Here’s a question I get a lot…
“Can I actually make money with an Ultimate Guide?”
The answer is yes. HELL YES.
Today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Ultimate Guide System graduate Nick, who used his Ultimate Guide to bring in 4 consulting clients (worth $3,094) AND a job offer within days of publishing his Ultimate Guide.
Meet Nick Wolny:
Nick is known for two things:
- Eating peanut butter & scrambled eggs for breakfast during the Ultimate Guide System live calls
- He’s establishing himself as the go-to expert in Facebook Advertising and Digital Marketing for local fitness and yoga businesses
A few months ago, Nick was still working as a general business coach for fitness businesses. He saw some initial success with his business idea as he got the first few clients through his network, but then the things slowed down.
He exhausted his network and knew that he needed to build an audience.
He knew that in order to do that, he would need to stand out and find a more specific niche. He decided to pivot to digital marketing consulting, as he saw a gap in the market when he worked with his first few clients.
As he did that, he had a huge imposter syndrome when he thought about writing about digital marketing, as he felt like he was competing with companies like Digital Marketer. Those people had 10+ years of experience, while he acquired his skills just over a year ago. Why would anyone listen to him?
Still, he put himself out there. He started writing. He tried to create truly remarkable content.
And that’s where he got stuck.
He knew he needed to create remarkable content to cut through the noise, but didn’t know HOW to do it.
He didn’t know how to create remarkable, meaty content that people would find insanely valuable and want to work with him after reading it.
“The content i created wasn’t research driven, and wasn’t rigorous (which makes the difference in content). I tried to be too charming in my writing. I tried to wriggle my way into creating valuable content by making people laugh. But the content I created wasn’t deep and valuable. It was charming surface level content, and that was it. There was no meat in my content.
My email subscribers responded to my emails with responses like “LOL”, and not with detailed emails about how they’d implement my strategies in their businesses. I wasn’t attracting clients that wanted to do the work. I attracted readers that wanted to be entertained.
Every time I tried to write a post longer than 1,500 words, I failed. I couldn’t deliver a long, valuable piece of content. I didn’t know how to do it, what to talk about or how to structure it. There were so many tripwires where I got stuck and never finished my writing. From coming up with a title, to validating the idea with my market, to creating a table of contents… I was never able to finish my pieces.”
That’s when Nick joined Ultimate Guide System. In fact, he was the first person to sign up for it.
“I wanted a system that would help me get email subscribers that didn’t feel like sh*t”
“I noticed how I behaved through Ramit Sethi’s Ultimate Guides. Whenever I saw one, I stopped everything I was doing and read them. I wanted to get every single bonus with the guide. I wanted to read everything. There’s just something magnetic about Ultimate Guides. I wanted to do that for my audience too.
I wanted a system that would help me get email subscribers that didn’t feel like shit. I didn’t want to do things like 5 day challenges or messenger bots. I wanted to focus on ONE QUALITY way of getting email subscribers. I knew writing an Ultimate Guide would force me to focus on one thing that works. It would put guard rails around what I’m doing, and allow me to go really deep on a topic.
I really just wanted to say “hey, I’m Nick, I’m going to offer this super valuable thing to these people who think just like me, and see what happens”.”
Nick ended up successfully writing his first Ultimate Guide with Ultimate Guide System:
The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Monetizing Facebook Live For Your Fitness Or Yoga Business
Just a few weeks into the program, as he was doing the research with his Ultimate Guide, Nick not only got one, but TWO paying clients:
Nick sharing his wins in the UGS community
Nick’s first client with his Ultimate Guide
This essentially paid for the whole course within WEEKS of joining it.
So how did it happen?
“Two people reached out to me when they saw me do the market research validation on my Facebook wall. We sat down, talked about what they needed, and they signed up with me as consulting clients. I made my full investment for the course back within weeks of joining it.”
Once he published his guide, he got 2 more consulting clients from it that reached out to him:
A potential client reaching out to Nick after he published his Ultimate Guide
Nick’s $1,500 3-month retainer client
This brought the total revenues from his guide to $3,094 within a few days of publishing his first guide.
But here’s the best part of Nick’s story.
