636: Is Business Coaching Worth It? A Look Inside the last 12 months of Side Hustle Nation

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1:16What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. It's the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply. So there's been a few requests for a progress report type of episode, just kind of a state of Side Hustle Nation, so to speak. and it's been a while since I've done this, probably over a year. So I wanted to take some time today to catch you up on what I've been working on, what I've been working through, some of the challenges, wins, and projects from the last 12 months or so. And the biggest new thing is late last year, I joined a business coaching program called 2X.

1:46It's run by Austin Netsley, who I must've met 10 years ago at probably my first ever blogging conference. This was like three businesses ago or more for him. Now, our paths have crossed several times since then in the podcasting world, in the self-publishing world, at different conferences. But what really sealed the deal for me was having three different friends all go through 2X. And these are people you would recognize. They've been guests on the show, sometimes multiple times, and they all saw really strong results. And on top of that, another friend of mine, Tom Sylvester, was one of the 2X head coaches.

2:19They actually had this power guarantee, which is something you could take away and maybe apply to your own business. But it was a power guarantee like, hey, look, if we don't increase revenue by the amount of your investment. We'll just keep working with you until you do or something like that. So very little to lose, even though it was a big upfront investment. And especially when combined with my long history in the business, it was over 10 years old at that point. I reasoned, look, it's time to get some outside perspective from a group with a proven track record of getting results. My biggest fear going into it was, am I even coachable with those 10 years in business, I had developed certain habits and processes that were pretty well ingrained, maybe some bad habits along the way.

2:59And to be fair, they were working pretty well, but there's always this nagging, grass is always greener kind of feeling of what could be. Is there a way to make more and work less? Is there a way to build better systems? Is there a way to make the business less reliant on me? And then on a more existential level, is that something you'd even want? After all, you got to fill your days with what lights you up. And I still get a kick out of finding and sharing cool side hustle stories. But up until that point, I really had had very little in the way of formal coaching from a business standpoint. I worked with a podcast coach for a while a few years ago, which was helpful.

3:34I had a speaker coach leading up to my TEDx talk, which was helpful, but not a lot outside of that. I remember thinking as a kid, look, if Michael Jordan is the best in the world, what's he need to coach for? And then over time, you start to realize that no, no, the highest performers in just about every field still work with coaches in some capacity. And in most cases, those coaches never reached the same level of achievement in that field as the people they're coaching. And that was always weird to me, but I came to accept that it didn't really matter so much as their skill in guidance and frameworks and fundamentals and pulling the best out of their clients.

4:08And I would like to think of myself as having humility enough to admit, look, you got this far, but you don't have all the answers. And even though every business is different, I want to share a couple of the 2X frameworks that I found most interesting slash helpful. The first is understanding your value chain. This is a way to describe your customer journey. How do they find you? How do they pay you? What's a typical lifetime value of a customer? What are the steps in that chain from marketing to sales to fulfillment? And what kind of numbers and percentages and conversion rates are associated and costs are associated with each of those steps?

4:43Now, the typical 2x client is a six-figure service business that's trying to figure out how to scale to a million or beyond. And the value chain might be like someone clicks on our Facebook ad, a certain percentage of those people opt in for some free guide, a certain percentage of those book a discovery call, and a certain percentage of those sign up for a$4 ,000 or$5 ,000 package, and a certain percentage of those ended up being a good fit for our monthly retainer type of service. But understanding all of those little steps and the little sub steps inside each part of the system is pretty fun.

5:17And you can start to think about what different levers you can pull to make a dramatic impact on the end result on the bottom line. What was challenging for me as more of a media business, the question became, well, what's a website visitor worth? What's a podcast visitor worth? How do we break that down? Well, if we're sold out on ads, maybe a download is worth 10 cents, plus or minus. like not to diminish it, but kind of small numbers relative to, oh, I sold a$5 ,000 package. And maybe that listener becomes a subscriber. Maybe they listen to dozens of episodes. Maybe they tell five friends about it and those downloads are worth another 10 cents.

5:50But it was really difficult. And that totally discounts the value of the relationship and the trust and the possibility of connecting someone to a hopefully life-changing new income stream. So the value chain exercise is really interesting to try and break down what that looks like for your business. Again, every business is different, but it kind of all comes back to these certain fundamentals and even for the different areas of your business, because the website traffic value chain is a different one entirely. The other one that I want to share was what they call the CEO takeover. And the process looks like this.

6:24Imagine you're about to get fired as the CEO of your business. And there's a new CEO that's coming in and he's got or he or she's got a much bigger, more ambitious, more strategic vision. And they're coming in. So what actions are they going to take in the next one to three months? What are they going to stop doing? What are they going to focus on? Where are your biggest opportunities? And of course, the punchline is that CEO is you. So go get after it. Now, as far as results, business is up compared to last year. How much of that is a direct result of 2x is hard to say. But I will say this, I feel like I have a more strategic outlook on the whole operation.

