So let’s be honest about that. But it’s not a fake dream when you’re in my odd situation. I’m surrounded by people who make 6 and 7 figures online.
People such as:
- Dan Koe
- Dan Go
- Matt Grey
- Todd Brison
- Zach Progob
- Dakota Robertson
I chat with them frequently. After a while you begin to see patterns, no matter your intelligence.
I’d have to be stupid after 9 years not to know something about this topic, given I’ve achieved the goal (admittedly it took me longer than a year).
In the headline it says 365 days. This is a goalpost to aim for.
For some of you it will take longer, and for some you’ll do it faster. The point of this article is to be a rough blueprint, not an exact science.
Why?
Everyone’s journey online will be different. How dare I tell you what yours will be like? Who am I … an internet Jesus? No.
The key here is to have an open mind. Consider that I might be right and experiment for yourself.
Race your way to 6 figures with this strategy
I’m going to piss off every finance bro that ever lived with this one.
Sell your time.
Wait, what!?
Yep. In the beginning, the fastest way to make money online is to sell your time in the form of:
- Freelancing
- Contracting
- Or coaching
That’s what I did in the early days. It’s more about the mindset shift than the money you’ll earn. Once you make money outside of a traditional job, everything changes.
New levels of life get unlocked.
The other reason to start by selling your time is that you only need 3–5 people a month paying you $3000 to hit 6 figures.
That means you don’t need heaps of leads or millions of followers on social media. The best way to attract these customers is with beginner-level content you post on social media tied to a topic you know about.
If you can’t think of a topic, then write about the skills or industry attached to your job. Chances are you know that better than most.
By-the-hour customers have a superpower
I’m telling you to start with a handful of customers for a reason.
When I started out I was a social media coach. I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do long-term — early mornings, pain in the ass customers, homework, long Zoom calls.
But these early coaching client guinea pigs helped me understand my target market’s psychology and to learn what problems they faced.
Once I knew that it was easier to transition to the next step.
Modern online businesses are education companies in disguise
Businesses that sell courses or information products are often, wrongly, labeled scammy.
“They’re selling the dream, I tell ya.”
What these skeptics get wrong is the modern business is an education company in disguise. It started with websites.
Businesses created websites full of, you guessed it, information. They had to educate potential customers on what they sold and why they did it.
Then social media came along and upended the entire game. Suddenly businesses had to publish daily “content.” Now AI has come along and smacked us in the butts again.
Soon businesses will need human-like chatbots to educate their target markets. There’s no escaping the information age.
The tangible takeaway here for you is you’ll need to get on social media — either under your own name, or using a nickname.
Start with free and don’t worry if you need to pee
When good-hearted, normal people seek to make money online they make one big mistake. They say this:
“What’s my product? What do I have to sell?”
This way of thinking never works.
At the start you have nothing to sell. Other than offering a service on the back end to get to 6-figures, what you want to do is offer a free product instead.
- Free products scale faster.
- Free products have infinite distribution that a paywall can’t mess with.
Now, here’s where I tell you I’m a dumb-dumb. I’ve offered free products for years. What I’ve never done is create an email course.
After watching people like Nicolas Cole and Ali Abdaal build 7 and 8 figures business off the back of email courses … I’ve realized I missed this opportunity and am working to fix it.
Don’t you miss it too.
To make things worse, my business partner recently bought a popular ConvertKit course. Many 7-figure creators say it helped them get to where they are.
Basically the whole course is a blueprint for how to create an email course.
An email course is a series of free emails you send people to help them with a problem. It’s more detailed than a tweet or an article like this. It may even be customized based on an individual’s goals.
Offering a free product may make you feel like you want to piss your pants.
That fear is normal. But what you need to do is get over it and offer a free product, which will be the foundation for a paid product later
No data, no paycheck
It’s time to scream this one from the hills…
Stop guessing.
An email course gives you data on what people ACTUALLY want, not what you THINK they want.
In my last article on this topic a few critics said “But I keep getting stuck online!” If you follow the data you won’t get stuck. And outside of that it’s best *not* to be a lone wolf.
