“Kill your website. Go build an Automated Selling System instead.” - Sarah Nicole Nadler

Do you wish you had time to travel more, spend time with your kids, relax and just enjoy the fruits of your labor…but you’re stuck putting out brush fires and dealing with customers in your business?

Let me show you how to make your business boring AF…so you can go invest time or money in other things. 

In 2008 I sold my cleaning business and went backpacking through Mexico. It had been a rough year. My sister had passed away not long before, my parents got divorced, my alcoholic boyfriend couldn’t keep a job and I was forced to pay both our bills with my small but mighty business.

I was burned out emotionally and overwhelmed with managing my employees and juggling sales calls. 

So I sold that business.

I traveled for a few years, living off my savings and volunteering for various charities that were meaningful to me. 

When I started to run out of cash, I looked at starting another business. But I knew what I did NOT want: another business that would turn me into an overwhelmed, burned-out mess.

I started searching for answers online and that is when I discovered the power of automation and digital marketing.

After building my first automated sales system, I was able to relax and spend less than an hour a day generating all the leads I needed to stay fully booked as a wedding pro. 

And once I started to max out my capacity, I flipped the script on my whole business model! Learning how to package up my IP (intellectual property) into a Signature Program allowed me to stop trading so much time-for-money and made my business boring AF…all while earning more than I did when I was working 15+ hour days on the weekends! 

All that extra cash allowed me to start investing… and the rest is history ;-) 

With that said, let me show you how to use automation and digital marketing to make your business very very “boring”! 👊

Step One: Turn Your Ideas Into Passive Income

I used to think that you had to be a top earner in your industry, with all the bells, whistles and certifications, before you could start earning passive income with your ideas.

Luckily that is not at all true!

Anybody can turn their intellectual property (IP) into passive income, so long as it's really really good (good = gets actual results!).

If your current business relies heavily on you trading time-for-money, this might be the perfect way for you to either a) add an additional stream of revenue not tied to your time, or b) replace your current business model entirely with a more passive income stream.

No matter what your goal is for this, we’re going to make your business boring AF by leveraging your intellectual property to earn money passively.

Intellectual Property Your intellectual property includes any work or invention that is the result of your creativity: such as a book, online course, app, software, trade secret, etc. It is anything you create or own the rights to, and for which you can apply for a patent, copyright or trademark.

The first step to turning your ideas into passive income is to complete this sentence: 

“I have a proven methodology that solves ________ problem for ________ people.”

That’s it! 

If you have that, and you’ve gotten real results…even if only for yourself, you’ve got an idea that could earn you passive income.

Now, there are a few things to avoid when coming up with your idea:

1. Don’t rip off other people’s ideas and call it your own

2. Don’t create your offer or product in a vacuum and try selling it before you’ve ever proven that it works

3. Do not allow imposter syndrome to prevent you from ever getting started

If you can avoid those, you’ve got a pretty good chance of turning your idea into passive income!

With every episode of Fierce Feminine Finance, I like to empower you with a POWERFUL free resource that goes with the episode which you can implement right away to create some of the same results, if not better, in your business.

This week, since we are talking about how to make your business very very boring, I put together a list of 20 Ways To Earn Passive Income With Your Ideas so you know the best questions to ask your financial advisor.

After going through this free training you will be able to choose a strategy that will help you retire early while living the lifestyle you're currently dreaming about.

You can download it right away by clicking here or on the photo above 👆

Alright, you’ve got an idea and you’ve turned it into a product you can sell (an ebook, journal, template, online course, masterclass, etc). 

Now it’s time to figure out how to sell it in a way that doesn’t trade your time for money.

Step Two: Build An Automated Selling System

When I built my first business, a residential cleaning company in Colorado, I got my first clients by knocking door-to-door in high end residential areas and high-rise apartment buildings. 

My second business as a wedding pro, I did a ton of networking and paid thousands of dollars for shitty leads on sites like Thumbtack, WeddingWire and TheKnot. 

