I had BIG plans for 2015. We are talking growing my business 5x. But all my plans got flipped on their head when I sat down at my computer today.
I keep sitting down at my computer KNOWING I need to do work for my main website OnProperty.com.au but I sit there feeling unable to do anything.
So the plans for 2015 have changed dramatically and I will now be pursuing other things.
In Today’s Episode
- What my goals WERE for 2015
- Why I have to change my goals for 2015
- What are my new plans for 2015
“I think you probably have an entry-level product exactly like you’ve always made. It’s an entry level product for normal people.”
Up until this week my plans for 2015 had always been to work on On Property which is my major money making website and to build that and to grow that. But this week everything seems to change.
Hi and welcome to Instructions Not Included, a startup story about me Ryan McLane as I grow and build my online business from what it is now, making just enough money for me to get by and to hopefully a significant business that makes a big impact on the world and hopefully I can eventually employ people as well.
So 2015 I had my plans, I knew what I was doing in 2015. I’ve got my be hads which are big airy audacious goals for 2015. I can see them right now as I record this up on my clipboard/whiteboard and that was to get 100,000 visits per month to Onproperty.com.au and to get 120 new annual members. So 10 new members a month at $500 each, that’s around $60,000 for the year on top of any other recurring income I might earn on the side. So I’m kind of talking about anywhere between 60 to $80,000 for the year and growing my following significantly from currently, it’s about 20,000 people month, five times that to 100,000 people per month. That was my goal for 2015. However, once I’ve been recording this podcast Instructions Not Included and thinking about my business in more detail, and going into more detail about what do I actually want to achieve. I have started to realize that well maybe what I had planned for 2015 isn’t going to pen out that way.
The reason that I thought this was I keep sitting down at my computer and I know that I need to do stuff for On Property. I know that I need to record videos and podcasts. I know that I’ve got transcription that need editing and blog post that need doing. I know that there’re episodes that I have recorded and uploaded but need to be published. But every morning I sit here and I just feel like I can’t do the work. I feel like I just can’t do it. Maybe you can relate, maybe you’ve been in your job situation and then go to work and you’re just sitting there at your desk or wherever you are and just feel like, I just can’t do this today. I just can’t do anything. All I can bring myself to do is sit here. I know I used to feel like that back when I was in pharmaceutical sales. Every now and then I had a really bad day, I’d be feeling flat. I’d drive to a pharmacy and I’d park at the front and I’d need to go in, and I would probably wouldn’t be able to go and I’d just sit there. And sometimes it’d take me fifteen minutes to half an hour just to get out of the car and I feel like, okay, I can do this, I can go and do this sales call. And I’ve got this same sort of feeling now with on Property and I hate it.
So it led me to start thinking that, well maybe growing On Property next year isn’t what I’m going to be doing. Because the truth of the matter is all I really need to do is redo my sales messaging and my sales funnel in 2015 in order to increase my sales and make it more valuable. And I kind of need to automate some of the stuff on the back end and basically I believe that On Property could take over and make a decent amount of money next year. Maybe not the 60 to $80,000, but I think it could make at least about $20,000 even if I didn’t really do much to it or add any new content. And so this has given me the thought that well maybe my focus shouldn’t be on growing On Property if I’m not enjoying it that much, but maybe I should be managing it and maybe growing it a little bit but not spending 40 hours a week like I have been doing on On Property. So I started just brainstorming and trying to think of ideas of what I could create another blog about or another podcast about or another something where I can create new content, do it from scratch and generate an income for.
One of the reasons I believe On Property became so successful is that I started playing in an area where a lot of people were spending a lot of money. Coaching programs would cost about $5,000 in this industry; training programs around $2,000 or $3,000. There were three day seminars where people were paying $6,000 to go. There is mentorship for $10,000. People are spending so much money on property. And there is a whole bunch of people out there who didn’t want to spend these thousands of dollars for this full coaching package but wanted to spend something and get some sort of training to move them towards their goal of investing in property. And so that’s why I kind of enter this market because I felt that I could really attract people that wanted that low entry point products that could really help them move forward on their property journey. And that’s what I created and that’s what I achieved and so now I’m thinking well maybe I should go and replicate that in another niche. Find a low entry product that I can create, take something that’s really difficult like investing in property is, really confusing and difficult for people, simplify it and then sell a product about that.
