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AMY PORTERFIELD:
Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield, and today we have an extra special episode because I am answering your questions.
Not too long ago on Instagram I posted the question, “What would you like to know about how I built my business?”
I got a flood of questions from all of you so thanks in advance for your enthusiasm and your really thoughtful questions. There were so many good ones.
I only chose ten for this episode but you can be sure we’ll be doing a few of these types of episodes where I’ll answer all of your questions so that we can get to even more of them.
Before I dive into the ten questions I wanted to give a listener shout out. This listener shout out is from the Slay Coach. The Slay Coach wrote on iTunes:
“Amy has been my biz bestie for years and she didn’t know it! I have built a quarter of a million dollar business in my first year, and so much of that is because I listen to this amazing podcast! The strategy and tactical points are the highest value of any online educator out there! I’m the mentor and coach I am today because of this show!”
Oh my goodness! The Slay Coach, I don’t know your first name, but first of all congratulations on your success. I am truly honored to be a little part of your journey and that is so awesome to hear what you’ve done in just such a short time. I love it.
I’d love to hear from you as well. All you’ve got to do is leave a review in iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and you just might hear a shout out from me on one of my episodes.
Before we dive in, this episode is sponsored by my free master class, The Ultimate List-Building Catch-Up Plan, my proven three-stack system for leveraging the most powerful what’s-working-now list-building strategies without the stress, tech confusion, or crazy overwhelm that often comes from building your email list.
All you need to do is go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/listbuilding to sign up for the free master class. If you’re struggling to get started with building your email list or if you’re just not attracting the type of subscribers that you want on your email list this is definitely the master class for you.
I won’t make you wait any longer. Let’s go ahead and jump into the ten listener questions.
Question 1 – If you burned it all down and started over what are the first three things you’d focus on and do now?
When I read this question I thought it was so interesting that it is coming in now. A couple of episodes back I shared with you that in 2018 I got out of my partnership. It was a mutual decision and it was a big deal. It took a long time to get to a place that we really felt good about separating.
There was a moment during that year when we were working on negotiations and what was going to change and how we were going to do it that I thought, “What if I had to start all over? What if this negotiation doesn’t work and I just had to start from scratch?”
It was a very unlikely situation but I was kind of looking at the worst case scenario. What was really cool was that in that moment I thought, “I know how to make money online.”
Since I know how to make money online I could always start over whether it be in a different niche or the same one or whether it be selling something different than digital courses.
Just knowing how to make money online, having a really good understanding of the ins and outs (which is what you all are doing right now when you are consuming podcasts like mine and you’re reading up on business books and you’re taking online courses) you are understanding the ins and outs of building a business online and making money online.
That’s something no one can ever take away from you. It gave me the sense of confidence. Worst case scenario, if I had to start over I could. That felt really good. It was the first time I ever had to look at things like that and thankfully it didn’t come to that.
It was just an interesting calming feeling and I want you to allow yourself to feel that as well when things feel scary to you or maybe they aren’t working out as planned. If you know how to make money online you can always start over. I truly believe that.
To answer your question a little bit more specifically, if I were to start all over, funny enough, and this is truly how I feel, I would do exactly what I teach. I would focus on building an email list. I would then create a digital course and I would than launch that digital course with live launches twice to maybe three times and then I would put that course on evergreen.
I would focus on that one course for probably a good two years before I decided to create anything else. Funny enough, if I look back on how I did things, that was not how I did it.
If I went back to do it all over again I wouldn’t do it exactly how I did it. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. So let me tell you how it looked when I was first starting out.
After I did my two years of consulting, because I didn’t know how to create a digital course and I wanted a digital course but there weren’t a lot of courses on courses back in the day when I started so I didn’t know what to do so I was very scared I wasn’t going to make enough money so I took a bunch of clients.
You guys know my story. For two years I did social media consulting and coaching and I did the actual social media for small businesses. I hated it. I had about eight clients at a time. It was not my specialty, for sure.
After two years I transitioned into selling digital courses. But here’s the thing. Once I transitioned into selling digital courses this is how I did it. I launched my first course without validating the idea.
