The Art of Selling Online Courses

227 How I Made $650K+ Selling Courses

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 227

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Alison Ellis has made over $650K selling online courses to florists over the last 10 years. She's got 10,000+ students enrolled in her programs and literally built her office from the course revenue.

But here's the thing.. a lot of the "proven" strategies just didn't work for her audience.

Tripwire funnels? Didn't convert. Webinars? People signed up but didn't show. High-pressure countdown timers? Her audience doesn't respond to urgency the same way.

Why? Because florists are creatives. They got into flowers because they love flowers, not because they love marketing. They'll spend $5K on a fancy design workshop but hesitate on a $500 business course.

In this episode we dig into what actually works when you're selling to people who don't think like marketers. How Alison went from making YouTube videos she didn't think anyone watched.. to $9K in her first five weeks.. to building a course business that's been running for a decade.

We talk about her Flower Math course, her $1,500 Art of Good Business program, her Patreon membership, the in-person workshop she runs in Vermont, and what she's changing this year to get more sales.

If you sell to creatives, coaches, artists, or anyone who's not naturally business-minded.. this one's for you.

🔗 Check out Alison's website at https://realflowerbusiness.com

🌸 Find Alison on Instagram and YouTube at @realflowerbusiness

SPEAKER_01:

There was a table of designers that said, why don't you ask Allison? She's the pricing guru. And that's when it occurred to me for the first time ever, truly, that people didn't know how to price their flowers. And then it was basically about five weeks from that moment to when I released my first album. I made about$9,000 in five weeks at first. The lifetime on the courses is a little over$650,000. My ads manager is like there's an endless well of people opting it. Once they do buy, they are most likely to buy every single thing that I produce.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the Art of Selling Online Courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret ads. Top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Angel, and today's guest is Allison Elliott. Now, Allison is the founder of Realflower Business.com, the creator of Flower Map, and the author of Falling Into Flowers, which is a step-by-step guide to today's modern wedding business. It's a floral designer and educator who teaches florists around the world how to increase their income, how to find more freedom in their small business with honest, actionable strategies, and step-by-step online courses. 2015, over 10,000 florists around the world have enrolled in Allison's business courses, her private group coaching, and the free resources for florists. Allison, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

So I've covered it a little bit there in the intro, but talk us through just in a bit more detail. Who do you help with your courses?

SPEAKER_01:

Who do you help with your courses? I teach floral designers, I call them floralpreneurs, how to run the business side of their business. Because what I have learned is most people start their floral design business because they love flowers, not because they love marketing or that they have any sales skills. They've never written a proposal for a wedding, perhaps, right? And they don't know how to price for profit. So knowing that that's something that I'm super passionate about, uh, it's something that I have become passionate about teaching others to do because it's not rocket science. It there are formulas that I follow that I learned from flower shops. Like I didn't invent any of this. That's the beauty. I didn't have to make it up. But what I do is I give them a super shortcut on client communication, pricing, marketing, everything, basically. That's the business side. And uh yeah, that's that's my lane, and that's what I love to do.

SPEAKER_00:

What caused you to get started doing that? So I assume you were running a florist yourself before you started teaching other people about it. At what point did you think, man, I should start telling other like, did you have people asking you all the time, like, how do you do it, Allison? Like, how did it happen?

SPEAKER_01:

Great story, actually. I'm excited to tell you. Okay, so I always get to talk about flowers. I never get to talk about course. So I started this about 10 years ago, and it was very organic. So what happened was I went to a workshop and I met other floral designers. So while I was there, you know, I went into the ladies' room at this, you know, convention that we were at. And this girl looked at me from across the the sinks and she said, Oh my God, I'm your biggest fan. And I just couldn't believe that she knew who I was. I had been making YouTube videos and sharing them with another uh blogger who had an audience. And I reached out to her, you know, years earlier and I said, Hey, could I start writing guest posts for you? Sure, you can write guest posts for me. So I wrote posts. Then, you know, I like to follow what the cool kids are doing, and video was all the rate. So I started making videos and I would send them to her and she would post them. It had never occurred to me, John, that people were actually watching these videos.

