25:34Cindy's Got Systems · Talking Head
Watch This If You "Know What to Do, But Just Aren't Doing It"
A solopreneur coach walks through eight small tricks she uses to get past the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
August 15thThe argument in one line.
Predictable revenue in a solo knowledge-based business comes from five boring, repeatable habits, emailing your list, publishing content consistently, showing up on schedule, staying on one topic, and testing changes one variable at a time, not from passion, a clever hook, or a single lucky win.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You run or want to run a coaching, course, membership, or freelance business built on your own knowledge and expertise.
- You have an email list you rarely use and want a concrete case for why that has to change today, not eventually.
- You publish content on and off and want the argument for why topic and schedule consistency compounds over years instead of resetting.
- You've bought a course or 'blueprint' and are looking for a framework on how much to follow it versus tweak it for yourself.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for a single clever tactic, hook, or growth hack; the entire video argues against exactly that kind of thinking.
- You already treat weekly emailing, weekly publishing, and weekly community show-ups as non-negotiable habits; this reinforces what you already do rather than teaching something new.
The full version, fast.
The 'lifestyle business' idea, chase your passion, chase passive income, sold a generation on easy money, but the businesses that actually make consistent revenue run on boring systems. The creator names five: email your list on a schedule (business niches several times a week, lifestyle niches at least weekly, never only when you're selling), publish content consistently because it compounds for years after you hit publish, show up on the same schedule for your community because trust erodes fast when you go dark, stay on one topic because interest-driven algorithms and expertise both punish scattering, and test tweaks to any 'blueprint' one variable at a time so you can tell what actually worked. None of it is exciting. All of it is what she credits for going from a 2011 resignation letter to a seven-year-old paid community.
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00:00 – 02:07
01 · Even 'lifestyle' businesses are boring
Cold open against the 'lifestyle business' and passive-income myth. Brief bio (resigned in 2011, tripled her income year one as a VA, teaching since 2018) and a bakery/bookstore anecdote showing how romantic the idea of running a business sounds versus how repetitive it actually is.
02:07 – 07:13
02 · The boring system that makes predictable sales
Email. A mentor's daily habit of asking 'what will I email my list today' as the single most important task of her day. The ROI case for email, the correlation between emailing frequency and income among the lists she's subscribed to, her own stalled list, and frequency guidance by niche. The rule to never email only when you have something to sell.
07:13 – 10:56
03 · The boring system that builds visibility and trust
Publishing content consistently. A single blog post that paid off for years, weekly new subscribers and members via YouTube, podcast, and blog, content as a free always-on salesperson, the trust built by being seen on camera, and the compounding value of old videos and posts that keep converting for years.
10:56 – 14:11
04 · The boring system that creates long-term clients
Showing up week after week. Discovering an archive of more than 300 consecutive weekly group coaching calls since September 2018, members active for seven years, and the friend-who-ghosts-lunch analogy for how fast trust erodes when a creator goes dark and has to rebuild from scratch.
14:11 – 18:07
05 · The boring system that makes you an expert
Staying on one topic. A coaching client's 'multi-passionate' scatter as a cautionary example, the shift from follower-based to interest-driven algorithms that punish topic-hopping, and the case that depth on one topic, not breadth across several, is what makes potential clients and event organizers trust you as the expert.
18:07 – 20:22
06 · The boring system that scales your business
Testing everything. A chicken-stew recipe tweak as a metaphor for adapting any bought 'blueprint' to your own personality, skills, audience, and goals, the rule to change one variable at a time so you can tell what worked, and the sign-off pointing to a related video on treating your business like a scientist.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Email marketing still has the highest ROI of any marketing method across every industry, and that has not changed in over a decade.
- Every list owner she follows who is making millions emails multiple times a week; every list owner making no money rarely emails at all.
- Her own list of a few hundred people sat unused for years, and revenue only became consistent once she started emailing it regularly.
- B2B and business-focused lists should hear from you several times a week; lifestyle niches like home decor or health can drop to once a week, but not less.
- Never wait until you have something to sell to email your list, that pattern trains subscribers to expect a pitch every time they hear from you and tune out.
- A single blog post she published years ago turned into a client relationship worth an estimated $6,000 to $8,000 over time.
- Every week, 80 to 100 people join her email list through her blog, YouTube channel, or podcast, and new paid members cite the same three sources.
- Old videos and blog posts keep generating views, subscribers, and paying members years after publishing, so consistent output compounds instead of resetting to zero.
