Back in January, the HeyCreator Summit 2024 took on the online creator space by storm. The hugely successful event, sponsored by ThriveCart, saw guest speakers from all walks of the entrepreneurial life giving talks on everything from the importance of community to influencer partnerships, social media strategy and what digital tools to harness to take your business to the next level.
On day four, the online event hosted speakers discussing scaling businesses, focusing on consistency, and affiliate marketing. Hosted by Angel Marie and Kevin McKeand, the panelists shared their entrepreneurial journeys, like transitioning from blogging to digital courses and leveraging email marketing – teaching us all about strategies like streamlining offerings, prioritizing a mission-driven approach over profit-centric was emphasized, as well as learning from past mistakes and engaging with your audience.
Read on to discover more:
Takeaways:
- Identify key opportunities to scale your business, and go all in
- Email marketing and social media both have their place
- Be patient: building a business can take years
- Have a mission and a “why” behind what you’re doing
Steven Chen
Steve is the founder of a company called NewRetirement, whose mission is to help people achieve financial confidence, become financially literate and make good money decisions.
It all started when his mom experienced some challenges when transitioning to retirement. After asking for help, Steve and his brother tried to outsource the problem by finding a financial advisor – but they soon found that as an older female with less than half a million dollars, most advisors weren’t all that willing to help. While they were working on spreadsheets, it occurred to Steve that there was a huge gap in the market for over-50’s financial advice, and that he could use his expertise in SaaS to help people enjoy financial security well into their advanced years.
Ken Yarmosh
As the founder of the Remote Solopreneur, Ken helps creators, business owners and solopreneurs grow their operations without big payrolls by focusing on systems and operations. Once the CEO of Savvy Apps, he also acted as a VP of Product and Transformation Agent for high profile startups.
But Ken didn’t get to this point overnight – during the panel, he talked about the importance of realizing the journey is about building your career brick by brick, of putting care and thought into every move to ensure you construct something meaningful and true to you.
“I feel like sometimes people can look at all of us and say, ‘I’ll never be that person’,” says Ken. “But I didn’t wake up one day and just become someone who ran a $5 million company. We had to get here over years and decades – we’ve got to just start and build on each success.”
Gemma Bonham-Carter
Founder of an online education company and personal brand, Gemma helps entrepreneurs monetize their expertise by creating and launching digital courses. And then once they’ve launched their digital courses, Gemma also helps them grow sales by leveraging email marketing and sales funnels.
Gemma’s roots are in the blogging world: while working a career in public health, she decided way back in 2010 to nurture her creativity by starting a blog about her fixer upper home and the DIY projects she and her husband were carrying out in their little bungalow. Over the course of five years, she gradually grew and monetized her blog, finding enough early success online to quit her 9 to 5 job. This added much-needed flexibility to her schedule as she had two kids in the meantime!
While exploring courses as another potential source of income, she discovered she had valuable insight to spare teaching others how to blog successfully and start their own brands, incorporating e-commerce, Shopify, and eventually digital marketing.
Today, Gemma has a whole team behind her, and a fully-fledged company called Course Creator School. Before now they were focused on using just a few channels for lead generation which led to email marketing, and in 2024 they’re excited to explore the world of affiliate marketing.
On scaling a business
Even if your company is already successful and you’ve hit your first milestones, it’s important to always iterate and adapt. This is important not only to grow revenue, but to stay relevant.
From his history working on various SaaS startups, Steve knows all about scaling a business. From the early years, New Retirement leveraged the power of affiliate marketing to spread the word about what they do, with loyal recruits recommending the product to others and sending traffic to their pages. While this direct to customer side of the business took off, Steve was able to spot and leverage another huge opportunity by selling to enterprise. Their first enterprise customer brought in the entirety of that year’s D2C sales combined – half a million dollars – so with the idea validated, Steve decided to focus more attention on this valuable sector.
Now, the business is ten times as big as it was, thanks to Steve’s adept navigation of business scaling opportunities.
