[Transcript starts at 0:40]
Hello, hello, hello. My podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet a another episode of my a favorite online business podcast. If you are listening, tuning in watching this on the day that it drops. It is Monday, November 10th. I was looking at. I'm like, wait, that's the wrong date. No, Monday, November 10th, and today we're talking about realistic expectations for online business.
This might end up being a little bit of a longer episode based on how long this outline is. Uh, and I'm not mad about it 'cause I got things to say. Uh, we are actually, before we get into that, this is episode six 90. Would you believe it that we're not gonna make it to 700 this year? There's not enough week.
Nothing enough. Mondays left. We will make it to 6 97. In 2025 and then, we'll, we will hit episode 700, uh, three weeks into January of 2026 is wild man. Times be be flying. But speaking of time, right? We are in such a weird time right now, uh, especially kind of as it relates to everything, but, you know, thinking about this online business and that quote, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times to really be hidden right now, right?
With that. My excitement about things is also in a very weird place, right? Like, I want to help people, I wanna help you people, you find folks. But also put my glasses on here. Also, online business, real talk. Online business doesn't like. Super duper excite me, right? I'm gonna always keep it a hundred with, with y'all.
It's not a burning passion that I have. Um, but on the flip side, there is so much fucking bullshit out there with all these fucking greedy ass, whack ass business coaches. Uh, and so that's presently the bigger driver for me as it relates to online business. Right. I know that in saying that, I definitely wanna run the risk of, you know, anti positioning marketing, where it's just like, I am not this, I don't stand, I no, I don't stand for this where it's, I'm not a fucking boss babe, or a bro chacho marketer.
Um, but y'all also know where I'm rooted. There's my word of the year. I'm rooted in a desire to do it better. Biggest name, their biggest fray term we talked about in episode 6 88. We will link that. Thank you, Courtney. Thank you Joe. Uh, which is regenerative commerce for the win. But I wanna use this episode to give it to you straight as it relates to what to expect when it comes to online business.
Because like I said, you got these whack-a-mole out there that are lying and misguiding and. While it is a weird time to talk about selling things, like the economy isn't ending, it's bad, but it's not bad. And it is this behemoth and people are still buying things and people are still selling things. And if you wanna be selling things, there's nothing wrong with that.
Uh, and so I just wanna help folks that are like, Hey, I believe there's a better way to do it. I don't wanna sell my soul. The brochacho and boss babes ain't for me. I got you. Okay, but first, real quick, hold on. I got Rupert in your hair. Hey, knock it off. Leave that in there, Courtney. This is real. This is real recording.
Rupert's in here today, you can't see him, folks. He'll probably come into the camera shortly, but he's, he's on one scratching at the door. Why is he on one? Because it's late. And this is a good segue. I've been gone for the past few days. Lex and I have been gone. Uh, we went to Jill's wedding and that's, that's what I wanna give you an update with or update about before I hop into the episode.
Um, we went to Jill's wedding in Hawaii and it was so fucking, it was so fucking good. Not gonna lie. I'm obsessed with the suit that I wore. If you didn't see it, we will link the Instagram post. Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, Joe. I got it from Twister. Twister. Wow. Twisted Taylor, uh, which is a UK company, and that means that Trump's fucking tariffs.
Hit it was like an extra 90 or a hundred dollars because of that shit. Um, so don't forget, as per always fuck Trump and fuck this whole fucking administration. Not just because of the towers, but 'cause of fucking everything. 'cause they're all the fucking worst. Uh, but back to Jill's wedding, it was in Oahu, specifically the Ritz Carlton Turtle bag.
Would you expect anything less from her? No, we wouldn't. Uh, Alexa and I flew out there on Wednesday morning. We got upgraded all the way to first class. That was fucking dope. Uh, same flight as Jill and Keith and actually a handful of other folks that were attending. We got in that day. 'cause you know you're flying west, which means you gain time, your time travel.
