Yoga Marketing Secrets For Transforming Your Business: Joe and Dean Share Breakthrough Business Strategies With Twisted Yoga’s Stephanie Taylor - I Love Marketing Episode #341

And then they're just going to want to a sign up, give you money and refer other people into the group.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and.

This is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Yoga Marketing secrets for transforming your business. Here's a Special episode from more cheeselesswhiskers.com Remember to subscribe to I Love Marketing so that you don't miss a Future episode. Visit ilovemarketing.com subscribe for more.

Hello, this is Joe Polish and welcome to I Love Marketing. I think you're going to really enjoy this podcast. I'm just going to quickly frame some context around this and then we're going to launch into you hearing Dean Jackson have a conversation with my friend Stephanie Taylor, who owns a yoga studio. It's her first year in business. She's really working on generating clientele and setting the stage for, you know, what do you need to do in order to have people show up at the studio, have a great experience, invest in packages, invest in themselves and how do you actually set that up? How do we retool it? So listen to this episode from the standpoint of put yourself in whatever business category, whatever your mission, whatever your product or service is, think about this as if Dean is actually talking to you. I will pipe in occasionally during the episode, but for the most part it's Dean Jackson taking Stephanie through a thinking process, asking her questions about conversion and then identifying what is going to help her build and grow the business. So listen to this one and then the follow up episode is me and Dean Jackson, we're going to be talking about marketing plans. So if you listen to this episode, I think you're going to get a ton out of marketing planning. And the time that that we're releasing this episode, the new year is very close. And so I think it's going to really set the stage for you to have next year be your best year ever. And so enjoy.

Hello and welcome to the more cheese lesswhiskers.com podcast. My name is Dean Jackson and today if you are listening, you're going to get a lot of great lessons in.

This particular episode of our podcast.

This week we have Stephanie Taylor from Arizona. She's a friend of Joe Polish who makes a special guest appearance here with us on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast. And we're also simulcasting this on our I Love Marketing podcast I do with Joe. And this is the interesting thing, you know, normally when we do a episode we are looking for, where's the opportunity to apply the eight profit activators to.

This business to get the best return.

And so Stephanie was very open. She was willing to share everything that's going on. She's been in business coming up now just on one year, had a really great. She's done a great job so far of building her business on the strength of some Facebook advertising at the beginning of the year and then has reignited some Facebook advertising advertising at the end.

Of the year here.

But you're going to see a major difference in what happened the first three months and the last three months. That's where one of the biggest lessons is she's built an asset that will have an ongoing yield year after year after year. The great thing about something like a yoga studio is that that's the whole point of the business, is to build up a recurring clientele that come month.

After month after month.

So we talked a lot about some strategies for that and it was great to have Joe on the call with us. So here we go.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello, Stephanie. Hi.

How are you?

I'm so good.

How are you?

I'm doing well, thank you.

Tell me what's been going on. I got your. The ads you sent over. Hey, Joe. You already started. Without you?

Well, you should have.

So it's Joe Polish, everybody special.

Are you really kidding? You actually already started?

Yeah, we already started.

Well, good. This is gonna sound fantastic.

It really is. It's perfect.

Hello, Stephanie. Now that I'm here, the action has begun.

Yeah. Now we. Joe's supervising today. We're going to get some really good. Get to the bottom of it.

Okay, so you've officially started. And how did you do the intro?

I do the intro after. See, we're just recording all the content here.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right, so fill me in. Where are we at?

So this is. We're at the point where Stephanie's going to explain what's going on.

All right, so what's going on? So I opened Twisted Yoga Studios in January of this year. So I'm about to hit my one year anniversary of being open. The studio itself specializes in aerial yoga. However, we offer multiple different formats of yoga and that's all we have is yoga. We don't do anything else besides that. In the beginning, I hired a third party marketing company that I used previously. I have managed yoga studios for the last couple of years before taking the jump to open up my own. And they, they ran my Facebook ads for the first three months of opening. So they started in December and January and then again in February running my ads. And they brought in from that, it was almost, I think I had just shy of 2,000 leads that came from them. And we offered a free class or a free five day pass.

Right.

So that was the incentive to get the leads. So once you got all that information, then I, you know, I started doing my end of everything and did my follow up calls, my texts, my emails, all of that fun stuff. And from just that lead campaign, I was able to then sustain all summer long. So once I worked with that company and shut down with them after three months, I just used that lead list to pull me into the summer and everything else. Then at that point in time, I'm, I'm passively marketing and I wasn't as aggressively marketing as I was in the beginning.

Right.

So that was, you know, that was a little bit of a mistake on my end. Now the other thing that happened is the second that I stopped working with this third party company, they told all my SEO that they had been working on everything, my landing page, pages, all of that wasn't built into my website, it was built into theirs. So all of that money and everything else that we, time that we built, spending, you know, building this all up, it just all went away the second that I stopped working with them. So that was another lesson learned.

Yeah, yeah. So the 2000 leads that you got, you have a, you have an email list of 2000 now or do you have more? Okay, good. How much did you, how much did it cost per subscriber for you to get that?

Oh, that's a really good question. So I was spending with them 1950 per month. And that's including my, my ad spend. So if we look at that, So I spent 1950 and let me forgive me, I'm getting a calculator out real quick.

So 6,000 due to three months with them, you said?

Yep. So just, you know, just shy of 6,000. And then if we, you know, divide that by the 2000 per lead, I'm looking at spending about $2.92. 93 cents per lead.

Yeah. Right, Perfect. Okay. And so the way I look at this is I'm looking at the backwards from the assets that you already have. Right. So now you've got, you started from a running start. This is how you built it was with these, the Facebook ads. And you got that 2,000 people. Now if we take your, your after unit, meaning the people who are, you know, regular returning members, do you offer a monthly membership or is it just pay as you go classes or how, how do people engage with you both.

Ways So I do offer a monthly membership and as well as I offer class packs.

