Ep 360: Launch Your Online Business ft. Nathalia Copeland

make it lifestyle for themselves. Natalia Copeland, who I love. Hello, Hello, so nice to meet you. I know she was complaining about being up a little bit early, and I'm like, yeah, I don't feel bad for you. You live in Hawaii and you're moving to Portugal and you're gorgeous.

in my business for y'all. You know that I've you know, launched a career coaching business in the past couple of years now, and I was at this point last this time last year really where I was like, Okay, I think I'm going to try to have another kid, and I kind of want to get a book deal too, and looking at the year, I was like, how am

I gonna do this? But I don't also want to die, Like I don't want to I just didn't want to be the kind of entrepreneur who had an online business and just was like basically creating another even worse than a nine to five, like a nine to nine, yeah, you know, a grind exactly. And I at the time

my career coaching platform, Mandy money Makers. I was doing live coaching, which I loved when I was doing live lessons for six to eight weeks per cohort, and it was a very high touch, like I must be available and fresh and sparkly for this group. And I realized, like there's a little word called scaling, and I was like, I can't scale this this way, right.

this can work for me. And that's when Delhi was like, I'm not going to waste your time. Just go Toto Talian. She is my business coach, my sister, And that's when I found you and we have been working together. We started working. I took your I started enrolled in your course and I say enrolled because as a person who now has an online course, you can enroll, but did you actually take it? I know we've talked about this. I'm just like, I've done that. I've done the modules,

okay back in July, and you really have. I mean obviously it was your your strategy and your lessons that really helped me. Yeah, create now a less high touch but still really impactful Mandy Moneymaker experience where everyone's getting as much value, I believe, but without I can see myself. Oh, I can take breaks, I can go to Costa Rica next week. I can have this baby in a couple of months, you know, and hopefully i'll have another book

baby after that. So thank you for being here and thank you for helping me.

So you're a perfect example. When I use the timeline of how long it takes to see success. It's like at your point in the business, like within thirty days of you doing some focused work, you could see some results. If somebody is starting from absolute scratch, it could take them, like you know, maybe three to four months to really start seeing some traction.

so I actually was working. It was kind of like sales and real estate where I was working for law firms and they would have like inbound leads calling me, and I would like vet if they were a good fit for their real estate law firm. So I was like, Okay, I'm really good at this sales thing. I was always like at the top, like sales chart of other salespeople on the team, but the topic just wasn't It wasn't

what I was really interested in. Then I, you know, married my husband who's in the military, and moved to Japan and pretty much like closed up shop and started a whole new life. And it was exciting for those two years to kind of be like Peter Pan and not have to grow up. But eventually I was like this life of moving around every two to three years, like I'm going to make money? How am I gonna, you know, have a career that grows with you as

you continue to move us around the world. And that's when I decided to go back to school get my masters in marketing in London, which was awesome, and then I got this job at this firm that was teaching Facebook ads. And this was like seven eight years ago when Facebook ads was just those little ads if you remember, on the desktop on the right hand side, like that was it, and it was it was mind blowing. It was like what and all the targeting that you could

do back then. Now if you think Facebook ad targeting is a little creepy today, you don't even know. Like back then, the kind of stuff you could do. So that really taught me a lot. And from there I saw somebody selling a membership and that membership was you know about Facebook Ads. He was like an expert, and we actually, as the agency, the marketing firm I worked for, we paid him to join this membership and you know he would help us. Everybody was just kind of learning.

No one was really an expert that time. And I did the math in my head and I was like, wait a minute, he is how many members and he's charging how much a month? And that was the aha, light bulb moment that I realized the information education industry like could really be something. And it opened my eyes

and I was like, this is it. Like I know, I've always had like that desire to start a business, like starting a business around this topic and also you know, selling like some sort of information product, whether it's a membership or a course, That's what I'm going to do. And yeah, I started with Facebook Ads. That was like my first major product. And then you know, the evolution is where I ended up today. So there's a lot of a lot of pivots, a lot of in betweens.

