Are you wondering how to start an online
business?
I run a fairly large service based
online business
called Express Writers. Together, I have a
team of
over 90 creators on staff. I started this
business back in 2011 with
nothing but 75 dollars that was all I
had to my name in my bank accounts.
And today it's 2020 almost 10 years
later
we are crossing 30,000 projects
completed
and we almost have 100 people on our
staff. I've done
a lot of interviews stories through the
years but today I wanted to kind of pull
the curtains back
and have you feel like you're sitting
down with me to learn the story
see what happened and get some expert
advice on how to start
your own online business. I'm really
gonna hold nothing back in this video,
I'm going to give you my best advice
I believe that now is the time to go
online because of the lockdown we have
had
literally double the amount of people
now using the internet and google search.
So, now is the time to start your online
business I've been doing it for 10 years
in today's video, I'm going to share with
you the story how I did it
what my growth catalyst were and the
four things you need
you absolutely have to have to run a
successful service-based business.
First of all, I think the statistic is
that by year 10,
only one third of businesses last, for us
to make it
to year 10 which is happening in just a
few months for us,
the best comparison would be like; if
you're in a subway train going 250 miles
an hour and you have to hold on for your
life
that's basically what running a
successful business looks like,
it is not easy, you have to be along for
the ride
if you're not you fall off the train, you
can get left behind.
So, it's important to know there's really
nothing set in stone
I think that success tends to find you
when you're walking down the right path,
so your specific path should and will
look a lot different from mine
that said there are some proven things
here on how to start an online business
that I just kind of wanted to share with
you today.
Okay, so the founding story really quick.
Back in 2011,
I was 19 years old and like I said I
only had 75 dollars in my bank account
and how Express Writer started was; one
morning
I woke up thought to myself I really
want to make a living
doing what I love and I knew I could use
the internet for that because
at 13 years old I had figured out how to
make money using the internet
I was filling out surveys for cash. So, at
19 years old, I had that idea,
I want to learn how to make money I took
it online, I google search
how to make a living writing and that's
where everything started.
So, that day, I started a Freelance
profile, I learned about the freelance
market,
I scrolled Upwork which back then was
called Odesk
and I found 13,000 paying jobs and
that's when I knew I had really hit a
market that had
opportunity. Google search! Google search
your industry, Google search your
services,
see what's out there, if there's a lot of
jobs you're in a good market.
I was completely self-taught, so I
actually dropped out of college,
I was going for an RN degree completely
unrelated college did not get me where I
am today. In fact, if anything it would
have been a complete waste of time, had I
kept going to college, so after I set up
my freelance profile
I just applied the gigs and I got paying
gigs
and whenever I was in the paying gig
that's when I was learning,
now I was getting paid pennies but it
was a great learning experience.
So, three months after I had that idea to
do what I wanted to do for a living,
built on my passion for writing,
take it online, three months later I had
more work than I could handle,
like repeat clients, referral clients, it
was crazy.
So, I had to make a decision either turn
away clients or build a team.
Now, I knew nothing about building a team,
literally nothing,
we're talking a 20 year old college
dropout learning all of this on her own,
so what did I do? Well, I like challenges,
so I started a business,
I was at my desk, I'm like what should I
name it? I thought for about five minutes,
the name Express Writers came to me and
I just ran with it
and to make my logo, I sat down
typed expresswriters out in my word
document changed the font to Edwardian,
this is not a joke, this really happened
and then I made the color blue and green,
that was my logo for about the first
year. One thing I did write at the
beginning was I focused on
the core service which was writing, so
before I hired sales people before I
built processes
before I invested a lot in my business I
looked for
the amazing the perfect writer that
would step in as me
and perform just as well as me for my
clients, so that was my first instinctual
thought
and that is what I continue to do behind
the scenes of Express Writers
is hire and find the perfect content
writer and now today
we have an amazing staff of editors, a
great leadership
management team and we kind of mentor
and help our writers
in their journey from day one. Okay, so
back to the story,
in the first three years after starting
Express Writers we actually grew by 200%
each year, so it was really rapid growth.
