Work Less, Earn More

Welcome to the second episode of The 100K Method, a limited podcast series about how to strategically scale your online course to six-figure success. 

I created this series because when I started my online business, I was broke, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and my biggest goal was to create a consistent stream of passive income, but I had a really hard time figuring out how.

In this episode, we’re going to jump in a time machine and go way back to 2018, the year I took my business from 0 to $100,000.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Where I was at the start of 2018 after two years in business
• The strategies I used to grow my YouTube audience and my email list
• Why I hosted live workshops on a variety of topics for the first five months of the year
• How I used content I had already created to support the launch of Startup Society
• The real numbers that brought me over the 100K mark

Learn more about Gillian:

• 100K Mastermind
• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Welcome to the first episode of The 100K Method, a limited podcast series about how to strategically scale your online course to six-figure success.

I created this series because when I started my online business, I was broke, living paycheck-to-paycheck, and my biggest goal was to create a consistent stream of passive income, but I had a really hard time figuring out how. 

Lots of people were talking about passive income, but what they shared was vague, theoretical, and frequently overhyped. What I wanted and needed was practical, hands-on advice from someone who had successfully done what I wanted to do.

After a lot of research, I determined that digital courses and membership sites were going to be the best way to reach my passive income goals. There are certainly other options out there, but most either require a lot of money up front or simply don’t have a very high earning potential.

Online courses and memberships, on the other hand, can be put together with only a small budget and marketed strategically to turn into six- or even seven-figure streams of passive income. And that was exactly what I was looking for!

I’ll share the story of how I built my first $100K funnel in the next episode (and we’ll also look at the 100K method itself later in this series), but, in this episode, I’d like to start our conversation by examining the basic strategy of using evergreen sales funnels to passively sell online courses. We’ll also take a look at one of my 100K funnels in action, so you can see how this strategy works in the real world. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• A breakdown of the 100K funnel behind Creator Fast Track
• How the “show up” sequence boosts workshop attendance
• How the “win-win” webinar method works to convert leads
• Two email sequences to take customers from “not yet” to “yes”

Learn more about Gillian:

• 100K Mastermind
• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

If you are really multi-passionate, it's likely that researching your ideas, weighing the pros and cons and other methods of analysis will still leave you undecided about what niche to choose. Because the problem is that you love all your ideas and you can't stand the thought of scrapping any of them.

Today, I’m sharing three strategies for overcoming your indecision, and finally picking a niche.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How to use “practice mode” to figure out if you really want to build a business around an idea
• Why you should date your ideas before you commit to marrying one of them
• How giving yourself total freedom can actually help you nail down your niche

Learn more about Gillian:

• 100K Mastermind
• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• Can't pick a niche? Do THIS instead.

When I had my first two kids in my early twenties, maternity leave was really rough. It kind of happened, it kind of didn't, and a lot of things went wrong.

But when I was pregnant with my third baby, I completed a couple of projects that made a massive difference in my income and allowed me to take three full months of paid maternity leave.

So today, I’m sharing that story and telling you what happened and what those projects were that enabled me to take paid maternity leave.

And whether or not you’ll ever need maternity leave, these strategies are still relevant for any situation where you know you’ll need to be able to take a chunk of time off without sacrificing your income.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why I couldn’t take much time off with my first two babies
• How my third pregnancy pushed me to finally get moving on generating passive income
• Why I batch plenty of content before going on maternity leave

Learn more about Gillian:

• 100K Mastermind
• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

In a lot of ways, the opportunity of today's creator economy reminds me of the California Gold Rush. While some early adopters were able to make a lot of money, most people were very skeptical of the idea that you could make money as a content creator.

Fast forward a few years, and people have caught on that this is a real thing. But now they might be wondering if success is only for the lucky few who got in at the right time and all the big money has been made.

They might be thinking that the market is saturated, that there’s so much content out there on YouTube, or Instagram, or on blogs that there’s no space for one more creator in the market. 

They’ve gone from not believing it’s a real thing, to believing they’ve missed out.

But this is not the case at all. 

More and more people are getting started as content creators every month, building their audience, and creating a living as creators. And not only that, the journey from zero to earning $10,000 per month or more, is getting shorter and shorter.

How is that possible?

Today, I’m sharing what I’ve learned in my five years as a successful content creator about strategies that work, so you can shorten your journey from zero to earning a living from your content.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why you need to focus on just one platform when you’re starting out
• How to layer monetization strategies to raise your income faster
• Pros and cons of affiliate marketing and sponsorships

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ll know that I’ve interviewed people about a variety of different business models, which may leave you wondering what the best one really is.

