How to Make a Million with Your Online Business (Ep 35)

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Dawn McGruer brings you actionable digital marketing lessons every other week. Whether you are an aspiring or experienced marketer, learn the latest SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and online marketing tactics that are working today.

The internet has broken down your barriers

Welcome to episode 35 of Digital Marketing Made Easy with myself, Dawn McGruer, founder of Business Consort- Digital & Social Media Academy. Now I am so pleased to say that this podcast that started in 2018 is in not just the top 100, not even the top 50, but is ranking in the top 10 in so many countries globally. So a big thank you to all the subscribers who have made this possible because it is an amazing feat to be able to share my message globally. And this is the magic of podcasts, being able to take my insights and share them with the masses. And hopefully we will see kind of the emergence of podcasts more and more because they are still fairly new as a medium. Now, in this particular episode, we are going to be focusing on a real hot topic and that topic is how to make a million with your online business.

Now, when you look at those figures, it kind of looks crazy, but let’s just kind of go back a few steps and look at where we are. Now there’s probably around about 56 million millionaires globally. Okay? Now that’s quite a lot. If you think about many moons ago, there are a lot more people who are surrounding themselves with wealth. Now, what has happened is the way that people make money, and of course the internet has been a vast medium and an accelerator for this because it has taken the monopoly away for a lot of businesses. You could be any size business and you can reach global markets. Even when you think back to trying to get into decision makers, the power of things like LinkedIn for lead generation is huge because we can use a process called warm calling to actually get in front of the right people. No more having to pick up the phone, trying to get past their gatekeeper.

We have instant access and communication tools with so many people. Now, also out of those 56 million, about 88% are self-made. Now, that’s really interesting because we think about entrepreneurs and how many people are now either starting a side hustle, starting their own business, and have been in business for many years. I mean, I think back to my own friend group and colleagues, how many people are employed versus starting their own business. And it’s definitely had a shift in the past 10 years. Now, let’s be realistic about this. People don’t necessarily become millionaires overnight unless you win the lottery. So how long does it take, on average, for someone to become a millionaire? Well, in the self-made market, people who’ve got their own businesses, it takes a whopping average of 32 years. So if you are sitting there thinking, oh my goodness, all these people out there are millionaires. I’ve just started my business.

How long will it take?

You are not alone. It didn’t happen instantly for these people. Now, the good news is though, is there are certain ways to make it quicker. There are certain business models that make it possible. So I want to show you and go through a couple of ways you can reach a million and how that breaks down into actual sales and how many customers you would need each month and each year. So where many businesses go wrong is they start selling with really low ticket items. Now, when you’re selling a single product, let’s say 27 pounds, that means that in a year, you have to find and market to and attract and convert 37,000 people. Now, when businesses struggle to reach the goals and the targets and the revenues that they desire and wish, then it’s easy to see that that’s a near impossible feat. That a new business with maybe no audience, no list, low budgets in terms of marketing, how on earth are you going to get 37,000 people?

Now it’s totally possible. Maybe using things like ads, but you have to have the investment initially to put out there. Now, even when you step that up to 47 pounds, that’s still 21,000 sales a year. Now, if we go to 97, okay, we’ve halved that, we’ve gone down to 10,000, but that’s still a lot. That means that you’d have to find about 859 new customers each and every month to be getting to this million pound bracket. So all these figures I’m giving you, yet of course, we’re looking at the million pound mark, but even if you break that down into half a million, a couple of hundred thousand, it’s still a really, really difficult way. Now, my point here is that there needs to be a bit of balance because you can, by all means, have some entry level products. But there needs to be a mix in your offer ladder, because let’s say you were selling a single product, 197 pounds.

That’s about 5,000 people or 423 new sales in a year to get to that million pound mark. Now, even if you are not reaching for those stars just yet, it’s a really interesting way of actually looking at your business model, looking at your pricing, and kind of reverse engineering whatever your magic number is that you would need and want and deserve to earn each year. And then breaking that down monthly, and then looking at how that translates into the number of sales and the pricing around your products. Now, if you sold 397 pound product, that’s 2,500 people, 210 sales a month. 497 is 2,000 people, and then that’s 168 people a month. Now, when you get up to the realms of 997, so nearly a thousand pounds, that’s a thousand sales a year, 84 sales a month. Now what’s interesting is that when you look at a single product that is maybe 2,000, so 1,997, that would be 500 sales a year. So 42 new sales a month.

Using subscription-based models

So if you sell a product, obviously that is a higher amount with a mix of obviously lower, then it’s going to be easier to translate. Now let’s introduce a slightly different business model here. And let’s look at having a mix of selling single products, so products that you are selling one time to a customer, versus looking at either a subscription model or a membership or recurring revenue. Now let’s say that you had a customer who paid 27 pounds a month. Okay? That means that you’d need 257 customers each month. That’s 3,000 sales in a year to reach a million. Now you’re not going to do this with just one product, but it’s interesting to look at if you blended the two, how that changes the money quite quickly in your business, but also it changes the cash flow.