If you get stuck then pay for coaching from someone online who’s smarter than you and has social proof. Or join a community of smart people who have a similar online goal to you, and crowdsource strategies.
Whatever you do, just don’t sit there alone saying you’re stuck or it’s hard. It’s supposed to be. Be resourceful.
The path to 7 figures in 365 days
With data and a community of people around you, it’s time to build a product and launch it.
Products are what get you to 7 figures.
The most vital clue to a great product is this: what one piece of content that you published online became your most successful?
That piece of content will hopefully have comments. Read them. See what people are saying. Get a feel for a solution you could offer to a common problem.
The product doesn’t have to be a course or a book either.
It could be a physical product, a live event, a membership platform, a piece of software. The type of product doesn’t matter so much.
What matters is you launch something.
The scrappy way to launch a product
This is gonna sound wild.
When I launch a product, I don’t have a product. All I have is a landing page with a summary of what the product is. Then I drive traffic to the page to see if anyone is interested.
When someone buys whatever it is, I have two options:
- Deliver the product
- Issue a refund
If enough sales come through the door then I launch. If they don’t then I issue refunds.
My first online education company failed spectacularly. I built a product that taught people how to get published in publications like Forbes.
Only three people bought. LOL.
So I just refunded the money … but I learned many important lessons that I implemented on the next product.
I followed this formula 2 more times (because I’m dumb as a plank of wood) and eventually landed on the online business I have now.
See the power of launching? It teaches what you don’t know. Cause sitting there saying “I don’t know” and having a cry does nothing (I’ve tried that).
Building communities is more important than building products
Another mind-bender.
7-figure businesses are attached to communities. Read that again.
There isn’t a single 7-figure creator I know who doesn’t run a community. That’s not a coincidence. In the old days, we had minimum viable products. In the new world, we have minimum viable communities.
Your ability to lead people or get them into the same online space is more powerful than your ability to market or sell. That’s a huge opportunity for many of you — especially those of you who hate selling and think it’s evil.
What do you sell to a community?
Whatever they want. How do you find out? Ask them through emails, surveys, 1–1 Zoom calls. This stuff is child’s play.
Another common objection is “Where do I host my community?” Who the F cares. Anywhere — Facebook, Slack, Discord.
The tool you use matters a lot less than the soft/hard skills you possess. A winner with the right mindset will find a way and not let the name of an app keep them from their online goal.
An existing audience is a helper, not a necessity
“Shut up Tim, you’ve got a massive audience.”
That’s another pushback I’ve had. The idea you need millions of followers or an email list bigger than Tim Ferriss is a myth.
Especially now in the world of newsletter recommendations.
You can literally use ConvertKit, Beehiiv, or $ub$stack to buy other people’s email subscribers. Or you can use the free approach and partner with similar people to you to recommend each other’s email lists.
For example, Doreen has an email list about medicine. You have an email list about cancer survivors. You can send Doreen an email or direct message and ask her if she’d be willing to recommend your newsletter in return for you recommending hers.
Then every time someone joins her email list, they get a small notification at the end for them to also join your email list.
This one technique has made the goal of making 7 figures online attainable for so many more people.
How I left thousands of dollars on the table
If you do some or all of what I’ve suggested it’ll get you far.
One dumb thing I missed is I only offered products for sale at low price points. Not long ago I launched a product for $10,000.
I thought nobody would be interested.
Turns out I was dead wrong.
The lesson here is to always make sure you have products for sale at different price points. Wealthy people often see low price points as a sign the product is low value. I wish I had known this earlier.
So experiment with these price points:
- $50-$100
- $500-$1000
- $5000
- $10,000
If you have nothing to sell at a particular price, then some people have nothing to buy from you.
Final Thought
What you’ve just read is a rough guide.
More than exact steps, it’s full of powerful ideas I’ve learned. Take some or all of these ideas and go experiment with them.
Start with a service to get some money flowing, then dare to progress to products to upgrade from 6 to 7 figures.
If you want to do products and services together then you can. Just remember a service sells your time so it does limit your freedom.
Have fun out there and make sure to network in the DMs.
