How to Turn Followers into Buyers Even with a Small Audience

So we are live and today we're talking to Janae Rose about how you can build an online community and make money from it. And I was talking to someone else yesterday, this woman who has her own online community, about the benefits of having one. And one of the major one is once you have a community, you can do what you want with it. You can sell courses, you can sell training, you can sell workshops. But I think the problem is people try to sell all that stuff first without actually having a community. So we're going to help people avoid that mistake by getting some of these best practices before we officially get started. Two things. One is I just revamped my newsletter because I realized it sucked. I didn't like the content, I didn't like how spontaneous it was, I didn't like the value I was delivering. So I just started a new newsletter where every week you'll get one thought, one tactic and one time saver to help you save time, make money and avoid burnout. So there's a QR code down in the lower left hand corner. You can scan that to get access to it. The first issue is dropping tomorrow and I'm going to tell you how to quickly build your brand and get paid to actually prospect by landing paid speaking positions as an instructor. So I'll tell you my story about how I did that at General assembly and made about $500,000 over the course of five years just from that one resource. So that's what I talk about. But going forward, the newsletter will not be boring. So. So that's my goal. But Janae, if you don't mind introducing yourself, pivoting boring, introducing yourself, that would be amazing.

Yeah, absolutely. What's up everyone? My name is Janae. You might know me as Janee Rose or Janae Rose. Official. I am an online business expert and I have been a full time online coach for five years. So I quit my corporate job, wanted to find something that I was passionate about and I wound up building a community on Instagram and that evolved over the years to sharing that knowledge and expertise with others. So we're have a multiple seven figure business. I got to hire my husband a couple years ago. We've had thousands of students across our courses and our coaching programs and effectively we teach people how to build communities on platforms like Instagram and TikTok and how to convert those communities into paying clients for their coaching and course and consulting businesses.

So when you first quit your job and said, hey, I'm going to do this thing, what was the reaction from Your friends, your family? Like, what was that like?

Oh, everyone called me crazy. I mean, that's, it's funny. That's a big part of my just content my story overall because I feel like so many people are told that too, and no one had really. I have, I come from actually a family of entrepreneurs, which is interesting. Both of my. I have a stepdad and they're both business owners and I think maybe they knew how much work it was and the risk and they didn't want me to go down that route. And I had a good, safe corporate job. I worked for Coca Cola and. But before that, my career was really tumultuous. Like I had over six years, I had maybe eight jobs. Like, I did not find my stride, so to speak. And I just knew that, like there had to be something else. There had to be a better way. I wanted to make money, I wanted to have fun. I wanted to do something that I loved and that I felt like I was good at. So when I quit that job, it was a week before my 27th birthday. And I mean, I come from a family of Jewish parents. Like, they were not happy, right? It's like, why are you not a doctor or a lawyer? You know, you have this corporate job and now you're going to quit to do what? And so I quit to teach yoga. So everyone called me crazy. They said, you can't. Who's going to pay you? What are you going to do? Do you have a backup plan? And you know, thankfully I didn't give up.

Yeah, let's. This is on the topic of community, what support did you get? I mean, who was telling you, hey, this is a good idea, follow your passion or whatever. Who, outside of your husband maybe, who was rooting for you? Because it sounds like a lot of people are against you.

Honestly, no one. I mean, this is back 2017. Like there wasn't this whole online community now I feel like where we have so much access to these incredible entrepreneurs. Right? Think with really the rise of TikTok, it became like you can follow all of these big business owners and learn so much. There really wasn't any of that. Like the only coaches or kind of entrepreneurs that I knew of was like a Gabby Bernstein or a Tony Robbins, right? There wasn't really anyone because yoga was my, my big passion at the time. So I had, you know, 500 hour registered yoga instructors. So I knew that I had that skill and I could quit my job to do that.

Right.

I didn't really know how. Like, I didn't have yoga teaching jobs. But I was like, okay, I'm creative, I'm smart. I'll figure it out. But, yeah, no one really. I mean, I had saved a little. Little nest egg, and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna live off of that and I'll get scrappy.

Right?

Like, when your back gets. Gets pushed up against a wall, I think you really, you know, you poop or get off the pot.

Right?

You figure it out. And so that was sort of my plan. Really?

Yeah. I love it because I feel like our paths were similar to an extent. So I used to work at Facebook and I used to work at Adobe, but I never felt comfortable. And I always. I remember looking around one day and I'm like, I don't want your job. I don't want your job. I don't want your job. I don't. I don't want. I don't want to be here. Like, I just don't want to do this. This type of work. And there's like a frustration and like, a confusion from other people, like, hey, you're a Coca Cola. Why are you quitting? So on and so forth. And I feel like you telling that story is beneficial because a lot of people can connect with it, and it normalize the fact that just because on the outside looking in, it looks amazing. Look, if you don't like it, then move on. And then you're also doing something very similar to me, which is I'm building content for the person that I was seven years ago when I started off and didn't have the support. And you're obviously doing the same thing through your work. So I think that's great. And. And before we actually hop into it, first of all, Megan, thanks for joining here. But we have a cool question here from. From Shelby Meriwether, and she's saying, that's so cool. You know, how is it working with your husband? It sounds like it'd be really fun or really stressful. I'm guessing it might be a combination of both. But what is. What is that like?

