How Steven Essa Created A Webinar Formula That Helped Him Generate $2.2 Million In Revenues

You know, we've picked up $70,000 to $100,000 in sales just from a couple of phone calls to people after we've launched a brand new business and only got 10 customers in it.

Do you want to impact the world and still turn a profit? Then you're in the right place. Welcome to Growth Everywhere. This is the show where you'll find real conversations with real entrepreneurs. They'll share everything from their biggest struggle to the exact strategies they use on a daily basis. So if you're ready for a value-packed interview, listen on. Here's your host, Eric Siu.

How many of you have experienced making a bad hire or had bad hires on your team? I personally lost over $840,000 on just one bad hire alone. So that's why I'm doing a free class called the 5 Secrets to Avoiding Bad Hires That Can Cost You $50,000+ Each Year. Hi, I'm Eric Siu. Each. All you need to do is to text BADHIRE, spell it out, B-A-D-H-I-R-E, to 33444. That's double 3 triple 4, and you'll be registered. I'll see you there. Hello everyone, welcome to this week's edition of Growth Everywhere, where we interview entrepreneurs and bring you business and personal growth tips. Today we're talking to Stephen Essa, who is CEO of The X10 Effect and also known as The Webinar Guy. He's a world traveler and has gone around the world in the last year and picked up 25 people and helped them go from $2,000 all the way up to $22,000 in varying results. So, Steven, how are you doing today?

Excellent, Eric. Thanks for having me on, mate.

Yeah, thanks for being on the show. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how it led up to today and we'll go from there.

Yeah, mate. I basically started out when I left high school. I failed school. I went to the music business basically where I was going to make it in a death metal band and me and some guys basically We basically started taking it very seriously and touring around Australia and we quickly sort of became pretty popular in our community. So the big dream was to travel internationally and tour internationally and play with big bands like Slayer and Metallica and Slipknot and all those heavy bands. We went to America in 2002 and they said, you've come at the worst time, because the music business was collapsing and it was devastating. 13 years in the music business working very hard, 3 nights a week, 4 nights a week rehearsals plus working in a day job, promoting merchandise, all this stuff, all the marketing you have to do in a band, pushing yourself and hustling, and it all came to nothing in the end. So I basically was sitting there quite frustrated, a little depressed, sitting in my little one-bedroom apartment in LA, and I thought, I'm going back to Australia. I'm going to build a business and I'm going to invest in real estate. I'm going to get rich and then I'm never going to have to worry about making it in the music business. I can just play guitar in front of the mirror as all day long in my underwear and have a great time. So that's what I did. I went back to Australia. I was broke. I owed my sister $30,000 which I borrowed to survive in America and all of that. So I looked at different business models. I tried to build a website, that didn't work. I tried network marketing, that didn't work. I tried different— just building sales pages and creating products and I couldn't seem to get anything working. And until I went to a seminar in 2008, I basically realized, hey, why am I trying to figure this out myself? Someone has already figured it out. I may as well just go and learn from them. So I learned from a guy about internet marketing at a seminar. His name was Brett McFall, and that changed my life. I went straight to my boss's business. I started working in a real estate investment company. I went straight to his business and started applying what I was learning at the seminar to his business, and we quickly generated like $106,000 in sales using some of the techniques on his existing business. And then I realized, hey, I could probably do this for myself. So I quit my job and 6 months later I generated my first webinar and with only 15 people on the call, I made $594 in sales. 2 people out of 15 signed up for a course which I hadn't even created yet. And I thought, wow, if I could do this once a week or whatever, this would be really cool. I kind of found webinars to be a really easy way to sort of market and promote products as well as build relationships with people. I started like my first podcast show which wasn't on iTunes at the time but it was just basically a weekly show that I ran. Instead of doing it as a recorded podcast, I basically did it live and I would answer questions from people and just build that relationship and then I would promote my other product to them as well. So I made $4,000, $10,000, $20,000, $90,000 from some automated webinars and recently a business partner of mine in a business that I built with him did $120,000 in sales with only 13 people on the webinar. And that's another strategy I do now, which is I now mainly facilitate webinars for companies which I own 50% of, and I help the experts to sell and speak and all of that, and I'm more behind the scenes. And that's how I currently have, you know, 5 companies doing anything from $5,000 to $50,000 a month.

Got it. So you work with these quote-unquote— let's just call them gurus, even though I hate the word. So you work with these gurus that have a following already, and all you need to do is pretty much Turn on the jets with what you know already and then boom, they're off to the races.

Yeah, the ones I've actually started with, Eric, weren't gurus when we started out. Like they were— what they did have was they had a passion, they had a level of expertise that was really, really good, they loved working with customers but they didn't have that marketing side. And they're the ones that are going to really give you 50% because they just want to do what they do best. You know, many practitioners, healers, you know, specialists, coaches, trainers, experts, they love doing what they do. They don't want to learn internet marketing, they don't want to know how to put together a webinar or how to automate it and all of that, they're happy to give you 50% just to do that for them. And, you know, I've had many clients in the beginning— how I got the idea was many clients, like I helped one vet make over $300,000 from webinars in his first 12 months. He sold his vet practice and started doing webinars full-time, and he sent me an email saying, thank you so much, webinars are now my bread and butter. I had airline pilots teaching training students, and they automated— they made over £450,000 in a couple of webinars. So I asked them after they made the money, after studying my course, I said, hey, if someone would have done this for you, would you have given them 50%? They said, absolutely, if we didn't have to worry about building this internet marketing stuff, we would have gladly given up 50% for someone else to do all of this and we just turn up and talk. So that triggered the idea for me to say, wow, next time I meet someone who is really hungry but doesn't have the marketing side, doesn't want to learn that marketing side, just wants to speak and deliver and work with people and help people, I am going to see if they want to do a 50/50 company with me, and that is what I have done. Got it. Okay.