I really didn’t have the expertise in the area I was teaching, which was social media book launching. I had worked with authors but I had never launched my own book so I don’t know why I chose that.
I do know why I chose it. I felt I needed to niche myself really quickly. I needed to be known for something so I picked social media and book launching. I don’t know, looking back it seems crazy but at the time it made sense.
I launched my first course. I didn’t validate it. I did not have an email list. Next I launched my second course without an email list or with a really, really, really small one. I think there were 600 people on my email list and I did not engage with them.
They hadn’t heard from me in months before I sent them an invite and asked them to join me on my webinar. That is not ideal. So two courses launched and I had two failures.
Then I decided maybe I should focus on growing my email list. After those two failed launches I got smart and looking back I would not do it that way again. There were a lot of tears, a lot of frustrations, and a lot of fear that I would have to go back and get a J-O-B because it wasn’t working.
However, if I started all over again I would focus on building my email list. I would be posting at least once a week whether it be a podcast, a blog, or a video show. I would choose podcast again, definitely.
I would create my platform on my podcast. I would post on my podcast once a week. I would email my list no matter if it had ten people on it or a thousand people on it. I would start emailing every single week to let them know I have a new podcast episode out.
Then I would be doing Facebook Live or Instagram Live or both every single week and I wouldn’t care if no one was there. I would do it for the experience and I would do it to get better at delivering my content and honing in on my message and engaging with my audience.
I would do it and I would do it and I would do it until it worked. It will work if you really focus on attracting the right audience and honing in on that message and making sure you’re always adding value before you ask anything in return.
Consistency is something I didn’t have in those early days and it would definitely be something I would focus on a lot if I started over. Then after I had been building my list for a while, maybe have a few thousand people on my list max (I don’t think you need a huge list to launch a course), I would start validating a course idea.
Something I teach in Digital Course Academy®️ is how to validate your course idea. I would validate my idea and I’d start to create my course. From there I would, of course, sell it with webinars and live launching.
One thing I would do while I was creating my course, or really right before I created my course while I was list building, I would work one on one with a few people whether they pay me or for free. I would just get in the trenches and make sure I had that time working with people.
Even though I hated the two years of doing one-on-one consulting before I launched courses the time in the trenches with them was invaluable. I didn’t know it and I didn’t have a good attitude about it so I would change that moving forward. But, I needed to do the work. I needed to get in there. I needed to see where they struggled, what they needed, what they were up against.
I needed to understand my ideal customer avatar. Working with them one on one gave me that understanding. You don’t need to do it for a long time but it is important that you do it with a few clients so you really learn firsthand what they need and what they want.
That’s what I would do if I started over.
Question 2 – What did you do when your email list was tiny (less than 100) like mine? How did you interact with your small community?
I thought about this question for a while and one thing that came to mind was that I under promised and over delivered. I was constantly looking for ways to wow my audience.
One way I did that was around Thanksgiving. I had a list of probably 300 people. I emailed my list and let them know what I was most thankful for. Then I asked them to respond to the email and let me know what they are most thankful for.
I’m going to guess about 100 people responded. That’s a really high percentage and it happens when your email list is small. You have a lot of really good engagement because you could be more personal and more engaging and more available to them.
About 100 people responded and I responded to every single person that sent me an email letting me know what they were grateful for. It wasn’t like, ”Hey, thanks, so great to hear from you,” copy, paste.
It was something meaningful to every single one of the subscribers that responded to the request for what they were grateful for. It took me about three days to get through all of them but I did.
That’s exactly what I would do. Take advantage of the opportunities of a small email list. You can get on the phone with many of them. You can do 20-minute Q&A sessions one on one with them. You can be available to them in ways that you will never be able to be available to your email list when there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of people on your email list.
Treat them with extra special care because you can. You likely have more time now than you ever will when your business gets bigger. So take advantage of this. Like I said, get on the phone with them, respond to their emails. When they reach out to you, you reach back out to them.
Let them know they are heard and that you actually care. You have a huge opportunity when your email list is small; unfortunately, many of my students are so bummed that their email list is so small that they can’t get past that.
