The Art of Selling Online Courses

253 Selling Feels Icky. Here's How To Fix That

John Ainsworth Season 1 Episode 253

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0:00 | 55:07

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David Duffy is an Irish musician and bassist who co-founded Secrets of Solo, the biggest online school for solo swing dancing, with his wife Ksenia, a dance artist with over 200 million views online. One of their videos alone has 14 million views on YouTube. And yet, when those viral moments happen, the sales spike they expect... doesn't really come.

That's where this conversation gets really interesting.

John sat down with David to dig into the gap between attention and revenue, something a lot of creators feel but rarely talk about this honestly. David runs the marketing and business side of the school while Ksenia teaches, and he's refreshingly open about what's working, what isn't, and where they've been getting in their own way.

They get into the tension between being an artist and running a business, why Ksenia only wants one sale a year and what that's costing them, the €12 choreography challenge that brought in 70 new members at Christmas, and how to use analytics to figure out which part of your funnel actually needs fixing.

John also walks David through how to think about conversion benchmarks, monthly promotions, and why urgency works even when it doesn't feel like "you."

If you've ever felt like you're creating great content but not seeing it turn into consistent revenue, this one will resonate.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Check out David's work:
🌐 https://kseniaparkhatskaya.com/
🌐 https://secretsofsolo.com/
📸 https://www.instagram.com/ksenia_parkhatskaya/
▶️ https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@secretsofsolo⁩  

Art Versus Selling Your Passion

SPEAKER_01

When they happen we're like, well, maybe we're gonna see a big spike in bookings for our band or a big spike in something. And it it's crazy. It just doesn't seem to lead to things like you think it would. When something becomes too commercial, how do you hold that line between there's something pure around the art that sometimes it feels a bit funny to mix this this idea of selling your passion? It's kind of the curse of being creative is exactly it's like you just wanna keep making new things and trying to play in the humans just have too much content now and the videos are too distractive. Our easiest thing is like create, create, create, just adds, just make music, just make make course, just make things, you know, because we want to make it. But our hardest thing is like, okay, we've made all this stuff now, how do we sell it?

SPEAKER_00

Hello and welcome to the Art Telling Online Courses Winning Strategy. My name is John Edward and today's guest is David Duffy. Now David is an Irish composer, a batist and a multidisciplinary artist who together with his wife, internationally recognised dance artist Senior, co-founded Jazzville Productions, the artistic umbrella, behind their touring shows, albums, and festival commission. For the reason David joining us today is for the Phil Online. Secrets of Solo is the biggest online school and has welcomed over 5,000 students with consistent five-star reviews from the community. Tenya rose to global attention through her signature 20s Charleston choreography on So You Think You Can Dance. She's wrapped up over 200 million views online, toured more than 35 countries, taught at over 250 international swing and jazz festivals over the past decade. David is running the branding, marketing, musicianship side of the school. So we're talking to him today about this. David, welcome to the show.

Who Solo Jazz Courses Serve

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, John. Pleasure to be on. I've listened to the show many times, so it's uh it's great to actually be a guest and hopefully share something useful with people.

SPEAKER_00

So talk us through this. Like, who is it that you help with your courses? What's the what's the target audience?

SPEAKER_01

Um it's as you said, it's quite a niche thing. It's um it's this authentic jazz dance that Cassenia has been doing for years, which is Charleston Swing, and that's a huge world in of itself. There's this Lindy Hop kind of world that's that's spreading everywhere globally. Um, and so then there's pockets within that kind of broader jazz dance community, um, which will be solo jazz solo jazz, which is what Casenia teaches, and then you have Lindy Hop, Shag, blues, all of these various other styles that that all come from this um culture, which is rooted in African American culture, um and kind of coming from that space, and um and yeah, Cassenia has kind of been doing that for many years. Before I met her, she was already very established, but she didn't have an online school, and that's how we came together. And so the school is helping people who are really deep in that area and deep in that um field uh to become much better. But also over the years we found that, especially during the COVID period where people were at home, that there was a lot of people who just wanted to learn a dance style, they didn't know which dance style, um, and this really appealed to them, and they'd never heard of it before, they never knew it existed before, but through whatever videos we're doing or whatever advertising we're doing, they they found the course. And uh I th so it's kind of gone very broad. We've had people um from all age ranges, and we're really just I think Cassenia's main thing um and the school's main thing now is to to just energize anyone that wants to get moving, anyone that kind of wants to move their body and and connect with the joy of dancing to to music, and and then that that just opens up this huge window of people who who love jazz music, you know. And I think many people listen to jazz and hear jazz or or whatever, then there's like more simple versions of that, be it Frank Sinatra or something like that, or Michael Buble, or like really pop versions of that that you feel like that swing, and I didn't know I could dance to that, and you can dance to that, and and as I said, there's these many, many styles, and I'm not a specialist, so if I'm saying anything that anyone's listening, um Yeah, yeah. No, no, I I understand it deeply from working with Casenya over the years, but I'm I'm not some authority on all of these of all of these styles. I just know that that this is the one that Casenya was in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Let's talk about that a little bit, because this is interesting, right? Because you're not your background wasn't as I understand it, like marketing and business and what have you. Your your background's in music, but you've kind of taken over the you're the operator behind the school, right? So, like how did that how did that come about?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean it wouldn't be fair to say I'm the full operator, but um there's myself and Kassenia who really operate the business together, and then we have a web developer, Andrew, um, who also kind of came in quite early on, and he's been growing with us in this space, and and we've been learning this space together. Because the website's about eight or nine years old now, so it's been a while. Um for me, it was it was a combination of things. I think I've heard guests of yours speak about this this book, but I read about nine years ago I was reading the the four-hour work week. Yes, uh, the two first book book.

