#111 - How to ”fake” a 7-figure team on a teeny budget

All about how can you do work smarter, not harder? How can you make those sort of investments that are going to give you your time back but also give you that higher level experience for your business, that higher amount of expertise.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you, you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello, hello guys, it is Kate here from. Hello Funnels, and Welcome to episode 111 of the Doing It Online podcast. Now today, as always, we are going to get super practical, super useful. So I hope you have a pen and some paper or you've got your notes out on your phone because you're going to be needing them today. I really wanted to talk about something that, you know, it's kind of the, I, I guess the less sexy part of having an online business and scaling an online business. And that is the part where you get to the point where you are maxed out that you're going to need some help. And usually what happens is that you kind of get to the point where, and it's almost like this chicken and egg thing, right? Because people always ask, like, when is the right time to get help? And then usually it's like, if you're thinking about it, it's probably already too late. You should have got it earlier, get it immediately. But to be able to grow your business in any real way, to be able for your business to actually be a business and not just be this kind of glorified freelancing kind of setup that's just way more complicated than being a standard freelancer. You need to have, you have systems, you need to have team, you need to have a business that continues to run and that you're not responsible for everything. Because, you know, and I think we all know this, right? Like, I don't think I need to explain why getting a team is important, but that, that chicken or egg thing like I talked about is a lot of people like, oh, I'm maxed out, I've got no time. I know I need help, but I don't, I can't afford that help or I don't have time to get on the help. What do I do? Today's episode, I wanted to share some, I guess, temporary solutions for you. And these are some amazing services that I found recently. That will help to alleviate some of that stress for you. They are, it's not a team. It is services. You can get to do certain things. They're all fairly cost effective. They're not as cost effective as, say, having a full time VA would be, but they mean you don't have to train anybody. You don't have to have that commitment of having that longer ongoing salary or wage. And you can just go, okay, I can take this piece off my plate. This is the service that will do that. It's done. And you can move on. You can free up that time, you can get that space back, you can reinvest that time back into your business and grow. And eventually, yes, you will be able to get a team, but. Or maybe not some of these, you might want to keep. Today's episode. I'm going to how to Fake a Seven Figure Team on a Tiny Budget. And I want to share, as I said, some super great services that I found, some of which we have actually used. Others, of course, are just ones that I've heard had recommended to me. And I sort of realized that there's more and more of them coming together. So I wanted to do a little list. The first one that I wanted to share because this is one that I think a lot of is something you should get off your plate as soon as you can, particularly if you are not a natural writer. And not everybody is. Like, I actually have a writing background. I held onto the writing for a very long time. But I think we all know that to run a business you need so much content, right? You need emails, just. You need social media, you need ads, you need launch copy, you need sales pages, you need all of that stuff. And if you are not a natural writer, and even if you are, it's probably not actually your zone of genius. It's not the thing that makes the money in your business. Well, it can be, but it's not the thing that it's promoting, right? So it can take so much time to be creating all that copy. So getting the copy off your plate, or at least the bigger, more stressful chunks of it, can free up a lot of time. And there is an amazing service called Moxie. Don't Write links are all below, which we've used when we have had capacity issues with creating our own copy. They can do Facebook ads, they can do your launch copy, they can do sales pages. It's like the stuff we've got back has been really good. I'm happy to recommend these guys. And I said very, very cost effective. Like much more cost effective than hiring any other kind of copywriter. Sorry, copywriters, but probably not the as cost effective as having a dedicated person on your team. But obviously that's a bigger commitment moxie for your copywriting. And the other thing is that they are just fast. We were kind of a bit stuck. Everyone kind of got on my team got Covid or was sick or their kids had Covid and we're like, we've got a launch coming up. We don't have time to do the copy for this launch. And we they turned it around in I think four days, which was amazing. And we didn't have to do it and the team wasn't stressed. And that was just a big win for me staying in the same copy realm. Now, this isn't one that I have used, but I do know people who have used it who say that they love it. Vicarious recommendation is a company called Content Crop. Again, link will be down below. This is more around your social media guys. So this is one of the things, one of the processes that we teach inside Ecourse Empire is yes, you need to be creating content. You need to be showing up consistently for your audience, giving value, creating connection, all that stuff. But you need to do it in the most efficient way possible. And this kind of helps you do that. Like, it's part of the model that we teach is that, okay, you'll go, you'll create one piece of pillar content for that week, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a blog post, whether it's a live video, whatever is kind of like the easiest and most natural for you. And then you want all of your other content to be created from that. And that's exactly what this service does. Basically, you'll send them your, your podcast or your video or whatever it is that you've done for that week, and then they will turn it into all of your social media posts, I believe, also some newsletter. And it's a subscription, so you kind of can pick how many bits of content you want every week. They design the images to go with it, they edit the videos. The whole shebang looks really cool. All right. Another little budget trick, which is actually one that people, I've got friends who have used this service well into them being able to afford a more premium one. But it was actually so good, they're like, why would I change? And this is around Facebook ads. Facebook ads, another area in your business where you can kind of DIY it to a point, and then it's going to get. It's going to be like, okay, this is taking up a lot of my time. This isn't my zone of genius. Like, even if you've done done a few courses and you've got some people advising you, like, there is a real difference when you have someone whose whole job is to know Facebook ads inside and out. But, and I found this recently, the cost of good Facebook