The Business Advice That’s Keeping You Stuck (And What Actually Works) [Happy Trap Series #2]

Have you ever felt like every business guru that you come across is promising 10K months or that one perfect strategy to hit it big, but yet nothing really ever seems to stick no matter what you try. When I started my legal templates business eight years ago, all I ever heard was that you couldn’t go straight to an evergreen webinar.

I heard that you had to run it live a certain amount of times to make sure that it worked before you ever ran with it evergreen. But here’s the deal. My dad had leukemia at the time I was helping to take care of him and I didn’t have time. I just like flat out didn’t have time. I had to figure something out in my business to make my business run smoother without me always having to be on social media or having to produce content every single day.

So against what everybody said was the only right way or the only way that would work was to run a webinar straight to live and then turn evergreen later. I went ahead and ran it straight to Evergreen instead, and guess what happened? It worked right away. I worked really hard on my webinar, I set up a really good funnel, worked with a great copywriter to create emails that came out after people watched that webinar, and it started converting not only to my warm audience, but to cold traffic too.

Sitting here, nearly eight years later, that little funnel has generated over eight million dollars in revenue. So I think I can safely say at this point that it worked, and I’m really glad that I didn’t listen to all the noise of the certain way I had to do things. This is part two of my happy trap series a four part series I’m running this month talking all about the happy trap in running your own online business and today in this episode We’re going to talk through why there’s only one right way is a myth.

What really drives success and how to filter out the noise. All right, let’s dive into part one. Why is the only one right way thing a myth? It feels like you can’t open Instagram or even YouTube without hearing from somebody about how this is the magic formula, or this is the right way. This is the breakthrough strategy.

One of the things I love the most is that those strategies are changing all the time. So like someone posts today that this is the only way to build your YouTube channel, or this is the only way to get more followers on Instagram. And three days later, they share a different tactic or a different way.

It’s kind of like when influencers tell you that there’s this brand new skincare that they’ve been using that has like completely solved their entire life only one week later to link to a sponsored post from some other skincare product that now is changing their life in a different way. Funnily enough, I think that so many of these strategies actually go against one another too.

Like some people will say the only way that you can build an online coaching business is if you work with people one on one first, and then you’ll hear other people in the space say who are also successful, that you should never work with people one on one if you want to be successful and the only right way to do it is to have an online course or to sell a digital product.

We’re always being bombarded with these messages like if you just do it this way then everything’s gonna work out or this is the only way and so you have to listen to me, right? But here’s the truth. Growing a successful online business, in my opinion, actually has more to do with these four things.

Number one, we need demand from your ideal client for the product that you want to create. Two, we need to look at the supply. There has to be room for it. Right? And just because other people are selling it doesn’t mean that there’s not room for you. It just means that there needs to be room for something a little different or your twist on it.

And when other people are selling something, that’s also sign that. That’s also a sign that there is proof of demand, right? So that’s good. We know that there’s a little bit of proof of concept there, but we wanna make sure the supply is not too big, especially for the way that you want to offer this product.

The third thing is differentiation. So I want you to focus on differentiating not only your product, so your product itself should maybe solve a problem that’s not currently being solved or you offer your product and or deliver your service in a way that’s not currently being offered by that many people.

I also want you to differentiate your Self as a creator, especially if you’re somebody who creates a lot of content like this, if you’re going to have a podcast or a YouTube channel, or even be on Instagram, I would love for you to set yourself apart and your content apart, maybe even the tone of it or the approach that you take to it from the other people in your space.

So it’s a two part differentiation. We’re differentiating your product, but we’re also differentiating you as a creator. Last but not least, growing a successful online business has to do with marketing positioning. So we want to look at how clear you are in your messaging, um, really, really getting to know your customers.

And more than anything, in my opinion, speaking your customer’s language, really understanding What their pain points are, what their desires are, and truly what they’re looking for, not just what you feel like offering. So you might not know this, but before I started my legal templates business in 2017, in 2016, I actually started a health coaching business online.

So I wanted to teach busy professionals how to cook because that’s what I really love doing in my free time. But I sort of went about it the opposite of what I’m suggesting to you now. I started an online health coaching business. I just made it look like- everybody else’s business. And I’m not talking about copying people’s content.