SPEAKER_00

That's the starting point for a lot of people, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

For a lot of people, yeah, absolutely. And I've heard it on so many podcasts, and I was reading that and I was like, okay, passive income, yada yada, and kind of got in, and I was just thinking about that whole kind of concept of um what could be working while we're not working, because at the time I was very much like playing music five, six nights a week, and that that was my my life, and still is to some extent. Um, but you only earn when you're when you're on stage, you only earn when you're actually physically present, and so that has its own cap and limitation to how often you can play and how often you can be out. And then uh anyway, I met Kassenia and we uh Cassenia's my wife, so we we started dating and we were together, and then I saw all of this success she was having online at the same time. I discovered like Scott's bass lessons or something like that that had been advertised at me as well, which is a really another big, big online space for learning bass. Um and just those things kind of clicked. I just said, Why like why are you not teaching this online? Why don't we connect all of these people who are on YouTube, all these people who are watching you on the web, and and give them somewhere to go, give them somewhere to learn this? Because she was already teaching internationally as well, like she was already a very successful international dance teacher as well. Uh so it was it was kind of an easy, obvious thing to do, like now saying it, but at the time, not that many people were doing it. There was one or two other schools in that space. Um and I I think to be honest, again, someone else could correct me, but like there was a school called Rhythm Juice, which was Dax and Sarah, who are two American friends of ours, and they were kind of the first to be really on this wave. They were kind of two or three years ahead of uh of everyone else, and um and around that period as well, we were in LA and we met them and we were talking to them about it as well. So I I can't remember the exact way that all fitted together, but that was it. Yeah, um, and we moved we moved to Barcelona for lifestyle reasons, but also for uh other reasons that myself because anyway we got married, we needed to move to Europe. And so I lost a lot of my income uh from playing music, and I just kind of threw myself at this. I was like, okay, here's a here's something that's already kind of working on a on a small way, but like let's take this more more seriously. You know, this is a huge opportunity and huge growth.

SPEAKER_00

Um do you still play at like festivals and and gigs and what have you a lot, or is it you mostly focused on this now?

SPEAKER_01

Uh oh yeah, I mean still playing all the time. I I like I don't think yeah, yeah. This is we're we're in my music studio now.

SPEAKER_00

Um for anybody listening, there's just there's three different instruments. I can see a bass, but then I don't know the other two basses. They're kind of behind the plant there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, basses and all.

SPEAKER_00

One looks like a U bass or something. What is that on the left?

SPEAKER_01

Uh no, the other side, yeah. This one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, that's um a Hoffner like uh Paul McCartney kind of signature. That kind of style. He was famous for playing this. It's called a violin bass. It's like a hollow body thing, it has a very specific sound. Uh so yeah, we we still do that, and and I mean we still consider ourselves and are artists, and we do this to mi to remain artists because yeah, I mean, to sustain a nice lifestyle as an artist is a very challenging thing for for any artist, even mid-tier, high-tier artists, to to earn well is is very challenging, and to have a nice lifestyle from that is challenging. But we, to be honest, we take a lot of the income we get from this and we just reinvest it into like making albums, making shows, touring, like really everything we make there just goes back into making something else that's kind of always been been our attitude, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Um I think a lot of people listening all relate to that because there's so many people who like the the kind of person who we're talking to on this podcast is almost always a creator first. They're like they were passionate about a thing, whether it is you know, piano or bass or Charleston or you know, uh teaching a language or knitting or whatever. That's their first thing, and then the money is just like okay, I kind of had to learn how to do that part to to make this all work. But it's like the cre you were talking before about like the the being a creator first, like you're all the YouTube channel, and you like okay, well now let's teach this and try and make something work from it, but like the passion is in the music, the passion's in the the dance rather than like the business is like a a means to an end kind of thing, 100%, and and always has been and still is, you know.

SPEAKER_01

And I mean that's our that's our big challenge to be honest. Uh uh running this business is that uh our easiest thing to do is top a funnel, our easiest thing is like create, create, create, just dance, just make music, just make make courses, make things, you know, because we want to make but our hardest thing is like okay, we've made all this stuff now. How do how do we sell it? And um, and there's a tension there, like even to some extent, um that's why Kassania wouldn't love being on a podcast like this because she doesn't she doesn't like the that kind of business aspect of the thing so much, you know. It's not that she hates it or something, but there's always a friction as an artist. Um I think that happens with with uh maybe it's an Irish thing or a European. I feel Americans have it less in a very general kind of way of saying it, but like there's less uncomfort between this idea of money and and what you do to make that money, but there's something um there's something pure around around the arts that sometimes it feels a bit funny to mix this this idea of selling your passion and there's a bit of friction there sometimes, maybe, yeah. I I don't know if if other people experience that, but that's something we actually everyone when yeah when something becomes too commercial, how do how do you how do you hold that line between yeah I I mean the stuff you're talking about is is things I hear from people all the time.

