“I give this advice to people every single week, create a sales page with a button on it that says ‘join the waitlist’.”
Fiona Johnston | Peach Business
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So you want to make money while you sleep, but what does that look like in reality?
How can an everyday human go from servicing customers one-to-one to creating one-to-many automated digital passive income products?
Today we’re talking to a real-life ADPIPer, financial coach, Fiona Johnston, about how she created her ADPIP empire, the challenges, the wins, and the lessons she has for you.
Tune in to learn:
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Why Fi made her move from chartered accountant to financial literacy coaching
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How Fi built her first online program
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Which ADPIPs work for Fi’s business
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Why Fi’s ideal customers are women in business who want to make more money
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How Fi builds brand awareness through campaigns
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How Fi uses three-day challenges to give new people the opportunity to join
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What percentage Fi’s ADPIPs make up in her overall business
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Fi’s top tip for anyone starting their ADPIP journey
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About Fiona Johnston
You probably haven’t met anyone quite like Fi Johnston before. Fi is a Chartered Accountant who’s all about impact. She’s a creative, passionate and kind business and money strategist who makes people feel differently about money. Fi is the Founder of Peach Business, an investor and multiple business owner, a money and business educator and speaker, strategist and coach. She’s obsessed with small business, and when she talks about money it just hits different. Fi makes women feel safe with money and brave in their financial decisions.
Fun fact: Fi is in an all-ladies choir, she loves singing like nothing else and they wear double denim and red lipstick for all of their gigs.
Connect with Fiona Johnston
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Transcript
Kate Toon:
So you want to make money while you sleep, but what does that look like in reality? How can an everyday human go from servicing customers one-to-one to creating one to many automated digital passive income products? Today we’re talking to a real life ADPIPer, financial coach, Fiona Johnston, about how she created her ADPIP empire, the challenges, the wins, and the lessons she has for you.
Hello, my name is Kate Toon, founder of Stay Tooned, Busy Business Owner and Digital Products Passive Income Queen. Today I’m talking with Fiona Johnson. Hello, Fi.
Fi Johnston:
Good morning.
Kate Toon:
Good morning. Good to have you here. If you haven’t heard of Fi before, let me introduce her. You probably haven’t met anyone quite like Fi Johnston before. Fi is a chartered accountant who’s all about impact. She’s a creative, passionate, and kind business and money strategist who makes people feel differently about money. Fi is the founder of Peach Business, an investor and multiple business owner, a money and business educator, a speaker, a strategist and coach. She’s obsessed with small business and when she talks about money, it just hits differently. Fi makes women feel safe with money and brave in their financial decisions. And fun fact, Fi is in an all ladies choir. She loves singing like nothing else and they wear double denim and red lipstick for all of their gigs. Oh my God. Double denim.
Fi Johnston:
Yes, the goal is triple or quadruple denim if possible. So you could have denim shoes or a denim wristband or something that’s highly coveted.
Kate Toon:
See, I’d love to be in a choir, I can’t sing, but I would still love to be in a choir.
Fi Johnston:
Everybody can sing.
Kate Toon:
Everyone can sing. I love that. Love that positivity.
Fi Johnston:
Your talking voice indicates to me that you can absolutely sing.
Kate Toon:
Okay, there we go. Maybe we’ve unleashed a whole new me. Not sure I can do double denim. Until about four years ago, I’d never owned a pair of jeans. Jeans are a new thing in my life.
Fi Johnston:
There’s a lot of questions to unpack about that. Jeans are the… Oh my Lord.
Kate Toon:
Talk about that in another episode because today I want to talk about you and your ADPIP and your journey towards one-to-one to one-to-many. So I know you from many years ago when actually I worked with you one-to-one, and it was a glorious experience. Fi helped me look at my business numbers. You created this, honestly, the most beautiful report, which I still have on my desktop and I look at it now where she went through all my figures, broke them down in a way that made them understandable and also was a bit of a cheerleader and said, “Kate, well done. You’re doing really well.” So that was in your previous life. Tell us a bit more about your previous pre ADPIP life.