They choose to focus on the fact their email list is not growing, it’s so small, they don’t have time to spend on making it bigger, “What can I do? Can you give me some more strategies to grow my email list?”
I should probably start asking those students, “What are you doing now for those that are on your email list? How are you making them feel extra special?”
I can promise you they are going to be the people that are customers for life. I see names on my email list and know that they were with me ten years ago. It’s incredible and they are still with me now.
Some of them, I know, are there on my list because they felt like they got extra special attention from me in the early years. It makes a difference. Go out of your way to wow them.
Question #3 – When you have multiple awesome projects you’re working on how do you prioritize? P.S. Love your podcast, all of your freebies, and your Courses course.
Thank you so much. I’m totally bummed. We messed up and we grabbed all of these questions without grabbing your names. I would love to say to whoever sent this, “Thank you so much, Sally,” or whatever your name is, but we messed up and I wanted to make sure I got this recorded today to stay on track.
Just know it wasn’t intentional not to give you all a shout out. We’ll do better next time.
This question, what do you do when you have multiple projects you’re working on? First of all, I make sure I’m not working on too many projects. In an ideal situation there’s one core project we’re working on and then we might have two or three sideline projects that my team is working on when they have time but it’s not the #1 focus.
When you do have multiple projects make sure you are very clear about the #1 priority. What should get your team’s most attention and your attention?
For right now, when I’m recording this, by the time it goes live the launch will be over but our #1 focus is Digital Course Academy®️ launch in January. That is our #1 focus. If everything was not working out the one thing that has to be on track is that launch process and the planning and everything we’re doing for it.
There’s always one clear project we’re working on. That’s one thing I would really encourage you to do inside of your business, even if it’s just you right now. If you don’t even have a team get clear with yourself. Of course, when you have a team, get really clear with your team.
The second thing is that a couple of years into my business, I wish I had done this sooner, we adopted a project management tool. I think when we first started out, I can’t remember but I think we might have used Basecamp, I can’t remember, we now use Asana and I have used Asana for years and years.
The one thing I can tell you about project management tools is not one tool is going to be perfect. Don’t do what I did. In the early days I kind of flip flopped through a few of them and that’s why I can’t even remember some of the names because we used a few in the early years.
I was always searching for something better. I thought the grass was greener. This tool does that or this tool does that. If you use some of the tools that some of the top marketers recommend they are all pretty good.
Trello, Basecamp, Asana are three that either I have used or my friends use consistently and they work well. I’m partial to Asana. I think it is top notch, one of the best tools I’ve used.
We probably should reach out to them and see if they want to be sponsored on the podcast because I could talk about them forever. But here’s the thing. I need to get a project management tool that I used consistently.
In the early days I told my team to use it but then I wasn’t checking in on that tool consistently. Now it’s every day. In the morning I check in to Asana. I look at all of my tasks. I look at all of the communication where people are waiting for me to respond.
I knock it out and then I go on with my day and when I wrap up my day I’m back in Asana making sure I did all of the tasks that I’ve been assigned by my integrator, Chloe, or I assigned them to myself, and I’ve answered any questions that have come up in the communication.
This is a religious thing inside of my business. We are there every single day. It’s changed how we manage projects. I believe, no matter where you are in your business, if you’re Day 3 of your business or Year 3 you should definitely invest in a project management tool.
Many of them are free when you’re just getting started and you have a small team so that is definitely one of the things that have saved us from a lot of stress and overwhelm. You’ve just got to use it every single day.
Question #4 – In hindsight, what is the one thing you wish you would have done sooner?
To my loyal listeners, can you guess? I bet you can guess. What’s the one thing I’ve always said I really wish I had done sooner? Drumroll please….List building.
I mentioned this earlier so I won’t go down the rabbit hole again but I waited two years to focus on growing my email list and then even after that it was slow coming until I really said, “Okay, I’ve had enough pain of launching a digital course and no one paying attention,” because I didn’t have an engaged email list.
Maybe I should start doing something about this. I wish that on Day One I had said, “Okay, I’m going to grow my email list.”