Yeah, Shelby, you got it. You hit the nail on the head. It's an evolution, for sure. You know, I think in the beginning, it was a lot of, like, you did what? Like, you. Hi. You can't.

Right?

Because in our kind of society, the expectation is like, I would go to work for him. Right? Like, it didn't make sense to people. And so we got a lot of. Kind of not judgment, but just confusion, I guess. Like, people still to this day think I Work for him. So it's, it's, it's amazing. I think, like, behind every strong woman is a strong. He's stronger. Right. Like, that takes a lot. And so we each have unique assets that we bring to the business. He's got a really tenured sales experience, and so he came into this space with a lot of knowledge and was able to really grow and run our sales team. And he's much more operational than me. I'm much more creative and kind of innovative thinker. So we have kind of assets that allow each other to own different departments and that's super helpful. But I think, yeah, we, we have a joke like, put your husband hat on. Which means no talking about the business. Right. Because we worked together. Lived together. A couple years ago, actually, when he first started working with the company, we left LA and moved to Austin. So, you know, it's. It's a journey, but it's really fun.

Yeah, I can imagine. On vacations you have to have a rule like, look, we are on vacation. You can talk, you can talk, but don't talk about it's husband, wife, hat.

That's what it is. It's husband, life hats. So it's like no work, but it's also what we're passionate about.

Right.

So we get to share that passion with each other. But definitely when you butt heads, it's tough. And it's tough to take criticism from your partner too.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Well, I've been there, actually, I'll say it that way. So. So the whole theme today is how to build a community and how to monetize it. But first of all, what is your operational definition of what a community is on social media? Like, what's the difference between having a community and having followers? Like, what does that actually look like and what does that mean to you?

Yeah, I think that it's. It can be splitting hairs when you are thinking about what are the differences of the words. I think it's really a difference of the meaning.

Right.

And like the intention. If you have followers, okay. I would think you're more a musician or a celebrity. Right. Like, these are just people who are interested about you, but that doesn't mean that they're going to, you know, want to be in the room with you or want to xyz. And so I think when you're thinking about a community, right, a following is going to be more for that celebrity type person. A community is like, this is a group of people who have a similar interest or a similar goal or Even a shared obstacle or problem. And they're looking to you for advice and information and expertise, not necessarily to like be your best friend, right, or to be a fan. They are someone who, at least in my book, they're seeking information and like they're seeking a kind of a supportive environment where they can get that information. And I don't think typically followers convert as well as a community, at least in this, this type of kind of space, right? Like social media, not world global fame.

I like the, the comparison you make with, with you know, like an artist, right? So it could be like Donald Glover. Like you might have a bunch of followers, but they're not going to ask each other for advice on life, right? Like, hey, what should I do besides how to get to a concert? But if your followers all want to learn more about social media and like, maybe you're that person, like you're the magnet and the centerpiece of it, they can still learn from each other. And I think the benefit of that is you're curating an experience that they get to, you know, to buy into, like literally with money. But it doesn't have to be you all the time. It's almost like self sustaining without you constantly nurturing. It doesn't have to be just only you nurturing it. So I think from what I'm hearing is that's another benefit of community is like, they help each other. It's not just individuals. It's like a community that's actually supporting each other. So I think that, yeah, so how do you actually find your community? Because that's one question people have like, how do we find it? How do we build it? Like, people will say like, oh, use the right hashtags and stuff like that. I'm pretty sure you got a hashtag away from building a community. So what does that actually look like?

Yeah, I love that when we'll say I'm using all the right hashtags, I say, okay, a hashtag can't help you if your content sucks, right? Like, I'm a very blatant. I'll just kind of show you what it is and tell you what, what the reality is of, of social media. And I think now, right, we are in this space where more people see value in, in building audiences and communities in this space so there's more content than ever before. And that means that you need to be, you need to be creating content specific to this community, this person that you want to come follow you and eventually buy from you, right? So content is the end. All Be all a hashtag, a geotag. These things are not going to help if the content is not clear. So we have a term that we use called niche specificity. So you need to be super specific to your niche. And a niche, it's a group of ideal clients, right? So if you think about who your ideal client is or your ideal audience member, your ideal follower, that is who you need to be creating content for. Because at the end of the day, your content is like a magnet. It is meant to magnetize, attractive, your ideal follower, it is meant to repel anyone who is not that.

Right?

And so when we think about building a community or building an audience quickly, you want to, you do want to be controversial in your content because you do want to be repelling anyone who is not going to find value in your world, right? You don't really need followers. You need dedicated people in your community.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's funny. I was talking to Pat Flynn about this. He's the host of the Smart Passive Income podcast and he has a lot of other cool stuff going on. And the conversation we had was, you can't build a community until you first become self aware. Because if you don't know who you are internally and the value you can provide externally, you won't be able to build a community. You, you won't have that true north to anchor to. And to your. The point you're making is finding that niche and saying, I make content for you, but not being so distracted by saying, well, what about you, what about you? What about you? And I love the fact that you have this almost like negative customer Persona because you should be polarizing. And I always say, like, you want to be Nickelback, Nickelback. If you Google it right now, Nickelback's one of the most hated bands in the world. Like, do it. You'll see Nickelback show up. But they're also one of the most successful Canadian bands in history. So the people that love them really love them. And you can have a million followers who think you're just kind of so so. Or you can have thousand followers who just love you. Those people are going to pay you money, whereas everyone else is going to sit there and like, like your post and keep it moving. So along those lines, you know, I say this all the time because I've had challenges in the past that followers are not leads. I used to do digital marketing consulting and I. People say, like, how do we get more followers for our page? How do we do this, how do we do that? Like followers are not leads. They might be the precursor to someone who's going to become a lead. But in your experience, how do we convert these followers into a community and then eventually over to leads?

