Ep. 355: Side Hustle to Self-Employed Summit 12 Month Roadmap Replay

Shannon Mattern: Let me go ahead and share my screen. And so what we are going to be doing together is creating your Side Hustle to Self-Employed Roadmap. So let me pull up the chat, make sure you guys can see this. So this is what I wanted to make sure that you guys walk away with. So the thing that separates the dreamers from the doers is a plan. So we have had so much, so many incredible speakers, so much incredible information so much so that, you could potentially get here and feel extremely overwhelmed. That is not what any of us want for you. We want you to walk away feeling really confident and feeling really clear and not feeling like you just feel even more lost than you did when you came to the summit. That is not my goal. So I want to make sure that you guys walk away with a plan. If after spending four days and 24 hours with me, you don't know who I am yet, my name is Shannon Mattern. I am obsessed with helping side hustlers, DIY their website, even if they're not techie, web designers build massively successful profitable web design businesses. And I have the Pep Talks For Side Hustlers podcast. And you guys have been in the chats sharing, connecting with each other in the Facebook group, connecting with each other. I wanna make sure that you have your hands on this thing that I created for you. SideHustleToSelfEmployed.com/roadmap. If you want the Google doc version of it, /roadmapdoc. That'll get you an editable Google doc version. You are not going to be able to fill out this whole workbook in this such this session. But what I want you to do as one, like Jasmine said, take a break after this summit. Like just take a break, you know? Give yourself some time to just decompress, relax, take the earbuds out of your ear if your ears are hurting, like mine are. And then set some time on your calendar to go through this. Make some time for yourself in the next couple of weeks to just go through this workbook. SideHustleToSelfEmployed.com/roadmap. If you want the Google doc it's /roadmapdoc.

: So we are going to build your side hustle roadmap. We're going to build your plan from side hustle to self-employed. There are 10 stops along this journey that I'm going to walk you through in this session today. And this is what I can tell you. Hindsight is the easy road, right? You heard so many of our speakers come and say, it was a hot mess at the beginning. It took me a long time to figure these things out. With the benefit of hindsight I can tell you that this is the easy road. Once I started doing things in this order, business got way easier. I took the hard road and I've mentioned that to you guys before. I took the hard road. I was like "I want to avoid the discomfort of having any feedback from people at all. I want to have an anonymous, passive income business", and to do that I get to build a website and do all of the search engine optimization, mass marketing stuff, and then scale. And I can skip all the hard stuff, right? This was the hard road. This is what kept me side hustling for three years. This is what led me to burnout. This is what led Bree Pair from her session to be like, "hon, are you okay? You need to come to this mastermind. We need to help you". And so, I just want to give you the benefit of my mistakes and help you maybe get to where you want to go a little bit faster.

: So just a little bit about me. I started my business in 2014 as a web design side hustle. I burnt out. I didn't have systems, processes, boundaries, pricing, sustainable pricing in place at all. My desire to have freedom, flexibility, financial independence, and autonomy was very strong. I'm not going to call my workplace toxic necessarily. I had a toxic attitude about my, about my workplace and so the desire to leave was really strong. The people I was listening to at that time, Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income, Chalene Johnson with the marketing side of her business. The strategies that resonated and appeal to me were the ones that they were teaching. And so I was able to avoid a lot of the personal growth stuff that would come back to bite me. Not to say that this isn't something that worked out really well for me, but the reasons that I did it caused me to struggle. So I created my free DIY web design training, the Free 5-day Website Challenge, and I gave it away for free and then I earned affiliate commissions off the back end. And I still do. It still makes me really good money every single month, affiliate commissions off the backend when people would buy web hosting or the ConvertKit or Elementor, the things that I recommend in the training. But I was able to avoid having to put a price on my stuff. I was able to avoid learning how to sell it. I was able to avoid all of these things, and that could only get me so far. Right? So, I hustled hustled hustled to build a huge audience. And the five day challenge, people loved it . It was free. It was making me affiliate commissions. Okay. Next step. Online course. So I build an online course in a vacuum, like we've heard so many of our people say I built this thing. I got zero. I talked to no people, got no feedback, build what I knew they needed. Offered it. No one bought it. To crickets. Offered it to crickets. And so, because of that, I made that mean something about me. I made that mean that I needed to rebrand, get a new logo, just all of the things. It's like, oh, well, this didn't work. I must need to make a new course, get a new logo, redesign my website, change my niche, all of that stuff. And that is not what you need to do when something doesn't work out the first time. Right? You need to change it and try something different. Try again. Talk to people. Whatever. You've heard throughout the whole summit what to do.