The strength of your business is directly tied to the quality of your email list not the quality of your social media, not the quality of Instagram or Facebook, but to your email list. It’s a direct reflection of how well your business is doing. I’m telling you it makes a huge difference when you actually put the focus there.
It only takes one decision. You can say right now, “That’s it. I’m done with struggling when I’m launching or trying to get something out there. I’m going to grow my email list,” and you start to do it.
Question #5 – How do you set boundaries for quality family time and one-on-one time?
I chose this question because this is where I really need to be open and honest with you, like I am all the time, but for this one I want you to hear me that I don’t do this very well.
It is something that I work on every single day. Hobie, you guys know the love languages, right? Hobie’s, my husband, love language is quality time. Mine is acts of service.
If he does the dishes or takes out the trash he is incredibly sexy to me. But if I sit down in the morning, no matter what I have going on and I drink a cup of coffee with him for 30 minutes he is in bliss. That’s all he wants, 30 minutes of my morning.
That sounds so easy, right? But because of his firefighter schedule, he’s 24 on and 24 off, sometimes he gets home around 8:30 or 9 in the morning when I have been going for at least an hour and I am deep into the work.
I need to stop, come downstairs, brew some coffee, and sit down with my husband. I love him more than anything in this entire world. I think he is the most amazing man I’ve ever met and I believe we have the most beautiful marriage ever. I truly do. I can’t even believe I’ve gotten so lucky with that man.
Still, on many days I would choose work. I’m embarrassed to say that. I sound like a horrible person when I do. But I’m on a mission. If you listened to my podcast about my impossible goal I’ve got some big goals for this year. Every day I am focused on knocking them out.
To be quite honest, this is something Rachel Hollis said in her book, Girl Wash Your Face, and it really resonated with me, I am the most secure and the most comfortable when I’m working. I’ve got that. That’s my jam.
When it comes to running around and getting Cade to wrestling and making sure I show up here and going to pick up school supplies and getting dinner on the table I’m not the best at all of that.
I’m also a stepmom so it kind of throws in a little weirdness with all of that as well. So I have to work more on my family time and balance more so than I do in terms of sitting down and getting work done.
I can check off a list like a boss. But making extra time for Hobie, I have to be very mindful of that. When I do it, and I do it very consistently because it is important to him and if it’s important to him it’s important to me, I do it very consistently with him.
When I do it I just have to plan for it. I have to remember that all of this business stuff wouldn’t even mean a thing if I went to bed at night and he wasn’t there. So that’s how I do it. I book the time.
I get very clear with myself what really is important and I remind myself that, yes, I like to gravitate toward the work because it’s comfortable and easy for me but that’s not what life’s about.
That’s the honest truth about all of that and it doesn’t make me sound too fantastic but that’s my truth.
Question #6 – I want to know if you’ve ever veered off course. If so, how did you know when it was time to get back on course or go ahead in that different direction?
The truth is I’ve really thought about this one. I’ve never really veered off course but I also am very blessed with this ability to not chase shiny objects. That’s just never been my thing.
On the flip side, I also stay comfortable too long. That is something I literally talked about in last week’s episode about setting big goals. I tend to stay comfortable and do what I do best.
Veering off course wasn’t really part of my story because I just kept in my lane and kept going. It served me well in so many ways but when you asked this question (I wish I knew your name) I thought about it and thought that I haven’t veered off course but I’ve definitely said “yes” to projects for the wrong reasons.
I think that is kind of a form of going in the wrong directions. I’ve said “yes” to projects for all the wrong reasons. In a minute I am going to tell you those wrong reasons but to answer your question specifically, when you veer off course and you need to decide if you should get back on course or go in the new direction you veered into, the question really is that you’ve got to get clear on what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
What is your business going to look like? If you get clear on your “why” and you get clear on who you are serving and how you’re serving them it becomes very clear what direction you should go.
Ask yourself, “Am I going in this new direction because I got bored or because I needed something more exciting or was I chasing the money?”
Why did you move in this new direction? Then get honest with yourself. Again, what is your “why”, who are you serving, and how are you serving them? If all of that feels very clear to you, you will know your direction.
