We're pulling back the curtain on the coaching industry, shedding light on the gross, if not unethical, side of live sales events. Steve Corney is back to dissect a live event funnel run we both went through. This episode is the first of two where we'll walk you through everything, from the registration process to the closing pitch, highlighting how deceptive tactics are ineffective and can leave customers feeling disrespected.
We won't just walk through how abysmal this particularly funnel is (because, spoiler alert: IT IS), but also sharing our thoughts on the better, more effective, more *gasp* RESPECTFUL approach, replacing the tricks and traps with ethical sales strategies and impactful learner experiences.
Quick overview of what we cover:
RESOURCES:
LISTEN TO MORE EPISODES WITH STEVE:
CONNECT WITH STEVE:
We're pulling back the curtain on the coaching industry, shedding light on the gross, if not unethical, side of live sales events. Steve Corney is back to dissect a live event funnel run we both went through. This episode is the first of two where we'll walk you through everything, from the registration process to the closing pitch, highlighting how deceptive tactics are ineffective and can leave customers feeling disrespected.
We won't just walk through how abysmal this particularly funnel is (because, spoiler alert: IT IS), but also sharing our thoughts on the better, more effective, more *gasp* RESPECTFUL approach, replacing the tricks and traps with ethical sales strategies and impactful learner experiences.
Quick overview of what we cover:
RESOURCES:
LISTEN TO MORE EPISODES WITH STEVE:
CONNECT WITH STEVE:
Yeah, so here's what's included in this amazing challenge, like total value, like $36,777 and $77,. Brother Brunson sense Then all yours, not for $97, but just for you, action takers, $7. You did the data map, you did the numbers on it and I was shocked, like I was already vomiting in my mouth a little bit. But too late, I'm going down the rabbit hole, I'm paying my $7. Then you told me that, yeah, the numbers didn't even add up and it made it even worse.
Steve:It's like all right, I'm putting my bat suit on, but I'm going in.
Adriane:Welcome to the Soulpreneur's show, a podcast for a new generation of leaders, visionaries, disruptors and trailblazers who want to do business better. Our goal is to provide you with stories and insights into the strategy, systems and soul behind scaling, service-driven, impact-first, human-centric businesses to help you create time, financial and lifestyle freedom. We want you to have a business that you not only love and pays you well, but that prioritizes what you want for your life, so that you can take actual unplugged vacations, you can step away from social media and you can spend your time doing things you love with the people you love. Let's get to it. Before we jump into this episode with Steve, I just want to preface a couple things. So we did a little bit of a funnel review for someone who shall not be named as you will hear, we give her a code name. We did a funnel review when we got into this. It was long. The whole thing was like an hour and a half that we wound up talking about not just what our perception of what she did or did not do, but also like the way that it should be done, and so it wound up going quite long, and so we've made the decision to split it in half.
Adriane:So as you dive into listening to this, first and foremost, steve has been on two episodes prior to this one. If you have not listened to those, you don't. There's nothing in those episodes that you need to have in order to listen to this one. Beyond, like it will give you a taste of Steve's a bit spicy. We both I don't know were we both spicy in this one? I think we probably both were but he tends to be real spicy Very opinionated about some of the nasty things that happen inside of the coaching industry. So beyond that, there's nothing that you need from any of the previous episodes. So we've decided to split this episode in half and we are going to cut this.
Adriane:There are five primary things that we are going to touch on. Number one the registration experience. Two, onboarding and pre-event communication. Three, the community aspect of this particular funnel. So this was a it was a live event funnel. Four, the training and curriculum that was actually offered. And then five, the pitch and the actual opening and closing of the cart. By the time we got there, we started to talk about some broader things because we had been talking a long time about all this stuff. So we are going to touch on. In the first part. We're going to talk about the registration experience, the onboarding experience, and then the community conversation is going to get split At some point while we talk about communities, we split that and then that's going to pick up for part two. So, without further ado, let's get into this.
Steve:Wow, wow, wee, wow, woo. I am excited. Hey, Jen, it's time. It's like it would be the equivalent of like giving me a digital chainsaw. That's what you've done for this episode. You've welcomed me back again Like. So I've got to make the assumption that first time was like sympathy oh, here's this little Aussie that's out there in his big island like all by himself, let's bring him onto the podcast. Then there was the second time back and it's like oh, okay, maybe it's like a little extra sympathy. It was like maybe some people said oh, he was really nice, you should maybe throw him another little carrot or stick or bone or whatever.
Adriane:But this is the third time dude, what's going on? The first time was the pity ask, that's it. The pity ask. Then all right, I'll guess there's a follow-up. Third date is serious. Third date is super serious.
Steve:But it's serious times that we live in, isn't it? It's getting serious out there. It's becoming pretty dirty and gross. I've got to be honest.
Adriane:That's like the understatement of the year, mm-hmm.
Steve:So what are we?
Adriane:doing here.
Steve:Well, we are going to do a little funnel review. Ooh, a funnel review.
Adriane:There's a.
Steve:Goose bumps, goose bumps.
Adriane:Feeling the warm and tingly feelings already.
Steve:It is because I know who this is and we've agreed here. It's important. We don't like what's happened here.
Steve:And we're actually. We're ying and yang in this world. So we have realized that if we were superheroes, I am Batman, because I will go out and fight for justice and people will know that Batman's been there. Adrian, you're not so much a sort of in-your-face kind of In the battle, but you're doing cooler stuff. You're like the Felicity Smoke in Arrow Now. She's like the super, like a super genius in the computer On the Like person in the chair, just doing all of the hard data stuff and just like winning arguments and beating people with like knowledge and facts.
