#125 - The secret to making course sales over Christmas

Why do the sales have to slow down or stop in December? Why does it have to stop? Just because I'm not actively selling, not actively launching, not actively emailing or showing up live or doing any of that stuff. Like why does it have to stop? Because when you have a funnel, it doesn't.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online. But better, easier and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello everybody and welcome to episode 125 of the Doing It Online podcast. I'm your host Kate here from hellofunnels Co and today we are starting to get festive. Yes, we are definitely those people. The I've already started to pull out the Christmas decorations. I am so happy to be hearing Christmas carols playing in the supermarket. I love this time of year. No matter what you celebrate, there's so much going on for the holidays and festivities. I freaking love it. And I also love how we can make talking about how you can make the most of it in your business because that is what we want to talk about today. Because besides the festive fun and getting together with family and if you're anything like me, who's a chronic gift giver, all the online shopping, the looming feeling of the holidays can be a little double edged or double sided. Like in once on one hand you're going, yes, end of the year winding down, can't wait. And the other side, there can be this really strong feeling of dread around the okay, well, how am I going to be making money? How am I going to keep sales coming through? How what am I going to be doing to, you know, to cover that time period when for not every niche, some niches go bananas over Christmas, but for a lot of people where it does typically slow down and also it slows down because you want to have a break. It's not just because everybody else is busy or whatever and that can play a part in it as well. But typically we want to be able to enjoy the holidays. We want to take our foot off the gas, but we want to know that our business is going to be there when we, when we come back in and log back on and open up that laptop in January. Now, I know personally with my first few businesses that December, like I, you know, like I said, I love Christmas, but I used to hate the, like, I used to have so much dread around the paying bills and all that stuff in December. And I thought the solution, like, I thought I was really savvy and I was on top of it because I started saving for December like every month, January to November. I put money aside so that, you know, like some people save for Christmas presents. I was saving for December knowing that December would be a quiet month revenue wise and that I wanted to still make sure everything was covered and paid. I thought I used to think I was like such a super clever CEO doing that. But then I realized that actually, you know what, why do the sales have to slow down or stop in December and those that sort of like that real like two week period where most people, and I myself as well, like to be offline. Why does it have to stop? Just because I'm not actively selling or actively launching, not actively emailing or showing up live or doing any of that stuff. Like, why does it have to stop? Because when you have a funnel, it doesn't. And the last two years I've actually found like that period between Christmas and New Year's and I don't know if it's something around like New Year's resolutions or maybe people are getting like given gifts of cash for Christmas and they want to go and spend it and invest it on themselves and their business. I don't know. But I'm always surprised at how unquiet that period actually is when you are completely actually offline. When you're not doing anything live, you're not promoting anything live, everything is just on autopilot and is automated. And that is what having a, funny enough, a funnel does. Like, there's so many things that I love about funnels and we talk about it a lot. Like having a funnel is. It's sort of the closest way to adding in some a good level of certainty and reliability into your business that you can get as an entrepreneur, as an online business owner. It's that thing that kind of helps you to ride out the ebbs and flows. And we always talk about again, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while or if you're one of our lovely Ecourse empire members, you'll have heard us talking about the term of that financial freedom checkpoint. And that is a number that we get every single one of our clients to calculate. And that is like, what? How much money do you need to make reliably in your business to cover all of your expenses, paying yourself taxes and a little bit of A buffer. And that's like one of our first goals for their funnels is to get that checkpoint. Now, of course, you know this ebbs and flows and still some people might find that December is slightly quieter, but it's not dead, it's not gone. It's not like if you weren't launching, if you took a big couple of month break. So that's what I really want to talk today is like, how can you make the most of this opportunity that is here, that if you do not have a funnel yet, given that we are now getting into the chunky part of November, how can you make the most of it? How? Like, is there still time to add a funnel? The answer is yes. And if so, how do you do it in a way that's as, as time efficient? And like, let's face it, everyone's pretty busy this time of year. That's as quick and easy and simple as possible. Before we do, dive into that, a little like audience participation question and I'd love it if you could DM us the answer. But I would love, love, love to know if sort of like this time last year you were mentally hard on your to do list. Like, yep, next year I'm going to get organized and next year is going to be the year that I get a funnel up and running. If that was you, please, like, either tag us, do a story, DM us at HelloFunnels, let us know. I have a feeling that you won't be alone, because it is. Funnels are one of those things that people do tend to because it's not seen as like this urgent quick fix that people do tend to put off over and over and over again. But when you do actually get them into your business and see the difference they make and all that, like, anyway, I won't, I won't ramble. But yes, I would love to know if that was on your stylist and also if you actually did it, if you got around to do it or if it is still on your to do list for next year. And if it is, let's fix that. Let's get this off your to do list. Finally get this amazing asset into your business in time for Christmas, in time to hopefully make you some sales through the holiday period, Whether, no matter what you're celebrating, whether it's Hanukkah Christmas and there's a whole lot of amazing other celebrations happening this time