SPEAKER_00:

You might meet one of them in a in a toilet.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. Genuinely. So when she says to me from across the sinks, you know, I'm your biggest fan, it was just, you know, I guess an aha moment. Like, oh yeah, people are watching. Then fast forward to one year later, I was back at the same workshop and we were making this gorgeous, elaborate centerpiece. And of course, people were trying to run real businesses. Can you sell this? What would you price this at? So there was a table of designers that said, Why don't you ask Allison? She's the pricing guru. And that's when it occurred to me for the first time ever, truly, that people didn't know how to price their flowers. So I sat there, I did the math, I told them what I would price it for. We had big long discussions. And then it was basically about five weeks from that moment to when I released my first online course.

SPEAKER_00:

So that would be 2016, then, is that right? That's 2015. Okay. So how long had you been doing YouTube videos for before that first convention?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna say a couple of years, maybe.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. You were teaching people in the videos about pricing, but you never thought that anybody else didn't know how to price. Like I I'm trying to make sense of the kind of the process.

SPEAKER_01:

I know. It's uh what I was doing was just sort of talking. The only way I could describe it is I was just talking to talk. I had opinions and ideas, you know? I needed to express them. And so this person who I had never met, I've still never met her in person, but like I I ended up having my own section on her blog. Like I'm a blog category, you know? So it was just again organic. Something said, you have something to say. So I would talk about, to answer your question more specifically, stuff. I would talk about should you do a mock-up before you book a client? Or should you charge for that mock-up? Or what do you charge for delivery? Or how do you talk to clients about how much information you'll give them before they book you? Common, just mostly customer problems, right? Back and forth. Um, and then yeah, it just sort of organically turned to I was confident about pricing. I like to talk about money. A little, I'll do I like to talk about money. So I would talk about what do you charge? What's the profit margin? And yeah, so that first time somebody said, ask Allison, she's the pricing guru. It was like this huge light bulb moment that then became, I have to figure out how to teach people how to do this because it's so easy. And then it was like these things just started falling from the sky, literally. So all of a sudden, I have this idea, I gotta do this. Like I'll I'll have to make an online course. I don't know anything about that. Again, this is 10 years ago. There's no Kajabi, I don't think. I don't think maybe there's no. Now we have to go make sure I'm not lying. But uh, at least I hadn't heard of it. So, but yeah, I ended up going to myself, all right, you're gonna have to make an online course. You don't know how to do this. And then, like magic that day on Facebook comes an ad, learn how to make an online course. One out in one hour, there's a webinar.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, okay. Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

I was there at the webinar, bought the thing. It was a hundred dollars for this plug-in that went on my WordPress site, and I was able to sell courses and I made a course. I just did videos, you know, in my old office. I'm now in the office that the courses built. We built, I was able to build myself an office. But, you know, at the time, I'm in my little office with like lamps, just filming the course content and getting it all together. And I released it in October of 2015. Of course, the goal was you could sell five figures, five figures in a month, right? That's your goal.$10,000 a month. I made about$9,000 in five weeks with that first launch. Oh, wow. Right. Yeah. No kidding, right? So and all I thought was, okay, this is it. This is what I have. It's this one course, and that's it. Flower math. That's it. Just flower math, the florist guide to pricing and profitability. And by the end of probably five weeks, I was already like, I can't just talk about this every single day. Right. What am I gonna do? So, and of course, the actual advice, especially back then, was has to be only available for a limited window. It's for sale, they can get it for this week, these two weeks, whatever it is, and then it's closed until next year, you know? So that's what I was gonna do, was gonna close the doors on flower math. And a friend of mine who didn't sell online courses at the time, but now she does, she said, How are you gonna close this? You just started it. I said, Boy, you have a point. Oh, yeah. Yes, maybe that's not the smartest thing. And I'm glad I didn't close it. It has been open ever since. So it's always open for enrollment at all times. And then of course I went on to make more courses and more courses and more courses.

SPEAKER_00:

And give people now some kind of idea of the size of your business. You mentioned you had that$11,000 in the first five weeks. If you're happy to then share revenue, otherwise, like maybe number of customers or something to give people some kind of idea.