When Viral Clips Do Not Convert

SPEAKER_00

It's like that that the the analytic side of things is something they don't want to focus on. That the the money side of things is like, oh I didn't get into this for the money, but I do want to make more money, but it's not the main thing that I'm interested in. And it's like that's kind of it's kind of why I started the business, right? It's like to help people like yourself who are like, right, you're great at creating content, you're great at creating courses, people love the courses, but there's this bit in between, which is how do you get the people who watch the videos to buy the courses? Like that that transition, right? And how do you do it? Not only uh how do you get them to buy it, but like how do you do it in a way that feels comfortable to you, that feels comfortable to your audience, that doesn't feel aggressive and salesy, and like that is doable, but it's not necessarily intuitive. So it's like it's uh that's kind of the reason why why I got started, why I started the podcast as well. Talk to me about the videos that you got, because you said you've got uh I I kind of quoted a number at the beginning, I think, of like 200 million views. The the YouTube audience is like 71,000 subscribers, I think. So that sounds like you've had some or Cassania's had some really viral videos because that's a that's a big discrepancy between those numbers, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um I mean, one like some like that I think that number is like something that, and that's I think it's way, way underestimating. It could be honestly in the billions of people that have seen Cassenia dance on the internet. Right. Let's kind of put it that way. So there's a video you might have even seen it, you know, that was her in some jam circle in Paris. She's wearing this like black and white stripey shirt, and she's just doing like a signature kind of Charleston move. Later on, we kind of understand that like part of the dynamic was there's a bit of competitiveness there, and there's people kind of moving around this circle, and so I don't know, people kind of in the comment sections clung on to the fact that um she kind of gets pushed out of the centre, so it it fed some human kind of part of people that like there's a great dancer, but she's kind of been pushed aside, and then and so this kind of comment section goes on. But there's a lot of great dancers in that video, but that video, whatever reason, for whatever reason, got repurposed and repurposed and repurposed, and like over the seven or eight years, I don't I can't tell you how many times Kassenia has been sent, Hey, here's you dancing to some random Russian track, random Chinese track, random whatever. No, like I mean hundreds of times, and these videos have 10 million views, like insane amount of views, and she's often like really embarrassed because some like nonsense music they've attached to the video. But at the start of that kind of era of people like downloading a clip and repurposing it and then re-uploading it, that happened with that clip many, many times. To the point then, anyway, the guy who filmed the clip he had it viral on his YouTube channel, it had like 15 million views, and then Kassenia eventually is like, Okay, I can I have that clip, and she got it and she re-posted it on our channel, and it's now like 14 million views on on our YouTube channel, and same when we posted on Instagram. So there's something weird about that clip that like whenever we seem to post it, it's it seems to get a lot of uh traction. That was just that one clip, but then there's been honestly, I think since I've known Kxenia, it's happened like 12 or 15 times with different clips, like genuinely that that that they've kind of gone into the the hundreds of thousands or millions of views um across various platforms. So there's something that she does in her dance, there's something that she communicates uh on video or on camera that obviously just attracts people, that's obviously you know, very watchable. And only recently we had another one uh on our Instagram, and I think that now has 18 million views or something, and it's it's me playing bass, actually, it's us with our jazz quartet, and she's singing, and in she's in a section where she's dancing, and she just made a a reel on Instagram, and and again it went super viral, like within two days we could see okay, this thing is just taking off, it's just exploding, you know. And it's it's still going. Um that video.

SPEAKER_00

So what have you found about the the kind of connection between those viral videos and what's what's actually making you money? Are those ones the ones that are getting tens of millions of views? Are they are they making you money or are they like just more, I don't know, out in the mainstream and it's it's not kind of connected?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, disappointingly so it seems not because because when they happen, we're like, well, maybe maybe we're going to see either a big spike in income or or a big spike in bookings for our band or a big spike in something. Yeah. And and it's crazy, it doesn't it just doesn't seem to lead to things uh like you think it would. I'm sure it leads to something. I'm sure if 10 million people watch a video, five users come from that, like five uh members sign up from that. I'm sure. Like it's not like zero, but um but the numbers must be tiny g given given even when we have those videos and underneath we have a link like you know, like a video on YouTube that's 16 million views, and underneath we have if you want to learn this dance style, go to the school or go into our funnel, and yeah, it doesn't lead to what we think it will lead to. So so that's been a really curious learning for us because um I think many people in the online space think the key to cracking this this thing is is TikTok or Instagram or viral videos, or if I get some sort of massive video, then that's gonna lead me to have a load of course sales, or that's gonna lead me to have a lot of income, and that's not been our experience at all, you know. Now we are weak on the analytics, we're super weak on the analytics, so I can't factually tell you that this video led to X, Y, and Z. I don't know what what they led to. Um we just kind of see it all as this kind of um big moving ecosystem, and somehow it will all come together, and somehow it is all coming together that if we just keep making great content and keep putting stuff we believe in out in the world, that it will come back in some good way to us.

SPEAKER_00

Do you have any sense of which videos, what kind of videos have converted really well? I know you haven't got the strong analytics, but have you seen like okay, when we've got this one, it's got lower views, but we know that we get uh customers from it?

SPEAKER_01

Um yeah, I think we certainly again, this only in the last few years where Kseni really started using like many chat and things like that, uh, where we actually started consciously saying, Okay, let's do an educational video with a very specific uh question that's answered, and underneath then a very specific funnel sequence. So that's only kind of in the last two years we're really like consciously saying, Okay, let's make a video that deals with this problem, and then the funnel also tries to deal with that problem, so that there's actually a sequence. There's a bit of a method to the madness, and those those seem to be working better now, and they don't need to have huge numbers, they don't need to have if a hundred people respond to the the many chat, then we can see that from those hundred, you know, sixty enter the email thing, and now we have a little bit more set up that we can see sixty people got that email and whatever a few of those dropped off. And I can't give you exact numbers, I could if I if I opened up the um the website, but yeah, there's now a funnel in place that we can kind of see how many people are getting through it, as it were.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that sounds like you're further ahead with the analytics than uh than you're giving yourself credit for, man. That's cool. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Recently, like, yeah, that's only recently we're we're there, and then I mean, I I think still what what holds us back is just interest and desire then to to engage with that. Yeah, like weekly or daily, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like and actually and and then maybe not like um maybe not understand it, but understand what to do with it as well. Like, you know, like a hundred people entered and now sixty people dropped off. Okay, so is that that the mini chat word was wrong, or that the text we sent out in the mini chat was wrong, or that the email is wrong, or the first email is wrong, or you know, like how to improve that is.

