Latest / The Life-First Solopreneur / 172. ZERO Marketing Experience—Here’s How They Make Six Figures a Month with Todd and Leah Getts

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172. ZERO Marketing Experience—Here’s How They Make Six Figures a Month with Todd and Leah Getts · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: Todd and Leah Getts made a bold move from traditional careers to building a thriving online business without prior marketing experience. So what drove them? Well, determination and a deep desire to be present for their family. In this episode, they reveal how they went from struggling in network marketing to hitting 6 figure months through affiliate marketing and course creation. But it's not just about making money.
• 0:22
  It's about making an impact and a business you actually enjoy running. If you're feeling stuck in a job you don't love or overwhelmed by the idea of starting an online business, this conversation is exactly what you need. They break down branding, lead generation, automation, and the number one mistake most aspiring solopreneurs make. So tune in to hear their game changing insights. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship.
• 0:53
  My name is Carly Ries, and my co host, Joe Rando, and I are your guides to navigating this crazy, but awesome journey as a company of what. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solo entrepreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions. We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around, or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around.
• 1:33
  We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. Okay. Todd and Leah, your story, I'm just so intrigued by this because without any marketing or business experience, you two transitioned from your traditional careers into building an online business. And I would love to know why and how you took that leap.
• 1:55
  Leah Getts: Desperation, I think, in all honesty. Because at the time, Todd and I have been married for ten years. We've been praying for children this whole time. We finally adopted our first son, and I was now at home with him.
• 2:12
  Todd had to travel for work still. And so at this point in his career, he was doing traveling consulting, and he was leaving Sunday afternoons, flying back Thursday nights and Friday mornings. And after ten years of praying for kids and, like, idealizing this whole family life thing, and then I was a single mom most of the time, and he only got to see our son on the weekends. And that wasn't okay with us. we lived in rural Oklahoma where there were no job opportunities that would replace the kind of income that Todd had, and so he had to continue to travel. so we found, and we actually started with network marketing. I think that's a gateway drug for a lot of people into entrepreneurship. And so we're like, okay. This might be how we do this. Like, this is how we do it.
• 2:55
  And then we totally sucked at it. We ended up coming online trying to figure out how to make that work and found affiliate marketing. And we started to learn actual Internet marketing skills, and that's where it really took off for us. so it was really driven by the desire to be home with our kids, to have our family together. And, you know, we started with online with affiliate marketing.
• 3:18
  That's where it went great. We started, Todd was able to actually retire from his 6 figure job. I think it was eighteen months or something after we had started. And we since went on to launch our own course. within a year after that, we had hit our first six figure month, selling our own courses, teaching lead gen, and the things that we had mastered at the beginning.
• 3:43
  And our second son has never known what it's like to have parents work out of the house.
• 3:47
  Carly Ries: So Yeah. Well, so I'm just putting my mind and some of our listeners. I'm trying to put myself in their shoes, and they're like, wait. I live in the middle of nowhere. And did they just say 6 figure month and not year?
• 4:00
  So let's say they're like, okay. I want to be with my kids more. I want to work from home more. There aren't a lot of opportunities where I am. What is your advice for that first step in starting an online business?
• 4:12
  Todd Betts: Wow. Well, I'd say number one thing that you need to get good at for any type of an online business, even if you're doing things like ecommerce or something like that, you wanna get good at building an audience, building an email list, creating content, branding yourself. I mean, the more and more you look at where Amazon is going, where even SEO is going, when you have a brand and you're building your own audience, those are the things that companies like Amazon, Google, or even if you've got your own coaching business, your own online course, those are the things that people are attracted to. Brands are ranking higher in in SEO. I was just on an SEO webinar that, you know, that's one of the things that they're noticing is if you have a brand, your content is ranking higher than other types of content where there is no brand.
• 5:04
  In Amazon, if you're doing Amazon products, you want to create your own brand. You wanna build an email list. If you're going to sell your Amazon business, if you're building an Amazon business to sell it, having an email list with that increases the value of that business and increases the amount that you can sell it for. So building a brand, building an audience, and getting good at lead generation, building an email list, that's the very first thing you need to get good at even if you don't know what you're going to sell. If you know who you're gonna market to and you and you know the kind of people that you wanna work with, start creating content for that.
• 5:38
  Start building that list and that audience.
• 5:42
  Joe Rando: Can I ask a question Because I think we're gonna move on here and I don't wanna miss it, but that term building a brand, because I see so many different definitions of what it means to build a brand. And there's the traditional, oh, you got your colors and your logo and you know, some people get your brand void. But what do you mean specifically by building a brand?