And how do revenues look for your company today?

We generated last financial year— our financial year finishes at the end of June 30th every year, so we start our financial year July 1st. Last financial year, we did $2.2 million in sales.

Wow. Awesome. Cool, man.

And this is just—

webinars are the bread and butter, huh? So that's interesting. I mean, just for the audience to know, I mean, you know, In the tech space, you don't see a lot of people talking about webinars too much. People are very head down. It's B2B sales, or they're driving a lot of traffic, and they're optimizing conversion rates, but you don't see a lot of webinars happening too much. People do do it. So I mean, what kind of tools do you recommend for people that are starting out with webinars?

Yeah, I think what you need to— the first thing I do before I start any— I never start a business with a website. I never ever do that. I always start with a webinar, a 60-minute webinar. At the end of the day, if you can't speak to someone for 60 minutes and then convince them to buy a product or service or take the next step, book a consultation or test out your offer, test out your software on a 30-day trial or whatever, if you can't convince them after 60 minutes talking to them about the features, the benefits, what you know and what led you to building this software or doing this business, if you can't convince them after that, then you've got no chance on a webpage with just text. So always looking at, okay, let's put together a 60-minute webinar presentation and let's deliver some great value and then let's tell them about our product or service at the end. So instead of selling on the webinar, we actually want to educate people as to what led us to where we are and how they could do the same. So if someone's selling a software, you could do a demonstration. So before you do a demonstration, you talk a little bit about the manual process of what you used to do, for example. So I used to have to I created a webinar software, right? It's called Webinator. So when I do a webinar for that, I say like, look guys, webinars are fantastic because you can generate 10 times more sales than a website, you can do this and this and this, here's some of my credibility, here's some of the people I've helped, this guy made $1 million, this guy made $1 million, these people have million-dollar businesses thanks to my webinar strategy. But you know what the problem was? That we had to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning to do webinars for the UK, or we had to do webinars for the US at 11 AM and many people don't like doing multiple webinars in a day so you got to be there, it's not automated, it's not leveraged. So what I did was I got a developer together and I created this amazing software which automates your webinars for you, let me show you how it works. So I state the problem first, identify the target audience, identify the needs and then really give them the solution, that's what I do in the webinar. Now if I don't have a software to sell then we're looking at just creating a sequence of steps that people need to go through in order to be successful, and then you offer them a product or a service at the end. Now, you don't have to do a big hard sell. There's lots of— 3 different ways to sell on a webinar that I teach people: the soft sell, the medium sell, or the hard sell. And any one of those at the end of 60 minutes is going to yield some conversion, because people who stick around for 60 minutes definitely are interested. They're just looking for what's the next step, and 10% of people want to go further faster.

Got it, okay. So, you know what I've heard with some webinar pros, and these people are doing a couple million, they're pretty successful as well, and what they do is they say during webinars they never really want to teach much. It's like, yeah, teach a few points but don't really give them much, and then because if you give them something to do, then they're going to go out and do it instead, and then they're not going to pay attention to the webinar. I mean, so when you're doing these webinars, how much teaching are you actually doing? Are you providing a lot of value? Or are you just giving them just a little bit just to get them interested?