Yeah, I think that the way that I explain this to our students and the way that we teach it is that your goal isn't the number of followers you have, Right. You could have a million followers, and if only one of those people is an ideal client, you're screwed. To your point, right? That's. That's not a lead. That's not leads, that is followers. So the opposition of that, which is what you would want, is to have a high concentration of ideal clients or leads in your community. Okay, so if I have a thousand followers and 999 of them are leads, guess who's going to be more profitable? It's the person with less followers, but has a high concentration of clients or potential clients. So when you think about a lead, a follower is going to be nurtured into a lead. If your content, from the very start, the very beginning, the first piece of content that they see of yours brings them in, they go to your profile, wherever that is, and you want them to binge the rest of your content.

Right.

And as long as there's congruence in that messaging of this is who I help, these are the things that I do.

Right.

This is, you know, the topics that I talk on, they're going to stick around and they're going to be nurtured and kind of as they come down your social media funnel. I like to think of social media as kind of a funnel.

Right.

So it's bringing in the follower, and that follower will turn into a lead. And as they move farther and farther down your funnel, then your followers become buyers.

Right.

So it's just having the right quality people come to your community, and the way that you do that is through your content.

Right.

Kind of drawing that line of like, this is who this content is for and this is who it's not for.

Right.

If you're not ruffling any feathers, you're probably not doing it right. Because you're not getting enough attention, essentially.

Yeah, yeah. You're being boring and basic and forgettable. So you mentioned students. So I'd like to understand, like, what do you mean by students? Like, what the program is referring to, but also what are some of the common ways they're failing to build this community or convert these leads just based on your experience and interaction with them.

So our students are our actual clients. That's we Just call them students. That's our terminology, because they're learning to build businesses. So in my mind, they're students, right? A client would be more someone like your, I don't know, different. In my mind, it's just worse. There are students and I refer to them that way. But I think when it comes to what people get wrong on social media and what stops them, the biggest roadblocks, you could say, from building communities that can actually convert into paying clients, or people who buy their course or their digital product or work with them in their service or their consultancy, the number one thing is people think that you need to just tell people what they want to hear, right? And they are also posting so few posts, they're making such few pieces of content that they're actually not giving themselves enough room to kind of fail forward.

Okay.

And so when you think about your success rate through growing your, your social media, a lot of people come to me and they say, I've been posting for three years, right? And they have a couple hundred followers. It's not clear who their niche is. I know that they're not probably making enough money to go full time in their business. And those indicators is that they don't know who they're talking to. They don't have that ideal client. Maybe they're not confident in selling right, in converting these people. So saying, hey, this is what I do. If this is what you're struggling with, here's how we help people fix that problem. And people get really focused on the mechanisms. So I think that social media has two big compartments. You have the psychology of social media and then you have the mechanisms. The mechanisms is like hashtags, geotags, social media, stories, lives, right? It's all of the tools built within the platform. People focus on trending audio, this thing, that thing call to action. But what they're not focused enough on is the psychology behind the content, right? So what is going to make someone stop their scroll? You have to. You're fighting for attention from everything that's going on in the world, from everyone else that this person is following. You're fighting to get the attention of the algorithm, right? To favor you and to get your content pushed out to more people so that, that they can find you. And so it's not like a one magic bullet, right? When you're coming to social media and you're wanting to build an audience, trial and error is often not a good strategy because by the time you figure something out, it's three years later or four years later. And you're, you know, you don't have the momentum anymore. You don't have the will or the drive to keep that going. And so social media is a skill, right? Like, it is, it is just as much a skill as if you wanted to be, you know, professional, I don't know, like soccer player, right? Like, you're gonna have to play soccer for a really, really long time and you're gonna learn from the best coaches and you're gonna get the best strategy and you're gonna need to know, you know, all of the different mechanisms and all the different scores and all the things. Social media is very much the same way.