6:59I feel like I have a clearer picture on the work that I truly love and enjoy. I feel like I've built some better systems for my team and have attempted to get better at letting go of certain responsibilities. Oh, the other thing that was kind of annoying, but actually ended up being helpful was this quarterly planning process. I would hardly, you know, been doing this business for 10 years, would hardly ever do anything like that. Big picture, what are our most important initiatives for the next three months? I'm sorry, I'm too busy chopping down trees to sharpen the ax here. But in doing so, you get some helpful clarity and some positive results came out of those planning sessions.

7:33Now 2x is a structure wise, it's a combination of one on one coaching by coach Brian has been great. There's some group sessions, and then there's these in person masterminds, roughly every quarter or so. What I learned about myself is, is got to be one on one or in person, because I had a really hard time prioritizing any of the group stuff. The in person events were really cool, almost a forced pause to get out of the normal day-to-day operations and think at a higher level. Now, Austin has been generous enough to offer Side Hustle Show listeners a free copy of his book from six to seven figures at 2x.co slash side hustle.

8:09Subtitle on this one, The Proven Playbook to Get More Traction, Free Up 20 Hours Per Week and Scale Past$1 Million in Revenue. It's a great book. I first read it a few years ago on my second pass through it. I think I actually had to put it down and go implement some stuff, which is a great sign. Again, this is best for people who've already got a business up and running, but maybe you're running into bottlenecks or maybe you've hit a growth plateau and you're looking for a playbook to unlock that next stage of your business. Again, 2x.co slash side hustle to grab that book for free from six to seven figures by Austin Netsley.

8:42So thanks to Austin and his team for putting that together and really for all their help over the last year or so. So I wanted to kick off this progress report episode with that coaching program because that's kind of been the underlying base layer foundation for everything else that I've been working on and not working on. Now, prior to joining last year, there were a couple other significant shifts that I should talk about. On the podcast side, it was joining a new ad sales network called the App Media, Young and Profiting Media. As you've probably heard on the show, they've done a great job selling sponsorships far better than I ever did on my own.

9:16Bigger deals with bigger brands. Now, as part of that shift, That meant getting off of Libsyn as the podcast host, shifting over to Megaphone, which supports dynamic ad insertion across the whole catalog, where previously I was just selling a set number of predicted downloads on the latest episode. Hey, we think we can deliver you 30 ,000 downloads in the first 30 days, in the first 60 days on this episode that's going to air on this date. I was definitely late to make this move, but it's another example of that underrated entrepreneurial skill of simply looking around. What are the other top shows doing?

9:50Well, they're doing this and they've actually been doing it for a while. Get with the time sloper. Now, the other challenging thing on the podcast was this download drop that, you know, I guess was a result of some iOS updates late last year. It impacted a ton of different podcasters. The hardest hit shows were ones like mine that had a big back catalog. And in talking with other hosts, it sounds like this was pretty much across the board where all of a sudden you're getting half to two-thirds the downloads you were previously getting. And so on the one hand, there's like safety in numbers, there is, you know, the misery loves company aspect to it.

10:24And even if the numbers today are more accurate, a more accurate picture of what's happening, it's still a blow to the ego where I had this, you know, inflated sense of self-worth. Hey, I'm talking to a stadium full of people every week when it's more like, well, you're talking to an arena full of people every week. Still great. Still super grateful to be able to do it. Now to combat that, I've done a couple things. The first was adding a new episode like this one every other Monday, usually shorter format, but gives listeners more content to choose from and has proven more sustainable than my short-lived attempt at going to two a week a couple summers ago that ended up not really working out.

11:01But this one has been probably six months or so, and it's been fine. It's been fun. It's kind of, I like the creative challenge of filling in those dates with content that hopefully is compelling. The second thing was expanding my paid listener acquisition efforts. What that looks like in practice is probably spent 20 grand this year trying to grow the show by advertising on various podcast platforms like CastBox, like Overcast, like Podbean, like Player FM, some smaller ones as well. And those do deliver some download and listener growth. But going back to that listener value chain is still somewhat of a question mark in terms of how profitable that ad spend is, or if it's even profitable at all.

11:42Or is it you're just, you know, banking on that long term value of a listener? What I do know is that listener growth is a really consistent lead domino. And it has been for 10 years as downloads grow. So tend to many downstream metrics like email subscribers, ultimately sponsorship sales and other revenue. So that's why I'm comfortable making that investment, even if it doesn't, you know, even if it's really hard to tell the near term profitability of that. So that's been what's going on on the podcast front. I missed podcast movement and PodFest this year, but do hope to get to a podcast specific event next year to connect with other hosts and just learn, you know, what's the latest and greatest in the industry.

