[42] Using Webinars as a Bootstrapper
Alright. This is Bootstrap Web episode 42. This is the podcast for you, the founder, who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And today, we're talking about webinars, how to use them to get customers. I'm Jordan.
Speaker 1:And I'm Brian. And let's do this. But before we do, let's, get a little bit of an update. Brian, what's been going on over the past week since we, since we last spoke?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Sure. So, you know, something that kind of occurred to me this morning, I was sitting in in Starbucks as I as I usually do a couple times a week, doing some work in the morning. Had the baby with me too. That's always that's always fun.
Speaker 2:Multitasking. Screaming next to me while I'm, like, trying to write some stuff. Anyway, so, you know, I I'm all about learning by doing, and really, I'm all about learning by watching what other people are doing. And I've been doing that for years, and that's really how I learn new techniques and strategies is I'm not really so much a book guy even though I like to read and and and whatnot. I I like to just watch what people are actually doing.
Speaker 2:And starting today, I started to really take notes on like, really studying what people are doing, especially when it comes to marketing. So for example, what I've been doing a lot of lately is just subscribing to people's email launch sequences. And first of all, I'm just interested in what in the content that they put out, but really what I'm doing is I'm watching how they do their email launch sequence. I'll go I'll I'll subscribe to someone, and I'll let their sequence play out however long it takes, usually like a week or two. And then at the end of that two weeks or however long it is, I'll go back and and look at all those emails in my Gmail inbox and just go one by one.
Speaker 2:Like, okay. How did they how did they write email number one? How about email number two? Number three, what was the subject line? What was the purpose of every email?
Speaker 2:And then how did they build up toward that offer? Or, you know, how are they trying to convert new subscribers into something else, whether it's a webinar or purchasing a course or and whatnot. So I've always kinda had my eye on that, but today, I actually started taking notes on it. For instance, I just started checking out what's the guy who does the the product launch formula?
Speaker 1:Jeff Walker.
Speaker 2:Yes. Jeff Walker. So pretty well known dude in the in the marketing world there. Right.
Speaker 1:I've I've done the same thing with with his launch sequence. And you you just kinda you do a search in Gmail for his email address, and then you can see the whole history.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yep. Yeah. So I kinda, like, took notes. Like, I even, like, took screenshots of the emails.
Speaker 2:And I took notes, alright. This one was two days later, and then three days later, and then this one was next day.
Speaker 1:Right. The timing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then I can kinda go back and see, like, what was the strategy? And when I compare that to two or three other people who are doing pretty well out there, you know, you start to see these these patterns. And, you know, you think you kinda get it just by watching and watching what other people are doing. But once you start really studying it and taking notes, that's how you really learn, I'm I'm finding.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and the other part of that is once you actually try to set it up for the first time, that's when all these things come up. Like, oh, when should I notify people? What should I say in this notification email? Should I send a reminder?
Speaker 1:How many reminders should I send? What should I say in the reminder? And that's when signing up for these people's lists and saying to yourself, how do I do the reminder? How do I do the offer? How do I follow-up?
Speaker 1:How do I build excitement? And to be able to look back at at the way other people have done it, doesn't mean you can just copy and paste. It's gonna work the same for you, but it's a starting point.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. Let's see. What else is going on this week? So I just, two days ago, I published a new article on my blog called, how to delegate when you're creative.
Speaker 2:And, this one actually seemed to do, pretty well with the audience, and it's been resonating and getting, you know, a lot more tweets than usual. I was actually surprised because when I clicked publish on that, I I kinda thought it wasn't very focused and and whatnot. But but a lot of people have been responding to it, a lot of good comments. So I've been you know, that's been pretty exciting.
Speaker 1:It resonated with me. And and and I think as much, it's as much about what you're writing about as the actual details of what you're saying because just just even the title. Right? I'm I don't consider myself, like, a a creative. I think of myself as a business person.
Speaker 1:But holy shit, I'm I'm losing my mind with delegation. I keep looking at my to do list and it gets bigger. It never shrinks. And I just I just in the back of my head, the voice is getting louder. Okay.
Speaker 1:It's time to delegate more. Not everything on this to do list has to be done by me, and it's time it's time to actually, like, move forward on it. I've I've gotten to the frustration level, so I think that's why that that article did well because I think a lot of people in the same boat. You just can't you can't make enough money, and you can't be as happy as you want if you just do too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, you know, the interesting thing about that title, right, like like what you just said, and I this kinda goes back and this is really a a longer conversation for another day, but Right. I'll just say real quick. The title is how to delegate when you're creative. And so I again, I've been doing a lot of work getting to know who my audience is, and I know for a fact that a lot of them are creative professionals.
Speaker 2:Right? Designers, coders, copywriters. There there are a lot of those type of people. But then there are other types as well. You know, business owners, like, you don't really consider yourself a creative person.
Speaker 2:I had a couple of comments on that article. Like, one was from someone who's like a fitness coach. Mhmm. And she's saying how she needs to start delegating. And so it that goes just goes to show that if you know your audience, that's how it really resonates with your core readership.
Speaker 2:But you'll still reach the fringes of that audience, like people who are not quite exactly those people. Mhmm. You know? And that's that's the benefit of of really writing and speaking to one particular person because it'll still branch out to other people as well.
Speaker 1:Right. You attract the right people and the people who are or consider themselves creative see that and they say, oh, that's for me. And I just ignore the word creative, and I say, see the word delegate and say, oh, that's for me. So Yeah. That's cool.
Speaker 2:So And then the other little tactic that I kinda discovered this week, I'm sure a lot of people have been doing this. I just kind of figured
Speaker 1:it out this week. I I saw what you did. I I'm interested. What what what alright. Tell us
Speaker 2:about this. So it's a really simple thing. Anybody can do this. Like, it's like a quick win win that you can do right now. It literally took me five minutes to do.
Speaker 2:It's you can pin a tweet to your Twitter profile. Right? And basically, what that does is any one of your tweets, there's a little option. Like, you click the dot dot dot on that tweet, and and you just select pin to profile. And what that does is it pins puts it right at the top of your of of your profile.
Speaker 2:When when anybody views you on Twitter, like it like, right when right before they're about to follow you on Twitter, they have to look at, you know, like, twitter.com/jordangahl.
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. And you always read the first tweet or two.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You read the bio, you you know, and you read a couple of the recent tweets. This one will show up as the first tweet, and it'll always be there, like, constant. And what I did there was I so yesterday, I created a tweet which promoted my free crash course for productize. I used, a, you know, a a catchy headline, the same headline that's on the landing page for that.
Speaker 2:And I also attached an image to that tweet, so it's got like a nice banner image. It's it's Right. It's big and bold, you know, attracts attention. And I just pinned that to my profile, and I did that like two days ago, and I've had, I don't know, at least at least 10 times more opt ins every day. I've had something like 30 opt ins today, 30 opt ins yesterday.
Speaker 1:I think it's brilliant.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, that that also might have something to do with the article that I published this week, so I'm still not sure how many options are coming from from this, but I I know that a bunch are, and, it'll be interesting to see how that sustains over the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:I think it's brilliant because, okay, you can pin a tweet, but to go the next step and pin a tweet that leads to an opt in for your email list, that, I think, is the that's the smart piece of it. Yep. And I I don't see Twitter as a real hardcore business tool, But I have been getting a lot of Twitter followers and and just talking to people on Twitter since the, you know, the different interviews I've been doing. So to be able to turn Twitter into a a source of real email subscribers, I think that's I think that's great. And it helps you be less hesitant to use Twitter.
Speaker 1:Right? Sometimes I just look at Twitter, I'm like, oh, I think I can do so much there, but that's just not where I need to pay attention. I need to I need to go somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I've always been
Speaker 1:It makes the two.
Speaker 2:It's nice. I've always been pretty into Twitter. Like, for all of the social networks, that's always the one that I've used the most. And I always promote like, whenever I do guest articles and whatnot, I always try to include my Twitter handle there. And and, you know, I don't really care so much about Google plus.
Speaker 2:I almost never use Facebook.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know? LinkedIn, it's still I I don't really look at it too much. But Twitter is where I feel like, especially in in in my industry, being in, like, the web industry Yeah. All all the designers and all the Apple fanboys were all on Twitter. So I Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I totally I totally agree. I mean, it shows. You have you have a bunch of followers. I have I I've made that mistake where I just, like, followed a bunch in the beginning.
