How Anthony built a $100,000 side business (in just 12 months)

It’s the greatest time to be alive for an internet Solopreneur.

The tools at our disposal help us create lean, mean, revenue-generating machines quickly, easily, and without much cost.

Especially if you have knowledge that other people are willing to pay for.

(and we all have it!)

Once you realize your knowledge is valuable out in the wild, you owe it to the world (and yourself) to set up your very first business.

Today I’m going to show you exactly how to do that, in 10 easy steps.

Let’s dive in.

Step 1: Clean up your social media profiles to reflect what you talk about.

For today’s lesson, I’m featuring Anthony Natoli as an example. Anthony is one of my students who has built a 6-figure business outside of his 9-5 job.

Anthony went onto LinkedIn, made himself a banner, got a nice headshot, and updated his tagline to clarify what he talks about (sales, prospecting, and growth mindset tips).

Step 2: Create daily content that highlights your expertise

Anthony posts tips that deliver on his profile promise.

He doesn’t talk about his favorite restaurant or the funny thing his kid did over the weekend. He sticks to sales, prospecting, and a growth mindset. Just like his profile says he will.

But you can’t just create valuable content for a short period of time and expect to see instant results.

Anthony has been writing LinkedIn content for over a year, which shows the consistency needed to build your audience.

You must play the long game here.

Step 3: Listen for common questions and the biggest challenges your audience asks you about.

When you create daily content, you’ll get a ton of questions and hear a bunch of pain points from your audience. This information is a solopreneur’s goldmine.

Take notes using the 30-30-30 Method.

• 30 minutes per week talking to prospective customers
• 30 minutes per day figuring out how to solve their problems
• 30 minutes per day creating content about those problems

Step 4: Create a process you can walk your Ideal Customer through in 60 minutes or less

Once you’ve interacted with enough folks, you can start forming a hypothesis about what kind of program would fix your ideal customer’s most common challenge(s).

For Anthony, the challenges he heard about most were about sales prospecting and building pipelines.

So he created a Sales Prospecting Bootcamp to help solve them.

Step 5: Use Carrd to build a personal website for $19.

Carrd is my favorite simple website builder.

It’s beautiful, flexible, and easy to use. And you can whip up a simple website in less than an hour.

It’s perfect for beginners who shouldn’t be investing a ton of money into technology at this point.

Note: Once you’ve built a successful business, you can always upgrade to a more expensive and robust platform like Kajabi, which Anthony and I both use.

Step 6: Open some time slots to take 1:1 calls or facilitate group coaching.

Find some recurring times in your calendar that you can dedicate to client Zoom sessions.

If you don’t have much availability, consider running group coaching (instead of 1:1 sessions), like Anthony did.

By offering group sessions, Anthony serves 20+ people all at once, taking maximum advantage of his limited availability.

Group coaching is a time-friendly option, especially if you’re already working a 9 to 5. And group sessions are cheaper than private sessions for your attendees. Win-win.

Step 7: Add a "Buy" button to your website.

This one is so, so important. I can’t emphasize it enough.

Make it easy for people to buy from you.

Make the process clean and simple. And make sure you create a good customer experience.

Anything that makes it hard (or annoying) for people to buy from you will kill your sales.

To build your buy button, you can use a Stripe checkout page, Gumroad, or PayPal. There are many options.

Sites like Kajabi come with the payment feature already built in, which is very convenient.

Step 8: Set up a Calendly account, and send customers to a Calendly page to book time with you after they’ve purchased.

Open up a free Calendly account and create your group coaching availability or your 1:1 time slots.

Keep it simple.

After you’ve created your event types in Calendly, they make it super easy to add the booking link to your website.

Step 9: Next, add your website to your social profiles.

Once your website is live, put it everywhere you can think of.

Link to your website on your LinkedIn profile and featured section, on your Twitter bio, in your pinned Tweet, and on all your other social media channels, in your email signature, etc.

The more places you put your website, the better.

Make it ridiculously easy to find you and to do business with you.

Step 10: Create great content every day, and keep it up.

Put valuable information out into the world, and your target audience will come to you.

When you constantly deliver value to your audience for a significant period of time, you gather loyal followers. And you’ll continue to get questions about your content, cold emails, and DMs.

People will want a piece of your valuable time.

And when they do, you direct them to your link to pay.

Interesting possibilities:

If you run a 1:1 program and you can book:

• 2 calls per week at $150 an hour: that’s $1,300 per month
• 3 calls per week at $150 an hour: that’s $1,950 per month
• 3 calls per week at $250 an hour: that’s $3,250 per month

If you run a group coaching program once per week and book:

• 5 clients per week at $75 per client: $1,625 per month
• 10 clients per week at $75 per client: $3,250 per month
• 15 clients per week at $75 per client: $4,875 per month

Or more.

The possibilities are endless.

Look, this is certainly not perfect.

There are a million nuances I didn't mention.

But I can promise you that getting started is the hardest part.

Give this process a try for the next twelve months. Tinker around with it. Listen to your customers. Experiment. And make little improvements along the way.

It may not be easy. But it is pretty simple. And if you stick to this program, results are sure to follow.

If you want to build a business like Anthony's then grab the two products he used to create it:

1. The LinkedIn Operating System: By running this playbook you'll go from undiscovered to growing and monetizing your LinkedIn account.
2. The Content Operating System: Stop staring at the computer every morning wondering what to write about. This system gives you an easy way to create 6-12 pieces of quality content at one time.

I hope this helps.

See you next week.