Episode 49: How to Scale Your Impact with Bob Heilig

On that webinar, I sold a $497, 90 day group coaching program which was basically me just creating a course with them live.

Yeah.

Did an additional $83,000 in sales. So my first webinar that I ever did.

Wow.

We made over $110,000. And my life changed in that moment.

Welcome to the start Tiny podcast. I'm your host, Ali bjork. And in 2019, I launched my first ever tiny offer for $27 and have since generated over $5 million in revenue. After starting an industry wide low ticket revolution, I've been helping other entrepreneurs launch and scale their own tiny offers. And on this podcast, we pull back the curtain on exactly how they're doing it so that you can do it too. What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Start Time Tiny show and I am so excited to bring you today's guest. He is a dear friend of mine. His name is Bob Helig and he is going to talk to us about how to build better businesses by loving on our audiences. Now, I know that's something that sounds super simple, but it is what Bob has truly mastered inside of his business called your virtual upline, where he focuses on leadership training and development for network marketing professionals. Some of the things that he shares in this podcast episode and in this interview really shift the way that I see serving my audience and some things that I've probably been lacking on doing. And I had a lot of takeaways that I'm super excited to implement. So I hope you have some of the same impact made after listening to this episode. Without any further ado, here is my interview with Bob. What's up, Bob? Thanks so much for joining us on the show today. In your own words, will you introduce us to what you do and what your business is?

Yeah. Well, I'm excited to be here. So the name of our company is called your virtual upline. And so we, we serve the network marketing, direct selling, social selling space. We sell directly to the independent consultants. Our business is really built on primarily on a membership program. We do one on one coaching as well. And so we'll specifically help people with sales, marketing and leadership. We teach a very unique philosophy, really more of a values based approach to growing a business and doing those things that we call love, serve, grow. And so really those are kind of the three values that define pretty much everything that we do internally as a company and that we teach our clients and our community members as well.

I love that. That's awesome. And how long have you been doing this.

So officially, I guess we're seven years in. I started making money in the beginning of 2016. I started the journey which was really just creating content in, in the summer of 2015. I didn't really have a vision of what it would be, but we, we started making money in 2016. So seven years.

I love that distinction. So there was a whole year between when you started creating content and when you started monetizing that content?

Yeah, yeah, there' seven months to be exact. There's an interesting story there.

Well, let's get into it. So seven months between starting. So you had the idea you want to start a company. Did you start as a personal brand, wanted to build up your own brand, and then started monetizing seven months later. So what was going on in those seven months in between?

Yeah. So what happened for me is I actually was a distributor in a network marketing company, was a top earner for the company that I was in. That particular business allowed me to walk away from my medical sales career, which I spent about 10 years in as a full time network marketer and life. And it was great. And in the beginning of 2015, the company that I was working with actually went out of business.

Wow.

And so that was a little bit of a shock to the system. Now what was interesting was I had two friends of mine, their names are John and Nadia, who had been hounding me to start doing videos on social media. Right. Cause they were into the personal brand. Like that was really when personal branding was becoming like a really hot term. And I was just like, yeah, I'm not doing that because I didn't have a reason to do it in my mind because I was making money and things are going well and sometimes there's things we know we should do, but we don't really need to do them. Well, that put me in a position where I was like, okay, I see the reason why I need to do this now. And so I started studying personal branding and video. I bought every course in the world, but I didn't do it. I drugged my feet. I actually wound up joining another network marketing company that six months later went out of business. Yeah. So I'm like, I'm like, okay, if there was ever a sign I need to be doing this thing. So I attended my first ever marketing conference in Orlando, Florida. It was in June of 2615. I made a commitment to myself at that conference that I was going to go home and I was going to do my first video the following Monday morning. And Periscope had just come in.

Oh, yeah.

Live video to me was very interesting because I'm like, okay. I think live video would be better because it. With Periscope, it was gone after a day. So even if I suck and if I embarrass myself, I'm only going to be embarrassing to whomever catches it in the day that it exists.

Yeah.

I woke up on a Monday morning, and I went live on Periscope, and there was four people on there. I had no idea what I was doing. It took me, if you remember. Did you do Periscope? Were you on Periscope?

I was too scared. No.

Periscope, you had to double tap the screen to get the camera to flip around. I went live for 30 days not understanding how other people were able to start their video with the camera pointed to them. Because I. I would go live and then fumble around, and you would see the first 10 seconds would be my desk lamp.

Oh, no.

Return to me. Yeah, that was the first 30 days. So I went live for six months. I had every day, Monday through Friday, every day.

That's amazing.

Nothing to sell. And it got to the point where after about six months, I'd have people every day asking me, can I buy something from you?

Wow.

That was in 2016. I'm like, all right, maybe I should come up with something.

Yeah.

I came up with an idea to do a webinar, and that was kind of the start of how things began to grow.

That's awesome. So what did you sell in that first webinar?

It was on Facebook, right? Do we have time share the story real quick?

Oh, yeah, totally.

