Work Less, Earn More

When I started working on starting my online business, it was because I was running away from the business that I already had.

Essentially, I was breaking up with my current business and my online business was a bit of a rebound. What I wanted out of my online business was flexibility and freedom. I wanted to know how to make as much money with as little effort as possible and in those rebound days, I was susceptible to anything that sounded like what I was looking for.

It wasn't until I was well into the process of building my business that I realized there were some things about the business model I had inadvertently chosen that I wasn't all that fond of or that there were other options out there.

Over the next several episodes, I'm going to be interviewing a series of online business owners about their business models, how their businesses make money, their biggest expenses, how much time their businesses take to run, how big or small their teams are and more.

To start this series off, I'm bringing on my friend, business mentor and podcast producer, Tara McMullin. In this episode, Tara breaks down seven simple business models for small business owners.

Tara McMullin is a coach, community builder, podcaster, producer, and writer. She’s the founder of What Works, a digital platform for small business owners who are building strong, resilient, and sustainable companies. She’s also the co-founder of YellowHouse.Media, a podcast production agency that helps entrepreneurs create standout podcasts that grow their businesses. Tara’s podcast, What Works, has been downloaded over 2 million times and boasts over 300 interviews with thriving small business owners.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why getting clear on your business model helps your business become more sustainable, resilient and easier to run
• How keeping it simple can actually generate more revenue with fewer expenses
• Seven simple business models with real-life examples and a breakdown of the math behind the revenue
• Plus two models for physical product-based businesses
• Key questions to consider when choosing a business model

Learn more about Tara McMullin:

• What Works
• The What Works Podcast
• Instagram: @tara_mcmullin
• YellowHouse.Media

Learn more about Gillian:



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

Did you set a goal to take your business from $0 to $100,000 in 2022?

You might think of dividing 100,000 by 365 and figure, “okay, I need to earn at least $274 per day and I’ll hit that mark.”

But the first thing to know is that it isn’t going to happen that way.

Most likely this process of going from zero to six figures over the next year is something that's going to happen exponentially.

You're going to start slow. It'll seem like you aren't making any progress at all at first, but over time, your income will increase faster and faster.

It will almost certainly be something of a rollercoaster, where you’ll earn more one month and less the next.

It’s a two steps forward, one step back kind of experience.

And that might not be what you want to hear, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s the truth.

Keep listening to find out what else you need to know to hit that six-figure milestone in 2022.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How to keep discouragement at bay so you keep putting in the work to hit six figures
• Why it’s okay to have some unknowns in your business plan
• Why you need to get to market quickly, even if your product isn’t yet perfect
• Why your income might dip while you’re setting up scalable systems
• How to build a marketing and sales process that works for your business

Learn more about Gillian:



• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• 50 Service Business Ideas – Free Download

To celebrate our reaching 100 episodes of Work Less, Earn More, I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes all this week.

I went all the way back to the very first episode and pulled out the ones that stood out to me as must-listens, ones that I think even if you've heard them before, they would be worth listening to again. Then I had to narrow it down from 20 or so episodes to 5.

To do that, I needed a theme or a topic, and I landed on doing a whole week of episodes all about funnels and launching.

For the final episode of our five-part bonus series, we're going to do something that is a little bit unrelated if I'm going to be completely honest, but I think it's an important piece of the puzzle.

When I was first trying to build my business, my funnels weren’t working and my launches were falling flat.

And it wasn’t because of the funnels or the launches.

The reason they would have worked for me is because I was barking up the wrong tree. I was trying to sell something that there wasn't demand for. I was trying to sell something that nobody wanted to buy.

I hadn’t validated my business idea.

So today, I’ll walk you through how to do that, so you can put all of the great lessons in the last four episodes this week to use.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• 3 questions to ask to validate your business idea
• Why market research is essential to building a successful business
• How to tell if your business idea is valid and worth pursuing
• Why it might not take a long time to build a substantial, successful business

Learn more about Gillian:



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

To celebrate our reaching 100 episodes of Work Less, Earn More, I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes all this week.