• 6:06
  Todd Betts: Yeah. So it's what people know you for on the Internet, you know, what they associate your name for. So when people think about digital trailblazer, what do they think about? Right? When people think about Apple or Google, you know, what are not just the thoughts, but also the feelings that come to mind.
• 6:22
  That's really what a brand is about. So, it has a lot to do with just putting a personality behind the logo, putting a belief behind the logo. What you stand for? That's what your brand is. you know, I guess when we first kind of started building an online business, we had this idea that, oh, yeah. We could just hide behind the computer and create content and not really have to put our faces out there and we can just have, like, a faceless business. And there's a number of people that yeah. I mean, you might have been able to do that a while ago, but more and more, you need to put a personality behind it. And that's really because people want connection. People only buy from those that they know, like, and trust, and it's easier to know, like, and trust somebody that you feel like you know versus a faceless brand that you don't know who you're buying from or what they stand for. So that's what I mean by brand. And, kinda getting back to the original point I was trying to make, being able to build an audience online, it's like, McDonald's. Right?
• 7:30
  McDonald's didn't grow to where it is by selling burgers. They got to where they are by picking the best locations, right? It's location, location, location. When you're good at generating traffic and generating leads, it's like having the best location in the biggest city, right? Imagine if you've got a McDonald's franchise that was just gifted to you.
• 7:52
  You could take it over. Most people would look at that and say, Yeah, I could definitely be successful with that, But now imagine that you've got that franchise, but it's in the middle of the desert with no roads going to it. How successful do you think that's gonna be versus the same franchise you put in the middle of Times Square, New York where there's upwards of 300,000 visitors per day? Right? There's a world of difference.
• 8:15
  It's the same product. It's the same brand. it's the same quality. Everything the same, but just that location is different, and it makes a world of difference. And that's what the ability to generate leads and build an audience makes for an online business.
• 8:27
  Carly Ries: So would you argue because I think people are like, there's a gazillion online businesses out there, and you're not necessarily gonna have your own unique profession. Like, I'm a marketer, and so is my neighbor. it's just everybody's a marketer. But would you say that brand is how you stand out in a crowded market, or are there other ways to do that?
• 8:46
  Leah Getts: Todd, I was gonna say you've got a good antidote with the whole beer scenario.
• 8:51
  Todd Betts: Oh, yeah. So standing out in a crowded market, yeah, that's tough. Part of that is definitely gonna be your brand because that's what people connect with, but more than that, you want to have something, kind of like a spin or an angle that you take on what your offer is and how you help people and how you achieve the results that you achieve.
• 9:11
  A good example of this, I think it was Schlitz beer. Is that how you pronounce it? It's a beer company. Schlitz.
• 9:17
  Yeah. It's not in business anymore, but there's a great story about it where they brought in a marketing consultant. And, they were trying to figure out a new marketing campaign to sell their beer. And this marketing consultant was being taken out on a tour of the factory and he was trying to find an angle like how can we get the edge over these other beer companies and he saw a part of the beer making process where they were like injecting the bottles with air or something and they're doing something with the bottles before they pour the beer in there. He's like, well, what's happening over there?
• 9:52
  And the guy that was giving him the tour was like, oh, well, that's just where we disinfect the beer bottles so that, the beer stays fresh for longer. And he's like, There we go. That's our angle. We're gonna say that our beer stays fresh for longer because we disinfect our bottles and the guy that was giving him the tour was like, well every beer company does that. That's not a big deal and the marketing consultant was like, yeah, but nobody else is saying it and so that's gonna be our angle.
• 10:21
  And so whatever your offer is, a lot of times it doesn't even have to be something that's unique or something that not everybody else is doing. It could be something that just nobody else is saying, but that's what you want your angle to be. Another good example is, p 90. P 90 x.
• 10:42
  They, kinda popularized back in the early two thousands. Kind of aging ourselves here.
• 10:48
  Carly Ries: p 90 x back in the early two thousands.
• 10:51
  Todd Betts: Yeah. I mean, it's a great program. They had this idea of muscle confusion. Right?
• 10:57
  And so the way that they presented it was that all these other exercise programs, you do them for about thirty days and then you hit this plateau and you stop seeing results. K. And that's what they call the plateau effect. And the way that p 90 x is different and better is that, we introduce what's called muscle confusion. So after thirty days of doing this workout, we mix up the program to introduce muscle confusion which spikes another thirty days of growth.
