Introduction
What would you do if you were building a business from nothing and you only had 30 days to create a new job for yourself? Could you make enough money with your online coaching or consulting business to survive? What about doing it out of your dorm room?
That’s exactly what our founder Ocean Ronquillo-Morgan discussed with Cameron Stack on his Unscripted Startups podcast. It’s not just sweat, blood, and tears. It’s knowing how to keep things simple. From the outside, she looks like a business machine. It’s almost hard to see how she keeps up while balancing her classes. But when you peel back the layers, you see she’s running a well-oiled machine with a simple process that keeps new clients and customers coming in the door.
Read on to see how… You won’t be disappointed.
How Ocean Ronquillo-Morgan Built A Consulting Business From Her Dorm Room
1. Physical to Digital Ebook
2. Tips When Building a Sales Funnel
3. When Sales Funnels Are Poorly Designed
4. Biggest Lessons Learned
5. How to Handle Feedback
Cameron: So, I noticed that you launched an eBook about how to bring things from physical to digital. Tell me a little bit about why you wrote that eBook and what are some of the lessons?
So, in December or January, I launched my own digital agency. So essentially, we build sales funnels for professional clients like real estate agents, chiropractors, and dentists, and then bring that page traffic with Facebook ads.
And as we all know, COVID-19 has disrupted all of those professions in one way or another. So back in March, I wanted to create this eBook based on the findings of Facebook groups and how everyone else was handling their digital agencies and what they were doing.
And I kind of compiled together a list about how these businesses who can’t even operate a physical storefront, especially in Los Angeles. Things are still closed. The salon I usually go to has been closed for about two and a half months. So, you know, not being able to get that revenue is so tough on these, you know, brick and mortar locations and people who are just trying to get by with their businesses.
So, what I did was I launched this eBook and it teaches people how they can transform their physical storefront into a digital storefront in one day, without prior experience, any sort of fancy equipment or any prior, you know, advanced social media tactics.
And out of that, there was this one individual, this lady who had a friend that was running a spa. And she DMed me and I saw one of her Facebook posts is that she was able to create an online storefront for her friend and then drive a lot of revenue in the form of gift cards because people wanted to support the business and redeem those gift cards in the future when everything opened up.
And it was honestly astonishing. I wasn’t really thinking much of it at the time. I just wanted to put it out and whoever needed this help could take a look at it. But, you know, I think COVID will really transform how people do businesses, especially in the online business space. So, we’ll see.
Cameron: What are some of your tips when building a landing page or a sales funnel?
Exactly. So, you can think of a sales funnel as a road with clear signage, and there’s only one direction you can go, which is just straight. You can think of a regular website as a highway with multiple lanes, multiple signs, and it gets super confusing. So, with the sales funnel, your number one goal should only be either leading a consumer to a purchase or getting them onto your email list or whatever option you want them to take, like redeem a discount code $20 off.
So, you want to be as clear as possible. And depending on what you want to do, you want to paint the picture of the problem and kind of provide a case study of the problem and what happened and the results of that, your solution, and then your testimonials. So, you remove a lot of the noise that’s in traditional websites and you kind of lead people just into this one little place. And if you don’t get a sale immediately at the time, you can get someone’s email address. So, you can follow up with them with email marketing and, you know, always be omnipresent, always fall on top of their minds.
Cameron: I feel like there are a lot of websites out there that are either poorly designed or the flow is messed up. If they can’t find something immediately, they’re just going to bounce back off of that page.
Yeah, exactly. Especially right now, when you have platforms like TikTok where people watch videos in five or six second increments, people have shorter attention spans today than they did many years ago. And I definitely think that’s because of the internet and our mobile devices. So, you really, really, really want to lock in on that attention.
Cameron: What would be some of the lessons you’ve learned or some of the things you would advise against doing your consulting with the different companies and startups that you’ve worked with?
I think the number one thing is work on your customer service, your soft skills. You can have all that technical knowledge, but it means nothing if you cannot do sales, or you cannot talk to people in a respectful manner.
Our power lies in the power of our relationships. This is something that’s not quite as prominently discussed in business schools, but someone that you may know could unlock the potential to be your next client, your next job offers your next business idea.
So, on and so forth, really hone in on those soft skills. Be nice to everyone. Take your ego out, try to listen to people actively and just be yourself. Be authentically you.
Cameron: Yeah, you really do need to step back and say, yes, I spent a lot of time with this product, but I also can’t like be so attached to it that I’m not allowed to receive any feedback. Yes. Some people are just negative and some people are just mean, a lot of people are trying to give you feedback.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, making money is great with your business. You know, you should still be focused on getting profit and revenue in but business is also a very human-centered game. It’s about reciprocity and being kind to others and seeing how you both can benefit.
