MBA2735 Q&A Wednesday: Is It Too Early To Sell To My Followers?

0:02Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. It starts with our approach. Every Mazda comes standard with proactive safety features. So you're more aware of what's around you, more focused on the road ahead, and ready before problems ever start. Mazda. More of what matters most to you. Go to mazdausa.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse or promote any product. Owning a small business comes with a lot of challenges. When I was starting out, I was chairing meetings. I was scripting and shooting podcasts. I was putting up social media posts. It's a lot. I know. I've been there.

0:41There is no doubt growing your small business is hard. It's even harder to do it efficiently. But with LinkedIn, you get all the tools you need to grow in one place. With LinkedIn, simplify your sales, marketing, and hiring so that you can, you know, actually run your small business. Learn more at linkedin.com slash MBA show. Today's Q &A Wednesday's question from Joe is a good one. He asks, I'm putting out content on social media. I've got about 75 ,000 followers across social platforms and I'm starting to build momentum, but I'm not sure if I have a big enough following to start selling to my followers.

1:18Is it too early? The short answer is no, it's not too early. And actually, I wanna flip this question on its head. If you're running a business or you want to run a business, then selling isn't optional. It's a part of the job. In today's episode, I'm going to break down why selling early is not a problem. And in fact, I recommend it because there's going to be a lot of things you're going to get out of it other than just sales and how to get started if you're thinking about starting to sell to your following on social. Let's get into it.

1:52Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

2:06We read every single review. Seriously, it's how we know what's helping and what to dive deeper in on the next episode. So if you've got 20 seconds, leave a quick review and tell me what you want more of. I'd love to hear from you. A lot of people think that selling is something that you do after you've made it. after you have a massive audience or you've had viral growth, tons of validation. But in my opinion, that's backwards. If you're building a business, you need customers early, not just for revenue though, but for education, for your own information. It's like R &D so you understand who you are serving.

2:42Customers, people that pay you money, are the best people to tell you which direction you should be moving in. They teach you things that content will never do because they're actually invested in your information, in your products, in your services, invested in you. So when you start selling, even to a small group, you immediately begin learning. You learn what people are actually willing to pay for, which is huge. You'll learn what they complain about, because when you know what they complain about, you know how to build solutions, products for them. You also learn what they misunderstand about your brand, your business, even your content that you're putting out there.

3:19And you learn what they really value versus what they say they value. People are funny and you want to know the truth, you're going to have to ask them to pay. Because when people pay, they're invested and that's when the truth comes out. They say, you know, with their dollars, yes, I value this. In my opinion, that feedback loop is gold because it really allows you to understand how to serve your audience better. When you're only creating content, though, your job is relatively simple, honestly. You post, you engage, and you repeat. And you just continue to do that. And it's actually quite hard to get better and iterate when you don't have a customer that is paying you money and giving you honest feedback.

4:01Because trust me, customers will give you feedback. They'll tell you what they don't like. They'll complain about things. They'll say when things are broken or things are not what they are expecting. You have to keep this in mind because this is where the rubber meets the road. Best of all, though, when you start selling something, you start developing real business skills. You're going to learn things that you didn't even know that you had to learn, or at least you kind of knew, but you didn't really think about it. Things like how to price your offer, how to communicate value to your customers clearly so they can want to buy your products and services.

4:32You're going to learn things like what a fair refund policy looks like. You know, should you give refunds to customers based on your policy? You're going to learn a ton, like how to price your offer, how to communicate the value of your offer clearly to your customers so they could see why they should buy. You'll also learn things like, should you refund your customers when they complain? Do you have a solid refund policy that you can uphold? How do you handle customers that are unhappy or unprofessional? How do you even handle that at all? Do you do it via email? Do you do it via software? Do you do chat?

5:04Do you do Facebook Messenger? How are you going to handle customers that want to reach out to you and ask questions about your products and services either before they buy or after they buy. And most of all, how do you deliver the outcomes your customers are looking for through your products and services? And not just information, because at the end of the day, when you are creating media, you are providing information, but you're not really held accountable for the outcome. And that's where a customer differs. A customer is paying you for an outcome, for a job to be done, whether it's a product or service, whatever it might be.