Okay. And so here's what you do. We want to look at it. If I'm overlaying this before, during and after model on this, I look at of the revenue. So you're coming up now on one year. Right. You said you started in January. So if you look at this now, how much of the revenue that you get is recurring, that, you know, people are ongoing members. How many ongoing members do you have right now?

So ongoing members, the ones that actually have memberships with the studio. I have about 30 that do that. And so I have consistently, I have reoccurring revenue that I know is coming in at 3000.

Okay. And so they pay $100 a month, roughly.

Yes.

Yeah. And how long do they stay? Is that something that people start up and then stop or are they. Once they're in, they're kind of in.

Once I can convert them to a membership, they're kind of in. So I have actually had people that have been with me this whole entire year.

Yes.

Which is, which is beautiful. But that membership part is another area of struggling for me.

Okay. And this is kind of the way that I want you to kind of think about this is that this spend that you're doing on acquiring the leads, acquiring the email list, all of the revenue that you've generated, what's the total revenue for the year now that you will have generated?

So I am just shy of $51,000 for the year.

Okay, so. And the majority of that came from the 2,000 people that are on your list.

Right.

That's how it all. Okay, so when you look at it, that, that asset that you've developed there is the, the 2000 person list of people who are already sort of yoga interested, at least you going into year two here now with that as an advantage, you've got those 2,000 people already, and you've got 30 people that are already paying you $100 a month. And you've got now, I'm sure some group of that 2000 that just come and buy class packs, you know, do you have regular buyers of the class packs? How many people would be in that kind of category?

So in total, I have a reoccurring Clientele base of 75. So I have another 45 that will pop in and out. Buying class packs.

That's so perfect. Okay, so good for you. I mean, that's pretty, you know, really.

Great.

You know, effort first year. Now when we look at it, another element that I want to look at in your after unit is how many of those people refer to somebody to bring in somebody else.

So I've been struggling with the referral element of it. Yeah, quite a. Quite a bit. I'll be honest with that. It's more of a focus for me the last month than it has been previously. For the last month I've brought in, you know, 10 referrals, which is great. And I typically offer like a, if you refer a friend, I'll give them their first class for free. So yeah, that's like that to get them in.

And that's such a great, like, I think that's a crystal clean kind of offer is the first class because there's something like a, you know, nobody's going to come just for one class. You're looking for the person who's going to come and buy a class pack. And then I'll then really decide I should just become a member and just join per month.

Right.

So that all the equity, the long term growth is looking to. It would be a dream if you had what's your capacity, how many members, if you had, you know, just monthly members, how many do you think you could sustain?

So my, my goal, you know, with all of this is to have 300. I would love to have 300 active members.

Okay. So it'll be 300 members, $100 a month, 30,000amonth. That's kind of your, that's where we're headed.

Right, right.

Okay. And your facility, your current size would accommodate that. You can.

It does.

Okay. So I think that this real thing that we want to look at is measuring and establishing how many of the people that are, you know, what. And I would say when we're first looking at overlaying things and putting your, you know, making the lines for where the before unit ends and where the during unit ends and where your after unit is for you because you have this recurring thing. I would think that somebody, you know, beyond their first 30 days, I would treat somebody's first kind of 30 days as the during unit. And then ultimately everything after that is in the after unit. And so the goal is to look at your, look at your after unit as this, you know, portfolio of all of the people who have come more than once to see you, that maybe the progression might be that they come for a free class, then they come and do people come and pay for individual classes periodically?

They can.

Okay. And does that happen a lot or do people typically buy a class package?

So my individual classes, like a drop in A single class is purposely priced at a high point so it makes you want to buy a class pass pack opposed to just the drop in. Yeah, So I do have people that come in and they will pay the drop in fee, but most of the time they see, oh, hey, I can get a five class pack. And that's way more financially sustainable for me.

Right. Okay, good. And is that. How many different class pack offers do you have? You can buy five.

This is, this is something new and interesting too is that I've changed my pricing structure three times this whole entire year. So in the beginning I offered a whole bunch of different class pack options. You could buy five, you could buy 10, you could buy 20, you could buy 30, you know, and that model wasn't working for me. So then I dropped it down to you could buy five or you can buy 10. Right, yeah. Now I'm at the place where I just offer 10 class packs on a regular basis and then I use my 5 class pack as like a Black Friday, a Christmas feel like a special event, all for five class packs.

Okay, perfect. And how regularly do the members come? Like how. What would be. If you've got, you know, 75 people that are sort of recurring, is it something that they come once a week or three times a week or every day?

So majority of my clientele comes twice a week.

Okay, two times a week. Got it. So a 10 pack would take somebody, you know, beyond a month kind of thing. And how does that price out compared to a membership?

So a membership, a monthly membership is $129 per month. It's unlimited classes and a 10 pack is $180. So again, it's priced at a point where you would rather buy the 129 if you're going to be coming that frequently.

Okay, that's great. So I think that, you know, do you have a CRM or a system that you use to kind of keep everybody in in place or how do you keep your. Okay, so I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna. What do you use for your.

I use mindbody software.

Okay. Okay. So that's specifically for yoga studios, kind of say.

Yeah, it's a, like a boutique fitness and they can do like spas and stuff. Yeah.

Okay, great. And so do you have the, the capability to categorize? People like to say this is a after unit person. So you could get a sense of this at any given time. What. Where you could isolate and say this is the number of, you know, members and active 10 pack buyers. So you could get. Because right now you said there's 75. Is that a number that you kind of have pegged as a KPI that you track?

It is. So mindbody allows you to pull reports into Excel. And I run Excel reports and that's how I do my, my retention and looking at, you know, my monthly figures and of course, what, what people do I need to target?

Yeah.

You know, moving forward.

