Lessons from Pre-$1 Million Businesses with MNIB Consulting Founder Breanne Dyck

Interviews, Show Notes

Lessons from Pre-$1 Million Businesses with MNIB Consulting Founder Breanne Dyck
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The Nitty Gritty:

  • Why you should figure out a different way to do what’s already working rather than start over with something new
  • Why the hub-and-spoke organization model isn’t sustainable for growth
  • How when you focus on things that feel easy to you, your results will improve
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My guest this week on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast is Breanne Dyck who published an interesting article earlier this year called “15 Lessons for Pre-$1M Online Businesses” that got a lot of play in our community. Breanne learned these lessons as she built her own business as the founder of MNIB Consulting Inc. and as she continues to help others build theirs. In this episode, we explore some of the lessons she wrote about with a focus on how they impacted Breanne’s business, MNIB Consulting.

Don’t Stop as Soon as Something Starts Working

Every time we pivot we get closer and closer to the thing that is ultimately going to work.

– Breanne Dyck

Breanne describes the big business model overhaul MNIB Consulting just went through where they reviewed all the products they have ever offered and evaluated what was working, what was not working and what’s the least complicated way to combine the things working and be the most transformative and impactful for their clients. As a result of this evaluation, they simplified their client support and made it very easy for their clients to come to them when they had questions.

Your Approach to Team Is Part of the Problem

What matters is, are you hiring someone that you can give ownership to of their entire area of responsibility?

– Breanne Dyck

The hub-and-spoke model of team development, where everything still goes through the CEO, doesn’t effectively free up the CEO to work within their zone of genius. Breanne describes how she specifically built her team from the org chart framework described in Gino Wickman’s book Rocket Fuel so that was not the case. When she hires new team members she gives them ownership of their entire area of responsibility.

Do What Feels Easy

Too often entrepreneurs get caught up in the “I have to do this” mentality even if it doesn’t feel easy. Breanne felt that way about blogging. She knew she needed to produce regular content, but blog writing never felt easy to her. So, she found ways to regularly produce content in different ways such as a daily email, posting in Facebook groups and podcasts.

This format for content is more conversational and off the cuff and allowed Breanne to process ideas as she was having them. And, you know what? Her daily email, a task that feels easy to her, is working remarkably well and the response rate is 10X that of when she was writing regular articles.

There’s so much more in this episode including how a line in Profit First by Mike Michalowicz led to a breakthrough for Breanne about how she would grow her business, what percentage of revenue online businesses should dedicate to salaries (including yours) and why Breanne stopped list building. Access the full episode to learn all of this and more.

Do you subscribe to the podcast? Jump on over to iTunes to listen to all episodes where today’s creative entrepreneurs share strategic and tactical components about how to make money, take control of their businesses and pursue what’s most important to them.

Self-Publishing, Distribution, and Writing for Wealth with Author Joanna Penn

Interviews, Show Notes

Self-Publishing, Distribution, and Writing for Wealth with Author Joanna Penn

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The Nitty Gritty:

  • How the Amazon Kindle and ebook pricing made it possible for independent authors and entrepreneurs to self-publish and write for wealth
  • Why marketing, packaging, and pricing correctly can expand your sales
  • How mobile, audio, and the growth of the international market are the next opportunities for authors
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Ever the entrepreneur, Joanna Penn, my guest on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast and author of 26 books and counting, realized the potential to write for wealth in October 2009. That was when the Amazon Kindle launched internationally and lower ebook pricing allowed independent authors access to a much larger marketplace.

Ebook pricing was a revelation. When the Kindle came out, independent authors could price their books lower and still make good margins.

– Joanna Penn

Joanna’s entrepreneurial mindset quickly realized the potential to sell books digitally to people all over the world.

Online marketing, packaging and pricing

If you are going to publish online, you need to market online.

– Joanna Penn

In 2009, Joanna was miserable at her 9-5 job, so she decided to write her first non-fiction book. After self-publishing and self-marketing the book through traditional channels (PR, TV, and newspapers), Joanna had sold about “three copies.” At the time, she really wanted to tap into the American marketplace that was much larger than Australia’s, so her focus shifted to online marketing to reach those American readers. She ditched traditional media for anything with a clickable link; started a blog in 2008, a podcast and Twitter account in 2009.

Since “you can’t have a career with just one book,” don’t trap yourself into launching a website or social media channel for just one title. Chances are you will write another book, so make sure your branding can encompass this growth.

99 cents made the first Kindle millionaires.

– Joanna Penn

By 2011, Joanna had a number of books and realized that she could leave her miserable job because her income would grow based on the size of her audience and the number of books she had.