Yeah, I totally disagree with that theory, Eric, and I'll tell you why. Basically what you're doing, you're burning people who are not going to come to your future webinars, right? And we all know in business that we don't make sales every time the first time. And if you're in the business to make sales the first time every time, then yeah, go ahead and just, you know, try and create a pitch that's, you know, with no content or very little content and then pitch people. But you'll struggle to get them back. To another webinar because they'll see that you're not adding much value. But what you do want to do is have a balance of information. So what I try to do is I put together a killer— the first 10 minutes you want to put together a killer introduction which is stating what's the big benefit for them, what's the marketing hook, what's the title of your webinar. It could be like my latest one is Discover How to Make $120,000 in 60 Minutes Every Week Thanks to Webinars. So that tells them clearly it's a big promise, here's what it is, and I get to the point as quickly as I can when I start the webinar. Webinar, then I want to relate to them. I want to find out who's on the webinar and tell them, this webinar is for you if you're an author and you're looking to leverage your $30 product into a $300 webinar series. I'm going to show you how to create that and start making more revenue for yourself so you're making money as an author and you can do writing full-time. If you're a speaker and you're sick of traveling around the world and you want to leverage and you don't want to travel anymore but you still want to make money and you want to automate yourself as well, I'm going to show you how to use webinars to do that. And if you're like a business opportunity seeker and you haven't made money yet, I'm going to show you how you can use other people's knowledge to make money. If you're a software developer and you want to sell your software, then this is a great way you can use JV webinars. I'm going to show you how to do that. So I'm going to try to touch on all the different verticals that could be on the webinar with me, all the different demographics, the target audiences that could be there. I want them to all say at one point on the slide, oh, that's me, you know, yeah, that's what I want to do. Now I'm connecting with them. And then I want to build up some proof, credibility, so I say, look what I did for this guy, look what I did for this guy, he's a pilot, he's a vet, he's a doctor, he's a coach, here's what my wife did before we even met, here's what I've done. And I build up lots of proof at the beginning to show them, hey, here's why you should listen to me because look what I've done here. Look, I've even travelled around the world, 25 cities around the world, picked people, made $2,000 to $22,000. From the audience. I'm giving lots of proof. You have to be able to back up what you say that you're doing. So testimonials, proof, and it can be your own testimonial too. You can have your own case study. If you've done something like if you've lost weight, you've got a diet program, you say you lost 20 pounds in 12 weeks or whatever, then you say, look, this is me before, this is me after, because nothing sells like proof on a webinar and people go, ah, wow, this guy knows what he's talking about, or this girl knows what she's talking about. And then we want to, you know, if we don't have that, we want to show some stats to back up what we say. So I use a bit of both. I say, look, my statistics show that, you know, 1 out of every 100 visitors on a website will buy, 1 out of every 10 visitors on a webinar will buy. So webinars produce 10 times more sales than websites. So I'm trying to convince them like a lawyer in a closing argument in a case, trying to convince the jury that you need to understand how powerful this is and why you should listen to me and why I can teach you how to do this in the first 10 minutes. Then you get into the steps and this is where the selling is done in the content. So people make up their own mind based on the information that you give them on the webinar and what I always tell people is just break up your content into 3 or 5 steps and that way you've got some structure and you're teaching that person who's watching that you have structure. So they're going, oh, okay, wow, this makes sense, like step number 1 is that, step number 2 is that, Step number 3 is that, and that should go for about 40 minutes. And what you want to have on every single step is you want to have, again, proof. You want to back up what you're saying. You want to have some stats on what you're saying, or one of those 2. You want to tell a story on a step. And what you want to tell them is what to do and a little bit of how to do it, but not too much because you don't want to turn it into a lecture. So what do I mean by that? Let's say we were doing a webinar on podcasting, right? So step number 1 was set up your website. podcast website. So you wouldn't want to say, let's go to GoDaddy right now and buy a domain. That's what you need to do. So click here, go there, sign up with GoDaddy. Now when you sign up with GoDaddy, just avoid the cross-sells and the upsells they're trying to do. You don't need those. And then you got your account, now you need to get the hosting. Now here's how you link the hosting with that. And then here's— you know, you got to get this plugin, it's called Blueberry. Let me show you how to— you wouldn't have 40— you couldn't do it in 40 minutes. Does that make sense, Eric?

Totally makes sense.

So you can't go too deep anyway, but you don't want to hold back and you don't want to have the audience feeling like you're holding back. You want to have them feeling like you are trying to cram everything in as much as possible into that 40 minutes, so you're trying to give them massive value. Because people are smart these days, you know, people, buyers know. They're being pitched to every single day of the week. They're becoming savvy. They've heard all the tricks. So if they sense for one second that you're holding back or you just want them to buy the package or this is another one of those webinars that, you know, there's a little bit of content, they tease me and then they pitch to me, you're just going to look like everyone else. What you want to aim to do is overdeliver, give them all the tips. Say, look guys, obviously if you want to buy a domain name, I'm not going to show you here because it's very easy, go to GoDaddy.com and then you buy the hosting from there, the deluxe plan is the best plan that I get. Then what you need is a plugin, you need to use WordPress and you need a plugin, it's called Blubrry and that's going to link you to iTunes. Have a programmer do that for you, go to Fiverr, give them some resources where they can go. Find someone on oDesk and say WordPress specialist, look for it. So they're sitting there and what you want them to be doing, Eric, is taking lots of notes. Oh, this is good. Oh wow. Oh, that's excellent. Oh good, good. You want them to be engaged and doing that. Otherwise, they're probably sitting on Facebook. They're surfing the internet. They're thinking, oh no, this guy's not going to give me anything. You want to be giving them as much as you can. Tell a story. Hey guys, I set this up for a client recently in the weight loss market. Have a look at this podcast example.

Bang!

Look at that template that my guy created for me. And you know, I've got a guy that I use. I pay him 4 grand a month. He's really good. But you know, guys, you can find them on oDesk and you can Let them know that you've got a really, really good guy because you're planting a seed. If you're going to sell them a website later, you're going to say, look what my guy did and he's $4,000 a month, he's really expensive but you guys can go and find your own but this is what you're looking for, this is the sort of quality you're after. So we're still planting a seed that our guy is really good for later on if we're selling that done-for-you service for them, selling them a website or a course and giving access to our guy, we've showed them and planted the seed early on. That's totally okay but as long as we're not robbing them because they're investing their time, we have to deliver great information, tell a story, hook them in, tell a stat, tell them what resources they should be using, tell them what to do and a little bit of how to do it, but mainly what to do. You don't want to turn it into a full lecture. Do that on every step and go for 40 minutes, and then you've got 10 minutes left at the end to pitch your product or your service, and there's a few ways to do that.

I love it. Now do you have any replays or anything that we can share in the notes afterwards, maybe even a PDF so people know exactly how they should structure I do, absolutely.

Yeah, I've got a webinar that I run and I follow the exact same formula except it's a 90-minute webinar, so the intro is 15 minutes, the content is 60 minutes, and the outro is 15 minutes. If you follow that, you watch to a T, I'm following my own script exactly to the letter, and that's available at stevesser.com.

