Tag: joanna wiebe

The New Reality of the Course Empire

Transcript

We are talking about courses.

And as I was putting together the workbook for it, which has about seventeen pages of scattered thoughts, it occurred to me that the reason it feels so scattered is because, the course world is different today than it was a month ago than it was a year ago and definitely than it was five years ago.

So I don’t want to put together a workbook that, is actually not based on what’s really going on right now. So I thought let’s have a discussion about it, because I know there are people in this room who work with course graders who have their own courses, and who are thinking of grading a course and wondering if that’s the right thing to do. So, this is more of a discussion today if that’s cool with y’all. So please bring your best experience, your best ideas, what you know to the conversation, and we can talk about that.

Now the bigger question when people talk about putting a course together, it’s typically a second part of their existing business, which is fair, but it does mean you’re now spread across two different business models, which is tricky. So you’ve got your, you know, service based business. Great. And then you have this other digital product business, which used to be great because you could honestly say, like, we’re just going to sell it in the background and just keep generating passive actual passive, income from it.

And, the passive income is kind of gone now. Not entirely gone, but it’s not what it was. It’s not it’s not at all what it was.

And I think there’s lots of reasons for that. And if anybody has any thoughts and wants to chime in, please feel free to.

But, obviously, there’s a lot of crap out there.

And then there are a lot of good options too, like, really great, strong, well produced options that, yeah, feel different, might not be as great with instruction, but I’m thinking of, you know, the stuff that Coursera puts together, and things like that. I don’t take it, but I know that people in teams in particular do take it, take the stuff over there. It’s also very affordable, compared to what most of us the rest of us do with our thousand to five thousand dollar courses that we put out.

So there’s a lot going on. Right? Anybody Anybody can make a course right now. It’s very difficult to tell if the course is any good or not before you get into it.

It requires a lot.

ChatGPT is our number one referral source right now, for people who buy copy school without having even heard of us before.

So a lot of people have typically come to us from our own ecosystem, and great.

But I’m quite surprised by what ChatGPT is doing for our business. One part destroying it, one part building it. So it’s a weird I’ve got a weird relationship with ChatGPT.

So but all that to say, when you’re thinking of building a course today, just like any content that you’re thinking about today, we are trying to increase our authority service area with LLMs, all the AI world out there, and with Google. So still worrying about search engine optimization, but also worrying about GEO. So all of this this other space where generative AI is telling your next client that they should go with your competitor.

So that’s something that we need to be thinking about when we’re doing everything, but absolutely when we’re putting together a digital product as well. Because the service obviously has a lot of friction to get into it. Right? Do I want to hire you for this versus I have someone on my team who should be doing this work?

Can you just teach them how to do it? And, of course, that’s where your course comes in.

So what does ChatGPT care about when they’re recommending? Because it’s going to be important as you put a course together or whatever your offer is. What do they what does ChatGPT care about? And that means what content should you be putting out where in order to promote your course. So you can see how.

I didn’t even expect, a year ago, of course, to be talking about how courses and ChatGPT are working together right now or how Reddit is a big influencer for ChatGPT or Wikipedia as well. You’re supposed to have a Wikipedia page now. So in order for you to even consider selling a course, you need to already have a stronger authority surface area in place. And then the question is, well, given that courses are very difficult right now to move people on unless they’re really affordable and small.

And typically, we’re hearing also supported by a human. So people still want someone to check-in with all the time. So this passive income thing isn’t what it was because you have to actively participate in running a course now, which you didn’t have have to do for the longest time. So what do we do with that?

Now I wanna bring this to y’all and kind of open the floor before I propose what to do with that.

I wanna open the floor and hear those who have courses.

What’s working, what’s not working for you? If you wanna share it. I don’t see why you wouldn’t wanna share it. But if you don’t, that’s okay. But if you do anybody?

Yeah. I’ll I’ll definitely share. Do you just mean, like, with my course business or what my clients are seeing?

Or Sure. Whatever, like, whatever feels, like, relevant to the idea of how do I build a course today, or should I build a course today? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So what I was seeing kind of last year was well, bay basically, in terms of buying behaviors, I’m seeing that people if people don’t buy now, I think it’s, like, ninety percent. If people don’t buy now, they’re, like, beyond recovery after a month, like, ninety percent of people.

So, people it’s, like, about getting people to make a fast decision, but in order to do that, there’s definitely a price cap. So last year, I was looking at, like, a two thousand dollar price cap, whereas this year, it’s more like twelve hundred. So like if you’re gonna create a digital product I think it needs to be like around the thousand dollar mark, because you need to be able to sell it. Like from the moment people sign up for your webinar, like they’re gonna make a decision very quickly.

And then but you’re not gonna make money really off that. So it would then be if you have a higher ticket offer or a mastermind, to seed that into because people are only seem to really be buying those if they’re either getting on a sales call or they’ve already bought from you already. So that’s kind of how I’m seeing it all work together. So, they my clients that are making the most money have, like, a five thousand dollar offer that they’re selling through, through a call or like a five hundred dollar offer that they’re selling with Day one Evergreen and then that feeds into like a high ticket system.

So, yeah, that’s what I’m seeing. In terms of my own course, like, I’m not really doing much with it, but it is fully passive because it’s five hundred dollars and people just, like, hit me on a podcast or something and buy it. So I’m making, like, two k a month from it, which isn’t great, but, like, it’s nice because I can just put that that, like, high as a social media manager. So yeah.

Cool. Thank you.

Okay. So just to sum up what I’ve heard about the course world, for you is keep prices down lower than they used to be. And if they’re higher, have a sales call.

Yeah. Or if they’re higher, like, make them much higher with a community aspect.

Otherwise, keep it lower, but make sure that it seeds into something higher because, like, especially if you’re running ads. Like, it’s just they don’t stand alone in the way that they used to.

Yeah. Yeah. Nikki?

I just wanted to share share.

Mhmm.

When I was looking for someone to audit my podcast, I saw all sorts of different interesting programs that people were pitching me on and all that kind of thing.

And one interesting model that I saw was this kind of, like, high touch slash do it yourself program where they took the course that they already created and clearly were, like, previously selling for, like, two thousand dollars. And now it was, like, sitting inside this program where it’s now a, like, eight to ten ks program where like there’s like this accountability and like one on one calls but then you’re like handed off like let’s say once a month but you’re handed off to like the content in the courses. So like there’s the accountability because you have to check-in with the calls but there’s also, like, the passive content that, like, you’re not, like, left alone for, like, these one month periods of time. Yeah. So it’s just, like, an interesting model to see.

And then for myself, I was kind of thinking about, like, the community model where you’re kind of filling the room with I mean, I don’t know how to do this, but I was just like, it would be cool and it could work well if you’re filling the room with, like, a lot of smart people that like to share and help each other.

There’s a lot of value in that and then, like, once a month workshops. So, like, it can be low ticket, but also high touch person to person. Mhmm. So I was just thinking about that.

Yeah. And that’s funny because, over the years, we’ve for copy school, when teams have come to us, they rarely buy without having a conversation with us. Like, they don’t even go through our Sam card. Like, it’s just happening, with sales calls and, Stripe invoices. We send them an invoice for the number of seats, etcetera. But they have always wanted what you’re talking about, this hybrid of, yes, we want these on demand programs, but we need a kickoff call. We need check-in calls.

We need goal setting, and we need, like, a timeline with a final call at the end with the option to add on copy reviews and things like that.

So it’s interesting that has been what teams have been looking for for years, but it sounds like you’re saying, Nikki, that’s not just teams. It’s like individuals are expecting to have more of that as well. Is that right? Or was it teams?

That’s what I was saying. Yeah. Like, all these offers now shifting to that. By the way, also, I’ve been running, like, jobs to be done interviews, like, this past two weeks, like trying to figure out my ICP and all that.

And a lot of them were talking about that. Yes.

Like their companies expense these courses and they pay for these seats and like some of them use it, some of them don’t like, but all of them mentioned master class, which I thought was interesting because they were also like they were saying like like it sounded like the previous years were like copy school, CXL, reforge and like now it’s more shifting to like master class and, like, still some of that, but it was just, like, interesting to hear.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Thanks. Myrna.

Yeah. I’m gonna look at it from my client’s perspective, because I’ve had two different clients and and who have been in this whole online educational space at volume.

And what worked before is just not working for a couple of reasons. Time.

They just don’t have time to sit down in a course.

And so they need smaller, digestible kind of courses. So some of the courses that are doing really well are the the the faster courses where you’re getting something that’s very real world applicable very quickly.

But if you are in a longer course, I think I’m gonna echo what Nikki said, and it was the the idea of community.

And that’s really lacking in a lot of the the course structures that have been, successful in the past. And, they’re sort of ex they’re expecting access to the expert, a lot of real world applications, demos, tools, whatever they need. Definitely expecting this higher touch with the expert that that isn’t easy to execute always.

And and that’s why I think I’ve seen a resurgence of the membership model or the hybrid membership model when it comes to a course.

Okay. So what does the hybrid membership model look like?

I think it looks more like where you have it’s almost like this a little bit more, right, where you have smaller groups, and you have this ability to interact with the community, but you also have this giant resource library and a and and this back and forth. Mhmm.

And so it’s it’s not exactly what I would call it’s more of like a member a mastermind at scale maybe.

Interesting.

Yeah. And so and then, you know, I think the other thing that especially in the space I’m in, it it’s in this trauma education space.

Everybody’s starting to blend in, and so you really have to have some sort of differentiator and be super clear about that in your messaging because that’s not coming across, and it’s like everything seems to sort of feel like the same thing over and over again. Yeah. Even your own courses are starting to cannibalize other the the your own courses within your own ecosystem.

It’s interesting. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Marna. Mhmm. Abby?

Yeah. Since we it’s kind of removed on to, like, the higher ticket programs, I just wanted to share a model that I’ve been saying seeing working really well because it’s a bit different. And it’s, you basically run an on demand webinar all the time. And then there’s, like, a car open close on the first week of the month, and you have an agency come in for that week, and they take the calls and close for you. So it kind of creates a natural urgency, so you can you can only apply to book a call within that week.

I am thinking about doing it for my own business because it’s, like, cheaper than hiring a full time closer because it’s just for the seven days. But the clients I have who are still doing, like, three hundred k a month with online programs, it is through that model of, like, having having closes. So, yeah, just another thing I’m seeing. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. Cool. Love. Katie?

No? Katie? Oh, Katie’s frozen.

Yeah. Just to speak to can you hear me? Okay. Sorry. My Internet is being weird. That’s why I’m on my phone.

To speak to, I think, as a buyer, so I told Abby about this already, but I bought a YouTube course well, bought into this YouTube course, but it was also clearly a course that had been turned into this hybrid model. So whereas they were probably selling it for, like, two k before, it was five hundred a month extra months. So I paid fifteen hundred for four months. Yeah.

But I will say, like, it was really tough going. It was very, like, front loaded with theory. So I got really and there was, like, very little engagement in the community and no perceived reason to be on the calls.

So, ultimately, at the end of that, it’s like you walk away without having anything versus like, you know, if you’ve invested in the course, you have still the thing to refer back to at the end.

And having got so little value from it, I didn’t want to keep investing. So I went back to another creator whose work I know and like.

And I have access to her, like, mini course, which has proved significantly more valuable than this, like, over bloated thing. So I think that, like, even from a consumer point of view, there’s so much more value in having that. Like, I don’t want two modules worth of theory. I just want the quickest path to the win that I purchased the course or, like, to the problem I purchased the course to solve. So that’s where That’s curious.

Sorry. I I wonder about that simply because this this race for shortcuts when ChatGPT exists and is, like, a shortcut.

It’s weird that you would hire a course to do what you could hire ChatGPT to do.

So I find that like, it’s weird. Right? Isn’t it weird?

