Free Workshop Strategy — Same Topic vs. Rotating Topics for FTA (free-to-attend webinars)

Kai, thanks for letting me record this. Go ahead with your question.

Yes. You mentioned before in another call that you were asking, do you offer a recurring topic in your free workshop or are there different topics? And this is right the question we have. I work together with Sandra. She's on the call too. And we ask ourselves, should it be always the same topic or should it be Or is it better to have different topics every month? Because I think the risk is that when we have different topics that the participants repeat to come and they get a full program. You know what I mean? Yes, I know. So this is the question we ask ourselves right now.

Yeah, no, it's a very good question. So I've done both before. Typically when I have the same free workshop, free webinar that I repeat again and again and again, it doesn't usually make sense to promote it to the same audience every month because the first month that you promote it, you get the most number of registrants because people have never seen this before. And then hopefully good attendees. The second month you do it, maybe it's okay, you get fewer registrants. Some of the people who couldn't attend last month will attend now this month. So that's good. The third time, now there's diminishing returns. It's like by the fifth time you do it, it's like, who is still gonna show up? Because it's the same audience and your audience, it's not like your audience is growing by the leaps and bounds every month. Now if it is, then yes, do the same one every month. Some people have a clever strategy for using ads, you know, paid ads to promote the same workshop. So therefore they're able to keep growing growing the, having a good number of registrants, you know, and that might be a strategy. So I would say that if you have the same, if you say, okay, I just wanna do the same workshop, we wanna keep on improving it, then you need to at the same time have an audience growth strategy, you know, because otherwise it doesn't make any sense. So either paid ads or net carry and collaborations, meaning, you know, bring your workshop to multiple other audiences. Other colleagues, you know, people who are willing to bring your workshop to their audience. I think that's great. I did that for years, same workshop. I just kept on improving it, different audiences every month, and I was able to get quite a good business from doing that. Okay. I think that's actually, to be honest, I think that's probably the best business strategy. Okay. Now for those of you who are saying, well, I am not as active or effective at growing my audience. I really am talking to the same audience every month. Maybe it grows a little bit over time. That's great. Then you have to do different workshops because you're not gonna get enough people attending. And, and different workshops means that they see the breadth of your expertise., and, and it keeps things interesting for them, right? And, and for yourself too. It's, it's more interesting to teach something different every month. Now, to your concern about, ooh, are they basically getting everything we know as a result? And why would they sign up for anything else, right? If they're just getting everything we know month by month by month. That, that's a real question. And I think the, the solution is how you structure each free workshop. This is important. So, tell me, tell me, tell me.

Can you tell me about the structure, about this structure?

Please, yeah.

Can you tell me about a right structure about these workshops? Because if I, or if we give everything, and we tend to give everything, Sandra and me.

Yes, because you care.

Yeah, yes. But what do you mean by if you structure this in a good way, this workshop?

