#228 - What the big names aren't telling you

So where does the profit come in? The profit comes in with the cross sells. So all the stuff that happens beyond the cart, the other promotions that happen, that's where you start getting profit. But you have to have a lot of people coming in the front end. You've got to make sure you're doing that and you are breaking even and then you have to have it dialed in, cross sells in the back end for this to actually work.

Okay, clearly I am no good at keeping secrets, but that's actually a win for you because today's episode is actually taken from our private podcast, the Secret Funnel Files. So that means you are getting exclusive access to something that is normally just for our private podcast subscribers. Now this is a really juicy episode, which is why I was so excited to share it. So if you jump in and listen and you want more, if you want to dive into the Secret Funnel files where we pull back the curtain on exactly what is working with the biggest names in the industry, how they're implementing it, how you can implement it too. To have start making amazing sales on your online courses, all you need to do is click the link below or head to hellofunnels co secret and there is another four more episodes ready for you to dive in and binge right now. So jump in, listen and then I'll see you inside.

If online business was a reality show, this would be the recap podcast because inside this episode I'm going to be pulling back the curtain and breaking down the exact numbers, strategies, the dirty laundry, the works of how some of the biggest names in the business are using these exact below the surface strategies that I shared in the last episode and how they are using them to massively boost the sales and profit in their business. Now I want to kick things off with a quick disclaimer because first of all I want to say that the businesses that I will be discussing in this episode, first of all, I have so much respect for these businesses. I'm sharing them with you today because they are fantastic examples of how to do it right and I absolutely take my hat off to them. The second thing I want to say for full transparency is that while I have seen behind the scenes of many, many multi six and seven figure businesses, I have not personally worked in the majority of these businesses. So I'm not here in any way to take credit or say that I'm affiliated. I'm just sharing these as examples based on my 17 plus years of online experience. Okay, let's dive in.

So let's pull back the curtain Right up front with the goat. The greatest of all time, I would say, when it comes to, you know, particular types of online course selling, and that is Amy Porterfield. Now Amy Porterfield, I'm sure she needs no introduction. She has been in the online space for I think 15 plus years. She's earned over a hundred million dollars in her business in that time. To give you sort of like the recap, the top line Amy has two signature products and a membership which is for her alumni students only. She runs two big live launches a year plus she has regular affiliate promotions for her friends throughout the year as well. And the business model that she uses is one that inside our program ecourse empire we call the continuity. And this is because the way that her programs all kind of lead to to her back end offer, which is her alumni only offer, also known as a continuity offer. Now I ran the numbers and this is based on things that Amy has publicly shared on your Instagram podcast, interviews, et cetera. So in 2023, Amy's business earned approximately $20 million and that's US dollars of that. Around 10 million was from her two big live public launches, including one which was $7 million which came from her massive her digital course academy launch. Then another 1.2 million was from affiliate sales. So that leaves about $8.8 million, which is around about 45% of her revenue unaccounted for. So where does this come from? It comes from those below the surface strategies, AKA funnels that we talked about in the last episode. So there's two main funnels that Amy uses that I want to dive into today. So, so the first of all is a front end funnel. So yesterday I sort of briefly explained this, but I'll go into a bit more detail now. So a front end funnel, that is a funnel whose purpose is to bring in new subscribers and also through doing that to make enough sales to cover the cost of any paid ads that you run. So Amy doesn't have a low ticket offer here. She's not out there selling a $7 offer or a $37 offer. Her front end offer is actually her 997-list- builders academy course. So she has a webinar that she runs ads to year round unless she's launching. So she's running ads and she's also driving organic traffic from her podcast, from her socials, from, you know, her website to her webinar year round. And she has publicly said that her webinars convert between 2 to 10% depending on whether it's cold or warm. Traffic, which is pretty much within the standard benchmarks. The 10% is pretty good for selling Evergreen though. So she's definitely, like I said, she's the goat when it comes to webinars. Now the important thing to note here is, like I said, that she is running this year round. She is growing her list year round. It's not just in, you know, the eight to six weeks prior to her launch when she kind of switches to running ads to straight lead magnets because that's what most people see and that's what most people replicate. She has been growing her list, you know, 24, 7, 3, 6, 5 through this funnel. She's been paying the ads, which means that she's able to do it at quite a good speed and velocity. Those people have come in, they've gone through a indoctrination sequence so they're warmed up, they know who she is, they know what she sells. And then on top of that she would have also because she's doing this at, at scale, she would be adding a lot of customers for her entry level product to her list as well. Which