  • STEP #5: Don’t wait… Move on! – Once you submit the pitch, don’t wait to hear back as that might take weeks or months. Instead, occupy your mind with chasing the next opportunity on your plate!
  • STEP #6: Get help with your writing – When you have an opportunity to write for a really big publication, don’t hesitate to reach out to your friends and ask them to help you write the best possible article. They’ll love helping you out!
  • STEP #7: Spread the word – Don’t just wait for the article to take off on it’s own once it’s live. Find a way to spread the word about it through your social media, your e-mail newsletter and any relevant places (like Facebook groups) where your article could really help people.
  • STEP #8: Thank the writer – Every time you get featured in the media, send a thank you note to the writer. They’ll appreciate it and want to work with you more in the future!

Well, that’s it for today!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it.

What’s your #1 takeaway from this article?

Let me know in the comments below!

How Selena Soo Builds Authentic Relationships With Entrepreneurs

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Did you ever wonder how some people…

  • Are able to build a network practically overnight?
  • Seem to know EVERYONE in the industry and get invited to speak at conferences, get invited to private dinners and have hundreds of people promoting their work?
  • Somehow manage to juggle hundreds of relationships at the same time?

It’s not easy to build relationships with top experts in your industry, especially when nobody knows who you are yet (or you’re not living in a place like NYC where all the cool people are).

Especially when you’re just starting out, building a network can be overwhelming and can feel like a process that will take YEARS of hard work IF you figure out how to do it in the first place.

Luckily, there’s a shortcut that can help you build authentic relationships in a fraction of the time.

It’s a shortcut that all of the top networking experts use, but rarely talk about… Unless you find a way to spot it in their behaviors.

I used this shortcut when I first build my network, though I wasn’t aware I was using it. It just happened naturally, and I could never really pinpoint what I did…

…until a recent conversation I had with Selena Soo.

Selena is one of my mentors and friends, and she’s INCREDIBLE at building authentic relationships. She’s probably the most connected person I know from all online entrepreneurs, and it’s not even close.

A lot of people say building relationships is Selena’s superpower, and it is. It’s something that she got so good at over time (though it wasn’t always that way – she was very introverted and had few friends in high school and college) that people watch in awe as she “works the room”.

But even more impressive is the work she does behind the scenes that most people never see, which is her REAL superpower (more on that in a sec).

When I talked to Selena and we talked about how she builds authentic relationships, she mentioned something very interesting and I felt like a lightbulb lit up in my head…

And that’s where I realized that Selena’s superpower is fueled by a technique that she keeps using over again, which is the exact shortcut I’m talking about today.

The best part?

This shortcut isn’t reserved just for existing top experts in your industry (though I’ve seen many top experts use it without really knowing or talking about it).

You can use it even if…

  • You’re an introvert (Selena is an introvert too)
  • You don’t live in a big city like NYC (I used it out of Slovenia)
  • Nobody knows who you are yet (the same thing was true for me)

So what is this secret shortcut that I’m talking about?

I call it “The Rule of 15”.

Here’s what Selena said in our conversation that blew my mind (highlighted are the most important parts, but I highly recommend you read the whole thing):

“I spend a lot of my day connecting people. For example, I recently discovered this contributor at Forbes, and her focus is on millennials and side hustles. And that’s awesome, because right now at Forbes, a lot of people can only cover particular topics. Someone else at Forbes might talk about mental health and entrepreneurship. So I found this person that’s perfect for so many of my students, my clients and friends.”

And so, I’ve been pitching some of my clients to her. So then I thought, “Let me reach out to kind of a broader circle of people, and see if I can help them get an article in Forbes?” Some of these are my star students, my really close friends, and I wanna be able to help them. And so rather than just reaching out to one person, I reached out to 15 people. It was the same email, that started with something like: “Oh hi so and so, just thinking of you. It was so great to see you at Vegas at my even.” Or, “Hi so and so, it was great to catch up over coffee the other day.” Or, “Congratulations on your launch.”

After that I told them I met a contributor at Forbes, and asked them if they might be interested in being featured in Forbes. If so, I’d love to introduce you. Here’s what you would need to do. And so I’m building relationships with 15 people at a time, and some people are really busy and they don’t have the time to even pitch. But others are like, “Oh my gosh, I wanna seize that opportunity.”

So that was with Forbes. My friend Jess Nazarali told me that she was looking for more podcast guests, so I again reached out to 15 people. Some of them were the same people I reached out to before, some of them were different. Maybe there is a cool event that I wanna go to. Maybe I’ll reach out to another 15 friends, “Hey I’m going to this event, do you want to come with me?” So by doing it in kind of a concentrated way, and making the same offer to multiple people, it’s like I’m potentially connecting deeply with 45 people in the course of two or three days, versus three people if I were reaching out to one on one, or zero people if I was with someone who was connecting the dots, between ideas and opportunities and people.

So when you do that every single day, it’s like you can add massive value to well over 100 people in a month or two. And so that’s kind of being someone who’s a giver, then it’s also it’s easy for me to ask for a little support, or feedback, or something. And not that I even necessarily ask them all the time, but I just know adding value to them all the time will help. And then it’s also easier for me to often refer people to them.”

What is “The Rule of 15?”

The concept is simple:

Whenever you have an opportunity to add value to your network, rather than reaching out to one person, reach out to 15 people. 

That’s literally it.

So next time an awesome opportunity comes your way:

  • Make a list of 15 people you know that could also benefit from it (or as many as you can)
  • Write an email (see sample below) to reach out to these people where you share the opportunity with them
  • Send out the emails all at once

You can likely do this in just 1-2 hours and massive value to 15 people in your network. And then, as Selena says (and does), you can use this technique to add value to hundreds of people every single month.

This way, you’re building 15 strong relationships at a time by sharing the same opportunity with 15 people in a fraction of a time it would take you to build those relationships 1-on-1.

Plus, you can constantly stay in touch and on top of mind of people you already connected with!

The Rule of 15 Email Example

Not sure what to include in the email? You can keep the email SUPER simple!

You really just want to:

  • Write a quick personalized note
  • Share the opportunity you have

Here’s an example of an email Selena sent to me about the Forbes opportunity:

It’s as simple as that!

20 real-life examples of how you can use “The Rule of 15”

Now at this point, you’re probably wondering: “What are some ways in which I can use “The Rule of 15”, especially when I’m just starting out with growing my network?

I’m glad you asked, which is why I prepared a list of real life examples of how you could use this rule to grow your network:

  1. Inviting people out for dinner / cocktail party / drinks you’re hosting (or your friend is hosting)
  2. Inviting people to come to an event with you that you’re hosting / going to / your friend is hosting
  3. Scheduling a catch up call with people in your network that you haven’t talked to in a while
  4. Sharing a publicity / podcast / guest post opportunity with your network
  5. Sharing a really great online course / book / article / video with people in your network
  6. Introducing people to other cool people they should meet
  7. Sending an email to people in your network and asking them if they need help with something right now
  8. Share articles from people that you loved on your social media (though you won’t want to do 15 in a day, you can do 15 in 2 weeks)
  9. Invite them out for coffee to catch up
  10. Offer free coaching / consulting calls (“office hours”) to 15 of your clients, email subscribers, or people in an online community you’re a part of
  11. Check in with your clients or students to see how they’re doing and if there’s anything they need help with

Here’re some more examples of adding value through the “The Rule of 15”. These will take a little bit more time as you’ll need to personalize them a bit more, BUT they’ll be even more valuable for growing your network.

