You may want to read these earlier posts for context on today’s topic. And nope, this is not a sponsored case study.

“Reading between the lines”; cc Emuishere Peliculas, courtesy of Flickr

Whew! Well, this topic has run out of steam and so have I

But there are still elements to the case study that need mentioning, even if they don’t fit tidily into categories…or maybe especially because they don’t. Some go along with the great comments on these posts, where folks clearly picked up—and picked at—what wasn’t expressly written.

So to wrap up the series, here are some of my untidy, uncategorized, yet-unsaid thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and assumptions about Alexandria Brown’s business structure/model:

Freeing up our time ain’t free
Automation and delegation cost money, and a steady stream of it. Payment processors and shopping cart engines call for transactional fees and commissions, and sometimes monthly fees and storage fees. Virtual assistants’ time costs $30+ per hour, and is often packaged in blocks of time, or by task. Freedom comes at a price, and I’ll be happy to pay it when the time comes.

A lot goes out before anything comes in
VIP events call for VIP accommodations, food, and entertainment, with proportional out-of-pocket cash for deposits and whatnot before any ticket sale revenue.

A lot goes in before anything comes out
Creating a first product is hungry work. Like most creative work, tons of time goes into researching and developing the product, bringing it to market, and attracting buyers before the author/creator sees a penny of earnings.

Self-motivate or perish
Between the first spark of the idea and the first sale are hundreds of effortful (wo)manhours, and outside motivators like a dwindling savings account and encouraging friends and family will only stretch so far. A regularly-stoked inner fire is essential…ask me how I know. No, wait. Don’t ask.

This is get rich stuff, but not get rich quick stuff
It took Ali 7 years to build what she has. ‘Nuf said.

Stamina wins the race, not speed
See above ^

Limitless demand
The digital product portion of Ali’s machine is structured to work on maintenance-free autopilot, and generates income 24/7/365. The only limitation is the size of the market, which (for her) grows with online income hopefuls every day—she has 28,000 ezine subscribers now, had 22,000 just four months ago.

Limitless supply
Create something once, sell it a million times. Behold the beauty of digital products (music, ebooks, whatevah) that don’t require a stock room and have no per-item production costs.

Limited risk
The only per-item fees for digital products are transactional (payment processing, shopping cart commission, etc.), so there’s no outgo until there’s income. Well, there are the annual domain and hosting fees. But that’s less than $60 a year with GoDaddy, so pack a lunch once a month and build sumpin’!

Reactions to the potential
At first, I went tharn at the idea I could or would know something worth $2,000,000—totally deer-in-the-headlights. Then I wondered if I already knew something worth a fortune, which led to sifting through my Idea Bag for something with larger-than-average potential. And left me wondering: what if I didn’t yet know my Golden Ticket topic…how would I recognize it when it surfaced?

Dig deep into something deeper
The topic has to have some meat on its bones. It needs be vast or bottomless or both so it can spread across a niche or two, or go wayyyy deep if it’s restricted to just one niche. It needs to interrelate with other things, be worthy of a subtopic or two. And it has to age well, or at least gracefully. It doesn’t have to last forever, it just needs a lasting effect. It doesn’t have to be unique, just uniquely executed. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just capable of being perfected.

Popularity not required
It’s encouraging (and a relief) to have proof and to know in my gut that I could earn enough, maybe even more than enough, without needing to attract and hold the attention of millions. I’ve never been popular in my life. I wouldn’t know how to win a popularity contest, or what to do if—by some freakish happenstance—I won it. But earnings from 1000 people? I know exactly how to get that started.

Et tu?

Got some stray thoughts about the case study?
Lemme know down below…

You may want to read these earlier posts for context on today’s topic. And nope, this is not a sponsored case study.

If you’ve been doubting that Ali could possibly do all this by herself, you’re right. There aren’t enough hours in a single day for one person to keep this multi-million dollar machine running and still have a life. And while her business does require outside help, it doesn’t require leased office space and a squad of employees. Believe it or not, Ali manages her $2 million/year business from her home in California with select online services and a small crew of virtual assistants.

Set the autopilot

The elegance of online transactions is the hands-off quality. Allowing technology to handle the repetitive, predictable tasks that it was designed to do frees us for what we are designed to do—imagine, strategize, and create.