SPEAKER_01:

I am happy to talk about numbers. I was actually glad you asked about that because again, I like to talk about money. So I liked that you asked that question because it made you you asked uh in our you know pre-interview, what's the the lifetime revenue? And it made me stop and go back and look, you know, because I went, huh? That's uh wouldn't I that kind of be nice to know, wouldn't it? So without including, because I do still run my floral design business. So I never stopped doing that. And so these are two part-time businesses, right? Or two full-time businesses that I run. But the lifetime on the courses is probably a little over 650 grand since I started. It was slow going at first, right? Then I started to hit a stride. Of course, during COVID is when I had my best sales. It and then over the last couple of years, it hasn't been as I haven't been selling as much. And I think there are a lot of reasons why that I'm gonna be fixing this year, you know? Some of it is just capacity, but um, overall, my goal is to be doing this for a long time and not to just make quick sales and then burn out, which is what I see so many course creators do.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, definitely don't want that. So, how often are you doing like a promotion of one of your your courses to your audience?

SPEAKER_01:

I do a promotion at least once every quarter, but it's probably closer to almost every month that there's something that I'm trying to bring them to or a live stream or something that I'm offering, even if it's a free thing. I'm trying to keep it moving in terms of not just I'm not relying on a sales funnel to automatically deliver things. I'm trying to keep things in real time, like what's going on this month, what am I selling this month, what are we enrolling this month, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's the that's the kind of frequency we found have have a promotion of one course or program, even if it's a low-ticket thing, like ideal is something a bit more expensive, like at least a few hundred dollars. But um, and I think with because you're you're talking to business owners, not consumers, then that can be a little higher your number than maybe if someone was selling, you know, uh how to play the guitar, then that's like, okay, maybe it's like$100,$200. Yours is like, I think your flower math costs like$500, right? Something, something like that.

SPEAKER_01:

It's interesting. Over the years, I have learned so much. I have had so many misconceptions, or I've taken other people's beliefs and been like, oh, I'm falling short because I'm not doing X, Y, or Z. Um, and what I've come to at this point is I don't know, not to sound too like woo-woo or something, but it's just like everything happens for a reason, right? Everything, everyone's on their path. The things that I've tried in the past that haven't worked, which I feel like is just about everything at this point, meaning, right? I've tried funnels, I've tried pitches, I've tried, okay, so you sign up for my free proposal tips, and then I'm pitching you my$99 how to write a proposal template, horrible sales. Give you a discount. So you save money on it, horrible sales. There's all these attempts and adjustments. And what I feel like I've really learned at this point is it is about the consistency, the showing up. It's not about just a perfect word in an email. It's about the trust. It's about where they are on their journey. And my customers, and if they're out there listening, I love them, they are cheap. And they know this. They're very cheap. They are very, very cheap. It's not the same as the like selling B2B to somebody like me who's a course creator. Like, I have absolutely like gotten on a call where I'm like, I know I'm not buying this thing, but I'll just take their tips. And I'm literally signing up for a$10,000 program at the end. My customers would never do that. They would never jump into a$10,000 program because they know that the result is what they're looking for and they're not looking to mess around. They will struggle with that problem for years. I will tell you this, John. People will buy my flower math course on sale because I do say a sale a couple times a year. And then they will email me, like someone just the other day. I bought your course in March. Yes, you did. March of the previous year. You bought this pricing course that will teach you how to make more money in less than a couple of hours, frankly. Very easy, or confirm for you that you are doing it right. Right. And it has been over a year and a half and you have not looked at it. That is my customer. Unfortunately, I like it, I love them. But that is who they are. So I have a big hurdle to get over, which is that they even if they buy, even if they know it's gonna help them, they might not take the course. But what I've also learned is once they do buy, they are most likely to buy every single thing that I produce. They will come. I have people coming from across the country to my workshop for the second time because they've bought all of my things, they've made more money, just bought herself a van for her flowers, snaps to Carissa. Anyway, I think it's really like the kind of thing where I still need to recognize the potential that I have to create more of a journey for them. That it's not about getting more people to buy. I do want to make sales, but I also care more that they actually do the course. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

They get the result, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because they will get a result immediately. And then they could buy more courses from me because they'll have more money, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It's selfish, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

No, we do a lot of that as well. If somebody buys one of our courses, then we treat that as like the okay, that's the that's the almost the starting point. It's like, right, okay. Then we're gonna follow up and be like, okay, well, did you do that yet? What are you looking to achieve? How can we help you more? What are the tips you need? Like, okay, you need to start with this module, and that's gonna get your result. Because I know as soon as someone starts getting a result with it, once they actually start doing something, they're much more likely to then get dopamine from it and go, oh, this it actually works. This isn't just like this sounds good. It's like I actually made more money. Well, let me try another tip. And it's like that might not do everything, but at least they'll kind of get going. So um Yes. One of the things you said to me is you want to make more uh convert more of your email opt-ins to sales within a day or two of signing up. Um are you up for kind of talking that through and looking looking at what your process is at the moment?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

So, what do you do? So I looked at your confirmation page after someone signs up for your lead magnet. And there's a couple of things on there. Do you remember what you've got on there? Could you kind of talk us through it or do you want me to tell you what I've seen?

SPEAKER_01:

It would depend on what the opt-in was. Was it my free ebook?

SPEAKER_00:

It was free ebook about. Let me see if I can remember. Uh it was a free e-book about.

SPEAKER_01:

Everything I wish I knew before I started my business.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Could well be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Boy, I am gonna be very honest and embarrassed in saying I don't know because I change it fairly often. So there could be a video that welcomes you to the book, or there could not be, because I could have decided that I needed to re-record it and didn't replace it. There is most likely some sort of call to action to either join my Facebook group or buy flower math, is what I'm guessing.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Tell me where I'm a video that was like almost an indoctrination kind of video, just explaining the concept, like why you'd done this, what your background was, what you're trying to achieve. You did talk about the Facebook group. You had a video and there was an audio as well, which were a little bit different to each other, and someone could download the ebook directly from that page as well. So it's a kind of a there was a kind of few things going on there. What for you, what is the logical next step? If someone signs up for that ebook, what should most of them do next? Like what's the what's the first thing they should buy?

SPEAKER_01:

That is such a good question, and a hard one, which I feel like sounds like an excuse already, but I'll tell you why. Because everybody is some at a different place. The easy, reflexive answer would be, well, they should buy flower math because everyone needs flower math. But the truth is, some people, most people don't have a business plan at all. So I have a very low-ticket business plan jumpstart course. Again, that's my tripwire that I made many, many years ago. It does not act like a tripwire, okay? I will, it just doesn't. It's very, very interesting. The I'm gonna call them problems, but the the problems that I have had with implementing the traditional funnel stuff because the way my customer is, they don't want to interact with that stuff. Like I respond to a funnel because I am solving a different problem than what my customer thinks they're solving. So they don't feel that urgency. If it's a sale from flower mouth sales ending tomorrow, they feel the urgency. But I the high pressure, you know, you're leaving money on the table right now doesn't relate to them. In fact, I've actually had somebody say to me, What does leaving money on the table mean? Oh, John, oh, let me tell you. So that's when I go, okay, who are these people? They're really different. They're really different than me, who is so passionate about business, who wants to solve the problem, who sees that if I buy this coaching that I swore I wasn't gonna get for$10,000, I know I'm gonna make that back in my first launch or within three months or whatever. I know I can rinse and repeat what I learned here, you know? It's just they're different, uh, different mindset.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you but anyway, back to you helping to start segments? Are there like different segments of them of like, okay, some people have different problems and they're they're very different to each other, or is it like they tend to be like, okay, well, 60% of them should start with this thing?

SPEAKER_01:

They're very different. If I could tell them what they need, see, this is the difference between what they think they need and what they really need.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

What they really need is probably my complete course bundle, if I'm being honest. So I appreciate you asking this question because that would never be what I would say, right? But of course, what they should do is get my most expensive, most comprehensive program because it has how to price, how to talk to customers, the contract. The proposal, the workflow, every single thing you should be doing, right? My website bootcamp, it has all of the things. So that is the thing that probably most people need. And ultimately, over time, my students, like the ones who come to my workshop or repeat show up for I do this training every January and you have lifetime access. The people who keep showing up, those are the people who are still looking to buy more. Um, they always usually end up buying all of those things, and then we're at the end where I guess now you have to come to Vermont to come to the workshop, right?

SPEAKER_00:

It's it's about two and a half grand, right? That total bundle. Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

It's like$22.88 or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's probably pretty hard to sell to the new person who's just signed up.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, sort of, except get this. Get this. These same people will spend$69 a month on a membership to learn floral design. So they will be overinvested on workshops. They'll spend$5,000 to go to a workshop with someone who seems fancy, who's teaching big designs that they themselves probably will not really sell.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So they're interesting. They're interesting, they're challenging because it's not that they don't have it, it's that they will spend it on learning how to do floral design skills, also very important in our job. But that's why what I try to emphasize is you can't stay in business just being a talented floral designer. You have to know how to price. So if you just did flower math first, you'd be able to invest in even more workshops over time. Um, but yeah, so that's that's part of it too. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00:

So maybe flower math is kind of the one they need the most. The ideal would be the whole bundle. That's probably too expensive to sell straight away. Like normally you're saying about tripwire, right? So normally when we're doing something that we sell immediately after someone signed up for lead magnet, we're looking at like super cheap, like something that might normally be a hundred odd bucks and we sell it for 27 or something like that. So it's just get someone in the door and they go, Oh, yeah, I got that. That was cool, I liked it. What else do you got?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Now if you're selling like so I was working with um the guys over at Authority Hacker, which is they they uh they teach, well nowadays they teach AI, but they used to teach um SEO, like how to s how to build uh website traffic. And what they had as their opening offer was it went to a webinar and then the webinar promoted a$1,000 course for like$600. Something, something along those kind of lines. I'm just kind of wondering like if the the flower mouth is the place that people should start, whether that might be have you have you run webinars before? You said you've tried everything, so tell me.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, you don't even know. Yes. So for ye again, I love it, like love this conversation because it's just I when I say I have done everything, I I really am not just saying that. So yes, I had for years an opt-in, three numbers florists need to know. Opt-in's like crazy, right? Like my ads manager is like, you there's an endless well of people opting in, right? But again, how do we get them to buy? Because they would uh they would join three numbers to know. It's not a very long webinar, they're not watching it, they're signed up for it. Then I turned it into um a webinar that I teach live. So I do that at least twice a year. I love teaching it, it's so fun to do. It usually obviously is like a launch, so I'll have sales. But it is so interesting how many people sign up now and do not attend, right? This is not a new story that you're hearing. So the effectiveness of it, the idea that I need to have 1,500 people on this email list to attend this webinar, and there are less than 50 that show up, you go, are they that interested? Then they're not watching the replay. Again, they want the information. You know, when you go, okay, what's your ideal customer's dream solution, right? No boundaries, doesn't have to be attainable, doesn't have to be realistic. Great. What is that? They would like through osmosis, the things in my brain to go into their brain. And that is the truth. That is what they would like. They would like to not watch a less than one hour webinar to make sure you're making profit. It's a challenge. It is a challenge. So I think that is why continuing to show up and not feeling the urgency that they have to buy it today, even though I would like to. I would love for them to buy it. I would love for them to watch the webinar and then buy. Even with the ebook, I was gonna give the pedestrian answer of well, what would you like them to do? I would like them to read the ebook. And I bet most of them don't. But if they did, they would buy from me because they would like me. The ones who read it are always like, Oh, I loved your, I loved the book. It was so validating. I, you know, blah, blah, blah. So, and yeah, I've done everything from inside every course. There's a place to upgrade. People don't do it. It's so rare. Like when someone upgrades, I go, who is how have they done this? My goodness, look at this upgrade. Because most people don't. Now, I should and could push it more. And that is what is gonna be my big change this year. So if I'm being honest about when I was the most profitable making the most sales, it was when I was doing lots and lots of free calls, free calls, free calls, free calls. Almost always converted into some sort of a sale.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So while I really felt like I didn't have time to do that anymore, I could start doing that again and see if people but people also like to hide. So they don't necessarily want to have a call. They don't necessarily know what the question is. So I feel like I need to have multiple ways that people can engage. My next thing I want to do this year is creating a more intentional little just series, you know, like the secret podcast idea, but just some sort of series of shorter form things, because the attention span and create that for each of my opt-ins that's a little bit more customized, even than what I already have, because I already have things, but just keep refreshing and then just keep going back to the people who already bought because they are the most likely to buy something else. And my worst mindset that I've had this entire time is well, but they already bought flower math. I can't ask them to also come to my workshop or whatever. Meanwhile, they're the most interested because they've already experienced my value, they've already understand that I'm trustworthy, they want more, they want, they're aligned with me, you know, like it's we could just go off into the sunset together. But I'm like, oh, I don't want to bother them. So that's what I'm changing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we've found that people who've bought, this is across a few different course creators, so