This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
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<inaudible> You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life. You love FASTA with business, mental and entrepreneur activator a probate. Hi everybody. And welcome back to the show. This is episode number 193 here at the sweet life entrepreneur in business podcast. And I’m April beach, founder of the Sweetlife company and host of this show.
Thanks for tuning in with me another week, we are giving you another business training that many coaches charge thousands of dollars for, and I’m so glad to have an opportunity to pour into you as you’re continuing, or maybe you’re just starting out growing your business online. If we don’t know each other yet, I would love to get to know you more. You can always shoot me a DM over on LinkedIn or Instagram at Sweetlife podcast.
And if this is your first time listening to the show, go back and cruise back and listen to our trailer. Now it was almost 200 episodes ago that would release that trailer, but it will give you an idea if you are in the right place for business strategy and training today, we’re talking to those of you guys who have an established business offline,
and it’s time to bring your offline company and your offline services online. And in this show, I’m giving you three steps to start this process. And let’s talk about why this is important, just to make sure you’re in the right place, listening to the right show. That’s going to give you the right results you’re looking for. So you’ve identified, right?
You know, that there’s so much more potential to reach people and expand your offerings by offering online services. We’re going to talk about some different options of those online services today, because knowing that you want to do that, and actually then taking the step to understanding the choices that are available to you in the most efficient way are two totally separate things. And I get that.
That’s why I’m here recording this show for you today. So when it comes to getting into that online space, there is so much information and it can be incredibly overwhelming. And what we don’t want is we don’t want you launching certain online programs or offers or services or even courses just because everybody else is doing it. We want to make sure it’s a right fit for your company.
And all of that wisdom is what we’re pouring into you here on this show. At the end of this episode, you are going to have confidence in knowing what to do first, second, and third, to take your offline services online. You, if you have been overwhelmed will stop being overwhelmed by all the fragmented information, or you’re either getting information in two different ways.
It’s either super fragmented and you’re not really sure what information you can trust, or there’s so much information coming at you from software companies to business coaches about how to bring your business, that it can be totally overwhelming. And this episode is going to help you sort out fact from fiction. And it’s going to help you understand really what you should just be paying attention to here in the beginning.
And you’re going to have a game plan of what to do in what order to bring your services online. And this show just like almost all of our episodes. We have super amazing episode bonuses. So with this particular episode, to give you even more wisdom and information, I want you to download our totally free ultimate guide to online business models. So we’re talking about obviously online services here on the show,
but this is over 14 pages and it just totally lays out all the different online business model options from online courses to group coaching programs, to masterminds, even to podcasting, to help you have even more wisdom. In what direction you want to go taking your services online. So you can get that ultimate guide totally free by going to April beach.com forward slash ultimate guide.
We’ll make sure we get that into your hands right away. Okay. So if you’re ready for these results and you want this information, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s show.<inaudible> Okay. Three steps to get started taking your offline business online. So, first of all, let’s talk about what your offline business looks like. You either have a brick and mortar store,
or you’re used to providing services to people in person face to face, whether it’s hands on. And we work with a lot of healthcare providers, a lot of consultants and experts, and they want to go. And that could be you. You want to go from seeing people face to face and really expanding your reach to serve more people at a time.
And by doing so you create a business model that gives you ultimately more time and location freedom, as long as it’s done strategically. So if you have a current business that provides face-to-face services, one-on-one services on location, then this is the perfect episode for you to be listening to step number one, as you move in the direction of thinking, Hey, you know,
I really want to expand my business with online services. Step number one is to choose your online business model. And if you have been listening to this podcast now for almost four years, you know, we talk about online business modeling all the time. So if you want even more resources, cruise back to our podcast website@sweetlifecode.com and you can actually search all of our episodes for all of the online business modeling shows,
wanting to make sure, you know, that’s a tool available to you, but right now I want you to just hone in and focus in on what do you imagine that that looks like when you’re working with your clients? Not face to face, it could be in zoom could be by the phone, or it could be creating great content and videos for your clients and distributing it to them.
What does that look like to you? And what do your clients really need from you? If you listen to last week’s episode, we talked about what clients are really looking for, what buyers are buying right now. And people love on demand. People love having resources and answers and quick results at their fingertips. And so, as you’re thinking about creating your online offers,
certainly consider what is it that my clients really want in addition to maybe seeing me face to face. And some of your clients probably have been telling you this already. And if you ask your clients, they will tell you they’ll say yes, I want to meet with you virtually or yes, I would love to be part of a mastermind. So if you ask your clients,
they will tell you, they are always your best place to do. Research is going to your perfect clients are ready. But right now I want to dive into the three most common types of services that offline companies are launching as online offers. And they are online courses, online coaching programs and online memberships. You might have actually thought about one of these types of options before.