Adriane:That's you, I will fight eventually. I just don't choose to.
Steve:She fights. Felicity Smoke fights eventually too. Only when, only when, like there is nothing else left for her to fight with data and science and logic, she will go gloves off, bam.
Adriane:I'm glad you found an example for this.
Steve:I wanted to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it has to happen, but yeah that's us at the moment. Because, yeah, we're two different humans, different approaches to this. Because in this example, I went undercover and then I revealed myself very quickly and said, hey, here.
Adriane:I am. We did technically both go undercover. Yes, I simply went completely cloaked undercover. I flew under the radar, whereas Steve couldn't help himself. But poke, poke, poke, poke. Let me poke the bear to see what kind of response I can get.
Steve:If we had to TLDR this episode? Yeah, tldr, let's call our charlatan in this case. So we went and reviewed a challenge funnel. Ok, the charlatan's name is Christine and we're laughing. We're laughing because Adrian's scared that I'm actually going to name drop. So, chris, in this case Shady Chris, shady Chris couldn't even TLDR. Shady Chris couldn't even do the nice thing to the audience, which would be add up the value stack to actually make sure that the total value that they presented on the page, added to the correct number that each individual item was valued at, couldn't even do that. That's the end of TLDR. Because you could. If that's what, if that's where we're at. You know that it's not going to be pretty, but we're going to go through a few things and make sure that we unpack why it left a bad taste in our mouth, the best way to do it or the better way to do it, and then obviously throw some shade Chris's way as well, because it wouldn't be fair for us just to sit back and go.
Adriane:Oh, that's OK, Chris, you get a pass.
Steve:It's not your fault. It's absolutely your fault, Chris, and if you're watching this and if this sounds remotely like you, maybe we are talking about you, but on with the show.
Adriane:I really like it. Just from the second that I hit record, it became the Steve show. This was you did an introduction. Stop it Talk, stop it, stop it.
Steve:You're doing, we recorded. We've recorded a fair bit this week actually, because we're doing some secret stuff in the background and I think it's only fair that I talk a little bit, because in the stuff that we recorded, I think all I did was press next on the Zoom PowerPoint presentation and added some post-it notes on your bidding my liege, so you did more than that you did.
Adriane:You did more than that. You did a great job and I appreciate the effort.
Steve:I think the world's going to appreciate the effort, because there's some magic. There is some magic in the air and it's coming, it's coming.
Adriane:OK, we're going to stay on track, though, because this we are. We can go for too long on this. So what the plan is is we're going to walk through five primary elements of running a digital sales event, which Steve's World is, is live event, digital events. Would you say that? That's how you would say it Digital events.
Steve:I have digital events. Yeah, absolutely Yep.
Adriane:So we're going to walk through the five elements and then the way that we would do it versus the way that it was done in this particular sales event.
Steve:Why? Because there's.
Adriane:Chris, chris, careful, careful. Now I'm just pushing you all the time to let. Oh, is he going to reveal?
Steve:Is he going to reveal or not.
Adriane:You forget that we have editing power though.
Steve:That's true and that's OK. That's why it's OK.
Adriane:So if there's an accidental slip, yeah, so we're going to walk through the five elements, because I don't think in any instance is the way that I would recommend doing it, the way that was actually done. That's my TLDR is I try to look for the good in things. I could not find the good in this.
Steve:Yeah, I don't think there's any.
Adriane:I don't think there was any one element of this that like I would say. I would recommend doing it that way.
Steve:It was not a tasty experience at all and I like to I like to hope that they're, I like to give hope for this, for these sort of people and, like our previous episode where we sort of talked about look, if you're, if you're starting to think that we're talking about you, when we're not attacking people who are doing this unwillingly or unknowingly, it's if you know that you're just doing absolute shady stuff. That's bro, woo or bro, or woo or woo, bro, whatever the mix is. Listen to the previous episode to sort of figure out where you sit on that scale If you're willingly and knowingly doing it. Despicable and deplorable behavior by you. And this is why we're doing this, to help the people who are just following what they've been taught by some of these shady coaches and some of these shady practitioners of this.
Adriane:Yeah, and I will go so far as to say that what are we actually calling her Christine?
Steve:Christine policyakes policyakes?
Adriane:I don't, we have no idea. If she has any idea, if she knows how like really, it's not a good way of doing this. I don't know what she's been taught. It's very clear that she's followed a system that's actually the name of her.
Steve:That's actually the name of the funnels tool and software that she uses. Yeah, yeah, systemio.
Adriane:It's very formulaic. I mean just the little bit that I saw because I couldn't keep watching it. I just couldn't do it. But like even the slide deck that you showed me before this, like any, it's just copy and paste. There's nothing to it. Yeah, Well, that's what they say.
Steve:Right, so I guess, I guess people are going there, but hey, Steven, Adrian, that's that's really cool that you're coming in and being the savior and helping us and like exposing this and you're going to give us another way. But it's just cookie cutter Like, isn't it surely? It's just like here's the, here's the registration page, here's the pitch deck, here's the experience, like to a degree, yeah, but it's not one size fits all, and what works for brother Brunson doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for me, it's different for Adrian. It's there Even between Adrian and my business. It's completely different language, very different audience, people's desire to state all that sort of stuff, right. So that's what we're going to be doing. Is we're going to be showing you the way to think about it from your world's perspective, as opposed to seeing some of the areas as to what they've tried to do, to use some of these dodgy bro Wu techniques that clearly no longer work. Why? Because you're more sophisticated now and your buyers are more sophisticated and eyes are open to this stuff.
