Work Less, Earn More

Webinars are an incredible sales tool.

They let you build relationships with your audience and convert lots of sales in a way that is still aligned with you and your values. It doesn’t have to be sleazy or salesy to work.

But you knew all that from last week’s episode. Or if you didn’t, definitely go check that out.

Now that we know how effective webinars can be and the basics of setting up your first or next webinar, we’re going to talk about webinar content.

What exactly should you say in your webinars? What should you teach?

How can you organize the information that you're teaching?

And most importantly, how can you wrap your webinar up with an effective sales pitch that will actually convert a large percentage of your attendees into buyers?

Plus, we’ll cover some tips so you can avoid common beginners’ mistakes and start seeing success from your very first webinar, from how long it should be and how many slides you should have to the importance of rehearsing your presentation and whether or not you should have your camera on.

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Webinars consistently convert at a rate of 10 times the rate of email.

What is it that makes them such a powerful sales tool?

You’ve probably been to at least a few yourself, especially in this age of busy-ness and occasional quarantine.

They can be amazing–full of awesome, helpful, free training! Or in the wrong hands, they can be terrible, super-sleazy sales pitches. Maybe you’ve seen some from both ends of that spectrum.

Some business owners have even decided they want nothing to do with them because they’ve been tainted by sleaze.

But there’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because some people misuse webinars and do them badly doesn’t mean that webinars themselves are corrupt. And they are still incredibly effective sales tools.

Done well, a webinar should be a positive experience for you and your audience. You can share a lot of value and strengthen your relationship with them. When you do get to the sales pitch, it’s a logical and welcome next step for your viewers because they want more of what you’re offering.

In other words, you want to knock their socks off with your free content so that they’re eager to pay you for more!

With the right balance of information, relationship-building and a taste of the paid product–no sleaze!–you can harness webinars to grow your business.

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As entrepreneurs, we’re in the business of creating value and trading it with others.

Which is to say, the main business of running a business is selling products. That’s how you engage in trade, serve your customers, and earn a livelihood..

But the business of trading–that is, selling–can seem like a mystery. What should we sell? How can we market our products? And at the end of the day, how can we convince people to buy them?

It turns out that making sales is much less about “convincing people to buy” and much more about explaining the benefits of your product and finding a mutually agreeable price. You have to find the point at which the price is equal to, or less than, the customer’s perceived value of the product.

It’s an equation that takes the mystery out of the process, and makes it much less emotionally charged.

So how do you apply it to your business?

This month on the podcast, we’re looking at four different aspects of launching products online, one of the most common ways digital entrepreneurs, like you, sell their goods to the public.

In today’s episode, we’ll be discussing launch math, the science of calculating the potential results of your launch long before you ever run your first ad, send your first email, or even, possibly, create your product.

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The math:

Conversion coefficients:

Equations:

[launch list] x 0.02 = webinar registrants

[webinar registrants] x 0.30 = webinar attendees

[launch list] x 0.005 = email sales

[webinar attendees] x 0.05 = webinar sales

[personally engaged leads] x 0.20 = direct sales

[sales] x price = total revenue

[sales] x cost = total cost

[total revenue] - [total costs] = net profits

With the events of 2020 behind us, more people than ever before are taking the leap to work for themselves.

There are a lot of potential upsides. A flexible schedule. Freedom of choice in who you work with and what you work on. Security. And of course, no limit on your potential earnings.

But most people are also painfully aware of the challenges of getting started.

Is your personality a good fit for freelance work? What business should you start? Will anyone even want to hire you? And how can you find your first client?

To help you answer those questions and more, today on the podcast I’m bringing you Jay Clouse.

Jay is the founder of Freelancing School and the Unreal Collective, and his speciality is helping people make that transition from creative-stuck-in-a-day-job to freelancer, then from freelancer to CEO.

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Most of us wouldn’t consider setting out on a trip without a map.

Sure, if you start driving without a map, you might have a fun, interesting experience, but you’re probably not going to be able to get to a specific destination.

If making it to your particular destination is important to you, you start your trip by pulling up Google maps and plugging in that address.

But it is amazing how many people think that they can get to their destination without a map when it comes to starting a business.

They have a general idea of what business they want to start or what product they want to sell, but they don't take the time to come up with a plan for how they're going to build a particular business.

In fact, a lot of people don't even know exactly what they're trying to build.

Building a business without a plan can still potentially be a fun and interesting experience, but it can also potentially be a big waste of time.

Today, I’m going to talk you through exactly how to quickly and easily write a business plan to ensure that you have a solid road map for how you’re going to build your business and where you’re trying to take the company, so you can avoid wasting your time, energy and maybe a whole lot of money along the way.

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Despite my best intentions, the day-to-day operations of my business don’t always come naturally to me.

Back when I was a solo-preneur, there were days when I was full of ideas and passionate about pursuing them. On those days, daily operations seemed less important than making big, important moves to grow my business.

Then on the days when I wasn’t even feeling very motivated or excited about my big ideas, boring day-to-day tasks were the last thing I wanted to do.