: So, in 2017 I finally got on the easy road. I made a plan. I was like, "you know what? I really want to actually quit my day job" because I would say, "oh, I'm going to quit. I'm going to quit by the end of the year, I'm going to explode my business this year. I'm going to Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, all of the things". And it just did not work. I was just completely burnt out. Burnt out at my full-time job. Burnt out with my side hustle. Still had a really strong desire to leave. So by 2017, I was like, "huh, how about we make a plan? How about we figure out what's actually going to make money and do more of that?" And I got help. I did not come up with that on my own. I got a business coach and started working through that. And she was like, "Hey, you know, if you fix your one-on-one services and got that actually working where you were charging sustainably and they were structured in a way that they weren't taking you so much time. You could take on one-on-one clients and you could quit your day job sooner. And so I had to learn how to set boundaries and how to run projects and how to manage clients. And it was worth learning because it enabled me to make up what my courses and training wasn't making in revenue to replace my paycheck. So I did. I got to 2018. I was making a hundred thousand dollars at my day job by the time I quit. I wasn't making that I started, but we'll talk a little bit more about why to fall in love with your day job on the way to self-employment. But I hit my revenue goals to be able to replace my paycheck on the way to 2018. Twice, two months in a row, I hit that income goal. And that's when I was like, "okay, I can make this happen". Well, then I quit and then I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified. I did not know the emotional roller coaster that was coming to me from mind trash and an unmanaged mind around going from side hustle to self-employed. So I just hustled instead of maybe hiring a business coach to help me with that, getting some support. I was like, I can outwork my depression and anxiety and fear. Right? So that's what I did. And it was by this course, by that course, try this thing. It was like everything I did back in 2016. The lessons learned went out the window. The fear kicked in and I just hustled. Hustled hustle, hustle. And this is what I looked like when Bree met me and was like, :honey, we need to help you". And I got support. I started actually meeting other people. I started, instead of having a solo podcast, having guests on my podcast. Talking to other entrepreneurs, joining masterminds programs that had really supportive communities and really started getting outside of my own bubble and not trying to do everything all myself.

: So by 2019 I was in a place where I was like, "okay, you know what? I think I'm gonna quit client work again. And I'm gonna go all in on my courses and my business". I was investing in the right support and help with mentorship, with team. And by 2020 I was had everything in place to really grow. And so from 2020 to 2021, it's the best year ever. I still struggle with overworking. I still struggle with being a control freak and all of that. But I finally feel at this point like I have gotten to the place where I'm working on the right things. I'm spending my time on the right things, in the right places. And it's been a journey. And so I just wanted to share that with you because if there's an easier road that you could take, I want you to take it. I really want you to take it. My big mistakes? I tried to start at the end of the journey. I tried to start with scalable offers. As Kyshira said. It takes just as much time to sell a $2,700 offer as it does to sell a $27 offer. I was trying to sell thousands of $27 offers instead of doing the mental work I needed to sell one $2,700 one, which would have been faster. Going in alone, literally going alone, thinking I'm smart enough, I'm techie enough. I can watch this webinar and reverse engineer what they did and do it myself in my business and all of that stuff. Not wanting to spend any money on anything because if I spent money on it and it didn't work out, then I failed it, I was bad and I wasted money. And if you grew up in a house with a single mom, feeding three kids, trying to, as she said, rob Peter to pay Paul, you know that wasting money is the biggest no-no in the whole entire world because you don't have money to waste. And so I just hustled. I just hustled. Going it alone is very isolating and challenging. Undervaluing what I brought to the table, under charging for my services, undercharging for everything. When I'm not willing to invest in myself, I'm not willing to ask my clients to invest in me. There's a whole, whole vicious cycle there. Because I was like, "oh, I'm self-taught, I can't charge that much". Not true. We're talking about we charge for the outcomes our clients get not, necessarily us chasing overnight success. You all are in Facebook groups with entrepreneurs. You see Facebook ads. You've been on the webinars. You've been everywhere where people are sharing their launch results, especially back then. I don't pay attention now because I'm not on social media so I don't know. But back then, all I'm seeing is five-figure launch, six-figure launch. I thought that was how you grew a business. And so that's what I was working on. I was not working on income producing activities. I was working on the 10X traffic explosions, all of that stuff. Fearing failure. We've talked about that a lot. But at the end of the day, I took the hard road and I still got here. Okay. So if there's any lesson in all of that, you must not quit.

