A daily checklist to get your business from $0 to $100K/year

This is a step-by-step checklist to get you from $0 to $100k a year with your business. Now we have broken it down into four big phases. Things you have to do to actually start, which I know is very intimidating, and get to $100 a month. $100 to $1k a month. $1k to $5k. $5k to $10k. Because I genuinely believe that most people do not start businesses because they make it way too overwhelming to start. So that's the point of this video is to break things down into teeny tiny mouse-sized cheese pieces. So you can actually just gobble it up and make progress and get going with it. Now, just a quick disclaimer here. This is a very specific, very detailed checklist that my team and I spent weeks creating, but it is after all a simplified version because I cannot create a checklist that works for every single type of business, every single type of product service under the sun. So just a little heads up. All right. So phase one, really the only thing you're trying to do here is to figure out one problem that you can solve and take messy action. And I would say the bulk of people get stuck in this first stage because they're so afraid of taking messy action. So I really want to dive into details and talk about how to do that, because I know a lot of times the thought is I need full clarity before I begin. Otherwise I cannot begin safely. And that's just unrealistic. When you start a business, there's so much unknown that oftentimes it's only when you take a step that you realize what the next step could be. Now, heads up, I will be giving this checklist out for free, but there will be a pop quiz. And if you don't pass the pop quiz, you don't get the free checklist. Okay. That's just my way of guaranteeing one you're paying attention and you're actually watching the video through not just downloading a checklist and then forgetting it in your downloads folder on your laptop. No. So the first thing is, and this is the most important thing I could talk about this until I'm blue in the face. You have to be able to find a problem if you want to start a business, because essentially what business is, is just systematized problem solving. Netflix solves a problem of people being bored and wanting on demand TV movies to entertain themselves, to distract themselves, to fill their time. Comb solves the problem of my hair being messy. And I want it to look nice for you guys and figure out how big of a problem it actually is, how painful it is. The more painful, again, the more value you're generating, the more people are willing to pay for it. Now, yes, identifying problems is a skill and it takes time. It's an ongoing task. I have developed the skill so much that I'm looking for problems all the time. I'm always like, oh, that was really annoying. That took longer than it needed to be. That really frustrated that person. Anytime I hear those words, I'm like, ooh, there's a problem. So the next time you come across a problem in your own life or in your friend's life, your family's life, think to yourself, ooh, is this potentially a problem that I could be interested in or is worth solving in the form of creating a business? So the easiest way to begin identifying problems or pain points is to start with yourself. So think about your own struggles. Think about the last time you were super annoyed. What potential product could solve that problem? If you deeply know the problem, that is super helpful for creating the product in a way that actually solves the pain point because you know the pain point and marketing it because you can actually talk specifically and comprehensively to that issue. The next thing you could do is talk to business owners and ask them questions like what's the most frustrating part of your week? What is the most time consuming task that you work on every week and you wish it was off of your plate? Or this is a favorite question that a lot people use in market research for clients is if you could wave a magic wand, what would your business and life be like? And that's a question I used often to figure out the role of my freelance role, digital business manager, because a lot of clients were saying, I just wish I didn't have to manage my team all day. I wish I didn't, I wasn't stuck in slack. I wish I wasn't the person in charge of ensuring all the projects are getting done. I wish like not everything lived in my head and that is how I created the offer of project management, team management, systems management. You can also scour stock, read comments on social media, Facebook groups, product reviews, and be like, what are people complaining about and requesting often? Because if on Amazon, there's a product that's selling, people are buying it, but hundreds of people are complaining about some specific thing. That is great, validated demand for product, people who are willing to pay for a product. And if you solve that problem, you probably have a very competitive offer. So examples, I was getting a lot of comments in my DMs and my YouTube comments, people asking me who edits my videos, what style of video editing we do, who's my video editor, and more on that in a second, specifically what we did with those comments. But that's just an example of where you can identify potentially a need, potentially a pull from the market. And that is super important to look for. So now it's your