#H2HChat Learn Why Webinars are Still a Huge Thing w/ @Jon_Schumacher

Hello, welcome back to another HH Chat. Welcome, I'm Bryan Kramer.

I'm Courtney Smith Kramer.

And we are here for another HH Chat, which means that it's another Monday at noon Pacific Standard Time. Wherever you are in the world, we are happy to have you here. Uh, this is gonna be a lot of fun today, um, but we're just coming off of a big week. We had a massively awesome week last week. It was your first Social Media Marketing World.

It was my first Social Media Marketing World. It was a great conference for any of you social media marketers, brand marketers, content marketers, people looking to build your influence or run influencer programs. It was just chock-full. I think he had, what, like 27 parallel tracks at any given time? It was a lot. Not really 27, but it seemed like it was. Just so many choices. I can't wait to go back and watch all the sessions.

Did you have a favorite? Besides mine, of course.

Well, that's a loaded question. I did actually have a favorite. I had 2 favorites.

Yeah, tell us.

Joey Coleman.

Oh, Joey killed it.

He's an amazing, just likable guy, like super cool human.

I didn't think it was gonna come from you. Yes!

Um, and, uh, then also I do have to say I did love the morning session that you moderated with Sandy Carter, Chris Carfi, and Chris Penn.

Thank you.

I thought that was fantastic. Uh, so it was all about AI and the future of augmented reality and the future of bots, um, which I don't know if you guys have even looked into bots before, but my mind was a little bit blown. Now I've spent a lot of my time just Researching bots.

In fact, I think we will, we will have some HAA Chats coming up on bots and artificial intelligence and all kinds of good stuff. So definitely look forward to that.

Yes.

Anything else?

Oh, and I also enjoyed meeting in real life all of my new friends that were already connected on social and also connecting with all of the friends who I have met before. It was like a reunion.

It was

a little bit.

Yeah, it was fun. So I had a good time as well. But I want to make sure that we start focusing in on the awesome topic today that I'm truly passionate about. I know, Courtney, you're— you've written many a webinar for many companies.

I have.

But there is no one better than John to have on our show today. John, how are you doing?

Doing awesome, Bryan. Courtney, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored that you, when you think of webinar, you think of me, and I'm excited to come and give some good value and answer some questions and have a little fun.

John comes to us all the way from Santa Cruz.

Wow, over the hill.

San Jose.

Wait, what? Not Tahiti? It looks like he's in Tahiti.

I know, right? Yeah, right? No, yep, all the way in Santa Cruz, right here on the beach. We didn't get flooded away with the mudslides, so We're still here, we're still ready to go, so it'll be fun.

John, just for everyone out there that— I mean, you got a lot when I said— when I posted this a week ago and letting everybody know that you were going to be the guest this week, they were all excited that you were going to be here because you had transitioned from your full-time job into what you're doing now. But I thought it would be even better if you could describe, you know, a little bit about yourself and your background and what you actually did To transition out of the rat race, if you will?

Yeah, yeah. So I was working, I started online part-time like many of us do, right? And I was actually, I started doing webinars as interviews, sort of like this, back in 2013 when Google Hangouts was sort of a new thing then, right? I mean, I was one of the first people and I was in the healthcare space actually at that time. That's my background. It wasn't in business or computers or anything like that. It was in healthcare. I'm a licensed physical therapist. And I started interviewing entrepreneurs, tech startups here locally in Silicon Valley and in Santa Cruz and worldwide, really. I did one live webinar a week for an entire year. But ultimately decided that it wasn't really my, my passion anymore, wasn't that in the healthcare space that I really enjoyed marketing. So I had all this experience doing Google Hangouts, I'd grown an audience, I had a podcast and all this kind of stuff in the health space, so I pivoted and started training people on how to use live video and Google Hangouts, and that was really my first kind of successful online thing in 2014. It was a brand called Hangouts That Convert, and then I sort of pivoted more broadly in 2015 into webinars as a whole, and in 2015, summer of 2015, I actually went full-time. I just killed off my therapy income, and now I'm making a full-time living selling courses and and consulting and coaching and those type of things in the webinar and how to sell with webinars, how to do that without being kind of a salesy dick, if you know what I

mean,

so.

We did talk beforehand and I mentioned to John this was an R-rated show. It's not an X-rated, it's not PG, it's R-rated. And by the way, John, you probably don't know that Courtney wrote a book called 21 Reasons Why Creativity Is Like Sex, was written by Courtney recently, so So definitely a very happy person when it comes to— Nice.

Cuss words.

Creativity.

Rated R, rated

R. So, John, tell me why you saw this as the pivot. Why was it this that you wanted to do versus everything else out there? I mean, there's so many different things you could pick from, but this was the one that you saw as exciting to you. Why was that?

Yeah, well, I think part of it is a blend of of what you're excited about, you know, what the market wants to learn about and those type of things. And I saw a blend there with live video. Well, I think it's just, I think there's just no better way to replicate the one-on-one, you know, connection than live video, right? You talk a lot about the human-to-human connection, and that's really what live video or a webinar— A webinar can do for people is it really is the next best thing to me and you sitting here at a coffee shop talking to each other and building a real visceral connection with people. And I think that's why I got excited about this, both from, you know, hey, a business standpoint, like, look, hey, this could be the thing I leave my job, you know, sort of the selfish part of it, but also the thing that I was really excited about and could see that, you know, video is going to be the future, right, of communication in many ways. And so that's when I started training on it. I tested the idea and people started joining and And I just kept kind of growing from there.

Wow. So just to dive right in, I mean, webinars is just sort of long-form storytelling, right? So do you— can you kind of walk us through? I'm sure you've, like you said, you did a live one every single week for a year, and I'm sure you've done many more since then. So tell us, tell us in your opinion, What's the story arc that really works the best in the webinar form?

So like the presentation, you mean?