Perfect, great. I think we'll link that up in the post itself, but this will be awesome. So, you know, you talked about the conversion rates for webinars. You know, you said that you indicated that they're at 10%, right? So, you know, what— can you talk about the stats around live webinars first, and then can you share some stats around automated webinars that you're talking about?

Yeah, absolutely. Look, whenever we do a new product or a new service, we always launch it live. You know, live webinars are going to get you the best conversion because people feel like, you know, people feel like you're there. It's just like it's got a better energy to it, a live webinar. You know, but that being said, we've done webinars where we we've made 5% conversion on the webinar and then we've done 10% or 12% on the replay. One example comes to mind, we did $5,000, had 100 people on the webinar with my business partner when we launched him in 2012. 5 sales out of 100 people at $1,000 and then 16 sales at $16,000 from the replay, so $21,000 in total. So it just depends on the way that you market it, but at the end of the day I think live webinars are better. Run 2 live webinars a day instead of just one, so what you do is you run it say at midday Okay, 12 o'clock your time, and then you run another one at 8 PM. And when people register, you give them the option to join whichever one they want to, and then you run both of them and you pick the one that converted the best and you use that as a replay. That's what we do now. And just about 6 weeks ago, I did a JV webinar with a guy that makes me a lot of money, and we did over $57,000 in sales, and most of those sales came from the replay. But what I find is on a live webinar More committed people turn up. They're committed. They've made that commitment, they've registered, and they've showed up. That makes them the most highly targeted person for your business at that point. They are absolutely hot to trot. So, you know, they're the best ones and they're the ones who made time. So, you know, everyone else can catch a replay. Conversions usually won't be as good, but over the long term, if you're promoting it and more people watch the replay, you'll probably get more sales.

Got it.

So I'm going to give you a real-life example right now, okay?

So, you know, I launched my product. It's around, you know, how to hire A-players, right? You know, conversion rate was about 5%, you know, a couple weeks back. The big issue right now is that the, you know, even though there's an email list and all that, you know, we're driving traffic through Facebook. We're not getting— we're not— for whatever reason, we're not able to drive traffic through Facebook. And I have to assume that you're promoting heavily through Facebook. Is that right?

Oh, absolutely. We promote through Facebook too. Yeah.

Got it. So what would you do around this? has a product they just launched, you know, there's some conversion around it, but they're having trouble getting traffic. What should that person do in this situation?

Look, the easiest way— and this is a question I get all the time— once we've put the webinar together, how do we get people there? The easiest way to get targeted traffic that's going to be buying traffic— because look, we can have people on a webinar, Eric, let's say you have 100 people on your webinar that basically came from Facebook ads, right? They've never met you before and they come straight to your webinar. And even if you nurture them a little bit over a few weeks and send this email and the 7 touches and all that crap that people talk about, even if you do that, those 100 people are never ever in a million years going to convert as powerfully as if you said to me, Steve, mail this webinar to your database for me and get people to a webinar. And I personally email my database and go, hey guys, if you want to know how to build a million-dollar business, you need A-grade players and I just met this guy Eric He's amazing, he's got a system for getting A-grade players in your business and check out this webinar, I've convinced him to put it together or he's got this amazing webinar, check it out. And if I promote that to my database and I get you 100 people there, because they're the target audience that you're after, you are going to convert 10% plus on that webinar. If you don't convert 10% or more, something wrong with my database, I don't have a good relationship with them. So targeted traffic from someone else's database, a joint venture partner, is the fastest and easiest and cheapest way that you will make money. Because if you try and make money on a front-end offer on Facebook ads, you will blow your budget. You will spend 100% of your money before you even make one sale, right? Whereas then you make money on the back-end products, your $5Ks and your $10K boot camps and whatever else that you are running. So to do it this way, you are giving up 50% on average to a JV partner for them to promote you, but you are not paying if you do not make money. Whereas Facebook ads, you are going to be paying if you do not make money. So what's really smart is to find people who have a database already who would appeal to your target product, and you convince them, say, hey Steve, hey John, promote this for me. It's a great webinar, it's packed full of great content, your audience is going to love it, and there's a great offer at the end. You're going to get 50% as well. Another great reason why delivering content is very important, because if you're going to mail to my database, if I'm going to mail my database for anyone, I want to know that that webinar's got great content in it. So even if my audience doesn't buy, they're still going, wow, thank you Steve for putting on, Eric, he was amazing. Even though I'm not ready to buy it now, I know where to go when I'm ready and I got some amazing tips there, thank you so much, and they'll come to my next webinar. That's what I'm looking for because I'm looking for stuff to promote all the time. So you want to find 3 or 4 or 5 guys like me that have databases over 30,000 people that can get you a lot of people registered on a webinar. Those guys can make you rich. You know, 3 or 4 JV partners when I started made me absolutely wealthy, made my first million dollars from JV partners. I didn't focus on any other traffic source. Because someone else has already built the database, let's leverage that. And if you can't find someone else to promote for you because you say, oh, this big guy, he's not answering my email, well, you've got to follow up. You've got to, you know, sometimes it's taken me 3 years to get a JV with a guy that I'm doing right now and he's going to take me on tour around Australia. We could do $2 million in sales in 2 weeks, but that relationship I've been nurturing for 3 years now. So it's worth building and if they won't promote you, offer them money upfront. If you know that your webinar converts at 5% or 10% with Facebook traffic, then it's going to convert a lot more with someone's database. So say to them, Steve, hey, I'll give you $5,000 if you promote this to your list. How many people do you have on your list? Or I'll give you $1,000 and that's called solo ads and there's lots of different websites now that have solo ads in the business opportunity market and different areas. That you can actually go and pay them and they mail their database for you. That's way better than doing cold traffic from Facebook ads if they have a relationship with their database. You have to make sure, join their database first, make sure they're sending regular emails, see what they're offering, see what their open rates are, ask them, and then pay them money to promote for you, and that's powerful. Also, websites like blogs do this as well. You know, my wife has a social media management company called Social Media Worldwide, and basically what she did, she went to these mummy blogs Mums who are trying to stay at home and make money, she went to those blogs and paid them like $3,000, drove traffic to a registration page for a webinar, got a list of about 300 or 400 people, then promoted her $297 a month product. She did about 10 sales. So it's like $3,000 recurring from a spend on a solo ad.