turn. After watching this video, I want you to write this down in your notebook. You have your notebook out because we discussed there's going to be a pop quiz in exchange for the free checklist. Next time you're scrolling on TikTok, Instagram, or you're talking to your friends or your family, I want you to take notice of people complaining about problems or pain points. And I want you to write down at least three problems that you notice in the next week. It can be your own problems as well. And then start brainstorming what are good solutions to fix those pain points. Now, of course, you're not going to start a business for every single problem you hear, but it's a good way to get into that brainstorming mindset, where at some point you're going to be like, that's a problem I would love to solve. And I have a great idea on how to do it. So for example, if you notice people asking for video tutorials for specific editing styles, you could maybe create a YouTube channel targeting this niche. You could create a product, an editing workshop, an editing course, foreshadowing. Another one, maybe you notice that your local cafe has good reviews and everyone's like, this place is super cute. We love the staff, but the was really bad and barely had any matcha flavor, which I, I have this problem with a lot of cafes. Another one, if you want to create a digital product, an educational digital product, you can also scour videos that talk about that topic. Like let's say Pinterest management and see what people in the comments are asking questions about. They're like, I want to become an expert on how to manage Pinterest accounts for clients. You can turn all of that farm, all of that into a curriculum to teach that topic. All right, now let's talk about messy action because I know this makes us so uncomfortable, but we have to do it. And it's this quote that I read recently that was like, first make it exist, then make it pretty, then make it perfect or something. But the point is you have to get it out first before perfecting it. So once you have come up with a problem, that's when we want to start creating the minimum viable product. I'm not making the final perfect a million out of a million thing. I'm just making the minimum viable version of that product, right? Because I need to get it out. I can't just like create the perfect thing in a vacuum by myself. So only include what's absolutely necessary. Remove everything else that doesn't absolutely have to be in the product to deliver the product promise and get really clear on your value prop. So what problem does it solve in what way for whom? And then we're going to, and I know it's scary. We can hold hands if you want, we can hold hands, but we have to get it out there ASAP. You don't need a fancy website yet. We can set up like a little one page doc. I do that for a lot of my services. A lot of my products is I just create a Google doc that has all the information and I'll share examples in a second. Don't make it a whole thing. Like I need the branding. I need the logo. I need the website. I need like payment processing set up. I need to do all these things before I begin. Those are fake obstacles that you are putting in place to protect yourself from getting it out there because I know it is scary to get it out there, but getting it out there is the fastest way to creating a product that actually helps the market that actually solves their problem. Because that's when you get data back or no data, which is also data. Send this offer doc to 10 to 20 people, collect feedback, ask them what they liked, ask them what they thought was missing. And we want to tap our warm traffic sources first. So that means people, you know, clients, ex clients, anybody that you think could remotely be interested. We want to be sending it to them and being like, what do you think? I would love to know your thoughts. And the most important thing I can stress here is do not obsess over making money when you're just getting started. If you over obsess about making money, you will not make money in the long run. First, most important thing we have to focus on is, is this problem I'm solving actually a big enough problem that people are willing to pay to fix? And is my product actually doing that? All right. So this offer doc that I mentioned for me, it's basically just a sales page that I put in a Google doc in a message or PDF that you can send to your initial warm people to sign up for your beta round. I call it a beta round because I'm trying to get feedback, you know, like that's my first goal. It maybe also gives them lower expectations. So that's also good for you because then there isn't as much pressure to make it perfect the first time, which is unrealistic anyway. So what I include in my offer doc is what my offer is, what problem it solves. And I detail out exactly what problem they have, that this is solving what's included, who it's for, how much it costs. And then like a very simple call to action to tell me that they're interested. And then I take payment in Stripe or PayPal or something like that. So I created a beta round offer doc for my signature program, DBM bootcamp back in 2020. I recently secretly launched a one-on-one YouTube strategy consulting offer. And that doesn't even have a sales page. It's still just a Google doc that I send out to people who are interested and it has gotten clients. So it works. And