means that when it comes to launch time she' got a lot of people who've had an initial experience with her and who are like, okay, that was great, what's next? And that's where she's like, hello, welcome to Digital Course Academy. So that's what brings me to the second type of funnel that Amy uses, which is her VIP upsell or cross sell funnel. And so what that is, it is either an automated or can be done live but it's usually rinse and repeat. So as in it's the same emails in the same sequence. So I count it as a funnel because whether you put people through an automation or you just send them same emails, it's same same, you know, usually what's going to happen, it's pretty reliable. So what Amy does is she has emails that go out and that invite people from one product to the next. So you she'll invite people who've joined and done her list building course to come and join her create an online course course. And she also has an email sequence that invites people who've done her online course, her digital course academy, to then come to her continuity offer, her alumni only offer which is her membership. So that is her VIP upsell and cross sell funnel. Now from what she said publicly, she makes 25% of her annual revenue from those cross sells and upsells. So that's a pretty big chunk which can be attributed to a few either mostly automated or at least repeated email sequences. Okay, so up next in the final files, I want to pull back the curtain on Jenna Kutcher. Now, as a lot of you know, years ago, Jenna Kutcher and I used to both be in a mastermind together. So I have had the chance to see behind the scenes of Jenna Kutcher's business and to also help her out with one of her funnels. Now with the numbers I'm going to share here, Jenna doesn't actually share her numbers publicly online like Amy does. So as far as like top line wise, I believe she's at around the 10 million a year mark. But I'm not a hundred percent sure. It could be higher, could be lower. But you know, like I said, I do sort of know what the behind the scenes of her funnels do look like. So top level of her business, Jenna has five products available, all available evergreen, but she runs a majority of them with a live cohort at least once per year. She does four big quarterly live launches. She also does affiliate launches and promotions. She's got a huge social media following, email list and podcast with literally like millions of followers, subscribers, all that stuff. She's got a really big audience. And Jenna's business model is one that inside the ecosystem we call the library. This is because she shares multiple similar level offers throughout the year. So let's go to the below the surface strategies. Now like this is stuff we can see on top is like launches, it's big followings. But what's the stuff that actually makes it work? So the two main below the surface funnels or strategies I wanted to share, number one is an email engine. So Jenna has, well last time I checked she had a six month email engine. So that is six months worth of emails and promotions with roughly like each month themed around a different theme or topic, which then had a related promotion behind it. So given that Jenna adds 10, 20, up to 50,000 new subscribers to her email list a month depending on whether she's promoting or not. I've heard her share all of those numbers at different points. If you add to that that the standard funnel, like even a not great funnel, converts at about 2% the numbers of how many sales she's making from that funnel particularly cause it's a longer funnel. I love that she's got a longer funnel here. That's one of the strategies that we help people build out. We prefer more like we think 60 days is pretty good. Six months, it's kind of, you know, that's next level but because you've got a longer funnel, I would assume her funnel is converting at a much higher rate than 2%. So you could imagine how many sales that is bringing in day after day, week after week. And then the second sequence that I know for a fact that Jenna uses and that works really well for her, is a downsell sequence. Now, the reason I know this is because that I actually helped her out with this when we were in our mastermind together. So the downsell sequence, as I mentioned, this is literally a rinse, repeat sequence of emails that you can, again, you can send them live or you can send them automated. They can be used with live launches, or they can be used with evergreen funnels. And when done right, they should convert between 10 to 20% of people to additional sales. So it's an extra 10 to 20% of sales on top of the sales that you've already made. So just think about that. Like if you've just run a promotion, if there was like a switch that you could flick and you got an extra 20% sales on top, literally not having to do anything, wouldn't you want to do that? And then think about it now at the scale of someone with a business like Janice, who's got literally millions of followers, like, that simple 5 email sequence has added, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to her business. Again, if you look at, like how those pieces come on top of each other and, you know, I know for a fact she's probably got others of the five in there as well. You can see how this starts to make up a much bigger picture, a much stronger picture, and a much more, I would say, interesting picture than what we're just seeing with those big quarterly launches. All right, next, and the final lovely lady that I'm pulling back the curtain on today is Evelyn Weiss. Now, I hope I'm saying her name correctly. I have a friend who has this last time. I know people pronounce it different ways. So Evelyn, she's not been on the scene as long as Jenner and Amy, but she is making big moves. And she is the queen of what I call the sweet and low business model, where you have basically you've got multiple. And I'm not talking one or two, I'm talking a lot of low and some cases very low ticket