Ali can focus on writing the content for her weekly newsletter because maintenance of her 22,000 28,000+ subscriber list is managed by an email server application. Her digital products (eBooks and teleseminars) are immediately available for download due to a robust and feature-rich shopping cart that manages the digital delivery while she develops more money-making products.

Instead of monitoring her email account for new subscribers and sales, she’s off at the gym, on a beach in Hawaii, busy creating at her desk, not drowning in an endless stream of time-consuming hands-on transactions.

What business functions can you hand off to technology?

And that creative time is critical: Ali’s products are extensive and I expect it takes hundreds of (wo)manhours to produce the content, create the virtual packaging, and develop the sales letters. But there’s little or no maintenance after that initial time investment. No continuous fulfillment horrors of handling payments, printing receipts, packing boxes, adding postage, and postal pick-up—and none of the related expenses, either.

Another type of automation I observed is how Ali “automatically” creates new products by repurposing content. Her Online Success Blueprint Workshop in a Box is an admitted repackage of the content from her live-event workshop. From her sales pages, I estimated her 2007 workshop event yielded $569,430 in ticket fees, and the same content repackaged as a kit pulled in an additional $220,059.

Don’t get it twisted…pulling together the kit wasn’t automatic. At all. Creating 147 kits of CDs and worksheets and notebooks and whatnot was surely a mighty task. But the kits’ content was automatically created in the development and presentation of the workshop. Delivering the Online Success Blueprint Workshop in a Box requires fulfillment steps avoided with the digital products, but burning CDs and licking stamps is well worth an additional $220K+ from content you already have on hand, yes?

And hey, it’s not like Ali’s doing the production or fulfillment work herself anyway. She’s touted the value of using a virtual assistant for years, and I recall hearing in a teleseminar that she contracts three VAs to keep things running smoothly.

Hand it over

It’s important to note that Ali contracts her help, she doesn’t employ, and therefore deftly avoids the Human Resources Hell of benefits and taxes. Instead, she hires virtual assistants (VAs)—independently contracted administrative assistants who work from their own home offices.

Ali has written numerous articles on the topic of delegation, and if she walks like she talks, I expect she hasn’t touched a single bit of administrative work in years. I feel sure her VAs manage the mail order fulfillment we just talked about, as well as customer service, scheduling, assembling and sending off the weekly email newsletter, answering phones, and the other 3,247 mission-critical tasks that support every business—online or offline. Anything that someone else can do is done by someone else.

Like any executive, Ali’s not handing off these tasks to others because they’re not important. In fact, these tasks are too important—and too numerous—for anything but a specialist with a singular focus. Like any executive, she needs dependable, detail-oriented assistance with the day-to-day operations so she can work with the big picture.

And that likely includes all of her housework, grocery shopping, cooking, and errands. I remember Ali mentioning hiring someone to go to the cleaners for her, in a teleseminar years ago. I thought then, like now, on how much time I spent managing all the critical necessities of my life that someone else could do. It was a lot.

What tasks could you give away?

What would you do with that recovered time?

How I’m going to automate

Starting without a bean, I don’t have cash to pay myself, so I’ll need to manage my own administrivia for a time, but there are plenty of free and affordable online tools to automate my budding plan. As I see it right now, I’ll get along fine with old friends like PayPal for payment processing and iContact for email newsletters, and new (to me) services like E-Junkie‘s way-more-than-a-shopping-cart shopping cart.

And when it’s time to give tasks away, things like accounting surely belong in the hands of professionals. For household tasks, the first—and maybe only—task I would give away is cleaning our apartment. It’s a small space, and I’m a lamer for even thinking of paying someone else to clean it, but seriously?

What else—and what more—could you do this year
if you didn’t do the tasks that others could do?

Next in series » Wrap-up: Between the Lines

cc JOE MAD, courtesy of Flickr

Since the previous post, I’ve found much more income than the $387,088 needed to reach the million dollar goal. I revisited the 1000 True Fans post and Ali’s seminar audio to see what should count as True Fan earnings. Kevin Kelly’s full definition of a True Fan is—

…someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

Re-listening to the last portion of Ali’s teleseminar, I found she has her own term and definition for customers she can count on: Exceptional Buyers.