I've been in business five years now and I love what I'm doing today. I feel like I'm finally I found my thing.

but it's not it. And so what I love about your story, and that's why I wanted you to go backwards, because if we just started the end Natalia business coach, Baddie multi gajillion, You know, Air, I'm sure moving to Portugal and living this valulous life.

you know, finally getting into the Facebook ad world. But anyway, so so happy that you shared a little bit of that because right, like and this is also such a key part of what you do with your with your business the fast Academy is you help people figure out their thing and what I like about it too, and you can talk about this is like some people think when they or this is my impression when you first start with a business, that it has to be the

thing and like almost not giving yourself any room to not fail. But like pivot or like say ah, this wasn't it or people didn't like didn't respond to this, so let me try something different. So can you talk about those like people who are waiting to launch something or waiting to start maybe an information based like online business, and are waiting because they don't feel like they have the perfect idea yet. Any advice for them?

is you are afraid of picking the wrong thing. But when you look at the opportunity cost of what you lost from all those years sitting there thinking about it and not taking action, the money you're afraid to lose, or the time you're afraid to lose through in action, you've already lost it. Right, So I always tell people in action is a decision. So you've made that decision.

Now you just have to wake up tomorrow and say I'm making a decision in the other direction, because the decision is being made for you every single day that you say, I want to stay in research mode, right, we find ourselves in that loop and I just need to do a little bit search research. So that is the.

actually use this phrase with my students. Get comfortable with failing forward, right, That is that is the goal every successful person that you admire online today, if you have an opportunity to ask them on a live or in a DM and they'll answer, ask them, is the thing you're doing today where you started? And I guarantee ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of them will be like no.

my really shitty canva. Like you know, we attempts at creating, can't I have those two promotions for my and like the whole like I didn't have any branding. My website was just it was, but I was doing the damn thing, you know, like I was. I've never been a person to sit too long when I when I feel like I'm gonna try this, you know, just kind of going for it. And yeah, the same thing applies so much.

And even in my career coaching with people who think they're undervalued, think that they you know, maybe could be worth more, think that they need to stop working for someplace that you know, a manager who's toxic or a place that keeps promising they'll get a raise and then it never manifest and I'm like, why are you letting them dictate your timeline? You know, so like doing something, and it's that fear of what if I choose the wrong thing? I'm like, well what if? And then you

can choose another thing. And it's almost like if you don't fail, if you don't have that experience and you survive it, then you're even more afraid. Does that make sense? Like you kind of need to try that you can bounce.

product anymore. You don't get to where, right, you don't get to where like you are today seeing that success without that because it is all experimentation. And I would equate it to somebody saying I just graduated from college and the job that I pick has to be the job for the rest of my life. No one thinks that, right. Everyone's like, let me just get this job, let me see how it feels, let me pay my bills, and then I can like grow and grow and grow in

my career. Look at your business idea the same way.

I love working with women. In their forties, like mid to late not in late career, but mid career, because I feel like at that point, you know a lot about yourself, You've developed a skill set, a niche, you have sort of your information superpower, and I feel like you're well positioned to actually create whether it's a consulting business or you know, an online course, And it's like helping them part of me is also helping them through their career, but also like, I know you have a

secret baby ambition to have your own business someday, So what would that be and starting to help them figure out what that thing would be. So what would be the first step for a step that you would say to take If you are someone who's like, I'm feeling pretty good in my job now, but I would like

to create my own income. I would like to have, you know, potentially a course or something I launch online, a product to start with, and just get something out there to just you know, get over that fear a little bit and just do something.

somewhere else in your business. Like I had somebody who worked for a pharmaceutical company as a sales rep. She was not interested in doing that anymore, but her sale skills were incredible. She ended up transferring those sales skills into a course about being more confident on the phone to sell things, you know, business to business, and you know, created a course for entrepreneurs that have to do phones else.

So I really want you to kind of list out what are all the things first that you're proficient at, that you're good at. Could be things that are in work, it could be things that are you know, hobby skills. And also personal events I think are a big one that people overlook, you know, just to be a little bit vulnerable. I talk about how I've had a couple of miscarriages, I've had heart surgeries. I was an undocumented immigrant and while I personally am not going to teach

on those things. I bring it up because I have people who have gone through fertility issues and because of that they can now share their story with somebody else and help them through, you know, the methods that worked for them. Or I had somebody who their child was suffering from drug addiction, and you know, she created a course to help other mothers, like, hey, you know you can't fix your child, but here's how you cope with

this life event. So don't discount also big life events that you may have gone through and how you could help other people. And then once you like have all that and down, you look at your paper and you're like, all right, let me pick like three of them that I'm like the most proficient at and let me actually see if there's profitability in this market. And that's like, you know, a whole nother competitor analysis conversation that we can have. But it's pretty quick to see, hey, are

people actually selling things around this topic? Can I make money?