SPEAKER_00

Is it all right if I can give you like an an overview of the this won't answer that exact any of those exact questions, but like an overview of how to think about analytics with with course funnels.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So the basic approach is you want to track every step that is on the critical path. So by critical path, I mean it's like a project management term, it means basically anything that is directly between somebody starting and somebody buying from you. So that's gonna be okay. Did you get it's like the in-course world, it's gonna be like uh either on YouTube, did you get their email address from them signing up for a lead magnet or on Instagram, it's probably gonna be them filling in something on many chat, right? Okay, and then what's the next step in that process? What's the what's the clear path all the way through? And then you track for each of those stages what's the percentage conversion rate at each step, which you've got some of that data, right? You're telling me you already got some of that. So then the next step you need to know is well, what's a good benchmark? Because if you don't know what the good what a benchmark is for each step, then you don't know whether you're doing well or badly. Now, if you've got, let's say, with YouTube, let's say you're pointing people through from YouTube to a landing page uh where you're asking for their email address and you've got a 30% opt-in rate without any data about whether that's good or bad, you could be like, okay, well, that sounds good. I've heard 30% for opt-in for landing pages before, that's cool, right? But actually, when traffic is coming from YouTube to a landing page, then a decent conversion rate for that is 70%. So you kind of need to have that point of reference in order to be able to decide is this something that is doing badly or is it doing well? Once you know what step is doing the worst, that's what you're looking for against benchmark, which one is furthest from benchmark, which one is doing the worst, then that's the step to work on improving. So as long as it is on that critical path, if you can double that conversion rate, then you double the outcome at the end. Now, if something is a, you know, let's say a good benchmark for one step in the process is 25% and you're at 22%, it's going to be really hard to make that much of an improvement. It's not that you can't improve it. You quite possibly can get it to 30 if you work and you work and you work at it. But it'll be difficult because you've already probably done a lot of things right to have got to 22%. However, if that conversion rate is 25% and you're currently at five, it'll be super easy to make it better. Almost anything you do would probably make it better. And if you just look at right, here's the the five uh best practices for this step in the process, then you can see, okay, we're just going to implement that, and probably that step is going to improve massively. Now, that's there's one other thing that's actually easier for most people than improving something that's doing badly, and that is putting in place a step that they don't have at all. Now, lots of people were missing steps within that funnel. So for that, you need to know, well, what are the ideal steps the whole way through this? Like, so for example, on YouTube, you should always go from YouTube to a lead magnet rather than from YouTube to a sales page, because research has shown us through lots and lots of testing that that converts better overall. You will you will long term make more money if you get someone on the email list, as long as you're also sending out email promotions or what have you. Um for you guys, your sales page, uh, you kind of got your home page set up as your sales page for Secrets of Solo. It's actually really good. I was going through and doing an analysis of it, and there's like there's 13 elements that you kind of need to have on a on a sales page. People might have heard me say 15 before. We've slightly tweaked the way that we structure this, so there's sub-elements now. But there's these 13 elements, and I went through and analyzed your sales page against like a good quality one. And you've got, I think, like 11 out of the 13 in place, and 11, I think 10 are green, and only ones like an amber, and then there's a couple that are missing, right? So you've got a really good starting point there. So that's not worth working on because that's already got a lot of the best practice stuff in place. But your YouTube channel doesn't always link to lead magnets. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. So that's the way that you use analytics is to look at, okay, put into a spreadsheet, what's your numbers at each step, what's the conversion rates, find out the benchmarks, compare your numbers to the benchmarks, and then look at which step is doing the worst. That's that's the overall concept. Now you need to know then within that, well, what are the benchmarks? And then you need to know uh what is the best practice? This step that I've identified that's not doing as well, what is the best practice at that stage? Like you were talking about the details there, right? Is it our first email? Is it the is it the uh fact that we haven't got enough people opting in? Like where exactly is it? And then, okay, well, how do you do that better? But I think it's really helpful to start with a kind of conceptual idea. If anyone listening wants to know more about this, I'm gonna find you um some podcast episodes that we've done before about it, but also we've got a a training course that's normally paid for for customers, but anyone listening can get access to that for free if you just drop me an email um and ask nicely. So it's uh John J-O-H-N at datadrivenmarketing.co and just ask me for the KPI um work uh uh course and I'll send it through to you. But I'm gonna find some um here you go. Episode 77, how to use KPIs to scale your course with Yosip uh is a is a really good one about that as well. Does that make sense, kind of the whole uh structure of how I explain that?

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, yeah. And I um I think as I said, it's only recently we've we've kind of started to implement that, but we haven't got someone on the analytic side. But it makes perfect sense like where people are dropping off. I think my one question, but maybe it's not relevant, is so a video of Cassenia dancing, like it's just let's say it's entertainment, like and I think it's worth putting those up as well. So that gets, let's say, 10 million views, but it's not selling anything, it's just dancing. So maybe we shouldn't analyze that type of video for its conversion rate, we just see that as kind of like audience capture, and and that's what it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the way that I look at those is you still have the lead magnet with each of these videos, but you look at well, how many opt-ins was I getting from that video? And what you'll find is obviously the conversion percentage will be way, way lower when it's an entertainment video versus an educational video. But if the views are high enough, then that might be okay because you might still get a whole bunch of opt-ins. Now, of course, the ideal is what you then do is analyze okay, for all of these entertainment videos, how many of those people eventually bought? Because that's the crucial thing. But like, I kind of want to do this, you know, simpler steps at a time. And what you will see is that you'll get much, much lower opt-in rates on those videos, like much lower, right? Compared to a really strong educational uh video. And then you can decide off the back of that, okay, that is this worth doing because it isn't really bringing in much in the way of opt-ins, even though it's getting the the high number of views.

SPEAKER_01

Um is this just this is 101 stuff now. Is this just using like like bit.ly or something like that? Like, how are you saying this video, yeah, got it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you could do it using um you could do it using bit.ly, yeah. One of the things actually I wanted to tell you about this is a really minor detail. Um, this is very practical, but I'd noticed some of your bitly links, there's like a two-step process at the moment. If someone clicks the link, they go to a bit.ly page first and then they go to the actual URL. So you're gonna get a big drop-off at that stage. Um I don't know why that's happening. I'm not sure if Bitly's messing around or what.

SPEAKER_01

Might might be, yeah, it might be the like again. This is some of the housekeeping stuff, and it's great to talk to you today. Um because because honestly, we just get so focused on um making we're touring a show next year, so at the moment we're in that, and we just forget about the school for a while. We're just like, okay, we can't give it so much energy right now, and and we yeah, we don't go into what do we do three years ago with those links? Those links are just still living, so it's good yeah, to go through and and check. I haven't checked what what bitly's doing, and I'm not even sure if bitly is the what's the current standard, like what would you use yourself for?

Membership Pricing And Entry Offers

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean we sometimes do it with UTMs, we'll sometimes do it with we've got some that are set up with bit.ly. Um I'd want to check actually with YOSIP what's most up to date because I've not been involved in like the the setting up all the analytics on any of the tracking for videos in a while. Um yeah, I'll check with Yosip what the what it is and we'll get the details over to you about that. Yeah, yeah. So what what is your actually talk us through, let's go back a step. Uh talk us through the for your for your offer. You've got the membership, right? What's the pricing on the membership?

