twointwomillion
New member
I did $200K in 2022. I'm building the equivalent of an MMA gym but for solopreneurs. A little bit of education and then a lot of doing, in-person over Zoom, with a group of students. (I believe entrepreneurship education should be modeled after sports, not university.) I also consult for firms and help them understand marketing science instead of marketing bro-science.
It took me 10 yrs to get to $200K in a year (with this business) which will be grossly underwhelming for some and aspirational for others.
Teaching solopreneurship is by far the hardest (and most retarded) way to try to make a living.
That said, I think this product must exist, and here are 10 lessons I've learned over the years that will help you make your first $10K in 2023.
1.When you target everyone, you target no one. If you have no idea who your exact target customer is, don't target broad and aim to narrow it down later (which is what a lot of marketing research suggest). Instead, do the opposite. Start extremely narrow, give it a few weeks, then iterate or tweak based on your results.
2.Customers do NOT buy products, they buy outcomes. No students buys The YRC Bootcamp (my product) because they want solopreneurship training. They buy a solution to a very specific problem. In my situation, the main ones are: "I want to go at this with a group vs. doing it all by myself", "There's a lot of bro-science out there and I want something I believe will actually work", and "I already know enough but I need help actually getting myself to take action".
3.Shun the non-believers. The number of mini-products that are included in YRC is insane. All with the goal of doing everything I can to help my students succeed. And yet, cynical people who don't know me or my program claim "This is a scaaaam". That's very hurtful but you just gotta deal with it. The world isn't gonna change, so make yourself stronger. Don't try to convince non-believers. Just go after the ones who already believe what you believe.
4.Surprisingly many people claim they want to change but they really don’t. This ties into my previous point. I saw a post on this sub the other day about a dude who was struggling for a decade to make his first sale. That’s such a massive (and irrational) waste. If you’re struggling with something for 6 months, 12 months max., why not just pay for help? Clearly, doing it yourself isn’t working. Is struggling for 9 more years really worth those few hundred dollars, you’ll be spending mindlessly on sneakers later anyway? But the truth is, it doesn’t matter if you have a product that can help people if THEY don’t want change. Again, target people who believe what you believe. Convincing is a waste of your (and their) time.
5.GET FUCKING GOING. Some people will read this, and by Jan 1st, 2024, still be at $0. Those people are typically the ones who’ve read all the books, watched all the keynotes, and get their validation from intellectual one-upmanship. None of that matters. If you want to become a comic, you HAVE TO get on the stage. Literally, the only way to fail is to never get on stage. If you throw up a landing page with a simple product and a buy button, even if no one buys, you’ve already crossed a major hurdle most people never cross.
6.Build up an audience of buyers. Start creating content on Reddit/Linkedin/Twitter (potentially. Youtube/Tiktok) that helps your target customer. There are two ways to do this: the first is to look for questions in the places they hang out and answer those. The second is to look at content from competitors that did well and then use that as a template you can fill out with your own insight/recommendations.
7.Build an email list to deepen your relationship with them. Ask your audience of buyers to get on your email list. You’ll get A LOT of hate for step 6 and 7. Suck it up. No matter what form of marketing you use (even if it’s ads) you’ll get hate. The only way to minimize hate is to deliver genuine value before you ask for something. But the catch here is that just because you try, doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. And today’s people are no different than the crowd in the Roman amphitheater, they don’t care about your effort, only about your outcome. So just do the best you can, ask for an email, and accept the hate that comes along with it.
8.Focus on MOMENTUM. I started out with consulting which earned a lot of money. Then I created YRC (my flagship product), then video courses, and lastly eBooks. I should’ve done it the other way around. Nothing is more important than speed and momentum. Start with a simple guide or an eBook and get a few sales. If you only charge $9 it’s not hard to deliver more value than that and leave people with the feeling of “That was money well spent. I’m happy.”
9.Leverage that momentum into more expensive products. It's easier to sell a more expensive product to existing customers because you've already built a relationship with them. This is also where your email list comes in handy. By now, you should be able to offer something more expensive (and thus more profitable) and get a few takers.
10.Done is better than perfect. It's better to take action and do a poor job than to keep scrolling Reddit and reading books to learn how to do a perfect job. An ugly landing page with cringe-inducing copy has the potential to make a few sales. (Even if it makes zero sales, it'll probably still give you a mental boost for overcoming fears). Not launching anything for yet another year because *it has to be perfect*, will only serve to make you feel like shit. This is a learnable skill, to be okay with mediocrity. I'm not saying, ship shit. I'm saying, just ship it, and improve as you go. I'm on my 8th cohort of YRC and it's much better now than it was during the 1st one. No doubt by cohort 100 it'll be better than this 8th one. THAT'S OKAY!
