Podia originally posted this case study.
If you’re a solopreneur or entrepreneur who borders on the brink of burnout, you’ll likely relate to our culture’s obsession with hustling.
These days, whether it’s a side-hustle or full-blown business, it seems like you need to sprint an entire marathon to be a successful business owner.
That’s what creator and successful business owner, Minessa Konecky, thought, too.
Then she learned how to take back her life and freedom.
Now, Minessa has a thriving online business where she’s teaching others her systems for running hustle-free businesses.
In fact, being hustle-free is at the center of both her life and her business.
Of course, it wasn’t always this way. Let’s start at the beginning when she was a major hustler to learn her story.
How Minessa fell into her hustle-free mission
While working closely with the owner of a medical devices company, Minessa and her sister experienced first-hand the pressure that comes with learning how to build a business from scratch, including being responsible for team members’ paychecks.
This is when Minessa first understood the stress of running a business and learned what not to do.
Following their stint at the medical devices business, Minessa and her sister took their learnings and jumped into starting and operating their own business selling LuLaRoe clothing.
While their previous learnings proved worthwhile as the business took off, this experience was pivotal for Minessa. It’s when she learned another hard lesson — that hustling wasn’t worth the sacrifice. In her case, the sacrifice meant her health.
“I was starting to get really, really sick all the time. My brain wasn’t functioning. I was feeling tired. I was getting run down,” she recalls.
Although her doctors were unable to help her, Minessa did some research and started to link her poor health to her bustling business.
“I started to explore this idea that we were actually building our own business prisons, where we basically set up a structure in our lives, where the only possible outcome was failure and exhaustion because we’re not taking care of ourselves,” she explains.
This epiphany led Minessa to design her current hustle-free life.
“I put together a system that helps migrate people from this hustle culture perspective — where you have to work 24/7 — to designing a life where you let technology and social media do a lot of the time-consuming work for you, so you can take time off.”
It took her two years to build her current business and figure out what systems and strategies to use. She tested, observed, and studied people taking their lives back from their businesses while also making money.
Along the way, by preaching what she practices, Minessa formed her thriving hustle-free business, Direct to Success, which pulls in over six-figures per year.
A key to Minessa’s success is her perspective on mistakes and learning from failures. Rather than seeing failure and mistakes as regrets to avoid, she embraces them as golden lessons on how to move forward.
“I think that what we really need to do is look upon past failures and mistakes as wells of information that we can then use to feed whatever it is that we’re doing now,” Minessa advises. “It’s never a waste.”
Speaking of lessons learned, a regimented schedule is another learning that contributes to Minessa’s freedom. If that seems backwards, read on.
Why Minessa’s regimented schedule allows her more freedom and creativity
As counterintuitive as it may seem, Minessa finds that the more regimented she is about her schedule, the more space she creates for freedom and creativity in her life.
That’s right — the tighter her schedule, the more freedom and creativity — and here’s why.
“By not having a regiment of some kind and not having this structure, what you’re essentially doing is creating stress in your life,” warns Minessa. “Which heightens the cortisol production in your body which reduces your creativity.”
This “needing structure to have freedom” is exactly the principle she teaches in her free digital download, 5 ways to hustle-proof your business, offered on her site.
In her free lead magnet, Minessa shows you how to get rid of what she calls “pacifiers”, which are “things that make you feel good, but don’t make you money or help run your business.”
And when you remove your pacifiers from the picture, you can run your business with more intention.
“In order to have a hustle-free life, you’ve got to have a sort of a disciplined life,” Minessa coaches. “You need to know what you want to do with your time, and you have to be intentional about it.”
So, how does Minessa outline her airtight schedule?
By organizing her week activities into colors (literally) and setting specific intentions in the morning.
“I have a system that I go by every single week, where, at the beginning of the week, I go through and I make a note that’s color-coded.”
Minessa organizes action-items like appointments, building her brand reputation, and social media engagement by color.
And first thing in the morning, she specifically lays out what she’s going to accomplish for the day to avoid outside forces dictating what her day looks like.
More specifically, Minessa doesn’t allow for more than “three major things to do in a day” to preserve her non-hustling free time.
With Minessa, rather than outside forces, being in control of her priorities, she opens up space to work on intentional projects — like tending to her business funnel that she created using Interact and Podia — which brings us to our next topic.
How Minessa uses Interact and Podia to create her funnel and segment her audience
A foundational way Minessa grows her list of prospective clients is by creating a marketing funnel that uses quiz tool Interact and all-in-one platform Podia.
When someone engages with her brand and fills out Minessa’s quiz, she’s able to distinguish her audience’s needs and nurture them accordingly to the right products.