She quantified these folks as her top 5% (based on dollars spent, I expect), and went on to define them as:

…people who buy everything you have. When you come out with something new, they’re the ones with their hands raised first…they’re in line. I had people at my [Online Success Blueprint ??] workshop asking for Platinum Mastermind applications before we even mentioned the program. Those are the people who are ready. Those are my 5%—my exceptional buyers.

How would you determine your business’ True Fans?

Do those Exceptional Buyers sound like an information marketer’s image of Kelly’s True Fans to you? They sure do sound like ‘em to me. So I’m counting all the income from these top buyers. And from the products and services Ali offers, I see three easy-to-implement keys to satisfying the truest of True Fans.

The Keys to VIP Treatment

With its $15,000 price tag, tiny membership (only 17 people), and executive club format, Ali’s Platinum Mastermind program can safely be described as “big-ticket” and embodies what I see as the three keys to VIP earnings:

• Exclusivity
• Personalized answers
• Access and proximity to expertise

If you doubt the value of cost-based exclusivity, try flying First or Business class. There are hundreds of seats on a 747, and only a relative handful of high-end seats. Those passengers get: 1) priority check-in and seating, 2) a closed-door lounge to wait for their flight, 3) better meals and drinks, 4) larger seats and generous legroom, 5) easy access to the stewardesses and pilots, and so on. There aren’t any special requirements for having a First of Business class seat, you just have to pay for it.

Compare that to Ali’s Platinum Mastermind membership, which has high-ticket exclusivity paired with an application approval process. Going beyond that in exclusivity, access and personalization is her $12,000 Private VIP Consulting Day package in Marina Del Ray, California, where you and your business questions get Ali’s undivided attention on her home turf. This costs a few thousand less than her Platinum program, but remember the Platinum membership lasts an entire year, while the VIP consultation is just one day.

Topping both of those across the board is Ali’s One-on-One Diamond Mentoring Program, which includes 3 VIP Days and regular access to Ali year-round for strategy sessions, decision-making, etc. Check out the barriers to entry: Participants have to: 1) be female, 2) make it through both an application and an interview process, 3) hand over at least $1,000,000. A True Fan, indeed!

Note: When I told Dan about that, he commented that I could’ve saved a lot of time by listing this first. “Alexandria Brown Case study: Diamond Mentoring Program…$1,000,000 with one True Fan. The End.” LoL!

I don’t have numbers for how many people (if any) participated in Ali’s Private VIP days or her Diamond program. So while it was critical to see the potential in VIP packages, and I do consider VIP folks as True Fans, with no income figures these high price tag opportunities can’t count toward our goal.

Intermission

Rollin’ on up our toll road from Ali’s $47/month Silver Mastermind group, larger fees have led to smaller and smaller groups, longer and more frequent opportunities to have specific questions answered, and closer, more frequent access to Ali’s expertise, culminating at a $1 million coaching relationship. It was an increasingly expensive road from “come one, come all” to applications and interviews.

Before we get to the last bit, please do simmer on the possibilities for yourself in this solopreneur business strategy/model:

Effectively demonstrate mastery in a niche
and offer higher levels of exclusivity, attention, and access
to your expertise in a tiered package structure
with proportionately increased fees and hurdles

Please keep this in mind while you’re simmering: Ali started started online sales in 2002 with a $49 ebook [thanks Wayback Machine!].

Events for VIPs-to-Be (and VIP Wannabes)

At $2,997 for a three-day event, it’s difficult to classify Ali’s annual Online Success Blueprint Workshop among the coaching services, so it stands alone. Held only once a year, the workshop is too short-term to be considered a membership. According to the sales letter for the boxed version of the event, there were “almost” 200 attendees…so it’s not exclusive enough to be VIP. The workshop doesn’t even have its own pricing tier—it’s priced the same as the Marketing Mastery program.

But I can’t find any reason not to consider it True Fan income. There’s a True Fan-style commitment involved in slapping down three grand, traveling to LA, and pausing Life for three days and two nights to follow Ali’s program in person—particularly when there’s a boxed version with the same information for half the price. To me, it’s like attending a live concert when you can just as easily buy the CD.