5:35Like, for example, I ran a software company for 10 years, and that software is supposed to do something for my customers. And if I don't give them that outcome, then I have failed my customer and they have the right to be angry and they have the right to ask for a refund. So that's why it's so important for me to make sure that that outcome is met. So when you're just doing content, you're not really being asked to hold that side of the bargain or to actually deliver an outcome for your customers. You're really just informing them and helping them through content and hoping that, hey, they take it on and use it.

6:08These are business skills you can't really learn in theory. You have to learn by doing and you start crafting your own set of rules for your business. Even if you only sell to five people, 10 people, 20 people, you're going to get a lot of value from that whole experience. That's enough for you to start shaping a real business model and start understanding what the future of your business is going to look like. I also want to address this question about audience size. Here's something really important that I have learned over the years. You don't need a massive audience. You need the right audience.

6:38I know lots of entrepreneurs, business owners, coaches, creators who don't have a massive social presence. They don't have a social following that's millions of people. They might have a few thousand, they may have 50 ,000, and they run eight-figure businesses. A small focus group that you trust will always outperform a huge audience that's just casually watching. There's a super old-school OG blog post from Kevin Kelly, and it's titled Thousand True Fans. And it's all about if you have a thousand people that are really in love with what you do and are willing to buy your product or service, then you're going to have a successful business on your hands.

7:17I would prefer a thousand people that are willing to buy my products and services than 10 ,000 or 100 ,000 followers on social media because those people will pay my bills, right? The following won't. Tell me if this sounds familiar. Try to learn another language before maybe Spanish in high school, or you learned a few phrases before a trip. But when it's time to actually use those skills, you realize that knowing a few words isn't the same as a real conversation. That's why we're so happy to have Rosetta Stone as a longtime sponsor. Rosetta Stone Sapphire is a major new release in language learning, combining Rosetta Stone's trusted immersion method with the latest innovations in education technology to help you go from knowing phrases to speaking confidently about the topics you care about.

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8:37The$100 MBA show listeners can get 20 % off the Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. You'll get unlimited access to all 25 Rosetta Stone languages, plus all the new Sapphire learning tools. Visit rosettastone.com slash MBA to redeem your 20 % off. That's Rosetta Stone dot com slash MBA and start learning a language for real. Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free range, self-directed investing, or perhaps you pick up a few farm fresh trades while you peruse.

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9:49And if you grow your audience, even at a massive scale at millions of people, there's even monetary compensation for that through ads and sponsorships. But understand that if your goal is to run a successful business, you need to see where the dollars are going to go. So having a customer or customer base is going to allow you to monetize and start funding your content creation and your media and start hiring people at a higher scale. So it's a good idea to start earning some money. So many people are probably asking right now, Omar, what should I sell first? Well, when you're early, I am telling you, I'm pleading with you, please do not overcomplicate this.

10:28Your first offer should be simple. It should be clear. It should directly connect with the content you're already putting out there. So think about creating something simple, offering something that is easy for you to deliver, something like coaching or consulting. And coaching could be group coaching. It could be a small digital product like an online course or an e-book or a guide or a template. It could be a paid workshop. It could be a service. The goal here right now, don't worry about scaling. Don't worry like, how am I going to make this like a, you know, a hundred person company? No, right now we just want to make sure we make our first dollar and see what our customers value.

11:01The goal here is not scale. It's to learn from our customers. And what we're doing here is we're pressure testing. We're understanding where are we going to resonate with our customer? We're going to fine tune our messaging when it comes to the sales page or how we're going to sell this product. We're going to refine our positioning, how we can differentiate ourselves from other people that are delivering similar products or services. We're going to refine our offer so that it's compelling. So it's a kind of no brainer for our customers to say yes. This is where we're just experimenting to figure out how can we get as many customers that are interested and in love with what we have to offer.