Yeah, great. Okay. Oh my gosh. I, I have so much to say about this because I literally built up my business from $0 to $10,000 a month by teaching a monthly free workshop. And then my client said, you are so good at this. Can you teach us how you do that? What's the structure? So I ended up, I ended up having a whole other business teaching people how to do free webinars and get business that way. And it became something I did for years. Now, after doing that for a while, I had a crisis of conscience, okay? Because the way that I was doing it and teaching it was very much a sales pitch disguised as a free webinar. And raise your hand if you've ever been to one of those. You know, it's like, oh, a wonderful free— oh, looks like I'm gonna learn so many things from it, I'm gonna attend. And it turns out Whoa, it's basically a very clever sales pitch, you know, dressed up as a free webinar that's educational, etc. And I think that's in bad faith and that's not something we want. So I had a crisis of conscience after some time of doing that and I said, I'm gonna stop doing that. That's when I rebooted my whole business and, you know, that's part of my story. But so I know how to do it the sneaky way, okay? And then now I do it hopefully the more, genuine way. Okay, so I'll tell you this, I'll tell you both ways and you could decide what you wanna borrow and what makes sense to you. The sneaky, you know, effective sales pitch way is basically to structure the whole webinar as a myth-busting and case study experience. So you're really just prioritizing 3 things in the webinar. You're prioritizing credibility building, like look how great I am. And you do it in a graceful way by saying, well, I've worked with these clients and let me tell you this story after this story after this story, whenever possible. That's sort of credibility building through case studies, okay? Through case examples, stories. And you hopefully, if you're nice to them, you will teach them something through those stories so that even if they don't buy, they will be able to benefit from it., right? And then the second thing that's prioritized in a sneaky sales webinar is mythbusting. So mythbusting is basically, you come to understand your ideal client has certain myths about how to solve the problem that you help them solve. Maybe they have tried mainstream solutions that don't work and there's some myths attached to that. Maybe they haven't tried anything and there's some myths attached to why they don't get started because they believe it's not gonna work, or they believe, oh, this kind of thing is for this kind of person. It's not for me. Whatever myths there are, you raise those myths so that they go, yep, I believe that. And then you give them insight or stories to make them go, oh my God, I never thought of it that way. That's really profound. Like if you can give them aha moment after aha moment, then they're standing on the, they're sitting on the edge of the seat going, my God, I'm learning so much. Not really. They're not really learning anything, but they're learning how great you are and how smart you are, right? Because you know how to bust their myths. And maybe yes, maybe some of the myth busting has some teaching component and that's great. That's, that's the good part. But after aha moments and after seeing how great you are through the case studies, obviously they're ready to work. They're much more ready to work with you. And what I do is I have in the middle of my webinar, my sneaky webinar, in the middle of it I have a client, you know, I say, hey, I, I wanna, I wanna introduce you all to one of my clients, and who they're, they're going to tell you the story from their point of view, okay? And then the client says, oh, it's so great to work with George, and you gotta sign up for his program. And I've trained the client beforehand what to say, you know, they're telling their truth, but they also— I would say, please mention the program that you're in so that people can plant a seed that this is a really good thing. And I, and then, and then I'm, oh, thank you, Kai. You were so kind. Thank you so much for saying all that. You know, for those of you who wanna join the program that Kai is in, I wanna tell you by the end of this, if you sign up by the end of this webinar, I'm giving you this bonus and that bonus and this discount. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you my firstborn child, you know, by the, if you sign up by the end of this webinar, if you, if you like my firstborn child, if you don't, I'll give you, I'll give you, you know, something else. All right. So that's the, that's the sneaky sales pitch., right? It's like, oh, oh, I guess, oh, I gotta sign up by this. And then whenever someone signs up, I'm checking my email. My email is getting a notification. Oh, it looks like Daria, you just signed up. Congratulations. You get one of the spots of this webinar. Oh, looks like Anya just signed up too. Congratulations Anya. And these are real, these are real sales coming in. And I, and so that's part of the sales pitch is some sneaky bonus by the end of the webinar and naming people who signed up. You know, and so people feel like, oh, I, I don't, I don't wanna miss the bandwagon. Okay. So, okay. So that's the sneaky webinar method, right? The, the more authentic webinar method that I'm, that I'm doing now is basically this. I really do aim to teach them something useful, but I also am understanding that what I know If I try to communicate everything, you'll feel overwhelmed. You'll feel like, oh, I think it seems like I know everything now for the rest of my life. I don't need George anymore. When of course we all know— or same thing, Kai, you just