.jpg)
The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
How I Built a Thriving Hair Brand in 2024! Ask Debbie About Hair
In this episode, we sit down with Debbie Williams, a board-certified nutritionist and holistic health expert, to discuss her journey of building a successful health and wellness online course business.
Debbie shares how she transitioned from one-on-one consultations to online education, teaching natural health and nutrition practices.
We break down the key steps she used to launch a parasite cleanse program, including the viral YouTube video that helped build her email wait list and webinar funnel.
Also, we discuss the importance of building a team, developing copywriting skills, and using email marketing to connect with your audience.
Tune in for practical strategies you can apply to grow your course business.
Check out Ask Debbie About Hair:
www.askdebbieabouthair.com
https://stan.store/askdebbieabouthair
Follow Debbie on social media:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@askdebbieabouthair
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/askdebbieabouthair
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/askdebbieabouthair
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AskDebbieAboutHair
Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name's John Ainsworth and today's guest is Debbie Williams, an accomplished board certified nutritionist, holistic health practitioner, health and wellness coach and hair and scalp specialist, and she's been featured on ABC, fox News, cbs, essencecom, the Zuri Report, tv One Beauty Launchpad, international Beauty Show and many health blogs, and today we're going to be talking about how our courses and engaging social media presence have empowered over 2 million followers to overcome hair loss and health issues and live healthier lives. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I want to share something incredibly valuable with you.
Speaker 1:If you're looking to boost your course revenue, you need to check out our seven-day roadmap to increase your revenue. This is the same system we've used to help countless clients achieve predictable revenue without making sales calls, running paid ads or competing on price. You're going to learn how to increase your course revenue by 30%, how to identify and fix the missing parts of your current funnels and how to optimize your funnels for maximum performance. So if you're ready to take your revenue to the next level, go to datadrivenmarketingco slash roadmap and download that for free. So, debbie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello, nice to be here.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much. So talk us through who do you help with your courses and what kind of problem are you solving for them?
Speaker 2:Who do I help with my courses? I help people who are struggling with health issues and I call them mystery illnesses, because they don't know they've been to different practitioners and they're still sick. And, as a board certified nutritionist, I believe that food is medicine, so I help people find natural ways to heal and I build them through programs and courses that guide them on a healthy journey, to a new roadmap to healthy eating and a whole healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Nice, Okay cool. So how long?
Speaker 2:have you been doing that through courses? When did you start selling courses? Courses? To be very honest with you, I always loved courses, because I was one. I would buy courses all the time, but for me I always thought it was going to be very difficult to do. I put it in the back of my head that I need to do it, but I was afraid to do it because I thought it was just too time consuming. But I realized I was really doing it without even realizing that I was doing it. So I will say probably it's been maybe three or four years now that I have been developing courses, and another reason why I started to develop courses is because I was just getting too many people who were pulling on me, needing me, and I was like I can't serve everybody. Here's what I'll do I'll create a course, follow the course, I'll come in. We'll do maybe like a biweekly live, but I couldn't service everyone one-on-one.
Speaker 2:So course was my way to to be able to reach out to as many people who wanted my help without me having to physically be there for each one gotcha and so, but you'd been.
Speaker 1:It sounds like, from the amount of different uh networks and stuff that you've been on, that you maybe have been doing the work around educating people and and getting the word out there for a long time. How did that all get started?
Speaker 2:well, my journey as a board certified nutritionist is an odd one. I started out as a hairstylist 20 years ago and even as a hairstylist, I wasn't your typical hairstylist. You wasn't coming to me to get your hair done in style. You were really coming to me for me to give you a treatment to help your hair grow back from. Maybe you had a bald spot, maybe your hair was thinning, there was something going on. So I was that hair loss practitioner or specialist here in Atlanta and what had happened is when I would see a client have a bald spot thinning, acne, acne, even on their scalp, I would say hey, listen, I need you to go to your doctor. I see in your scalp there's something going on and I know it's internal. So go to your doctor, tell your doctor what I've seen and maybe they'll run some tests. Well, this was happening a lot and every time they would go, each person would come, would come back and say yeah, debbie, the doctor said I'm fine and I'm going. Yeah, that's not true, your hair is telling me something, and I wish the doctor would know what it's telling also.
