Building your own online business should not be difficult.

If you are a heart-centered, multi-passionate entrepreneur, follow my 6-Step Roadmap. I share how to start building your own successful online business. Use this Roadmap to also attract your ideal clients, turn your creativity, passions and purpose into profits.

There are various proven steps you can follow to guarantee your online success.

Especially when you are starting an online business. Many guru’s and experts will confirm that there is not only one specific plan for building a successful online business. As a result, I have seen thousands of people start and grow a successful online business by starting here:

1. Find a need you can fulfill with your passion, purpose or creativity
2. Get your voice out there and create content that captivates your audience
3. Design your platforms and touch points so your audience can reach you
4. Build a user-centered website and use SEO to drive the right traffic to your site
5. Create your brand personality, message, voice and establish an online presence
6. Offer FREE lead magnets that will help your reputation as an expert and give value to your audience
7. Set up automated funnels to help increase your income, nurture your audience and grow your online presence

If you are new to the online world, you can definitely benefit from the process above. Most certainly, even seasoned online entrepreneurs can enhance their online presence by following the above steps.

NOTE: To make it easier to implement these steps, I created a mini-course that will help you start your online business without the overwhelm.

It is specifically designed for heart-centered, aspiring multi-passionate entrepreneurs, like yourself, to help you build a successful online business.

Looking at the above steps, you can see there are a lot that goes into building an online business. If you are new to the game of online success, it can surely be overwhelming. Even confusing and hard to know where to start.

Should you start with developing your product first?

rather identifying your target or ideal client first?

Perhaps you think you should first build your website?

maybe an online social presence?

So many choices could easily lead to quitting before even you even get started!

But this is why I am here!

I will guide you step-by-step on how to build an online business inside my free mini-course

Not only have I done this (successfully) but I have also helped many entrepreneurs. I help you discover your “zone of genius” and share it with the world.

As a solo entrepreneur for more than 16 years, I built 3 businesses with these exact strategies. I am teaching my students & clients these strategies inside my business membership. I have taken what worked, what did not work well and what could work better and created a mini-course or complete Roadmap.

This Roadmap is a 6-Step Business Course and really helps with reducing the overwhelm of starting an online business.

First, let’s define what it means to Build an Online Business:

An Online Business means you either have a

• digital product for download,
• a subscription service,
• an online shop with delivery solutions,
• a digital service like coaching, or
• a monetized blog with affiliated links

Choosing the right type of Online Business means it should be aligned with

• your skills,
• expertise,
• passions,
• purpose or “zone of genius”,
• vision and goals

TIP: Digital services, products, solutions, coaching or blogging should fulfill a need in the market.

Therefore, it will be a successful, profitable business and not just a side hustle or a hobby

Your choice of

• an online service,
• n online service,
• a digital product,
• a virtual sol
• a digital product,
• a virtual solution,
• online coaching or
• monetized blogging

should attract the right clients/customers you would like to work with (your ideal audience)

An Online Business should build a brand identity, either a personal brand (yourself) or a business brand (a registered entity) to stand out online and attract your ideal audience

Digital Businesses use a website as it’s main “shop front” to operate from. In other words, it helps direct interested followers into regular buyers by offering specific solutions for each touch point during the customer journey.

Starting an online business requires the help of an expert and sound legal advice.

Unlike any other business, it is less confusing and much easier to manage the compliance side of an online business.

In addition, your online business could also be an extension of a physical business. Always ensure all logistics are carefully handled to avoid confusion .

Like any other business, an online business requires a developed marketing strategy to ensure

• visibility,
• profitability and
• growth

Now that you understand the definition of an Online Business, let’s look at what it means BUILDING an online business.