  1. Sending people who helped you a written thank you card or a thank you email
  2. Writing a testimonial or recording a video testimonial for people in your network
  3. Writing an Amazon review of a book of books you loved reading recently
  4. Sending book authors thank you notes for writing their books
  5. Writing an iTunes review of podcasts you loved
  6. Writing a written (or recording a video) review of an online course you’ve taken
  7. Writing an article where you share advice of 15 people around one topic that really helped you
  8. Leave a comment on people’s blogs / articles that you really loved
  9. Write a helpful post or leave a helpful comment in a community you’re a part of

These are just some of the examples, and I encourage you to get creative with them.

And if you have any examples that I missed / that you have successfully used or thought about, please do share them in the comments and I’ll add them to this post :).

That’s it! Now you have everything you need to put The Rule of 15 into action, and if you’re ready to do that, here are some steps that you can use to get started TODAY.

ACTION STEPS: The Rule of 15

I encourage you to go through these steps right now so you can see the benefits of this rule for yourself:

  • STEP #1: Think about 1-5 ways in which you could add value to your network (or opportunities that you have right now)
  • STEP #2: Pick just one of the ways and compile a list of 15 (or as many as you can) people that you could benefit from the opportunity / value add
  • STEP #3: Prepare a short email template that you’ll send out to these people
  • STEP #4: Sit down, write and send out all of those emails in one go
  • STEP #5 (BONUS): Repeat the steps above every day, or whenever a new opportunity comes your way

Remember, even if you can’t come up with 15 people you can help with right now (or don’t have 5 opportunities waiting for you), you can just start with one opportunity and try to find 3, 5, or 10 people to add value to in your existing network.

As you do that, you’ll notice that there you give, the more your network will give back to you, the more people you’ll meet… And eventually you’ll have no problem with coming up with 15 or more people to add value to at the same time :).

That’s it!

If you’re going to use The Rule of 15 to grow your network, take 3 seconds to leave a comment below of how you’re going to use it!

And if you’d like to get even more strategies for growing your network and surrounding yourself with successful people, you can’t miss my Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People (enter your name and email in the box below to grab your free copy).

You’ll also love this guide if you haven’t STARTED connecting with successful people yet (or have no opportunities coming your way yet). The free guide will help you get there :).

-Primoz

How to Write a Non-Buyer Survey After a Failed Product Launch

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  • What do you do when your product launch fails (or doesn’t perform as expected)?
  • How do you figure out where you “messed up”?
  • Is it bad timing, is the price too high, is your product not compelling enough?

There’s only one way to find out – by talking to your customers.

And the first step in that process is usually sending a “non-buyer survey” to your leads that had the opportunity to buy the product but didn’t.

Since I’ve been asked over and over again by my clients to share an example of a non-buyer survey (as well as how to interpret the data), I decided to write a post it where I’ll show my whole process of performing non-buyer surveys with you.

Why do you even need a non-buyer survey? 

Non-buyer surveys are great because they allow you to start identifying the exact reasons why your customers aren’t buying your products.

The insights from non-buyer surveys then help you improve the product pricing, positioning and sales copy to make sure your next product launch does way better than the next one.

But the one thing that people miss when it comes to non-buyer surveys is that the surveys aren’t the end of the story – they are just a means to an end.

Perhaps the most valuable role of non-buyer surveys is that they allow you to find interested potential customers that you can call on the phone to dig even deeper into the reasons why they didn’t buy your product.

If you’re not using a non-buyer survey, you’re missing out on all the valuable data on why your customers aren’t buying (and if you’re relying on your guesses and assumptions and not data… get ready for a world of pain and failed launches).

So if you don’t have a non-buyer survey yet, you definitely need one!

How I learned to write a non-buyer survey

I first learned how to write a non-buyer survey back in 2014 when I worked through Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch to set up my own online business.

When I had a product launch that did “okay”, I asked his product development team how to make the launch better.

They told me that non-buyer surveys aren’t a place where you need to reinvent the wheel, and that they’d send me some templates I could use right away.

They were right. The survey templates that they’ve sent me worked exceptionally well and I use them to this day, and I’ve seen Ramit Sethi use these exact surveys to get non-buyer feedback for his products as well.

I’ve also seen a lot of my friends use the same surveys in their own businesses with great results, which is why I decided to write about these surveys in this post.

So without further ado, here’s a template that you too can use to write your very own non-buyer survey.

Below the template, you’ll also find the step-by-step instructions for how to analyze the survey data, as well as how to email the survey out to your readers.

Although it is possible to use a top business phone system and have the survey done by phone. This can be quite costly if additional employees are needed to carry out the extra task. So in the spirit of saving of money I recommend using a software like Surveymonkey to host your survey as the basic plan is free and it gives you a great overview of the data.

Non-buyer survey template

Here are the survey questions that you need to ask in a non-buyer survey

1. I noticed you had the opportunity to join PRODUCT NAME but decided not to join at this time. Would you say you were at least considering joining of were you not interested at all?
(yes / no)

2. Which of the following factors played a role in your decision? (choose one of more)
– I don’t have time
– I can’t afford it
– I don’t understand what it is
– I’m not sure it can help me
– I’m just not interested
– Other (please specify)

3. In your own words, why didn’t you join? Please be as specific as possible.
(paragraph box)

4. If you were interested but didn’t join, what will you do about TOPIC instead? (Leave blank if TOPIC doesn’t interest you)
(paragraph box)

5. Name / Email

You can tweak these to fit your own product, brand and language, but I wouldn’t tweak them too much. The overall structure and length of these questions should be more or less the same (so don’t try to add 3 more super long questions to the survey – save the extra questions for the 1on1 calls).

How and when should you send a non-buyer survey to your non-buyers?

Your potential customers will likely be the most engaged in the week right after the product launch once the memory of it is still clear.

If you can, you should send out a non-buyer email to your readers within 2-3 days of finishing your launch (if you finish it on Friday night, you can send out the survey on Monday). But even if it’s been a few weeks since your launch, it’s never too late to send out the survey and still get some good responses.

In terms of what to send, you can keep things super simple.

You could send out an email like this (with a subject line “Can I get your feedback?”):

Hi NAME,

I noticed you had the opportunity to join PRODUCT NAME but decided not to join at this time. Would you mind telling me why? (I’m not trying to sell you anything. I just want to learn how I can better serve you.)

SURVEY LINK

Thank you!

You can tweak this email to fit your voice and brand, but I do recommend keeping it super short to get the maximal responses from it.

Analysis of non-buyer survey questions

Ok, now let’s look at each of these questions in detail to understand WHY we’re using each of the questions from the survey.

QUESTION #1: Were you interested in joining the program?

This question allows you to separate the people who were not interested in joining your program from the ones that were.

You can then further the not interested in joining the program into two groups:

  • People who might never buy anything (or this program) from you
  • People who might buy from you, but just weren’t convinced that they really needed your program.