You make a good point in regards to the mechanisms. Because I used to teach digital marketing at General assembly and people would say, oh, what's, how do I find the best hashtags? What's the best time to post, so on, so forth. I'm like, master the fundamentals first. I'm like, that's a very lazy way to find success, to be honest. Like, what hashtag should I use? What's trending audio? Like, I'm like, how would you go spend a couple hours researching your audience and then come back and tell me what you have to share? Because that's how you find the success. And I love the fact that you're talking about failure because whenever I hear something like, like, like Pink was performing at the super bowl, she was horrible. Or this person like, totally, you know, this, the way they sung this song was really bad. I'm like, do you know how hard it is to be creative and to come up with a new stuff all the time? Like something's gonna fail, you know, like something's gonna fail. Like if you, if you don't try these things that are dangerous, that are polarizing, you're not gonna get the reward for who you are because you're not taking enough risk. And some things are gonna flop. But when I think about, like, I'm sure it's happened to you before. Like all the posts I've had that flopped, like, no one like, wrote, hahaha, they just didn't care. And thankfully, thanks to the algorithms, no one's gonna see it really either, because it's that bad. So people get so hung up. And I think, you know, we say, like, perfection is the enemy of progress. The reason why you're not creating content is because you're trying to create perfect content. But no one's content is perfect. I mean, look at Gary Vaynerchuk. Half the stuff he has is very Sloppy, but he just knows, just drop it, drop it, drop it, drop it, get it out there. Whereas people who are just starting out are spending thousands of dollars on the right equipment and worrying about their lighting and all this stuff. And it's like, dude, just say something. Like, as long as we can hear you, it's fine. And that's good to know.

Yeah. And just having your point of view, right. And that all goes back to the foundation, which is your niche, like coming to social media. And we're again, we're not talking to like someone who wants to be an influencer or a celebrity or.

Right.

Just wants to have a following for the fun of it or get brand deals. Like that's not the scope that I teach within. So I'm sure there are people who teach that, but that's just not what we do because we really focused on business owners, right. Like people who have a solution to a problem. And so when you take that idea of, okay, you have the solution to a problem, there's a person struggling with that problem who needs that solution.

Right.

So just reverse engineering that. You need to know. You know, we essentially say like everything that makes them tick, but when you think about what's going to make this person stop what they're doing, right, not pay attention to anything else, stop scrolling, which we know is a game, it's like a slot machine, they just want it to change, they want to keep going. And I don't know if you've noticed, but even like the platforms now are, are changing where in the reels feed, it will automatically move up, it will like, it will scroll for you if you spend too much time on a post and you don't like hold the screen. It's really, it's really bizarre. But the goal, right, is for them to be like pumping you through different types of content. So you have, you just have to know that like your content needs to have this kind of embedded understanding of I need to get their attention and hold it just long enough to either get my point across or to get them to take the action that I'm asking them to take to, you know, comment to like, to follow, et cetera. And then it's also a long game. I feel like a lot of people come to social media hoping for that like quick win success and it's definitely possible, but it's not going to happen for everyone. And it's typically, even if it does happen and you have a piece of content that goes super viral, it won't happen consistently because it was lucky not strategy.

Right.

And I say strategy with as much, you know, as much respect for the algorithm as possible.

Right.

Like, we never know. We really don't have that much control, but we know what factors will typically increase your ability to go viral or to get more attention. Yeah. And I just think people focus on the wrong things.

Right.

If you really know your audience and you are, I mean, as specific as using quotes, using their verbiage, their emotions, their real life situations inside of your content, you don't need to go crazy viral, will you? Probably, because a lot of people can relate to that.

Right.

But you're going to end up with a lot of attention from people who really need the thing that you have. And that's what's going to allow those followers to become leads and then eventually paying clients.

Yeah, I love it. And I'm asking a lot of questions. Everyone in attendance, please do feel free to ask them as well, because I want to make sure it's a. Not a dialogue, whatever the conversation is. But yeah, I mean, also, you can go viral and get nothing from it. I mean, I had One post on LinkedIn that got like over a million views, which is good for LinkedIn standards. I didn't make any money from it. People were just like, hey, dude, that was funny. Like, it's not like someone's like, now come teach me how to grow business. You know, so there's that. But I think one thing people have to get used to what you said, is you have to pretend like nobody cares until you give them a reason to. You might have the best content ever, but if you're leading, if there's no hook, it ain't gonna land. Like, yesterday I had a video where I was talking about how, like, my daughter taught a very valuable business lesson just based on her losing her first tooth. But in the video, I mentioned the fact that I told my daughter, there's no Santa Claus. So the beginning, I know, I'm that guy.

Right?

But the beginning of the video, the title was, you know, if you have children, do not let them watch this video. They were like, well, why? And I'm like, because I'm gonna bought the Spoil Spanish class. You'll understand that later. But initially it's like, well, what the hell is this video? Why is he putting this on LinkedIn? So just assume like, nobody cares whatsoever, and then you'll capture more attention. Then you get the opportunity to provide real value. We're not doing clickbait, but we're just saying, like, if I don't do this no one's gonna care. But, but on your end, I know you have this, this pillar like these. I want to make sure I have it right. It's the, the four keys to creating a community. Do you mind just bullet pointing? What? Those are for us?

Yeah, absolutely. So it's called the BOSS method, and this is our kind of trademark. It is not kind of. It is our trademarked process that we've built over the last four years of being in this space and teaching coaches and creators how to monetize their audiences. So it's really actually how to build a profitable business through social media are the pillars. So the first is you have to build an audience.

Okay.

