Work Less, Earn More

Sometimes, the truth can be hard to swallow…

But knowing the truth empowers us to make the best decisions.

Here’s one of those truths: if you’re building an audience online, only 2% of your audience will EVER buy from you.

This goes whether you have 100 followers on IG, a million email subscribers, or anything in between.

Of course, we can work on improving that percentage, but we’ll never be able to change the fact that MOST of our audience just follows us for the free stuff.

And that’s okay! In fact, it’s a good thing, because it means we can impact the lives of a far greater number of people than those who are actually interested in pulling out their credit card.

BUT, it also means that if we want to increase our sales, then we NEED to prioritize growing our audiences.

(Yes, you 100% can be successful with a small audience… but you can be even more successful if you can reach more people.)

Social media is a great place to get exposure and reach new people, but we all know that email subscribers are the crème de la crème of an online audience, because those are the people you can reach most directly + predictably.

(Meaning… no need cross your fingers and HOPE an algorithm cooperates!)

In this week’s podcast, I share three email list growth strategies… and these aren’t just random strategies that sound good. These are the strategies that consistently WORK and have grown my email list to 98,000 subscribers.

(We’re currently adding 8,000 new subscribers every month with these tactics!)

I know what it’s like to wonder WHY your list isn’t growing; and maybe even to feel like you’re the only one. For the first several years of trying to grow my list, I really struggled:

These were the tactics that finally made the difference, and I want to share them with you.

Listen to the episode now (or download for later!) and start growing your email list a lot more quickly.

There’s no reason to keep struggling when the tools are available. I KNOW you can do this once you know-how!

Here’s to your success!

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Learn more about Gillian:

Resources mentioned in this episode:

A few weeks ago, I gave my Instagram account a good clean out. I unfollowed a couple hundred accounts that weren’t really what I wanted or needed in my life right now.

Goal: to see more of the things I really care about!

The next day, as I scrolled through my feed, I saw a post from my friend Lucy.

Hey, it’s Lucy!, I said to myself. Man, I haven’t seen her in forever. I wonder how she’s been! What’s she up to these days, anyway…?

I tapped on her profile pic to navigate to her bio.

::reading bio::

Wait, what?!

She sold Thirty THOUSAND courses??

That, my friend, is a LOT of courses.

Naturally, I DMed Lucy straight-away to ask her to come on the podcast and tell us her strategy.

(I may or may not have been super curious to know myself.)

The story gets even better, though, because once we got on the phone, I learned that not only had she sold 30,000 courses… she’d done it in just 18 months.

If you’re as eager as I was to know how she did it, then go listen to the episode now, because it was SO interesting. Lucy explained her whole strategy and really didn’t hold back!

I loved this interview, and if you’re interested in selling online courses then I’m pretty sure you will as well!

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Learn more about Lucy Griffiths:

Learn more about Gillian:

I’ve been a teacher for over 13 years now, and I’m confident this skill is part of my God-given purpose here on earth.

But for the first 8+ years of teaching, I didn’t earn a very good living from the work. I was tied down to my local area, my calendar was crammed with lessons, and I was barely able to support my family.

Eventually, I scaled my local business and things got a bit better -- but it still felt like an uphill battle. This was one of the key motivators for starting my online business: I wanted to work from wherever (be that my living room, the local Starbucks, or a Parisian café) and on my own schedule.

So when I learned about “membership sites” for the first time… I immediately knew I was interested.

A membership site would allow me to use my teaching gifts to have a positive impact on the lives of others while at the same time maximizing -- and stabilizing -- my profits by creating monthly recurring revenue.

Sign me UP!

It took a few years to figure out how to start a membership, what I’d teach, and who it would be for -- but eventually, I got it off the ground, and today my membership program is my businesses’ main source of revenue!

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Learn more about Gillian:

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Every month, I’m peeling back the curtain and sharing the ins & outs of my monthly revenue.

These income reports are an in-depth and honest look at how much my business earned, what it cost, and how many hours it took me to do it.

It’s now October and it’s been two months since I returned from taking the summer off for maternity leave—and September’s income report shows that things are still trending downward which means it’s prime time to make some moves to change this and start, once again, growing!

(By the way, if you happen to be in a “descent” yourself, know that this is a natural part of the cycle of growth. Two steps forward, one step back is a very healthy and normal pattern. To try to force things to constantly spiral upward is unrealistic, ultimately impossible, and will only lead to stress.)

As always, I’ll also share which tasks and projects really ended up paying me best so that you can see how I’m optimizing my business so that I can work less and earn more over time. Plus, you’ll get a time report, breaking down the time I spend on each activity and how that created a financial result (or not).

I hope that you’ll be able to learn from my trial and error, as I work to grow my business, my impact, and my income––all while keeping clear boundaries on my time and personal life.

Today, we’re looking back on September 2020.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Links:

Creating content is hands down the MOST time-consuming work I do each week. Writing blog articles, filming videos, recording podcasts, posting on Instagram… the list could go on.

As a digital entrepreneur, you get it. Content creation is time consuming… and our TIME is limited.

But—and a big one at that!—content marketing works so well.