Shannon Mattern: We are going to tell you, all of our speakers, me, I could tell you everything I did wrong. I could tell you the wrong I learned from all of it, everything that made it harder for me, take longer for me. I didn't quit. So it doesn't matter that I did things wrong. It doesn't matter that I've messed up. It doesn't matter that I failed. It doesn't matter that I spent money on things that I didn't need that I thought I needed.. It doesn't matter because I just never gave up. And we are all going to have a very different journey. And all of the things that I did, none of it was wrong. All of it led me here. All of it led me to this place. I just didn't quit. You will get there if you don't quit. We've all told you, Hey, if you want to do a course, don't go make the course content before you talk to people and validate that they would actually buy your course. Some of you are still going to go make the course content. You're still going to do it. We're going to tell you not to. You're going to still go do it. You are going to learn something from that if you don't quit. Okay?. If you walk away from this summit with one thing, your journey are going to be different. Everyone's journey is going to be different. I'm going to tell you everything that I wish I would have done differently at the end of the day. The only reason that I'm here talking to you as a successful business owner is that I just didn't give up.

: So with all of that, that's why I'm qualified to help you build your side hustle roadmap. So our first step on the roadmap, and this is Stop #1, on your first page is to do the math. I need you to know what you are shooting for. I asked you guys this question on the survey. How much do you need to replace your day job income? A lot of people go in like, "oh, I have this big goal of a six figure business". Do you need to do that right now? I need you to find your minimum baseline right now. The minimum baseline. And I talk about this in my podcast. I do an income report every single month. And I tell you guys exactly how much money I make, what my minimum baseline is. Rule of thumb, depending on your business model, it could be if you have expenses for software and stuff like that, rule of thumb - one and a half to two times your current take home pay. The amount that actually gets put in your bank account is what I consider your minimum baseline. So, when I was working at my day job, I feel like my paychecks were around like $1,800 every two weeks or something. I should just make it $2,000, a round number. So I'd take one and a half times that. So I think it was like 5,000 a month went into my bank account at the end in 2018 when I quit. And so for me, my business needed to make $10,000 a month for me to pay taxes, pay for all the expenses that I needed to run an online business, which was all the software. I had some subcontractors at that time and I had to pay them. So my baseline was two times. But in order to figure out what that really is, you need to know what your business expenses are. And so we talked about that and in Nacondra's presentation on day one, Nacondra Moran, Tax Prep 101 for Freelancers. She talked about what are all the things that are potential business expenses. Dee talked in her session about bartering and doing your GUTS assessment and all of that stuff. Your business expenses might be lower than you think. So you've got to figure out all of the numbers so that you can pay yourself. We're not a charity for our own business. We need to pay ourselves first, pay our business expenses and set aside money for taxes. So these are the sessions that I want you to make sure that you go back and rewatch to do your roadmap and figure out the math. Some of the other goals that you might have, and I have a worksheet on here for you to do your math, but some of the other goals that you might have is paying off debt. Just because I wanted to replace my paycheck doesn't mean that I needed that full paycheck coming in every single month to make my monthly ends meet. And so the other thing that I did was to figure out what my household finances looked like. That's so important. If my household finances look like this, and then also we have $2,000 a month coming out in debt payments for car payments and whatever, and my student loan. What does it look like? Why don't we pay that off? And what is our personal financial picture? My friend Skye McClain, she's a lifestyle blogger. She knows how to monetize her blog like a boss. But she also talks about budgeting. And so she talks a lot about paying off debt and everything over there. And then a podcast episode I had with Nick True from Mapped Out Money, shannonmattern.com/312 talks about getting your personal finances in order. So that's in the document here. I listed it in there. And so also just making sure you can cover your benefits, right? So when I quit my day job, we needed to put me on my husband's health insurance plan and that costs us more money. So I wanted to know, what does it look like when I quit my day job? , Dee Williams from the Elope With Your Side Hustle presentation on Friday said she heard a quote that entrepreneurs jump off of a skyscraper and build the plane on the way down. And Dee was like, "yeah, but I also had a blueprint for the plane I was going to build before I jumped off the building". And I was like, "yes, exactly". So know what this looks like for you, because then when you get to the day that you quit, you're not freaking out. You're not freaking out with the money. And then there's some other goals on there that you can consider.