Fi Johnston:
Yeah, so thanks for the intro, Kate, and thanks for having me and everybody listening. Hello. I’m Fi. Yeah, so look, my before business life I’ve worked as a chartered accountant in many different industries and I’ve had my business now for nearly 14 years. So I feel like a bit of a business veteran these days. And three and a half years ago something happened you may have heard of called COVID.
Kate Toon:
Oh, I heard of that. Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal.
Fi Johnston:
Yeah, it was on the media a lot. So during COVID I noticed I had been working one-to-one with small business owners doing business strategy and financial coaching. And in around that sort of early COVID time, I had a lot of small business owners reaching out to me saying, I don’t know what’s going to happen with my money through this pandemic and I want the skills to work out how to work it out myself. They were going to their accountants or their bookkeepers looking for help and the bookkeepers and accountants were sort of spending all this time trying to help them work it out. And I realised there’s a huge gap in the market for people who want to learn how to do their own finances.
So they want to understand how do I actually understand money better and how do I work out how to make more of it myself? And most accountants and bookkeepers have not moved into the education space, so they tend to be more advisory. So I will do the work for you and you will pay me every year to do that for you. What I really wanted to do was explore how do I actually teach someone to fish rather than giving them a fish? And that’s where my digital products started.
Kate Toon:
Well, you’ve kind of answered the next question now. So the next question was around your big little idea. So your big little idea was to fill almost the space between accountants and small businesses. And I feel like you’re almost a translator or you’re helping people. Accountants have a certain role, they output figures, but they’re not necessarily amazing sometimes at making those figures make sense to small business owners. So when you came up with your big little idea to fill this gap, that was the gap that you saw. What kind of things did you think would be right to fill that gap?
Fi Johnston:
Honestly, I put the idea together so quickly. I think you and I share that, I’m a scrappy business owner. I just started thinking about what are the outcomes that people want? They want to learn how to make money, they want to understand their numbers. So I started thinking about the different components of money and how can I start teaching that. So financial literacy is the sort of foundation. How do I kind of understand these reports I’m looking at? And then how do I start to break the other parts of money down? And it’s taken me a while to get here, but I launched an online program in May, 2020 and wrote the content as I went. So it was a very participatory experience for the first round of participants.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I recommend that in the book, I talk about you’re building the bicycle as you’re riding it. Now I’m not saying that you launch something in a disingenuous way, you launch something you don’t have. Clearly you already had the skills, the know-how and the vague plan of what you wanted to put there. But I think it’s great to be open with your OGs, your original people and say, Hey look, let’s make this together. I’m going to respond to what you want and appreciate that what you launch with will not look like that in a couple of years time. It gets more and more sophisticated and you get more clear on what you want to do.
When you decided to move, so you had already done done-for-you and you’d actually moved already into the done-with-you space. So it’s DIY with a coach and a mentor there to help you, but it is essentially DIY is what you’re selling now. What fears did you have about moving from one-to-one to one-to-many? Were you thinking who’s going to buy this or were you confident that you had enough people that would want it?
Fi Johnston:
I think the biggest fear I had was how will I get all of this done? I had a pretty good sense that people would buy it. Although I must say my first round, my goal was eight people and I had 30 and I think it was just representative of the time. It wasn’t necessarily that I did a particularly great launch. That first launch I think is often the easiest. So I wasn’t afraid that people wouldn’t buy it. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to actually get the work, actually be able to create the content and deliver it whilst also delivering to my one-to-one clients. So for me that was a big fear.
Kate Toon:
I think that’s a really valid fear. We talk about that in the book. It’s almost, lots of people fear failure, like what if no one buys it? But then the flip of that is, oh God, what if people do buy it? And I suddenly have all these people to serve and then I let them down because I don’t want to let them down. And I love what you said about the first launch. In the book I call it the Kevin Bacon Factor, and it is that the first launch is everybody you already know, people you’ve already worked with who’ve been following you for ages, they’re your most eager buyers.
And unfortunately some ADPIPers get buoyed sense of overconfidence and think, well boom, I got 30 my first launch, I’m going to get 80 next time. Na-ah. The next few launches maybe less than because you’ve used up your best people and you’re getting further and further away from Kevin Bacon, from the centre. But we’ll talk more about that and when we talk about your marketing strategy. So in your head, what would be your USP? If you’re sitting there and I’ve just met you at an event, we’re both eating sausage rolls, new vegetarian sausage rolls, and I say to you, “Fi, what do you do?” How would you describe yourself in a couple of lines?