Adriane:Sure, okay, so shall we jump into item number one, the registration experience. So someone, the way that they're going to enter into your sales funnel I don't believe that funnels dirty word. I know a lot of people are like oh, don't say funnel, that's an icky word. If you have a way to convert people, you have a sales funnel.
Steve:That's a fun, yep.
Adriane:That's a fun. So someone is going to enter into the funnel via the registration experience. Even if they're already in your eco sphere, even if they're not completely cold to you, they're going to enter into the registration experience. Do you want to start with what we would recommend or do you want to talk about?
Steve:Let's talk about Chris, because it was horrible man. It was horrible and disrespectful and inconsistent, incongruent, and then, a week later, the registration experience that we had was then replaced by something that would have to be the most disrespectful thing that you could do to someone who is part of your ecosystem, and that was the challenge. Was the challenge or this that they chose to use a challenge? In this case, it was a $7 low ticket offer, yep, with an upgrade after it, but we paid $7 to participate.
Adriane:We paid $7.
Steve:We're putting 14,. We're putting 14 US shekels on the line for the viewers. I don't know what other podcasts would do that, but we're doing it for you. So we paid $7. A week later it was advertised for free, but during the curriculum and we don't want to jump too far into that they talked about how you never do free events because it's not worth the effort. But then the practitioner of this shit said thank you so much for paying $7. Next week I'm going to offer this whole thing for free. Well done, and it's look, it's not about the money, it's just about the vibe and the feeling that it leaves the people who have committed and bought into the bullshit Originally. It's like well, we don't really care about you. Thanks for your cash. See you later.
Adriane:That was the most shocking part was she made a point to say you get low quality leads when you do free events. You might not be ready to. You need to be more advanced. You need to be more advanced to do the paid lead generation strategy, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. So the actual registration experience, you sent it to me. You found it on LinkedIn.
Steve:LinkedIn. Yeah, there was no paid. There was no paid ads run to this, by the way, so I did some research. This is all organic. Oh, this is all organic being punched out by army of virtual assistance across, especially LinkedIn.
Adriane:Linkedin's a Christine's place of adventure which is your normal place of adventure. That's my world of.
Steve:Yeah, that's my world and I know, I know, I know the tools that would have been used to automate the process. I know how it all, how that all happens, but ultimately, hey, I'm running this event on this date. It's really cool. Here's the stack and here's all the offer, here's what's included, blah, blah, blah. And that felt really gross, which made me want to send it to you. And then we landed on the actual page and on the page was really bold headline like how you can make $100,000 months by just running a live virtual event.
Adriane:Yeah, the registration page was a port. It was. I mean, it was not only, I mean, it was, it was, it was all a formula, it was all bombarded with. First of all, the message was over, it was overdone, but it's so over promised, because the the promise of the event which this goes to. So we're going through the five things that you do for the live event. What you would plan in advance of that would be like all of the marketing tactics.
Adriane:There's a runway, that that that leads up to all this. So somewhere, before any of this happened, she made the decision to land her messaging on how you can, within five days of doing this challenge, you can start to have 100k months.
Steve:Months people, months 1.2 million dollars a year.
Adriane:That's the messaging. So you can look at that messaging and go, oh, that's really appealing, I wouldn't want $100,000 months. That sounds great. What does it take that? We know the?
Steve:you know the realities of that. Are you like hard, hard hitting questions on? I'm not $100,000 a month business. No, I've seen it. I've seen it maybe three times in in my career in the bank.
Adriane:And that's the difference. If you, you can have $100,000 in a month, but if you're not repeating it, are you 100,000 a month.
Steve:Don't sell $100,000 months. Yeah, that was the. That's the promise, right, and this is where the cracks of inconsistency start to come through. Right and for the uninitiated. But they're starting to be more sophisticated. As we've said over the last couple of times we've got together, people are not motivated by these grandiose promises of lifestyles and the rich and the famous value. They're starting to be like bullshit. I don't believe you, and so what the charlatans are doing, and what Christine did, was then just layer it.
Adriane:So many times, so many times.
Steve:And, like you said, over promised through this sales page. And the sales page is point. What's the point of this sales page? From your, from your experience, because you've run really successful events what's the point of, what's the point of it? It's got to, it's got to do a couple of things right, or one thing really.
Adriane:I mean, I don't know, I've never gone through a style of training that teaches you to do that in that way. My perception of what that like, what is the tactic? When you're going for a style like this registration major, where it was way over promising, over and over and over and over and over, it was very in your face, that tactic to me is like the flash and grab the big off. Flashy tactics that make you go I need this, but it's so overdone at this point that the sparkle has sort of faded.
Adriane:Yeah, you're not actually you're not saying anything.
Steve:That's really cool. You know we made me think of because you know I love movies. Right, this is a Guy Ritchie film and it is lock stock and two smoking barrels. The movie opens with Jason Stratham and another character and he's standing on the streets of London with a little trestle table and he's selling necklaces, diamond necklaces, and he's like we'll sort the buyers from the spires, the needy from the greedy. Come on, love, take it's just 10 pounds to Scott, 10 pounds, and he's selling empty boxes. That's what it felt like, right, it's like this is what Christine's doing.
Steve:She's like yeah, this is, you get a hundred thousand dollar months. Yeah, look at this person, look at this, look at this, look at this, look at this, look at this. Well, and then you buy it, and then you open, you go home and you go hey, honey, I bought you this amazing like diamond necklace. There's nothing in the box. Oh, by that time, though, Jason and crew have packed up and they've disappeared. You never see them again.
Adriane:And they're counting on the fact that you're not going to look inside.
