96: Dallas Travers: From Talent Agency Owner to Business Mentor and Online Course Creator

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners increase the revenue with digital products and automated sales funnels. In this podcast we tell the stories of ordinary business owners just like you. We talk about their story and how they got started, the challenges they've experienced and how they overcame them. And these are discussions with real people who understand what it's like to own an online course or membership business. Before we begin our show today, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by our flagship Course in a Box program which helps you create your revenue generating course in less than a week. Course in a Box is available on AppSumo at a special deal and you can learn more about Course in a Box by visiting the link in the show notes. So let's jump right into our show.

And today my special guest is Dallas Travers. If you're a coach who serves everyday people, you need to know Dallas. Her ripple effect system teaches the exact steps to attract paying clients. Build your list daily, then scale your business with a course so you never have to ask, what should I do today? Dallas, thank you so much for joining me. We've been chatting before and I'm super excited to delve into your entrepreneur journey today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. You were a guest on my show. We just recorded that episode not long ago, so it's fun to get to return the favor and get to connect with you again. Thanks for having me.

And you have such an interesting story and journey and we've been chatting a few minutes before, so I'm going to let you jump right in and tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you got to where you are today.

Sure. It's a bit of a loaded question.

Perhaps.

So I'll start with where I am, but then I want to go all the way back because my journey has been pretty unpredictable. So today I help coaches build successful businesses that align with their values. And the reason I'm so good at that is because I have walked in the shoes of most of my clients in that my first coaching business was serving actors, so serving real people instead of people who were like coaches being coached by other coaches. And I started my business actually because I was young and foolish. I moved down to Los Angeles from a small town in Washington state because I got this job offer, Destiny, to work at a talent agency. And I was bartending at the time, so that sounded like a career upgrade to me. So I moved And I worked at this company for probably, I don't know, six weeks or so before I realized that this was not a legitimate operation at all. This was a company posing as a talent agency, hosting these open calls to invite actors to come in and see if they had what it takes to make it in Hollywood. And boy, if they could afford the professional photos they had to invest in, then they surely had what it took. So it was the scam operation. And I didn't know anything about the entertainment industry, so I didn't realize it until I was there for about a month and a half or so anyhow, that when I realized where I was working, I thought, I can't stay here. And I wasn't going to admit to my mom that she was right. This sounded sketchy. So I was stuck down in Los Angeles, and I just decided to open my own business helping actors find legitimate representation, an agent, or a manager. So I started this business not knowing anything about the entertainment industry. And so therefore, I didn't have any preconceived notions about what I wasn't allowed to do, which served me a lot. So, fast forward. This marketing company designed to help actors get representation was really successful and that evolved. A lot of my clients would ask me career advice, and again, I didn't really know the entertainment industry. So I just gave them what to me felt like reasonable creative problem solving advice. I didn't know it went against all of the rules of how an actor was supposed to behave. And this advice started working. So I then transitioned into. I just started coaching more and more.

Right.

And then formalizing the coaching I was doing with individuals to create group programs. And, you know, fast forward 10 years later, I was. I had created this cottage industry that didn't exist before, and I was really the leader in my field and helping a lot of people, which was so uplifting and beneficial to me. But through that, other coaches started to seek me out and say, okay, how are you doing what you're doing? Can you show me? So while I had this big enterprise serving actors, I also started mentoring individual coaches. And then I realized that that was the next logical step in my journey. I could have a bigger impact by teaching other coaches who needed to teach from someone who didn't, who had practiced and proven these strategies out in the real world.

Right.

And wanted to apply it for their market. So that's how the Six Figure Coach Club came to be. And I no longer work with actors. Back. Back in 2018, I closed that business down so that I could go all in serving this new audience. But the biggest thing that I learned through that journey was that we know enough to take the next step. And sometimes it's taking the step that gives us the information we're meant to learn in order to be at that level, if that makes sense. There's so much I didn't know and I sometimes wonder, had I known more back then, would I have taken the risk? And I don't think I would have. So for anyone listening, if you feel like I'm using air quotes here, you're not ready yet. Sometimes the only way to get ready is to do the thing, and it's the doing of the thing that gets us ready. And that's been a theme throughout my, my journey as an entrepreneur, for sure.

I love that. Doing of the thing is what gets us ready. So that's, that is. That's a great quote there. So I know nothing, Dallas, the entertainment industry. So I have lots of questions for you. You were bartending when you got this call or you got this opportunity with this quote, unquote talent agency. What year was that? Do you remember?

2000.

2000. Okay, so you moved down to LA and it only took you about six weeks to figure out this wasn't, you know, a real company or they were, you know, more, more of a scam than anything. I'm just curious, how did you figure that out?