- Ali Abdaal reached 6.5 million subscribers by publishing weekly for nine straight years, proof that consistency compounds even before an audience is large.
- Interest-driven algorithms now show people content based on what they've clicked and watched, not who they follow, so switching topics constantly confuses the algorithm about who your content is for.
- Going deep on one topic long enough to become the expert is what separates a real authority from 'anybody, including your favorite chatbot,' who can only produce surface-level content.
- She has group coaching records going back to September 2018, more than 300 consecutive weekly calls, and members who have stayed active for seven years.
- Trust erodes fast when a creator goes dark and comes back, the same way it would with a friend who repeatedly cancels and reappears, and it takes longer to rebuild each time.
- Cookie-cutter business blueprints work for the person who built them, but have to be tested and tweaked to fit your own personality, skills, audience, and goals.
- Change one variable at a time when testing a new system or tactic; changing everything at once makes it impossible to know what actually worked.
Five boring habits beat every clever tactic
WHAT TO LEARN
Consistent, unglamorous habits, emailing your list, publishing on schedule, showing up weekly, staying on one topic, and testing one change at a time, are what actually produce predictable revenue in a solo knowledge-based business.
01Even 'lifestyle' businesses are boring
- The 'lifestyle business' and passive-income framing sells an easier version of running a business than the reality, whether that's a bakery, a bookstore, or a solo coaching practice.
02The boring system that makes predictable sales
- Ask yourself daily what you'll email your list today. Email marketing still has the highest ROI of any marketing method, and the creators making the most money email multiple times a week.
- Never email your list only when you have something to sell. Talking to subscribers between launches, through stories and behind-the-scenes updates, is what keeps them from tuning out the pitch when it comes.
- Match your email frequency to your niche. Business and B2B audiences expect several emails a week; lifestyle niches like home decor or health can drop to once a week, but not less.
03The boring system that builds visibility and trust
- Publish content consistently even before you have an audience. A single blog post or video keeps generating views, subscribers, and clients for years after you hit publish, so early consistency compounds.
- Content is free, always-on visibility and trust-building. It works while you sleep and builds the kind of trust a paid ad cannot, because people are watching you face to face.
04The boring system that creates long-term clients
- Show up for your community on the same schedule every time. Trust erodes fast when you go dark and come back, the same way it would with a friend who keeps canceling plans, and it takes longer to rebuild each time.
05The boring system that makes you an expert
- Stick to one topic instead of chasing multiple niches. Interest-driven algorithms now show your content to people based on what they've engaged with, not who follows you, so topic-switching confuses who your content is even for.
- Depth beats breadth for building authority. Anybody, including a chatbot, can produce surface-level content; going deep long enough to become the expert is what a scattered creator can't fake.
06The boring system that scales your business
- Treat any course or blueprint you buy as a recipe, not a script. It worked for the person who built it, but your personality, skills, audience, and goals are different, so test it against your own business.
- When you test a new tactic or system, change one variable at a time. Changing everything at once means you can never tell what actually worked.
Terms worth knowing.
- Encore career
- A second career pursued in retirement or later life, chosen for fulfillment rather than income, distinct from ordinary post-retirement work.
- Six Figure Systems
- The paid membership community and weekly group coaching program the creator has run since September 2018, teaching solopreneurs the recurring habits covered in this video.
Things they pointed at.
09:53channelAli Abdaal's YouTube channel
Lines you could clip.
00:00
“I don't know who invented the term lifestyle business, but I'd like to have a word with them.”
00:29
“Boring is what makes the money.”
02:22
“What am I going to email my list today?”
03:11
“Email marketing still has the highest return on investment of any marketing method across any industry.”
05:24
“So don't be like Cindy.”
06:03
“Do not wait until you have something to sell to email your list.”
09:17
“I have videos on this channel that are still getting views every single day, that still get subscribers to my email list every single day.”
11:33
“More than 300 calls I showed up for.”
13:55
“How long would it be before you stop trusting that they would show up? It wouldn't take very long.”
16:50
“Anybody can do surface level content. Anybody can talk about that stuff, including your favorite chat bot.”
20:19
“Hustle is out, systems are in.”
Word for word.
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I don't know who invented the term lifestyle business, but I'd like to . Somehow it's gotten all mixed up with the idea that you should follow your passion and that you should chase passive income. And that's created an entire industry of people who promise easy money and endless fun.
