Coaching Others How to Declutter Your Home with Sarah Muller

People need to learn how to declutter their home and Sarah Muller figured out how to help them with an online business. She doesn’t actually go to their house but rather, she teaches them remotely through online coaching.

Learn as Sarah Muller teaches us the step-by-step process to coach online.

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How Sarah Mueller Makes Money for Her Family

Sarah teaches people how to clean up messy homes, declutter, and organize, and she does it all online. She does it through her Facebook group, training on her membership site, and ebooks.

How Sarah Became Successfully Unemployed

Sarah had a corporate job at a brokerage firm working 9-5, but then her oldest son was born. She was no longer in her job and switched over to consulting.

She did that for a few years but thought it would be great to have her own business, work from home, and be with her son. She then opened an e-commerce bookstore in 2003 and ran that for nine years.

Through that, she became interested in marketing, which is how she reaches people and is then able to help change their lives.

How to Get Started Teaching Online

Sarah says that she gets started by talking to people and seeing what problem do they have that you can solve. You may have an idea, but you have to know if anyone wants what you’re selling.

It’s more effective to go find some people and find out what their biggest problem is. Then you can offer a solution for people to buy or even offer it for free.

Sarah doesn’t recommend building anything before validating it and making sure people care.

If you don’t have your own Facebook group to validate an idea, then you can join other Facebook groups.

If, for example, you like gardening, go find a Facebook group of gardeners and listen to them and talk to them. You’re not selling. You’re just listening to their problems. And then you can validate from there.

How to Build Your Idea into a Business

Sarah likes to keep it simple. She has sold things before they even existed. It sounds crazy, but you can do it. Here’s how:

You take your idea and your outline of what you will teach or sell, and then you pitch it to people. It could be just 25 people. It doesn’t have to be 10,000 people. You tell them you have an idea and would like to know if they are interested.

Then you send them to a Google Doc that lists the problem you will solve and what they will learn, and you ask for feedback. Then people respond back with what they are and are not interested in.

You then ask them if they’d be interested in buying your product. You’re just looking for a “yes” or “no.”

If they say, “No,” then you ignore everything they’ve said to you about your idea. They just aren’t interested in your product.

If they say, “Yes,” then you send them a link and ask if they are interested in buying it at a discounted rate. For example, you say that you’re going to sell it for $100, but you are offering it right now at $30. Some people will say, “Yes,” and then they buy.

It’s so important to ask for money up front. It doesn’t have to be a lot. But are they willing to put their money where their mouth is? If they’re not willing to buy it yet, then you still have some work to do before you start selling it.

This is a great way to get validation. Maybe 10 people said, “Yes,” and 5 people bought your product.

How to Build Your Idea into a Product

Sarah likes to outline: what are the main things you’re solving, what results are you delivering, how do you envision this playing out, what do people need to know.

Stu McLaren teaches the success path. What are the steps someone needs to take to get from where they are now to where they want to be?

For Sarah’s audience, that’s people who are overwhelmed with a messy kitchen, and they want to get where their kitchen is clean and decluttered and feels great.

Then Sarah would outline the three or four things that her audience would need to do to get from point A to point B. Once she has those steps identified, she can put together a lesson or two for each step.

In summary, here is how you build your idea into a product:

Identify where your audience is now and where they want to be
Outline the steps they need to take to get from where they are now to their goal
Create lessons for each step using text, video, audio, etc.

Sarah also likes to include extra resources. She delivers her training as videos, but her customers also love worksheets. It’s easy for Sarah to put together, and it helps her customers absorb her content and feel like they are getting a greater value.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, but you can always make it better. Just try something and get it out there. Get some feedback and then revise and modify from there.

Don’t even try to make sure it’s complete and perfect. That could take you 18 months. By then, you’ve lost interest, and the people have disappeared.

How to Deliver Your Product to People

It could be as simple as a PayPal button on your website. People click on it, PayPal sends you an email that you’ve made a sale, and then you send your customer an email with the product. The product could be a link to a PDF in Google Drive.

Sarah says that it’s important not to get hung up on technology. There are a lot of great options out there. Pick one and stick with it.

Summary of How to Create and Sell Products

Figure out what the problem is that you can help solve
Go to where your audience is to figure out who they are and what they need
Create a website
Presell your product and get feedback
Outline your idea
Create your product
Deliver your product

How to Get from Selling a Small Ticket Item to a Big Ticket Item

Sarah says it’s about showing up and letting people know that you’re a real person. A lot of times, people don’t think that you’re actually reading their emails. People are surprised when Sarah responds to her emails.

Letting them know that you care is important. Sarah writes to them like they’re her friends. She doesn’t use a formal template. She is conversational and informal. It’s about the relationship and establishing trust. That way, when she does have something to sell, they know it’s valuable.

You don’t have to start out with an email service. When you are starting out, you can personally respond to every email. You can follow up and see how things are going. People want to share their successes and problems, and keeping in touch will go a long way in building that relationship.

You don’t want just the first sale. You want to serve them for as long as they need you. Doing whatever you can to build and nurture that relationship is important.

How to Scale Your Business to Become Successfully Unemployed

You can scale in two ways:

1. Go get more customers

There are more people who need what you’re selling. They have the problems that you are solving.