Fi Johnston:
I help women to feel better about money so they can make more of it.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. And we would probably append the second part of that, which would be, and I do this through my coaching programs, my boo boo di boo and my boo boo di boo. So what does your little universe look like now? What ADPIPs do you have? Do you have downloads, courses, memberships, masterminds? What have you got?
Fi Johnston:
So I’ve just transitioned from a kind of cohort based, I’ve had a 10-week program that I’ve been running. I’ve run it seven times now, and I’ve learned a lot in that time about what actually makes a difference for my members. It takes a long time to sort of grab the education and I feel that it takes around three months for people to grab the new education. And what I’ve now converted that cohort of 10 weeks to is a six-month membership because I want to spend the first three months on education and sort of immersion into this new world. And then we spend the next three months actually implementing and continuing to kind of go on. So yeah, I now have a membership. I have quite a few smaller digital downloads and even the way that I work one-on-one is now transitioning because I’ve built so many amazing assets through all of these courses that I can now start using those with my one-on-one clients too.
Kate Toon:
That’s interesting. So are you still offering the 10-week program or is that gone or is that going to be like a preamble to the membership?
Fi Johnston:
So the 10-week program is now the education included in the six-month program.
Kate Toon:
I think I love that kind of evolution because again, for example, I had a 12-week course, which I still have, but very few people are going to solve all their problems in three months and that’s why then we have the follow-up membership afterwards. And I think what that says to me is the good qualities of an ADPIPer is that really, yes, you could keep selling that and you could make good money from it, but you’re not going to get the transformation, I know that’s such a coach word, that you want in your clients. They’re actually not going to achieve their goals with that. So you could keep selling it, but it’s not selling the right thing and having that expanded time period is important.
The harder thing is, I think as we know as ADPIPers is actually it’s easier to sell a course than it is a membership because people do not like ongoing commitments and they do not want to admit to themselves that it’s going to take six months. So I have a six-month program with this Six Figures While You Sleep, the program and lots of people think, well no, no, no, I can launch a digital project in a month. And it’s like, yes you can, but you will not sell it. If it takes six months to work it out, it’ll take even longer. So the length is really important. So we’ve got your USP, I love it. Describe your ideal customer. Who’s your ideal avatar?
Fi Johnston:
So my ideal avatar is a woman in business who is, she might be anywhere in her journey. She’s probably at least two years into her business adventure and she wants to make more money, so she wants to make more money either through growing her team or growing her own digital business. And she wants to do that ethically. So she wants to feel good about the money that she’s making and she wants to be making more of it.
Kate Toon:
I love that. And I think as well, there’s something in there about you are quite an advocate for women talking about money and overcoming the stories that we tell ourselves that we’re not good at math, we’re not good at money. And also creating wealth for ourselves as entities rather than relying on partners or other people because as you know, you know the statistics better than me, it’s women in their fifties and sixties that have no super, no investments, anything like that. So that’s an important kind of, not a soap box, but a thing that you stand for ethically as well. Is that right?
Fi Johnston:
That’s right. So I see women, digital business and small business ownership in general is an amazing economic tool for women. It allows us to make money doing anything at all. But if we haven’t cleared out our old money stories that we learned when we were children, we are going to take all of those money stories into our business and we are going to stop ourselves. We are going to self-sabotage our efforts to make more money. And until we actually have the space to talk and experience that with other women, we don’t actually realise that we even have all of those stories floating around our heads. And so I think where my space lands is somewhere between that kind of practical and moving very slightly into the woo, but really speaking more broadly about let’s unpack what’s in our mind and then let’s use that to take action.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I mean what I like about you is you’re not a financial coach that relies on mantras and not to be too dismissive, but dream catchers, you’re like, yeah, you have the story, but let’s work it out by using an Excel spreadsheet. I love the practicality and the honesty around that, that it’s mindset shifts through practical actionable tasks, not necessarily too much navel-gazing, a bit of navel-gazing. We all need that. So right now you’ve got digital downloads, you’ve got your course, which is now part of your ongoing membership. Let’s talk about how you’ve promoted that. So you talked about lots of people live in brand awareness land, they’re just like, I need more people to know about my thing. What are some of the most successful ways, maybe give us two ways that you’ve built brand awareness around your products.