Here's the truth. The really successful business owners that you see and that you admire and that you follow have embraced the boring systems because boring is what makes the money by the way if you're new here my name is cindy and in 2011 i turned in my resignation letter to start my own business online as a virtual assistant my first year in business i tripled my day job income and by 2018 i was teaching others how to turn their knowledge and expertise into a real sustainable and profitable business online so if that's something you're interested in hit the subscribe button because i post new videos every single week And I never gatekeep the good stuff, like what it really takes to turn your business dreams into reality.
Let's get into it. Not too long ago, I was talking to a coaching client and she works with people of a certain age who are looking to launch their encore career, do something in retirement that sounds fun and sounds more interesting than their corporate job was. And she said the most common things that she hears are people want to start a bakery and people want to open a bookstore.
And I laughed. And I said, I think these people don't understand how much work is involved in starting a bakery. I think the reality of running that kind of business, the reality of running any business is a lot less exciting than the glossy brochures might make it out to be.
Here's the thing. What really brings in the money consistently, what really earns consistent revenue in any business is repeatable. oftentimes very boring systems like the ones I want to share with you today.
One of my very first business mentors said something to me one day that has stuck with me all these years. She probably said this to me 15 years ago. And she said the first thing that she does every morning is she says, what am I going to email my list today?
That stuck with me because She was saying it was the most important part of her day. It was the single most important thing that she did in her business because that's where the money came from.
That's where the revenue came from. If she wasn't sending emails to her list, then she wasn't making any money. And that is true today, just like it was 15 years ago.
Email is how knowledge and experience -based businesses like ours make money. I'm not going to bore you with the stats on this. I've talked about it at length before.
And if you're interested, you can Google what the ROI or return on investment is for email marketing. But I can tell you this, it has not changed in all those years. Email marketing still has the highest return on investment of any marketing method.
across any industry and i can tell you this from personal experience i am on dozens of email lists i sign up for email lists every single day it's part of my business research it's part of my competitor research i highly recommend you do the same but that's a subject for another video i guess but suffice it to say i am on a lot of email lists some people Whose lists I am on, I know that they are making millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars every year.
And some people whose lists I am on, I know that they are not making any money. And every single one of the millionaires emails multiple times per week. And every single one of those who are not making any money rarely email.
I don't think that's a coincidence because this was true for my own business as well. For years, I had an email list. I had a couple of hundred people on a list that I was paying for and I never mailed them.
And it was not until I started consistently sending emails that I started consistently earning money in my business. I justified this at the time because I was in a service -based business and I didn't really need email to bring in customers. My customers were...
coming to me through word of mouth, largely, sometimes through the content that I was publishing online. We'll talk more about that in a minute. But as a service provider, I could only support so many clients.
So why did I need to be promoting my services through email? Well, I could have made the transition to course creator maybe that much sooner if I had been working that email list a little bit harder.
I could have maybe built up a wait list of clients and maybe transitioned into an agency model where I had multiple virtual assistants working for me. Both of these are good ways to scale a business. And I wasn't doing either one because I wasn't emailing my list.
So don't be like Cindy. Email your list, especially in a business focused niche, which means if you are B2B, if you reach other business owners, you should be emailing your list. at least several times a week non -business related niches non -business related industries can probably get away with a little bit less i'm talking about things like home decor or health or personal development these niches can get away with fewer emails but i would say you still should be emailing your list at least once per week and here's the really big mistake to avoid Do not wait until you have something to sell to email your list.
That is a huge red flag to your subscribers that they only hear from you when you have something to sell. You should be talking to your email subscribers on a regular basis about topics that can help them achieve the results. that you are promising through your programs, even if your programs are not available right now, even if your program is not on sale, even if you haven't launched your program yet, you should be talking to your email subscribers about how they can achieve those results.
Tell them the stories. Tell them about your own experiences. Tell them your origin story.
Tell them about clients you've worked with. Tell them about things you saw on your morning walk with the dog. It doesn't matter.
Just don't wait until you have something to sell to email them because that's going to make their spidey senses tingle just a little bit, and rightly so. So my question for you today, just like my business mentor all those years ago, what will you email your list today? The next boring system that makes real money is publishing content consistently.
The first blog post that I ever published, brought me a client that I worked with for years. I don't have the actual numbers, but I'm going to say that that client probably paid me between six and $8 ,000 over the years that we worked together.