Speaker 1:So now I have more Twitter followers than excuse me. I'm following more people than follow me, and I think that's, like, a cardinal sin. If you see that on someone's profile, you're like, not worth following. Yeah. The follow following ratio.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. I need to I need to go through and expunge and, you know, make myself, look better on in the Twitter world. Alright. Cool, man.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting update. I guess
Speaker 2:That's about it. Up on, on your side?
Speaker 1:Well, besides being really tired, because my kids have stopped sleeping and, I appear to travel more than than is healthy. Last week, I went to a wedding up in the Cascade Mountains in Leavenworth. Right? This is, two and a half hours east of Seattle. So it was it was a bit of a hike.
Speaker 1:So we went to Seattle first. It was a great time. Beautiful wedding and beautiful mountain scenery. It was nice to get away. And I did I did manage to unplug enough.
Speaker 1:So our WiFi didn't work, I saw that. That's my excuse. That is gonna make me okay with not worrying about anything. So I just took one morning, sent a bunch of emails, and then closed everything down. And I was like, alright.
Speaker 1:I'll get back to everything on Monday. And the truth is everyone's busy. Everyone's doing their thing. No one really minds. So on Monday, sent a bunch of emails and say, sorry for the delay.
Speaker 1:Was at a wedding. And everyone's reply is like, hope you had a good time at the wedding. You know, like, there's no no one cares.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Especially on a Monday. I mean, I wouldn't even apologize. You know? That I try to I a lot of times, I'll never even respond on a weekend just to not set the expectation that I Right.
Speaker 2:That I respond on weekends. You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I go back and forth on that. Sometimes I'm like, let me be the guy who responds at 11:00 at night. And sometimes, you know, I I think like, like you just said, that it it shouldn't set that precedent and expectations. Yes.
Speaker 1:So, right, what that leads into is I've really been enjoying the, just the narrowed focus. So, right, we spoke a few weeks ago. I took a bunch of things off my table, and now I'm really focused on Cardhook more than anything else. And it it feels good, and it's starting to pay off. So the right?
Speaker 1:The Mixergy interview kinda kicked off a bunch of momentum, and now I'm really just working my butt off to take advantage of all these opportunities that are coming up. So, you know, every free trial, I'm, like, hunting them down, getting them on the phone, talking to them, getting them integrated. Everyone who, contacts me and wants to do a partnership, I'm following up on. Other people who are replying and saying, I wanna work with you. This is the ecommerce platform I'm using.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying, yes. Let's do it. Get me in touch with the ecommerce platform. So I'm just trying to pursue as much as possible, and that's really only made possible by the fact that I don't have a million things on my plate.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's good. Yeah. The other piece of it is, I'm really taking a page out of your playbook where I'm looking at things over the next few months instead of over just the next few, you know, days or weeks. And that seems to have a calming effect and a more strategic approach where I say, instead of trying to do everything right now, I say, if this week, I get this important thing done, and next week, I get this next thing done.
Speaker 1:And if I look at it that way, then, you know, a month from now, two months from now, three months from now, I'll be much further along instead of, like, panicking and feeling guilty and stressed about it. Now, I'm just saying just knock them down in a nice orderly fashion, keep everything rolling as it is on the, you know, client acquisition side, and then build out the marketing system and the funnel and the all these different assets, instead of saying, I need to get all them done right now, just be okay with the fact that it can't all be done now. Just do it well and just go piece by piece. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. And you know what? Actually, there's a really good episode of startups for the rest of us this week. Kind of goes along those same lines.
Speaker 2:I think they were talking all about how to build a marketing calendar. And and Rob and Mike were both sharing how they how they plan out their marketing initiatives, like, ninety days ahead of time, which is really smart. I I I need to do actually more of that. I I do plan, like, the overall things that I'm working on, but specifically when it comes to marketing, I've gotta be more focused on, like, alright. These are the tests that we're gonna run-in the next four weeks, and then and we're gonna let and these are, like, the higher level things that we're gonna test over the next sixty, ninety days.
Speaker 2:So that was a really good episode. We'll link it up in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah. I think the the big thing, the way I view, the marketing pieces right in these early stages, I see it as as assets, as marketing assets. So if I'm working on a task, I'm not working on an asset. So, you know, launching the blog and writing content and, you know, setting up an email autoresponder, all these things I see as assets that stay in place and move the business forward to a big extent.
Speaker 1:Getting one more person launched on their free trial is good, but it can't take priority over the assets. So yeah. That and that's that's part of why I'm starting to see, like, okay. I I need to delegate more because if I don't work on the assets, which is what I really should be working on and the strategy, and I keep working on these tasks and I'm busy and owned, everything's great and there's so much momentum, it's not gonna it's not gonna move as fast as it needs to.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The you know, that that's an interesting way of putting it that, you know, working on an asset because I mean, that's exactly what I was writing about in that article on on delegation is that, you know, so many, like, freelancers or p or or new founders have trouble with delegating because it's like, I could spend two, three, four times as much time writing out the instructions and training someone on how to do it and and doing QA on their work when it would just take me, like, ten minutes and just do it myself. And but what you're really doing when you're investing that time and writing the procedure is you're building an asset. You're building a system that's going to run without you so that you never have to do this task again.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that's you you know, the the interesting thing, it feels stressful and right? You I can fall into, like, the dark cloud of how have I not launched the blog?
Speaker 1:I've it's been on my to do list for six months. But but the reality is, you know, I spoke with my my business partner, cofounder, and we were talking about this, and I said, look, the the truth is we should pat ourselves in the back. This is this is moving from one phase to another. Right? The first phase was, do people care about this product?
Speaker 1:Does it give them value? Will they pay for it? Will they continue to pay for it? So now we are leaving that and we are now transitioning to how can we more efficiently gather clients. So it's it's like a a painful piece, but it's but it's good.
Speaker 1:You know, you have to acknowledge, okay. Now you're moving from is this viable to how do we really, you know, how do we have the ability to step on the gas and it doesn't crash the car into the side of the road? So I I see it as a good thing. So I'm, you know, trying to stay, positive whenever I get into these situations where I'm I look at these important things that I want done and I haven't gone have done. I'm just saying to myself, look, this is part of the the growing pain, of moving from, no systems and everything manual and let's just get this launched to let's build let's build a machine.
Speaker 1:Let's build something that you can really, you know, put x on one side and get five x on the other side and then increase the, the speed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. You know? And think, I think that's what we're really gonna talk a lot about here today when we when we get into webinars because that's certainly one of those things that for me that's been on my to do list that I've been wanting to do for well over a year now, and I still haven't fully dove into it. So we'll we'll get into that, you know, in in a minute.
Speaker 2:One quick distinction I wanted to make there was that, like, you know, you mentioned doing sales calls and getting customers on board, and it's very manual like we spoke about in the in the previous episode. In the early days, you know, getting customer number one, customer number five, number 10, you gotta do that. And and, yes, that's not it it's not the most systemized, and it's not a machine, but you're getting those customers in the door, especially for a SaaS recurring revenue service. Like, you you are building an asset in that they're once you get them on board and paying their their customers and they're subscribed, and that helps you get that early traction and fund your early days so that you can start devoting more time to building these systems, which is where you're at now. So I I think it's important to do that manual, get on the phone and sell sell some shit.
Speaker 2:Like you know? And then Sell sell some and make that transition. You know? And I think we're both kind of in that phase right now too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it doesn't have to stop. You know? You have built your automated sales system around the fact that you still need to talk to people on the phone. There's nothing wrong
Speaker 2:with it.
Speaker 1:It just means that you won't be the one that does it all the time. The way I see Carto clients, if if I call it an average of $100 a month per client, you know, that's $1,200 a year. You don't you don't need that many of them to have a decent viable business. If I see spending one hour of phone conversations every day, you know, Monday to Friday times fifty weeks for two hundred and fifty days, if I can do that and pick up 250 clients, one a day, at the end of that, you're you're looking at $250 a year from those 250 people. That's worth that's worth your time.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. Totally. Even if you have to talk on the phone for an hour every day, as long as you build the automated systems in place to get you on a phone conversation for an hour a day that closes somebody, cool. Doesn't have to all be automated and hands off and, you know, kick your feet up under a palm tree and never talk to a customer. That's nice, but it's not it's not necessary.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Like, I've been you know, we have in Restaurant Engine, we have basically systems that outsource that entire lead comes into the website, consultation calls made by my teammate. They they follow-up and everything. But I'm actually starting to think about ways to even, like, filter out the most promising leads and escalate those to me so that, like, I get on the phone to to close the ones that are most likely to to get on board. Maybe that and and that would kinda be, an effort to to move them through that funnel faster.
Speaker 2:You know? Right.
Speaker 1:Lead lead scoring, essentially. Yeah. Alright. Cool, man. Well, I am really pumped up for for this week's
Speaker 2:Yeah. And yeah. There's like a crazy train.
Speaker 1:Some action.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, you know, before we dive right into it, once again, we are planning on doing, a question answer episode. We'll hopefully do a bunch of these. And if you guys have any questions at all about anything that we're talking about, tell us about your business, tell us about what you're working on, and, you know, ask for some feedback, You can ask us those questions, and, maybe we'll cover them here on the show. So you can go to bootstrappedweb.com/ask.
Speaker 2:That'll get you to our, contact form, and, and send us a send us a question. We'll be we'll be you know, we'd like to get into it on the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Definitely. Alright. Yeah. Or tweet us at jordangollin@castjam.
Speaker 1:Yeah. This week, I I answered a question on which headphones I use. They're not the most attractive things in the world, but the audio is great and they're cheap.
Speaker 2:There you go. Well, see? Twitter's good for something after all.
Speaker 1:Yep. I didn't use an an affiliate link or anything, but, know. So I'm excited to get into this week's topic, webinars. This is something I've kinda been, you know, hot on for about a year and have wanted to do more of it for Cardhook. I I did my first webinar, two months ago to sell an online course.
Speaker 1:Really, really interesting process. It worked. It made money. I know I wanna do more of it. You know, when I map out my sales funnel for Cardhook, one of those one of those steps is, okay.
Speaker 1:If this happens and then this happens and if they don't sign up or if they do, webinar is firmly one of the most important steps there. And and we'll talk about how that can be an asset and can be automated, potentially, all these other things. So let's let's jump into this week's topic on webinars and how to use them to get sales, grow your business, get customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally. And I think we should frame this entire episode like we were talking earlier. Like, you and I are both in the process of getting into webinars. You know?
Speaker 2:We've both kind of dipped our feet a little bit. I've I've done one a couple weeks ago. I did one for someone else as well. I could talk about that. But, you know, you did one, made made some sales right on on your very first one.
Speaker 2:So we're just getting into this, and it's it's something that I'm building a big plan around for both my upcoming course, but also in Restaurant Engine. You're planning it for CardHook. So, you know, we're we're not basing on what we're talking about on, like we're not like the world renowned webinar experts here, but we're just gonna share some of the things that we've picked up along the way and some things that we're thinking about.
Speaker 1:Right. I think the best thing we can do is act as as a sort of filter, between right. You and I are both students of webinars. Right? We are we're in the learning and implementation phase.
Speaker 1:We're not total novices, and we're not super experts. But I think what we can do best is talk about the resources that we have used to learn, how we applied them, the tools we use, and what's worked and what hasn't worked, and just kinda be a filter, for people listening and, you know, let them get some sense of how we've used them, and they can depending on their situation, either they're thinking about doing their first webinar, or they've used them, and, you know, get a bit different perspective from from how we've done it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, mean, like, what is it about webinars that is so attractive? Or why why are you diving into it? And and and why am I diving into it? I'll ask you first.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I think the biggest reason I'm diving into it is because because they work. And you everywhere you look, they work. I remember listening to Lewis Howes' Mixergy interview, which is a phenomenal interview, and he gives a course, and it has worked tremendously for him. I know James Wedmore is a beast on webinars, and I think we'll talk about him a little later on.
Speaker 1:He's he's a phenomenal resource for for information on webinars and how to use them properly and how to structure them. And then the the last piece of anecdotal evidence I've, I've gotten is I went through Dane Maxwell's foundation course, right, a few years ago. And one of the most interesting things that he talked about is how he built up Snap excuse me, not Snap Inspect, Paperless Pipeline, his software. Right now, he's selling a course and teaching people how to build their own software companies. But the reason he can do that successfully and with credibility is because he built Paperless Pipeline using webinars, as as one of his big tactics.
Speaker 1:And right. So I was close to him and listening to a lot of his information, and everything he was saying just in my mind said, I can do that. It it works because you can gather a large number of people and you can make the perfect pitch to them. And it's not about webinar. It's more about video and audio and the connection that you make with the person and the excitement and energy and momentum you can build on a live event and the right, and the scarcity and this pressure.
Speaker 1:It's it's amazing. I've been on webinars that I have no interest in buying the product, and I still get excited about it. You you can't even help it. So it has this strange dynamic, and it's a combination of it's definitely worked for other people. People have done really well off of it.
Speaker 1:You look at your own experience, and it excites you on webinars, and I know I've bought things off webinars, and the combination of the promise that it holds. Like, if you can get twenty, thirty, forty, fifty people on a webinar every other week, right, I think in for Kartik, if I can get 50 people on a webinar every other week, so a 100 people per month, the conversion rates in webinars are just really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, and okay. So here here's where I'm coming from on on this webinar Okay. From the whole webinar thing. And I I think that there are probably a lot lot of people out there who are like me, again, creative designers, developers.
Speaker 2:Like, I've never bought anything from a webinar. A webinar never convinced me to buy something. I almost never attended webinars just because I wanted to. The few that I have ever attended, it's it's because I wanna watch to see how they do a webinar. I mean, you know, you might consider, like, watching an an hour long Mixergy interview, basically or a Mixergy course, like, pretty similar to doing a webinar, but that's a recorded course, whatever.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit different.
Speaker 1:Right. And and there isn't an offer at the end.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. And, you know, so I I come from that perspective, like Skeptical. Yeah. A little skeptical.
Speaker 2:Like, it's it's never been something that has worked to sell me on anything. I've never really been interested in scheduling, you know, on a Tuesday afternoon to spend an hour of my time sitting on some webinar. So I come from that place. But, again, I I you know, I watched the Lewis House stuff. I've seen James Wedmore's stuff.
Speaker 2:I hear again and again and again, webinars work. Webinars work. You know? And then you start to see numbers in these income reports, and these and these guys are releasing products, and they really make webinars like the centerpiece of their whole strategy. So Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's pretty clear. It obviously works. And and at a certain point, you have to get you have to accept the fact that, like, even though it doesn't work on me, it can very well work for my customers. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I don't know yet.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 1:It's worth a try, though. I think
Speaker 2:Absolutely worth a try.
Speaker 1:Evidence shows that it's worth a try. Because if you can get it to work, it's something that's that's scalable. Because you can have 50 people on on a webinar or 500 people, and it's essentially the the same amount of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think so, like, why why is it effective? I think, like you said earlier, just the fact that it's an event, that is that is very effective. You know, there are, like, automated email auto responders, and that's something that just kind of rolls out continuously. But but a webinar is an event.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, you have to show up, and this thing is happening live, and there's an exclusive offer only available today. I think there's there's no doubt about there's clearly urgency about that. And and, yes, you can get into, like, the automated webinars and all that. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that in a minute, but but I think the event aspect is what really makes it, interesting.
Speaker 2:The other I mean, of course, it's not all about the offer at the end. You really are teaching something for an hour on on this webinar. And I have and the few webinars that I have sat in on, especially when I'm just watching them to to, like, spy on how they do a webinar, I'm actually sitting there like, yeah. I kinda learned something there, you know.
Speaker 1:And and that makes a difference, especially over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just the fact, right, before I joined this podcast with you, before I did any of these interviews, right, sitting happily in anonymity, I did my first webinar. Just announcing that I was going to do a webinar created a sense of expertise, and people started asking me questions and approaching me in a different way. Hey, Jordan, would you mind if we talk for five minutes? As you know, which which is a different dynamic. And then doing the webinar and this is this is the real key that I think has to be mentioned.
Speaker 1:What a webinar does is it offers you the opportunity to provide a large amount of value at once. And when someone does that, you either if it makes sense for you at the time right? What a webinar should do is give a lot of value and then have the person watching say, what's next? How do I get more? How do I get this done faster?
Speaker 1:How do I do this with you? Right? And if you're not ready to buy, what it does is it makes you walk away with a sense of this person being an expert. And then in the future, it makes it much more likely that that you'll do business with them and wanna do business with them. James Wedmore, perfect example.
Speaker 1:I've been watching his stuff for a year. I never bought from him. All of a sudden, last month, he sent out this thing that just hit me the right way and the time and the moment, and I I joined.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's it's listening to someone speak or watching someone present. It's a different it has a much greater impact than just reading an article somewhere or even just following someone on Twitter. It's it's very similar to to watching someone speak in person at a conference or at a meetup or something.
Speaker 2:You know, I I've spoken at at at conferences and meetups, and and that has had the same effect. It's like you get people coming up to you afterward, people sending you emails, buying your products. They they see you as an authority when you're up there teaching and, you know, at the podium sharing something of value to the audience. And, you know, it's like the same kind of deal as, like, as, like, podcasts or or doing, like, videos and and whatnot. It's like, it's a much more intimate relationship than just reading words in in an article.
Speaker 2:So Yes.
Speaker 1:And and it creates an element of of celebrity. And when you can combine an element of celebrity with the element of authority, that right. That's hugely powerful because, yeah, sometimes I almost look for excuses to do business with people just because I like them, and I'm just drawn to them. Right? We've talked about this before with 37 signals.
Speaker 1:You you know, you you kinda like them so much, you almost look for an excuse to use Basecamp. Yeah. I know I've done that multiple times, and I I still don't use Basecamp because I kinda don't like it, but I would still give them a chance.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And and that's what webinars do. They give you the opportunity to give value and help solve someone's problem in such a significant way that that they trust you.
Speaker 2:So yeah. Totally. So so I mean, what about what about the idea that are are webinars overused? I mean, you see them everywhere, and more way more this year than ever before. And, I mean, are they overused?
Speaker 2:And, also, do they come off as, like, a little bit spammy? Right? I maybe this is just me coming from okay. I'm a I'm a tech web geek, and I kinda see through what a webinar really is. Right.
Speaker 2:Or what it's intended to be. You know? Not that it doesn't provide real value because it it can and it should. But, obviously, it's a sales tool. When I see someone promoting, you know, join my free webinar on Twitter or I see that floating through LinkedIn or wherever, it's okay.
Speaker 2:They're trying to sell me something. That's why I don't wanna join.
Speaker 1:Yes. So I think all of the all of the above. They are a bit overused, and it is a bit of you being like a techie design snob. And they're not as spammy as, you know, as as you perceive them to be or or or me or someone else. That does not mean that they don't work and that you shouldn't use them.
Speaker 1:Perfect example, I saw recently an advertisement for a webinar, and in the advertisement, it says there's nothing for sale. Right? So that lowered my guard. And what the webinar did is it offered a free consultation. So Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. You you're not making an offer for a sale, which helped me join the webinar, helped me trust you more. But then your offer is for a free consultation to get on the phone, and you're gonna try to sell me something there. Right? So this is just being creative and innovative in in something that's becoming a bit saturated, but there's still an unlimited amount of innovation with with with these things and.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, you at a certain point, you and I'm speaking like to myself here. You gotta get over that bias. You know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and I I think the thing that helps get get over that is when you put out a webinar and it and it's based on a very specific topic that you know answers questions that are in the mind of your audience, like you know that for a fact, you know your audience, you're just providing value and your little group, your little tribe, even if it's just 10 people, they're gonna join you, you know, and that's all you need. You don't need hundreds, you don't need millions, you know, thousands. It's just, I mean, I I did one webinar like a month ago as I just began the telling people that I'm doing a a product called Productize. And I I did that first webinar not in an effort to sell the the course or anything.
Speaker 2:I nobody even knew about the course yet. I just put it out there. I sent it to, maybe a list of, like, only 50 people. I think people who have forgot what it was. I I think it was, the first 50 people who joined the the free email course out of oh, no.
Speaker 2:How did I do it? I I sent it to my whole list, and I had, 50 people register for the webinar.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, 50 registrants?
Speaker 2:Yeah. How many Out of 50 registrants, thought maybe five would, like, show up, you know, if that. We had, like, 18 people on the webinar, and they actually stayed throughout the whole thing through the q and a. And at the end, I wasn't pitching a product. I I just mentioned that I'm doing productize at enter your email to join the early access list.
Speaker 2:And that was a a big kind of wake up call to me. It was that, like, look. I'm I'm teaching something valuable. You know, it's almost obvious, but it's like it was on a it was about, like, how to choose the right idea to productize. And Right.
Speaker 2:You know, these are people who've expressed interest in productizing and, you know And
Speaker 1:and you spoke to 18 of them at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's people who are joining me live in in the middle of an afternoon on a weekday, and it it's like, wow. This this stuff has an impact, you know. And then I had we had a great q and a session, and it actually made me really excited to do it again, which I'm gonna do in October. So
Speaker 1:Nice. Well, I I I think that's a good transition to, you know, kinda talk about how we use webinars in our in our business and how we've used them in the past and what we wanna do with them in the future. I know for for me, I just did that first webinar that I can I can talk about and
Speaker 2:Yeah? And
Speaker 1:I wanted to
Speaker 2:How did that how did that go?
Speaker 1:It was it was really interesting. The learning process was amazing. It's a little trickier than expected just because the setup of everything is a bit complicated. Right? There's the webinar itself.
Speaker 1:And that you need to structure out. You need to create PowerPoint slides. You need to write a script. At least this is this is how I did it. But that's almost secondary.
Speaker 1:First, you need to set things up. So you need to be able to get registrants. You need a landing page. You need to add people to an email list. You need to send out confirmation emails.
Speaker 1:Right? And I had trouble need create slides.
Speaker 2:You need to, like, create the presentation. Right?
Speaker 1:Right. But before you even do that, you you need to get everything in order. Yeah. Right? Because the presentation is what happens on the day of the webinar.
Speaker 1:There's a whole bunch of stuff that happens
Speaker 2:before But even preparing those, like, I did them, like, the night before my webinar, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I spent a a lot of time on the slides. Yeah. And and the script. But what I had frustration with was the setup process.
Speaker 1:So I was using Facebook ads. Though Facebook ads are awesome but frustrating enough on their own, I think that's that's another topic. But I was running Facebook ads to a landing page. So I'm using Leadpages for the landing page, and then I wanted to I wanted to add people to my email list at the same time as they registered for the webinar. So I'm using AWeber for the email list and using GoToWebinar for the webinar.
Speaker 1:So first, you have to go and create the webinar and the settings and the reminders there at GoToWebinar. And then you have to go over to Aweber or in the future, I'll use GetDrip. And then you need to set up the emails that go along with it. So you wanna do that ahead of time. You wanna say to yourself, okay, let's go look back at Jeff Walker.
Speaker 1:Let's go look back at James Wedmore. Let's look back at Derek Halpern. Let's see how these people set up this launch sequence that leads up to a webinar. So this is all the stuff that goes on the background. Okay.
Speaker 1:What email is gonna go out first? And then how many days before the webinar am I gonna send a reminder? Do I wanna include a little bit of value like slides or like a handout questionnaire thing before the webinar? And then do I need to remind the day of or the day before? Is GoToWebinar gonna send out an automated reminder?
Speaker 1:So all these different pieces to set up before the webinar actually happens, I think is just as important as actually delivering the webinar itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, and maybe right now, like, since we're already talking about, we could talk about, like, the tools
Speaker 1:and the
Speaker 2:setup that can avoid it. You can avoid it. But I have a question there because I so I didn't use GoToWebinar. I used webinars on on air Google Plus. I'll I'll get into that in a minute.
Speaker 2:But Right. You said that you had to set up the email sequences in Aweber. Like, does GoToWebinar not do that automatically?
Speaker 1:It does. It sends out this simple, straightforward, you know, standardized template reminder, but I I wasn't I wasn't counting on that on on being enough. Gotcha. I wanted to do it the right way. And I I think I went about 90% of where to where I wanted to.
Speaker 1:At some point, I just got so busy and was spending so much time on this stuff and I needed to get to the slides that I just didn't do some of the things. Like, the day before the webinar, I wanted to send out a handout Mhmm. That said basically, this is your handout, print this out. You know, that gets people more engaged and you basically have like a fill in the blank. And it's essentially a teaser, but it's just a little bit of value.
Speaker 1:It's a two page, three page PDF document that gives them a preview of what they're gonna learn and it has like blanks. So it's like the three most important things for your sales funnel are blank, blank, and blank. And that gets people to like watch and write down and that just helps people stay engaged in what you're saying and listening to you. So I wanted to send that out, like, two days before. I didn't get to that.
