Happy New Year!

This is the first episode of 2023, so I want to dive into it by sharing my thoughts on the new year. I’m not sharing any forecasts or predictions. It’s hard to predict anything that will happen. So what I’m going to do instead in this episode of Art of Online Business is share nine thoughts on what’s ahead for 2023.

Through my Accelerator coaching program, I have access to a lot of different types of businesses, mindsets, and strategies in addition to my own nine years of experience running an online business. So I have a lot of thoughts on ways that you can set yourself apart, and create a healthier, more sustainable business that will help you serve your people in a deeper way.

Along with those nine thoughts, I’m also sharing a bonus thought that is crucial because if you don’t have it, it’s going to be very hard to be successful in your business or it’s going to take much longer for you to be successful.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why trusting yourself is essential to success
• The importance of taking a human approach to leadership
• Why you need to pay attention to the market
• My thoughts on mental health and burnout in online business
• Why you should be making decisions based on your values
• The importance of conversation over conversion
• What to focus on with marketing content
• My thoughts on SEO and short-form content
• Why data matters
• How to offer more personalized content
• Why listening to your audience will set you apart

Links & Resources:

• Check out the Motivating by Appreciation MBA Inventory
• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

My Exact Business Plan for 2023

My Biggest Lessons and Takeaways of 2022

$1M From a $297 Course in Less Than 2 Years | w/Jessica Berk

All right. Welcome to today’s episode of The Art of Online Business podcast. I’m Rick Moretti. Happy New Year. This is the first episode of 2023. Hope your holidays were awesome and I wanted to dive into the show here in the New Year with an episode with a type of episode that I’ve done the past few years, and they’re always really successful episodes throughout the year. And so and that is kind of sharing my thoughts on the upcoming year. I’m not into doing forecasts or predictions or anything like that. Nothing against people who do. I’m just like, it’s so hard to predict anything that’s going to happen, especially what we’ve seen over the past few years. And so what I’d rather do and what I’m going to do today is kind of share with you my thoughts about what I’m seeing in the online space and then also what I see as a matter of working with 30 different types of online entrepreneurs in my accelerator coaching program, I have a you know, I have access to a lot of different types of businesses and a lot of different types of strategies and mindsets and all that. In addition to my own nine years of success in running an online business. And so I want to share with you nine thoughts. That’s actually ten because I have a bonus one for you and I want to start right out with that bonus one. And this is sort of like if you don’t have this in place, it’s going to be very, very hard to be successful in your business or you’ll get there.

But it’s going to take a lot of time. And I’m saying this from experience. So and what this is, is trusting yourself. Here’s what I mean by that. Years ago, I used to have this. I used to come up with ideas to do in the business or, you know, maybe doing something in the business already. And I was like, Oh, maybe I tried this. Or, you know, I’m thinking about doing this instead or whatever it might be. And what I would do is I would go to literally five different people and ask for their opinion on whatever that idea was or whatever that thought I was having was, and I would get their opinion on what they thought about it. And everybody would. I would get five different opinions. And so by the time I was done with asking for everybody’s opinion, I was more confused than I was when I started. And what I realized this was several years ago. What I realized is that I needed to trust myself. I had a ton of evidence that I know really, really well how to grow a very successful online business. And I started to believe more in myself from that perspective. And so a lot of that came from trusting in what my ideas were or what my thoughts were, etc.. And so, again, this was a hard lesson to learn years and years ago.

But once I did, things got so much easier from a taking action standpoint because when you trust yourself, you, you know that you can’t do wrong. What I mean by that is, you know, it’s the whole cliched of like, there’s no failure, right? If we try something and it doesn’t work. Okay, great. What do we learn from that? And the key there is speed to next action. So what do we learn from whatever just didn’t work to moving on to the next thing and trying something else, using the knowledge that we just took from whatever it is that we try that that didn’t quote unquote work. And so I see this a lot in a lot of the students that I work with or there’s that there’s that trust in themselves. That’s that’s a challenge and. When they have great ideas. Something holds them back from moving forward. Right. And there’s a deeper thing that’s going on there that we’re not going to dive into in this episode, but that I like to dive into with people when these types of things come up. But I see this sort of theme in it’s an overarching theme I see a lot across the board, even with established online course creators and coaches, It’s that you’ve got to trust yourself when you trust yourself in moving forward and even moving forward, especially moving forward in the face of that uncertainty, that’s when you’re going to be getting ahead in your business and getting to wherever it is that you want to be going.

So that’s sort of the bonus thought as a to be a successful online business owner is to trust yourself. And by the way, this I’m gearing this conversation to the established course creator stablished membership creator or established coach in your online business. Now, of course, all of the stuff that I’m going to talk about will also be relevant to you if you’re in the earlier stages of business, especially like trust yourself. But that’s who I’m kind of speaking to you today. All right. So my first thought is, so I’m going to start out here, by the way, with some of the like less marketing kind of things, marketing kind of things and focus first on the mindset and the leadership part of having a successful online business. So the number official number one is improving yourself as a leader in 2023 is or is going to happen so much. I think faster and more clearly by taking a more human approach to your team. And what I mean by that is, you know, and I was guilty this for a long time as well, is we’re kind of like we get caught in the well, we have so much to do. I just want people to do what they’re supposed to be doing on the team and get their work done and then just keep moving through stuff.