Steve:That's right and that is. That is. That's quintessential, bro, as we talked about in the previous episode. Bros, they, they, just they. They know that they're not going to get you a second time, compared to the woos who are going to like psychologically manipulate you yeah, keep coming back thing and like screwing you time and time again. Yeah that's pure bro techniques. So maybe maybe she is like a distant relative of brother Brunson school of witchcraft wizardry.
Adriane:That's I think I said to you. I said this has to be like, she has to be a click funnels person and you said no, she's a something else, because I didn't. I didn't see that system.
Steve:Which is a great tool. It's an all in one tool like a kajabi, like a high level, like something like like a click funnels, but it's just got a little bit more functionality and yeah, all right.
Adriane:All right, I like it, but. But it's clear to me that she was not counting on people to pay that close of attention.
Steve:Yeah, social proofs. You had social proof, right, but the social proof we looked in there. I was confused legitimate right. So social proof on a sales page good or bad?
Adriane:Excellent.
Steve:Excellent idea.
Adriane:If it's done the right way, Correct Now we're just talking over each other at this point. We both have so much to say.
Adriane:We're so excited, we're so excited when you're using social proof the right way and you're not just screenshots, screenshots, screenshots, screenshots, screenshots. If you've got a little bit more, I mean listen, if you're selling something for $7 or you're doing something for free, put your screenshot like that's. I can get over that. If it's, four fifths of your page is nothing but screenshots and it's something that someone's paying money for. I'm going to argue that there's a better way, but you really go off the rails when you're not looking at your screenshots far enough to realize that what you're actually putting screenshots. So she's selling how to make 100k. You're going to have 100k months after you do this five day challenge. She had screenshots that were how great like a salon was.
Adriane:Yeah, not even the right stuff like not even the right business, not even like business model. Oh yeah, it was very confusing and, like you said, the value stack didn't add up, so it was clearly banking on the fact that no one was really going to look all that.
Steve:Yeah, so here's what's included in this amazing challenge like bam bam, bam bam. Total value like $36,777 and $77,. Brother Brunson sense Then all yours, not for $97, but just for you, action takers $7.
Adriane:Yeah, it really was. It doesn't make business sense anyway. The value stack started at $24,000, except it wasn't even close to that when you added it all up.
Steve:You did the data map, you did the numbers on it and I was shocked, like I was already vomiting in my mouth a little bit. But too late, I'm going down the rabbit hole. I'm paying my $7. And it's actually like $10.50 because of the exchange rate. Yeah, so I paid more, but that's OK.
Adriane:You paid more.
Steve:I'm sorry, but then you told me that, yeah, the numbers didn't even add up and it made it even worse. It's like all right, I'm putting my bat suit on, I'm going in.
Adriane:Well, it was. I mean, it wasn't like I got my calculator out and tried to figure out. It was just like it was so, like my math, I love math it was very obvious that I was like those numbers don't add up to $24,000, like not even close. And so then I did get a calculator out and it was like the difference was from $13,000 to $24,000 or something. It was a big difference, it was a big difference.
Steve:So value stacks, yes or no?
Adriane:I'm a no on about. I think that it's not wrong to use a value stack. Now, this is different than you've talked about this in a previous episode on. There are legality issues in Australia anyway, around saying something that is of a particular value and you have no way to actually back that up. Personally, my feeling on it is that it's kind of an insult to intelligence, like you sort of know. There's a difference between saying OK, you're going to get X number of calls with me, I'm not going to put a, I'm not going to put a value to that. But I can tell you that if you were working with me privately, this is what I would charge you every month. I think there's a little bit of a difference there, because that is enough. I know what I charge to work with someone privately. I know what my contracts cost, but I'm not going to put you get three calls with me, so that's what that's worth 17,000.
Adriane:Right, so just pick a number out of the sky, and I think that they've never sat well with me for that reason Of is that really like? Where are you getting that number from? Like it's just arbitrarily? What do you think? I know your answer, but what do you know?
Steve:Look, I get, I get that. I get the reason behind it. You want to show that they're going to get a whole bunch of cool stuff, but the legalities in Australia say that if you say that it's worth 3,000, I have to go somewhere where you're actually selling it for 3,000. You have to demonstrate to me that you're selling it. The other, the other legality is misleading and deceptive conduct, which is hey, there's only 30 seats left of this digital program and to be like, oh, I've only got 100 copies of this downloadable PDF Bullshit you do.
Steve:You're not going to stop at 100. That's against like. That's misleading and deceptive conduct. That's breaching a strong consumer law. If someone.
Steve:The problem is, though here's the problem. I don't know how it rolls in the US, but in order to do anything, you have to pay to play. So you, so someone, would have to Sue Christine and start to front up the legal costs to be able to start to do anything, or, at the very minimum, you would report them to a relevant, a relevant association and the likelihood of them doing anything Very, very small. But the cost of your soul, what's the cost Like? At the end of the day, I would. I would much rather being go.
Steve:Hey, here's my challenge. I know the value of it, and I've done a really good job at getting in the heads of my target audience, understanding their current state, their desired state, working with people and demonstrating some good case studies and some good social proof, putting together a really well thought out curriculum and then displaying that in a logical way that then just says hey, if you want to get involved in this, it's got a small cost. Come on board, Register here and let the people decide whether or not, it's something that they want, as opposed to the alt bro method, which is just overwhelm and show you just said something really just mind blowing, and that is let someone decide for them.
Steve:What is?
Adriane:it. What is it OK?
Steve:Shogunah yeah.