Okay, so that's great because if I look at this, that your, the majority of your revenue like of, of the 51 is going to have come from people who are these sustaining members like you're looking at here. You know, so everything is about moving people into that, into that orbit there. And if we were able to do, you know, exactly the same thing that you did this year, if you could get another 2,000 subscribers and you get another. If they just behaved in exactly the same way that they behaved this year, you've essentially more than doubled your business because you've got all the sustaining people coming in. Right. Coming into the year, you're starting out with this advantage of 70 of 75 people. And that's why looking at this, you know, before we even get into the Facebook ads is I want you to have a sense of what is actually happening here. You know, and the, the thing that I try and get people to do is get out of the expense based mindset of advertising and looking for it to say they're judging the success of it by just the event. Like I ran the ads, I got this many. I mean, they track all of the stuff. Like I see dutifully, you've got all the things that we got this many impressions and this many clicks and this many people opted in. So, you know, all the stuff. But then the measurement is that this many people came in and took a, took a class or you know, did the thing. But it was almost sort of looking at the conversion of just their first, their first purchase in, rather than looking at, if we take the bottom line of this is that you spent $6,000 and that $6,000 ultimately turned into $51,000 over the course of the year. Right. So it was an investment in that. Now the, the 2,000 people that you already have, how often do you communicate with them?

So my, my communication for like my, my people, my, my whole entire contact list, I guess is I try to do two monthly emails and then on top of that I do follow up. If you haven't been in a while, the mindbody will automatically send out emails to people that are 90 days without a class, 90 days removed from their last class and then they do it again the following four weeks from that. So I have those things triggered to set up. Then weekly I pull reports and I say, okay, these are the people that haven't been in a while, I haven't heard from them in a while. And then I make calls. And so at that point in time I'll make calls and I'll make text messages and emails as well that are personalized directly from me.

Yeah, these, those are two people who've dropped off from the after.

Yeah, yeah. And I, and I continue to do that until they tell me like, oh hey, you know, this isn't, this isn't going to work out and I want to be removed from this or yes, I want to come in.

So just keep going or we moved or whatever. For whatever reason. Yeah. Okay. Do you have a sense of how many, if you have 30 members and 75 people with active, you know, multi class packs right now, how many people have been members over the course of the year? Like in addition to that, 30 that started and then are no longer members.

So you know, I don't have a specific number and it's a really, really great question because there, there's quite a few. So it's not, it's not a tiny.

Number.

I would say, I'd be honest with you. I think it would be even close to the 30 people that are active right now.

And that's, you know, it's good to know to get a sense of what the sustainability is. Right. How long they stay. And then what's really an important thing is to look at how are they multiplying themselves. You know, like that's another wild card that really is, you know, almost free because your incremental cost to have somebody sit in on a class that has excess capacity, like if your goal is to get to 300 and you're really at, let's call it a hundred now, if you treat like the multi pack people as, as they could pop in on any class that you're about one third of capacity of what you could do. Does that feel about right?

It does.

Okay, so that means that you're, you're one of the assets that you have is this unused capacity at for free. Basically, you know, it doesn't cost you anything for somebody to do it. That's why I always love whenever possible to offer a free class as the first thing that people can do with you because that will get you a multiple of the people who will pay Any amount of money for that first experience with you. You know, whether you're incentivizing them with like a, you know, a discount or a buy one, get one, if there's any money exchanging hands, it's going to be, you know, outperformed by a free, you know, a free class. There's zero friction on that. You know, now that and the way that you do that, you kind of. I look at those as the, as.

A.

You know, really cool way to put a currency on it for you. Because right now there's two ways to look at it. There I was talk about. There was a guy, Gamal Aziz, who was the guy that was the general manager of the MGM Grand Hotel. And he, when he would, would come into the hotel, he would look at all the things, all the elements that they were doing, whether it was retail or restaurants or gaming or entertainment or the hotel rooms and conferences, all of those elements. He would look at it and he'd say, how much could we be doing here? Like, how high is high and what are we doing? And then he would consider that gap as a loss. So he would, like. If I said to you right now, you know, you've got, you're generating this, you know, $3,000 a month, and you're saying that 30,000amonth is what the capacity is, that in a lot of ways he would look at this, that right now you're losing $27,000 a month by not having it at capacity, right? So it kind of gets you to realize that there's empty map space in your studio. When a class is going on is like an unused hotel room, right? It's as soon as that class is over, its value is nothing, right? The moment that class starts, if you haven't got somebody who's either paying to be in that class or taking that class with a potential of joining a future class, that's it's a loss in a way, right? And so I look at it that I've really discovered that sometimes it's less expensive to get somebody a result than it is to convince them to give you money to get the result or experience. So it's sometimes easier, for sure and less expensive to get somebody to come in and try a free class. Then to give you money to try that free class. And it's not saying that anything, that it's not worth it, because it is, and you're revering that it is, but to have that and treat it like a, a currency that you have, you know. So when you said, remind me how much the individual classes are?

$25 for a drop in.

$25 for a drop in. Okay, so one of the things that I might look at doing for you is to offer somebody a $50 gift card. And now there's a different thing with this than. Because that $50, you know, if somebody could put it towards their first month for 129 or they could come for two classes, whatever it is, right. That you've got something that they have that is zero obligation on their part. But as, but you're revering it as the actual currency of what you're doing. You're not just saying come for a free class. You're offering somebody a, you know, a $25 gift card now. And that has real value because that is something that somebody can download as.

A.

You know, it's almost like a bookmark on a future intention. Right. If they, if and if over the holidays they're not gonna come in this month for a class, they've got something that right in the new year they can come in for that class. Right. When you offer somebody like 20 off or 50 off or buy one, get one, or any of those things where they're paying money in order to get the savings, that means the only way that they can respond to that is to do it right now. Where sometimes the best thing you can do is to gather all of the people in your, you know, in your geographic circle there. How far are you targeting when you're doing the Facebook ads, how big a radius around your studio?

We're doing the five to ten mile radius.

Yeah, okay, perfect. And that makes sense, right? So for people. Because nobody's gonna come much beyond that. So when you look at it, that that's your, that's your thing. And they may come to you, they may come specifically because you have aerial yoga, which maybe is different than any of the other places around, that maybe that's a special thing that, that you have. But it sounds like a specialty kind of thing too, right? Where when you're going into aerial yoga, that, that sounds like a specialty thing, but it also may feel like a, a novelty thing that maybe they would come and try that one time, you know, as opposed to. And then kind of get. Not realize that, oh, they've got traditional yoga too. And do is how, how much of the classes that you do are aerial versus traditional yoga.