That was from. a single blog post. As of right now, every single week someone joins my Six Figure Systems program and says, I found you on YouTube or I found you through your podcast.
And every single week between 80 and 100 people subscribe to my email list and they all find me through my blog, through this YouTube channel, or through my podcast. So publishing content consistently creates income. In fact, Next to email, I'm going to say it's the highest leverage use of my time.
If I could do nothing else and I still wanted to stay in business, I would send emails to my list and I would publish content. Those two things create revenue. And here's the thing about content.
It is the least expensive, most effective visibility tool I have in my business. I don't have to spend money on ads. I don't have to spend money to create these videos.
I don't have to spend money to publish a blog post on my site. And yet that content is out there doing a salesperson's job. Content also creates.
trust. There's a lot of trust built up between me and the people who consume my content. You're here watching me on YouTube.
You are seeing me face to face. You're hearing me talk. And that is a trust builder.
The more authentic and transparent you are, like I talked about in this video, the more trust you will create with your potential customers and clients. Content also works long after I hit the publish button. I have videos on this channel that are still getting views every single day, that still get subscribers to my email list every single day, that still create new members inside Six Figure Systems every single day.
And those videos will continue to work for years to come. The same goes for my blog. Those articles continue to work.
every single day for me. In fact, one of my only regrets in business is that I wasn't more consistent with content publishing earlier. I was just looking at Ali Abdaal's YouTube channel the other day.
He started publishing videos weekly nine years ago, and today he has six and a half million subscribers. So imagine... where you could be if you had started publishing content months or years ago.
And it's not just the big creators either. Don't look at this and say, oh yeah, but Ali Abdaal, he's been around forever and he's got 6 million subscribers. Among my clients and students, the ones who are making money are the ones who publish consistently.
I have one client who has more than 200 ,000 YouTube subscribers. I have another client who has been publishing a weekly blog post since 2000. eight.
These people are making real money consistently in their business because in large part, they publish content consistently. So let me ask you this. If you could hire an army of people to do nothing but talk about your business all day long, every day, would you do it?
Of course you would. That's what content is. Another boring system that makes money is just showing up week after week.
We're in the process of changing video hosts right now. We're moving from one to another. And that means moving all of our video archives from within Six Figure Systems from one host to another.
And we discovered that we have group coaching calls that date back to 2018. That's when we started Six Figure Systems was September of 2018. And I have group coaching calls, weekly group coaching calls from that entire.
time. More than 300 calls I showed up for. More than 300 times I showed up for members to answer their questions, sometimes the same questions, week after week after week.
But I showed up every single week and I continue to show up every single week. Honestly, it's part of the best part of my day. I listed this among the boring systems because People seem to get tired of doing the same thing week after week, and I get that.
But showing up week after week after week for my clients, for my students, for my members inside Six Figure Systems builds trust, just like the content I publish online builds trust, just like the emails that I send build trust. So that showing up, that being there for people builds trust. I know that because I still have people in Six Figure Systems who have been with me from the very first month.
So they have been active participating members of my group. for seven years so they show up too showing up every single week also adds value to the group it lets my customers know that they can count on me and that they can count on the resources inside six figure systems and that's true for all of the successful business owners that i know they all continue to show up on a regular schedule for their community, whether they run a membership or whether they create group coaching programs or they sell courses or they have one -to -one coaching, whatever their business model looks like, they continue to show up when they say they're going to show up.
The not so successful business owners are the ones who go dark for days or weeks. And when they come back, they have to start from scratch. They have to start from scratch, building that trust up again.
And every time time that gets a little bit harder. Imagine if you had a friend who you guys go out to lunch maybe once a month and every few months they just ghost you.
They just stop showing up for lunch and then they come back and they say yeah I'm sorry life you know life got in the way whatever I'm back now it's all good and then everything is good for another few months and then they ghost you again. How long would it be before you stop trusting that they would show up? It wouldn't take very long.
And we do this in our business. A lot of people do this in their business. And it's unfortunate because it does take that much longer to build up that trust again.
So be the friend who shows up. Another boring system that has made me a lot of money over the years is covering the same topics. over and over and over again.
I was talking to a potential coaching client the other day and I asked her about her business and she said, well, my first business is whatever. And I kind of shook my head. because I knew where this was going.
Some people like to call themselves multi -passionate. Maybe you use that term to describe yourself. But when it comes to business, focusing and staying on target and talking about the same thing over and over and over again is how you make real money.
