Episode 66: The $90,000 Launch That Almost Wasn't

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey everyone, this is Julie and today I would love to talk to you, go a little bit behind the scenes and talk to you about one of my digital Insiders and the launch that she just did. Now if you listen to my podcast episode, the one right before this where I was talking about the three types of launches, one of the things that I have been doing is building this content as a direct result of the one on one coaching that I'm providing inside of Digital Insiders. And so I'm doing this process over and over and over again in different markets with different personalities and all that kind of stuff. And so Kristen has been in DI since day one and I just want to tell you a little bit about her journey. I hope to be able to do an interview with her soon. She joined back in 2020. 2017. Yeah. Oh my gosh, two years ago. And the first year in the Mastermind, she's one of those classic entrepreneurs that has a million ideas. She's a certified public accountant, so she's got like tax professional, she's a university professor, she's got small biz, she's got pod, just all the things. And she's got. So this first year in the Mastermind, she was trying to make sense of all of her ideas. And I will admit I was sometimes a little hard on her because I was like, you have too many ideas and you're spending a lot of energy on ideas that aren't as fruitful as other ones might be. And she makes the joke that she couldn't get me excited about anything that she. Everything she brought up to me because I always was finding holes in it. And so we built a funnel for one of her websites that she has for accounting that gets a lot of page views per month and it didn't really take off and there was just a lot of struggle. And the reason, I tell you that is because Kristen is an example of someone who did not give up when it wasn't working right at first. And it's so hard. I wish I could bottle up how to figure out when something is right. But she had to kind of grope around in the dark a little bit for almost an entire year trying, trying this funnel out, that funnel out, and nothing really converting it the way she wanted. And so last year, sometime 2019, she had the idea for a bookkeeper training school. And I immediately got excited. And she was like, oh, my God, that is the first time I've seen you excited in like a year. And I was like, I know. And so I was like this, yes, Kristen, this is it. Like, I know. This is perfect. And so what she did was she had all of these random audiences from all of this different areas. She had students and even her husband had an audience from a completely different market of like fantasy world building. Anyway, she scraped together an audience of 100 people because she didn't have. She wanted to do a big thing with ads. And she did a pressure launch for her first time opening bookkeeper training school. And as suspected, the market was ripe for it. It was dialed in. It was clear she had the expertise and she made $8,000 in that first launch. And I think the program was at $297 at the time. So that was the market validation we needed. So we did a pressure launch and she decided she wanted to do another pressure launch. So that latest pressure launch just finished this launch. She did did have a webinar. She ran traffic to get people signed up for the webinar. And wouldn't you know it, she was floored when she started running ads. And one of my other digital insiders, Ossi, actually was running her ads for her and they were getting 79 cents, 80 cents a lead. She was using Funnel Bohemian, I believe, one of our drop designs. And we were working on her headline and her hook. It was actually a group chat with me and Ossi and Kristin just trying to dial it in. And she ended up getting 6,000 people to register for her webinar on $5,000 of ad spend, which for any of you guys running ads to webinars, know that that is ridiculous. So that was super exciting. But the nerves and the pressure started to mount because all of my digital insiders are requ use all my spreadsheets and trying to anticipate how things are going to perform. And one of the latest spreadsheets I've made is actually for launch. Gorgeous. And it's an anticipating how many humans will see your offer. And so one of the things That I teach people is you can go on benchmark conversion rates, you can go on 3%, 4%, 5%, 2%, and you can anticipate what. What your funnel is going to convert at. But it all depends on this one key number, which is how many humans will you get to see your offer? And so I took her list size, her open rates, her click rates, her group numbers, her list numbers, and I plugged them all into a spreadsheet. And what we noticed about these leads is that they were incredibly cold. Like, these people were. Were colder than ice. And so they were asking questions in her group, like, is this a job opportunity? Do I need to have a computer in order to become a bookkeeper? I mean, they were just like, crazy cold questions. And so as we got closer and closer to the date of the webinar, you know, Ossi and Kristen and I were going back and forth, and I said, you know, you have to be prepared. I know you have 6,000 leads, but, man, I'm not quite sure how this is gonna go. These people are cold. Like, in a way, it was almost like her ad had gone viral. And so, yeah, so we decided to make a few changes. Right at the last minute, we introduced a much easier payment plan option, etc. So she was getting ready for this webinar. We decided to stream it live into the Facebook group rather than do zoom, just because, you know, the people were like, you know, on their phones and, you know, weren't going to understand what's zoom and all this kind of stuff. And so as we got closer, the nerve started to mount because I said to her, I'm like, if you're only going to get a 1 or 2% conversion rate, you need at least 3,000 people to see this offer in 72 hours. And that may not sound like a lot, but until you've actually done a launch, you don't realize how hard it is to get 3,000 people to actually see your offer. I don't mean just register