• 11:27
  And then we do that one more time for another thirty days of growth and that's ninety days of continued progress rather than thirty days of progress and then plateauing and that was their angle. The thing is that if you ask any fitness expert or anybody else who's who's doing health and wellness coaching, they would have been very familiar with that concept. They may not have called it muscle confusion, but they were familiar with that concept. But p 90 x was the first one that said it and, I mean, their product blew up like crazy because of it. And so whatever it is that you're marketing, finding that unique angle, is really the big difference in, looking like everyone else versus standing out and being different.
• 12:08
  Joe Rando: Such a great point. I love that. And it reminded me, I just went bought a new car. And one of the things I always do is I go check the highway safety, you know, information about the vehicles, to see which ones are rated the highest. Because if I'm gonna drive a car in the highway, I'd like to know if I get in a crash.
• 12:26
  It's got my best odds. And if you look at them, a lot of the cars aren't Volvos. You know? There are other makes. But when you say, what's a safe car?
• 12:38
  Volvo. They own it. So I get what you're saying. I love this. I'd never really thought about it that way.
• 12:43
  But, yeah, you can feature something that isn't unique to you but isn't being featured by other people. And once you do that, you own it. It'd be tough for another car company to come off and say, oh, no. We're the safety car company, not Volvo.
• 12:54
  That would be a tough sell and probably not worth the effort and the marketing callers. Cool.
• 12:59
  Carly Ries: So I'm putting myself in our listeners' shoes again, and I'm like, okay. I gotta create a brand. Whether they've jumped ship from their corporate job or they're just starting their business, they're like, I have to build a brand. What's affiliate marketing? What's SEO?
• 13:14
  There's so much to do, and I have to make a living, and I have to educate myself. and maybe you guys went through this when you left your nine to five jobs. But how would you combat that overwhelm of, I have so much to learn and I have to run a business while I learn all this stuff?
• 13:32
  Leah Getts: Yeah. It really comes down to doing it one step at a time. Because you're looking at a mountain and you're gonna climb the mountain, but you can only focus on that next step and keep moving forward. And getting the help, getting the training, getting a mentor, a coach, someone to guide you on that process is so valuable.
• 13:51
  I'm not gonna lie. We would not be where we are today without that, and that really helped us even just to understand the language, understand even what we were learning in a training. It started to make sense when we could talk through pieces of it with someone who knew the industry, knew what was up. So really focusing on just that next step and keep moving forward is the way to go. Because if you are sitting there looking just up at the top of the hill, it's daunting and you're gonna, you know, slow down or stop.
• 14:21
  Todd Betts: I would even say networking with the people that you wanna build a business like. So for me and Leah, when we started network marketing and trying to generate leads online, we networked with a lot of other network marketers who are building businesses online. And that's kind of what got us into affiliate marketing in the first place was that we found out that network marketing was actually small portion of their actual income and most of their income was through affiliate marketing, creating courses, coaching, and things like that. And when we saw that, it's like, okay. Well, we can do that too.
• 14:51
  And that's kind of what drove us into that direction as well.
• 14:54
  Carly Ries: So let me ask this. As you were talking about moving forward or next steps, once somebody builds that steady income, how do they scale? I mean, you guys were saying that you, figured out your affiliate marketing and all that, and then you started a course, and now you have a podcast and, like, all these things. How do you scale without adding to that overwhelm?
• 15:16
  Leah Getts: That's a big question.
• 15:17
  Carly Ries: Is That possible?
• 15:19
  Leah Getts: Yes and no at the same time. So you can definitely scale and just increase your workload, and a lot of people do that at first where they're just trying to
• 15:28
  bring in more clients. They're still doing, one on one coaching or they're doing what they did at the beginning, just more of it. When you're looking to scale, you need to really assess all the pieces of this puzzle and make sure you're choosing the most leveraged options possible. So when we're talking about lead generation, maybe, coaches out there have started and they're networking and they're messaging and they're chatting and doing this kind of stuff on Facebook to generate leads for their coaching business. That's not scalable.
• 15:58
  Like, that may be a good way to get started to get your first few clients. But if you want to ramp things up, there's only so much time in the day. You can't really just have more and more and more conversations with people. So looking at what's a more leveraged version, does that mean using Facebook ads? Does that mean, getting in front of other people's audiences like podcast guesting?
• 16:19
  Like, what are the more leveraged ways that you can do lead generation? The same goes with the offer itself. if you're currently doing one on one coaching, it's only so scalable. You only have so much time in your day. So what if we move that to a group program or you add low ticket courses? look at some of the ways the deliverables that you can offer and make sure that they're set up to be scalable because, otherwise, you will just run yourself ragged. And unfortunately, a lot of people get stuck in that trap.
• 16:50
  Carly Ries: Well, so where does automation play into all of this from a time saving standpoint, like, don't lose your mind standpoint. How do you implement it in your business, and how do you recommend others use it?