If it doesn’t you have some work to do and you’ve got to really search for the “why” and make sure you know who you are serving and why you’re serving them and how you’re serving them.
When I say “how” I mean, for me the way I serve you all is to create digital courses that teach you how to grow your email list, create a digital course, and launch it with live webinars and evergreen webinars. That’s how I teach you what to do. The “how” is important as well.
To get back to saying “yes” to projects for the wrong reasons, that might have been the reason you got off course. For me it is either FOMO (fear of missing out). The other day Hobie said something about FOMO and I said, “How do you even know what that means? Where did you hear that?”
Hobie doesn’t know stuff like that. He said he saw it on Facebook so he thought he would try it out. I was like, “Please don’t.”
Anyway, FOMO, fear of missing out, or I’ve said “yes” to projects for the wrong reasons. One wrong reason is money. I knew it was going to bring in a lot of money so I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I’ll give you an example of that in a minute.
The other one that most of us do not admit but it is very big for many of you because I’ve seen it and definitely true for me in some situations, ego. We say “yes” due to ego.
Let’s just talk about ego first. An example of me saying “yes” to something that gets me off track related to ego is when I’ve said “yes” to speaking gigs because I wanted to be on stage in front of a big audience.
How I knew it was ego versus getting on the stage for the right reason, to get my message out there to my audience to help them build their courses and launch them, when I looked out into the audience it was not my audience.
How many of you have gotten on the stage, whether it’s a big stage with a lot of people in the audience or not (it doesn’t matter), you’ve traveled somewhere, you’ve gotten on that stage and looked out and realized, “These are not my people! Why am I here?”
If you just want to be there, many times (not all times), maybe you just want the practice. That’s cool. But many times we say “yes” to things like that because it fuels our ego, “Look at me getting to speak at this big event. Aren’t I important?”
This is my experience so I won’t put it on you but it has taken me away from the work. It’s taken me away from my family. Travel time is dead time to many entrepreneurs. Sure, you can get work done on the plane but if you add up all the time you’re traveling and not in front of your computer getting your best work done or making the videos or putting the webinar together, I’m telling you it’s taking you away from your core work.
Make sure that when you do travel it means something.
Ego, saying “yes” to things because of ego, can get you off track. Money as well. I often had fear of not making enough money in the early years. I think that’s very normal. But I wish I was just a little bit more mindful about the things I said “yes” to.
I wish that I had charged my clients a little bit more and took fewer clients so I could do quality work for the clients I had versus spreading myself too thin. I was afraid to charge more and I needed the money so I just stacked it on.
That definitely kept me in the consulting role way longer than I wanted to be there. It was the fear of not having enough money.
Just the fear of missing out. I have definitely said “yes” to virtual summits that I was included in or even speaking gigs or being interviewed here or there because my friends were doing it and I wanted to stay relevant and I didn’t want to miss out on something big that was happening.
It took me away from my core projects that could have made a bigger impact in the lives of my students. These are hard decisions. This is when we’re doing some serious #adulting when you’re saying “no” because you know it’s not right for what you’re building.
I know I’m not even going to get the quote right because I don’t even know what it is, but there is a saying out there that you’re not going for instant gratification and if you could just stay in the moment and do what is going to serve in the long run instead of trying to get the quick win right now you can have so much more longevity in your business.
I really do believe there is truth to that and it’s hard to say “no” to things that are around money or FOMO or ego. Those are the things that typically send you in the wrong direction.
The way you decide if you’re going in the wrong direction or if you can continue that direction is to ask yourself why you’re going in that direction in the first place.
Question #7 – How did you originally grow your podcast audience? What specifically did you leverage or was it purely organic? Much love from Canada.
I love my Canadians. Sending you so much love right back. There was one similar question, “How long did it take you before your podcast started growing and what’s the best way to spread the word of the podcast?”
I thought about this one too. I had to really kind of dig deep to think about how it all came about. I would say it was a good two years before I felt my podcast was really doing amazing things.
It was a good two years of podcasting and the first year I was not consistent. I maybe was getting one out every three weeks or every month or maybe even longer. I didn’t have a posting schedule. It was just something I did in my business.
