#87 - Have an offer that sells but can’t seem to scale? (Part 4/5)

I love when these two pieces are in play and they're working nicely because the speed that people can grow when you have those is just crazy.

This is the Doing it online podcast with your host serial entrepreneur six and seven 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 it.

Hello. Hello everybody. It is Kate here from hellofunnels Co. And welcome to episode number 87 of the Doing it online podcast. Now today is actually part four of our Spectral Spectral. I'm already stumbling over my words of our special five part series where we are going through the five most common places. I see people get stuck as they start their business and they grow. These are like really, really common areas. People hit a ceiling or they plateau and the actual action plans, the things you need to really focus on to bust through them, to move through them. Now we are up to number four. Number four is, well, it's kind of a fun but very frustrating place to be and that if you are here then you already have an offer. You already have so many pieces in place you feel like you are. It should be, the momentum should be kicking in any minute now. But it's not like you go through your list in your head. You're like, I'm doing all the right things. Like things are growing. I'm getting more people on my list and my following. I'm got an offer and when I launch it, it sells but I can't seem to sell more of it. I can't seem to grow. I'm feel like I'm sort of just stuck and it doesn't seem to matter how much harder I work or what new things I try. It's like the wind, the wheels, sorry, they're just spinning and that's super frustrating. I've been stuck here myself with, with a previous offer. I was like, surely, you know, like I was, I knew the steps of like I followed them. I'm like, I created a great offer, I validated it. I creating content. I'm doing all of the things. People are loving this offer. Okay, so now it's just time to hit the gas. And you go to hit the gas and nothing really happens or changes. And you try all of these things and it's like becomes this spaghetti throwing competition but none of it's sticking. And this is actually one of the Reasons that I created our program Ecourse Empire, because from my own experience and then from coaching so many other people who have also been at this point and then seen what kind of needs to happen for those gears to reconnect again and things to start growing again and to bust through this plateau, I. I've realized that it's actually, it's no one thing, and that's why the spaghetti throwing thing doesn't work. It's actually to get movement and momentum here. It's about having a whole bunch of things and luckily, like, you already have most of them, but having a series of systems, or what I like to call an ecosystem, actually all set up and all feeding into each other and growing each other and becoming this, like, snowball of, like, as this one gets bigger, that one feeds this one, this one, and it just becomes faster and faster and faster and bigger and bigger and bigger. But if you don't have all of the pieces in this ecosystem, then the gears don't connect, they don't touch and things don't move and they don't grow. That is what I'm covering off in today's episode. If you are not at this stage yet, if you're like, oh my gosh, this sounds amazing, I wish that I was had a product and my problem was like, I can't, you know, I'm already selling it. Well, how do I sell more of it? I would love to be there. There's probably a more relevant episode to you in the last couple of episodes. Feel free to dive back, go listen to those, or hey, jump in, listen to this one too. And then at least you'll know and be prepared for when you do hit this phase, which you will, which I have so much faith in you and what you're doing, and I know you will get there and you'll be just as frustrated as the rest of us when you do. So don't worry. But at least you'll have, hopefully the prior knowledge from this episode that you won't stay stuck there for long. Let's do it, guys. Let's dive on in. Okay, guys, let's talk ecosystems. This is one of my favorite things to talk about, and it's one of the things that actually really made such a huge impact on my own business. And like I said, it's one of the reasons we created our Ecourse Empire program was I had a couple of programs that were each helping people out with like, one small part, like one very important part, or. But it was giving them like one gear for an engine or one puzzle piece. And you'd see them, they'd come in and they would create whatever maybe it was creating an amazing webinar, an amazing webinar funnel for their program. And that would get jump them up to, you know, to this next level. And then they're like, okay, now I'm stuck again. Where do I get this next thing that I need for the next bit of momentum? This ecosystem that I developed is something that we implemented in our own business and which literally doubled our business in a year, finally got us over that 750 bigger mark. And, you know, we're still growing exponentially each year and my clients are using it and just freaking loving it as well. So this is what this is like. This is the good stuff. I hope you have a pen. This is what we're going to dive into today. You need six