Speaker 2:So, because I wasn't getting any answers from the doctors, I decided that I needed to help my clients and start getting answers. So my journey led me to become a trichologist. A trichologist is one who studies hair and scalp disorders, and I would say a trichologist is just as smart as a dermatologist without that dermatology degree. But that wasn't enough for me because it wasn't answering my questions. I'm very analytical, so my journey led me down thinking I wanted to be a medical doctor. Then I realized that wasn't going to help because most doctors are treating symptoms. I needed to get to the root cause, and that's how I wound up learning about naturopathic medicine and how I learned that nutrition is the key to everything. And so I stood there and became a nutritionist and went on and became board certified.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Okay, cool. And so when did you start, instead of being working with people just one-on-one at the clinic or something? When did you start like putting the message out there and going on podcasts or going on? What was it? We said foxcom or something, I forget what it was exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been on all news stations, I've been everywhere, but when did it really start? It actually did start before it was really taking off, before the pandemic hit. Then the pandemic hit and everyone, we couldn't touch each other anymore. You know, you couldn't be face to face, and so I was already transitioning to online businesses and digital services, but because we were stuck at home, it forced me into that category. So that's when it started.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Okay, and most people I know right, most course creators. They have built up a YouTube channel or they've built up their Instagram. Very few of them have been on, you know, abc News or whatever it was that you'd said before. So how did that come about?
Speaker 2:How did that happen? Okay, so let's read. You're right, Most people they start there and I was on YouTube. I was on YouTube 10 years before YouTube was a big deal and, as a matter of fact, I'm going to go back seven years ago and most people, some of your people here, may know me for that.
Speaker 2:I did a video about rice water and in that video I was explaining how, if you mix rice, white rice and water and ferment it for more than 24 hours, it will ferment into a solution that you can spray into your hair to help your hair grow. The video went viral. It's still viral. It's seven to eight years old now. It's still viral. I still get comments every day from it. That video shared with the world how nutrients, because when you ferment the rice, it was drawing out nutrients like magnesium and calcium and copper, and this is what was helping hair to grow. And from that rice video it it started a buzz to the point where TV stations wanted to talk to me. You know, other places wanted to hear about it and to this day I will tell you, every beauty brand out there has a rice water shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer or something to that effect. So that it's my start, I would say it was YouTube.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Okay, and so how does it work nowadays? So you're sending these courses, do you do? You do it via email? How are you actually making the sales of your courses when you do?
Speaker 2:So this is how my courses start out Courses. We are in a world where, you know, social media is big and social media it's most people there. There's two reasons why you're on social media for education or entertainment. Those are the two, and I I'm big in the education part of it. Um, I have almost 2 million followers on TikTok. Um, about almost 700,000 on YouTube, and I'm growing, growing in all different places.
Speaker 2:So I'm an educator by heart, I'm an educator by nature, and so I decided to develop these courses, like I said, because it wasn't enough of me to go around and I knew I was buying courses from other people years ago and I loved what they did and I saw the money potential, but I just didn't think that I could develop a good enough course and everyone would say to me what you speak, what you say, is a course in itself, because I teach from the beginning to the end. So I started developing new courses and, honestly, when I developed my courses, I was afraid of would they buy it? Maybe I need to keep the price really low? And so many other people in my industry would say you know what? You're giving this stuff away for free. We need you to step your game up. But I realized that it was purposeful because I started out with I would call it a low-hanging fruit. It was a very reasonable course. It was maybe some of the courses were $37, $67, $97, but most of them at that time was under $100. It helped me to build my audience, it helped me to build my email list and it helped me to grow by starting with just a small in-course that was just giving you just enough to see the benefits of what I was teaching you.
Speaker 2:And then, after you saw, hey, what she taught me, I'm learning, I feel better, my headache is gone, my skin is clearing up. Then from there, I'll introduce you to more courses. But I believe in you know, if you try something and it works for you, where else can you go? Stay right here with me. I got something else to offer you. So that's how my courses work. I'll usually start out with a smaller end course that's very significant to a health need and then, once they see that this is working, they always come back and go okay, I want more. What do? You? Got the 30 days program. I ended it. I lost a few pounds. I feel great. What else you got? And so this is how my whole email list and my courses grow.
Speaker 1:Nice, you mentioned your email list there. How big is your email list nowadays?
Speaker 2:we scrape the list often, um, so I would say a list that is doable, that's real. I would say about 30 000. It's usually could be more than that, but you know you scrape the list from those who aren't responding and different things.
Speaker 1:So I would say it's about 30 000 nice and can you give everybody some idea of, like, the size of your business revenue? If you're happy to share, but if not, then like number of students you've had through or some some way for people to get an idea of the size?
Speaker 2:Revenue. I revenue scares me when, when I hear people tell these numbers like, oh, you don't know who's watching here. So I'll just say, in regards to how many clients do I have? I would need my assistant to tell you that, but I will say, over the years, I have thousands that we get in a year's time and it's growing constantly.
Speaker 2:I feel, and, like I said, that 30,000 email lists these are current people, these are people who are staying on the list. So that could mean that I have as much as 30,000 clients because, like I said, we quarterly, we will scrape the list, we'll clean the list, which I feel everyone who's doing courses, everyone, when you do an email list, you have to periodically, you know, clean the list off, because when we have these lists and we have these marketing programs, we pay for each name on the list and if you're paying for people who are no longer um, either responding to you or they moved on, you still have to pay for that. So this is why we always clean our list up. So I'm going to say I'm close to the 30,000. Nice.