SPEAKER_01

30. It's 40 monthly and 360 annual. Okay. And and that's all we do. And lately we've just now recently started doing uh small like kind of uh paid funnel at the end, like where you get a one-hour class for 12 euro. Uh that just adds direct into that, or how's that work? Yeah, that was we just saw that is like um just for people who wanted a very low cost entry into getting a class with Cassenia, getting a full class with Senia, um, that has a very fixed outcome that's less general, like come in and here's we're that's still something we're we're all the time kind of dancing around, is we have this massive library now, um and that's led maybe to not a super clear like path of entry, path of exit. So when I listen to like you found me through whatever Jacques um piano in 21 days, yeah. And and to be honest, we were super jealous of that when we heard about that because it's like um he doesn't have a ton of content, he doesn't have a uh whatever uh a massive library, and we spent all this energy making this. It's just a very clear, you can't do this, and after 21 days, you can do this. Boom. Like it doesn't even whatever he promises, it's the very clear in and out. And our system is like, well, we don't know, come in and hopefully you enjoy it in here and hopefully you stay. You know, like um that that's a bit of it, and and we we very much see um that to keep people engaged, it's way, way better if we have this thing starts at this date and it ends at this date, and here's what you're going to learn, and here's what you need to do. That that seems to hold a lot more traction than um come in and here's a massive library, look around. You know, people the human humans just have too much content now, maybe are too distractable. So, anyway, so we kind of introduced that now in the last year or two, where we're as a way of getting people in, we just say here's a fixed-length choreography, learn it, film it, put it up, and then maybe we'll do some sort of uh competition where we pick one of those videos to get a free membership. So it's kind of a path that we're taking.

SPEAKER_00

Have you tried um as well as the membership, selling selling the courses from inside of the membership separately? No. Apart from that one, I mean no.

SPEAKER_01

No, no, they're well, they're just like little as I said, choreographies, they're just like a one one hour learner a choreo. We started with that actually, like the very, very first thing we did eight, nine years ago was buy the course. Like you own the course. And we still have legacy members that we we said forever you'll own these courses. Um but yeah, we then we changed the can the the membership thing. So we we haven't done that, no, like where you you close off a part of the library, you say come in, you have access to this much of the library, but if you want to add other bits of the library, you buy them internally.

SPEAKER_00

No, I kind of mean like so uh nearly everybody when they do a membership, they think that it's either membership or solar courses, and it's uh the the answer, the better answer is to do both, in my experience. So as in and so Scott, you mentioned Scott Space Lessons earlier, Scott does this, right? So you can buy the membership. I th I forget, I've been a member of of his uh of Scott's Base Lessons. It's$1.99 or something for the Yeah,$29 a month or 19 a month, something cheap, right? Uh he will sell those courses individually as well, some of them. So the reason is the way that the way that the uh marketing works best for a an online course business is to have at least one promotion every month with a time-limited discount on it. But with a membership, you can only do that at most every like three months. Otherwise, people are like, oh, it's it's on discount again this month and this month and this month. This like doesn't really work, right? So every three or four months you can kind of do that with a membership, and that works great. But in between that, you need to have something else to sell to the email list, otherwise, you're kind of missing out on that opportunity. Like the majority of potential revenue in an online course business is in the email list, uh, like 80% probably, rather than direct sales. So if you take something that you've got and then sell that individually in between, there will be a bunch of people who didn't want to sign up to a membership, but they do want that particular course. And the benefit of that is that, like you're saying, like when someone joins the membership, it's like, well, which of these things do they go and join? And and I found that I uh Scott's a friend of mine, and I saw I I was at dinner with him one time, and I was like, Well, which where do I I've done the beginner course within your membership? What do I do next? He's like, That is a good problem, that's a good point. We have a problem with that, you know. So he's he's kind of got that issue as well, right? It's like, well, what how what order do you do it in?

SPEAKER_01

And he's been working on that recently, like, how do you make that more He has this player's path thing, yeah, which is like you come in and you analyze your level and then he suggests yeah, yeah, content.

SPEAKER_00

Um but um but the huge advantage with courses is they've kind of got a structure already. If someone's like, that's the course that I want to sign up to, then that's a that's the thing that is quite kind of easy to for them to know. Well, I've this is what I signed up to, this is what I'm gonna take from beginning to end of that. And so that's one way, it's not the only way, but it's one way of being able to, when you've got a membership, have a promotion going on every month. There's other there's other things that are possible as well. Like you can do um a webinar that then the back of the webinar leads into promoting the annual membership deal. Um and that's like another promotion you can have that also leads to a bunch of sales that come in. So that's like a there's there's different ways, but that's one really simple way, and that's something we do quite often with people. If they've got a membership, is just like, okay, we're gonna take out one of the courses this month and just sell that as an individual thing, but it's still in the membership. I'm not talking about members don't get access to that, I'm just saying it's a different way to kind of structure the offer.

