If you want to grow your revenue with an established course or group coaching program – it’s super important to scale your client results.
Part one of our series is all about shifting the focus from, ‘how can I make more money with less?’ to asking the hard questions about what your program or curriculum really offers (read: whether or not it actually delivers on what you're promising).
Because once you’ve landed on the ‘effective dose’ for learner engagement, experience, and outcome delivery - not to mention, the actual transference of knowledge - you're off to the races!
Quick overview of what we cover:
CHECK OUT STEVE + ADRIANE'S PROJECT:
LISTEN TO MORE EPISODES WITH STEVE:
RESOURCES:
If you want to grow your revenue with an established course or group coaching program – it’s super important to scale your client results.
Part one of our series is all about shifting the focus from, ‘how can I make more money with less?’ to asking the hard questions about what your program or curriculum really offers (read: whether or not it actually delivers on what you're promising).
Because once you’ve landed on the ‘effective dose’ for learner engagement, experience, and outcome delivery - not to mention, the actual transference of knowledge - you're off to the races!
Quick overview of what we cover:
CHECK OUT STEVE + ADRIANE'S PROJECT:
LISTEN TO MORE EPISODES WITH STEVE:
RESOURCES:
Welcome to the Soulpreneur 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.
Speaker 1:So, what we're here to do? We've talked about this previously, but we have, in our little adventure that we're doing together, service driven scaling. We have four pillars that we've sort of established around our own framework of what we're teaching, around marketing, sales events as in, like, launch events, sales events, etc. And curriculum. So what we're doing is we're going to do a little series on how you can actually make more money, make more sales. The key here is that if you are an established coach or course creator with an established program or an established audience because this is more about taking it, taking something to the next level, rather than how you can just start, because starting to make sales is a whole different way of thinking about all that.
Speaker 2:You might get some little tidbits though. Like, if you're a new into the space, you might get some new ways to think about. Hey, when it'd be a cool, it'd be actually a cool goal setting thing. Hey, when I get to this level, I can then already be ahead of the game and have some stuff. So you might get some stuff. And hey, I'll sing another song at the end if you want. Just to entice you to hang around. It's been a minute since you've sang, who knows. I'll just feel it. I'll just feel it in my soul.
Speaker 1:You really. Something has changed. You really did. You have started to feel.
Speaker 2:It's just practicing my anchoring techniques with NLP. Like they do this, like the voodoo shout outs, do that shit.
Speaker 1:You're anchoring, okay, so what we're starting with. So the premise here, the thesis statement, is that if you want to grow your revenue with a course or a group coaching program, you also want to scale your client results. Yes, that's the thesis statement.
Speaker 2:I would actually argue that that's how you grow your revenue.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's possible to grow without that, but what are you leaving on the table when you're not prioritizing that as well? So that could be an interesting thing to get into.
Speaker 2:And would people like if you're doing it the other way, not prioritizing client results? Yeah, you can make money, but is anyone going to come to your funeral when you die? Probably not.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully you still have friends.
Speaker 2:You probably sold them into your program too. Sold them too. They're on my other life distributors. You know you're getting them to. You've got them under your pyramid, in your up chain or your downstream.
Speaker 1:Downstream? Well yeah, because when you're not prioritizing scaling, your getting client results at scale. So first question what does that mean to you?
Speaker 2:Getting client results at scale. Is you doing the heavy lifting and asking yourself the hard questions about your program curriculum as to whether or not it actually delivers on what you're saying. You're going to deliver and then taking the necessary action to make sure that it does. By doing that, that then allows you to confidently go out to the masses and scale like, put more humans or bodies into your curriculum, knowing that you've got, like, the effective dose of learner engagement, learner experience, delivering on the outcomes because you know, because you've checked, you've asked, you've researched, you've confirmed, and then also you're ensuring that there's actual knowledge transference, which means they're actually getting the skill. So it's the how aspect of the knowledge, not the what, the why. They're actually getting the how. Once you got those things, you're off to the races, because then all you have to do is keep an eye on some numbers, some metrics and listen to what people are saying.
Speaker 1:You said that was such a more eloquent answer than what I would have said.
Speaker 2:One here.
Speaker 1:That's why I'm here sometimes, the way, the way that I think about it, because this is so like, this is so binary compared to what you just said is yours was like art. It was like what's that?
Speaker 2:I think it's like math, like if three x equals seven, the vector to the power of 22x equals. Shut up and care about your clients.
Speaker 1:That's, that's the Steve math. The equation didn't completely make sense, but all right, it's not. It's not math, it's just. You know, when you think about what is scaling at just from a really fundamental level, which I think people already talk about sort of incorrectly, which is fine. A lot of people talk about, scaling is just like you make more money, that's not really, that's just growth. Or when you're just making more money, making more money, but you're not actually helping more people, that just means you're just taking more money.
Speaker 1:To me, so when you look at like, how do you get results at scale? How do you scale client results? It's, it goes hand in hand with. Well, if you want to actually scale your business, it's about making more while reducing expenses. So if we are, if we're scaling client results, we're we're making more, but we're also increasing outcomes, because scaling is input, output. So we want to be able to do more with less and you're going to be able to make more money on the back end. That way does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Such a different at. Yours was so pretty.
Speaker 2:That's why we team up, because some people are going to resonate with my answer, some people are going to resonate with yours, and then there's a catch all in between that you know. You should. You should be able to take something out of that. What's the moral of that story, though? I think the moral of story is, is that you need to, you need to give a shit about client results, right, I think that's what I think, if people, if people haven't figured that out yet, that that's the ultimate consensus for us, or that's our ultimate thesis statement, is that you need to actually be willing to admit that, hey, I've committed to teaching you, I've committed to coaching you. I actually care about you and your outcome, as opposed to me and my bottom line. The difference being, though, is, if you just care about money, yeah, cool, you might make some, but whatever. But if you care about client results, you might like money. Is the byproduct, like that's going to happen just automatically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you absolutely should. That is that's the moral of the stories. You should care. But we we talked about this recently, where.