Here’s an example:

  • If you’re selling a program about fitness to an entrepreneur and they’re already invested in another sport (or know how to be fit already), they will likely never buy this program from you.
  • If you’re selling a program about mindset to a painter and the painter says “I just don’t think that mindset is that important”, then you probably could reach them in the future if you tweaked your messaging successfully.

In the latter example, it’s not that they’ll never buy from you, it’s just that you haven’t showed them (or convinced them) WHY mindset is so important to them, so they never became interested in the product.

When you reach out to people in the second category, you should try to find out why they think that mindset isn’t important (and address those concerns with your next product launch).

Now we’ve covered the people who were not interested in joining your product.

With the people that WERE interested in joining your product, you have a group of people who wanted to buy from you but had concerns against buying (which you’ll be able to identify and improve through insights you get from other questions).

One last thing we should mention is that you should look at the ratio of how many people were interested in joining / weren’t interesting in joining, because that allows you to determine where you went wrong.

If the majority of people WERE interested in joining, it means that the product is desirable, but you didn’t address the buyer’s concerns well enough.

If the majority of people WERE NOT interesting in joining, it means that either the product wasn’t desirable, or you haven’t made it desirable enough (which you need to dig into with further research).

QUESTION #2: Why didn’t you join the program?

With this question, we’re trying to identify the main concerns our potential had around buying the program. Did our potential customers not buy because of limited time, money, or something else?

Once you collect the results from your survey, you’ll first want to look at the data in a quantitative way:

You’ll want to look at which of the reasons were the most popular, and which were less popular.

Here’s a simplified way to analyze this kind of data:

  • IF a lot of people said that they lack time for the program, THEN your program either feels “too hard / time consuming”, OR you haven’t made it seem important enough for people to dedicate the time.
  • IF a lot of people said that the program is too expensive, THEN your program is either priced too high OR the benefits of the program didn’t seem valuable enough to them.
  • IF a lot of people said that they didn’t understand what the program is, THEN you didn’t make your offer (product outline / what it includes) clear enough through your emails and your sales page, OR you made it too confusing.
  • IF a lot of people said that they’re not sure how the program can help them, THEN the benefits didn’t resonate well enough OR weren’t convincing enough.
  • IF they just weren’t interested you can ignore the responses from this person (or address them as you analyze the responses from people who were not interested in joining).

As you analyze this data, you want to get a clearer idea what was the BIGGEST issue that you need to address and improve, and which are minor issues that you don’t need to worry about so much.

Is it the pricing? Is it the clear offer? Is it the benefits?

Then, you’ll want to primarily focus on the major issues as you dig into the data further. If we look at the graph above, I’d definitely dig deeper into the “no time”, “no money”, and “how can it help me?” issues, while I’d spend less time digging into “what is the program?”.

You’ll be able to do that by digging through the next few questions (and jumping on further non-buyer phone calls withy our potential customers).

QUESTION #3: In your own words, why didn’t you join?

This is the question where the real gold lies and where most of your attention will be spent as you analyze the data.

Here, you’ll start to see more specific reasons why people didn’t join, and you’ll likely start to see patterns between what people are saying.

  • For example, if a lot of people say something along the lines of “I struggle with procrastination and there’s no way I could put in the hours to go through the course”, that means that your course doesn’t seem easy or achievable enough.
  • If a lot of people say “I’m focused on other areas of my business development right now”, it means that you didn’t make the program seem important enough that people would want to take it (or you didn’t target a real, strong enough problem they have).
  • If a lot of people say “I don’t understand what it is or how it would add value to me right now”, that means that you didn’t make the offer clear enough (you didn’t explain which problem you solve for your audience clearly enough).

This might seem similar to the analysis that you were doing in the previous step – and it is – but the distinction here is that you can dig deeper into the data by finding more SPECIFIC reasons why people aren’t joining.

The first thing you can do to do that is to group your data from each category in a document, and start analyzing the data within each of the reasons.

For example, within the “I’m not sure if this program is right for me”, you could see concerns like:

  • “You seem to be targeting 20-25 year old, introverted people while I am 40+”
  • “I need to find a profitable business idea first before joining this program”
  • “I didn’t feel like paying money just to join a Facebook group”

Then, once you find enough real reasons why people aren’t joining your program, you can call them over the phone to get them to tell you more about them (and get even more clarity on what’s stopping them from joining)..

The main benefit of seeing these results is that you can start seeing REAL problems in the language of the people, that you can then work through step by step as you’re preparing your next launch.

Note that this isn’t an easy task, and that some of the data won’t be as clear / super useful. You’ll definitely get some responses like “I just didn’t have the time” or “I just wasn’t interested”, which won’t be useful.

But when you get a response like “I really don’t have the time right now”, but the response is 2 pages long, then that’s suspicious – how come they didn’t have the time when they have the time to write a really long response to you?

Or when they say “it was too expensive”, but then they mentioned they joined 5 other online programs (or are planning on joining them), then that’s again something very interesting that you want to look into more.

You can use these answers as a great starting point to identify potential improvements in your copy, as well as a great starting point for your 1on1 phone calls later on down the line.

QUESTION #4: What will you do instead to solve this problem?

With this question, you’ll be able to identify:

  • Potential competitors that are solving the problems you’re promising to solve better than you are
  • Additional concerns that prevent people from joining (like “I don’t think paying for connections is worth my time”)
  • Less effective alternatives that you didn’t talk about (like “I’ll just read a few blog posts instead”).

You can expect to find less valuable data here (as some of it will be repetitive, though once in a while you’ll discover something you didn’t think of yet which will be worth the digging).

QUESTION #5: Your name and email

This is perhaps the most important question in the whole survey, as it allows you to schedule 1on1 calls with your customers to follow up on their responses and discover deeper insights that you won’t be able to find through a quick survey.

So don’t skip this question!

What’s next?

Once you do an initial analysis of the survey responses, reach out to at least 3-5 people whose answers you’ve found interesting to talk to them for 15 minutes on the phone and get information from them (the more the merrier).

You can use an email like this to do that (subject line: I’d love to talk to you about your survey response!):

Hi NAME,

Thank you so much for filling out the survey about PRODUCT NAME last week.

I’ve found your response really interesting, especially the part about ________

INSERT THEIR SURVEY RESPONSE

I’d love for you to tell me more about that as I really want to serve you as best as possible in the future.

Would you be willing to jump on a 15-minute Skype call with me to talk more about it?

If yes, let me know and I’ll send you some times when we can talk.

Thank you!

-YOUR NAME

Right now, you have a survey template ready to use, as well as the email you can send it out with, and a starting point to analyze the data, which is more than enough to get started.

You can start digging through the data and start scheduling the 1on1 calls with your potential customers instead.

I’ll write more about the non-buyer phone calls in the future (as they’re something you need to learn as well) and maybe do a real-life analysis of a non-buyer survey as well, so stay tuned.

-Primoz

Have questions about non-buyer surveys or how to analyze the data? Leave a comment below!

Why “Charge What You’re Worth” is Horrible Advice (And What to do Instead)

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A lot of advice for pricing your products or services goes like this:

  • “You should charge premium rates!”
  • “You should charge what you’re worth!”
  • “You should find your happy price!”