• 17:00
  Leah Getts: Yeah. We are big on automation, and Todd's sort of the automation king. I don't know if he wants to chime in on here.
• 17:06
  Todd Betts: Yeah. that's just something that you wanna build one piece at a time. Obviously, the very first thing is just lead generation. Like Leah said, a lot of people when they get started with an online business, they're trying to do things cheap. They're trying to, save as much money as possible and that's totally understandable.
• 17:22
  You can get your first clients just by sending messages on Facebook with no funnels or anything else like that. But if you really wanna scale, you need a funnel. You know, an opt in page, a thank you page, and then, getting people onto your email list and messaging people. And then, I mean, there's so much tech , I think about where we started and where we're at now and the technology that's available to us. there's so many more ways that you can automate now, but, also, there's a lot of tech that you gotta deal with as well. And so, being able to learn some at least some of that. And then once you kinda learn it, you know what you want done, hiring somebody to do that for you or to manage it for you within your business. But there are so many things that you can automate. It's just a matter of building it one piece at a time.
• 18:10
  Like, I'm trying my hardest not to go down the rabbit hole
• 18:17
  Joe Rando: Yes. Exactly. But do tell us what tools you like to use for automation, if you would.
• 18:22
  Todd Betts: Yeah. So things like your email list, you should be building an email list. That should be something that's automated. Your email follow ups. So after somebody opts in to a free lead magnet or to a webinar or a training that you're doing, you have their name, their email, their phone number, automate an email follow-up sequence that goes out, to them to nurture them.
• 18:41
  Right? What we call a nurture sequence. So all that can be automated as soon as they take that first step of opting in. all that is automated. And, some of the tools that we use do that I mean, we used to use different tools for everything.
• 18:55
  We used to have, a specific tool for our funnel pages. We used to have a specific tool for our email marketing. We had another software, for our CRM. We had another soft I mean, all these different things, and we had time altogether with another software called Zapier, and it was just a big technological nightmare. Now within the past two years or so, we've come up with some really good, all in one systems that, does everything really well.
• 19:24
  What we use is called ConvertPoint, and that's what you know, it saves us about $1,700 a month just by switching to this all in one software just from the other subscriptions that we were doing. So that's what you we use, but there's a lot of other good ones out there. So, I mean, Kartra is one that does a lot of that stuff. That and we've got clients that use Kartra and they love it. So it's there's a lot of options.
• 19:45
  It's just kind of a matter of, what your preference is.
• 19:50
  Joe Rando: We do everything with HubSpot. So yeah.
• 19:53
  Carly Ries: And that is our choice. Well, let's say people are like, I'm trying to automate. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying all this stuff. Nothing is working.
• 20:01
  Where do you often see people go wrong, and how can they course correct?
• 20:07
  Todd Betts: So That's huge especially when you're brand new. Right? you buy a course, you learn a strategy, and it doesn't work. You buy another course and you learn another strategy and it doesn't work. And you kinda go from strategy to strategy and from system to system. And, maybe you learn lead generation and you don't really generate that many leads. So then you learn, how to do webinars and you do a webinar, you don't make any sales, you learn challenges and that doesn't work either and you do all these things and it's not working.
• 20:38
  It's common for people to hop around from thing to thing to thing like that and nothing works when really what the issue is, is your messaging. It's like I was talking about earlier in this episode where it's about coming up with your unique angle and really building an argument around that, about why you're different, why you're better than the competition, why you might be a better choice for a specific person versus somebody else. The message is what makes the sale and if your message is not strong, if it's kind of a weak message, if it sounds like other people, then, yeah, you're gonna struggle with no matter what strategy you use. Right? Facebook ads are not gonna make the sale for you.
• 21:18
  A webinar is not gonna make sales for you if your message is weak. Alright? So that typically, that's a very first thing that we're looking at is what is the message? Is it strong? Does it set you apart from the competition out there?
• 21:30
  Because if people go through a webinar or challenge and, you know, they love you, you sound great, and then at the end, you put together your offer and you present it and they're like, that sounds exactly like this other person's offer. Now your audience has options. And when two things look exactly the same, like, imagine that you've got a menu in front of you and you're at a restaurant, you're trying to decide, and all the names may be different of the items, but when you look at the ingredients and what they're doing, they all look like it's the same thing. Right?
• 22:04
  How do you make a choice about what you're gonna buy? People have this analysis paralysis and they don't make a decision or they just look for the cheapest option and when people are looking for the cheapest option, it's just a race to the bottom of who can sell their product or service at the cheapest price possible and there's no point in being second cheapest. So you need to find that angle, that message around your offer needs to be solid because that's what's gonna make the sale.
