260 - Starting from zero - what I would do if I had to rebuild in 2025

I've got a good question for you. If you had to start your online course business from absolutely zero today with no audience, no list, and limited budget, would you know where to begin? Look, most people would absolutely panic. But here's the thing. Starting from scratch in 2025 is actually the biggest opportunity that you'll ever have. The landscape has changed. AI has shifted everything, and the strategies that work now are completely different from even 12 months ago. Hi, I'm Kate from hello, Funnels. I've made over $6 million in core sales and today I'm breaking down exactly what I'd do if I had to rebuild everything from zero in 2025, including the three types of profitable problems I'd be focused on solving and the exact funnel strategy I'd use to get profitable fast. You ready? Let's dive on in. So, as a content creator who's been around for a while, I love doing videos like this and I've done a few different ones over and I like to do them every few years because you know what, what I would do does change, and particularly right now, it would change so much from what I've done. Even 12 months ago, I thought it was really time to jump in and just talk about, like, what is working, what is working right now, and what are those big outcome strategies with small input that are going to work really well for somebody who is in those beginning stages, who doesn't have a lot of resources and who's wanting to get moving fast. So, so I'm going to break it down for you. I have a process, step by step process of exactly what I would do. Go grab a pen and let's get started. So the very first thing you need to do before you make a website, before you worry about branding or any of that, is you need to spend the time figuring out what your profitable problem is going to be. And right now you really need to make sure that you are really considering the world that we are now living in and that you choose a profitable problem that is going to still exist in five years time or more. Otherwise, you're going to be right back here at square one in a couple of months. So the things to think about right now, and excuse my dog, he's how. He's my, he's my podcast manager today, is you really want to think long term. And I know that a bit of that is going to involve some guessing, but I have been looking at, you know, the, the trends that I'm seeing and the stuff that we just, we just know as Humans who've been in business for a long time. And I've found that there are three particular areas that if I was recreating my programs right now, or even if I was thinking to update my programs to make them more, you know, long term proof, these is where I would be focusing. So first of all I would avoid the problem that I seem to always fall into is I would not be tying my programs or offers to any particular typ type of tech or technology because those are all changing way too fast. That's just a little bonus tip there. And one, it's probably more for myself than anyone. The next thing is that I would be looking at one of these sort of three areas. So first problem type, I call these the forever human problems, but obviously done with a bit of a modern twist. So these are things that it really doesn't matter what else is going on in the world, us as humans are always going to care about these things. So these things are, you know, finding love, health, parenting and our kids making money, generally feeling fulfilled. Like those areas are just part of being a human. And it really doesn't matter what else is being thrown at us. We are always going to want these things and to want more of them or to solve an issue, to deal with them. Okay, they're always going to be pain points. Now of course the level of those pain points might fluctuate depending on what's going on in the world, but these never go away. However, the ways we solve them, the delivery methods for them, them, they're always going to be evolving. So you want to make sure that if you are going to focus on solving one of those forever human problems that you want to try and do it in a really human centered way, that something that AI can't replace, like you need to do it in a way that is going to be much more valuable than anything that they can just pick up ChatGPT and go hey ChatGPT, how do I get a boyfriend? Like that's, you know, that's kind of what people are doing now, right? And you know that it's going to get more and more common. All right. On problem two, and this one, I would say again, a little bit of caveat. This is temporary, but it has big possibility and if you can do this correctly, it should give you enough of a boost and growth that you can pivot down the line as this sort of evolves away. So the type of problem I'm talking about right here is this real, like helping people to navigate the change and disruption that is coming. So if you think about it, so many industries are going to be really heavily impacted by AI and then the impacts of that, like this is going to be like a bigger sort of ripples in the pond kind of thing. It's not just going to be the core, you know, a lot of jobs are going to go away. What is that going to mean? And then what is that going to mean? So there is a real opportunity right now. If you have the experience, the skillset, the ability to be able to serve those people, they are going to have a very real and large pain point. They now need to either, you know, retrain or redesign their whole life, really their whole identity to be able to adapt and continue on and thrive. And there's going to be a real period for a lot of people where, you know, there's a lot of turmoil, I think going on. And if you can help people here, and I mean genuinely help people, I'm not talking about like monetizing people's pain. Like, if you are able, if you have a solution, if you have, you know, anything that you can do, expertise that can help these people to, you know, make it through this period of disruption to come out the other side better off, then that is a real business opportunity. That is something where there's going to be a real need and a bigger and bigger and bigger need coming up. And now, of course, as I said, this is going to be temporary something, you know, this turmoil will not last forever and it's going to adapt and evolve and over time. But that, that is absolutely an opportunity. And again, if, if you can literally legitimately help people, I would be strongly considering that this might be a good place to start. All right. Problem type number three is anything around human connection and experiences. So when you're thinking about the problems that you want to solve, this is really more focused, I guess, around the how you'll be solving it. But again, as AI comes in, as you know, the access to knowledge becomes easier and easier and cheaper and cheaper, which basically devalues it. We need to look at like what