Yeah, as you're building through a presentation, because I built, like Bryan said, many a webinar, and it really is about telling the right story in the right order and making sure that it's sort of, you know, arcing in the right direction to keep people—

Right, right. Yeah, so I'll assume you mean like a sales webinar presentation, because there are other uses for webinars beyond selling and things like that. Well, I guess we'll talk about a sales Presentation. So yeah, so there's 4 main parts, right? The introduction, the content, the offer, and the Q&A section. And I can break down some of the big ideas of each of those and where to focus if you'd like, and we can kind of go through those. So

we like big ideas.

So I would keep your webinar roughly 60 minutes or so. I mean, most people tend to block that kind of time off. You can go longer for the Q&A, obviously, but the main presentation most people like to see within an hour. I like the introduction to be about 10 minutes or less. So, you know, gone are the days of the look at me on my yacht and all this crap, right? With like my kids, you know, spending 20, 30 minutes on yourself. I mean, that's a good way to, you know, get people dropping off your webinar quickly. And also, you know, not coming back ever again, right? So if you're playing the long game, I think that's a bad strategy. But the big picture for your introduction. is really to do a couple things. One is to define the problem gap and define why they should care about what you're sharing. So those are a couple things to do right up front. You know, empathize with them, not like, oh, you know, hit them over the head with these pains and really screw the knife in, but just empathize that you know why they're there, you know, that there's a problem, and then why what you're teaching them is going to get them across that problem gap, and if possible, use third-party validation if you can, you know, a stat or a famous quote or a few of those items, so it's not just me saying it, but it's actually smart people, other smart people saying that, and then I like to give about a 1-minute intro for myself, like here's 1 minute of me and then I'll shut up and we'll just get on to the content, you know, and that's about the extent of that first 10 minutes or so. Yeah. And then if you want, I can go on and on in depth on this if you want. I can just keep going on the content next, or if you want to interject, feel free. I don't want to talk for like half an hour and then it's over. So you want me to talk?

I was like, oh crap, did we do that? Yeah, like, how much time do we spend on the intro? Oh no.

Yeah, so it's—

yeah, you know what, John, we're on a roll. Go ahead and keep going. Um, let's, let's take at least another 5, 5 to 10 minutes, or 5 minutes. To just walk us through the remainder, and then let's come back and visit the types of webinars.

Okay, yeah, yeah. So then the content, right? Like, what do you teach? How much do you give away? You know, people worry about those things, right? Am I teaching too much? And most of us probably do, and I know I'm guilty of that. But the main idea for your content isn't to just teach like A, B, C, D sort of process. It's to really do what's called teach away objections. You know, we want to teach away the objections people are going to have to one, doing what we're telling them on the webinar, but two, buying our product and service. That way when it comes time to tee up our offer, we've removed the barriers on the bridge, so to speak. And so we need to be aware of what those objections are for our ideal customer, like what hangs them up. You know, for webinars, it's the technology is too hard and complicated. So I need to like teach that away and show them some simple solutions. You know, I don't know what to say on my webinar. I don't know, you know, all these things. So I have to know these things and remove those. So everybody listening to this, you need to understand the objections in your market, and you need to— otherwise your sales presentation isn't going to— it's not going to sing, you know, and you're just going to teach a process. They're going to clap their hands and leave the webinar, you know, and that'll be the end of it. So another nugget for your content. is what I call the triangle of teaching. And that's at the top is the objection that we just talked about, but then we want to teach right brain and left brain strategies, right? So the right— the left brain is more analytical. It wants to know diagrams and how-tos, and the right brain is more stories and case studies and stuff. So we need to teach with both of those. We need to show them, we need to teach away an objection, But we also need to share a story that really anchors that home, preferably a case study that shows one of your clients overcoming that, you know, and so when we combine the 3, you know, the objection breaking, the storytelling, as you talked about in the beginning, with the teaching points, that makes for a powerful content bit that I think, and when you couple that with some engagement, you know, getting people to interact with you is a big one as well, you have a winning recipe for your content.

Do you have a story to tell us as an example of what you just said? I'm kidding.

For all the right-brained thinkers out there. Yeah, so exactly. So, so yes, I mean, like, for instance, I'll just use one of mine because it comes off the top of my head. So for the web, and I'm a webinar coach, you know, webinars. So I'll just say like webinars are too— how many people on here think that webinars are too complicated or too expensive to host? And then I'll, then I'll actually show them for all the left The left-brainers, yeah, the left-brainers, yeah, they're the techie ones.

Right.

That, you know, I'll show them the software and I'll show them how much it costs, and then I'll tell a story of a client of mine named Kim who didn't let that stop her. She used the $100 setup and had her first webinar success, you know, and so that's an example of sort of how to condition that together. Teach them, but tell stories that are relevant as well to paint the picture, you know, as to how they can have success.

What are the common things you see, John, that people approach a webinar with the wrong way? What makes a webinar fail?

I think what makes a webinar fail is, of course, the fundamentals, right? It's messaging. It's your message, right? Your lack of understanding with, you know, who your market is, what pains they have, what objections they have, you know, all of those things. I mean, because no one cares. No one really gives a shit that you have a webinar. Right? I mean, they don't care. They just care that they have a problem that you can hopefully solve, right? And just like they don't care if we're having, you know, creating videos. I mean, you can create all this stuff in the world, but no one cares, right? So you need to understand your messaging and you need to structure that like we're talking about here in a way that really helps to shine its best light and to get them to really get it and to get emotionally excited. That's why we want to use a lot of engagement. We want to tell stories. We want to really give them a few aha moments that change them chemically inside, you know, and that's how you'll have success.

Oh, I like that. Change them chemically inside.

Yeah.

And we're not talking about drinking, Courtney.

Could be.

I'm

a

fan

of that all the way around.

Yeah. I

just needed to correct that right away. So if you're going to coach somebody to to just start doing webinars for the very first time? How do you get someone to feel good about being on video just even in the first place? Because this— that's, that's something that I think maybe some people like yourself take for granted. Not for granted, but just you've done this. So, you know, you know that part, you're over that hill. But how do they get into that realm of feeling good and feeling like they're offering value, comfortable in their own skin on camera?

