Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!
If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.
This is the series description:
You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.
Interview with Lauren McManus and Alex Nerney from Create and Go
It was my pleasure interviewing Lauren McManus and Alex Nerney of Create and Go, a popular make money online blog that teaches you how to build your blogging business and quit your 9-5 job. Lauren and Alex made over $103,457.98 their first year with Avocadu after their first blog, Health and Happy Hour, failed.
These are some of the blogging experts that have actually done it in a different niche.
Check out what Lauren had to say on behalf of the duo!
1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?
Alex and I started our online business because we had a desire to escape the corporate life of trading our hours for dollars to build someone else’s dream.
But more than that, we wanted to generate a passive income that would also allow us the time freedom to travel the world and enjoy our lives before the average retirement age.
We are now at a point of success in our business that we get to travel the world and explore other countries and cultures while still working and growing our online business.
This motivates us to keep pushing forward every day.
2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?
The moment that we realized we could really make health and wellness blog really work was the month that we created our first successful product to sell to our audience.
In the two months prior, we had made less than $1,000/month and our income wasn’t very consistent.
When we created our first product (a yoga eBook), we had no idea how our audience would receive it.
We spent weeks on it and were full of concerns, doubt, and fear over whether it would be successful – especially after our first product, an online diet program, turned out to be a complete failure.
We went on a trip to Seattle the weekend that we launched the product and had accidentally turned our sales email notifications off. We thought our product had bombed again, but when we checked our sales dashboard after the weekend was over, we were ecstatic to see that we had made several sales.
We cried and laughed and celebrated, and it’s a moment that neither of us will ever forget.
3. At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?
This is another moment that I will never because it was one of our favorites.
Just 4 months after we launched that first successful product, we had reached the point of earning $10,000/month with our health and wellness blog.
It was also the month that we took our first international trip since starting our online business and moved to Nicaragua. During the first week or two, we went on a sailboat with friends around the coast of Nicaragua for a few hours. I remember looking out at the coast and laughing with friends and feeling like…
“I’ve made it. I can’t believe this is my life.”
I felt SO lucky and so thankful for everything that I had and had worked towards over to the last year to get to this moment.
4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?
This was particularly hard for me because I tend to be a bit of a control freak when it comes to my business (and most other things in my life).
I didn’t trust others to do the work because I felt like I could do it better.
The first place I really needed help with was in my Facebook groups because I run 5 of them for my blog. I reached out to see if anyone that was already very active within my groups, and therefore familiar with my courses and my content, would like to help out by being an admin.
Drew, ever the opportunist, hopped on this because he saw the potential for growth in this opportunity (before I saw it, I might add). After witnessing Drew go above and beyond in everything that we had asked, we knew that he could help us out in other areas of our business.
We expanded that role to customer service manager and it was one of the best decisions we have ever made. Drew has helped us grow our business, build better relationships with our customers, and improve processes that we didn’t even know needed improvement.
5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?
I think it all boils down to two things…
- Honesty
- Transparency
If you strive to do all things from a perspective of honesty and transparency, you will never have to sell your soul or feel icky about selling or marketing.
Alex and I try to tell our story in everything that we do because it’s the reason why we’re here. In a world where everyone is trying to sell you something at any given point in time or place, those who take a more honest and transparent approach stand out above the rest.
As long as you are selling a great product that really works and that your people are truly happy with, you don’t ever have anything to feel guilty about.
6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?
I believe most people give up too quickly and simply don’t want it badly enough. I’ve watched a lot of people claim that they want it but they either aren’t willing to put in the work or invest the money for it.
Alex and I spent over $10,000 on software, courses, and other training while we were trying to monetize our business.
We tried everything because failure wasn’t an option for us and we knew the value of investing our money to learn from the people that were actually making money.
I think the biggest problem is when people either don’t invest the money to learn from experts or when they do invest the money but they don’t value the information enough and therefore don’t work hard enough to implement it in their business.
It’s all about obtaining the right information and then what you choose to do with that information.
7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?
Niching down is incredibly important and I encourage everyone to do so as soon as the need becomes apparent. What I mean by this is that if your audience is gravitating toward 1-2 particular topics, you should listen to them!
If you try to sell to everyone, you won’t be able to sell to anyone.
It’s better to have a smaller, super targeted audience of ravings fans than it is to have a large, general audience who isn’t super interested in anything specific.
It’s also really important for marketing because people want to know that you are speaking directly to them and have a product specifically for them. If your message is too generalized, it won’t speak directly to anyone.
8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?