Right. Getting. Getting things done in the business. When. We don’t really take time to get to know them as actual people. You know, what are their what are their interests? What are their goals outside of the business? Even going so far as like not even going so far. Like, this is a basic thing. And I’m actually going to do a podcast episode about this coming up, specifically about this topic. But giving them context when you’re talking to them about owning something in the business, right? So like why? Why are you having them do whatever project that that you want them to do? Like how does it fit into the overall vision rather than then just assigning it to them and saying, go do this, which is not taking the human approach slowing down and speaking to them as the human that they are and the person that is on your team who really, I’m sure wants to see you succeed as much as you want them to help you succeed. It’s slowing down to speak to them, to give them context as to number one, like where does their role fit into the overall organization, into the vision, into the mission of the business, the impact that they’re having. And, you know, like when you get them a project again, like why are they doing that project? Where does it fit into everything? Taking the time to slow down, to have, you know, conversations with them that are not always business related.

You know, one of the if one of the and it’s harder to do with with contractors I understand but at the same time like I think it’s really important to do this as well. But you know, how often do you sit down with your team or do you set aside time to talk to your team individually about what are their goals, what are they trying to achieve both in the in the business and outside the business? You know, like what makes them tick? Basically, so few CEOs of online businesses take the time to do that with their team. And when you do that, when you show like legitimate human being interest in them. That is going to go such a long way. Now, that’s not why you’re doing it, but when you do that, you’re going to get so like such a bigger buy in, if you will, from that person or from your team when you take the time and initiative and effort to have those conversations. So taking a more human approach to your team. Two things come to mind when I’m sharing this is like, number one, I had this kind of conversation with somebody on my team a few years ago and like one of their goals was to take their family to Disney World, and they hadn’t been able to do that in a long time because it’s expensive to to go to Disney World or to Disneyland, especially today.

And I was like, all right, amazing. So I, I take note of that and I’m going to let I let them know that, like, I’m going to do whatever I can to help them make that possible. Like and I did, I was able to like thankfully, I was able to make that happen and not like not for the entire trip, but I was able to contribute to make it, you know, a sizable help in allowing them to do that. That goes such a long way, right? Because I legitimately care about this person and I thus care about their family and their happiness and all that stuff. Like how hard is it to be able to do those sorts of things? And it doesn’t even have to be like a trip to, to, to Disney World or anything like that. You know, there is and I don’t have the name of it off the top of my head. I’ll link it up in the show notes for today’s episode over at Rick Mull radio.com in the podcast section. But there is there’s an assessment that you can take. It’s like a $15 license fee for each person. And it’s kind of like a love language for for business. And you can have people on your team take this assessment and it will tell you, like what motivates them. We often think that money motivates people in terms of like cash bonuses or whatever, and that might be true, But a lot of people are more motivated by an enjoy maybe like experiences or giving them an excursion or public praise or just giving them paid additional paid time off or whatever it might be.

We often assume that money is the biggest motivator for people when in fact a lot of times it’s something outside of that. But we won’t know what that is until we actually take the time and effort to find out. So again, there’s that this assessment I’ll it’s it’s like the business love language assessment there’s a better term for it but I’ll link it up in the show notes for today’s episode. You click it, it’s like 15. I have there’s no affiliation for me, just like $15 fee or something to to for per license. And it’s great. It’ll give you really good insight into the each member of your of your team. So that’s number one improve yourself as a leader in 2023 by taking a more human approach to your team. And I’ll tell you right now that your team is craving this sort of effort by you. All right. Okay. Number two, pay very close attention. And this should go without saying. But I this is super, super, especially here in 2023 where there’s so much economic uncertainty and stuff is changing so quickly. Pay very close attention to your market and the people that you serve. And there’s a lot of different ways to go about this, you know, like just baking time into your into your schedule to, you know, read newsletters, listen to, you know, specific content or people that you look up to or or what have you talk to your people talk to the people that you serve.

Talk to the people in your audience, Talk to your customers. Talk to your students. Make sure that you’re getting feedback from them on what is most helpful to them. What are they struggling with? Are you solving that problem for them? What are their feelings about your offer or offers, etc.? And when you do this, when you pay close attention to this, it will give you a higher probability of if you need to make changes based on what’s happening in, you know. On day to day as the economy or the world or what have you or your space, you’re going to be able to make changes if necessary a lot more quickly. But it’s going to be a lot harder if you’re not paying attention, if you’re just head is down. And you’re just creating. All right. I’m just going to create content and I’m going to do my I’m going to create my course and I’m going to just create content for my membership. And that’s all I’m doing. Well, that’s all well and good. And those all those things are necessary. But you also got to be paying attention to what’s actually happening in your market and listening to the people that you serve.

