You know that lightbulb moment you have when you realize something epic is about to happen?
Everything just clicks.
This was the case for Tiffany Williams, founder of Rich Girl Collective, a business that coaches women to start online businesses, when she discovered the magic of scaling her own online business with digital products.
Not only was Tiffany able to grow her income exponentially, but she was also able to serve more people in a meaningful way.
Her epiphany -- and scaled business -- didn’t happen overnight, of course.
Pre-epiphany, she worked hard at learning the ins and outs of marketing an online business while she was still employed at LivingSocial. This is also after earning her MBA with a concentration in marketing.
All that hard work paid off, however, and today, Tiffany has been successfully building her online business for over seven years.
We had the pleasure of sitting with Tiffany in an interview to unpack her entrepreneurial journey and process for growing such a flourished business.
Today, we share with you those juicy details. But first, let’s start at the beginning when she grew her first online audience.
How Tiffany used Facebook Groups to build her audiences
To grow her initial audience, Tiffany created Facebook Groups and purchased like campaigns that sent traffic to her groups. She built her first Facebook group on a topic that she had a true passion for -- Yorkies.
Tiffany created her Yorkies Facebook group, provided relevant content, and announced products, which were physical (vs. digital products) at the time. Her first product for sale was a pink t-shirt that she designed herself and simply read, “Yorkies Rule!”
What came of her first product launch?
She made $785 in three days with a community of about 1,000 people.
While Tiffany has made far more in three days since then, it was certainly enough to serve as her first “aha moment” as an entrepreneur. It was also the same income amount as her 9-5 job.
So what did she do? She repeated the process across multiple niches and officially grew her side-hustle into a full-time online career.
Through more Facebook ad campaigns, Tiffany was able to grow subsequent pages very quickly for 22 different niches, where she continued to sell physical products.
“Once you have the process down, it doesn’t matter what niche it's in,” she explains.
An impactful lesson from a fresh entrepreneur, right?
It’s also one that she continued to use as she diversified her products for sale.
How Tiffany diversified her product offerings by asking her audience
Tiffany moved beyond her 22 Facebook group pages and started to diversify her product offerings by referring to the most important aspect of any good business -- her audience.
She simply asked them what they wanted to find out what to offer next.
“I'm super big on asking your audience what they want,” she reveals. “They will tell you.”
More important than asking, Tiffany listened to her audience, which is really how she discovered the best way to serve them.
She kept receiving questions about her success and found that people really wanted to learn about what she did to help her business ideas flourish.
"Wow, there is a need,” Tiffany realized. “People really want to learn and know what they can do to start either a side-hustle to make some extra money or to be able to leave their job so they can do it full-time."
So, she did what she knew best, which was her repeatable process of starting a Facebook group to answer her audience’s questions one at a time.
Tiffany is so dedicated to serving and engaged with her audience that she created a weekly “Talk Tuesday with Tiffany” event for the group.
“I just ask my audience what they want, what they want to learn, and if it matches something that I have done, and I have been successful with, then I teach it to them,” she explains.
Not only do these interactions give Tiffany an understanding of what to teach, but they also provide clarity on what products to offer. It’s a way to validate her offerings, like one of her first digital product ideas.
For instance, she asked her audience if they’d be interested and willing to pay for a guide.
"Well, if I created a guide or something to help you out with this, giving you the exact same steps, would that help you out?” she asked. “Would that be something that you’d be interested in if I charged a minimal amount?"
The answer was a resounding “yes”. Tiffany listened, and launched a sales page before creating the guide, then ran a livestream to get the word out and get more feedback from her audience.
The end result? She made $1,100 on her first livestream alone.
Of course, none of it would’ve been possible without a loyal following, and when it comes to nurturing a fanbase, Tiffany is top-of-class.
How Tiffany grew her loyal tribe
To grow her loyal following, Tiffany focused on serving her audience by answering their questions and continuing to ask what they wanted to learn.
This became -- and still is -- her main priority and purpose of the Rich Girl Collective Community Facebook group, which is now 35,000 members large.
As obvious as it sounds, Tiffany grew her fanbase organically. Her audience benefited from her Facebook group so much that they asked to invite others, and it grew from there.
“They started inviting people, and it literally grew just like that,” she shares. “And then, when I got people in the group and they started growing, they started inviting people . . . Then it grew bigger.”
So much so that Tiffany’s had up to 1,500 people requesting to get into the group at one time.
Sheer mass isn’t the goal of her group, however. Although it’s 35,000 people large, she wants to keep it “authentic and organic”.
Wondering how she keeps the group “authentic and organic”? Two things.
The first is she gives away free content. A lot of it.
