#228: My Best Tips for Growing a Six or Seven Figure Business Fast!

In this solo episode, I’m sharing my best tips for growing a six or seven figure business fast. There are the patterns I see creators follow over and over again.

They grow financially successful businesses by:

• Solving real problems with the content they create
• Cultivating an audience of people interested in their content
• Selling products and services directly to their audiences
• Leaning into “selling”
• Having multiple income streams

I also debunk the myths around:

• Course creation and why thats not a smart idea for a digital product, especially your first digital product
• Why you always need to be testing your ideas and let the market inform you if you’re onto something
• Why starting a membership is so much easier than you think

I share how easy and inexpensive it is to create and sell products and services with MiloTreeCart, our new payment platform for female content creators.

My recommendation is to start by creating a digital product in your MiloTreeCart dashboard, and have fun setting it up with our free sales pages. Then go sell it to your audience! See if you’re onto something!

Remember, there’s no monthly fee to use MiloTreeCart. We take a small transaction fee only (5%). It’s so much easier to sell your own digital products than you think!

Show Notes:

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• Free Workshop Idea Worksheet
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• All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes
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Jillian Leslie
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. I am your host, Jillian Leslie, I am a serial entrepreneur with my husband, David.

And I’ve been doing this podcast for over four years. So I have had, gosh, over 200 episodes, I have talked to a lot of people, a lot of successful bloggers and online entrepreneurs.

And what I wanted to do was share the things that I see over and over again for how they get there. And this also ties into why we have built MiloTreeCart otherwise, our original name, MiloTree Easy Payments is now MiloTreeCart.

My Best Tips for Growing a Six or Seven Figure Business Fast!

But why we feel like it could be very useful for you, as you think about the trajectory of your business. Okay, so what I have discovered, what has worked for us as well, is that people who have tremendous success, growing businesses on the internet, so these are six and seven figure, online entrepreneurs typically have two things.

So they have an audience of people that they have cultivated. This could be through traffic, email, like an email list, social media followers, or hopefully a combination of all of those.

So there are people out there who know like and trust these creators. And second thing they have is they have products to sell to their audience that solves problems. Now, many of these very successful online entrepreneurs and bloggers make money in other ways as well.

Tip 1: They Sell Products and Services Directly to their Audience

Maybe they have tremendous traffic, and they’re able to put ads on their websites. Maybe they’re working with sponsors as well. But it looks like from what I see, what really pushes that like really accelerates their growth, is when they figure out how to sell to their audience that’s sitting there, wanting to buy from them.

So what’s interesting is, people who have audiences, who solve problems, come to me and they say, hmm, I know I’m supposed to sell to my audience. But I don’t know what to sell. And I don’t know how to set it up. And the idea of setting up some complicated technological solution is way too intimidating.

Tip 2: These Products Are Solutions to Problems People Have

So what I saw David and I kept hearing this over and over again, and just like for you. listening to your audience, and noticing problems that you can build solutions around. Same thing with us, we kept hearing this and we thought to ourselves, hmm, most of the people who I see being successful selling products to their audiences are actually selling digital goods.

So there are some who are selling actual physical products. That opens up a whole other can of worms, things like inventory, and shipping and warehouse space. But the easier solution we keep seeing is selling digital products. So what is a digital product?

Well, it could be a digital download, it could be a membership. I’ve seen many online entrepreneurs that have interviewed on the show, have tremendously successful memberships, paid workshops. That’s what I always think is like the best way to start. Also coaching or services. Those are all digital products.

Tip 3: They Don’t Build Courses First

Now one other digital product that I haven’t mentioned, is courses. So people, that tends to be the first place people go. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to say, well, I have this successful blog or whatever. What I am going to do is create a course. And it is so funny because my first reaction is to say, no, don’t create a course, don’t create a course!

And I’ll tell you briefly why now. Yes, you can have courses and they can be very successful. But I feel like I’m here to debunk myths. So the first myth is that courses aren’t easy to create. Plan on going away from your business for say six months, recording a bunch of videos, creating a bunch of PDFs. And that makes you feel good, like you’re working on your business.

But there’s no reality to the fact that people are even going to buy your course so you kind of go, well I’ll deal with that later on too. You’re busy creating all these videos. And then you come back and you’ve put it all together. And you’ve invested in a very expensive course platform. And now you’ve got to sell it.

And I will tell you, most courses don’t sell themselves. So you’re out there, and you are trying to figure out whether this course is even something that your audience wants.

So I say if you are thinking of creating a course, that’s great, because it’s making you think about selling solutions to your audience. But I want to say, hey, listen to these other ideas first, and listen to why we built MiloTreeCart for you, and how it can really work for you.

Because remember, I say this a bunch of times when you have an idea for a product or a blog post or something, it’s because you have a hypothesis that this is going to be successful. And chances are you’re right, or you know, your audience, you know what they’re struggling with. But there’s no guarantee.