And the reason why offline companies are going to these is because they’re really great ways to already package the expertise that you have within your company. There are great ways to utilize your assets. And we’re going to dive into that here in just a second. But step number one is choosing your online business model. Let me give you a quick definition of what each one of these three most popular types are type.
Number one is by launching an online course. So an online course is a great way to take your established content, your things that you’ve already done. You know, in most cases with offline businesses and the established companies we work with, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel. We want to take your expertise and your assets and things you’ve already created within your business and just reframe them,
repackage them, reprogram them. If you will, to offer as an online course. And online courses are most commonly offered two different ways. The first one is called evergreen. Evergreen is where you would take your information. You would turn it into videos in that your clients could purchase it and buy it and absorb the information any time. So they’re prerecorded videos that people can go through any time.
And then the second type of online course is literally it live taught online course where you’re still taking the content. You’re still taking the information and you may teach this in a combination of zoom, live coaching and some PowerPoint presentations, maybe some videos as well. So the two most common types of online courses that offline businesses are launching as online services are evergreen again,
which is pre creating videos that people can watch on demand whenever they want. We already know people are buying those types of things. And number two, launching live coaching as an online course, I will say that for established business owners, I would caution you against launching really cumbersome, huge live online courses. If you’re still running your local business, unless you have a team to help you do that.
So just a little caution there. It can be really time consuming. The second type of online business model that many offline companies are adopting is live coaching. And this is where you take a group of people. Maybe you’ve served them one-on-one before and you start coaching them live online through zoom. You can provide phone consulting, you can provide FaceTime consulting, the medium and how you deliver.
It really doesn’t matter. It’s what you’re delivering. So this is actually providing live coaching without being face to face. And you can provide this one-on-one or you can create a group and provide live consulting to a group, either on a onetime basis for a specialty topic or on an ongoing basis. And the third type of business model that offline company are most commonly launching as online offers our memberships memberships are really amazing.
It’s where you take your expert content and you deliver it on a monthly and a quarterly basis to people in a community that you have created. Memberships are a great way. And we’ve especially in 2020, been working with established businesses who have community already around your business. Maybe it’s a brick and mortar store in creating a membership amongst all your customers. It is an amazing way to connect with them,
and it’s an amazing way to connect them with each other. And memberships is a great thing to consider. If you have content, if you have coaching, maybe there’s some sweet deal or discount that you want to deliver to your customers. And it’s also a great way to create a program for those customers of yours that want to access you on an ongoing basis for a longer period of time.
So they can achieve better results with the services that you deliver. A membership community is a great way to do that. So your first job and choosing, gosh, you know, how am I going to bring my offline business online is to consider what business model do you want to launch? And we just talked about the three most popular ones, courses,
coaching or memberships, but don’t forget to download the ultimate guide to online business models. So you can see all of that. And again, you can grab that by going to April beach.com forward slash ultimate guide. Okay. Step number two is to develop your actual offer program or service. So you’ve already chosen the business model of how you want to deliver it.
Now we need to organize your assets and we need to take your ideas, and we need to take your expertise out of your head out of other places in your business and bring it in to creating your new online offer. So here’s some tips to do that. Number one is to sit down and extract your expertise. What are you known for? What are you great at?
What things have you already created in your business? We don’t want to recreate the wheel here with your first online offer in order to keep your current customers coming back to you. We want to give them more results in a different way within your established area of expertise. And it’s also going to save you literally months, if not years, to create something brand new from scratch,
right? So let’s take what you already do, and let’s scale it online with an online offer for you. So extract your expertise and start with what you already have. Go through your archives, go through things that you’ve created. Content you’ve already created in your business in the past and give yourself an opportunity to take an assessment and an inventory of all the great things you’ve already created.
I guarantee you, if you’re an established business owner, you’ve created some amazing things and some excellent content in your business, and that’s why people love you, right? So go back and see what you’ve already done to help you realize your potential. So for what you can deliver to people through an online program and service, and then also consider what people love the most from you.
If you are a brick and mortar retailer, and you have every single Monday, it’s a new shirt that you may feature on social media and it’s a new item drop, right? Well, people probably go crazy about that. So how can you take that and bring it into a new membership community? Or how can you create content around that to deliver into a coaching program?