Obviously I’m a lawyer. I know not to do that, but I meant more like imagining that everybody’s business that I saw online was the way to do it. Like it was the rubric, as I say, and not just an example, which is more how I encourage you to look at it now. Right. So I looked at the way people were offering services, the way they were styling their packages, right.

The way they were even just working with people, like everybody at that time had a one on one package, an online course, and like maybe a digital product, even the types of freebies that people were offering, like I wasn’t thinking at all outside of the box of any other way to do it or looking for any hole in the market at all.

Honestly, I just figured if other people online were successful, or at least what I thought was successful looking, you know, from my vantage point online, then I should just do that. And then therefore I would be successful too. If only it were that easy, but that is definitely not how it works at all.

Looking back on it, I think one of the reasons that that doesn’t work. And if you’re maybe in this position right now, and that’s not working for you is because you need to understand the mechanism of why something works. My mom always used to say, you have to understand like what the mechanism is, what’s the mechanism behind why something works the way it does.

Right. So some of the thing that I saw somebody else doing online might’ve worked for them. Because they really understood their customer’s pain points. They spoke their customer’s language. They were, um, really in it with their community and creating a connection and really understanding what they needed.

So me going out and just replicating that on my end, it doesn’t work because I don’t speak, I, first of all, don’t have that same customer base or that same audience, right? I’m a different person. I also probably didn’t have an audience at the time, but I was very different than them. And. Just trying to replicate that language.

It was like I was speaking to other people who didn’t speak my language, right? So nobody understood me. Therefore, nobody followed, nobody was catching on. I also just wasn’t being at all authentically myself or sharing really anything very interesting. Cause I was just trying so hard to fit a mold of what I thought I was supposed to do.

So I can understand now in retrospect, why that wouldn’t really catch on with anyone. So it’s probably no surprise to you then that my business ultimately wasn’t very successful, that health coaching business, it was fine, I worked with a handful of private clients, I sold some courses and some digital products, but it wasn’t going really anywhere, it wasn’t going to allow me to be successful, and I wasn’t very happy doing it, not only because It wasn’t successful, but because I didn’t connect with the work or what I was doing online.

I don’t think it’s then any surprise that when I started my legal templates business in 2017, I started it from a completely different perspective. Instead, I started it by looking at what was being offered, what was missing, and what were people saying online about what they needed and what they really wanted.

And I created a business that really plugged that hole. All right, let’s get into part two, the reality of successful business strategies. As a business owner, you have a unique opportunity to create a unique business. Right. And I don’t want you to blow it. Like this is a really cool chance where you get to create your own business, your own products, and even develop your own audience, like a niche of people who are really looking for somebody like you and what you have to offer.

I know we always say like what works for me might not work for you and vice versa. And that is true, but I don’t want you just to make this decision because it’s not a good business strategy. I just also think that it’s really cool to have the opportunity to build out something that you own and then as a part of you, and that is reflective of who you are as a creator and a business owner.

It’s like that show Chopped on the Food Network. Like if I gave you a basket of three ingredients, like three totally random ingredients and said, go, like, I want to see what you come up with, you might create something super cool that I didn’t think of. If you’ve ever watched chopped, you’ll see how inventive people’s, uh, like, I don’t know, imaginations and cooking are, and something that I would make would not only taste completely different, but I would create a completely different dish. That is really cool. Like there is no objectively one right way to make a basket on Chopped, for example. I bet what we would all make would be really different, but they would all taste really good.

And like, I don’t, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to eat the same thing all the time. So I think it’s pretty cool to have a lot of options. And that’s what people are looking for online too.

The other day, my husband, Ryan, showed me this really cool YouTube channel. I’ll link it down below, but it’s where they bring in musicians who are professional musicians, or like they had a guy the other day who was a professor at Juilliard and they play a song for them removing the instrument track of whatever instrument they’re known for. So like the professor at Juilliard was a drummer. And so they played a song by Nirvana that he had actually never heard before without the drum track and then asked him to play the drums along to this track. It’s Incredible to see what these musicians come up with. The point of doing this is not to see like how close could that Julliard professor get to Dave Grohl’s drumming track, like that, that wasn’t the point. The point is to see like, does this guy create something completely different? That’s equally as good or maybe even better. And that’s actually exactly what happened in this case. The Julliard professor, he, I mean, there were some things that he hit that you were like, Oh my God, that does sound exactly like the original song by Nirvana, but then there were other things that he did I’m not super technical musically, so I don’t understand, but I could hear it. And my husband was telling me that there were other things that he did that were like an improvement or like just a really cool idea. I thought that was such a great illustration of how there’s just not one right way to play a song or build a business there are all kinds of opportunities here for you if you allow it.

