Here are the 3 most important things you need to start a business. 2 are tech related, 1 is an inside job. In the lesson, find out: Why you need to be confident you could make $19Starting a business isn't free, but it's still pretty cheapThe biggest thing that got me to $110,000 in my first year in business This is lesson 2 in the Free Sample Series of Weird Lil' Business School If you already learned more in 25 minutes than you have in 90 days of Google searches, sign up for the full Weird Lil' Business School Course. A audio-only course that gets you making and selling a creative product (not your soul) in 3 months. You'll have bonus (or full-time) income, so you can say no to idiotic non-union commercial auditions or clients that haggle over $5. Sign up before May 1st and save $50 - go to AmberPetty.com/WLBS TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the Weird Little Business School podcast. This is Episode 2 of the Sneak Preview series of the Weird Little Business School. What does that mean? Well, this is what Weird Little Business School, the paid 3-month program to help you run a business and start making money as a creative, to keep all of your brilliant ideas for yourself and get money from them as you grow your audience and all that delightful stuff. That's what the course teaches you how to do. How would you know if you want such a course? Well, that's where this free preview comes in. So these are the first five lessons that you get to enjoy gratis. I'm Amber Petty. I've built a six-figure business that I've run for the past five years. I used to be in improv and musical theater and a freelance writer, so I've got all kinds of weird crap in my background that actually makes me an exceptional marketer and business owner. And you have all those skills too. So instead of listening to some boring-ass corporate nothing, you can listen to me, somebody who's been in your shoes and knows how to cut away all the unnecessary crap and get you into making money and sharing your creativity, the most fun parts of business. Last episode, we talked about the things you don't need to start a business. Today, I'm talking about the things you do need. Granted, this might be slightly different for different businesses, but overall, this is the minimum stuff. This is what's going to make your life easier. As a business owner, make people trust you to give their money, but you're not wasting your money on any software and stuff that you don't actually need. So, number one is you need an email system. So, not just your email, you need to be able to send emails en masse to your email list. I recommend Kit. It used to be called ConvertKit; it's the same thing now They just wanted to change their name to something harder to Google. I recommend that. I've used that my entire business. It works really well. They also haven't upped their prices that much over the course of working with them, where I've seen other places double their prices during this time, so it's very reliable. Now, you could also use something like Substack, but I'll get to why that's a little harder in a second. I think it's better to just get an email system that is independent, so that could be Kit, that could be MailerLite, that could be Flowdesk. Those are ones I also know that people enjoy. Don't get MailChimp; that one sucks. I've never known a person happy to have MailChimp, so skip that one. Now, if you're thinking, oh yeah, but ConvertKit, it's like $19 a month. Here's one thing to keep in mind for your business: it's not going to be free. This is a business. To start a business in ye olden times before the internet, you had to have a brick-and-mortar store. You had to have inventory; money was required to start any kind of business. Nowadays, we're lucky as hell, and we need very, very little. So I'm not saying to spend a ton of your money, but certain things you're going to have to pay for, and one of them is an email system. So if you're not confident that you could make $19 a month, you probably shouldn't start a business. And again, maybe your first month you don't make $19. That does happen, and that's totally okay. But if you can't make back $19, if you think that's impossible, don't start a business. Because that's what it comes down to. You can make your money back from anything that I'm suggesting you use here. And I'm suggesting the minimum because I don't think it's fair when people are told to get Kajabi, for example, which is over $100 a month. I think that's an absolute f*****g waste of money. So I'm giving you the minimum, but I want you to remember this is not free. So having a little money to spend on this minimum software, on some ads potentially, on working with people or taking courses that are going to make you build your business faster, that stuff is helpful. And listen, I'm not just saying that because I sell a course on how to build a business. You don't have to take mine. But when you see stuff that legitimately shows you, hey, this is going to save me hours of Googling or getting myself confused, that's a worthwhile investment. So an email system is worth it. Now, why am I lukewarm on Substack? Well, Substack, first of all, Substack is an email platform. It's not social media, although it has some social media elements to it. But it's not a social media platform like Instagram and TikTok and things like that. There aren't algorithms to deal with and the key part is the reason why email is so important is because you keep the emails no matter what. So once somebody has opted into your email list, even if you switch from Substack to something else, or I switch from Kit to something else, I get to download those contacts and keep them. If Instagram decides to sell itself to some bigger overlord somehow and disappear, you're screwed. Those followers are gone forever You may have heard of a little something called Twitter and how that platform is now worth a flaming pile of garbage approximately right now. All those followers are gone for many people and even people that didn't leave Twitter, most of those followers don't participate anymore and the that's just poof gone, your work up in billionaire-coated flames. With email, that doesn't happen. So even if Substack collapsed, you still would be able to download those emails and keep them, so that is the primary difference. Now the reason I'm falling out of love with Substack is because, one, it's prioritizing using Substack over email, meaning they give people options to sign up to follow a Substack but not share their email address. They're pushing people to use their app over using email. That doesn't help you as the business owner because, again, you want those emails, and because Substack is free, they only make money when you make money, so they make money off subscriptions, which means all their business is to get more people on the app and to get more people to have paid subscriptions Now none of this is dire; it's still a usable platform, but it's limiting, so you're kind of playing in somebody else's sandbox a little bit, and they could decide to change their rules at any time and make it worse for you. It's limiting because you have fewer options. So one of the best options you have in any kind of email service like it is you can tag people, you can segment people. So if people sign up for a class, you can send emails just to them. If people want to opt out of a certain sales email sequence, you can take them out of it but still email the rest of people. That tagging option makes your life much better as a business owner. Also, you have the ability just to email people more often, which you'll probably need to do as you sell stuff. So you just have a lot more options when you go with an independent email service than when you have it with Substack. Now if you have a Substack right now and you love it and it works as a way to build up your audience, hooray! You don't need to change it; stick with it for now, and then if you're starting to feel limited by it, know you could always switch over. But for everybody else, just get an email system, and I'm not sponsored by Kit. I'll probably, frankly, get an affiliate link in the future and use it because I legitimately like them; but I've just used them, they work well. The other bonus with an email system, and this one I only know Kit for sure, is it has a lot of other features. So you can also make landing pages for opt-ins, meaning when you give out a freebie, when you give something away for free to get people on your email list, you can make that sign-up page right through Kit. You don't have to have another website or another piece of software. You can even make a product on Kit, so if you have an ebook or meditations you want to sell or something like that, you can make the page that sells the product with a secure checkout option, all just through that same place. So that's another reason why I like it. I think you get a lot of bang for your buck, and it's more trustworthy to me because I'm paying them directly. Right? So their job is they want to keep their customers happy so the customers continue to pay. Keeping the product good is profitable for them, whereas Substack just wants more people on the app and more people running paid products. Making the free email part good, that is not profitable for them. But an email system is number one. Why? Because getting people's emails is key. It is key, even for huge influencers. They are told to have an email list. Massive businesses have email lists and email you. You'll see in the past few years, most publications and newspapers have newsletters now. It's because getting attention via email is a way. To really get and capture attention, 2. to let your audience get to know you better, and 3. it drives sales. It's still the biggest sales driver in almost every single business around, from tiny one-person businesses to Old Navy, See's Candy, all the big ones. So all t