Hmm, yeah, that's a tough one. I mean, for one, for one, you don't have to be on camera to start hosting webinars, right? I think that's something that people don't have to do, right? You can have slides and you can talk through the slides if that's where your comfort level is to start. Otherwise, just practice with a few people, like just film yourself a few times. I know that's painful, but you know, when I was in Toastmasters, I used to record myself speaking in public, right? You would do a video or something. Listen to myself, cringe, you know, go through all this stuff because we always sound weird to ourselves, right? When we speak or when we see our mannerisms, you're like, oh my God, really? Do I do that? And we're the worst critics. But I think practice makes, you know, practice doesn't make perfect, but it makes, you know, permanent or persistent, you know. And I think, you know, we need to practice. So I would just do it with a few friends or a small group and just get comfortable doing your first webinar that way, you know, without trying to like present to the world, you know, just do a few practice sessions. And the more you practice, the less sucky it gets, right? The less— the less we feel bad.

I still get sucky.

I still— I still— yeah, the suckiness bar, right? Like, that could be a new metric that we measure. But, um, but I think it's— I think it's true, right? I mean, we just, you know, there's, there's no magic pill you can take. It's just you Getting used to that discomfort. I mean, I still get nervous when I host a big webinar, you know, I still kind of like, okay, hopefully this goes well. And, you know, but it's just, you just got to keep going and act in spite of your fear, right? And here's a quote. I know you talked about tweetables. One of my favorite quotes, I can't remember who it's by. The guy says, he says that heroes are people who act in spite of their fears, right? They put their dreams above their fears. And you really have to be motivated enough to to get uncomfortable. I mean, how nervous were you, Bryan, when you gave your first speech? You know, I'm sure you— maybe you're a mutant abnormal, but most of us are scared to death of our first, you know, go-around like that, right?

I am, I am still nervous every single time I get on stage. Yeah, but I think that— I think you should be. If you're not, then I do think you're right. I think, uh, there's something wrong with you. Um, and, and, and I, and I think that's a good thing. We were just talking about that with Jeff Bullas, um, who has you know, half a million followers and does incredible stuff, and he still gets nervous every time he gets up on stage. And that's part of the deal, but you don't sustain that all the way through. It's something you get kind of over in the very beginning, and then you start hitting your groove and go through it. It becomes a high for me. Yeah. You know, actually, it's like a drug to me. Like, once I hit that, like, that moment, all of a sudden I'm like, I don't want to stop. This is so much fun.

And

then everyone has to sit me down because I won't— no, I'm kidding.

I was gonna say, that's why they invented stage hooks.

The hook comes out, huh? You're like, ergh. But I think you're right, man. I mean, it's just, we have to get past those fears. I mean, anybody out here who's a creator or coach, You're gonna face fear, and it's— I mean, you still get scared, like, as things keep rising for your career, it's gonna be scary, and you just have to learn to manage it, and I think disassociate a little bit from your craft, right? I think we think we are our craft instead of a separate entity that's gonna be okay even if we screw that up, you know? I think that's an important shift to make kind of long-term.

Well, and I think too, You know, for whatever reason, people think that they need to be absolutely perfect, and it's nice to be polished, but, you know, just from all of the presentations that I've seen, I become more endeared to the person when they are able to sort of get to that vulnerable place and—

Yeah.

And either speak their truth or their heart, or, you know, stumble over some stuff and then just start laughing about it. I mean, that, that's a human condition that we can all

Yeah.

Applause about.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the key term is that it, and I like to say this to my group because there's perfectionism is a disease, right? And it's it's that it's about connection, not perfection, right? It's really about connecting with your audience, and that's one of the powers of webinar and live video. So it's about connecting.

You spoke in a tweet. That was good.

Tweetable. So, so, John, tell, tell me, let's, let's dive back into the categories of webinars. Talk about the different ways that we can use webinars and, and, and we're leading up to a place of, of why webinars are not going away and how they're going to be relevant in the future. So eventually we'll get there for anybody who's listening. And then also, if this is your first time on H2H Chat, please make sure you're using the hashtag H2, number 2, H chat on Twitter. You can go to Twitter, or you can go to the landing page that we have here in in in the tweet stream. You can find that landing page, and you can tweet alongside everyone. There's the video as well, or just go to Twitter. You can tweet that as well. We'll be taking your questions the second half. So in about just a little over ten minutes, we're going to take your questions. You can start asking questions anytime. We'll take your questions down. And we will ask John those awesome questions back with him. So John, let's dive into the categories.

Yeah. Oh, do you want me to just start listing them off?

Yeah, if you don't mind. What kind of categories? I didn't give you much of a lead-in there, did I?

That was more of a shove you in the pool, not a dive in.

So John— Sorry, I'll give you more landing, more of a landing runway. So John, let's dive into the kinds of webinars that exist. Because you mentioned at the very beginning when we walked through just the sales webinar, what that contains, but what other kinds of ways can you use webinars and are they even called webinars?

Yeah, no, I mean, you can call them whatever you like, but I think that's a great question because I think people, they only think of webinars as a lead generation sales pitch basically. And I know marketers ruin marketing, right? We all ruin marketing and that's kind of the way that it's gone. You know, in the future, right, or in the past is what has been, you know, sort of the turnoff for the webinar. So you can use them in so many ways. I like to say that a webinar is like a telephone, you can use it however you want. And so things like interview-style webinars, like we're doing right now, I mean, that's how I got started doing them. Some of the people who came on my interview show were, you know, were sharing it on social media or They were emailing their list to it and stuff. So I was able to get exposure with another person and grow my brand in that space just using a non-pitch interview-style webinar. You could do roundtable discussions. You could have multiple people on at one time, do kind of a mini summit and kind of host a webinar that way. You could do non-pitch webinars. I'm doing one of those this Wednesday where I'm not really selling anything. I'm giving away a free bundle at the end, and I may, you know, talk to some of those folks afterwards, but I'm not really doing this like classic pitch at the end of the webinar. It's more of just to get in front of an audience, build my list, get exposure, and those type of things. So you can do non-pitch webinars. In fact, that's a great way to start growing your audience if you're just getting started. You could do paid webinars, so the webinar could be the product, right? And that works well if you obviously, if you have an audience, you could just, you know, charge $20 to $40 for the webinar. People come for 2 hours and they learn from you. You could use webinars as group coaching, you know, like let's say you sell access to a series of 3 or 4 webinars and then you just fulfill the, you know, the program with webinars so that webinars can be used not just for selling and lead generation, they can be used for fulfillment as a coach or as a consultant. So there's a lot of different uses for them beyond just the classic get people on a free webinar and pitch them. You know, kind of model.