I do have a couple of websites at the moment. I’ve got publicspeakingpwer.com which is about public speaking. I’ve got tiredandsleepy.com which is about fatigue, that’s just kind of makes money through AdSense. I’ve got inspiringaudiobooks.com where I review audio books and I make money through an affiliate program with that. I’ve got yourenergydrink.com which makes hardly any money, that’s your AdSense. That’s kind of the extent of the websites I have. Public speaking power gets a lot of traffic, thousands and thousands of people every single week come to public speaking power, but it makes almost no money. I’ve always thought maybe I should go down that route and try and make money from public speaking power but I don’t think that’s going to be me this year.
I started writing down some other things that maybe I could talk about. One of them is fatherhood. I’m really passionate about being a good dad. I had a look at the podcast and really the only people talking about fatherhood are Christian pastors. Why is this case that the only people speaking about this are Christian pastors? I’m not a Christian myself but there should be people that are talking about it in a secular way to help more and more people be good dads. I could talk about the topic of moving to the Gold Coast which is something that I did recently. I could talk about holidaying with your kids. I could go into more details in one of my other blogs. I could talk about my Christianity or my faith or where I see church going in the future because I really feel like something’s changing in that environment. Or I could talk about podcasting and that’s kind of such a small wisp.
I really don’t know what I could talk about, but podcasting I thought could be really interesting. Taking something that’s really complicated and helping people set up a podcast and create a podcast. I was just looking at Podcast is Paradise which is a $2,000 product where you become a member of this community and podcasts is paradise. And a lot of people don’t want to spend $2,000 to start a podcast but they want to know how to do it and he was saying – the guy who runs it, who is John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurs on Fire, he was saying that there is over 200 videos in Podcasts is Paradise and that was part of his sales pitch. But 200 videos? Who wants to sit down and go through 200 videos just to set up and start podcasting? Therefore that could definitely be an area where I could have an impact and I could provide a low entry product to people wanting to get started but not wanting to spend exorbitant amounts of money. That’s something that I’m thinking about at the moment. What topics could I talk about? Where could I expand my portfolio of websites next year so I don’t just have to focus on On Property?
So yes, my plans for 2015 have taken a dramatic turn. I really don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll keep thinking about it. I’m not going to start a website about podcasting yet but that’s probably where I’m leaning at the moment. But I’ll keep thinking about it and see where I end up and you guys can follow me on that journey. I still need to work out what I’m going to do with On Property Plus which is my members’ area and how I’m going to do that. I still need to do a new sales videos for that so at the moment I still keep plotting a way with On Property trying to make it better doing this podcast and then we’ll see what happens next year.
Here’s a snippet from Monday’s episode where I talk about the growth of my business and I go deep into the statistics of how many people who visited my website, downloaded my podcast, as well as how much income I made in 2014. If you’re into statistics and you want to see exactly how things have grown for me then Monday’s episode is going to be a one that you do not want to miss. Now here is the part that you’ve probably been waiting for, which is my income report. I am going to leave out December because December hasn’t finished and truthfully I really don’t have any idea how much money I’m bringing in each month until I sit down at the end of that month and say well how much did I actually make. I’m in a fortunate position where I’ve got a buffer fund of about $4,000 or $5,000. So if I’m not making enough I can draw from that fund in order to survive. However, what I’ve done is I’ve looked at the whole year minus December and I can see that my profit for the year was…
If you want to make sure you don’t miss Monday’s episode then you need to subscribe to the podcast. Go into iTunes if you are on an iPhone or Stitcher if you’re on an Android device and search for Instructions Not Included, subscribe to the podcast and download all the episodes. I recommend starting from the start if you can and if you’re up for it please leave me a five star rating because it will help expand this podcast and get more people listening to it.
Thanks so much for listening and remember if you want instructions go [10:30 inaudible]
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