the aesthetic video editing course that I started with Maya, my video editor that we sold in an offer doc as well. And now that we have run the beta round, we've gotten feedback, we're optimizing the offer. Now we are creating the sales page. So here's the example of exactly how we have done this in our business as well is with the aesthetic video editing course that I started with Maya, my video editor. I have a whole video talking about that process, walking through how we did it. If you want more detail on the beta round and what we were doing and all that stuff. But essentially I got tons of comments, tons of DMS from people being like, how do you guys edit the way you do? So we were like, let's test and see if people are willing to pay for this. So created a beta round. We created an offer doc and we sent it out and essentially we sold out of all the spots that we were looking to fill. And now we can invest way more money into this business idea, knowing that it's valid. Okay. So this is the entire checklist. Now I don't want to overwhelm you. So I'm not really going to show you all of this in detail. Again, if you want a copy of all of these checklists, checklists, do the pop quiz at the end and you'll get it for free. All right, now let's move on to phase two, which is going from a hundred dollars a month to 1k a month. And the focus of this phase is super important is to make your offer irresistible. This sets the best foundation for a business that I've ever seen. So very important here is you did the beta round, right? You've gotten feedback from people, review the feedback and actually apply the feedback. Essentially your beta round people, the first 10 people who buy your product, who give you money for your thing are product partners. What did they love? What did they hate? You need to be talking, talking, talking, talking to them. So was anything confusing for them? Unclear, not detailed enough. Uh, any technical issues? What else were they hoping would be included and wasn't included? Obviously if only one person say it, I would like take it with a grain of salt. But if a bunch of people say it, then definitely take that into consideration and brainstorm around. How can you actually add more value into your offer? So for example, if you run a digital product business, maybe aside from just your digital product, you also add on weekly group calls or bonus templates or tools that make their life easier and save them time. We do that in our products all the time. Maybe you include a private podcast version of your digital products so that they can also listen to it instead of having to be at their laptop and paying attention to it. Maybe you give them bonus projects that they can do that they can put into their portfolio, which helps them land clients faster. Maybe you include one-on-one box or access to for specific limited amount of time. Like just brainstorm empathetically around the problem that your person is having. If you have a physical product business, you can create a loyalty program for repeat customers. Add in a free gift. You can create a one-on-one series on how to best use your product and give that to them for free. Education is a huge value. Give, right? If you have a service-based business, for example, you're a graphic designer, you're a freelancer of some kind, you can deliver a little something extra with each package that they did not expect. You can deliver faster than you promise. You can offer them seven days of support after service delivery. I'm not saying you have to do all these things. I'm saying brainstorm how to make your customer happy. Because if your customer is happy, delighted, elated with you, they will tell everybody else about you. When your product or service is super good, everything else in your business is easier. Marketing is easier. Sales is easier. Everything else is easier. Okay, now we're going to start getting more eyes on your product. In phase one, we were just focusing on warm. Now we're going to create content. So here I would recommend picking one platform. You're only allowed one. Do not start on every single content platform. That is not realistic. Nobody is doing that unless they have a huge team to support them. Pick one platform to post content on. Also, the platforms are so different. You want to get good at one platform. You don't want to spread your learning out over like 15 platforms. Again, it does not have to be perfect. It does not all need to be planned out perfectly as super strategic. Treat it like it's an experiment. Always give value first. If you do not give value first, people will have, they will not care what you're saying. So pick the one platform where your audience hangs out. So if it's TikTok, TikTok is like a younger audience, relatable videos, more behind the scenes, personality-based content. If it's a slightly older audience, then maybe Instagram, Pinterest, threads, maybe I would be thinking about those. It's a little bit more aesthetic, more aspirational content. Facebook is a slightly older audience. You can use it for communities, for groups, for events. So sometimes I like to do my market research and Facebook groups as well, because there are a lot of targeted Facebook groups, like, you know, business owners over whatever, 50. If that's your target audience, you can find tons of groups that are like that. And then you can see what questions people are