: Roadmap Stop #2, Jasmin nailed this stop. If you were here and you watched her presentation. It was incredible, Pricing and Priorities. So you guys are here because you want to go from side hustle to self-employed. The time that it's going to take is dependent upon how much time you're spending on income producing activities, things that make you money. And there are things that take longer to make money. And there are things that take less time to make money, like building a blog to 20,000 page views a month so that you can get advertising revenue. That is going to have a way longer runway than offering a service to someone who can pay you for it tomorrow. And there is no right or wrong way. You just have to know what you want. What is your ultimate goal? Why do you want it? And then go after it. One of the biggest mistakes I made, I wanted to quit my job but I wasn't willing to do the personal growth work I needed to confidently work with clients. And so that's why I have voided it and made it drag out for three years. So it slowed my progress down. I could have quit so much sooner had I gotten that part fixed. It's totally up to you how you want to do it, but I put a table on here for you for, how to basically analyze what is the thing that's going to get you to your end goal faster. So how much is the thing that you're selling? How much does it cost? How many of them do you need to sell to get to your minimum baseline? Is this something that you can start offering now? Do you have to create it? What's the runway for the lead time for doing this? Do you have to build a big audience to market and sell this thing in order to make the amount of money you need to make for your minimum baseline? So there are no wrong answers here. This is very personal to you. But I want you to look and do the math and see if I'm going to sell $27 trip wires and that's all I have going on in my business, how many of those do I need to sell? And then basically multiply that by10? No, 100? The math is in is in here. But you have to build your audience exponentially bigger than the number that you're going to sell. And that's just time, right? It's time. So I want to encourage you to pick the thing that is going to make you the most amount of money in the least amount of time with the least number of sold that you can deliver in the least amount of time. And so, as you're considering what this is going to be, definitely go back and watch these sessions, Jasmin's session, Kyshara, Sarah with her day rates. All of these sessions are going to kind of help you figure out what is the business model that I'm going to be using.