It's like a really. It's kind of. It's funny now. It wasn't funny then, but so I. You know, I'm just focusing on serving and helping, and I'm just teaching people stuff that I had learned. And because I wasn't pitching all the time, I built a lot of trust with people quickly, and they started to share, and the following grew. And so I'm like, well, what can I teach people? Everybody wanted to know Facebook. So I'm like, I'll just do a training on Facebook. I'd never done a webinar before. Did not even know what a webinar was. And so I Googled, how do you do a webinar? My mentors told me, he goes, you should do a webinar.

Got to do a webinar. Yep.

Okay. And then, you know, I didn't want to sound stupid, so I'm like, yeah, okay. And then I'm like, what's a webinar?

Googling it. Yeah.

How do you do a webinar? And I found webinar jam came up in the search. In the search results. So I'm like, all right, I guess I need this. And. And I. And then I. The thing about online marketing, new online marketers can share in my pain. You. You think you need to do one thing, and then you do it, and you realize there are six other things you need to do to do the one thing that you want to do. And I'm like, I need to do a sales page. I got to write emails. I'm like, oh, my God. I'm like, how do I do this?

Yeah.

So I went on upwork, and I found some random guy to put together. I. I think I was. What did I. I don't. I think I. To get in my webinar jam set up a. I don't even remember where the sales page was, but he created this thing. It didn't work at first, and then, like, I was gonna plan on selling it, and the day before, I had to hire someone else.

Oh, no.

It's the damn thing.

Yeah.

Anyway, long story. I get to the point where I'm like, okay, I can finally start selling stuff, something. And I go live on Periscope, and I announced it on Periscope, and I'm like, I don't know if anybody's gonna buy it. It was. It was 27 bucks. Nice reading on Facebook.

Yeah.

And I'm going live, and then all of a sudden, there's these, like, notifications the top of my screen. I'm like, what. What the heck is this? There were strike notifications, purchases coming through.

What's going on?

And I'm. I'm like. I'm like, I'm so distracted.

Yeah.

By the time I'm done the periscope, 20 minutes later, I go in the stripe, and I check, and there's 200 purchases.

Wow. Oh, that's awesome.

I am, like, freaking out because I didn't even know what I was going to teach.

Yeah. Or what a.

It was. It was a week later. And so we sold 1100 people to that. To that webinar. Right.

Wow. Yeah.

I'm frantically working on the training and trying to put it together. It's the day before, and I finally am like, maybe I should log into webinar Jam and figure out how to do this. I get in there. I have no clue what to do. So day before, 1100 people paid, training the training.

So everyone Paid. Not like a free webinar, but it paid one.

Okay, so true story. I know I go into the webinar jam Facebook group and I post. So I need someone's help. I have a training tomorrow night. It's my first webinar. It's a paid webinar. I have 1100 people that have paid and I don't know how to do a webinar. Can someone help me? Right. Praying that someone. I can pay someone to do it for me.

Yeah.

People must have been like, there's no.

Way they're freaking out, right? Like 1100 people.

And so I'm having to worry about creating the slides and do this. And so thank God there was one guy who commented that just seemed like less of a weirdo than everybody else. His name was Richard. And so I paid Richard $500 to run and host my first webinar and introduce me. And on that webinar I sold a $497, 90 day group coaching program which was basically me just creating a course with them live.

Yeah.

Did an additional $83,000 in sales. So my first webinar that I ever did.

Wow.

We made over $110,000. And my life changed in that moment.

Yeah.

My entire belief system around making money shifted in that moment. And. And it was just from there. It's just been a roller coaster of a ride.

Wow. Oh, that's so crazy. There's a couple things I love about that story is that you figured it out as you went. Like you just trusted yourself to go do the thing and make it happen, but you didn't spend a ton of time creating something and then going and selling it like you did. The. You sold it and then created it. Which is what I always try to tell people to do because a lot of people don't work in that order. They will work super, super hard, create a course. Like take six months a year to perfect this course and then go sell it. And then nobody is. Nobody is there to buy it. So how did you figure that out to do it in that order? Like, did you just by necessity have to do it that way or did you have a mentor tell you that?

Yeah, I joined a mastermind. And so I had somebody coaching me on it. The one thing that I will give myself credit for, that I know I do do well. Yeah. I'm an implementer. So if you tell me, you know, if you're, you're where I want to be and you tell me to do something, I'm going to do it. And so everything he told me to do, I did it. You know, I started taking some coaching clients because I wanted to figure out how do I get more money. And I remember going to him and saying, how much should I charge? And I told him how much I wanted to charge, and he said, you need to multiply that by 10. And I looked at him like he was.

Yep.

He said, well, just let's split the difference and let's see what happens. And I did that, And I sold 10 coaching packages. Right. And so I just, I am really coachable and I'm willing to do something and have it not work as a way to learn. Like, that's a big part of what we teach with Love, Serve, Grow is that we teach that the money that you make is really a byproduct of your ability to do those three things. So we also teach that business is really a personal transformation program with a compensation plan. And so I know the faster I do, the faster I learn, which helps me grow more, which ultimately will get me to where I want to go faster anyway.