Tip 4: They Use Easy, Inexpensive Platforms like MiloTreeCart to Sell Digital Products

So what we set set out to do… We said to ourselves two things, our audience does not like heavy tech, raise your hand, if you’re one of those people I am. David loves heavy tech, he loves platforms. He loves building things, I don’t. Therefore, he ends up solving all of my IT problems. And I know what a struggle it is.

So we said to ourselves, could we build a really easy platform to help creators get paid to set up digital products and get paid for those products? But we don’t want to host necessarily that product, we want to go, how can we make this easier? Hey, how about instead of using an expensive platform like Kajabi, or Teachable or Circle or Mighty Networks, or any of those platforms that are complicated, that are expensive.

What if you set up your product on MiloTreeCart, and test it for free? What do I mean by that? Well, go set up a product. What I like to start with is a paid workshop. Go create a paid workshop, put a name and put a price in and then we offer you free sales pages, takes 10 minutes.

We’ve got a template, you will have a sales page with a URL, we host it for you. And then what I say, go test it. And also you have a link, like a Buy It Now link. Go put this in front of your audience and see if they buy from you.

This is the antidote to going off for six months, building a course working so hard with no guarantee that people want this. I say, go make sure there’s a market for what you’re selling way before you even create your product.

Tip 5: They Use Platforms and Technology Their Audience Already Uses

So that’s what you can do with MiloTreeCart. Now another thing is I say, I don’t want you to have to go learn another platform. So I say, hey, you host your workshop on Zoom. Do an hour long session on Zoom. Right.

So all you need is a paid Zoom account. And we integrate with all major email service providers. What I mean by that is, somebody purchases your paid workshop. And that email address can be sent directly into your MailChimp or your MailerLite or any of those services. You can contact those people.

So really, to set up a paid workshop, you need a paid Zoom account, you need an email service provider, and you need MiloTreeCart. And we will keep track of all of your customers and their email addresses and give you this dashboard. And that’s all you need. And I say, hey, wait until you’ve gotten at least two sales before you make your hour long workshop presentation where you’re solving a small problem for your audience.

And I say make it only 45 minutes, leave 15 minutes for Q&A, like simple, simple, simple. And this way you will know if you’re onto something.

Just to show you how easy this is. I was coaching a woman named Lindsay who teaches social media strategy. She held a live paid workshop on Zoom. She charged $99. She taught people how to optimize their Instagram bios. She got something like 13 people to show up, and boom she made $1,300.

And now she’s doing her next one where she’s teaching people about Reels. Lindsay has also been able to funnel these people into her monthly membership and is collecting recurring revenue every month.

Tip 6: They Put Out Offers Quickly to Test Their Ideas

And it doesn’t always work. I was coaching somebody helped her set up a workshop and nobody bought. So what I said is okay, how can you get close to your community to figure out what exactly they’re struggling with. And then, let’s create another product, create another sales page and see if that’s what people want to buy from you.

And this is why I recommend you don’t build out anything until you’ve gotten sales, until the market has said, yes.

Let’s say you want to create a membership. Okay, great. Here’s what I recommend. Set up your membership details in your MilotreeCart account. You can collect monthly subscription payments, yearly subscription payments, set up your free sales page, go sell your membership to your audience.

And then once a month, once every other week, do a live Zoom call. Record it and upload it into a private Facebook group and use that Facebook group not just to store content, but for interaction and Q&A and community building.

And I’ll tell you why. People know Facebook, so you’re not asking them to go download an app on their phone or use another platform.

Here’s another thing that I want to debunk another myth. People are joining your membership for you. And for the community. They’re not joining it for your back catalogue or your content library, or your fancy tech.

Tip 7: They Know People Join Their Memberships for Them and the Community

If you can show up for your audience and solve their problems and cheer them on, they will stay it’s as simple as that. Now one other truth I see, as I talk to bloggers, content creators, even the successful ones.

We are all incredibly uncomfortable with selling. But selling is a skill that I highly recommend you cultivate. And remember thinking of “selling as service” is I think the best way to do it. You are helping people. And if they pay for it, they value it more. And then you also make money for what you know.

Now what we are trying to do here at MiloTreeCart again, where we see this problem we can solve is I’m going to give you email templates to send to your list, and social media images to share on Instagram and Facebook and wherever you want to sell them, because I want to make you getting out in front of your audience as easy as possible. Because this is how you build your business.

Tip 8: They Are Always Seeking Feedback from their Audiences

So let’s say you do a paid workshop. Well guess what? You’re going to interact with people, these are the people who’ve raised their hand, taken out their credit card for you. Even if you only get three people, go do it.

Because then you’re going to listen and you’re going to learn, and you’re going to ask questions, and you’re going to build your true fans. These are the people who are then going to hire you as a coach, or buy your services, or buy your digital ebook, or join your membership.