Who would put more money into the course?

But I don’t have to I don’t have to second guess what she’s telling me to do versus what Tati Bhatia is telling me to do. Yeah. Definitely trust.

Also, because it’s a creator. I mean, at least Dharma, like, so I bought a bunch of her other programs. Like, I’ve been in her world for years. So and also so I had access to an older version of this course, and she just redid it.

Mhmm.

So there’s, like, hyper relevance to the content because it was new for twenty twenty five.

Yeah. And so with my own courses, I mean, I had this, like, smattering of workshops on different topics that I’ve held back from promoting in any capacity now because they feel stale, because there’s no mention a of AI in them. I think the only way that they would be remarketable is to go through and provide, like, a chat gbt prompt for each step in the process that I’m outlining, which, by the way, the other YouTube course had also integrated.

Mhmm. Yeah. And what would stop you from doing those prompts? You just don’t want to?

Yeah.

Not, like, not aligned with the market that I wanna be serving now.

Fair. So then you just let that die?

Well, that’s yeah. I mean, I don’t know. That’s the question.

Yeah. It is. I agree. No. I wonder that same thing so often. Okay. Thanks, Katie.

Abby?

Sorry. I’m I love talking about courses in case you can’t tell.

Yeah. So I it was funny because I I had my mastermind earlier, and I was talking about, quick positioning based on mark sophistication.

And this conversation just made me think of something in that because with when you’re looking at the highest levels with sophistication, you talk there’s, like, the community aspect we’ve talked about, but I think there’s also the value aspect. And I wonder if people will start leaning into that more. So, like, as an example, like, you know, like, there’s so many courses around, like, or how to build, like, a seven figure agency, but looking at, like, one specific thing, like, like, using it to, like so you can create jobs for people or just something that’s very value aligned.

So you’re creating a sense of belonging and identity rather than just an outcome. I wonder if that could be, like, the kind of potential future courses is, yeah, identity versus outcome.

Interesting. I’m wondering with all of this, like so the reason to create a course five years ago was, because it was pretty easy money. That was the number one reason people created courses, which is really good, quick money. I my acupuncturist, was performing acupuncture on me and talking about her course.

And I was like, I run a course business. And, like, it was like, her whole everything changed about her. She was so excited to talk about this chorus, and she’s gonna make all this money. Years later, she never stood the course up.

And now now what? Right? Now it’s unlikely to.

So I’m wondering, it does it make good business sense to create a course today?

Abby, you say yes.

Yeah. Like, even just for the authority service area, like you say, I think everyone should have a book, should have a course, should have spoken on ten podcast in five masterminds, have a blog, perhaps the same. Like, it’s just like one of the things on the checkbox. And, plus, you’re still gonna make a little bit of money from it. Even though if you wanna if you wanna make a lot of money from it, you have to make it like a whole arm in your business and hire people to help you with it. But, yeah, I just think it’s a at minimum, it’s a tick At most, like, you can you can still make good money from it. It’s just harder.

And we’re all like this, so it’s easier.

If it’s to part of it is to increase your what Nikki said there too. Right? Part of it is to increase your authority service area.

I wonder then, should it be gated, or should it be on YouTube?

Do you need to sell a course today? If you’re just gonna sell it for five hundred bucks, anyway, you sell for a month in a good month, let’s say, and you’re only selling them because you’re out there increasing the size of your service area, which you could better increase by just putting it out there for free. Couldn’t you?

But then it’s not self liquidating. Like, if you’ve got a course of five hundred dollars and you can run ads to that and then run ads to your YouTube video, then you’re gonna get in front of a lot more people, and more people are gonna take your course testimonial social proof. Like, I just think if you’ve got, yeah, if you’ve got something that’s self liquidating, then you can scale it. Whereas, like, yeah, like YouTube, like, as I think a lot of us have seen, you’ve gotta hide the editors. Like, there’s just so much. Whereas if at least you’re selling a five hundred bucks course, like, that’s gonna fund your editor.

Interesting.

Jess?

I yeah. I just wanted to say, like, what Abby said with having a course up helping to, like, support your authority.

That is something I just like, I’m always thinking of it as, like, a money making venture. And, like, if you don’t see the direct path to, like, making a lot of money from the course itself, and if you don’t have a big list and you are running ads and there’s, like, all this stuff to do to make it make you a lot of money, I like that reframe of, like, it’s just another piece of your, like, authority in addition to having a book and having all this stuff. Like, I think that’s, like, a really helpful thing for me. That was just, like, a little light bulb moment.

Okay. So you’re thinking of it as part of your bigger authority building picture.

I still have a question, and Nikki just popped it in there too. Nikki just said in chat, she had a podcast guest who ungated his course and did the awesome stuff for his business. It was not hosted on YouTube. You still had to opt in for it.

So use this lead gen, which is but this does go back to that question of your business model. And if you’re spread thin across two business models instead of just focusing on the one, am I gonna be an agency slash consultancy or am I going to be a course business? An agency doesn’t need a list. A course business needs a list.

Agency doesn’t need ads. A course business needs ads. So you can quickly see, like, you need two additional skill sets to do the course business. If the payoff is five hundred dollars for a course you sell and while that’s happening, the expectation is you have to make yourself available.

Your hour is worth a thousand bucks as a consultant. The Chorus business has just turned that into two hundred bucks an hour at best. So I’m looking at it as somebody who if the topic of the conversation is building your course empire, is there a way to build a course empire today? Does it make sense to try to build a course empire today?

Or is there a better, smarter way to build a consultancy that is based on, like, we’re talking about here, these authority checkpoints. Like, do you have these things in place? And then my question would be, well, where do you host this course? Because although it’s cool that this person was building was doing lead gen with his course, that does sound a lot like list building just to give away a whole free course versus put it somewhere where people, including ChatGPT, can find it, can parse it, and can say this person’s an authority and send better quality leads who are ready to spend more money to you for services including workshops.

So I want to open the conversation up or at least have some thought around the people who didn’t put courses together, and I’m thinking April Dunford. Bob Mesta did, but he didn’t do much to sell it, with Rewired Group, for jobs to be done.

They have done book, promote the hell out of your book, get on stages, whatever those might be, virtual or real, and drive to high ticket workshop sales so that you can build a five million dollar a year business running twenty workshops a year with bigger ticket clients, and it’s really you plus VA.

You get a lot more money for yourself. You get to buy vacation properties that way. Now it takes a lot, though. It takes a lot. But what I like for those who because if I if I were to start a whole new business today and someone told me what the expectations were around delivering a course and that I can charge a fraction of what people charged three years ago for that same course, and I have to do more for it.

Whereas, I could not do any of that.

I could still create that content, be a teacher, put my thought leadership out there, and sell to sell workshops into larger organizations who love this, sell a mastermind to the smaller smaller sized ICP, so freelancers, other consultancies, and things like that, sell that as well.

Do I need a course outside of for lead generation and authority building? Abby, you wanna hop in?

Yeah. So I can’t I can’t speak to the selling the work workshop. So just there’s just two things I wanted to say is, one, I do think having something to sell makes you a a much better service provider. Like, that doesn’t have to be a course, but I think understanding what it takes to sell a product, having a testing ground, like, a playground is just test things.

It makes you a better business owner. It makes you a better service provider. And, of course, it’s just such an easy one. It’s so easy to have.

Like, we’ve all got IP that we can create a course with.

The second thing is I just think when we’ve been talking about creating, using your course content as lead gen, I think it’s kind of it takes for granted the fact that once somebody’s become a customer, it is so much easier to convert them into a higher paying customer.

Like, I was really shocked when I opened up my mastermind. And, okay, I only made forty k with it, but I did nothing. I did not I posted it up to my email list once. I have less than a thousand people.

Posted on LinkedIn, like, three times, and it was all people that bought my course. Five hundred dollars then paid me five grand to be in my mastermind. And that is a scalable business model, is having a mastermind. And I just think even though I’ve got people that have downloaded all my freebies, watched my webinars, it’s the ones that have given me money that that convert into high ticket.

So I just really think, like, we can’t be taken for granted that if people buy something from you, it doesn’t matter what it is or how much it cost, like, you can make more money from them.

Does a book do that job?

Well, yes. But also, I I found that the peep it was loads of people more people have bought my book. Then of my mastermind, I think there’s nine people in there. Seven of them bought my course, and I’ve made it, like, over three hundred book sales. So, like, a book’s ten dollars. A five hundred dollar course is just it’s different. It’s a bigger commitment mentally.

Yeah. So it sounds like, no. A book doesn’t do the job that a course does when we think about the ladder of getting people. Depends on your audience. Yeah.

I guess it yeah. It it depends. But, like, yeah. If you’re for five thousand, ten thousand dollar mastermind, like, I don’t know. And if your book’s incredible, like, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens with yours.

Awesome. Nikki? Oh, you’re still muted somehow. Thought you just went off mute.

I pressed lower hand instead of mute.

I think what I wanted to say was this is, like, literally what I’m, like, grappling with right now is, like, this this business side versus this course side and, like, building the two different audiences and, like, all my content will be unfocused and all that.

But at the same time, there’s still this fear of, can I really just do one thing? Like, just audits and workshops for teams? Like, that’s crazy. Like, it feels so I don’t know.

I’m not sure the fear is. I don’t think it’s limiting. I don’t think I will be bored. I don’t think like, what’s what’s wrong with just that?

Is it because you’re used to busy hands?

Is you also used to be busy?

Or maybe it’s like the or, like, the opportunity cost.

Like, there are always going to be these people, like, these little mini April Dunfords that wanna be her and wanna learn from her and wanna like, she’s attracting them anyway, so, like, she should just say no to them.

Like Yeah.

Literally, April just says no. And in fact, her fear is creating little mini April Dunfords.

That is she doesn’t want them. She wants no mini April Dunfords out there because it dilutes her brand.

That is such disciplined.

Yeah.

I know. Right? And but that’s even when you say fear, that’s where courage comes from. Right?

It is doing the thing because you’re scared to do it. So have the courage to be a disciplined business owner, and it will mean turning away money. And as I April wouldn’t I don’t think mind me saying it. It’s not like April comes from money.

April doesn’t have an easy time saying no to these things, but she does. She says no. And it just keeps raising her her workshop prices so that she feels better at the end of it all. It’s worked out pretty well.

But it does take work. Yeah. Is it wrong to not wanna do a course, Myrna says? I don’t think so.

I think right now, you have to have a reason to do a course.

You love teaching. You’re building your authority, and this is one more way to do it.

I don’t think the reason can be money, and that was the reason. I don’t think that the empire will be a course empire.

It’ll be your empire, but will it be based on the course?

All the course businesses right now are tanking.

Tanking.

Like, insider insights into what’s going on in huge names.

People are shutting whole things down. They’re having to lay people off. It’s just getting expensive.

Her workshop starts at sixty thousand, April’s, and she typically sells lots. Like, she sells, like, four into Google at a time. So, you know, when you’re doing quarter of a million dollar or three hundred thousand dollar invoices for a few days work, you can see the discipline pays off. Yeah.

Abby?

Yeah. Can I just pose a question to the group? I’m just curious. So one of the ways my buying behavior has changed is because I’m so aware that anyone that’s making the ad to put out of content, AI is scraping that content and helping make them redundant.

So if I’m if I get something out of someone’s free content, like, I’ll buy from them and probably not take the course. I just wanna give them, like, a thousand dollars to just because, like, if they’ve taught me something that’s helped my business, like, they I wanna give them my money. Like, is anyone else thinking like that? And can you see that becoming, like, a not like a movement, but just but kind of, like, more people embracing that?

I think course creators want that to be a movement.

Are there more Abby’s out there?

Was anybody gonna answer that?