So right now it's actually even there. 50.

50.

So across the traditional and half aerial.

Yeah. And is that more of an advanced thing, the aerial.

Not the way that I teach it. But the way that it's. It's known out in the public right now is. It is very advanced. But my. My whole. So I've created a whole entire program around it and a philosophy in the way that I teach it, and I branded that itself. But educating people about my brand and what I do and how different I do things has been a struggle too.

Right. Okay. Yeah. This is. How does Joe Polish look when he's flying through the air in that aerial yoga?

Hey, he has some, like, videos of it and some pictures of it. I'm sure he'll be willing to share.

Yes. You know what? I look very graceful and beautiful. Dean.

That's just every day, all day.

No, no. Here's the thing, though. And I'm just sitting here listening because you're really. There's some really great, you know, knowledge and information and numbers and stats and, you know, behavioral things being fleshed out here. I've got a whole slew of notes just sitting here listening. And so I like you going down this line of questions. One of the things that I think of, and I'd like to get your take on this from aerial yoga, I think there's an element of it that is intriguing. It's like, oh, let me try this. And also, I think there's a part of it that could scare some people, or if so much of the association with it is. Well, I, you know, I'm. I've never done that before. So I'm going to default to what seems to be less threatening or easy because the question becomes, you know, out of all these people that are signing up for your studio, Stephanie, like, how many of them belong to other studios? Like, how many of them are real yogis that are advanced and Ariel is like, the next thing that they're going to do, or is it people that are just really starting a new exercise program and a new fitness program or a new spiritual program or, you know, what. Whatever genre that they're in. Because finding the avatar of who is the ideal client is. Is important here. And I often thought for Stephanie, that it may be, you know, more advantageous to get people in without aerial yoga and then use it to them while they're there, versus obviously seen.

That's where I. Yeah, that's where I was going with that, was to see that that may be, you know, perceived. I've never heard of aerial yoga. And so that may be perceived as, you know, a specialty thing. That, yes, somebody might be reluctant for that, but if they knew if they were coming for, you know, traditional yoga. And then, wow, we could do this as well. That's a surprise. And delight in a lot of ways, you know, and you can test these, you know, it's easy to. Easy to know one way or the other what is. What's appealing to.

To people.

Yeah. And let me mention something also, Dean, because like, right down the street, and when I say right down the street, I mean a couple miles away is the only Acro yoga studio, I think, in the country. And so that's where people are. You know, if you could imagine just flipping people around on their, you know, on their. With your feet.

Want to do that? Next time I come, flip me around.

That would be. That would be very. I think I. Anyway, I might snap if I tried to deal with you. But that would be, that would be interesting. But like, here's the thing. So you take like Tim Ferriss, like the guy that trained Tim and Acro Yoga, who's also, he's. I've also worked with the guy, you know, I mean, he's, you know, he's been down to the studio and whatnot. And so there's a very interesting sort of thing with college students and different people around there. So there is a. There is the right combination for Stephanie. And it's just a matter of, you know, figuring out what that is. And I want to say something, then I'll shut up and let you go through the series of questioning. You know what Dean was saying earlier about it's less expensive to get someone to create a result for someone than it is to get them to convince them to sign up. And I learned that through my carpet cleaning business back in literally 1992, where I started using a free room of carpet cleaning. No cost or obligation of any kind. I had it packaged with a way to demonstrate my services in the home. And I would give them a carpet audit because I looked at what is everyone else doing, and I remember the term of look at what everyone else is doing in any particular category or industry. Do the exact opposite and you're more likely to have success than try to follow everybody. Everyone else. And so everyone in service businesses would offer free estimates or free quotes. And I didn't want to just do a, you know, a free estimate because then you become a free advisor. I was like, let me just give the service for free. Not the. We're going to show up and give you a quote and an estimate and then we're going to try to convince you why you should do business with us. What if we just Gave them a taste of what it is that we were offering. And I made more money giving away free, a single free room of carpet cleaning than I ever did price discounting my services. And I became one of the most expensive but also highest value cleaning companies at the time. And I was, you know, small operation, but then I started teaching it to other carpet cleaners. And then literally it's generated, I mean hundreds of millions of dollars for cleaning and restoration companies all over the world using a free room of carpet cleaning. I mean to this day it's still, you know, with the over 10,000 cleaning companies that became members of my organization, it, you know, it still is one of the main things that the ones that are smart actually do to generate business. While you see all of these other companies doing price advertising, price discounting, bait and switch, all kinds of stuff. And this is like free room of carpet cleaning. We're going to do a carpet audit. If you do, if you do decide to get additional services, it comes with 100% money back guarantee. So the theme of what Dean will get into, and I just want to kind of preface this is how do you make it total friction free, non threatening, so easy for someone to like try it and produce a result for them in such a way that reciprocity kicks in and then they're just going to want to a sign up, give you money and refer other people into the group. And not only for people in the before unit, but also once people are doing business with you. How do you instill that sort of behavior? Because that's ultimately where we want to see all of this going. And so anyway, I love what's being smoked out here because it's really important. I just, you know, part of it is like, okay, what's the right offer for her? But also how, I mean what should to the public like it's, you know, the whole saying that you can't see the label when you're inside the jar.

Right.

Stephanie's standpoint, she's an aerial yoga person. She certifies people in it. She's probably, you know, the most skilled person in the valley in this area. Maybe I don't know that that's really for her to say or know. But ultimately she lives, eats and breathes aerial yoga, but she knows it. For someone that doesn't, is that an invitation or is it like a fear? And that's a lot that I'm trying to figure out. So anyway, so I'll just shut up and let you guys continue to talk.