After about a year of that I started to podcast every single week. I think that set me on the fast track. If you have a podcast you must, must, must, rain or shine, never miss a week. Every single week, same day, same time release a podcast episode.
If you want to make things go a little faster, if you want to maybe get noticed on iTunes even more or Spotify or wherever, then do more than one a week. See if you can do two a week or throw in a couple of bonus episodes each month.
The more you do, the better. You’re going to get more downloads and that’s going to push you out into more audiences. You also want to make sure you are on all the podcast platforms because iTunes is not the only one you want to be on.
Spotify, I Heart Radio, there are a few others. Google Play. Definitely make sure you are on all of them.
Definitely weekly or more and then what I also did, I was very mindful about my podcast episodes. I don’t think there’s a huge badge of honor in saying you went off the cuff every single episode and just kind of went with it.
I think preparing, even if it’s for 20 minutes with a loose outline, is a really good idea. I believe because I spend so much time preparing for these episodes, thinking about them, planning them, especially the step-by-step episodes I do for all of you, there are hours that go into those before I hit record.
I think I’ve gotten such a huge audience because I’ve been so intentional and mindful about the content. I deeply care about the content in this podcast. I think that has helped me immensely.
Planning out the episodes, doing them weekly; also, no matter the size of your email list you are emailing your list every single week letting them know you have a brand new podcast that’s coming out. To me that’s a must.
Then, it’s a must to get on social media and let people know you have a brand new podcast episode. Heck, if you want to go live on Instagram or Facebook and talk about the episode that is definitely a good thing.
From there I think setting yourself apart from the rest is a great way to get known and seen and heard on these podcast platforms. The fact that I used to do freebies for almost every podcast episode definitely set me apart.
I don’t do that as much anymore because we just changed our focus and we’re putting that energy elsewhere in the business. But I did it for a good two years and it helped immensely.
Now that I’m only doing it on certain episodes I definitely have not seen my downloads go down. I’ve built my loyal audience and the numbers are only getting bigger so for the time that I did it, it really solidified my audience and added immense value. I still do it, just not as much.
Those are some things that have helped me a lot in growing this podcast.
Question #8 – Apart from your weekly consistent content what moved the success needle for you?
I love this question because whoever sent it to me knows me well. They know I think they should be doing weekly consistent content so I’m glad that is a thing that is known and hopefully you’re doing it.
Beyond that, what has moved the needle for me in terms of success? Another question that was similar, “Why do you think you’ve been so successful versus others? What is your special sauce?”
This one was really, really, really hard for me. I walked around the house folding towels today and I was walking Scout. Those were the two things I was doing while I was thinking of this question.
What helped me and why am I still around where others started around the same time as me and they are no longer in this world, in this online marketing world, not this world in general. You know what I mean.
They’re not doing what they started doing in the first place. I never see them online anymore.
I started to think about that. I already told you I care deeply about the content. I want to bring that up again here because I don’t think everyone that’s doing what I’m doing cares deeply about the content.
I think they care deeply about other stuff in their business, maybe more about community or engagement or whatever it might be. But content is my thing. If I’m going to teach you something I’m going to be very mindful in terms of how I teach it and how I present it to you so that I don’t waste any of your time, your effort, or your money.
I think my audience knows that. There is no fluff here. If you’re coming to learn how to create courses or grow your email list or webinars I only teach what I know. That’s another thing that I think sets me apart.
I’m not going to teach you anything I haven’t done. I am always going to go before you and try it out. That way you can trust in me because I’m not just teaching theoretically. I’m teaching stuff I’ve actually done.
That also narrows my pool of what I can teach. I’m not going to do a course on Instagram. If I created a course on Instagram I bet I could make some money. But it wouldn’t be the best course because I’m not a pro at Instagram.
I stay in my lane and teach what I know and I go before you and I hope you can see me as your guide because of that. That is important to me.
I also think I am building really true collaborations with my peers. When I tell you I am friends with Jasmine Star or Rachel Hollis or Michael Hyatt or Marie Forleo I am never, please hear me on this, I am never doing that to name drop.