So, so, um, I'm gonna keep asking questions and feel free to jump in here when you have a chance. Um, I don't know why I said that to her. She will do that anyway.

Do you think I'm feeling lonely over there? Thank you for your concern.

That's okay. So, um, so, so, John, what, um, I think for a lot of people is not even the fact that they can get on a webinar and start talking. But what if they're talking to no one and no one shows up? Kind of defeats the purpose of the webinar. So when you're a first-timer and you're looking at how to get people to your webinar, I mean, 50% of it, I would imagine, is doing it. The other 50% is getting people there. How—

actually, I would say 20% of it is the technology working.

And the technology working. Oh, and we'll get to the tools. But how do you get— how do you suggest people really look at getting an audience?

Yeah, yeah. And this is the second most common question besides what tools do I use for newer hosts, right, is how do I get people there? I'm scared I'd be speaking to an empty house. And there is, if you're just starting out with no list, no audience, no nothing, you're probably going to have a smaller webinar to start with, right? Unless you plug into a partner, and I can talk about that in a moment. But as far as webinar traffic, there's 3 ways you can get traffic, right? And I call them the 3 Ps of webinar traffic, and they're personal, partner, and paid. Those are really the only 3 ways you can get people to your webinar. Personal is your email list, your social, things that you own, right, that you can kind of send people to for free without paying anybody or partnering with anybody. Most people start out, they just don't have that, right? They just don't have a list or they don't have any of those things. So part of the strategy needs to be, you know, either putting out content, you know, and sort of building a list that way, but also the second one is partnering. And I think that's where a lot of people should look to start. Not just the straight JV sort of thing, but like see if you can build relationships with people. Like we talk, you talk about in H2H, I'll give it, I'll give you a shout out, human to human, right? It's really that part. Exactly. And we can't do this on our own, right? And in this world, we need to make friends with people, not just partnerships, but friends with people that you, that you trust, you have relationships with. And so you should always spend part of your time networking. Part of your time building relationships with people in your industry. Because let's— so the way I built my list, my first 130 subscribers, was doing a free webinar to a Facebook group. You know, so certain Facebook group owners, certain Facebook groups will let you post in there, some won't. You need to make sure you follow the rules. But you can, you know, make friends with people in there, partnerships, collaborate. Maybe a blogger, you know, something like that. I mean, I added my first 1,000 subscribers just doing a few small partner webinars with people that I had built relationships with. That's how I got started. So partnerships are huge for a lot of people starting out. Otherwise, it's paid traffic, which costs money. It helps to speed it up. It's not as easy as a lot of the big gurus want you to think of, just like putting out an ad and a webinar and they just flood in and You know, it's just, especially these days, it's getting more expensive, you know, and stuff. So those are just some ideas, but there's only really 3 ways to do it. And I recommend people spend some time building real friendships that can turn into partnerships and things like that. It's a big one.

So let's— just before we dive into questions, we already have some great questions coming in from Lou, and we have one from Adam Helway. Great. A really great friend in Fremont here. So keep your questions coming. We will be starting those questions in just a few minutes. And now's your chance. So you will never be able to ask a question again of John. I'm kidding.

I'm gone,

huh? But now's a good time. So definitely make sure that you're asking those questions about what we're talking about here today. So John, let's kind of end this this part with, with what you were talking about there on the partners side. You said it's a good time to— it's always good to get to know people in the, in the human-to-human connection and partner up with people that can help, help you. What do you look for in a partner? What do you look for in a person that you're comfortable with? Because not somebody may have 100,000 followers, but maybe that doesn't still make sense, right?

This is such a great question, right? This is the best question. Yeah, and I could go on a rant right now, but I'll try to like just boil it down.

Bring the rant on.

So honestly, what really disgusts me with a lot of the industry is these kind of reciprocation swaps that I see a lot out there. I think there's a few things you should look at in a partner. One, you should have a friendship with them. That means you don't lead with the ask. And like, I get people who message me, hey, I got a product, would you do a webinar with me? Like, and I'm sure you get this too, right? And it's like, Really, like the first thing you do is you ask me for something or you look for this? Like, and that's a clear person who's just looking for a reciprocity swap kind of. They don't care about their list. They just want to sell products to it and that kind of crap. So that bothers me. Um, but so one thing is an established friendship. Obviously they need to have knowledgeable content and good content that is a good supplement to what I'm teaching. And they need to be philosophically In this, in a similar mindset. I think people forget about philosophy and marketing. In fact, that could be your next book, Bryan, is, um, The Philosophy of Marketing, because I think that philosophy, you know, marketing is as much philosophy as it is a science. And just because you get a 0.67% click-through rate more by doing some kind of clickbait BS doesn't mean that you should, right? Totally. And so I look for, I look for partners that, you know, are philosophically somewhat in line with me, that have a good adjunctive content, preferably a program that I've used and are actual friends of mine that this isn't the first time I've talked to them. You know, I mean, I could— go ahead. Yeah.

Sorry. What do you mean by reciprocity? How do you know that there will be reciprocity in a partnership when you're basically, you're helping them? Because I agree with you. I think that you're better together when people band together and they start helping each other, it starts to become a much better product or people start to crisscross. And you know that, you know, there's more to it than just, just John. You know, there's, there's John is helping you to see a much bigger world than just himself. And so when you're putting that out there, you're also putting that out there as far as someone else's brand. Because if what happens if that course that you just promoted isn't good? Or that person's webinar sucks, or, you know, whatever it is that you just relayed, it doesn't turn out to be on brand for you. How do you look at that and say, God, I really got to make sure this is on brand for me because I'm putting my whole list behind it?

