Grow Your Business: How I Went From $0 To $16M+ In 5 Years

Learning how to grow your business is far from “easy,” but it is still possible with the right systems and knowledge in place. I started college with intentions of graduating with a degree in business…but dropped out after I quickly realized that those professors had never actually run a business.

So instead of college, I started reading books and learning from people who had done what I wanted to do. Now I want to give back in that same way by breaking down my methods for growing Self-Publishing School from $0 to over $16 Million in only 5 years.

We’re not stopping. To date, we’ve taught over 8,000 authors how to write, publish, and market their books. Want to learn how to grow your business? Let me break it down for you.

Grow your business: 13 steps

• The ONLY 3 ways to grow your business
• Know your promise and audience
• Create a product or service that’s the best
• Write a book
• Generate high-quality leads
• Invest in learning
• Put the right people in the right roles
• Charge what it’s worth
• Offer low-ticket products
• Build partnerships
• Work on your referral game
• Speak at events
• Listen to your customers
• Bloom where you’re planted

The ONLY 3 ways to grow your business

Before we get into the specific action-items from this, I want to touch on the only three ways you can really grow your business in terms of the revenue-generating portion.

In order to grow your business, you have to get more customers, increase the average order value, and increase purchase frequency. While these are the three main ways you will increase revenue to grow your business, I touch on the actionable steps you can take in order to accomplish these.

1. Know your promise and audience

This is a really basic concept when you start learning how to grow your business, but if you don’t know who you’re talking to, how can you possibly market effectively?

Before you can really start crafting messaging, or even content, to cater to your target market, you have to know a ton about them and create their avatar profile. To grow your business, you have to know the details about who you market to.

Answer these questions about your target audience:

• Who are they?
• Where do they live?
• What’s their gender/age?
• What is their best desired outcome?
• What has been preventing them from solving the problem by themselves?
• What’s their biggest obstacle related to what you’re selling?
• What content do they consume and how do they consume it (mobile vs audiobooks vs YouTube videos)

This is a great place to start. From here, you can craft your winning message to fit your target customer’s avatar, which increases conversion down the road because you’re speaking “directly to them.” To grow your business most effectively, target your ideal customer.

2. Create a product or service that’s the best

Our core value is Best is the Standard and that should arguably be the standard for every business owner. Our standard isn’t just about creating the best product or service for your niche, it’s creating one that fulfills the deepest needs of your target audience.

But remember that you don’t have to have a perfect product in order to launch. Done is better than perfect.

For new products, we actually do internal launches to our list and existing students at a discounted rate. This allows them to act as beta testers so we can find areas of improvement before launching to the public.

3. Write a book

“I bet you say that to everyone,” is probably what you want to tell me. As someone who makes a living from other people writing books, it makes sense for you to question this advice, but let me tell you: Without publishing my books, I wouldn’t have been able to grow Self-Publishing School to what it is today.

This is largely due to my books serving as yet another customer acquisition channel. We actually use my bestselling book Published. as a lead generation tool in order to pull in leads. Those who have read this book are actually much better qualified to convert and become students.

You can get a free copy of Published. right here if you’re looking to start this for yourself.

4. Generate high-quality leads

Generating leads, specifically high-quality leads, is one of the hard parts of learning how to effectively grow your business. You have to get people to opt-in to what you’re offering.

We do a really good job at lead generation here at Self-Publishing School, so consider these questions as you seek to generate leads to grow your business:

• What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?
• How BIG of a problem is it (it should be huge for them)?
• What’s the result they’ll receive?
• Make it easy for them to opt-in with 3 clicks max (click to opt-in, fill in email and click to submit, get it as an instant download or deliver in an email)
• Make it really high quality because this is really the first impression for what you have to offer, even more so than free content on your site

5. Invest in learning

I can’t tell you how much I’ve spent on learning in order to grow my business. The number of books I’ve consumed alone is astonishing to most people. This is one of the biggest advantages I’ve given my company.

Books aren’t all, either. I’ve invested in other’s systems and products in order to grow Self-Publishing School to where it is today. I always recommend other people do the same.

If you’re looking for a solid way to grow your business (that most people don’t even know about, much less are using), check out this training to get started.

6. Put the right people in the right roles

One of the things we do best at Self-Publishing School is our hiring process. Overall, we work really hard to make sure the right people with the right skills are in the right places, doing the right things. Say that 5 times fast!

Here’s a quick overview of the necessary steps for hiring the right people:

• Create a job scorecard
• Source candidates
• Pick the best candidate
• Sell them on the position

Below is a brief overview of each so you can use it to grow your business too.