Got it. For solo ads, I hear about internet marketers talking about safe swaps all the time. Are you familiar with that and what's your take on it?

Safe Swaps is pretty shit, excuse the French, because there's a lot of guys on there who are really savvy, but there are always some good guys on there as well. So just be careful. You've got to check to make sure that the traffic is— that the leads are genuine, okay? So you want to basically check the reviews of the people, but even they can be tainted sometimes. Check the reviews and test them out. What's good about Solo Safe Swaps is that— It's only $50 for like 100 clicks, so you can test it out. So if you're in the IM space, you can definitely test it out, but a lot of those leads have been burnt as well. So, you know, they've been tossed around and handed around as well. My friend just came out with a new, a new website which basically does solo ads, and I know his database is really good. His name is Brian Cos and Sean Casey as well. They're top internet marketers, and those guys came up with a really, really cool a really, really cool site. I'm just looking for the name of it now. I can't seem to find it but yeah, just basically test out. It's cheap to test out. Spending a little bit of money, if you put aside a budget of $5,000, test a couple of guys out and see if they actually convert because getting the opt-in is the first step but actually seeing if they convert following it through. What I noticed is even a lot of big internet marketers, Eric, they don't even track all the way through. They don't track each traffic source so if you are sending solo ads to each different provider, make sure that you're tracking all the way through. Like I use Infusionsoft which is not the best system in the world but it's all-in-one and it's easy for a failed student and a non-techie like me to use and I can track every single person all the way through to if they buy or not because it drops an affiliate link on them for every referral that they click on. So we know exactly who they came from. And when they buy and when they don't buy. So that's really the most important thing is how much money you're going to make back. So you want to track that process all the way through and you need a really good tracking system to do that.

Got it. Now just jumping into pricing for a second. So the 5% conversion that I got was at a $197 price point and I've been testing $497 and $997. The only issue is each webinar only had about 10 to 15 attendees. So do you think that sample size is too small and do you think I should continue testing pricing Yeah, absolutely.

