003: Build in Public Report – 02 Oct 2022

Welcome to my weekly Build in Public report, where I discuss the activities that contribute to me building a $20K/month one-person business (starting from zero) and what I have learned each week. 

(Quick shoutout to my new subscribers – you know who you are!)

Why am I doing this? Here’s why: 

Why am I doing this?

– A lot of #buildinpublic posts I’ve seen are typically for SaaS/software companies and product creators. Not really services.

– Public accountability

– Inspire others

– Improve my writing & storytelling skills

– Get feedback to improve

— Anfernee Chansamooth (@anferneec)
Sep 29, 2022

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In this edition:

Goals & targetsImportant Goings-On this past weekOKRs can be both a blessing and a curse (and two tips for ensuring that you create effective OKRs)What worked and didn’t work with my Twitter growthWhy most business coaching is brokenHow I landed my first coaching clientWhat’s next

Goals & targets

Wrapped up Sept as follows:

Takeaways:

I feel this is a pretty good result considering that I’m a one-man band (for now).I’m still balancing goal-setting, updating Weekdone regularly, and allocating time to work on projects efficiently. In other words, working ON the business vs. working IN the business.I like that WeekDone makes it easy to set up objectives by function/departments. I decided to keep this structure as it helps me put my “CEO” hat on and think about what’s happening in different areas of the business. As a professional marketer it’s easy for me to put most of my attention on marketing and neglect other areas like finance and delivery. As I only discovered this tool halfway through the month, I only had two weeks to really learn the tool and think about what my objectives were for the month. Hence I had no clear sales objectives because frankly that wasn’t my focus for the month. Having said that I still ended up with a great result in terms of revenue generated for Sept (more on that below).

Here’s my first attempt at OKRs for October:

I’ll share two important things I learned about OKRs in the lessons section below. If you’re thinking about implementing OKRs in your business or are finding that you’re struggling with the objectives you’ve set previously, you’ll want to read this. 

Important Goings-On this past week

1/ My website hit 1.6K visitors and 50K+ views in one month

I finally completed the last step for transitioning to my new domain last week and set a domain-level redirect from my old site to the new domain. That basically means that if you type in simplecreativemarketing.com, you’ll get automatically redirected to theAuthenticMarketer.com. 

When I decided to rebrand and change domains in March 2021, one of my biggest concerns was the impact on monthly traffic. It had taken me 6 years of work to get the traffic to where it was at that point.

Before the transition, the old site averaged around 2K visitors per month. Here’s the Fathom Analytics report for Sept 2021: 

Now here’s the report for last month:

Perhaps the most fascinating insight comes when we compare the above report to a Google Analytics report for the old site (Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2020):

As you can see, at its peak in Oct 2020, the old website reached 1,945 visitors and the total pageviews for the year was just above 16K.

So last month, my new website attracted nearly the same amount of visitors (1,621) and more page views in one month (52,103) than for the entire year of 2020 (16,390)! 

So it’s safe to say that the combination of:

off-page optimizations that my amazing web designer (and WordPress superstar) Colleen has been working on, and on-page optimizations I’ve been doing on individual blog posts and keywords last month

have been working. The transition to the new domain has been a success! 

Over the coming months, I will be breaking down how I attack keyword research and content optimization. As well as how I monetize the incoming traffic.

I’ll also give my paid subscribers the chance to submit their websites and content (articles, social media posts, sales pages, emails, etc.) for a video teardown. I’ll review what you give me and provide important, specific feedback to help you make your content more effective for generating conversations and sales. 

So if you’re interested in learning this stuff to apply it to your website and business, upgrade to Authentic Marketer Plus for only $10 USD per month. 

2/ I joined a 100-day challenge

I’m currently on day 9 of Kate Erickson’s free 100-day Goal challenge. Kate is John Lee Dumar’s wife and business partner. (JLD is the host of the popular Entrepreneur on Fire podcast, author of The Common Path to Uncommon Success, and creator of the Mastery Journal)

Kate’s goal is to upload a 5-10 min podcast episode every day for 100 days, and she’s got a FB group for participants to share daily updates and interact.

My goal is to post on Twitter every day for 100 days.

Anyways I’m sharing this here because:

It’s not too late to join.The 5 questions listed on the 100-day challenge page are great for daily goal setting and reflection. Try them out! Kate’s podcast is worth a listen for daily inspiration and to spark creative thinking.

3/ Launched a new email-based coaching program and signed my first client!

I’ve been toying around for months with the idea of adding marketing coaching to my list of service offerings, and three things happened last week that I took as a “you should probably listen and act now” message from the Universe.

I acted on it, and now I’m kicking off a 12-month coaching program designed to help small business owners get the accountability and results they want to achieve  – without paying a crazy amount for it and no zoom calls.

If you’re interested in getting some weekly coaching from me to help you with your marketing, simply reply with “Accelerator” in the subject, and I’ll send you some info.

You can read more about what happened last week, why I’m not a fan of most business coaching, how I landed my first coaching client, and what I learned this week under the Sales section below.