Long story short, the housekeeping just wasn’t getting done.

While I was struggling with balancing the day-to-day with my big ideas, I read Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C Winters. They identify two kinds of leaders: Visionaries and Integrators. Visionaries are the big picture, big ideas people. Integrators are the ones who make sure it actually happens, holding projects and teams together through big projects.

Realizing that I’m wired for the big picture and not so much the daily nitty-gritty also made me realize exactly the kind of person I needed to partner with to move my business forward.

I got lucky and found the perfect person in Cortni Loveridge, and she’s enabled us to do so much. But how do you find the Integrator to your Visionary?

Or if you’re an Integrator, how do you use those skills and find your Visionary partner?

Today’s guest expert is Sarah Noked, certified Online Business Manager (OBM) trainer. Sarah teaches people how to become OBMs, who are essentially Integrators, trained to manage the operations of online businesses remotely.

Sarah will be sharing with us all about how to decide whether you should become an OBM or hire an OBM to work for you.

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This is the story of how I successfully launched a profitable product online.

But this story was preceded by almost 3 years of trying unsuccessfully to launch an online business, and before that, about 7 years of trying to figure out what I even wanted to start.

I was 6 months into my YouTube journey, and my channel had grown to about 15,000 subscribers. I was earning just enough from ad revenue and freelancing that I'd been able to finally quit my day-job. Though, to be honest, we were still barely scraping by and mostly living off of savings.

The time had come to try to launch a digital product to — hopefully! — create a stream of passive income.

The only problem? I'd already tried to launch three digital products, and none of them had been successful.

In Episode 2, I talked about the mistakes I made trying to do a big launch of a project I didn’t know  if people even wanted.

So what did I do differently that finally moved the needle and started generating sales?

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Not. One. Single. Sale.

After spending almost two months creating an online course, writing launch emails, and even putting together a webinar, I ended up making ZERO sales.

So what happened?

In episode two of $0 to $1M, I'll be sharing my mistakes so that YOU can avoid them with your next launch and get much better results than I did.

It was 2016 and I was ready to launch my online business. I had finally discovered what I was most passionate about—what I really wanted to "be when I grew up"–and I was ready to step into this new career.

Over the previous several months, I'd built a list of 1,000 subscribers for another business venture, and now that I'd started my digital marketing business list, that was quickly growing as well.

I wanted to turn my knowledge into a source of income, and creating an online course about list-building seemed like a great way to do that.

So, I planned, recorded and edited video lessons, created worksheets, wrote launch emails, planned a webinar. I was putting everything I'd learned over the past 2 years about digital marketing into practice!

Problematic symptoms started showing up early, but I had a lot of faith in the process. I was holding out hope for the promised six-figure launch!

14 people signed up for my webinar. None of them showed up.

Needless to say, I didn't make many sales.

In fact, by the end of the whole "launch," not a single person had purchased

What went wrong?

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I expected that growing my business would be a lot of hard work, tough decisions, and at least a few late nights. But what has surprised me the most is what a journey of personal growth it's turned out to be.

In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the lessons I've learned from my entrepreneurial failures have been as valuable as the rewards I've received from the successes.

And in this new series, $0 to $1M, I'm sharing those lessons with YOU.

This first season of three episodes focuses on lessons I learned while struggling to earn my first $1,000.

It took me over three years to earn that first thousand dollars. Partly getting momentum from $0 is tough and partly, well, I did everything wrong.

But, like I said, every mistake I made taught me something, and made me a better, more successful entrepreneur today.

I'm what people like to call a "multi-passionate entrepreneur." Which is a cute way of saying: I have way too many ideas and I'm not very good at sticking to any of them.

But entrepreneurship is a long game; building a business takes continued effort, consistency, and patience.

So how did I find a way to settle down and focus on one thing? In this episode, I'm sharing the story of how I went from a wannabe with a bad case of "entrepreneurial ADD" to a successful, focused business owner.

My hope is that, by sharing my story, you'll find some inspiration and ideas for how you might be able to overcome this challenge yourself — whether to make that initial decision to choose your niche and decide what business to start, OR to refine your business to focus more on one area of specialty.

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If you’re not playing the game, you’re not going to win the game.

Experimenting with new platforms, new tools and new strategies is part of the game, but throwing content at a wall like spaghetti isn’t playing the game to win. A winning social sales strategy takes commitment and consistency.

Approaching your social sales strategy like a science experiment might sound complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. You just have to know what your basic hypothesis is so you can analyze the metrics when you’re done.

I am joined today by Jessica Stansberry. Jessica is a longtime friend and powerhouse content creator.

Jessica is the owner and founder of Hey Jessica LLC. She helps rockstar entrepreneurs and content creators use video and content creation to grow their brand and show up as an expert. She throws down booty-kicking advice on her weekly podcast, Hey Jessica Radio, on her YouTube channel, and blog and shows up every day on Instagram to make sure the tips never stop coming.

I'm super excited to have her on the show to share some of those tips with us and give us some behind the scenes, insider info on her social media strategy.

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