Fi Johnston:
I’ve built brand awareness using campaigns, so I run one or two big campaigns a year. My most recent one was a documentary, so that’s helped me kind of be a little bit more known. And then I tend to use my email is where the actual conversion is happening. And something that I really regret, Kate, is not starting on my email marketing journey earlier. Just in my early days of business, I couldn’t think about why somebody would want to receive an email from me. And now that I’ve cracked the code, I’ve got things to write about every single week and I love writing emails to my subscribers. So I use the campaigns to put my balloons out and say, come and have a look at what I’m doing. And then I try to get people into my email funnel so that they can get to know me, feel safe reading my emails, and then when they’re ready, convert into becoming a client.
Kate Toon:
Great, well, we’ll come back to the lead generation and the funnel, but the brand awareness, that’s a different approach than I’ve seen a lot of ADPIPers do. I love the idea of campaigns. Having worked in ad agencies, it is not about just flinging up graphics every now, there’s a bigger idea, there’s a bigger purpose, it’s a campaign and then that’s the strategy. And then there are lots of little tactics that come off that videos and whatever. And I think the way that you’re thinking about it is the way that I think it’s big ideas, how those are executed and shown on social media or whatever is another matter, but what’s the big idea and your documentary, what you have right now is about the topic we just talked about, financial discussions around women. It’s a bigger idea rather than just flinging up graphics about this is what net profit is.
I love that. So that’s fantastic. So let’s move into the next stage. We talked about brand awareness, lead generation, love that point that literally if you listen to this podcast today, afterwards, go and set up a little email box on your site. Even if you don’t have your lead magnet yet, you’ll be surprised, even if you get seven people in a month, you’ll be so grateful for those seven people. Often it’s a persistence and longevity thing with email building, not some big amazing idea, but you do now have a lead magnet. What’s your lead magnet?
Fi Johnston:
This is something I’m working on at the moment, so I have probably too many lead magnets at the moment. What I’m trying to do is really nail into what are the problems that my ideal clients are trying to solve? And that is they want to understand their numbers better. So I have a lead magnet that is the money things that all entrepreneurs need to know. And I have other lead magnets which are more masterclass style because I feel that I’m better on camera than I am on written paper even though I love writing. So I have a couple of masterclasses that take people through the link between how you think and feel about money and how that transfers through to how to make money and how to manage your money.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I love that. I think if you can picture in your mind the Nile in Egypt, you know the Nile in Egypt, at the top, there are loads of little tiny tributaries coming towards the Nile and I think that’s what a lot of people do when they start in this world is they make lots and lots and lots and lots of lead magnets. Whereas I like to think of more as the Thames. There’s one big opening and it gets narrower and narrower and I think what works for me, a little bit of a tip here, you don’t have to take it, it’s instead of having multiple entry points, you have one entry point you really work out which is your most popular lead magnet, which you think is the easiest. And then you actually deliver all the other lead magnets in a flow, in the same flow.
So if I’ve signed up for your checklist, then I get the masterclass because actually asking someone to watch an hour long masterclass is a problem, not a solution. It’s like an ebook is a horrible, horrible lead magnet because you’re giving me a lot of work to do. So I like to layer them and do the kind of, it’s Gary Van uses the expression jab, jab punch. So you give, you give, you give, then you ask, then you give, you give and you give people layers. So anyway, there’s a little visual. Do you want to be the Thames or the Nile? It’s an interesting way. So once you’ve got people in-
Fi Johnston:
I love that, yeah. thank you.
Kate Toon:
Then you have your email nurture sequence, which now you’re really into writing emails and it’s such a wonderful way to stop shouting in the fruit market in London of look at my thing, but instead to have a lovely one-on-one conversations to build a relationship, to build trust, to build proof. Do you have what I would call a tripwire product, so a low cost kind of appetiser version of the later thing that you charge for? You’ve got a lot of free master classes. Do you have a tripwire product as well?