And you start to build this tribe of people who show up for you over and over again. So therefore, if Instagram changes its algorithm and your stuff isn’t being seen, or Pinterest is doing weird stuff, like they are always doing, you still have this army of people who know, like, and trust you, and to feel like you create value in their lives.

So what I’d like you to do is to think about what problems are you seeing your audience struggle with? And can you create a membership or a workshop or services around this. These are all awesome digital products. I say put the course on hold for now. Because you’ve got more research to do before you spend all of that time and energy really building out your course.

And I’m here to help you because… ready for it? I want to get on a call a free call with you. Because I want to kick the tires of my own product. Meaning I want to ask you questions about what you like about MiloTreeCart. How we can improve it? What’s working? What you’d like to see? This is how I learn.

So my learning started from talking to my community and noticing hmm, who’s making a lot of money?People with audiences who are selling to their audiences. What kind of things are they selling to their audiences? Typically digital products so they don’t have to deal with all the headache of physical goods.

Okay, where are they, that some people are having tremendous success doing this? How are they figuring it out? Well, that seems kind of tricky. There are lots of moving parts and that all-in-one solutions… I’m gonna say this is my second truth. One is courses are hard to make. Two… all-in-one platforms typically are not all-in-one platforms.

Tip 9: They Know that All-in-One Tech Solutions Are Typically Not All-in-One

Because you end up at least what I I see, our people hacking together additional things using services like Zapier to like build out, like you have to kind of be technical to put these things together.

So we said, Hmm, we see this problem, how can we help content creators? With the technical intimidation? How can we make our products so easy to use? Hey, here’s how we’re going to do it.

And how can we say to people go use services you already know, like Zoom or email and make it so easy for you. This is the problem we’re solving. Hopefully, it solves it for you. Hopefully, this episode gives you the spark to go try this.

So here’s the other thing we baked into our product, we said, we want people to use our platform to test ideas. So we will only charge them when they make sales, we will take a small transaction fee off of their sales. But otherwise, our platform is free.

You sign up for SamCart, or Kajabi, or any of these other services, and you start paying right away, maybe you get 14 days free. And then you start paying whether you are making sales or not.

And we thought to ourselves, no, no, we want to be aligned with you. And we want to give you a platform where you can throw up a bunch of ideas and test them by setting up your products, setting up your free sales page, and going in front of your audience and saying, Hey, do you guys like this? Hey, do you want to buy this? Hey, what if I tweak it this way?

Tip 10: They Take Failure In Stride

And this is where bravery comes in, which is because not all your ideas are going to be successful. And as somebody who is somewhat sensitive, it can feel really bad when you put an offer out there. And let’s say nobody buys.

However, because we have this platform, I say okay, lick your wounds, and go put another offer up there. Go get creative. Go get close to your audience. Ask people to get on the phone. Ask them what they’re struggling with. This is how you build a business.

So my recommendation is, if you know something about something, set up a paid workshop. And you can do this literally in 10 minutes.

First thing I recommend you do is go to milotree.com/workshopidea, and I’ve got a free download for you where you can work out what would your idea be? Because that seems to be one of the things that people struggle with. What would I teach?

Okay, great. Now you got a topic, and then go to MiloTreeCart.com, sign up for an account and start playing around. Put a product up, put a sales page up, you get a link and start sharing it.

Plus, I’m going to share with you a 14-day launch calendar that will have all these emails you can send to your list, and all these Canva templates that you can use for social media.

I want to make this so easy for you. Because you’re already working so hard in your business. Wouldn’t it be great if you could make additional money and take your family on that vacation, or save for college, or buy yourself that beautiful new dress? Isn’t this the freedom you’ve always dreamt about?

Get on a Free Call With Jillian Leslie to Talk About Your Digital Product Idea

And to be able to make money and to help others, like honestly, I don’t think there’s a better route. So I’d love to get on a call with you to talk about what you want to build. It’s a free call. And if you just email me at jillian@milotree.com.

I’ll send over a link to my calendar and I can hear what you want to build and give you pointers and direction and hopefully put you on the path to success.

Tip 11: They Know That Selling to their Audiences Gives Them Confidence to Continue Building Their Businesses

Now before I go, I want to share one observation, it has been so satisfying for me working with a bunch of you to help you set up digital goods to sell to your audience. And when it clicks, and when it works. And I’ve been seeing some creators make I don’t know, turn on a workshop and make $1,000.

Seeing the transformation in you is incredible. You go from, I don’t know what I’m doing to, no, I got this! And I can accelerate this and I can really grow my business and grow my financial freedom.

So if this sounds like something you’ve been looking for, definitely take me up on all of this, and as I say, my friend, go seize the day.

If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me, and I will see you here again next week.

Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to:

• The Best Blog Content Tools You’ve Never Heard Of with Britt Reber
• She Tripled Her Blog in Less Than 3 Months Doing This… with Anina Belle Giannini
• How to Build a New Income Stream Fast and Easy with Cristy Harfman

Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy…

If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you.

Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week.

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