My Complete Roadmap is a mini-course created to help you understand

• where to start,
• what to focus on first and
• the order of the steps

when you want to start building your own Online Business:

Follow this 6-Steps B.O.S.S Framework

• Step 1 – Your Plan

• You first need to clarify your own desires.
• In other words, get clear on your vision and goals for your online business.
• Having the right mindset, paired with a vision of what your business will do and who it will serve will help you craft the right plan to reach your business goals.
• Brainstorm all your business ideas that aligns with your passions, talents and gifts. Above all, find the reason WHY you want to pursue this idea. Getting to know WHO will be interested in buying your “ideas”, help find the answers to WHAT problems you will solve.
• Follow by doing market research to help you understand what defines your brand uniqueness.
• Creating a financial plan helps to predict your expenses. It assists in creating realistic goals and how to reach them by implementing the B.O.S.S Compass.
• The BOSS Compass gives you access to my pricing pillars and pricing formula. It is a complete guideline on how to calculate the best price for your ideal offerings.
• Once you are clear on your WHY, your WHO and your WHAT, you can proceed to choose your HOW.
• Choosing your online business model is necessary to define the legal formation and requirements you need to comply to. Managing your online business can be confusing if you don’t understand the legal and statutory compliance you need to maintain. Invest in expert help here.
• Defining your online business model, will also help clarify your Brand identity. Choosing a personal brand identity will mean your online business model will be operating under your personal name. Registering your online business as a separate entity, your brand identity will be your registered Business name.
• One major decision to help clarify your business goals, visions and core values is defining your business deal breakers. For example, one of my greatest business deal breakers is: “I will not have a physical location or office space for clients as my core business goal is to be as virtual and online as possible so I can reach more people, and enjoy freedom of time and location.”
• Final process in this step is to write down
  • your core business values,
  • an elevator pitch,
  • a vision and mission statement and regularly refer back to them as a guideline in any decision making process.

Building your Brand for your Online Business is just as important as building a profitable business.

• Step 2 – Your Persona

• Nothing will accelerate your growth more than positioning yourself to stand out of the crowd.
• Many new online entrepreneurs miss the importance of their own “magic” or “zone of genius”. As this is the key to building an online Brand or Persona. This positions your Brand as the “go-to” resource in the market.
• Taking the process of defining your business model one step further, you need to focus on defining your Brand. Your Brand Identity is linked to your Business model and this determines how you will show up online.
• Your Persona or Brand name will become your domain name for your website. You will need to register that domain name before you “launch” your brand online.
• The Brand Voice and Brand Communication Style of your Brand is linked to your personal story or “journey”. The very reason why you decided to do this or your WHY. This is essential in creating a Brand message to captivate your ideal clients.
• Creating your Brand Identity includes choosing
  • your Brand Colors,
  • Brand Fonts and
  • a Brand Logo.
• Deciding on a personal brand, you will probably opt-out of choosing a logo and rather use your personal photos. This is a good time to invest in some professional photo shoots for profile pictures and website photos.
• Let’s say you go with a Business Brand, choose to invest in a graphic designer. Graphic Designers help to design your brand logo and a Brand “signature”.
• A successful Brand strategy is just as important as your marketing strategy. Keep it aligned with your business goals and visions, and create your Brand manifesto to keep your brand message aligned.

Choosing your Online Platforms for your Business is key to building future success