In the podcast, Joanna shares her insights about figuring out the right price point to get the highest number of people to purchase your book and why offering something for free to your audience is still very important to build your email list and give them a chance to sample your work to see if they like it.

Under her pen name for action/adventure thrillers, J.F. Penn, Joanna’s first book in a nine-book series, Stone of Fire is permanently free on Kindle. That freebie is like the cheese samples in the supermarket. You go in and try it. If you like it, you’ll buy the whole packet—or in this case, the reader will purchase the entire series or more books if they liked what they sampled for free.

Think of Amazon as a completely different ecosystem. Amazon’s algorithms will recommend your other books that are at a higher price point to shoppers when they show interest in your free book. This is why Joanna uses J.F. Penn for her action/adventure thrillers and Joanna Penn for her non-fiction writing—to fully leverage Amazon’s role as a search engine to get in front of the right audience without confusing the algorithms.

In addition, Joanna is adept at re-packaging her work to be more easily found on Amazon whether by adjusting titles, creating box sets or altering the categories she shows up in. If your book has gone stagnant on Amazon, look at changing the cover, the category, and keywords and putting some ads on it and you may restart the whole thing.

Growth of mobile and international marketplaces

Kindle apps on mobile. Audio through Alexa. Best-seller lists on Amazon. The digital transformation of publishing continues. Joanna predicts the next opportunity for independent authors will be international marketplaces, and a little foreshadowing, it might not be on Amazon.

You don’t want to miss a thing from my conversation with Joanna about self-publishing. Tune in to the full episode to learn more about how she repackages her work and what’s on the horizon for self-publishing.

Join us each week by subscribing to the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast on iTunes.

The Power of Dedicated Social Networks with Mighty Networks Founder Gina Bianchini

Interviews, Show Notes

The Power of Dedicated Social Networks with Mighty Networks Founder Gina Bianchini

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The Nitty Gritty:

  • Why it’s time to disrupt our existing social networks
  • How we can create a better future when we connect individuals who share a common identity or interest
  • Why there’s room for the old social networks and new interest-driven social networks; entrepreneurs can leverage them both
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While we may not have a crystal ball to predict the future transformation of social networks, we have Gina Bianchini as our guest on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast, and she has some amazing thoughts about how social networks must evolve. Gina is the founder and CEO of Mighty Networks, a company that facilitates the creation of dedicated communities around an identity or interest, and founder and former CEO of Ning.

Existing social networks served a purpose but we have outgrown them

There’s just no substitute for people who are on your same path.

– Gina Bianchini

When Facebook started 11 years ago, it set out to help you consume information from people you already knew—former colleagues, college roomies, extended family members, high school and elementary school classmates. And, it did its job splendidly. Today, there are 2 billion people who are connected in ways they weren’t previously.

But, as Gina describes in the podcast, Facebook doesn’t support finding, meeting and breaking the ice with people who are on the same path as you—whether that path is a career or entrepreneurship, an illness, parenthood or more—via a newsfeed that whizzes by and gives no context for the updates that you see. Dedicated social networks solve that issue.

Small (with the ability to scale) is the next big thing

The people who don’t already know each other is the next chapter in how the world is going to create new relationships and a better future.

– Gina Bianchini

So, is small the next big thing? Tune in to the podcast to hear Gina’s full explanation, but the reality is that it doesn’t take a lot of people to make you feel like you’re in it together. At the same time, being in it together should be able to scale to larger numbers.

You can connect with people who are at the same stage as you (there’s a reason there’s a freshmen orientation), in the same region as you are and as the network grows you can meet more and more people that are just like you. An interest-driven network should focus on all the kinds of relationships that very naturally mirror the perfect environments of the real world.

So, it’s not really a matter of small versus large. What Gina loves about small though is that it feels attainable. Anyone can create a network based on an interest that then can create these really phenomenal moments and spark incredible relationships that don’t require millions, thousands or hundreds of people. It just requires a handful of people that care about each other.

How to use dedicated networks to grow your business

Think of your traditional social networks as your marketing (or the front of the house), while a dedicated network is the “back of the house” where you trade shop talk with like-minded people. A dedicated network doesn’t have to compete daily with hundreds or thousands of posts on divergent topics and issues and viral sensations.

When you try to use Facebook for everything in your business is where it falls down and where interest networks can really step up.

– Gina Bianchini

There are plenty of useful nuggets in the full episode of Profit. Power. Pursuit. about the notion that interests bring us together, the power of dedicated social networks to enhance your life and your business success and the critical role word-of-mouth advertising is even for a venture capital-funded business such as Mighty Networks. Gina also shares what’s on the horizon for dedicated social networks—videos, smarter software (that can actually ORGANIZE events for the network) and revenue features to make the networks even more powerful.