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. So Love, Serve, Grow, that's the basis of everything. But probably from your own experience of just serving people by going live every day for six months and then having that result come as, you know, the fruits of all of your labor of going live all the time, do you feel like that really shaped your mindset around coaching and how you teach people to do it now?

100. Yeah, we, you know, we, we always teach that if you're, if you're really just focused on serving and helping and, and you can solve problems in advance through content, that that is ultimately the best way to get the results that you want. And so that's the thing, like, I don't have the business that I have today if, if I didn't do that early on. And I just think there's such a lesson and it doesn't, you know, for me, my thing is live. Yeah, it doesn't have to be live, but it's just, we just, in our community, we really teach our clients to look at what is the ratio? What is your give to ask ratio? You know, what percentage of time do you spend really focusing on creating content and giving your time in a way where it's not connected to some sort of an ask to the percentage of when you ask? And for most of, you know, our profession is notoriously bad in this area where it is. They're very transactional.

Yep. Straight to the dm.

You know, social media and sales and marketing. And so, you know, we just teach them that they have to really learn how to adapt and evolve and take on a different mindset and approach. But it's a. It's advice that can, you know, it's counterintuitive because if I make the ask more often, I'll make more sales. And it actually was that way, Ali. As, you know, 2020 and 2021, there was a direct correlation to how often you made the ask to how many sales you made. But what happened is that the world has changed so much and consumer behavior has changed so much, and the economy has changed so much that it's kind of flipped everything on its head. And if you want to sell more, you actually need to ask less, and you need to be more intentional about what you do when the asks.

Yeah, that's such an interesting observation, too, on how much things have changed, because I've felt a shift too, but just hearing it worded that way, I'm like, yeah, that makes complete sense. So what have you figured out as far as the give to ask ratio? If somebody's listening and they're like, oh, what is the magic number we teach?

10 to 1.

10 to 1, okay.

You know, it's like giving a number is kind of arbitrary. Right.

Like, people like it.

We teach 10 to 1 because we know that our audience will kind of will kind of hear what we say. And so I know that if I can even get them to, like, five to one, they're so much better than where they are today. But just think about the majority of the time, you really should be focused on just serving and helping and not just promoting and trying to sell all the time.

Yeah.

When it comes to content. Right. That's. That's really, to me, that's the winning formula today.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that has shifted a lot with all the different types of content that you can create now, especially as a personal brand. It's not just Instagram anymore. It's like reels and newsfeed, and you can go live on Instagram. It's like, Now Instagram is 10 different things. So I think that's such an interesting shift for people is that you can serve with your content too. Because I. I sometimes have people ask me because I sell tiny offers and I run ads directly to the sales page. I have strangers buying stuff and. And they're like, don't you feel weird, like, going straight to the sale and you're not offering any value to them beforehand? But that's all my social media is. When I. A lot of it is just content. And you know, so that's a. Yeah, we're talking.

We're talking about organic content here. Right. I think ads are a different animal. Your ads are successful because you serve and you help through content every day. Right? Yeah, we're talking about from looking at organic content in terms of. At a macro level, what are you doing and how do those two pieces come into play? I think that's really the thing we need to think about.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That's so true. Okay, so the live streams have been an amazingly effective strategy for you, has that. If somebody isn't doing live streams, like, how did you just commit to that? Did you just do it scared? Or did you have a plan? Like, how would somebody who's not visible at all? Because a lot of people that I talk to are so inconsistent. And you just went from zero to 60 or like 90, you know, you did six months straight and without having ever done it before. So how did you just turn that on and not even look back? Like, I think that just that mindset discipline, to be able to do it every single day is something a lot of people can learn from. So how did you do that for yourself?

Yeah, you know, I'll fully admit lives were a challenge for me early on, but it's something that I quickly learned to love to do. Like, it's just when I'm live, that's just. That's kind of my zone of genius, being able to just impromptu be coaching and having feed. Like. So I just. What I found really quick was that I was able to do things when I was live with people that I wasn't able to accomplish through other forms of content. And so that's the reason why I say here's the analogy that I. Because what I'd like to do is just make an argument for why you should go live.

Right, let's do that. I think it's highly effective.

Here's. Here's the analogy. Analogy that I think of is we're so focused most of the time trying to go wide with our content strategy. More followers, more reach, more, you know, more engagement. And that's important. Right. But what lacks is the depth is the depth of the conversation and the depth of ships. And so to me, where live. Live creates depth. And live is what it really is is it's giving back to your existing community in a way that no other piece of content can. It's such an investment of your time and your energy and your knowledge and your information that if somebody is actually there with you, they appreciate you on a new level. They also experience you on a different level. So I think live, what it really is is it's a chance for you to deepen relationships that you have with your existing audience. But I also love it because it allows me to do something called conversational selling, which we teach.

Yeah.