Speaker 1:I will next time, but right.
Speaker 2:That's that's a good little tip there. I'll I'll have to do that on the next one. I I've seen I heard Brennan Dunn talking about how he does a day or two before the webinar. He'll he'll send an email asking question. Like, submit your questions, and I'll cover them in the q and a.
Speaker 1:Right. You you can do a lot of these different things and you can learn them all from watching the the guys that are good at it. What's his name? Entrepreneur not entrepreneur fire? What's his name?
Speaker 1:Freaking $202,180 grand a month,
Speaker 2:what's his name? John Lee Dumas.
Speaker 1:Okay. So he's a beast. So why fuck around? Just sign up for his list and see how he does it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know? And and they do it they do it right. So you get the confirmation, you get pumped up, you get a bunch of value in that email, then you get the reminder, then you get more value, then you get something exciting, and then some, like, scarcity bid, then, oh my god, there's so much excitement. Make sure you get there on time. We only have a 100 slots available because of GoToWebinar's limitations, and it's definitely gonna sell out.
Speaker 1:So all these things that you do to maximize the number of people that show up on the webinar. And then there's a whole bunch of things that happen after the webinar. Like, I recorded it, and then I sent out the recording to everyone. Right? Because if you took your list of 50 people that registered, 18 showed up.
Speaker 1:That doesn't mean the 32 aren't interested. It means they didn't show up.
Speaker 2:So you Right.
Speaker 1:Why lose out on that? You need to send them a recording.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Don't remember if I did send them a recording. I think I did. But, again, like, that that webinar that I did was like a test run just to see if I could do it without anything breaking, which It went pretty smooth. So so okay.
Speaker 2:So, like, your setup, what you used was LeadPages for the landing page. Yep. Aweber to set to send out emails and pre emails even though you didn't do the one that and then GoToWebinar to run the webinar. And slides, use, like, PowerPoint, and you basically just showed your screen?
Speaker 1:Yes. And I I recorded everything and then sent out the recording.
Speaker 2:Then And you recorded does GoToWebinar record it, or do you have to record it yourself?
Speaker 1:No. GoToWebinar records it automatically. I think once you start, you can have the option to record, but you record and then right? Then I uploaded that to, Vimeo, And then I used Leadpages to create a very simple video landing page for the replay. So the replay had its own home.
Speaker 1:So when I sent out the email to everybody of, hey, excuse me, in case you missed it, here's the replay. So that is on a nice Leadpages landing page with a little button below that they can that they can buy the course directly from. So I
Speaker 2:So use, like, Leadpages for all these creating these pages. You're not using WordPress or anything?
Speaker 1:Nope. You could use Leadpages for the whole deal. Right. The only thing I did Why
Speaker 2:did you upload to Vimeo, not YouTube?
Speaker 1:I think I wanted more control. I wanted more control over it.
Speaker 2:Control like, the way it's presented or
Speaker 1:First, I think Vimeo looks more professional. Second, I didn't want it to be public. Yeah. I I don't see that piece of it as that big of a deal. I do think I do think using GoToWebinar is is the right way to do it.
Speaker 1:I think it does look more professional, and it's very, very stable. And it's kind of annoying to, like, ask someone to download and then launch in this weird way. But I also think that process, for some reason, I don't know. It's like what people are used to. It's what people think of as as like a professional webinar.
Speaker 2:I don't you know, I don't know. So let me tell you my what I did. Right. I went with webinars on air, which is basically like a wrapper wrapped around Google plus Hangouts on air. Right.
Speaker 2:I was actually surprised by how simple, that whole process was both for me and for the people who attended.
Speaker 1:That's shocking.
Speaker 2:It it is shocking. Like, I you know, as much as as frustrating as Google Plus is when we just have calls, like, our weekly mastermind call always gets botched. Who knows what's happening with Google Plus? But for but for a webinar on air and the service webinars on air.com, I don't know if it's like $30.40 bucks a month or something like that. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It worked really well. Basically, it once at the time of the webinar, it sends the email or maybe like the day before, whenever it says, here's the email. Click here to join the webinar. User clicks there, takes them to a website, webinar is there playing. They don't have to log in to Google plus.
Speaker 2:They don't have to have a Google plus account. They don't have to download anything. They just go there and it's and it's there. And I I I wasn't even sure about that. I thought that they had to have like a Google plus account, but they don't.
Speaker 2:They could just watch it. It's like live.
Speaker 1:Nice. I mean, that's how that's
Speaker 2:how it
Speaker 1:should be.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I thought that was kinda cool because every time I I attended a webinar using GoToWebinar, it's like, I gotta download something. It's taking forever. It's and then I found on my computer, I have, 10 different GoToWebinar installations and it's like, you know, But
Speaker 1:I hear you. I I would I would I hope and would love for for things to move that way. I think for me I don't know if I'm being old school or what, but for me, the, the professionalism and expectations of GoToWebinar, is just what I wanna stick with.
Speaker 2:Well, it's expectations from people who go to webinars a lot. Right? Like, if like, I so I'm planning on doing it with restaurant owners, who I'm guessing a lot of them have never gone to a webinar before.
Speaker 1:Right. It should just be a link, and then you see and then you see the screen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's what I
Speaker 1:That's how it should be.
Speaker 2:That's what I like about Google Plus. So I I think I'll probably try that again until it stops working. So that so that was my setup, was I I used webinars on air, created the thing in in Google Plus, which, as we know, the Google plus Hangout on air automatically turns it into a YouTube video right when you're done. You can even set that to, like, unlisted or or even, like, password protected if you wanted to. Right.
Speaker 2:So webinars on air automatically sends out, like, the reminder emails, and they give you, like, a little embed script that you can pop into a website, and that's, like, the registration form. Okay. I I dropped that into into my WordPress site, which I guess you could just do that on on, like, any WordPress site. I I put it right into the template, customized a little bit. You know?
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:So it sounds like the the end result is similar, but you you didn't do as much of the setup and and the warming up emails ahead of time.
Speaker 2:Didn't. I mean, again, this is really like I treated it like a test run. I mean, the next one, will do much more of that. Right. I really just wanted to see if I could run a technical webinar.
Speaker 2:Right. But, yeah, like, next time, I really wanna do, like, a couple of emails leading up to it, like, submit some questions. Maybe here's a worksheet. I really like that idea.
Speaker 1:And the emails afterward.
Speaker 2:And and the sales. Yeah. And and it would be like a, you know, teaching something and then doing an offer. And it was a little bit weird with I forgot how I did it. I mean, I created slides in, I think what's it called?
Speaker 2:A a Keynote.
Speaker 1:Keynote. And then I had
Speaker 2:to, like, share my screen. But GoToWebinar webinars on air was a little bit weird with that. Like, you could still see, like, the scroll bar in my computer and everything, which is a little bit little bit odd. But I don't know. I had to I sized it up, so it wasn't so bad.
Speaker 2:Right. But, other than that and then, you know, like, webinars on error makes it really easy for people to submit questions, and then I can, like, turn on questions, turn off quest and and they also have, like, show an offer. So you could, like, program in, like, special offer with a button and the button text and the link that it should go to and, like, turn it on when you want it on, turn it off. You can even, like, redirect people to a page when when the webinar is over. Nice.
Speaker 2:So it sounds I didn't really take advantage of all that. I did use the the offer just to point them to the early access page. And
Speaker 1:It sounds to me like the the ecosystem for for Hangouts On Air is building itself up to to make it much more viable. Because I think for me, in my head, what I wouldn't do and wouldn't recommend is just hang out on air and then expect to do everything else yourself. So this, webinar's on air. Right? This product that this skin, it looks like it adds a lot of value and a lot of the the pieces that a GoToWebinar or whatever other type of software, does for you if you're trying to use a webinar to market and and to sell.
Speaker 2:So Yeah. Exactly. I I think you're right. I think it it adds the the exact functionality that you need and strips away the other crap that that complicates it, like having to log in to Google. You know?
Speaker 2:People don't need to do that. I don't know how it would perform with, like, a 100 people or more on the webinar. I had 18. So Right. Maybe that's why I was the same.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that's also part of why I went with GoToWebinar because I was just I didn't want to worry about the technical side. Right? You you just it's such a big event, and and I spent money. I spent, like, $1,200 in ad spend on Facebook.
Speaker 1:So there's just a lot of pressure because it's an event. You just don't wanna screw it up. You just don't want something to go wrong, and it's a sweaty, stressful affair. Yeah. Especially your first one.
Speaker 1:So you just don't wanna add anything to it. I mean, I remember it was a it was a stressful day. I did it in the coworking space in in Miami, and I wanted to go to the conference room, that didn't work. So I had to just do it, like, in front of the whole coworking space. And I just looked out, and I was like, guys, I am gonna be talking some weird sales funnel shit for like ninety minutes and I'm sorry, but this is really important and they were like, it's cool, man.
Speaker 2:You really were presenting like in front of people live tech like in a way, you know.
Speaker 1:I was looking at a computer screen, talking, hoping that everything was working and everyone could hear me, and at the same time had like 15 people in the co working space like working and and hearing me do this whole thing at the same time. So I had to just like tune that out and and focus on the screen and focus on my script.
Speaker 2:You know, that brings up an interesting point because I was going into this first webinar that I did. I was a little bit nervous or I I expected that I would be a little bit nervous when I'm up there talking in front of people. And I I always get nervous when I do public speaking events. Right? I've done a few more of them, so I've become a little bit more comfortable, but and I've learned I've learned some tricks to, like, battle through that a little bit, but you still always get butterflies when you're talking to a group of people.
Speaker 2:And and I get them really bad. And I was surprised at doing the webinar how comfortable I was with even with 18 people. Because if I'm if I'm speaking to a room of 18 people, that's not a huge amount, but I'm still pretty nervous.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Stressful.
Speaker 2:Seeing all their faces and everything. But I'm sitting in the comfort of my office, doors closed, not in a coworking space. So it's like it's just me and a microphone. Right? I was like, I was just hanging out, just talking.
Speaker 2:You know?
Speaker 1:That's ideal. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that you do this podcast and you're comfortable with where you are right now, literally and physically, where you are, you're comfortable. And talking on the mic and being on screen and all that. So I think that's that's good. Right?
Speaker 1:It's one of these things where you expect the first one's gonna be rough and the second one's a little better and third one's better. And then you just slowly get better until it becomes natural, just like, you know, like any other task that you kinda dread at
Speaker 2:first. Exactly.
Speaker 1:So I just wanted to go through because as I heard myself speak, I was being a bit flitty. I was being, oh, I did this and I did that. And if I were listening to this, I would just wanna be like, Jordan, just freaking say how you did it piece by piece. So I just wanna go through it once. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then I wanna get into, like, how you wanna use webinars for for Restaurant Engine, and then we'll talk about how I wanna do it for Cardhook and kinda get deeper into the actual strategy.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So just real quick. Facebook ad to landing page by Leadpages that's connected to Aweber and GoToWebinar at the same time. GoToWebinar sends out the confirmation and the reminder and, obviously, the actual link to the webinar. AWeber adds them to an email marketing list for this webinar and for future purposes, sends them the automated sequence that you wanna use before and after the webinar with the reminders, any of the value you wanna add, and then the follow-up that includes the recording and then the reminder for purchase and then the reminder that the cart is closing and they're they're about to lose their chance and then the final sales pitch. And then after that, I kept it going with, a thank you.
Speaker 1:So that's that's how it worked. That was the setup outside of the actual event.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and the I guess this is a good point to to touch on right here is how do you track the funnel? And that this is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about doing webinars is because you can track the funnel and really nail down how much it costs to acquire a paying customer in the end. So what are the steps that you're tracking? You like, you have ad spend and, like, how many people are viewing the ad, how many people are then clicking the ad, then how many people convert to registered for for the webinar, just registered.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And then out of those registrations, you're you're measuring how many people show up. Right? Right. That that'll always be a smaller percentage of the people who actually register.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's somewhere between 3040%. Yeah. The way I looked at it was spend to get people to click on the ad. The ad gets them to the landing page.
Speaker 1:The landing page converts somewhere between 1525%. And then of those 30 to 40% actually show up, you try to maximize it by sending out the recording. And then you make your pitch. The people who on the webinar are most likely to buy, but you definitely should not forget about the people who didn't show up.
Speaker 2:Right. So everybody who registered still gets the recording. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Definitely. So it gets the recording, and then it gets the offer, and the last minute, and the, you know, it's about to close, and the the whole sales sequence.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and then so, basically, in at the end of the day, what you're measuring is how many people bought, and and then you kind of run that number against the the cost per
Speaker 1:Exactly. Right.
Speaker 2:Cost per attendee or, like, how how much it cost to to make a sale.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, what I use on
Speaker 2:Facebook up up through the funnel.
Speaker 1:You know, Facebook ads, you can you can optimize for different things. So you can optimize for clicks, for impressions, or for conversions. So if you set things up on your landing page with Facebook ads to maximize or to optimize for conversions, then all you're looking at, and this is what I always would prefer to look at, is how much money are you spending per conversion, per registrant. Right? That's what Facebook ad is gonna convert.
Speaker 1:When they convert, that means they registered on your landing page.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So I think I had it somewhere about $8, 6 to $8 per conversion. So I spent 6 to $8 to get a registrant, and then 40% of those showed up. So now, right, do the do the math there. You're basically paying about $20, little a little less $18 per person to show up on your webinar. And then you can say to yourself, okay, how easy is it to sell my product?
Speaker 1:Is it a digital product? Is it software? Is it a service? What's the average price? So my math was, $400 per student for the course.
Speaker 1:And I got five students, so I made $2,000 in revenue from spending about $111,200 in in ad spend. Not amazing, but not a bad start. Right? It was my first one. It wasn't optimized.
Speaker 1:I didn't have all the pieces in place. But then if you look at that and you say, okay, if you're selling a digital product, if you're selling something that can be sold easily over and over, that's not bad.
Speaker 2:No. Not bad at all.
Speaker 1:If if I can spend a thousand bucks every day to make $2,000 in revenue, I I would be very, very happy.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And, again, folks, this is Jordan Gal, who at the time of you doing this, this was before you started doing the podcast, before you started blogging.
Speaker 1:Total anonymity.
Speaker 2:Total you know, you you had no name recognition, but just offering something of value to a targeted audience that you've targeted through Facebook ads.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And this is this is what's possible. You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. The the course was on how to build alright. So now let let's let's get into what's inside the webinar. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2:What are well, like, what I guess, like, what are some of the tricks and and, like, techniques, you know, that you've picked up along the way or or that I picked up?
Speaker 1:Okay. By far, the absolute best resources, the two best resources, in my opinion, are Lewis Howes and James Wedmore. Lewis Howes does a great job of communicating and articulating what needs to get done. James Wedmore, and I I I link this in the in the notes, He has there's a web page called realmarketinginsider.com. That's his, membership program /vsavip.
Speaker 1:Realmarketinginsider.com/vsavip. I linked it. It's like this weird, impossible to find link I somehow found. And on it, he has, like, a two hour webinar.
Speaker 2:Sent me that. I I watched it. It really it the whole the free webinar is it's really valuable. I watched the whole thing and it's
Speaker 1:you've learned That's so much. You what it is. If you can deliver enough value, then you convince people without even selling. So my webinar was on how to build a sales funnel. So I went step by step.
Speaker 1:I said, first, you need to know who your customer is. You need to create a customer avatar. Then you need to map out the end result that they're looking for. What are they trying to achieve when they do business with you? Then you need to map out, you know, three, four, five, six steps that will take them from where they are currently to where that end result is.
Speaker 1:Then for each of those steps, each of those is gonna turn into an email in your email autoresponder, in your sales funnel. And then when once you do that, you need to outline it, and then you need to use a narrative device to make it interesting, and then you need to put that together, and here are the tools to do it. And I just I just gave as much value as I possibly could. And I think the the smart way to put it that I heard is you teach what and then you sell how. So you teach what you need to do.
Speaker 1:You need to figure out who your customer avatar is. You need to figure out what their end result is. You need to do this. This is what you need to do. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then if you are ready to go the next step, you can go figure this out on your own. I hope you got as much out of this as possible. And I thank you so much for spending an hour with me. But if you wanna go the next level and get this done, my course will show you how to do it.