Without an audience, you could have the best offer in the world. You could be the best expert in the world. You could be, you know, you have the best intentions in the world and it doesn't matter because no one knows you exist. And so when you think about the pillars, it's like foundation, right? Middle, middle, top. So you're building a house, essentially. So you have to build your audience and you have to build an audience of ideal clients. If you have an audience, it's huge, but no one cares about what you do. It doesn't matter, right? It's not going to convert. So that first step is building an audience of ideal clients. And that second step, then you need to have an offer that they want, they need, and they're willing to pay for. And I see this mistake a lot. People say, I have an offer, I have a course, I have an e book, I have this thing, I'm not making any money. And they're like 50 followers, right? I'm like, well, what happened here? Right? Or they have 500 followers, but it's all family and friends. And so building your offer before your audience is a big mistake. You know, there is a. We teach a co creation process. You can build your audience while building your offer and essentially like deliver that live instead of trying to spend six months filming it, which I think is a massive mistake within offer development and design. So you have your audience, then you need to create your offer that people want, they need, and they're willing to pay for.

Okay?

And you have to be able to validate that, not because you think they want it, right? So that's something else that we see is like people create these courses and they might be incredible, but they, it's. They think people want it and then they go to sell it and nobody wants it, right? Because it wasn't, it was developed out of your own desire to do the thing versus people coming to you saying, I'm struggling with this thing and this is what I really need and this is what I'm willing to pay for and this is what I want it to look like. And this is right. So all of that data is super important to be building your offer before you go out and create it. And then once you have your audience and you have your offer, now it's time to sell, right? So you have to be able to sell through your content in a way that gets the people who are hot leads, right? You don't need everyone to be like rushing in to buy your thing depending on the price point.

Right?

But what you need is the people who have been following you, right? They found you, they followed you, they've nurtured by you. So they've been digesting your content, they've been engaging with you. They're in that consideration phase of like, should I work with this person or maybe go do that thing, right? Or oh, I've been wanting to work with this person and I've been waiting for, you know, the right offer, the right call to action. So you need your hot leads who are in your audience to come forward and either apply to work with you or buy the thing, whatever your sales process is. And then the final S of the process is to scale the business. So how do you do this consistently over time, month over month?

Right?

Like what, what are those KPIs that you need to be hitting? You know, how do you essentially start to optimize the business so that you're not the only thing in the business if you get hit by a bus, you know, the business can still survive.

Right?

So that's our boss method. Build, offer, sell, and scale. And those are essentially the four pillars that any online client or info product business needs to grow. Using social media organically. No paid ads.

Yeah, I love those new mic devices. So. So I like the whole, the whole boss approach. And one thing that you said that really stood out and this is just, I want to double down on it, is you have to validate your offer. Right? I see so many people do the same thing. They built this online course and they're about to launch it. I'm like, have you ever done this live?

Yeah.

No. I'm like, well, how about this? Because, like, for me, like, my advantage is that I've taught for the last seven years at NYU and at General Assembly. So everything that I offer that's packaged has been delivered live several times. And when I bomb, I'm like that wasn't good. Don't include that. Right? So I'm getting negative and positive feedback, but that's what I do with some of my clients. I'm like, before you build this course, I want you to go pitch to give it like a workshop for free to organizations that your ideal client will work with. If they all say, no thanks, that'd be kind of validated. It's not a good idea. And if they say yes, you can improve it and even do some kind of pre sale to validate it as well. But it's sad to see people waste so much time and spend time and money saying here's the best way to build it and like, here's the tools I need. And all of a sudden it's like no one cares, right? So I'm glad that that's part of it because it's, it's. You might have the right intentions, you might have the right information too, but if it's not packaged correctly, then you're in trouble. But I do want to get some, an understanding of like the sales process because what I see some people do to like to do sales is they'll do like an Instagram story saying, hey, you know, do you have this problem? How about that problem? Here's how I solve it. Or it'll be like a series of quizzes. It's like, well if you answered all these, then you should buy. My thing is there. And I don't want you to give away all your tactics that, you know, obviously we could, we would not have time. Well, that's good news then. So what are some ways that someone who's like, obviously we're not using paid ads either. Like what are some easier or like, I don't see easy but clearer ways to make sales to your audience once you have a good offering and a good, and it validated. Well, yeah.

So I think first and foremost, right, what's the pipeline? Is it you're sending people to a link to buy and it's a freestanding digital product or course?

Right.

Or is it that they need to apply, get on a call, you know, and work with you to be essentially qualified. So depending on your sales process, it's going to look a little bit different. You know, I would say the like 80% of people right now who are new business owners, we always suggest that they are selling live through calls because they're going to get again like that type of market research, that type of data and feedback. It's invaluable to your business it's going to go inside of your content later on, it's going to go in emails, right? It's going to help you potentially pivot your offer or restructure or refine. It's going to allow you to really get inside. We're going to be able to hit home runs easier, easier, easier as time goes on. So for us, it's really about like, teaching coaches and business owners how to build the skills that they need to grow their business. Sales is a paramount skill, right? You can have the best offer in the world. The most engaged audience, people are asking you to buy. And if they have to talk to you, right, you have to work with them and essentially ensure that they're the right fit and you're the right fit to help them. You have to have a sales call or you need someone on your team who can handle those calls. If you are wanting to do that process like you have, you want people to apply to work with you, then you're going to want call to actions essentially leading people to apply, but you also really want to have qualifiers throughout your content, right? So when we say talk to your ideal client, it's not like, hi, ideal client. It's if you are this person with this, you know, situation that looks like this and you are frustrated with this and sick of dealing it like this and you want, right, like really honed in and clear and specific so that someone can read that content or hear you on a live and feel like, whoa, what is this witchcraft? Like, they're inside my head. How did they know? I, I need more information, right? And so we teach up. It's content, it's conversations and it's sales calls, conversions.