I’m going to talk about listening more here coming up. Okay. Number three. Burnout. There’s a bigger focus on the reality of burnout and the mental health side of running an online business. So my thought on this is that in 2022 last year, I spoke a lot about burnout in the mental health side of running an online business here in the podcast. And I was doing it. I mean, honestly, I think that I was doing it before the conversation was really kind of more I’m not saying I set a trend or anything like that. I would just like I was really thankful to be able to have that conversation before the topic of burnout kind of became more widely talked about, which I think is a really good thing that it’s being talked a lot more about because so many people experience burnout, experience mental health issues that are caused by what’s going on, like their business that they’ve created without realizing what’s actually going on. And I’m raising my hand like that. That was me for a long time. And I’ll be honest, like towards the end of 2022. I was feeling some burnout myself. It had been a long year. A lot of different reasons and was recognizing that. But without, you know, past history of the types of things I’ve gone through over the years and I’ve talked about a lot here in the podcast about, you know, my struggles with anxiety and depression and so forth.

You know, if I if I wasn’t up sort of on really being in tune with, you know, my emotion and body and all that type of stuff based on things that have gone on in the past and conversations I had with people, etc., I would have just thought like, Oh man, I’m just failing, right? Like, my brain isn’t working. Well, know there’s something more there’s something deeper going on here. And I think there’s going to be a continue there’s going to continue to be a big focus in 2023 on burnout on the mental health side of running an online business, because, again, it’s been sort of like so taboo to talk about for so long. And I think that these topics will continue to be a big focus, especially as, you know, the hustle and grind mentality and culture continues to be proliferated, especially in the online space, right? Like, if you’re not working 17 hours a day, you are failing, you’re doing something wrong, you’re not working hard enough. And I just think that’s such a load of crap because there’s you know, we’ve talked about it on the podcast and also going back to the team like this is not just for us, right? As CEOs of our business and leaders of. Our business. We need to keep this, you know, this mindfulness of burnout and mental health top of mind for our team and ensure that they’re not experiencing burnout by what you are doing to help them not fall into burnout.

Like what kind of resources are you providing for your team? You know, and I say resources. This can be something as simple as, you know, checking their workload, not making sure that they’re doing five different roles on the team or, you know, working 60 hours a week. Et cetera, etc.. You as the CEO of responsibility to your team to ensure that that burnout isn’t happening for your team. And then if if they are experiencing that, hopefully you’ve set up a culture in the business, in the team such that they’re able to talk to you about that and that you can work together to help them navigate that. So I think this is going to be a really much bigger focus on in 2023, the reality of burnout and the mental health side of things. Number four. Is values. She’s been listening to the podcast here for a while. You know that. It shouldn’t be surprised to hear me talk about values. I think that. You are winning in your business when you are making decisions in your business through the filter and lens of your values. If you’ve not set up values for your business, then you should. I really think you should make this a priority for 2023. This is not like a sit down for an hour and, like, come up with some values like this, like really be thoughtful and take time to do this.

You know, we’ve heard a lot about this, I think, in 2022 as well, is that especially nowadays, people want to buy from people and businesses and organizations who stand for something whose values are prevalent. You know, a great example of this is when the Patagonia founder came out in 2022 and said, like all of their profits are going to a specific I can’t remember off the top of my head I should look this up. But they’re going to a specific cause. And it’s like people who believe in in that and the cause that they’re talking about. Like you want to go support Patagonia because of that. And so by letting that like, letting that be known, they’re sort of making a, you know, a sticking a stake in the sand and saying, this is what we stand for. And so one thing that and I’ve talked a lot about the journey of our values and the values that I’ve created in my business and everything that we do in the business is through the lens of. Our values from the type of guests we have here on the podcast to the type of partners that I’m willing to partner with to the type of businesses that we allow in our accelerator program. I turn to I turned a lot of just amazing people away from accelerator in 2020 to just simply because it’s nothing personal.

That doesn’t make him a bad person at all. It’s just like there is. The business was outside the scope of the values of our values. And so when you start making decisions through the lens of your values, people are going to take notice. And so for us, we have made our values front and center. On like our accelerator page, right. So the application page for accelerator, which is Rick Muller forward slash accelerator, has our values. Front and center on the page. Right. Integrity, advocacy, vulnerability, kindness and collaboration. And I describe what each one of those is. Side note that was a big mistake I made early on when putting my values together for the business where I just listed out integrity, you know, then the next one, then the next one. And I didn’t put any kind of context or meaning to what what that means to me. And so, for example, advocacy being one of our values, we use our brand and platforms and channels to support people from all walks of life. Right. So I could just put advocacy down there and that could mean, you know, 15 different things to 15 different people. While I’m putting down what this means to me and what this means to our business, right? Like integrity, for example, it’s kind of a buzz sort of value. And it’s very easy to say something like, Oh, integrity is important because it’s important that I do what I say I’m going to do.