It's a great question I get all the time. Look, I'd be looking for a little bit more than 5% or 15 people and 5% as well. So what I'd be looking to do, Eric, for your product is there's not really much difference between $197 and $297. What I found from research that I've done and testing that we've done with many students and myself is basically that people will spend up to $297 without any hesitation. That's the first price point that I'm testing, usually for a course, a series of 8 or 10 modules, maybe throw in there a couple of coaching sessions, really just so that you can basically call each customer and find out why they're buying. Because I always introduce a new product with coaching calls because number one, I want the audience who's buying to have have that security to know that, hey, I'm backing up this product and I'm going to call you, right? But after the first 100 customers, I'm going to check, you know, I'm going to put the price up or I'm going to reevaluate the program or I'm going to add more value to it to try and figure out to get it to that next bracket which is $497. So if you're converting more than 10% at $297, you're ready to go to $497 because that's the next bracket. And what I found, most people don't have more than $500 at any given time in their bank account. So that $497 price point is the second price point that I'm going to test. But sometimes, if I'm doing a property webinar or a stock market webinar, I'll test $497 or $997 straight away because you're looking at what else is available on the market. Because even at the close of your webinar, what you want to do before you make the final offer, you basically go through your whole course and you tell them what they're going to get. And before you pitch the price, you say, can you do this another way? Yeah, you could go and buy Johnny B's course that shows you how to do what I'm showing you how to do, plus I'm actually going to do some coaching sessions with you. You are not going to get that with his course but you are going to get it with mine and his one sells for $997. Or you could go and study this share trading program which sells for $5,000 but they only show you how to buy shares at a discount. They don't show you how to protect yourself. They don't show you how to put insurance on your shares and stuff like that. So you want to show the competitors and what they are offering and why yours is still superior even if it is just the price. So you are justifying the price drop, justifying the discount and showing why yours is absolutely amazing and doing that as well can really, really help. So $497 is the next price. If you are still doing 10% at $497, then you want to be moving it up to $997 is the next bracket. Recently I had a student came to me and she said, Steve, we converted at $297, so we put it to $497, we still converted at 15% for $497. I want to put it to $697. Now I know she's moving out of the bracket of people that have $500 at that point, so I said to her, look, if you go from $497 to $697, you're just going to lose people who were going to buy for $497 but not going to be able to afford any more than that. You're just going to lose them and you're moving into the next bracket of people who have $1,000 to spend, and once they've already made up their mind and they're watching you and they've seen Now they've made up their mind in the content section because they've gone, wow, look at Eric, wow, wow, this Eric guy, man, if he can get me 1 or 2 A-grade players, man, I can grow my business to $2 or $3 million, right? So they're sitting there and they know they want to work with you from the content because you're blowing them away, right? And they're sitting there going, man, I'd love to have this Eric guy on my side. And then when you go into your product at the end, now they're going, oh man, I have to— wow, I get to talk to him on the phone, wow, that's awesome. Now they have already made up their mind that they are in. Now they just have to be able to afford what they have got. Or they have to be able to see themselves asking their wife to say, darling, one more program. I am just going to buy one more program. Eric's program is the only one. That is it. He is going to show me how to get A-grade players. That is all. So in their mind, while you are closing, while you are selling, they are telling themselves a story. They are like, wow, he is going to have this and how am I going to sell it to my wife and whatever. They are justifying. So if you are at $497, they are like, oh wow, she won't even notice it on the credit card. in. Or, I've got that and next week I'll make up the rent next week. It's not a big deal. Whereas when you jump to $997, that's a different group of buyers that are buying at that point there. So a different group of buyers that are jumping in. So what I said to her is, let's just take it from $497 to $997. And she still did 10% at $997 because when you put the price up to $697, From $497, you run the risk— if she did 10% at $497, right, and we had, say, 100 people there, we got $5,000 in sales, right, at $497. Well, if she only does 6% or 7% at $697, she's not going to make the same amount of money, right? And I would rather more customers in the door than I would rather a higher price, because I know 1 out of every 10 customers who buys our $297 or $497 program program, they're going to buy our $5,000 or $10,000 program, which is our profit-maker product, right, where we make real profit in the company. I've done this many, many times, Eric, and every single time we have 10 customers, I tell my business partner, call up those 10 customers and offer them a done-for-you service or a hand-holding one-on-one coaching for 12 months for $10,000 or $20,000. We've picked up $70,000 to $100,000 in sales just from a couple of phone calls to people after we've launched a brand new business and only got 10 customers in it. It's just amazing how many people want more handholding, want it done for them, and they're happy to pay a premium for it. In fact, a lot of people on your webinar right now that you've sold to that didn't buy were probably looking going, $197, I can afford that, but I don't have time to do that. If Eric would do it for me, if Eric would hire A-grade people for me, I'd gladly pay him $10,000 or $20,000. I'd gladly pay him, you know, you know, a management fee of $1,000 a month to, you know, hire and fire them for me, you know. But they don't have time to watch your course and do that. So by not offering a high-end profit-maker product, then you're missing out on people who likely are information, but they didn't want that particular package. And that's where a lot of people go wrong. They say, Steve, people aren't buying my course. Well, maybe they didn't want a course. Maybe they want it done for them. And if you offer it, hey, Bang! They're going to do it. And I've had this happen so many times where people came and said, I don't have time to do it. Can I buy you to do it? That's how we built my wife's social media management company. She does $297 a month, manages your Twitter or your Facebook account, and people weren't buying her course but they gladly, they're buying that. The company is now worth $1.7 million because she's got a whole bunch of customers she manages on a monthly fee.

Got it. Okay, so let me understand. I mean, my understanding usually is you sell them at $297 price point and then you're upselling them in the backend, right? Are you saying, you know, in your webinar you're also telling them that you have the done-for-you course or done-for-you service available as well?

Absolutely. I mean, not at the same time because I've never seen too many good speakers on webinars who can do a dual close. If you confuse people and they're not sure what to buy, they can say no. So it's a much higher risk because a confused mind usually always says no. So, you know, you run the risk if you're offering 2 things things, you run the risk of having them get confused and not sure what to buy and they make no decision. So what I'm suggesting is you put together another webinar, spin the content a little bit, change it a little bit, maybe even put a different marketing hook on it, resend it to your database and offer your $10K or your $20K program at the end and have it a little bit separate. We did this with the bootcamp. We sell a $10,000 bootcamp where we have 20 students come in on the Gold Coast here. They fly in, we pay for their flights, accommodation, We spend 5 days with them, we build their whole business for them, and I offered that on a webinar in December. I did $100K. 10 people signed up at $10K each, people from London flying in and whatever, Thailand, they flew in from Thailand, all of that. So I could have offered them my standard $3K program, but they felt like they've done all the courses, they now want to have someone sit with them or do it for them or whatever it is. So either a done-for-you, a mastermind a boot camp where they get access to you and they just want it done. They are happy to pay, they just want it done. So you definitely have customers right now, Eric, that would be buying your higher-end package because they don't want to buy another course. I did this with Scott Ruick, a big media buying guy in San Francisco. He has been in Silicon Valley 13 years and he has basically built $100 million companies in Silicon Valley and all that that, and he was struggling to sell a low-end product. I said, Scott, what are you doing, man? I said, you are like the man. You got all the cred, you ran all the media buying campaigns for all the big guys, Frank Kern and all of those guys in the early days. I said, you should be going for the high-end customer, not the little guy. And we put it up to $10K. The next webinar he did, he did 10 sales at $10,000 and he said, Steve, you wouldn't believe it. He goes, the people, when I phoned them up to interview them to make sure that I approve they get in, because you want to basically make sure who's giving you $10,000 And he's got some mental stability. You don't want to be dealing with a nightmare if you're doing one-on-one coaching. So he said, Steve, 9 out of 10 of those guys, they said to me, oh, look, Scott, we don't want to bother you. We're already making $40,000, $50,000 a month from our house. We just want to call you from time to time to network a little bit because we're bored. Is that okay? And he's like, wow, these are the best customers ever. People who pay you more money are actually the best customers you'll ever want to work with. Just sack everyone else and just work with your best customers.