Speaker 2:Right. The step by step, the templates, the walking you through how to do it, all of it. Exactly right. One of the one of the things that I picked up from Lewis' house was you have to make it really engaging and interactive. And and, like, every ten or fifteen minutes of the webinar, maybe even quicker than that, you you have to do some kind of thing where we're like, okay.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna do a survey. You guys tell me, you know, tell me what you think about this question.
Speaker 1:Or Right. This next point is really, really important.
Speaker 2:So this is where you wanna this down or, like, do something, you know, to keep. It it shouldn't just be like kinda monotone just talking, going through the slides, you know, one by one. You you've gotta do something to like wake them up every five to ten minutes.
Speaker 1:Right. And everyone right. Everyone says, at the beginning, you say, you know, shut everything down, focus, this is how you're gonna get the most out of it. I really think very, very few people turn everything off and stare at the screen with just your webinar on with 100% attention. No, of course not.
Speaker 1:Right. So here's the thing though. Lewis is a master at that stuff. And I think he is because he is advanced. So he has all the fundamentals down, and now he's he's playing on the margins.
Speaker 1:He's fiddling with the things that maximize the conversions and maximize engagement. And these little tricks are from a pro. I went about it as a novice, and so instead of focusing on, like, getting those right, I just said, let me just focus on just giving value and hope that's enough. And in the future, I'll nail everything perfectly about this is where you need to pay attention and write this down and here's the worksheet and all the other stuff that you know you should be doing, but it's it's a lot to do all at once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:I think the biggest focus just needs to be on if you're gonna discuss a problem, you want to get people really far along in the solution in your webinar and that's that's how they trust you without you having to sell anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then how do you how do you make that transition to the offer at the end? Right? Like, what's what are some some tricks to smooth that transition, and and what are some selling techniques, you know, after you've spent forty five to an hour teaching?
Speaker 1:Right. And any even the teaching can be broken down nicely. Right? There's a there's a little handout, I've seen before. Right?
Speaker 1:The seven steps, like, the first piece is the meet and greet, and that you just wanna be human. Right? So my first slide in my webinar was like a picture of me saying, we'll started in a minute. Mhmm. And then I'm talking about, hey, how's everyone going?
Speaker 1:Sorry to put the, you know, picture of, the Miami summer and rub it in everyone's faces. I'm, you know, just being normal Yeah. And engaging.
Speaker 2:And you could also talk about something current to to prove that this is not recorded. Right?
Speaker 1:Right. That it that it's live.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Some kind of current event.
Speaker 1:So that's like z like, that's before it even starts. So if the webinar starts at 10AM, you wanna get on at 09:50 and start chatting like that. Mhmm. Then the welcome, you just wanna tell people what's about to happen. Right?
Speaker 1:Who are you? What's gonna happen on this call? Why is it gonna be really valuable? And then after that, it's a little bit of a story where you can build some credibility. Right?
Speaker 1:So for me, it was, you know, why am I teaching and selling a course on building a sales funnel? Because this is what I do for my consulting clients and it was really hard to figure out how to write content in autoresponders for other people's businesses. And so after having figured that out, I really think it's valuable to other people also. You tell a little bit about your story, and then the meat of it is, okay, this is how you do it. This is what you do, and then then you do this, and then you do this, and then you do that, and, you know, then you give some something actionable.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then after that, that's when you make the transition.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, you know, and and, like, that transition, this was I I kinda had the wrong impression for a long time about webinars. I thought that the whole idea for a while was, like, just promote the free webinar, the teaching, and and whatnot. And then the selling at the end, you should do that, but it it's you don't have to talk about that until you get there. Like, it should be a surprise that you're selling something at the end.
Speaker 2:But no. Like, you should be totally upfront that at before the webinar even starts, even in the emails, in the intro, you know, introduce yourself. I I teach a a premium course in this or at stay tuned to the end. I'm gonna tell you about like, you don't have to make that the focus up front. Obviously, the focus is what you're teaching, that like, the topic, but mention it.
Speaker 2:I mean, all the webinars that I've been watching lately, to see how they do it, is they're they are totally upfront about the fact that at the end of this webinar, I'm going to make you a a special offer. So so just be upfront about it.
Speaker 1:Right. I I think that's better off. And and I think I I just said a line or two about it. But I didn't focus on it because I didn't really know how to introduce it and yeah. It that's a it's a bit of a of a tricky thing, but I think you're still better off mentioning it and talking about it upfront because why why Yeah.
Speaker 1:But that that transition after you teach, right, the ideal is to then introduce a new a new problem and then your offering, your course, your paid product is the solution to it. Yeah. So the way I did it was, okay, now you know how to build a sales funnel and how to go about it, and you have all the steps, and I'll send this recording to you, and you'll have it as a resource and everything else. But if it sounds overwhelming, you know, you still need to get all this done. So and then I listed out what still needs to get done.
Speaker 1:You need to figure out what tools to use. You need to integrate on your website. You need to, you know, do all these steps. And if that sounds like a lot for you, that's why I created the sales funnel roadmap, which will do this for you. And it's a four week course that has four modules.
Speaker 1:And in week one, we're gonna get this done. In week two, we're gonna get this. Week three, week four, so that by the end of it, this is what you'll have. Basically selling the dream of this is your current problem. You wanna build a sales funnel.
Speaker 1:By the end of the four weeks after you have bought this, you will have a sales funnel, and that will give you these results that come out of having a sales funnel. Right. And then this is the price, and this is how you sign up, and thank you so much. Now let's jump into the q and a.
Speaker 2:And and of course, you can include, like, if if you have them, you know, the case studies, success stories, testimonials, all this stuff can be included in that ten ten, fifteen minute pitch section of the webinar.
Speaker 1:That's the ideal, and I think that works tremendously well. I didn't have any of that. So all I talked about was some clients and what they've said about me and but it would be much more effective to show previous clients, previous students, previous results. Yeah. And then the q and a session, which was awesome.
Speaker 1:Awesome for just talking to people and awesome to hear what you left out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And all
Speaker 1:these questions are the gaps that you you left out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. Last week, I was sitting in on David Simon Garland's webinar. He was selling a webinar about how to create online courses. That's his that's his product.
Speaker 2:Right. I had no intention of buying the course, you know, or anything. I I just wanted to see how he ran one of these webinars. Right? So an interesting thing, popped up when you know, I I stayed till the end to see how he delivers his offer and he and how he makes that transition, and I thought it was really interesting.
Speaker 2:And it's this is another reason why I think webinars can be very effective if you do it this way. I'm not sure if I would do it the same way, but what he did was he transitioned into the offer, and then he started talking about the product. He started talking about the testimonials and the case and the success stories that people have had. And he's spending, like, ten minutes into all this stuff, and he still has not provided the link to buy yet. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:He's he's forcing you to sit through the entire pitch before you even have the chance to go buy. And I
Speaker 1:think I think And the price and the price.
Speaker 2:And the price. Right. And and he's anchoring it to once he gets closer to the price, he's anchoring. He's like, you know, people have told me I should I should charge 5,000 for this. Others have said 2,000 for this.
Speaker 2:And Right. So know A pro. Right. And what that because what what most people would probably do is once you get into that section, you'd like post the link and, like, while you're talking, you can start taking in sales. But I guess the reason why it's effective is you're overcoming all of the objections before anyone has a chance to, you know, to to abandon.
Speaker 1:Right. It's the the perfect sales pitch. You get to price anchor. You get to discuss the objections before the the decision can be made, before the price is revealed. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right? It's the same reason the sideways sales letter. Right? This is Jeff Walker's thing. It's the same reason it works because you build in so much value and you meet these objections and price anchor and and all that comes before the offer.
Speaker 1:So you're just perfectly positioned. Yeah. That's I I see the video launch sequence and the webinar thing as very, very closely related.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because what you're what you're doing is giving value and selling first before the decision can be made.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, the interesting and the and the question that I'm I'm still trying to battle with myself right now is I see a lot of these products, they're never available for anyone to just go on the website and buy. Like, you can only buy it if you go to the webinar, or you can only buy it if you if you make it through an entire email video sequence.
Speaker 1:Right? Like There's gotta be a reason for it.
Speaker 2:Right. I guess the question is, are are as a new product creator, are you losing out on sales by forcing people to go through all those hoops? And but at the same time, you see, like, the the pros are are the people who are really successful at this. That's what they do. They, you know, they only open it up to people who've made it through the webinar.
