Today, I’m proud, honored, and humbled to say that I’m the successful owner of a multi-brand online training company that brings in multiple 7 figures a year in revenue. Has it always been that way? Absolutely not. I certainly wasn’t successful overnight—or even within a few years!
Sure, I had mild successes (I had to in order to keep going, right?!), but I wasn’t where I wanted to be—or where I wanted my business to be.
The truth is: it’s very easy to look successful online. There are a lot of digital marketing “gurus” out there who are teaching things that they’ve never done themselves. Not only is it wildly disingenuous, it’s also forcing many business owners into tactics that just aren’t right for their business.
Three of the main reasons I wasn’t successful are all things you can learn from and course correct so that you’re not spending months or years (like I did!) struggling to make your own business work. And I’m willing to bet you’ve at least heard of—or maybe even started to believe—some of these same myths.
It was only when I finally stopped chasing what “everyone else” was doing and dug into my expertise that I started to see real success.
I dialed in on what I knew about how consumers *really* behave, examined what *truly* builds a desire to purchase, and took a totally different approach to my messaging than anything I’d seen before. And most importantly, I focused on tactics that put my AUDIENCE’S needs and wants first.
By the end of 2018, I implemented a system that incorporated all that…and allowed me to 40x my income over the next two years (and we haven’t stopped there!).
But the CSS only exists because I blocked out what the gurus say you “have” to do to achieve success (ahem: live launching, evergreen, challenges…). All of those tactics just weren’t working for me. Instead, I leaned into what I knew and what I saw was working firsthand.
I didn’t always know what the “how” was. I had to create it. But you don’t have to. By sharing three of the mistakes I was making before I leaned into what I knew (and what the data proved was working), my hope is to save you a lot of frustration (and time!) waiting for all the tactics you’re trying to finally “kick in” for you.
Mistake #1: Build It & They Will Come
“This is a great program. I’m going to put it out there, and then people are going to buy it.”
That was me back in 2012…
Like many new business owners, I naively thought “If you build it, they will come.“
Before Nicki K Media became a multi-brand online training company, I had one course. This program (the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy, or CCA) is based on my 20+ years of copywriting experience and teaches people how to write copy and how to build professional copywriting businesses.
It was—and is—a fantastic program. So, I figured it would sell itself.
That’s not what happened. And I soon realized that I was going to have to figure out some way to actually sell this program.
I know a lot of online business owners who have that moment of, “I know people can benefit from this. But do I continue with it because it is eating up so much of my time, energy, heart, and soul?”
It’s very frustrating and daunting when you put something together that you know benefits your audience but then they don’t come running like you thought they would.
Some people did purchase the copywriting program and had success with it. One that always comes to mind is one of the very first students who sent me an email to tell me she’d list her job but was able to support herself because of what I taught in the CCA. She then landed a full-time contract role at one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world.
That affirmed to me that what I had to offer was something that people wanted and needed. That’s what kept me going through all of the years when I couldn’t quite figure out how to get this in front of people.
But sitting back and hoping people will find it organically? It’s not enough if you want to grow your business—and impact more people.
Having a solid system for selling (the Circuit Sales System) has since allowed us to teach 10,000+ copywriting students.
Mistake #2: Following the Herd
As business owners, we’re often told, “You need to do THIS strategy.”
But the digital marketing industry can be an echo chamber of bad advice from so-called marketing “gurus”. And what works for the marketing masters doesn’t work for most of us.
So, what “you-need-to-do-this” advice did I follow? All. Of. It.
First of all, I played with my offer’s price a ton—increasing it, decreasing it—thinking “Oh, maybe it’s the price.” But price is rarely the reason people won’t buy.
I tried challenges, live launches, email funnels, more evergreen funnels. I tried taking it from a course and making it a membership (which meant creating additional content every single month). But everything was falling flat. Nothing was connecting, and it was so frustrating and so dispiriting because I knew that what I’d put together was really good.
I had evidence that it would benefit people. But I couldn’t figure out how to deliver it to them in a way that would inspire them, that would get them excited, and that would get them to take action. Those are the three magical points. I would get one or two of the three with all these kinds of things, but not all three.
Jumping Off the Everyone’s-Doing-It Bandwagon
In early 2018, I was totally beaten down by trying so hard. I was spinning my wheels, I was struggling, and I was starting to give up hope.
At the time I was doing some copywriting work for a business coach and I needed to send her an invoice for work I’d done to the tune of 700 bucks. But what I really needed was…guidance? Help? Insight? Who knew? But I hoped SHE did. So, I asked if she’d be willing to barter that $700 for a one-on-one call with her. One, 15-minute call.