And uh, so we got in at like 11 and we drove to Koloa Koloa, I should pronounced Koloa Ranch. And we did the UTV Raptor tour and it was hands down, one of the top five adventures. Excursions, excursions, ex experiences that I've ever been on, that I've ever had. Like fucking amazing, like 10% of the tour was the Hollywood side of things.
And like what was filmed there, uh, fun fact, less than 1% of Jurassic Park was filmed there. It was the, uh, gal Imus scene when they're running in the fields. Just that one little part. Um. If you haven't seen my stories, I'm sorry. Or if you didn't see my stories, uh, because like we filmed, Nash showed that and they, we got a, I asked LI drove the whole time Lex was filming.
I really wanted of all the things that I really wanted a, a picture of the log that they jump behind and hide when they're in that big field. She did not take a good video of that. It was mostly the ground, but uh, less than 10% of the tour was about the Hollywood side of things, and the rest of it, 90% of it was with the history of the island, and it was so fucking good.
Our tour guides were Sydney and fia. Uh, and they were amazing. They're just a perfect dynamic duo. Sydney was just like, she is something special. And it really was worked well because FIA was like a bit more reserved but still had answers and was fun and kind and welcoming and knowledgeable. And 12 outta 10 recommend it.
Go do it. We did the two hour tour 'cause we got in later three hour tour would've been great, you know, if we had gotten them. Um, but it was. Awesome. Uh, so then that was Wednesday, Thursday, the main thing. We did a, a short hike in the morning called Pillbox Trail, uh, I believe, and then I took Lux for coffee and we met a dude.
From Manhattan Beach there. 'cause he was like, you like those shorts? I had my legend shorts and he works for the company. Um, we also saw him fun fact on Sunday when we came home we saw him at LAX Small world. Right. Um, but took l for coffee s sort thing and wound up getting shaved ice. There, there was like a, a series of like, you know, little, uh, what do you wanna call them?
Food trucks. Um, so we got Shave Ice from there 'cause it was convenient and it was amazing. Best I've ever had. We actually went back the next day and the following day, so that was on Thursday. We got up, we went back on Friday and we went back on Saturday. We would've gone back on Sunday, but we flew out at eight o'clock in the morning.
Um, but it was amazing. We also went to the Tide pool in that area. It's in Sharks Cove. Um, there's called a bunch of little fish. It was awesome. Friday was the actual wedding and it was great. Small wedding, like 30 something people. And I knew everybody because it was small. I knew her. I know her family and you know, Jill's my best friend.
And it was just awesome. It was so awesome, and it's, it's obviously just so great getting to celebrate your best friend and, and watching them be so happy and do that in such a dope place. Um, and I will say that Hawaii grew on me a bit. I went back in like 20 19, 28, 20, 20 19. I went to Oahu and Kauai, and I found it to be nice, but very wet.
There's lots of chickens, which is fine. Nothing thing against chickens. There's lots of chickens this time too. Um, but I just, you know, feel like the locals don't want you there. Understandable. I don't want us here. Um, mainly I think it just didn't live up the, to the hype that everyone had around it. And it still isn't my like, number one place to go, but definitely have really nice memories.
There now. Um, and it was a really good time, so it was fucking great. I'm super happy for Jill. And speaking of Jill, good segue here. She's the online business extraordinaire, which is the segue I'm gonna use for today's topic, today's main topic, which is realistic expectations for online business. So again, the brochacho, the boss babes, the big hats, they're all out there spitting the bullshit and.
Quite frankly, there's a better way, and that better way starts with transparency. I've been doing this, you know, front facing my business for five years now. I have helped many, many people. I have seen many, many things. I've gone through it many, many times, and I wanna share with you what. I have learned and what I know to be true.
So starting off, how long does it take to be successful? Obviously, success is subjective and I think it's super important that you define success for yourself as a starting point, so you know your enough expectation. Realistic expectation. Management wise. Not everyone who plays the game gets to win the game as it stands.
As is the case for any businesses that adhere to the traditional extractive capitalistic model. It's a bit of a fucking pyramid scheme, and you end up with a few folks at the top having a lot and everyone else competing for a little while. The folks at the top. Tell the folks down below that there is in fact plenty to go around.