I think that Alex and I both attribute our fast and continued growth and success to our mindset and our work ethic.
We started our first blog while we were working our full-time jobs and worked 80+ hours/week during this time. We stopped hanging out with our friends and watching TV and even went on an “eggs and rice” diet for a while to save money (not recommended).
We ended up quitting our well-paying, full-time jobs before we were making a dime in our online business because we knew that if we could invest more time, we could make it work.
We believed that.
Alex and I spent every waking moment living and breathing our online business over the first 3 years to take it to where it’s at today and while it was very difficult and trying at the best of times, it paid off one hundred-fold.
9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?
Building a systemized business is all about trial and error.
You need to first build a system that works (i.e. an opt-in, a sales funnel, and a product to sell), and only after it’s working to some degree can you begin optimizing and scaling it.
You also have to take this one step at a time and only work on one piece of the puzzle at a time. For example, if you make changes to your opt-in and your sales page and your sales immediately drop, you won’t know what changes were negative and what, if any, were positive.
It helps to analyze each piece of the monetize puzzle both independently and dependently of the entire process.
Another example of this is if your sales pages are converting well enough, the problem isn’t your sales page. It’s that you need more people on your sales page. You can fix this by increasing traffic or optimizing your opt-in to generate more leads.
You first need to identify the problem(s) or weak points and then focus on optimizing them.
10. If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?
I would tell three-years-ago Alex and Lauren to find a couple of solid role models to look up to.
As I stated before, we invested a lot of money into various software and courses but a lot of it was wasted because we had no idea what we were doing and hadn’t really developed any kind of solid plan.
We literally just tried everything – webinars, launches, affiliate products, CPA products, you name it.
The biggest problem was that we hadn’t yet identified ourselves as bloggers or really started following any successful bloggers.
If we had invested that time and money into courses on how to grow and monetize blogs specifically (rather than courses for any and all websites), we would have learned what we needed to know much faster.
I think everyone should find a couple of successful bloggers to look up to and learn from along their journey. It’s better to follow a couple of people very closely and invest in their courses rather than seeking out any and all free or paid information that seems like a good idea at the time.
About Lauren McManus and Alex Nerney
Alex Nerney and Lauren McManus, former personal trainer and certified public accountant, first got started in the online business world with a health and wellness blog, Avocadu. They were able to quit their full-time jobs within the first few months and earn six-figures with that blog within the first year. Since then, they have started Create and Go, where they now teach others how to start, grow, and monetize their blogs.
Interested in Learning From Alex and Lauren?
Their most advanced course, Six-Figure Blogger, teaches you how to create digital products (eBooks and eCourses) and the email funnels necessary to sell them to scale your blogging income.
If you don’t believe making money online can be done like this, just take a look at their income reports.
It’s designed for bloggers who want to diversify their revenue with products of their own, instead of just selling affiliate products.
Alex and Lauren learned this on Avocadu when they turned a $5 commission on a yoga eBook into a $37 product of their own. The profits increased and so did their passive income.
The best part of this course is that Alex and Lauren teach you how to do this organically.
That’s right…
There’s no paid advertising involved in this course.
It’s possible to make thousands of dollars per month passively on your site on autopilot.
And, as Lauren mentioned, there’s no point in driving paid traffic to your site until your systems are properly set up and converting well.
I’ve seen countless students in the Six-Figure Blogger Facebook group achieve success through following these steps.
Including some of my former interviewees:
And, some of my future ones as well!
This course leaves the nonsense behind and tells you the “honest blogger shit” (actual lesson) that you need to know to succeed in the competitive blogging industry.
Without Alex and Lauren, I wouldn’t have made $1k from my coaching program in my first 3 months with less than a thousand monthly pageviews 🙂
Purchase Six-Figure Blogger Today!
Conclusion
Thanks for participating in my series, Lauren and Alex!
As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.
Inspired by Alex Nerney and Lauren McManus?
Now, it’s your turn!
I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…
- Outsource Effectively
- Systemize Your Business
- Shatter Your Revenue Goals
After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.
Let me help you start scaling successfully.
Cheers to future success!
Great interview Drew.
Even though I’m already familiar with Alex & Lauren as I’m in all of their courses (😁) there are some great pieces of information here (or motivating reminders) for someone like me who’s moving from 4 to 5-figure blogger (6 and 7 on the way 😉).
P.s. Microtargeting; will be adding that to my vocab.
Yes, microtargeting is a GREAT term to be familiar with, especially when it comes to paid advertising. So glad you enjoyed the article. If there’s anything I can do to help you go from 4 to 5-figures please let me know!