You know, when I'm live. So we talked about this give to ask ratio and we just, we try to teach 10 to 1. I think of a live as its own separate thing. It's, it's, it's its own container where I approach alive with a 10 to 1 give ask ratio. When I'm going live, I'm going to give for 90% of it and I'm going to strategically drop asks in there. And I might do it in a way where I'm teaching something and I have kind of an indirect ask that is related to something I'm teaching. Right. There's some sort of a free thing that I want to give away. And so, you know, the indirect ask is comment this and I'll send you this thing. But then there's also direct asks in there. And so, like, you know what I find to be really helpful is because I see people going live and they're not interacting with their audience. Reason why you want to go live is so you can talk to the people that are on there and acknowledge them. And because I find some of my best ideas for content come from the questions that I get from my viewers, because I'll find that I'll start giving answers to a question and I'm like, oh, shoot, I've never actually thought about saying that before or teaching that in the way that I just did. I need to actually talk about that again. And so the lives create themselves, they create future content. But you got to interact with people, ask a question, acknowledge them. Right. And so somebody said to me, how long should they be? I say, as long as they can be.

Yep.

The longer the better. Because if, you know, you might only have five minutes of something to teach or talk about, but if there are people on there with you, invite a conversation or a discussion. And if you could stay on another 10, 15, 20 minutes answering questions and just talking, that's amazing. Because all that's going to do is it's going to let you build more relationships, it's going to add more value, and it's going to give the actual live, more organic reach because of the interactions and the things that are happening while it's, while it's Going on.

Yeah. That's so good. I remember getting that advice about webinars, too, of how long should the Q and A be at the end? And somebody said, as long as you can stay on, you stay on and you answer all the questions because anybody. And that's in a specific selling environment. But the longer you stay and answer questions, the more people are going to get off the fence. If they finally hear the answer they were looking for, it triggers a different way of thinking about it. So I love that I've. You've inspired me to do lives. Um, I haven't been doing them at all. I have a membership where I send out a video every day, but it's like behind a paywall and only a small group of people are seeing it. And I'm like, why have I been, like, shutting my content behind?

Yeah.

Like, my best content is.

I'd like to talk to you a little bit about that because I. Yeah.

Oh.

But I'll say one other thing about lives.

Yes, please.

Lives are a great way to demonstrate your expertise in a certain area. Because I've gotten this feedback. I've actually had people tell me this. They've said to me that I've been watching your lives, and I watch the way that you interact with people and the way you answer their questions. And it has made it very clear to me that you are an expert in the subject matter that you teach. It's not just me putting, you know, going to Google and coming up like, I am actual in real life. I am coaching people and I'm giving them advice as way to demonstrate my expertise in an area which just creates more perceived value for somebody working with me.

So my brain goes to, like, what if people only go to the live streams and they never pay to join anything? Like, are you cannibalizing your programs by doing lives?

Yeah. So great question. This to me, is the million dollar question. Right. I'll answer it like this. If you're really. And I'm not saying you're saying this, but I'm just saying.

Okay. My brain said so.

If you're really worried about that, then maybe the question that you need to ask yourself is, am I really doing enough job delivering actual value in my program?

Ooh, that's good.

Because if your program is nothing more than just a bunch of information that you're providing to people with very little in the way of actual coaching and support.

Yeah. Or context for the bigger picture too.

Yeah. Then that, to me, is the bigger problem.

That's a great answer.

Because the Thing about online course businesses. And I look, we were as guilty as. It's very transactional business. Very transactional. We focus so much of our time on marketing and promotion and selling people on why they need it. For us personally, one of the things that really hurt us and I could. We can talk a little bit about our last year in business.

Yeah.

We started really seeing a decline because we did. We weren't putting enough focus on what happens after somebody buys.

Yeah.

And really trying to deliver customer results as a way to sustain the growth. So we just got really good at selling. But we were churning so many people. We had tens of thousands of people coming through the doors of our program over the course of five or six years. And I was. I am somebody that I'm always going to be focused on sales, marketing and content. So I was always like, how do we make the content better? How do we create a new training? What I realized, but I just really wasn't thinking about it. Is that what they. They don't need information?

Yep.

They need something different. So in the beginning of this year we pivoted big time to really start to think differently about where the focus was in our business. And to me, that was what happens after somebody buys. And so I'm so confident now that the value that we provide in our program in terms of coaching and support and direction and community is what people really need. I will teach you everything. And I tell our students, you're going to hear me teach a lot of what you paid for. But I want you to understand it's not the information that you're really here. Because if information and knowledge were enough, you'd already have the business of your dreams. But you don't.

Yeah.

I think that it's a limiting belief to think, well, if I give too much away for free, it's going to hurt my business.

Yep.

The exact opposite. And I can share that story with you to prove that to you.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean it's so true. I'd love to hear the story too. Because this, I mean, that's what my. I have a tendency to. I mean, I try to push abundance thinking, but there's always like my scarcity brain is super strong. So I have to, I have to overcome that often and like, you know, keep working towards abundance. So what's the story of the example?

Yeah, well, I'll tell the story, but I'll say this. The reason, the other reason why you need to do it is because there is so much competition today for attention on social media. And if you don't have like world class information in your free content. You're going to really struggle getting and keeping the attention of people that could be. That you could do business with.

Yeah.

And so for me, I want to be known as somebody that my free stuff is better than most of the paid stuff that people have actually gotten.