Yeah, exactly. You said it right. So again, it's— they need to be philosophically in line with what I believe. If they're like just the total IM marketer that could care less about their list, they're just looking at numbers, that's probably not going to work for me. It's not going to work for me. They also need to have something that is a great adjunct to what I'm teaching. So I'm a webinar guy, I've partnered with video coaches or speaking, it has to be somewhat in line, like serving experts that want to sell more courses and coaching and those type of things. So it needs to be somewhat in line, not a direct competitor, but someone who's in line with that as well. So I want people to promote me if they want to promote me. Because they like my content and they like me, not because they're just looking to get to my audience, you know, like because they want, like they expect some kind of turnaround. And so I think transparency and intention are really important, right? Like being upfront with people, but the intention behind it is really another thing that matters, right? It's, it's, you know, are they— I've had pretty big names. I won't call anybody out, but just like, they're like almost arrogant in the sense that they expect a reciprocity or, you know, You know, just their appearance on my summit or something, because I've hosted 2 online summits, you know, automatically should have made a reciprocity of me promoting their course and stuff like that. It's just, that's the kind of stuff that bothers me about the industry and about somehow some people like to conduct themselves. So partnerships could be a whole discussion on itself. You know, it's a wonderful thing, but there's also this other side of it that can be kind of mucky. Yeah. You

know, how do you think we got to this place, right? Like, it's the same thing with when you follow someone on Twitter and they— there's an auto DM that says, hey, thanks for the follow, come like my stuff on Facebook and tweet this. And it's like, what?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's people that are just playing the numbers game. They don't care about long game at all. They just want like a short little fix and they'll get whatever they can, you know. So it's There's different mindsets and philosophies in marketing, and, you know, we all get to choose how we want to play out in the world, you know.

So we have a ton of questions that have rolled in. I'm not surprised at all. I want to make sure that we get time to do that, so I'm going to kick into the questions. Feel free to keep the questions coming. I promise everyone that if we get too tight with questions, then I'll make it a lightning round so that we can get through everyone's questions. That just means that John will have to answer them fast.

So quick, I'll shut up. I won't rant so much.

Yeah, so, so, so why don't we get started? We will start with here with Lou Hayes. He said, what traits separate overlap a webinar from an e-learning module, live or recorded? What's— I guess what he's saying is, what are the traits that differentiate e-learning from a webinar?

Yeah, I mean, hmm, I mean, if you're looking at like just a straight video versus a webinar, is that the comparison I think he's trying to ask for?

I think so, like in the traditional sense. I'm speaking for Lou, I don't know his context, but I'm, you know, like an e-learning module, something that would be embedded inside of a course versus a webinar outside a course, but But then again, maybe he's talking about like the, how much do you give away on both sides?

Yeah, I mean, I'd have to get a little more clarity on the context of the question, but I'll do my best. You know, I mean, obviously a recorded video is a recorded piece of content that has on-demand features to it, whereas a webinar, I mean, you can do an evergreen webinar, we haven't really talked about that, but in the traditional sense, a webinar is a live interactive Experience. So if you want to build rapport and get that interactive piece, you know, a live webinar can— is going to give you that advantage over a recorded piece of content. So I use both of them, right? I mean, in my Webinar Mastery Academy, I have recorded videos, but I also do regular live webinars to interact with people, to build rapport, answer questions, and those type of things. So they're 2 different animals, right? One is more content consumption, one is more interactivity.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a good answer.

That's a good— that's good. I hadn't thought about it that way before. Okay, so, so here we go. Here's Adam Helway, otherwise known as The Secret Sushi. He— do you feel it's better to gate a recorded webinar after presenting or promoting and hosting it again?

Gate a recorded webinar like the replay?

Yeah.

Is that what he's thinking? So in a sales webinar sense, I like having a replay strategy is really important. Right, I mean, that's, I would say 70% of your sales come after the webinar is over, like it's not even on the webinar, it's like after, and this is the part that almost everybody misses. And so, so yes, having a strong replay strategy, I don't know if you'd gate it, I don't know what he means by that, but you want to, I mean, if he says no replay, I would have a replay and I would have a strategy because show-up rates are declining somewhat in certain industries, so having that replay available for people will boost it significantly. You know, having your replay embedded onto your sales page and then maybe having some timestamps underneath that where people can catch up with it quickly is a good strategy because statistically speaking, if you start it with no scrub bar at the bottom, the average view time is maybe 20 minutes or so versus live is about 57 minutes. And so people are not watching replays through to the offer very well. But if you give them a way to advance and kind of pick out what they want and then give them all the information still on the sales page, You'll get a higher conversion rate from your replay strategy. So I'm not sure whether that answered his question. I don't know what he means by gated necessarily, but—

I think gated meaning email address in order to watch.

Oh yes, yes, yes. I would do that for people who are new. Obviously, if you already have their address and they just missed the webinar, then you would already have that, but yes, I mean, I would, you know, get their email address If they're like, if they missed the registration and they wanted to get to the replay, you know, within, if there's any deadlines for that replay, of course, then that would be the end of it. But yes.

That's, that's, I had no idea that 70% of sales come after the webinar. That is huge. Oh yeah.

If you don't have, if you don't have a, most people just think of a webinar as an event, but it's really a campaign, you know, and it's like, there's things that happen before it, during it. and then after it with a deadline for an offer, and I'm talking sales webinars now, you know, an offer, a deadline of some kind of authentic offer. I mean, it happens, you know, I had a client the other day, he did a $75,000 webinar, he did $13,000 on the webinar and everything else was in the follow-up.

What do you mean by that, everything was in the follow-up?

Everything else came after the webinar was over in the replay strategy and in the follow-up email sequences that led up to a deadline.