Speaker 1:So, harvard business review, I will throw some math at you. I'm gonna throw some math because I do love I do love the numbers side of things. If we've gotten this far and you're like I'm not convinced yet, let's, let's dazzle here. So it's, harvard business review said it's, it takes five to 25 times more money to acquire a client than it does to retain one. That's unbelievable. So if we go on the low side of that and just say five, so that means if it costs you $100 to acquire a client which I think that's, that's low, but we'll go with it it's probably going to cost you more than 100 bucks to acquire client. That's fine, easy math. 100 bucks to acquire, that means it's going to be $20 to retain.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, so if you have a $1,000 program and you are spending $100 to acquire a new client, you've got to spend $10,000 to get 100 of them. That's all relatively simple math. So you are, I have this all written down somewhere. So you've got to spend $10,000 to acquire 100 people and you're going to earn $100,000 because it was a $1,000 program. But if, on the back end of that, if you retain 4%, does it say 4%? Do you think that's average what people are retaining these days? Yeah, that's right, it's on the low end when you really look at, especially if you're doing more to the masses, it's pretty rare that you're retaining and that's industry average in the education sector. So to retain 4% of those people, which is 4%, it's $80 to retain them. But if you have a $2,000 program, on the back end, that's $8,000. Would you spend $80 to make $8,000?
Speaker 2:Yeah, could you do it to oh thank you. You couldn't advertise cold for $80 and make $8,000, though Never. That's the kicker. I never and you know, because that's your wheelhouse Even the most clinical, surgical, precise, like most rock star ad creator, marketer, salesperson, that's tough man. But yeah, I would absolutely, I would absolutely believe that.
Speaker 1:There's no one who is in the right mind would ever say no, I don't want to spend $80 to make a grant. No one would pull $80 out of their pocket and just lay it down Cool, let's do it so. But if average is 4%, what if you could increase that?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, and it would increase.
Speaker 1:That's the thing and it would increase.
Speaker 2:It would increase Exponential.
Speaker 1:The stuff that we're going to talk about today like it's going to increase your retention. So you've got to spend $10,000 to make $100,000. That's pretty. I mean, that's not bad. That's $100X return or that's $10X return, rather. Like I'll take that that's great. So you can increase on the backend if you put more effort into actually paying attention to what you're doing for your current clients and your current learners, and you can boost that from like four to, let's say, 30%, which that's a big jump. But I think 30% is extraordinarily reasonable for when you are like really prioritizing, making sure that they get the outcomes, they get the good experience. We'll get into all that, but I don't think 30% is, would you agree? Like it's 30%?
Speaker 2:I think it's completely realistic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's realistic. I think it's realistic.
Speaker 2:It's great.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if you want to retain 30 people because your retention is going higher, you've still got your original 100. But if you want to retain 30 of them now, that's 600 bucks. Okay, 600 bucks, that's reasonable. That's a chunk of money, but it's not really big chunk of money. You could if you had that same $2,000 program. Instead of retaining 4% but retaining 30%, you spend 600 to make 60,000. I mean, that's it. That's all you did in a year.
Speaker 2:You're is out dude.
Speaker 1:It's just. It doesn't make any sense why you wouldn't focus on this.
Speaker 2:Have we convinced you folks? If you're listening to this, send us a carrier pigeon that says the carrier pigeon yeah. Which means pigeon. Yes, we have.
Speaker 1:You wait on your special, on your resume and your special skills. Do you speak pigeon?
Speaker 2:No, I just I talk shit for living. That's what my secret skill is.
Speaker 1:That's what.
Speaker 2:That's what I already figured out, folks.
Speaker 1:Some skills are like an actual section on an acting resume.
Speaker 2:Is it really?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so with curriculum, I just want to talk a little bit about, like, some things that people might be doing that they're not aware are maybe actually working against them, or the things that they might be more aware of with curriculum. So that could be something. Like you know, the majority of the people who start their programs are not actually finishing it, or they're finishing. They're completing less than half of the program and might be out of order. You talk about is when you let people I think you said free range chicken around the farm. They can just go listen to whatever. They can just go listen to whatever they want. In total, they're listening. They're they're completing about less than half of learning material.
Speaker 1:You're retaining less than half of your people. If you could just return, retain 30%, that'd be pretty incredible. So if you're retaining anything less than half we want to help you with this and that your, your clients or students are dropping off of the program, like they stop coming to support calls or whatever you've, whatever you've got for them before the end of the actual period. So you might also be doing some some things to try and fix that. That might actually be further contributing to the problem that you're having. So that's where I want to start with this list to address some of those things.
Speaker 2:I didn't think it's really timely, because I think one of the one of the cool things that we get to do and I get to do in my real world, like in my real real life at learn awesome is we get existing course creators and they could be companies or they could be experts, like the coaches, consultants that are probably listening to us today. They come out and they go, hey, I need to revamp my program. I'm like, why? Well, we're not getting any more learners or learners aren't completing our program. I had this conversation with a, with an association, this week actually, and they their symptom clients are leaving to go to the competitor. We lost one of our corporate clients who are feeding us a lot of students and we're not getting as many enrollments into our program.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh, cool, what's your course? It's a 360 page PDF. Oh, let's, let's just stop there. I got the answer kids, I can fix this, let's revamp, let's fix the elephant in the room, and sometimes it's as easy as that, right, but then you're faced with things like oh, we don't have the budget to be able to completely revamp the program and do video and stuff, and that's a big undertaking to take 300 pages of anything and turn it into something that's engaging is quite difficult, but straight away, like the quickest win.
Speaker 1:I said is like why don't you just audio book it?