Speaker 1:And how often are you promoting any of your courses? Do you do automated sequences or do you have a promotion that you'll send out as a broadcast to your list each month? How does that work for you?
Speaker 2:So it really depends. So, for instance, right now we're getting ready to broadcast a parasite cleanse. Parasites is a problem that many people are sleeping on. Statistics shows that one in every other person is carrying around parasites here in the United States and don't know it. Carrying around parasites here in the United States and don't know it. We think that it's a situation for you know these countries where it's, you know they're not that I would say, underpopulated. I would say, but no right, here in the United States the statistics shows that parasites are on the rise. It shows how parasites a lot of it is the beginning of a lot of things, even cancer.
Speaker 2:So I'm about to do this really big parasite cleanse. So what? How I'm structuring it is one. I did a YouTube video and in the YouTube videos like if you want to learn more or sign up for my wait list, that's building me a new email list from new subscribers, then from that wait list when it's ready to go out, and that wait list right now has thousands of people on it, and so that let me know. And doing a YouTube video and doing something like that is great, because now you wanna see if there's a need for it. Is there an audience for it. That's a way to know what the need or to fulfill the need, and so I did this parasite cleanse video. It's going viral on YouTube now. It's doing exceptionally well.
Speaker 2:I have an opt-in email list that they fill out in the description and now, when we are ready to finally do it, which is probably in another week or so, we're going to hit that list hard, and this is where we build this funnel. We build the funnel to because, remember, they opt in for the list. So this is not cold call, this is not a cold email. We're going to send to them letting them know it's ready. Now for that email list. For all of those people, they're going to get a discount because they signed up on the wait list, and so we're going to target them and let them know you're special to us because you waited, you've signed up. Here's what we got for you. And then, in most instances when we do that, most of the people on the list they've just been waiting, waiting, waiting.
Speaker 2:They'll email me hey, when is it coming out. But a lot of times I'll do a wait list just to see how many people is it really a need for it, and then we'll take it from there. So that's the next one, so we broadcast it that way. Then we'll send to the list and then we'll remind them a week or two beforehand. But we just recently started with a new I was using Webinar Jam because we do a webinar for it. We'll send them to a webinar and then from the webinar, this is where they will purchase the program. But I found a new platform that I absolutely love, ewebinar, and it allows me to automate these webinars. It allows me to automate the webinar where they can choose their time that's convenient for them to watch the webinar off of the time that you're saying. Watch this webinar at 7pm on Thursday. They know they're not available at that time, so they'll choose a time that works for them and this way you wind up getting more people being interested and buying. So it you know it's been working pretty well.
Speaker 1:Now, I love webinars, so I'm delighted to hear that you you're using those. How does that fit? Where in the sequence is the webinar? Is it it like only for people who are doing um at the very beginning of the sequence and they get an early bird discount? Is it something part way through like? Where in your promotion does it fit?
Speaker 2:so the webinar can go in different categories. So let me just talk about the webinar that we're doing now statistically. So I will go on social media, I'll do a post on tiktok. I'll do a post on TikTok. I'll do a post on Instagram. I'll even, you know, maybe do a short for YouTube and I'll hype up the topic and so, and the one that we were recently doing it is called the seven day liver reset. The liver is one of the hardest working organs in the body. Most diseases and inflammation and so many other things comes from an overworked, overburdened liver. So I'll do social media posts short, 60 seconds or less social media posts about liver health. Do you want to know more? Then sign up for my upcoming webinar. So how I get people to the webinar is from a short, from a 60 second or less post, and they'll sign up for the webinar there.
Speaker 2:So the webinar, I would say, is maybe the second step. The first step is the social media, to draw it to the webinar. Then they watch the webinar and from the webinar, this is where we try to get them to be able to buy, of course, with a bonus, something that's special for them being on the webinar once they buy and let's just say you don't buy in the webinar. You are now in my funnel, so we're going to send you an email. For those who signed up for the webinar but didn't show up for the webinar, we'll send them the replay. Or, if you sign up for the webinar and you watched it but you didn't buy, you're now in a different funnel where we're still going to send a few emails to you, trying to still grab you and going. You watch this. You know you need this. You stayed long enough. What's holding you back? You know when I find when we ask a question, you'll get an answer. So we'll ask a question in our email sequence and that turns them into vibes.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, and so what are you covering in this webinar?
Speaker 2:In my, in the one that I'm specifically talking about, I'm educating everyone about liver health. One thing that most people don't know is weight loss. That's a key word, weight loss. And so when I do my webinars, I do my research first to see again if there's a need for it. And so most people are struggling to lose weight. That's a you know, everybody knows that, but most people don't know why they're struggling to lose weight.
Speaker 2:So, of course, when I'm drawing you in, I'm bringing curiosity, I'm going to possibly bring in some controversy, something to bring you to the table, and in this one, I basically said I'm telling you the skinny lie about why you can't lose weight, and so I'm basically saying this is what people don't want you to know. But you can get yourself a personal trainer, you can go on a caloric diet, you can do all these things, but if you've been doing this for all these many years and you still not losing weight, here's the problem it's because of your liver. And then I go through the details in this webinar, sharing with them all the aspects of the liver the hardest working organ in the body, that they didn't know. I bring in the resources, I bring in the science, fact information. I help them understand that all of your troubles is in this one organ that nobody is talking about, and so this is what I usually do in that case. So that's how we get them there.
Speaker 2:Just education. People respect education and when I, when I do these educational webinars, these educational posts, most people when I, when they send me comments, they're like oh my gosh, I was looking for this. The stuff you said made sense. And I always tell everyone in all of my videos this is backed up and I will leave the information where they can go, review it, research it and back it up. Information where they can go, review it, research it and back it up. I always say listen, don't take my word for it here's, do the research yourself, but I'll start you out. Look in the description and I'll send you some links where you can start your research, for some from some very reputable science-backed sites nice, okay cool.
Speaker 1:So we've got the promotion going on. We've got the webinar you mentioned. There's bonuses. Are the bonuses specifically for people who came on the webinar or does anybody if they buy? Okay, cool, so there's webinar specific bonuses if you stay on the boat.
Speaker 2:And here's a thing that most people you want to do when you do a webinar. The first thing is, I believe, in the in the beginning of the webinar, be very transparent. Let them know hey, I appreciate you coming to listen to me today. I just want to know what I'm going to share with you. If you like what I'm sharing with you at the end of this webinar, there may be an opportunity to work with me.
Speaker 2:I put it out in the front and I say that because I didn't like and I don't like webinars where we all know at the end there's being you're being sold to, but people respect you more when they know at the beginning listen, I got something for you at the end, so and then I always say and if you stay to the end, I'm going to have something even extra for you. So now people's like oh, what is that? What is that? What is that? So, yeah, that's why the bonus is for those who stayed and I actually give a bonus, even if you don't buy whatever it is I'm selling because you stayed to the end. You gave me some loyalty, so I still have a bonus, something for you, an e-book or something that they are going to get, just because they came to the webinar, because you also understand that that's strategic. Strategically is still building up an email list yeah, beautiful, okay, cool.
Speaker 1:So then the e. What about the email part of that promotion? We've got the webinar. We've talked about how how many emails will go out to that audience during that promotion.
Speaker 2:During the promotion. I don't like to bombard people with emails, because people get annoyed. It's like okay, you just sent me one, how many times are you going to send this? But when we're doing a promotion, you may get maybe two to three emails, maybe in that week, no more than that. I don't want to bombard you because we just don't. And if you signed up, then you may get the reminder about the webinar, but only maybe two or three, no more than that.
Speaker 1:Got it Cool, and what kind of things are you covering in those emails when you're sending those?
Speaker 2:out. When we send out the emails, we're mostly asking a question, we're hitting a pain point. The subject line is very important. So that subject line is going to hit on a pain point that they were already questioning. So that's what I'm covering. Are you I don't want to say are you fat, because I think that's not a nice thing to say Are you gaining weight?
Speaker 2:Do you have belly fat? Are you? You tired of this? Say it in a question that's hitting a pain point, because now you're hitting a pain point and you're making them think about it. So that's what the email it's about asking them about their struggles and letting them know. Watch this webinar. I may have the solution for you.
Speaker 1:Great, okay, cool and cool. And then you mentioned you're giving a discount as well, during that week too. So that's, that's beautiful. So we've got bonuses, we've got discounts, we've got webinars, we've got promotional emails. This sounds like a great campaign. Now, how many people, how many people you've got in your team helping you to do this? You've got someone helping with writing it, with setting up the technical side of it, any of the design, how much of it is you?
Speaker 2:So once upon a time it was all me and I noticed that when it was all me, I couldn't get it done and we didn't get things done and a course would never be finished. I would write it up and then move on to something else and something else and something else. But I realized that I needed to stay in my lane and I needed that. I needed help. And so for all of us, new businesses or entrepreneurs, you got to realize you can't do it all. When you are wearing one hat and you're doing it all, nothing ever gets done or accomplished. So I have a team of about five and my team is amazing. Everyone has their position. We and my team is amazing, everyone has their position. We, every morning, we and a lot of my teams they're not here where I am, so we get on a Zoom call every morning to talk about our strategies. You know what we where. We left off the day before.
Speaker 2:So yeah, but I finally learned that I couldn't do it all. It was draining and I realized when I was doing it all and because I was getting drained and because I have a family and so much more, I was a hamster on a wheel. I wasn't going anywhere. So I had to pass the torch and be able to say, okay, hey, you handle that assignment, you handle that assignment.
Speaker 2:But one assignment that I need to handle is the content writing. I don't want anybody to write my content for me, because this is coming from me, this is coming from my education. If I have somebody write my content, then I'm reviewing and go, okay, this is good, but I wouldn't say that, no, I know how I want to speak, I know what I want to say and I think I'm a fantastic content writer. All of the things that I see, all of the things that you may see from my videos, is all me. I've been writing content for years and I get a lot of credit for you know putting out good content. So I write the content. I let them handle all the admin stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what I found for a course business, I mean this is I'm looking at this from the point of view of doing the promotion side of things. Not the YouTube videos, not the building up your Instagram account, but just the promotions. I think there's four parts to it. Someone's got to write it. Someone's got to figure out the strategy. You've mentioned a bunch of different tactics as part of the strategy.
Speaker 1:Are you going to have a webinar? Are you going to have emails? Are you going to have straight to a sales page? You know, are you going to have a webinar? Are you going to have emails? Are you going to have straight to a sales page? What discounts are you going to have? What bonuses are you going to have? That kind of thing?
Speaker 1:So you've got to have the strategy. Someone's got to write the emails. You've got to have someone doing design. You know, design the sales page, maybe design some stuff in the emails, and then someone. The tricky thing when someone's starting out is you've got to do all of it because you haven't got any money to spend on somebody else helping with those parts and it's like so you're having to learn right. I've got to learn how to write promotional emails and how to figure out the design side of things and set it up, and I've got to figure out the strategy, which is tough, and so you've managed to get to a point now where you've got that support. So it's a lot easier, but it's like it's hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will agree with you and that, like I said, in the beginning, I was doing it all. But what I realized is this I wasn't really making money when I was doing it myself, right, because I wanted to do it all. And if you think, you go, I don't have enough money to do it, well, you don't have enough money not to do it. That's the thing you need to think about. So, you know, you put a little a budget aside and basically say, okay, this is what I can afford. Who can I find that can assist me?
Speaker 2:There's someone out there you know, even if you're finding a college student or someone. But you got to think about it. I don't have enough money to do it and I don't have enough money not to do it. So, whatever money that I have, let me put a budget aside and let me divvy out with the amount that I have and you may come across some great people, because I know that I have. I have an amazing team. My team has been with me for years, and I started out with thinking I didn't have enough money. I was like I can't afford it. I can't afford this. I can't afford to hire a person. I can't afford a designer, but I couldn't afford not to. And so every time that I couldn't afford to, I couldn't afford it. You know, it was like I wasn't making any money. So once I jumped in, you'll see that now you can. You can start making some money.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I've been working on recently is I. I used to think everybody needs to find a copywriter, because most course creators aren't copywriters. They don't know how to write promotional emails, they don't know how to write sales pages, but what I kept finding is that cheap copywriters are rubbish and it's really hard to find good copywriters. So then started teaching people how to write the copy themselves, and that worked. Okay. It's like teaching people how to do it and then we've spent the last I don't know six months maybe working on this process for helping people to write the copy themselves live on workshops with us. Because that's what we're finding is like if I teach someone how to do it and then they have to go away and do it, people are like, oh god, I don't want this. But if you someone's like, okay, I'll come on the workshop and you, you support me and we give them the templates and the examples to kind of work through and then they can ask questions live, and then by the end of the workshop it's done and it's been.
Speaker 1:I was like I know, I just had this feeling in my gut. I was like this is going to work, this is like what people need and people have been coming on those workshops and then been like doubling their revenue from doing that. So it's like I think that copywriting part is a really hard part. You were mentioning you do the writing yourself, right? It's a really hard part to outsource because you've spent years becoming an expert in a topic. Hard part to outsource because you've spent years becoming an expert in a topic and then somebody else might be good at writing sales copy but they don't know your topic, right you know, and so doing those things together. Yeah, I mean, if anybody listening is interested in those workshops, then we've got a a wait list for them. At the moment we had like five the first five spots sold out in like 18 minutes so it's yeah.
Speaker 2:And can I say this that's great that you you have these workshops, because some people were thinking that now that chat GPT is available, they could just do the copywriting there. And chat is good and I actually use chat for ideas, but I it's still not my voice, and so you know it may pull out some great ideas for me, but then I need to sit down and write it. Some great ideas for me, but then I need to sit down and write it. So that just tells you that people still want to do it themselves and not have to rely on AI. The thing about AI to me is amazing. It's phenomenal. It's not new. We've been using AI forever. Just think about as many years. When you call your bank or your credit card, it's an automated person you're talking to, which annoys me, because you're saying, yes, I want to do this, and they're like we haven't heard you yet. Please press one.
Speaker 2:We've been dealing with AI for years. It's just now. It's available to us more than it was before, but AI still cannot take the place of the real you or the real topic. And what I'm afraid of AI because that's why I didn't want to get so bombarded by it it stops you from thinking because, if everything you do, you just go to chat and ask it a question and it's going to respond to you and you're going to utilize this. Now you're not utilizing your brain anymore. You know we're going to get lazy because it's like I don need to think about it anymore, I'll just let the ai system do it. That's what's happening. We're going to start really just not thinking about it anymore and then we're going to slowly start.
Speaker 1:The brain is going to, the cells are going to start to go away yeah, what we've we're working and working on, like, how can you use chat gpt or a custom GPT or something you know, claude, one of these other tools to write parts of the copy? And so far it is much better to write it yourself with support around the structure than to than to use chat GPT for it. We've tested it and we still will carry on testing it, cause we're like, if we could, we know people are coming in these workshops and it takes a few hours. It's just like if we could cut that down from three hours to two hours, that's a saving for someone's time, right, that's great, but so far, uh, it's kind of okay you know, it's like yeah, it'll kind of do, but it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not the greatest. Um, yeah, so if anybody was interested in those workshops, go to datadrivenmarketingco, get onto our email list and you'll. You'll hear about those. But the next thing then that I wanted to talk through with you is what's any part of this whole process that's a challenge for you at the moment? What parts of your email marketing or your funnels are you like, man? I wish this was a bit better.
Speaker 2:Okay, there's a few I'll talk about. The first one is building and maintaining a quality email list. You know, I have a good list now, but you have to continue to build. You just can't think, okay, well, I got a list of 30,000. I don't need to do anything else. Yes, you do. That's a challenge Keeping a list of engaged subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content. You have to continue to be interesting, and sometimes you're not interesting. Oh, you keep getting interesting for everybody, but that's it. So the solution to that challenge is regularly, like I said at the beginning, clean your email list by removing, I would say, one's inactive subscribers.
Speaker 2:And you know I use Lead Magnus a lot to attract the right audience. Love Lead Magnus, love a lead page, and then segment. What we do is we segment our audience based on their interests so that this way we can send to that audience relevant content that reaches them. So that's one of my challenges. The other challenge is we talked about it crafting engaging content. So the challenge there is writing emails that grab attention and motivate action. It's just the same way.
Speaker 2:So I do a lot of YouTube videos and, of course, you know your YouTube thumbnail and your YouTube title. That's where, if your title is not grabbing the attention, then, and it doesn't motivate the audience, what you're saying in the video could be amazing, but you have to grab their attention through your thumbnail and your title. So that is another challenge that I face. So how do I get through the solution for that? It's like just focus on creating concise, value-driven content that addresses my audience's pain points. I'm big on hitting on the pain point. A lot of times when I write, I have to say, okay, I got to punch in the gut. I got to punch in the gut because I got to get to your pain point. I got to get to the emotions. Emotions is what sells. Actually, you're selling the whole emotional structure. So crafting and engaging content is a problem.
Speaker 2:Building and maintaining a quality email list, and the other thing that I have a problem with is avoiding spam filters. Ah, that's a problem, you know, trying to get to your email audience and that's those spam filters are there and so your emails aren't being delivered to the email box. And I found a solution for that is really to use well, we have an email service company that do the emails and I absolutely love them, but to use a reputable email service provider that knows how to authenticate the emails, and they use something called DKIM. That's something that they authenticate it with, so this way, your emails don't go into the spam folder. Because that was a big deal. So those are my challenges. It's just making sure they get the email, making sure they open the email and making sure that the content is good.
Speaker 1:Well, let's look at that first step there. About the you said building the email list. Let's start with that. About how much website traffic do you get a month?
Speaker 2:That is where my admin team comes in. I don't have an answer to that one because they remember I stay in my lane. I'm the content writer. They know most of that. So website traffic, that would be something that they know. But I'm going to say we obviously do pretty well because every month we have new buyers, we have new people subscribing to the list, we have new people signing on to my YouTube channel, but I don't have a number for you there, sorry.
Speaker 1:No worries, I'm going to see if I can do any of this live and if not, then I'll back it's AskDebbieAboutHaircom right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of them, but then we have people that are going through to my product sites also. Hair and Scout Meds is one one nice, okay, cool.
Speaker 1:I'm looking through and I'm looking for lead magnets on your home page, because here's some of the things that we found, and what I'll do actually after this is I'm gonna get someone from the team to go through and do a review of your site and maybe either YouTube or Instagram. Youtube looks like your biggest channel, I think. Is that right?
Speaker 1:No, TikTok is actually my biggest channel TikTok Okay cool, and do a review and see where's some low-hanging fruit for you in terms of increasing your opt-in rate. We find that most people can about double their opt-in rate and some people we had someone the other day who beat 45 times their- opt-in rate and some people.
Speaker 2:We had someone the other day who we 45 times their opt-in rate. Wow, they didn't have much stuff in place?
Speaker 1:they weren't. They didn't have all the lead magnets and all the lead pages and all of that stuff, you know. So they were really from a low point. But we'll see, because I suspect that there's some, some low-hanging fruit there. But I'm just having a quick look through. Do um, because one of the crucial things is having um, a pop-up that comes up on the site after a period of time yes, we have that you've got that, okay, I'm not seeing that yet I'm on your site.
Speaker 1:I wonder if I've been on there before and and left.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you. Yeah, we have a pop-up on the xw about hair uh site and that's basically how we get a lot of our emails from there. And then, if you want to try my other site, hair and scalp mitts, that's the site where I sell my um natural hair caroline. There's a pop-up there also and I think there's a hair quiz on there also got it.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, all right. So I have spotted somewhere where I can help you to improve the number of options that you're getting onto your email list all right, I like that talk you through it and then we'll do your little video afterwards, kind of showing you the details for you.
Speaker 1:So on your blog posts, you'll see as I scroll through the blog post what I'm seeing is there is, uh, the blog post down the left hand side. There's the sidebar on the right and the sidebar links to other blog posts. This particular blog is your gut is making you sick, and then at the bottom there is a get a gut health test which looks like it probably is an affiliate link that you've got up there. And then at the very bottom we've got the option to go to the previous post, the next post or leave a reply, and then the very bottom, actually under that you've got links to like tiktok, facebook, etc. Now if that page you added in an ad for your own lead magnet partway through the post, we find that significantly increases opt-ins. So what I mean by an ad is not putting the opt-in form but putting some kind of a designed ad talking about how great your lead magnet is. So let's say what's one of the lead magnets you've got? That would be on the Ask Debbie About Hair site.
Speaker 2:What I have to ask Jay. Hey, jay, can you come here for a sec? I haven't been on that site in a while because I've been writing content, content and building courses and webinars. What's the lead magnet we have on the Axtebi site For e-book? Oh, we have an e-book for what? What's the e-book for For healthy hair hacks? Okay, so we have an e-magnet e-magnet. We have a lead magnet for e-book on the Axtebi for healthy hair hacks.
Speaker 1:Healthy hair hacks Perfectly Okay, cool. For healthy hair hacks healthy hair hacks perfectly okay, cool. So what you do is you would take, for example, five benefits from the ebook. So you say this is five things this is going to help you to do. This is going to help you to have healthy, healthier hair, improve your diet um, you know, look more beautiful.
Speaker 1:Whatever the things are right that you pull out as your five benefits and then you'll have an image probably of you and there will be those five benefits and it will say sign up for this free ebook.
Speaker 1:And that will be like in line within the blog post, so you'll have text, then the ad and then the more text, and if someone clicks on that ad, it's going to have a button at the bottom of it, but they could click anywhere on it, so the whole thing's set up to be clickable. Then it brings up the pop-up and so then someone fills in the pop-up and signs up to your email list. Now what we found is you can do this top, middle and bottom of a long blog post. If it's a short post, maybe just once or twice, but let's say it's 2000 words, then then you could have top, middle and bottom of the post and each of those ads is slightly different, so they're all in your design, they're all in your style, but one of them is image focused, one of them is benefits focused, one of them is a testimonial focus, and so you'll catch different people's attention with each of those things as they're reading through it, and we found that significantly increases opt-ins on its own.
Speaker 2:We've seen people go from one percent opt-in to three percent, you know can you send that to me because I gotta give it to you, yeah, and a sample so they can see what we or you know website where it, so we can see exactly how that works.
Speaker 1:I like that absolutely yeah, and I'll. I'll read one out now for everybody who's listening along um, if people go to tealswancom, this is a good example. Um, I'm just going to check, it's right. And then if you go there to articles, so that is tealswancom, slash resources, slash articles or you click on the menu and click on articles and you choose any of the blog posts there then, you will see that there is in the side.
Speaker 1:Actually, I forgot one. In the sidebar there's also another ad, so, along with other blog posts, there's the sidebar promoting it, and then, as you scroll through, you'll see that it's promoting these five free guided meditations. And so, as you're listening to this, you can go to that site, check those out and just tell your designer. I'm going to do something like this give them, you know, tell them the copy for it, for your, your lead magnet, and put those little promotional things together and then put those all over your site you're spelling t-o-t-e-a-l t-e-a-l and then swan s-W-A-N like the bird.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to check that out when we get off of our video. Beautiful.