: Stop #3 -Schedule and Planning. And Lani Jackson's presentation this morning was everything when it comes to this. But you have to know what your priorities are, what days you will work, when you won't work. All of those things. Because otherwise you will either be like me, which is overworker 24/7, everything's on fire. You have to drop everything and constantly work. Or you will be on the other end of the spectrum, so overwhelmed and never working. And just always thinking about that you should be working, but Netflixing instead. Plan this out and commit to yourself to do it. So Lani gave you guys some really great tips and then if you get the All Access Pass, my Painless Planning bonus is in there. And I still use that same method every single week to plan out my week, to plan out my life, and to make sure that I'm only doing certain things on certain days and not doing everything all the time. But you have to commit the time. So many of you guys said that time is, you're thing. It's not going to magically happen if you do not commit the time. And if that's one of those things, then you need some mindset work. With Alicia. Or you need to figure out what is it that you think about time that's not letting you make time for your business. So Lani, Alicia, and Dee for time, if you want to go back and watch those in planning. I did want to say this. When it comes to your schedule, you're going to make this pie in the sky perfect day schedule. And it's not going to work out that way. And that's okay. Because what you're gonna do is you're going to commit to that. You're going to practice it. It's not going to go the way that you want. Evaluate why. Make a new plan. Try something different. Try it again. Try it again until you finally figure out the thing that is going to work for you. You're not going to get it right the first time. And it takes practice, but you just have to commit to trying until you find the schedule that works for you. Tracy asks where's the Painless Planning Strategy. If you purchased the Side Hustle Power Pack, it's included in the Side Hustle Power Pack. Sasha, yes, I am pointing the pencil at all of you.

: This one (#4) is the most important one that I could tell you. If you are not quitting your day job because you need the money, you need the paycheck, you need the health insurance, you need the benefits, you need to go from hating it to falling in love with it. If I could teach you nothing else, because so many of you are here because you told me that you hate your day job and it's horrible and it's awful. And I hated my day job too. I hated it. I had a bad attitude about it. Everybody should do things different. I had all the right answers about how things should be run. So many thoughts about my day job and why I wanted to leave. And I had a business coach tell me that I had to get that cleaned up because I was going to take that with me into my side hustle. And I was like, Whatever. Okay. Sure. She made me write down every single day, 10 reasons why I liked my day job, 10 positives about it. She made me write down 10 things every day that having that day job enabled me to do in my life. Drive my car, have internet to run my side business, have a roof over my head, have electricity. So why am I grateful and all of that. Because when you spend your time dreading going to work, dreading sitting in rush hour traffic, being miserable while you were there, dreading the drive home, do you think you have energy at the end of the day to work on your side hustle? Or are you just completely drained, completely burnt out and completely just useless? So you cannot escape your negative thinking. You can't. And so this is the work that I had to do. I had to stop hanging out with all the other complainer's at work. So I stopped. I stopped. I stopped going to the happy hour where they just complained about everybody and how wrong everybody was. I stopped talking to the people about the workplace gossip. And the relationships fell away. And it was fine. It was better. I was happier. And so I really started to change my attitude about my day job and just think it is not worth my negative mental energy, because I need that energy for my side hustle. I need it for the mission. The mission at the time was so selfish. It had nothing to do with anybody else. It was had to do with me making enough money to quit. That was it. So I was like, I'm not giving all these people my energy. And I had to change everything. So you are the only one that controls your thoughts and how you think, and if you want energy at the end of the day to grow this business, you've got to follow in love with your day job. So many good things came out of that for me. Promotions. More flexibility. Once I became a better employee with a better attitude, more opportunities came up, more flexibility. I was able to take time off to work on my side hustle. My boss was actually like, oh yeah, please grow your business. Because the more you invest in all of these skills that are required to grow your business, our company benefits. And I was just like, you're a genius. And I wish more bosses would think like that. She was like, you're doing your own professional development. She was like, you go for it. So it was incredible. So fall in love with your day job. If you're building your own business to escape your day job, you have to fall in love with your day job. Debra says, uh, who's your boss? Her name was Lori Chovanak. She's incredible, an incredible human being. She was not my boss at the time that I started my side hustle. She came on later and she was extremely supportive.