The truth is, there is no such thing as the best business model because different things work for different people. It all depends on your goals and even your personality.

For some people, rather than courses or group programs or memberships, it makes the most sense to continue to work directly with clients. Maybe they enjoy building relationships, the accountability of client deadlines, or the certainty of getting paid for their work.

And just because you’re not going for a passive income model doesn’t mean you can’t work less and earn more.

Perhaps the most obvious way to do that is to get higher-paying clients, but how do you land those clients?

Today, I’m talking with Ruth-Joy Connell about how to pitch to and land corporate clients.

Ruth-Joy Connell is the CEO and founder of RJC Consulting Global — a Corporate Consulting firm specializing in helping service-based entrepreneurs, price, pitch, and close corporate contracts. Her goal is to help entrepreneurs serve and earn at their highest level so that the work they do can have a generational impact. When she’s not collecting coins, you can find her shopping at Winners, watching re-runs of 90s TV shows, or traveling to new countries.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why taking your work to corporate clients doesn’t mean reinventing the wheel
• How to clarify the client and consumer for your work
• The best platform for marketing to corporate clients
• Five steps to creating a list of prospects to reach out to

Learn more about Ruth-Joy Connell:

• RJC Consulting Global

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• The Ultimate Guide on How to Find your First or Next Corporate Client

In just a few weeks, I'm going to be turning 30 years old.

This last decade has been such a crazy one filled with so many adventures, starting with getting married at 20, then having my first baby the following year, and buying our first house the year after that. And since then, we’ve gone on to buy a couple more houses.

I had four more babies, started several businesses, and visited 12 countries. It’s been a really packed decade and God has taught me so much both through all of these different projects that I've done and also through all the challenges that I've faced, both personally and emotionally. There have also been external challenges like tackling growing a business or buying a house.

So I thought that today would be such a good opportunity to reflect on some of these lessons that I've learned, both to remember them and to share them with you guys.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The most important lessons my twenties taught me about earning money and building wealth
• The physical and emotional factors that help me stay healthy and happy
• What my twenties taught me about supporting my mental health
• What I’ve learned about trust, faith, and my relationship with God
• How my relationships in my twenties taught me about commitment, security, and reaching out

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• The Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Take Charge of Your Emotions--Today, Julia Ross

Financial freedom is a common goal and an amazing thing to experience, but it often gets tied together with the idea of penny-pinching today so that you can save for the future, with the end goal being to amass as much money and stuff as possible.

Regular people call this saving for retirement. Others take it to an extreme and call it F.I.R.E: Financial Independence, Retire Early.

And some people don't save at all and just hope for the best. 

But a lot of us somewhat goal-oriented folks at least feel like we should be making sacrifices today so that we can eventually retire fabulously wealthy.

Whether or not we successfully do that, of course, is up to our personal motivation, willpower, and ability to strategize.

But is accumulating money and stuff even truly the highest ideal? Should it really be our priority? Do we really need to feel guilt over not making those sacrifices today?

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How feeling financially secure is a moving goalpost with diminishing returns on your happiness
• Five priorities that guide the way I save for the future
• Why you have more control over what you earn than what you can save
• How to make your spending intentional rather than emotional
• How I shifted my mindset to being a good steward of my finances

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!

Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

I have a new baby!

Surprised? So was I!

Meet Ezra Perkins. He’s almost three weeks old and he arrived three weeks early, so he truly was a surprise for us.

Today I want to take a few minutes to share the story of Ezra’s birth because it’s kind of a funny story.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Ezra surprised us on our 10-year anniversary trip to the beach

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Have you ever had a moment of clarity when you suddenly realized that your life doesn’t have to be the way that it is?

Maybe it’s when you see someone else’s life, or something on Instagram, and you see how beautiful it is and you wonder, why doesn’t my life look like that, or feel like that?

Sometimes it’s the moment when we realize the only reason our life is the way it is–that we live where we live, have the friends we have, eat the food that we eat–is because we’re in the habit of doing them.

The good news is that regardless of whatever led you here right now, you can start making different decisions and completely transform your life.

And it doesn’t have to take years. In as little as six months, your life could look dramatically different.

So today, I’m sharing the fundamentals that will take you from where you are now to where you really want to be and make dramatic changes in your life.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Six ways to categorize and clarify the changes you want to make
• How to decide what area of your life to focus on first
• The major mindset shifts that will help you make big changes
• Why setting quantifiable goals is essential to making plans and staying motivated

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins