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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
I Doubled My Revenue In Just 4 Months With This Funnel
🔥 Want to boost your course revenue by 30%? Get our FREE guide on how to implement order bumps in 3 simple steps! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/order-bumps
Brendan Williams runs an online education business teaching Photoshop to photographers and designers. With 160,000 YouTube subscribers and 40,000 monthly website visitors, he was generating nearly 1,000 leads per month.
But his revenue was inconsistent. Some months were great, others terrible.
He was doing monthly promotions, had order bumps, email sequences - all the "right" things. But something was missing.
Then he made 4 specific changes to his funnel and doubled his monthly revenue in 4 months.
🔥 Struggling with low conversions? Grab our FREE checklist of 15 must-have elements to optimize your sales pages! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/elements
🔥 Need better results from your email campaigns? Get our FREE templates and see the difference with two proven email strategies! 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/templates
🤝 Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.
Total, it basically takes my average monthly and doubles it from what I had.
Speaker 2:That's Brendan Williams, owner of Brendan Williams Creative. He completely transformed his course business using our proven funnel strategy. Brendan has 160,000 YouTube subscribers, gets 40,000 website visitors monthly, generates nearly 1,000 leads per month and he doubled his revenue in just four months.
Speaker 1:In this episode, you'll learn how to set up an offer that converts on autopilot I ended up just taking the made it turned it on and like immediately it was working, because I already knew it worked.
Speaker 1:The copy changes that 6x your conversions I went from like 1% to 2% on an upsell to maybe 10%, 12%, 15% on even the same product. Right, it'll still be the same course, same price, same everything. But then the page changed and the copy changed and now it all works and what to do every month that brings in the most revenue. That has actually been probably the biggest difference in terms of overall revenue, for the business is doing those two, and that is what has made a massive difference.
Speaker 2: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 is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Brendan Williams. Brendan's the owner of Brendan Williams Creative, an online resource and education hub for photographers and designers looking to master the complexities of creative programs like Adobe, photoshop and Lightroom. His goal is to help creatives focus on their art without feeling technically limited by the software that they rely on, and today we're going to talk about Brendan's business, his funnel and how he's grown his sales. Brendan, welcome to the show. Hello, thanks for having me out, so I covered it briefly there. But who do you help and what kind of problem are you solving for them?
Speaker 1:So, as you've already said, I help photographers and designers primarily learn Photoshop. As creatives, we have a ton of different softwares that we can rely on to make our work or edit our photos. But the problem with these softwares is that there's a lot of settings, there's a lot of tools, there's constantly updates to them and people quickly get overwhelmed and they end up focusing more on, like the, the nuances of the program and how can I make it work, rather than actually creating the things that they downloaded the program for in the first place. So I help people to navigate those programs and start focus on the creating and not the technicalities of the settings and things.
Speaker 2:Nice. Now, where were you at before you had started working with us? Like, what kind of size audience did you have and give people some kind of idea of the size of the business?
Speaker 1:So I started working with you guys in February of 2025. Before that I already had an existing YouTube channel and website. My YouTube channel is, or at the time was, probably around 160,000 subscribers. Website traffic was around 40,000 pages a month. From that I would maybe get anywhere between 900 to 1000 or so leads per month from between the website and the YouTube channel. At the time I still was kind of new to selling courses. I was only maybe a year into it and was still figuring it all out. I had maybe 350 or so students at the time and then more that were customers of digital products and downloads and things like that. So overall I was the majority of my revenue was still with display ads and affiliate, but then product sales were kind of like that extra bit that I was trying to grow and figure out. So that's kind of why I wanted to work with you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so with that, like what had made you decide to ask for help with upgrading your funnel, what, what did you cause you to get in touch?
Speaker 1:So I I've been listening to this podcast like really religiously for a very long time. I actually like I talked to you a couple of years ago and I first joined the DC cause I heard about the DC from you and I was like, wow, I need to meet all these people at the DC. Then I met you there and at the time I was following everything that you were basically saying on the podcast. Okay, you got to do a monthly promotion. You got to like have your welcome sequence, you got to do the order bumps and upsells, all those things, and so I was like, great, I got it covered. I understand these things. But then I would do a promotion and sometimes it would work really well and sometimes it wouldn't. And one month I would have maybe two or three times more revenue than the next month. Even though I was still doing a monthly promotion, I still had the order bumps, I was still sending emails and I'm like, what am I missing here? I don't know what is going on.
Speaker 1:What am I missing here? I don't know what is going on. I'm doing the things, but I'm not just making the money. I guess that I was expecting to. I wanted that consistency in the business, especially within product sales, and I absolutely didn't have that.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of the main reason why I wanted to reach out and begin working with you guys, because I wanted to figure out what I was missing because obviously there was something and we're going to get into the details of what Brendan's changed but one of the crucial things that you need if you're going to grow your course business is an optimized sales page. So that's like one of the steps in the process, and a great sales page can convert about three times better than a rubbish one, and if you want to get my template for a great sales page, go to datadrivenmarketingcopages. That's going to allow you to make a great sales page in about half the time and could about double or triple your sales. So let's get into, then, what was first for you when we started working together, like what were the things that you changed or what were the things that we helped you to kind of improve, because it sounds like you were doing the things but it wasn't converting as well as you wanted it to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the first two things were related to the welcome email sequence and creating a tripwire, and those are kind of like the same problem at once in a way, because I was making the mistake that I think a lot of people, especially earlier on in their journey, such as myself, make, which is they create this very long, complicated welcome sequence, Like I had a three month evergreen sequence. That was like had the few personalized welcome emails sharing about my story and those kinds of things. It had a promotion, then it would have some more value emails and it basically just cycled a promotion every 30 days with all my best offers and so someone would join my email list. They wouldn't hear from me like in live context for three months and then by the time they're on my live broadcast list, most of them were kind of either cold or not as engaged as they once were, and so I had potentially lost a lot of people and a lot of engagement by having them sit in this kind of stale funnel. That wasn't very interesting, at least in hindsight.
Speaker 1:Then the second thing was the tripwire. I didn't have one and I was also stuck with what do I make as a tripwire product, Because I understood it was supposed to be something cheap like $9. But I didn't know what to create and I didn't want to spend the time to make it and then put it out there and no one buys it. I'm like, well, that was a waste of time. And at the time, before working with you guys, I had my email sequence was or, sorry, my welcome email sequence was this kind of long, really detailed seven day course. Essentially it had quizzes and all these workflow tricks and things like that for Photoshop users and people. I always got tons of great emails about it saying, oh, thank you so much for this course. I really love it, all these things and like I knew that it was providing a lot of value and I thought, great, I've just I'm nailing this email sequence nailing this welcome email sequence.
Speaker 1:And but what if I could create something like this for my tripwire? Then when working with you guys, you're like why don't you just take that and make it a tripwire?
Speaker 2:And I'm like that'd be a really good idea.
Speaker 1:So I ended up just taking that exact thing that already existed in my welcome email sequence, made it a tripwire product, turned it on and like immediately it was working because I already knew it worked, I didn't have to make anything new and then adding the same offer as the upsell to the tripwire that would have been at the end of my welcome email sequence. It just kind of shifted everything a little bit earlier in the customer's journey of joining my list in a way. Rather than, rather than them waiting a whole week and then another week with the promotion, they potentially get everything right up front if they choose to buy it and then, if not, they will still get the promotion. That is the main welcome email sequence course that I that I offer there. So that was the first thing that we worked on and that was probably one of the biggest initial changes that occurred.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, cool. You cut out the three-month evergreen. You took your seven-day course. That was an opt-in and you made that into a tripwire. So how much were you charging for it as a tripwire?
Speaker 1:It's a $7 seven-day email course.
Speaker 2:How well is that converting? Like, what kind of percentage of people are getting that?
Speaker 1:Of all total leads. It's about five and a half percent. It goes up and down, but yeah, it's doing pretty well.
Speaker 2:So for context, for everybody listening, if you have a tripwire offer, if you can get between about three and 10%, that's the kind of range that we see. The top best we've ever had was 12, but that's kind of more of an outlier. Three to 10% is pretty solid, so five and a half is really good. So what did that mean in terms of increasing revenue once you made those changes?
Speaker 1:So between the tripwire and the welcome email sequence offer it's basically three. I've made three times more revenue from just that change alone compared to my previous welcome email sequence.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice, okay, yeah. So that's triple the revenue from that part of the funnel, and the previous welcoming sequence was that seven day one or seven day plus the next seven days during the promotion Exactly Great, okay, cool. And so you've got all that money coming in actually much faster now as well, which is cool, okay. So I want to take people through a couple of things that we've covered. So one is you had a very long evergreen sequence, and this is something I see people have a lot, and I feel like it's something that people are almost romantically attached to as a concept Because it sounds that you know the whole make money while you sleep, right, everybody wants that. That sounds really nice, that's great and to an extent, that's what we're doing with building out a course business.
Speaker 2:But the problem with it is that in my experience, live promotions work much better than evergreen sequences. Like the first two weeks great, absolutely. But once you get out to a longer period, it seems to not work as well, and there's a few reasons why you get out to a longer period it seems to not work as well, and there's a few reasons why. One is because when you do a launch live, you do an email promotion each month, live. You can tie it to a time of year. You can tie it to something that is going on at the moment new year, new you, photoshop has just launched a new product. There's this thing that's happening. Summer holidays are coming, christmas, whatever, whatever and that makes it feel more timely and relevant to people. Finding that initial hook. That's really important.
Speaker 2:Another one is that when you do an individual promotion each month, you get the chance to see which one worked, how it worked, how well it did, and then you can analyze that all in one go. And because it's all in one month, it's all in one go, you do actually analyze it at the time. You have all the numbers in one place. Now you have to be tracking it, which not everybody does, but I know that you do that now. So that really helps.
Speaker 2:And the third reason is shit breaks all the time and it's really really hard to see in a long, evergreen sequence that something has broken. You know, like you change a sales page, you come up with some clever idea, you a b test something. Now it's got slightly different url and all the old links are pointing to the old url or something like that. That kind of thing just happens and people just lose sales for months without realizing that something was broken and all of those. There might be other reasons, but in my experience it does tend to work that those manual campaigns work better, and those are kind of the things I've discovered so far as to as to why. So that's cool that you cut that down just a couple of weeks. You've got that working way better. So what else had you changed? What else did you adapted in your, in your funnel?
Speaker 1:Well, I guess the the next closest step after the welcome email sequence and tripwire that I changed was working with different order bumps and upsells. But that was something that I've struggled with for a while because, although, like I said, I've put them out there on my checkout pages and things, they didn't always work, especially to like the benchmarks that you would always be recommending, especially on this podcast, and I didn't really know why. I just assumed, oh, it's the product, that is the problem. I need to make something new. This clearly isn't working. I need, I need another option and I don't have that many products to sell after a certain point. You know I'm like OK, well, filter through all my, all my ammo here, I guess what do I do?
Speaker 1:So what you guys had suggested is working more on the like copy of the upsell pages and things like that, and that is what has made a massive difference actually just adding further context for like what the page is when you land on it, because before someone would check out, see the upsell page and it would kind of just say customize at the top. But I think for a lot of people it's a little confusing, like where am I? Why is I thought I just bought something. I I just want to get that thing Versus. Now I have a very clear area at the top saying like congratulations on purchasing this thing, this is what you've, this is why you bought it, kind of reaffirming their reasoning for purchasing that product.
Speaker 1:But here's this extra thing that's going to further improve your experience. And then tying in the upsell that way and making it very clear this is a special one-time offer. You can accept it or decline it below and then moving the button to accept or decline way to the bottom of the page so they can't just like instinctually click away and be like I don't want it, I don't want it. They have to scroll through all the sales copy which is basically the same as the sales page for the product, maybe look at the sales video and those kinds of things. So anyways, I went from selling like maybe one to 2% on an upsell to maybe 10, 12, 15% on even the same products, same products right, it'll still be the same course, same price, same everything.
Speaker 2:But then the page changed and the copy changed, and now it all works nice man, that's fantastic that's a real significant difference, huge, okay, so a few resources that we've got that I can point you to if you want to learn more about how to do some of the stuff that brenda has just been talking about. I mentioned before about the sales pages and for the upsell sales pages. That makes a really, really big difference. So if you go to datadrivenmarketingco slash pages, then there is an opt-in there where you can get the template that we use for creating great sales pages. And then the second one is we're talking about upsells, and if you want more info about how to get your order bumps and upsells in place, then go to datadrivenmarketingco slash revenue, and we've got a guide about how to get all of that set up as well. All right, cool. So so far, we've got the welcoming, more sequence, the tripwire, and we've got the order bumps and upsells. What else have you changed so?
Speaker 1:the next step from that was kind of working Oops, I'll just restart because I made that noise. So the next step from that was working on the email copy. And although I felt pretty good about my emails before, one thing I wasn't doing much of was the warm-up emails before promotion, like those three warm-up emails and I didn't really know what to put in them and I didn't know how to tie them all together so that people wanted to maybe read the next one or reply to it or how can I actually make it valuable while still leading to a promotion at the end of it. And that was something that I struggled with.
Speaker 1:But now that I understand kind of creating a customer avatar and those kinds of things, every time I do a promotion I kind of look at my customer avatar that's meant for the whole business and then I narrow it down to like who am I talking to and what's their specific problem? And I kind of vary this for every promotion depending on who I'm trying to target, I guess, and then I imagine what that most painful problem for that person is right now and then I create kind of like a story and some resources for that person. That is kind of getting them to think about the problem, getting them to have some quick takeaways that they could go and apply in Photoshop or in their photo editing or whatever, but then showing that this is just a small piece of the larger picture and that's where the product comes into play. Then showing that this is just a small piece of the larger picture and that's where the product comes into play. And I couldn't say specifically how much that is changing things, because I've changed a lot of stuff within the emails.
Speaker 1:But I know that that has definitely gotten a lot of responses. People thank me for the emails and those kinds of things, so I think it's on the right track because of that then, to make then, with that context of the value emails at least for me, I find it easier to make more direct and potent sales emails as well, because I'm able to tie it into a specific problem and not just like this general, like pie in the sky thing of like here's this, here's this very general problem that I'm not really saying specifically but hopefully you can imagine it. I'm saying like here's your problem, this is the tool that you're having a problem with, or something like that, and here's exactly how we can fix it, and kind of tying it to something that someone can imagine more, and so that, I think, has also made a big difference. People are clicking a lot more on my emails than they did. Like. The open to click rate is quite a bit higher. It used to be like around 1% or 1.3% and now it's like 2.7 plus percent. I think it's because I'm targeting a more specific problem and people are able to directly relate to it better that they're like okay, this course is the solution, not not second guessing that in a way. And then I've also made these call to actions within the emails. Rather than having like by now or something like that, I've been changing all the call to actions to like yes, I want transformation, you know, and that has improved.
Speaker 2:Nice the psychology with that. The reason for that is when the whole sales page you're talking to them, the call to action button is the one thing that is them doing it rather than you saying something to them. They are like, oh, I am now choosing this. So that's why it's important it's in the first person, because then the person reading it is thinking get, that's me saying that thing. As they're clicking it, it kind of is so it fits with their perspective on the entire thing, which is quite difficult when you're writing the sales page to have their perspective. But that's like a, that's a way of being able to do that.
Speaker 2:So a couple of podcast episodes I want to point you to. If you were listening to this and you're like, oh, I want to know more about how to do emails like this. So episode 131, how to send more emails without sounding too salesy, from April 4th 2024. And that's going to cover some of it. And then I'll also point you to episode 118, make $3 million using good email copy and urgency, and that's from January 11th 2024. So I think those two are going to be good ones to check out. And in terms of resources for the email promotions I want to point you to my templates for that which you can get at datadrivenmarketingco.
Speaker 2:Slash emails, and we'll put these links in the show notes and description as well. Okay, so you made all of those changes to your emails and we'll put these links in the show notes and description as well. Okay, so you made all of those changes to your emails. You improved your open to click rate from 1.3 to 2.7%. You've improved your call to action buttons all of this stuff, right? What kind of difference did that make in terms of sales? Did you see?
Speaker 1:Well, for example, in March I did a re-promotion of a previous course that had been out for a year and, as expected, like an older course, will do kind of progressively a little bit worse as time goes on, because more and more people see that course and they've seen the offer. There's only so many new people on your email list every month and so on. But I actually had my best ever month outside of the very first promotion. So it's been dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping since that promotion and then made these changes and now we're back to like a second best ever revenue for that course, which was pretty exciting and great to see. So that's a tangible difference that has been made from those changes.
Speaker 2:Now I know one of the other things that you'd done is you'd gone from one email promotion a month to two. Is that right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How did you feel about doing that? Because that's something that, like a lot of people that I talk to, they're already at the point where they're like doing only two or three promotions a year. So doing one a month is quite a big, a big jump for most people. How have you found doing two a month? Has your audience responded to that? What's the differences that made in terms of sales?
Speaker 1:so, for context, I previously was trying to do one promotion a month, about a year before we ever worked together. That in itself made a huge difference. But then I thought, okay, I couldn't do two because basically what you just said, it's going to be too too much for people. And I already got emails from people saying you sell too much, like you're a scammer, all these things, and I'm like what are you? What are you talking about? I'm just selling a course. If you don't want it, unsubscribe or like whatever. So I was a little bit apprehensive a little weird, isn't it?
Speaker 2:some people, have got very strange beliefs about the world.
Speaker 1:yes, and those emails used to kind of bother me, but now I don't really care that much and so I went into like working with you guys with that kind of mindset of like I'm just going to do what you guys say and people, some people aren't going to like it, but some people might, and we'll let the numbers talk and just go from there.
Speaker 1:So I said, great, we're going to do these two promotions and that has made such a difference because I mean, everyone can imagine, you do one promotion, you make more money, you make two no-transcript, one main offer that's a little more expensive, and then one flash sale that's shorter and cheaper. I was like, okay, I get it now. So then I could take things that were like my order bumps or like little digital products that I don't really talk about that often. I can use those as the flash sales. And then I have my courses and things as the main promotions every month. So that has been like really easy for me to kind of separate into two parts and always have something to promote. Essentially Nice.
Speaker 2:I think it's. For a while I stopped telling everybody to do two promotions a month because I felt like no one's even listening to me about one. How am I going to Clients? Yes, absolutely. But like on the podcast, I was like, okay, let me just say one, but it's, this is basically what we do. We used to. We had some clients where we used to do two full promotions a month and we did find it started to burn out the list more and it's very time consuming.
Speaker 2:And then we went to this testing this out. I think maybe a year ago we started testing it internally with done for you clients and we were doing one full promotion and one flash sale and it was like, yeah, that actually works. It allows enough time for fitting in useful, valuable content. It increases sales enough. It course promotion and then the second one would be a challenge. So every month they would have these two different promotions go out. And the challenge was a cheap thing. It was like and 39 or something like that, but it brought in a significant amount of extra revenue not as much as the main course, but it was less emails to send, it was easier to do. So the whole thing worked really well. Nice, okay, cool.
Speaker 2:So I want to summarize back for everybody and let's see if I've got everything down here. So you updated your tripwire funnel, you made the opt-in into the tripwire, you updated the welcoming email sequence and cut the three-month evergreen sequence and that allowed you to about three times the revenue that you got from that tripwire and the welcoming email sequence. You then added order bumps and upsells my sequence. You then added order bumps and upsells and no.
Speaker 2:So you had order bumps and upsells, but you improved the copy for them and that allowed you, with your upsells, for example, to go from like one to two percent to like 10 to 12 percent something like that which is from that particular bit six times or 10 times more revenue, whatever it is, but like in terms of the you know, within the context of of, if you're selling a course for $199, you're selling an upsell for $199.
Speaker 2:If you go from 2% to 12%, you're making about 10% more revenue overall within that particular funnel, that particular promotion, which is a significant increase, especially if you then have that every single time you're running it Improved your copy on the upsells, single time you're running it improved your copy on the upsells and the order bumps. You improved your emails, you improved your call to action buttons, you went from one promotion a month to two promotions a month, with the second one being a flash sale, and you started using your lower ticket offers stuff that was order bumps or upsells or digital products. You didn't talk about a lot in that kind of place. What kind of difference overall, when you put all of that together, what kind of difference has that made to revenue overall?
Speaker 1:Yeah, in total it basically takes my average monthly and doubles it from what I had before. And I was just doing one promotion a month without the welcome email sequence changes, and then now, with all those changes in place, yeah, I'm making about double on average than I was before, which is a humongous difference.
Speaker 2:Nice, I'm delighted for you. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. I appreciate all that you guys do. It really has helped.
Speaker 2:One of the things I want to say I'm trying to be listening to this about Brendan and the way that he works, which I hear from the team on a regular basis. I don't know if you know this we talk about you behind your back. Oh, that's great to hear. Dominic will come to me and go oh, Brendan's so good. He just takes everything and then he does it. He just goes and he implements it.
Speaker 2:And this is one of the things that, like all of our most successful clients, I hear this feedback again and again of like they took what I told them to do and then they went and did it. And the least successful ones, the ones who go, they take two to three months to try and implement it because they're being perfectionist about it. And I know how difficult this is because I struggle with this myself. Like I am going through training at the moment from somebody about growing our YouTube channel and I am taking everything that he says and I'm working on it many hours a week, but I can see myself being perfectionist and not launching things fast enough, not moving fast enough and things I'm like oh my God, John, just do the thing you're supposed to. So I get that.
Speaker 2:It's difficult, but you managed to do that really well and I think that's a massive credit to you. And I think that's something that we can all learn from people listening to this Me. Everybody can learn from this in terms of going like right when the when your coach knows what they're talking about, listen to them and do the thing and don't overthink it, just like crack on, get the thing done even if it's not perfect, as long as it got better, and then the next time it gets better, next time it gets better. So real credit to you on that one. Well thanks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've kind of been taking the mindset of like, is this 80 good? Okay, great, that's it moving on. And that has made my life a lot easier because I can always change it later. Nothing's set in stone. People are going to forget about the promotions or my bad sales page. It's always going to change, so who cares.
Speaker 2:Nice, anything else. Was there anything else that you changed in your funnels, your sales pages, anything else that people should know about?
Speaker 1:I don't. I honestly I don't think I changed that much more on the sales pages and things. I changed up a little bit of the formatting but I think that's more like personal to my business and I don't know if it'd be super applicable to any listener necessarily, because I was still following like the pain agitate solution, introduction bonuses, all those kinds of things. I just kind of like updated some of the formatting in general. So I don't know if those changes are like that useful for people. Do you describe to everybody briefly what the pain agitation solution?
Speaker 2:section is on the sales page Because almost nobody does this. Those changes are like that useful for people. Do you describe to everybody briefly what the pain agitation solution section is on the sales page because almost nobody does this? Like every time I look at someone's sales page like not clients of ours, but like just generally when I look at sales pages, this is just a section that people just miss, like as if it doesn't exist because people don't know about it. If you want to see the details about this, then I've mentioned this already but there's that template that I've got that you can download at datadrivenmarketingcom. I've got details about what this is, but would you kind of talk people through that particular section of the page.
Speaker 1:Sure. So the pain agitation solution sections of the sales page are below the headline and the first call to action button in your VSL if you have one and it's basically calling out a specific person with a specific pain, such as I can't use Photoshop and I've spent hours working on Photoshop, I've still not, is still not feeling any easier. Then you're agitating that solution by saying, yes, you have spent all these hours doing it and you aren't able to create what you want. You feel limited by this and this is going to cost you in X, Y and Z ways, such as not creating the projects that you want, not sharing the work that you know you're capable of, etc. And then positioning the solution of well, here's possibly why you're going wrong with these things.
Speaker 1:Here are some common mistakes, but there's a system or a process that can solve those problems and get you to that dream result that you're looking for. Let me show you what that is and then going into your product offering, explaining what that is, what's inside of it, showing those testimonials proving how that solution actually works for that problem that you're kind of posing at the beginning, and hopefully you're using headings along the way through all these paint agitate solution sections and onwards, that kind of stop people to scroll through your sales page and be like, well, that's me. Or oh, that's that's interesting, how can this help me? Or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the reason why this matters so much is because if people don't think you understand their problem, then why on earth would they think that your solution is going to solve it? Why would they think that your course is going to solve their problem if they don't even think you understand their problem? But, on the flip side, if you can show that you understand their problem better than they understand it themselves, they almost assume that your solution will solve it, even before finding out the details about it. It's like, oh my God, he gets me, he actually understands what it is that I'm going through details about it. It's like, oh my God, he gets me, he actually understands what it is that I'm going through.
Speaker 2:I have this frustration, this annoyance, this irritation, this thing that I'm trying to do, that I keep failing at and I kind of stuck with it. I don't even know why I keep failing with it. And then you can say to them do you have this problem? Do you have this frustration, this irritation, this thing that you keep getting stuck with? They're like, yes, yes, and you go. Well, the problem there is. Whatever the reason that you're struggling with, that is because of this other thing. And they go oh my god, that's the, that's what's going on here. He actually understands not only what my problem is but why I've got that.
Speaker 2:And I can see, now that you've explained it, all the knock-on effects this is having in my life that I hadn't even really thought through myself. You know, I wasn't like really consciously aware of. And then you're like oh, I've got the solution to. It's like oh my god, thank goodness, thank goodness, you've come to save me. And it's like people just don't even think about this. They go into just describing what's in the course, as if this is obvious, that and you know it is right as the course creator. Well, why on earth would I create the course if it wasn't to solve this problem? But you have to say it to people. You can't just know it. That's no good knowing it, you have to say it to people.
Speaker 2:You can't just know it, that's no good knowing it. You have to actually write it down on the page so they can read it and go. Oh, I see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel that if you don't have a pain agitate solution section, you're just saying here's a course, hopefully you can figure out what it is, and no one wants to buy a course for the sake of having a course. They want to buy a course to solve something, because that's the only reason why anyone buys a course. So the pain agitate solution proves why they need to buy this thing and why this is the perfect course and not this other person's course or whatever. The better you can speak to them, the better they're like oh, this is it yeah, love that.
Speaker 2:Okay, any more advice for people who are feeling a bit stuck in their in their business growth, because I know there's some other stuff that you've started implementing in terms of behind the scenes things that we, we teach the first thing is tracking everything.
Speaker 1:I was really bad at this because I would just look at my convert kit dashboard every now and then and be like, okay, yeah, that's an open rate and that's a click rate, but I don't know what that means, I don't know what to do with this information. Or I would like I even had heat maps installed on my sales pages and I was like, cool, okay, what do I do with that? You know? And now now, after like working with you guys, I get what I'm supposed to be looking for now, like what? Comparing your benchmarks compared to what I'm seeing at every step of the funnel, so from email open rate to click rate, to sales page views, to click through rate, to the checkout, to order bump conversions, to upsell conversions and so on. And so by tracking every number throughout that whole thing even starting from like how many unique visitors that I get this month compared to leads, and how many of those leads ended up buying my tripwire and then bought the upsell, and so on and so forth, like all the way down the line it makes it so much easier to understand what's going on and not feel so overwhelmed by like I have a thousand things that I'm looking at. But what is important, I can see every step of the process and be like, oh, that here isn't meeting the benchmark it should be, so I should fix this. And then it's like one direct problem I can go and solve. And then I solve it. I wait, the numbers change or they don't, and then you do it again until it's working.
Speaker 1:Basically, so that has really changed things for me, because I used to feel, or I used to work off of like kind of gut instinct, of like, oh, this email just doesn't feel good, I'm going to make a new one, or this sales page isn't working, I'm going to make a new one, or whatever you know. And I had no idea whether that was making a change or not, it just made me feel better. And then now I'll be like, oh, this promotion isn't working, or like, this sales copy just isn't working. And then I'm like, hey, look at the numbers first. What do they say? Okay, things are fine, move on, this isn't a problem, your feelings are. That has helped a lot.
Speaker 1:So I've been doing that weekly for my welcome email sequence and the tripwire, I guess, and then I have a monthly total tripwire tracking and then I of course, track every promotion that I do. So every email based on, like the are sent, how many people viewed the checkout and, of those people, how many people bought something, what was the revenue each day. So it's actually been quite interesting to see the correlation between the different stages of the promotional email sequence and which ones pretty much always will make more sales than another, which has also given me some peace of mind during a promotion, when, say, one day is really quiet, I'm not like, oh my God, it's not working. I need to like sell everything because I'm not going to make any money again. I know that, okay, based on all this other data that I have from the last many months, these other emails are going to perform and they always do so. Tracking everything has changed. My life Makes me so happy.
Speaker 2:I talk to people about spreadsheets and the importance of them and their eyes glaze over and I'm like no, you don't understand.
Speaker 2:You don't understand. I'm not saying spreadsheets are fun. I'm not saying spreadsheets are fun. I'm saying your life is better when you know how to track things, you know how to analyze it, because you can make good decisions. And without that you just go, like you're saying, based on your feelings, and it's like I don't know about you but my feelings jump around all over the place. I cannot make good decisions based on my emotions, like some days I'm happier, some days I'm sadder. This is irrelevant. To like what is actually a good decision, a good idea, like it's important for my own mental health, sure, but it's not important for good business decision making yeah, 100%. And I think there's something else wasn't there that you said was a good resource. From another podcast episode you'd heard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from another podcast I don't know which number it was in, but someone had recommended a book called Profit First, which I ended up reading after that podcast. And essentially, to summarize this book, it just helps with explaining a methodology for how you use your revenue within your business between, like, your operating expenses, your obviously your tax accounts, how much you're paying yourself and making sure. Oh, he's got the book right there. Nice, making sure that you're always making profit rather than just like spending and hoping that you make profit off of your expenses.
Speaker 1:And that has given me so much peace of mind, because before I would be like I don't know how much I can spend on, say, like ads or hiring this person or whatever, so I just wouldn't. And then I would constantly be on edge of like, oh I'm not, I don't have enough money, because I just wasn't sure what I needed for everything. But then now, after breaking everything down into percentages based on that book, I can always pay myself the same every single month, that I know exactly what's what I'm going to be making, I know what I can spend on the business and I don't have to worry about that. I am always making extra on top and, of course, I'm able to pay my taxes, which is very important, and that's that. So that has really given me a lot of peace of mind on top of this. So, like spreadsheets and that book, I'm like Zen now.
Speaker 2:Almost. Yeah, I love it. When I first read that book, I was like it sounds like nonsense. You can't take the profits first. You've got to have the profits. It's just whatever's left over after you've spent all your expenses. And what I realized after many years was there's always places in a business to spend money. There's always things that you can spend money on that seem like a great idea, and it doesn't mean they are like I would spend money on, like okay, I'm going to get, I've got money in the bank account. There's this coaching I've heard about. I'm going to sign up for it, but it wasn't the thing that I needed to be working on next, and so I couldn't put enough time into it, and everything takes longer than you think it will do, and so it ended up being just like no-transcript. Have you? I've just managed to make the business so much more profitable, and it's like what I did actually when I um to implement the idea from that.
Speaker 2:The kind of crucial idea of taking the profits first is.
Speaker 2:I told my accountant to take a certain small percentage of profits, starting in three months time, and put it aside to come out as dividends, and so he he started doing that, and it's like now that that money's just gone from the bank, from the business account.
Speaker 2:So I now have to work within that constraint and I'm supposed to get paid profits. That's how the business is supposed to work. You're supposed to get profits out. And then I told him, like okay, in another, after a while, it's like in another three months, increase that to this percentage, and so then that higher percentage is coming out, like over time we're going to gradually work up to the to the goal percentage. And he kind of lays that all out in that book and in profit first. Okay, if anybody is listening to this and they're thinking this sounds great, I love the idea of the, the kind of coaching that brendan's been getting and how helpful that sounds, can you talk them through a little bit about the Instant Course Sales program and how it works and what you found? You know what parts of that you found useful in terms of implementing what we've talked about today.
Speaker 1:So there's kind of like two pieces to it.
Speaker 1:There's like a video course that you can kind of work through at your own pace, and then they have tons of PDF resources and things for extra context, such as like sales page templates or email subject line templates or things like that, and then you can go and do your own things with that information.
Speaker 1:But then we also have the weekly coaching calls as well as kind of a chat that you can use at any time with someone from your team.
Speaker 1:In my case, dominic is the person I've been working with for the most part the last few months and there I can ask any questions that I need, which I pretty much do every day. And then there's the weekly calls that I try to attend most of the time, and then there you can ask questions and kind of hear what other people are up to as well, which has been interesting and sometimes useful, because maybe it's a problem that I've been thinking about and someone asked about it. So, yeah, between all those things it's, I feel like I get all of the touch points that I would want, cause I I feel like I'm pretty self-directed, so I don't want someone constantly needing like a call every day with a coach Like I, I am happy to just work on, go at your own pace course, have these like chat things that I can get to when I get to them and just kind of dump things, questions in there when I need and then kind of one call a week that if I have any major questions.
Speaker 1:I can go and get those answers there, so I've been finding it very useful.
Speaker 2:Nice, great. If you are interested in that and you want to sign up or you want to have a chat about it, you can go to datadrivenmarketingco slash call and make a call with Dominic for 15 minutes and just kind of, we'll learn a little bit about you and your business and check if this would be a good fit. And if it is, then he'll put you through to talk to me or to Yosip where we can learn more about your business and then if we agree it's a good fit, then we'll explain to you like how the program works and the pricing and that kind of stuff. It's pretty reasonably priced. I think that's fair. Did you say that, brendan?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, I would say so. Considering all the resources that I get and the fact that, like, from doing all the work and implementing all the things that you've said, I've been able to double my revenue within four months, basically, that's pretty much more than pays for what I pay you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's kind of the normal results that we're mostly seeing is most people double their revenue within a few months, and that's kind of the goal that we've got. I double your revenue in 90 days is our goal. All right, cool. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate you doing it. I had to badger you for only two years before you agreed, so thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me on, glad to be here finally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's great and I love the timing of it the fact you can now talk about everything you've implemented and how it's kind of worked, and hopefully everybody listening can benefit a lot from that and go and implement those tactics. Thank you, dear listener, so much as always, and we will see you next time.