Speaker 2:Because they have an audio option. Oh, that's easy, like that's. That's easy and simple and straightforward, but would move the needle Right it's it's about. It's about showing your client or showing your learner that you get it right, that you're, that you're open to improvement, and that creates a beautiful story. And I'm really into this, like the story of where committed to like improving the experience, that alone will build respect, because you're showing, but then you're actually doing it. Don't just say you're going to do it and not do it. Say that we're committing to increasing and enhancing the learning experience. We need your help. Fill out this feedback form, help us here and then, as a result, it could be something as simple as taking your you know, taking your tech space program and giving them an ability to play it and listen to it when they're on the road or on the train, or something like that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that speaks to two. Two different things is what I just heard you say, one being you have to be able to meet your learners where they're at and learning inclusivity Is that the way you would say it? Learning inclusivity is like a real thing. You want learning. There are different learning styles. Some people are auditory learners, some people are kinesthetic learners, some people are visual learners, and you want to have some type of option to be able to meet them in a way that's going to actually give them the results in the way that their brain processes things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Look, I think absolutely. Yeah, I did. I said. I said a couple of couple of things there.
Speaker 2:Learning styles is a tricky one for a for a, for a learning designer. It's hard when we hear that in the edge of prener space, because it's easy. It's one of those things that sort of just being grabbed like ah, if you do video, audio and text and an activity, you've ticked off all the learning styles. Hooray, You're a learning scientist. Off to you know, the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 2:You go, not, not quite learning styles, I would say it's a preference, it's a sensory preference. So you may have the preference of wanting to watch video instead of listen to audio or read text, but if you lost the ability to watch video, you're no longer you, you're not useless to the world. You will figure out an adapt. It's just the preference. So we, we in our world, in the, in the learning design world, we challenge that all the time. It's been dis, it's been discredited and it's been researched heavily that it doesn't exist. Like, learning styles are there as preferences but they're not. Like. I'm a visual learner, that's all I can do. I identify as a coconut. Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1:You know, I, I got it. There was a second thing that came off that I'm going to say that in a second. But I have to say, like we've been doing this for a, a hot minute, now we're going on, oh yeah, seven or eight. Well, I think our first podcast that we ever did together was in April, so that wasn't. That wasn't that. It was four months ago.
Speaker 2:Feels long, though, because we've probably done so much. We've got some really cool stuff yeah.
Speaker 1:Feels way longer. Feels way longer. The point of that being like it is I, I more or less know sort of what you're going to say, like to some extent right, like not to say that you're predictable, but, like you know, we talk about similar themed things and whatever, and that one was I had, I had a real moment of like you just impressed me with that. I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 2:Hey Mackenzie, put that in the show notes, bro.
Speaker 1:Start the episode with that. You just impressed me, you sent me that soundbar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, could you send me that soundbar? I'm just going to be like playing that. You just impressed me, impressed, impressed, impressed me.
Speaker 1:Like the like the suits episode, where Harvey's like you're the man, he just plays it over. Louis plays it over and over and over again. That's going to be you. With my voice, your little, I said a lot of words.
Speaker 2:I said a lot of words then. So what was it that? What was it that ticked the tick the box for you then?
Speaker 1:You know I almost finished what I said. What I said around, like learning, inclusivity and whatever, as like that was one of the cornerstones of I have a master's degree in learning design. That was one of the cornerstones of what I was taught from every professor at every stage was figuring out how to be able to meet. And you know, this program was more for, like, it was geared toward teaching kids. So it's different. Adult learning is different. But you know, I almost finished it up with that as and then for you to go hang on, I want to challenge that because I think and this happened before we ever recorded a podcast episode we sat down and went over one of my client launches and you gave me a laundry list of like here are the things that could have been done better, here's technology, here's blah, blah, blah. And I think I said to you like I got more out of that conversation. Maybe I didn't say this to you, I don't know if I did, I'll say it now.
Speaker 2:I got more Press record again. Press record again.
Speaker 1:You're going to sound bite this too, steve. Put this on your reel, on your sizzle reel, like I got more out of that conversation than I did from a lot of my master's degree.
Speaker 2:That's a tale of the time. Students, yeah, territory education and this is why the edgaprinner space exists right Is because the institutions that teach have to teach a particular way, they're motivating and geared a particular way, whereas our world is that where we get to hang out with super smart people all the time and they challenge the status quo constantly. But, yeah, it is an interesting thing and I see too many times these serial box certified coaches that have come out and said I'm a course creation specialist, oh, you don't have enough video in your program, because you know what about the visual learners? What about shut up, like? How about that? Like?
Speaker 1:what about.
Speaker 2:It's a strong statement. It's dangerous, yeah, it's dangerous, because if you look at the space and this is not a reflection on any people's course but you look at the platforms that you can host a course on in the edgaprinner space, they are predominantly geared to two types of mode of delivery video and text video and PDF, workbook video and quiz video and something else right, so it's hard, please. It's conditioned this whole space into going. That's the only way I can deliver education. I have to do a screen record of a PowerPoint presentation, talk, people's talk at people, and that's me being an educator. That is possibly the greatest and worst thing that you could possibly do when you approach like your course creation.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I feel like now we're just creating a podcast episode for other learning designers because no, they won't listen to this, because they would be there.
Speaker 2:They've already pitchforked me enough. Like the anti-price learning designers. Yeah, yeah, I think it's super interesting. I think it's super interesting but for the purpose of our crew and the people that are listening to this, it's not your fault that you've followed what's worked, because it has worked. It has and there is a point.
Speaker 2:YouTube exists for a reason. Youtube is successful for a reason. The video format is good. But is it the only way that you can educate people? Absolutely not. Is it the most effective way? Absolutely not.