asking. That's a great way to do market research. YouTube, I would say, is more generally broad across the age ranges and demographics. So that might be a good option as well, if you are willing to make long form content, which I think is actually one of the most difficult things to stay consistent with. So I would probably start with short form, get good at that. And then all of those skills translate into long form content as well. So every week at this stage, we're going to be focusing on ideation. So looking for content ideas that serve your audience, planning your content calendar, creating posts and posting consistently to drive traffic. And traffic is so often I feel like forgotten when it comes to business, especially starting businesses. People think if they create the product, people will just magically show up banging down the door being like, give me your product. That's not realistic. Traffic is a continuous task we do in business every single day, every single week, every single month. You are in charge of making sure people come and show up to be curious about your product or service. So here, I would say at this stage, you can start thinking about creating a one-page website if you would like, just to make things a little bit more formal, take it out of a Google Doc. So here's an example of a website template that I created, and I can link the video down below. I made it with Hostinger. Above the fold is your offer, your call to action. It needs to be very specific on who you help and the problem that you are solving for them. And then you can talk about product features or share examples, work samples, if you are selling service-based thing, then testimonials and reviews, then pricing and packaging. You can do a little about for some credibility, some authority, and then CTA, contact info. So in this phase, for example, if you own a local mantra cafe, which would be such a dream, at this stage, you might start to post on Instagram, experiment on Instagram, be creative, figure out what is getting to your target person. You might start increasing prices at this stage to test pricing. You create that one-page website. You might improve your product based on feedback, like adding vegan milk options. You might start adding testimonials as they're coming in, really just optimizing and making sure your product offer is as interesting, as irresistible as possible. So in this section of the checklist, I also put in a task to educate yourself because that is really important as you build businesses is there's so much to learn, but I don't want you to get stuck in overconsumption. So I would say commit to learning about business. Like, so like watch one to two videos a week or read one business book a month or something like that, but don't get carried away with it and watch like 50 business videos. And then you're totally overwhelmed and you don't implement anything, right? That's not the goal. And then again, reviewing the feedback, setting up your business professionally is important as well. All right. Now phase three, now we're getting into the funnel stuff. We want to figure out our funnel. We want to stabilize traffic because once we have stable traffic and a good converting funnel, it's over, it's over for everybody else. So figure out your sales funnel. What is a sales funnel? A sales funnel is essentially just a bunch of steps that people take that helps get them from who are you? I don't know you. I have no trust with you. A completely cold person to, oh my gosh, I'm obsessed with you. I love you. I want to buy your product. I want to buy your service. I always compare it to dating. Like you would never show up on a first day and be like, let's get married. Right. That would be bizarre. And for us in business, getting married is somebody paying you money for your product or service. So that's what we want to do. We want to break things down and figure out that sales funnel. So here's an example. The first step is somebody being no clue who you are. They're hearing about you for the first time via your social media posts, via Google search, via an advertisement, via word of mouth, somebody else tells them about it. And then the next step is they take some sort of action. They take the first action with you. So they normally that is they download a lead magnet. So like a PDF or something, or they opt in for a workshop, a free workshop, a free webinar. They sign up for something that gets them on your email list more on that in a second, but that's them showing interest enough interest to take some action. The next step might be you start sending them emails, educational emails, value-based emails that educate on whatever topic your product or service is related to. So they're opening all the emails and you're seeing the open rates from this person are really, really good. Maybe they're clicking out to different resources you have. Okay. And then maybe the next step is you start a sales email sequence and you sell the product or service that you're offering. And they actually go and take that step and they buy whatever that may be. That might be a small $10 thing. It might be a $50 thing. And then maybe the next step in your sales funnel is something a little more expensive, a little more expensive. So that's just an example of how you build trust step-by-step incrementally to get the sale. So it's extremely important at this stage to figure