Wow, that's amazing. The fact that you can sell those $10K programs, I mean, the fact that you mentioned you guys were able to do $120K just off of one webinar, I mean, that shows the potential for everyone that's out there, really any business. Okay, so I want to take a step backwards really quick on the JV stuff. So, you know, let's say someone's starting out, you know, they're not sure where to look for JVs. You know, what's the best way for them to go and look for the right JVs and what type of What criteria should they really set for these potential JVs?

That's an awesome question, Eric, and something I've been testing over the past 10 months is exactly what we're doing here in this interview. And that is, if you're an expert at something or you've got a product, then you should go and find people who are doing podcasts right now because they're looking for people to interview, right? So what they're doing is you're meeting new people, all right? So if you get interviewed by someone and you give great value to their subscribers, they're like, wow, Wow, thank you so much, dude. And where can people find out more? Like, you watch, I didn't pre-organize this with Eric, but basically he said to me he's going to ask me at the end, where can people find out more information? Am I right, Eric?

That's correct.

Exactly. So at the end of every podcast interview, as a sign of reciprocity, the person who's interviewing you will say to you, where can people find out more information? And what you want to do is you want to sell them on your webinar. You don't sell them a product. You say, guys, I've got this amazing webinar, it teaches you how to hire A-grade players. I give you a formula on there as well as a template and a demonstration on that and it's all for free and it's available at my website blah blah blah.com and you give them your website. Now, people, they're going to send this podcast that you do out to their database. Now, not every podcaster has a database of 20,000 or 30,000 people but when you start doing 10 or 20 of these, at least At least 1 out of every 10 will have a big-sized database, and as you get better on the interviews, word spreads, other people want to interview you. What I did was hired Jessica at Interview Connections, and what they do is they hire— they find me people to interview, to get interviewed on their show. So they might book me 3 or 4 times a month on different people's podcasts, and then that podcaster says to them, hey, thank you so much, have you got any more people like that? That interview was great. And then they get confidence and then they book me on other podcasts and then I'm on all these different podcasts. At the end of the podcast, some people go to my webinar, they sign up so they're on my database and then a percentage of them buy. I've generated over $50,000 in sales just from doing podcast interviews and the amazing people that I've met. I've met people like Eric, I've met other podcasters with great products and I tell them, hey, I've got a webinar, I can do a webinar to your database and you can do a webinar to my database. So automatically I've built a relationship with guys like Eric in that way because if I just emailed Eric and said, hey, promote my webinar and I'll promote yours, Eric might say yes, he might say no because he doesn't know me. But now I've built up a relationship with Eric and I've heard what he does, I see that he does a podcast, that means he's professional, I can listen back to some episodes and go, wow, this guy knows his stuff. And Eric can approach me and say, hey Steve, do you mind promoting this webinar for me and I'll promote your one and we can do some sort of swap. Swap. Now even if Eric doesn't have a big database himself and he's just getting started, it doesn't matter to me. I'm still looking for stuff to sell and make money from my database, so I'll gladly promote him as long as the webinar fits my list and he gives me 50%. And that relationship is built whether you're running podcasts. If you've done podcasts already and you've interviewed people, you have every right to ask them to promote you because you have let them talk about the thing that they love talking about the most and that's themselves and their business. So I feel like I already know every person who interviews me on a podcast and I'm way more likely to work with them than I am with someone who just sends me an email. So while emailing works, I recommend you go out there, get interviewed, start a podcast, interview people on a podcast, vice versa. Both ways will work for you. We do both but one of those will work for you definitely.

Got it. Now when you're sending out these outreach emails to people that you want to do JV partnerships with, just walk us through what would Yeah, totally, dude.

Instead of just me coming off the top of my head, I do have a template. Let me dig up the template and I'll give you the exact wording that I use for you guys who are listening so you can actually be confident with it. And I got this template from an amazing woman who took a company from $700,000 to $4.3 million revenues in just a few years and she gave me this template and it's absolutely amazing. It goes something like this. This: Hi first name, I hope you are well. I'm a big fan of your work. My name is blah blah blah and I specialise in this area here, a short sentence about what you do. I recently created a webinar titled blah blah blah blah blah, How to Hire an A-Grade Team and Grow Your Business to $1 Million or whatever your title is, and I'm selling my product called Build Your A-Grade Team Mastery Program in this webinar. This is converting very well. Here are some statistics and numbers on the webinar. Overall conversion rate is 5% or 10%. The high dollar amount EPCs is this much, so earnings per click on what I sent to my database. The price point is a one-time fee of $497. The payout is $250 per sale, that's like 50%. The refund rate is less than 2%. And there is great content in there that your list will really appreciate and really And would you be interested in arranging a joint venture webinar to your list? I look forward to hearing from you. Kind regards. I love it.

We're going to have to steal that from you.