That’s why it’s so important to create helpful videos, articles and other content is the perfect way to attract your target customers.

What’s to be done??

Allow me to introduce Lacy Boggs, my guest on today’s episode. Lacy runs The Content Direction Agency, a multi-six-figure content market agency. If you and I think we have a “content creation as opposed to time available” ratio problem… let me tell you… Lacy has it way worse. That’s because a whole roster of clients depends on her small team to create their content.

Naturally, Lacy’s figured out a few tricks to maximize content-creation-efficiency so they can keep man-hours down and productivity up.

Regardless of the size of your team—though especially if you’re a solopreneur—you’ll find her hack and systems effective to do the same in your company.

What does this mean? You can get MORE visibility, attract MORE leads, and close MORE sales—all without working more at all.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Learn more about Lacy Boggs:

Learn more about Gillian:

If you started your company, then most likely you are a VISIONARY leader. That's a unique gift! But we all have our strengths and weaknesses, and you might need "another half" that you don't even know you're missing.

That other half is called an INTEGRATOR.

Many visionary entrepreneurs have one behind the scenes—think Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors, and Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, who both had operations managers. The visionary sets their sights on the vision and the integrators are the people who actually put these dreams and these plans into action.

In fact, I have an integrator here at Gillian Perkins International—and I’m going to share how I found Cortni, what she does in the business, and how it’s impacted the business and so much more in this episode all about integrators.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Learn more about Gillian

Resources mentioned in this episode

Imagine this: you can be a totally lazy entrepreneur yet create amazing, high-quality work and accomplish everything you want in business—and more.

And I don’t mean lazy in a negative way. I actually consider myself a pretty lazy person. Yet given the current hustle culture, being a lazy entrepreneur probably sounds hilarious at best and an impossibility at worse.

So how on earth can you be a successful entrepreneur and be lazy at the same time?

Most importantly, creating high-quality work is at the top. Being smart about where you spend your time is key, too. And, sometimes, running Facebook ads is the most efficient way to engage potential customers and sell your work.

In this episode, I’m chatting with Claire Pelletreau who is a self-proclaimed lazy entrepreneur. She’s also a Facebook and Instagram ad consultant, teacher, conversion optimization expert, and creator of Absolute FB Ads.

Claire spends her days writing about Facebook and Instagram ads, troubleshooting ad problems with her students, and managing campaigns for 7 and 8 figure business owners. She specializes in Facebook and Instagram ads that sell online courses and programs, but she’ll happily geek out with you on ways to test advertising for any type of business.

Claire also LOVES talking about money—profit, loss, the whole shebang. She asks her guests how much they charge—and how much they earn—on her show, the Get Paid Podcast.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Learn more about Claire Pelletreau:

Learn more about Gillian:

Other resources from this episode:

Natalie Taylor from The Missing Ink

Every month, I’m peeling back the curtain and sharing the ins & outs of my monthly revenue.

These income reports are an in-depth and honest look at how much my business earned, what it cost, and how many hours it took me to do it.

I’ll also share which tasks and projects really ended up paying me best so that you can see how I’m optimizing my business so that I can work less and earn more over time. Plus, you’ll get a time report, breaking down the time I spend on each activity and how that created a financial result (or not).

I hope that you’ll be able to learn from my trial and error, as I work to grow my business, my impact, and my income––all while keeping clear boundaries on my time and personal life.

Today, we’re looking back on August 2020.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Links:

Resources Mentioned:

It can be SO frustrating to start a business, put in the work, and still not make any money.

I get it: it took me a few years of trying before I finally “broke through” and starting making money with my online business. I recently shared a video on my YouTube channel about how I took my blog and business from $0 to $100,000 in revenue in 12 months. But, in the video, I made it extremely clear that those 12 months were not the first twelve months in business.

In fact, I’d already invested a few years into trying to grow my business, trying to make money online, and, in all honesty, completely failing and essentially making $0.

So what changed between now and then?

It wasn’t that my hard work finally paid off, even though that’s a common story you hear among the small business world. Instead, I changed some key things in my business that led to that financial success.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Links:

Globally, there are over one million podcasts available—and growing! That is a HUGE number of podcasts.

Given the continuous growth of this industry, it’s no wonder that you’re considering creating one—or want to learn how to make your existing podcast even better than it is now.

There are countless resources available on HOW to start a podcast. That’s why I wanted to take a different approach with this episode and instead explore what determines the success of a podcast, how hosting a podcast impacts your business, and how you can make the most impact on your listeners.

Podcasting is relatively new to me and so that’s why I invited someone on the show who’s been in the game for awhile—someone who could share how to create a podcast that will not only be effective in terms of downloads and listeners, but will actually influence your business and revenue, too.

Tara McMullin is the host of the What Works podcast, founder of the What Works Network, and the co-founder of Yellow House Media. She’s been helping small business owners find what works for them for over a decade. Her goal is to push past the hype and facilitate candid conversations about doing business in the New Economy.

In this episode, Tara’s going to divulge all the ways in which we can make an impact in our communities through podcasting and so much more.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Learn more about Tara McMullin:

Learn more about Gillian:

Other resources from this episode: