521: How Running A Simple Challenge Can Explode Your Brand’s Popularity With Toni Herrbach

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Quarter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Welcome to a new segment of the show called Profitable Audience, where my business partner, Tony and I discuss all things related to content creation and building an audience. And in this episode, Tony and I are going to discuss how to run a challenge to grow your brand and sell your products.

00:23
Before we begin, want to you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com and tickets go up in price this Friday. The Seller Summit is an e-conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business.

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entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now, I personally hate large events, so the seller summit is always small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers.

01:21
The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, from May 14th to May 16th. And right now, the tickets are going to go up in price this Friday. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 50 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that does not require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting.

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when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:07
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. This is a new segment called Profitable Audience, where I have my business partner, Tony, chat about content related topics. And what we are going to cover today are challenges and specifically how to run a challenge that eventually leads to some sort of paid product. Yeah. Or a sale of a physical product too, right? It could be anything. In fact, I think one of our Seller Summit speakers didn’t, Alicia.

02:38
run challenges to her water, sell her water bottles. Is that my remembering that correctly? That’s correct. She sold water bottles that were just about the hardest things that you can sell. Yeah. Really. And she turned that into an eight figure business before she sold it based on the back of these challenges. Yeah. So I wanted to talk about this today because I just went through, it’s interesting as people who work in content and commerce,

03:05
I tend to take other people’s courses or sign up for their lead magnets or participate in challenges, partially for myself, but then partially just to see the logistics of how they run a challenge because I think there’s just so many new and innovative things that you can do. And so just within the past three days, I finished Amy Porterfield’s list building challenge and Shalene Johnson’s…

03:31
I don’t even know what her challenge was called. It was like a walking challenge. So the goal was to get more steps each day than you did the next day. OK. That’s pretty easy because I’ve been getting none. Yeah. I go from 0 to 15. So as you, we’ve talked about this offline, Shaleen has sort of rebranded herself as like a middle-aged aging expert.

03:55
talking about diet, exercise, hormones, things like that, all targeted to women ages like 40 to probably 60 years old. And that’s her core. And so this, think, was a big part of her rebranding is holding this walking challenge and then moving people into her paid, I don’t know if it’s a course or a product or I’m not really quite sure what Is a paid walking? Yes, yes. You pay Shalene and you have to walk.

04:22
Let’s start with the list building one with Amy Porterfield. think most people are probably familiar with her. You’ve had her on the podcast. I will say her work is flawless. Everything about her stuff is perfection, correct? The landing pages are beautiful. The slides are beautiful. Very well intentioned. No I undotted, no T uncrossed. Kudos to her for really creating quality

04:51
content that’s free. And so she did a list building challenge, which is very similar to the webinars that we give for profitable audience that you give for profitable online store. Hers was solely focused on email list building. And she basically, you signed up for the challenge, but it wasn’t free. It was actually $37. And I think we talked about this a long time ago, but you she had the $37 webinar.

05:18
And then there was the upsell to the $99 VIP where then after the webinar, she stayed on and answered questions to the people who bought the VIP pass. I have done that before. Yes. We’ve tried it based on her. did gate one of the workshops once if you bought my book. Yes, I remember And I hated every minute of it. I don’t know. just didn’t. So basically it

05:45
I want to say it halved my sign-ups. Maybe even more than that. But you didn’t get paid because it was about the book, so it’s a little bit different. They had to pay to get in, right? The book at the time, I think, had to be the hardback because I was trying to Yes, it was $27 or something like that. Exactly. So, $27.37 is about the same. Either way, a lot of people weren’t even willing to buy the book. I would say just for people listening,

06:12
This is not a great strategy if you don’t have a big list. You’ll have a hard time selling a $37 webinar. If you have a Amy Porterfield sized list or a huge following on social media, YouTube, TikTok, I would say this is something to explore. But if you are just getting started out, I would not start with paid. You know, I was thinking about it though. If you’re not willing to spend 27 bucks to get my book, chances are you’re not going to get the class, right?

06:41
Yes, absolutely. It’s that first barrier, right? You’re weeding out, because we get this sometimes on our webinars where there’s people that like, just go read a couple articles before you watch this, right? Because you have no idea what you’re talking about. Educate yourself a tiny bit. So it does sort of weed out some of the really hard people to deal with on the webinars. However, if you don’t have any social proof of your products or your services, I do think starting out with paid is a tough sell for people.

