206: Are You Busy or Profitable? How to Tell the Difference

Welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks, constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there, Destiny. Here today I want to talk about getting laser focused on activities that truly move the needle in your business. Maybe you see a new platform that has launched and you're maybe I should go check that out. Or somebody contacts you to participate in their bundle and you're thinking, okay, I would, maybe this is something I should do. Or you get inspired by somebody else's success story and start thinking, okay, maybe I should start doing this. And I'm going to be totally transparent with you. I have been here recently and I was super excited about launching the newsletter Profit Club app on Product Hunt. And to be honest with you, I still am interested in doing that. But after I started really digging into this and looking at people who have done this before, I was like, okay, I know what's required for it to be successful. To have a successful Product Hunt launch, I knew what was going to be required here. It would require me to do a launch team for my email list. I'd probably have to go out and do some podcast episodes to get some visibility there. I might even have to run some paid ads to get visibility to the app and just to the launch in general. Very similar to what I had to do when I launched my books. Getting together that book launch team was a lot of work. Then I asked myself the million dollar question, how much revenue would this actually generate? The honest answer was, I don't know. That uncertainty was enough for me to put it on the back burner. Another example. As some of you know, I recently attended the Newsletter Marketing Summit. It was a live event. I went down to Austin, Texas. It was a great event. I was really excited about it and I came back and I thought, you know what, it would be really cool for me to do my own virtual summit featuring some of those big names in the newsletter space. I would love to interview them. I'd probably learn a lot through the process. But again, how much money would it make? And the people I'd interview probably wouldn't share it with their audience. So it wouldn't be a lead generator for me unless I ran ads to it. So I was like, you know what, I'm probably not going to make a lot of money. It's really just to be fun on my part to do it. So I put it on the back burner. So here's the revenue reality check and here's what I've learned. Every business decision you make needs to pass the revenue reality check. So before diving into any new initiative, ask yourself, will this directly generate revenue and if so, how much and how soon will it indirectly lead to revenue or reducing cost? What's that conversion path? What's the timeline there? And is the potential return worth the investment of time, energy and resources? This doesn't mean that you should only pursue activities with immediate financial returns. We know that some things out there are going to build long term value, but you need to be crystal clear about your expectations and realistic about these outcomes. Let's talk about what actually moves the needle in my business and what I have decided to focus on. For me, the revenue drivers are very clear. The first is my email list. Nothing beats optimizing what already works. If you have something that's working in your business, double down on it. For me, my email list is my money maker. It's where almost all of my revenue come from comes from. So anything that I can do to move the needle there is going to pay off. This might be refining my newsletters, creating effective flash sale emails, and optimizing promotional sequences. When somebody gets onto my email list, getting my offers in front of them sooner and more often. When I invest time here, I definitely see direct returns. The other place is growing my email list. The bigger the email list, the bigger potential for revenue. And I will say that the newer people coming onto my email list I have found that they are more likely to buy sooner. So the email list growth is very important and converting them or putting offers in front of them sooner has definitely worked for me. So couple of areas that has been working for me are paid ads. So getting people who may not have known about me, getting the visibility and getting them on my email list and getting my offers in front of them definitely has worked. Participating in summits is still working for me. I actually like summits more so than bundles because I feel like the leads I'm getting from a summit are more likely to convert. When I'm in a summit, I'm doing a workshop, some type of training, some type of presentation, so they're seeing that they're getting to know me better and when they sign up for my email list they have that connection. The other thing that has been working, not as much as Facebook ads, but it's definitely been working, is strategic newsletter advertising in People who have an email list that has my ideal customer on it. Now, once somebody joins my email list, converting them to my paid offers is critical. So I'm going to put more emphasis on this going forward in 2025, live trainings outperform almost everything else that I'm doing, but I don't necessarily need them for somebody to convert into main offer. Getting targeted email sequences with bonuses that appeal to my ideal customer are definitely helping. Also, direct response ads can work too. Somebody sees my ad and almost immediately signs up for one of my offers. That's definitely something I'm going to be focusing on. And I know that all of