Welcome to Less Is the Strategy, the podcast that's gonna help you to simplify, strip away complexity, and finally escape the cult of hustle, so that you can scale your business in an easier way.
My name is Ant Hodges. I'm the author of the book Simplify the Funnel. You can grab your copy over at simplifythefunnel.com. This book was a labour of love, but it's become a message that is so important for the online business world and the online business community today.
If you're an entrepreneur, a creator, a coach, an educator, and you've been creating courses and serving people all over the world... because that's what we can do when we harness the power of the internet. We can actually reach out to communities that we have zero contact with from around the world, and actually serve them, to actually solve the problems and challenges that they have in their lives.
Now, one of the problems in this industry really came to light as a bit of an epiphany to me this week. I just celebrated my 45th birthday this week. And you know, when you get to birthdays, particularly milestones... not that 45 is a significant milestone, it's just another birthday for me... you reflect, you spend time thinking about what you're doing, and what the last year has been like, what the next year is gonna be like. And for me particularly, I do a lot of thinking around my business, and who I'm serving, and what I'm doing in my business to help other people.
In thinking all of that through, something sort of dawned on me that I picked up a little while ago from an author. I was on a webinar that he was running, and he was talking about how he'd fallen into this complexity trap. He's a tech based entrepreneur, teaches people how to use tech and all of this kind of stuff. And he'd fallen into this trap of complexity, specifically around his offers.
And what I mean by this is, it's been ingrained in us from every entrepreneur who's fairly successful, that you may have followed, that I may have followed... there's this premise that we need multiple streams of income in our business to be able to succeed. There are many pros and cons to having multiple streams of income. But one of the cons, one of the drawbacks, is that it adds huge layers of complexity to your business and to your life.
And I was reflecting on this thinking, and I was picturing and trying to look, and trying to kind of remember the successes from many of the online gurus that I've studied with over the years. And I tried to start to think about their business models and what they had. And when I look at it, most of, if not all of, the super successful entrepreneurs in this kind of knowledge commerce, creator space, whatever we wanna call it, they have very few streams of income.
They may have, like this author had... he's got his book, he's got his YouTube and podcast, which create sponsorship and affiliate income, and then he has his mastermind type program. Effectively three streams of income. But the trap that he fell into was thinking he needed to build out all of these funnels, he needed to have all of these complex things going on in his business in order for him to be able to succeed. Which all it did was just spread his focus too thin over lots of different things, so that he wasn't actually able to succeed at anything really well.
When he stripped back, and he removed some of the focus on the streams of income in his business, and focused instead on the things that really mattered, things started to change. By refocusing and doubling his efforts on his YouTube channel, he grew his visibility, and he grew his affiliate income. Sponsorship on his podcasts... he was able to charge more for that sponsorship, because he was getting a higher reach, and he was focusing on the production of that podcast in the best possible way.
His book sales, when he launched his book... and very similar to me, when you launch the book, you start marketing the book, and you start talking about it, and then other things come in. You think, okay, well, I've done the book thing, I'm gonna move on to the next thing. But actually, what you need to do is just be consistent in that. And he just doubled down on his efforts to sell his book again, because his book was top of funnel, effectively selling a no brainer product. I.e. a book like mine at the top of the funnel, and then being able to upsell and cross sell through that product. It meant if he focused all of his efforts in his public marketing and his advertising on his books, everything else would become trickle down. So he doubled down on that.
In terms of follow up, within his sort of nurture sequences, within his communications to his community, the first offer and main offer was to invite them to become part of a higher ticket program. It's like $500 a month to be part of a higher ticket group, training group, coaching group, mastermind type program. And it was those three streams of revenue that he's focused on for the last two years, and it's just catapulted his business into another level.
Now this is the reality that I feel like you're probably in, and I know I've been in, and trying to work out what should we be focused on in our business, where should we put our efforts, where should we be doubling down, and where should we be stripping energy and time back. So that's my question for you today from this podcast. What stripping back needs to happen in your business to enable growth? And I'm talking specifically about the streams of income and the offers that you have out in the marketplace.
If you have multiple streams of income right now, I'm not saying turn them off. What I'm saying is, what streams of income produce the easiest result for you and the best results? Because if you can double down and focus your energies and your efforts and your campaigns on those things, then things will catapult.