Fi Johnston:
I’m literally upgrading all of my funnels to include those sorts of things right now. I don’t know if anybody else listening feels the same, but these kind of terms really sort of trigger me. I’ve seen myself as such an ethical business owner that it’s been a lot for me to overcome these kind of tactics that you are talking about and I’m really trying to help just to keep remembering that all of these things that I’m offering and selling are about helping people to make more money, which is my goal.
Kate Toon:
It’s so funny, isn’t it? And it’s semantics. If you talk about funnels and tripwires, it all sounds like you’re trying to gain people into falling into your trap. So I call mine a slippery tube of joy. You’re welcome to use that. Slippery tube of joy and I call my tripwire an appetiser for the main course. And just that makes it a lot less cynical. And we also all have to remember that people want what we’re selling. They are just looking for affirmation that we are the right choice. If we don’t sell them something, someone else is going to sell them something and they might not be as ethical as we are. So unfortunately all these tactics do have a bit of bad name, but they work. It is like popups work. We don’t like them, but they work. We’re basic creatures. We respond. And leading someone gently down a path and offering them little bite sized treats before they get to the main meal is a divisive method. Because some people will be like, “I don’t want that. I don’t like the taste of this, I don’t like it.” And they’ll leave your funnel.
But the people who like it, will be like, “Yeah, give me more.” And now I feel so much better about making this big investment because otherwise I was about to throw $2,000 at you and I don’t even know who you are. So yes, I love that you’ve mentioned that we have to cheer our mind around and realise that we’re actually helping people, not trying to trick them into a hole. So once you’ve got people, you’ve got them in your hole, that sounds awful. You know what I mean? Then we move into different steps and I think this isn’t something we can really think about when we’re brand new to the ADPIP world, retention and advocacy. It seems like, oh God, I’m just desperately trying to get some people alone and keep them.
Now you obviously have a six-month program and obviously you’ll have business rules around people who want to drop out halfway through because people will, it’s a big investment. But with your membership, how are you going to keep people, how are you going to retain people, not just in terms of getting their money but keeping them involved in the program? What are some of your ideas you’ve got there?
Fi Johnston:
Yeah, I mean obviously the best way to keep people in my program is to deliver a transformation for them. So I do that through being with them every single week. So we have weekly sessions, we talk about different topics. We have a Facebook group which is developing into a really valuable space. I will also be running lots of other events through that time. Every three months we run a challenge. And the way that I’ve worked out my kind of slippery tube of joy is to, every three months I want to give new people an opportunity to join. And the best way to do that is to have them see what it’s like to be in my Zoom room with my other existing members.
So every three months we will run a three-day challenge where people can come and experience what does this feel like? Do I like the way that Fi runs these? Do I like the other people here? And then they can have an opportunity to join the membership and continue on. Once somebody reaches the end of the six months of initial membership, they actually get to stay for half the price.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it.
Fi Johnston:
Yeah. So if they’ve realised that actually having that weekly attention on their money helps them to make more, I’m creating a space for them to give money a spot in their calendar and they can continue doing that with me over time.
Kate Toon:
That’s exactly the way that my program works as well. More people can move down into the, not down, but across into the digital marketing collective. I love that and I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. When I was writing the chapters, especially around advocacy, I was like, I’m not sure that I have many tactics here because at the end of the day, the way that you create advocacy is by being good and by offering value and by helping people. And I think you can’t game that, especially over six months. People are going to see the real you and they’re either going to love you or hate you, and there’s very little you can do about that.
And I’m not saying that challenges and all that don’t work, but at the end of the day, the people who stick around are the people you’ve made a genuine connection with and that’s really just about showing up and delivering on your promise. I love that. Well look, we’re coming to the end of the episode. Let’s talk about money. The book is called slightly sarcastically, Six Figures While You Sleep. And we all know that six figures is a ridiculous figure because is that before tax, after tax, revenue, profit? Is that including your expenses or not? How financially is this working for you? Maybe what percentage does your ADPIP make up in your overall business tapestry?
