The only 5 things you need to make $100,000/year

Sep 11

Written By Andrew Woodbury

How to apply simple systems to grow quickly

Read time: 6 minutes

Here’s our TTT for this week on how to grow your online teaching business.

What is TTT? A Tip, Takeaway, and Task. On Thursday.

Today’s read will take you about 6 minutes.

Enjoy!

Tip: Simplify to earn more

Without stating the obvious, you can start earning more by doing less. So often we as teachers get caught up in doing more than we should.

Helping students with any kind of problem.

Saying yes to every student.

Charging a rate that leaves you with almost nothing after taxes.

Giving feedback students haven’t paid for.

Lesson planning when we know the lesson will go in a different direction anyway.

Posting aimlessly on social media with little to no engagement.

Another chestnut comes to mind: working more doesn’t mean it’s productive work.

It’s extremely challenging to earn $100,000 per year if you have to show up to work for anything to happen.

To have our teaching business grow, we need systems.

For many, the biggest challenge is systematizing and automating. Having work be done in the background by the machine is the epitome of a successful business; not having to physically do it ourselves saves us lots of time and energy.

What’s the point of listening to that growth podcast if you never actually take action on the recommendations?

So how do we set up such a system?

Let’s dive in.

Takeaway: Less is More

Let’s get laser-focused on what your business does. It helps one type of person do one very specific thing. And within that framework, you can automate and systematize the majority of your business.

Here are the only five things you need to earn $100,000 per year or more.

1. One landing page

Our recommendation: Carrd

If you read our newsletter last week, we walked you through how to set up your landing page through Carrd. Carrd is (in our opinion) the best on the market in terms of setup, functionality, and aesthetics.

And it’s free. Upgrade to the pro version for only $19/year. You won’t find better value than that.

And one landing page is all you need. Remember, you do one thing really well - your teaching isn’t for everyone, it’s for someone. If you need more than one landing page, you haven’t niched down far enough.

2. Email marketing system

Our recommendation: MailerLite

Once prospects opt-in on your landing page, they give you permission to contact them. MailerLite makes it super simple to do this.

It’s also free for your first 1,000 subscribers. After 1,000, your business pays for itself.

Mix in value and sales emails and watch the revenue come in.

3. An asset

Our recommendation: A course

Selling your time only goes so far. That’s great for getting proof of concept, but it limits your growth - no to mention leads to burnout. Having an asset allows you to sell and scale without working more. A course is the best of both worlds in terms of helping your students the most while fitting in with a scalable business model.

If you’ve helped a student accomplish something, that means you did it in a systematic way. This also means it’s a repeatable way, which you can teach to hundreds or thousands of others.

And remember, “course” doesn’t mean “self study.” There is no one-size-fits-all here.

4. A payment processor

Our recommendation: Stripe

Stripe is the world’s most-used payment processor. Get rid of worries about international fees and currency exchange rates. Stripe is your one-stop shop. Set up invoices, subscriptions, installment plans - basically anything. It also embeds directly on your landing page.

Oh, and it’s also free, and they take the industry standard 2.9% processing fee.

5. Persistence

Our recommendation: create your own systems.

There’s no magic pill for persistence. Just wake up and go to work. Create good habits, hold yourself accountable, find accountability partners, and do the same thing every day like a machine.

Task: What are you waiting for?

With these aspects in place, do these five things and watch what happens.

Step 1: Post long-form content 1-3 days per week

Step 2: Post short-form content 1-3 days per week

Step 3: Offer a lead magnet to get emails

Step 4: Send sales emails to get revenue

Step 5: Do this for 1-3 years

Step 5 is always the one that gets people. Growing a successful business doesn’t happen overnight. In podcasting, there is the rule of seven. That is that the vast majority of people who start a podcast don’t get past episode seven. They don’t have discipline and consistency.

If you want your business to grow, you must have discipline. If you do, this simple five-step formula is all you need. And it works.

We hope this helps.

See you again next week.

Leo, Andrew, and Mike