In fact, one of Tiffany’s rules of thumb is to give away 90% for free and sell the last 10%.
The reason is people will think, “her free stuff is so good, I can't imagine what her paid stuff is like.”
Tiffany’s second priority for keeping the goal of her Facebook group on track is to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to member requests. Which means she’s very selective with who she allows to join the group. Members need to be the right fit for the group.
“The group could have probably been at 100,000 members by now, but we decline people who we don't think is a good fit for our environment,” she affirms.
By keeping her Facebook group authentic and organic, Tiffany has created a tribe that’s loyal. So loyal that it requires only three people to manage.
“There are three people managing the group,” she reveals. “Me, my mom, and one person who is a student who's turned into a friend of mine.”
How do they get by monitoring such a large group with so few people?
That’s where the loyal tribe steps in. The members basically moderate themselves.
“A lot of people who are not technically moderators . . . moderate the group if I'm not there,” Tiffany explains. “They will send me a DM in a quick minute and say, ‘Hey, look at this post, I don't know if this should be up there.’”
Spam posts aren’t the only thing her members moderate, either.
Tiffany’s audience is so loyal they moderate her group, look out for spamming, direct new people to her other products, and answer each other's questions.
Doesn’t get much better than that, right?
Or does it? Let’s step into Tiffany’s transition from physical to digital products.
How Tiffany transitioned from physical to digital products
Once Tiffany learned that she could successfully serve her audience by offering info products, she went all-in on digital products.
You can call it her bigger “aha moment”. Tiffany realized, “So I only have to really create something one time, and then I can sell it over and over again.”
Yes -- selling to and serving her audience at scale.
Tiffany loves teaching, so creating a collection of classes and trainings was a natural fit. More specifically, “teaching women exactly what she did to get to where she is today” is at the heart of her membership, Rich Girl Academy.
“So, the academy is kind of like a personal trainer at a gym,” she explains. It’s a monthly membership that gives members more access to her and extra accountability.
For $37 a month, members become part of a smaller group setting and receive a monthly Q&A and monthly training from Tiffany. There’s also additional training from her “team of Oprahs” that covers a variety of Rich Girl Collective topics, which include:
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R - Relationships and family
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I - Investments and entrepreneurship
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C - Community and awareness
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H - Health and wellness
With her academy in place, Tiffany’s online business transformed from selling physical products across 22 niches to digital products within a single niche.
As far as her business goals from here, she wants to streamline Rich Girl Collective even more and reach 50,000 -- high quality, of course -- Facebook group members and, ultimately, offer a single membership.
Streamlining her business is something Tiffany achieved in a cinch using Podia’s all-in-one platform.
How Tiffany uses Podia to serve her audience
When it came to setting up her digital products, Tiffany was able to manage everything seamlessly using Podia’s dashboard. “I just like the ease of it,” she describes.
She was first attracted to the unique design of Podia’s online courses. “I watch a lot of people's courses, and I always see people's courses with the same look,” she explains.
But when Tiffany came across a course built using Podia’s platform, she was attracted to the design and ease of use and thought, “Once I get my courses together, this is what I want to use.”
The seamless dashboard -- on both the front-end and back-end -- isn’t the only part that Tiffany enjoys, either.
“My favorite thing about Podia is the support,” she states. “I can get on the support chat and ask a quick question and have an answer... I love that.”
Experience the ease of use and excellent support yourself by signing up for a free Podia account.
OK. While managing your online business can be handled with ease, finding the right time to launch is anything but. Which is where Tiffany’s final words of wisdom come in handy.
Tiffany’s parting advice for creators looking to launch
Tiffany’s advice for creators who want to launch their business is to simply start and learn as you go.
Why? You’re never going to feel like you’re completely prepared to do it.
In other words, don’t let perfectionism get in your way and think that you have to learn everything before launching.
If you do, everything you learn before making the leap might be outdated by the time you’re ready, especially online.
“With online business, internet marketing, and social media, it changes daily and weekly,” Tiffany coaches. “So I would say . . . go head-on and start and learn as you go.”
What’s more is you may not be able to afford to delay your launch.
“Perfect is for the broke,” she continues. “Launch where you are. Get it out there to the world and then correct it as you go.”
Even large companies like Apple launch before their products are perfect. They launch first and then send out a bunch of updates after the products hit the market.
So, are you ready to launch? Yes? Great. No? Do it anyway.
It might be rocky at patches, especially in the early aughts, but with the right online course platform in your corner, you don’t have to go it alone.
And neither do your customers.
“I absolutely love Podia because I know my audience likes ease,” Tiffany voices. “They like something that's super, super simple. And now, I'm turning them on to Podia because they just love the platform.”
