Episode 187: Lean Launch - Building Your Online Empire on a Budget
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Today I’m diving deep into a topic today that’s close to my entrepreneurial heart—the lean startup approach for online businesses, specifically for knowledge-based ventures like course creation and coaching.
I'm Whitedove, your go-to mentor for all things online business. Welcome back to the Femnation podcast, where we cut through the noise and focus on actionable insights. Today, we're addressing one of the biggest myths in our space: the belief that you need a significant financial outlay to kickstart your business. I’m here to break down exactly how you can start your own online business for less than $26 a month.
Now, let's get straight into the crux of our conversation. The first and possibly the most critical step is creating content. In the digital age, content is king—but more importantly, consistency is key. Whether it's blogs, videos, or quick social media posts, producing content regularly is non-negotiable. It helps juice up the algorithms, ensuring that your voice is heard amid the digital noise. Remember, it's not about producing perfect content but about continuous production. Perfection can often lead to paralysis. Instead of waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect post, focus on getting your ideas out there.
The second vital element is building your audience organically. This doesn’t mean you need an official business page from day one. Rather, it’s about being present and visible where your potential audience hangs out. For me, starting with platforms like Facebook has been incredibly effective due to its compatibility with long-form content, which is consumed more readily there compared to other platforms.
Let’s talk about tools. I personally use Membervault, an affordable yet robust platform that allows you to host courses, build a community, and even manage a blog. It's only $19 a month for their lite plan, which is a steal considering the functionality it offers. No affiliate links here—just genuine advice based on years of experience.
Moreover, I advocate for starting with low-ticket offers. It’s a less intimidating entry point for new customers and a realistic starting point for new entrepreneurs. You don't need to launch with a high-priced, comprehensive course. Low-ticket items allow you to validate your ideas, gather feedback, and perfect your offerings without a significant upfront investment.
Now, layering on top of the platform, I have my Coach Launch Toolkit, priced at just $7 a month. This toolkit is designed to provide you with all the resources you need to grow your business organically—from audience building to content creation and launching your offers.
So there you have it—a practical roadmap to starting your online business for less than $26 a month. It's about simplifying the process, reducing overhead, and focusing on what truly matters: connecting with your audience and providing value. Remember, it's not about having all the bells and whistles from day one. It's about starting simple, staying consistent, and scaling as you grow.
This approach isn't just about saving money—it's about being strategic and smart with your resources. It's a testament to the fact that with the right strategy and tools, anyone can start an online business. So, whether you're a budding entrepreneur or looking to pivot your current business model, consider this lean approach to kickstart your journey.
Thanks for tuning in, and remember, keep moving forward, always.
Coach Launch Toolkit Membership for $7/month
Connect with Whitedove
Instagram @whitedove_gannon
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Pinterest: @whitedovegannon
Website: whitedove-gannon.com
Free Stuff: coachlaunchtoolkit.com
Podcast Transcript:
Hey, femnation. Welcome back. Today I'm going to dive into a, money type topic in the online business space. Hi, I'm whitedove of your bizbff and your favorite online mentor. And I welcome you to another episode on the Femnation podcast. Let's dive in. All right, today's episode is about starting a business. An online business knowledge based course, creator, coaching, all of that for less than 26 a month. Here's how I'm going to tell you exactly how. Two things that you need, and only two things that you need in order to start your online knowledge base business the right way. And it's going to be not what you expect. Now, here's what I want to tap into. Many, times, many, many, many times, we feel like we have to continue to invest. We have a lot of roadblock and mental hang up on when we're ready, you know, are we ready? Are we prepared? do we know enough? Have we created it enough? Have we built it out? Have we fleshed out the idea enough? We spend too much time, time trying to get that perfect and zero time executing. We should be executing while we were working on the business, building part of it. The proper way to do this business is to start producing organic content on a, on a regular basis, right? You want to juice up the algorithms so you're producing consistent content. Doesn't matter if it's written, if it's video, if it's clips, it doesn't matter. You contributing to the content beast is going to be what kicks that algorithm into gear for you. Simplified version of it. There is a lot more we could dive into, but I'm going to leave it simple there. Also, you need to be generating your own audience organically. That has to be, you have to be someone that people can see your content. So you have to build your audience organically. And I do not mean business page. You do not have to go out there and be labeled as a business in order to justify that you are an online business. You do not need to go out there and say, hey people, XYZ, I'm gonna create this thing now and announce it to the world. Just create the thing and start talking about it. We have moved away in this online business space from the traditional business establishment rules into a creator society. So anything goes. We are, as Gary Vee says, day trading attention at this point. So your number one priority should be your organic profile on a social