12:21I'll be right back with more of this online business progress report, including the simple tweak that probably should have made years ago right after this. one of the tools i personally see make a huge difference for business owners is quo formerly open phone it's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before just with a new name when you're running a business you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity the quo formerly open phone this is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications it works through an app on your phone or your computer so no more using your personal number as your business line no more carrying two phones around with Quo your team can share one phone number and collaborate on customer calls and texts just like a shared inbox so anybody can jump in to keep response times fast and this is where it gets super cool you can set up Quo's built-in AI agent in just a few minutes to handle calls after hours answer customer questions and capture leads on autopilot I want to invite you to get started for free plus side hustle show listeners get 20 off your first six months at quo.com slash side hustle.

13:27That's q u o.com slash side hustle. Look at them getting that three letter domain q u o.com slash side hustle. And if you've got existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over and no extra charge. Whoa, no missed calls, no missed customers. Are you still overpaying for wireless? It's time to say yes to saying no. At our partner, Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. And here's why I said yes to making the switch over five years ago, and yes to getting premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. I really liked being able to keep my existing phone and my existing phone number when I switched over.

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14:43Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. The other big shift that happened just before joining the 2X coaching program was adding display ads to the Side Hustle Nation website for the first time. Like you, I think display ads on the internet are pretty annoying. I've been using an ad blocking browser for years. I was always hesitant to clutter up the site with them in the name of better load times, better user experience. But that being said, 10 years into the business, I come out of my cave for a minute and again, practice that underrated skill of looking around and notice that all my friends and peers in the personal finance space, in the side hustle space are running display ads on their content.

15:24So I said, hey, let's give it a test. Doesn't have to be permanent. Let's just turn it on and see what happens. Well, here's what happened. No noticeable drop in site traffic, email signups, affiliate conversions, or whatever drop there was, was more than offset by the incremental revenue. This is through Mediavine, by the way. They've been super supportive. They've been great to work with. They're very involved in the creator economy. I would always see their team at FinCon and at other events. But flipping this one switch pays the mortgage and then some every month to the extent I probably should have done it years earlier, as much as it pains me to admit that.

15:55And then what we were able to do just recently was figure out how to turn off the ads for Side Hustle Nation email subscribers. So if you're already a subscriber and you click a link from one of our emails, it should be an ad-free experience for you, at least on that first page. I don't know if you'll remember that setting throughout your whole session. If you click on multiple pages or navigate throughout the site. But in any case, it felt like a win to be able to hide the ads for people who've already opted in. On the website side, I have definitely struggled to create new content this year.

16:23We've probably only added maybe 20, 25 or so new posts. And this was a realization of mine in the last month or so. We've made a focus and investment in maintaining the existing library of content. Defend what you got. Keep that up to date. But with that, there's only so much potential search traffic we can capture, right? Even if we do everything right, there's only so much search volume surrounding those keywords. And some of that is being eroded by AI snippets. It's being eroded by more ad results in the search results pages, a million and one Reddit posts. And so while it definitely is important to keep the archives up to date and relevant, if we want to increase traffic, we're gonna have to get more serious about adding new content to expand the, you know, the quote unquote, surface area of search potential.

17:08One idea that I tried early in the year that flopped, it was recruiting a handful of paid side hustle app testers from the community. I said, maybe I'll pay you 50 bucks, test this thing out, answer a few questions about the app, take some screenshots. Easy, right? Now, this plan was inspired by Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur. He says, look, I can get this raw feedback from users. I can hand it off to a writer who knows SEO. They know how to structure product review posts that are going to rank in Google. Then I do my final edits and hit publish. I thought this was a genius plan. I thought this was really going to accelerate content production.

17:45And while I did get several volunteers to test the apps, when it came time to actually do the work and send in the answers to the questions and send in the screenshots, it all fell apart. It was like radio silence. So what I'm trying to do instead is hire a dedicated app tester or reviewer who can be a consistent member of the team and help put these together. Hopefully they'll be hired by the time this airs, and we'll see if that approach works any better. And quick note, quick pause on the strategy here. So there are dozens of little apps and websites that promise you can make money with them.

18:18You know, they'll pay you to, you know, take pictures of your receipts. They'll pay you for tracking your steps. They'll pay you to take little surveys. I've tested a bunch of these over the years. Some are better than others, but the plan is to create honest reviews for those. Here's how it works. Here's how much you can realistically expect to make. Is it legit or not? You know, if you still want to sign up, here's our affiliate link or referral link. If such a program exists, a lot of them have referral programs. A lot of them don't. But if not, here are some alternatives that might be worth a look.