Speaker 2:I wonder, like, is that I guess the math works out and and I'm and I'm trying to figure out, like, is it
Speaker 1:What what do you have to lose? I I think that's the reason you see people like David Simon Garland and Johnny Dumas, they do a webinar every week or every other week. So, you can't buy unless no. I I think one of them, I think Johnny Dumas, I think you can you can just go and buy on the site. But a a lot of these products, you can't buy unless you go through the funnel of
Speaker 2:I'm not sure. I think I looked at his. I don't really follow his stuff too much, but I think last time I
Speaker 1:looked at it Podcaster's paradise?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think, like, the the call to action is, join this week's webinar.
Speaker 1:I I think you can get there. And look. The truth is, people who really wanna buy it, they'll find a way to buy it. Yeah. But I think there's a there's a lot of reason to it.
Speaker 1:It's just it's the same thing as having a really long sales page. You know, that stopped working because people went to the bottom, and they looked at the price and made a decision before they got any of the value and heard any of the testimonials. So that that's it's just an admission of I will have a much more successful, higher conversion rate if I force people to allow me to deliver them value before I make them the offer. Right.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Well, man, we covered a lot of this. Are we I know.
Speaker 1:We've been running a little long.
Speaker 2:Anything else to touch on when it comes to webinars?
Speaker 1:I wanna hear how you plan on, using it in in Restaurant Engine.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So and I haven't fully thought all this out yet. It's on my it's on my to do list next month to to really dig into this for Restaurant Engine. But, yeah. I want I want to implement it because I I see it as a more measurable way to approach the sales funnel.
Speaker 2:Because up until now, we've been almost entirely relying on organic content, which has taken us to a certain point. But now, like you said early on, I wanna make it more into a machine that I know that if we dump this amount of leads into the top of the funnel, it will result in this many new customers consistently. And I I see webinars as a potential solution to doing that. I'll probably start with and I'm gonna do this on Hotel Propeller too. I might even start with that before Restaurant Engine.
Speaker 2:I'll probably do I'll start with, like, one one per month and maybe then increase it to, like, once every two weeks.
Speaker 1:What's it gonna be focused on? Just just what what the importance of a website for restaurant or, you know, trend or I guess you can you can take on different topics see which ones Yeah. Are people find more interesting.
Speaker 2:I tend to think that it it should be for this type of product in in in my personal situation here, the signing up for Restaurant Engine or Hotel Propeller, you're you're making the decision to redesign your website. So you have to already be in that mindset. Like, I'm looking for a web designer. We need a new website. I already know that.
Speaker 2:So the
Speaker 1:question further along in the decision process.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It it can't just be, like, you know, how to a a quick five tips for your Facebook page that you can implement if you want. It it I so I think the topic should be around, you know, five things to think about when you're redesign redesigning your website or
Speaker 1:Right. To capture the same type of
Speaker 2:Or that that's a bad title. But, you know, it'd be something like how to how to get more customers to your restaurant using the web or something along those lines. Right? And so I I think it should be really tied to our product and but but teaching, you know, high level strategy, things that we actually implement on your website, like responsive and and mobile, and and and then just get into the the pitch for how I mean, the other thing that I wanna use webinars for I don't know if these would be the same educational webinars or or if I should break these out into their own separate type of webinar, is we spend a lot of time on these consultation calls just answering the same questions over and over and over again. Maybe if I if we have like a restaurant engine tour webinar.
Speaker 2:The whole webinar is just about how restaurant engine works. And that way because like, currently, we get people requesting consultations, and we kind of treat them one by one. And we do have a video tour, and a lot of people learn things there, but they still wanna talk to us. I'm thinking maybe this can become something where we can process five, ten, 20 leads at a time instead of one at a time. And and like answer all all their questions in a group.
Speaker 1:Once they sign up, it's it's this week's, you know, restaurant engine, basically, onboarding webinar. Yeah. People get to Either take them through a tour and then and then ask questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Probably pre sign up, though. Like, still still in an effort to get them to sign up, but they're already interested in the in in redoing their website. They're they're interested in Restaurant Engine. They just need to get all of their questions answered.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. That that's I like that. That's that's interesting. You know? It's yeah.
Speaker 1:You don't you you don't usually hear it in that context, but it makes sense that people have these detailed questions before they sign up. If you can if you can leverage something to answer those questions for a lot of people once. Yeah. That sounds good. The thing I mean The more they see you, the more they hear from you, that's better.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, like, the things that I'm thinking through, like, I'm not sure. I I think it would it would really my hunch is it'll be very effective for Hotel Propeller. I'm not sure about restaurant engine. I don't know if webinars are are something that restaurant owners would would respond to because
Speaker 1:They don't sit still for an hour in front of
Speaker 2:the Yeah. Like, of them are so busy. We we just have a tough time getting on the phone with them when, you know, when it's like not their their busy lunch or dinner hour. Whereas, you know, a a B and B owner is basically sitting around all day, you know.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah. That's that's smart to think through that in in their situation. Yeah. And I I agree with you.
Speaker 1:I think it sounds like hotel propeller would be would be a better, you know, fit for it. Yeah. My my struggle with how to use webinars for Cardhook is it's it's actually similar to to Restaurant Engine. CardHook, I don't try to convince people that they should be doing a band card. Right?
Speaker 1:I I try to take on the people who already know they want it and are looking for the right tool. And I wanna be positioned as the right tool for it with better pricing structure and all that. So I'm not sure. I don't I don't wanna do webinars about how to recover abandoned carts. That that doesn't sound right to me.
Speaker 1:So I think I'll take the same approach that I did. And I just built a sales funnel, an autoresponder, you know, a lead magnet, everything for a cart hook while doing the course. And when I thought through that, I I really thought about the end result there being a more optimized ecommerce store. And and the emails teach how to optimize your e commerce store. So I really think yeah.
Speaker 1:And and and it almost lends itself perfectly to let me just teach the shit out of optimization and give as much value as I can completely unrelated to the product because then at the end, it's a very honest transition to say, now that you know how to better optimize your site, it doesn't matter how optimized, it doesn't matter how perfect you do this, you're still gonna have abandonment. And for that, use CardHook. Right. It's almost like I don't need to sell the product at all. I just need to talk about their problem and give them value and then almost sit back and hope that my expertise and trust and authority and the value that I've given, you know, lends them to say, you know what?
Speaker 1:That's actually an interesting idea. I haven't thought of it or I've heard of it, but I've never tried it. And let me give it a try with this guy because he actually knows what he's talking
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think in your case with Cardhook, it's so it's such a simple concept of what it what it it just does one thing, and it does it really well. And the other thing, you know, earlier you said a a webinar is you wanna teach what and then you wanna sell how. Cart hook or an a tool that that prevents abandoned cart, it's not the kind of thing that you can go and do yourself if you wanted to. You still need a software tool to do it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I mean and Cardhook is that tool.
Speaker 1:So Right. It's almost like the the info product lends itself to the what, how situation. The software piece is you can just you can just focus on their issue. Right? If you have, like, a project management software, if you just help people on, you know, how to get clients.
Speaker 1:Right? We know we know Brennan does this really well. Then you don't have to sell your software at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You can just give them enough value and enough trust and then say, and I'm the same guy that uses this soft software offers this software that does the rest for you, the next piece, the next step in the process. Yeah. I'm I'm really interested to see over the next, you know, let's say, month or two what the two of us can do on webinars and to kinda report back here on on our results. If they're too good, you know, if they're too good or they're too bad, we won't talk about it. If they're if they're mediocre, we'll we'll we'll reveal them.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Just like everything else on this show. Yep. Very cool. Well, let's, let let's wrap it there. And, this was a really good talk.
Speaker 2:I I think, I even have way more to think about now with webinars. So Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff.
Speaker 1:We'll collaborate, we'll, we'll look over each other's shoulders and see what works for each other and that's it. If you guys wanna, you know, ask anything about webinars or or or talk about it, you know, get in touch. And if you wanna dig into the backlog of episodes, we're we're racking them up here, baby. Week by week, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it just goes by. I know.
Speaker 1:So so, go check them out over at bootstrapweb.com. Subscribe on iTunes. Listen on Stitcher. Anything else you can come up with that I'm not aware of? But if you do like it, head on over to iTunes and leave us a five star review.
Speaker 1:We would really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yes, indeed. Alright. Excellent. So we'll Right. We'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 2:Good talk.
Speaker 1:Alright. Later, Drew. Bye.
![[42] Using Webinars as a Bootstrapper](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)