Now, if I was to share with you
why we grew and what were our catalysts,
like I said I'm gonna hold nothing back
the first thing would be to think about
the environment you're working in
and change it if it's not a good one,
incidentally,
part of my story is that I was born into
a religious cult,
if you ever watch the handmaid's tale
that's how I grew up,
we wore long dresses, our hair had to be
a certain wing,
we couldn't pierce our ears, we couldn't
wear open-toed shoes, we couldn't wear
the color red,
those lists go on and on and on. So, I
kind of found myself
at 21 years old with this little
business idea that was rapidly growing
but I was in an environment I had been
born into that was
not just oppressive but also abusive. So,
my father the cult leader, the minister
was actually taking
80 percent of my finances from me,
telling me that it was my duty as a
daughter.
Why do I tell you this story? I'm holding
nothing back and I really want to
encourage you that if you're
in the wrong environment, you will not
grow.
If you're living with an abusive partner,
if you're God forbid in a cult like I
was,
if you have a day job where nobody cares
what your name is, nobody cares what you
enjoy
doing, nobody wants to hear from you,
that's all toxic
and it will hamper if not completely
block your growth.
So, that's step one, get out of a toxic
environment and by get out,
that's what I mean, as for me I escaped
in the middle of the night,
yes, I packed up my car, got out of there
started wearing pants, started living a
normal life
and here I am today and I can tell you I
would never be here today
if I didn't get out of that toxic
environment I grew up in.
If I grew up in a cult and I escaped it
in the middle of the night and that was
all I knew, you can absolutely break away
from any toxicity you're living in,
it's completely up to you, I bet you
weren't expecting that for step
number one right? Now, what about some
practical approaches to growth,
how do you start an online business once
you have the right environment and
you're ready to hit the ground running?
You need four things in my experience,
you need people,
you need processes, you need tech, good
tech
and you need finally a presence. People
and processes go hand in hand,
I see many potential business owners
start out building a process,
that's great but you really need people
before anything else
because once you have the right people
in your team
it's magic, everything else will fall
into place so much quicker,
so you need the right partners and I'm
going to give a quick shout out to my
mentorship program that I just launched,
you can learn more about it at
juliuscommunity.com, inside this
mentorship, 246 00:07:54,479 --> 00:07:59,039 I have all kinds of fast track, growth
files, I've written out short little
guides
that will teach you how to post your
first job with a template,
how to hire what to look for in hiring I
have interviewed thousands of people in
the last nine years,
there are some traits you absolutely
have to have and some that you want to
completely stay away from.
In order to hire and build a team that
really serves your clients
works with you and becomes a partner, you
want to thank the people you hire like
partners
they're not just a name you delegate
work too but they also aren't your best
friend,
you have to treat it like a work
relationship, so good people and if you
need help on delegation growing I'm
pretty good at that you can learn more
about my mentorship,
it's kind of like a mastermind, you get
immediate on-demand help,
learn more about that at
juliuscommunity.com, you could find good
people at places like
Upwork, Freelancer and then my own team
at Express Writers could be a great
content creation partner for you. Next to
people, you need
processes, you need a smart workflow
developed a way to deliver work,
service-based businesses, this is the
lifeblood
of your service, it's your organization,
how you deliver,
how well, how fast, how quickly can you do
what it is you do.
You need a pipeline, you need a process.
So, if you're just starting out
Trello is actually a great tool you can
learn more about it at Trello.com, it's
completely free,
you can set up a board with multiple
cards and kind of create your own
project workflows,
add people to it, have them manage
projects, you can track projects that way
and in the video description link I
actually have a link to one of our
example
project management trello boards, this is
something we created for just
one agency client, so by no means covers
our entire team workflow
over the years we have actually evolved
and built our own custom
ecommerce platform and matching team
room.