Yeah.

That just automatically creates perceived value for. Well, if the paid stuff is this good and now there needs to be actual value. But. So here's the story. So I built my business going live as the owner of the business. That was the one thing that I knew that if I did, there was a direct correlation. The more I showed up live, the better it was for the business in 2020. Remember Clubhouse? So Clubhouse came out in 2020. Right. So I went live for like three years straight, and I just got. I got burned out on it, quite frankly. And I was like, I need to take a break. And so I took a break and I started to see the business start to slip a little bit. Clubhouse came out in 2020, and I'm like, oh, I'm jumping on that. So I went live on Clubhouse every day for the first quarter of 2020. We had our best quarter ever in business, that particular quarter. And we rode the wave of that for about the next year and a half.

All through the unprecedented times and all the stuff.

We had our best year ever in 2021.

Wow.

I got complacent. Looking back, I got. What happened was I actually got a little burned out from the business. We were running way too lean as a company. We only had three employees and everybody. We just were doing the same thing over and over again for like four or five years. And I just got tired of it. So I took a step back and in the year in 2022, I went live maybe less than a dozen times the whole year.

The whole year after having done it daily for a while.

But I got away. I got away from it for over, like, for a long, like about a year and a half. I just stopped doing it. Yeah, things were going so well and I'm like, I don't need to do it. We're making sales. Every time we launch. We just. Just print a bunch of money and it's great. And. And so I got away from it. And every time I went live, it was because I had something to sell and promote. And we've sold on email. We sold, like, we just sold. And what happened was it started to work against us. And in 2022, we started to see a really big decrease. So we had our best year ever in 2021. In 2022, we did less than 50% of the revenue that we did the year before. Before.

Wow.

The end of the year. And. And I'll just. I'm gonna. Just. Because I. I feel like not enough people do this. I'm.

Thank you. Yeah. No, I'm. I'm. Was. I was.

The end of the year. The end of the year in 2022, I had to take. And. And I'm sure that there are some online business owners that know this term very well. I had to take a Stripe Capital loan so that I could continue to pay my bills. And the employees, that company, we were pretty much working just to make payroll each month. And it was really important to me that I did everything that I could to not have to let go. The people that put their trust in me and joined our mission and our company. That was not an easy place to be. So I had to really look at myself in the mirror and ask myself a really hard question, like, Bob, what do you need to do different to get this business back on track? And the one thing that I knew is I'm like, I just need to start showing up the way that I need to show up. And so I started going live on Instagram January 1st of this year.

Yeah.

Every morning, Monday through Friday, just like I did when I started. I'm still doing it today. But I knew that we needed to shift our strategy. Doing everything I've been teaching.

Yep.

But it did not work right away. We had launch after launch that just. It didn't fail. But we were only making enough money just to get to the next pay cycle. And I was so stressed out, and I. If I'm honest, I actually started losing confidence in myself, myself, because we were. We just couldn't do anything wrong. For the first five years of business, everything did. Just worked. And it was like. And then all of a sudden, it stopped working. And we would do a launch and nobody would buy. And I'm like, I don't understand what's happening here. And so I. But I had faith. And I knew. I said, you know, we're practicing what we preach, and I believe that it's just a matter of time. Well, here's what's interesting. In May of this year, for the first time in the history of our company, we missed payroll because I did not have enough money in my bank account to pay my employees. Every single one of them was like, okay, let's. Let's just. Let's. We had a launch Two weeks later, we're like, let's just focus on the launch. You want to talk about pressure for a launch?

Yeah. I got goosebumps.

Like the whole team is basically working for a launch that they know is if it doesn't go well, they don't. They don't have a job anymore.

Yeah. Yep.

Six months into starting. Interesting how the timeframe was pretty similar. Six months into starting. That was the launch that I had been hoping and praying for and waiting for for over a year for.

Yeah. After you had been going live for six months.

Yep. We had 1100 people. So on June 1st, we had 400 people in our program. Barely enough to even pay the bills.

Yeah.

We had 1100 people join, and that launch literally saved our company. Two weeks later, I had another launch where we ran the exact same playbook. 1600 people join in one 30 day period. We had almost 3000 people join our membership.

Wow.

Added about $200,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

How did you feel when that all happened? You know, the numbers coming in and all the.

I felt weird because as bad as it was and as scared as I was, I never lost faith. Like, I just knew. I'm like, what we teach is so good and I know that it's so important, but it just wasn't getting traction. And. And so it kind of was like, it was just validation of what I had always known. But it was such a huge relief. I mean, it was the weight of the world off of my shoulders just to know that I could actually take a breath.

Yeah.

Know that after we made payroll that we would have money in the account. I mean, it was. And so now, listen, we're only three months into this kind of new trajectory of the business.

Yeah.

We still have a long way to go, but our business has completely transformed form because of the things that we did. And I will say. And I know one of the things I want to talk about today, one of the biggest things that created that success was the offer structure, which you directly influenced and gave me the inspiration of what to do. Right. So can I talk a little bit about what we did there?