Job scorecard

This is basically an overview of the role of the job and includes what the mission or purpose of the role is, the job title, the core competencies, and the most important part: the outcomes and results of the first 90 days with which KPIs will be measured.

Source candidates

This can be one of the hardest parts. What I focus on is getting as many high-quality candidates as possible. I do this by leveraging my team and contacts to refer people along with personal reach-outs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and really anywhere I can. At a minimum, I like to have 100 candidates per position.

Pick the best candidate

This is really subjective, but one thing to really look for are candidates who have a long history at certain organizations or look at whether or not they were pulled or pushed out. Were they fired or were they headhunted and offered a new, better job?

Sell them on the position

To grow your business with the best team members, make sure the role you offer is a step up from their current or past positions both in salary and work environment.

What I’ve seen in hiring people where that when it’s a “step down” in salary, this turns to resentment later on, and therefore a higher turnover rate.

Sell them on the benefits your company offers as well. At Self-Publishing School we’re largely remote, but we also have an office in Austin, Texas, and even offer twice-monthly house cleanings paid for by the company, among many other benefits.

It’s hard to cover a really great hiring process in order to effectively grow your business in a short section, so check out this more detailed video if you want to know more.

7. Charge what it’s worth

When I first started Self-Publishing School, I had no idea what to charge. Because I was one of the first in my field, I didn’t have too many examples on what to do.

In the video above, I talk a lot about pricing yourself effectively and fairly. The bottom line is to charge what it’s worth, keeping things like time saved and other benefits at the forefront. Don’t just hit up a competitor and price yourself accordingly.

Instead, really think about your offer, your demographic, and how you can use those (along with a more detailed breakdown of what you can afford to charge to keep the business profitable) to determine a fair price point for your product or service.

8. Offer low-ticket products

One of the best things you can do to grow your business is increase the conversion of your core offer/product/service by offering a low-ticket product.

It might seem counterintuitive, but what this does is moves the prospect from lead to customer. This shift in relationships is crucial (we do this by offering a free copy of Published.).

9. Build partnerships

This is an area we’re really working to expand at Self-Publishing School for a number of reasons.

• It helps us reach new audiences
• We’re able to build connections for the future as well as the present
• We can leverage these partnerships to help our students achieve more success
• Partnerships are another revenue-generating channel

We’ve worked out a ton of partnership deals that have won us revenue, stage slots (which we’ll get to below), and discounts/specials for our students. All of that has aided in our business growth, and it’s just the beginning.

10. Work on your referral game

Word-of-mouth marketing is so powerful. People trust those close to them. When those people recommend you and your product, you’ll have customers close at a much higher rate simply through these referrals.

Here are a few ways you can build a referral system into your business:

• Offer a discount for both the current customer and referral they help bring in
• Ask your customers to refer someone via email or another form of communication (automate this shortly after they’ve had a “win” or success with your business)
• Give your customers the very best and they’ll refer on their own
• Develop a reward system for “top referrers”
• Automate any and all of these processes the best you can

Referrals are a huge part of learning how to grow your business.

11. Speak at events

It’s so surprising how many business owners don’t want to or don’t even think about speaking at events to grow their business.

In 2018, stages were a million-dollar revenue channel for Self-Publishing School. Skip ahead to 2024, when we did about $4M from events. To date, we’ve built an INCREDIBLE team of 7+ speakers and people working at these on-stage events.

By getting booked to speak on stages about the benefits of writing a book and why I believe everyone should write a book, we were able to close prospects at a much higher rate, just by being in-person.

Not only that, but being on those stages places you as an authority, as well as allows you to develop new partnerships to grow your business in other ways as well.

12. Listen to your customers and the right KPIs

The information coming into your business is invaluable. You need to know what people are saying, what issues they’re having, and you also have to be tracking the right KPIs if you really want your business to grow.

Your customers know what they want and they know when things aren’t working. Listening to them and what your KPIs are saying will give you exactly what you need to grow your business. Check out the video above for which KPIs can drive real performance and growth in your company.

13. Bloom where you’re planted

I talk a lot about this often because really, it’s the best place to be, no matter what I’ve listed above.

The quick rundown of this idea is to do your very best no matter what! No matter where you are right now or where you want to go, doing your best no matter what the task is at hand is the most important.

People always notice—people are always watching. You never know how that can impact you and your business in the future. Another way of thinking about this is to remain humble. Never become spoiled or entitled no matter where you are. Bloom where you’re planted and that can make the biggest difference in your business long-term.

Grow your business: take your next step today

Now that you know the 13 steps for how to grow your business, take your next step. Use our free resource below to generate the outline for your book so you can put into practice what you learned!