So I have some Things to say to all of us, too, because I've never thought about it in this perspective. And both of you are bringing to light some of the things that I've been doing. So this. The first three months that I ran this advertisement, when I first opened, right, that was my free class unit. Right. And then my video, because we did it as a Facebook video ad that you saw on there was not aerial yoga with us doing traditional yoga. So there was no. No idea. I mean, we said on there, hey, you can do aerial yoga, but it wasn't like the. What you saw. Right, right. And so that's where I got those 2,000 people. Now, the ads that I'm currently running to, the ads that I started running in October, November, and December, these three ads have all been focused on aerial yoga specifically because it's something that I'm doing that, you know, nobody else around me is doing. Right.

Okay.

And we're associating in a cost to it now. So it's like a raffle or winning or whatever. But I wasn't doing the free anymore because, you know, what you mentioned earlier, Dean? I was looking out of all the numbers and having, like, little heart attacks, like, oh, hey, I'm not making the money back in. But I didn't look at the bigger picture of, you know, a $6,000 investment and $51,000 gain. Right, right. So, you know, the. My 9 versus perspective on it was completely wrong. So here I am sending out, you know, all these ads right now that are specific to Ariel, and the people that are responding to these ads now are people that are coming in because it is a gimmick, you know, and it is this, you know, novelty, and it is this. I want to take one class, but I'm not. I'm not interested in signing up with you, and I don't want a membership because I did this this one time, and I checked it off my bucket list and, you know, on my way.

Let's go. Yeah, that's exactly what I was fearing, you know, so that's. That's good. So that's good learning. I mean, it's. It's good to know that you've. You've got that. So. And that may be something that might be, you know, more suited to Groupon or something, you know, that have those kind of, like, experience things that, hey, let's go do. Because that way people come in a group kind of thing, whatever. But you may find that they're not. That they don't convert the same way that somebody coming to a traditional yoga class might. Right, that sounds like what you're saying.

Yeah. And my, my 30 people that are in my memberships right now that are coming twice a week, they're, they're coming to mostly traditional yoga classes. Right. If they come, you know, if they can add another class in there, they'll come, you know, maybe once a week for aerial yoga. I have one client that comes five days a week and she only takes one aerial yoga class. And the rest of them are the traditional mat yoga class.

Right.

Okay.

So that's the, the market is speaking there, telling you what's actually real there. So that's good. Now, how many, how many leads have you generated from that campaign? Have you got more than the 2000 or is it 2000 overall?

No, it's 2000 from the, the first one. The one that I'm on right now, I'm at283.3. But we have done three different campaigns now in the last three months. So I did one in October, I did one in November, and I did one in December. And in total, it's 283.

And how much have you spent for that?

So I spend 750 for the cost of the company to do it, and then I pay $30 a day and what I'm doing in the month on Facebook.

Okay, so you've spent 3,000. Almost 5,000.

Yeah.

So you spent 5,000 to get 283. Now there's a great. That's just illustrating exactly the point that it's roughly, you know, somewhere around, you know, eight times better the free class convert or gets more response. Right. About eight times more response than trying to get somebody to pay money right now. So you, you've just illustrated it exactly what I was saying. So that's a good, that's good knowledge to have, right?

Oh, absolutely. And it's just, it's just funny that it took having this conversation for it to actually, like, come full circle for me.

So that is. Well, I can see, like what I would definitely now even test, though, because I'm going to share something with you that maybe even will cut that in half again that. Okay, you know, offering the free class, you know, did you say for the month of whatever? Did you have an offer, like, come in any month or grand opening or what? Was the offer the way you articulated come in for a free class, was it in this month or up until whenever. Was there a deadline?

We didn't. On the original ad, we didn't put like a deadline on there. Yeah, but When I would call them, that would be part of my creating urgency at that point. It'd be like, hey, it's this part of the month. You know, let's get you in this week. What's your schedule this week looking like? And that's kind of where we would go.

I got you.

But I mean it didn't always pan out that they came in. Right, right. But it allowed me to continue to work with them and not have to have this weird deadline or them say, hey, I've missed the deadline so I'm just not even going to respond to anything.

Right, right.

Okay. So I would look now and test a $50 gift card and that, that, you know, and the, the importance of it being more than. Because that's more than one class. They could come in, use the $50 gift card for the drop in rate for one thing and then they've still got another that they could come for or they could, they'll see that they could come unlimited for the whole month with $50 applied to the 129. Or they could use $50 to get a 10 pack and for 130 kind of thing. Right. So whatever. There's something that you're going to be, there's going, it's going to be burning a hole in their pocket in a little bit. Right. They've got money now. They've got this currency that they have and that, you know, again, your incremental cost of that for them to redeem it is zero because it doesn't cost you any more to have an additional person in the class. Right. Do you have instructors that you pay per person or are you doing all the classes?

So I don't teach all of them. I teach majority of them. However, I pay instructors per class right now. So if one person shows up, there you go.

No difference. Yeah. And so you've got all this excess capacity here. The most important thing, the most valuable thing that you're going to be able to build is this list of yoga enthusiasts, you know, people who, who view themselves as. I would love to come and do this at some point. And we've been doing this with Luba, my girlfriend here in Winter Haven. She has a studio called Amazing Brows and Lashes and they do microblading and eyelash lifts like a, as a studio. And we've been doing a, for over a year now, a grand opening offer of a hundred dollar gift card and that is getting opt ins for about A$50 to A$60 of people downloading the gift card, which happens to be about is 20% off of microblading. It's a $500, $500 thing. 20% off is $100. But the, the psychological impact of $100 gift card versus 20% off can't even be measured. I mean, just the, it's a completely different vibe, you know, but it's the same thing, right?

Yeah.

And so even you saying a free class is still different than a $50 gift card.

Right?

Right.