SPEAKER_01

I think our fear uh with that, the reason we didn't do it was a we we have like a flagship course, you could say, uh well, we think if you look at the numbers, we look at some numbers obviously. Um there's like solo jazz 101, which is like you're new, come in, learn your your first steps. Yeah, um most people come in and complete that course first, like that's what people do, you know. Okay. So we so anyway, we felt at some point, okay, if we sell that, that might take someone a year to get through, depending on how driven or active they are, or or more, or they might or they might not finish it. And I think that was our biggest fear with selling the courses is they might come in, they might take six classes, go, oof, this is difficult, bye-bye, and I'm not gonna buy anything else again from you because I already bought something that I own forever. And if I want to do some dancing, I can come back to that course now that I own forever. So why would I become a member? That's that's kind of a bit of a maybe a negative limiting belief. The courses are incredibly valuable, incredibly well structured, but it's not an easy thing. And I think that that was one of our challenges, was maybe opposed to something like piano in 21 days. As a musician, like what's been taught in that course is very fundamental that that someone can get it. Like, that's the beauty of it as well. It's like, yes, you can you can learn this thing, like any human could probably learn this if they applied themselves, but dancing to jazz music, much like playing jazz music, not so easy. So when you come in, like like it's a complicated, it's a complicated style, it's a complicated music, it's a very sophisticated music. It's like um, I don't know if there's an online course for learning violin or classical piano or something, but it it it will be challenging because there's a there's a point where it gets hard quite quickly, and then humans by their very nature go, oh, this is a bit hard, bye. That that that was part of of our reasoning. Um we don't see many people completing the full courses. Um and we're having more success now with uh a class a week format that Kassenia is doing at the moment called Spotlight, which is really working for us, which is um a nice idea she came up with, which was well, we have this library, people don't know what to do with it, and it doesn't really uh people seem more engaged if I just have a WhatsApp group and I'm like, hey, here's this week's class, take this one. Just here you go. Here's here's your class on a Sunday night, here's your class, take it this week, and then on Friday we'll all submit our videos and have a chat about what was good, what was bad, and then Sunday I'll give you another class. And that and that it's kind of that kind of system seems to be having a lot of success for us because people are like I give it, I'll give another example. My mother pays for um Sam Harris's meditation app, um I can't remember uh what it's called, Waking Up, and he releases a daily meditation, and that's all she does. Like the the access thousands of hours of blah blah blah. She just like pays her annual subscription so she can come on, daily meditation, press play, okay, ten minutes done, close, boom. And it's it's a very clean, like daily thing. And she I you know, I I I I believe in that as well. I'm starting to believe that that's uh in this world of absolute overload of of content and information and things like that, that people like uh a daily achievable task and and they feel good, they get their dopamine hit and and they go on, and then and then they want to come back the next day because they did it, you know. They didn't fail, they succeeded, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Do you know what your average retention is in the membership? How long people stick around for?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, uh like that's something we're working with. Like honestly, two, three months for a lot of new users. Like, there's people like we've had some we've had some members for ten years, like we've had people who literally have have stayed forever. Um so it's it's it's quite low on the monthly thing, but we find that people treat it a bit like a la carte, like they come in, do two months, they leave. Maybe they'll come back again, do two months, they leave, you know. They they they they come in and out when they have time, I guess, or when they're engaged, and and maybe like summer there's always a drop-off because maybe people are on holidays, they don't want to come, so like July is our lowest month, August is our lowest month, um, January and February are huge months, mainly because we do a big sale in January. That's the only sale we do, is January, and uh something else I wanted to talk to you about, which which you mentioned there, like doing one every three or four months. We just do one a year, and Kassenia's a bit like that. She hates brands and things that are always on sale because she just feels like, well, then they're just devaluing themselves. So we just do one sale a year, which is January, and and that leads to a massive spike in sales.

SPEAKER_00

So I understand where she's coming from on that one. There's a downside.

SPEAKER_01

We fight about we fight about this, by the way. I listened, I listen to you and I listen to a lot of other podcasts where it's like I th I think we could do at least two or three. Like, I don't think we have to be so limited with it, but yeah, go ahead, sorry.

SPEAKER_00

So I had I had I got a friend and she sells online courses, and I saw her at a conference, this would have been back in I don't know, 2018, 2019, something like that. And she was saying basically what Cassania's saying. She was like, I um I don't want to put stuff on sale on a regular basis because it devalues the brand, and I just don't want people to feel that way about it. And I don't I don't want people feel people feeling like oh something's always on sale, I'm like a whatever it is, like a you know, DFS or sofa company, whatever. Um and I was like, Yeah, but this is the thing that works. Like in online course businesses, this is how it works, this is what works to increase sales. Like, if you look at um the amount of what happens, right, for for nearly everybody, every course business that I ever look at, um, there's a spike in sales once, twice, three times a year. Like Black Friday, there's a spike in sales. New course comes out as a spike in sales because there's a launch with a uh special offer goes with it. And the question I always ask is, Well, why don't you do the email promotions in the other months of the year? And they say the same thing, you know, because I don't want to be too salesy, I don't want to devalue the brand, etc. And so I was trying to make this argument to my friend, and I wasn't getting anywhere with it. And about two, three years later, something like that, I was uh messaging with her on WhatsApp and she told me that she had doubled her revenue. And I was like, Oh, what did you do? And she said, What I started doing is I started doing an email promotion every month where I would do a discount, and I was just like, What a great idea! I'm sorry, where did you get that?

unknown

Yeah.