Both of these strategies took a ton of time and to be honest if I hadn’t been desperate I probably would have quit! 

But I had no other way to make ends meet and so I exhausted myself, worked long evenings and even longer weekends, and made it work. 

But when I learned about funnel-building, all of that changed. 

A “funnel” is simply an Automated Selling System. I use Laptop Lifestyle Funnels to do this, an easy drag-and-drop software anyone can use. An Automated Selling System consists of “landing pages” (like baby websites) and email automation, both meant to do 3 things: Attract, Nurture and Convert. 

a) Attract

The first step of building an Automated Selling System is to figure out how to attract people to it. There’s no point in building a funnel if you don’t have a solid plan for how to get eyeballs on the thing you sell!

The best way to attract people to your Automated Selling System is using a freebie.

Whenever I think of the freebie funnel, I remember hanging out at the mall as a kid and craving Auntie Anne's Pretzels.

Auntie Anne has one of the most brilliant examples of a freebie I’ve ever seen. Her attraction strategy is simple: pump the smell of cinnamon and sugar out in a crowded mall and have an employee stand to one side with a tray of free pretzel bites to sample.

Those little pretzel bites were like crack. After smelling that, you couldn't not try one, and once you did, it was impossible not to buy a pretzel!

The employee with the samples was usually some awkward teenager who couldn’t even look you in the eye. They said nothing. There was no pitch. No walking up to passersby or  haranguing them to try one. 

The freebie (pretzel bite) was so good it needed no selling. 

That’s the hallmark of a good freebie–it sells itself. If you have to “convince” someone to take it, you’re offering the wrong thing. 

To pick the right freebie, you have to get inside your customer/client’s head and ask yourself, “What do they really really want?”. 

(Your freebie is always something they want, not something you think they need.)

But a lot of successful business owners fail at this because they overcomplicate it.

When I bought The Pemberley Farm as an investment property and started building an Automated Selling System to attract couples to book their wedding there, my freebie was a price sheet. 

That’s it. 

When brides or their moms are looking for a wedding venue, the #1 thing they want to know on my website is: What do you charge? 

So instead of putting the price on the website, like so many venues do, or hiding it entirely (which just frustrates the heck out of introverts and people in a hurry to choose a venue) I made a button:

When a person clicks that button, they get a popup that asks for their name, email and phone number and then instantly sends them a complete list of my packages + pricing. 

This freebie works because only someone who is seriously considering our farm for their wedding would ever relinquish their name, email and phone number just to get the price. 

b) Nurture

Most people put up a website for their business but don’t know how to build the Automated Selling System (funnel) on the backend that makes it work. So they just end up with…a fancy website that makes no money.

I have almost nothing else on this website.

It has three testimonials, a picture & short bio on me, a few photos of the farm and this button. That’s it.

Yet this website brings me 5-10 leads per week, running zero ads and hardly ever posting on social media!

Kill your website. Go build an Automated Selling System instead.

Once the person has entered their info, my Automated Selling System sends them to a page that looks like this:

If they scroll down, they will see testimonials from past couples who got married at Pemberley, a video about our farm, and a little info about the history of the farm and the settlers who lived there.

If they do not book a tour, my Automated Selling System shoots me a text with the person’s name and phone number so I can immediately follow up, and it puts them into an automated email marketing system that continues to nurture them with wedding planning resources, photos of weddings at the farm, etc. 

The whole point at this stage is not just to "sell them" my wedding venue services...but to build know, like and trust.

c) Convert

All this helps me book weddings on our farm without having to run all over town attending networking events, or frantically calling shitty leads I paid for…only for some other venue owner to reach them first because they bought the same lead!

My Automated Selling System is incredibly simple. 

And it works like a charm to bring inbound leads and automated bookings, with automated email and text nurturing to remind the person to show up for their tour.