Shortly after publishing his guide, a CEO of a company reached out to him to offer him a job interview for a marketing director position because of his guide:
Since then, Nick has made it to the 5th round of interviews over the past 5 weeks, and he might very well be getting a new job because of his Ultimate Guide. Even I never expected that something like that would happen through an Ultimate Guide. That’s absolutely insane.
“People now perceive me as an expert. They want to work with me because I know what they need, even if they don’t.”
Here’s what Nick loved the most about his new clients:
“With all of my 4 clients, they came to me and said “I’m not sure what I need, but I’m ready to pay – just name the price.” This was super interesting to me and SO AWESOME, because I was never good at sales, pitching or cold calling.
I didn’t need to “sell” these people, they were already sold. For them to come to me and for that to happen multiple times, and to say “I’m not sure what I need but I want to pay you because you know what I need”, that’s incredible. It feels like people perceive me as an expert. They want to work with someone who will know what they need, even if they don’t, and that person is now me.”
“More and more cool things are happening to me because of my guide”
“After I published my guide, Leadpages reached out to me and wanted to interview me about my guide. They’re planning on featuring me as an expert in their next Ultimate Guide that’s coming out later this week.
Another cool thing that happened was that some of my idols and heroes from the online business world that I followed for a while signed up to my email list. Now I know I really gotta bring it. I need to keep my email list engaged, and I’m expected to bring my A-game.”
No more “LOL!” email responses!
And guess what? He’s no longer getting “LOL!” email responses, but actual detailed emails with questions from his potential clients instead:
“Now it’s EASY for me to consistently create remarkable content”
Remember how Nick struggled with creating remarkable content?
Well, over the past few months, he:
- Successfully published his first 13,000+ word Ultimate Guide
- Wrote 3 Huffington Post articles that were between 1,500-2,000 words long
- Is 6,000+ words into writing his second Ultimate Guide
Nick’s new Huffington Post articles
“Now I’m confident from start to finish what creating remarkable content looks like. One of the biggest confidence markers is that I wrote my Ultimate Guide in the time frame of the course. Now I know that writing a new blog post won’t last for 6 months or 10 months.
I’ve written 3 pieces for Huffington Post in the last month. I’m building a digital footprint and writing regularly. I reached out to a few gyms, wrote about them in Huffington Post, which allowed me to connect with the local gyms, they’re sending me contacts, and creating buzz for me.
I’ve had the opportunity to post on Huffington Post since September, but never did it. Now I’m creating 2k word rigorous blog posts ON THE SIDE, and it’s not a big deal to do it.”
“I’m coming from a position of power, not force”
“I’m increasingly confident about building my business with power, not force. I’m not saying hurry the fuck on my list and i’ll take your money like a lot of people in my industry do. You want to join my list because we have a similar mindset, and I’ll show you a quality approach to digital marketing for your business.
In the marketing space there is an abundance of join now, buy now. For me, less is more. I know there’s people out there that are looking for solid information, without being sold to like crazy. I want to help those people.”
Nick’s future: from $3,000 online courses to becoming a Forbes contributor
“I eventually want to create a high end group program, with a live call approach like in Ultimate Guide System, with a community for a period of time, where I work together with fitness business owners on their marketing. I know that to have a 6-month semi-personalized experience at $3,000 is a steal for them.
I also want to become a Forbes contributor that talks about the intersection of fitness and capitalism. A lot of people are tapped into how people want to feel and look. It’s a multi billion dollar business. There’s a business conversation to be had around that, and also exercising together, working out together, talking about community, and the transformation that comes with it.
Fitness is leadership, needs to be talked about, and in a platform like Forbes, people will take it seriously. Now I’m working on building my digital footprint to be able to get there.
Now I’m more savvy than before. I want to get media attention about my work, not about me. I don’t want to be quoted in Time, I want to write an article for Time. I don’t want to be mentioned in media to put a logo on my site. I want to write a killer guest post that people will actually find valuable.”
3 Changes that Nick made to his online business with Ultimate Guide System
Let’s talk about some things that worked really well for Nick, that you too can use to grow your own online business.
1. He gets feedback on his writing early
“One of the big things I learned from Ultimate Guide System is to get feedback on my work early. It’s so powerful.
In the course I asked for feedback on everything. My title, my table of contents, my writing. Even when it wasn’t great yet. It helped me get things right and move forward.
Now I always ask for feedback if I’m not behaving the way I want to behave. I know that if I wrote just 500 words in 3 days that some feels off, and I need to go talk to someone about it to figure out what’s going on.”