190 Online Success Blueprint Workshop tickets @ $2,997 = $569,430

If you don’t like the assumed 190 attendees, be comforted that as few as 130 attendees would have exceeded the $387,088 we needed to meet the $1 million goal. And notably, even with that lesser attendance, the final result would be:

$1,002,522 per year with 441 True Fans

Bzz bzz bzzzzz…

I hope reviewing the many income streams and their revenue has your brain buzzing as much as mine is. I feel sure there is something I know or think or do that would be valuable to 1000 avid followers, and I believe the same is true for you. Finding those folks is a challenge, convincing them to buy is another. Keeping their attention will be tricky, and so will cultivating that wee collection of Exclusive Buyers.

What do you see as the biggest challenge to this business model?

And I can’t help thinking: What if I had helped my business ideas take root when I bought Ali’s first eBook back in 2002? What if I had fought my inertia, instead of slipping into a four year job coma and letting myself be overworked, underchallenged, undervalued, and underpaid?

What will it take to get—and keep—you moving?

If I had worked my way up Ali’s tiered program structure, what would I have now? Would we have a roomier apartment? Would I have paid off my student loans? Would we have a second car? Would we spend a week in Montreal for the July jazz festival?

What would you do with 50% more income next year?

I’m not striving for a massive house, fancy cars, and a neck full of bling. More money does indeed bring “mo’ problems” [shout to the Notorious B.I.G. for clarifying that], and I’m dedicated to a drama-free Life. I would be ecstatic with Kevin Kelly’s proposed $100,000 True Fan annual earnings. Even though it’s just 5% of what Ali earned last year, it would be more than twice the highest salary I’ve ever earned.

How little would it take to change your lifestyle?

So…How does she do it?

Next week I’ll touch on the tactics of Ali’s Big Machine: how she runs it with only a handful of helpers (and no employees), the likely expenses, the mountain of work I suspect is involved, and what I feel are the key benefits to the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

Next in series » Part 3: Get a Life With Automation and Delegation

If next week is looking busy for you, subscribe to my full feed or sign up for my email service to stay in the loop…

You might want to read the series intro first if you haven’t already.

cc Ian Muttoo, courtesy of Flickr

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating” and I had plenty to nibble on when evaluating straight-from-the-source info that Alexandria Brown earned $2,000,000 in 2007. This post assembles details from her current sales pages and my notes from her Top 10 for 2008 teleseminar to demonstrate how a solopreneur can make $1 million USD with fewer than 1000 True Fans.

My figurings revealed big money in selling information (no surprise there), the mad cash that comes from selling access to information, and the potential in leveraging vendor access to subscribers…those last two caught me off guard.

Selling information

Ali has built up a small but mighty product portfolio in the past 7 years. Best that I can tell, she’s trimmed away six or seven of her products in the past year, and now offers only five:

• Power and Soul ($20)
• Think to Grow Rich ($297)
• Boost Business with Your Own Ezine ($497)
• Workshop Marketing Secrets ($997)
• Online Success Blueprint Workshop ($1,497)

I’ll start with what I know for sure: the sales page for the Online Success Blueprint Workshop says only 147 copies are for sale…and they’re sold out. Assuming everyone paid full price:

147 copies of Online Success Blueprint Workshop
@ $1,497 each = $220,059

Well, hell. That’s a nice step toward a million, ain’t it? And that’s the least Ali could have earned on that product. Here’s what happens when I apply the same limits and assumptions to her other items.

147 copies of Workshop Marketing Secrets @ $997 each = $146,559

147 copies of Boost Business with Your Own Ezine
@ $497 each = $73,059
\Note: A safe assumption, since a recent seminar follow-up
mentioned 300 copies were sold between Mar 24 and Mar 27

147 copies of Think to Grow Rich @ $297 each = $43,659

147 copies of the Power and Soul @ $20 each = $2,940

Product Sales Total: $486,276

This is my best guess, because the sales pages for these other four products disclosed neither a sales limit nor a number of sales. However, if there are 147 folks willing to buy Ali’s most expensive product, it’s probably safe to assume the less expensive items are selling equally well. However, I won’t assume more sales just because they’re less expensive.

Even if I had an actual number of products sold, it would be impossible to tell how many customers these sales represent. If Ali’s marketing funnel is working as it should, at least some of the folks who bought her most expensive item also purchased at least one less expensive product first. But even if there were no repeat sales, that’s still only 735 unique customers for almost half a million dollars in revenue.