And I agree – I even wrote a blog post on what it takes to charge $1,000/hour.

But there’s a twist.

When you’re trying to land your first few paying clients, charging premium rates can hurt your business.

That’s where most new freelancers, coaches and consultants get it wrong.

They read a blog post or take an online course about charging premium rates, love the idea of it (who doesn’t love the idea of making more money with the same amount of work?), and they’re all excited about charging hundreds of dollars per hours to become the next Scrooge McDuck:

And some people make it.

Every once in a while, you’ll hear this massive success story from someone who started charging $500/h and built a 6-figure business practically overnight.

But most people don’t.

The harsh reality looks more like this:

You define a product or a service you want to offer.

You find a few potential clients.

You talk to them about how you can help them.

You create one or more packages for them.

You think about pricing, and read articles online / ask other entrepreneurs about it.

Eventually, you settle on a rate you’re happy with.

You present your rate to the potential clients.

And then you either don’t hear back from them, hear them say that “they’ll think about it”, or just get a clear “this is out of my budget right now” back.

This sucks.

It sucks because this whole process usually doesn’t take a few minutes. Finding your potential clients, talking to them about what they want, preparing different packages, coming up with pricing… Can potentially take days, weeks, or even months in some cases.

And when you get to the point where you share your price and they reject it, it hurts.

You’ve spent all this time and effort landing a new client, and it was all for nothing.

You need to start again at square one.

I’ve seen this happen over and over again with my clients and friends.

Consultants, photographers, designers… You name it.

They set out to get their first few clients (or try to launch a new service), get all hyped up, then belly flop into the harsh reality and are left with no clients at all.

Here’s the problem that most experts don’t talk to you about:

You have to EARN the right to charge premium rates.

In my post about charging $1,000/hour, I talk about different ways of raising your rates, like:

  • Growing your knowledge, expertise, and results you can deliver to your clients
  • Improving the quality of your products or service you deliver to your clients
  • Building your reputation as a credible expert, and becoming fully booked

And when you’re starting out, you just haven’t done all the hard work to deserve charging premium rates yet.

If you don’t have a ton of client success stories and happy clients referring you to other people they know, you have no business raising your rates.

I’ll even take this a step further.

If you’re not fully booked yet, you shouldn’t be charging premium rates.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s think of 2 aspiring designers – Jack and Tom, who both want to start a freelance business.

They both want to charge $100/h.

They both manage to find 5 clients that are interested in working with them.

They both spend plenty of time understanding their customer’s needs and come up with proposals for them.

But when they think about pricing, they take different approaches.

Jack uses the “charge what you’re worth” approach and charges $100/h.

Tom uses the “undercharge and over deliver” approach and charges $50/h.

Here’s what happens next:

Jack has high hopes and is excited to get his first paying clients, but ends up being rejected and hearing crickets.

He’s “too expensive” for the clients, and ends up with 0 clients, 0 success stories, 0 referrals, and a whole lot of time wasted.

He’s back to square one.

Tom, on the other hand, manages to land 3 of the 5 clients at $50/h. The projects aren’t huge, and they bring in around $250 per client, which is less than he ideally wanted, but it’s a start.

The flip side is that he now has his first few paying clients, and his hobby is turning into a real business.

He does amazing work for the 3 clients and receives raving testimonials from them that he can put on his website.

But that’s not all. One of the clients is so happy with the work that he decides to hire him at a bigger project for $1,000, and even agrees to pay him a higher hourly rate.

Another client doesn’t have more work for Tom but has a friend who desperately needs a designer, so he recommends Tom to them. Tom lands another project for $600 and this time charges $60/h with no pushback.

After 3 months, Jack is still in the exact same place. He’s putting in a ton of work trying to land new clients, but always gets rejected. His business doesn’t move anywhere and he’s discouraged. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing wrong and why people won’t just pay him “what he’s worth”.

On the other hand, Tom’s business is slowly but steadily growing. He has now landed over $2,500 in client work, has more work coming his way from his existing clients, as well as more clients asking to work with him because of the amazing work he has done for their friends.

As you can probably guess, Tom’s business is likely to continue growing, while Jack’s business will likely crash and burn – all because of a simple pricing mistake.

While this is a “made up” story, this exact story happens all the time, and it likely happened to you or someone you know in the past.

So many people try to charge premium rates before they already have a strong client base and end up empty-handed.

To avoid this from happening, you can follow these two simple pricing rules:

  • Always “undercharge and over deliver” with your first few clients
  • Don’t raise your rates until you’re fully booked

The second rule should be pretty straightforward – but let’s look at the first rule in more detail.

The “undercharge and over deliver” pricing strategy

If you’ve read the above story, you already have a vague idea of how this strategy works.

In essence, it’s pretty simple:

Whenever you’re launching a new product or a service (or want to get your first paying customers for a business idea), you should intentionally charge less than your “ideal” rate and focus on over-delivering for your customers.

Just how much less than your “ideal” rate should you charge?

50% is a good benchmark to start with.

If you believe your services are worth $100/h, you can charge $50/h. If you’re developing an online course that is worth $500, you can sell a “BETA” version of it for $250.

The idea here is to make the price a true “no-brainer” for your potential clients, and to make them feel like working with you was the best investment they could have ever made.

Instead of trying to make a quick buck, you’re focusing on building the foundation for a long-term, sustainable business.

As a result, you’ll be able to:

  • Spend more time getting paid than looking for new clients
  • Collect amazing case studies and testimonials that you’ll be able to use to further grow your business
  • Get more work from existing, happy clients
  • Get referrals to other potential clients
  • Gradually raise your rates to “what you’re worth” AND see clients happily pay them

Then, once you land the client, you do all in your power to “over deliver” and blow them away with your product or service.

This might mean:

  • Proactively giving your clients new ideas for what you can help them with / proactively building those ideas out for them
  • Sending project updates regularly, rather than waiting for your clients to check in with you
  • Getting feedback on how well you’re doing, and what you could be doing better

And as a result, you’ll end up with happy clients that will love recommending you to their friends.

Now to make this even more real, I want to share a few personal examples of how I used this exact strategy in my business:

Example #1 – How I built my first ever coaching business

When I started my first ever online business (productivity coaching for online poker players), I charged my first client around $50/h for a 1-hour call with me, even though other poker coaches were charging as much as $400/h.

Then, as I got more and more paying clients, I gradually raised my rates to $75/h, $100/h, $125/h, $150/h, and eventually $250/h.

Throughout this process, kept improving my services and thought about how I could serve my clients better. I thought about how I could help them with not just productivity systems, but also things like learning, nutrition and sleep.

I started writing written call summaries for them after our coaching calls with them, with clearly defined action steps. I added weekly check-ins in-between our coaching sessions to see how they were progressing. And so on and so on.

The more I improved my coaching services, the more I could raise my rates.

Example #2 – How I turned Ultimate Guides into a 6-figure online business

When I got my first 1on1 coaching client for Ultimate Guide coaching, I only charged them $500 to help them create their Ultimate Guide. This was when I was already running a successful online business, and the hourly rate for this project was horrible.