All you need to do is to subscribe to Profit. Power. Pursuit. on iTunes so you access all episodes of our award-winning podcast with the best entrepreneurs of the 21st century.

Giving Yourself Space to Explore with Monica Lee

Interviews, Show Notes

Giving Yourself Space to Explore with Monica Lee

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The Nitty Gritty:

  • Why a feeling of restlessness is the sign that it’s time to explore the possibilities for your business.
  • How to scale back or alter technologies and strategies to fit into your own goals and business. Just because everyone else is doing them, doesn’t make them right for you.  
  • Why you should embrace continuous exploration to be sure you and your business are headed in the direction you want to.
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As artist, illustrator, mentor and podcaster Monica Lee shared on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast episode, even entrepreneurs can “quit their jobs.” Really! Well, at least push the pause button to give yourself time and space to explore new directions and possibilities for how to make money in a way that is meaningful to you.

I sort of ‘quit my job.’ I kind of just had to stop and regroup and really ask myself: What do I want to be doing? What does my life look like earning money?

– Monica Lee

When you get restless, it’s time to explore

You really have to believe in your hustle. And be authentic about it.

– Monica Lee

When Monica found herself extremely restless about what she was doing and hustling for, she knew it was time to rethink her art and her creative career. Although it was a really, really hard decision, there was really no other option, Monica explains. So, she put a full stop on things that were generating income for her allow her the “elbow room” to make decisions on what she really wanted to be doing.

Evolving into your own

When Monica found herself in a creative transition, she challenged herself in a new way and jumped in full force to learn online marketing. She immersed herself in the goal to expand her business expertise. Monica learned how people developed their e-newsletter list. She started a video interview series that ultimately evolved into her podcast Smart Creative Women. She began mentoring other artists; with experience in licensing, illustrating, freelancing and in the children’s industry, she had a lot to offer. And, like every good online marketing person, she developed an e-course.

As the pendulum swung to the business side, Monica had to ask some hard questions. Was she a teacher? Was she an artist? How is her creativity going to show up or if she’s all in as a business person, should she just go be an art director for another company?

When I started asking myself those harder questions, that’s when I had to put a full stop. It was hard to execute things as I was peeling back the onion layers on myself and where I want to go.

– Monica Lee

Continuous exploration

What if this growth isn’t good? It’s that risk of not having everything turn out ok, but it’s doing it anyway.

– Monica Lee

Although there are people who can determine the balance between their entrepreneurial side and their creative or core offering by doing them both simultaneously, Monica found that if she was going to give herself the time and emotional space to truly figure out her direction, she had to set the business things aside. To get back in touch with her creative self, she traveled a lot and rediscovered what inspired her. Once her creativity was nurtured and she got back to creating work that was exciting to her, she added back the business side, but with more intention. Monica set her financial goals, and then worked backward from that to determine how she was going to make the money she wanted to.

As you will learn in the full episode of the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast, Monica continues to challenge herself in new ways and asks hard questions of herself to ensure that she’s on the right path—for her business and for herself.

We go live every Tuesday with tangible takeaways for your small business from some of today’s most inspiring business owners. Be sure to tune in every week and subscribe on iTunes to Profit. Power. Pursuit.

Navigate a Slow & Steady Business Brand Transition with Racheal Cook

Interviews, Show Notes

Navigate a Slow & Steady Business Brand Transition with Racheal Cook

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The Nitty Gritty:

  • Why a slow-and-steady approach to change can still lead to success
  • How Racheal’s business evolved naturally and her brand was built intentionally
  • How publishing her last book helped her further grow her business
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There’s nothing wrong with a slow-and-steady approach to change as Racheal Cook, my guest on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast and author of Your Business Sweet Spot, reminds us.

In 2008 she started The Yogipreneur, her first business, by accident as she was recovering from a career in corporate consulting that had left her unhealthy and unhappy. While The Yogipreneur still exists, Racheal embraced a full brand change in 2014 and you can now find all her resources for entrepreneurs of holistic and service-oriented businesses, including the Sweet Spot Strategy, at Rachealcook.com.

Slow-and-Steady

I like to test things A LOT before I bring them forward.

– Racheal Cook

Rachael doesn’t rush things. When she left the corporate world, she took her time to figure out her next move. It ended up being entrepreneurship. When it was time to reorganize her business around the Sweet Spot methodology, she started testing ideas out within her program and on her alumni students who receive lifetime access to coursework. The evolution took more than 3 years. As a slow-and-steady girl, her vision right now is to stay focused on growing the program and strategy she has in place now rather than add other elements to it.