Adriane:Shogunah. That is her tag. That's what that's the phrase I was trying to think of. It's all shock and awe, yeah. So, and then there was an upsell on it. We don't have to go because it was all the same nonsense but there was a ninety seven dollar upsell for the IP.
Steve:What's the logic? So we've got Rego experience. I hit register, we paid our seven dollars. Then we were like, wait before you go, Brother Brunson and Sister Christine has got some more fleecing that they want to do with you. The upsell is OK, right, that's an OK thing to do 100 percent.
Adriane:Yeah, 100 percent. I mean there's a. What I understood her upsell to be was fine, like it's not something that I would not do. Let's put it that way. I guess there's the one thing where I said I don't think there's anything that I would recommend doing, putting a ninety seven dollar upsell. You've already paid seven, now you can pay an extra ninety seven to be able to get I think you get lifetime access to the replays. You got to go on a zoom call and actually ask questions.
Steve:I think that that is super valuable, super valuable, super legit.
Adriane:Yeah, legit the way that it was sold it was another value stack. It was another value stack, it was all the same. It was all the same.
Steve:Salon testimonials, yeah, so the, the the aim, so the, the, the sign or the like the ad like. If you're paying for traffic through this, the reason that you attach dollars at low ticket is to liquidate the ad cost. Yeah, so it's. It's using paid VIP experiences, or some of the paid experiences, to reduce your cost of acquisition. Is that? Is that what I'm understanding as a, as a complete layman on the on the subject.
Adriane:Yes, and that's also the idea of doing a paid challenge. I mean, it is the concept of. We sort of made fun of this because she wound up going back to a free version of it. But that's what a paid challenge is known for bringing in a higher quality lead. That's the idea is, when you bring in paid participants, that there are people who are already willing to get their wallets out. So when you're selling high ticket which she is her offers were six thousand and twenty thousand dollars at the end of this. That's the spoiler. Those were the offers at the end, which that's a whole separate thing of presenting two different offers in one fit. That's a skill in and of itself. We'll get there later, but that's the idea is, when you're selling high ticket, If you can, if you get someone to get their wallets out in advance of ever hearing the pitch, there's a much better chance that they're going to be willing to go into whatever your higher price thing is. That also can help to liquidate the ad spend, especially if you are targeting a warmer audience. They already know you. They're more likely to buy in.
Adriane:When you're targeting a cold audience, you're probably not going to fully liquidate on a seven. That's. It's too much to get into all at once. Well, we'll do separate. That's a whole separate thing. But the idea if you can pull an upsell trigger, ninety seven dollars, I think, is a lot to a cold audience. That's a lot. That's a big ask. If I were going to do are you asking me all this If I were going to do a ninety seven dollar upsell at the end of something, I would strategically I would do this differently. If it were free seven dollars and then pull a trigger on an upsell, I probably would say legit and I would legitimately do this. It's ninety seven dollars, but for the next only. If you could actually put a timer that would expire for the next 15, 20 minutes you can get it for half the price and you can. You can say that's not. I understand that that can be an integrity issue also.
Steve:I mean that's a timer works as long as the time is the timer works.
Adriane:Yes, interestingly, clickfunnels is one of the only software that I found that can actually do this. Cartra can do it too, kajabi can't. There's no way to put it in to show it. There's a lot of places that you can't when the time. If it's a, when someone opts into the page, they've got X number of minutes or hours or whatever, until the page will default someplace else. A lot of software only gives you the option of at this time, or you can count down, but you can't move someone off the page. I sort of digress there, but I would discount it so that you're offering them something that's more like 30, 40, 50 bucks. So it's a little bit less I hate using this term a little bit less of a no brainer. I don't ever want someone to just not use their brain when they buy something for me.
Steve:Maybe. What if we say reduce as much as possible, reduce friction?
Adriane:Making it a no brainer, yeah.
Steve:I love that. I've got no issue with using scarcity. I was having a chat to Papa Pauli today and I was just getting fired up about it. I was telling him hey.
Adriane:Pauli's got to get mentioned in every episode. Now he's becoming part of the show.
Steve:I was a student IP professor at a Melbourne leading university and I was saying, hey, Christine lives in Sydney, Pauli, and she's doing this like despicable stuff. Let's sue her. And he's like yes yes, I'll use her as an example in my fourth year. Like master's program IP law lectures, I'm like yes. When I be guest lecturers, for no I'd be awesome if for us to just pop in and be like hey, let's do the review, but anyway anyway, I digress, I think, as long as the time expires, yes, and as I said, I'm not going to go back.
Steve:That is an absolute, legitimate marketing tool, but in the interests of time and the souls of our precious, precious listeners, who I hope they appreciate that we've gone into the trenches for them, let's go to part two, which is the onboarding and pre event experience which, for me, this is the make or break for a lot of.
Adriane:Okay, so I hope you are really enjoying this episode. I wanted to pause, though, for just a quick reminder, and then we will get right back to it. If you are a service based business owner and you want to sustainably grow and scale your business, with a foundation in your business that supports your lifestyle vision and will unlink your time from your revenue, I would love to support you in that. So our signature group consulting program is called sustainable growth lab. It's unlike anything I've ever seen in this industry because it, first of all, it's a group consulting program. It combines consulting, masterminding, mentorship, in person events and even a done for you option that you can add on, where our team will do the work for you.
Adriane:Sustainable growth lab is 12 months long and it's for you if you're making at least $50,000 in US dollars per year. You're maxed out on client work or customer or student, whatever you like to call them. You're working all hours and you're ready to build sustainability that will turn your business, your one man or your one woman show, into an actual company that not only makes six figures plus but pays you six figures, is supported by a super mission driven team, and will help you step into the scaling visionary CEO that I know that you want to be by dialing in your processes and building a solid infrastructure that supports your growth. So to get started with the application head over to sustainable scaling dot co slash links. That's not dot com, it is dot co. So sustainable scaling dot co slash links. It's also in the show notes. All right, let's get back to it.