But getting the first clients at a lower rate helped me build up the confidence, create the first few success stories, and charge higher and higher rates (I later charged up to $5,000 for 1-on-1 consulting for one Ultimate Guide, which was more than I even expected I could charge).

If I tried to charge $5,000 or $3,000 right off the bat, chances are I’d get rejected by my first few clients, and think that this is a “bad business idea” that I’d never fully follow through with. I probably would have never created a 6-figure out of Ultimate Guides.

Another example is Ultimate Guide System, my premium online course on growing your online business with Ultimate Guides.

I designed this course as a 1-year program with tens of hours of live coaching calls (as well as additional hands-on coaching support through an online community), and it’s the most hands-on online program I’ve ever seen.

When I first launched the program, I charged $997 for it, and some of my customers even complained about it being “too cheap”.

I knew that and I agreed with it – but I wanted to keep the price relatively low because I wanted to get as many paying customers (and success stories) as possible for my business.

Later on (also due to the amazing success stories and testimonials that the program got), I was able to increase the price to $1497 and later on $1997, which I believe is much closer to what the program is actually worth.

If I tried to sell the program at $1997 right off the bat, I’m not sure if it would sell as well and get me so many success stories – which would make the program a lot harder to sell in the future.

Example #3 – How I launched a 5-figure coaching program

Last November I sold a group business coaching program for the first time.

It was a 6-month program that included weekly 90-minute coaching calls in a group of 5-6 entrepreneurs, which is unlike anything else you can find out there.

Especially if you consider the opening price, which was $2,500.

Now don’t get me wrong – $2,500 isn’t cheap by any means – but to get this level and frequency of coaching from someone who runs a 6-figure online business, you’d usually need to pay way more.

When I launched the program, a lot of the clients told me that the program was way too cheap, which I knew and I was aware of. I intentionally undercharged with the intention to massively over deliver.

My clients ended up absolutely loving the program, and many of them said it’s the best business investment they’ve ever made – which is why I decided to launch it again 2 months later.

As I did that, I sold out all the coaching slots within 3 days, at a higher price point. What’s interesting here is that a lot of the new students that joined the program were referrals from old students that were super happy with the program.

Now I have two groups of amazing entrepreneurs in the program that I know will become amazing case studies that will help me grow this program (and other parts of my business) in the future.

If I charged something like $5k for this program right off the bat, I might have still sold a few slots, but I don’t think the experiences (or results) would be as good as in this case, so I know this was the right decision to make.

How to apply the “undercharge and over deliver” pricing strategy to your business

Ok, we’ve looked at the common pricing mistakes that most new entrepreneurs make, we’ve looked at a strategy that you can use to get much better results with your business, as well as a few examples of how I implemented this strategy in my business.

Now let’s talk about how you can apply this strategy to your business as well.

It’s really simple:

  • When you’re trying to get your first few paying clients for a new product or a service, think about your ideal price point / rate and decrease it by 50%.
  • Focus on undercharging and over delivering so you can create amazing case studies, testimonials, success stories and referrals for your business.
  • Only raise your rates once you’re fully booked or when multiple people are telling you that your rates are WAY too cheap.

And once that happens, read this article on how to raise your rates to as much as $1,000/h.

That’s it!

What about you? Have you tried charging premium rates in the past (or undercharging and over delivering)? If yes, what happened?

-Primoz

Want more money, more clients and more FUN in your online business?

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Last year, I had a crazy idea.

I wanted to create the best, most hands-on online business coaching program out there tailored specifically to top performing online entrepreneurs.

It was my dream to help incredible coaches, consultants, freelancers and online entrepreneurs scale their businesses from 5 to 6 figures and beyond, like I scaled mine in the past.

It was my dream to work with a small group of people who are ultra-ambitious, hard-working, and want to build an online business to change lives of millions all over the world.

It was my dream to share all the knowledge I’ve learned over the past 6 years of building an online business with them, point them in the right direction, and help them grow their business faster than ever before.

Last November, my dream came true.

I launched a small group coaching program called “The Top Performer Club” as an experiment, and had the perfect group of entrepreneurs sign up for it.

We jumped on a live call every week to talk about their businesses, as well as the current trends in the online business industry they should be aware of.

The program was the perfect mix of weekly clarity, accountability and feedback, and I knew it would help them grow their online business – it was just a matter of when, not if.

But even though I knew the program would be helpful, I never imagined just how helpful it would be.

For example, just last week, within 48 hours…

  • One student let me know they got from 0-650 email subscribers within a few weeks of launching their website, and have people reaching out to them for coaching and speaking gigs
  • Another student let me know they got their FOURTH proposal accepted in 2018 (it’s been less than 3 weeks!)
  • And another student has sent out a few emails to their email list that brought in the MOST engagement she ever had from her email list

Plus, we have two more students in the program that are starting their product launches this week and another student who is working on building their second online course within the past few months, and just signed a new recurring client.

I was blown away by their results, but deep down I know that they weren’t “luck” or “chance”. They were a direct result of all the hard work they’ve been consistently putting into their businesses over the past 2 months or so (we’re only 1/3 through the program).

When I took the time to think about why the program worked so well, I realized that it was a mix of 3 things that are extremely rare in the online business world:

  • Crystal Clarity
  • Brutally Honest Feedback
  • Non-Stop Accountability

These 3 things lead to one thing that matters most when running an online business: consistent, strategic massive action (I know, that’s a long phrase… but t’s the most accurate description).

Here’s what I mean:

#1 – The advantage of CRYSTAL CLARITY

You’ve probably heard the phrase “what got you here won’t get you there” before.

This phrase is especially true in online business.

The same strategies that we use to get from 0-$30k likely won’t be enough to get us to $100k, $250k, $500k or $1m in yearly revenues.

That’s why online entrepreneurs hit plateaus at different stages of their businesses. We keep doing what they’re doing and see the results… Until it doesn’t work any more.

At that stage, what do we usually do?

Maybe we keep trying to work harder for a while, until we see that that’s clearly not enough.

Maybe we try to get clarity by seeking out new strategies by joining new online courses, reading books or browsing the web… But at a certain level we can’t really learn from those sources any more, as the information is “nothing new”.

Or, what’s even worse, we see 10 different options for what we COULD be doing, but don’t know which is the BEST option for our business (so our business becomes super messy).

So we end up stuck, not knowing what to do next and wish someone would just TELL us what to do so we can go back to kicking ass with out businesses.

I’ve found that in this situation, there’s one option that is FAR better than all the others, and the #1 reason I joined an elite mastermind from a 7-figure entrepreneur last year:

Getting direct, brutally honest feedback from someone who has built the type of business we want to build.

I know that if I want to get my business to 7 figures, the best way to do that is to learn from someone who has already created one.

To get your business from 5 to 6 figures, the best way to do that is to learn from someone who has done just that.

When someone helps you figure out EXACTLY what you need to do to scale your business to the next level… You can stop wasting time and THINKING or PLANNING your “best actions”, remove the guesswork from the equation and focus on doing the work, knowing your business will grow.

There’s worse for growing an online business than being overwhelmed, all over the place and not knowing what to do next.

