6 crucial steps you can’t skip for online business success

The businesses I've seen succeed, do so because they've got the basics down pat and do them *really* well. Where I've often seen businesses struggle is when they've tried to skip the basics because they feel they're too advanced (or impatient) to start at the beginning. In today's episode, I'm sharing these basic, but essential steps that are important for any business to succeed.

– The common things that businesses tend to focus on first *before* they've got their basics covered.
– Why defining your ideal client is so important—not just when you're starting out, but multiple times a year.
– Why researching your audience is way more than just *thinking* that you know them or sending out a survey.
– How articulating the problem that your offer solves is so important when it comes to effective offer messaging for your ideal client.
– The importance of creating a budget for your business, even from the get-go.

 

 

What are the 6 essential steps you must not skip for a successful business?

Six of the essential steps that a lot of people consider to be a little bit too beginner, too basic, but that are really important for success in your business. Now, the beginner stuff, the basics, the first steps that everyone teaches you in courses in starting a business. When you Google, how do I start a business? There's a reason those things come up over and over again. They are important for a reason. And over my last 7 or 8 years working with other businesses, I've noticed that the businesses that end up being the most successful are the ones that do the basics really well.
And I see this with courses as well. When people are investing in a course, when business owners invest in a course, they want to skip to module 6. Because they assume that modules 1 to 5 are the basics. They're too beginner. And they have convinced themselves that the secret to success lies in the more advanced modules.
There's some kind of magic pill that's in the really advanced modules that they haven't heard somewhere else. But then they don't end up getting the results from that particular course, or even particular, even working with a coach and the coach tells them the foundational steps, they don't see the results because they are too busy trying to find that magic pill that they think exists and they're skipping over the beginner steps, the stuff that's actually going to make or break them.

If you can't do the basics well, then the advanced stuff isn't going to make any kind of difference in your business.

Now, I survey my email list twice a year, and from the questions that they are asking, I can tell that the reason many of them are struggling in business is because they are focusing on the wrong things. They are asking questions like how can I create a good website? How can I make my Instagram feed look pretty?
And how can I get followers? How can I get reels that get more views? Should I be on TikTok and Instagram? How do I develop a catchy name and tagline for my business? Should I create a low ticket or high ticket offer first? And from these kinds of questions, I can tell that they are focusing on the wrong things.
They are looking for some kind of magic pill, some kind of right answer when they should be. Spending a bit more time on the basics, the foundations, the boring parts of business, that if they can do really well, that's what's going to amplify their results from everything else that they do in their business.
You know, the stuff that they have probably labeled as a little bit too beginner for them. They're like, oh yes, like I've done this before, but they actually haven't really done that. That's the stuff that is worth doing. So I'm going to share a couple of those things in today's episode. And, yes, I was guilty of doing this as well at the start.
I was constantly looking for the one answer, like the one reason why I hadn't been able to grow my business. And it wasn't until I actually stepped back and went through a process from start to finish, it wasn't until I actually followed those steps in order that I started to see the shift.

 

1. Define your ideal client

So the very first step was defining your ideal client. And you're probably going to be rolling your eyes at this. How boring, right? I did this way back at the start of my business.
Guess what? I still do this every time I launch a new offer, every time I relaunch an existing offer. So like multiple times a year, I'm going back and I'm revising who is our ideal client for this particular offer and for this business. And it sounds really boring, but it makes life so much easier because if I know who I'm talking to, then the content I create can resonate a lot better.
The messaging that I use to communicate my offers and my business is going to land a lot better. And when I talk about your ideal client, I don't mean your target audience. I don't mean the woman aged 35 to 45 who lives in Australia and runs a business. That's a target audience, that's not an ideal client.
I mean the one ideal client. And I don't mean your niche either. Now, if you want, if you're not really sure what the difference is between those, go back to this blog, where I talked about the difference between your ideal client, your target audience and your niche, and whether you really do need to niche or not.

 

2. Audience research

The second step, audience research. Now, I don't care how well you think you know your audience, how well you think you know your ideal client, you don't know them enough until you've spoken to them one on one and until you've asked them questions about the things that they're struggling with and really uncovered what's going on between their ears.
What are they thinking? What are they telling themselves? Surveys are great, but on their own, they're not enough. Now, I love surveys for content ideas, but when it comes to messaging for offers, you need to know a little bit more, you need to go a little bit deeper. And asking your existing clients, questions can be effective, but you're probably missing out then on insights from the people who didn't buy.
And the people who didn't buy from you, their intel, their insights are going to help you to make your messaging and your offers more compelling. Because you'll understand what stopped somebody from buying, so you can address that before it stops somebody else from buying. Now, huge hack. If you are struggling to stand out online, find out what your ideal client is struggling with. Find out what their problems are, what words they use to describe them. Not the words you think that they use to describe it, the words that they are actually using to describe it. And then create content that speaks to this. If you are struggling to stand out, it's either that you haven't defined your ideal client well enough, you don't know them well enough, or you're not communicating with them in a way that resonates.