of year, whether you're religious or not, if you're taking time with your family, you're wanting to Take time off. Then you need to have a funnel and you need to have a funnel that works, right? So, so let's dive into how we're going to do this. Now, just so you guys know, and this is a little top secret thing and we only just announced it to our amazing members, but we are actually going to be running a exclusive Ecourse Empire Sprint around doing just this. We're doing a four week sprint for all of our members in Ecourse Empire. It starts on Monday, November 21, which is only a few days away. And we are going to be going through this step by step together. We are going to be breaking it down, making it as simple as possible, making sure like we are so aware of how busy everyone is this time of year, but also how great it's going to feel when this is done. We are taking out all the fluff, we're making sure it is just the most important pieces and we'll kind of COVID go through that in a second what they are. And of course we're always, as we always do, we've got templates, we've got emails, swipe files, we've got everything like as much as like 80% done for you as we possibly can to make sure that this is a quick, easy, easy as possible and as painless as possible experience for you to finally get that funnel freaking done. What are the steps? How do you do it? First of all, like the most important thing is you need to pick the right funnel. Okay, so it's not a one size fits all scenario. There is no one funnel for everybody. This is not Lord of the Rings. You need to choose the right funnel for you, for your offer. And also in this instance, based on the fact that it is a busy time of year and I know not many people have a whole bunch of spare time, you need to choose a funnel that's going to allow you to get it set up quickly because that's the goal here. We want it done for Christmas. Number two, and again, bearing in mind that we're doing this to get it set up for the holidays so that it's, it's in and it's done, is that you need to make sure you are working smarter and not just harder here. So not about adding more work to your plate, but helping you to really embrace reusing all the amazing assets that you already have in your business. And you'll be so surprised if you sat down and listed what you already have. Like if you've been in business for any time at all, you most likely have so many amazing assets that you can use here. Again, really important to choose the right ones because things that work live don't always work when automated. So you definitely want to make sure you have some guidance there, which is exactly what we're going to do inside this sprint. But we're gonna. So inside the sprint we're gonna get everyone to do an asset audit as one of the first things to go through, pull that stuff together and to sort of realize this amazing bank of assets that they have and help them to choose the right ones to use for this. Funnel number three, you need to write a killer email sequence and it doesn't have to be a super long one. Again, we're talking about quick and dirty action here guys. The email sequence that we're taking everyone through is about seven to 10 days long, roughly the period of the holiday season. Right. And of course, as with everything, we're going to provide basically a Mad Lib style email template that you can grab, update, get up and done. The goal is that you should be able to have this thing completed in an hour or two. Number four, you go set up your tech. Now believe it or not, this is not as difficult as a lot of people worry that it's going to be. Setting up the tech part of the funnel is actually usually one of the most simple pieces, particularly if you are in ecourse empire because we give you one click install template leads, you're going to map out this funnel, you're going to create, find the assets you need, you're going to write the emails and you've got all that sort of like half done for you anyway or more than half done in some cases. And then you're going to click a button and you're going to have the automations you need in your account and then you just copy and paste those emails across, like really not difficult. And if you have someone on your team, you can get them to do it, they're welcome to come in as well. Step number five is you need to know the numbers to watch. What we really love to do with any funnel is we test it to your existing audience first. You almost like run like this little mini promo to your audience to get you a few sales before Christmas bonus. And then you we're going to give you the milestone trackers to be able to go, okay, now I know that this worked or this didn't work and if it worked, if it's hitting it within those milestones, then step six is to start fueling that funnel to start filling it with amazing clients to be and, and again, given the time of year, the strategies that you want to use to. Because you want this to be on autopilot, you don't want to be having to do a bloody live reel every day. Right? This is not the time of year for that. Unless you want to. I mean go nuts if you love it, but most people don't. We need to do this automated and of course because it's a new funnel and we're still testing it, we don't want you to be spending a whole ton of money. We're going to. We've got a bunch of both paid and free options but, but all automated options. We're not talking about any of the manual stuff here. We just wanna make sure that you have people coming in that you are making the most of this time and of the people who are coming through, but doing it in a totally hands off way. And then step seven, the final step is to go and pour yourself some eggnog or whatever your festive drink of choice is. Personally I like eggnog with a little bit of Bailey's just saying. And relax. Your funnel has got your back. You finally got it freaking done. But if this sounds good, if you wanna come and take these seven step, all you have to do is like right now, hit pause, head on over to ecoursempire.com or go to hellofunnels.com, both of them will get you there. Links in the show notes, click apply, get your application in. We are fast tracking applications because we know we do kick this off very soon and not everyone listens to the episode the day that it lands. Apply now. Even if you're applying and it's past the start date, don't worry, you can still jump in and catch up. Even if you're a few days behind. That'd be totally fine. And we can't wait to welcome you into ecourse empire and help you get your funnel finally freaking done. Alrighty guys, that's it from me this week. I will be back same time next week with more funnelly goodness. Until then, keep doing what you do and I'll see you online. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let let Kate show you exactly how today@Stealmyfunnel.com.