Because it has currency, it has value. We really value that. And so I think that you would be able to, you know, run. And it doesn't even require video. We do a very, very simple ad that is, you know, just, I call them horse for sale ads. You know that sometimes the best way to sell a horse is with a sign that says horse for sale. That sometimes the best way to sell, you know, a new yoga studio is to offer people a 50 gift card for this to come in. And that I think I would definitely test as a way because you're now the value that you're going to be building there is it would be really valuable to have this list of people who live within 10 miles of you and are interested in yoga enough that they would download this $50 gift card signaling their future intention of coming in. Right. So that kind of thing. Now you've got the opportunity then for, you know, all of next year and the year after and the year after to email them. Because now you've turned invisible prospects into visible prospects. Right. You're, you're advertising to all of the. Do you do any other selection? Do you do men or women or age or anything specific that you're targeting?

Mostly women. So we target women specifically and we target 25 to, I believe it's 45 years in age.

Perfect. So all the 25 to 45 year old women within 10 miles of your of your studio who happen to also be on Facebook is a pretty big audience, I'm sure. And what we now, what you're able to do then is they're invisible though, right. You don't know who they are. Now when you offer this gift card using, we use lead ads for this, so it's super easy for them. And you know, they're so inexpensive on Instagram and Instagram stories where those kind of things, the free things are super easy too. The lead ads are super easy because they don't have to go to a website. They don't have to type any. Anything in. They just click and it automatically has their email address and their phone number and Their name all preloaded in the form and they just need to press one button and it sends it. So there's zero friction in responding to it.

Okay.

Yeah. So that. What I'd be looking at for that is, let's see, what, how low can we get those names and emails for, you know, and then, then you've got the opportunity each week to bring new people in. You know, with sending out some flagship communication where you can show people videos, you can show people the fun stuff that's going on in the studio. You can give them, you know, meditations or do or some quotes or, you know, articles, something that is all related in this whole world kind of thing. But then also invite people to come, you know, post up your class schedule every week if they're getting a flagship email from you and having a super signature which will invite them to come in for whatever your class is or to try the Ariel. Or do you sell, do you sell mats and do you have branded swag and all that too?

No, I don't. I've been, I've been looking to maybe venture into that, but yeah, my retail section is really small.

Okay.

Yeah.

And, you know, I could do that. Your E Commerce one, you know, that'd be a thing where you could. Because you've got now, you know, you've got these four, 2,000, and I'm already thinking ahead to 4,000. You know, you'll have all of those people that maybe they would. You've got an opportunity to do some E Commerce stuff with them too.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, there's a company here that we actually have an episode on. I love marketing with Ian, who owns Spiritual Gangster. And so that's a. You know, they're based here in Arizona and that's where they started. And there's a big following with the local yoga community. And then, you know, people all over and not that it even needs to be Spiritual Gangster, but as an example, if. If there was like a Spiritual Gangster retail line or if it was like sign up for a membership or come in and get a free Spiritual Gangster T shirt, that in and of itself would be an attractive mechanism. Right, right. Secondly, yeah, with like smoothies as an example or prepackaged juices, that's another thing that would, you know, be. Would work, I think, really well there just for things related to other ways to monetize her thing. Plus, we know that anytime you can add a premium to anything, it's going to bump the response. And so if there was any sort of premium that she could offer people.

She had a little, like, countertop fridge from Juby True or whatever. The, you know, one of the juice places.

Exactly. And you know what's funny? I actually have, you know, like, life aid. Aaron's one of our Genius Network members. You know, a bulletproof, you know, heck, all of the bulletproof and Whole Foods is there because I sat Dave Asprey, the, you know, founder of Bulletproof, next to John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, next to each other when John was speaking at my event. And now. Now whole. Now Whole Foods carries all the bulletproof products. And that all started at Genius Network.

That's great.

And, you know, we could get Dave to, you know, have bulletproof stuff related to things there. And I can, you know, JJ Virgin would totally send bars and everything for Stephanie to sell bars. And those are just contacts I have. But this would apply to, you know, any. Anybody. And so I think that would be, you know, a smart thing. Like, you know, just walk into the studio and get a free energy bar. I mean, as crazy as that sounds, people, you know, they're not. They're not going to drive to a yoga studio just to get an energy bar. There's some semblance of. Of interest or a T shirt. You know, some may. But at the end of the day, if you have it set up, once you go there, there's, you know, there's a real incentive there. Here's one thing that I've been, you know, just kind of reluctant to say, and I wanted to in real time. Dean wanted to run this by you because over the years, we can pummel people with ideas. And, you know, it's the whole Emerson thing or whoever said it, you know, you ask for a new idea when you haven't used the first one that I gave you. And so Stephanie, after something like this, is going to have a lot of things to think about and then ultimately determine, okay, what can I take here and do something with it? And knowing her, she's going to kick ass and take names and she's driven and she's smart and all that sort of stuff. And all that being said, my whole thing is you take peloton bikes. I have a Peloton bike and Peloton. They started about six years ago, and they're now a $4 billion company based on funding that they've had. And they have plans on going public next year. I've been to the Peloton Studio in New York, and I've met the instructors that they. A couple of them that I'VE taken classes from. For people that don't know, Peloton is like basically a proprietary computer screen on top of a bike. And they just launched a $4,000 treadmill. So they've got a $2,000 spin bike and then they have a $4,000 treadmill. And you pay 39 bucks a month to get live stream spin classes. And then there's also pre recorded things with Tour de France, you know, spins for your to do spin and just like, it's just awesome. And you can take live classes or pre recorded classes from you know, 15 minutes up to, you know, an hour. And there's classes every hour on the hour and they get some of the best instructors in the world for spin because they can pay them extremely well. But studio frankly is no different than any like Soul Cycle or any other spin studio, except they have cameras mounted in the ceiling and they're streaming it. And so for Stephanie, you know, I'd love to see her get this to a point where she's having you know, a monthly stream of aerial yoga all over the, all over the country for you know, 30 bucks a month or whatever that. Because she's going to be doing the classes anyway. And so there, that could be a giant business. But I'm also reluctant to go deeply into it because it's like, let's get the initial thing, the core business right. Yeah, the core business working. But I'd love to do a follow up with Stephanie after she gets some of these things in place. And actually let's track how we've taken, you know, a really cool person who's a really hard working entrepreneur that just, you know, very talented, the product is great, the service is great. It's just a matter of getting the marketing right, getting the offering right. And once that becomes, it's like let's, let's, you know, track and see if we can turn this into a, you know, a million dollar business for her out of a, out of a studio that most people would just be, wow, let's just do a yoga. Yoga classes. I'd like to actually parlay this into something far bigger. And when I say I don't have any ownership in her company, it says I'd love to just see this happen for her.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Thank you. And that's Joe's mentioned, you know, something along that to me before and it's been a huge dream of mine to be able to like grow it into something bigger. Right. That's why the name of the studio is Twisted Yoga Studios. With an S. And I did that on purpose, you know, and I would like to get to a point because right now, especially with, with aerial yoga, there's no governing body over it. There's no one that's out there saying that this is the way that you do it and this is how it should be taught. Right. So the market is wide open for it right now. And so I have this unique ability that with the way that I do it and the way that my product is that if I can get the marketing down and I can get all these things right, that it can grow into something very, very huge. And ideally that's where I would like to take it. But I don't have the core down yet.