Okay?

So those are kind of the three Cs of the outline of the sales process that most coaches or consultants or service providers should do. You might be thinking, well, why? Why? I don't, I'm a service provider, I'm a consultant. I don't want to take sales calls. If someone pays you to work with you and they're not the right fit or you can't help them, it's going to ruin your reputation. It's a really good way to have, you know, your bank calling you because people are submitting refund requests or, right, doing all those crazy things that we don't want to deal with. So it's really important when you work with people in the live capacity that you're ensuring that, that not only are you like an energetic fit, like you like them and you want to help them and you Think that they're respectful and they're your ica because you can't help everyone. That's okay. This is part of my kind of issue with courses. Like, we have a lot of students who sell courses. We have small courses. And I think it's fantastic. You just really need to be refined and know have your kind of your sales page, if you will, really speak to disqualifying people so they don't buy it when it wasn't right for them. And then they're going to call their bank and try and get the refund, right? So just important to really know who you're talking to. And then on your. Sorry, go ahead.

Oh, go for it.

Oh, I was going to say. And then once you're. We teach. So you have your content. Your content is supposed to get people into your DMs, right? So there are many mechanisms, many ways to do that. Let's say you put up a poll, right? And you ask a question. Someone votes in the poll. Okay, cool. You can reach out to them and say, hey, so you vote in that poll. Wanted to connect, right? So keeping it simple here. And then now you're, you should be qualifying them and there's a, you know, few questions that you should be asking to qualify in the DMS before recommending that they, you know, move forward to apply. Then you're getting on a call and you're doing, you know, a full process where you're hitting at least like seven states of ensuring they're the right fit or not.

I mean, I hope everyone's listening because what you just said, it just works and it makes life a lot easier. So just watch this again, take notes or whatever. But like, let's go back to a few things. One is just pre qualifying people, right? So even as a seller, you should always be the buyer, right? Just because you're selling your services, you want to buy into the relationship. So even your intake form, like before someone gets on a call, you want to ask pre qualifying questions, like, have you ever worked with someone like me before? What's how. How much money have you paid for this in the past? One question I have, which might seem like it's unnecessary is based on what you know about me, why are you interested in partnering with me? I asked that question because sometimes people say, like, I'm not sure. I don't really know much about you. I'm like, let's, let's cancel. I'm like, go watch this video, learn more about me and then we'll see what's up. But they might say, oh, my friend recommended me. Or I like the fact that, you know, you have four children, but you're still doing this stuff. Like, I want to hear, why me specifically, you want to talk to you. That way I know you're not just kicking tires. And then beyond that, your point about making sure that you're attracting the right person? Yeah. I mean, you don't want to ruin your reputation. I think early on, there's this scarcity mindset where you'll take anyone who'll pay you money, but then if you're not showing up fully and they're being disappointed, you're better off just moving on to the next person and being more clear about who you can help. And I think that's the part that's rough when you're on those sales calls. It's like, I ain't feeling this. Are you feeling this? And. And you know in your head, like, this ain't gonna work. And you have to tell that person, I can't help you. And when they were just really excited about it, it's. I think it hurts. But you're. You're doing them a bigger favor because at least they know to move on and find someone else. But you. You have to have that tough conversation with people and say, like, this is not a good fit or this is gonna go downhill from there anyways.

Yeah. And you might make some people upset, but it's, you know, it's for the greater good. Right. So it's. It's too expensive. It's too much of a liability. It's not worth their energy, their effort, their money, their time.

Right.

Or yours. And so it's always, like, we say no to most of the people that apply to work with us.

Right.

Because it has to be a time fit. It has to be an energy fit. It has to be all of those things that you need out of them.

Right.

Because this is not done for you. This is done with you. Like, we'll hold your hand.

Right.

But we're not going to create your content for you. We will help you, like, every step of that way to understand the process. We'll look over it. We'll tell you why we think it worked or why we didn't think it worked, how you can make it better in the future.

Right.

Like all of those components. Yes. But, like, you have to sit down and do the writing. You have to sit down and come up with the live idea. Like, it's. Because, again, it's. It's. If you teach someone how to fish, you'll feed them for life versus if you give them the answer, they won't.

Right.

They're going to walk away and be dependent on you. And that's not a good thing either. So there's a lot of like refinement that comes with selling because yeah, in the beginning you want, you just want to sign clients and like, that's okay.

Right.

We're all, we were all at day one of our business at one point, you know, and everyone has goals. Um, but it's super important to keep in mind, especially in the online world, like rep. It's a reputational game. And I do think that like over the next year or so we'll see a lot of people exit the space and get kind of spit out because they weren't taking care of their clients and they were more concerned about like their revenue numbers.

Yeah, well, it's gonna go down quickly. And the last thing I'll say on that topic is what I look for often is clarity. Are you clear on what you do and how you help people? Because if you don't, I can't really pull it out of you. Like I can, I can search to an extent, but if you don't have the confidence and the clarity, I gotta move on. I got four kids to raise. Like I get like, you know what I mean? Like, I can't. Like, I'm not a life coach is what I'm saying. Whereas some people are. I'm not, I'm like, let's just, let's just get it. Like I got a process and you go into it, cool. If not, then I'm not your guy. But what I want to do is kind of shift a little bit to communities, like online communities that people would pay to join and just get your thoughts on best practices for that, how to, how to manage them without spending a lot of time on it. Even the tools that you would might recommend just from that perspective for.

