Start with delivery, then design your sales and marketing.
When you're building an online business, it's tempting to start with the things you can see: a website, social media, an email list, or a marketing funnel. But there's a problem with starting there.
You can spend months building marketing systems without knowing whether your business will produce the results you want. That's why I recommend a different approach: Start with the end in mind.
Doctor’s Notes
One of the most important lessons I've learned from working with experienced professionals is that building an online business isn't simply a technology project. It's a business design challenge.
You need to understand the results you want for your clients, your business, and yourself before deciding what systems and capabilities to build.
That's why I recommend designing your business backward from delivery.
When you know what results you'll help clients achieve, you can design the offers that deliver those results. Then you can determine the marketing activities needed to attract the right prospects.
Operate your business from left to right. But design and build it right to left.
Online Profits Insight
Design Your Online Business for the Results You Want
Most online business training focuses heavily on marketing. But marketing is only one part of a successful online business. Every expert business has three core operating activities:
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Marketing: Attract qualified leads.
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Sales: Convert qualified leads into clients.
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Delivery: Help clients achieve their desired results.
These activities operate from left to right, but designing and building them in reverse order can save considerable time and effort.
Start by defining the client transformation and how you'll deliver it. Then create your offers and revenue model. Finally, design the marketing needed to generate the right prospects.
Two additional activities support marketing, sales, and delivery.
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Content provides information, education, and resources throughout marketing, sales, and delivery.
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Community provides interactive opportunities to connect, build trust, demonstrate value, and support learning and implementation.
And remember, you don't need to implement everything at once.
Your first objective is to get Online Business 1.0 operating with a core revenue-generating offer. You can add other capabilities as your business evolves.
→ Read and Watch: Design Your Online Business for the Results You Want
Read the full Insight article here...
Kajabi Korner
Think Business Capabilities, Not Just Website Pages
Kajabi provides tools for websites, landing pages, email marketing, courses, coaching, and communities. But having those tools available doesn't mean you need to implement all of them immediately.
Start by identifying the business capability you need next. For example, if you're launching a coaching offer, you might initially need a simple offer page, checkout, scheduling, and client delivery experience, and that's all you need.
Later, you can add automated email nurturing, a content library, or a community.
The business requirement should drive your technology decisions, not the other way around.
If you're interested in learning how I can help you can build Version 1 of your online business with a free 30 day trial of Kajabi with 3 months of complimentary Kajabi implementation coaching from me, let's set up a time to talk.,
Let's Talk About How To Build Your Online Business 1.0 in 3 months
Sprint to Success!
Once you've designed your business, how do you turn that design into something operational? That's the topic of this week's Online Experts Roundtable.
A focused sprint is a project that creates a working business capability. You might implement a private coaching offer, a live workshop, a lead-generation system, or an online course. Each sprint adds another functional piece to your business. And the sequence matters.
Join us on Friday at the
Online Experts Roundtable
October 23, 2026
1:00 pm Pacific
Build Your Online Business One Sprint at a Time
Start with a Revenue-Generating Offer.
Add Capabilities as Your Business Grows.
We'll explore how different expert businesses can start with different core offers and progressively add capabilities through focused sprints.
Community Updates
Design Your Online Business in Five Days
I'm preparing an upcoming Design Your Online Business Workshop
During this five-day workshop (1 hour per day), we'll work through the four essential elements of your initial online business design:
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Clients and Mission
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Signature Framework
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Customer Journey
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Business Model
The goal is to help you develop your Initial Business Design and identify the best path forward for your circumstances and goals.
Design Your Online Business Workshop
November 2-6, 2026
9:00 - 10:00 am Pacific
You can participate in the live workshop for free. Replays will be up for 24 hours each day if you can't make it live. An optional VIP experience will provide additional coaching, resources and support as well.
Learn More and Join the Workshop Notification List Here...
Thank you for being here.
I’m excited to continue building this community together.
To your online success!
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