Jumping from one topic to another spreads you too thin and it doesn't allow you to really get to where the gold is in your niche. And I think that's more true now than it ever has been.
Interest driven algorithms are the norm today versus follower based algorithms. So a few years ago, if you were on Instagram, for example, or if you were on YouTube, and you subscribe to someone's feed or subscribe to someone's channel, or you followed them on Instagram, or you friended them on Facebook, you would see their content.
in your feed you would log in and it would all be your friends and it would all be people that you had connected with and people that you were subscribed to and that is not true today now it doesn't really matter who you are subscribed to you see in your feed similar content to what you have clicked on watched engaged with in the past so think about How does that matter in your business?
If you are constantly changing topics, if you're constantly talking about something different, then the algorithms don't know who to show your content to. The algorithms don't know if your ideal customer is somebody who wants to build a business or somebody who wants to be more productive or somebody who wants to declutter their house or somebody who wants to lose weight.
Those are four different people with four different interests. And if you want the algorithm to show your content to the people who are most likely to buy, then you need to be consistent with what you are talking about. But there's a more important reason to stick to one topic.
And that's because going deeper into that topic, learning more, speaking about it on a deeper level is what makes you the best in the world at what you do. Anybody can do surface level content. Anybody can talk about that stuff, including your favorite chat bot.
But the truly successful people, the truly successful people in their niches are the ones who focus long enough to become the expert. Trying to maintain multiple niches, multiple markets, multiple offers. also makes your potential clients question whether or not you are the right person for them.
Are you the best coach for me? Or are you the best coach for somebody in a different niche? Are you the best person to invite to this event?
Or are you focused on something different? Are you the best person to ask to keynote this conference? Or is your interest elsewhere?
By focusing on one thing, on one topic of interest to you, you answer all of those questions through your content, through your email, through your products and programs. You let people know this is my area of expertise.
The most successful business owners that I know have been talking about the same thing for years. The not so successful business owners seem to change topics. multiple times a year.
Instead of looking for new topics to cover, look for new ways to say the same thing. Another boring system that makes me real money is testing everything. I like to experiment with new recipes and I found one last week for chicken potato stew that looked really good.
It looked really good on the YouTube video and I made it and it was okay. It wasn't great. It had Probably too much time in it.
Rick doesn't really like time. I like more gravy in my stew. This didn't have a lot of gravy.
I'll make it again, but I will also change it up so it works better for me. I will add more gravy. I will use less time.
Maybe I'll put sage in it instead. Business works exactly the same way. Lots of people out there, including me, will sell you the blueprint.
how to sell on Instagram, how to make money on YouTube, how to start a membership site. All of these systems are out there available to you. And all of these things work for the creator, but they might not work for you.
That doesn't mean they're not valuable. It just means that you have to test them and tweak them and make them your own. Not every solopreneur.
is the same. We don't all have the same personality. We don't all have the same skills.
We don't all have the same audience. We don't all have the same goals. So not every cookie cutter system is going to work for us, but we can take those cookie cutter systems, treat them like a recipe and tweak them to make them work for us.
Continually experimenting with your business is the path to scale, but there's a caveat. You cannot do it all at once. You cannot change everything at once because then how will you know what worked and what didn't?
Instead, master one move at a time, improve one thing, and then move on to the next thing. I did an entire video about how this process works for solopreneurs like you and me. You will find that over here.
If you are interested in... treating your business like a scientist, I recommend you watch that one next. And in the meantime, remember, hustle is out, systems are in.
I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
She opens by picking a fight with an idea, not a person: the 'lifestyle business' myth that got tangled up with following your passion and chasing passive income. Her counter-claim lands in the same breath. The business owners you actually admire didn't find an easy shortcut, they embraced boring, repeatable systems, because boring is what makes the money.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:29list
The Five Boring Systems
- Email your list on a schedule
- Publish content consistently
- Show up on the same schedule every week
- Stay on one topic
- Test tweaks one variable at a time
The five repeatable habits she credits for consistent revenue, contrasted throughout the video against chasing a single clever tactic or a 'lifestyle business' shortcut.
Steal fora monthly audit checklist for any solo knowledge-based business
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
20:12next-video
“I did an entire video about how this process works for solopreneurs like you and me. You will find that over here.”
Soft, single mention at the very end pointing to a related video on testing one variable at a time, plus a subscribe ask folded into the intro rather than a hard pitch at the close.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