: So Stop #5 is to get your first client. Sasha Korabov came and told you guys how to get your first client without social media, without a website, without an audience, without anything. Right? She told you exactly how to do that in her session. She gave you the script. She gave you the exact words to say. Who talked after her? Bree Pair told you exactly how to find out what to say to get clients. So all you need to know is what is the problem you solve, how you solve it, who to solve it for. And you could probably use a contract if you are providing one-on-one services with people. That's why I introduced you to Autumn Witt Boyd and Girija Patel, so you could go to the Contract Template Store and get some terms to define the relationship that you're going to have with these clients. Kathy Goughenour talked to you about Riches in the Niches and how to just pick things that are at the intersection of your passions and your skills, and that you don't have to go learn new skills. You can literally use the skills that you have and go out there and get clients and start making money. And Gina was here talking about how to get started as a virtual assistant. So just go get a client if you're a one-on-one service provider. And even if you're not a one-on-one service provider, define your offer and just go make it to people. If you are wanting to build a course or a group coaching program or whatever, on this sheet I have, What is it that you offer? Who is it for? What problem does it solve? What is this problem preventing people from doing? What is possible for someone after they have solved their problem? What is your offer? Go talk to people. Make the offer. If it's a course and one person wants to buy your course, go get a couple more people and then go make the course. Just go put yourself out there. And I have a sheet here for you to pick the low hanging fruit for your market research interviews. Make the list, do the work. So that is Stop #5. Just get a client or get a customer.

: And then Stop #6, Systems and Processes. So you heard so many people talk about this. Get paid to build your systems. The next time you work with a client, document every single thing you do, from how you brought them in, how you onboarded them, the work that you did, if you built a website. Document all the steps. If you did some virtual assistant services, document how all of that works, document how you invoice. Just start making those standard operating procedures, because otherwise you're reinventing the wheel every single time you work with a client Whether you're scaling yet or not, it doesn't matter. You want to have something that you can go back to so that you're not winging it. So you know, how long things take, so you can plan better. And that will pay off for you so much in the future. So Jasmin talked about Getting Organized and Getting Prepped to Scale. Sarah Noked talked about making SOP's. Tasha talked about making SOP's and why it is so helpful to just know all of these things. So your systems and processes.

: And then after you have all of that stuff in place, get booked out (Stop #7). Repeat what you did to get the first client. Don't wait for people to come to you. It's not that people magically start coming to you, right? Reach out. Follow up. Check in with past clients. Do more market research interviews. Do the things that got you the first client again. And once you know how to do all of this, it just gets so much easier. It gets so much easier. And so Sessions to Re-Watch. Sasha, just go out and talk to people. Bree's session is one to talk to too. So that's your milestone. And when you're booked out, now it's time to think about building a website. And this is kind of where you know so much, what you do, who you do it for, when you do it, how it works, how to get clients. Now you can start to create systems that help do the marketing for you while you're working with clients. So what I would highly, highly, highly recommend is that you figure out all of this stuff first before you spend time building a website. Your web designer will love you forever if you have all of this stuff figured out first before you build the website. One of the biggest challenges that any web designer will have is when we have a client wanting to hire us, because the website is the first thing that they think that they need to do in their business. They haven't figured out any of this stuff first. And we as web designers end up working through them, figuring it out with them. And most web designers aren't qualified to help you figure out your business. You need to figure that out before you do that.

: So once you have reached that point, it's time for a revenue check (Stop # 8). Have you hit your minimum baseline? How many times? What does your personal financial picture look like? Are you paying down that debt? What has to happen for you to quit your day job? Do you want to just keep your day job and keep that side hustle money and keep paying down debt? Are you ready to have that conversation with your spouse or your partner, if you have a partner? What has to happen? And you'd get to decide. This is unique to you. What has to happen for you to quit your day job? So now that you have all of this stuff figured out, and his could take three months, six months, nine months, it's up to you. It's up to you. You never have to go to step eight. Unless you're automating, you can go to step eight to automate tedious systems and stuff in your business, but you never have to go to step eight. You could just stay right here. You never have to build a website. You never have to mass market. You never have to scale. If you are perfectly happy with your methods of getting clients and you're loving what you do, you have won! Congratulations! You know, you can stop. But if you want to move on if you want to add more revenue streams that are online revenue streams, scalable revenue streams, then you can move on to letting the tech do some of that work for you. And when I say minimum viable tech, I mean minimum viable tech. Okay. You do not need all of the funnels and everything going. You can start really, really small. And I think this is where I see people think "I need a marketing funnel. I need Facebook ads. I need all of these things". That's in the scale. It's time for you to go from getting clients through individual outreach, word of mouth referrals, to going online and getting in front of bigger pools of audiences. I put together this event and invited 20 people who serve a similar audience in different ways to all share their knowledge and expertise, to get in front of each other's audiences, to get their attention, get them back to their website so that they can make offers. And so this is exactly what this summit was for. Speakers show up to things like this to get in front of people like you guys. And if it's the right thing for you, you go get on their email list and then you work with them. So you only do this once you're really clear on what you do for people and how you do it for them. Because now you can take those referrals on that scale, and you have systems to move them through so that you don't burn out and that you don't get overloaded. So Sessions to Re-Watch for your minimum viable tech, How To Build a Website That Converts Even If You're Not Techie, Kristen's visual design course for designing and graphics. And Kelsey's copywriting course. Because you'll need all that stuff when you start to build a website and market yourself and all of that stuff. And so once you have them in a minimum viable tech set up, and this is where I come in. So I want to help you once you get here with DIY. Because even at that point, if it's your first go round, maybe you're DIYing, but you're probably making enough money that you're hiring an incredible web designer to help you, like the ones I trained in my Web Designer Academy - shameless plug.