So, as time goes on you should and you
will
find better and smarter ways to build
processes and
give your services to your clients,
without time or
money loss. So, processes is what really
gets you there,
saving time, money, stress and worry, all
those things can really happen when you
don't have an organized process
in a service based business. The last two
tech
and a good presence, so you need good
tech that means a good website, a good
way to organize things we mentioned
trello,
if you're actually delivering services,
think about paid subscriptions to tools
that will really boost what you do so
for example we subscribe to Semrush's
pro account, we have our strategist use it,
this is how we research great keywords
and look up things like position
tracking for our clients whenever we're
building a kind of strategy plan.
Another tool we use a lot is Buzzsumo to
research content that is
trending in our clients industry.
So, those are tools you can add to your
process,
that are honestly a USP, a Unique Selling
Proposition because then you can say you
invest in tools to give them better
results
and they make the lives of your partners,
the people you hire
so much better. In tech, remember your
website is key, so have a brand name
expresswriters.com is ours,
we have a strong fast well-built website
that we are always maintaining,
always adding content to it's a
continual evolution,
so just be ready for that ride be ready
to invest in your tech.
Finally, a presence this is where you
need to be out there you need to be
getting known
whether that's through publishing books,
consistent content on your site,
launching and hosting a podcast, getting
consistent with instagram,
twitter, you name it, building a presence
is all about being perceived as an
authority
and just doing that time and time again,
it is a hundred percent true,
a thousand percent true, if you build it
they will come,
that might sound unrealistic but once
you commit to it and you really put out
great content
consistently trust me you will get known,
just make sure when you're putting out
content, you have a strategic approach
you're not just throwing content at a
wall hoping it'll stick
but you know what you're doing and the
best way to get there really is mentors,
I have invested thousands of dollars in
coaches
without my coaches and mentors for
example I would never have gotten
published on entrepreneur
or learned really great techniques for
how to craft persuasive copy.
So, mentors rather than like a college
degree mentors can really get you ahead
put you on the fast track to hit that
next level in your presence
and I don't really recommend just
handing your marketing off to a firm,
I think if you're starting an online
business you should be at the helm of
your own marketing,
you should be the one tracking, the one
leading the one coming up with the main
ideas
but like I said the mentor someone who
will coach you and guide you,
can really give you that push where
you're going to go a lot further than on
your own.
So, don't outsource or offshore your
marketing
but think about getting a mentor to help
you become the marketing genius for your
own brand
and then of course rely on your partners,
the people you hire to create and work
for you,
to do the heavy lifting. So, I still eat
all the marketing at express writers, I
have for nine years, I've never
ever outsourced that, so that's how to
build a great presence, don't outsource
all of it,
you need to be the idea person but you
also don't need to do the heavy lifting
let your partners let the people you
hire to create for you,
publish for you, schedule for you, all
those tasks, let them do the heavy
lifting.
To wrap on today's video and you can
check the link in the description or the
link it'll
show here on screen to dive in a little
bit deeper and read my blog recap
on this topic on content hacker, for
every youtube video that comes out I'm
also writing a blog on the content
hacker
and going a little bit deeper giving you
more resources.
So, definitely bookmark come back to that
blog, read it when you can,
if you're looking to learn how to start
an online business, this
is a terrific resource for you. Like I
mentioned at the beginning, I held
nothing back,
if you feel you can relate to this video
in any way,
if you too had to break out of a toxic
environment in order to grow,
I especially would love to hear that
from you, I want to hear about your
experiences, so drop them in the comments
let me know your struggles and let me
know where you're at in creating your
online business.
Don't forget to hit that subscribe
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best, I try to only create videos that
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truly give you some deep insights, I
don't want to add to the noise
that's out there already. So, subscribe
come back here for more videos just like
this.
And as always, thank you so much for
watching, I really appreciate you being
here with me.