You have such great listening skills. You're like, okay, there's more to this story here.

I'll tell you.

So this office, you walk into the office and there were a series of like mini offices inside, down a hall. So my office was the closest one to the entrance or exit from the space. And it was payday. And all of a sudden I just see this mass exodus of people sprinting out of the office. And I'm sitting there thinking, is there a fire drill? What's going on? Well, they were racing to the bank because there was not going to be enough money in the account for everybody's paychecks to actually be cashed. So my fellow co workers would race to see who could get to the bank first in order to actually get paid. So that was a red flag. And then I started getting paid in cash. This guy, I'm not making this up, his name was Big Bill. He would come up and give me a roll of money with a rubber band around it, which was how I then started getting paid. And so that just felt very suspicious to me. So I just started to do, do the research I should have done before accepting the job.

Right.

And started to realize that the way the business actually works is a legitimate agent or manager is not going to charge. You can't actually now legally charge you money in order to represent you. And so that was the big. The big operation they were running. They were making money off of charging people for photo shoots rather than making commissions off of booking talent on work.

So I'm just curious, did you ever not get paid for something? Did your co workers beat you to the bank?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But I. Oh, for sure, for sure. But that didn't last. Again, I wasn't there very long.

Right.

But we got paid every Friday. And I think the second week I was there, my check bounced. And then I started getting visits from Big Bill.

Okay. With, with the cash, with the rubber band. So one of the, one of the things that you mentioned was you weren't. You didn't know a lot about the industry. I think you were probably still learning it, and you didn't really know what the rules were that actors were supposed to behave. What were those rules? I'm just curious, how did you kind of figure out, were there certain things that you were telling them to do that were against the rules? That fascinates me.

Yeah. And I think this applies even today in the work I do with coaches. Right. But for all of us, I think many of us buy into unspoken agreements that may not be written in stone, but we all just. They're led by our own fears.

Right.

And so then we, we fall into these agreements because they protect us from taking risks. So in the, in the entertainment industry, agents and managers are the people who will then pitch their clients for jobs.

Right.

So they'll. They have the relationships with producers and casting directors and it's really this hierarchy. So actors are talent only. They're not supposed to air quotes, again, represent themselves. So the advice I was giving them was, oh, well, you want to get a meeting or you want to get an audition? Why not pitch yourself for the audition? Oh, you'd like to get an agent. Why not actually call them and see if you can get a meeting? These networking skills that a lot of entrepreneurs just think of. Naturally, actors really believe they were not allowed to behave that way. So I was just inviting them to step up and behave as their own talent agent rather than sitting back and hoping someone else was going to champion their cause, which at the time was very revolutionary and disruptive.

That's interesting. So you worked in that industry for around 18 years, so a long time. At what point did you start helping coaches?

Yeah, so back in. I would say about seven years in, I started having individual people reach out to me to say, can you help me? And I. At the time, the work with actors felt very aligned with my values. Not so much anymore, just because I've grown and changed, and I think there are. The entertainment industry is flawed in a lot of ways, but at the time, I could never have dreamed of doing anything other than the work that I was doing. So it was very. I didn't even charge for it, but I would have coaches seek me out, and I would just kind of show them the ropes or mentor them along the way. And then I realized how fulfilling. I don't know if you've had this experience, destiny, where suddenly you're in a circumstance where your knowledge and your skills and your gifts are reflected back to you. And that's what started happening in the work with coaches is I could really see, oh, wow, this thing. I didn't just get lucky. I actually have a framework that works universally. And I could see that what I developed in my own business worked for other people, which was super fulfilling for me.

So let's jump right into that, because I'd like to know a little bit more about that framework. So can you talk a little bit more about that framework and how and talk a little bit more about the business that you have today?

Yeah, sure. So for me, the core of my success and fulfillment has always been when I lead with my values. It's interesting, actually, thinking back just a couple of years ago, I had this moment where I thought, what am I doing?

Right?

Like, I'm doing all the work, and sure, results are coming in, but I didn't feel spark in the way that I used to as an entrepreneur. And I realized, destiny, that when I made the official shift from away from working with actors toward going all in serving coaches, I didn't check in and reassess my values. I just assumed that they were the same. But I had become a mother in that time. Like, my life was really, really different. And without realizing it, I started running my business more from a place of strategy rather than from my values first. So the first part of the framework is understanding your own values and always leading with them. This is how I make decisions. Decisions get run through my values filter when I. All of my marketing gets run through my values filter. And that's how I know I'm aligned and energized. And if you want to know, for anyone listening, okay, so how do I know my values? This isn't some worksheet you have to sit down and complete your business. Values shouldn't really be any different from the values you live by in your life. So ask yourself what matters in your life? What lights you up in your life? What are your. What makes you mad? Right in your life. And that should reveal to you pretty clearly your core values live by those inside of your business. So with that, there are three parts to the framework. The first one is clients.