Are you talking like memberships?

Correct.

Okay there. I'm not a huge fan of memberships and I'll tell you why. Because I think that people see it as low hanging fruit. And in fact it's the opposite. It's just as hard to sell something that's $50 a month or a hundred dollars a month as it is to sell something that's $5,000.

Right.

Because you're having to go essentially through a lot of the same process. People are going to have the same questions, they're going to have the same objections.

Right.

And they're going to be looking at their bank account statement every single month. And when they want to cut something down, they're going to look for their low hanging fruit, which typically ends up being something like a membership. I think they can be great tools in your business, but you got to have a big audience to make them worthwhile.

Right.

If you want 50 people to pay, you know, 100 people to pay you $5 a month, right. Not a whole lot of of meat on the bone. So you need a big audience and you need to be consistently bringing people in to make that worthwhile. And most people will use that as like a break even funnel. So they'll run ads to a membership and their customer acquisition costs will be either a little bit less or a little bit more than what it costs them to keep that customer for two months. And the attrition rate on memberships is pretty high. Typically people bounce at month three. So again, there's things that you can do to fix that. You can pre sell them an entire year and kind of lock them into that with no refunds. Things that you can do like that. I think that, you know, memberships really are a tool for an upgrade. Like if I was going to do a membership, that would be the premise of which I would do it. And so you would want to essentially add value, overvalue your monthly membership in order to generate these leads.

Right.

And really nurture them and let them kind of see behind the curtain of what it's like to work with you. As far as tools, there's a bunch of membership platforms I think like Kartra, Kajabi, both have membership platforms if I'm not mistaken. But you can even have people like pay to be in your Facebook group.

Right.

Like there's lots of different ways that you can have a membership, but it's not really my speciality. So I don't want to speak like too much, I know a little bit, but I think that they can work and they can be a benefit. But if you can't master building a free community, what makes you think building a paid community is going to be any easier?

Yeah, I think where some especially solopreneurs get stuck is they'll have a client and they don't have a way to continue working with them. So they might have a three month program, but it's like what's next one of the three months. So I think that's where sometimes like the courses and the communities come up. But to your point, if there's what, what next? Right? If someone's just in it for 50 bucks and you have even 100 members, like, great, now you made 5,000 bucks a month and you're spending a heck of a lot of time on it. So it's probably not the best fit. But if, if it's more or less a way for you to pre qualify people for more expensive products and services, that's great. But it's something to think through because everyone wants a community these days, a paid one, and they're like, oh yeah, I'm gonna go on like whatever and like, you know, 29 bucks a month, that's it. But it is real work because people will leave if they're not being managed properly. So going to the last s in the boss approach, what are some approaches that your students have taken in regards to scaling that have worked?

So first and foremost, they don't focus on scaling right away.

Right.

I think so many people hear this all the time. I want to scale my business. I want to scale my business because we have another program called funnel and scale where we really take the business and like pull you out of it so that you can run in. It can be, you know, multiple six or seven figure company and a lot of people apply for that and they have nothing to scale, right. We're like, well, right, like how does this work? How do I say this in a way that's, that's compassionate, but also like opens your eyes a little bit. So just because you have a course, if you're making $1,000 a month, there's nothing there to scale, right? Like you need to be making. What we look for is your business cannot scale until you're hitting about eight to $10,000 a month. Again, I'm speaking for coaches, service providers and consultants who typically are going to sell a more high ticket offer, $1,000 or more because they solve a big problem and you get paid in proportion to the problem that you solve, right? So like, you should be able to scale a business to six figures, $100,000 a year with one offer like that is what we teach. Because that is what I know to be true, right? We've proven it over thousands and thousands of people. And I think that, you know, having a really good foundation, building a strong community, creating content that's generating people into your audience who are like, oh my gosh, it's, it's like you took this out of my head, right? Nurturing those, those community members. By community, we mean free audience, like following, right? Not paid, paid community. They're validating their offer so they're delivering it and they're refining it. And so that's part of scaling the business is like going not, not being afraid to go back to your offer and change things to make it more effective, to help people get faster wins.

Right.

To be doing all of those things, getting better at selling, like becoming kind of a conversion machine. And then when you want to scale it's like, okay, the first things typically to go are we want to get a funnel built that's not just free social media.

Right.

So yes, starting to build your email is doing all those things everybody wants to do and then automating the offer. So whether that means bringing in, you know, a team to help you. Hiring a co coach, for example, like what does the training process look like? What needs to happen. A lot of our students as well, once they're already doing about six figures, they're like, okay, I'm ready to delegate my sales process. So we have to increase the amount of leads they get in order to. Because a sales, the owner of the business is always going to be able to sell the best because they're, they're the business, everybody wants to work with them.

Right.