Okay? So for instance, even if you had payment plans for a higher ticket item, then that can be deemed as kind of recurring revenue, right? So for instance, we have a diploma product that people can pay monthly or they can pay upfront. Now, the difference is when you can actually look at your forecast of sales and know each and every month what you’ve got coming in before you even get to that month, it gives you that foundation of certainty and comfort that all your bills are covered, that you may even be in profit by that point. So any new sales coming in are just building and scaling and growing that business. Now let’s look at a recurring model for 47 pounds. That would be 148 new customers that month, so 1,773 sales a year.

Now let’s jump that up to 97 pounds a month. That is 70 to 72 new customers monthly and 859 sales a year. 197, 35 new customers monthly, right? That is 423 sales a year. Now, remember, these are all million pound. If you blended these, you can start to see on a spreadsheet how your sales would move. So my advice here is to get a spreadsheet, look at all of the business products and services you have, and then decide what model is going to get you to the magic number. And the great thing is here is you can start tweaking, testing out, putting into your spreadsheet, trying out different numbers, and then you’ll hit a point where you think, do you know what? That seems possible. So on a recurring revenue model of 197, that’s 423 sales a year with 35 new customers. 397, just 17 new customers a month, 210 a year. And by 497, that is 14 customers a month and 168 sales a year.

Now jump that up to 997. That is just 7 new customers a month, 84 sales a year. And then let’s look at the last one, 1,997 recurring revenue is just 3 new customers a month, 42 sales a year. So let’s look at this as a business. To make a million you would just need, doesn’t sound as bad, 42 customers paying 1,997 pounds a month. Okay? Now you imagine you had one product, let’s say maybe an online course or a product or a service or something that matched that amount, you might blend that so that you had maybe 20 people, just 20 people paying you that over a year, and then selling individual products at different mix.

Now that becomes a very much more tangible and manageable number to try and get to that figure. So even if your sales revenues are not that vast, break it down. And this is the balance, this is where we see scaling and growing because when businesses have the foundational cash flow, and you’ll know this yourself, that it gives you a different creativity. It gives you a different mindset going into the month knowing that you have money there to either invest into other things, to make sure that indeed that you are paying yourself first, and making sure that you are drawing the money out of the business that you deserve and that you are worth. Right?

Reverse engineer your goals

So think about getting your spreadsheet together, looking at reverse engineering, think about what money you need to make for the next year. Okay? And think big, okay? You can have different stages and you can try out for maybe a million, half a million, couple hundred thousand, just see how it works. And try and get to a point where you have created a business model that feels right. But most importantly, feels achievable because when people set out and say, “Right, I’m just going to get this membership up. I’m going to do 27 pounds a month.” That’s a lot of customers to get. Now even if you were going to do that, but you didn’t need as many customers because you had a blend of other either recurring revenues, payment plans, or you had individual products you were selling, find the mix that suits you, your budget, your marketing, your experience.

And it’s also important to understand, obviously, the motivations of why you started your business. Is this giving you freedom? Is it giving you joy? Does it feel easy? This is what we’re looking for. You don’t want to be absolutely killing yourself, that you are so caught up building your business that you are disengaged with life. You need to think about what the balance is. So also figure out three things. And this is my final parting gift to you. If you know your numbers and you know your dreams and you know your revenues and you have a model that feels right and it feels achievable, then it becomes easier to bridge that gap with what marketing you’re going to do. So you look at what you’re currently doing to bring in customers and think about the marketing that you could do to level that up.

Okay? So all we’re going to do is kind of boost what is working right now. Then you have to know how much it costs you to get a customer, how much it costs you to deliver that product to service, and what the actual costs and running costs are for the business. And this is going to get you one step closer to understanding the profitability and the sustainability of your business. So it’s one thing making sales, because at the end of the day, revenue is what? It is vanity, whereas the profit that you are making is sanity. And I have met many, many business owners who’ve come to me as a client and said, “Dawn, I am making 100,000 pounds a month,” but they’re making tiny, tiny profits because they’ve put so much into building the business operational, spending loads of marketing, but they haven’t streamlined the business.

They haven’t got the structures in place. They haven’t got the automation. So for me, if you see these numbers banded round, it’s about what is your dream? What money do you want to take out of the business, right? And how are you paying yourself? What is left in the business after that month ends? So be conscious of both and let me know how you get on. But I think my parting words for you is that if making a million in a year is your dream, your wish, and your want, remember it doesn’t happen overnight. But you can see that in just 12 months, how achievable it could be. Now, even if that takes years or however long, just getting comfortable, I think, on the business model and knowing that in your mind that you can do it and that it feels aligned to what you can achieve with through your own budgets and marketing. That will make you show up in your business in a whole different way.

So I hope you found this useful and don’t forget, come and find me on social media and let me know how you’re getting on. I would love to hear more about your businesses, so come and connect. And you can find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Facebook, all the channels. So have an amazing week, and I will see you on the next episode.

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