But these Customers don’t qualify as True Fans anyway. Kelly defines a True Fan as “someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce,” and the case for these product sales is crippled by the repeat sales question. One purchase does not a True Fan make.

But…

Does someone who continually invests in you by paying month after month for a subscription-based membership qualify as a True Fan? I’d say so. And based on the cost of her coaching program memberships, Ali doesn’t need even 100 subscribing Fans to equal her products sales.

Selling access to information

Funny thing about toll roads…regardless of where you enter or where you get off, the toll gets paid. Some toll roads have a flat fee you pay when entering or exiting, while other toll roads charge more the farther you travel. Ali’s product sales are like a flat fee toll, while her group coaching programs are the other kind:

• Silver Mastermind Group ($47/month)
• Marketing Mastery 12-Month Program ($279/month)
  Note: During her teleseminar, it was offered at a monthly rate, currently available at a one time $2,970. This may need to be reclassified to the VIP category
  
• Private Platinum Mastermind Group ($15,000/year)
  Note: Best that I can tell, this is an annual fee. If not, it would also get reclassified to the VIP category.
  

All of these programs offer live coaching/training calls, digital and printed transcripts, and exclusive group membership—and the farther you’re willing go, the more you’ll need to pay. Fee increases translate to smaller groups and increasing levels of direct access to Ali.

As an example, the Silver Mastermind group has monthly live coaching calls, but the more expensive Marketing Mastery group has open Q & A calls each month AND quarterly “laser” consultations—which are first come, first served, 10-minute 1-on-1 calls with Ali. The most pricey Platinum Mastermind group gets much of the same, plus resort weekend workshops, and it’s the only group that has regular 1:1 time with Ali throughout the year.

The Marketing Mastery and Platinum Mastermind headcounts are listed on her site, but I’m relying on my memory for the number of members in her Silver Mastermind program. I recall hearing in a teleseminar that her Silver Mastermind group has 450** people in it. If someone knows different, please let me know and I’ll update. In the meantime, I’ll cut my undocumented count in half, just to be conservative. With that in mind, here’s how the membership fees add up:

225** Silver Mastermind fees @ $47/month = $10,575/month
$10,575 x 12 months = $126,900/year
**Jun 8, 2008 Update: Ali just announced there are 750 members

69 Marketing Mastery fees @ $279/month = $19,251/month
$19,251 x 12 months = $231,012/year

17 Private Platinum fees @ $15,000/year = $255,000/year

True Fan Memberships Total = $612,912

Even if I dropped the Silver Mastermind group completely because of my undocumented headcount, we’d still be almost halfway to a million with nowhere near half of our allotted 1000 Fans.

Note: If I included revenue from her products, the running subtotal would be at $1,099,188

Leveraging vendor access to subscribers

In addition to her bevy of paying members, Ali has a a bunch of freeloaders (like me) who read her free weekly ezine and attend her free teleseminars. Some of us are working our way to her paid products, others are just hanging out, and there are 22,000 28,000+ of us, according to her ezine advertisement sales page.

Assuming her last five issues represent the entire year, there are 5 advertisements run each week. They usually cost $250 each, but she offers a “Buy 3 Get 1 Free” ad special for $500. To be conservative, I’ll assume that everyone takes her up on the discounted price:

5 ezine ads x $167 = $835
$835 x 52 weeks = $43,420

That’s small potatoes compared to the membership fees, but it’s darn good money for publishing the same number of articles in a month that many bloggers post in a week. It’s also wincingly close to my annual salary at my last office job. But we’re looking for True Fans here, and free ezine subscribers aren’t necessarily product or membership buyers. While the ad revenue improves our image of Ali’s income, it won’t count toward the $1 million goal.

Ali’s partnerships won’t factor in either, because I know nothing about their volume and/or terms. The ezine always mentions Silver Mastermind guest speakers, and I’ve listened in on free teleseminars where she was co-hosting or interviewing someone. I suspect that even her well-attended free events involve joint ventures. Also, Ali often mentions income from affiliate product sales. I imagine the Silver Mastermind group’s “Million Dollar Resource Rolodex” of her preferred tools and resources has at least a few items that pay her a commission.