This is a great habit of high performing entrepreneurs. They get feedback on their writing earlier rather than later, which helps them move forward whenever they see they might be getting stuck, and keep the momentum going.
2. He writes daily (for the last 70+ days)
“When I started Ultimate Guide System I did this thing where I would write 1,000 words/day each day to finish my guide on time. I streamed it on Facebook Live from a coffee shop every morning.
I’m still doing it to this day, for 70 days, and I’m going to do it for a year. I have this Facebook page where I go live every day. This is where the rigor comes in. I do it every day. I’m doing this, I’m here. Even if I feel like shit and I’m on my couch, I’ll write for at least 15 minutes.”
“When I do it for a year, I’m going to document my experience and share it, and how it changed my business. I already know there’ll be 50 ways in which I could talk about it. How my attitude changed. What changed in my business.
And I know I’ll be able to create more remarkable content and Ultimate Guides consistently this way.”
You don’t have to write for a year, write 1,000 words/day or stream yourself to the world like Nick – but there’s a lesson to be learned here.
If you commit to writing every single day (at least during the week) before you go to work, even if you write just a little bit, writing can become a habit, and creating remarkable content consistently gets easier.
The more uninterrupted time you block off for writing, the more writing you’ll get done.
3. He committed to attending every call and completing the course on time
“When I joined Ultimate Guide System I said to myself I would come to every call and make sure I finish my guide on time. I made it to all but one call. I asked for feedback whenever I could. And I finished the course on time. It took a lot of time, and more than just 3 hours a week, but Primoz told me that right off the bat when I asked him how long it would take. So I was ready.
I loved the live format of the course. I feel like it’s really the best structure out there, to have a lot of concentrated work in the beginning and then support for a long period of time. There’s just SO much value in having the opportunity to work with someone live. But you have to do the work. You have to come to calls, ask questions in slack, get feedback and move forward. And if you do that, it just works.”
This is something that I noticed with my students. The more calls they attended / watched, and the more active they were in the Slack (our chat community), the more they got out of the course and the faster they wrote their guides.
If you really dedicate the time to go through the course as planned, and use the community and all resources available to help you out, you WILL have an Ultimate Guide written by the end of it.
Writing an Ultimate Guide on your own is hard unless you’re the type of person that can write 10,000 words like nothing by themselves, and having a community to support you and to turn to for help is a big piece of consistently creating incredible content.
Here’s what Nick said about Ultimate Guide System:
“Ultimate Guide System was the BEST online course I’ve ever been in. I feel like a schmuck for stealing from Primoz.”
“I’ve learned so many things in Ultimate Guide System. How to methodically define and validate a piece of content before you start writing. I’ve written things that didn’t go anywhere because I missed that step in the past. Now I’m more clear than ever that the first step is the most important.
I now have really strong tools that I can use and leverage to write really remarkable content. It’s getting harder and harder to do it as more people come into the space, but I’m confident I can stand out from them and continue to grow my business.
It was cool to have a list of places in the course where people historically got stuck, so I could pay attention to it and avoid it. Primoz always told us “this is where my 1on1 clients got stuck, this is what might happen, this is how you avoid it”. He was always keeping an eye out for us.
It was great to have a community of 30+ people, writing their guides, each in a slightly different way. Some of them spent more time designing these gorgeous guides. Others like me just wanted to keep moving. Now I know that there’s no one way to create remarkable content, you need to find your own way. This course was really different than any other course out there.
It’s a joke, it’s so cheap. Compared to other things I spent this kind of money on, I feel like a schmuck for being in this course. I got exactly what I wanted out of the course. My guide wasn’t even published and I already made back my investment. And I know that this is just the beginning for me.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed Nick’s story, and I have more stories of our students coming your way in the future, plus exclusive resources that will make writing your first Ultimate Guide easier than ever before.
To make sure you receive those exclusive resources (I’ll only share them with my email subscribers), and be the first to know when Ultimate Guide System opens again, download your free copy of the Ultimate Guide Checklist.
You can use it to get started with writing your Ultimate Guide, and learn all about how you too can use Ultimate Guides to get your online business off the ground (or take it to the next level).
Download your free copy of the Ultimate Guide Checklist.
Source: 1daybanner.com