Yeah. I didn't know if we were going to go there, but I would love to hear the story.

So, you know, Ali and I are in a mastermind together, and so oftentimes people are sharing things they're doing that are working. And she's obviously the tiny funnel queen. And so I wanted to. I wanted to put one of those in my business. And so I asked her to share hers. And I kind of was hacking it. And so she had an upsell page. And I'm, I'm like, I love this the way you've designed this offer. Right. It was like. And it wasn't the first time I saw something like that, but it was a reminder. But the way you did it was really smart. It's like the kitchen sink offer, right? Where it's like, yeah, you get the free trial and then you get all this other stuff and even if you cancel the trial, you keep it. And I'm like, okay. I'm like, that makes so much sense to me. And so what I know today, because we teach this all the time, that where consumer behavior has really changed the most because of the economy is that people are looking to get maximum value out of every dollar they spend. And so to me, I was like, light bulb moment. This makes so much sense because we're giving them so much actual value for making the decision to buy and we're reducing risk. I'm like, this is what we need to do now. I swore, I said, we'll never do a free trial of this program. Because what we noticed was a free trial customer was a different quality. I had to just say, bob, that's not really serving you or your students because people are wanting this kind of stuff.

Yeah.

All I did was I pretty much just completely copied your exact offer. I even used your language, which I asked. Okay. She.

Yep, yep.

Just like everybody love that term. And so what I did in this, you know, the launch that we did, it was a three day free, three day workshop. All I did in the actual at the end for my pitch, I sold coaching, which is one of the things that we offer in our program now. And I sold the offer. I didn't even really sell the program. I just sold the offer, which was join for free. You know, what we did was we had a couple of live things that were happening in the membership over the next couple of months were implementation things attached to what we taught in the workshop. So I can't get it unless you join. But if you join for free, you can do the first one at no cost to you. You get all this other stuff and even if you can't. So I just made it like such a no brainer.

Yeah.

So 85% of the people that signed up did it on the trial.

Wow.

And that was the reason why. So what I did is I just simplified the offer and the decision to join people to say yes.

Yeah. And took away a lot of risk too. I mean, it seems like people Are a lot more risk averse now. And I love how you said that too. They're looking for maximum on what they're spending.

Yep. And we, by the way, we retained those trials at 75% the first month.

Nice.

Yeah.

Wow.

Quality customers.

Yeah. So they went through the three days.

With you, something to make a decision.

Yeah, just that extra carrot at the end at the ethical bribe. So they went through the three days with you on like a three day challenge type scenario or three day workshop. What was that part? Okay. And then after that, at the end you said you can get your free trial. That was the only thing that you pitched at the end.

So we pitched. So what I did was so we have two tiers to our membership. This is, this is new for us. Our base level is, it's kind of self study. We have group coaching calls like a basic membership 97 per month. That's what we did the free trial for our second tier membership is you work with a coach, it's the membership, but you get an assigned coach. So we have, right now we have three coaches on our team, full time employees.

Yeah.

You get a monthly call with a coach for 497. It is now we sold it for 397 initially.

Okay.

And so what I did was because I know the coach is really the thing that makes us different because our competitors offer that type of a service. So I just sold the coaching and down sold the membership.

Okay. So there's no offer confusion or anything.

The coaching 497 coach, some of you may not be able to afford this right now. You might not be a good fit. If that's the case, here's what we've put together for you. You can actually join for free for 14 days.

Oh, I like that.

Here's what you get.

Yeah. So they did see both at the same time. Because I've always heard like don't have offer confusion, don't send them in two different directions. But it seemed like it worked really well in your case.

Yeah, it did because we simplified the offer because I only talked about what working with a coach look like. And then I down sold the trial. And so the whole pitch was the two live things that we were going to do for members only that were directly related to the problem that they came to solve in the workshop.

Yep.

And so that was like, we'll help you actually implement what you learned. And by the way, the way we designed it was the first challenge they were getting access to as part of their 14 day free trial. So it was like, you get this for free because we're doing. But they had to stick around. It was actually. We had it split in half. I think, though, first seven days were in a build in the middle of it.

Okay.

Had to stick around for the next thing, which is what they wanted even more, which was content specifically built in these things from a retention purpose to say, well, I can't leave because I need to get this next thing that's happening next month. Yeah, we were really intentional about. So part of the value, I think, today in an offer is also accessible. So actual access and live support, like, that's what people really want. So that's all I talked about. I didn't talk about the 12 lessons and what we teach and all the tools. I didn't even talk about the membership. I just talked about those specific things.

Yeah. Yeah. So you must know your audience pretty well to be able to figure that. Figure out those pieces which, you know.

I'm guessing it took me six months of falling on my face every time I tried to sell it. So I would try to sell it. Nobody would buy it. It. And I'm like, well, what. I don't know what to do different. And so I'm like, well, so it really was just trial and error after failed launch after fail launch, realizing I can't continue to operate from the same playbook and hope that there's different results, especially in a launch that was life or death for our business. And so out of desperation, I'm like, let me just try this. And, you know, thank God it worked.

Yeah. Oh, I love that whole story. Glad that I got to help in any level.