KPIs Benchmarks And Critical Path

SPEAKER_00

She obviously had heard it enough times, or somebody else had convinced her better, or she got desperate and tried it, whatever it was. I don't know. Anyway, she did it and it worked. Because that is what works in this kind of business in terms of making sales. And what I think the crucial thing to do is is to figure out okay, well, how can you do that in a way that doesn't feel bad to you? Because what you don't want to do is have a business where you're like, oh, I feel icky all the time. But if you can do this in a way that just feels good, you're like, okay, there is a reason why there's a discount this month, there's a reason why it's different to the discount in previous months, it's not just the same thing again and again and again. It's it's something slightly different. The reason that it works particularly in the online course space, there's there's six main reasons. I'm gonna see if I can remember them now. Six main reasons why people buy anything. And in terms of from a sales point of view, and there was a big study done on this. Um and the this guy wrote a book. What's the name of that book now? Um he wrote another one called Pre-Suasion. Uh I'm gonna have to look this up now. But um let's find this. Who wrote presuasion? But basically, the um they were that you uh had reciprocity with a person, the person had done something for you, and then you wanted to do something back for them. They were that you trust the person, that you feel that they have authority, one of urgency or scarcity. Robert Chaldini is the name of the book, and then the original one is influence. I'm gonna find the other two that I can't think off the top of my head. I'll take that too. What was the uh six reasons people buy? In and so all of those work to a certain oh, the other ones are social proof and then commitment and consistency. So some combination of those is generally uh there in most sales processes. In online courses, urgency and scarcity is a really big deal. And like I can I can explain as best as I understand it why, but I think the most important thing is that it is true, is that you need to have some kind of urgency for people to take action. What we found is there's lots of people kind of putting something off, like, oh, I will, I w I do want to do this at some point, but why should I take action now? Now there's a slight difference between urgency and scarcity. Scarcity is there's a limited number of this thing, and urgency is there's a limited time until this thing, uh while this thing is available. So the urgency part of that is there's a discount and the discount ends on Friday. The discount doesn't isn't the point. Yes. The discount is not really the point of why someone is going to buy by Friday. The point is that they are putting this off, that they're not getting around to doing the thing. The discount is an excuse to talk about why they're talking taking action now. If you we if you were able to do this at a high enough level in terms of like the copywriting or the the giving people a reason to take action now that wasn't around the discount, then that can work. But it's much, much, much easier to do it with a discount from a business point of view, from a marketing point of view, from a persuasion point of view. It just gives an excuse why you're going to be talking about taking action on this thing this week. And so if you if you want to increase the biggest thing you guys can do, if you can get Xenia on board, right? And I am willing to help message with her about this, right? Is if you guys could find a way to basically do an email promotion every month for something, not the membership every time, right? Yeah, but for something, whether it's a webinar, whether it, you know, whether it's a paid masterclass that's different this month, whether it's a course from inside of the membership, maybe the membership a couple of times a year, whatever, all these different options. Um, and there's lots of ways of doing this, then you would see your revenue increase dramatically, like quite possibly double from where you're kind of at at the moment. Um so that's my my I know that it's it's it's not even you I'm trying to convince, right? I'm trying to give you the ammo to give to Casenia, but it's like that would that would be the thing, that would make a massive difference for you guys.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I hear that, and and we know and we know that to be true, and we know a lot about and and we're the same. I mean, I it was curious you mentioned that we we talk about that, you know. You say, I don't know why the mattress brands have found themselves in that space and how to separate yourself. Like, I don't know will I ever buy a full price mattress ever for the rest of my life, because mattresses are always on sale. I don't know how that industry got stuck as being always on sale. And maybe that's the wrong comparison because um it's curious, like yeah, like Cassenia kind of talks about, yeah, I want to be the Rolex, like Rolex is never on sale, you know? Um, but they do it differently, right?

SPEAKER_00

They've got if you're gonna do Rolex, you've got to do a whole you've got to go full Rolex.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Right? So Rolex have very limited supply, they have uh a constraint. Where you feel lucky if you get to buy. There is a wait list for it. It's a whole different marketing strategy. If you're going to do that, you have to be doing all of the bits that go with that. You can't just not go on sale. That's not doing Rolex.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. True. True, true, true. Yeah, you're lucky if you get to buy one and then you're on the first tier, and then yeah, you go on the side.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, like I've got a um a conference that I would run the marketing for it. We would run it in London, um, and it was like a hundred people. The limit was the the number of seats that were available at the conference. And the conference was great and everyone loved it. And so I would uh I ran a system for for hype which was around scarcity for it, which is there are only a hundred tickets, they're going to sell out, you're not going to want to miss out on it. And so the first time I managed to sell them out in four weeks, and the next time was in one week, and the next time was in one day, and the next time was in an hour, and the next time was in three minutes, because every time it was like, Oh, you missed out, you can't afford to miss out, you need to be there at the absolute moment it goes on sale, which is kind of it's not the same thing, but it's more similar to the Rolex thing in terms of their scarcity. Yes, they've got scarcity rather than urgency. Online courses, you don't have scarcity. If you were doing a masterclass where it's individual attention from Senia and you sell that for much more money, then you've got only 20 spaces. You've got to use what you've got at your disposal, which is like if you if you want to do some Rolex marketing, you're gonna have to go, right, what can we what can we package up that fits with that? It's the high price thing, one-on-one attention. Um, there's only a limited number of spaces, it's going to sell out, you have to get on the wait list first, and then you do that. That could be great. You could also do that, yeah, but you just can't do that with the online course part of it.

Urgency Scarcity And Ethical Promotions

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. And and I I I think, as you said, it's more just making it genuine. I like what you said about um other systems. I mean, that is the easiest today. It's 50% off, but uh what we are trying at the moment, and I think it is leading to some success. I don't know how much, but I think if we do it more, is there is a group starting on this day. Right. You have to you have to sign up Friday, so because the group starts on Monday and it closes in two weeks, and that's it. If you're not in on Monday, you're not in, you know. You don't need to put anything on sale, but that's only now in this, like uh, as I said, these little uh 12 euro choreographies or whatever, that it's like as an as an entry. Uh by tomorrow, you get on the group, you're gonna have a clear task, and at the end of the thing, you're gonna have a clear on and off ramp. And then yeah, we're hoping that that leads to memberships and you know, and trying to convert those people. If you liked that one, we have more of these, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's that's the system. That's a really strong urgency as well, right? So that's like it's not an urgency because the discount's going away, it's an urgency because the the the thing starts on Monday, so there is no other time that you can join it. Um maybe next month, but like that's the only time this month that you can join, which is great. Yeah. So how have you seen that? How have you seen that work? Is that uh I know it's kind of early, you said, but like what's the first one?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean I at at Christmas it was really successful. Um, I mean we're we're again it's very niche thing. Like I think our user base is like 500, and and our goal, you're talking about double. Our goal was always like a thousand members, um, which was like the Kevin Keeley thing or whatever, a thousand true fans. Yeah, we always kind of believed like that's a really nice number. Like if we had that thousand users, we'd have a a beautiful kind of level of income and we'd feel great. Like we don't need we don't need more than that, and that's a really nice size. So that's always been the goal, and yeah, at Christmas, I think like 70 people came on from that path, like 70 people became members at at Christmas, yeah. From doing right, yeah, one of those. So that like that's a lot, you know. We're doing another one now this month um because of the success of that. But that was paired with our January offer. So it was like we ran that in December for two weeks, so that people came in, got a taste of the school, and then after those two weeks, we were like, okay, now we're doing our 50% off January offer. And and a lot of those people then converted into that that that thing. So that was a nice system for us. It was like, come on, cheap, get a feeling this is great content. Cassenia is an amazing teacher, the school has amazing quality, so it's like that part of it we're always very confident and sure about as well. It's like when people come in, they really do enjoy it, like it's really good content. What about then?