Well, I think it's all going to drive. I mean, you figured out the core thing. You demonstrated how to turn 6,000 into 51,000 and that's a win, you know. And so what I'm trying to show you now is let's take another 6,000 and turn that into 250,000. Right. Combined now with what you've got there. And it's all, you know, I think the assets that you have going into year two are you've got all the people who have been with you, you know, for at least, you know, who've given you money. Those would certainly be people in your sphere that you want to keep those people coming back, re engage those people. You've got the people who are currently continuing to pay you and want to keep them doing that, but also multiplying themselves, right, to get people going. When I mentioned about the during unit here of figuring out where the lines are. And so I would think that the during unit for you is from the moment someone walks into your studio for the first time, till they've gone through, you know, that first 30 days, whether that's, you know, two classes or one class or whatever it is that they're going to do with the objective of getting them into a multi class pack or a, or a membership and that they refer somebody, they bring somebody with them. And if we, if we're, yeah, if we're not setting that as an objective and then thinking and measuring that, that is really a, you know, a cool thing that you can watch that you, you have a client multiplier. That way, you know, that's the strategic objective that they come, they have a great time, they as a core sign up for a multi pack or for a membership, but then the strategic objective that they refer somebody else, you know, to, they bring somebody and they could do that by giving away a 25 gift card to them, you know, or a 50 gift card or whatever your model is. But I don't think you can go wrong giving away 50 gift cards to anybody who's in your area that's interested in yoga, because now they get an experience of you, and they also start off owing you reciprocity. Right. The reciprocity is that you've given them this $50 gift, and that can't be underestimated. The value of that.

No, I. I love it. I love the way that it sounds to do a $50 gift card opposed to saying, hey, your first class is free.

Right, right.

And then I. And I like the referral aspect, too, of saying, oh, hey, here's a gift card that you can give out to, you know, some of your friends and have them come to class with you, too.

Yes.

Great.

Like, welcoming people, you know, like that whole, you know, great episode to listen to would be. Joe and I did a great episode years ago with Bedros Coolian. And, you know, he talked about this process of loving up on people that. That first 30 days, you know, with the intention that they feel. They feel great, you know.

Yeah, I actually listened to that episode.

Okay. Yeah, there you go.

I think that's one of the. Yeah, I think that's one of the first. When I first met Stephanie, I think that was one of the first things I told you to listen to. Right.

Oh, is that right? So we both think the same thing. That's funny.

Yeah. No, I mean, I literally went to her studio as a client. I mean, I, you know, I just went in there and I thought it was super cool. And I've done it. It's even in the. Even me doing aerial yoga is in the trailer of the documentary on me called Connected, which is not yet released. But we're going to have, like, what do you call it? Extra footage from the documentary that I'll be doing aerial yoga at our studio, which we've got videotaped and everything. Okay. Before we wrap up. And this could go a little over for the typical episode, Dean, and for your cheese and whiskers and whatnot, what would you suggest? Because here we are at the time we're recording this. It's right before Christmas.

Yeah, I think it's perfect.

The new year. And so a couple of things. And then on January 5th, there's going to be a poor art. Like, people listening to this. It really wouldn't appeal to them unless they happen to live in Arizona and they hear this. But my Good friend Leila Parnian, who I been doing pour art with and then the whole painted mannequins using pour art, which is a method of where you just kind of like pour pain.

Yeah, I saw your live of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean we're doing it up on stage. We have Alice Cooper, the singer with the mannequins and everything at my most recent Genius network meeting. So Stephanie does a couple cool things. One, she has recovery classes for people that are in addiction recovery. So she has recovery yoga. And then she's going to do a pool class with Layla at a time when I already have a meeting scheduled. So I'm gonna see if I can finish up my meeting early and get to the class. I'm not sure I'll still be able to make it, but they're gonna be doing a poor art class there and you know, so for events like that, I already have my ideas, but I could share those. But I want to get your ideas a couple things. One, the holidays, great time that she can make a really powerful offer gifts, start the new year off right. That's always a perfect time of the year to get anyone into any sort of fitness regimen or something new. Secondly, things like an event class. So she's doing meetup groups where things are like themed where you can not just come and do yoga, but different speakers and different topics. And if the poor art thing works as a really great community builder, it's also something that is parlayable. So what how would you look at leveraging?

One of the things I would do at the holidays, especially if you're targeting women, is run an ad targeting men and do a video ad that's offering them a 50 gift card to give to their yoga loving girlfriend or wife. And so to say something like that, you know, have from live from your studio with your some Santa team on it or whatever. But basically saying to people, hey guys, this is only going to to you. No girls are watching this right now. But if you want to be a hero this Christmas, I got you covered. Download this 50 gift card free. Not a single string attached. They don't have to make anything. They come in for a free class and you'll have another gift for your special yoga lover and you'll look like the hero. Right? That's kind of a nice thing to as a multiplier, you know, just to see that same thing. We're doing that same thing for, for Luba as well for the eyebrow, for amazing brows and lashes. That's one idea. Then the Other thing is that the $50 gift card is going to tie in perfectly over the holidays. It's a great thing. Right. Here's a gift for you to come in. I think I would immediately just focus on getting like, I, I suspect that if you're getting opt ins the other way with the free class for $3, we calculated out that I think you'll be able to get them for less than $3 with the gift card.