It was. And so what did I tell you? I told you when we were talking, I'm like, listen, you're more than the tiny offer queen. Like, you're an offer strategist. Right. Like, you helped us essentially generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for our. Our business by just helping me see the offer from a different. Different perspective.

That's awesome. And that's what I love to do. I'm, like, getting choked up because, like, this is my favorite thing to do is offer strategy. So I boxed you, and I was like, what was it about that conversation that helped you guys get to that end result? And it was. It was just so cool to get to hear your answer of the offer strategy and how it all worked together. So.

Yeah. Which, by the way, can I tell you, what we're doing right now, that's crushing.

Yeah.

So I'm like, okay, so I want to. We have a Launch next week. It's a two day paid workshop for 27 bucks. And so I'm like, I'm like, all right, what can I upsell? Right? It's 27 bucks. I'm like, I don't know what to upsell. I don't know. We always struggle coming up with things to do as an upsell. And so what I was thinking is, I'm like, all right, I'll do the same offer at the end of the workshop. But then I'm like, well, why would I wait till the end of the workshop? Do the offer as the upsell? What if the upsell is the free trial and the kitchen sink come up with new stuff to put in the sink? And now I will tell you, it was a much bigger pain in the you know what, to create that upsell page and to film that video. Because what we did was. So it's a two day workshop. There's a bonus day three and four, which are implementation that they have to be a member to get. What I did was I said, you can get no matter when you. So it's a fixed date ending trial. So the trial ends the week after the two bonus days happen. So depending on when you join determines the length of your trial. But I did the upsell as the free trial, and it is crushing. We're converting it at almost 30%.

Wow. Of people that are seeing that page and signing up, signing up for the.

Free trial, that will be billed. All of them will be billed on October 8th.

That's an awesome conversion rate. Yeah, that's huge.

It's gotta go down. Like, my. My marketing manager shared it with me. I'm like, that's not. That cannot be accurate.

This isn't real.

You have to check your numbers like that. And. But it's. It's crushing. And so I'm like, yeah, but let's just put it in front of them, like, if they're ready to buy. Like, why do I wait? Because the challenge is always not as many people show up on the next day. And then you get them to watch the replay. I'm like, let's just throw it up into the front. And it's crushing for us.

Yeah, I love that. So the thing that you're running ads to right now is a $27 workshop.

It's a $27 two day workshop. Yep.

Okay. I saw it and I didn't click on it. And I thought it was like a digital product. And I was like, oh, that's so cool. It's an official Tiny offer. But the workshop is another way that I teach it too is like having that small impulse price point on a workshop. So is that working?

Well, we're selling it. I think we're. Our ads are coming in right now at I think $11 per lead for, you know, and so those are going really well. I don't know. Say again?

Profitable. Is it profitable on the front end? I would think at that price we're.

Profitable on the front end. And I think we're. I have to check, but we're at about a thousand registered so far. So it'll be a nice. What I was looking for for is I was looking for a really nice cash injection that we needed for this month. Right. Because we kind of had a. We weren't selling anything this month. And then we'll do another really big free 3 day launch in the beginning of November. So I needed to find something that could kind of be a bridge in between those two.

Nice. So you're doing that paid workshop. Upsell is the kitchen sink type offer where they're getting a free trial. They're taking that. You're still doing your daily live streams and it's all working together.

Yeah, I just go live. And so when we're in a launch sequence, it's a direct ask, it's a direct promotion every day for the workshop. Comment leads. Right. Manychat we use that. And it's just every day I'm just. And that's how we drive a lot of our sales.

Yeah.

Through the daily lives. And yes, that works for us. And listen, I don't think like it doesn't have to be daily lives, but I just think you go live once a week, you know.

Yeah.

It's just a smart thing to do in terms of getting and keeping attention.

Yep. Yeah. I think everybody listening should start doing it. I'll commit to it too.

Look, I was teaching. It's funny, man. I was teaching lives. I taught lives when I taught. Like that was what I was known for. Lives.

Yeah.

And then I stopped doing it and I got away from it and I never talked about it. And now it's all I talk about again because it's just me. It's like, you know, and there are just certain things that we can do as the owner of the business and the face of the brand that no one else can do. That just drives. It just brings so much value into the business. And so to me, it was about me just getting refocused and recommitted to what that looked like for us.

Yeah. How did you do that? I mean, I know we're probably getting towards the end of our time, but this could be a small. If there's like, a shortened answer to this question. Like, if you felt like you were burning out and you felt like you were losing momentum or excitement about what you were doing, like, how did you get it back and be willing to do it daily without worrying about burning yourself out again? Because I've totally been through that too.