Once a couple has toured the farm, it even allows me to send them a proposal with a couple clicks, follow up with them to make a deposit before someone else steals their wedding date… and sends welcome emails to new clients as well as task reminders to my event assistant. 

And because our farm is a self-serve venue, couples set up, host, and break down their own wedding. 

The last large scale wedding we had, I sat cozy in my kitchen working on my next YA fantasy novel while a hundred guests enjoyed the ceremony and reception! And got a 5-star review at the end from the couple. All from 20 minutes of work showing them our farm before they booked, and pushing a few buttons.

This is almost completely passive income… compared to 15+ hour days on the weekend that most wedding pros spend.

Can you see yourself doing this? Completely booking out your calendar using an Automated Selling System, and then delivering high value (not tied to your time)....and seeing thousands of dollars show up in your bank account?

This is the power of using your intellectual property to creating passive income.

Step 3: Filling Your Funnel

Now, you may already have a funnel in your business

Maybe this idea of an Automated Selling System isn’t new to you. And if you’ve been in the online business world for a while now, you may have even tried this…and failed to earn money passively.

If that’s the case, the most likely cause is that you couldn’t figure out how to fill the funnel with the right people. 

There are two reasons this might happen:

1. You offered something people need but not necessarily something they really want 

2. You don’t have an automated way to get it in front of enough people

Imagine if Auntie Anne offered fermented cod liver oil samples instead of cinnamon/sugar pretzels. Cod liver oil is (apparently) full of healthy fats and vitamins! According to my grandma, it’s something everybody needs. But nobody really gets into a fevered enthusiasm about it. 

Imagine if Auntie Anne had her employee stand on a little dirt road in the middle of nowhere, waiting hopefully with their tray of pretzel bites…praying that someone someday will walk by and try one?

I think you get my point.

After you have turned your idea into a product you can deliver that doesn’t demand your time for money…

After you have built an Automated Selling System that attracts, nurtures and converts your audience without you having to hustle…

You still need a traffic source. 

If you’ve got the most delicious, drool-worthy, gotta have it! freebie in the world…

You need to get eyeballs on it. 

Cue the part where most people tell you to post on social media or run paid ads.

 I’ve tried both.

1. Selling on social media requires time and good sales skills 

2. Running paid ads requires a lot of money and good copyrighting skills

I’m an investor, not a lazy get-rich-quick guru, so I often invest my time (selling on social) AND my money (run paid ads) to drive traffic to my funnels.

But there is a third option. One that works great if you don’t have time OR money to invest…or if you simply want a turnkey option.

Go where people are already congregating, stand in the corner, and hold out your tray of delectable deliciousness.

No pitching. No haranguing passersby. Perfect for the introvert.

Just…be there. And offer something people really really want. 

Alex Hormozi talks about this in his book $100M Leads. If you want to build an amazing hot dog business, and could have ONE competitive advantage…what would it be?

The wrong answer is “the best hot dog” or “the cheapest”, etc.

The correct one? 

“Put your hot dog stand in front of a starving crowd.” - Alex Hormozi

So how do I find starving crowds? 

1. For Pemberley Farm I used the power of SEO. By utilizing the Google Keyword Planner tool, Pinterest, and AnswerThePublic I was able to identify what keywords engaged couples are already searching in my area (Kansas City) and put my Automated Selling System front and center in those search results.

2. In my money coaching brand I use brand collaborations and affiliates. Every time I want to fill my funnels in a passive way, I ask myself this question: Who has what I need and needs what I have? And then I go make that person an offer so good they feel stupid saying no.

No matter how you do it, putting the right freebie in front of a starving crowd is the best way to drive traffic into your Automated Selling System. Want to learn how to build one of these yourself? Get on the waitlist for Laptop Lifestyle Academy, the coaching program I joined that taught me how to automate my sales and bookings!

And that is how you make any business boring AF... so you can go invest your time and money in other things!