If I don’t have a genuine friendship with someone, if we don’t text, if we don’t talk on the phone I don’t act as though I’m someone’s friend. That is one thing that’s important to me. Those people are genuinely core, true blue friends that I could call if everything went awry and I was in puddle on the floor.
I have other friends outside of the industry but it’s important that I make really solid friendships, not just relationships but friendships, in the industry because those are the people that get me.
When you tell your neighbor, who is a dentist (mine really is a dentist), about how a webinar went horribly wrong or the fact that you have tons of support tickets because your audience is mad about XYZ, if someone’s not in your world with you they do not get it.
They can feel bad but they can’t really offer true advice or they can’t really sympathize with you at the level you want them to. I think that’s important. The relationships I have are very, very, very important to me and I don’t have a bunch of them but I am very proud of the ones I have.
I do think having peers in the industry that support you helps build up your business. I think it helps immensely. That’s not why I do it but it’s a direct correlation, for sure. There’s alignment there. It makes me feel not so alone and that makes me show up better for you. I think that’s important.
The other one that might surprise you is that Facebook advertising, going directly to webinar signups, starting from my very early days, put me on the map. I became known for Facebook marketing early on because I was running tons of Facebook ads to a Facebook marketing webinar over and over and over again.
I think my secret sauce is that I stay with something and continue to do it over and over and over again. I think this is something that when I think about other people that have done this, Marie Forleo is a great example with B-School.
I think we’re going on nine years this year, I think it’s nine. Yeah, she’s a great example of someone that stuck with it. So, if you’re looking for staying power, if you’re looking to be really successful in what you do, you’ve got to stop chasing the shiny objects and choose that one thing in your business that has gotten you really good success or has that glimmer of “this could really work.
I’ve seen some good conversions around it. Now I’ve got to scale it and focus on it,” let’s focus on that one thing and keep doing it over and over and over again whether you put it on evergreen or launch it live or whatever I don’t care.
I’m just saying let’s not do ten different things. I have a friend that flip flops her ideas all the time. I’ve actually had to pull away from our friendship a little because I’m not a very opinionated person.
If you don’t ask me what I think I’m likely not going to tell you and she doesn’t ask me what I think. But I feel compelled to be like, “You are all over the place. You’re driving me nuts. Stop asking me questions about this because you’re never going to follow through with it.”
Now, that’s not a good friend and I would never say that. But I started to feel that way and when I started to feel resentful I thought I probably should pull away a little bit. But I really think the staying power is when you choose what’s working in your business now and you make it better over and over and over again.
If you feel like you’re getting bored, go back to the why and what and who you’re serving and look at those people and the results you’re getting for them. There’s nothing boring about that.
I’m going to step off my soap box right now. Sorry about that.
Question #9 – What do you do in the moments when you doubt yourself?
The only advice I have for you here is that you doubt yourself and you stay in motion. Staying in motion gives me the momentum I need and the motivation and the inspiration.
I just keep doing. I know that’s so simple. Of course, I listen to inspirational podcasts and listen to Audible with business books and, like I said, I have a really good peer group in the industry.
When it comes down to it, when I doubt if I can do something I just keep doing something. I just don’t stop. Eventually it gets easier and eventually I have stopped doubting myself so much.
You’ve got to listen to the episode that I did last week if you haven’t done so already.
Sometimes I get my episodes mixed up so let me just make sure. Yes, it’s Episode #247 called Why I’ve Agreed to Fail 100 Times in 12 Months (https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/247).
In there I talk about the idea of creating an impossible goal and I share my impossible goal with you. Also in that episode I talk about the idea that this year I want to get better at failing. I am really good at staying in my lane and playing it safe and doing what I do best.
Like I said, I’ve already told you that has served me well. But, it’s also a way to play small and I think (I was going to say “might” but I’m not going to use that word) I am capable of a whole lot more. I can do bigger things.
In order for me to do bigger things I have to be willing to fail over and over and over again. I have to do something knowing I likely won’t do it right and won’t get the results I want. But I’m still going to do it.