18:44And if you're serious about making extra money, why don't you check out the Science Hustle Show? Hey, we got 600 plus episodes. They're filled with legit business ideas. Come on in. So my gut says that that could be valuable top of the funnel type of content. You've heard about this app. You're looking for a little more information. You say, okay, OK, maybe that isn't for me, but the there's there's other content here that can help me get to where I want to go. So that's what my gut says. If we can build a system to test and review those in a way that attracts visitors. A couple other projects on the site itself were more on the technical side of SEO.

19:15So I hired a couple pros off of Upwork to update and modernize the schema across the site and the articles. This is kind of like the structured metadata that theoretically tells Google what the content is about, how it's structured, who wrote it, all that jazz. Hard to say if it had any direct impact, but relatively low investment for some potential upside there. The other upwork hire was related to site speed and load times. Again, I think a fast website is probably just table stakes at this point. And we just wanted to make sure we were playing by Google's best practices here. You can punch in your site to Google's page speed metrics tester tool and see how you're performing.

19:55Don't just do it for the homepage. Make sure to test some internal content pages as well. I'm happy to link up the profiles of both the freelancers that I hired in the show notes if you'd like to hire them for your own for your own site. The other thing on the website front was creating more product displays and call outs using the Lasso plugin this year. I've been a customer of theirs for probably about a year or so. Easy to use the product displays. They look nice on the site. They kind of look like the wire cutter displays. Like, oh, our top pick is this. And it's got little star ratings and a link out to the product.

20:27It really only takes a few incremental conversions to pay for the software. So I've been using Lasso, loving that. And then inspired by Alex Goldberg in a recent episode we did on his paid traffic campaign. I have been running a small scale paid traffic campaign through Google for years, but was kind of inspired by that chat with Alex to try and ramp it up a little bit. But if you missed it, it was about driving consistently profitable affiliate traffic through Google ads. I don't have the most sophisticated traffic tracking system in place, but I've added a few new campaigns over the last few months.

21:01And I've been trying to find a freelance expert to, you know, with some paid media arbitrage experience to help scale this. The challenge I run into is, you know, aside from the revenue attribution tracking, is being somewhat limited or throttled by the bid targets. This is where Google is kind of, you know, genius for setting this up as an auction system, where for me, there are certain prices per click where it makes sense to buy traffic. And there are certain prices per click where it would be super unprofitable to buy traffic. So Google's default suggestion is to increase that bid. You know, it's kind of like, well, you know, if you're trading a dollar for two dollars, would you trade a dollar for a buck fifty?

21:39You know, probably. Would you trade a dollar for a buck twenty five? Maybe. You know, would you trade a dollar for a buck ten? kind of squeeze as much margin as they can out of you. But this is a situation where, yeah, I understand I can get more traffic if I spend more, but I needed to be at this price, not at your suggested pricing. I'd happily spend$10 ,000 a month or more if that was at a certain price point. So I think last month it was less than$1 ,000 in spend for the sake of reference. Now, Alex's argument is that this is consistent, predictable, high converting traffic that doesn't rely on the ebbs and flows of social media or the latest SEO algorithm update.

22:21In our survey of email subscribers early in the year, and this has been consistent every year we've run the survey, is one of the biggest challenges or pain points for SideHustle Nation members is finding customers for your side hustle or growing your business. So that led me to create a new course this summer called Get Gigs. It aims to help people with service-based businesses get more gigs, connect with more customers, make more money. This was a fun one because I got to pull in my all-time favorite strategies from the over 600 episodes and compile them into this choose-your-own-adventure course.

22:52Not every method is applicable to every business, but I'm confident a few of the strategies when you put them into action will more than cover the price of admission. And on the price of admission, I said, hey, let's not reinvent the wheel. So we went back to a launch formula that's worked well for me in the past. That was to pair the Get Gigs launch with the annual BC Stack bundle sale. The pitch went like this. Hey, I made a new thing. Here's how it can help you. But while I know these client finding methods are effective, I'm looking for feedback and testimonials. It's a brand new course, which means that you can get it at a special launch price instead of$97.

23:25It's going to be half off. And to sweeten the deal even further, not only do you get lifetime access to Get Gigs, You also get these 50 plus other products that are included as part of the BC stack as well. That ended up being another$10 ,000 launch and hopefully helps a lot of people connect with new customers and build their side hustles. Now, if you're in that boat of looking for more people to hire you for whatever you sell, put together a special offer for side hustle show listeners. It's not as good as that launch price because that was a one time deal, but it's the next best thing. All you got to do is go to get gigs dot me and use promo code podcast to get that special listener only discount.