Right.

Do you have a system in place to bring in clients on tap? And I'm a big fan of simplicity and we can talk about this a little bit later even. But really under. If you're a coach, before you go and launch a course, you have to know how to bring in private clients. Because it's the private client work that informs the course that you want to launch. It's the private client work that helps you get really good at overcoming objections and understanding the, the way your, your future course students actually operate. So I'm a big proponent of never skipping that step. Now, I don't mean you have to live there forever only serving private clients, but that really does come first. From there, it's about building out your community, which includes two things. Loving up like crazy on your clients and customers and your audience. And number two, leveraging that adoration to expand your community. And then the third piece, this is where we finally get to scale with a course or large group programs. But I see so many coaches try to skip those first two steps and then they end up feeling disappointed because this course that they launched flopped, either because no one signed up for it or because when people were inside the program, it didn't deliver on its promise. So the ripple effect system, this framework that I've developed over the years, comes in those three layers for a reason.

And I think when I was on your podcast, we actually delve into the conversation about, you know, the private client work. And I think that is so critical because that experience you, even if you're doing, if you're listening and you're doing freelance work, it. The same would apply to you whether you're a coach or a freelancer. Just doing that one on one type client work and onboarding those one on one clients is critical. Before you jump into everything else, now you have a course or program called the Six Figure Coach Club. Can you walk us through when did you originally launch it? And I know you've had a launch recently because we chatted about that. Can you walk us through that process? When did you launch it in your business and what have you done with it since then.

Yeah, that's. Thank you for asking. So if we're tracking here, there was a moment where I thought, okay, I'm going to close the actor stuff down. Let me really commit to serving coaches only. I followed my own advice that started with private client work and that was happening in tandem while I still had the. The other business. So the private client work was the thing that informed, okay, what does this audience need? Who really is my dream client? How do they operate? How do they think? How do they speak? So the first program that I launched was actually called Client Surgeon and it was designed. So that was in 2018. It was designed to solve one immediate problem, which was helping coaches find more clients. And that course was hitting all the metrics. It was generating money. It was great. Idestiny personally felt like it didn't really represent my strongest gifts. I'm great at selling and I have a system to bring in clients. But what I'm really good at is this is so unsexy but infrastructure.

Right.

I'm really good at helping you build a business from scratch that can last over time. And Client Surge was just solving too small of a problem for me. So at the end of 2019, I thought it doesn't feel good. I felt like I was underserving my audience. And so I decided to roll client surge into the six figure Coach Club. And we launched that in December of 2019. And it's really nine courses in one program, taking you all the way from getting your messaging down pat so that you can easily bring in clients on tap and then list building community building, hiring a team and launching a program. So the six figure Coach Club, like I said, it launched at the end of that year. And in the first year, 50 out of the we had 60, like charter members and 50 of them passed six figures within their first year inside the program. So I knew that giving the full picture was really what I was meant to be doing. And then we did live launch again. And I'd love to tell the story if you're open to it, because this launch fell so flat. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

So let me. I definitely want to hear that story. Is this a year long program? A six month program? Tell us a little bit about that.

I wonder the shape of it.

Great.

Yeah. So this is a year long mentorship program and there are two key phases to it. The first is the actual program curriculum. So as I mentioned, it's nine different courses in one program and people come in and take an assessment. So it shows them exactly where in the curriculum to begin. But then there's hands on mentorship from me in a group format. So we have calls every week to really hot seat coach people and answer any questions so that any coach in the who's working the system can. Can truly make it their own. Because we know that there is, there's great guidance, but there's no one size fits all program that works the same for every coach. So you're with me for a year as we move through, move through that curriculum.

So you launched it in December 20, 2019. Do you only launch it once a year? Yes. Go from like December to December or how, how do you structure that?

So I. My goal for all of my clients and for myself is to be able to have Evergreen enrollment so that there's less pressure on your launches. I love a good launch destiny. They're so thrilling.

Right.

And there can be a lot of pressure if you don't have a system set up to enroll clients or students throughout the year. So we live launched in December just to test the metrics and make sure that the offer was rock solid and then moved into Evergreen enrollment. So people can join the club anytime it feels aligned for them. We run people through an Evergreen webinar and then they can book a call with my team to really decide if it's a fit or not. So we do Evergreen enrollment, but I do launch live once a year as well.