Speaker 2:But there's a time in my world when I'm motivated to learn something that I'll sit through an hour of video, happily eating it up with a spoon, but I have to be super motivated as a learner to be willing to sit through an hour of content straight. So, when it comes to you're just Like you've just made me trust you and respect you enough to give you money, and my first lesson with you is 90 minutes of you talking at me about some topic that might be relevant, and I don't really get any transferable skills after it. Ugh, like you're pushing the relationship, bro. I've just paid you money. I want a quick win. Like what can you give me straight up that I can start to show my partner who's like why are you spending money on all this stuff? You always buying shit on the internet. Maw, maw, maw, maw, maw. I want to be able to say honey, it's okay, look at this skill that I just learned. I just made my money back, ha-ha.
Speaker 1:Ha-ha. Well that's really the second part of what. Going way back Minutes, how many minutes ago blew you right back To the second part of what I heard you say is like it was also really long and you think that you're doing your learners a solid by giving them lots to chew on and a lot of information. And I heard you say something recently that was like I was like write that down. I'm going to remember. That Was one of the worst things you can do for an underperforming course is to add more to it.
Speaker 1:Ha-ha oh my goodness, ha-ha. I want everyone to see what you do, what just happened to you?
Speaker 2:That's like the inner child of me just got to laugh Like yeah, that's it. And like all the previous, like ancestors of me just were like chuckling simultaneously. That's what that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah look, that is such a marketing Like. That just proves my point right. So if the online course or coaching space was not created by marketers, that is the statement that proves to me that it is. If you think it's not, it is because only a marketer would think I can add more value to this course by adding more shit to it. A learning designer or someone that actually cares about the transference of knowledge would go does my content deliver on the outcomes promised? Does this transfer knowledge? Is this fucking useful or not? If not, delete it. But it takes one thing, and it starts with the letter C confidence, to strip your course back to the barest of bones. If I do it and when I do it because that's what I do, that's my bread and butter is we would take a course that's 40 modules or 40 videos long and I'll go through it and I'll be like dude, I got five minutes of useful content out of that Rat roll.
Speaker 1:No blame on us.
Speaker 2:So what I want to do is I want to relaunch your course. That's five minutes long, three topics. You in, I'm out, steve, I'm not comfortable with that at all. Fair play to them, too, like it's an uncomfortable place to be, but everything that I went through there was five minutes out of 40 videos. There was probably like five or six hours worth of content that was actually delivering on what they said on their landing page Actually gave me the skills to walk away and use. Now, that's amazing. Congratulations, you've done it. You've actually taught me something Brilliant.
Speaker 2:But you've buried me under four days worth of video that I'm not going to come out of that thinking that I know anything. I'm going to come out overwhelmed, which, again, is a sign of the times. That is the. That is the surefire tactic that the snake oil. People reach into their little coat and they go. Oh, I know what we can do to keep them coming back overwhelm the shit out of them and make them feel like they're stupid, Instead of actually just go. You know what? Here it is, five minutes. You will have this skill, this skill, this skill, and it will help you do this, this, this and this. Come back and see me when you want the next step, oh baby.
Speaker 1:But I also want to be clear that I'm going to assert that the vast majority of people who are listening to this are not coming at it from that place of I want to overwhelm you and make you feel stupid. That's. That was the marketing ploy that happened way back, way back when now that's where we're at is you're doing it because you think that it's going to help. You want to add value? You want to? Oh, I'm going to email my people and let them. You know, you have lifetime access to this. Like, hey, guys, I'm going to, I'm going to add there's going to now be a. You know, we're going to add a module 11. It used to be a 10 module course. Now there's going to be a module 11. You're now. I think that's appropriate if there's updates to the information, but that's maybe not always going to be. The best use of curriculum updates is to just is to just add to it. But you're doing it because you think that it's going to be helpful.
Speaker 2:No, but it's like if you want to give a real practical tip, real practical tip for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah you've got an Evergreen program and you want to add an extra module to it, so please create another course. Oh, don't add, don't add module 11. Create a standalone program, just for the data's sake, right, because what you're then able to do is you're able to run a whole other train of numbers on that when you announce it to your cohort. But then you can announce it in a way that shows hey, listen, I care about you guys, and I've had to look through the numbers and I've thought about this. I was going to add this Listen to the story, right, I was going to add this as a module, but I didn't want to overwhelm you.
Speaker 2:You flip in the script straight away, because I care about you, you do. Instead, what I've done is I've created a new program, standalone. It's going to cover these things. What I need you to do before you do it, I need you to take this quiz, which is going to tell me whether or not you've got and got the required knowledge to succeed in that program. Off you go, done. You will see some real magic happen there, real magic. Are you charging?
Speaker 1:them for it.
Speaker 2:You could. So I'm not talking about economic like, economically you could or you could or you don't have to. But it depends on your model. Like, maybe you've got, maybe they're paying you a subscription, so as part of your subscription that's part of their like library of content, so maybe you would charge, but maybe you would do a little pop up and charge. But the way that you can charge more for it is by showing them that you care and then showing them that they have to demonstrate to you that they have the prerequisite knowledge from the course that maybe you're having trouble with them completing. Maybe that's the carrot that gets them to complete it, because they really want to learn topic 11. But if topic 11 just gets buried in the bottom of you know the other 10 topics in a course and you soften out that it's probably just going to get left there or maybe one or two people will complete it, but yeah, that's a hot tip for you right there.
Speaker 1:And now it's time for another. Get to know Steve and Adrian. How do you, how do you feel in general about adrenaline activities, like adrenaline inducing activities?
Speaker 2:Like, like, base jumping. What is base jumping? You just jump off a building with a parachute, like that's it. Oh, yes, like that yeah, skydiving.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do, yeah, I do that, sure yeah.
Speaker 2:I would. I would say I would say like I've sort of like leveled out a little bit as I've got an older, but we'll still. We'll still do some crazy stuff in the ocean. So ocean is where I've been called to serve my adventures. So, yeah, if I look at some of the waves that I surf, it's yeah, it's definitely adrenaline.