Well, here's where the burnout was coming from. The burnout was coming from two places. Half of it was I was taking on too much as the owner of the business internally. I wasn't expanding and growing my team, and I was struggling delegating responsibility to the people that were here. So I became the bottleneck of the business because I was too much of a control freak. That got to the point where it just wasn't serving me anymore, and it was creating chaos for our team. So that was part of it was me really stepping more into the leader role of the business and giving up and starting to put people in place that could take things off my plate. But another part of it Ali, was that I just got sick and tired of teaching the same thing. Thing. We started to see offer fatigue. We had a. We used to have a membership that was for five years, was our entire business started to see kind of declining results. And I just got tired of talking about and teaching the same thing. And so part of what I did in 2020, and this is not something in retrospect, it wasn't the best business decision. But I'm. Sometimes I can be a little bit of an impulsive, rash person. It's probably my add. But we scrapped the whole business and start. We launched. I. So what I wanted to find something like I was searching for a bigger mission and a message I really get excited about. And so that's when we came up with Love Serve Grow. And so we launched an entirely new program called Love Serve Grow. And I started teaching completely different stuff.

Oh, wow.

Like today, the number one thing we really teach is sales strategies. And so selling wasn't even a part of the conversation in our business two, three years ago.

Wow.

And so what I did was I actually. I found a way to find the vision of the business. Just. I lost sight of the vision. We had so much success, and it was so far beyond where I thought I would be. I didn't know what was next. And so I just got really clear on what next could look like for us. And so it was A combination of those kinds of things got me to the point. And the other thing too is I think serving is a self fulfilling prophecy that we say that every act of service affirms your own sense of self worth. I never feel better about myself than when I'm going live and I'm giving back and I'm serving my audience. Some days I don't want to do it, but most days it's the thing I look forward to the most in the business. It's just me. And I learned so much about what our clients want and what they need. And I'm so, I'm so tapped into the pulse of what we need to be doing and talking about. That's where I pull that and that is in value. I think sometimes as the business owner we get too far removed and out of time what's relevant and what our clients need. Yeah, my lifeline to getting that.

Yeah, that's so true. I've experienced my, my experience mirrors yours almost exactly because I feel like so many consultants and people that I was working with and being coached by were like, you got to remove yourself as much as possible, like you're the CEO, go be the CEO and hire people to do everything. And like I, I got disconnected from showing up and having conversations with people, trying to hire a sales team and trying to hire, you know, like social selling. And I feel like I really lost touch on my purpose, which is serving people. And I feel that same reciprocity every time I go live or if I have a chat with somebody and hear their stories and what they're working towards. Like I'm inspired to do better as a business owner. And I almost got kind of apathetic, like being too far behind the scenes and like almost in a bubble. Like I want to be on the front lines and talking to people and seeing what they need. So I made that shift too. And it, it's been a, it's like breathed so much life into my creativity and my excitement.

So I lost that. I lost an emotional connection to the business. It just became something that was making me money and I lost that purpose behind it and so that I rediscover that.

Yeah, I love that. So to wrap up, if somebody is listening and they are not feeling emotionally connected to their business, how do you like tune in and reintegrate and fall back in love with what you're doing? What would you suggest?

I mean, to me it's just, it's, it's serving. What's one thing that you can do to serve and get, you know, like, get your hands dirty. Like, do something. Do. Take an action. Maybe it's go live. Maybe it's reaching out to a client client. You know, maybe it's following up with someone. Just, like, do something. Take a step and create some momentum. And every day it's just doing the little things. But to me, the little things have to be driven by the bigger picture of where you want to go. What's the mission? What do you want? You know, I had. I lost sight on what I wanted the business to be because it was already so much than ever than anything I thought it could be.

Right.

And so I had to get another vision of, okay, so where do I really want this ship to go? And I started getting really inspired by building something bigger that could make a bigger impact and that could allow me to live even more of the kind of life that I wanted to live. I think if the little things we do every day aren't aligned with some bigger picture that feels important and meaningful to us, you're never going to sustain the little things long enough. So it's a combination of those two things.

Oh, I love that. I think you should write a book about that, Bob.

So I actually am right. I started.

Are you. That's awesome.

On seminar last week.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I'm committed to write. I am writing a book. That's your book process. And I scared as you know what, but I'm gonna do it.

It's gonna be amazing. Just the next thing. You'll figure it out as you go. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Bob. It's been great chatting with you. And where can people find you? Where can. If people want to connect, they want to learn more, where do they go?

Yeah, two places. Check me out on Instagram. I go live every day, as you know. We've talked about that a lot. And the other thing I would say is I. If you listen. You listen to podcasts, obviously. I have a podcast as well. It's called the. Your virtual Upline podcast. And I think even if you're not in our world, I think there's still lots of value to be taken from a lot of what we talk about and what we teach.

Love that. All right, thanks again, Bob. Talk to you soon.

Thanks, Ali.

All right, everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that made as much of an impact on the way you see your businesses and how you see serving and how you see loving up on your audiences. The way that it made an impact on me after having this conversation with Bob, I can't wait to implement some of the things that he shared. I took a ton of notes and I'm sure that you did too. So thanks so much for being here and let me know what your biggest takeaways were. As always, I love hanging out on Instagram Instagram. So please follow me over at Ali Bjork is my username and send me a DM and let me know what you thought about this episode and what changes you're going to be implementing after meeting Bob or maybe after hearing from Bob again, if you already knew Bob before this episode. So thanks again and I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.