If you spend a lot of time and energy and effort, like everyone does... and I'd say for the first six months of this year, I've focused on one stream of revenue that, if those sales came in, would be oh, life changing. But they are the hardest ones to get.
I've made this switch, and I've talked to my community about this. I've made a switch to stop focusing on getting fractional CMO client work in the business in terms of my cold marketing work. And actually, the marketing and the advertising that will generate me the best impact that I can have in the world will be to add people to my community. I run something called the Simplify Business Community. You can find out all that information over at hodgesnet.com. Hodgesnet.com is where all of my training, all of my community sits. It's the business that is effectively a side product of Ant Hodges, the brand. But it's where you can learn how to use the power of the internet for more profit. So that's hodgesnet.com.
The Simplify Business Community exists to build this network of people who really wanna dovetail and simplify their business. The community hasn't really been growing over the last year or so, because that's not where my focus has been. My focus has been all on my fractional CMO, my higher ticket items, and it's not been on the community.
And for me, this reflection this week was, that stream of revenue is not gonna go away. But my LinkedIn, my website, my podcast, the CMO Field Notes podcast, is generating a level of interest and inquiry, and I'm just gonna keep those things going. But what I would like to double down on and focus on, because it's having the biggest impact to the most people, is to add more people into my community, which is my lower end product.
My community is actually something that I position after my book. You buy my book through my website over at simplifythefunnel.com, you'll be invited to become part of the community, so that you can learn how to embed these principles into your business and be around people that are doing the same. And that for me is where my energy and my focus needs to be.
So in whittling down my own business, and being quite vulnerable with you here on this podcast, I wanted to unpack this to show you the journey that I've been on. The journey started, in terms of simplification, in Portugal in 2023. Sat in Porto on my own, when I made the decision to cut the revenue streams that I had in my business, which were agency based. They were the done for you Kajabi build funnels, they were the done for you social media, the done for you video editing and publishing, the done for you... oh, advertising. I couldn't get the words out, they were there in my head, but I wasn't sure where to find them, and I eventually found it. Facebook advertising, big one that we did. They were our main kind of core services, and then strategy on top of that, and running events, and all of these kinds of things.
I wanted to simplify in 2023. That's why I started to write the book as well. Because looking back, it's the clients that simplified, and only had their minimum viable funnel, which were just one or two offers set up, were crushing it. And I was still in this trap of going, I need these multiple streams of income to be able to make my business a success. And in reality, I even wrote the flipping book on it. I just needed to simplify. So even I got caught up in this trap, because I'm still listening to entrepreneurs talking about multiple streams of revenue.
But it really hit home when I reviewed the last year, and then kind of thought about what I want for the next year, following my birthday. And the decision is to simplify. I need to practice what I preach. I'm going to strip away my focus on trying to make streams of revenue in my business work that have been a struggle. And I'm gonna focus on streams of revenue in my business that can have the biggest impact.
My new ROI is return on impact. And I believe that if I impact enough people, if I change enough people's lives, if I can transform their marketing and their business in such a way, then I will get the financial reward for that. So my focus is not on the financial reward, my focus is on the impact that I can have in the world, to change the world. So that's where I'm moving to, that's my focus.
And I just wanna ask you that question. What streams of revenue are taking you away from what you should be focused on in your business? What streams of revenue are taking up your energy and your effort and not actually producing the results? But what streams of revenue, if you double down on, could create even more results for you, for your business?
I've been Ant Hodges, this is Less Is the Strategy, the podcast that helps you to simplify and scale. If you've enjoyed this episode, if something really resonates with what I've said here, then I'd love to hear about it. Please find me over on any of the social channels at Ant Hodges. But please, pass this episode on to somebody else who might need to hear it. Share it in your socials with people, and subscribe wherever you're listening, or even if you're watching over on YouTube. Make sure that you're subscribed, so that you get future episodes as they come through. Less really is the strategy. We can scale when we simplify.
Well, thanks for watching Less Is the Strategy. My name is Ant Hodges. This podcast exists here on YouTube, but also on any of the other podcast players, to help you to do one thing, to simplify and scale. Ultimately, simplicity is the thing that will help you to grow your business. Complexity is the thing that will kill your business.
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I've been Ant Hodges, I'm here to help you simplify. So let's do it. Simplify and scale.