A few months ago, my great friend, Ray Edwards, shared a series of podcast episodes where he broke down the framework that he has developed for those who are looking to start an online business. I invited Ray to come and share the seven phases of his framework, with my community, in this week's episode.

Ray Edwards' Framework For Starting An Online Business

Phase 1 – Design Your Life: The idea is to ask yourself, what do you want your life to look like? What are you willing to do and what are you not willing to do?

Phase2 – Person-Problem-Pain: In this phase, you clarify who it is that you are wanting to serve, you decide what problem you want to solve for them and you discover what pains these people are experiencing related to this problem.

Phase 3 – Product: In this phase, you determine what products and services you plan to offer your customers. This could be one-on-one coaching/consulting, online/digital courses, physical products, etc. Also, in this phase, you should decide when you will make these products and/or services available.

Phase 4 – Copy: Everyone should be clear on the value and benefits that they bring to the table. Not only that, you should have pre-determined language at your disposal to communicate what it is that you offer. In fact, Ray suggests that “everyone should have a sales letter.”

Phase 5 – Marketing: Once you have your product(s) and you have you have your copy that clearly communicates the value you offer, it is time to begin marketing what you have to your target customers. This is where want to find out where these people hanging out? Better yet, where are they looking for solutions already? This is where can start building an audience with a blog, podcast and an email newsletter. This is where you begin setting up your landing pages and possibly even begin advertising.

Phase 6 – Optimization: In this phase, you take what you are already doing and focus on making it better. You try to improve email opt-ins and open rates. You try to optimizing conversations from your ad campaigns. Etc.

Phase 7 – Scale or Sale: When it comes to the SCALE of your business, is your business a mission or a means? When it comes to the SALE of your business, is your business even something that could be sold? Or are YOU the business? What is your number? What will you do after the sale?