Yeah. My opinion is that I don’t I don’t really see that happening, mostly because, you know, people are I I don’t know. I feel like if they’re gonna give money to something, like unless they’re, like, feeling like an activist, you know, like, you know, they want something in return, I guess. I don’t know. To me, I just don’t I don’t see it going in that direction.

It’s like I think, historically, people have bought courses to say, please. Like, please, can I have your content? It’s like, I wonder if they’ll start buying courses today that say thank you because it’s like, I’ve already learned a ton from your YouTube channel. Like, thank you.

Like, the same way of Substack, you might buy someone coffee. I don’t know. It’s like Joe. Like, whatever you put out, I’ll buy it because I just because I’m grateful to you.

Like, I’ll buy it as a thank you whether I need it or not. Like, I don’t know.

I just we’re just curious to see if anyone else has seen that or if it’s just Yeah.

Like, it it might depend on the market too, but I I don’t see a consumer just handing over their cash because they are grateful, you know, at least in the direct shipping space.

A little cash. Right? Like, Patreon. Mhmm. Right? That sort of thing. Yeah.

That’s that’s a little different.

Yeah. Because they’re also getting value. Right? Because they’re I mean, they’re going to maybe participate in that community because Patreon’s like a community driven thing, same with school, something like that. But as far as, like, a course Yeah.

I don’t know. Roxanna?

I was just gonna say exactly what Jess said. I have done that. Mhmm. But thousand. You know, it’s gonna be, like, a couple of hundred because I think they’re great and I love them. For instance, I buy memberships from and for anything from, real finger, Ash Amberjay. You know, I think she’s amazing.

I gave her five hundred just to be in a local community newsletter course that I was never going to start just because I love her. But I don’t think I ever gave more than five hundred for that.

However, while I’ve never had a course, I’ve just did I mean, I’ve always had, like, small courses. I only did them just for lead gen and workshops.

I am grappling with this, and I’m wondering because I started a substack, but now it’s sitting there isolated. I haven’t emailed my list in three months or more.

And I used to, and I people would love my emails and I you know, it would be great. But now I’m rethinking everything and I, quite frankly, I don’t know what to do. April Dunford sounds amazing.

So maybe I should just, like, focus on the book.

And I’m just I’m just thinking what so what do I do?

You know?

So if we could just if I could just walk out of this call thinking, oh my god. Yeah. Forget about Substack. Forget about the email list.

Forget you know, now it’s the book and yeah. And it’s not gonna be a course. That’s okay. You’ve never done it.

You’re not gonna start now. This is kind of my universe of concerns. So there.

And I think that’s fair. Absolutely. What do I do? The challenge is it’s it’s you still do all the things more than ever.

So that’s the problem, is just how hungry the machine is, and it always needs fresh food. You always have to be producing something new or at least telling it that it’s something new, such as taking an old course or old content and putting it into a new environment.

So you do the Substack, and you do YouTube, and you do Reddit, and and and that’s that’s the problem. And we have to get to a place where that’s why you’re doing the right work and thinking through who is my ICP, who’s the persona at my ICP that I want to target, what is my specialization, and what do I bring uniquely to that. Because, otherwise, if you have to create content, if we all have to create content all the time, that’s the job, all the time, ongoing content creation, then you better make sure you’re not wasting your time on talking about headlines when your ICP is never gonna think at that level. They’re never gonna give a crap what you think about a headline, and you could waste a lot of energy coming up with content that doesn’t do anything.

So I don’t think we’ll walk away going here’s exactly what to do next. But what I wanna do is because everybody gets distracted, we all get distracted by all of the options out there. What I wanna do is at least know that people are walking away going, I will do a course, but it’s gonna be this kind of course sold in this location for this amount of money, whether that’s actual places or the amount of money is zero dollars and it’s sold on YouTube or whatever, and you’re doing it strategically for the right people, not not, hey. I wanna make money fast. I’m gonna put a course together.

Because that probably is not the way forward.

So, yeah, it’s not a list of what to do, but, ideally, you can either opt in to making a course or opt out. And once you make a decision as a business owner, you really have to stick by it. So if you say I’m not doing a course, you’re not doing a course. No matter what you hear, no matter who says something to you, seven months from now, you’re not doing a course.

That’s where I want us to land, hopefully. Is anybody thinking of doing a course right now?

Is everybody pretty disheartened by the whole course world right now? Yeah.

But the other options are still there, especially as we move into, you know, this what’s going on with humans in this world kind of question when every all of your clients or people who should be your clients are spending way too much time with ChatGPT, that’s where more of you in front of them goes a long way, which can look like a course, honestly, or it can look like a workshop or just more time spent on YouTube. But I don’t know. I feel like it’s kind of liberating to say, okay. Good. I’m gonna remove that as an option for a product I can create.

It’s not gonna be my it’s not gonna distract me anymore. But I know people wanna connect with me because among many other reasons, they’re they’re disconnected in life, they’re disconnected from the work that I do that I can help them do better. So I’m the human who comes in and helps them with this stuff. So there’s still something there. It’s just is it a course or not. Nikki says, what about digital products? Nikki, what other digital products?

Well, if if, like, we aren’t building a list to talk to the course people and building this, like, ladder of mastermind and course and all that, and I’m going down the wrongs instead of up the wrongs, it it probably doesn’t make sense to even build any digital products because then you’re just not gonna make enough money on them.

Well, what are the other digital products? Because, like, an ebook is a digital product.

Yeah. Playbooks and ebooks and packets and all that kind of stuff.

Why would those be bad?

Because, like, all the list building effort doesn’t pay off. Like, that’s what I have right now. Like, I finally launched a course and then just, like, let it sort of die.

And it never and it was never, like, a proper funnel that, like, really made, like, good customer lifetime value. Like, they just kind of, like, you know, every so often sales, like, I feel like you need that, like, proper funnel to really make it worth the time.

Yeah. It’s true. And that’s the two business models.

You’re spread thin unless you have a lot of money.

Like, I I have had the two business models running side by side, and it was great. But it was also when courses were selling without any effort. Like, nothing. So that world doesn’t exist.

It doesn’t exist like it did. That doesn’t mean someone won’t come out with a really great course and a bunch of people buy it. Sure. That’ll still happen if it’s for the right thing at the right time, etcetera.

So if you think you’ve got the right thing at the right time, don’t let this dissuade you because you can still do it. It’s just you have to be motivated by that thing, not I’ve got this knowledge. Let me make some extra cash on the side with this course. But I think also that these other smaller peripheral items you’re talking about, like SOPs, let’s say, because those were so popular to sell two years ago.

Those little documents, even templates, templates that you can teach them to share with CHAPPGPT or Claude in order to write emails with them, that could still work great. It’s low ticket. It is a way to say, hey, Nikki. I love your podcast. I’m gonna buy these templates from you, and whatever that might be. And it’s easier for you to create too. But the the the bar for courses is getting higher and higher and higher.

You have to hire when you think about the production of a course and what it takes.

These are twenty, thirty, forty, and more thousand dollar investments that you have to make in producing that course. Not so for a PDF, not generated by AI necessarily, but, in the vicinity.

Abby?

Yeah. I just wanted to just say something inspiring in the favor of courses because I think there’s this whole class of course creators who, like, followed the product launch formula in twenty twenty and made millions, and now they’re, like, jaded because it’s not like that anymore. Yes.

But I’m still seeing people make it like, I I’m working with a weight loss coach. She has a five thousand dollar program, and she’s making, like, two hundred k a month from it. And it’s like, people just buying a Zen Pick. Like, a Zen Pick is what ChatGPT is for marketers, and people are still buying it. And it’s because she’s doing it through YouTube. Like, the clients that I have that are absolutely crushing it are just doing it through YouTube, but they’re still they’re still making millions from courses. It’s just not through the product launch formula.

Yeah. Also, you need to post that. Chat GPT is to marketing, what those emphases to weight loss.

Yeah. But Oh, I hear that. It’s fair.

Yeah. I just don’t want if, like, if anybody’s in here and it’s like, oh, I really wanted to create a course, and now I just feel like there’s no point. Like, I just I I think if you want to, like, you can make it work, and it can be really fun. Like, trying to make it work. Like, don’t listen to the course creators who are just, like, bitter now.

I’m not bitter. I am so.

However, being I think it’s important when I look around at what freelancers can waste their time on, this is a thing they can waste their time on.

It’s it’s diff if everybody was raising their rates and charging what they should and working on lead gen and getting good leads coming in, And if everybody was in a place where they were like, okay. I’m building a million dollar consultancy. By this time next year, I’ll have generated seven figures.

I’ll have my team of four full timers in place. I have a good pipeline that I’m constantly working to actually convert. I’m good.

Okay.

Now you have more of the luxury of, okay. How do I expand this? What else do I do? And you can start putting out a course that you can dedicate your time to, but that’s not the case for the vast majority of people in this room.

That’s not where they are yet. When they get there, we’ll have that conversation. First, get your book out the door, get those leads coming in, raise your rates, have all that stuff in place. The course is a distraction.

And I stand by that. It’s got nothing to do with bidder.

Unless it makes you happy. If it makes you happy, then it’s like it adds something to your life as well. There’s that as well.

Next, Cody. Just kidding. Cody, you’re up.

Okay. So I put this in the chat, but I think it’s important for people to actually hear it too.

Well, before making a course, I think it’s important that we think about who it is that we’re who our ICP is, because for me, it doesn’t make sense. If I’m targeting companies that are doing, you know, at least twenty million dollars a year, CMOs, the CMO doesn’t care about how to write an advertorial. They wanna hire somebody to do that. You know?

So, I think it’s important that we just think about who it is that we’re targeting before we go off and create something like that. Agreed. Totally. Thanks, Cody.

Jess?

I did wanna make a note before my actual point is Jeff Walker is currently launching product launch formula, and I’m so curious as to see, like, if he’s, like, updated it or, you know, if he’s changed, like, anything, since twenty twenty. I’m just, like, really curious to see that. I hope not.

I hope that we still see him in his, like, Colorado cabin. Like, all exactly the same video sales letter. I love that.

Yeah. I’m yeah. I’m really curious to see what he does. But one thing I think that has been coming up for me is, like, I just watched, is his name Ramley? Ramley John launch his new book, and he had this, like, whole hoopla where I got like, I bought it because I was like, well, I need to know what’s in your book.

But then I got a course and access to all this stuff. And even when, there was somebody I think I asked Jessica if she helped produce this woman’s book Talia Wolf.

And it feels like people who are launching books, it’s like they’re already in such an established place that they when they launch, they have so many people sharing it and they have all this stuff around it. So each time I hear, like, write your book, produce your book, like, put out this book, it also feels like, okay. But now the the expectation is to also do a course and to also have these templates with it and to also have this and to have this upsell and and etcetera etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. So I wanna pause on that because that’s just marketing at play. Right? You don’t know what Talia’s business is like.

You don’t know what Rolleby’s business is like. You just know what they’re projecting, and that’s all anybody will know about you as well. So I would I would throw that right the hell out. Just don’t let it enter your mind.

Yes. To the takeaway of okay. Cool. So you have to have, like, great marketing around what you’re doing, and it can be helpful to have a course to sell into, to sell people into when they buy your book.

But everything else is it’s it’s a mask. It’s a thing that’s been created to make them look bigger and more badass. Not that they’re not. I’m not saying that.

Mhmm.

But I I wouldn’t I wouldn’t let that in for a second.

All it takes is marketing, and you’re a marketer.

You can do this.

Yeah. And I started watching Ramley’s course, and I’m, like, halfway through it. And I was like, it’s it actually kinda did me a favor where I was watching it, and I was like, there’s not a thing in here that I don’t already know. Like, I could put this out.

Yeah. You know? And, like, I’m still waiting for my hardcover to be delivered and maybe because I’m in Canada. That’s not why that’s why I haven’t got it yet.

But, yeah, I was just like, oh, there’s, like, not some secret thing in here that, like, I don’t know.

No.

Exactly. Yeah.

So most people are putting out. Also, when it’s published by a publisher, the publisher is attracted to those higher level things, not the more detailed things.

So that’s what we’ll often see from publishers versus self published, which is gonna be typically more useful, unless about a really great title that, you know, gets everybody to buy the book and nobody reads the thing.

So hundred percent. That’s why I keep saying write the freaking book. Yeah. It’s not it’s not because I think you’re not qualified.

It’s because I think you are. So go fucking do it now. Like, just sit down and do it. Workblocks, do it.

Yeah. I’ve been try I’m trying to watch that video of Jessica’s when she came into Yeah. CSP. Is it up now?

Because oh, perfect. Friday. Yeah. Oh, amazing. I can’t wait to watch it.

Okay. Good. Sweet. Now we’re talking about Hormozi. Abby, you little shit disturber over there. Alright. Nikki?

Hi. Sorry.

First of all, that by the way, that’s, like, my biggest fear about writing a book is that I’m gonna be one of those, like, useless authors that write something that everybody knows. Like, I don’t wanna do that.

Don’t do it.

That’s but then I’m, like, spinning my wheel. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Different different conversation.

So my my biggest question here is if like, back to what Cody was saying of, like, my ICP will not buy my course. So then why are they opting into any of my content? Like, they’re not gonna listen to my podcast either. They’re not gonna read my book either.

On your thank you page. Why what are you asking them when they are on the confirmation page?

Excuse me. Moment led you to it?

Yeah.

What was going on in your life that brought you to blank today?

How else are you gonna know? And that’s when they can tell you. You already know what to do. You’re just not doing it.

But Not and universally.

Just in What?

What’s that? I just missed what you said.

Oh, I said not universally, but just in that case, you’re not doing it. But go ahead.

Listening to my podcast, maybe as, like, an authority piece of, like, oh, I listened to it because ChatSpy told me that I should fire you. So I listened to it to, like, check that you know what you’re talking about, but they’re not actually my audience.

The people who are listening to your podcast are not actually your audience, or who is signing up is not actually your audience? How do you know?

I feel like the people listening are marketers doing the work.

Like, they are that before you know.

Still like Mhmm. Not Do do do VPs of marketing listen to, like, nitty gritty email strategy? Why? They’re not doing the work.

Some of them are.

Some of them absolutely, tragically, are right now because their teams have been cut in half, and they’re trying to create GPTs to replace those teams. And they can’t. And while we’re on the subject, all of these companies that have cut their staff in half, they still have freelancer budget. They’re just not allowed to hire.

So it is a good time to get out there for those VPs and put yourself in front of them because they don’t have the same team members they used to have. So consider that. But if you don’t think your ICP is listening to a podcast, do you have the podcast because you’ve had the podcast and your old audience is no longer the audience going forward? And if that’s the case and you don’t believe your new or current ICP listens to a podcast or your podcast or podcast in general, then why would you put your effort into it?

So I was thinking that I need to majorly change it. However, I still don’t think I have enough to say. Like, my expertise is not what they want to listen to day in, day out. They wanna hire me to do the thing.

Like, they want my expertise, but they don’t want me teaching it to them. They just want me doing it. What they wanna talk what they wanna, like, listen to a podcast on is something totally different. I don’t know.

Managing people and I don’t know. I don’t know what managers care about. I should know better.

I think that that was so I would say that that was somewhat true. But all along, every that’s all stages are for when these people and VPs do go to conferences, and they sit in the audience and they take notes. And usually sure. They might not be taking notes for what they’re gonna do, but they’re saying, oh, hire Nikki to come in and do x. And that’s their takeaway on their little notepad, and then they go back and they do that when they’re back in the office.

So don’t I, there’s the the struggle between, like, okay. We have to figure out what to work on. Right? What to work on now.

You have a podcast.

Consistency pays off better than hopping around fifteen different things. So just keep doing the podcast. Mhmm. Keep doing it.

Keep plugging away at it. Never stop doing it. You can change what it’s about. You can, like, move around and do different things, but keep doing it and then add in your book.

And you’ve got now this stronger authority surface area, and then you have figured out on your website what you’re selling. Do you have a mastermind for the people who listen to your podcast and want to be like you and do what you do? Do you have a workshop for the people who have a team already and they just want you to come in and teach that team? And do you have done for you services?

Which, like, all of that is a really standard, nice view of a business. All the front end stuff, all the back end stuff.

Yeah. I I yeah. If you think that your ICP is not listening to your podcast and you do some research and you find that they’re not and all the wrong people are, that doesn’t mean you have to give up your podcast. I would just consider changing it. Try something different on it instead.

Katie?

So you think they do listen to tactics?

Yes. I know that they do.

April’s book is ten steps to position your product, and it’s it’s the CEOs of large organizations are reading reading it. We think that they’re all caught up in strategy and all up here all the time.

But do you know how many leaders are frustrated by the doers on their team? And they’re like, what do my doers not know? And so they go and they look for the book that they can hand to their team and say this. Do it this way now, you guys. That’s where you come in. That’s where your content comes in.

Gotcha. Word. Cool.

Abby’s over there printing slogans. Alright.

Katie, you’re up. What’s up?

What are you thinking?

Okay. So just question on what you just said before my actual question. You said the business model would be, like, mastermind for people who wanna know what you know, do it themselves.

Yeah. Workshop for teams, and then done for you services.

In that sense, your the workshop for teams is training the internal team so that they could do what you would advise them to do.

Training is not facilitating. Yeah. So it doesn’t have to be training. You don’t have to come in and say, here’s what the exercise.

It depends. Right? So it depends on what they’re looking to do. And I think that the easier win, especially if you’re trying to get their team to a better place with what you’re training them on, is thinking of it as facilitation.

So they have some prework to do, then they have the workshop with you. Then there’s homework. It’s usually, like, let’s talk about, like, a two day workshop. Day one, six hours of going through and facilitating the thinking part, getting them so that they can go do homework.

You also go do some homework. You come back the next day, and together, you get to the outcome that the workshop was set up for, which requires that you really run a tight workshop because you can’t do that much with thirty people in the room.

So, yeah, that’s that’s so it’s a question of do you train in that time? Depends. I would know Minimum. But rather help them come to the right answers by giving them frameworks and listening and talking them through it, which they seem to like more in my experience.

Okay.

Okay. Thank you. That’s fine. I I did just finish, forget the model, so I can see how that translates to what they because they call themselves facilitators, so I can see that.

Yeah. April facilitator as well.

Go ahead. Sorry. My question is around, kind of what Cody and Abby were discussing in chat around, like, the workshop as paid consult.

And sorry. I just realized that. I was like, well, I have my diagnostic funnel set up, but it’s kind of, like, potentially gonna be irrelevant. But, like, the idea of having the diagnostic as a paid low ticket offer, I feel like we talked about this a while ago, and you said you were concerned that adding that friction of the payment just means that fewer people will see it.

But I wonder and, like, maybe a question for you slash the room, but, like, whether that because, basically, when I think about doing it, like, a pay any kind of low ticket paid training, the only thing I wanna teach is, like, my diagnostic funnel. But then I think it’s kind of weird to have the same content out there where one is free and one is paid.

Do we like, if you’re dealing with B2C SaaS, is there any point of having that, like, thirty seven dollar offer, or are you just focusing you’re like, just do the book. Ignore the product the shiny products.

Yeah. I’d I’d keep it pretty tight, and within the realm of what they expect.

So they expect a book. There’s probably they’re you’re up against someone who has a book, typically.

And as long as you have a book, self published or not, doesn’t matter. You’ve got the book. They can read it. They can hand the PDF around. They can upload the PDF to chat gbt, sadly, etcetera. So just have a book and then have a workshop and then have, if you want, done for you services. I wouldn’t put anything else in there that is paid because why?

Unless you thought the thirty seven dollar sale is that tripwire that gets them ready to buy more from you, but I see that less as less relevant for the kinds of SaaS brands that should be hiring you. So Brian from SamCart doesn’t need the tripwire experience. In fact, these are people who are more likely to say, look. I know I know what you’re doing.

I know what this is. Like, cool. So you’ve got a tripwire. Awesome. Can we just skip ahead to the part where I hire you to come do this stuff with us?

And they’ll reach out to you by email with that. So just, like, pull out all the distraction.

Focus only on like, if you think about even your global nav on your site, book, services, about, and that’s really it. So they go to the book, then they see the services. It’s a single page. Basically, it’s all about reaching out to you anyway with some ideas of what you can work on together. And you’ve got your lead gen in there wherever it is that has the diagnostic, and that could be a retargeting sort of thing. But the point is you’re keeping it really tight, so that they’re not distracted by all the bells and whistles.

Yeah.

For SaaS, at least.

K. Thank you. Sure.

Yeah. Abby?

Alright. Sorry. Sorry, Abby. Before you go, Katie, you put that out to the group too. Did anybody else wanna offer anything in addition to that?

No? Okay. Awesome. Thanks. Abby.

Well, first of all, thank you all for indulging me or at least going off camera to roll your eyes when I start talking again.

Yeah. I just wanted to say one one more thing. Unexpected benefit I’ve seen from creating a course and writing a book is to do something big like that. Like, you have to be so clear on your big idea, and it just makes everything else, like, so much easier.

Because before I would just, like, my LinkedIn strategy, I was just, like, putting up Paris and it was just, like, I don’t know. And nothing was really doing working, but because I like, in writing the book, it was like I had to get so clear on that. And now content’s just so easy. It’s like I I have like a little a thing I teach called, like, the take the cake method.

It’s like you wanna, like, bake a cake, which is the big thing because then that feeds, like, your wedge, your slice, and your crumbs. Whereas if you’re just putting out crumbs, like, it’s such a waste of time. But bake it, and then the crumbs just, like, take care of themselves. So that’s, like, in favor like, I think a book is the best one to do, but even, like, a course, it’s just it feeds all your other content, and it feels like a ten x move rather than just the constant, like, feeding the machine.

Yeah. I love that. I like take the cake too.

It’s a neat visual.

And I do think that, for me, I know that in writing this book that I’ve just written, writing the the pitch for the book, really forces you to clarify who you’re targeting, why they should love you, like, all of the things that you need in order to get there. So we don’t just write a book so that we have the product. We write a book so we know what we think and who we’re going after, who we’re there to help. So it’s the whole process of it.

Plus the outcome is now you’ve got a book.

Worksheet

Getting Invited onto Stages & Podcasts (p.26)

Transcript

Alright. Cool.

Good. Excellent. Okay. Welcome to the new week in the summer of big things. Today, we are going to talk about getting invited onto stages and podcasts.

So if that’s your thing, if that’s a big thing that you want to work toward, we’ll talk through the part of the workbook that walks you through that. That is starts it starts on page twenty six and goes to page thirty one. For those of you who are in the document itself, I’ll share my screen when it’s time when you need to look at something on the screen. But I do wanna start with is anybody does anybody wanna speak to wanting to get on stage or how that’s happening? Jess, do you have something to share here?

No. I just want to. And, like, I’m actually I go and I speak at there’s a starter company, like, yeah, like, a starter program through the small business enterprise center here that they invite me to speak, which is, like, really cool.

And I feel like I’m good at it. So I wanna do it for more of my, like, ideal clients.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Good. Anybody else? Roxanna?

So I haven’t spoken in a long time on stages for some reason. You know?

And when I did, I converted, which was great.

But I kinda need to get it together and perhaps do something for the fall.

Okay. Okay. Cool.

Good. Alright. So podcasts come up a lot as well, and we’ll be talking about podcasts today too.

Who has podcasts being a guest on podcasts as part of their, like, growth strategy?

Yeah? Sabine, Jess, Cody Yeah. Abby. Yeah. Cody, do you wanna share something? Oh, sure.

Okay.

So I I it’s not something it’s not, like, my big thing.

Right? My big thing is my YouTube channel. But my content has created like, I I don’t know. People have been reaching out to me asking me to be a guest on their podcast because of that. So I just wanna share that.

Okay. That’s great.

Excellent. Anyone else wanna share anything regarding podcast stuff, Sabine?

Sabine, who decided to throw up on camera today?

Nice.

No. Podcast always used to be really easy for me compared to any sort of PR stuff. Even speaking on stages, it’s always been so remarkably easy for me to also sell on the back of that. I used to have my own podcast.

I stopped that because it became too much. But being a guest and maybe starting up something where I have a little less of an expectation that it’s super super duper polished. I think it’s also about getting the level of effort right. You know, there’s a balance.

Okay.

As in, like, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you can you need less prep work, or does It’s less I I think it’s less about the prep marketing of every single episode and having, you know, having so many different channels to look after.

I think if I were to start my own podcast again, I would make it a real focus, like Cody said, with YouTube. But being a guest, I think, can be more a supplementary path on top of my own owned channels.

Okay. Alright. Cool.

Okay. Excellent. Cody’s saying in chat, I had my own podcast too. Had it for a whole year.

It’s a solo podcast, though. Solo’s supposed to be better, actually. Okay. Interesting.

Alright. So we’re going to talk about let me just bring up my stuff here. We’re gonna get into the nitty gritty of it. Right? So if this is something that you’re not working on right now, it’s still worth seeing and maybe even, like, assigning to your VA or somebody else that might have more time if you have somebody on staff who you know is underutilized.

Putting them on this work, especially with a checklist in front of them, is pretty straightforward. It’s a pretty easy win. And then you’re ready whenever someone comes knocking. Whenever someone’s like, I think I might want you to speak on my podcast or get on stage, you’re good to go. Alright. So let me share that. Okay.

Poop. There we go. Alright. So you’ll need a speaker page in most cases. So years ago when conferences were enormous, you didn’t need like, when they were everywhere, you didn’t need a speaker page.

You just need people conference organizers were just busy watching other people’s replays or attending other people’s conferences and then, like, stealing speakers directly from there. Stealing being, like, ethical stealing. You’re just looking and saying, like, you were dope. Can you come over here now?

And so you didn’t need this. And you might still not need a speaker page. I don’t have a speaker page, but I also don’t want to travel and go do this stuff. I know a lot of people who get invited on a lot of stages, they don’t have a speaker page.

But that often has a lot to do with kind of being in this, like, insulated space. Once you start speaking on a stage on like, you start with one, typically, that will land you in a group of events that are all kind of, like, the organizers all attend each other’s events, and that’s how you’ll find yourself being invited to other events. So, yeah, that you’d that’s something to think about when you’re putting together your speaker page, whether you need one or not. Now if you’re not getting invited onto stages right now, there are ways around that, ways to kind of fudge that, which we can talk about.

But the speaker page itself is made for your organizer. It’s not made for the people in the audience. You are writing the speaker page to help that conference organizer who is busy, who just wants the best people in the room, who wants to make sure that anybody they bring on stage has charisma, can actually, like, walk around the stage and not just depend on a slide deck and not stand with a very dull slide deck presenting things for twenty five minutes and then shuffling off stage and going home. Conference organizers want an active event.

So we need to think of them first and foremost, and we can talk a bit about what they’re looking for. Now on the speaker page, really straightforward stuff. This is for your organizer. You gotta match that h one to the keywords that your organizer will use.

So that means looking into that, that does there’s not no clear answer right now outside of if they were, like, copy speaker for copywriting or something like that. I don’t know. You have to go find that. That’s part of the job.

You wanna show your face in high resolution above the fold.

People don’t like that. I know a lot of people here are like, I don’t want to. I don’t like it. Do it. We all know, like, our face is a big part of it. It is our signature now, and that’s an important thing in a time of AI. So put your face there.

Showcase your full name and your value prop as a speaker, not as the kind of copywriter you are or agency owner you are or whatever. What you will be speaking about, that’s what you put above the fold. Make sure on all devices, it’s above the fold.

Now what do organizers want the most? They wanna know things like, yes. I customize talks for each event. A lot of people are like, oh, I have, like, these two talks I give, and no.

I don’t I don’t, customize them, and that’s really problematic for the organizer. When I was first starting out getting on stage, I did a new talk for every single event I was at, and I had to the point where if I showed up at an event and the week before I had spoken at one event and then I went to a different one, and I know that the last one went well, I would just go off and talk to the organizer and say, like, okay. I have a new talk for you, but I actually just gave this other talk last week, and it went really well. Which one should we do?

And that’s, like, a nice thing for them. They’ll probably just say, like, no. Go with the one that’s on the agenda. We’re good.

But that’s not always the case. And so it’s nice to be able to just, like, kind of share ideas and different options with the conference organizers. You do have favorite talks, so it’s likely that you’ll have two or three decks in your back pocket as you go. Start with one, but don’t expect that you can get away with saying, like, here’s what I talk about.

This is my talk. If you do, it’s probably not gonna go over well if you don’t have a lot of events you can say you’ve spoken at. Organizers, again, they wanna make sure that they have something unique that will attract people to their event to pay for a ticket. And given that most events put your, put past conference put past talks on YouTube, if you’ve already given the talk and it can be found on YouTube, the organizer’s not gonna love that.

They’re gonna love that they can go watch and see how you are and what the content’s like, but they don’t want you to then say, I’m gonna give the same talk for you because an attendee would be like, well, why am I gonna pay if everybody is just giving all of the same talks they’ve already given and they’re on YouTube?

They also want things that make it easy to show that they’ve got authorities, thought leaders on stage. So if you’ve published a book in any way, that includes self publishing. Nobody cares. And you can bring copies.

Maybe you’re like, I always bring twenty copies to give away to attendees. Cool. One more thing they don’t have to worry about. One more piece of value they can add to their audience, add for their audience.

If you have bulk discounts where they’re like, I love that you wrote a book, and you’re like, cool. How many people are going to be there? And they’re like, three hundred. And you’re like, okay.

Well, if you buy three hundred copies of my book, I can drop it from fifteen dollars five dollars per. And if it costs you nothing, it costs you two bucks to print the thing, and now they have three hundred copies of your book sitting there. Now you just have to make sure that those books are, like, leaving, so it doesn’t look pretty sad.

So that’s something to keep in mind. What what can you add that proves you’re an authority? And then further than that, can you give part of that away? Honestly, little things like this, I’ve been asked several times.

Hey, Joe. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you fly out here? Because so and so got sick.

Or so and so lost their passport on the way here, and now they can’t get into Canada or into the States. Can you come out? So if you say, hey. I live in Toronto.

I’m thirty minutes from, international airport, and I can get to most places in the US and, even over in the UK and parts of Europe, then that’s good for them to know. That’s great for them to know. It doesn’t mean that it will make them book you or that they’ll go looking for you for that. But if they’ve been on your speaker page, maybe they didn’t say yes to you before, but they remember when they’re in that panic of, holy shit.

We don’t have a speaker for Tuesday, and it’s Sunday. They will then go, like, who was that person? Who was that person? That person who said that they could fly out in short notice.

And that could be just enough to get you there. Remember that these a lot of the conferences that are out there are small, and they’re, not embarrassed that they’re small, but, you know, big conferences get a lot of hype. Oh, we had five thousand people here. We had twenty five thousand people here.

Not, that’s not what most events are meant for, like, this big thing, but some speakers only wanna speak to large audiences, have very particular requirements about audiences. So if you’re like, hey.

I love small audiences. They’re my jam. I prefer to speak to two hundred to four hundred people in a room. Then knowing that the vast majority of those events that are out there are two hundred to four hundred people, you’re now making yourself, like, fit in to this, like, ninety percent of the events out there. And while we’re on the subject, smaller audiences are better. You get way more out of them.

If you’ve worked if you’ve, been on stage and other speakers love working with you, cool. Share their testimonial. That’s a big part of it. Right? There’s going to be behind the scenes when you’re speaking at an event. There’s a speaker’s dinner that you’re invited to the night before or the night of the first day.

There’s other parts where you’ll be asked to interact with not only the attendees, but also speakers. So if you seem like a cool person who is, like, not gonna make it weird to be around you, that goes a long way. So if other speakers, anybody in this room, if you’ve spoken maybe you put on your own event just for short like, you were just like, I need some video of me on stage. So you, like, rented out a small room and invited a bunch of people to it and invited someone else here to come out and speak there too and did, like, a mini copywriting event, great.

Get the person you invite out to also say, like, ah, so and so was so great to work with. It’s so nice to be a speaker who, like, works with other speakers, who get what it’s like to be a speaker. I mean, none of that even made sense, but, like, but more of that kind of, the conference organizer’s like, cool. This is, like, a speaker who’s not a dick, who doesn’t, like, leave or make it weird, which some people just do.

So if that’s not you, cool. Get a testimonial. This is a big one.

When you are going on stage and you tell your conference organizer, I stay for the whole event. So I I like staying for an event. I get to learn everything there. I get to connect with other people. Other speakers who stay have I’ve become best friends with speakers. Like, we now travel together.

And we met because we were backstage together going, like, I’m so nauseous. I can’t even and they’re like, I’m so nauseous too. What are we gonna do? And you become good friends.

And so if you can say, I’m an active speaker. I’m an active attendee. I stay for the whole event. I network.

I go out for lunches with people.

Cool. That’s one more thing that speaker that conference organizers love. Keeping in mind that there are a lot of people who are professional speakers who show up two hours before they go on stage. They get mic’d.

They stand around quietly in the back, and then they go on stage, give their talk that they’ve given ten thousand times, walk off stage, take their mic off, kind of do, like, a fake inauthentic hi to everyone, and then they get back on an airplane. That’s shitty. As an organizer, you don’t want that. Then the attendees are all separated from you.

The speakers are like, who is that?

And it’s just a weird feeling, so you cannot be that person. You can talk about that. On your speaker page, obviously, list every single thing that you’ve done that where you’ve been invited to speak or share any thought leadership. If you do have a highlight reel, go ahead and embed it.

You don’t need one, but if you’ve got anything you can share that’s like, here’s how I sound or look on stage. Here’s how audiences respond to me. And usually when you speak at one event, there’s a videographer, and that person is recording everything. So all you have to do before you agree to speak in an event, say, like, cool.

So happy to do this. So excited. I know you’re gonna be recording it. Can I get a copy of my recordings that I can embed it on my website?

Cool. It doesn’t have to be a highlight reel. It can just be the whole thing. If a conference organizer is seriously looking for good speakers, they’ll watch your whole session.

You don’t need a highlight reel. You don’t need to spend extra money or extra time.

Podcasts, events, and three posts about you, people talking about you, add that stuff in there. That could be, like, off other people’s LinkedIns. I don’t know. And then just drive to the appropriate call to action.

So what do you want them to do at the end of this? Again, this is for an organizer. This isn’t, like, necessarily go to my contact form, but rather, hey. If you would like to talk about a custom talk for your event, go over to my LinkedIn DMs or whatever the thing is that you want them to do.

Any questions about your speaker page?

No. Okay. Cool.

We’re not gonna dig to oh, Sabine?

Sorry. It was too late.

Cody’s very helpfully shared her speaker page. It’s a Canva page. It’s a it’s for a podcast, so it’s it’s maybe slightly different. But do you envisage the speaker page more as a page on the website or, like, an online document like this Canva page?

A findable thing. So what is a conference organizer doing? They have in front of them a spreadsheet, and what and one of the parts of that spreadsheet, one of the tabs is, who might I bring on for this next event that’s happening eight months from now, and it’s time to hunker down and get this person booked.

They have gaps in their curriculum that they’ve they’ve got this. Here’s what we wanna cover.

Who can cover those things? So events that you might be speaking at, and this is answering the question, but events that you might be speaking at might be conversion rate optimization events, like CXL Live, when Pep and his organizer are putting that together.

They have a curriculum of the things that they want to hit throughout the day. They wanna make sure because they’ve got people in the audience who want who really want something out of the event. It’s not like some of those shitty events that are out there that are actually quite big that are really basic and no one’s that engaged and, like, marketing teams send three junior marketers to it because it’ll keep them busy.

The event will keep them busy. Those are not the events we’re really optimizing for. You wanna think about pep. Looking at a spreadsheet going, okay.

So we’re gonna start day one with the first part of conversion optimization, things around research and discovery. So he’s gonna list out that stuff, and he’ll have gaps. He’ll say, like, oh, obviously, Elle’s is perfect for this, and maybe Talia’s great for that. Who can do this?

And then if it’s a name that they already know, you might be like, yeah. But is there anybody else newer, fresher, somebody else?

And then they go looking, and maybe they have somebody who says internally, oh, I’ve heard I’ve listened to this person on this podcast, and they sound pretty smart. Maybe they talk, or something like that. But what you’re doing is if if this deck or Canva page or whatever, I don’t know how it’s working for you, Cody, I would just put it on my website, though. Like, just it says speaking in the global nav. And then if I’m an organizer or I read your book or whatever it might be, then I can go to that speaker page and see that you talk about podcasts and in person on stage events, and then that’s I can find it. So all I’m worried about is, is it findable?

Keyword phrases, obviously, will help bring someone to a live page, but there’s other ways you could do it. I just don’t know why you would. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just put a page together on your website because it’s a CRM. It’s easy, But do whatever you want to.

I just wouldn’t I wouldn’t leave it off my website. So Cody said, I would absolutely put it on my website if I were to go hard on speaking. Yeah. Why not?

Cool. Yeah. What other chats do we have here?

Work with us, hire us, speak at your event. Yeah. I would pull out hire us. Don’t say hire us, speak at your event.

Some of the most popular speakers out there, that get the most business from their work are not asking for money at all. And I like, properly, I rarely ask for speakers’ fees. It’s only if I’m like, I don’t want to go to this event, but maybe I have a friend who’s gonna speak there. And I’m like, well, if you’re going, I’ll go.

And they’re like, okay. I’m getting ten k to go. And I’m like, okay. Well, I can probably ask for something like that, and go to.

But, like, then I think of all the other conferences I’ve been to where I’ve not charged anything, and they’re great. It’s been big for building thought leadership and getting invited onto the next stage and the next stage and the next stage and getting ultimate, like, payoff for that. It’s rarely direct payoff. It’s usually indirect payoff.

But I would take up anything to do with what I cost. Mm-mm. Just do it for free. They’ll pay for travel, and they’ll pay for your to put you up in a hotel.

Okay. Good. Just pull it. Just get hire us right out of there. Cool. Alright.

Anything else? Any other questions on that?

Cool. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Question, Joe. Yeah. When you say they pay for your travel and they pay for hotel, is that something typically that you would book and then they pay you back, or they take care of that directly and they send you the details?

I because I am a terrible flyer and I will only fly business, which most events don’t want to cover.

So I say, here’s what it costs for me to go, and then I say, like, it’s usually a a set rate of twenty five hundred to three thousand. Like, I go and look at what the hotel’s gonna cost. Right. Sometimes they’ve just got specialty rates anyway, they’ve already booked in for speakers, and they’re like, well, we’ll get the hotel.

Fine. You get your own travel. And then I just asked for, like they just cut me a check for two thousand, five thousand sometimes. Depends on what the travel’s gonna look like.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Awesome.

But it is. Yes. It’s standard for them to pay for travel and accommodations. That’s it. And then they’ll invite you to a speaker’s dinner, so your, like, other costs are usually covered along the way anyway. So there you go.

Alright. You need a plan on a page for getting invited. You need a plan for getting invited, but let’s start with a plan on a page. How can you actually attract hosts and organizers to you?

So this is just your homework. If this is your big thing for the summer, list out those target podcasts for q three, which we’re in right now. So that’s a little bit tricky because it’s only got a two and a half months left in it, but, hey, that’s still two and a months. You can do a lot in two and a half months.

So target podcast for q three and q four. I’ve only got four on there because I don’t want a mega list of all the podcasts on the planet that you might ever speak at. Rather, what are the targets? The actual ones you wanna be on.

Who is the organizer? So who decides who goes on it? Sometimes it’s the host. Other times it’s not the host.

Other times it’s their whole team, like, agreeing or voting. Find that out. That’s the job. And then what’s their LinkedIn?

Just so you can start following them, and be engaging with them, and then identify what they want that you can give them.

So this is you just being, like, unreasonably thoughtful about their lives. What and I don’t mean send them flowers. That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, like, what do they want from someone who comes on the show?

Do they want you to promote the podcast episode? Of course, they do. Do they want what else do they want? So list out the things that you want that they want that you can give them.

And, basically, anything they want, you should be able to give them because it’s probably not irrational. So if they want you to bring fifteen examples to talk through for what you do, put together fifteen examples. Like, just do the thing. Do the work.

If you’re doing this to grow your authority and get more traffic and clients in, then give them what they want. They’re also going to like, they got on your target list for a reason, so do the work. And then also do target events for the next eighteen months. Now anybody who is doing an event in the fall, it’s usually fall and spring.

Anybody who’s doing an event in the fall is likely already booked. So the only way you could get in there is, like, getting on their radar to get invited in the event someone cancels out. And you honestly could just ping them and say, hey. I know your event is in October.

I know you’ve already got your speakers all lined up. I’m all over speaking. I’m digging it. I’m doing great with it.

Build that up.

And if somebody can’t make it, just know that I’m here and I can fly out with four hours notice or something like that. You can always end up having to say no later if they come to you, but hopefully, you can actually say yes if they come to you, and now you’re doing it.

So what are those target events for the next eighteen months? And then same thing as before, except this time it’s the event organizer. Find who it is. You can find this. It just takes a little bit of research.

Go on to their LinkedIn. Follow them. DM them if when it makes sense, comment on their stuff, repost their stuff, etcetera, and more of what they want that you can give them. Short notice, custom talks, etcetera.

Then update your speaking page. Make sure you’re following them on not only LinkedIn, but other spaces, especially if they have low followers in other spaces. Let’s say they have an Instagram or the company has a YouTube channel and, like, their subscribers are pretty low, which is really common for a lot of organizations. Of course, they don’t spend all their days just, like, working on this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s on there making themselves visible, commenting on their YouTube video, you’re the one commenter, and you’re, like, insightful about it. This is just these are small things to start, like, elevating in their eyes.

Make sure that you’ve updated your content strategy with topics they invite people to cover. So if you’re like, I know that this person, the person who organizes MozCon is all I can think about. So whatever.

They want someone who does magic while on I don’t know what the thing is, but make sure that you are then creating content around that stuff so that they are more likely to find you.

And then use SparkToro. We talk about SparkToro a lot.

SparkToro has tons of answers for things that you didn’t even know you could find out about a purse about a business, and the people you’re trying to get in front of. So use SparkToro to determine where you’re going to share this content so that it drives them back to your speaker page.

Questions?

Moving on. Finally oh, Roxanna. Yes.

So you spoke a lot about SparkToro, and, obviously, I was not here. Where do we find the things that you said?

I don’t know how well our search is working yet in Copy School Pro. I know Sarah’s been working hard on that. You might be able to just search SparkToro.

But more than anything, I it’s not that I teach how to go through SparkToro, but I’d rather say, like, just go use SparkToro. So just go use SparkToro. So head over there. There’s free accounts. There’s, like, low cost accounts, and Rand has, like, the ability to cancel.

It’s really easy. So you might only sign up for a month and then just cancel, and then sign back up again when you need to go through it again.

Yeah. Cool.

Awesome. Alright. Speakers oh, it does. Okay. Thanks. Speakers to connect with.

You are about to if you do this stuff, if you go on stage and somewhat on podcast this is the tricky thing about podcast, right, is because you’re more likely, of course, only to connect with the person that you’re actually speaking with, the host of the podcast. You can, however, connect with people who have been on the podcast before. So go back and look through who was on the podcast in the last, I don’t know, ten episodes, and then just DM them. Like, just put their name in and, like, DM them and say, hey.

I saw you were just a guest on whatever. I was just on there last week, or they just invited me, or I’m thinking of going on there. Any tips? Just start connecting with speakers.

And the reason for this is event I cannot tell you how many times an event organizer has said, Joe, do you know anybody who? And I’ve put their name forward, and then they are speakers now. And it turns into really good things. I’ve CTA Conf, I can’t tell you how many people I recommended to CTA Conf.

I think one year, like, half of the agenda was just people that I’d said, what about her? What about him? And it’s great, and it’s a really good kickoff. But if I didn’t know those people, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

If I didn’t know that, like, Claire or somebody was interested in getting on stages and talking about jobs to be done, then I wouldn’t have said, hey. Do you know Claire? She talks about jobs to be done for marketers. Maybe her?

And then she’s on stage, and then she’s on stage again and again and again and again. So get them get friendly with speakers.

Obviously, we always wanna do it in a non skeasy way. It’s very easy to tell when someone’s being inauthentic. But if you’re genuinely curious and if you know, hey. If this person invites me to be on stage and they’re on stage at the same event, we’re probably gonna get together and have after, we’ll get together for drinks when there’s, like, a boring session happening and there’s, like, a pub down the street.

So this is like, befriend people. Just start making friends with other speakers, and then you might be one of the people that they recommend. Okay. That is really it. Oh, there is this part. It’s really detailed.

So I’m just gonna leave this with you so that you can know that you have to go back and do these things, but some of it is already, like, done. Your IRL funnel, talked about last week, your appointment funnel having those things connected, etcetera.

And make sure wherever you are, whether you have started the book or not, put that a book is coming soon, go in Canva, make a fake book cover with the title on it and your name on it, Say it’s coming soon. Put a mock up together. Put it on LinkedIn. Put it on your website. Nobody needs to know that it’s not quite ready yet. They do wanna know that though, that you are, an authority. You’re a thought leader or you’re about to be one.

Okay. Any questions?

Yes. Katie?

Can I you said also, can you hear me? Because this my mic wasn’t working. Yep. Yeah. Strong CTA for the speaking page. Like, I currently have a type form because I’m speaking to, I figured, podcast hosts and, like, coaches who have a mastermind and wanna bring in a guest expert. Would you wanna get on a like, forum to book a call?

Is that pretty standard for how you’d want that process to go?

It depends how much time the organizer has. So when you, like it’s it’s useful to even just, like, start I don’t know. Go spend some time listening to what conference organizers complain about. They rarely have the time or resources for any of the work they have to do. Right? It all feels really, really overwhelming.

So I would reduce friction wherever possible. I would say, like, hey. Here’s you fill in this form, or, like, if if time is of the essence, here’s my phone number. Call me.

And then if that gets weird and, like, the wrong people start calling you, then just take it off. But we’re really just trying to reduce friction so that that event organizer and I have event organizers in my head as I’m saying this. All of them would appreciate you making it fast and easy to find out if you’re the right person for them or not. So I would if a type form, I would eliminate the type form, go with a single, like, here’s how to email me, or why not just text me, and let’s get this. Like, let’s figure out if I’m even a good fit.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the pay at the end of the page, have, like, book a call or leave a message, and then the type form’s just, like, kind of segmenting them, and then they write their intro.

So Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I would just do as I require as little as possible and then start adding fields if you get, like, inundated with people. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Cool.

I got a I don’t know. This is just to me, or is this to everybody? I don’t know. Will you be doing more IRL events when your book comes out? Yes. If yes, will you try to get event organizers to bulk buy your book? Probably not.

But I’m I haven’t worked through that idea yet. I haven’t done any planning for what to do with the book since it’s not out till July twenty twenty six, so I have some time.

But I don’t know. When I when I dig more into that, I’ll definitely share what I’m going to do with bulk buying.

Yeah.

Obviously, it’s a good signal to Amazon and other spaces when a bunch of your books are purchased there. But if they go through, like, my publisher or me, then there’s all these book sales that are lost now that, like, Amazon doesn’t know anything about and etcetera. So yeah.

Okay. Anybody else? Any other questions or thoughts about particularly getting on stages, but the same rules often apply to getting on podcasts? They’re just in my opinion, and I know that it is an unpopular opinion.

Few podcasts are really, really good and likely to last a long, long time. There’s a lot of shit dies on the Vinom podcast. You gave a great podcast interview two years ago when no one’s ever gonna hear it. And that’s true for speaking as well.

Right? But you’ve got to get more personal with people, and that they’ll remember versus you just being another voice on the podcast. So that’s why I recommend more, getting on stages, but I know everybody else just wants to be on podcasts. So yeah.

I love podcasts, and we’ll die on that hill, Joe.

I hate to see you die, but go for it. I mean, if that’s, like, the thing that you want, cool. Alright.

Transforming Money into Wealth

Transforming Money Into Wealth

Transcript

I’m Acquania. I’m Acquania Escarne, and, glad to be here today. I’ve been in the community a few months now and, like to write.

So, I’ll talk about my multifaceted business, but I I started writing, blog writing, in like twenty sixteen and, you know, got my first thing off of Upwork and was initially only doing blogs and, articles for online magazine. But in twenty twenty, one of my clients asked me to help promote his ebook and digital sales and COVID were insane. So, that was my first client and he went from a six figure business to a seven, eight figure business. And, we still work together, and he referred me to all his friends. So I’ve actually built a, email marketing business with no website, no direct promotion to my email marketing services, but referral only.

Diverse Ventures: Life Insurance and Real Estate

And, in addition to that, I am a licensed life insurance producer and a real estate investor.

So, in twenty twenty, I also started investing in hotels and other types of real estate. So I’m gonna share a lot of that today, and, I started doing it with life insurance. So that is the beginning of what I’m about to talk about. So I’m gonna share my screen and then hop into this. And I like I said, I’ll leave time for questions because really, telling my story, helps people a lot because how you do it can vary slightly depending on where you are and what you have in your portfolio.

But money is money and money makes money. That’s my goal. Right? So let me minimize me, and you can always, you know, interrupt me while I’m talking, because I’d rather answer questions in real time.

Okay? So today, we’re gonna focus on how to invest in real estate with life insurance, but I’ll tell you all the types of real estate that I’m into and how I’ve made that work. My name is Aquania Esquane. I’m a mom, a wife, and an average traveler.

Before I did all of these things, I was a diplomat for the US government and, straight out of undergrad I went into grad school and then into the foreign service, so I’ve lived in many countries. My youngest was born in Dubai and I’ve also worked on foreign policy and U. S.

Issues. But that’s where I kinda started to put together all of these strategies on how to help people make money because when I was in Port au Prince, Haiti, they had an earthquake, and I saw how a lot of mid income to high income government workers were actually not prepared for disasters. And that’s what got me to encourage people to save money for emergencies and then also to take my finances even more seriously. Fortunately, when I went to Haiti, I had life insurance already, and I was already building the strategy that helped me do what I did in twenty twenty and beyond, but it started my desire to teach people how to do it too.

So it’s funny how crazy natural disasters will also make you reevaluate, your priorities and your focus.

Okay.

So, I started my journey on financial literacy with Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

I know many of you may have heard about this book. If you have not, feel free to add it to your read list. It is a classic. My dad gave it to me at sixteen, sixteen, which is about the same time I took this picture and I read it. I read it in high school and I literally took to heart what he said and I started saving from retirement at sixteen with my first job.

Early Financial Habits and Retirement Savings

I worked at a clothing store as a cashier and a sales associate. And instead of using my paycheck to buy clothes in the store, I used my paycheck to start saving for retirement.

So I opened a Roth individual retirement account, which is a tax free or tax deferred account where you put money in after you pay taxes, and you get to take it out in retirement tax free. That was my first introduction to saving for my future.

And I’ve actually been able to leverage that one account to help me buy my first home. It also has been, very useful in emergency funds and even, just teaching other people, including my children, on how you can save tax free dollars for your future. So it’s never too early to teach your kids about money because they might listen and it might actually pay off for everybody because now I’ve been able to use some of the wealth I built to bless my family and to, you know, have amazing experiences for us. And so I highly recommend you start early.

Purchasing Properties for Financial Freedom

Okay. So this is me and my husband in twenty sixteen.

When we purchased our dream home in Virginia, we also purchased two other properties in that one year. So that’s the year that we really got on the path to financial freedom.

And the reason I say that is because most people can’t buy three properties in one year unless they, really plan or have just a lot of money. We actually did both. We, first being in the foreign service, as I mentioned, I was assigned to Dubai in twenty twelve, and I took my family with me. And those years while we were assigned overseas, we were also turned into forced landlords, because my husband purchased the condo he had at the top of the market in two thousand and eight, and then he was underwater in twenty twelve. So we weren’t in a position to sell the house, so we had to rent it.

But what I did was leverage my government benefit. So the US government paid for my housing in Dubai and a tenant paid our housing in Maryland. So we let the tenant pay the mortgage for the three years we were abroad and we we saved that mortgage payment, right, in a bank and invested it. So when we came back in twenty fifteen, we decided to make a plan for the money we’d save and the money we built, not just in life insurance because I’ll explain how I built up cash and life insurance, but also the money we saved for three years not paying a mortgage, and things that we had earned off of other investments.

My husband and I got a financial advisor the year before we got married so we could really work with another person to combine our money. And that person gave us a lot of these strategies that we were able to just set and then let work, right? So in twenty sixteen, we purchased our home. We actually helped my mother-in-law purchase a condo so that she could retire in her own home versus paying rent.

Strategies for Real Estate Investment

And then we also purchased a home in Philadelphia where we turned it into a rental and it created rental income for us. And the source of all of that money was mostly life insurance and then, the savings from not paying a mortgage. So there are definitely ways to leverage money and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. But before I move on, do I have any questions?

I have things in the chat. Oh, yes. Yes. Glory days was definitely COVID when people just paid money for no reason.

So here’s how investing with life insurance works. But I’ll also give you some tips on how you can do this same strategy with retirement assets too, because now I have literally leveraged retirement assets, life insurance, and my own cash to do all kinds of deals.

Okay. So whenever you wanna do something, you need money to do it. I’m sorry to say I’m not gonna tell you today that you can do all of these things with other people’s money. That is just not my mantra nor is it realistic. You need some capital. It preferably a little bit of your own because when you have skin in the game, you take it more seriously.

You can create capital by raising money. I’ve also done that.

One of the things I did last year was raise a million dollars in six weeks of other people’s money to purchase a hotel, but that was something I did years later after really fine tuning my own money and how I used it.

So in the world of life insurance, just so we’re on the same definition of what it is, I wanna be clear that it is a contract.

The Basics of Life Insurance Contracts

And in the in the US, we really take this contract seriously.

You sign a contract with a company, you have agreed that God forbid you die, they are going to pay, and it’s a tax free benefit. So your your estate doesn’t pay any taxes on the money you leave them in life insurance.

But one thing that that people don’t always know is that you can use some of the benefits of life insurance while you’re alive. So that’s really what I did is I honed in on that benefit, and I ran with it.

So in my opinion, life insurance is a guaranteed way to leave a legacy because there are two things guaranteed in life, and you guys know what those are? Do y’all have this joke? Because yes.

Two things guaranteed in life. If you know what they are, drop them in the chat. Yes. You got it. Death and taxes. So that’s why I say as long as you have a contract in place before you die, they are gonna pay out, and that’s what makes it guaranteed. But there are there is some fine print to it, and I’ll kinda hop into that quickly right now.

Types of Life Insurance Explained

So, of course, life insurance, there’s different types everywhere, and and which one you get matters, because they don’t all allow you to do the strategy I’m about to talk about. But, being healthy, of course, being young, the type of insurance you get, and your criminal history and medical history all matter. They contribute to what the cost of this strategy is going to be for you, so that’s why I kind of want to highlight that first and foremost.

And we also have what we call term insurance which is like temporary contracts and they cover you for a certain amount of time like ten, fifteen, twenty years. And then we have permanent life insurance which is never expires.

It is more expensive but that’s where the money is, right?

So if you have access to these types of products, this is where you really want to kind of do the comparison and then see what’s best for you because I will say this strategy is not for everyone. It worked really well for me, my family, and a lot of my clients, but it’s important to kinda talk to someone to see if it’ll work for you too.

Alright. So term insurance, as I mentioned, it is temporary. It’s a a contract that expires, but it is still worth having in place if you don’t have anything else. And most employers kinda offer this as well. So, like, if you have an employer or you’re, you know, an entrepreneur who also has a nine to five, your employer might offer an a benefit where they provide life insurance to you or they provide it at a reduced cost. And a lot of times, that’s term insurance that just renews every year.

But the thing about this type of insurance, although it’s good to have and definitely the one that is the best bang for your buck, it also statistically doesn’t get paid out.

So it’s not the one that a lot of wealthier people use because it’s not meant for the purpose of building wealth. It’s meant for the purpose of leaving wealth. So I definitely think if you are limited on income and you wanna just make sure your family’s taken care of, term insurance is definitely the way to go because that will leave the wealth that your family needs to continue to live the life that you’ve built. And, unfortunately, I have had clients pass away, and this has been a lifesaver for their families, but it has also allowed their families to set themselves up for success after their death because they had money and didn’t have to worry about paying bills while they were grieving. So it’s still worth considering.

But, it does have its pros and cons being that it’s budget friendly. You can get a million dollars for, you know, an inexpensive price if you’re young, healthy, and not smoker not a smoker.

But, it is something that expires. Right? So that’s kinda one of the cons. You gotta keep up with it.

You gotta make sure you know when it’s gonna expire. You have to make sure that, you know what your contract says. And then, unfortunately, most people will never see the money because they live beyond the contract, which is a good thing. Right?

It’s good that you live a long life, but most people will outlive their contract. So these don’t get paid out that often, but they are still good to have in place as a backup.

Now the one that I leverage to start my wealth journey is permanent insurance. So one thing I will say is this is guaranteed to be paid out because it doesn’t have an expiration date. As long as you pay the the premium, according to whatever your contract says, they will pay your family.

They will also even pay you. So I’ll talk about how you can earn interest in these types of accounts.

And I know they do have these in Canada too. They just might have them under different names.

But the reason that I particularly like them is because these have been proven to build cash even in low or not as well performing economies and they are also, some of them are not directly invested in the stock market. So you have a type of product that’s not susceptible to the volatility of the stock market. So that’s what I also like and it is a good thing to have in addition to, so let me be clear, in addition to your other investments retirement accounts, it is very helpful to have some type of permanent insurance, if your budget will allow.

Now, there’s different types. I will briefly go into these, but I will say check where you are because it varies.

But you have some types of policies where guaranteed coverage for life, guaranteed price for the time of your contract.

But some of them make more money than others. And so like for example, in the US whole life insurance is the one that we know the most because it’s the oldest product on the market. So a lot of people will refer to their insurance as Whole Life even if it isn’t. But the reality is that this one is more conservative, so it doesn’t always make as much money as the product that I use, which is Index Universal Life. So I really like this one because it’s flexible.

It allows you to change what you pay based on your budget and your circumstances.

It also tends to have a higher return than some of the other policies. But again, it can come with, the the changes. It could be zero percent some seasons when the economy is really bad and then twelve, fifteen percent return when the economy is really good. But the goal is to go for what you’re most comfortable with because you never wanna take on more risk than you can handle. Okay?

But, do you guys have insurance? This is just a quick check with the group. Does anyone have insurance? Drop in the chat yes or no. And then if you do have insurance, do you know what type?

Okay. So we got a yes. We got a no. No. Okay. Alright. I’d love to get to say yes.

So here’s the thing. It’s it’s it’s yes but no type. So definitely look at your contract.

From this point forward, I’m gonna be focusing on the permanent one I talked about that makes money.

But I can answer questions about any type of insurance you have if you genuinely have questions. Okay?

But the key with the permanent insurance is because it doesn’t expire, and you’re paying more for it, the life insurance companies kinda give you some perks for hanging out with them and using their product. And one of the perks is interest. So they’re paying you interest after the first twelve months and every quarter after that based on how well their money does in the stock market. So the key to this strategy though is giving your money time to grow. So for example, my husband and I got policies the year before we got married, but then we gave them two to three years to grow before we cashed in forty thousand dollars to start our real estate investing.

Building Cash Value in Life Insurance

What we used was called cash value. So that’s the money that’s inside of the policy that grows over time. That’s part of that money is money we put in the policy and part of that money is the interest that the insurance company paid us to. Okay? So that’s where you get the capital. And then once you have accumulated enough capital, to to spend, that’s when you start to look for opportunities to leverage.

I like them. Thank you. I actually did this for myself, and I was, like, trying to get creative. So thank you.

So that’s what we’re gonna really focus on is, like, building the cash. So the cash, which is super important, comes from your payments. So every time you make a payment on your life insurance, a portion of it is going to go into a cash bucket, and a portion of it is gonna go to the actual cost of life insurance because it’s a life insurance product. So you are paying a cost for if you die, they’re gonna write the big check. Right?

But the part of your money that goes into the cash bucket is what’s gonna accumulate every month you make a payment. And then after your first twelve months, you start to get interest.

And that interest varies.

It really depends on how well the life insurance companies investments did. So I’m not sure if you guys know this, but life insurance companies don’t just sell life insurance. They actually invest in businesses, invest their money in the stock market, and then they use those profits to pay out their claims, right, and to make money.

So they are the people who are investing in the stock market, but your actual policy isn’t invested in the market.

So that’s why I like it because you don’t deal with the volatility and it makes it different from your other investments. Right? Your retirement investments might be in the stock market, but your life insurance doesn’t have to be. So I like that too.

But after the twelve months, they look at how well they did. If they made a twenty percent return on their investments, they split that with you and all the other people who also have permanent insurance. And on average, the company that I have policies with, they pay between ten to twelve percent since COVID. So just imagine you are paying for something that is gonna give your family money if you die, but in the meantime, you’re also gonna earn a ten percent return every year. I don’t think that’s too shabby.

But that ten percent grows. And if the life insurance company continues to be profitable when they invest, then you will continue to earn interest.

But here’s the catch.

On the month on the quarters, they don’t make any profit. So just imagine two thousand and eight, market’s down, real estate’s down, nobody’s making money. The life insurance companies lost money too. So in those quarters that they don’t make as much money or any money, you don’t earn any interest. But the the the deposits that you made and put into your cash bucket that the interest is paid off of, those will continue to accumulate. So your cash bucket is always making, deposits or getting deposits from the payments that you make, but the interest fluctuates based on the life insurance and what they pay out.

So I like it for that reason too too, because your cash value just doesn’t have the potential to decrease. It only has the potential to increase with the interest payments.

But, and if you make a reduction, meaning a withdrawal, then it will decrease that way, but it doesn’t decrease otherwise.

Utilizing Cash Value as a Savings Tool

So I call this like my second savings account.

And when you let the cash value just grow, then you can utilize it. But I still recommend you use your cash value while you’re alive because the death benefit goes to your family. The cash value is meant to be used by you and that’s what we did. So my husband and I, we had accumulated forty ks in cash value. We decided, hey, we wanna kinda stretch this out over three investments and see what happens. So we, use that money towards down payments on the real estate ventures and the money towards mom and the money in the house in Philly.

And then we funded those deals. And so you have to find the opportunity.

In twenty twenty, I actually found a lot of opportunities, believe it or not, because when everyone’s sitting at home, you have tons of classes to learn how to do tons of stuff.

So, in addition to learning how to take my cash value and put it into physical real estate that I knew how to do, which is buy homes and buy rentals, I also learned in twenty twenty that, hey, for twenty that twenty to twenty five thousand dollars you can also invest in hotels and your money can buy hotels and also give you profits from hotels if you’re an investor.

So in twenty twenty, I took some of my retirement funds and actually invested in my first hotel in Oklahoma and then, kinda got addicted and started investing in hotels every year after that. And so, what I will say is COVID was the best time to get into hotels because they were all on sale. You had owners who were multiple owners trying to make mortgages and struggling to do so because travel was down. And so they were literally giving away hotels for a discount, for taking over mortgage payments, whatever that bank needed to do in order to not have that property foreclosed was what you were able to do to take it over.

And the reason I really like hotels is because you’re not just buying the land, you’re also buying a business. So when you buy the hotel, you are buying a business that rents rooms, sells food sometimes, and then also has a land value as well.

So that’s what we I did in twenty twenty. Purchased real estate, including hotels, and those businesses, then started to pay me, in twenty twenty one.

So I borrowed.

I lended myself the money, basically.

And then I found the deal and then I literally, rinse and repeat.

So a lot of these properties I still have. I even started getting into apartment syndication. So for anyone who’s ever lived in a big apartment subdivision, most of the time those are owned by corporations or by LLCs who have investors in them. And so I chose to use my money, retirement money, life insurance money, and our cash to do those types of deals.

And so invested and repeated. And then since then, some of them have sold. So for example, the apartments that we had near Disney World in Florida, we sold those in twenty twenty three. And then, the the hotels I’m actually still invested in and, seeing how those go, and they’re pretty much doing well now that we’re out of COVID.

Exploring Case Studies in Insurance Funding

Okay. So before I get into case studies, I just wanna check to see, do we have any questions for the Canadians here, cash value, whole life, etcetera, all things here. Yes. Yes.

I’ve I’ve presented to a group in Canada before, and they told me the same thing, but I just wanted to to make sure. Okay. So I will say that it does take money to make money, but how much money you put into insurance is up to you.

Oh, that’s a good question. So, Katie, I invested directly into the hotels through private equity deals, and now I am a hotel owner myself. So when people invested with me in twenty twenty four, they sent me and my partner’s money and we purchased the hotel directly. And then they’re paid out, cash flow from the hotel profits directly from us as well. You can do funds like real estate investment trust and stuff.

But there just aren’t as many funds that do hotels as you would think. So I chose to do direct investment, but I also, you know, did my research, knew the people I was investing with, got to see the properties as well, before I, before I really dived in. And so that’s how I’ve been able to do it with confidence.

But I will say it is different. You will not always meet people who just invest in hotels, but when I learned and I met people who did it, I learned how they were doing it and why, and then I’ve been teaching others. So you can definitely do direct investment.

Alright.

So for the insurance, the first case study I have is someone who has excess cash flow because you can have excess cash flow of a thousand or so, and then it really, really makes sense. That’s what we call front loading or heavily funding your policy in the beginning. And then the next example I show you is when you fund it less, but you fund it longer.

So in this example, if you’re someone who has the cash flow and you only wanna do this for a few years, in this case, Jessica did a thousand dollars a month for four years. And then in the fourth year, she actually couldn’t even do the full amount because we have limits that you can do. So she kinda maxed out at three thousand eight hundred, but she still had quite a bit of cash. It builds up over time and then it becomes accessible for an investment. And you can actually access your cash value whenever your balance is more than zero dollars.

So this is a short term funding strategy where you, you know, quickly fund your policy at a high amount for a short amount of time, and then you can choose to take money out in the early years or leave it there. It’s really up to you. But this one is like fund it, forget it, and then don’t fund it anymore. That’s kind of the strategy that I call it.

Short-Term vs Long-Term Funding Strategies

And the reason that I personally like this is because you can contribute more than a Roth IRA, and it doesn’t have to do with your income. It doesn’t matter. As long as you can afford the contract and you need the insurance, there’s really nothing stopping you. So being able to have a high return, being able to get tax free money, that’s not limited to tax laws, is really nice. And then being able to withdraw it while you’re young or whenever you want is also a benefit.

Alternatively, if you wanted to do less, might even say five hundred dollars a month, and you are young, healthy, non smoking is always preferred because you’ll get the best rates. But in this case, Sarah’s even older than Jessica.

She’s funding it for five hundred a month, but for a longer period of time, because some of my clients will use this to, create another set of income for retirement.

So they will fund their policy for for, you know, monthly while they’re working for twenty years or fifteen years or whatever.

And then in retirement, they make no more payments, but the policy pays them.

So in this strategy, you are using half as much money as Jessica, but you’re funding it much longer than Jessica.

But this person’s goal was, hey, I wanna have forty thousand in tax free money in retirement for the rest of my life. So this is what I’m gonna do in a temporary setting in order to access tax free cash indefinitely later.

And so this is also a way to do it. Again, if you wanted to take any of this money and start to use it before retirement, you absolutely could. But I have some people who are like, you know, I don’t I’ve maxed out my employer options or my available tax free options, and I wanna still invest more towards retirement. This is a way to do it and it’s not limited.

And then it does come out to be a fixed amount when you retire and you can get that money every year until you pass away.

Alright.

So same thing, tax free, life insurance. So if she dies, the money the family gets almost five hundred k tax free, but then also, because Sarah’s strategy is tax free money in in retirement, she’s doing six thousand dollars a year to get forty thousand dollars a year in retirement, and it still has the same annual return range, but she doesn’t make any more payments in retirement. So it aligns with this idea that, hey. When you retire, you should have less bills, and your insurance shouldn’t be one of them.

Okay? So let me see.

Alright. So yeah. So I’m gonna skip to questions for that one for a second.

But if you withdraw, you still no. That’s a good question, Roxanna. So that’s the really cool part is, like, no. If you have cash and you withdraw it, you have options. You can pay it back so that you can continue to use your cash bank for other purposes.

And that’s what some people choose to do. When you use it for fix and flips, for example, you you take out money to fix the house or the do the renovations, then you sell the house. And when you get the proceeds from the house, you can put the money back into the life insurance policy. And when you do it like that, you can continue to utilize your cash bank and it’ll continue to make interest. But if you decide you don’t wanna return it, you don’t have to.

So there are, options and you choose based on kind of when you do it. So like in the Sarah strategy where she’s taking money out every year in retirement, that money is already calculated to never have to be paid back. If you took out money even before retirement one time and don’t wanna pay it back, that’s an option too. It just depends on, how much cash you have in there and whether or not you keep making payments or not.

So most of the time for people who take money out and never wanna pay it back, they still continue to pay for their life insurance, but they just have that money that they got. They don’t have to pay it back. And then even when they die, nobody’s looking for them. But for those who wanna continue to utilize that bucket, they will pay they will make payments to pay it back.

But you get to decide your repayment terms. So some people will say, oh, I’ll make I’ll make a extra hundred dollar payment until it’s paid off, and then others will make lump sum payments if they’re using it for real estate, and they have lump sum payments that come in. So it just depends. But, no, you’re not required to make the payments back.

That’s the short answer.

Thank you.

Bye, everyone.

Thanks. Bye. Bye.