• Step 3 – Your Platforms

• When you launch an online business on social media platforms, you do not own any rights on it. You stand the risk of losing your profile should the social media platform decides to terminate your profile or page. This is why it is essential to build a platform that you own, like a website.
• A front-end website and back-end email marketing platform should be your highest priority when choosing a platform for your online business.
• These platforms can be optimized to attract ideal clients, convert them into buyers and nurture them for years to come. This will result in future recurring income.
• Automation and email sequences can help you enhance your nurturing process and promote your offerings on autopilot.
• Social Media Platforms is only a marketing strategy to help you extend your promotions to a wider audience. It helps to grow your following and email subscribers.
• Choosing platforms that aligns with your marketing strategies contributes to growing your online business and provide value for your audience.
• The best social media platforms is where your ideal clients hang out. It is not their job to find you! So make sure you hang out where they do.
• Start by choosing one platform. Learn all you can about the platforms’ strategies. It will make it possible to use this platform to its maximum potential. Find ways to ensure your organic marketing efforts are maximized on this platform.
• Use clever BIO’s to promote yourself and your offerings and lead them into your sales funnel.
• Implement social media tools to help you schedule your content. This way you can stay consistent and in front of mind on this platform.
• Detailed content planning will help you to add value, build authority and share your authenticity on this platform.
• Content captions and clear call-to-actions lead followers into becoming loyal buyers, use this strategically.
• Design your website around your audience and ideal clients, not around you.
• Decide what actions you want your visitors to take and guide them by using touch points. Touch points gets them to the next desired action.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is used to optimize your pages and test all your online processes before launching. Broken links could hurt your rankings. Use free tools like SureOak to help analyze how you can optimize your website.
• Sometimes just a single landing page can help your audience take the desired action. Instead of taking them through all your pages on your website, where they might lose interest before taking any action.
• Ensure you implement an email marketing system that supports your marketing strategy. It should offer automation and sequences for a nurturing strategy.
• Create a welcome sequence for each different action your visitors take.
• Efficient email campaigns can be used to promote your offers, share discounts, launch new offers and nurture your audience.
• Google Analytics is a powerful tool that tracks all your conversions on all your web pages.
• Virtual Communities, like Facebook Groups are a great way to build an online community. Like-minded people engage and sell their unique offerings inside these groups.

Finding and creating profitable offers will ensure the profitability of your online business

• Step 4 – Your Products

• Your offerings or products are the one unique thing that will ensure your online business idea turns into profits.
• Create and design your offers with your audience in mind and ensure it is aligned with your purpose.
• I like to refer to your products or services as your “perfect profitable offer”. Your offer needs to be the thing makes you want to get out of bed and do what you do!
• Discovering your IKIGAI, a Japanese concept, is to help discover what this “thing” is.
• Pricing is just as important as your actual offering. Research competitors and survey your ideal clients to get that “sweet spot” to ensure your ideas turns into profits.
• Once you have your perfect profitable offer, determine your pricing. Then you need a way to receive online payments from your buyers. Your payment structure will determine what solution suits you best. If you choose once off payments, the solutions are less complicated. If you want to offer down payments and discounts, then you need a more complexed payment solution.
• Online payment gate software or cart software should be chosen carefully. Always read the fine print on how much commission is taken per payment. PayPal for instance takes between 2-5% of each online sale. Make sure this is included in your pricing, to avoid errors in predicting your profits.
• Promoting your offers should be planned and mapped out. Using a profit planner can reduce a huge amount of stress. The uncertainty of future profit predictions and expected outcomes can be reduced this way.

Creating Content to promote your profitable offers is vital for the success of any online business

• Step 5 – Your Promotions

• As an online entrepreneur, you probably know by now what the greatest secret is to an online presence? CONTENT! Yes, content is KING!
• Knowing how to leverage your content in a way that drives traffic & conversions, helps you become the authority in your space.
• Content creation should be done strategically to ensure it aligns with your marketing and Brand goals.
• Connection and engagement with your followers or audience is necessary to ensure they get to know, like and trust you.
• Increase your online efforts with my 5C’s Content Method. This method help you develop a content plan with core Topics and Categories.
• Choose a content delivery platform and build from there, for example a Blog. Then re-purpose your blog posts into YouTube videos, Podcast Audio, Social Media Posts etc.
• Always ensure your content are niche specific. To ensure that you are not talking to a crowd but rather to one person in the crowd.
• Block out time in your calendar to create valuable content. Quantity is not the focus here but rather quality content. Use social media tools to help you schedule this content on your social media platforms for evergreen results.
• Develop a social-list building strategy where you can provide free content to get followers. Guide them from the awareness stage to the buying stage of your sales funnel.
• Ensure you track all your performances across all platforms. When you know your numbers you can build better strategies and make the changes required for better outcomes.
• Content is KING but Knowledge is POWER!