So there's that magic factor. When you delegate your sales, you're typically dropping like 30% of your conversions. Well, that's how like if you're closing at 50%, someone else can typically close like 20 to 30% and that's that they're well trained. So that process then requires us to either improve their virality so that they're generating more leads and or add paid media to that function. So getting up Facebook ads, getting up Instagram ads and like pulling them out of the coaching spot and putting them into the CEO spot. So those kind of the process if you will. But it's like focus, hyper focus on getting $10,000 a month. Why eight to $10,000 a month is six figure business. Right. That's why it became the like number. There's nothing magic to it except it can replace most people's corporate job.

Right.

So it gives you that stability in that foundation. But it's like, don't try to run before you walk. So it's like I always tell my students, put your blinders on. Like you should be focused on nothing else outside of content, conversations and closing clients. That's it. And then once you've hit 10k a month, cool. Now we can start to help you like refine this process and really scale and like do those other things. But that's how some of our students have scaled from like Zero. It's like seven figures in a year because you have to start the process A, and then you can move forward to process B. But, yeah, trying to run before you walk, it's just. You're going to fall.

Yeah, Yeah. I like the, the focus on having someone else do the sales calls because, like, there's even like, like closers.com, like a website. You can hire closers and give them, like, whatever kind of percentage. Because you can't be good at everything. Right. I mean, you may be really good at delivery and really good at creating content, structuring so and so forth, but maybe you're not good at sales or you just don't want to do it like you, you want to go like kids or something. So finding ways to remove yourself is super important when. Once you can afford it and once you have a process for someone else to at least replicate. So I love that focus there because it's not, it's not for Everybody.

Yeah, well, 100%.

Right.

And, like, I haven't taken a sales call in two years, maybe three. I don't remember last time I took a sales call. Right. But you, you can't hand over the wheel if you don't know how to drive.

Yeah.

So that's kind of the premise is like, yeah, you can't be good at everything, but we gotta get good at the things and then you can get back to your son of genius, which typically is like working with your clients.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. So, yeah, I mean, I want to make sure there's, there's any more questions, please do ask them. But, Janae, on your end, I mean, you've given us some great tips already, but how do you help people? How can they reach out to you to get more in depth information from you and your team? Like, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, absolutely. So we offer free business audits. So if you're a coach, consultant, service provider, course creator, you want to be, you can go to generos.com apply and book a free business audit. And that's step one of. Right. What is your next step? Is it to work with us? It might be, it might not be. And our team will really audit what you've done so far. They'll look at your social media, they're going to dig into your offer offers, figure out, like, you know, are you generating leads, are you closing leads, like, what's kind of happening here and get you a roadmap forward. And then if you guys go to, you can Follow me on Instagram @generosofficial or TikTok. And the link in my bio also has some free trainings. And if you're curious about, like, you just want to learn from me and learn more about what it is that we do, we have like a 59 boot camp. It's incredible. It's three hours. So yeah, there's lots of different ways that people can learn about us. But feel free to always DM me as well.

Awesome. Cool. And Megan is dropping the links to the, to those sites, both the apply part as well as Instagram, so please do check that out. But last question I'll ask you is like, looking at the back half of the year, like, what are you excited about for your business for industry? Like, what's, what's really, what are you excited about?

There's been some opportunities that have come up that are, that have been a little bit shocking and unexpected for me. Like, I was reached out to by a potential streaming network that wants to do like a millennial Gen Z entrepreneurship show, which I'm like, that's crazy. But it could be super cool. As far as the business, like, we, our clients are doing better than ever, which to me is like so fulfilling and I think just continuing to have a bigger impact. Like, that's all. That's what this all started from. That's what it's going to continue to be. Kind of the like North Star for us is like, we know that people struggle with social media and courses and coaching and all these things. And there's a roadmap.

Right.

Like, we built it. So just continuing to get that in the hands of as many people who want it because this industry isn't going anywhere. But I do think that trial and error is getting phased out really, really fast. And from the industry perspective, like, the faster you can validate your business and make money, like, the longer you'll be able to be here versus getting kind of chewed up and spit out by the frustration of things not working. And so, yeah, it's really, really cool. And I would just leave everyone with like, if I can do it, so can you. There's nothing that different about me. Like, the fact that we generate millions of dollars a year is just a testament to a lot of hard work. Work and, you know, yeah, finding my. Finding what I was good at and like, really leaning into that. So it's pretty cool to get to see and walk through that path with some of our students who, majority of our students who go from like zero dollars or a thousand dollars a month and they're like, I just quit my job. I'm making 20 grand a month. Like, oh, I made seven figures last year. Oh, I just had a million dollar month. Like, it's just mind boggling, right? Like, it's a really cool process. So don't give up on yourself. If you're out there and you're like, what do I do? But yeah, for me, just going to keep chugging along doing what I love.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And I think you're going to have an influx of more people that need your help. With all the tech layoffs you're going to see people say, look, I don't want to go find another job. I just, look, I know how to do this, I know how to do that. I'm just going to teach people independently and from there they're probably more fulfilled. So, yeah, I know you're going to help a lot of people and you've already done so today. So thank you very much for that. Everyone else, thanks for tuning in. And if you have any questions or any more comments, please do drop them in the thread. We will keep an eye on that. And this recording will be on my website as well as YouTube. Give us about a week on that one. So thanks again and I will see you next time.

Bye, guys. Thanks so much.