So the question is, is there actually enough to go around? And I think that it depends, it depends on the niche, and that's from a customer perspective. Like just how many people want this service that you offer. Is it enough to sustain what you wanna be doing? I don't know. You have to do the market research there.
Um, part of that also will depend on how early you are to that niche, because there could be not that many people, but it could be enough to sustain, especially if you're, you know, first to market and you're the best at what you do. Um, when I was writing this, this outline out, I was gonna add that it depends on the other people in your niche, but.
I very much believe in Second Chance sales where people come back around after going to someone else, um, where they sometimes get burned or they just, like that person couldn't get them the results. Um, so like, yeah, it kind of matters who else is there, but also I don't think it. You know, I think there's something to be said.
I know I just said that it's a pyramid scheme, and I use this, you know, people at the top, but I'm gonna use another analogy here, which is a mountain, and there is always room at the top of the mountain. Meaning for people are just better at this thing and, and getting the results for people. Uh, there's just, there's objectively, there's room, right?
So the expectation management piece, right? Realistic expectation here is that not everyone who plays will. It's just, I need to put it out there. So how do you set yourself up for success? Give yourself the best chance at at winning and succeeding. Main thing here, don't burn the ships, right? Give or create yourself a financial safety net.
This is something that I stay preaching and teaching and this is my own path. I was working for rock tape treating in person as I grew my online business. I started online stuff when I was still in person. In New York City, I started putting content out when I was still in person in New York City treating in a full-time PT gig right before I even had the rock tape job.
Social media and posting social media is what actually helped me get the rock tape job right. I went fully online in 2020. I stepped back from treating in 2018 and then stepped back from all my teaching in person in 2020. Largely thanks to COVID, right? But from 2018 to 2020, the majority of my income was from rock tape before then.
It was from physical therapy and rock tape, right? So I started in rock tape in 2015, started as a PT in 2010, right? So you see, I had baseline income there. And some of that income after 2018 was from my own in-person courses that I was running, right? I had the financial safety net and support and security to allow my social media presence to grow.
I didn't need my posts to do well. I wasn't even trying to start an online business when I first did launch something, when I, when I did my first launch, it was breathing with the maestro and it was a $25,000 launch, which is fairly unheard of, and I. Always want transparency, but as I was writing this outline, I was like, where do I stick that in because I don't wanna lead with that.
And then people would be like, oh, okay. Like that is not typical. Right? But I had been showing up online for four years every day, providing value, sharing posts, and not asking for a single sale. Even once I did launch that online course, I was still doing in-person teaching and that was my main source of income.
I didn't need the online thing to work out. I wanted it to work out, but I didn't need it to work out. There was no stress, no pressure, no urgency, and that makes a huge fucking difference when you're going into this online business thing or any business thing. Any business venture. I have spoken about this in previous episodes.
Um, but so many of the business that we hear about, so many of the businesses that we hear about, the big names especially, or including them, they spend years in the red before turning a profit, right? They're floated by investors and seed money. Amazon, one of my favorite examples to use, fuck them, by the way.
Lost 90% of its market value in the.com crash, 90%. It took nine years from the time Amazon launched for it to post a profitable year, nine years. People out here doing this for nine days and they're like, I didn't make any money. Nine months. I didn't make any money. Nine years. Right. On a smaller scale, I brought my girl cadence in to talk to the mafia quite a few months ago.
She's, I've spoken, spoken about her before. She's a Pilates studio owner in Brooklyn, and she spoke about how she got a, you know, got to peek behind the Pilates, the proverbial Pilates curtain. Proverbial Pilates studio curtain and saw how many studios were being floated by rich husbands, not by the the patrons coming through, right?
The expectation management piece here, right? The realistic expectations don't burn the ships, have financial safety nets and other streams of revenue in place so that your online business doesn't need to succeed in order for you to eat. Okay? How long do you have to have these things in place? How long will it take?