Steve:So we're going to talk we're going to talk in a future episode about how we're going to do sort of like the metrics and the numbers that you need to track. So, obviously, registrations to an event is one thing, but getting into show and getting them to participate and getting them engaged before the events even started is super, super important. Christine, you screwed the pooch hard here. Yeah, I was zero engagement, really nothing, nothing. I got to thank you.
Adriane:Yeah, it's. The thing that really baffled me on this is primarily that she sells done for you also. That's the higher priced offer and I knew that going in. I don't know how I found that. I probably because I did did some internet stocking, but I realized that one of her offers was going to be a done for you pitch. You know, if I'm going to pay someone to build a sales event funnel for me, I'm going to expect a lot of engagement, because when I do it myself, there's a lot of engagement around the pre event pump up. It's going to look into it and so if you can't even demonstrate to me that you can send even one email beyond, hey, you're registered and please upgrade, because that was definitely their upgrade again.
Adriane:That's all that we got was like yeah, was upgraded, and then upgrade, upgrade upgrade.
Steve:Don't be a loser being action taker. Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.
Adriane:Yeah, if you can't demonstrate to me that you can do more than that like, why would I ever pay you to do anything else for me, especially when you're making the promise of making 100k months Like you've got to? At that point, you are either intentionally deceiving people because you're not going from zero, or you're for sure not going from zero to 100k. You're you are not going from 5000 to 100k, you're not going from 10k to 100k. That's not only is it not realistic, but it will. It will destroy your business at some point. Like it sounds cool. Oh, it sounds really appealing.
Adriane:I'm in. I'm in 10k months. I'd love to go to 100k months. It's going to break your business. You don't have the operational capacity for it. That aside, you're probably thank you for thank you for laughing at me. You are just. You have to be. If you're speaking to 100k months, you've got to be speaking to someone who's further along, and someone who's further along is going to see right through the fact that you have no system for engaging people, because they didn't get that far without having a way to engage their people Exactly.
Steve:Exactly right and I think let's help the little, the amazing listeners here, as to what could be done, what could be done better now with a, with a pre event pump up. Obviously, the first thing that you get after you sign up whether you pay or whether it's free or whether you do the upgrade, whatever is, thank you for registering. And it's got to be like it. It's got to generate excitement and it's got to have like the next. There's got to be logical next steps to each thing that you put into your pre event sequence. Right and typically like, if you're doing you talked about it before, you're going to have like a marketing runway. How far out are you going to be like opening up registrations? Typically like in your world, weeks, months.
Adriane:So well. So if you're running ads, you all what you want a testing period. So I'm probably going to open ads three, four weeks before, a month before. But when you go, when you're that far out like you really start to eliminate the possibility that people are going to actually show up live. Because they're going to get closer to the event, the more likely people are to show up live because it's fresh in their mind. So if you're only running organic, if you're just promoting to your warm audience or you're only promoting on social media where people are seeing you, you know there's a shelf life of like a day on social media and nothing's really getting seen beyond. That is what I don't know. If it's that way on LinkedIn, does LinkedIn have a longer shelf life?
Steve:That same deal.
Adriane:So a week like that's where you're going to get the bet. Probably you're going to get the highest quality registrants, not because they're a lower quality lead, but because they're a lot more likely to actually show up and engage. What would you say to that? How would you?
Steve:I'd say once, I'd say once, two weeks, right, because then you start, you start running out of potent pre event pump up stuff, right, so you can, you could send like a reminder which is like hey, we're live in a, we're live in a week, super exciting. But that's not going to cut it, that's not going to make me like from wanting to attend. You've got to provide me with some values and pre, some pre work. Maybe a sneak peek into the workbook, maybe a little, maybe a little video, like like a prequel to the, to the challenge. Maybe maybe a little opportunity for case studies or some examples, or you know, like a little look under the tent is to like, hey, look, we're still building the stage, but like, check it out, Super cool.
Adriane:So I don't really specific examples for those we don't have to get into. We can get into that in a future episode like the full, but a really zoomed out overview of that is the steps of content that you're putting in front of someone, especially if you're trying to get your illustration like two weeks out or longer. Is you want to have some type of awareness or found a methodology, foundations, some type of perspective that's going to develop thought, leadership, authority and somewhat like you really want to let people know who you are, why you're trying to get your illustration and shift some perspectives around the way that most people are teaching this and the way that you're teaching us and this is my, this is the way that I think about it so you're putting stuff in front of them that's going to help them go. Oh, this is, this is interesting.
Adriane:I want to show up to this because no one's talking about it in this way, or I understand, maybe, why this hasn't worked for me and the way that you are going to teach me is going to shift that in some way so that it can work better. So, instead of then, just come to the thing why haven't you upgraded? Why haven't you bought? Why haven't you. That's really not effective, especially if someone doesn't know you all that well.
Steve:Absolutely, absolutely. And then Christine used Facebook groups as a delivery mechanism, which, again, that's cool. So you had to get the link to join the Facebook group and then maybe there was an ask for a welcome post or anything, but that's a whole other If we think about like the email pre-event pump. That's a whole beast in itself. Then the actual community platform that you're using, the introduction and indoctrination. That's a horrible word, isn't it she?
Adriane:uses that word. I hate that word.