Fi Johnston:
Yeah, so right now my ADPIP is probably roughly a third of my income. And that’s an interesting question because it’s actually quite difficult having what you call an ADPIP and another type of business to run at the same time. And I think that’s something for people to consider if they’re shifting their business models. So right now I have one-on-one clients that I work with for six months. I have larger clients I work with ongoingly and I have my members in my ADPIP. So what I’m trying to transition to is how do I actually reduce the amount of one-on-one time that I spend, and how can I use the assets I’ve created on this three and a half year long journey of creating online resources? How can I actually use those to make my one-on-one programs better without taking as much of my one-on-one time?
Kate Toon:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean I think what I do is I had a period where I just had to go, I’m going to go all in on this, and I took a step back. I actually share all my financials in the book and what I earn each year and when you can see the dip, when I went, right, I’m going to have to let go of my clients and now to a degree I use my one-on-one coaching as a positioning tool. And it’s basically you can pay a grand and a half to talk to me or you could join my membership for an entire year. It’s your call. And some people will always want to choose the one-on-one, but it’s very sparing for me because I find one-on-one very draining physically, so I can only probably do one a day before I’m worn out.
So it’s simply a positioning tool and I did have to take a step back to take a step forward and that was a risk and it did reduce my income for a good year, but it’s paid off in the end because also it’s like having multiple dogs or multiple children, you feel torn in two and you feel like you’re not doing a good job of both. It’s a very different mindset to work with someone one-on-one, it’s a much more personal and intimate. So it’s interesting-
Fi Johnston:
And it’s also a very different marketing strategy too.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, totally. Totally.
Fi Johnston:
And that’s something I’ve spent, it’s taken me a long time to realise how different the marketing strategy is for my online business compared to my one-on-one.
Kate Toon:
It’s really different. And I remember approaching a coach a while ago and he had a program and I said, “Look, I really don’t want to do your program. I would love to work with you one-on-one.” He said, “Sorry, I don’t do that.” And it was like, oh, good on you, in a way. You know what I mean? I know you want that, but I no longer want to deliver that and I’m fine with that. So look, let’s wrap up. Lots of people listening to this will not have started that ADPIP journey. They’ll still be in the service-based mode. What is one tip, just one, that you would give to people starting this adventure?
Fi Johnston:
Create a sales page with a button on it that says join the wait list.
Kate Toon:
I love it. Today, right?
Fi Johnston:
I give that advice to people every single week.
Kate Toon:
It’s so important and wait lists are such a great way to segment your audience. Those people you can email up the kazoo because they’ve actually volunteered for that and you don’t have to feel guilty because they asked to be there, whereas it feels otherwise, like you’re kind of spamming people with your stuff and in a way you are because people who are on your general list don’t necessarily want that. So getting people syphoned off into that Cairo, Nile Inlet is a good thing. I think that’s fantastic.
Well, look, Fi, you’re such a great example of this world and also how to manage this money once you get it. Because the funny thing about ADPIPs is there can be big lumps of money and then periods of no money and how you manage that can be really challenging. I went through a lot of mindset issues around that. Very odd. You’ve been such an important part of my business and I appreciate you because I got you involved when I was just starting my ADPIP journey, if you remember 2017 I think it was.
Fi Johnston:
Yeah.
Kate Toon:
Yeah. Inspirational.
Fi Johnston:
My pleasure. Thank you for having me on the show and can’t wait to read the book.
Kate Toon:
Woo hoo. Thank you so much.
Fi Johnston:
Thanks, Kate.
Kate Toon:
So there you go. That was Fiona Johnston. You can find links to all her various bits and bobs in the show notes. Sorry if you can hear an annoying barking dog in the background such is the life working in a shed in your back garden. So until next time, thank you for listening to the show. This is a brand new podcast, so I would so appreciate it if you could take a minute to leave me a review or rating wherever you’re listening to it. Also, don’t forget to check out the show notes for this episode at katetoon.com. You can also buy copies of Six Figures While You Sleep on Amazon or wherever you buy good books. Finally, come and join my Facebook group, the Misfit Entrepreneurs to meet lots of other busy business owning ADPIP humans and get advice and tips from me. So until next time, stay sleepy people and I’ll speak to you soon. Okay, bye.
