How I sold a $5K Coaching Program (without Facebook ads)

Building an audience online or really getting any kind of visibility for your online business today is incredibly hard. Some of the solutions that we hear to help us blow up overnight include dancing on TikTok, which I don't know about you, but it's not really my favorite thing to do, or spending a butt ton of money on Facebook ads. And I don't know about you, but I'm not much of a gambler and I don't want to put money in Facebook ads that may result in building my audience when. But the thing is you don't need a huge audience to have a successful business. You don't need to go viral, you don't need to spend lots of money on Facebook ads to create an offer or a product that people will actually buy from you. I want to share with you how I did this. Now, by no means am I a huge YouTuber. I have around 50,000 subscribers, which is a lot. But in the eyes of the YouTube world it's not that much. And I have a small list of around, you know, 12,000 email subscribers, which again is big in my eyes. But you know, in the business world that's not that big. But in April of this year I decided to launch a group coaching program. Now this group coaching program was the biggest thing that I've ever thought about selling. It was $5,000 to be a part of it. And my imposter syndrome and my fear of failure kept telling myself to not do this, like who are you to do this? Like you're not good enough at this. Who's going to buy this? I kicked that much to the side as possible and I moved forward with launching my group coaching program. And what happened in April is I got kind of overwhelmed. I think some more of that inner talk, that inner critic of myself also caused me to not want to promote it as much. I didn't talk about this program on social, I didn't talk about this program on stories. I didn't talk about this program much on YouTube or in my email list. But we still ended up getting 20 people enrolled which led to a six figure launch of this coaching program with zero Facebook ads, didn't go viral and hardly promoted it. So I want to break down in this video exactly what I did to do this and make sure you stick to the end because I'm going to wrap this all up by going through what I think worked best, what I think didn't work, and then what I would do if I did this again or if I move forward with this program. Alright. So first, I utilize just two platforms to launch this program, which I caught 10K on replay. I focused on YouTube here and my email list. Now, before I jump into exactly how I use these two platforms, I understand how hard it is to juggle all the social platforms that are out there today. So I've been really trying to simplify where and how I show up on social. So. So I'm curious where you are with figuring out what platforms you're going to show up on. Tell me in the comments below how many social platforms you're trying to show up on consistently and which are the ones you are, you know, trying to be consistent on. I'd love to have a conversation down in the comments about, you know, what are we trying to show up on and are we trying to show up on too many platforms at once? Let's discuss. Okay, so here's how I used YouTube to launch 10K on replay. I talk a lot about YouTube, talk a lot about getting started on YouTube here on my channel. So what I ship shifted to was content that was going to prime my YouTube audience here about business strategy and the way I build my business and the views and the stance I have for business building. Because my coaching program is all about hitting consistent 10k months of revenue in your business. So it's really focused on not just the YouTube part, but the whole business model. So I needed to get those of you here on YouTube to buy into my unique approach to business and make you see, like, I literally know what I'm talking about when it comes to building a business. Plus, many of you that have been here for a while are getting tired of me talking about the same YouTube content all the time, like how to start a channel, how to get views, all of those basic things. You're ready for that next step. You want to hear more from me. And in reality, my business model is what's getting me to half a million dollars in revenue in a year. Not here on YouTube. Not being a YouTuber. So for me to sit back and focus on growing a subscriber base here on YouTube isn't profitable for me. Building a relationship and a community here on my channel, for the people who are wanting to use YouTube to grow their business is what I wanted to focus on. Because like I said, this is exactly what allowed me to go from making $250,000 in my business in 2020 to jumping to half a million dollars in 2021, or while dealing with the C word kids at home, you know, constant in and out of quarantine and shutdowns. I was able to work less and still get to half a million dollars by using my business model that starts with YouTube. So knowing that the videos that I was going to put out on my YouTube channel is not part of my YouTube growth strategy, these videos were a part of my community building strategy, my authority building strategy. So in March, I put out three video focusing on my unique approach to business. These were my minimalist approach to business, seven things I'm quitting in my business this year, and five tips to stay focused as a business owner. Now, these videos did nothing to grow my audience. I maybe grew a few subscribers, but the audience retention on these videos were significantly above normal. Meaning those of you that here have been watching me on YouTube wanted to hear about this, that this is something that you needed and that you were interested in. So that definitely told me my plans to launch this coaching program around business was definitely validated. And the reason why these videos don't do as well is because YouTube's already categorized me as like a YouTube education channel. So when I put out content that doesn't involve how to get started with YouTube, how to grow a YouTube channel, YouTube doesn't necessarily serve me to as many people because it's kind of put me in this box and that wasn't the typical content that I usually create. Which is again, fine for