Okay.

Yeah. And then I would start immediately doing, ramping up the communication with that list, you know, to now that it's sort of, you are giving people a glimpse inside too. Like I would start doing, almost treat it like a little reality show in a way, right. That you could show stuff that's going on, candid videos of things that are happening in the, in the studio and maybe show the different, the different. Show the environment, show the types of people that are there. Have people talking about their wins or breakthroughs or something that, you know, great that happened or how much better their life is because of yoga and maybe show some of the, the aerial stuff. You got so many opportunities to just kind of in that closed group of the people who are on your email list. You, you also want to treat it like you're running a newsletter for, or a magazine for people who love yoga or that yoga lifestyle and happen to live in Phoenix, you know?

Yeah.

That'S what I would focus on. I think those things alone will make a, will make a big difference.

No, I think so too. I love it. Thank you so much.

Yeah. So, Stephanie, to kind of wrap this up, what is your, I guess your main or some takeaways? And what if you had to summarize what is the one sentence solution that you can derive in your current. You know, I know you could go back and ponder this, but what immediately comes to mind for you right now? What takeaways? And then if you had to summarize it into a one sentence solution, my.

Biggest takeaway is to do the $50 gift card, right. To look at what can I give to them in this place where I'm already losing money, right. There's no reason why I can't give away a spot on a class right now for $50, right. So that was changing my perspective on viewing who I'm marketing to and how I'm marketing to them is my biggest takeaway. So I liked what Dean was talking about earlier saying, you know, technically right Now I'm losing $27,000, you know, a month on open space, right? Open spots in a Class, there's all this openness that I can now market that open area without really losing money and that's what I need to focus on.

That's great.

Great. No, that's great. And so this is sometimes hard to do, but I think you can do it. If you had to now take it into a one word or two word action, what would you call it?

A one word or two word action.

Yeah. So like the one sentence solution. If you had to have a one word solution, like, and it could be an action or it could be what, what would you, what do you need to do that will move you towards making that happen as quickly as possible?

My one word is give.

Thank you.

Okay. Awesome.

That's good.

I love it. I love it.

That same thing.

Well, cool. Well Dean, thank you for, you know, this was sort of an off the cuff. I called up Dean and said, hey, let's, let's talk with Stephanie. And you're like, let's just turn it into a podcast episode. And here we are. So I appreciate you doing that. And Stephanie, I like you being a sport here because you know, recording something that's going to go public about your business and everything is not always easy to do, but you've got, you know, this also goes back to there's no relationship between being good and getting paid. Not all the time, but much of the time for small business owners. But there's a huge relationship between being good, being good at marketing and getting paid. And so that's, you know, that's the whole gift that we could offer to small business owners is just taking people that are hard working, you know, doing their best. Just have not dialed in because my story is very similar to many entrepreneurs that would be listening to this. Desbro carpet cleaner, living off credit cards, working my butt off, going in debt, being a nice person and looking at other companies, many that were even unscrupulous, that were making money and I wasn't being frustrated and like, what the hell? I mean life is not fair. And you know, learning marketing and then realizing, ah, you know, the secret ingredient here was just I just didn't know how to business in the right way. And once I figured that out, everything changed and now we're able to help, you know, all the many small business owners all over the world that are struggling with the same thing if they of course pay attention and listen and apply. So there you go.

Awesome. Well, that was fun.

Yeah, totally.

Thank you guys so much. I don't even know how to express my gratitude, but I really appreciate you taking the time and doing this with me.

Awesome.

You're welcome. You're welcome. And I'll be in there hopefully shortly before I head off on my vacation. And if not, then it'll be after the new year. But yeah, and let's. I want to really kind of look at what Stephanie does over the next few weeks.

Yeah, I'd love to see that too, though.

Field reports. Yeah, the field report. Yep. So, Stephanie, if you could keep us in the loop on what your results are and what your numbers are. Let's do that. And let's maybe do a follow up in the future. We can even get, depending on how this plays out, go over what works, what doesn't work, and then really how to parlay this in a whole different sort of model. Also, because I like seeing nothing's more motivating. You can double your business. But if you're like, how do I go 10 times? Because one of her things, there's a 10 times growth thing from 30 to 300. And that's exciting. And that's it. Awesome. So thanks, guys.

Okay, guys, thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Bye. And there we have it. What a great episode.

I love the lessons in that. I mean, certainly we got to dig deep into the idea that sometimes it's less expensive to get somebody a result or give somebody an experience of you than it is to convince them to give you money to get that experience. What has happened in her second venture into Facebook advertising has proven that she has 285 people from spending $5,000 in the second half of the year and 2,000 people and $51,000 driven from spending $6,000 in the first half of the year.

And I think that what we're going.

To find is that if she uses this offer of the gift card that we will be able to get that cost of acquiring a subscriber even down lower than what she was doing by giving away just free classes. So Joe had a good idea too, of maybe doing a follow up episode to check this, check in on Stephanie's progress and see what's happening.

And I agree.

I think this will be great. So if you want to continue the conversation here, you can go to morecheeselwhiskers.com you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book. And if you'd like to be a guest on the show, just click click on the Be a Guest link and that will take you to a spot.

Where you can tell me a little.

Bit about your business and then we can get together and hatch some evil schemes for you. So that's it for this week.

Have a great week and I will talk to you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of I Love Marketing. If you'd like to learn about the Genius Network Annual event, go to geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com if you would like access to the complete presentation, the show notes, the links, and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 341 that's ilovemarketing.com 341.

Sam.