it'll vary from audience to audience, but but people who've bought are about 20 times more likely to buy something than somebody who hasn't bought from you yet. And that'll be a mixture of things, right? It'll be those are people who actually do tend to buy courses and so are more likely to buy from the start. But another part is they bought something from you, they loved it, so like, okay, right, I'm I'm sold. I don't, I've got more trust in you. I'm more likely to think that whatever you're selling is gonna be is gonna be good. Okay, so you've got something there. So you had the free calls, not everyone wanted it, but the people who did, it it tended to then convert. It's time consuming, you've got to figure out if it's worth it, but there's might be something there. One thing you'd mentioned as well is that you wanted to get more people talking back with you, to like replying to emails. Is this something that when they do reply, that tends to then lead to a back and forth that leads to a sale? Or like what's the why do you want to get that?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a good question. Why do I want it? I think similar to the calls, I think that all right, this is where I'm gonna get into the deep psychological psychology of myself here. But I feel like I've been hiding a little bit the last two years. I was working so much and I kind of needed to just take my foot off the brake and see what would happen, you know, still running ads and doing things, but I wasn't pushing, pushing, pushing, or showing up constantly trying to like grow my YouTube channel and things that like would have been a priority maybe before. So I think that I just stopped talking to people, getting that connection. So when I would have these calls, my house was under construction at the time. So you have to picture me on the workers' lunch break in the bedroom that my husband and my son and I were all sharing at the time, just like having these little calls about their businesses. And then, but then selling, selling, selling, right? Just selling every time I had a call. But even on the times where I didn't sell, I got so much value. You get that little phrase that they use where you go, oh, I'm gonna write that down and put that in my sales copy because this is what they're thinking. You know, I went from even when it's like, oh, get the online business training you need for your floral business. I have a little post-it note here. Well, I have like 20 post-it notes here, but one of them is a dear friend of mine who has a successful business. And what she said was the business portion of my floral design school training was minimal. Boom, right? Write it down. Because that is what she is thinking. That's how she assesses herself. And so then I put that in my sales copy, and then the people who identify with that, which is everybody, by the way, that is true for everybody, they can go, oh, that's true. She's saying something true. But I didn't go to floral design school personally. I learned on the job, I learned in training. So I didn't know that. I learned business stuff because I didn't go to floral design school.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Okay, so the calls and emails with people are useful because two things. One, people buy after they talk with you, and two, because you learn stuff from them and you know what to say in the copy, maybe what other product to create, you're getting kind of information from people, and you kind of got the time again now to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the problems is people aren't replying. You maybe got emails that are automatic that are going out, and then people aren't replying back to them again. There might be something possible to do with AI there. So here's a here's a technique that I've been uh trying out and has been working really well. Is um whatever you put on the confirmation page is after the lead magnet will get attention from people. Now, if you sell a cheap product, you know, the$27 product, then about 3 to 10% of people will buy at that stage normally. Um is that true for your audience? You keep telling me your audience is different. I don't know. I couldn't say for sure, right? But that's common. Now, if you put instead of that, if you put a a quiz, a survey on that confirmation page, about 70% of people will fill that in and will tell you information about themselves. Um and so if one of the things that you want is to learn more about your audience, if you put a survey there, then you know, type form, form stack, whatever you use, you know, then most people will fill it in. And then some of those people, you could either, I mean, you could just personally write back to each person, or you could set it up so that AI will write you an initial response back to people as kind of like a um a way of simplifying it. So there's a system that we've built where the data comes in, it gets automatically added. This is using um NA10 or make, I forget which one, one of the kind of automation systems. That information is automatically added into a Google spreadsheet, then uh by type form, and then NA10 will go off and grab the data and it will then send it off to Perplexity to go research that person. So it'll go, right, I'm gonna go look up their website, I'm gonna look at their um their floral business and learn about them and learn about from all over the internet, and it goes and does all kinds of research, brings it back, and then drafts an email to that person that is very personalized, that's then gonna ask them more and from, you know, start the conversation with them. And obviously, then so then you can edit that. You can set it so it just is it's ready, it's like a draft, or you can have it send automatically, you know, if you're if you've convinced it's working well. So something like that might be the right thing.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not saying for definite, but it's like that's I love the survey survey idea though, because I would like to survey them more anyway. Like that was kind of my next thing is like I need to survey my Facebook group, have a link where they can I get the most interaction when it's like click here for you know a quick tip that's on my blog or something. So if I can have them do a quick click through and share some feedback, uh the AI, it's gonna make my head spin, but I love what you're saying. I don't have to do all this work, that makes it easier. But yeah, getting them to tell me a little bit more about them right up front without it being via email might be exactly the little shift, right, for me. It's a good idea.

