Kimra Luna’s rags to online business riches story is an incredible one. Pregnant and on welfare, Luna tried multiple blog and business ideas, desperate to get her family back on track. When her husband finally got a job, she became even more motivated, because she wanted him to be back at home instead of working long hours away from their kids. The couple used a tax return to get her a laptop, and they later took on debt to launch her first major product.
Those risks paid off. Luna is now a successful personal branding strategist for online business owners, and she is a leading authority on Facebook advertising and webinar-based training. How successful? Zero to almost $1 million in her first year successful. She is the creator of Be True, Brand You, and her Facebook group, The Freedom Hacker’s Mastermind, has more than 30,000 members.
Here are six key lessons you can learn from Luna to go from desperate to dominating your industry.
1. Start where you are.
From a young age, Luna exhibited one of the necessary traits for entrepreneurs: resourcefulness. Her first foray into business was filling a local, albeit unique, need in her hometown — booking punk bands. She checked the CD jackets of her favorite bands and started cold emailing.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I can book concerts in Boise, Idaho, do you guys want to come?'” Luna says. “And sure enough, within weeks I was booking legendary punk bands.”
Later, while she was on welfare, she ran a reiki business from her in-laws’ living room. After becoming pregnant, she started a mommy blog and cultivated a few private Facebook groups for moms.
2. If you know it, you can teach it.
Her mommy blog started to get impressive traffic from Pinterest, a new platform at the time. Soon she was leading webinars on how to use Pinterest, PicMonkey and whatever else that she knew well and could teach well.
“My first course was actually on teaching people how to get customers and clients with Facebook groups,” Luna says. “That was the first course I created, because I’m a Facebook group junkie.”
I asked her what many are asking in the online business space: Is it too late to jump on the webinar bandwagon? Not at all, Luna says.
“If you’re an expert in something, I think it’s the perfect time to be teaching that, because education itself, especially here in the States, is switching over to people wanting to have [online education].”
However, if you’re considering jumping into online business, don’t just know your subject matter — love it. Luna says it’s about “figuring out what you are best at and presenting that out to the world.”
3. Decide to commit.
Luna’s blog and Facebook groups attracted followers, but they weren’t making any money. Things started to take off for her financially after she shut down the mom-focused brands and went all-in on her course business. To get started with her official course, she convinced her husband to get a credit card so she could run Facebook ads.
“It was only like, $2,000. It wasn’t even like, that much, but it was still, it was a big deal for us,” Luna says. “So, you know, I was like, ‘Okay, I have to make this money back.’”
Many entrepreneurs nurse multiple ideas for years. Try and fully commit to one in order to truly test it.
4. Build a tribe (of raving fans).
Luna learned a valuable lesson in the days she spent booking and promoting bands.
“At the concerts, you see the people who are buying,” Luna says. “The people who are buying are the raving fans. They’re the ones buying the CDs, buying every single T-shirt there is.”
She knew that she needed a group of die-hard followers. To do this, you first need to be yourself and emphasize whatever makes you, you. She unapologetically was (and still is) her vegan, bright-haired, tattooed, punk-rock self.
Then, you need to put in the work to make personal connections, which she did by offering video responses to every question on social media, rather than simply typing a reply. She also offered hours and hours of webinar content for free — without using the webinars as the start of a sales funnel — before creating her first product.
Remember, a large number of followers doesn’t matter if most of those followers won’t buy.
5. Create buzz around your product.
For the launch of Luna’s now-signature program, Be True, Brand You,she created outlines of what the course would include to test the reaction. When it was clear that her tribe wanted the course, she decided to run a Black Friday special. She created a bit of a frenzy, bringing in $40,000 almost overnight. Each launch improved dramatically, as did her student testimonials.
“I have an intake survey when people sign up, and I ask people why they joined,” Luna says. “They said, ‘I saw this person’s video. I heard this person’s story.’ So the stories of my students is what was selling the product.”
6. Stay grateful.
Another tactic that really moved the needle for Luna was a mindset shift. She realized that she was an avid complainer and that she had to change her ways.
“When I started learning about gratitude and focusing on gratitude … things in my life just started happening and happening,” Luna says. “Every single day, I say the things I appreciate and always make sure I write Mark Zuckerberg — because he created Facebook.”