Right. What's the actual answer? I, I started it earlier and I didn't fully answer it. It takes as long as it takes, right? I always like to say though, and this is something I picked up from the online space, it was a quote that I read once, judge your progress in terms of 18 months spans and you'll never be disappointed.
Right. And this is just the timeframe to start getting traction. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna super successful in 18 months, or like, everything's gonna change. It's just like, Hey, I like this. I could keep going. Alright, if I headed my way. The first 12 months minimum would be spent just sharing content, building your brand, just giving and not asking for anything.
The longer you can make that runway, the better. I, I would say a minimum of 12 months. I know people don't wanna hear that, but that's what I would suggest. I So overall, we're looking at 18 months of consistent concerted effort in a single singular direction before making any decisions about anything, should you pivot and try something else?
Right. In general, let's summarize that. The realistic expectation management piece. Judge your progress in 18 months spans, but give it three to five years before you start venturing into traditional success territory, right? AKA turning a profit, it will take time. When should you launch when people are asking you things?
Until then, I wouldn't fucking launch anything. Like I said, I, I'd love to know if you had a 12 month minimum of just content. I'd love it to be longer. Mine was four years. Alright, wait to create. Simon Sinek says it. Don't find people for your product. Create a product for your people. Attract the people first.
How? With content free content. Social media, a podcast newsletter, all the things writing value. Then you listen. What are they talking about? What's resonating? Then you ask questions. Then you listen and you're like, all right, cool. We're heading in this direction. Then you ask if they want the thing that you are thinking about creating.
Then you listen. If they say, no, you don't fucking build it. You don't make it. You don't launch it. If they say yes, cool, then you create the thing. It's actually very straightforward. There are too many people that are launching shit based on hope, based on having no interest, and then they're like, ah, no one's buying.
Should I keep the cart open? And it's like, that's not gonna make any more. People buy it. They don't want it, right? It's a very predictable order of operations. Here. Wait to create my first launch did as well as it did because I waited a long ass time, right? While providing content, providing value. I listened.
I chose breathing with a maestro 'cause that's what all the questions were about. That's what was really a popular topic, and I liked it as well. I asked them if they were interested and if they wanted me to build this, and they said yes, and then I had them help me build it. That is why it did so well.
Right, so the expectation management piece here, realistic expectations wait to create. Don't launch anything until your people are asking you questions. There is no timeline for this that I can tell you, but again, gauge your progress in 18 month spans, and you'll never be disappointed.
So what happens when you launch, right? You've waited, you listened, you put the content out, you attracted the people, attracted the audience. You asked the questions, you listened. They said yes, and now you're gonna launch. What now? There is predictability and it's time for some math, so write the shit down and remember that no one not, I mean, no one is above the conversion rates, right?
For those numbers, we're gonna come back to say what they mean, but you can write 'em down first. One to 5% for cold traffic, five to 10% for warm traffic, 10 to 15% for your wait list. It sounded weird. I said like for 10 to 15% for your wait list. Okay, one more time. One to 5% for cold traffic. Five to 10% for warm traffic.
10 to 15% for wait. List traffic. We'll call it. Wait. List traffic. These are conversion rates. AKA. How many sales you can reasonably expect based on who you're selling to. I calculate it. This does presuppose some sort of corralled attention, meaning that these people have raised their hand in some way, shape or form and said, I'm interested in the thing that you're selling.
I'm interested in that. You're talking about typically the selling mechanism. Uh, as we talk about cold traffic and warm traffic, that's going to be a timely lead magnet. That is Jill's expertise is how she loves to sell. I don't really like selling that way, but. I can help you with it. I understand it and I'm gonna teach you about it now.
So typically that selling mechanism that corrals the attention can be some sort of timely lead magnet, whether it's a challenge or um, a webinar workshop, something like that. That's gonna be the lead magnet. And at the end of that thing, that experience, you sell them into the full offer. Cold traffic would be people that come in to register for that experience, and they come from ads, right?