Okay.

Yeah,

got it. That's incredible. I had no idea.

Yeah, you can double or triple your sales.

Wow. $75,000 webinar, one single webinar, one campaign.

It was in a week's time. Yeah.

Wow. So anybody who's watching this, you can pay tomorrow for what we're doing today.

What's

that guy's name in, uh, in Popeye? The guy that will gladly pay you tomorrow for a hamburger.

Wimpy. Wimpy.

Wimpy.

The hamburger guy.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

Okay, so, um, so Paul Bradley Smith, he says, uh, what's the— here's your, here's your, uh, tech tools question. Um, Paul's such a good guy, great friend in San Diego. He said, best platform for doing Your first webinar on a low budget?

Great question. Yeah, we hadn't talked about the tech, which is the biggest stretch for probably 70% of people on here who haven't done one yet. So one of my favorite tools is zoom.us for newbies, like new— newer hosts who are technophobes, right? Because Zoom is super easy. It's $55 a month. You can get up to 100 attendees. So it depends on your audience size a little bit. But it's really easy. It's literally like go in there, click a few buttons, and you can email the link out to like get people signed up to it. It's really my favorite tool for information-focused webinars. It lacks a lot of the marketing features that some of the more sophisticated platforms have, but it's a great way to get into momentum if you're a tech newbie and you just want to get that first one up and running.

Awesome. Awesome. I too love Zoom. And ironically, they're in downtown San Jose, which I didn't know up until, like, a few months ago.

Yeah.

They're actually headquartered here. So that's—

I'd like to visit them. That'd be great.

Yeah.

Yeah. It'd be fun to visit.

If you ever want to go together, we will do that.

I'd like that. I'd like that.

Yeah. OK. So let's see. We've got Stacy Di Polo, our friend, good friend Stacy. We just spent time with— a lot of time with her at At Social Media World, and so good to see you here, Stacy, sober.

What are you talking about?

So Stacy said, are webinars more appropriate for B2B? Any examples of webinars that successfully target like busy small business owners or of that genre?

Yeah, I mean, they can work B2B, B2C, H2H. Right, whatever you want to do. Yeah, I mean, you could sell anything like that. Yeah, I mean, certainly. I mean, is she asking if they're good for B2B or good for B2C? I couldn't remember. She said, are they best for B2B? Is that what she said?

Are webinars more appropriate for B2B? Any examples of webinars that successfully target busy small business owners?

Yeah, I mean,

let me clarify that by giving you some context. She works at GoDaddy, and GoDaddy is a small business targeted business. So I think she's coming from that perspective. GoDaddy is looking at small businesses and how they can help. Would webinars be one of those things that can help?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as long as you have a mailing list of people that are interested in that, I mean, if you have an email database of small small businesses, a webinar is just a gathering place for those people, right? And so what you do is, you know, you follow the same format, you sort of present the why, you know, teach away the objections, present the offer at the end as a way to work with those people one-on-one. So a webinar is just, it's just a virtual stage. That's all it is, right? It's just a virtual stage. And so you could sell B2B, you can sell B2C, you can sell any sort of way you want from that stage. It's all about the messaging and the presentation and how you do it. There isn't a better way online to gather a group of people that really care about your stuff than on a webinar. All it is is a virtual stage, you know, and there's a reason why speaking from stage is so effective, but you get to duplicate that with webinars, same kind of thing. I mean, so it absolutely will work, you know, in B2B or B2C.

So here, there are a few more questions here. I'm going to dive into each of them, so don't worry everybody. But I do have, I'm gonna slip in one of my own in that, 'cause we haven't talked about the upfront funnel, getting people, we talked a little bit about getting people butts in the seats and getting people there. But John, if you don't know John the way I do online, he pours his heart and soul into Facebook ads. And I only know that 'cause he— I targeted you. of time and strategy behind this. And if you ever want to take a course, I highly suggest John's course because he walks you through second by second by second by second of what to do for your webinar from beginning to end. And you would sound like I'm actually a partner in making money on this, but I'm not. I actually just follow him so much. He really does hand-guide you along the way. So that said, my question is that up front, John, I know you can't tell us everything that you teach in your course because we don't have enough time, but how do you put effort into the Facebook ads in order to make this successful? What is— maybe just 1 or 2 points or a thought that you can give on that?

Yeah, boy, Facebook ads is a big discussion. How to make them more successful? I mean, it really— I'll give you one answer and then I'll give you some more specifics. One of it is it depends. Depends on your current assets, like an email custom audience or a lookalike audience based on a customer list with layering and all those things is going to be much more accurate than a cold audience. And so some businesses that brag about getting these cheap leads have advantages that you don't have as a newbie, and that's just the facts. Now, if you're looking to start out, I'll give you some tips that I'm seeing work well if that's what you'd like. To see like just what's working well, is that what you're saying? Yeah. So I think right now video ads are working really well, Facebook Live video ads, long-form copy on the actual ad, I would split test that versus short copy, and I would send people to a landing page, webinar registration page, it's very minimalist. Like if you go to johnschumacher.com, you'll sign up for my free workshop, I have like a very minimalist registration page. You know, basically just your big idea for the webinar and a button to sign up, you know, and so that's That's working really well. But I, again, I have things that most people, I mean, they don't have a customer list, they don't have lookalikes of like, I mean, I have just a lot of good audiences now from running 2 online summits. Right. And, you know, having a mailing list and those type of things. So, I have a bit of an advantage in that sense. But, you know, it's getting harder to run people directly from Facebook. Depends on your industry and where you're located. In the US and Canada, in the make money online niche, It's getting really expensive because people have seen so many webinars. Now, if you go to, you know, maybe like let's say Brazil or something, you can get like 50-cent registrations all day long. You know, it's like, you know, so it depends a little bit on a lot of factors with Facebook ads. It's not as simple and clean as oh, just pop a button and and then just come flooding in. But if you are going

to use

what's that?