Steve:Yeah, so maybe the onboarding of people into the community, into the community needs to, is a whole beast in itself and we like we don't hey notes. For next time, if you invite me back for a fourth date, seriously, I'm going to come back to the US and hang out in like we need to have like some Dunkin Donuts, some Chipotle and some Le Croix. Like not that, not that coconut bubbly rubbish that you try and tell me is good.
Adriane:Wait, no, no, no, it wasn't coconut that you were so offended by, it was pommel mousse.
Steve:It was the grapefruit. It sounds like an apple. You were like grapefruit.
Adriane:What?
Steve:Well, yeah, if that's fourth date, like we need to do one just on the pre-event pump up, just on the community onboarding, not indoctrination. Why indoctrination? It triggers like all sorts of like being held captive and stuff, who knows. So like drinking the Kool-Aid, it's little.
Adriane:Stockholm syndrome.
Adriane:Oh yeah, oh yeah, Before we get to that, because I do want to talk a little bit about the community, because that is part three, before we get there, can we talk about, from your perspective, what is the frequency with which you should be emailing, because so many people are. I don't want to bother people. I don't want to send them so many emails that they're going to not like me, they're going to unsubscribe, like what would you recommend frequency wise for making sure people see this? We're going live. Please show up, please join the Facebook group, please do.
Steve:Yeah, so I guess there's. I guess there's two parts. Right, we're still in the pre-event stage right Pre-event.
Steve:Yeah, during the event, more is more is more because people are busy. That's fine, want to let them know that things are happening. But yeah, pre-event I would say like if you're two weeks out, you would want to have like a thank you. Then you'd want to have probably like next day this is something, something cool, to wet your whistle. Then be like if you've got a week, if you've got a week and then you've got another full week to lead up to it, I would probably like have a day's break in between each thing, maybe two days max. But then, yeah, if your, your system just has to be sophisticated enough like you're not getting into Gmail and like hanging, banging these out one at a time, you would have like conditional logic built into your automations where if someone joins the challenge at one week to go, they don't get the previous like six emails that have gone out.
Adriane:Right yeah.
Steve:I'd say, I'd say, in a two week period you'd probably want to send, you know, half a dozen to 10 maybe emails, yeah, yeah. I was like that's, that's like that's, I reckon that's. I reckon that's on the low side, but I'd be comfortable with that.
Adriane:Yeah, and as someone who signed up for I mean, it's a little. If you are in a niche, maybe that's not B2B. If you are a B2C niche, so you're you are working with a demographic that is maybe not as used to what these types of events look like. They're they've maybe never gone through a challenge in this way that niche might be. Now, if you're in a health or fitness niche or at some where this is happening a lot more predominantly, you might have an audience that is used to the like. They know they're going to sign up for the thing and they're going to get a whole bunch of emails. But if you're in B2B, like I expect, I'm almost surprised when I don't. If I'm not getting a whole bunch of emails. It almost makes me question the legitimacy of the business owner. If I'm being totally honest, like why are you sending me more email? Like I'll open them or not? But you got like you. You owe it to yourself to promote your business. Go ahead and send the emails.
Steve:Surely, and unsubscribe is not a dirty word, like if people unsubscribe, good, good, good, and then I have to drag them through the challenge and hope that they just give you crickets anyway. So like that's okay, cause you're just enriching the people in your, in your little world.
Adriane:I just deleted 20% of my email list. Actually, it's all right, people. People can unsubscribe. That's a different thing for a different day too, but you don't. You don't need people that don't want to be there.
Steve:And then Chris, just a Chris just a heads up. If you use like your AOL email, that's right. So in Australia we have, in Australia we have like your, like your cell phone provider, like T-Mobile or AT&T, you can get. They also are internet providers in Australia. I think they are too.
Adriane:You can get it. Imagine if you had like an at t-mobilecom.
Steve:So it'd be like it'd be like steve corny 1967 at t-mobilecom.
Steve:That was like that it was like Christine Rocks 57 at msncom. It was pathetic and it like that's what came up on the emails, the from address and then delivered by systemio. So in 2023 and beyond, you have to go to, you have to go and buy your name domain or your, your domain, that your business, you have to like. You can't, you can't just roll the dice on like perception, like that. If, especially if, you're promising $100,000 months, get the fuck out of here, christine, like you, you you need a real domain. Sorry, it's not like the Google doc, it's not like the Google doc advertising, you know? Oh, hey, you don't need a fancy funnel, you don't need a fancy thing, you need a Google. You need a fricking domain that's legitimate. Come on.
Adriane:To send emails from yes, I'm not from Australia. I've been to Australia. I'm not from Australia. I knew the minute I saw it, I was like I don't think that's. It's not something that I recognized, but just looking at it I was like I don't think that's that's so.
Steve:It's one of us. I think that's the first thing that I did when.
Adriane:I opened the email was I was like I got to investigate. What is this sender? Yeah, If you're making, if you're claiming that you can teach me how to make $100,000 months, I'm, at bare minimum going to expect you have your own domain. There you go. That's pretty that's pretty.
Steve:So your system on system up properly. Part three community.
Adriane:Let's go Part three community.
Steve:What's the community? There's nothing wrong with Facebook groups?
Adriane:right, some people are like I hate Facebook.
Steve:It doesn't like everyone's on Facebook.
Adriane:Me. I hate Facebook, but yeah, use of Facebook group.