SPEAKER_00

So are the people who finish this next cohort, is there gonna be an offer for those people for jobs? There's not, but I think there should be like because that way it's not available as a discount to everybody, it's only available as a discount to the people who are finishing this cohort. Yes, yeah, and then you'd get a higher percentage of those people as a special bonus for you guys. You're gonna get whatever it is, first three months at half price, the the the annual membership at half price, whatever, whatever you know, way you want to package it up. Um, and that will give them a reason to take action, but it's not available to everybody, it's only available to this particular group who've proven they're interested right now. I think you'd probably see that do really well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think that's where we're gonna go. Um, and uh I I can't you'll know his name, you know the guy who's always in a tank top with a big beard, and he's in Alex Homozy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a what a brand. There you go, you can describe it from the sentence. Uh brilliant brand, yeah. Tank top. Oh yeah. Um he had a thing about that as well, like um that we're gonna try, I think, which is like um is giving a discount as a prize, which I really like that concept. You because you have done this, you've completed this, you've won a 50% off annual. You've been, you know, and and it doesn't even need to be again like everything, like I listen to your again, what you say to people a lot, it doesn't need to feel fake, it doesn't need to feel like cringy, it can be genuine, like here is a reward for finishing this thing, like a genuine reward. Like you can't get this unless you finish this thing. And if you finish this thing, great job. Here's a coupon for 50% off annual, and then it it feels very organic, it feels very real in a way, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Did you ever hear the episode I did with Timothy Moser? He teaches Spanish through group coaching programs. No. So it's episode 170.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

And he he does something very similar to that, right? So what he does is he gets people in to a challenge, and I forget how long the challenge is, if it's 30 days or 14 days or something like that, but it's paid, and that is their front-end thing. And at the end of that, I think that the end they do a webinar and they do the discount, and it's like, you get this discount for our ongoing system, but you have to have finished the challenge. So they're like, oh, they're pushing people to be like, we're gonna make this offer for you at the end of this, but only if you do the full challenge, because they know that the people who do the challenge are then more likely to become successful, they go on and do the membership. They know that people who finish, if they get people to finish the challenge, that means they're engaged and then they're more ready to buy, and so they kind of come they package the whole thing together. Um so that sounds kind of similar to what you're doing right now. I think that's because I think it sounds great.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's a good way. I mean, I think uh again, um this kind of atomic habits thing as well, like this idea that like, yeah, if you get people into a run of do well, I think we all enjoy doing it. I'm the same. I I love practicing bass, it makes me so happy. And if I do it every day, I feel great and I want to do it more, but then there's periods I don't do it for two weeks because life and and and whatever, and it's very hard to restart the habit. And and I'm kind of a firm believer in that, especially around dance and music and things like that. People want to do this stuff, people love doing this stuff, but getting them to take action, like this little daily habit, is um is always the challenge, I think, in this field. It's like like you will enjoy this, like you will enjoy learning Spanish, but it it's hard to to start, you know, it's hard to uh to get the daily habit, but but once you have it and you're like, Yeah, I love this, and then at the end of that, you're like, Okay, do you want to do this for the rest of the year? The answer is a much easier yes than you've you've never done this, why not do it for a year, you know? Um, I think.

SPEAKER_00

So I think that is that's a path that we we we want to explore. Um yeah, definitely, definitely worth a test because you've run it once and it worked. Yeah, you're running it again and it see if it works again. If it works again, it's like maybe do maybe do that more often, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

I had a friend, uh, I've talked about this on the podcast before. I saw uh saw her at the conference last uh summer when I ran. I was doing like a review of people's funnels uh in advance of the conference, and that was kind of like one of the presentations. Yes, and she'd said to me how she was doing she'd she'd heard me talk about webinars and she'd tried it and she'd run a webinar and it made her$70,000. And it was like, great! And she's like, What should I do now? I was like, do another webinar. And she did she did that, and this one made her like$130,000. And she's like, now what do I do? I was like, Sarah, do another webinar. Find a way, how can we get it so that you can run a webinar every month? And she messaged me a few months ago. Um, I think she made so much money she didn't she didn't need to run them for a while. She's like, I took the winter off again. Shall I run another webinar? And I was like, Yeah, you should probably do that.

SPEAKER_01

I guess there's a lot behind that, I guess, in terms of her yeah, her authority or positioning to get the people into the webinar. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. She's already built up an email email list of like 7,000 people. She sells a high-ticket thing, she's an amazing salesperson, she's got a great webinar. She did one of them with a partner. There's a lot of bits that went into that, but it's like, but it's working, and when something's working, what you need to do is do more of it. And I struggle with that constantly because I've got oh, but I've got this new great idea that is like, oh, this is gonna be much better than all the previous stuff. I'm gonna work on this new idea. Luckily, I've got Yosip who is like John. What if we do more of the thing that's already working?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

I'm like, oh yeah, good point, Yosip, let's do that. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01

That's kind of the the the curse of being creative. Exactly. It's like you just want to keep making new things and trying them, playing with it. And I mean, yeah, we're we're we're like that, but I I I do I I do think this this system kind of might be the the the path forward. And and what you're saying about analytics, I mean it just gives me uh a revived energy now to go back in and like okay, like just double check all of the links, double check everything is is is kind of clean because because yeah, like many creators you ever hear, you're just doing it on your own time, and sometimes you you it gets messy. It's very hard to keep things super clean, you know.

Final Thoughts And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00

For sure, for sure. David, this has been awesome. I've really, really enjoyed talking with you. You're doing something fantastic, uh, and uh I know that your audience really appreciates you. I've really loved hearing kind of your story today on the podcast, and I'm sure that the audience has as well. Um thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks, John.

SPEAKER_01

It was great.

SPEAKER_00

As always, thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you guys next time.