Said it's time. Start songs.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, video is working well, Facebook Live, you know, longer form ads I see working well, minimalist registration pages. Thank you page is a big one that most people don't use correctly. Most people just say, hey, we signed up, here's your link, I'll see you on the webinar. That's the extent of it. And they're just blowing a huge opportunity to improve their show-up rates and their rapport with people before they even get to the webinar. So I could go off forever on that stuff, but anyway, that's some ideas for you.

That's great, man. Thank you so much. Okay, so David Pepper said, what is the best webinar you've ever attended and why? And, you know, if you don't have an ever, maybe one of your top.

Oh boy, it's a tough one because I don't attend a lot of people's webinars. I do it in short bunches just to like see how they present. Who do I really like? Well, I think it's a guy probably no one's going to know about. His name is James Tuckerman. He's an Australian guy. He owns a big digital publishing company in Australia, very engaging guy. I think I was on his webinar last, it really sticks out to me, and the fact that he was very relaxed and funny and engaging and You know, he sort of did some of the classical stuff, but with a little bit of a quirk to it. So I think standing out is even getting more important, like breaking the traditional mold, so to speak, as a presenter can serve you well. So I would say it's James's presentation. He used GoToWebinar and he had his image up in the slides at the same time, right? So he had his video playing and his slides were over here. And that really added a lot to it too, is becoming on camera. Engaging, he asked a lot of questions, and so keeping it fun, I think we forget about that as a presenter. Keep it fun, keep it light. People don't want to be overwhelmed, they want to learn a few aha moments and to be able to write down, but if you can entertain people as well, and that's a really powerful thing.

You know what sucks about that whole thing, the one thing out of everything you just said is he's Australian. Anyone with an Australian accent already has a leg up.

That's true.

That's

true. That's true.

I'm gonna talk like an Aussie.

Yes. Yes. And the ladies love him. So anyone with an Aussie accent can cheat. They can just go into a bar and they can make it happen any day of the week they want. They're lucky.

So, um, let's see, we've got another question here from, uh, from our, our friend, another, uh, weekly attendee of H2H Chat, uh, with the Twitter handle Spicoti, says, any tips for the public sector, third sector webinars for public engagement or behavior change, like campaigns or debates, rather than being for commercial? So I think More kind of, sounds more government-oriented or for campaigning or things like that. Have you seen webinars work in that area?

Probably less so, but I mean, again, it's a matter of just being able— how, I mean, you only need 2 things, right? You need traffic, you need a way to get people there, and then you just need your presentation, right? And so if you have access to these people and you want to gather them in one place online, and build rapport, teach, educate, then yes, a webinar will work fine. I mean, it's not the platform itself, it's just a matter of do you have access to the right people to get them there basically. Like once they're there, they're there and you can teach them, but it's the access to those people that is always the challenge for some businesses that they don't have a mailing list or they don't have relationships. But I mean, think about this, why don't you, your government agency partner with a few other companies co-promote a webinar and bring everybody on and teach them and educate them. You know, I mean, that's something you could easily do in any sector.

Absolutely. Okay, so then back on David Pepper, he's full of great questions. He's peppering all kinds of questions in today. Just kidding. So he said, identify a webinar niche that is not currently being served or oversaturated. Is there an area that That is still craving webinars?

Well, I mean, yes. I mean, certain parts of the world, you know, are certainly wide open, you know, in, you know, South America is wide open, you know, parts of the world in Asia are wide open. As far as the US and Canada, I mean, it really depends on your niche. I mean, certain health niches are great. Like I had a client who was in the hypothyroid niche. And we were able to get under a dollar registrations all day long for his webinar because the message matched the market so well. Right. It's like, it's all about the message to market match. Right. And so, you know, that's, that's the key. So yes, I mean, there's, there's plenty of sub-niches out there that aren't overly saturated that you can, that you can do. Now, the one, like the ones that I'm in are probably the most common, you know, like make money online kind of niches where everyone's seen a webinar a million times. Is harder to do these days. It could still be done, but it requires more skill than just turning on the ads. But yeah, I mean, there's tons of niches out there in the dating space. There's niches in there. That's certainly very doable, but it varies a lot. It depends on a lot of factors. But yeah, I mean, there's still Plenty of niches out there that aren't overly saturated. And if you're good and you're good with your message, you're gonna get people to join you, you know? Yeah.

What kind of webinars have you seen in the dating space?

I had a client who was doing webinars in the dating space as far as like for women who are basically divorced that were looking to rebound and kind of you know, pick the right man, so to speak, again, you know. So they were— she was selling programs and coaching on helping these gals get, you know, get back and get kind of back in order mentally and kind of, you know, look at how to pick sort of the right men the next time around. And that's a very niche, right?

Wow.

But it worked for her. She's actually a fairly decent authority. She's like a Fox News— like they have her come on and contribute and stuff to that niche sometimes. And So she'd built a bit of an audience, so she had access to people. But yeah, I mean, that was her— that's her full-time thing is like coaching and selling programs and speaking on that topic. You know, she's an expert on that topic. And so she uses webinars to sell it and to build rapport, build her audience, partner with other people, those type of things.

Yeah,

there's something for everyone. So there's one last question here. We might be able to fit in another one if you guys Have anything you want to squeeze into the fast lightning round? But I'll kind of close out with this one with Roxanne Davenport. She— it was kind of a question/comment, but in the webinar follow-ups, she says they are great. It helps people refresh people's memories. Any tips on how to properly do that without selling in the follow-up?

Without selling?

Well, without directly like Any tips for the follow-ups, I guess, is the question.