Okay, great. Let’s take it deeper than that. Right. And so for integrity, for us, like in our team, it’s a culture and it’s not just a set of actions, for example. And then I go into, you know, within the within the team in the business, I go into more in-depth detail on what each one of these is. But the point here being is that if you don’t have values, number one, let’s get some values for what you stand for and what you want to be about and make it known what those things are and why you’ve made those decisions. Right. The the other thing, just as an example, I remember sitting at dinner at the our accelerator retreat that we did here in San Diego back in October, and I was sitting next to a few people, a few members, and they were asking me about, Hey, like, is it true that you make a donation to a charity when we join Accelerator? And I was like, Yeah, we’ve actually been doing that for a few years now. And they were like, What? Like, why don’t you ever talk about that? And I don’t know. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with it because it’s like, I don’t want to be like performative, if you like, look at me like when someone joins Accelerator, we make a donation and but they were like, no, like, we want to know. People want to know those things.

Like if I’d known that, you know, I remember this one person saying, If I’d known that you made a donation to the Trevor Project when I joined, or when other people joined, like there would have been no hesitation when this person signed up. Right. And not that they had this person in particular did not have any hesitation because they signed up after learning about who I was and just a few in just a few days. But anyway, they were like, No, that just makes the decision so much easier to join a program where values are so important and you’re actually doing something about it. And so, you know, so yeah, some of the charities that we donated to in 2022 include the Trevor Project, Bridging Tech, Vanessa, Bayern Coola, Feeding America to write Love on Her Arms. A lot of these are related to kids. A lot of these are related to suicide prevention, LGBTQ plus suicide prevention and kids lot a lot of causes that are very values based and dear to me and the business. You know, we now put it right on the sales page, you know, basically for the program. And so that’s just another example of it’s guiding what we do and not being afraid to let people know what we stand for and why we do things. And again, people are going to be making a lot more decisions, especially going into or in 2023, about who they spend money with based on, you know, do they stand for something, Do they have values? What are they? Because if they don’t align with your values, that’s okay.

Then that’s just, you know. You are standing for something and the people that you know do align with what you’re standing for. You are going to attract, and that’s really what you want. To be doing along with values. My last point in this is I like to say conversation over conversion. What I mean by that is not doing everything at the like for the expense of a sale. Right. So simple example of this is if somebody is on the fence about purchasing your program or whatever it is, a membership or a course or coaching program, what mastermind, whatever it is. And they’re on the fence. It’s not trying to convince them to purchase. It’s slowing down for a second. Number one, recognizing that they might actually you know, there might be a legitimate, you know, something that’s holding them back. So treat them like a human being and have a conversation with them to learn more about them and their challenges and sort of where they’re coming from rather than, you know, prioritizing the conversion because it might not be a good fit for them. Maybe it is a good fit, but if it’s not a good fit, being empathetic with that and then if. Another offer from somebody else or another program or a different time or, you know, different payment option or whatever it might be is better suited to them, then you know that at least from the conversation, rather than trying to push and prioritize a conversion conversion conversion.

Right. So that is the fourth thing that forethought on 2023 values. Okay. Now we’ll kind of shift into sort of the marketing side of my thoughts in in 2023. And this first one should go as no surprise whatsoever. It is, you know, the content creator prioritizing content creation in this first one should come as no surprise whatsoever, and that is prioritizing content creation and then the marketing of that content creation. I think so many of us, myself included, I fell into this and I talked about this on just a recent episode here on the show where, you know, so many people create content, but then and that’s their primary focus, but then don’t focus on the marketing of the content. And I know that I did that for a long time, and that’s a shift that I’m getting back to in 2023. But short form video, like again, this should be of no surprise. This has been you know, we started talking about this. I remember like a few years ago and now obviously with TikTok and reels and YouTube shorts, etc., short form video, if you’re not creating short form video, you need to be right. And you know, along these lines, no longer can you get by without producing some form of consistent primary content in your business.

A podcast, YouTube videos. If your audience reads blogs, blog posts, consistent content. And then the key to that, too, is how can you create leverage to market that content? So, for example, this podcast here, not only am I recording it, but I’m also on video right now, and this video goes up on YouTube on my Art of Online Business podcast channel, because the podcast consumption as has

started to pick up considerably with people watching podcasts. And so, you know, and I’ll talk about that here in just a second in terms of, of YouTube. But, you know, I get to leverage this because it’s audio, it’s video, then we can create, you know, short form snippets, if you will, stand alone pieces of content from the video portion of this podcast. So you put on YouTube shorts to put on tik tok, to put on Instagram reels, to put on Facebook, etc., and then along with the content creation and marketing. This has been around forever. And I feel like this is one of those things that was important. I remember when I first started in online business nine years ago was super important then it felt I felt like it kind of like lost its steam, if you will. And now the importance of it has come back. Especially with the tracking issues that we’ve had post iOS 14.5 and everything like that, and that is SEO. So not only doing content, you know, for the platforms, but is it searchable and can it drive traffic back to your website? Because again, I’m going to talk about data here coming up.

