The Weekly Live Webinar: The Stability Play Nobody Wants to Commit To

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey everyone, this is Julie. Welcome back to another episode of Million Dollar Grit. Today I wanna make the case for the weekly live webinar, and you may have heard me talk about this a lot, but I cannot ignore the evidence in front of me as to why this is such a powerful way to sell your products and services. I made a commitment in 2025 that I was going to begin a weekly live webinar. Inside of Funnel Gorgeous. It took me 5 months to get it out the door. And I see this a lot with other folks who hear me talk about the weekly live webinar and they say, okay, that sounds like a good plan. And then it takes them months and months to get it off the ground. I think there are a few reasons for that. And I want to circle back to that point in a minute, but first I want to explain why I think the weekly live webinar is the way to sell in 2026. First and foremost, the weekly live webinar is probably the best way to convert someone who doesn't know who you are into a buyer in the, in the fastest way possible. And we know that lots of people are going to need a long time to be around you before they trust you enough to buy from you. That's okay. We know that people will need to follow you on social media or listen to you on podcasts or read your emails and kind hang around your orbit, and then at some point they'll be like, okay, I'm ready to work with that person. And that's totally fine. And most of us have businesses that accommodate for that because we have tra— you know, we have organic traffic and we have social channels and email marketing. But there are a small group of people that are in enough pain or in enough trouble that they need a solution right now. And the webinar is the fastest way to get someone who is a cold traffic, doesn't know who you are, into a buyer. Of course, in order to make this webinar work, there are very, very strategic things you need to put in the presentation, in the offer, in the funnel. It's not simple in, in that it's— it takes a lot of practice to get it going. But once it's going, there is not one thing that I have seen installed in my clients' businesses that changed the trajectory of their business better than a webinar. That's me saying it's worth the effort. Now I want to tell you about a few of my clients and how their webinars are going, and then we'll circle back to why I think it takes so long for people to get their webinars out the door. One of my clients, uh, her name is Heidi, and she sells a membership. And one of the ways that she sells her membership is with a summit. She does a big summit, but she noticed that she wanted to get people into her membership more consistently because her it happens only once or twice a year. I can't remember exactly. And we worked on webinar choreography. That's what I call it. It's sort of how we structure the slides, how we position the offer, how we bring up a particular topic. And she started this webinar and she's been doing really well. And she messaged me earlier this week and she said, last week's webinar was my best webinar to date. She had 40% of people show up. That's probably one of the highest show-up rates I've seen. Most people get between 10% and 20% of people to show up. She had 30% of people buy live on the call, and then she had 11 more sales on the replay. So that was 8.5%. And she said between the opt-in to the conversion rate was 20%, which is insanely high, insanely high. And she's so happy that she has this mechanism by which she can get people into her membership. I'll be really curious to see what happens over the next 6 to 9 months, because you know, she's, she's been used to doing her summit. And I know another client who I've talked about several times, Lindsay, she had her weekly webinar and then she had some live challenges. And what she found was that from a work effort standpoint, the challenges were a lot more work and a lot more effort, and they weren't actually returning more sales than just doing her weekly live webinar. I'm curious what's going to happen with Heidi in that if this webinar continues to perform so well, if that summit is going to all of a sudden feel like a pretty heavy left. That is one example. So Heidi's one example. Lindsay is another example, and I talk about Lindsay a lot. Lindsay is in the wedding niche, and she sells a program called Wedding Show Blueprint. She sells a $497 program, and she is regularly getting anywhere from 20 to 35 new students a week into her program. You can do the math on that. She has got that presentation so dialed in, and I think A lot of people in her shoes might say, you know what, this presentation is performing so well, why don't I just turn it on demand and then let it run on demand? But what she realized is that it's not that much work to show up an hour a week. Like, if you can't even show up 1 hour a week to sell to your audience and explain, and why would you give up a 30% conversion rate for a 15% conversion rate just to avoid that one hour. And, you know, her idea was like, okay, I'm going to turn this weekly live webinar into on-demand, but she has continued to just do it live. Another client who popped into my Voxer just this past week, and I'm so excited about this one because a lot of people say, all right, well, this webinar choreography that you're teaching works great for, you know, a $497 product, but I'm selling, you know, coaching that's $1,000 a month. Or $2,000 a month, right? It's high ticket. And I do have people who've used this choreography and have sold high ticket by now. The— in fact, the, the person I'm thinking of, her name is Tricia. She did her— the weekly live webinar, exactly the choreography, same choreography that I teach for a $500 course. Her program was $5,000, and she messaged me at the— at like midway last year and said she'd done half a million in sales. And it was a $5,000 offer. Okay. So it can work with a buy now high ticket if you are very, very, you know, good and diligent. But this person I'm about to talk about, he is not in the make money online niche. He is not selling to business owners about how to make money or how to, you know, business in a box. This is someone who is selling to the general population and he's selling something that's similar to coaching, but it's more positioned as like mentorship. People would choose this option instead of a coach or instead of therapy. And it's at least $1,000 a month. And he did this choreography where he's not asking people to buy right there on the webinar. So we shifted, shifted it a little bit. He did not name the price and he asked people to apply. But all the other choreography that I teach was intact. And he messaged me and he said, this was amazing. He said 100 Um, and 50 people were on and he had 41 applications, 41 applications from 150 people. Now, if you are not aware of what we expect in applications, we usually expect about 10% of people to apply. So if he had 150 people, that means 15 people should have applied. He had 41, which is, uh, almost triple. And he messaged me yesterday and said that he's closed, I think he's closed 5 or 6 of them so far. And these are big, you know, these are big dollar amounts and they are the regular population, okay? So I was so excited about that because, you know, a lot of people do buy nows and this was an apply now and it worked really well. I have another client now, she is testing a hybrid and I still don't have the full data on this. Although the very, very early data is promising. We redid her entire choreography. And I want to tell you, this person is a good salesperson. She came to me, she had already made significant amounts of money and her webinar had been working, but then all of a sudden it stopped working. And I think a lot of people in the market have said this, like what was working isn't working anymore. And so we completely scrapped her webinar and redid it from scratch. and we decided to do a $4,000 offer and we did something brand new with the choreography. We switched it up a little bit and we made it a buy now or call now. And we gave people the option and, you know, she doesn't love the idea of sales calls, but so that's why we wanted to say the price. We wanted to create the webinar choreography so that people are ready to buy, that they can buy. And if they're still not sure, they can get on the phone with her. And again, very, very early data. We're waiting to see, but she said that she had someone close off of that webinar. They didn't buy now, but they also didn't call now. They DM'd now, which I thought was interesting. She said all she had to do was get them in the DMs and then they went ahead and purchased. All right, the next person that has been in my DMs, Sarah. Sarah was actually very reluctant to do a weekly live webinar because she had an on-demand webinar that was working Okay. And she's like, why would I do this? Like, this is working okay. And she, she actually presented at the mastermind. She had all these avoidance tactics that she was using to try to avoid doing the weekly live webinar. And I dangled an award or a reward in the mastermind. I told people that I'd give them this like really awesome Disney benefit if they could make $60,000— $16,000 in 60 days. Excuse me, $16,000 in 60 days. So she decided, you know what, none of my current funnels would produce money that fast. So let me try this weekly live webinar. And she blew it out of the water. She actually doubled. She made $32,000 in 60 days. And she's been running this webinar ever since. And she's in the middle of a launch. And she said to me last week, she said that she had 56 live purchases on her webinar. She said 4 years of this webinar. It has never converted at 9% before. And so she is about to hit her goals. And I hope this is encouraging. I think her program is $497 as well. She's in a buy now, but I hope it's encouraging because I think there's so much doom and gloom and talk out there about how nothing is working. And, you know, people aren't getting what, you know, getting the sales that they used to get. And I've just told you about Heidi. I've told you about Lindsay. I've told you about Greg. I've told you about Sarah. I've told you about Tricia. I still have— I told you a little bit about Beverly. And now I'm also thinking over here about Candice. And Candice said that she ended up with a 14.7% live conversion rate, which is fantastic. She had 24% of people show up and then she had 14% of people buy. Live. Then I had another client, and she was one of those people who had the on-demand webinar that was working, and then all of a sudden it stopped working. And she went to the Mastermind in November, and I said, you got to do a weekly live webinar. And it's hard because once you've gotten used to the on-demand, you don't want to do it, and you're, you know, resistant, and you're like, well, this works so well, and it doesn't work, and so it must be the offer, it must be the market, blah blah blah. Anyway, she finally said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the webinar, and I'm gonna the choreography, and I think her program is $997, and she is just starting it. And remember, with a weekly webinar, you're doing small audiences every week rather than this big, huge, pressured launch. And so she messaged me last night and she said, "I got live sales. I got live sales." And I was like, "Yes, okay." And so she could have easily thought that her offer was no longer relevant, that the market had shifted, that things weren't working anymore. She could have gone down that route, but I said no. A lot of people don't