While I don’t have numbers for any of Ali’s probable partnerships, they’re worth mentioning in addition to advertising because they’re all revenue derived from third-party access to her pool of followers. To continue the highway analogy: not only is Ali collecting a toll from the travelers AND earning revenue for the highway billboards, but she’s also probably getting a cut of the rest stop sales

Note: If I included ezine advertising, the running subtotal would be at $1,142,608

Om nom nom*

Whew! That’s plenty for y’all to chew on for one day, and hopefully two. This post was a long write, and likely a long read, so I’m taking a break from blogging tomorrow. We’ll meet back here on Friday to pair more facts with more reasonable assumptions and try to account for the remaining $387,088.

For today, remember that I ignored all but one of Ali’s income streams because I’m sticking to the spirit and definition of a True Fan, and I don’t have any numbers for a couple of them. But that one valid income stream yields $612,912. Each year.

For a taste of Friday’s post, here’s a hint:

The three keys to big-ticket VIP earnings are:
exclusivity, __________, and _________.

[The answer is available now at Part 2: Big-Ticket VIP Access for a Few]

If Friday is looking busy for you, subscribe to my full feed or sign up for my email service to stay in the loop…

Et tu? Are you imagining the possibilities for your business, or are you thoroughly unconvinced? Lemme know down below…

*Happy chomping noises appropriately (and regularly) iterated by Georgene [ @Giania ] in loving homage to the worthy CM.

One true fan — cc Heraklit, courtesy of Flickr

The idea of supporting yourself comfortably on the proceeds from 1000 True Fans may sound loopy, but the math is straightforward. Get $100 a year from 1000 people and you’ll earn $100,000 each year.

The theory has its inevitable skeptics and hesitants, but Seth Godin believes it’s a concept worth restructuring a business around. Both positions call for a deep think, and it’s also important to ponder collecting a fanbase and improving customer experience.

Because although the math is simple, the execution of a 1000 True Fan Plan can be complex. Surviving and thriving on 1000 True Fans means:

• Earning and keeping the attention of tens of thousands of Potential True Fans AND
• Bringing them to part with a day’s pay (according to the theory) AND
• Convincing them to pay you year after year AND
• Maintaining a collection of 1000 willing buyers AND…

You get the picture. It takes time and helluvalotta work. It takes thoughtful strategy. And maybe more than those, it takes massive action and perseverance. But it’s doable. And it’s being done. I have proof.

Introducing Ali

In my Dismiss Your Doubts post, I introduced Alexandria Brown—the information marketer formerly-known-as the Ezine Queen—who solopreneured her way to $2,000,000 last year. I don’t mean she’s accumulated $2M over her 7 years in business, I mean that was her income for 2007. Notably, that’s a ninefold+ jump from the $270K she made in 2005.

Yes, way.

No sh!t.

How the heck would I know about her income? Well…because she told me. Offering details about her enviable lifestyle, workstyle, and earnings is one of her keenly effective marketing techniques. Ali uses all the income-generating methods she shares, so she is her own poster child. She’s attracted 22,000 28,000+ Potential True Fans with her success story, free teleseminars, and free email newsletter.

Me, the Hater

She also attracts haters, and I’m among them on my lesser days. It’s painfully stupid of me to feel that way when—with equal diligence and focus—I can accomplish as much as she has. In truth, it will be easier for me because I can work from the strategies Ali’s already developed, tested, and outlined (which is why I subscribe to her weekly ezine and never miss a teleseminar).

Now, I’m not an affiliate and this series of posts isn’t sponsored. But there is a payout for me, of sorts…

My positive and productive penance

Maybe writing about her success will extinguish my cussed crabbiness about it and swing my karma around. It serves everyone better for me to be truly thrilled for Ali, and proud that there are one-woman shows who earn a ton for their hard work, and particularly thankful that she’s left a trail of free breadcrumbs we can follow.

From what Ali shared in her Top 10 for 2008 teleseminar and my observations of her strategies and tactics, I’ve developed a bird’s-eye view of what she’s built, how it works, and how she makes millions from fewer than 1000 True Fans.