Yeah, I mean, I guess we would be talking about a sales type of webinar, an offer webinar in this case. Yeah, so the big— I mean, you need to continue to do what's called pre-answering buying questions. So things like, you know, who is this for? Will this work for me? Where does this fit in with what I'm doing? So I use a lot of stories. Stories really do it, right? And so, you know, if you have case studies, if you have Examples that are relevant to your emails, you know, be sharing those in the follow-up. You want to remind people about the deadline, of course, in each email, but I usually do a lot of stories, like I have a lot of case studies that I'll share in the follow-up. I'll do an FAQ email. I'll do an email that basically shows how this program pays for itself, you know. So those are all questions that people have, you know, what if I don't like this? Will this— will I get my money back from this? You know, will this work for me? You know, all those questions that you can answer with stories, case studies, FAQ questions, and then make sure to, you know, if you are selling something, and I don't know what she means by not selling, I mean, if you're doing a non-pitch webinar—

I put that in there. That wasn't something she said, so disregard that.

Okay, yeah, but here's the thing, when you're selling, here's my philosophy is when I'm selling something, I'm going to sell that thing, you know, I'm going to sell it. I'm not going to be a dick about it or too rude, but I am going to push that. I'm not going to be as scared to send emails. I generally send 4 emails the last day of a promotion. You know, people are like, oh my gosh, that's too many. You know, I'm scared to do that. And most people are scared to send too many, but it works like crazy. And you know, you'll get an occasional person who will say, oh, that's a lot of emails, or this or that, but it's very small when you're— you know, like I'll host a webinar with 600 or 700 people. You know, it's maybe 1 person or so that's like, hey, that's a lot of emails, you know, that kind of thing. And I'm like, yes, you know, and I respond like, yeah, I understand I'm pushing this to This will be over, you know, the deadline is over soon. So I think if you're just transparent upfront with it, I mean, it works, but it works really well. Like if you're only sending 1 email or 2 emails after your webinar, I mean, I'll usually send like 9 in a 5-day or 4-day period, you know, something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

You heard it here first.

What's that?

I said you heard it here first.

Yeah.

9 emails in a 4-day period, that is the best practice.

Well, that's, that's what I'm using right now, and it works pretty well. So, and it works with clients too. So, but it's like when you're selling your things, stand in your power and sell it. You don't need to be rude or, hey, if you don't do this, you're a loser, that kind of talk or anything in any of your emails. But, you know, keep a deadline. Don't lie and reopen it and those kind of things, but keep a deadline and stick to it and make sure people know about it. And you're not blasting your whole list. You're just, you're just, you know, emailing people that were involved with the webinar that already knew about it that this is coming to an end, you know. So it works really well.

I like that.

Good, good stuff. Good stuff. Okay, with the last remaining few minutes we have here, John, why don't you give everybody a way that they can find you, maybe enter into your hemisphere, your— maybe even take a webinar from you or find a course that they can take?

Yes. So my primary website is just johnschumacher.com. I don't know if we can enter that anywhere into— We'll tweet it out. Yeah, johnschumacher.com is my primary site. At the top of that, I have a free workshop people can watch. It's on demand. I have, you know, free resources, blog content, you know, other things where people can, you know, either opt in to consume content or just watch it for free on the website. I have lots of good content over there. My primary program is webinar-mastery-academy.com. That's my primary training program where I help experts sell more courses, coaching, consulting, one-to-many using webinars. And I really provide an A to Z, click by click, and I go very deep with my training. It's like on screen. It's not like fluffy theory. It's like, okay, like this is how you do it, you know. So I do that inside of there as well as have a nice community and have people and things like that. So it's over at webinarmasteryacademy.com, but they just want free stuff, they can just go over to johnschumacher.com and learn more about me.

Okay, I just put the link to your website out, so everyone should be able to get a chance to at least go check it out and sign up to make yourself known to John so that he can start getting to know you. Highly suggest it, as I've been doing so over the last year. Ironically, John, we live in the same area, and we have yet to meet in person, which is killing me. Got to do it.

Got to do it.

So we will need to do that soon, whether it's over lunch or coffee or whatever. We live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. We should be able to find a place to do that, I would think.

I say we go to him.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'm lucky that I don't have to travel. Everyone wants to come here.

Right?

Yeah, I'd love to do that. That'd be great. Yeah.

Good, good. And with the last 2 minutes, John, is there anything I didn't ask or Courtney didn't ask? One last final thought that you wanted to leave anybody with?

Yeah, and I think it's circling back to, you know, the whole kind of fear thing that I think people get hung up with. And I know that 70% of the market has not done a webinar. That's probably a low number for the broader market, of my market. And it's really the fear, right? It's the fear of, and the overwhelm of, which software do I use? And people spend, you know, months researching this stuff. Or, you know, I don't know that I'll be able to get anybody there. I don't know what to say. And it's just like, you just gotta screw it and do it sometimes, right? You just have to take action, stop consuming everything, I mean, some consumption in the beginning is good, but you got to start producing, right? Become a producer instead of just a consumer and get out there with your stuff and you'll start to grow. You'll start to learn, and some of it will be for you, some of it won't be for you, but you'll find out a whole lot better if you're in action than if you're just kind of passively consuming and kind of what-if-ing in your head all day long. So I encourage everybody, if you want to use webinars, then get started. You know, you can take Zoom and just go or something like that, right? Something simple and just go and fail forward and take action. If you're gonna use something else, do that too. If you're a writer, do that, you know, but like whatever you're doing, like start doing instead of consuming other people's stuff, you know, all the time. No offense, you guys are great, you know, they should keep consuming Bryan and Courtney's stuff, but you know what I'm saying, right? Like, except for them.

And that's a wrap. Thank

you guys for coming.

We really appreciate you being here.

But you know what I mean, right? Like, people tend to overthink, overconsume, and they think they're doing something by consuming. And you are, but it's not the same as actually producing and getting out in the real world through your own filters of life and making sure that you come up with your own stuff, you know? And I think that's something people don't do. So, end of rant.

Fantastic. That's a great way to end it. Really appreciate your time, John. Again, everyone go check it out. We will see you back here next Monday. At noon. We'll announce the guest over the next few days. Always good stuff coming. We're really excited about this season and on H2H Chat. If you have any questions or any suggestions on people that you want coming up, please do suggest topics or anything using the hashtag #H2HChat. Otherwise, we will see you again next Monday. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll see you soon.

Thanks, John.

Yep.