There’s nothing better for growing an online business than feeling calm, focused, and crystal clear on what you need to do next.

And that’s one of the reasons why The Top Performer Club works so well.

Because we meet on a weekly basis, my students can always get a clarity check on their business strategy, and then go right into execution.

There’s no more spending hours (or weeks) thinking about what to do next. There’s just consistent, massive action that brings results.

#2 – The advantage of BRUTALLY HONEST FEEDBACK

In my opinion, the #1 thing that 99% of online entrepreneurs miss right now is brutally honest feedback.

There are tons of online courses out there which help you build online businesses, BUT most of those online courses don’t include any good feedback.

They include information and guidelines, which is great… But that’s not really enough to build a successful online business as fast as possible.

Think about it.

Why do all the top NBA players have (many different) coaches?

Why don’t they just read books or online articles, or practice without feedback?

Why don’t they watch YouTube videos to improve their skills or take online courses?

Because consuming information can only help you get so far… And without a coach to give you constant feedback on what you’re doing, you just won’t progress as fast as possible.

I know that if I read a book on basketball and tried to learn it by myself, I might learn something – but hiring a coach to help me pinpoint exactly what I’m doing wrong and give me pointers for what to improve would help me drastically cut down the learning curve.

The same is true in online business.

While you can rely exclusively on online courses and see SOME business growth, I’ve found that the best growth by far comes from getting brutally honest feedback from people who have built the types of businesses I want to build.

That’s because when you’re starting (and scaling) your online business…

  • You don’t really know if your business idea is good or not
  • You don’t really know if the content you’re creating is good or not
  • You don’t really know if the sales campaign you’ve written is good or not
  • You don’t really know if the products you developed are good or not
  • You don’t really know if your coaching is good or not
  • …etc.

Of course you can try a lot of different things and see the response from your audience (and you should), but putting your work in front of someone who instantly sees what you’re doing well and what you could be doing better helps you shortcut that learning curve and learn faster (and grow your business faster).

If you just rely on online courses to get feedback, chances are you won’t get a ton of amazing feedback because:

  • The online communities are full of people at the same stage of your business as you are (rather than 2-3 steps ahead of you)
  • There are few (or no) live Q & A calls with the authors of online courses
  • The authors of online courses usually don’t respond to every question in their communities anymore or give you amazing responses (due to the large volume of questions)

And even if you do manage to get some feedback, you’ll usually get more encouragement than the type of brutally honest feedback that REALLY tells you what you could be doing better and helps you improve.

This is especially true once you start running a 5-figure business and want to get to 6 figures – there’re just fewer and fewer places where you can ask for help and get great feedback.

The reason why The Top Performer Club works so well is:

  • You can get LIVE feedback on your business every single week (which you can’t get almost anywhere else, even in a high-end mastermind)
  • I’m known for giving brutally honest feedback (I just don’t like sugar coating stuff and rather say what’s on my mind)

Which means that you can instantly tweak your content strategy, your sales page, your proposal or your launch sequence, get better at running and online business faster, and see the results pour in.

#3 – The advantage of NON-STOP ACCOUNTABILITY

Over the past few years, I noticed that the times when my business grows the most is when I have the most direct accountability.

It’s not that I’m lazy and don’t get anything done WITHOUT accountability… But speaking to a coach every week that lights a fire under my ass, challenges me to push yourself more and more and is there waiting for my updates at the exact same time next week…

…just makes me work so much harder than I would otherwise.

That’s why I have my own business coach, a high-performance coach, as well as multiple personal trainers.

When I was designing The Top Performer Club, I thought about different ways in which I could run it.

I thought about doing weekly calls, bi-weekly calls, and monthly calls. In the end, I asked myself “what would give my students the BEST results?”, and pulled the trigger on weekly calls.

To be honest, this was the BEST decision that I could have made to make a program a huge success and get incredible results for my students.

The weekly calls provide the perfect mix of crystal clarity, brutally honest feedback and non-stop accountability… Every single week for 6 months.

And unlike other coaching programs out there, I make sure that the coaching calls are at a time that works for every single person in the program, and I expect the students to attend at least 95% of the live calls.

This means that you don’t really have the room to “slack” or “fall off track”, because you know that next week, Primoz and other students are waiting for you and eager to hear your updates.

Now this kind of an approach isn’t for everyone, and it might even make some people uncomfortable, but my students have been absolutely loving it.

Because when you have this kind of non-stop accountability, you can stop wasting time, focus exclusively on the things that matter most in your business, and develop that consistency that you’ve been seeking all along.

And the best part?

Once you’re consistently taking massive action in your business, getting feedback, learning, improving, and growing… You know you’re finally giving your business everything it needs to succeed.

You’re not giving if 50%, 80% or even 95%. You’re giving it 100% of your effort, and you know that you’re finally doing your best to grow it.

And the reason why I love The Top Performer Club the most is simple – it helps you bring the best out of you.

It helps you become the kick-ass online entrepreneur that you know you are, AND grow your business faster than ever before.

I see so many online entrepreneurs who have successfully got their online businesses off the ground hit a plateau.

They’re working hard, but their business just isn’t growing as fast as they’d want it to.

They ride the roller coaster of the “feast and famine” cycles. They waste a ton of time thinking what to do next, rather than putting in the work and helping their clients.

They’re frustrated because they KNOW they can build a 6-7 figure online business, but don’t know HOW.

As I see that, I constantly think to myself: “It doesn’t have to be that way”.

Building an online business doesn’t have to be this stressful experience where you’re worrying about whether your business will do well or not, and where you don’t know what to do next.

It CAN be fun.

Remember why you started your online business in the first place.

To help people. To share your knowledge with the world. To become truly financially independent and spend 100% of your time doing things you love and living on YOUR terms – whether that means working on your business in your PJs, taking more frequent vacations. or spending time with people who matter most to your in your life.

I want to help you bring that fun, joy, and happiness back into your online business.

I want to help you grow your online business faster than ever.

I want to help you share your knowledge with the people that NEED to hear about you.

That’s why I decided to open up another group of 6 students for The Top Performer club.

The program will start in early February (you can apply for the program here).

Here is how The Top Performer Club works:

* The program is 6 months long
* Each week, we’ll meet for a 90-minute live coaching call where we’ll tackle one major challenge in your business
* The coaching calls will be at a time that works for everyone so that you can attend at least 95% of the calls
* There’s also a “text a top performer” WhatsApp group that you can use to get any questions answered outside of the weekly live coaching calls
* There are only 6 slots available for this program

That’s pretty much it – it’s a simple, straightforward program that works well – no unnecessary bells and whistles.

Who is The Top Performer Club for?

This version of The Top Performer Club is designed for ultra-ambitious entrepreneurs who want to scale their business from 5 to 6 figures.

The program is perfect for you if you:

  • Sell consulting services
  • Sell coaching services
  • Sell freelance services
  • Sell online courses (or live programs)

And you’re looking to join a kick-ass coaching program with other top performers who are just as ambitious and driven as you in growing their online businesses.

If you’re ready to get more money, more clients, and have more FUN in your online business…

You can fill out your application for The Top Performer Club here.