On that call, I explained my business, how people were raving about the course, how few people were purchasing, and finally just asked: “Is it possible for me to have a successful business? With ads or organic traffic or whatever—but is it possible?”
And she looked at me a little blown away by the firehose of both information and emotion and said: “Well…yeah!” And THAT was all I needed to hear! I needed that validation. That’s when I started to think, “Okay, if it’s possible for anyone, then it’s possible for me, and I can figure this out.”
I started to focus on what I know, which is that I’m a copywriter, I know messaging, and I know the customer journey. And because I’ve spent so many years learning about companies’ target audiences and seeing what they experience, I also know a lot about customer psychology and the customer journey.
Knowing What You Want…And What You Don’t
I was also clear on what I wanted and didn’t want in my business. I did not want to do live launches. I joke sometimes about being a lazy entrepreneur (despite being far from lazy!) because business owners would list all these “must-do” strategies like free Facebook groups (more on why you shouldn’t do those here) and live challenges…but I didn’t want to do ANY of it.
I would think, “I don’t have time to be running my business. How am I going to be have time to get in this Facebook group to nurture people who aren’t even purchasing? I’m supposed to give away stuff for free?!”
I wanted to find a system that I could set up and let it run and let it sell for me but also that would sell to people on their timeline, and when they were ready to purchase.
We talk a lot about the customer excitement and catching them when they’re most excited, and I wanted to set up a system that would deliver my very best offer when my audience were at their peak excitement and motivation to buy.
And then if they don’t purchase, I wanted to give them the opportunity to rebuild that excitement later on and give them the opportunity to buy again. I knew that there had to be a way to make this all happen automatically.
And there was. (It’s what became the Circuit Sales System.)
Mistake #3: It’s Not Your Focus, It’s the Tactics
In 2018, I let go of almost all of my copywriting clients so I could focus on the business. My thought process was, “Well, if I can just focus on the business a bit more…”
But I know now it was the tactics all along—not my focus.
You may already know that—especially if you’ve been hyper focused on your business and it’s still not living up to the potential you know it has.
I didn’t have much money coming in, and it even got to the point where I had $55,000 on a credit card. I wasn’t doing anything wild or crazy; it was living expenses and some business expenses. Was it still stressful? Absolutely.
The only thing that kept me going was that I knew it could work— I just needed to figure out the system. I knew that there are people who wanted this, even if they didn’t know that they wanted it yet. Once I explained this to them, they’d realize they wanted it and that it was a good product.
There was a way, and I was able to pay that credit card off very quickly once I got the Circuit going for the Comprehensive Copywriting Academy.
Leaning Into Tactics That Work
The online business world is full of people sharing bad advice around tactics they usually haven’t even done or made work for themselves. But they’re still sharing it. And that makes it easy to start experiencing the sunk-cost fallacy of, “Well, I’ve been doing this for so long and everybody says that it works, I have to just keep doing this.”
But if you really look at it, you realize it’s never worked, so it’s not a matter of doing it more often; it’s a matter of evaluating your tactics and maybe not listening to what everybody says you have to do.
Almost all the “must-do” tactics people are teaching AREN’T predictable or consistent. Think about how much finger crossing and hoping you do when you’re running a live launch or a challenge or a webinar. If your sales are based on hoping and surprises, you’re taking on way more risk than any business should. (Or can for very long.)
This level of risk has just become normalized in the digital selling world but it doesn’t have to be like this for you. The simple fact is that it’s very possible to make your business consistent and predictable. And when you do that, you can do do all kinds of wild things like take time off (gasp!) without it affecting your revenue, or add team members without worrying about how you’ll pay them. Ultimately, it will allow you to run your business without it running you.
Take a moment to imagine what it would mean for your business if you could rely on one, two, three, or even four sales a day. (Our current daily record in the CSS is 19, if that adds a little context.) How much easier—how much more FUN—would it be to run your business that way?
No one said that building a successful business would be easy. There are days you want to throw in the towel. But none of us got into business to give up. (Although there are certainly days when that’s all you can think about doing!) We all got into business to help people, to change other people’s lives, and to change our own lives.
You owe it to yourselves and to your business not to give up on it, and to keep trying. Because there ARE ways to accomplish your goals—and then set even bigger ones!
Want to find out more about the system that allowed me to 40x my income? Watch the free, on-demand video training now >>
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In this episode of our Energize Your Online Business podcast, we look at some of the mistakes Nicki made on the way to building her hugely successful multimillion-dollar online business! Utilize this episode to help you stand out from the competition and take your business to the next level.
Your Turn!
What are some of the mistakes you’ve made in your online business? What successful online business tactics did you use to fix them? Let us know in the comments below!