Okay, so tell us a little bit about your last launch. Is that last launch the one that you just referenced a few minutes ago?

Yeah. So. Okay. I'm like now I don't know if I want to. So it's funny because it's been a year because I was so demoralized by the launch that it's. We're not going to launch it live again until a year and a half after that launch. But so basically when I live launch, there are specific metrics that I want to meet throughout the launch to really reveal to me that the. That the system works. And I'm happy to share those if you want to hear them.

We could definitely go into those for sure. I think the audience would be interested in that.

Great.

So at a high level, basically I want 10% or more. For me, it's usually closer to about 16%. But if 10% of the people who sign up for the launch event, this particular launch was a five day challenge moving people into a webinar where I presented the invitation. But even if it's just straight to webinar, if we have a 10% conversion I know that we're onto something. Well, this launch converted at 2%, so I want to share it because this is a lesson that I learned, and I think all of us learn it at least once in our journey. This launch from the beginning was set up to fail because my messaging was off Destiny. Instead of really connecting back to my dream client, who, of course, is someone who's willing to invest in their business.

Right.

Among other things, I asked myself, what does my audience or what does the industry want to hear right now? I looked at the big picture of what was happening in the world. We were two months quarantine at the time.

Right.

I looked at the big picture of that and thought, what does my commute. Where's my community at? Instead of what is the message that my dream client needs to hear in order to invest in themselves through this program? So the whole thing was marketed kind of through the angle of, are you feeling discouraged and worried that your business won't be successful? This five day challenge and this program can help you. So I invited in a lot of people who were not emotionally, mentally, or realistically in a position to invest in their business. They were in a position where they were considering closing their business down.

Wow. Okay, I can see that's. That's a very interesting analysis.

So. And it was really interesting because enrollment was high, engagement was super high. The webinar attendance at the end was. We had 92% of people who signed up for the five day challenge actually attend the webinar. And then the webinar, which I had tested before, it was basically the same webinar. Did not. I mean, it converted at 2%. And I'm so grateful for the 2% who enrolled in the program because they are dream clients. But it just came so far from meeting my expectations. And I see so clearly why. And I think for many of us, we. I think we forget that we don't want a lot of people. We want the right people.

Right.

So I was really thinking about, how can I serve everybody instead of how can I really serve the right people?

So, you know, you've tested this webinar before. You had great attendance at the webinar, but at the end, it was really who were coming in at the top of your funnel was the wrong fit for you.

Yeah.

That's very interesting and thank you for sharing that information. So when do you plan on launching again? Dallas?

Yes. So we will launch again in just a. We will launch again in September and January of every year now. Because that. Yeah. For a whole host of Reasons. But usually September is when people start thinking about what am I going to do next year?

Right.

And then January is when my audience starts thinking about, oh, gosh, I didn't decide what I was going to do this year. So we have our evergreen funnel where people can join when the timing feels right. And then we will live launch in Q3 and one of every year.

So walk us through a little bit about that evergreen funnel, how you have it set up and how is that working for you?

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. So we have two entry points into our evergreen funnel. One is our organic traffic and the other is paid ads. What we're finding right now, Destine, I know you and I have talked about this before, but on the ad side, we are running ads to cold traffic to a quiz that's really designed to help coaches identify the precise next step in their business and how to take it. So that quiz then nurtures. The results are so customized and that nurture sequence is so personalized that what it does is fast track. It's designed to at least fast track the trust that people feel with me and with the six figure coach club. Then we invite them into a webinar. The webinar is evergreen, meaning it's on demand. And then people from the webinar can apply for the, for our program and then book a call with my team to really make sure that they're going to get what they need and that we feel like we can deliver on our promise. So that's the ad side. Should I talk about organic?

Yeah, talk about the organic. And where are people finding you, you know, organically so that you're not having to, you know, pay for them.

Yeah. I will tell you. Yeah. Our organic funnel out performs our ads funnel, probably 10x and which makes sense because this is a year long commitment. Who's like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't click on an ad, take a quiz, watch a webinar and right away commit to spending a year with someone. I need to really trust them first. So what we find is our organic efforts help nurture so much more that the people who show up for the club really show up ready when they come in on the organic side. But so we, you know, we're really clear about the content that we put out. My primary social media platform is actually Instagram and I focus so much on Instagram on continuing a conversation with my dream client. I learned the lesson from my last launch.

Right.