Implementing systems, solutions and sales funnels will help your online business remaining profitable

• Step 6 – Your Profits

• Who does not like a steady flow of recurring income into their bank account? I don’t know such a person and I am sure you don’t either.
• Becoming a BRAVE version of yourself, will enable you to do what you love.
• Building a successful online business that helps you reach your dream goals, requires systems. Systems ensure all your efforts are continuously bringing you the outcomes you desire.
• A sales system is a vital part of building a successful online business.
• Passive Income requires “funnels” to channel all your efforts through a “pipe line”. From here it is directed into the desired “buckets” to reach your end goals.
• Basic sales funnels starts at
  • the awareness stage,
  • then interest,
  • consideration,
  • intent,
  • evaluation and
  • only then purchase.
• It is a long road before your prospects become buyers.
• Each stage in a sales funnel requires
  • a system,
  • a strategy and
  • a solution. This is called the Triple S Funnel Hack.
• A flow of processes helps you track your profits.
• By implementing a proper bookkeeping system, you can track, measure and predict your income.
• A budgeting strategy assists predicting your outcomes.
• Automation helps to manage all your sales efforts by implementing the Triple S Funnel Hack.
• Decide on a customer product map to create customer touch points for each stage of your sales funnel.
• Understanding your Financial Freedom Point will help you to track your profit goals and measure your online efforts.
• Implementing different funnels can increase your income and provide a wider range of solutions to your ideal clients. To name a few; a webinar funnel; a book funnel; a digital course funnel etc.
• Start with a simple funnel like a Webinar Funnel.
• By using a basic sales strategy, your prospect will move through the different stages of this funnel to become a buying client.
• The awareness stage can be a social media post about your topic.
• The interest stage will be signing up for your free webinar.
• The consideration stage will be showing up to watch the webinar.
• The intent stage is completing the exercises in the workbook.
• The evaluation stage is asking questions and receiving answers about the webinar’s topic.
• The final stage, purchase will be when your ideal client proceeds to buy your offer you promote in your webinar.
• This type of funnel can be turned into an evergreen webinar solution.
  • The “system” used here is a Webinar Funnel.
  • The “strategy” used here is a Customer Journey Map and
  • The “solution” is turning a live webinar into an evergreen webinar
• It does not matter what type of funnel you use, or how many different strategies you align it with, you would like to use an evergreen solution. This will help you get recurring profits on autopilot.
• Your end goal should be to use my 1-2-3-Profit method.
  • 1 Niche,
  • 2 Offers,
  • 3 Systems
• For every niche you serve, you create:
  • 1 Free Offer and
  • 1 Paid Offer and
  • then use 3 systems to get you to recurring profits.
• The 3 systems I recommend is
  • a proper email marketing system,
  • a content creation and scheduling system and
  • a bookkeeping system.

Are you ready to dive deeper into building an online business?

You are invited to join the B.O.S.S Society. If you are just starting your online journey and you want to seriously up level your game plan, this business membership gives you access to tried and tested online marketing strategies, mindset coaching, and money mastery to help you Build Online Sales Solutions [B.O.S.S] with purpose for profits!

You will also receive valuable online business resources, tools and discounted offers every month & business advice, money & mindset coaching right in your inbox.

Get on the waitlist & JOIN the BOSS Society!

As a member of the B.O.S.S Society, you will gain access to our private online community, Profitable Online Creatives, where networking with like-minded creative entrepreneurs will help you turn your game plans into purposeful profits.

This Blog post is packed with information and to help you take action, you can find access to a FREE Business mini-course here.

See you online!

In this Blog post, we look at the 8 benefits of coaching for entrepreneurs.

Let us define the term Coaching before we look at the benefits of Coaching:

  “Coaching is the act of giving special classes in sports, a school object, or a work-related activity, especially to one person or a small group.”

– According to the Cambridge Dictionary –

According to Google coaching has many definitions – but the definition that really speaks to me is the one found in Wikipedia

Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a coach, supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance

wikipedia

Because of this definition, I strongly believe that EVERY person can benefit from Coaching.

But to be specific, let’s focus on Entrepreneurs who are business owners and driven to reach their goals.