things in place to have this ecosystem. And like I said, the first few you should already have. If you are at this stage already, then you've definitely ticking off at least three of these boxes. So number one is a healthy. Yes. Offer. So that's an offer that is easy to sell. If you don't have that one yet, listen to last week's episode. We went right into that there. Number two is you have a consistent content system. So you are out there, like, I don't need to tell you guys about this. You're further along enough in business to know the importance of showing up, of creating content that gives value and connection and doing it regularly. It doesn't have to be every freaking day. You don't have to kill yourself doing it. But you do need to have a system. You do need to have a schedule and you need to stick to it. It's about building. It's one of those slow burns over time. But if you don't have that in place, it does make it really, really hard to grow because then you don't have that longer running trust. You also don't have all of these amazing pieces of content out there in the world attracting new clients for you that are organic, AKA free, rather than if you don't have that, then you have to rely really heavily on paid ads, which we never recommend. Paid ads are amazing, but they don't want to be the only thing that's driving traffic to your website. You want to have. So hells yes. Offer and a consistent content system. So hopefully you like tick, tick. Yeah, all over those. Number three. And again, I'm assuming you have this because if you're listening to this episode it's about when you have an offer and it sells well, but you just can't sell more of them. The third thing you need is you need to be able to launch well. You need to know how to launch in a way that converts for your offer, your audience and the little extra piece I'll add to that, and that's potentially what a lot of you don't have yet. So it's like your first little to do is that these launches, what we call rinse and repeat launches, these are launches that not creating something brand new every time. Yeah, do that sometimes, but not every time. That needs to be. A lot of what you're doing in your launches is being reused. That your the time that you and hopefully your team are spending setting up these launches, running these launches is minimized and the effectiveness is maximized because you know what you are doing works because you've done it before. What you're doing instead every time you launch is you're making it better and better and increasing the conversions each time rather than creating something brand new. Always feeling like all you're doing is creating stuff for a launch. You have no time to do anything else. That's where like the first place I see a lot of people get stuck is like every launch is a brand new launch. Everything in their launch is done from scratch. Please don't do that. Please start repurposing, reusing and getting some systems in so that you can have people come in and help you do your launch. Like I just ran a launch and I literally had to show up for like it was all pre done for me because we, we'd done it before. Sure, we improved a few things, we updated a couple of things, but that was stuff my team was able to do. And all I had to do up was show up and do our live Q&As each day inside our workshop. The rest of it was able to be scheduled and done for me. And that is how launching should be as close to making a launch a funnel as possible. And that's what is my goal for launches, is that they should feel like funnels. Number three, how do you freaking know how to launch your offers? You know how to sell them, you know how to convert them. And now 3A is that you're going to start to dial this in. You're going to start to systemize it, outsource it and take a lot of that time piece off your plate. You don't have to launch less, you just have to be less involved in the creation of the Launches and the running of the launches. All right, number four, and this is where I come in is you need to have a strong core funnel of your most funnel friendly offer. So this is usually whatever your signature offer is. Sometimes though, again, depending on your how your business is set up, how your office is set up, how many offers you have, how often you launch. But maybe a different one may make sense to be your core offer that goes into a funnel. And that's why I don't believe in a one size fits all anything because everyone's business is so different. But you need to have. Well, first of all you need to know what is that offer that is going to make sense to be in your funnel. And then once you know that what is the type of funnel that makes sense for that offer? It's not, doesn't go the other way around. Guys, you need to know like different funnels work for different types of offers, niches, price points, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure you've heard me say that a bunch of times. So why do you need this? Why is this so important? Why is this like essential for you to be able to get that momentum? Well, because this is going to help to fill in the gaps, not just fill in the gaps between your launches and take pressure off those launches, which frees you up mentally and creatively to come up with the next big amazing thing that is going, that next big idea which is going to take you to that next level. But the other thing which I think is really important and it's one of the purposes of this funnel for us, and one of the first things we get people who work with us to be working towards is we actually want you to have a funnel that covers all of your monthly expenses, including paying yourself. This is what we call our funnel, our financial freedom checkpoint or our ffc. And when you have that in place, like when you've sat down, calculated how much that needs to be and then you have set up a funnel and it just means that every month like it's the closest thing for a self employed person or a business owner to getting it as a paycheck or getting a salary. Because you know that every single month all of those essentials are going to be paid. It just takes the stress off so much. And like I said, the having a funnel, the purpose of a funnel is about so much more than just sales and revenue. It's about that extra level of surety or reliability of security that us creative people need to really be able to thrive. There's two wins here. There's a financial win, which is always good. And then just means also that your launches that, you know, when you start doing launches, all of a sudden you're going to have more budget that you're happy to put into your launches. And you know, these launches work well because they're rinse and repeat launches. You can invest more in them, make them better, get more eyeballs into them, make more sales. Like, you can see how this all starts to play into each other. Like, it's not just about making your launches work better. And waiting for that one big amazing launch is going to change everything. It's about having a funnel that works and supports you and makes your launches better. And then also having these launches then like the revenue from those launches kind of become your cream on top because your everything else is already covered. And yeah, it's. I love when these two pieces are in play and they're working nicely because the speed that people can grow when you have those is just crazy. Number five, because that's. That's not it. That's, you know, that'll get you a bit of the way, that'll get you moving, but we want to keep you moving. We want to do this momentum to stop. We don't want you to then get at the next level and get stuck, Stuck again. So that next piece that you need is, you need to have a way of making your marketing pay for itself when appropriate. It's not always appropriate. Sometimes, depending on what the goal of your marketing is, it's going to be more beneficial for you to go, all right, we're just going to assign this budget and say, this is going to be spent for this. But we know we got funnels. We know our launches work. It all pays off down the road anyway. But for things like your launches, for things like going at the front of your core funnel, which you've got up and it's tested and you know that it works. If you can make that marketing pay for itself, for example. And this is why this is so important, is this is really common thing that happens and this is probably what has happened and why you haven't been able to scale at this point and why you have got stuck and are feeling frustrated is that people have this belief that, okay, once I'm at this point, once I have a product and it sells, okay, how I grow, this is easy, right? All you do is you spend more money on ads. Okay? The simple equation of I know people want to buy this product, therefore I just need more people the fastest way to get more people is with ads. So I'll do that. And therefore one plus one should equal two. But it doesn't. And what actually happens as you spend more money on ads is that actually because of the way the Facebook algorithm works is when you say to Facebook, okay, give me more people, give me more people. To do that, they usually have to start giving you more people, but these are more people who are less likely to buy. Like Facebook, they want to please you once. As long as you've set things up correctly and it knows the kind of conversion that you're going for, it will try and show you and show your ads to the people that are the most likely to buy. If you go, okay, well I want more of those. I want 10 times more, I want 20 times more, I want whatever. Eventually there's going to be a point and everyone's is slightly different. When all of a sudden it actually becomes more expensive to make the sales that you were making before. And then what happens is that all of a sudden people quite quickly can find themselves in a position where, hey, when I used to make 20 sales a month, I was really profitable. Now I make 25 and I'm losing money. So we never want you to get there. We don't. This, this is the purpose of this fifth piece is like, yes, let's start making our marketing pay for itself. And that includes things like, and which there's again no one size fits all here, guys. There is different strategies work for different strategies, different businesses, different offers. But it is things like having a self liquidating offer or what we call a mini but mighty offer. But again, they are not always appropriate for everyone and definitely please don't do them if you don't have a core funnel already. They are. The magic of those comes in when there is a core funnel and it works. Or it