is, what is, what else is being provided or what else can you do to make your experience, your office, your brand be something that can't be replaced by a simple, you know, app on your phone. So these are usually more human things. So community events, things that are done with you experiences, these are going to have more and more value because, you know, we're going to see that the way that, you know, the way that people are doing things, particularly if they are Spending more and more time with just with AI as their companion, as their source of knowledge, as their teachers, as their mentors, as their doctors, as their everything. You know, there's going to be, you know, people are going to want to come back to feeling like humans. We're going to want to be around other humans. So how can you do that? This is really, and I would say for everyone listening to this, even if you're not starting from scratch and you're just, you know, listening to this and it's sparking ideas of some of the changes you might need to do to start to AI proof yourself and your business. This is where I'd be leaning in on how can you really do this and do it well and do it better than other people and add more humanness to what you're doing, Allow the AI technology to automate, to speed up, to take off some of the heavy lifting and free up you, your energy and your time to come in and have more human connection. Because this is absolutely, well, as far as I know anyway, what AI cannot replace. And it really helps to position you in a more premium space from day one. So those are the three problems that I would really be focusing on. Hopefully one of them has kind of like flickered a little idea or two in the background. Now if it hasn't, I actually have an exercise for you to how to sit down and figure out exactly which is the idea that you should be pursuing. So what I want you to do is maybe not now, definitely not if you're out driving or anything like that, but you're going to come back to this and you're going to get a big piece of paper and we're just going to do like a good old fashioned brain dump, slash mind map. And what you're going to do is write down literally every single thing that you are passionate about and or have experience, expertise in. Like these can be big problems and then, or even small problems. I would recommend that you start that way, like write out the sort of like the bigger topics and then break them down into the little more specific things and the more the better. Now once you've done that, once you've got it all out, the very first thing you're going to do is go through and just cross off anything that you just hate you are passionate about and is. Even if something is like, look, I know I could do that, but do I want to know? Cross it off? Okay, we want to build businesses that are going to last a long time to do that. It's got to be something you actually care about. So get rid of all of those. Next you're going to go along and you're going to start adding stars to things. You can color code this if you want to get fancy, but just a single star, asterisk, whatever, a tick, you know, whatever's going to work for you and your brain. But I'm going to give you a couple of, like, criteria now, and you're just going to go through and put like, stars or ticks next to each of these problems or areas. And then at the end, you're going to see which are the ones that have the most. So first of all, go through. And anything that, you know, people are already paying to solve or paying to learn, like, so it could be buying books or, you know, there's already existing coaching programs or other things out there. There's products out there that people are buying to sol solve that problem. Great. Put a tick next to it. Next you're going for a ticker, a star next to anything that is a, what I would call a top three problem. Because the thing is, particularly as people get busier, as you know, the world gets crazier. People have a very long mental list of things they're trying to figure out, problems they're trying to solve, things they want to do right. And the ones that actually get the attention, the time, the investment, they're usually just the ones at the top. So if you've got some. Something like, I don't know, someone wants to learn how to get better at folding their sheets, that's probably not a top three problem unless they live a very privileged life. Okay. So I would go through and anything that you don't think for that for, you know, an ideal client wouldn't be a top three problem, therefore wouldn't be something they're probably likely to act on. I would just, I would ditch it. Like, we're wanting to make your life as easy as possible here. Top three problems sell much easier than any of the ones below it. And then next is some. Anything that you think is going to potentially become more of a problem or a bigger pain point over the coming years. So once you've done that, once you've put those three things in. So number one, things, you know, people pay to solve. Number two, it's a top three problem. And number three, basically it's got growth potential. Like, it's not going to become less of a problem, it's going to stay the same or become more. Then hopefully that will give you a bit of a Short list of where you should be focusing your attention. And from that you're going to select one, just one, and that is going to be what you base everything else around. So now that you've selected your profitable problem that you're going to be solving, now we move on to test two. Sorry to step two, which is to come in and you need to test and validate. So the, you know, the steps I'm going to be going through after this is we eventually going to start running ads. But I never want people to run ads completely cold without getting a bit of free data first. So I recommend that you then take this profitable problem you're going to be solving and that from that you want to again mind map it out. Like what are all the smaller, more specific things, the hooks, the pain points, the questions that are all sort of surrounding that profitable problem. And I would then go and create some content about that on whichever platform makes the most sense for you and use the fact that you usually get a beginner's advantage and that usually when you very, when you first get started on most of these social platforms and your following is like zero, that you will still get shown to some people because they want you to hang around, use that as an opportunity to do some research and to see which of these stories, which of these hooks, which of these questions are getting the best responses from that. That should give you some information to then go to the next step. So now you've kind of, you got your proper problem now you've seen what people actually like hooks them in, what gets their attention. Now you're going to move on to actually setting up a mini funnel system. So this mini funnel