(note: It’s a long application because I’m only looking for people who are super serious)

I’ve already received a few great applications for this round of the program, so I expect it to sell out pretty soon. If you’re interested in applying for the program, I recommend doing so earlier rather than later, as there are only so many people I can work with in order to deliver the highest quality of the program.

What about a coaching program for people who want to get their business from 0-5 figures?

Over the past few months, quite a few people reached out to me and asked me if I’ll be launching The Top Performer Club for people who are running their online businesses on the side, and want to get them from 0-5 figures.

I might do that in the near future if there’s enough interest, and if you’re interested in that version of the program, you can still apply for the program here.

When the time comes, I’ll reach out to you with more details.

That’s it for today – if you have any questions about The Top Performer Club and whether it’s right for you or not, just leave a comment below and let me know!

I’m looking forward to hearing from you,

-Primoz

What it Takes to Charge $1,000/h as a Freelancer, Consultant, or a Coach

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If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering…

  • What’s the best way to raise your rates?
  • How can you finally get paid what you’re worth?
  • And how can you charge more without losing clients?

I wondered about those same things too.

And over the past few years, I went from charging $25/h for coaching to as much as $1,000/h.

As I did that, I found that there were 3 bulletproof strategies that you can use for raising your rates as a freelancer, consultant or a coach.

I also realized that while most people talk about strategies #1 and #2 that I’ll share below, practically nobody talks about strategy #3.

In this post, I’m excited to share ALL of these strategies with you.

But first, let’s get an even more important question out of the way…

WHEN is the right time to raise your rates?

From my experience, there’s really just two situations when you should raise your rates:

#1 – When you’re fully booked with client work
#2 – When you KNOW you’re undercharging (and people are telling you about it)

The first situation is pretty straightforward.

If you’re completely booked out or even overbooked with client work, you’re spending every living moment serving your clients, and don’t have the time to work ON your business because you’re stuck working IN your business…

…Then you’re likely charging too little and can raise rates with your current or existing clients.

In fact, if you’re at that stage of your business, you HAVE to raise your rates, otherwise, you’ll always be stuck on a hamster wheel working with your clients for the same rates, without having the time to grow your business further.

The second situation is a little bit more subtle.

It’s when you KNOW when you’re undercharging.

So what does that actually mean?

It means:

  • You either just started out with your business and you intentionally undercharged to really over-deliver for your first few clients
  • OR, your current clients are so happy they’re outright TELLING you that you should charge more for what you’re offering to them

Having said that, there’s one situation when you SHOULDN’T raise your rates (or aim to be paid what you’re worth).

I’ve seen people try to raise their rates in this situation over and over again, and it was a huge mistake that leads to a ton of disappointment.

Can you guess what it is?

It’s trying to raise your rates when you’re STRUGGLING to get your first (or next) few paying clients.

If you don’t have people knocking on your door to work with you yet, or if you’re having a hard time even finding those first few paying clients, you have no business raising your rates.

Instead, you actually should be charging a bit less, really over delivering for your clients, and getting testimonials, case studies referrals that will help you get more work with existing clients, as well as get more paying clients to grow your business.

If you ignore this advice and try to raise your rates regardless (because you think you are worth so much more or feel entitled to charging premium rates, or simply want to make that $$$), get ready for a world of pain.

Rather than locking in your first (or next) few paying clients, you’ll likely get a lot of NOs, and often spend weeks finding clients only to be back at square one after your proposal is rejected.

In short:

Raise your rates when you have TOO MUCH, not TOO LITTLE demand for your work.

Sounds good?

Great, let’s talk about the fun stuff now – actually raising those rates, charging what you’re worth, and earning those Benjamins.

Strategy #1: The Nike Strategy

If you’ve got a ton of demand for your business or you’ve been (intentionally) under-charging for a long time, you’re in luck.

The SIMPLEST way to raise your rates is to literally “just do it” (you saw that coming, didn’t you?).

How to raise your rates with NEW clients

For new clients, that means raising the rate in the proposal / sales conversation, and seeing how they respond. For example, if you used to charge $100/h you can test charging $125/h with your next client. If they pay without blinking an eye, you can try charging your next client $150/h (and so on).

Gradually raising your rates like this will help you determine the true perceived value of your services. Eventually, you’ll hit a wall when people feel like your rate is too expensive (which is when strategies #2 and #3 come into play), but until then you can continue to raise your rates without any massive downsides.

There’s only one caveat – you should always make sure your clients continue to get amazing value from you and that they’re happy with your services for the price they’re paying. You never want to raise your rates to a level when people don’t think your work was worth the investment.

How to use raising your rates to get more new clients in a short amount of time

You could also use raising your rates as an urgency tool to generate more clients in a short amount of time. For example, you could announce to your audience (if you have one) that your coaching your rates are going up on a specific date, but that you’re taking clients at the current rate until that date.

The benefit of that strategy is that you might be able to score a few extra clients in a short amount of time that were procrastinating pulling the trigger, but there are downsides to it as well.

One of the downsides is that you’ll need to announce your rates publicly (which you might or might not want to do), while another is that you might hear crickets for a while after you do this (since most of the interested people will pay during the “sale” period). The last downside is that you won’t know if you can actually make the sale at a higher price point, and the last thing you want to do is go back to your old rates.

I’ve used this strategy when I first started my coaching business and it worked well for generating the initial income spikes, though I’ve stopped doing it once I focused on doing more high-value work with high-value clients.

How to raise your rates with EXISTING clients

As you raise your rates with your NEW clients, you don’t necessarily HAVE to raise your rates with your existing happy clients. You especially don’t want to raise your rates with them every few weeks or months, as they’ll feel like you’re just trying to milk them for money.

But after you’ve been working with them for a year or so, and when your rates are dramatically higher than they used to be and you’re not excited to work at your old rates anymore, it might be a good time to raise your rates.

You can do this by either letting them know in advance / during the renewal conversation that your rates have gone up, OR you can let them know that your rates will be going up AFTER this renewal but give them a chance to buy a bigger package at the existing rate.

The second option makes sense if you have your clients on a monthly package – doing this could incentivize them to purchase a 3-month, 6-month or 12-month package.

Strategy #2 – The First Class Strategy

Imagine walking into a first class cabin on an international flight.

You sit down in a chair that’s bigger than your chair in the office. Then, the flight attendant approaches you and politely asks you:

Which champagne would you like, sir? Krug or Dom Perignon?

They make sure that your glass is always full. They make your bed before you go to sleep. They proactively check in on you every few minutes to make sure you’re 100% taken care of.

People don’t pay thousands of dollars for first class to just get a bigger seat and better food.

They spend that kind of money because they know that the whole experience will be much better than being in the crowded economy cabin where you’re usually treated like a second-class citizen.

The unfortunate truth is that many freelancers, coaches, and consultants treat their clients like they were flying economy class.

They show up, they do the work… But that’s where it ends. They do the bare minimum they’re paid for and never go rarely and beyond for their clients, without thinking of their service as a first class service.

A great way for you to stand out from the crowd (and raise your rates) is to offer a true, proactive first-class service to your clients.