Find something that has a little bit of proven runway in front of you. And then in terms of making yourself stand out, it is not about looking at somebody else who's doing nutrition or somebody else who's doing career coaching. Or money coaching. It is saying what specific problem can I solve that's going to make me stand out? So, you know, career coaching is a fantastic example where so many people will say, well I could be a career coach, and I'm like, okay, well there's a lot of facets

about that. Are you going to help with like negotiation? Are you going to help with, you know, the job interview. Are you going to help with you know, being more confident at work so you can talk to your manager and get those big projects that you want to get. So notice how just saying you know, career coaching one

on one not as clear, not as exciting. But when you get very specific about the problems that you solve, it's very unlikely that another career coach will be teaching almost the exact same problems in the exact same way, and that is your differentiating factor.

into my online career academy. And what really is helpful for me is even through that masterclass, through teaching that again and again and again, I feel even more confident about what I'm offering because of the feedback and because of the you know, the actual good that I'm doing and I and you can't get that kind of feedback if you're not teaching something and trying it and seeing

if people are, yeah, are moved by it. And I had done a couple of versions of it before my very first one was seventy to seven hundred K and it was like how how to build wealth through your nine to five? And it was like my story. And at that point I had been coaching for a while, but I I didn't have a ton of like case studies to share, so I focused on myself and then

I did ever recession proof webinar in the summer. That was fine, but I didn't really really feel like I hit the thing until third times a term when I focused in on nail your negotiation. So this is the part where I think analysis paralysis can come in where people are like, wait, so how do I where do I what is it on zoom? Like, how do I

launch this? How do I tell people about it? It's very overwhelming, right, So where would you say, like tools wise, people can start getting what they need to actually create their product, to create a course or even before a course, like a free you know, entry point for people to come join them, like my my webinar.

invest in that tool. So and I get it right. When I started, I was free ninety nine all the way. I had no money, I was in a lot of debt, and I did not have startup capital to be paying. When I saw a subscription for like one hundred dollars a month, I was like, what one hundred dollars a month for like this this tool like click funnels or something like that. It just it blew my mind, like

I could not comprehend that. So if you are looking for completely free tools, you can start off with something as simple as convert Kit and Teachable. Convert Kit is the email provider I still use today. Teachable is the course platform I still use today. But they both offer free plans, and so just with those two tools, you can like at least get started. And then if you want to keep it really really simple in terms of

how do I record the content? People are thinking they need to become a video editor and learn something complicated like screen flow or camptasia. Now go to Zoom, turn on your camera, record yourself. That's it. There's another tool called useloom dot com. So that Loom is great. Yes, so again you like you get the little ball on the bottom of the screen, record yourself and I do my videos now in like one take. If there's a

little bit of light editing I have to do. Loom will even let you splice out easily, like certain parts. So there is a way for you to make this really really simple. Really you have to go out there and ask people, Hey, I'm doing a workshop, you know, thirty seven bucks. It's going to help people solve this specific problem. It's going to be you know, in two weeks and start start getting people to like sign up. And then once people sign up for it, using you know,

like I said, convert. It will even let you do like landing page where people can go and like put in their information, or you could use the Zoom registration page. Like the point is is like make it dirty, make it like version one point zero. Do not try to emulate some of these funnels that you're seeing out there today, because none of us started that way and trying that perfectionism of getting it to look super polished is holding you back from, like I said, like just seeing that

progress and getting the first version out there. When people spend a year or more planning their launches, I what they don't realize is that actually doing yeah, actually doing the launch is like step two or three. You've got like ten more steps ahead of you after the launch is over right optimization, making things better, figuring out what went wrong, what went right, what you can do more of.

And so if you tire yourself out just getting to that first launch, you're not going to have enough steam, enough energy in you to do what comes next. And guess what the money is in, like what comes after the first beta launch of just getting it out the door. It is not in like launch number one.

you know, really done one on one coaching. And also it was just so helpful and this is a key part of your your course as well that I am proud to say I could just kind of like gloss over was understanding your customer and like what are their pain points? Because I knew enough to know I want to really deeply understand what women of color in their careers are going through right now in this year, in twenty twenty one, post pandemic, and give as much value

as I can to solve those problems. And I did that first, maybe longer than Natalia would have recommended. I did free coaching for about six months, but I had yes. But while I was doing that, I will say I had a free product. I had my just quit toolkit

because I knew I got to start collecting email. So even though I was taking my time and I was consulting, speaking of using your nine to five superpower, you know, to bring in business, I was a consultant, you know, for and for for organ content for a couple of clients I was bringing in money while I was like la la la, having my renaissance moment as a career coach.