So now all of the content we put out is really a continuation of about 4, excuse me, 12 core ideas or shared beliefs that my dream clients need to have in order to really invest in themselves through our program. But then. So we're putting out rock solid content, but then we have. There's someone on my team whose job it is to identify those people who engage with our content and then move them into a private conversation, whether that's through direct messaging or even. We love Bombbombs, which is a video platform where you can quickly record and share personalized videos with people over email. And we find taking that extra personal step to really help people feel seen and heard and appreciated makes all the difference in ensuring that we have enough people coming into our program, but also the right people coming into the program. So from the outs, if you had told me a year ago even that we would spend this much time and energy personalizing our social media marketing, I would have never believed you. But it's the thing that has made the biggest difference is slowing it down and really pinpointing people that we can have the right have personal conversations with before moving them into our webinar funnel.

So let me just ask you a couple questions on that. So they're engaging with your content on social media. Maybe they're reacting to a story or commenting on a post, I'm assuming, and somebody from your team contacts them via Instagram and just says, I noticed that you did this. Or do you have any questions? What exactly are they doing?

Great. Oh, thank you for clarifying. So the first thing, and I want to make this really clear to all the listeners, the people. Her name is Emily. Emily on my team is not logging into Instagram pretending she's me. She's being Emily. So destiny. If she was reaching out to you, she might say, destiny. It's Emily from Dallas's team. We saw that you. Or thank you for your comment on her reel about getting clients right. Is that something you struggle with? If so, I'd love to share a podcast episode with you because that might be helpful. So we offer them curated content really aligned with where they're most stuck, and we always get a buy in first. So instead of Emily saying, here's the podcast, we say, can I share a link to the podcast with you? So really making sure that people don't feel like it's a robot just cutting and pasting messages. So that's been. And. And my podcast has been a really incredible way for people to understand what. What my philosophies are and what it is we're actually doing inside the club. So we Usually then move them to a podcast conversation and then we'll circle back and say, you know, if you're interested, we have this free master class which will teach you A, B and C. Would you like the link? And then people who say yes, we send them the link to the on demand webinar and then they move through the webinar funnel that way.

I love that. Dallas. I think that some a great system that you have in place that's not spammy or you know, giving, you know, reaching out to people that quite frankly might not be ready to hear from you.

Right.

So let me ask you this. What do you see as next steps in your business? You've been doing this for a long time and I know you have some stuff on your roadmap. So. So why don't anything that you're willing to share here.

Yeah.

So I am so clear about the impact that we want to make with the Six Figure Coach Club. So we're in a space right now. I talk a lot, Destiny, about crouching before you leap.

Right.

If I'm going to jump really high, I have to bend low first. And we have been leaping a lot just inside of the business with hires and getting our, all of our systems in place. So the rest of 2020, 2021 is really about soaring.

Right.

Benefiting from all the crouching that we've done so that I can focus really specifically on impact. So we have launched a social impact exchange program where coaches who serve marginalized communities or underserved communities or underrepresented communities can apply for a fellowship inside of the Six Figure Coach Club where in exchange for their tuition and full membership in the program, they're going to give me feedback on where the club can be more equitable, where the club, which is created by a middle aged white woman.

Right.

May not be as inclusive as I want it to be, just in terms of the strategies that we teach and the way we deliver the content. So my mission is to help more coaches who serve these marginalized communities in order to uplift those communities with the people who understand them best. So I'm so passionate about the exchange program. And that is, it's something that we've worked on up until now and we're rolling it out as we speak. So I'm so excited about the impact that we're gonna get to have serving these people who. It's like the ripple effect system on a whole new level, right?

Absolutely. And, and you might not have the link to this yet, but if, if somebody wanted to know More about that. Where would they go? Just to your website.

It's six figurecoach club.com forward slash impact.

Okay. And I'll make sure that that link's in the show notes so people know exactly where to go to get more information about that fellowship. My last closing question for you is what advice do you have for other online course creators or entrepreneurs out there?

It's okay to go slow. And I don't. And when I say slow, I don't mean it's going to take you forever to get where you want to go. In fact, I would argue that the slow burn is the most efficient way to have a successful course launch and this scalable business that we all strive for. So when I say go slow, I mean focus on those foundations first so that when you do scale with a course course and put this work out in the world, it lands on laps and in ears that are ready to invest in it. So I'm all about habits and building on those habits instead of skipping steps and hoping for the best.

And that just goes back to what you teach in that ripple effect system.

That we talked about here today.

So that's perfect. Dallas, where can people find you? And I'll make sure that the link that you just mentioned is in the show notes, but where can they find you? Like on Instagram? Yeah.

I'm Dallas Travers on all the social platforms, so you can find me there. And my website isEven Dallas travers.com Perfect.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Dallas. I loved hearing about your entrepreneur journey and how you got to where you are today and all of the great things that you're doing in the world.

Thanks, Destiny. It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform platform. And show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.