SPEAKER_00:

And what you could do after the survey is depending on what answers they've given, you could say, oh, they sound actually like they could be a good fit for one of my more expensive programs. They've already got a floral business. They're not like in florist design school at the moment, you know, they've actually got the business. It's doing enough money that it would kind of make sense, whatever your criteria are. If this and this then point them through to a call, and then they could book a call automatically with you after that. So you kind of got two steps you'd be getting there. And you I think what you could do in that page is you could remove the ability to just download the ebook straight away and say that'll be with you in ten minutes.

SPEAKER_01:

It'll be in your in the back.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, that's coming later. That's 10 minutes. Don't worry about that now. What I'll do though is I'll I'll connect you with um Josip, who's the head of funnel strategy uh at the uh data-driven marketing, the agency I own. And he'll have because he's the one who's hands-on, right? I'm like doing the podcast on YouTube and whatever, and I'm he's the one who's like day-to-day is like running everything. So he'll have better ideas for you about like, okay, and he'll have a lot of questions. He's very analytical, about like, okay, what is it that's most likely to work here for you? What's going to actually achieve your your outcomes and like then how could you get it done? So I'll send it and he'll be able to like record your little Loom video and kind of explain what's um some tips about what would work as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Incredible. Because you know, it is so interesting when we're in our business, it's hard to see sometimes the way the custom might be customer might be seeing it. And also when you are, you know, someone most likely like the people in your audience right now, where you take in a lot of different opinions on what works, what doesn't, and how you should do things, most of us end up making our own concoction. Most of us are not following anybody's program all the way. And so when then something doesn't work, it's because we're not following the script actually. We kind of went off script. So we're missing that one step or you know, the intention of do I really want them to download the book here or do I want them to buy something here? You're right. That book's in their inbox. Why don't you buy my$27 business plan jumpstart? Because most likely, no matter who you are, what I know about you is you don't have a business plan.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, right. Yeah, and I think I mean you're saying about like following following a program, exactly. I think that one of the things that we see, and one of the advantages that we've got is because we're working with hundreds of different course creators, we're seeing all of the different things that are working. You know, okay, well, in this situation, you should be having a webinar and then you should be having them point to book a call afterwards. But in this situation, you need to have a webinar where you send in direct, and in this one, you should have a low-ticket course. And when you're doing each of those things, the steps are this, this, this, and this. And so we know all of those bits and can say. Like we've had somebody recently who um he has a YouTube channel where he points people instead of to a free download to start with, he's pointing them directly to a um a low-ticket membership, which works great in his industry, but for most people, I wouldn't recommend that. And so that kind of nuance is kind of difficult. And that's one of the things where Yosip's gonna be great because he'll he sees all of these and he has all of the information in his head, and he could be like, okay, okay, okay, I've got it. For you, what you should probably try first is this, and that's most likely to work because of that and what have you.

SPEAKER_01:

Very cool. Yeah, because everybody is so different. Our customers and the way they want to be dealt with has a really big impact on the way we need to show up for them and what they're gonna actually take action on.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the things I'm really curious about, you've got the$1,500 main course and then your$2,200 course bundle. Well, does that sell via the website? Is it mostly only sell when you're doing a promotion? Does it sell only via sales? Like what's the kind of um how do your customers tend to buy that?