Perhaps maybe you can launch an online course, helping people stylize themselves. For whatever reason, there are so many different opportunities that you can take your established expertise and just tweak it a little bit and create your online offer instead of starting from scratch. And then the last tip is what are the most common questions people ask you the easiest way to create an online course or coaching program or membership community is by going through in writing down,
if you haven’t, before you should be in documenting the questions that people most commonly ask you in your business and then taking those questions and the answers to those and turning it into your first online offer. Whether again, you choose a business model and how you deliver that, whether it’s coaching or a course or a membership community, maybe even a podcast, but go through and figure out what are the most common questions that people me all the time.
And that is a great place for you to scale what you’ve already done, extract your expertise and explode it into more sales and an exponential reach. So step number two is to actually go through and develop the content that’s going into your offer program or online service. And then step number three is to develop your first marketing funnel. So first you have to pick the business model.
Second, you have to organize your assets and your material and actually create your program. And third is to go through the process of creating your first marketing funnel. So your marketing funnel is where you’re going to attract more people than just your local faithful and your it’s, where you’re going to convert your local faithful to start connecting with you online. So your first marketing funnel is usually developed in a very simple way where you would create something free to give away that solves a problem,
but not just any problem, your something free you’re giving away online should solve a problem that you discuss and also solve within your new online offer. So create something free. It could be a short video and tips could be a checklist. It could be a strategy sheet, a tip sheet. If you’re a nutrition coach, it could be creating a sample menu for the week,
whatever it is, create something of value that solves a problem for your customers that relates to the service that you’re going to be launching online. And then step number two is to create one page on your website. That includes a form where people can receive that free item. And then step number three is to create a marketing plan, to share your content and to share your message across social media.
You could do podcast guesting. You could go to networking events, both offline, and now we’re starting Kevin’s to see more local networking events happen again. And of course you can run ads. There are numerous ways where you can get eyes on your marketing funnel and grow your list through that. The reality is is this first marketing funnel is important because it shifts people who might be used to only connecting with you online.
Maybe the only way you have sold people into your services before is having them sign a contract face to face, or actually seeing them face to face. So your next step is to determine how are you going to funnel people in to your new online offers could be creating this new first marketing funnel for new people, or you might consider creating a new online experience with a welcome page for your established customers saying,
Hey, guess what? We love working with you in person. Now we’re excited to also work with you online. And so it can be handholding your established local one-on-one client and helping them to onboard and get comfortable with your new online offers. We want your established clients to be the first ones to interact with your new online offers because they’re the ones that love you.
They’re the ones that trust you. And they’re the ones that are going to really help your new online offers grow. They are your biggest cheerleaders. So three steps to take your offline business online. Number one, choose online business model. How are you going to deliver your online services? Number two, develop your offer service program, course membership, whatever it is,
develop the content and the curriculum in there. If you struggle to turn your ideas and your expertise into world-class programs, that’s where my company, the Sweetlife company comes in to help. You can always cruise over to Sweetlife co.com and we will teach you how to extract your expertise and turn it into a worldclass signature offers and programs. And then number three is build your first marketing funnel,
whether it’s a marketing funnel to move your established clients online, or it’s a new marketing funnel to generate new cold leads to your online services. I just can’t emphasize that enough, the importance of valuing the current clients you have and providing different ways for your current clients to absorb your established expertise before you go, and you create a brand new offer, that’s a cold offer to people who’ve never worked with you before.
We want you considering what business model your established clients want and need so that you can continue to pour into them and build those relationships. And we can create repeat customers to spend money again and again and again with you, once you nail your online business model with your current customers, then we talk about expanding to a cold audience and really expanding your reach and exploding your sales even more.
So just start with what you have, start with what you know, and start with the people you already know better than anybody else. Nobody knows your established clients better than you do. And again, start asking them questions. How did they want to work with you online? How can you better meet their needs through digital delivery of products, information, services,
and support. And those are your three steps to take your offline business online, choose your business model, develop your offer, build your first marketing funnel. All right. I hope you found this incredibly helpful. We really want to simplify things here for you. I know it can seem very overwhelming, especially when you’re new to the online space. If you’re in that place where you feel overwhelmed,
hit us up anytime, and we’re happy to jump on a business triaged call with you and get you started in the right direction. You can find us@sweetlifeco.com and all the show notes we talked about here on this episode, the ultimate guide to business models and how to learn, how to turn your ideas and expertise into your signature offer can all be found in the show notes for this episode by visiting Sweetlife podcast.com
forward slash one 93. All right, you guys have a fantastic week, so great to pour into you and talk to you soon.