But the the more opportunity that we can get what we call first party data, which means when people are on our site or we’re able to gather data from within the site that from which we’re working, rather than aggregating a whole bunch of data points like third party tracking the the better off that we’re going to be long term, right? So SEO is a great opportunity. It’s not a short game play. This is a

long game play and it can be really, really powerful. So SEO, combined with the content creation, can be really powerful too, and also along with the content creation. Meet like the customer journey is not as linear as it used to be, right? It’s like people consumed, you know, one type of content and that was what they did. And it was like, okay, I am introducing myself as a business and then I’m introducing myself as what we do, etc. It’s not as linear as it once was. It’s like, you know, people consume content all over the place and in 18 different ways. I’m just I’m exaggerating, but they’re consuming content in a lot of different ways. And so, number one, if we’re not on those platforms now, I’m not saying that you have to just jump right in to making 18. We certainly don’t do this.

And that’s it is a goal of here in 2023. But the idea is, are we meeting people where they are in their customer journey and having the right conversation? Too often I see people having one like the same conversation with everybody, right? And so if people just for as an example, if people are ready to buy from you, well, that is a very different conversation with that person than somebody who doesn’t even know you exist. And so we need to be leveraging, leveraging the content that we’re creating such that we are having the clichéd right conversation with the right person at the right time and we get to going back to that term leverage. We get to create leverage through the content that we’re or with the content that we’re creating, I should say, by repurposing it on different platforms and creating different types of content. Also on this short form content, I see there’s a shift and you know, especially the latter part on TikTok in 2022. The algorithm was really favoring, you know, sort of a how to or helpful pieces of content. I saw this sort of across the board as well. And I get a lot of feedback about the podcast here. And people tell me like when when you give strategies, meaning, people tell me, they say when you give strategies, when you tell us like, you know, if this then go do this, People love that. And I see like, this is concrete, small action steps in your content.

I really think that’s going to be a winning formula for you in 2023 as well in terms of your content and the last piece of content creation and marketing and short form video has to do with YouTube. And I and you know, there’s this has been coming it’s kind of been talked about a little bit here and there sort of the second half or maybe the the Q4 of 2022 was, you know, YouTube’s prioritization. Of content and seeing a shift in that from really how the algorithm works, where they’re creating a more of an algorithmic connection, if you will, between the YouTube shorts and the short form content to getting people to the long form content where the like YouTube shorts, you know, for much of 2022, it was more so kind of like standalone content when you know where where it’s going. And I think we saw this as. As to the reason if you saw that YouTube came out with like hey choose a handle for your YouTube channel or YouTube content. It’s a centralization of content that they’re creating. So the idea there being more so that YouTube shorts and the short form content is sort of like the gateway into that longer form content, like your longer form videos, your longer from podcast episodes or trainings or whatever. Also, YouTube is getting into the podcasting game big time, and they’re working on this now.

No clue when this is going to officially rolled out. But you know, a while ago they, you know, they hired a head of podcasting and they built out this team and so forth like they’re working on this. And you can go to YouTube now and click on the podcasting section. It’s really raw at the time recording this, but this is a focus for them. And so another reason why if you were podcasting, you should absolutely, I think, be recording video as well and then putting that video onto YouTube. Okay. Number six is and for those of you who know me, you’re not surprised by my saying this is data. So we are in a really interesting spot, I should say, place in the online world when it comes to data. Obviously, with iOS 14.5, that threw a big clink into the viability of data and tracking and in optimization and all that stuff. By the way, when that came out and I did an episode about that, I said at the very beginning of this episode that I’m not into like making forecasts or predictions or whatever. But I did predict, I did say during that time I said, You watch Apple’s doing this because they’re going to come out with their own, you know, advertising platform and this is a competitive play. And they’re putting the face of we’re advocates of privacy and all this stuff. And so, anyway, look where we are now.

Apples to apples, actually, Apple’s absolutely doing that. And so anyway, anyway. Data Metrics OC. Most importantly, you know, I saw this a lot in for some of our accelerators. This in 2022 was that they especially new people coming in to the program, they didn’t have any kind of. True knowledge of how their marketing efforts were doing, especially on the paid ad side. You know, in terms of meta ads, Facebook and Instagram, they they were just looking at. Ads manager. And that was the data that we’re relying on. Well, I’ve talked a ton about this here on the show where you’ve got to be looking at data and metrics and stats from different, you know, different channels so that you can, what I call triangulate the data. So you’re taking the data from ads manager, which is not very accurate. And then comparing it to Google Analytics, you’re then comparing it to your email CRM and you’re comparing it to whatever kind of funnel software that you’re using, right? And so you’re taking all this data from the different platforms and trying to make sense of it and trying to paint the best picture you possibly can to figure out how accurate or how well is my, you know, is my advertising, is my marketing, etc., actually working. And so you’ve got to be tracking your metrics. You’ve got to be tracking attribution. This is more advanced, right? But the more that you can have insight into, oh, these leads are coming from my Facebook and Instagram ads and then turning into sales, right? My social media like my tik-tok traffic.