gave me everything in the webinar. I don't need you anymore. But that's not true because you, you only taught me the symbols. You haven't taught me what the symbols really mean, okay? And you haven't taught me the nuances and the pitfalls and the how to really do it and the things that I'm gonna not know how to do. Not— I don't even know what I don't know. Okay, so that the danger of the free webinar is to make— is to give people the illusion that now they know everything about the topic. They really don't. Okay, so the— therefore the solution is to make sure you don't give them that illusion. Okay, which means you need to think about how can I give them an experience that feels really worthwhile even if they never buy from me. So this is the authentic part. This is the, you know, good faith part of a free webinar is even if they never ever, ever buy from me, how can this be such a good experience that they'll wanna talk about it with other people? And so you have to think about that. So, so, so that's, it's gonna be different for everybody. So how might you, Kai, structure and experience where they're like, that was a really good exp— and good experiences usually aren't flood of information. That's not a good experience. No, that's right. Yeah. Okay. You want to, because you, you think that flood of information makes you look smart and makes them feel cared for, but it doesn't do either. Well, it makes you look smart, sure, but does not make them feel cared for. I'm probably flooding you all with information right now, in fact, right? What's better is to acknowledge where they're at and to make them feel validated that where they're at is where they need to be. And the goal that they have is worth— as a worthwhile goal. Give them true optimism that they can get there. So that may be telling a story or telling them what general map is. I like to say this, you know how when you go into a city going to a town and you're a tourist, and sometimes you go to a tourist office, or sometimes you go to a restaurant, and they have those fun maps. Like, they, they— it's like, oh, the, the— this, this, um, fun museum is here. Oh, they have a water park here. Oh, they have a, you know, some, some landmark here. And it looks really fun. They make it draw— make it look fun, but it's not the entire city's map. You're like, you— if you try to use that map to navigate, you might get lost., but you see some of the fun things. Okay? Yeah. That's what you're trying to do in the introductory webinar. You're showing them the fun things along the way that they go, oh, I wanna take the journey. That looks, that looks like I want to take the journey and I need, I think I need a guide. I need a tour guide for to, to take the journey. You see what I mean? So you give them a fun map, but not the details of the map and oh, be sure, be careful. Don't go into this neighborhood. That's dangerous neighborhood there. You know, and maybe you do mention there's a dangerous neighborhood you might wanna met, you know, but so you tell them the why and the what in the free world. That's all you can really do. And to validate their experience and to give them true optimism, but to tell them the how is an illusion because they're gonna go away and hurt themselves, you know, with the tools they think they have. You gave them a sharp pair of scissors. Say, all right, good luck, I've given you the sharp pair of scissors, now go. And they're gonna hurt themselves, right? You see what I mean? So my free webinar now is actually shaped like this, and you all have seen this. And I do this once a quarter now. I used to do it— last, last year I did like 10 times, I think, or 8 times. And now I'm lazier, so I do it once a quarter. But you might want to do at least once a quarter, if not every month, okay? You think about your method and, and break it up into 5 modules or 7 modules, and you teach the first module for free. That's how I do it. You know, you know this, that's how I do it, right? Go, go to, go to georgekao.com/free to see how I do it. That's literally, if you go there, you sign up for it, that's literally my free webinar, how I do it. Look at how I shape it. Wow.

Well, George, thank you very much. Most of all, I take one insight with me. It's— we were talking about structures, but it's a matter of attitude and mindset. Yeah. How I approach.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's really okay to do multiple different topics every month as long as you structure it in a way that really validates the person, gives them a good experience. And let them know that there's more and genuinely let them know there's more because it's like if I were teaching the 5, which I am, I teach the 5-module course. I would want the paying students to experience the first module anyway. I actually do want them to have that first module. And if you don't wanna keep going in the paid course, you don't have to, you still get a good experience. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thank you very much, George.

You're welcome. And, and just a little bit more there. If you, if you're confused by how can I structure it this way, you can always talk to my AI about it. I have an AI that's trained on all of my blog posts and YouTube videos, and it's ai.georgekao.com. And you can work with my AI just to, to shape what that 5 modules— like, oh, I want to do a free webinar, but I don't want to overwhelm people. I want to give them a genuinely good experience. And here's my full method that I would teach in a 5-module course. What, what should the first module be that doesn't overwhelm people but really gives them a good experience. Yeah. Great.

Okay. Thank you so much, George.

Yeah. Thanks, Kai. Thank you.