Branding Evolution

True to Racheal’s nature of slow and steady, the first steps to evolve her brand began in 2014. While she credits sticking to yogis in her early years with giving her “big breaks” quickly because she was seen as an expert, she noticed that she was attracting a more diverse clientele by 2014—doulas, midwifes, healthcare practitioners. The tip was happening naturally. Her ultimate brand evolution took many steps and several years.

The Sweet Spot, based on the Hedgehog Concept from Jim Collins’ Good to Great, but modified by Racheal to resonate with solopreneurs, was a concept that had always been part of her philosophy. As Racheal began to envision how her brand would evolve beyond yogis, The Sweet Spot was a natural focus. This time, rather than bootstrapping her branding, she hired a professional branding company, Public Persona and set out to update and modify her programs, rewrite her materials and website content, update photography and all the other things involved with rebranding, on the side—all while the business continued to hum along and make money.

As long as you’re helping people they will forgive a lot of imperfections in how it looks.

– Racheal Cook

Book Helps Drive Business

If they like the content, they will love the support.

– Racheal Cook

Racheal was motivated to write her second book, Your Business Sweet Spot, because she needed to create a resource that was easily digestible for her students to pick up. Rather than write it from scratch, she pulled together all her coaching calls, transcripts, worksheets and more, and edited them into a book. While it only covers about 1/8 of what she does with her students, it gives the most foundational pieces of information. It also gives prospective clients a taste of what is to come when working with her. They can “try you out” very inexpensively to see if investing in classes makes sense.

You don’t want to miss a word of my interview with Racheal. Listen to the full episode at Profit. Power. Pursuit. to delve deeper into her brand transition, why she was initially hesitant to write her book and more.

Next week, we will have another interview with one of today’s most inspiring business owners. Don’t miss a single episode of Profit. Power. Pursuit and subscribe on iTunes.

Fixing What’s Broken to Develop New Products with Nathalie Lussier

Interviews, Show Notes

Fixing What's Broken to Develop New Products with Nathalie Lussier

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The Nitty Gritty:

  • What prompted Nathalie Lussier to transition her business from information marketing to software development
  • How the development of new products is driven by fixing what’s broken
  • How Nathalie’s team has evolved since they began to focus on software development
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It’s always a good idea to listen to the pain points of your customers to develop your next big idea just like Nathalie Lussier, this week’s guest on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast and founder of software company AmbitionAlly.

Since she built her first website at age 12, it’s probably no surprise that she graduated with a software engineering degree. But she certainly surprised friends and family when she turned down a job offer with a Wall Street firm to become an entrepreneur. She launched her first business, originally Raw Foods Witch but now called Real Foods Witch, to share information about healthy eating. She used her software development skills to create a menu planner app for subscribers to use to drag and drop recipes and build grocery lists. But then she realized she didn’t have the audience or the number of subscribers to make it a worthwhile project.

Fixing What’s Broken

What was different about the development of the products that eventually became AmbitionAlly, intuitive software for ambitious business owners, was she knew that this time they had a solution that people were excited about. What started out as “scratching an itch” her own team was bothered by turned into solutions that help other small business owners. Her transformation to software development began.

Do fewer things better.

– Nathalie Lussier

The first plugin Nathalie and her team developed was AccessAlly to solve problems they had with the membership plugin they used. Because it was more complex, they didn’t release what they built as a solution to the public, but kept using it internally to keep improving it. The first tool they released for the public was PopupAlly. While they have a lot of ideas they could push into production they hold themselves back to stay true to the one of the team’s mottos: “Do fewer things better.”

We do a lot of listening to our customers and the people in the marketplace.

– Nathalie Lussier

This effective listening helps them come up with the next big idea and also confirms they are on the right track with new product development. Nathalie’s team solicits feedback from existing customers through surveys, they pose questions to their Facebook groups such as “What would be your ideal solution? How do you wish this worked?” and talk to their Certified Partners who are in the trenches using tools daily.

They have the finger on the pulse and they bubble things up to us if they think it’s important.

– Nathalie Lussier

The lean-and-mean team

Behind the scenes of AmbitionAlly is a lean-and-mean team made up of 6 full-time employees and 1 part-timer who make the magic happen. With the exception of Nathalie and her husband, all team members are dispersed in various parts of the world and rarely work side by side. To keep the team on track, Nathalie credits her team’s secret weapon: their project manager and a daily 5-minute stand-up phone call.

Learn more about the evolution of AmbitionAlly’s team and the priority they place on continuing education, Nathalie’s thoughts on trends that will impact the small business world and what’s on the horizon for new projects by listening to the full podcast.

Subscribe to the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast on iTunes so you won’t miss a single episode of our award-winning podcast named by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the top 24 Exceptional Women-Hosted Podcasts for Entrepreneurs in 2017.