SPEAKER_01:

So I've got a couple. The the truth is the biggest package where it's like the complete course collection is the thing that sells the least. And again, when I'm being honest and analytical, it's because I don't put it front and center all the time. What you can do is upgrade within everything, though. So if you were to buy flower math, right, you can upgrade to get the templates, things like that. But um, when it comes to like my$1,500 course that's on there, the art of good business, that's a course that I teach every January live. So I tend to do a lot a live launch in November where I teach a little short marketing workshop. And then my goal is to take some of those people and then enroll them into my January program. And then once you're in that program with me, we work together for four weeks and then you're in it for life. So it's just a different kind of relationship I have with those clients. They're the most bought into what I do. Most of them have already bought something else or everything else. So it they don't just start with that, although some people do.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's mostly people who are upgrading from bought something. I loved it. Right, okay. Now let me go get let me upgrade to the the And do you have anything else for those guys to buy? They can come to Vermont, right? Which I happen to know is in the uh the northeast corner of the states, just south of Maine. Uh sorry, Alison, I Alison was telling me where Vermont was. I got it, I had remembered it completely wrong. Slightly. I was like, is it near South Virginia? She's like, or West Virginia, whatever it is. She's like, no, it's just not, John, you're wrong. Closer to Canada. Yeah. Yeah. So do you have like an ongoing coaching program or membership or something that those guys can pay you? Because you said earlier you you don't ask your best customers for more money. I'm wondering, do you have something like that that you offer?

SPEAKER_01:

I want to give myself credit. I've gotten better over the last couple of years about really recognizing that my current customers are my best customers. So I have been changing that mindset over the last couple of years where I really have been not as shy about selling to those people. So that I'm I'm working on. Um the sorry, I lost your question already.

SPEAKER_00:

Do I have Do you have something else to sell to those guys? If they've if they've bought the, they've come on the January session, they've done the four weeks, apart from coming to Vermont, do you have anything else to sell them?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, that was the question. I have a Patreon membership, which I've had since 2018, um, where I have a vault of things that don't quite fit into a course. But supplement lots of things that if you already have a course, you can get additional training there. I just started doing monthly coaching in there as well, like monthly group coaching, which I really enjoy doing. So that is a newer thing that I'm offering. It used to be that you would get social media prompts every month. And now I'm like, who cares? Let's do coaching instead. There's years of social media prompts that they can access.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, right. Okay. And what are you charging for that in the that coaching?

SPEAKER_01:

It's$29 a month for that access to like all of the trainings and then also the coaching.

SPEAKER_00:

Like I'm going for Oh, wow, that's cheap. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So again, this is why what I'm saying, like I am trying so hard to be really realistic about who I'm selling to and also delivering tremendous value to them. And even this is a hard thing to sell. Like you could literally ask me anything. If you asked me one question every three months, it would be worth the cost of admission. But if they're already enrolled in this$69 a month other learning how to design membership, so this is where I really have to fall back on what I know is true about myself, which is that I am persistent and consistent. And so I am going to be here when those other memberships are gone. I am going to be here. Do you know how many people have outlasted in my floral business is 24 years? Do you know how many people I've seen come and go and come and go? It takes grit to be in business for the long term and not just build something great that, you know, is a juggernaut right now, but then it's over. We couldn't keep it up. We burned out, we our staff burned out. We spent, we made a million dollars in our launch, but we spent 600,000 in ads, right? I that's not what I'm going for in my. So I have to just keep true to that. So yes, so I have this membership, I have things available, and I feel like what I'm gonna do a better job of already, the people who are enrolled with me in January, they should become these monthly members. That is where they should, that's where they belong. So I just need to make sure that I'm doing a better job of communicating why that's where they belong and what they're going to get. So yeah, I just see a lot of opportunity. A lot of opportunity.

SPEAKER_00:

That sounds good. All right, cool. Um if people have heard this and they want to go check out your business, see what you're doing online, where should they, where should they go?

SPEAKER_01:

My website is my hub of all my online awesomeness. So that's where they should get everything. Flowerbusiness.com. I obviously have YouTube presence. I'm on Instagram, but I really am resistant to being ruled by social media, so I'm not on TikTok. Really, my website, my blog is still the bread and butter for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Got it. All right, so Realflowerbusiness.com or Realflower Business on Instagram or at Realflower Business on YouTube. Perfect. Amazing. Alison, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story. Absolutely loved this, and I'm sure everybody listening would have done as well. Um yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. This has been great.

SPEAKER_01:

You're so welcome. Thank you for having me. This was really fun.

SPEAKER_00:

As always, thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate you guys. See you next time.