: So then you can move on to your mass marketing strategies (#9). Building relationships with other entrepreneurs that have audiences. Creating content. Building an audience on social media. Search engine optimization. Blogging. All of that stuff to build the email list like we talked about, and building a website that converts, to build an email list so that you can make offers. Gee talked about that, Creating Crazy Good Content. Bree. Nellie talked about that. And then we talked about that in this roadmap.

: So that's when you're at the point where you're ready to scale (Step #10). You're ready to do the one to many things. You're ready to add on that online course, those digital products. When Kyshara talked about mapping out your low end to high end product suite, it's because she's spending her time serving people at the high end level, that's where her time is going, but she has these other things to help people that don't have the budget to work with her at the high end level, or aren't ready to work with her at the high end level. So she has a product suite that allows people to still benefit from working with her based on where their budget's at, and also move them closer and closer to being ready to work with her at that high level. All of those products allow her to scale. She only has so much time to work with her one-on-one or small group clients. She only has so much time to do that, but she wants to serve on a bigger level. She wants to have a bigger impact. And in order to do that, she can create a course that 50 people can sign up for every single month. And she can create smaller digital products that other people can get. And she can have a way bigger impact with her message than she can just working with people one-on-one. And that's when it's time to scale. And like I said, I tried to start with scale and it was hard because I didn't have all of the rest of that stuff figured out. So whether you're growing an agency like Tasha came to talk about, growing the agency and scaling with an agency and the leader that you have to become and grow into when you're scaling an agency, she talked about the mistake people make is "oh, I'm going to start a VA agency because I don't want to do the work and I want other people to do the work for me". That's later on your journey. It really is. And, like I said, whether you're growing an agency offering an online course, a digital product, a group program, or a membership, validate first before making it. Meaning, go talk to people about it. Go talk to people about it. Make offers early and often. Early and often. When you start building an email list, you don't have to wait until you have 500 people to tell them how they can work with you. You can tell the very first person who subscribes how they can work with you. And then the second. And then the third. You do not have to wait to let people know how they can work with you. So Sessions To Re-Watch, Tasha's session on building an agency. It was so good. Kyshara's Product Suite. Meera's Proven Step-By-Step Plan for building a digital products business. She gave you guys the roadmap, the stages of growth and exactly what you should be doing in each stage. And she talked about even people who are never going to do a one-on-one service. They want to start with digital products. She even tells people okay, but don't try to start at the scale level. You have to start at the foundational level. Eden talks about the tripwire strategy for digital products and Nat talks about launching your online course. And Nat tells you that you have to validate it. Validate, validate, validate before you make the product. And that's when you're kind of at the place where you're having the impact that you want to have, right? You're doing the things that you want to do. You're running the business the way that you want.