I can track that coming in from here. And they’re doing X, Y, Z, like as far as converting and buying, etc.. So like I said, this is more advanced and I mean, we are preparing for a cookie less world, if you will, right? Where, you know, Google came back, it came out in the middle of 2022 that Google was pushing out the deprecation of third party tracking and basically the sunsetting. They’re not going to be allowing it from 2023 till 2024. And, you know, stay tuned to see how that goes. But we are moving towards a more first party needing to rely on first party data. First party data just is as simple of a simple example of that is if you use lead ads on Facebook, for example. Right. Because you don’t all the interaction takes place in the ad unit. Somebody doesn’t click on your ad and go to your an external landing page. It all happens within the platform, i.e. first party data because it’s happening within the platform. First party data would be like somebody is coming to your website and taking action or going like in your you’re when they come to your site, you’re asking them, you’re letting them know about your cookie policy, etc. and they’re agreeing to that first party data, right? Very, very soon.

Gone are going to are going to be the days of this third party tracking, which is an aggregation of tracking basically to paint a picture of a user. Right. So that’s exactly why you get the you know, when you’re on your phone and you get that prompt when you go to some other website, it’s like, you know, do you want to allow this whatever Yelp just off the top of my head Yelp to to track your. I forget what the wording is but like across the internet or something like that and you can say allow or don’t allow like that’s third party because third party again is tracking sort of your journey throughout the Internet and an aggregation of that data and all of that from a privacy standpoint and all that sort of thing that’s going to be going away. And so, you know, how can we be making those moves in terms of being able to do the best that we can to gather data, to gather metrics to to just to do it to begin with, because so many business owners that I see are not focusing on tracking data. It is a huge conversation I have with people when I’m working with them. An accelerator. We can’t scale something when we don’t even know like what’s actually working. We have to spend that time to ensure that we have the proper metrics, the proper attribution, the proper data dashboard. You know, Google Analytics for is going to be like they’re sunsetting, I think whatever they call it, universal analytics, as we Google Analytics as we know it this coming July and everything is moving to the fore.

And a big part of that is this moving towards a cookie list world and they’re using artificial intelligence to do modeling and performance modeling and all that stuff. But it’s critical, right? Like, you’ve got to be tracking your metrics. You’ve got to know your numbers, right, people, it’s kind of a joke. They know that when they get on a call with me and I’m going to be coaching them like you need to have your numbers because I’m going to be asking your numbers. The numbers don’t lie, right? It’s just data, but it’s telling the story of what potentially is going on. So you’ve got to make sure that you are tracking your data and making that a priority in your business and not just obviously in the marketing sense. It should go without saying you need to be tracking your, you know, your your business revenue, your expenses, your profit margin, etc., etc., your cost to acquire a customer, your lifetime customer value, all those different types of things because when you know those numbers. Knowing what to do next in your business becomes that much easier. Number seven and this is a kind of a quick one, not surprising that you’re hearing this from me, and I put it right here because it’s piggybacking off the data and that is paid ads.

Right. So, again, if you’re not taking making the effort to track the data and track the metrics and attribution and so forth, you know, UTMB codes, etc., when you’re running paid ads, I literally would not be running paid ads because we’re just throwing money out there at our ads and being like, okay, I think this is working. I’ll I’ll look at ads manager and it’ll tell me a few things that I can trust. But most of it, no. But anyway, paid ads will be an opportunity to stay top of mind in 2023 with all of the economic uncertainty. This is not the time to stop marketing. Quite the opposite. What happens is people often pull back on their paid ad efforts because they’re cutting back on spend during economic uncertainty. And so that leaves opportunities for those of us who see these, see these openings, see these opportunities. So and also what happens during these times, often because people tend to pull back on their spend, it will lower cost for you. So just keep an eye on that. Right. Really look at. This with the economic uncertainty that we are in leading into 2023. And, you know, depending on who you ask what for the length of 2023 or what have you. This could be a great opportunity, a great time to lean into your marketing. Don’t stop marketing. Obviously, if it’s going to if paying for ads, it’s going to not allow you to pay the bills and all that stuff.

That’s a different conversation. But this is just because there’s economic uncertainty doesn’t mean like you stop all of your marketing. Quite the opposite. Okay, two more things. So number eight is my thought on people are wanting more personalized attention, meaning students, your audience, your people that you serve, regardless of what niche you’re in, they’re wanting a more personalized experience from you. And so the question becomes, how do we offer that at scale? You know, for for me, an accelerator. I’ve talked about this a lot is I got feedback from our members sort of mid-year in 2022. And one of the things that they said aligned with what I’m sharing with you. They wanted even more one on one access to me in addition to a lot of what they are already getting in terms of access. And so for me, like, that was something that really lit me up. I love diving deeply into somebody’s business, and so I needed to make sure that I had the capacity to do that, both in terms of energy and time. And like, okay, how does this work? And so and I’ve heard this from a lot of business owners and so forth, that there is this shift going on. I’m not saying courses are dead. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that people are wanting more. They’re tired, tired of the experience where somebody buys a course and then they never see or hear from the creator of the course ever, ever again.