out what the conversion rate from step to step to step is essentially. So of the people who let's say land on a lead magnet page, how many people are actually inputting their email address? The conversion rate is very important at each step. And I'll share more examples of how to troubleshoot issues at each step. But first, just if anybody's not sure a lead magnet is essentially just a freebie, a low cost offer in exchange for getting their email address, because I mean, you've heard this probably a million times before, but your email list is super, super, super important. So basically a list of emails of people who are interested in your offer. So here's some examples of free lead magnets I have in my business. So you see some examples with tons of free notion templates. I have a free email course for VAs that want to get promoted. I have a free three episode series. I have a free private podcast. I have a lot of free stuff to help people decide, is this something that's interesting to me? And I really like having free lead magnets because I want people to self-select if this is the right thing for them or not. So I want them to have free samples, free tasters of how I teach, of how I talk, of how I educate so that they're like, oh, this is a fit for me or not. Cool. So let's talk about signs of a leaky sales funnel, which I would say most businesses have, and they're just not diving into the math of it properly. They're not looking at the conversion rates and figuring out where in your funnel things are leaking. I like sales funnels and the calculations of the conversion rates, because I feel like it takes, it makes things a little less personal and a little bit more just about the math, because then you can figure out where you're losing people at, which step, and then fix that step and track the numbers and see if that's improving. If you have a very low conversion rate of people signing up for your lead magnet. So let's say a hundred people land on your lead magnet page. And let's say like two people give you their email address. Something is wrong. It's probably a sign that your lead magnet is not solving a real and big enough problem. It's not relevant enough for them. Your opt-in page needs optimization or worse technical issues. People can't actually put in their email address and that they want it. Second one, low sales page conversion rates. So that means of people who actually land on a product sales page, very few people are buying. Then signs your sales page or your offer needs to be improved. Maybe your offer isn't as good as you think it is, which is, I know very brutal advice. And it's a very humbling thing to realize about a product offer. I have had it before where I was like, maybe it's actually not as good as I thought it was like, damn. Okay. I have to go back to the drawing board. Low email open rate or click rate sign that you need better subject lines. If it's an open rate issue, maybe better email deliverability. Maybe something is wrong. It's triggering the spam filter thing for people's inboxes. Maybe you need more obvious or interesting links. If you have a high cart abandonment rate, right? So a lot of people mix to the order form and put things in their cart, but they don't buy. They just exit out. Maybe you have a potential technical issue. Maybe you have a bad user checkout experience. Maybe you're missing key info on sales page, or there's a lack of congruency between your sales page and your order form. So that's one thing, figuring out your sales funnel. Then we want to stabilize traffic. So the main focus now is achieving consistency, both in our traffic and marketing. So traffic focus, right? We did outreach. We're doing organic content now. Now would be the time I would say to play with, invest in a little bit of paid ads and see what's going. That's also a great way to test your funnel because when you run paid ads, those people have no clue who you are. If you run to a cold audience, obviously then those people have no clue who you are. And so you really see how your funnel performs with a cold person. And if it does what it's supposed to do, which is convert a cold person slowly into somebody that's willing to pay you money to solve their problem. So start to create an even more robust organic strategy. Now that you know what works, create a content calendar, plan posts, you know, content pillars. Those are important back to create posts. You can use scheduling tools and engage with customers on the regular super important, and maybe time to test one paid marketing method. Now, organic is going great for you. That's fine. You don't have to do this, but I always think it's interesting to just play with a little paid ads. So you can pick one platform to run ads, or you can pick a content creator to sponsor. Just figure out how to make your money work for you at this stage. Basically. One thing you can also think about doing is if any of your organic content is performing really well, just run those as paid ads because if they performed well organically, chances are they will perform well paid as well. And with paid ads, the important thing is do not start paid ads until you figure out your funnel. That is very important. If your funnel doesn't work, paid ads will do nothing for you. Paid ads are just an amplifier of your funnel. At this point, you might also start thinking about hiring somebody, but we're going