Start a six-digit solopreneur business

Find Your Superpower newsletter 038

Read time: 9 minutes

Topics covered: Solopreneurship, content creation, LinkedIn branding

Most of you know me as the CEO and founder of a STEM-focused media communication business that has gone fully remote.

Our 20-pax core team encompasses a wide skillset ranging from business development to copywriting, publishing, design and digital marketing. In addition we work with a stable of 30-40 long-term freelancers who frequently take on assignments.

In 2023, I have been growing my keynote speaking and LinkedIn coaching business. Here’s the size of the team working on my speaking and coaching business:

One.

Yup... just me!

I run this side business by myself, budgeted at 1-2 days a week as a natural ceiling due to my work commitments.

Over the course of a year, I have grown my solopreneur business into a six-digit lifestyle business. 

Among GenZs and Millennials in particular, there is a strong movement towards running lifestyle businesses that provide the flexibility to work from anywhere. 

I hear you. I want that too, as it gives me more time to spend with my loved ones and on my hobbies.

In the waning days of 2023, I would like to provide you with a simple blueprint for how I got here, to help you embark on your own solopreneurship journey.

Here’s my five-step blueprint:

1. Build a consistent and powerful brand

2. Publish content regularly on LinkedIn to create awareness

3. Create a free or cheap product that acts as a top funnel

4. Convert prospects into buyers of your main product or service

5. Provide exceptional service that surprises and delights your customers

The backbone of all this is my tech stack, which revolves around a content platform called Kajabi (more details at the end of this newsletter).

1/ Build a consistent and powerful brand

Just to clarify what my academic credentials are: I have a PhD degree in biology, not a PhD degree in marketing communications.

I was previously a university assistant professor at a medical school until 2018, before I underwent a career transition to become an entrepreneur and a CEO.

At the beginning, it was an uphill climb as I was deemed mostly unqualified by legitimate media, digital marketing and publishing players.

I had to learn the hard way how to build a consistent and powerful personal brand. Show, not tell. With time, I gradually won over many of my now-industry colleagues, thanks to my commitment to showing up consistently.

Today, I cringe when I see people destroy their professional brands by showing up as Negative Nellies, Toxic Tommies and shock jock Howard Sterns. Staappp already, please! STAAAPP!!!

To stop this nonsense once and for all, I am running a free LinkedIn Branding Basics with Juliana Chan workshop for all of my course buyers on Friday, 26 January 2024, 11AM - 12PM (GMT +8). An invite will be sent closer to the date, and a recording will be placed in the course directory for those who can't attend. Please attend, course buyers. I promise you it will be the best hour that you invest in yourself in January 2024.

Regarding step 1, if you don’t get your brand right, you don’t pass go and you go directly to jail. #monopolyreference

2/ Publish content regularly on LinkedIn to create awareness

Next, imagine yourself running a cafe. You would renovate it and put up an attractive signboard to indicate that you are open for business. You would create regular content for social media.

A digital business is no different. You would need to indicate that you are open for business and ready to receive customers.

And if your business is targeted at professionals, executives, decision makers, C-suite management, investors, high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and all kinds of VIPs, LinkedIn is undisputedly the best place to find them.

How we do so is to create content regularly on LinkedIn.

[Note: this content strategy doesn't preclude creating content for TikTok, Instagram or X. It is not a zero-sum game and you can always create content elsewhere. But if you have a day job like I do and kids at home, it would be best to prioritize ruthlessly.]

In my case, I write this weekly newsletter, Find Your Superpower, which now has 30K subscribers on LinkedIn and email combined.

In addition, I post valuable and engaging content on LinkedIn 4-5 times a week, and on average I receive 100-200K impressions for my posts every week and around 8 million impressions every year.

Gary Vaynerchuk calls content creation the act of “day-trading attention”, which is his unique way of explaining that you need to drive eyeballs to your business.

To return to the cafe analogy, you want your cafe in a busy business or shopping district surrounded by many thirsty people searching for a drink. That's what good content on LinkedIn does for you.

In 2024, I am trialing a new group coaching format to teach you how to create better content on LinkedIn. The first cohort of my Six-Week Find Your Superpower LinkedIn Bootcamp will run from 17 February to 28 March 2024.

The goal of this six-week bootcamp is to work on creating content for career, business and financial outcomes, such as finding a new job, creating a top funnel for our business, and becoming more visible among our industry peers.

As Jerry Maguire would say, "Show me the money!"

3/ Create a free or cheap product that acts as a top funnel

Once your brand is solid (step 1) and eyeballs are raining on your content on LinkedIn (step 2), the next step is to build a reservoir to catch all of this newfound attention.

This next step is crucial, so listen carefully.

When the timing is right, you would create either a free or cheap digital course to allow prospective customers to trial your digital product in a safe and nearly risk-free manner.

If you prefer to charge for your product, anywhere around USD$50-150 should be acceptable. For that matter, a free product may not necessarily be better than an inexpensive product, as people may devalue your product if it is free. Food for thought, huh! That said, a free product removes one more obstacle to reaching your prospective customer—getting them to open their wallets.