Okay, so here’s what’s key to successful business strategies instead. If it’s not doing what everybody else is doing, then what is it? First is to get clear on your goals and values. If we’re understanding that we don’t need to do what everybody else is doing, we have to start setting that stuff aside, but we have to spend an equal amount of time actually getting to know what you want to do instead.

The second thing is consistency and focus. So I think one of the things that has led to my business, my legal templates business, being so successful over the years was that I really stayed focused on only ever selling two products. I sell downloadable digital legal templates and the Ultimate Bundle® it’s like a pack of my legal templates and trainings on how to legally start your online business. Those are the only two things I’ve really ever sold other than some like live events here and there and little things, but keeping it tight like that has allowed me to stay super focused and it’s really allowed me to make my everyday job marketing those products and it hasn’t taken all my time and energy and money chasing around different products and different funnels and different marketing strategies. I could just stick to those two things. The other part is staying focused. So by maybe by allowing myself to, or giving myself permission to like only sell those two products and not get so tempted cause believe me, it’s been tempting at times, but like not getting tempted to go down all of these shiny squirrel rabbit holes. Um, I think it’s allowed me to then stay focused in other ways. Like really always staying focused on my email list, emailing, um, my email list every single week with my newsletter, Sam’s Sidebar.

Um, being here, being on Instagram, I think it’s just allowed me to test out different strategies and see what works over the years. And part part of that was that I didn’t always have these new offers and new products coming out.

The third key thing to successful business strategies is tailoring. Tailoring your messaging tailoring your product your vibe to your customers and what your customers are looking for.

I even think about this with me being a lawyer I wanted to make sure that my stuff was tailored towards people with online businesses who maybe were intimidated, who don’t want all the fluff. They want like straight to the point. Just tell me what I need to do, but they also don’t want all the fear tactics and the like, your business is going to die if you don’t do all the legal stuff, like that’s not me. So it’s, it’s in alignment with my. My values and my goals, but also I make sure to tailor all of my content, my vibe, my branding, everything to creating and fostering that type of community so that I let people know like, Hey, this is a safe space to talk about legal stuff, we’re not doing this scary legal thing here.

All right. Now let’s talk about part three, tuning out all the noise and finding out what works for you. Okay. So I’ve kind of convinced you to get on board with this whole idea of building a business your own way, maybe dropping some of the guru talk. But now how do you stay focused on building your own business when it’s so tempting and you’re going to get hit with all this messaging about this strategy that you’re missing and if only you did this thing, then everything was going to be okay.

Step number one is to get clear on your nonnegotiables and how you want to run your business. If you know that you love coaching clients, for example, one on one, and that’s what really makes you happy. Please put aside the guru talk that like, you can’t work with clients one on one if you want to have a successful online business, I need you to drop all the stuff that you’re hearing and tune into what really works for you and your lifestyle, or even God forbid anybody ever talked about this, but to deliver the best product or service experience. Right? So like, what does your client actually need to achieve results?

Does that mean that they need one on one time with you? Can they achieve the same thing through a course? I don’t know. There’s not a right or wrong answer, but too often I think business owners only think of this from their own kind of like selfish perspective and they don’t think about what is actually best for their clients.

The second step is to separate facts from feelings. Okay, so when we talk about facts, we’re really thinking about what is working in your business or what works for you on paper. Right. So are you posting YouTube videos, for example, once a week, and that’s driving 100 leads per month to your email list, or you’re posting on Instagram three times a week, and you’re getting approximately X number of followers per month or something like that, like whatever your metrics are, to me, those are the, the like facts that we can pay attention to.

But I think that those facts then have to be balanced with your feelings. I don’t mean how you feel about like, I feel like no one’s watching my YouTube videos, or I feel like no one’s listening to my podcast cause that’s where we’re going to just look at the stats. I mean, what does it feel like to be doing that thing? You know, the posting one podcast or YouTube video a week, how does that feel and balance that with the facts. So if you’re only getting, let’s say five leads a month to your email list, but you’re posting two podcast episodes a week. How does that feel to you? Do you still love doing it? Do you still feel like it’s worth it?