That converts at one to 5%, which makes sense. It's the lowest conversion rate. They don't know you. They came in for this free thing, or maybe it's a paid one, uh, but typically with these numbers, looking at it that it's a free thing, they don't really know you. Warm traffic is traffic from your audience, right?
So this is people that sign up for this lead magnet. People that sign up for this workshop, they sign up for the challenge. They're already in your audience. That typically converts at five to 10%, which makes sense. You got more trust. They more familiarity wait lists, which is my favorite way of selling or interest list, whatever makes more sense to your people.
This is where you specifically get people on a wait list or interest list for the thing that you're selling. There's no experience before. It's like, Hey, the I, I do 'em all the time on here, right? It's like, hey, the intensive is coming. Not anymore because it's done. Press publishers coming. Get on the interest list.
That typically converts at 10 to 15%. Uh, all of this also depends on how you actually sell a k, how much you're promoting the thing, what, like to this audience, how many emails, how many posts, how are you talking about it? How are you running the lead magnet, right? Those things factor in and kind of move you within those, uh, within the, the range of those, those conversion rates.
So expectation. Management wise, this is so important and people fight me on it. They fight me and Jill on it, and I don't know why. 'cause it holds true. It it, the math is math. Realistic expectation management wise as it relates to launching. Right. And we're looking at these conversion rates. If by the grace of the goddess and in all the goddesses, you are able to get 100 people into your lead magnet, into your challenge, into your workshop.
If those people came from ads, something in my eye, if those people came from ads, expect one to five sales because cold traffic converts at one to 5%. I know you're looking at me like, what the fuck? What? It's the truth people be people in if. You get a 100 people into your lead magnet, and they are from your current audience, they're from your email list, they're from your social media that they've already been following you, you can expect five to 10 sales out of that, out of those 100 people, right?
Because warm traffic converts at five to 10%. If you build a wait list for this offer and you manage. By the grace of the goddesses to get 100 people on that wait list, you can typically expect 10 to 15 sales because wait lists convert at 10 to 15%. Does it feel low? Maybe. Maybe it does, but people be, people in and the mathy math in Additionally, I used 100 because it's an easy number to do the conversion rates with, but it's by no means.
An easy task to get 100 people onto the the wait list or into the lead magnet. There's a lot of people, right? So I'll have folks that are like, I wanna make $30,000, because it becomes math. You just reverse engineer things, right? I wanna make $30,000 or $20,000 on this launch, or $10,000 in this launch, right?
And it's a hundred dollars offer. We're gonna do simple math here. Right. They wanna make $10,000. It's a hundred dollars, uh, offer. Right? Which means they need what? A hundred people That in mind we're like, oh, that's not that bad. It is. It's a lot of people. We start to see if we're selling to a wait list and I need a hundred people to buy in order to hit my goal of $10,000, that means.
You're doing the ma um, hopefully you're starting to do the mass as we sit here. That means that you need a thousand people on that list. That's a lot of people, right? Because it converts at 10 to 15%. So on the low end, then you would hit a hundred sales. If you had a thousand people on there and you converted at 10%, then you would get 100 sales.
If each person paid $100, that would be your $10,000. We start to see now like, oh, we need a lot more people. Right? It's, it's not as easy as these bro chacho marketers and these bosse marketers will make it out to be of just like, okay, we'll just like get a thousand people and like that's in control for $5.
It doesn't work like that. The math, maths, but not their math. Their math is fucking made up. Their math is easy math, and it's just simple multiplication, right? But it's not what you're actually gonna see. We started getting into the percentage of these conversion rates. This shit holds true, right? So if you go into your launches with these conversion rates memorized, you will be managing your expectations.
Well, I promise there will be no surprises. And that's it. That is literally it. That is what I consider to be the most important. Those things are what I consider to be the most important when it comes to realistic expectations for online business. Alright, the traditional approach to, let's, let's run through them again.
'cause let's summarize right. Let's close the loop of learning. First off, not everybody who plays the game gets to win. The traditional approach to online business is a fucking pyramid scheme, so keep that in mind. It doesn't have to be, but if you go into the traditional approach, traditional business coaching, that's what you're gonna fucking get next.