Let’s dive deeper into the 8 Benefits of Coaching for entrepreneurs…

How can entrepreneurs benefit from coaching?

Coaching is an informal relationship between two people. One has more experience and expertise than the other, and offers advice and guidance as the latter learns. Coaching differs from mentoring by focusing on specific tasks or objectives, as opposed to more general goals or overall development.

In my blog post, Key differences between Coaching and Mentoring, we dive deeper into each definition and the benefits of each type of service.

As an Entrepreneur, managing your own business and wanting to do things smarter, you will definitely benefit from any type of Coaching.

8 BENEFITS OF COACHING

1. IMPROVEMENT of your self-confidence and relationships
2. CLARITY on your wishes and goals you would like to reach in your life, business, or projects
3. DEVELOPING the ability to create new solutions and new ideas
4. INCREASING your productivity to improve your work-life balance
5. ACTIONABLE steps to changes create personal development
6. RENEWING your perspectives and insights into yourself
7. BECOMING more accountable get results faster
8. LEARNING how to take advantage of your strengths and resources so it will bring you closer to reaching your goals

The benefits of coaching alone should empower you to choose to hire a coach, but I know not everyone understands how these benefits could make an impact in their lives.

So let’s look at the reasons why you should consider hiring a coach:

10 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD HIRE A COACH

1. If you want to achieve your goals and be successful but you do not know HOW to do it
2. Are you struggling and lacking the self-confidence to do things that move you out of your comfort zones?
3. Do you feel constantly stressed and are going through big transitions in your life, career, or business?
4. Or you want to understand yourself better and identify blind spots that can help foster greater relationships?
5. Perhaps you want to make better use of your time, resources, and abilities?
6. Maybe you want honest feedback and new perspectives?
7. When you want to reach your full potential
8. Definitely when you want to make more money or take the next step in your business or career
9. Consider it when you want to boost your overall thinking, mindset, and well-being
10. You want to be better and do things easier, differently and make an impact

As with many things in life, not one single type of Coach will bring you all these results.

There are many different types of Coaches and we all could benefit from at least one type of Coach once in our lives.

While the focus behind coaching differs, all coaching is typically reflective rather than directive in a manner.

The Business Coaching category for entrepreneurs includes:

• Executive Coaching
  • Enhancing performance
  • Taking talents and abilities to a new level
  • Helping someone to adjust to new situations or a transition
  • Reflect and develop a personal awareness of their strengths and work on weaknesses
• Career Coaching
  • Skills assessments
  • Understanding the job market
  • Understanding organizational processes
  • Identifying opportunities and career-based roles and how they are good fits
  • Developing career transition plans
  • Helping understand the world of work and their own personal development
  • Enhancing employ-ability
• Skills Coaching
  • Identifying and refining career goals
  • Flagging objectives within existing roles
  • Recognizing personal and career development needs
  • Up-skill to enable better performance linked to achieving specific tasks
  • Achieving both individual and company objectives

Relationship Coaching focuses on everything from:

• Communication
  • Questioning Assumptions
  • Conflict resolutions
  • Effective communication techniques
• Stress Management
  • Identifying behavioral patterns & triggers
  • Setting clear and healthy boundaries
• Emotional Wellness
  • Uncovering new listening mechanisms
  • Assisting with ways to better express feelings and views

Life Coaching focuses on:

• Personal outcomes
  • Explore what you want in life
  • Define attainable dreams and aspirations
  • Find answers and ways to achieve their goals
  • Highlight and understand their own potential, skills and talents

SOURCE: https://www.sacap.edu.za/blog/management-leadership/types-of-coaching/

If you need further advice on how these benefits of Coaching can help you to take the next step, or you need a helping hand to show you how to achieve your end goals, do reach out to me for ways how I can help you move forward.

You are also INVITED to join my FREE Facebook Group, PROFITABLE ONLINE CREATIVES, for a community of Entrepreneurs and Business Owners to help, support, and empower each other!

See you online!