Right? This whole conversation I think has to be balanced with taking some time and allowing yourself to do something for long enough. So that’s why we keep track of these stats and we do sometimes work off of the facts part is like, how, how many subscribers are you getting over time? We have to stick with YouTube or your podcast or posting consistently on Instagram. We have to stick with that long enough in order to see how those facts pan out. Right. So you can’t do this like every week on a week by week basis and be like, nobody watched my first YouTube video, or no one’s listening to my brand new podcast.

I always recommend giving it at least 90 days in my dream scenario would be six months that you would stick with a consistent posting schedule on whatever platform you pick, and then we balance out this facts and feelings conversation.

That’s why step number three is all about experimentation. So trying, now that we’re like ditching what everybody else is doing, we want to try what something you really want to try.

Do you love making videos? Have you always dreamt of having your own podcast? Do you love writing and you want to be on Substack? Like, what do you want to do when we put aside what everyone else is doing and what they’re telling you that you have to do? Let’s tune into what you feel like doing and experiment with it.

We’re then going to experiment with it long enough that you can actually track it over time and see how this goes when we’re being consistent and see then how does that, how does this add up and like, does this actually work for me in my business? Is it doing what I was hoping it was going to do? One of my favorite people on Substack, Sarah Faye, she’s actually a writing professor who also teaches people on Substack how to grow on Substack. She talks about this idea of creating a batch of content so that in advance, so that you have it set and pre scheduled to go out so that you can’t chicken out once you start posting on a new platform. So for example, if you were going to start to try to build a Substack and you only wrote like one post and then you go in, you post that Substack and no one reads it or nobody ever likes it, which is, you know, high probability when you’re brand new on a platform, you already have these posts going out for the next week and the week after that and the week after that, so that you can’t say, Oh my gosh, I did this once. It didn’t work. And now I’m done because then we’ll never know if something’s going to work. So I’ve been adopting this strategy, at least in my mind with YouTube. I’ve dabbled on YouTube here and there over the years when my parents, when my dad got cancer and my dad died, and then my mom died right after my dad died. I took a break from doing a lot of video. It was, it’s a, it’s a lot, right? You can imagine. So I wasn’t ready to come back and do this consistently. Now I’ve been back. I’m doing it consistently, but I’ve already committed to myself mentally that I’m not expecting any of these videos to do particularly well, or I’m not even, I’m just not even looking, I’m not thinking about it because I just want to see how it goes once I’m consistent for long enough, I also like to think of this as like, This is my opportunity to practice I’m getting it in. I’m getting back used to it. I’m hopefully getting better with every video or everything that I’m doing. And so it would be, I think way too much to ask or to expect for like the very first thing, or even the first 25 things, first 25 times you do something. In order for it to be successful, right? It’s going to take time.

All right. So let’s recap. We now know that there is no one size fits all approach in business or really anything else in life. We know that you want to find what works for you, your audience and your lifestyle instead of what works for other people. And we want to get clear on what you really want and also separate our facts from feelings and recognize that both are important while still experimenting with things long enough and consistently enough to get actual facts over time.

So next week is actually part three of the happy trap series. I’m going to be breaking down the, you need to have more followers to be successful myth. I’m really excited about this one because in this part, we’re going to dive into what you can do more of with the current people you have, whether you have four people or four thousand people, I’m going to break down why just having more people doesn’t actually lead to more sales and what does instead.

If you’re ready to stop chasing a perfect formula and find business strategies and marketing advice that actually works for you and the way you want to build your online business, I highly recommend ordering my book, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy: A Practical No BS Guide to Successful Online Entrepreneurship.

It’s available everywhere books are sold. I’ll drop a link down in the description, but once you go ahead and order, make sure you head over to samvanderwielen.com/book so that you can redeem your two book bonuses. If you purchase my book before April 15th, you’ll get immediate access to my email course builder, The Ultimate Email List Growth Toolkit.

And you’ll also get a seat in my live book club happening this May, where I’m going to do four live sessions with all of you to implement every single thing that you learn in my book. All you have to do is pre order my book, wherever books are sold, and then head to samvanderwielen.com/book to redeem your bonuses right now.

Thanks so much for listening to On Your Terms®, send me a DM on Instagram and let me know how this episode resonated with you. I can’t wait to chat with you next week in part three of this happy trap series. I’ll see you then.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, “5 Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business” at samvanderwielen.com.

And to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram @samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.