media platform and start producing content. And I prefer people to start with written content as well as usually on Facebook's platform. The reason being is that both of those are very simple. Long form, medium form gets written. Content does get read on Facebook's platform more than the other platforms themselves. You will have, a period of time where you have to maneuver into what it looks like to produce content for yourself. That's easily taught right on top of it. So much that is given to you out there as far as producing content organically is going to be a formula that's not going to feel like it fits for you. I did it, guys. I did it for years. I chased a million things and, applied a million principles and strategies and how to's, and you got to do it this way and add this and add that and take away this and don't do that. You know, set yourself up to be viewed as the expert and, you know, then you could just. The whole nine, right? I'm not going to go into all the, all the arenas of it, because I definitely can, but you, your capacity to be able to start is actually much simpler than that. Producing the content. Just producing the content while you're working on the offer, how you structure it, what you do, how you create it, how you deliver it, all of those things. That's the method that you should be using now, going from there, you definitely need to be creating something, but the big course is not necessary, especially right out of the gate. But there are tons of people that teach you how to build a course. Courses are awesome. Most people have great intentions on creating a course and the transformation they wish to see people go through. But our attention span is consumers of that amazing transformation is not there anymore. We do not sit down and go through a semester of videos, that you took for, you know, you spent a lot of time creating when only a fraction of that transformation that you took everyone through is what we needed to shift the needle in whatever it is that you are changing people's lives with. It was only that piece. So I highly recommend starting with a low ticket offer. I love low ticket offers. I love living in the low ticket offer world. It does not produce revenue as quickly, but it does produce verifiable results. If you get one or two or three sales of a low ticket item, and the chances of people saying yes to something like that is absolutely exponentially greater when it's less than 100, much, even less than 50 in a lot of places than it is when you start cracking that couple of 100 price point. There has to be, especially when people don't know who you are. There has to be an entry point for them to invest in who you are as a teacher. That way, the opportunity for them to make a determination if they want to continue with you isn't going to have a sunk, cost where a client taps into working with you. And that's not exactly what they're looking for, but they just don't know what it is they're looking for. That's fair. And it happens all the time. People come and go from learning opportunities. And the opportunity, for people to say yes, to test the water with a low ticket price point is greater than if we have to spend the time convincing people of a 500 to 5,000 course. It just mathematically, statistically, is that much easier, and our consumption levels are lower now. So then why not make it easier on yourself? Why not create that low ticket offer? That's the business model in itself, right? Build your audience, put content out, create something for them to invest in. That's the crux of this online business model. That's it. That's it. That's all there is to it. Now, there's more that you can get into later on down the road. There is more efficiency, more automation, more funnels. You know, you can expand on that. But if you haven't yet mastered this initial phase, most people ought not to jump to that page in the story, in their timeline when they're not ready for it yet, because there is something that absolutely needs to be learned at this moment. Remember, my last episode was talking about people who just don't stick around long enough to win consistency. This is what I'm talking about. If you haven't heard that episode, hop back and listen to it after this one, because it's good. But that's where most people skip steps necessary for the growth of themselves as a form of a leader in this online space to guide people through. That's where we need that initial phase. That's where we've got to go through those pieces. And that's why spending 3,000 course to learn something, even if it has a group learning element, you can ask the creator of it. That's why there's still going to be gaps, is because you're skipping forward from page one, which you should rightfully be on, to page 50, and you've missed those 49 pages in between that are necessary for you. So we talked about starting a full fledged online knowledge base business for less than 26 a month. Here's all you need. And this is specifically what I use. Membervault co look them up. 20 a month. It's 19 a month to start with their lite, plan. And I highly suggest you can put your entire low ticket offers, mid ticket offers, high ticket offers, coaching offers on that platform. Why do I suggest them? I do not have an affiliate code for it. You will not see it affiliate linked. I believe in what they do and what they create. I've been with them for seven years, even though I tested all the other ones out there. Well, I'd say probably 90% of them out there still. I would go back to membervault in a heartbeat if I wasn't already utilizing them. But I have been for seven years. 