Speaker 1:Thank you, all right, cool. So what advice? If somebody's listening to this and they're earlier in their journey, maybe they've got a little audience and they've got a little email list and they've got their first course and they're making $1,000 or $2,000 a month, what advice would you give them that you wish you'd received when you were back at that stage?
Speaker 2:Okay, the best advice is what we talked about already. You cannot do it all. You really need to hire. Stay in your lane. If you are the brains behind it, then be the brains. But the administrative part, get the administrative help. The longer it takes you to get the administrative help, the longer it's going to take you to see success. And so that I know now I wish I would have done it, but I thought that I could wear many hats, and I could, but it didn't get me anywhere for a very, very, very long time. So that's the best advice Don't wear many hats. It's not worth it. It's valuable you are, but use your value for what you do best and let everyone else use their value for what they do best, and then you will be building a loyal team.
Speaker 2:There is nothing like having a loyal team side by side with you, because you can't know it all Like so. For instance, I had a marketing background and I knew marketing, and so when Facebook really started out, I was right on top of it. We were doing some big things in Facebook. Then they kept changing the formula, the regulation, and I couldn't keep up anymore, and now it's like I don't even want to know what they're doing. I hire somebody who's taking care of the Facebook. I have somebody who's taking care of my Instagram. I don't want to, and I still love marketing, but again, I want to stay in my lane. So I want to tell them to even if you're hiring a family member, somebody else, you can't do it by yourself. You will not succeed if you're trying to do this by yourself. That's the first thing. The second thing is always keep a positive attitude.
Speaker 2:Being an entrepreneur is cute, it's pretty, but there's some ugly sides of it. But you've got to get through those ugly sides sides of it, but you got to get through those ugly sides and more people give up before they stick to it. You're going to have to. With everything in life. You have these hurdles that you got to step over. You got to jump across. You don't just look at it and go. I can't make it past this hurdle, so you turn around and go back. Don't. If you've come this far, keep moving forward. You will see. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Trust me, there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it starts with you and it starts with a positive mindset. When you carry negative energy and when you carry I can't do it, I won't do it, I don't know how it's not going to happen. So you got to say I can do it, I will figure out how to do it. I do know how, and then it will be done beautiful, nice debbie.
Speaker 1:If anybody wants to go check you out, where should they go? You mentioned a couple of different sites so far, like recap those for us, or point people to youtube or wherever you want people to go everyone knows me as X Debbie.
Speaker 2:If you Google just X Debbie, you'll find me, but the full name is X Debbie about health and hair, or X Debbie about hair and health. If you Google that, everything about me, all my different sites because every from my YouTube to my Facebook to my Instagram, tiktok all of it is X Debbie about hair and health or in reverse. So that's how you can find me. I also have an amazing hair care line that I had started when I was still in the hair care you know doing it, being a hair loss specialist and I had developed the line because once I learned that nutrition was the key to our health, I also learned that most of our hair care products were also. When we put them in our hair, scalp and skin, we were also absorbing chemicals in our body that disrupts the body system. So I developed a hair care line that's all natural, that helps the body recover and improve. So my hair care line is go to hair like the hair on your head and A&D scalpmedscom. It's an all natural line. It's made for all hair textures, all people.
Speaker 2:It's 10 years in and the wonderful thing that I want to share about that line it has grown organically for 10 years. I still don't really advertise and market it and it does exceptionally well. So, again, I have a true loyal audience and I every time that I try to hire someone on the Facebook ad, they just take my money. So I now have a new person on Facebook because I always thought I didn't have to go beyond organic. But yes, you do. I grew organically and now it's time to scale. So I'm having to scale this business that I grew organic for 10 years. So facebook, you'll find me. I asked debbie about hair, um, the skincare line. I have a skincare line, too that we just launched. It's called pure7naturalscom and the hair care line is hairandscoutmedscom nice, gorgeous.
Speaker 1:I love how, when you, uh, when I asked what should people, how, where should people go to find you? Like here's how to google me. I had a friend recently who she um, she's a entrepreneur and business owner and she wanted to be taking over some podcast and this podcast is like, got a big following. She knows a guy who, um, who does it a little bit and he wants a new host for it and she was like that would be cool, I'd like to do that. And they had said, as part of the application process, send in your resume. And she's like I don't have a resume, I haven't had a resume in. However many years am I going to write a resume? So she just took a big piece of paper and she wrote on it google me google me, that's the resume, listen that's the best resume you can have.
Speaker 1:Nice, all right, cool. If you found this interview useful, then please subscribe. Wherever you've been listening. Um, if you want to get hold of that lead magnet, the resource I mentioned earlier go to datadrivenmarketingco. Slash roadmap and we would love it if you would rate the podcast. So go to ratethispodcastcom. Slash online courses and let other people know how hopefully great it is. Only do that if you like it. All right, cool. Thanks so much, debbie, for coming on today and thanks so much, as always, for listening.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much.