I went all the way back to the very first episode and pulled out the ones that stood out to me as must-listens, ones that I think even if you've heard them before, they would be worth listening to again. Then I had to narrow it down from 20 or so episodes to 5.

To do that, I needed a theme or a topic, and I landed on doing a whole week of episodes all about funnels and launching.

I'm bringing you back to one of the earliest episodes from Work Less, Earn More.

In this episode, I share with you six things that took us past the six-figure mark.

One thing I love about this episode is that it's a really good recap of some of the biggest things that we did that grew the business, and I did it while hitting that milestone was still pretty fresh and we were still using a lot of the same strategies as we continued to grow.

So if you’re aiming for that goal, listen in and I’ll share how we did it.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why I had to narrow my focus and get specific
• Why I stopped selling and dug into market research
• Why different is better than better
• How I found my bottlenecks and hired help strategically to get past them
• How subscriptions and evergreen funnels took us over the six-figure mark

Learn more about Gillian:

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

To celebrate our reaching 100 episodes of Work Less, Earn More, I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes all this week.

I went all the way back to the very first episode and pulled out the ones that stood out to me as must-listens, ones that I think even if you've heard them before, they would be worth listening to again. Then I had to narrow it down from 20 or so episodes to 5.

To do that, I needed a theme or a topic, and I landed on doing a whole week of episodes all about funnels and launching.

Today I'm bringing you an interview that I did with my friend, Lucy Griffiths, who has a truly incredible evergreen sales funnel set up that sold over 30,000 copies of one of her courses in just 18 months!

Whether you’re just starting to set up funnels or you have one running you want to improve, listen in as Lucy shares the dirt on how she set it up and how it works.

Lucy Griffiths went from TV journalist reporting from conflict zones and interviewing political heavyweights and rubbing elbows with A-listers to building a course business that has now generated over a million dollars in revenue. Her Confident on Camera course has over 50,000 downloads and counting.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How micro-courses allow you to quickly scale up your sales
• Why you should script and record your sales pitch
• How Lucy structures her offers to increase her total cart value from a low-cost course
• Why she uses still image ads to sell a video-based course
• Lucy’s surprising strategy for generating leads and converting them

Learn more about Lucy:

• lucygriffiths.com
• Confident On Camera Course
• Follow Lucy on YouTube

Learn more about Gillian:



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

To celebrate our reaching 100 episodes of Work Less, Earn More, I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes all this week.

I went all the way back to the very first episode and pulled out the ones that stood out to me as must-listens, ones that I think even if you've heard them before, they would be worth listening to again. Then I had to narrow it down from 20 or so episodes to 5.

To do that, I needed a theme or a topic, and I landed on doing a whole week of episodes all about funnels and launching.

Today is Episode 22 with Tarzan Kay.

Tarzan reveals all of her best secrets and tips for launching to a small list and really maximizing your sales, even when you aren't selling to very many people.

And I know that that is the situation that many of you are in right now. And I was in that situation not too long ago myself.

Tarzan Kay is a master of email marketing and former copywriter-for-hire who specializes in fun-to-read, more-addictive-than-Game-of-Thrones email copy. She also helps freelancers attract better clients who’ll reach deeper into their pockets to pay for top-quality services using the power of email.

She shares all of her expert email marketing and copywriting tips on how she stands out in a crowded market—and how you can, too.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Sales strategies to make the most of your small list
• How to calculate your real conversion rate for your launch
• A two-part offer structure that helps you capture missed leads
• Why you should never judge your launch in the middle of it

Learn more about Tarzan:

• TarzanKay.com
• 10 Free Email Promo Sequence Swipes
• Instagram: @tarzan_kay
• The Must-Have Tool For Promoting To A List of Less Than 1000 Subscribers

Learn more about Gillian:



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

To celebrate our reaching 100 episodes of Work Less, Earn More, I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes all this week.