20 a month. You cannot not overlook that price point for an entire platform that builds your entire offer suite. It also has a blog section. It also has a built in community feature that they're just rolling out. It also has ah, website. You can custom domain directly to your vault for your people and you can build five products. That means you have five different ways to generate revenue, five different price points to generate revenue. You get the full version, you get five opportunities to generate revenue. And I would not even suggest you consider going past that until you start building a few sales in the process. Why? Because you need to be in it to win it. You need to stay the long game. I see a lot of people create content, create programs, create offers and never launch them. I was one of those people. I did it, got good at creating know this industry inside and out. And the one thing I wasn't doing regularly was launching. That was a few years ago. Obviously my business is not, not launching these days, but Membervault Co. if you do not have a platform, if you have a platform and you are not certain that it's the right one for you, or if you have a platform that is charging you two 300 a month or even 50 6100 a month, and it's giving you anxiety or squeezing you a little bit on that financial investment that you're making and not utilizing, then give yourself an opportunity to understand a platform that you specifically can work with. It doesn't take a tech team to do so and build your business off of only that 19 a month. The pressure is reduced then. The only other thing that I suggest on top of that to equal that 26 a month is a coach launch toolkit for 7 a month. Why? Obviously I'm biased on this one because I created it, but it is entire business building structure and I'm not going to let you quit in the middle. I'm going to hold your, your hand and help you understand that this is a long game. I'm going to give you examples, I'm going to give you processes, I'm going to give you templates, I'm going to give you training on how to organically build your audience, organically write content, organically launch. I'm going to give you all of that. The only thing you have to do is apply it. It takes time, sure, but the win is worth it. And I price it 7 a month. Why? For the sheer fact that I want this accessible to more people than not. I do not want my knowledge that I've spent multiple six figures on to be gatekept with me and only for high ticket. I want more people to be able to recognize that they can build a side hustle. They can start the journey to replace their income. They can make a business out of this. This is a viable business. This is a real industry and it's not going anywhere. I want everyone to have the opportunity to do that. And you can for only 26 a month. Now I'm going to put the link for both of those down below. I put the link for the coach on toolkit, on all my show notes because why I want you in there, I'm, biased. I think it's one of the most amazing programs out there, but it has a tremendous amount of knowledge behind it. And from someone who started with an accounting business seven years ago. No, my accounting business didn't start seven years ago, but started in the online space from my accounting business seven years ago and walked this journey, invested multiple six figures at this point, made a tremendous amount of money, built programs for influencers out there that made multiple six figures each month recurring revenue. I understand what it takes to make this work. And the number one thing I used to tell the influencers when I was contracted to work with, there's two of them out there. Names aside, most of you guys have probably seen me in those circles at some point in time. But the one thing I consistently told them is that we need to make this opportunity available for everyone. Everyone should be able to build a business from the ground up. Their business models, their business dreams and goals were different than mine. So I put my process together that I have tested, had, had, run with, had been successful with before I even worked with them to the table so that I could teach you. The only thing that you have to do is apply it and stick around long enough to win. If you were to start for 26 a month right now, you do not need anything else. If you were to start with those two membervault Co. And the coach launch toolkit, for only 26 a month and you committed to six months, nine months, or a year, you could pick whichever ones you want, you will be exponentially a different person with a different side business or different trajectory on your future revenue in that timeframe, then you will be. If you try to learn all of the fad trends, newest things that are happening right now from people that are selling a course. It's knowledge base, it's valuable information, but it doesn't apply to you. If you want to start a business in the online space that mixes with your lifestyle right now, instead of trying to overwhelm yourself with financial investment and or time investment, this is the way to do it. So, m from my experience, from my experience being that person that bought all the things, investing my money from my accounting business, as I transitioned into the online business space, investing my money into this space, thinking that I had more to learn, more to learn more to learn, more to learn. It's actually much simpler than that. If I could go back to my seven years ago self and just say, start here and hold the line, if I would have had somebody tell me that, it would be a different story today. But at the same time, I still believe that no matter what trajectory you're on, no matter what path you are on and where you are in that path, you will still get to your goal. As long as you stick around long enough to win, you will get there. I believe in you. 100% believe in you. Even if you have other programs or other processes or other things you're doing, even give the coach lunch toolkit a peek for pretty much the cost of a latte or a coffee at, ah, Starbucks, you can have all of the content that I've been building out for over a year, plus all the new content coming in, plus the twice a month q and a's, plus the opportunity to ask me any question, plus the ability to have a community, of like minded people to learn from and to grow with. It's your spot, my friend. And that's how, you can start a business for 26 a month right there. Anybody can do this. Everyone should. But even with that being said, no matter what you choose to do, or the path that you take, or the programs that you dive into, or the platforms that you use, always, always, always keep moving forward.