Speaker 1:Adrenaline racing, heart racing, pumping Stuff yes is the answer I am which I want to come back, which I want to come back to Because that I feel like we need to further explore that. So you've been like skydiving, it was cool.
Speaker 2:No, I did it. I did it at college, like there was like a little club that you know you joined to make friends. So then I was doing all these cool activities and we went skydiving and I remember going and then I'm like this is awesome, I want to go do my license. So you do the. When you go and pay for skydiving you do tandem. So you strapped to someone. That was awesome. But then I'm like how do I just jump out of the plane by myself? They're like sign here.
Speaker 1:Don't you have to have enough hours to be able to do that, while you're learning.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of different ways that you can learn to Do it, and while you're learning, you don't jump as high, but you're jumping out by yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's always something I've wanted to do. That's one of that's one of my.
Speaker 2:It's super cool, I think that I think I think you just you're. You're so over stimulated up there that you don't actually realize what's happening. So they say, they say like they advertise 45 to 60 second freefall. It feels like two seconds and it's because your eyeballs are just like getting so much input that it just doesn't know. Your brain has no idea what's happening. And then by the time you realize what's happening, you're just like cruising up in the air, like just just like the golden, the, the green leaf in Super Mario Brothers 3. That turns you into Raccoon Mario. That's what that does when you, when you get the leaf, it just like floods down.
Speaker 1:Yeah cuz the ocean. You don't actually, you don't. You don't just surf, you body surf.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got it. Yeah, I've got a surf, mainly because I don't know how to surf, or surfing frustrates me because Imagine this when you learn to surf, typically you don't know what it's like to actually catch waves, so you don't know the payoff, so you're happy to suck until you get to the payoff, because you're Acquiring the skills that you need to get to the ability to surf the big waves. You know turn into it. You know, get into the green zone, into the barrel. You know, yeah, just frothing, right.
Speaker 2:But the problem that I face is that I already know what that feels like because I can do it without a surfboard.
Speaker 2:So body surfing is literally you just swim onto a wave and you use your body as a rigid plank to surf the wave with no equipment. So because I already know how to catch the big waves, I already know the feeling, I already get the payoff. I don't want to spend time in the kiddie pool learning to be like a baby giraffe, standing up for the first time and just Sucking constantly, which is usually counterintuitive for me, because I'm pretty open to learning new things, but I get frustrated with. You know things that I think I should be good at, but I'm not like I'll get real frustrated real quick, to the point where I've gone out surfing with friends who want to teach me to surf and I've had one try and I'm like this is bullshit. I'm Paddle my board back in, like I'll paddle like 200 yards back into the beach, take my board off, swim back out and then body surf and they're like what are you doing? I'm like I'd rather just do this. This is more fun. Surfing sucks surfing sucks.
Speaker 1:I have to imagine it takes a Extremely more skilled, or at least careful, careful, the surface.
Speaker 2:The surfers will come in and start burning you, burning you at the stake. If you say that, like I mean, I guess different, like a different type of skill.
Speaker 1:I feel like you wouldn't have to be in the same shape to surf on a board as you would to be able to like hold yourself.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I've never served. I've never served of any kind. So different.
Speaker 2:It's a different. It's a different thing, dude. It's a different thing.
Speaker 2:It has a different skill set. It's a different, different position, different, different awareness, different speed. Like it's all. It's all different. But it's so much fun when you, when I'm out, when I come to the US, in in California, like I'll pop up. I'll pop up in the amongst all the other surfers and they'll be like what are you doing out here? You lost and I'm like now Game on the body.
Speaker 2:Surfers are the bottom of the food chain, so we get run over a lot, so we get all the slop, we get all the leftovers that the surfers don't want to take. So a lot of times we're we're battling for position and doing all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, it's cool, it's nice to be at the bottom of the food chain, but what's cool is that there's no board. When you, when you're swimming out, a lot of the frustration and the hassle is You've got this big power fiberglass parachute that you have to like catch with the water and dive with it, where, when it's just you, I just dive under the water and, just like dolphin, kick my way under, come up whenever I need to breath easy. Lots of fun.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting to me. Okay, okay, yeah, any any other activities like that?
Speaker 2:Oh, the water you can do. Yeah, there's some sketchy stuff that can go on in there for sure.
Speaker 1:So in the water.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, that's. There's lots of there's. There's lots of stuff where the adrenaline is absolutely pumping and it's not just, it's not all.
Speaker 2:Well. So it's like this surfing the wave, where it's like you're actually yeah, it's cool, it's fast, it's noisy, there's lots, there's water splashing in your face, but then there's the adrenaline of going out in the ocean on a big surf day. So there's days that the waves are so big we don't even go out to surf them, we just go out to see them. And so you know You'd be, you'd be swimming out and this wave the size of the building, like a three-story building, 20, 30 feet wave will stand up and it's like it's going to break on your head and you just dive under and literally it's like a detonation. It lands, oh, like it lands on your head, where you used to be. You're under the water.
Speaker 2:Now it just, and it's dark, like the lights go out, so it gets really dark, and then, like, you're just sitting under the water, like going wait, wait, wait, and then you see a little crack of daylight and then you go up and then, as you like, get through the white water, you take a massive breath, you see on the horizon another one and it's like, oh, shit, and you're out of breath. You know, okay, okay, okay, this, this is not fun anymore. And then it's like and so that could happen like three to five times, and there's been moments where me and my buddies have been out there and it's like, yeah, we ain't come back today. Today is the day that we're not gonna make it back. I'm dangerous. That in itself is a bit like oh, this is fun.
Speaker 1:So that like, oh, I should go, I should go do that. Like I don't do that often enough, like I'd like to go do that again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I haven't done it for a while. I haven't done it for a while, but it's uh, it's winter here, so you don't you're not doing any of that. There you go.
