Work Less, Earn More

In this episode, I’m going to be sharing a bit of tough love and helping you honestly answer the question, “Is my course ready to scale to six figures?”Because, in my experience, a course simply not being ready is one of the most common reasons that people fail to reach their passive income goals with it.It’s not that they don’t have a good marketing strategy, understand how funnels work, or have a bad course, it’s just that they haven’t yet set their course up to profit.So today, I’m going to talk about how to set up your course for success before you put tons of time and effort into building a funnel.Listen to the full episode to hear:What you need to validate about your course and whyThe three phases of validationHow to use the validation process to prove demand for six aspects your course needs to be ready to scaleHow a price that’s too low can be as much of a deterrent as a price that’s too highLearn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet in touch!Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

What would happen to your business if you suddenly were unavailable, if you couldn’t do the things that you typically do to run your business, generate traffic, and generate leads? What would happen if you suddenly had no capacity to show up on social media and share content?That’s exactly what happened to my longtime friend, Tara Wagner.You might think that she would've seen a huge drop off on the number of leads she was generating, the number of sales she was seeing, and even her monthly revenue. But Tara has figured out strategies for sustaining and building her business without social media.Today, Tara is going to share her experience and insights on these strategies.Tara Wagner is a mindset and business coach who helps other service-based business owners work half as much, without giving up revenue or growth. After burning out in her first business in 2008, she had to learn what it takes to build a healthy business in a healthy way. Today, she teaches other entrepreneurs across the globe the mistakes to avoid, the mindsets to master, and the areas to upgrade for more free time and fun in their small business with her program, Breakthrough Boss® Inner Circle. She lives in Las Vegas, NV with her husband and two pups, and spends her weekends catching up with her grown son's travels or geeking out with a new board game.Listen to the full episode to hear:Why you should take a hard look at the amount of time you spend on social media and the number of clients you can actually trace back to itHow Tara uses content, connections, and advertising in her businessWhy Tara recommends getting confident in selling one-to-one before you try to scale up with contentLearn more about Tara Wagner:WebsiteYouTubeReversing Small Business Burnout ChecklistLearn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet in touch!Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

In this episode, we’re going to cover three unfortunate mistakes most people make when trying to build passive income funnels. Mistakes that don’t just reduce the success of a funnel, they can completely cripple it and stop it from ever generating any revenue at all.Obviously you’ll want to avoid these mistakes but not just because they can cost you potential income. Building a flawed funnel is also a massive waste of time. And while we can always make more money, your time is a non-renewable resource. Time is the one thing you have a fixed amount of and can never get back once it’s spent. So avoiding wasting time needs to be one of our highest priorities with any business strategy decision.My goal for this episode is to bring these potential mistakes to your awareness, because that’s the first step to avoiding or solving any problem.If you haven’t started out yet, knowing what to look for and avoid will help you take a better route. Or, if you’ve already started, but gotten stuck, understanding these mistakes will enable you to diagnose why you aren’t getting the results you want. Specifically, why your funnel isn’t generating tens of thousands of dollars of passive income every month.Listen to the full episode to hear:Two big reasons why you need to validate your idea before you pour your time into building a funnelWhy you need an evergreen lead generation system for your evergreen funnelWhy your funnel needs to sell potential customers on a Primary Tangible ResultLearn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet in touch!Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

In this episode, we’re going to take a look at evergreen funnels and live launching. These are two different marketing strategies you can use to sell courses online. Both evergreen funnels and live launching can effectively be used to sell hundreds of thousands (even millions!) of dollars for an online course. And to this day, I continue to use both in my business.However, they’re much more effective–and much more profitable–when you use the right one for your situation. And that means choosing the right strategy both for your product and for your personal goals.Listen to the full episode to hear:How a live launching uses discounts or limited availability to incentivize buyersThe potential downsides of using limited-time offers on your productsHow to use evergreen funnels to combine live launching and steady sellingWhy I still use both strategies in my businessWhy evergreen funnels aren’t always effective at getting sales for new businessesLearn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet in touch!Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

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 businessThe strategies I used to grow my YouTube audience and my email listWhy I hosted live workshops on a variety of topics for the first five months of the yearHow I used content I had already created to support the launch of Startup SocietyThe real numbers that brought me over the 100K markLearn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet 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 TrackHow the “show up” sequence boosts workshop attendanceHow the “win-win” webinar method works to convert leadsTwo email sequences to take customers from “not yet” to “yes”Learn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet 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 ideaWhy you should date your ideas before you commit to marrying one of themHow giving yourself total freedom can actually help you nail down your nicheLearn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet in touch!Instagram: @GillianZPerkinsResources: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 babiesHow my third pregnancy pushed me to finally get moving on generating passive incomeWhy I batch plenty of content before going on maternity leaveLearn more about Gillian:100K MastermindSmall Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet 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 outHow to layer monetization strategies to raise your income fasterPros and cons of affiliate marketing and sponsorshipsLearn more about Gillian:Small Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet 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 wheelHow to clarify the client and consumer for your workThe best platform for marketing to corporate clientsFive steps to creating a list of prospects to reach out toLearn more about Ruth-Joy Connell:RJC Consulting GlobalLearn more about Gillian:Small Business 101Startup SocietyGet on the waitlist for VALIDATEProfit Planning ChallengeGet in touch!Instagram: @GillianZPerkinsResources:The Ultimate Guide on How to Find your First or Next Corporate Client