could be having a tripwire, it could be doing paid workshops instead of free workshops, but again they are only appropriate for certain types of businesses at certain times. It could be doing having a really amazing all access pass or VIP upgrade that goes onto any free challenges or summits or whatever you're doing. There's lots of different ways that this can play out, but the goal is that again it's taking this pressure off of your launches of your marketing. Because if your marketing is paying for itself, if it essentially costs you nothing to go out and get more eyeballs, then whatever you are selling is instantly more profitable, even if you're not selling more of them. And because it doesn't Cost you anything to get more eyeballs. And you can then get even more again and again. And it doesn't matter if you don't have the absolutely most dialed in funnel or whatever like that, because you're not. You're. You're gaining your money back right away and you are growing at no cost to yourself. Does that make sense? I feel like this needs to be drawn out on a whiteboard. But, you know, I've talked about this a whole bunch, guys, but it's like, you know, when you are planning a launch, again, if you're at this stage in business, I know you've done some launches and you realize how many steps there are in launches and how long and quite often far in advance, you actually start spending money and investing in your launch. And quite often it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna put down, spend $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, whatever it is, to get some new leads in ready for my launch. They're gonna go through all these steps and hopefully in about four to six weeks time, the enough of them will buy to then make it worth having spent this money in the first place. Where this idea kind of flips all that on its head is you go, all right, well, I know I want to get this number of people. I'm going to spend that $20,000, and guess what? I get it right back. That doesn't all of a sudden become this debt hanging over whatever promotion or whatever you're doing. It's actually money that can be reinvested into your next launch, or it can be reinvested into even more eyeballs. This is where it makes it just a very different proposition. When you're not like just spending and crossing your fingers and hoping and waiting and hoping you can make it through that lull until the revenue comes back in and the sales come in. When you're getting it straight back, you give Facebook a dollar, it gives you back A$10, then it's a very, very different way of doing business. Trust me. Okay, number six, our lucky last one. And one that is so overlooked. But when you have these pieces in play, like this is like you now have this beautiful engine and it's just cheering and. Right. And it's growing, and it's growing. It's going faster and faster or whichever analogy you want to put on it. Now, the last piece, the cream on the top, is how can you. Without spending any more on Facebook, even though. Or whatever ads you're using, even though they're paying for themselves, without actually Getting a single extra customer, how can you increase profit? This is about having the right strategies in place, the right systems in place. And again there are a bunch, there are heaps of different ones and they the right combo for you is going to be different from everybody else. And this is why I love sitting down and mapping this stuff out with our EcoSysempire clients. Because it is about having that right combination, putting the right pieces in place in the right order. That's going to be the right for your offer for your business. But when you have these little profit maximizers added in which again a system so they're automated that once you create them, set them up, they're like they're done and dusted. They can be adding an extra 10%, 20% on top as pure profit with you having to do nothing. And again that can be reinvested or it can just be money in your pocket. But all of that, that little 20% here, 50% there, that taking away the chunk that was previously allocated as a marketing expense because your marketing pays for itself. All of that stuff combines to crazy, crazy growth. And these are the pieces that you need. And these is literally what we step you through inside Ecourse Empire. I'm pretty sure there are still some spots left in this intake guys. I'm not a hundred percent sure because I am prerecording this and it is still a couple of weeks to go and the numbers were filling up fast. But if you'd like to find out more about it, just head to ecoursempire.com all the info is there. It's application only guys. If you are interested, make sure you apply. Make sure you then hang by your inbox so the second you get your acceptance letter and you can click through save on those last spots And I'm super excited to see you inside the program and help you to put this into place. Help you to customize this for you and your business and help you to start getting that freaking momentum that I know you really want. Thank you so much guys. Thank you for joining me as always. I can't wait to come back for next week for our final one in this five part series. Until then guys, keep doing what you do and I'll see you online. Bye.

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