But I had that free I had that free guide, you know, my just quit toolkit, which I posted about on social and would promote it when I remembered just to start collecting email, and I think that gave me my first few thousand email subscribers. How important is it to start with like a lead magnet like that, you know, something people can download for free and get into your world.

And I'm like, oh, that's like, you know, a knife to the heart, because what you don't realize is that email is not dead, all right, And if anybody is telling you that, then they're probably trying to sell you on something else, because the fact of the matter is every successful entrepreneur will tell you that the majority of their sales usually come from email, not from you know,

social media. Social media is a fantastic tool for discovery, for growth, for you know, connecting with your audience, creating a deeper connection, nurturing. But when it comes to making money, pitching via email is where you are going to get your best results. So right off the bat, I would say,

start building your list. And if you're like me who did not have a product when I started, or Mandy, I simply had my lead magnet, I had people getting on the list, and I would just say, I'm going to commit once a week to sending an email and keeping them warm and like nurturing them. Right, I'm not going to goost them. I'm not going to show up six months later. I am going to commit to emailing

them once a week. So if you can just make that commitment right now, then you can stay in that research mode a few months while you figure out the other things. But at least you know you're slowly building your list, you're nurturing those people. I had somebody do this for a year which again I don't recommend, but he did it for a year, and when he finally went and did his launch, he made one hundred thousand dollars. So you kind of look at it and you're like, oh,

your first launch one hundred thousand dollars. That looks so impressive. But I, again I'm very transparent and saying we'll take one hundred thousand and divide it by two, because that was how long of a runway where he was like nurturing his audience before he launched to it. So you

don't need to wait that long. But it is important to know that if you have zero audience and you're trying to launch tomorrow, like you know, unless you have some really good partner collaborations and affiliates promoting your stuff, that might not be the best idea.

a warm audience when I launched. And it's not about me discounting that and saying that like, oh, well, you can't do it because I had done this. But it's just about like being real, you know, like start talking to people early, even before you kind of have your thing figured out, so you can start to build that

trust so they're used to you. And then by the time you are ready to hopefully sooner rather than later, you know, pitch to them or sell something to them, they are like, oh, yeah, I know her from down the block, the internet block, and there's that little bit of trust, you know, and rapport that they feel like they have with you.

it's possible to sell to complete strangers. It's something that takes a little bit more effort, and that is called selling to cold traffic. That requires you to have really good messaging. Right. So a lot of the times when I talk to people, I can tell whether or not they've done the homework that Mandy has done, which is talking to your customers, coaching them really understanding their their fears,

their dreams, their aspirations, what they want. When you haven't done that legwork, it's going to be extremely hard for you to connect with people online and convince them that you can solve their problems because you don't know deep down inside really what they're feeling and what outcomes they're looking for, especially for people who might just be looking at somebody else's funnel and is like, that looks good.

I think I could do that. You've missed the whole essence of what it takes to build that connection with your audience. And the other quick thing I'll say on this is when people see your story, Mandy and they're like, oh, you know, so and so had this size audience, or she built her list for a couple months or six months, six months, is nothing right? Like six months even a year.

It is a drop in the bucket to say, like my customer who had one hundred k launch, Like, now he has an asset that he can use for years to come selling his course. Like you tell me you're not going to be willing to put in a year of work. Meanwhile, we're all willing to go work at a corporation that will fire us at the drop of a dime for five ten years. Like you are building something that belongs to you, right it is your own real estate. No one can take that away from you.

So every day that you might not be making money, you are making progress and then you have something tangible that you can take with you forever.

Like my network of you know of Delhi, of you know Jinny's from Joqia Nano from Mark Russell at BETTERWALLT who I didn't even know was in your program until after I joined. And you know, like we are, they're all O there, Yeah, we all listen. Our common denominator is Natalia. Okay, not gonna lie. So yeah. That the relationships you build and it helps you stay motivated when you start to doubt yourself. I know, I listen in chat and get built up.

degrees in the topic that our wives teach about. Because as much as you want your partner to be somebody who can support you on this, or your friend or your mom or your sister, unless your sister is like my sister and has similar business model, you cannot ask those people to be your cheerleader and your end all be all support for this, Which is why one of the things that you know you get inside of the Fast Academy is a community that you can instantly tap into.