That’s where I am this year. I’m willing to fail…100 times, in fact. Listen to the episode and you’ll understand why I chose 100 but when you say you doubt yourself…I always doubt myself. I really do. I just keep doing and that’s my simple advice for you.
Question #10 – Which mentor do you credit for making the biggest impact in creating the business you have today?
So, it’s funny because I have a unique relationship with my father. By unique I mean that it hasn’t always been that great. As much as I love him dearly and know he loves me dearly, we just had a rough time throughout all of my life with him.
I felt he was way too hard on me and we didn’t really connect. There wasn’t deep communication. I think that now that I’ve gotten older I can respect him for all he’s done and love him for doing the very best he could.
I know he cares deeply about my sister and I and that’s what matters most. So I am able to let that go and not live in the past. But, despite maybe not having the relationship I wanted with my dad, one thing I did take away from that relationship with him is that he was an incredibly hard worker.
He put a lot of value in the work that he’s done. He never cut corners. That’s why, when we talk about doing B- work on this podcast I’m always like, “argh!” My dad would never do B- work.
Everything he did, he did it with intention and he did his very, very best. I saw that. He was a firefighter but he also had a side job that he owned a heating and air conditioning business. He was blue collar to the bone.
But that guy really found value in the work he did and he did it well. That is why I do the work I do today and how I do it. I do it well and the perfect example of that was from my dad.
What I got from my mom was the compassion and the ability to connect with people and read people very quickly and know when they need extra attention and love and support.
I got the best of both worlds although it wasn’t the perfect relationship it still really served me well.
If we got personal those would be the two mentors that have shaped me in the type of business and type of entrepreneur I am today. But if I got more specific in terms of a mentor in this business, by far, it’s Marie Forleo, by far.
She has become a dear friend. She wasn’t always a friend. At first she was just the leader of a mastermind that I signed up for. I paid $17,000 for two years in a row to be in her mastermind with a bunch of kickass entrepreneurial women.
It changed my life. Marie changed my life because she called me on my stuff. She actually was the first person to ask me, “When are you going to start growing your email list? I’m tired of telling you to do so.”
She also was the person that said, “You need to come out from behind your computer and stop hiding.” That’s her version of saying, “You are playing small.”
This was many, many, many years ago but she gave me the tough love I needed and now when I give you all tough love it might not look so Jersey style like Marie but when I do it know that I’m doing it because I know it changed my life when someone else did it for me.
I am vowing that I’m going to do it even more for you. When I see you, if you join my small group coaching program this year or if you join Digital Course Academy®️ when we open it up again and I see you in the group and you ask a question and I know you’re playing small with that question I will promise, it is my guarantee to you, my commitment to you, that I will call you on it.
I’ll say, “This is a question that shows you are playing small.”
That was a gift to me and she did that early on. She is definitely one of my business mentors and now a dear, dear friend.
I love ending with this question because she’s going to be on the podcast next week and I’m so fricking excited about it. She’s been on the podcast many, many times. This time we’re changing things up and I’m going to present to her some core questions that you all have had but instead of just answering the questions I’m going to ask her to tell me stories of her students who have struggled with the same thing you might be struggling with.
How did they work their way through it? What does their life look like now? What did it look like then? I want stories. I want the people that have been there and she’s got a lot of them.
I thought why not tell other people’s stories but also help you move past some of those challenges you’re having in your business. Let’s get tactical and let’s talk about what they did and how they did it.
This is going to be different than any interview I’ve ever done on this podcast and definitely different than all of my episodes I’ve done with Marie. I think it’s going to be really special and I hope you’ll join me next week for Episode #249.
There you have it. Thank you so very much for all of the thoughtful questions. I can’t wait to do this again so keep them coming. I love to know what’s on your mind.
Also, don’t forget that this episode is sponsored by my free master class all about list building. If you’ve struggle with list building or if one of my responses in these ten questions sparks something in you to say, “Oh my gosh. Come on. I finally need to just buckle down and start growing my email list,” then the perfect place to start is with my free master class at https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/listbuilding.
I’ll get you all dialed in so you know where to start and what to do to get things rolling.
I cannot wait to see you again same time, same place next week. Have a great week. Bye for now.