Thanks for reading. Hope some of these gave you some ideas that you can apply to your own business. If you're into content about solopreneurship and marketing fundamentals, I write about that daily here.
It took me 10 yrs to get to $200K in a year (with this business) which will be grossly underwhelming for some and aspirational for others.
Teaching solopreneurship is by far the hardest (and most retarded) way to try to make a living.
That said, I think this product must exist, and here are 10 lessons I've learned over the years that will help you make your first $10K in 2023.
1.When you target everyone, you target no one. If you have no idea who your exact target customer is, don't target broad and aim to narrow it down later (which is what a lot of marketing research suggest). Instead, do the opposite. Start extremely narrow, give it a few weeks, then iterate or tweak based on your results.
2.Customers do NOT buy products, they buy outcomes. No students buys The YRC Bootcamp (my product) because they want solopreneurship training. They buy a solution to a very specific problem. In my situation, the main ones are: "I want to go at this with a group vs. doing it all by myself", "There's a lot of bro-science out there and I want something I believe will actually work", and "I already know enough but I need help actually getting myself to take action".
3.Shun the non-believers. The number of mini-products that are included in YRC is insane. All with the goal of doing everything I can to help my students succeed. And yet, cynical people who don't know me or my program claim "This is a scaaaam". That's very hurtful but you just gotta deal with it. The world isn't gonna change, so make yourself stronger. Don't try to convince non-believers. Just go after the ones who already believe what you believe.
4.Surprisingly many people claim they want to change but they really don’t. This ties into my previous point. I saw a post on this sub the other day about a dude who was struggling for a decade to make his first sale. That’s such a massive (and irrational) waste. If you’re struggling with something for 6 months, 12 months max., why not just pay for help? Clearly, doing it yourself isn’t working. Is struggling for 9 more years really worth those few hundred dollars, you’ll be spending mindlessly on sneakers later anyway? But the truth is, it doesn’t matter if you have a product that can help people if THEY don’t want change. Again, target people who believe what you believe. Convincing is a waste of your (and their) time.
5.GET FUCKING GOING. Some people will read this, and by Jan 1st, 2024, still be at $0. Those people are typically the ones who’ve read all the books, watched all the keynotes, and get their validation from intellectual one-upmanship. None of that matters. If you want to become a comic, you HAVE TO get on the stage. Literally, the only way to fail is to never get on stage. If you throw up a landing page with a simple product and a buy button, even if no one buys, you’ve already crossed a major hurdle most people never cross.
6.Build up an audience of buyers. Start creating content on Reddit/Linkedin/Twitter (potentially. Youtube/Tiktok) that helps your target customer. There are two ways to do this: the first is to look for questions in the places they hang out and answer those. The second is to look at content from competitors that did well and then use that as a template you can fill out with your own insight/recommendations.
7.Build an email list to deepen your relationship with them. Ask your audience of buyers to get on your email list. You’ll get A LOT of hate for step 6 and 7. Suck it up. No matter what form of marketing you use (even if it’s ads) you’ll get hate. The only way to minimize hate is to deliver genuine value before you ask for something. But the catch here is that just because you try, doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. And today’s people are no different than the crowd in the Roman amphitheater, they don’t care about your effort, only about your outcome. So just do the best you can, ask for an email, and accept the hate that comes along with it.
8.Focus on MOMENTUM. I started out with consulting which earned a lot of money. Then I created YRC (my flagship product), then video courses, and lastly eBooks. I should’ve done it the other way around. Nothing is more important than speed and momentum. Start with a simple guide or an eBook and get a few sales. If you only charge $9 it’s not hard to deliver more value than that and leave people with the feeling of “That was money well spent. I’m happy.”
9.Leverage that momentum into more expensive products. It's easier to sell a more expensive product to existing customers because you've already built a relationship with them. This is also where your email list comes in handy. By now, you should be able to offer something more expensive (and thus more profitable) and get a few takers.
10.Done is better than perfect. It's better to take action and do a poor job than to keep scrolling Reddit and reading books to learn how to do a perfect job. An ugly landing page with cringe-inducing copy has the potential to make a few sales. (Even if it makes zero sales, it'll probably still give you a mental boost for overcoming fears). Not launching anything for yet another year because *it has to be perfect*, will only serve to make you feel like shit. This is a learnable skill, to be okay with mediocrity. I'm not saying, ship shit. I'm saying, just ship it, and improve as you go. I'm on my 8th cohort of YRC and it's much better now than it was during the 1st one. No doubt by cohort 100 it'll be better than this 8th one. THAT'S OKAY!
Thanks for reading. Hope some of these gave you some ideas that you can apply to your own business. If you're into content about solopreneurship and marketing fundamentals, I write about that daily here.