On focus
When building a business, it’s important to be ruthlessly focused on what you want to achieve in order to achieve it. We are in a generation of information overload – when there’s so many YouTube videos to watch and so many podcast episodes to listen to, so many courses to take in and so many opportunities to learn, it can be tempting to think we can do everything, all at once. But in reality, no one can – and by focusing down on your specific niche, you’ll accelerate your learning and provide higher value to your audience.
One of the comments from a viewer in the panel put it perfectly when they said: “you can’t sell meat to a vegan”. Nor should you try: by focusing down on your offer early on, you identify yourself within your space and are able to more clearly see where your business should be heading. Not that you can’t pivot – far from it! – as long as every move you make is decisive, and well thought-out.
On email marketing vs social media
Lead generation is a tricky one, and many entrepreneurs turn to social media: but it can be a minefield. Gemma describes email marketing as being at the heart of her business’s growth since making that shift from being a home decor blogger to course creator. This method was perfect for her because not only was she able to find her voice and really lean into the writing side of things, but also because she owns her list – it’s hers, and even if the email platform she uses goes down, she can take those contacts with her. ‘Email gives me the security to know that I could make a sale tomorrow just by emailing my list,’ says Gemma. ‘I don’t need to worry about algorithms or shifting trends like on social media.’
However, social media very much has its place, and Steve advocates for having two main channels: one you own, such as email marketing, and another such as the social media of your choice. But should you start a podcast, or a vlog? Instagram or TikTok? According to our panelists, it’s about finding visibility opportunities that align with how you want to show up. For example, if you really feel like audio is your thing, start a podcast. If you really feel like you’ll absolutely crush it on Instagram, go all in on Instagram. For video, there’s YouTube or TikTok. Instead of trying to jump on the bandwagon of the hottest, newest platform, choose the one that aligns with how you naturally create content and – crucially – which ones are already being used by your target audience.
On tenacity
Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame once said “any overnight success takes about ten years”. When discussing business growth, each of the panelists agreed they’d be doing much the same as what they’re doing now, even if they weren’t paid for it – and in there lies the key to their success.
Growing a thriving business means you don’t quit, even if you fail. You have to be extremely passionate about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and also have a defined vision of success – because the truth is, failure is more than likely. Most entrepreneurs fail, and most companies fail. Even if your idea works there’s no guarantee it’ll keep working.
‘Expect a long journey,’ says Steve, ‘and don’t be doing it for the money. Expect failure as a part of success.’ Think deeply about why you’re doing what you want to do – because the money side of things is never guaranteed, but true success only comes if you’re willing to put in more than you take out.
On comparing yourself to others
When you get such a talented bunch of creators in one room on a panel like the one hosted by HeyCreator, it might be easy to feel overwhelmed. Many creators hit a mental roadblock when it comes to comparing themselves with others: even if their journey is similar, exposing yourself to new ideas and networking can sometimes find you meeting with people further down the path than you are. It’s easy to get discouraged.
Co-host Angel acknowledges this difficult reality, and encourages trying to transform this way of thinking into encouragement. When you hear stories from other entrepreneurs more successful than you, remind yourself they are at a different stage of the journey and use their wisdom as inspiration and motivation. You can get there too – it’s just going to be brick by brick, and step by step!
On your mission
Although they work in very different spaces, our co-hosts and panelists are all united by the same mission: to help people reach their potential.
When you have mere goals instead of missions, it can be harder for you to focus and keep working when times get tough. For example, if your goal is to reach a million dollars, that’s admirable – but without the “why”, you may stumble and falter without a good enough reason to keep striving towards the finish line.
Everybody wants to make more money. But it’s the intentionality behind those metrics – the mission behind the goal – that really matters. Without it, your audience will feel that inauthenticity and question why they should do business with you. Augment your mission with consistency and strategy, and the results you want to see will happen with enough time.
Do it with ThriveCart
Our panelists are able to deliver their business’s offerings to audiences all over the globe thanks to ThriveCart. Our leading online cart solution helps you build a business you love – so why not start today? Get your lifetime license and discover what you can offer the world with ThriveCart.