is the exact same mini funnel actually that we help people to set up in our automated challenge. And we're actually bringing it back in September. So the doors, I believe are open now. We've got limited tickets. If you listen to me break down this funnel, you're like, this sounds so good. I want to build it right now. Then make sure link is below, make sure you go grab yourself a ticket, come in, we'll do it together in three days. It's going to be super fun. But. All right, let's get back to the mini funnel system. So you're going to take that, you got your profitable problem, you've got your sort of like your hooks and things. And I call these the entry points into your profitable problem. So you can take those entry points and whichever one really seemed to resonate the most, you're going to create a really Juicy lead magnet. Now, I don't want you spending a lot of time here. I have a 20 by 20 rule when it comes to lead magnets. And that basically means that the lead magnet you create should take. Take no more than 20 minutes to create and no more than 20 minutes to consume. That's all it should take, particularly with AI stuff these days, guys, to be able to create something that's going to give enough value, give people that first taste and leave them wanting more. Once you've got your lead magnet, you're then going to build out a low ticket offer that solves the problem that people were interested in from that lead magnet. So you got your hook that resonated. You now have the lead magnet that you can use to be like, want to know more? Grab this free thing. That free thing is going to give them the first taste and then you go like, great, you want to really solve this. Come and get my paid thing. But again, we're talking low ticket here. We want to make this simple. So something between $47 to $97 that again is going to solve that specific problem once you have those in place. And the final piece of the puzzle is setting up a simple email sequence. As I mentioned, guys, we literally do all of this inside the IT challenge. So grab your tickets if you want me to give you the exact AI prompts. So the templates, everything to get this done really fast. And it's, it's super fun. Like last time we did it, it was so good. People were launching their funnels together, celebrating making their first sales together. It was, it was amazing. Once you've got that set up, this is the real ninja move, okay? And this is why I recommend you're doing this as a beginner and not later on as someone who's more advanced, because this is how you're able to grow really quickly with that combination of that super juicy lead magnet that's talking to that really entry level pain point. With that easy, yes, low ticket offer and with that super simple but high converting email funnel, you now have a little engine in place that you can use to grow your audience by thousands without having to dip into your credit card. So the secret here is that you run this funnel initially. If you have any kind of audience, I would run it to that audience to get your first few sales. But if you don't, you might need to dive in and do ads earlier. But either way you're due is you're setting up this funnel. And the purpose is that this funnel is going to make Sales and then the money from that sales, those sales are going to be reinvested back into ads budget to put more people through that funnel. And so, you know, eventually this is going to allow you. And one of our clients, Cherise, she just came to us and said, you know, she'd been doing this for a few months. She had 500 people on her email list and had been stuck at 500 for over a year trying to do all of the other, you know, free organic growth things. And then she finally set up this exact sequence and she now has nearly 7,000 people on her email list. And it's paid for itself. This, she has not had to dip into savings, credit cards, anything. This is paid for itself. It's making her sales every day. And now she's able to go and you know, make offers to her list which has thousands of it. And the last, I think she did a little mini promo the other day and it made nearly 7,000 doll. So this is why I recommend this exact, these exact steps, this exact system, because how many other ways are there other than going viral, which you cannot bank on, where you're going to actually be able to grow and have control of your growth and grow from zero or very, very small audience to having thousands and making thousands every month. It almost feels like illegal how this works. Okay, so that, that's the final step, right? That is the whole, that's the whole part. And then, sorry, there's one more step like while this is running and while your list is growing is that is when you would use the time, use the feedback. Like you keep doing content, you keep getting that feedback and that's where you take the time to develop a bigger program. A program that is going to tickle those boxes that we talked about earlier, that is going to really lean into the stuff, the humanity, the connection that is going to solve one of those problems that are still going to be around and still going to be painful and still going to be something people want to invest in in years to come. And the combination of that is how you end up getting to, you know, five figure months really, really quickly and better yet really, really automated as well. So now that you have it, you've got my complete starting from zero game plan for 2025. Remember, the key is thinking long term with your problem selection but moving fast with your execution. And, and speaking of moving fast, if you want to get that funnel built out properly, the foundation of everything we just talked about, right, that like that works so well, it feels illegal kind of solution, then you don't want to miss out on our automated challenge. It's coming up in September. It's for three days. It's live. We're going to do this together. You're going to come in and work through it piece by piece. I'm going to give you the templates, the prompts, absolutely everything. And at the end, you'll walk away with a funnel that is is actually up running and making sales. The results from last time, guys, were honestly mind blowing. It was so cool seeing everybody launch together, celebrate their first sales together and then come back and let us know when those sales ended up in the hundreds and then thousands. So make sure you don't miss out. We only have limited tickets, guys. The tickets are still available, I believe, when I'm recording this, but you're just going to click below or head to hellofunnels co automate. Grab your spot and come in and join us. So that's it for now, guys. I hope this has been helpful. If it has, please, please, please share it. It always means the world to small business when someone, you know shares a content with somebody else. It's how we get our message out there. And until next time, guys, keep doing online.