11:37Every customer that you get will make you sharper because you're going to learn from them. and you're obviously, you're gonna wanna talk to them. When we started any business that we've had in the last 20 years, those early days, that first six months, there's a lot of talking to customers, whether it's by email or by a video call or whatever it might be, understanding, hey, why did you sign up? What are you looking to gain from this product or service? What do you wanna get out of it, right? What would be a win for you? And I wanna learn more about their daily life and how they consume our product or service and how it fits in with their life and their business so that I can make sure that it's even better and I can track more people.

12:12I can understand who these people are and track more people just like this, who are them, I should say, that were attracted to my product or service in the first place. And by the way, this question ties directly into something that I've been working on for months. It's an upcoming episode that you don't wanna miss. I'm breaking down an experiment that I ran, which was all about, can you build a software business with AI in just seven days? I'll walk you through what actually worked and what didn't and what building real product looks like. So make sure you subscribe to the show on whatever platform you're consuming this episode on so that you don't miss that episode when it airs very soon.

12:47Another point I want to stress is that selling actually helps you create better content. A lot of people don't realize this, but selling actually makes your content better because once people pay, you ask better questions, you point out the gaps, you have case studies and examples that you can use in your content. You understand where the friction is in your customers' lives, and you can talk to those pain points in your content. You can find out what confuses them and clarify it with your content. There's so much you could do by just having customers and learning from them. And all these great insights you're going to get from your customers are going to help you create better social posts and videos and emails and your next offer.

13:25I have a confession to make. All my best products and wins in my career was preceded by a failed product. I put an offer that didn't work. I learned why it didn't work. And then I came out with a different offer, a different product or service. And that one did much better because I learned from the failure. I want to ask you a personal question. Are you afraid of selling? Be honest with yourself because we need to address that fear. Most people aren't really worried about selling early. They're just worried about being judged, about being ignored, about being rejected. And here's the truth. If no one buys at first, that's not failure.

14:02It's a data point. It's data that you can use, that you can use so you can adjust your offer, your messaging, your pricing, your promise, the product itself, whatever it might be. You could try again. That's business. It's very safe to just put out content because you're not really going to be judged. You know, worst case scenario, you know, people are not going to give you a thousand likes or, you know, millions of views, but it's kind of passive. But when you put a product out there and you have little to no sales, it's a signal. It's a piece of information saying that, hey, what you're doing is not working.

14:33And that's good because it's going and allow you to know what to do instead. You're going to learn, hey, this is not working. I need to tweak it. I got to change it, put something else out there, and get different results. So I want to help you start selling today. So if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, what do I actually do? Here's a simple approach. Number one, identify the main problem your content solves. All this content you're putting out there on social media, what problem are you solving? Think of just one problem that you really solve with your content. Number two, offer a paid way to solve it faster or deeper.

15:07People like Brevity, people want a fast track. They want to make it easier on themselves. So if you can offer a way to solve that problem faster or deeper or easier, it's going to be worth it for them. Number three, talk about it clearly and confidently in your content once in a while. And number four, invite people to take the next step. So you might want to have a call to action at the end of some of your content or your reels or whatever it might be and have like a link in bio where they can sign up for your product so that they know that you have something that they can buy. A lot of people don't know you have products and services that exist.

15:41Make sure you make it known. You don't have to say every time you open your mouth, but you do have to say it enough for people to be aware. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. And this is a message for Joe and everybody else who's listening. You don't need permission. You don't need a bigger following. You need customers if you want to run a business. Selling early doesn't hurt your brand. It actually builds it. And when done honestly and sincerely and with intention, you're going to make not only money, but you're going to make your business and your brand bigger. If this episode resonated with you, then I recommend you go back and listen to an episode that I published recently that's about the fastest way to grow in 2026, because the fastest way to grow doesn't come from marketing harder.

16:26It actually comes from building something valuable, valuable enough for people to be happy to pay for it. We talk about all that and how to do it in that episode. So check it out. It connects perfectly with what we are talking about today. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show.

17:02It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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