Gauge your progress in 18 month spans, but. Give it three to five years before you realistically start to see yourself venturing in traditional into traditional success territory, AKA, turning a profit. It will take time. Next one, don't burn the ships. Have financial safety nets and other streams of revenue in place so that your online business doesn't need to succeed in order for you to eat.
Next, wait to create. Don't launch anything until your people are asking you. Questions. Okay. If, if they ain't asking you anything and you create it and no one buys anything, don't come crying to me. Okay? It's predictable. Lastly, once your people do start asking you things and you go to launch, remember these numbers and remember that no one is above the conversion rates.
One to 5% for cold traffic, five to 10% for warm traffic, 10 to 15% for weightless traffic. I, I know that I opened this episode with a bit of anti positioning, marketing, and highlighting that online business isn't my burning passion, but I do have some fucking fight left in me to combat what the boss babes and brochacho marketers are out there spewing.
It's just online business does have predictability to it. But traditional success, AKA financial success, success is far from guaranteed. Right? There are, however better ways to go about setting yourself up to possibly succeed. And I have done my best, at least I, I believe I have done my best in this outline, uh, excuse me, in this outline in this episode, to outline and present you with realistic expectations for online business.
Um, so for those of you looking for help in the online business world, I've got a few options and I'd be remiss if I didn't share them. Someone fucking share them. If you want a deeper dive into the foundations of online business, basically everything I just talked about, but like deeper dive with things, where to start, who should you launch on something, what should you start with?
I have a completely free 90 minute training. I'm 100% free. Um, you need to give me your email address 'cause you have to sign up for the fucking thing. Um, but we will link that in the show notes. Uh, it's called the f and f Training Foundations of Fundamentals, if you're looking for self-paced trainings, um, on any of the various aspects of running an online business, email, marketing, webinars, creating webinars, creating and running, and and launching webinars, creating online courses, audio visual improvements.
Any of the things. I have trainings for pretty much everything, um, and they're all very inexpensive, so we will link those below just the main page where all them are housed. Worth noting. Cyber Mistro Monday is coming up. Uh, what is the date of that? Uh, November 30th. No. Just kidding. Don't know anything December 1st.
Uh, so maybe you wanna wait till then. We can go check 'em out though. And then I'm gonna put everything on sale. Uh, so maybe wait till then. Um, if you want one-on-one guidance for your specific circumstances, whether you're just starting out and want some guidance and directions, or if you've been at it for a bit and want.
Guidance, um, and structure for, and strategy for launching. Um, I do that quite often with people. Um. I offer 60 minute coaching sessions, and they're called my show meetings. There are $497. You can check out the details. I we put the link in the show notes. Everything is, is, is written out there. If you have any questions, uh, you can submit a, a custom, that's literally what the button says.
Submit a request, submit a custom inquiry. Uh, I'm happy to get back to you. Um, but that is if you want one-on-one, you want my eyes. On your business. That is how you do it. Um, and then lastly, if you are a brick and mortar business owner and you want help launching your first online offer and moving the online space, check out the lecture mind.
Uh, it is a year long coaching program that I run with Lex. Uh, it is small group. Very small group. We limited to 10 people, eight to 10 people. Um, it really just depends and, uh, all the details can be found on the information page. We are launching round a three in December, so get on the interest list. We only launch it to the interest list.
Um. It's a long program. Like it's not some type of thing that someone's gonna like stumble on it on in, on Instagram and be like, I wanna buy this. Um, so we sell it to only the folks on the interest list. Uh, so check out the info page. I will link it and then if it makes sense, add your name to the interest list.
It's no obligation to register, it's just guarantees that you'll have access to actually apply. Um, alright. Those would be my offers. We can wrap it up. There is. Hopefully I've shown you with the episode and with my offers that there is a better way to do online business, and if you want help, I'm happy to help you out with it.
Alright? Alright. That now is officially it. This is a fun episode today. Hopefully you found it helpful, as always, appreciative for every single one of you. Until next time, friends Maestro. Out.
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