realize that the past couple of years, if you're selling on a webinar, you're selling on a sales call, and like things were working and then they're not working, it doesn't necessarily mean that the offer died or that people don't buy. It just means that you were able to sell without actually really focusing on the choreography because people were more It was easier. You could rely on personality, you could rely on charisma, you could rely on, you know, the fact that they saw you on Instagram the earlier in the day. And now those things don't work anymore because trust is harder. So you actually have to use choreography, you have to use strategy, you have to understand what levers you're pulling. And I'm seeing this over and over and over again with my clients who've made lots of money, who are a little disillusioned when things stop working. But I say, if you just actually do exactly the choreography that I'm suggesting testing and you practice it, you are going to watch people start buying again. And that is proving to be true. Webinars aren't dead, courses aren't dead, coaching isn't dead. People are still buying, but it does mean you have to get a little bit more strategic. I want to go back to that question: why do I think webinars are so hard to get out the door? I think funnels in general are hard to get out the door. I did a podcast a long time ago with Dave Woodward and, uh, over on Funnel Hacker Radio, and I talked about how launching a funnel was a little bit like giving birth, right? In the last, like, you know, hour or two before you give birth, you think you're gonna die. And no matter how prepared you are, how good you are at, you know, at building funnels, those, those last like 6 inches to get out the door, it just feels very chaotic and stressful. I think that's just the nature of a funnel. There's a lot of moving pieces. You've got copy, you've got design, you've got tech, you've got sales, you've got people, you've got ads. It's a complex system. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You know, it's a very, it's a very specific skill. But I think the bigger reason that people drag their feet is because building webinar presentations are a pain in the neck. They are one of the hardest things to build. I would say the only thing that's harder is writing a book, but building a solid webinar presentation is very time-consuming and taxing. And yes, even with AI that can do all the design and everything, that's not really the taxing part. The taxing part is that building a webinar requires a very specific type of information that you're giving. It requires you to do research and like gathering your testimonials and having case studies and finding pictures and just like a lot of like research work that can be really annoying. And you're like, okay, I need a story that does this. So I don't have that story. So let me go find a client and let me create that story and let me make sure that that works and then bring it into the webinar. And there's a lot going on and I think that's one one of the reasons why people stall out on webinars. The second reason why I think they stall out is because I'm, I'm finding out, and I'm going to do a teaching on this very soon, people who are not naturally organized thinkers can get really turned around trying to build a webinar. They lose their train of thought, they start to be unable to figure out what is important and what is not important in the presentation. Then of course there, there's all this like mindset work about presenting it and You know, fearing if people are going to think, oh, you're not teaching enough, or this is just a pitch fest. All of that stuff kind of happens. And so I, it's very hard to do on your own. And a lot of my clients, they don't realize how much they have to practice. They think, oh, I'm good at sales. And then they practice and then it starts to get better. And they'll send me the transcript or they'll send me the slides and I'll be like, say this differently, say that differently. And, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 times doing this webinar, you're going to get really, really good at selling. This one thing, and it has created so much income stability in my clients. Watching people put this weekly webinar— yeah, you got to show up for an hour a week. Yes, you've got to run ads or, or maybe do a YouTube playlist funnel or have a good podcast. You need some form of traffic coming in, right? But this has created so much stability, and I feel like that is something that people need right now in 2026. They need stability. And I'm gonna just say, if you're listening to this and you do not have income stability and you do not have a regular flow of traffic, this is the thing that you want to be doing. You will, you want to create a weekly live webinar and you can sell a course anywhere from $497 to $1,000. You can sell coaching or a group coaching program as long as it's rolling enrollment, or you can sell SaaS, or you can sell mentorship, anything that's $1,000 to up to $6,000. $10,000 I've seen with a buy now. I mean, you got to be good, but a buy now, you can do a hybrid, you can do an apply now, you can do a buy now. Every single client that I have put on a weekly live webinar, and I have some that have really struggled, but eventually the webinar starts to convert and it becomes that stable revenue generating. And you gotta suck it up and show up once a week for your audience, which really isn't that big of a deal. Anyway, if this is something that you want to install in your business and you want to get going, please reach out to me privately. You can reach out to me on Instagram or LinkedIn, or you can email me at julie@juliechenell.com, and we can get you a webinar in 2026. All right guys, have a great week. And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.