Speaker 1:That sounds fun. I don't that. I think that would skip. I'm gonna strong. I'm a strong enough swimmer. I can hold my breath.
Speaker 2:I don't know how long do you have to hold your breath for like 30, 30 seconds would be sufficient for most, yeah, but 30 seconds when you elevated heart rate, right, right, that's that's where it gets, that's where it just. You just go, stay calm, that's that's. That's, that's how we used to teach New lifeguards is like that was the proving ground. Like hey, come out, let's get some waves breaking on your head and see how you survive.
Speaker 1:Like hot lifeguards.
Speaker 2:That was the key, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get back to it. So for the for those who are saying, well, no, but my curriculum needs to be revamped and my solution to that was I was going to add to it, but they actually need to revamp rather than creating something brand new, if you started to do an audit we don't think this is, it's probably too much for right now, but it could maybe be a little, a little sneak peek at what they might, what some people might learn with us later on if they Choose to an either free or paid formats based on some of the stuff We've got going on the future. But how would you start to approach you know maybe a couple bullet points of what would you start looking at for an audit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for an audit. I'd go, I'd open up your sales page and be like what are you saying I'm gonna get? Then I would ask you to show me. So if I was doing it like if I'm the, if I'm driving, be like, hey, adrian, open up your sales page, show me where you tell me what you're gonna give these people. Okay, cool, copy that, paste that into a Google doc.
Speaker 2:Right, that's our, that's our promise. That's what people have bought into, right? Because they haven't. They haven't get to. They don't get to do the course first and Then buy it. They have to come off a sales page or a landing page or something that says I'm gonna give you this, this and this, or I'm gonna give you these skills. Give me that Google doc. Bam. Then show me dot point one. You've said I'm gonna help you make the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. Okay, what goes into making chocolate chip cookies? Need to know the recipe. You need to know the ingredients. You need to know Basic cooking terminology. Sweet, there's three things within that one promise. Dot point on your sales page Show me, adrian, in the course where you teach those three things, oh, oh, you only teach one of them interesting.
Speaker 2:There's a gaping hole. Now. I would just be one step away from pull up your course data for a minute.
Speaker 2:Let me see that, yeah, no one's completing the program after they learn only one of the three components that this or your course feedback is yeah, it was good, but my cookies don't look like yours. I'm probably not gonna buy again. So that's where you start to overlay the data. But the starting point is the sales page and then show me all the topics and how those topics contribute to the stuff that you promise on the sales.
Speaker 1:It's a good. That's an easy starting point.
Speaker 2:It's super easy to do, right. The best thing that you can do, though, is to go and grab a child. Maybe yours not just off the street, but, yeah, if you've got a child available to you, they have to be a human. They have to have a child available.
Speaker 2:Now, grab your third child or anything. It's really good. They're not jaded or they're like they'll just say it how it is, and I think some of us need that. They need the coach that's going to tell them what they need to hear, not what they wanna hear, because you're in love with your content. Whether you say you are or not, you are so attached and in love with your content and someone's basically saying, hey, that baby that you've got there. It's really ugly Booft.
Speaker 1:Hard to hear.
Speaker 2:So yeah, you might grab a child, rent a child, or grab an unbiased third party that's never seen your stuff before, because they're really good, off you go.
Speaker 1:And who doesn't know you People who know you wanna.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people that, yeah, like you wouldn't do your mom right, you wouldn't ask your mom like hey, or mom's in general, parents in general. But you know, like I always think about that, right, it's like you've drawn this picture of a duck and like, so you've spent the afternoon. You're like sitting there at the table drawing this duck and you go and show your mom and she's like, wow, that's amazing, you are like a world-class artist. And then you go and show it to like the art gallery and they're like dude, are you okay? Like do you need something? You need to go to hospital or you need some pills to make the bad voices go away? Like this is a dumpster fire. So parents are always like always and people that know and love you like they're always gonna like protect you a little bit. But yeah, sometimes you just need that reality check that maybe art is not the way for you. Duck drawing is not a way for you.
Speaker 1:So something else. So if you see that people are not completing your programs they're not resigning with you what else might people be doing? They might be asking people for feedback.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really quick, easy way to do that. It's zero dollars, right, we talked about. Would you invest $600 to make 60? Like, would you just spend five minutes making a Google form for free and sending it out to your learners? Yes, is the answer. Absolutely. Ask for feedback. But also just think about the story again and think about the feeling.
Speaker 2:Right, robbie Williams feel I just wanna feel real love. You wanna make the learner feel special. So if I got an email generically from everyone that's like BCC or ugh, this is just generic, whatever. But if I actually got like a DM from you that said, maybe with an audio message that's like hey, steve, I got some ideas to improve the course and like I've seen that you've gone through a fair bit of it and I just would love to just jump on a call with you and ask you some questions about the course and just give you some pointers as to, like what you're dealing with at the moment. Let me know what do you think the difference would be? Like who's gonna give you better input? And the story and the feeling around how you're connecting with the learner to ask them about their feedback. It's so much better if you go one like one to one personalized and it just costs time, like that's.
Speaker 2:I think that's the beauty in this world is that some of our successful course creators who are looking to enhance themselves, you'd know right they don't have time necessarily to go one to one and do this stuff because they're busy and fair play. That's a really fair objection to that as to why you would go generic. But just trust me when I say that the impact of going one to one in this to capture feedback, to enhance the course, it's phenomenally different and better.
Speaker 1:They might also be doing things like. Would you send out reminders oh?
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 1:Reminders to come to calls Like if you see that people aren't.