• 22:32
  Carly Ries: And you said there's no point in being second cheapest. I went straight to if he ain't first, you're last from Talladega and Giant. So here's my 2¢ for this conversation? So I do wanna ask one more question before we get into the ones that we always ask our guests. And we actually asked this to a guest last week, and I really wanted your take on it.
• 22:54
  And that is, how do you recommend people not only run a successful business, but when they actually like running? Because there's a huge difference. You can be successful, but you could also be miserable. So how did you find that balance?
• 23:08
  Joe Rando: Been there.
• 23:12
  Leah Getts: Yes. I think it's important that you're not only passionate about what you're delivering, which you do need to be passionate about that, this is something that you get excited about, that you enjoy talking about, this is part of your mission and what just lights you up. But on top of that, how are you building it? Do you enjoy the strategies that you're using to build it? Because especially at the beginning, you're gonna be spending a lot more time on the strategies to build it than actually doing the thing. Because you need to actually get the clients before you can serve the clients. And if you hate the strategies that you're doing, you are not gonna succeed, and you're gonna hate every minute of it. You might get some initial traction, but it's gonna be like pulling teeth and you're gonna start to loathe your business. So I've seen this many times where people will find us because we help them set up their automations and their funnels and their systems and all of that good leveraged thing those good leveraged things.
• 24:06
  And they come to us because they're starting to hate their business because they got started messaging people on Facebook, and it was working. And they didn't really like it, but it worked, so they did it. And now they're suck doing it, and now they hate what they do, and they're ready to quit the business if they have to message one more person on Facebook. So
• 24:22
  Joe Rando: Wow. I can see that.
• 24:24
  Leah Getts: Yeah. So making sure that you're passionate about what the offer is, but that you also are enjoying the actual strategies. And if you don't, you need to really learn from or get help from people who you like their strategies, that you enjoy going through their processes or their content or what they're doing. That will help you identify things that you would actually would be in alignment for you for your business.
• 24:49
  Carly Ries: Well, such great advice, you guys. So I feel like that's a great pivot into our question that we ask all of our guests. You help people find success in creating an online business. So what is your favorite quote about success?
• 25:01
  Leah Getts: Mine's actually a Bible verse, and I have it on my wall right here. And it's Philippians four thirteen. And it's, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And for me, that's huge. we have done amazing things in this business, but that whole entrepreneurship, you know, a meme, right?
• 25:17
  Like, yay. Oh, it sucks. Oh, it's amazing. Oh, I'm dying. I should quit. that whole emotional journey of entrepreneurship is rough. And toughing yourself up for that, kind of putting on your armor, being ready to stay the course and do the thing for me that helps. that verse just reminds me, you know what? God gave me the gifts I need to succeed, and I need to trust to move forward. I just gotta move my feet.
• 25:45
  He's got my path. Right? And so really big one for me.
• 25:51
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Todd, did you have one too, or is that on behalf of both of you?
• 25:55
  Todd Betts: Yeah. The one that always stuck around in my mind, especially when we were first building our business was and I don't even know who said this, but, I'll either find a way or I'll make a way. And for us , that was it. we had this goal in our mind of what we want to achieve and, we saw that other people were successful, you know, and we knew that we weren't any stupider or you know, worse looking than anybody else on the Internet. It's like if they can figure it out, then there's a way for us to figure it out.
• 26:25
  And that model that, I'll either find a way or I'll make a way, that kept me going for a long time.
• 26:32
  Joe Rando: Reminds me of one of our other guests, Jay Schwedelson, and said something like his uncle came to him and said, well, stupider people than you have done it.
• 26:41
  Leah Getts: Exactly. Thanks, I think.
• 26:43
  Joe Rando: Little different spin on it.
• 26:46
  Carly Ries: Well, you guys, you seem to know what you're talking about. So if people want to learn more about you and everything you offer, where can they find you?
• 26:52
  Leah Getts: Yes. We would love to have them check us out at digitaltrailblazer.com. That's where we have, great resources, great information, all kinds of stuff to check out. And we have a podcast that we would love them to come check out. It's Digital Trailblazer Podcast, and it's all things building your online business, really in sales, marketing, messaging, all of the different things.
• 27:11
  And we kinda, funnel hack people wide and go into all their strategies that are working really well. So it's super fun. You can geek out on all the marketing and business stuff, and it's just really, really great information.
• 27:21
  Carly Ries: Yes. Love it. Well, thank you so much for coming today. And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, we love that five star review.
• 27:29
  We love that you subscribe on your favorite platform and on YouTube, and we will see you next time on the Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs.
• 27:56
  Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.