“Quizzes are an amazing way to convert people,” she touts. “You get to know so much about an individual person, or even about your people, and the trends that exist within your audience.”
First, Minessa uses quizzes as a way to learn about her audience and then segment them into one of three groups, which she’s come to define over time while growing her business and getting to know her audience better:
- Overwhelmed – Small business owners with too much to do and who aren’t sure how to spend their time each day.
- Professional midlife – Entrepreneurs who have learned what they need to know, but haven’t figured out how to connect the action items into a strategy.
- Perpetual procrastinators – People who know what they need to do, but can’t get started on their own.
After completing her standalone quiz, Minessa then nurtures her audience by leading them to one of three mini courses with content that’s dripped out (a.k.a., pre-scheduled to release).
Ultimately, she introduces people in her funnel to her two main products that her business focuses on, one of which is her Social Strategy Squad membership.
The other is Minessa’s flagship Renovate Your Facebook course, which goes for $3,500.
Both programs teach small business owners ways to streamline their business, so they can operate hustle-free.
While these two products are her main ones, they aren’t the only products Minessa offers. In fact, she’s got a wide range of products for sale and comes up with new digital product ideas regularly.
Speaking of which, let’s dive into her process for creating new products.
Minessa’s 6-step process for creating new products
When Minessa creates new digital products, she first identifies a need and brain dumps all her ideas for her new product.
“My first thing is when I notice that there’s a need . . . I open a Word document, and I start typing a lot of things,” she explains. “I use it as a dump — for all of my links, resources, research, books, blogs, and podcasts — and it becomes a dumping ground for content.”
Once she lays out all her ideas, she gives herself time and space to marinate on them, which is when she incorporates her “hustle-free” perspective.
Then, Minessa visualizes what her product will look like in terms of Podia and thinks through the back-end logistics.
“Almost all my courses are structured very similarly. They have phases 1, 2, 3, and then a bonus section,” she shares. “So I think in terms of Podia’s dashboard and, usually, it looks something like that.”
This is how Direct to Success’ courses, which span across categories of Facebook, marketing, mindset & mindfulness, and business fundamentals, are structured.
Minessa’s fourth step is to move from visualizing in Podia to creating on the platform.
“Because of the way Podia is really well streamlined, I can see how — as a viewer on the other side — whether or not something is going to look right,” she divulges. “That’s when I start to clean it up, in terms of the user journey and moving things around.”
After uploading all of her text-based content, Minessa fills in the blanks with visual details like videos and graphics.
“That’s sort of my last touch,” she shares. “My main focus is making sure all the first steps are focused entirely on a user journey that makes logical sense.”
Finally, her last step is to cut any extraneous content from her product.
“Once I’m done, I go back and think, ‘What can I get rid of? What doesn’t need to be here? What is me just being in love with the sound of my own voice?’” shares Minessa. “And at that point, usually it’s done.”
Having a streamlined dashboard to create her digital products isn’t the only benefit Minessa gains by using Podia. She also saves a few thousand dollars per year using the all-in-one platform.
Here’s how the math breaks down.
How Minessa saves $5,000 annually with Podia
Choosing platforms like Podia and Interact allowed Minessa to not only streamline several tools, but also save money in the process.
She went from using three additional tools and hiring a programmer to using one platform for managing most of her online business.
This amounted to a $5,403 savings per year, where she cut out costs for:
- $1,188 for AccessAlly
- $3,000 for hiring a programmer to help with AccessAlly and wire together her quiz funnel
- $747 for WebinarJam
- $468 for Leadpages
If you’re wondering how she’s able to eliminate her need for these tools (and hiring a programmer), it’s through Podia and Interact’s focus on constantly improving their platforms.
By always incorporating creators’ feedback into our development plans, we’re able to release unique Podia benefits and features that let entrepreneurs stay ahead of the game and streamline their business, without ever needing any code.
“So when you guys came out with each of your features, I was like, ‘Well, get rid of this, get rid of this, get rid of this,’” Minessa shares.
As for creating online courses and other profitable digital products, Podia’s ease of use aligns with Minessa’s hustle-free mission — and even allows creators to have fun in the process.
“Podia is such an enjoyable piece of software that it makes creating courses fun.”
Here’s to growing a thriving business hustle- and hassle-free and having fun while you’re at it. Start for free today.
Want to copy Minessa’s funnel-building and hustle-free strategy? Give these a read:
- How to create, sell, and profit from an online course in 2020
- How to power up your market segmentation strategies for more leads & revenue
- How to create a quiz marketing funnel
- How to set boundaries and work more productively from home
- Why choose Podia