And, you know, now if you’re buying like a $14 thing, like that’s a different story, right? But that’s generally not the case of what I’m talking about here. I hear this a lot. So people are wanting a more personalized experience and more personalized attention. So how do we offer that, you know, at scale? And again, one like I’ve noticed over the past 8 to 10 months or so that students want support and attention beyond just a course. And so how might we do that? How might we build that in? Well, I also notice a shift in the latter part of 2022 that a lot of online CEOs, we’re kind of going back to one on one because that’s what they were hearing from, you know, their their audience, or at least in the form of group coaching, because people were tired of courses. Right. And again, I’m not saying like I love like I love to sell a course. But it’s when you do it the right way. Like I just heard this a lot. And again, I’m not saying that choruses are dead in any way. I think for there’s with the right experience, it can be really, really powerful. Now, speaking of right experience, I think that, you know, from a segmentation standpoint, the more that you can offer a sort of choose your own adventure that is based on you taking a person through the phases of growth in whatever niche that you’re in or through the phases of interest.

If you’re in the gardening niche, like you could start them out. I always pick the gardening niche and I really don’t know a whole lot about it, but like starting them out from like doing like, you know, planting little things in the house or, you know, on the windowsill and then moving to like a patio garden box or something like that, and then moving to a full backyard, you know, like choosing your adventure and bringing them through that journey rather than like and I’m not saying all in one course, by the way. I’m saying like, can you create an experience where somebody is able to do that and then creating the in addition to that, creating the community aspect of your offers? This is and I talked about this when I did this type of episode back in 2021 for for 2022. People are still craving connection. They’re craving authenticity, they’re craving accountability. And to be surrounded by others who are going through and working towards the same common goals. And so can we create that kind of community aspect within our program or within our programs to be able to deliver that to our members? Right. And by the way, speaking of community, just a side note, you know, like like social platforms like Tik Tok or Instagram or whatever, they’re becoming more and more about community and and less about just like, hey, how many followers do you have? Right? This is a quality over community.

And when you’re creating content around creating that community and delivering on to that community, that’s when you’ll be more successful as opposed to, Oh, I have, just from a sheer quantity standpoint, number of followers and just trying to build the most followers as possible is like quality over quantity. And then lastly, when it’s when it comes to personalized attention, the offer, that sort of thing. Refining your offer. How can you make it so that people cannot say no to your offer? Now, I’m not saying to manipulate them or anything like that. I’m just saying, how can you make your promise so clear that somebody completely understands it and is like, Oh, that’s that’s exactly where I am. And you, Sol, you, you exactly solve my problem that I’m having in my business, right? And so we the clearer that we are. You know, I like to call this like you’re you’re creating a space of one for yourself in terms of being the go to in your niche. And you can do that through the offer that you create. And it’s going to coincide with the last thing I have to say here. In just a second, but always refining that offer, you know, just accelerator, for example. A lot of people don’t know this, but I’ve had an iteration of accelerator now for probably seven years and it is in its current form.

It is the best program that it’s ever been in seven years because it used to be for like for people where it was basically a high level of group coaching for Facebook ads years and years ago. Right. And so you’re always iterating. You always want to be changing. Like for me, like I added in the one on one element to the program just three and a half months ago. Right. And so you’re always you’re always iterating. Here’s a perfect example of being more clear on your offer and making it just so that somebody completely understands it. It’s a no brainer for them and saying like, Yeah, I’ve got to have this. And so this was an example from one of our accelerator members where and I’m not going to name the niche, but they, they teach people in this niche how to use certain tools in the accounting space and teach them about taxes and so forth. And sort of like that was the promise like, I will teach you this. And I was like, It’s not super clear, it’s not super compelling. And so I asked this person like, what? What is the biggest challenge that your audience like? What are they most interested in? And they were like, Oh, they want to pay themselves and they want to know more about taxes, etc.. And I said, Well, what if you shifted the promise of your offer and making sure, obviously, that you deliver on this in your in your program where you said, I teach the name of the people in the niche how to pay themselves within 30 days.

And you can even add a caveat on to that, or I’ll refund you one and one half times the price of the program. Like, how clear is that? You’re also exactly solving their number one problem and their number one desire, which is I want to get paid. Like, show me how to get paid in my business. And so clarity around defining your offer and your promise and then messaging it and so that you’re helping

people make the decision so much easier to join your program. My last thought. And I’ve talked about this one here in the podcast before, and I still think that not a lot of people, not enough people do this in their business. And so I think this is a great opportunity for you. And a lot of this goes back to kind of what I was talking about and people wanting more personalized attention and support, etc. in their journey through your program or programs is, you know, this whole concept of listening. And I know it’s a concept, right? But I want to kind of give you a framework here for listening, because this is one area that unfortunately, this can allow you to set yourself apart. And I say it, unfortunately, because I wish more people were doing it, is listening to your your audience, listening to your students, especially the people who are paying you money for whatever it is that they’re that they’re purchasing from you, whether it’s a course or a membership or coaching or mastermind or whatever, it is like asking for feedback.