 

3. Defining the problem you solve

Articulating exactly what problem your offer solves for your ideal client, or what task it ticks off their to do list, or what transformation it delivers for them. And being able to do this in really specific terms. Like, I see Too many businesses with really vague messaging. It gives them clarity on their vision.
Great. That's great. But what does that actually mean for them, right? What does that mean for their ideal client, for their life? A better version would be clarity on their long term vision. So they know exactly what tasks to focus on in their business this week, this day, this minute. That's a tangible specific outcome, right?
Tangible problem is being solved because they don't know what to focus on. Now, force yourself when you are identifying this, force yourself to write it out. Don't just think it. It's really easy to tell yourself, yes, I know that. But then when you're forced to put pen to paper and actually articulate it, you might realize that you don't know it as well as you think you do.
And if you aren't clear on what your offer does, if you can't clearly communicate what your offer does, your ideal client isn't going to know what it's about. ─ Okay, and if they don't know what it's about, they're not going to spend money on it.

 

4. Getting clear on the long term vision and building out a priority plan to get there.

I know that when you are just starting out in business and even a couple of years in, it can feel like you are just surviving one day at a time. But this short term survival mindset can be the thing that keeps you stuck where you are, rather than building something that you really intentionally want in the long term.
And having that short term mindset can keep you stuck on focusing on the wrong things, prioritizing the wrong things. So instead of having a vague idea of what you are trying to build, what exactly do you want your business to look like five years from now? And what needs to happen? Practical actions need to happen to get there.
And then how can you break that down into tasks that you're going to do over the next years, months, weeks, and days? Because otherwise, if you don't really know where you're going and you don't know what needs to be done to get there, you're going to end up focusing on the wrong things. Whereas when you know what to focus on to get you there, then you can take those intentional actions.
Rather than sitting down at your desk and being like, well, what do I feel like working on today? Because that's not going to move you anywhere, it might move you a little bit further forward, but it's probably not going to be the quickest way to get there.

 

5. Creating a budget.

So when you've got a budget, that means that you can make decisions based on what is in the budget, not based on your gut feel, because you know, maybe you don't want to miss out.
Somebody's got a great course that's launching with awesome bonuses and you don't want to miss out on that. And I know that finances can feel a little bit icky and it can be a little bit challenging if you're more creatively minded, but it's important to stay on top of them and budgeting means estimating your income and estimating your expenses, and then using that to make better decisions. For example, December is always a pretty quiet month in this business. And especially because I was mostly offline, my team was mostly offline. But as my accountant said when I pointed this out to her, she was like, well, you budgeted for that.
It would have been really different if you had a bad month that you didn't budget for. So there was no need to feel bad or feel stressed out about the fact that it was quieter, because we actually had a plan for it. We knew what was going to happen. We had a launch plan for January. We knew that would be fine, like it would all be fine, because we had budgeted for it.
But if I didn't have that kind of forward thinking budget, then it would have been really easy to go into panic mode of like, what now? Like, where do we bring sales in? How can we cut? Like what, what next? And just freaking out rather than actually having a logical plan and actions to take.

 

6. Intentionally designing your offer suite to maximize your sales and create consistent cashflow.

So rather than just haphazardly creating offers without thinking about where they fit in or why you're doing them and how they're taking your clients on a journey over time, if you can design your offer suite so that it helps the same ideal client again and again and again, then you don't need to.
Spend as much time marketing your business because instead of having to always try and find new people, you can keep helping the same person in a deeper way. And it's not about, you know, not delivering the entire solution in your office. It's not about leaving them wanting more and like not actually giving them the solution to their problem.
But instead it's about uncovering the different ways that you can serve them at different stages of their journey. They might have one problem at the start, and then once they've solved that problem, then there might be another problem that's now their main focus, and you can help them to solve that one.
And it becomes this beautiful little journey of how you can help them over time, rather than trying to help so many different people. And I know it's really difficult because especially if you have a skill or your expertise is something that could help a wide range of people, it's so hard to narrow it down to one ideal client when you could do all of the different things.
But trust me it's much easier marketing your business when you do that. Now your offer suite is the one thing that will determine whether your business is a little bit consistent or all over the place. It's going to be the one thing that determines how much freedom you have in your business.
If your office suite is not structured in a way to intentionally create freedom, then no amount of growth, audience, revenue is going to fix any of that.

 

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