Oh, totally, dude, totally. I'll Skype it to you right now and you can just punch it into your— onto the site. So the follow-up to that, now most people are not going to answer you even if you know them, right? Even if you know someone, they're not going to answer because they're busy. They're busy promoting their own stuff, they're busy working on their own launch, etc., etc. What you do is follow them up, okay, with a phone call is the best thing. If you can't, you follow up with another email about maybe 5 days later. You follow up and you say something like, hey John, I'm not sure if you received my email below about the webinar. It really is an amazing webinar, your list is going to love it. I don't want to pester you, I don't want to bother you, but I don't want to take no for an answer because I know how good this is and how much value your list is going to get out of So please get back to me, let me know when we can do this. It's going to be amazing and I look forward to working with you. Alright, so again, they just— the email is underneath. If you can get them on the phone, even better. And just let them know that you're being pushy but you don't want to be— you don't want to take no for an answer. If they don't want to do it, you're giving them an out. Say, look, if you don't want to do it, just tell me no and that's it. I won't bother you ever again. But most guys, most guys, they don't want to tell people no. They don't want to tell people no because they know that you could have something great and they want to help people, most people. Some people are real— some people will never give someone new an opportunity because they've got their own little networks and whatever, and that's okay. They've got their own business, it's their prerogative, they can run their business how they run their business, but we'll always give someone new a try as long as they've got got a webinar that they've at least done, even if they've got small numbers, if I watch the webinar and look at the presentation, I think, well, that's good content and my list can benefit from that. And you know what, it's a bonus if we make some sales at the end. I'm going to give them a go. I'm going to fit them in somewhere. If they're bothering me for 6 months, it might take 6 months for me to be able to schedule it in, but if they're persistent enough to follow up for 6 months, they're the kinds of people that I want to work with. I don't want to work with someone that emails me once and then says, oh, joint ventures don't work, Steve. I sent 10 emails out and no one got back to me. Well, of course, you know what I mean? If Richard Branson and Donald Trump got rich on the first deal that they did, everyone would be a billionaire now. But that's what it takes. It takes persistence. Create a spreadsheet and maybe hire a virtual assistant to do some of this for you once you've set it up. Have a template she can copy and paste. She can find podcasters and stuff like that. For a couple hundred dollars a month, you can have someone doing it for you, and if you just get one every month, That could be $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 in sales on a webinar to their list, plus the database, plus the relationship, and it goes from there. Love it.

Okay, cool, man.

Awesome.

Now, what's one piece of advice you'd give to your 25-year-old self?

Get rid of the music business and start looking at internet marketing. Because I think there was dial-up internet when I was about 25, and we had a website and it would take half an hour to load. I would have said to myself, Just basically enjoy life more and don't take everything too seriously. Work hard, but find something that is— if you want to be wealthy, which I wanted to be free, I wanted to be financially free just to do music full-time. I didn't care about the channel. I would have just said to myself, find something that makes money and start investing in real estate younger. Building a business on the internet, looking at this internet stuff, spending more time on that. And while you're still doing your music, you can do both but have a backup plan. Love it.

And what's one must-read book you'd recommend to everyone?

I love The Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. It was the first book that I read where I understood the mindsets of different people who make money different ways. So it taught me to look at— when I'm interviewing someone for a position in the company, I know if they're an entrepreneur and they're going to leave in 12 months and they're doing the job just to get information and I'm okay with that sometimes. But sometimes I'm looking for someone who wants that job security, who wants the benefits, that wants to go on holidays, that wants to go home and not think about work and it's not their responsibility. And I need to know who they are. So I learned that from that book there, plus I learned about myself. Shifting from self-employed, doing everything myself, to hiring A-grade players, which is why I'm so interested in your webinar, Eric. Because it's like that transition from going from employee to self-employed mentality, doing everything yourself, struggling to hire people, and saying, I better just stay small at $500,000 because I can't find good people. Taking that step in the mindset from going from a self-employed to a big business owner like Richard Branson and that, that knows that you have to hire the right people around you so that you can leverage and make more money. Love it.

Cool. And you'll get a free copy of it, no worries. Last question for you, Steven, what's the best way for people to find you online? Here you go.

See, I told you, didn't I? See that? It pays off, right? If you want to learn more about webinars, webinars and I've got a cool thing called the Medical Center where I show you how to get other people, build webinars for them and you make 50% for life of all of their products, all their services for life. I'll show you that, it's called the Medical Center Model or Publisher Model. Plus I'll show you, I'll do a live demonstration with someone on my Million Dollar Template and fill it in on that webinar as well and you'll see someone presenting that and automating that as well. I'll show you how to automate it. All that plus a lot more. Did I sell it enough, Eric? Was that good?

That was perfect.

It's available for free at SteveEssa.com. I'm being a little bit jokey than I normally am, but I'm trying to teach you guys that this is what you do on a podcast. It's a win-win situation no matter what.

I love it. Cool, man. Steven, this has been massively, massively valuable. I think everyone's going to get a ton of value here. Everyone, this is Steven Essa. Steven, thanks again, man.

You're welcome, brother. Thank you, Eric.

Or had bad hires on your team? I personally lost over $840,000 on just one bad hire alone. So that's why I'm doing a free class called the Five Secrets to Avoiding Bad Hires That Can Cost You $50,000 Plus Each. All you need to do is to text bad hire, spell it out B-A-D-H-I-R-E, to 33444. That's double three triple four.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Growth Everywhere. If you loved what you heard, be sure to head back to growtheverywhere.com for today's show notes and a ton of additional resources. But before you go, hit the subscribe button to avoid missing out on next week's value-packed interview. Enjoy the rest of your week and remember to take action and continue growing. Thanks, Eric.