offers. And they all are designed to sort of like cross sell and upsell between themselves and upsell to each other. So above the surface, top line, what we're seeing is you will see so many low ticket offers, you're probably Thinking, how is this woman doing anything else other than creating offers? And this is very common with this type of business model. There's also, and sometimes these are kind of hidden behind the scenes, but she actually uses them front of house. I think she has three or four multiple low ticket communities. So these are communities from $7 to $49 a month. And then the other thing that you'll see really common with this business model is lots and lots and lots of ads. Now, luckily for Evelyn, she was formerly a Facebook ads manager. So she's kind of got the leg up there on running all the ads and obviously with the ads, the big ads budget. So that's what people see, that's what people replicate, and that's what people get into trouble. So now we go below the surface to what's actually happening, actually making this model work. So the two that I wanted to really highlight, because again, she's a very smart lady, she's got multiple of these strategies in place. But the two that I want to talk about here were in cart upsells and also cross sells. So in cut upsells, what I mean by that, that's where you land on someone's checkout and it might have an order bump. So that's like a little box. It's like, hey, you want to get this great thing? Just tick this box or press this button will get added to your order. And then after you've actually put your order through, you land on a page and there's another like limited time only like get this now or you can't get it again. You know, usually something that's discounted or maybe something that isn't normally available, like some kind of really juicy offer. Those are your in cart upsells because they're happy happening in the checkout, in the shopping cart. For Evelyn, she has upsells from basically from her $7 community, several a month community. Her initial offers are $7, $9, things like that. And then her upsells go to $49 a month community. And then she also has a mid range signature DIY program which is about $800. Now once you're inside her online learning portal, she also has a lot of cross sells, which is the second strategy. So that's where sort of even within the actual, sort of like curriculum, within the actual pages, there's lots of FOMO happening. There's lots of, oh, okay, you can do this here. But if you want to take the next step, click here and watch my webinar for the next step. Or Click here to upgrade. And it's also really common at this point where people might have like a, an online shop that's just for people who've purchased something else. So that's where using something like a tool like school or circle or something like that, so people can see the other offers on display and if they don't have them, they can sort of get that FOMO and click and buy. So those things are where the bulk of what's her revenue is happening. And I want to explain why. So the thing that most people don't understand is that low ticket offers, like $7 offers, $9 offers, things like that, they are not designed to be profitable. People make the very incorrect assumption here and think, oh, because it's only $7, it's going to cost me like no money to promote it. I'm, you know, it's going to be able to sell it with so much ease. And that's actually not the case. It still takes a bit of skill to be able to still sell a $7 offer, believe it or not. And the thing is, with that $7 offer, if you were just selling it on its own, is it more than likely it would actually be being sold at a loss? So if you didn't have the in cart upsells, you would actually probably be going out there and paying Facebook $40 to make $7 back. Obviously depends on your niche, but that's pretty common kind of numbers. So this is where the incart upsells comes in. So obviously those order bumps, those immediate upsells, they all get added to the average order value. And the goal of them is to break even. So again, if people are looking at this strategy, even if they saw the order bumps, if they saw the upsells and they replicated that and they're like, great, this is how I'm gonna make so much money. It must be so easy to sell this $7 thing. And they just had these pieces in place. The goal is to break even. Most people struggle to even do that. And so you've gone and you spent all this time and settled this stuff up. And actually the strategy you're following wasn't even designed to actually make you any money. It was designed to break even. It was designed to pay for your ads. So where does the profit come in? The profit comes in with the cross sells. So all the stuff that happens beyond the cart, the other promotions that happen, that's where you start getting profit. But you have to have a lot of people coming in the front end. You've got to make sure you're doing that and you are breaking even and then you have to have it dialed in cross sells in the back end for this to actually work. I want to just take a second now and I want to get you to imagine any of these businesses that I've just discussed. If they just had those top of the iceberg strategies, then if you think about it, they would have way smaller lists that would have way less reliability and they would have pretty much no profit. Which is why those below the surface strategies, AKA funnels, they're not just a nice to have, they're an essential to have at any business size or stage, no matter your list size, right? No matter how far you are into business, they are so essential. And in the next episode, I'm actually going to help you to break down and figure out how to start implementing one these strategies. The right one of these strategies, even if you're just right at the start of your business and how to start making these big impact below the surface, AKA Evergreen sales. Right away. Alrighty guys, I will see you inside. Bye.