Speaker 2:If you see people aren't coming, yeah, if people aren't coming if people aren't coming to, if people aren't coming, you've got to do a reminder. Sequence, surely right? So you do. You do it really well, Like when you're doing your challenges, when you're doing your programs, when you're doing your calls, like I get plenty of notice, I just sign up because, like you've got really good copywriting. Whoever's doing your copywriting, most of the time it's you or it's the Breezy, but whoever's doing the copy over in the salt train, it makes me click, Like you've done it a couple of times where it's like I thought you were talking to me and I opened it and I'm like, fuck you, Adrian, you get. Like I was in the gym and I like my watch goes off. It's like Steve, I need to talk to you. Like that's the subject line. I'm like, oh shit, Adrian needs me. And it's like, ah, you got me.
Speaker 1:Oh no. So what you're saying is it's, I'm crying. Well, I ever actually need something.
Speaker 2:And I'm like Steve.
Speaker 1:Steve help and you're going to be like, no, it's just another marketing email, it's just a marketing email.
Speaker 2:Your marketing emails do add a lot of value. They do make me feel special, even though they're being sent out to the masses. But no, I would be absolutely if you're noticing people aren't attending again. Public service announcement. Steve's coaching community we've recognized own it, right. I've recognized that I haven't done enough to make sure that you know when the sessions are. So we are using ad event. There's a like, there's a plug for a future sponsor for us, right? Ad event phenomenal piece of tech, my favorite Technology. You use it. I love it Everything.
Speaker 2:Far out, far out. It just makes life bloody easy. We're using this. You can subscribe to this calendar. It's going to drop all of our sessions into your calendar and you don't have to do a thing, but then the user will get their own internal reminders. Step one, step two I also recognize that hey look, life gets busy, so I want to ask you how, when would you like me to remind you? Cause I can remind you the day before, an hour before, 10 minutes before, or all of the above, what would you prefer? I'll just give us a heads up, you know, the day before, steve, beautiful, easy. Go into active campaign. Or your COVID kit, your email service provider automation. Set the event date one day before, send this email. Easy, like easy peasy, quick wins. And then, and then, guess what? What does the data person do, adrian, if you've noticed a low show rate and then you make a change? What does the data nerd do?
Speaker 1:If you've noticed a low show rate you've noticed the low show rate.
Speaker 2:You've then taken the step to make a change. Then you rerun the data. What do you what? What does the data peeps do in that situation?
Speaker 1:Do you know? I would be curious to know. Well, I mean cause it could. There's a possibility that it couldn't, that it might not change something, and that's telling too, because that means people have really checked out right Like it's not, you can do these things and it's not a guarantee that it's going to work.
Speaker 1:That's the cool thing about data is data is always gonna tell you a story. It might not be the story you wanna hear, but if it's that people you know you're just not doing a I don't wanna say the word good enough, because that's so subjective. But if you are not taking intentional steps to keep people engaged, then it could be just as much as doing everything that Steve just said, and you're gonna click people back in and you're gonna start to see those numbers go up, which is what we would hope would happen. But there's also a possibility that you can do all those things and you're going to see no increase or maybe just a marginal increase, and that either way, is great because it gives you information of what do we wanna do next. Because if you're getting, you know, not so good results from taking extra intentional steps, then that tells you like, okay, we need to address a separate problem and that's the next step of the day. I don't know if that's actually what you were even asking.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely yeah, and it opens up the next little piece that I just wanna add right? So you've said that data will tell a story. So three things can happen. There's three alternate realities that can happen when you make a change. Either it gets worse, it gets better or nothing happens, right?
Speaker 2:So for us, when we're doing audits, we get faced with this one a lot. I'm so good live, I couldn't possibly run an evergreen or recorded program. We faced that. I faced that this week as well. Oh, this person doesn't believe in digital education because all they wanna do is like spend 45 hours a day with people, one-on-one, delivering an amazing experience. Cool, all right. So if, in this scenario, you then go oh well, hey guys, it's my fault that you're not showing up, let me make it easier for you and remind you. You run the change, you run the data and nothing happens. Guess what that tells me? Your format is wrong. So it ain't the reminder, that's the issue, maybe it's the format. Maybe a group coaching call at 9 am, eastern time is not a great time for your Australian clients to get out of bed in the middle of the night and attend 11 pm at 11 am yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe the format's wrong, and that's beautiful too, but it's a lot easier to quickly address. Hey, here's a reminder. That's super quick compared to completely revamping the format or changing the time or changing the entire delivery style. But you're presented with that opportunity because data is binary, it's black, white. It either works off, no change or better off. And then you make another decision Beautiful man, beautiful.
Speaker 1:I think to add on to the just, we'll just keep yes anding each other on this.
Speaker 2:Yes, and.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's another improv, Is that? That's why it is important to not change too many variables. So when you go in and you target this is getting a little too specific for where I think we were going in this, but hopefully it'll be helpful is if you see that you have something that's underperforming and you wanna make it better. The fix is not to just blow the whole thing up and do it all over again, like you want to take. You can look at something and all the way along the road there's going to be A, b, c, d, e, f, g, et cetera, like you wanna start with. Okay, I think that point C, that's the thing, that that's the variable I want to change first, and then you look at the data of, like, what comes from that. You know point C might be, let's change. You know we're gonna send call time reminders and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nice, so small changes. Stop collaborate and listen. Ice is back for a brand new invent. See, I did it. You haven't even registered that. I'm like I already snuck another song in there. Oh yeah, I just stopped and I just put Ice, ice Baby into our podcast seamlessly and you didn't even realize. But no, like you make a change, you stop, you collaborate with others and then you listen to the feedback. So you stop collaborate and listen. That's where I went, dude, like that's how I did it, let's do it again.
Speaker 1:Ha ha, ha, ha ha. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Good. I think that's important. I think that's a really great way to help people understand how to navigate data analysis. Fundamentals right Is one change at a time. Run the numbers again, like let it run, reassess based on the change, make another decision yeah, but don't make 16 decisions and don't burn the boats, no matter what you know. Tony says you don't need to burn the boat, not yet, maybe down the track, but there's so many like steps that you can take along the way before you have to get to pouring the kerosene on the boat and sending it off into the ether.