2. Solve the next problem

Sarah created her ebook on decluttering, and then she asked what her audience wanted to learn next. They said they were drowning in paperwork, so Sarah created a course on managing household paperwork.

Sarah is continuously asking where her audience needs help. She is listening to them to see what they need because she wants to solve their problems.

The Benefits of Having Multiple Products

Multiple products allows you to fulfill different needs

When you have multiple products, people can pick and choose what they want to learn.

For example, maybe people don’t want to learn how to declutter, but they want to learn how to clean their kitchen. Sarah has a product for that.

Multiple products allows different price points

Not everyone is going to be ready to spend a lot of money. A low ticket product is a great way for someone new to get to know you. And then if that worked out for them, you can offer the larger product.

Some people may hear your podcast and are all in, ready to jump right into your larger ticket item. Different people are ready to come in at different points.

You can also mix and match. You can offer product A and then they can get product B at 50% off. This allows you to provide more product and value and increase how much they are spending with you.

How to Get Your Business Noticed by Forbes

Sarah says while it might sound cheesy, it’s showing up as yourself.

She was chosen to be part of the Facebook Alpha project a couple of years ago and was 1 of 12. They liked her idea so much that they she was all over Forbes. She doesn’t know if she made it happen or if it was luck.

Sarah thinks you just have to be yourself. She is willing to be vulnerable and show up. She talks about her kids. She shows her messy kitchen and lets people know its OK.

People crave the authenticity and unfiltered. Showing that you’re a real person goes a long way.

Why You Should Have a Facebook Community for Your Business

Sarah says if you start a Facebook group and continue to manage it as a leader, you will collect people who are like you. You cannot start it and assume people are just going to buy your stuff. It doesn’t work that way.

For her Facebook group, Sarah is continuously thinking about how she can continue to lead that group. How she can provide value, facilitate the interaction, and show people that she has more through her products.

You can use Facebook groups for traffic to your website if your group stays on topic. Many groups’ topic is too broad and vague. Your topic needs to be specific and focused.

You can share links in your Facebook group on things that will help people in the group. Then people may click through and read something or watch something or maybe even buy something.

You can also use your Facebook group to learn about what people need. Sarah will ask those in her group and get great feedback.

How Sarah Uses an Email Sales Funnel

Sarah uses Facebook, email, and her blog for different reasons and in different ways. She loves email because it’s a one-to-one communication. She writes her emails as if she is writing to a friend because email is a personal medium.

When people first sign up with Sarah or join her Facebook group, they go through an email welcome series. That familiarizes them with Sarah and how she does things. It also gives them some quick wins with three 10-minute challenges over three days.

During the email series, she also offers her ebook for purchase to people. She shares that she understands the problem they have and offers a solution to that problem with her ebook.

How to Incorporate Selling into Your Brand

It’s attractive to people if you don’t need their money. If you can say, “It’s OK if you don’t come on as a client,” that will impress people. As opposed to someone who is trying to squeeze every last dollar out of you and leaves you feeling icky.

You don’t have to always be selling. Sarah is always trying to get people to take some sort of action through her content. That might be buying something, clicking on a link, watching a video, or hitting reply to share what they think.

It’s key to give people one thing to do, not ten. If you give people multiple things to do, they won’t do anything.

Each time someone takes an action, they are saying, “Yes,” to you, and each “yes” leads them closer to buying something from you because they’ve seen how you’ve helped them for free.

Sarah Mueller’s Advice on How to Build a Business

Sarah says that you have to be willing to screw it up over and over again. She doesn’t know how many times that she hasn’t reached her goals or things aren’t working.

Sometimes we look at others who are farther ahead and think they have it all worked out, but none of us have it all worked out. Things are always breaking.

To be an entrepreneur and have your own business requires you to be willing to fail a thousand times. It’s challenging to do that and can be emotionally draining, but that is the difference between those who say they want to start a business and those who actually do.

Sarah says that the difference between success and failure is that you keep trying and don’t give up.

If you wait until things are perfect, you will never get it out there.

How Sarah Mueller Is Giving Back

Sarah loves to support foster kids. Her community has an overabundance of things, and when kids start foster care, they have nothing. Sarah donates a significant portion of her revenue to supporting foster kids.

Sarah Mueller’s Advice on How to Get Started

Sarah says get something out there. What action can you take today? This is not something that should take a year. You can do something every day to take action to move you forward.

She also says be OK with B+ work or even C- work because you have to get that feedback. Without the feedback, you will just be building forever or thinking about building, which isn’t the same as building.

Sarah Mueller’s Advice to Her Teenage Self

Sarah says she would tell herself to be willing to create new things. We are always looking for the right way to do something, but there is no right or wrong way. We get to make this stuff up, and that’s where it gets exciting.

So many people have ideas, but they just don’t pursue them. But why not? What do you have to lose? Who knows what could happen if you have a good idea.

Also, go get advice. If there is someone who has done something similar, go and get advice that is useful to you.

Sarah Mueller’s Recommended Tool for Business

Sarah is an old-fashioned pen and paper kind of person. She says there is real value to writing by hand, taking notes, journaling, and brainstorming ideas. She says find a nice pen you like and then get writing.