Subscribe to my full feed or sign up for my email service so you won’t miss:

Part 1: Be a Tollbooth on the Information Highway
Part 2: Big-Ticket VIP Access for a Few
Part 3: Get a Life With Automation and Delegation

Et tu? What do you think about where this week’s posts are headed? Let me know down below…

A quick note: Be sure to check out the comments for each post…lots of good questions, ideas, info, and links

• Introduction
  • Introducing Ali
  • Me, the Hater
  • My positive and productive penance
• Part 1: Be a Toll Booth on the Information Highway
  • Selling information
  • Selling access to information
  • Leveraging vendor access to subscribers
  • Om nom nom
• Part 2: Big-Ticket VIP Access for a Few
  • The keys to VIP treatment
  • Intermission
  • Events for VIPs-to-be (and VIP wannabes)
  • Bzz bzz bzzzzz…
  • So…how does she do it?
• Part 3: Get a Life With Automation and Delegation
  • Set the autopilot
  • Hand it over
  • How I’m going to automate
• Wrap-up: Between the Lines
  • Freeing up our time ain’t free
  • A lot goes out before anything comes in
  • A lot goes in before anything comes out
  • Self-motivate or perish
  • This is get rich stuff, but not get rich quick stuff
  • Stamina wins the race, not speed
  • Limitless demand
  • Limitless supply
  • Limited risk
  • Reactions to the potential
  • Dig deep into something deeper
  • Popularity not required

More case studies are coming, along with great tools, tips, and advice for the smallest businesses. Subscribe to my full feed or sign up for email service to stay in the loop…

Image credit: striatic

It’s unavoidable. You’ll be attending a conference or seminar and be introduced to a “Director of East Coast Operations”, a “Vice President of Development, United States”, or a “CEO of Everything, Everywhere”.

So what do you, Master of Your Own Microbusiness, introduce yourself as?

Who the heck are ya?

You own your business, but doesn’t “Owner” sound inactive? “Owner” sounds like the business belongs to you but you don’t actually do anything—which is way far from the truth.

If you’re a solopreneur (like me) you’re doing it mostly by yourself. Does that mean you get all 27 job titles from Secretary to CEO, or do you have to settle on just one? You do all the work and get all the credit (and all the blame), but there’s no sensible way to put 27 roles on a business card.

And maybe it’s silly to play the Name Game at all, but what’s wrong with wanting a title that does more than proclaim you’re top dog in a one-person business—now THAT’S silly. How can you be “Director” when there’s no one else to direct?

So really, who the heck are ya?

One day my ex, a recreation facilitator, gave himself the subtitle “Director of Continuous Improvement”. A motivational speaker gave him the idea, saying that a job title should be more than what your business leaders have assigned you to do—it should be what you actually do.

That could be interpreted as living up to one’s given job description, but my ex took the extra step of assigning himself a new title that became his promise to keep. Whenever something needed fixing, he took it on and moved his department (and himself) forward with every task.

You’re a WHAT?

A “promising” title was great for his inner motivation and there was a notable impact on other folks, too. When he began introducing himself to customers and colleagues with both titles, a very cool thing happened…

Their eyes would glaze over when they heard “I’m the Recreation Facilitator”, but they were restored to avid interest on hearing “…and Director of Continuous Improvement”. People would respond with questions like: What’s that? How do you do that? You’re a WHAT? that inevitably started interesting—and interested—conversations that led to new business and/or contacts.

Oh! So you’re a…

So when you consider what you actually do for a living, what would be a compellingly accurate job title for you? I started calling Christine, my business coach, “Queen of the Nudge” because I can count on her to gently motivate me into keeping the promises I’ve made to myself. Let’s see if she puts it on her business card…

I chose “Digital Curator” for myself after reading an article on the value of recommendations. It perfectly encapsulates my self-assigned task to search, sift, sort, and share the best of what I find on the Web.

And what about you?

Are you a premier dog groomer who is really a “Queen of Canine Confidence”, or maybe a save-the-day computer technician who is actually a “Network Support Superhero”?

Take a moment to write down the valuable things your service or products bring to the world. From that list, compose a title that portrays your singular gift, makes a promise to your customers and clients, and will jumpstart an interesting-and-interested conversation.

Which is so much better than being a corporate “Vice President”, “Director”, or even “CEO”…they’re stuck with names, roles, and tasks assigned by others, but you’ve got your own business and are free to be and act and do as you like.