that is going to convert into revenue very, very quickly. So when evaluating all the opportunities that come across my desk, I use what I call this opportunity cost framework. So the first question I ask myself, what is the time investment? How many hours will this require? Because a lot of events, maybe somebody contacts me for a summit, and depending on what they're asking, I'm going to have to invest some time in that, especially if it's creating a new presentation or if they're asking for something special. So I always have to kind of think about how many hours will this require me. Also, the financial investment, you know, what is the direct cost to participate in something like this? And then the energy investment, how much mental and emotional bandwidth will this require of me? The alternative, what else could I be doing with these resources? If I invest into something, maybe if I invest into speaking at this event or participating in this, what else could I be doing? When you're participating in a bundle or summit, there's going to be things that you have to do which is promoting to your email list. So that's taking up valuable real estate in your promotional calendar. Should you want to promote that? Or would you rather be promoting one of your own offers? So that's what I always ask myself. And then the revenue projection, what is the realistic revenue expectation coming out of that particular activity? And then the timelines to results. So how long before I see returns from this investment? And I think that's very important too. If it's going to take a year for you to actually see returns from that, it might not be worth your time. This opportunity cost framework helps me make decisions that align with my revenue goals. Rather than just following what seems exciting or something I would love to do, but I don't necessarily have time to do, like the newsletter, virtual summit. I would love to do something like that, but I just don't know that I'm actually going to get revenue from it. So let's talk about some steps to find what I call these needle movers in your business. So here's what you can identify what truly moves the needle in your business. Number one, you need to know your revenue sources. Do a deep dive into your finances. Where exactly is your money coming from? A lot of times the 8020 rule is going to apply here, meaning 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your activities. And then I want you to analyze your time allocation. So track how, how you spend your working hours for at least two weeks. And then I want you to compare this with your revenue sources. Are you spending most of your time on activities that generate little to no revenue? Then that's something you might want to address. And then run some small experiments. So before committing to major initiatives, run a small test to really figure out their potential. Can you do a mini version of that summit? So, going back to my example with that newsletter, virtual Summit that I was talking about earlier, maybe what I could do there would be just to invite some of them to be on my creator's MBA podcast. That way I could bring them on, learn a little bit more. It would be valuable for my audience, so I'd have that content too. And that would be a way for me to do those interviews without doing a full blown virtual summit. And then really establish some clear success metrics. So for every activity, for every marketing campaign that you work on, define what success looks like. For example, for me, let's say that I am doing a live kind of webinar or live training. One way to define success there would be, I want to get 30 new members from this training. Building brand awareness is just too vague, right? But if you want to go a little bit deeper, generating 500 new email subscribers with a 5% conversion rate to my product or sign up for my membership, that is specific and it's measurable. The other thing you can do is schedule regular revenue reviews. I like to do these monthly, definitely do them at least quarterly. But look monthly if you can and figure out, okay, this is moving the needle for me. This is where my revenue's coming from and that's where you can double down and put more of your effort in that area. I feel your pain. It's hard to say no. I say no every single day and it pains me every time. But that's something we have to do. Remember that every time you say yes to something that doesn't move your needle, you are saying no to something that could I have had to decline podcast interviews, speaking engagements, collaboration opportunities that wouldn't necessarily directly serve my revenue goals. It is not easy, but I had to stay laser focused on my plan and what I needed to focus on. So here's some of my final thoughts. Getting laser focused on what moves the needle isn't about working harder, it is about working smarter. You're directing your energy to what truly matters in your business. It's also about being intentional with your most precious resources, which are your time and attention. I want to challenge you. Take an honest look at your business activities. What is actually moving the needle for you or what's just keeping you busy? The answers might surprise you and they're definitely going to transform your business. Now I just want you to know that success isn't about doing more things, it's about doing the right things. So what activities are moving the needle in your business? If you found this valuable, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur who might need this reminder. Until next time, bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.