for an event or be on your list. I mean, see your offer. Either see the pitch on a webinar or see the sales page. So nerves were high. And here is the part that I love to tell, because I think it just gives so much hope to people. She did her webinar and she had seven sales, and the voxer message I got from her at the end of that was so sad. She was, you know, she was feeling like it just completely flopped. It was the first time ever doing a webinar, and she had about. I 600 people on live. 500 maybe, which out of 6,000 is not a very high show up rate. But again, that's pretty typical for live webinars that the show up rate. Unless you're like doing voicemail drops and texts and all this crazy stuff, it's hard to get people to show up to a live webinar. So the show up rate didn't surprise me. But obviously the seven sales was very, very disheartening because her stretch goal, like her goal that she was hitting for on a cold audience at like a 1 to 2% conversion rate, she was trying to get at least 60 sales and seven was not 60. And so I actually went into her Facebook group and started looking at the comments and we started to form a plan. So Aussie and Kristin and I were saying, clearly objections haven't been covered. There's no question that the ad performed so well. Like it almost went viral. So it was hitting, it was hitting the mark. But people weren't making the sale. And I, and as much as people will complain, it's about money. It's never about money. And so I got a voxer message from Kristen. The, I don't know, it was like the day, the next day, or maybe later on in the day. And she's like, I think I want to change the offer. I think, I think people can't afford it. So what if I instead of doing a $500 course with a payment plan because we had a 6 pay of $97, I think she's like, what if I change it into a membership and it's only $47 a month, they get the job leads. And she was. And I, and I immediately stopped her. Again, this is another reason pitch for why you need a coach. I was like, don't you dare change the offer. And she was feeling the pressure of all these people in this group saying, I can't afford it, can't afford it, can't afford it. And she was trying to like pivot to be able to serve them. And you know, it's hard sometimes to know when to double down and stay the course and when to pivot. But I knew in this moment this was not the moment to pivot. That was not going to go well if she pivoted. So I, and Kristen is amazing and she's a go getter. And I said, don't you dare. And she's like, you're right. Okay, I won't. Just what do I do? And so we brainstormed about all the ways to crush Objections. And I have never seen someone be so diligent at showing up. In those 72 hours. Kristin went live sometimes twice a day in her group. OSSI was sending a ton of emails. And basically what was lacking in the webinar, because that webinar really needed to be dialed in more, was then systematically handled over the next three days in terms of lives and emails to help sell this program. And had she pivoted the offer, she would never have given her offer a chance to shine. And so that was just such a super important lesson to know when something flops, when to pivot, and when to, like, hold steady and stay the course. And I told her, I said, listen, you can always, if you decide you want to, you can, you can. It's totally fine to do a downsell after you're done, right after the launch is over. If you don't get as many sales and you want to try to recoup your costs and stuff, you can absolutely do a down sell. But right now in here is not. This is not the right time. And so that is incredibly, incredibly important. So anyway, she had an amazing launch. She ended up doing a 90,000 doll launch. In this launch, she sold way more. She went way past her goal of 60 students. And that was largely in part due to her not giving up, her staying the course, her showing up and doubling down on crushing objections. It was fascinating to watch, and so she was thrilled. So that is just a lesson. There's lots of lessons in there. But it was incredible to watch because so many people have these kinds of things happen where they end up having a webinar that doesn't perform as well. They pivot at the wrong time and they don't follow through with their plan. And I will say to people who are never sure whether they should pivot or double down, I think that in this kind of scenario, if you create a commitment, follow your commitment to the end. So if you say, I'm going to launch in the next 90 days, you follow that commitment. It doesn't mean you can't offer cool little plot twists, because all along the way you have to be able to respond to the market. But plot twists and sort of reading your customer is very different than just pivoting in a new direction. Ask yourself, is this going to confuse my customer? Because if it is to confuse your customer, then you need to wait until you finish your commitment and then you can move on, and then you can downsell, then you can pivot, you can change, you can look at the numbers and say, okay. What actually happened and the reality is, is that as this launch was going on, Kristen's numbers were looking pretty good. She was definitely in benchmark for conversion, and so she wasn't getting as many sales as she wanted, but her conversions were at the benchmark rate. So I said to her, I was like, this is not a problem with the actual offer. The problem is there's not enough humans seeing it, and we need to work on that. And so it's just knowing how to evaluate in the moment what's not working or what is. Because this had a really happy ending, because she ended up, you know, just so close a stone's throw away from a six figure launch on her program. And that was super exciting. So I hope that was helpful for you guys. And like I said, I'm going to try to get her on an interview on my Facebook page because I just think it's really fun and I just hope that whole backstory and journey helps you stay the course as well. Talk to you soon, guys. Appreciate you. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com forward/podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.