Speaker 2:So yeah, wow really really, really cool stuff. And again, a lot of this stuff is free like free but it costs time. So if you've got time, you can do a lot of stuff in terms of reaching out to your existing learners and engaging them and finding out the real insight by just investing time and using like clever tools.
Speaker 1:Okay, so to round it out, do you wanna give excuse? Already said add event, give two more tool suggestions and that'll be our wrap up.
Speaker 2:Add event yeah, Fathom's cool. So like, yeah, Fathom's cool to obviously record your meetings and get the transcripts. Yeah, that would be cool. You, definitely, if you've got a self-directed course and it's video. So it's not, video is not bad, right, it's just it's my quest to show you, and if anyone wants to see anything that's not just a video, next course, just reach out to me and I'll show you. Like, maybe I'll do some video of just like what it can also look like in the real world.
Speaker 2:But if you've got a good third party video tool like Wistia or Adillo, have a lifetime deal for, like, a hosted video solution. That's like YouTube, but what Like an absumo deal yeah, like an absumo deal. What you want, though, is you want the ability to go in and check the analytics on the video itself. So the course, your course platform will tell you who's completed the module, but only really good course platforms when you upload your video into the platform, will you be able to get data on the video stats. So, Adillo, Wistia, all those third party embeddable video players now we're nerd and out dude embeddable video players that's gonna say, hey, here's a graph of like and it will be like this, and don't worry, because all videos are like this. It'll start up here and it will fall off a cliff after a few minutes.
Speaker 2:And for marketing that's okay, you expect that right. But for a course you would expect not to see this dramatic like dump down of a fall off rate for an engagement perspective, and then you'd be able to see the numbers is like who and I love their dashboard right. It's like who's completed the video, how many full through plays 100%, 75%, 50%. Where does people mostly hop off Cause? Then you can scrub to that point and be like why did you jump off here? Ah, interesting.
Speaker 1:Shout out Kartra. You can do that with Kartra.
Speaker 2:Oh, Kartra, nice to done.
Speaker 1:When you host videos on platform. Yeah, you get analytics probably not as in depth as you would get from something like Wistia, but yeah, you get pretty decent understanding. I was like air table.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're an air table. You're an air table, air table dude, I would say. I would say like, if you're running collaboration meetings, if you're running like information gathering sessions with people, like a digital whiteboard solution, Miro, Miro, Miro on the wall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I realized Canva has a it's like kind of like Miro.
Speaker 2:I realized that is pretty special dude. If you're not using Canva, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1:What are you even doing with your life?
Speaker 2:Are you even a tech person? You could also use the robots. Like we don't talk too much about AI, but like you could pump your video stats into chat GPT and ask it some questions. You know, and the key thing is, like in a minute I'm gonna ask you to analyze my video and help me, like, create maximum engagement. What information do you need? And it'll let chat GPT tell you the information that it needs. Give it to it and then feed it the stats. Hey, I've got this video, that's got this, this, this and this. What could I do? You could even feed it the video and get it to summarize it for you what a world we live in.
Speaker 1:The chat GPT I use has told me I can't access video information. That was a fun chat. We can round this out here. Is there anything you would wanna close out with that we didn't cover?
Speaker 2:Just be confident, folks, that if you strip your course out a little bit, or if you revamp it a little bit, it might get thinner, like it might lose weight, and that's okay, like it's actually okay to put your course on a diet or your program on a diet. Only if, only, if, like it moves the needle. So, as we, I think the most important thing is what are the dot points on your sales page that you're promising that are making people pay? Congratulations, though, because if you're getting people to pay based on the promise because that's what it is right Hopes and dreams maybe, maybe not. No, like trust, respect, here's my money, whatever you're saying there just go in there and prove to yourself that you're actually delivering those things and write it down In topic.
Speaker 2:One minute four is where that dot point on the sales page is realized, cause then I'm gonna ask you, like why? What's the point of topic to that If you've already done it? What's the point? Cause that's the true thing is that what's enough for us as the course creator is so much more than what's enough for your client or for your student. The student's enough bucket is the most important thing, because you'll be surprised how little you need to give your student in terms of skills, knowledge and ability to fill their enough bucket to the brim and make them fall in love with you. That's the true opportunity. Loss is that if you bury someone in 40 hours of content, you've missed maybe five or six programs worth of sales that you could have sold if you had to just focused on one or two things each program.
Speaker 2:You do this very well I think that's how I'll finish this podcast episode is you do it very well from a point of, like you creatively structure your stuff, thinking about the best interests of your audience, which is something that exists in all of our pillars of this, of our program that we're putting together in service driven scaling. So it's always about putting yourself in the shoes of the learner or your client or your customer, and then the way that you creatively choose to allow them to consume content based on that answer to how, like who they are and what they want and what's in the best interest of them. Like some of your yeah, some of your audio versions of your content have been banging like really, really creative and respectful. I think it's respectful. It's like, hey, you're a busy person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am, I'm busy. How did you know that?
Speaker 2:I know, because I understand what like gets you out of bed in the morning. As a result, there's no way you're gonna watch 90 minute videos every day for seven days while I help you. You know, do this. Instead. Here's this that can be done when you need it, and I've got pop up Q and A sessions along the way, Should you need to ask me any questions. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Now I've got my own little sound bite I can play back in my ear.
Speaker 2:Play that back. Play that back.
Speaker 1:Play that back. So, if this was interesting to you, we're gonna continue on with this with this little series that we're doing of how you can actually scale your revenue, but we're also scaling client results and we'll continue on with. We're gonna talk a little bit about marketing, a little about selling and then a little bit about launch events, sales events and things like that.
Speaker 2:Love, love, love.