I went all the way back to the very first episode and pulled out the ones that stood out to me as must-listens, ones that I think even if you've heard them before, would be worth listening to again. Then I had to narrow it down from 20 or so episodes to 5.

To do that, I needed a theme or a topic, and I landed on doing a whole week of episodes all about funnels and launching.

First up is Episode 20 with Mariah Coz. Mariah is a wizard with evergreen funnels and in this episode, she breaks down how easy creating a successful evergreen funnel can be, even when it goes against conventional wisdom.

Mariah Coz has been creating and selling online courses, building webinars, and crafting funnels for years. In that time, her company has helped hundreds of people create and sell courses about everything from watercolor painting, programming, decluttering, football, and everything in between.

She is a veteran course creator and creates high-converting webinars, funnels, and launches for herself and her clients using cutting-edge strategies that no one else is teaching.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why it’s “mean to not go evergreen,” for your customers and for you
• How your evergreen funnel fuels your live launches
• Three things that might be holding you back from building an evergreen funnel
• Two ways to effectively create urgency without being sleazy
• One simple thing to put on your webinar landing page that will increase sales

Learn more about Mariah Coz:

• Mariahcoz.com
• Free Evergreen Sales Funnel Masterclass
• Accelerator Application
• Instagram: @mariahpcoz
• YouTube

Learn more about Gillian:

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

Welcome to Episode 100!

For this milestone episode, I thought it would be fitting to share some of the things that I’ve learned over the course of the last hundred episodes.

I took on this project with some knowledge and strategy, and I’d been creating content on the internet for years, but I still had a lot to learn. So today, I’m going to share the top three things I’ve learned over the last two years of running the podcast.

And I’ll be joined by Tara McMullin, my friend and one of the producers of this show. Tara is a podcasting pro and has the inside story of what’s happening in podcasting, what’s changed in the last two years, and strategies for running a successful podcast today.

Tara McMullin is a coach, community builder, podcaster, producer, and writer. She’s the founder of What Works, a digital platform for small business owners who are building strong, resilient, and sustainable companies. She’s also the co-founder of YellowHouse.Media, a podcast production agency that helps entrepreneurs create standout podcasts that grow their businesses. Tara’s podcast, What Works, has been downloaded over 2 million times and boasts over 300 interviews with thriving small business owners.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why your podcast shouldn’t be your primary visibility strategy, but it can establish you as an expert
• How COVID leveled the production playing field between big studios and indie podcasts
• Why limited series are on the rise and pros and cons of making and marketing them for your podcast
• Why your “new episode” social media post isn’t working

Learn more about Tara McMullin:

• What Works
• The What Works Podcast
• Instagram: @tara_mcmullin
• YellowHouse.Media

Learn more about Gillian:

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

If you want to turn your side-hustle into your full-time gig, you need two things: products and customers.

Of course, it’s not actually that simple.

There are a lot of variables depending on the kind of business you want to run, and a lot of ways for things to go wrong.

So today, I’m sharing the real secret to turning your side-thing into your main thing so you can have a steady, predictable income from your business.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The systems you need to have in place for steady income
• Why starting a business is more than setting up shop with a website and a tax filing

Learn more about Gillian:



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

There are plenty of great reasons to want to increase your prices, and I’m guessing you’ve thought of a few of them.

There are also plenty of concerns you might have about the process.

If those concerns are holding you back, this is the episode for you.

We’ll talk about reasons to raise your prices, why you haven’t done it yet, and I’ll share the secret to confidently raising your prices and executing the changes in your business.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How to balance raising your prices with a possible loss in overall sales
• Practical concerns around raising your prices, and one that might be all in your head
• 3 case studies to help you consider your pricing strategy
• The real secret to confidently raising your prices

Learn more about Gillian:



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