ad managers. This keeps going up and up along with the cost of Facebook ads. Eventually this is going to become something that's no longer a profitable exercise for anybody if it keeps going at this rate. But anyway, that's another rant for another day. But you know, it can be like $5,000 a month. It can be more like it gets. Starts to get quite expensive quite quickly. But as I said, this is all about the little handy little ways of doing it. The budget friendly way. I don't know if you've heard of a SaaS or software product called Adespresso. It's one that we recommend for people who are doing Facebook ads and are a bit terrified of Ads Manager. But if you are, if you use the adespresso platform, which yes, obviously has its own monthly fee, you can apply to have one of their team run your ads for you. And I haven't seen the recent rates on this, but last time I checked it was like it was less than a thousand dollars. Well, less so definitely one of the most budget friendly ways. And they were good, like really good, like people. And I still don't quite understand how they roped these people into it. But people who are running legit agencies who, if you went direct to their agency, would have charged you four or five times as much. Yeah, really cool little budget saving hack for you there. All right, another little shout out. This is now around building your tech because again, this is not something that everybody loves or that everybody is naturally good at. It can take a lot of time. It can confuse and stress you a lot. Quite often I see people inside our programs when they are trying to DIY it, just going, oh, I want to pull my hair out. You know, it's. There's a big learning curve with a lot of these systems. Even when you have templates and things, even when you have a course like ours which literally shows you videos over the shoulder. Like, here's how you set this up. You click this button, you put this here, you put this there. People's brains just don't work like that. And I get that there's a great company called Automation Agency. Again, it is a monthly subscription service. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head. I believe it was around about 500amonth. But I could. That may be incorrect, don't quote me but that gives you a certain amount of jobs. So they can build you landing pages, they can build you sales pages, they can set up automations for you, they can set up things on your WordPress site. They as part of the service, I believe they check and do your updates on plugins and things. If you're, if you have WordPress or if you have any issues, they can help you fix it. It's kind of like having your own little tech team and you just have to be a bit disciplined about how you. Because they only do a certain number of jobs for you at a time about how you sort of drip those out. But they absolutely could help you to do most of those tech things of most of the things you need for building a funnel, for creating a course, all that stuff, they know how to do it. And again it's just one thing more thing you don't have to do. Last two things that I recommend for those people who are trying, as I said, faking your way to a seven figure team, number one is templates. I freaking love templates. Any chance you can get a template, I would do it. Don't be like me, just be a template collector. But things like for your social media posts jump onto creative market. They have a billion amazing, gorgeous, like I think for like $35 the other day we got over a thousand different Instagra post templates. If you again if you're not a graphic designer, go find some templates that you like, update them to your colors and your fonts and just use those. Or again, if you do have VA in your team, give it to them. It's all about how can you do work smarter, not hard. How can you make those sort of investments that are going to give you your time back but also give you that higher level experience for your business, that higher amount of expertise. And of course the lucky last recommendation is if you are trying to fake your way to a seven figure business not by faking your business, but by faking the team for your business then one area that I always recommend that you invest in is some kind of coach, mentor, support, whatever that looks like, somebody who has already walked this path and can advise you on where the potholes are, where the curves are and what you can do to get there faster and with less time spent getting lost in the weeds, breaking down all of that stuff, it will pay itself back. If you invest in the right person a thousand times over, over your business's life and having that person on your team and because they are a team member, right, it is probably one of the best investments that you'll ever make. Hopefully people who've been listening to this, I know for some of you, be like, oh, I need all of those things and I don't want you to be. Don't try and outsource everything all at once. That's why inside Ecourse Empire, we do it as part of our retreat. And actually, guys, the applications for Equals Empire are closing today. For our next intake, if you're listening and you've been thinking about joining us, head over to equalsempire.com, jump in if you're listening. The day after this comes out, you might have to jump on the waitlist till we open the doors again. But inside our virtual retreat, which we run twice a year, we get everybody to go through and free up five hours was like, how can you free up five hours in your week? By outsourcing, by systemizing, by automating any combo of those and doing it in a way that's not going and investing necessarily in a super high salary team member, but someone who can come in or a process that you can put in that can take that off your plate. Because that's kind of what is becomes more and more important as you're growing your business is finding ways to get those things off your plate. You can be focusing on the more important stuff on the, working on your business, not in your business side of things. And having it as a process that you are doing regularly so you can keep peeling these layers off one by one makes a huge difference. When you look back over the period of a couple of years, that would be my recommendation. Just pick one, think about freeing up that five hours. Don't think about, I'm going to try and free up all of it right now. Go. What is that one thing that if I could get off my plate right now would make such a huge difference? Just do that one thing, get it dialed in, enjoy having that extra time, reinvest it back into your business and then maybe like I said, in six months, three months, whatever it's going to be for you, Go. Okay, now let's do the next one. Let's do the next one. If you try and outsource everything all at once, guys, it can be a nightmare. Just pick one, do it well, enjoy the benefits. And if you found this episode useful, please make sure that you share it or hit us up over at hellofunnels. Let us know what was your biggest aha or takeaway. We love hearing it guys. And yeah, that's it for me this week guys. I will see you next week, same bat time, same bat channel. Until then, keep doing what you do and I'll see you online. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@stealmyfunnel.com.

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