You may wonder if you should be giving away your best stuff at this stage. The answer is… YES!

Your free or inexpensive product has to be incredibly valuable, or it would not achieve its goal of converting your prospective customer to your main product or service (step 4).

If you do not show a potential customer what they can get for free or cheaply, they will not part with thousands of dollars for your main product or service.

You can take a look at my affordable on-demand video and e-book courses as a template to help you create yours.

4/ Convert prospects into buyers of your main product or service

The core services I provide are keynote speaking, moderating industry panels, corporate training on branding and content strategy, 1:1 coaching for VIP clients, and of course my new group coaching six-week bootcamp.

All of them are beneficiaries of getting step 1-3 right.

If you don’t have a strong brand (step 1), eyeballs raining on your content (step 2), and a zero-risk or nearly zero-risk product (step 3), then you will only hear crickets at step 4.

You may be the best coach in your industry or region. You may be the number one expert in the niche area that you specialize in. We could engage in the longstanding debate on the concept of “build and they will come”, but let me put it simply without hurting anyone’s feelings… they won’t come.

They won't come because they may not be able to find you, but they sure can find your competitor! 

5/ Provide exceptional service that surprises and delights your customers

Finally, if you aim to create an infinite loop of step 1-4, you have to deliver an exceptional product or service that surprises and delights your customers.

There are many books on this subject, but they all pretty much say the same thing… your customer has to come out on the other end with exactly what you promised you will help them achieve... and then some.

If step 1-4 is done correctly, your former clients will refer you to new clients.

Discovery calls that originate from referrals are the best kind of discovery calls to make as you have already been social-proofed by someone they trust and work with.

As an example, you need reviews such as the one below for an infinite loop to happen:

 

One platform to rule them all! #LOTRreference

Now that I have discussed the blueprint of a solopreneur business in five steps, I would like to introduce you to the tech stack behind all of this.

At this point, a gentle reminder that I am running all of this solo as a solopreneur. I have two other jobs as CEO and MOM that’s also kinda hectic.

Therefore, I need an idiot-proof platform that simplifies the process of creating, marketing, hosting and selling my digital products.

The entire platform has to be no-code (I am adept at simple code but no more), automate the payment gateway, and deliver my video courses and e-book to hundreds of people fuss free and in real-time while I sleep.

It has to combine a website, online video and e-book course directory, e-newsletter, email database, payment gateway, community coaching and sales campaign all in one platform.

After months of Googling and trying all kinds of platforms, I settled on Kajabi.

Initially, I was put-off and dissatisfied by the pricing of US$1,400-1,900 per annum, which seemed a little steep to me. During my 14-day trial, I even thought that Kajabi had too many features, as I merely wanted to start an e-newsletter and an email database.

But as my solopreneur business grew beyond a weekly newsletter service, I realized I needed all these features as well:

• a no-code website builder to make www.julianachan.org to host my courses

• a payment gateway connected to Stripe or PayPal to seamlessly run my course sales

• a platform to deliver my on-demand video and e-book courses to customers

• community circles and chat rooms for my group coaching cohort

I quickly realized that Kajabi was saving me loads of money. Had I run my courses, group coaching and newsletter in a patchwork of 4-5 different platforms, each costing approximately $50-100 a month, it would be far more expensive (and complicated) in the long run.

Anyway, if you are interested, you could try it out for free for 14 days here: Kajabi for solopreneurs. In full transparency, I will get a commission as a Kajabi partner if you sign up via this affiliate link. But that's not the main takeaway point.

The point is, solopreneurs need simple SaaS solutions to survive solo and stay successful!

As this is my first time talking about solopreneurship in general, I tried to make my newsletter as simple as possible to gauge your interest in this topic.

If you are interested, I will be happy to go into more detail in future newsletters.

You can let me know by responding to this newsletter!

PS: a final reminder that my six-week bootcamp is enrolling and my Christmas offer of 10% off my usual bootcamp price is ending on 11:59 pm, 24 December 2023 (GMT+8). Join the waitlist here!

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Thanks for reading issue 038 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.

For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 29,000+ people, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.

Here’s how we can stay in touch:

1. I would recommend you purchase my course, The LinkedIn Success Mindset. In this all-in-one guide to LinkedIn, we will learn how to manage our mindset, take action and avoid making cardinal sins on the platform. I will be giving course buyers a LIVE branding basics workshop on 26 January 2024.

2. If you are very new to LinkedIn, consider my masterclass on LinkedIn professional branding, Find Your Superpower: How to Rebrand Yourself on LinkedIn. This 1h on-demand video course that will help you identify your professional brand, write a brand statement from scratch, and launch your brand on LinkedIn. Don’t muck around for years on LinkedIn, sort your profile out quickly.

3. Season 1 of my podcast, The Science of Work, is available on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Please don’t forget to leave me a five-star rating to help others find my podcast! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

4. Sign up for my email newsletter mailing list to receive an invitation to join my WhatsApp community, where I share storytelling secrets, interesting LinkedIn posts and branding tips!

5. Register now for my Six-Week Find Your Superpower LinkedIn Bootcamp. Four days remain to the end of my Christmas sale!