This might mean…

  • Sending your client updates on how the project is progressing as a freelancer (rather than waiting for the meetings or for them to check in with you)
  • Checking in with your clients and how they’re doing as a coach (rather than waiting to hear from them)
  • Proactively asking your clients what you could be doing better / how else you could help them out, or even coming up with ideas FOR them

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not at all saying that you should turn your business into a “style over substance” type of business and focus JUST on the service without actually delivering on your promise.

But if you can combine the two together, you’ll likely be able to delight your clients more and charge higher rates than your competition.

For example, if you compare a photographer that charges $100/h (the economy photographer) and a photographer that charges $200/h (the first class photographer), their quality of their photos usually won’t be all that different.

What will be different is the level of service:

  • The first class photographer will take care of *everything* before, during and after a photo shoot and minimise the decisions that the client needs to make (like the shooting location, the hair & makeup, the posing, etc.)
  • The first class photographer will know EXACTLY what the client’s problems, desires, and concerns are and proactively anticipate them (like the turnaround time for photo editing, the number of photos they need, and how the photos should be edited)
  • The first class photographer will over-communicate before, during and after the photo shoot so that the client always knows all the necessary details about the photo shoot without having to ask about them (the venue address, the shooting times, the editing timeline and status, etc.

Because the first class photographer will take more time to talk to the client and truly understand their needs (then proactively address them), they’ll be able to charge double (or even higher) the rates of the economy photographer.

The same goes for a first class coach, consultant, or even an online entrepreneur.

So if you’re not doing it yet, definitely take the time about how you can go above and beyond for your clients and offer a truly first class service to them.

A word about hourly rates

The other difference you’ll notice between economy class and business / first class is this:

  • In economy class (especially on short-haul flights or on low-cost carriers), you have to pay for EVERYTHING – wi-fi, food, drinks, alcohol… Nothing is included.
  • In first class or business class, more or less everything is included in more or less unlimited quantities, without any extra charges (except for wi-fi). This means that you can have all the bottles of $200 Dom Perignon you want.

The economy class nickel-and-diming often reminds me of charging an hourly rate as a service provider.

When you charge an hourly rate, your clients have to pay for every single thing you do for them (or you end up doing a ton of unpaid extra hours).

While that’s a great approach for keeping things simple when you’re just starting out, you might want to go to a premium approach later down the line to avoid nickel-and-diming, charge higher rates and provide a better experience for your clients.

Instead of charging an hourly rate, you could offer:

  • Daily or weekly rates
  • Packages based on specific deliverables
  • Monthly retainers, or even 6/12 month contract

For example, if you’re a website developer and you typically charge $50/h, but you know that developing a website usually takes you 20-30 hours depending on how complex the project is, you could be charging anywhere between $1,000-$1,500 for “the whole package”, without focusing on how many hours it takes you to complete the project.

As you do this, you’ll slowly train your clients to stop comparing you to that other freelancer that charges $50/h, and you can gradually create bigger and bigger packages to charge higher and higher rates.

Or, if you’re a coach that typically charges $100/h, you could start thinking of you packages like a monthly retainer at $500/month that includes a weekly coaching call + email access to you, and then gradually raise your monthly fees from there.

Strategy #3 – The Craftsman Strategy

Ok, so we’ve talked about The Nike Strategy that you can use to instantly raise your rates, especially if you’re charging less than what you’re worth.

We also talked about The First Class Strategy that you can use to become a first-class business owner, proactively make yourself more valuable for clients and stand out from all the economy business owners.

But what do you do when you raise your rates, take extra care of your clients… but feel like you hit a ceiling?

How do you go from charging $250/h to $1,000/h or more, when just raising your rates or improving your service isn’t enough?

I’ve hit that ceiling multiple times in my entrepreneurial career and eventually managed to break through it.

But what surprised me is that almost nobody really talks about this ceiling, or how to overcome it.

So I had to figure it out on my own.

And as I did it, I realized WHY almost nobody talks about breaking this ceiling.

It’s because going from charging $250/h to $1,000/h doesn’t happen overnight, or even over 8 weeks.

It’s something that can take months or even years of hard work, that few people are willing to put in.

You see, you can’t really use hacks, strategies or tactics to go from earning $250/h to $1,000/h.

But there’s one thing you CAN do to get there.

And it’s actually insanely simple.

Do you want to know what it is?

It’s becoming a true master of your craft.

It’s learning new skills.

It’s honing your existing skills.

It’s becoming more valuable to your clients.

It’s solving more of their problems.

It’s solving their problems.

So instead of asking yourself “which other tactics can I use to raise my rates?”…

The strategy becomes as simple as asking yourself:

“How can I get better at what I do?”

While there might not be a huge difference in the skill set of someone that charges $50, $100 or even $200/h, I noticed that there is a large gap in expertise of people who charge $250/h, $1,000/h, $3,000/h or more.

If you want to charge hundreds (or thousands) of dollars per hour for your coaching, consulting or freelance services, the game becomes pretty simple:

You need to be one of the best people in the world at what you do.

You might have heard of ultra-successful entrepreneurs doing consulting for $3,000/h or more.

You might have heard of top speakers charging $25,000 (or even a lot more) to show up for a public speech.

You might have heard of copywriters charging $50,000+ for a single sales letter.

There’re a few reasons why some people can charge such insane rates:

  • They’re usually heavily overbooked and their time is limited
  • They’re one of the few people that have expertise in a certain topic
  • They can provide value that’s at least 5x or 10x the investment

And at the end of the day, all of those lead to one thing:

Being a true expert.

The people who spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on a coach or a consultant want the best of the best, and you have to be able to demonstrate your expertise to them if you want to charge that much for your services.

So if you’re stuck at a plateau and can’t seem to charge more no matter how you write your proposals or which strategy you use, the solution is simple:

You can take a step back and ask yourself questions like:

  • Which problems do my clients have that I’m not great at solving now?
  • How could I solve the problems of my clients faster and deliver even better results to them?
  • Can I learn a new (or master an existing) skill that’s increasingly valuable in today’s economy?

If you’re a coach, this might mean getting better at coaching around topics you’re not great at coaching, or improving your coaching skills (which few coaches do).

If you’re a software developer, that might mean learning about new technologies, platforms or programming languages that could help your clients but you’re not familiar with (OR truly mastering a valuable programming language to the extent that few people do).

If you’re a lifestyle photographer, that might mean learning new techniques for capturing incredible lifestyle shots, getting better at doing lifestyle shoots in certain environments you’re not great at (in a park, with a skyline, etc.) or deciding to become the #1 expert in engagement photography.

This process, of course, isn’t quick or easy, but it’s the exact thing that separates the people who charge the highest rates from everyone else.

While everyone else is busy finding new “strategies” for increasing their rates, they’re busy mastering their craft and becoming the best in the world at what they do.

To sum up…

If you want to charge premium rates as a freelancer, consultant or a coach, there are only 3 things that you really need to do:

  • Increase your rates gradually until you charge what you’re worth (The Nike Strategy)
  • Become more proactive on the service side of your business (The First Class Strategy)
  • Get better at what you do (The Craftsman Strategy)

That’s all you need.

Now I’d love to hear from you:

What’s your experience with raising your rates been like?

Share it in the comments below!

-Primoz

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