to talk more about that in the next phase. So example, let's say you're a wedding planner, right? So maybe your funnel looks like creating organic content on Instagram. People find you on Instagram. Then from there, they sign up for your free invitation template that you give out for free, right? People who are downloading a wedding invitation template are probably people within your target audience. And then maybe you write a really high value weekly newsletter for brides to be that shares your favorite tips, shares little hacks that they might not know about, shares way they can save money. And then you talk about your packages casually as well, or you include your service doc or something or an offer dog. And then that leads them to apply to work with you. So that could be your funnel. And then maybe if all of that is working well, and your organic strategy and your organic content is doing really well, then you can start running a small budget, let's say Pinterest ad campaign on that organic content. All right. So phase three, here's the master checklist. Do the pop quiz at the end and you'll get it for free. Now, welcome to phase four. So we're going from 5k to 10k now, which is very exciting. It's a very exciting stage to get to. So at this stage, our focus is to work on the business versus working in the business. So first things first, we need to free up some time because chances are, if you've made it this far, you are doing a lot of things yourself, which is not the goal of business. We're not just trying to create a job for ourselves. We're trying to create a bigger thing and to create a bigger thing. We need to be looking at the bigger thing versus the small teeny tiny things of the day to day. You know what I mean? So first things first, free up some time, lists out your daily tasks, what you're working on a daily, weekly, monthly, and highlight what might slow you down and think about what you can do with some of these tasks. Can you eliminate them? Are they actually necessary at this stage of your business? Automate it. There are for sure things you can automate. You would be surprised, or you can delegate. And I know that's scary if you've never delegated before, but you can start small. You don't have to hire someone full-time. You can hire a freelancer to help you like a couple hours a week and just start handing things off, building trust with that person, and then slowly increasing from there. So you can create an SOP. So write down step-by-step instructions on the tasks you need to let go of. If you want help with all of this, by the way, this stage would be potentially a great time to start working with a digital business manager. I train digital business managers, so this is kind of a biased plug, but they will change your life. So if you want to hire from my pool of trained DBMs, this is totally a casual plug. I did not plan to say this. You can find the link down below. You can thank me later. They're wonderful. Okay. And then I would say maybe pick another traffic channel at this stage. So if educational Instagram carousels have been performing well for you, then maybe you can start translating some of that to threads, depending on where your audience is. That's very important. Don't just post wherever you like to browse and scroll. Post where your person, the person you want to solve the problem for, they browse and scroll. And traffic focus, again, here now we're doing organic. And at this stage, I would definitely, if you didn't start in the previous stage, have a paid ad strategy. And build your dream team. Okay. So list out your main business systems. So let's say social media is very important to you guys. Customer support, product fulfillment. You can create basic job descriptions for maybe just one person that you would want to hire first. So maybe if you spend a lot of time on miscellaneous marketing tasks, like small marketing tasks, maybe your first hire is a marketing assistant. You can create a hiring checklist, right? So job description, role responsibilities, create a short little paid trial, create your application form. So at this stage, I would be starting to look at a hierarchy, something like this. You're the CEO. You're of the business. And then maybe you have a business manager. You can think of it as a COO, fractional COO, who's managing the project team and operations alongside you. And then underneath, you have everybody who's working on executing. So people helping you with marketing, people helping with product fulfillment, people helping with content, with sales, like whatever you need in the operations of your business, basically. By the way, I'm thinking about making a whole video about business systems because I love creating systems and I'm a big systems fiend. So if you're interested in that, you can let me know in the comments as well. All right. So this is the master phase four checklist. Now, if you want a copy of this entire master checklist, $0 to 100K a year, then I'm linking the pop quiz below. And I hope everyone was paying attention in class so that you can actually get the checklist. And if you want something else, that'll be super helpful in starting your business. I'm linking my one page business plan video here. It's amazing. And I'll help you map out your whole business foundations properly. Thanks so much for watching as always. And I hope to see you in the next one. Okay. Bye.