And so that is number one, asking them for feedback on their experience with you. You can get specific on a lot of different things, like if you’ve got a membership, what if it were asking after 30 days, how is the onboarding process or how is the onboarding process been going for you? And the key there is, number one, being really specific on what kind of feedback that you would like to get, meaning not necessarily like the answers. I mean, what do I want feedback on? So whether that is the program overall or the results that you’re getting or the coaching that you’re getting or the onboarding experience or the trainings or whatever it might be, just be, you know, just be intentional with what you want feedback on. And then it’s about coming up with a process for getting that feedback. What is the interval in which you’re going to ask for that feedback? Is it monthly? Is it quarterly? Is it half a year? Is it hopefully not annually, but just as an example, something I have not done a very good job of is ask you the podcast.

Might my show listener what you like your feedback on the podcast? I have never done a good job of that and so I’m going to be doing that on a BI, you know, a twice a year biannual basis where I ask you to just go fill it a few questions, just, you know, enter to win something. But like I want your feedback on what you like about the show, what you don’t like, what do you, what would you like more of, what would you like less of, etc.? What would they make this, you know, something that just create an even better experience for you, that sort of thing. So number one, ask for feedback. And I used to think this was a sign of weakness where I’m like, I’m not going to ask my students for feedback because then they’re I’m just thinking I’m just sort of setting myself up for hearing how crappy something is or whatever. I told a story in my head about this and it’s actually really, really powerful and your students are going to respect you a whole lot more. So number one, ask for feedback. Come up with an interval in which you’re going to and how you ask it. What is the process? I would not ask for feedback on a group call because people tend to feed off of each other based on how one person is responding. I would either do a survey, have them respond to an email.

The survey can be anonymous or not anonymous. Get on Zoom calls with people meeting individually like and you don’t have to do 50 calls a month or something like that. But what if, you know, you had for every I don’t know, you just choose five people randomly each month. You join your email list and reach out to them and ask them if they’d be willing to hop on the hop on a Zoom call for 15 minutes and you get to know them more. Right? Like that is going to go so far in developing your relationship with them. It shows that

you care, etc. Ask for feedback. Number two, review and analyze that data that you got from the feedback. So what are from your questions? So what is the feedback that you’re getting? Some of it is going to be helpful for you. Others it’s not going to be helpful, but then it’s up to you and your team to prioritize that data. Again, first and foremost, through the lens of the values, because you’re going to get feedback that is outside the scope of your values and is just not going to make sense for doing it in the business, right? Maybe it doesn’t align with your mission or your vision or whatever it might be. So prioritize that feedback based on. All right, these are the top five things I’m going to I’m going to roll out or potentially test out in the next whatever, 6 to 8 months or ten months or whatever it might be.

Right. And so prioritize create a board in your project management tool. We use click ups or create a click up board or Asana, whatever it is, and like then start assigning, you know, to the team, etc.. So review and analyze the data and then communicate those changes to your students, to your members based on their feedback. When they hear that you are making changes based on the feedback that they gave, it is going to make them feel so valued and be so appreciated. And so when you communicate, give them context as to what you know, what are you going to test? What are you not going to test and give them? Why? Why you’re making those decisions. It makes them feel part of what you have going on and it shows them that you care, etc., etc.. This is also going to increase customer experience that people have with you and your business and also retention. So if you have a whole bunch of products, if you’ve got a membership, etc., if you coaching people are going to stay around a whole lot more with a business who cares about them, cares about their feedback, cares about getting them results, etc. and you can do this through this feedback loop that I’m sharing with you right now. And then the final step of that is just test, right? So the priorities that you came up with, you’re communicating what you’re going to focus on first and then pose it as a test, like I call it a pilot.

So I’m going to pilot this these changes here and for this for this amount of time, for like the next 90 days and see how it is. See how I like it, See how you like it, then I’m going to come back to you and gather your feedback and then repeat this process again. So be intentional. Take the initiative to ask for feedback, to listen to your students, to your audience, to your members, etc. So there are nine things, nine thoughts on different areas, different topics that I think are going to be really, really important to pay attention to, to set yourself apart, to create a healthier, more sustainable business, and to serve the people that you want to serve on a much deeper and bigger level. Now, I have thoughts on a whole bunch of other things like, you know, about like I and and all this other stuff. But I think these I wanted to kind of like consolidate this as best I could. I mean, we’ve been going for what, an hour now. And so hopefully this is helpful. This is probably going to be a multiple lesson episode for you. But as always, thank you for tuning in today. I super appreciate you. If you have any questions on any of this stuff, please feel free to shoot me a DM over on Instagram and ask away. I’m at Rick Moretti there on Instagram. Happy New Year, my friend. And until next time, be well, I’ll talk to you soon.