You can find accountability partners if you just have Like in the beginning of my journey, I just had two people that were like my business species, and that was enough to keep me going through you know, the launch that didn't work quite the way I wanted it to, or when I thought about pivoting a week later after I promised myself that I wouldn't and they're like, hey, you said you were going to do this, like stay

on track. So everybody needs that, and you know, join a community either paid, that has like a higher quality. I feel like free Facebook groups right now can be very noisy and it's hard to find support there, or tap into an entrepreneur group in your community, like right here in Hawaii a little too late, but like two years in I found finally a entrepreneur like community where I could like actually go in person and talk to

other women that had their own business. And that was huge for me, right, just having that support of other people around. So I would say that that and like mindset, like really putting yourself in the right mind frame to overcome like some obstacles that maybe you weren't thinking about. Are some of the in talents that you don't realize that you're going to need in order to make this work. Everybody's you know, strategy is sexy and let's figure out

Facebook ads and pricing. But in reality, I could hand you all of that information tomorrow, and if your mind is not where it needs to be and you don't have anybody to like give you support, it probably won't work.

and who I am and all of that. But yeah, it does take some time to build up that like mental resiliency and the right mindset. I've got a couple of men and it's left and I would love for you to, maybe, like a mini rapid fire question, share your pet peeve when it comes to people launching online businesses, like what they can do wrong? That just is like why are you doing this?

I question whether I should do it. So for me, if I'm doing some sort of a free training, I'm going to take clips of that and I'm going to use it for ads, or I'm going to take that and I'm going to use it for an email, Like, there has to be some way that I'm using that asset more than once, because that's what creates the burnout. It's that feeling that you have to be creating new things all the time. And I think as entrepreneurs, right, we are a little bit on the we want to

keep things exciting, we want to do things new. We're like, it's the boring stuff that makes you the money, Right, It's going back to.

a bad job. And when we looked at the numbers, I was like, you are perfectly in line with where you should be, right, Like, you made the sales, you expected this much percentage, like it's perfect, And they were still disappointed. They were like, no, I expected to do better, And I was like, expected based off of what, Like,

what are you basing this off of? So I know it's easy to kind of just make these huge expectations but if you don't have like data to back it up, again, you're like setting yourself up for disappointment, and like, again, why make life harder for yourself? Like, don't do that?

we got off on a tangent. But okay, now I want to know, is there any system or tool that you are just kind of obsessed with that has major work easier these days?

good marketers. This tool is going to help them really understand how to write copy in a way that is more effective. And again it's just a tool, but if you haven't like played around with it yet, it's one hundred percent free. I really recommend like checking it out.

my superpowers is writing. You write so damn much as like if you have an online business, you're writing all the time, you know, So that sounds really cool. So how do you use it? Do you use it for writing copy or like you said, research or something like how would people best use it?

this topic and I'm not familiar with that topic. Within less than five minutes, chatch ept can help me figure out if there are competitors around that topic, how much is the price point, what are the strengths and weaknesses of those competitors, What kind of a curriculum like? What would a curriculum look like? I could be like, write me a six lesson curriculum for a course on this topic. What are the emotional frustrations of somebody struggling with this problem?

Because again, since I haven't had hours to talk to their ideal client, when they send me a piece of copy and they're like, what do you think? Do you think I'm on the right track, I'm basically letting them know, well, I don't know that these are the top frustrations that your ideal client has. I don't know that these are the top desires that your ideal client has. Because I haven't personally interviewed them, assuming that they are then yeah,

you're on the right track. But now chat GPT allows me to actually validate that and see like, okay, yeah this makes sense without me having to spend hours and hours like doing the research for them. So I think as a business coach, it's going to be a fantastic tool. And you brought up a good point about the new goation scripts, Mandy. The input is what determines the output.

So people are getting frustrated with it because they're like, well I try to use it and it gave me something that was like not that great, And I'm like, okay, the value of what you put into it and say like the specificity is what is going to create something good like coming back. And it's also a learning AI,

so it takes some time. So if you put in your templates in CHATCHYPT, like the ones that you have, and then you're like, make me tend more that are like this, that is probably going to get you a lot better of an output then just going to chatchypete and saying make me a template but not providing any context. So it's using it in a smart way and anybody who's like, oh, I don't want to use it. I'm like, in the end, it's going to be people who use

it and people who don't. And the ones who don't are I think they're going to be left behind suckers.