Steve:I've seen. I've seen clients who have gone and put the. They've put their pitchfork in the ground and said I'm not using Facebook. And then they go and set up circle, they go and set up a mighty networks, they go and set up an off platform, non Facebook group and they get lit on fire because purely, it's the F word, it's friction. There is too much friction sometimes for an audience to willingly go somewhere where they're not already. And Facebook, bless it, love it or hate it, people are there, they're checking it and so it's easy for them to just oh cool, I'm checking my friend requests, I'm checking my friends' stuff, I'm responding to them in messenger. Oh, steve's live in his challenge, let's go have a look. Boom.
Adriane:Nail on the head If you want to use. I love circle.
Steve:Circle is cool. I love, I love the third parties, but you've got to do like that's a whole other thing to do that. Well, as well, it's.
Adriane:I would like your this sort of deviates from what we're talking about, but I think that this is a good deviation. This is a, this is a tangent that makes sense is. My perception on this is use circle, use slack, use whatever you're going to use outside. Now, voxer, I think. Well, voxer is probably you're going to have a higher level. It's probably, if you're paying someone's paying some more money, they're going to get boxers.
Adriane:Yeah yeah, yeah, more of the VIP. But if you're, if you are working on a free challenge or any type of lead magnet, because this is a lead magnet. When you're doing a sales event, it's a lead magnet, whether it's paid or free, or I mean, you could argue that a lead magnet is never paid. It's a trip wire, but whatever semantics. So if you're doing something that's intended to be a lead wire, a lead magnet, lead wire there you go.
Steve:That's the lead wire.
Adriane:A lead wire is a different thing. You have to catch all. Or if you've got like a low cost membership where someone's paying $7 a month or $47 a month, even I don't know a hundred bucks a month or whatever like where their buy-in is less, either because they don't know you as well or because they're just they're really not financially all that invested, you've got to make it really really really easy for them. You've got to meet them where they're at. To make it. It's like you said, it's friction. Eliminate the friction so that you're meeting them where they're at. Whereas, if you want to use Circle, use it in your higher cost programs, use it in your, where people are bought in enough that they're going to make the effort to go someplace else to find you. Otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot.
Steve:I agree, and I think it's a bit of it's a bit of ego talking when you think that people will, I've set up this cool like custom thing on Circle. You clients don't give a shit, man, sorry. Like, oh, what you want me to download, I have to download another app. I have to set, if you like, that is the quickest way. You've seen me get like a little bit hulky and rage induced. It's that sort of inefficiency that like just gives me the shits. Man, like I will, I will sign up to something and it's like oh yeah, hey, join our Circle community and then I'll go like okay, click the link. Name, email address You've already got a Circle community because you got sucked into it years ago. Okay, what was it? Which email address is it? I'm out too much friction. Enjoy the challenge, buddy. See like you've lost me as a potential, as a potential client.
Steve:So yeah meet your people. I think that's a really good point. Meet the people where they're at and focus on creating a community feel, which you can do regardless of what platform you're using.
Adriane:You could do anything you can do. Yeah, you can. You can use whatever you want. There just might be consequences to it.
Steve:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, but people starting out like, just go go with it, go go easy and just go Facebook group and then later, if you want to start messing with something like, it's all about like getting it to work as well, right. So for you, the data queen, you would want data first before you start messing with any of the variables. Keep it as simple as paired back as possible, deliver on all of the key elements, like the five elements that we're going to talk about today, and then, after you run a couple and you've got data to feed into the system, then you would pick one thing out of the system, change it, rerun the data and see what the what the impact is.
Steve:Yeah, and that's exactly what you get to that very I could. It'd be. It'd be amazing to run that data to see how many people actually get enough data to change one variable in their whole challenge stack to be able to then make another decision, Because I reckon people are super lazy when it comes to getting the data getting enough data I don't know that it's laziness and getting the data.
Adriane:I think the bigger issue is the assumption that the lack of looking at the data and making the assumption that it's not working and then they don't try it again. So it's, it's, there's a constant and I'm all about pivot Like if you, if you could, but you have to be able to tell me the data. If the data shows that it's not working, if it actually shows that it's not working not that it not enough time has passed or not enough people have gone through the funnel, or not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough but if you can show me that there's a reason that, or even if it's like a strong intuitive sense that this is we can see that things are not working the way that they usually do, or whatever, if you can put some logic behind it. For me, even if it's intuitive logic, which might be counterintuitive, but I believe that that can be a thing Is we can pivot.
Adriane:However, when you are pivoting before you have a real reason to, you're never allowing yourself to get to the point to figure out what to tweak to actually make it better, or while this event didn't convert the way that I wanted it to. So, instead of looking at at what point did it miss the mark Because I'm sure that it didn't miss the mark all the way across the board Either it didn't have enough it didn't have enough going into it to be able to make that, to make to start drawing those conclusions or it didn't miss the mark all the way across the board. If you had enough people go through it, there's no way it missed it all the way across the board. So instead of burning the whole thing down and starting over again, let's tweak it. But that they're burning thing. Everything's getting burnt down too soon.
Steve:Yeah, good point, I call it. I call it lazy, you call it something much more polished and sophisticated, but I think we're saying that. I think we're saying similar, similar things. Which is, which is, which is great, give it time. Give it time to run or cut it loose if you've got a reason to cut it loose, but you've got to have the justify.
Adriane:I have a reason.
Steve:It's not just because I didn't work, I'm out, I don't want to sit there. I don't want to sit there and have to sift through or have to accept that what I've done is not perfect, because I think it is. It's yeah, it's, it's giving yourself that time and making the right decision for the right reason.
Adriane:If you can come to me and say I've done this event four times in the last year. I have no idea how to, how to interpret what's going on. And you can, we can look through the numbers like we can make anything better. I guarantee we can make it better.
Steve:You heard it here first, folks.