this particular strategy because the strategy wasn't to grow my YouTube channel. The strategy was to teach you guys and to show you viewers, you subscribers already, how I approach business and how it could work for you. The other thing that was unique about these three videos is they were the most commented on videos that I've had in like the past two years. So again, this was really sparking conversations. This is something viewers here, subscribers here were very interested in. And again, it just validated that I'm going the right path, that my followers here, my subscribers here, you hear loyal viewers were very much interested in learning about business. So then I got those videos out where I started to share my perspective on business and started to open up about business. And for those of you to see that I know what I was talking about, then I started leaning in on content that I knew y' all were struggling with when it comes to growing a business, like your biggest hurdles, your biggest pain points, which I know for many of you is content creation, having the time to create content, what kind of content to create and also what to focus on. Because when you're building a business or you're trying to grow your business, there are A lot of things happening. You're trying to create a course, maybe you're working with clients, you're trying to do social media, you're trying to do your finances, maybe you're trying to hire. And it's like what do I actually focus on? Where do I get started? So that's why the next videos that I followed up on gave you a taste of how to know what to focus on and all those problems that you may be thinking about in your head when it comes to building a business. So I did five realistic streams of income for your business, a stress free content plan and my weekly planning process. So how I really stay productive in my business on a week to week basis, once again, these videos really did nothing to grow my YouTube channel, right? I am not in a cycle here on my YouTube channel where I'm trying to grow it. I, I am trying to reach those of you here that are incredibly interested about business building, right? And I'm trying to show you that I know the pain points that you are having and I have solutions for them because I've been doing this for six years and there is absolutely a time that you need to focus on growing your YouTube channel. And so the six weeks prior to these particular videos that I talked about was my YouTube building strategy. And so these were the videos where I talked about growing a YouTube channel, how to grow a YouTube channel, right? This is what grew my audience at that point in time, what I focus on. So then moving on down like a sales funnel, right? I'm trying to capture people right here that are thinking about YouTube, wanting to use YouTube and then the next step down is, okay, they're they want to use YouTube in their business. And so I did the six weeks prior to broaden my intake, right, Bringing people in and then I'm bringing them on this journey to show them about how YouTube really works in their business and how to do that. So those three videos that I just talked about, the five streams of revenue in your business, my weekly planning process, and also my content stress free content plan, the goal of those videos was to get people who watch those to sign up for a free private training that I cat that I had caught. How to hit consistent income in your business. So each one of those videos had a piece at the end that promoted you to sign up or apply for this training. Because this training was by application only. I was going to be releasing this coaching program at the end of this live training and I needed to make sure those of you that were attending the training were ready for this program because it wasn't for everybody. Right. It was a $5,000 investment and you needed to have some kind of business model or some kind of idea of a way to move forward in your business. And I didn't want those that I was going to work with in my coaching program so to have to be slowed down a bit by people who weren't ready for it. Okay? So that's why we did this by application. And those three videos is where I pitched this application and talked about why it was important to be there and who was best fit for. I ended up again with zero ads having 160 people apply for the training. 113 were accepted. By the end of this entire process, we had 20 people join, eight clients paid in full and 12 clients did 12 monthly payment plans, which brought our total revenue for a brand new coaching program that I never launched before and I didn't spend $1 advertising it on Facebook to $110,000 launch. Again, no Facebook ad spend. Really? No social media promo because like I said earlier, I think I was starting to doubt myself. An imposter syndrome was setting in. So I didn't really want to talk about it because I didn't want somebody to be like, who are you to do a coaching program? Like, what do you know about business? You're not making like a million dollars. So I think internally that internal talk caused me not to want to talk about it on social. So I just really talked about it here on YouTube and in my email because I did send six emails total pushing people to the live private training to apply to attend the training. Now I'm going to jump into what worked, what didn't work, and what I would do moving forward when I open up 10k on replay again. But if you really enjoy learning about the business stuff like building a business, scaling your business, launching your stuff, and really how to take your business to that next level. I'm going to be sharing more about my journey to 1 million in revenue here on my channel. Now, 1 million in revenue is not the end goal for me and it's not always been a goal. It's actually been a detriment to me because I've had this idea that if I don't hit a million in revenue, I'm a failure. So I've spent a lot of work the past two years to not actually achieve that. But it is much more attainable now that it's been six years. Right. I've been growing slowly and steadily. I say I'm the Turtle here. I'm not the hare. And so I think it would be cool to hit 7 million. Here's the asterisk. Only