: Did you notice? Nowhere on here was Quit Your Day Job. There's no one specific perfect point to do that. That's totally up to you. I talked to my guests on Pep Talks For Side Hustlers, everybody has a different story. We have people who just got fed up one day and quit and then I figured it out. And that gives me the biggest heart attack? Other people are more like me and Dee, Deonjala Williams, who was like, "I knew I was going to have to build the plane on the way down, but I had a blueprint". This is the easy road. If you go through things on the easy road, I'm not going to say it's going to be easy. It's definitely not going to be easy. You are going to run into challenges. You have a unique experience that you bring to this. We're all different. Alicia was talking about things that trigger you are not the same things that trigger me. The things that are going to trip you up aren't the same thing that are going to trip me up. Your journey is going to be unique to you. You probably will detour onto the hard road. I could you, "here's my blueprint for your success". You could follow every single thing that I said to do to a T, and you're still going to run into things. You're still going to detour on the hard road. I'm not right. I don't have a crystal. I don't know what's going to happen. But I can give you the best chance for success. Okay? But your responsibility is not quitting. Your responsibility is not making any obstacle mean that you're bad, you're wrong, you're a failure, you're not smart enough to figure it out, you're not cut out for this. You are cut out for it. If I'm cut out for it, you're cut out for it. You must not quit. You have to keep going if you really want to get to the goal.

: I cannot thank you all enough for being here. I know I just talked for a long time. I really encourage you to take the time to fill out this roadmap. At the end of the day, I want you to make the decisions that are right for you, your business, your family, your goals, your health, and everything. All of our speakers have incredible, incredible resources for you. You can go get your hands on those. But if you want to connect with me, Instagram, I'm not going to lie.

Shannon Mattern: I'm not on social media that much. So you can follow me there and you can chat. I'll be in like every couple of days. It's just one of those things that in my business I just don't use that much. But free5daywebsitechallenge.com, Web Designer Academy for web designers, the podcast. Please go check out the podcast. Go listen. If you love a speaker here, go listen to the podcast. Because if there's not an episode for them, there will be coming. You guys, wow. I have to thank my team. I did not do this on my own. Natalie Matesic is my virtual assistant. She's incredible. She's absolutely amazing. She forces me to not be a control freak because she just does stuff. And it's amazing. No, the Web Designer Academy is not free, Kim. , You can apply for a free training. So just go there, check it out. All the details are there. But Natalie Matesic is incredible. Laura Kamark is the genius behind the summit website. She took that completely off of my hands and ran with it and set everything up. I could not do what I do without their support. Wendy Coop is an incredible, amazing, awesome person who is so knowledgeable and techie, and just wants to see other people succeed. She is on my team. She's my community manager. She is the person who when you have questions about the tech and the Free 5-day Website Challenge, she is in there making sure that you get unstuck and that you can move forward. So between the three of them, they're the not so behind the scenes people helping me have this impact and put on an incredible event like this.

Shannon Mattern: I cannot thank my speakers enough. Without them, you all would not be here. Right? So I can't thank them enough for agreeing to speak, for putting together an incredible presentations, for promoting the event, for contributing freebies and bonuses, the power pack, for showing up in the chat for you guys. It's been incredible. It's been absolutely incredible. I'm reading through all the comments. I'll probably cry after this is done. Anyway, you can make this happen for you. Okay. So yes, I am ready to crash, but I'm actually going to pop a little glass of champagne. I will meet any of you guys in the Facebook group who wants to have a little chat and ask me any questions. And then we are going to wrap this up. We'll figure out what to do with the Facebook group, because I do want to be able to continue this with you guys, and I want to see your roadmaps and stuff. So we'll figure it out. Well, My team, and I will talk about it, bandwidth and roadmaps and plans and stuff. So I can't thank you guys enough. Replay will be available soon and you guys, you're incredible. Thank you, Stephanie. Should I put some honey in my champagne? Is that a thing that people do? Thank you. Thank you all. I will see you all in the Facebook group in about five minutes and we'll wrap this up. So goodbye, everyone. Incredible. You guys are all incredible.