if I enjoy what I'm doing. Only if I'm still taking three day weekends. Only if I'm still wrapping up my day at 3:30 when the kids get off the bus. And only if I am not sacrificing my health and well being for the growth of my business. So if these rules that I set for my business get me to a million in revenue, fantastic. If they don't, fantastic as well. Because I'm following my rules and I'm building the business that I want. If this sounds like something that you want to follow in and listen on and see the process, make sure you hit subscribe to my channel right now because this is where the direction of my channel is going to be going. And really what I'm passionate and excited to be sharing with you now what really worked. First of all, special pricing. So when I built this program I initially see it as a 10k investment for the entire year, right? But this is the first time that I've launched this. I don't have any case studies for this particular program. I don't have any testimonials for this particular program. In fact I don't even have the content created for this program. I'm releasing content every single month for this program. So I position this as this is your chance to join us at Founders member pricing, which means it was half price. It was a $5,000 investment to join in a Founders member pricing and this was really huge. A lot of people appreciate this and it made me feel less self conscious by not having the testimonials from people going through this program say hey, I know this is a brand new if you're willing to buy into me and invest in me, I'm willing to give you like a cut here as we work together to figure this thing out. I also offered a free one on one call with me for anybody that paid in full because it's easier for us to collect the money up front because there is some administrative cost behind the scenes to get the payment plans. And you know how people sometimes their credit card changes or expires or they have to cancel it and then we have to get the updated credit card. So so we did offer an incentive of that one hour strategy call with me if you'd paid in full. The other thing that was really fun and different was when you applied for the training we asked you to share your Instagram account so that we could follow you. And then we actually were able to open up and have conversations with people in the DMs like they say have convos in the DM, so. So I did a lot of voice memoing back and forth with people to answer their questions. And I personally love that when we do video Strategy Academy launch we have like a voice, a video question box and then I send your answer back in video. I would way much rather do that than typing it all out. So I definitely love that and that for sure worked was having that conversation with people in the DMs now what didn't work? Not enough automations. So onboarding 20 brand new clients was a lot more work than I had anticipated. And I can see in the future how we can automate a lot of these things because we had to send a contract that they signed. If they were doing a payment plan, we had to send a payment contract because this is basically like you're buying a car, right? You have to commit to making these payments. It's not something that you can just cancel. And so we had to get those contracts out. We also had to get the onboarding email out to them as well. Well make sure they could get into our Slack channel. And then gifts we really wanted to love on these clients when we enrolled them and send them gifts. I am still to this day getting these gifts out because the initial way that I went to send gifts they stopped doing that particular gift. So now I've had to find another way to send what I wanted to send. And so that just kind of blew up in my face. I needed some more systems and automations that we are working on right now but that just became super overwhelming to onboard 20 new clients with the red carpet onboarding that I initially envisioned for them. So I will absolutely be opening 10k on a replay again some point in time. But the next time I open it, here's what I'm going to do differently. Obviously talk about it more. I'm going to let that fear of imposter syndrome stop forcing me to belittle myself and basically little myself altogether on social media because what I do works. I was able to build a business, right? I know how to do this. I have a master's degree in business and so I am an authority figure and I can talk about this and I will more on social media next time we launch. We are not going to do a live launch of this in the future, maybe later at the end of the year. But what we're going to do is we're going to test some things on Evergreen. So we're going to have some funnels behind the scenes in my business to possibly get people who have bought in my world to upgrade to it. And we're going to see what is working, what is not so that we can focus on those automations and really have a good system in place. So when we live launch it, if we have an influx of new clients, it's not so stressful and it's a lot more streamlined and like I said, I will do it the Live training Again I love teaching live. I love the energy. Prerecorded webinars are great for times where you're super busy. So for the summer we have lots going on. I have kids at home, no childcare and so I like having like the pre recorded webinar, the training on demand. But I will absolutely be doing the live training again because the energy is just so fun and connecting with people is why I love doing this kind of stuff. There's a lot more that I've been doing behind the scenes to work on my business to get it to this point. So I actually put together a playlist of stuff, some of the best videos that I did about things I'm working on in my business and I put them on your screen right now to check out. Seriously, click that playlist. It's like my best of business advice videos and I would love to open this conversation with you about business. So feel free to ask me any questions about scaling a business, launching a business, you know, putting out a program at this level down in the comments because I think we need to be talking about this more and sharing more about what we are doing behind the scenes.