07:09
Yes, I agree. On the flip side too, I’ve noticed that people sometimes go to eight or 10 of my workshops before they sign on. Yes. There’s a trust factor. Okay, so she always goes paid or? I don’t know if she always goes paid. I was like, you know what? I’m just going to pay the $37 because I really just want to see how she’s running the webinars. I will say she has a completely different style than we do.

07:36
which is fine because I think you need to do the style that works best for you. Her style is clearly far more polished than we are. There’s not a lot of joking. There’s not a lot of interaction with the audience, whereas we are very interactive with the people that come live to our webinars. It’s not that she’s not interactive. It’s just not anywhere like what we do or I’ve seen other people do, but it works for her.

08:01
I’ve attended hers before. I almost feel like the questions, like she’s not answering anyone in the audience. She has these pre-fed questions that she has answers to. She’s like a presidential candidate. Right. Yes. Yes. That’s the best way to describe it. However, she is delivering a lot of value. So I think,

08:21
We always have people say, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to run a webinar. I’m not sure how I should, should I stop in the middle and take questions, all these different things. You have to do what works best. And if what works best for you is having a set of pre-written questions that you know people, we know what people ask. People ask the same thing every webinar. If that’s what makes you more comfortable or you think sells your webinar better, then do it that way. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong.

08:45
What I did think was interesting that she did was the webinar was a series of, I think, four days, three or four days of lessons. She ran them at noon every day, noon Eastern. I always find that interesting, the time of day that you’re running webinars. Before the webinar, she did a mindset training each day before the webinar. I see your face. Did you go to these? I did not.

09:14
Oh, you didn’t go to the- I wanted to go to Curious. I know. I could barely attend the webinars because it’s at noon. It’s like a terrible time for me. I watched them after the fact. Oh, you did? Okay. I did. Okay. Okay. You and I both, I don’t know, I’m buying far more into the mindset thing than you are. However- That’s not true, actually. After doing the millionth consult, we hardly ever even talk about the specifics.

09:44
of any business, we’re all just convincing them that they can do it and that they can be successful. Right? Anyway, so I actually thought this was very valuable because most of the time when you are trying to convince people to buy a product at the end, whether it product, service, membership, course, water bottle, whatever it is, there’s a financial hurdle.

10:11
That’s the one, obviously there’s people that either have money or they don’t to buy it. But the other big hurdle is, do they have the mindset where they’re willing to take that money from one thing and put it into your thing? Are they confident enough? Do they believe in themselves enough? Do they think they have the ability, the talent, the technical knowledge, whatever it is that’s holding them back?

10:34
95 % of the time people don’t take action because they don’t have confidence in themselves to do whatever it is you’re asking them to do. That is 100 % correct. Actually, that is the topic of almost every single one-on-one consult that I’ve ever done. Yeah. So I think the mindset training was actually pretty genius because you’re basically handling all the objections.

10:59
by getting people into the right headspace before, and the mindset training was right before the webinar, right? So was mindset training first, 15 minutes, and then the webinar was like 45 minutes after that, or it was like very much in sync. Wait, also on timeout, so if it was at noon, you said, Eastern time, so she just starts to set 11.45? I think the mindset was at 11. So it was kind of back to back, but the mindset was only a 15 minute thing. Interesting, so she went on live.

11:28
and then let people sit for 45 minutes. think so. I have to double check that one because I never made the live mindset. And I’m not sure that she actually ran every mindset. I think she had other people doing it as well. I also don’t think the mindset was necessarily live. I think it could have been something pre-recorded that people just watched. You know, what’s funny is I’ve had this content for a very long time. I know you didn’t attend any of the family first challenge, but

11:57
the very first two days of that challenge was all mindset. And I can’t believe I could talk that long about it, but I actually ended up talking for two hours about the subject and people loved it. Yeah, because that’s people’s almost always their biggest issue is getting over the mental hurdles. But for me, I was thinking to myself the whole time as I was giving it like,

12:24
Oh God, people are not going to like this challenge. There’s no actionable content in here whatsoever. It’s all about getting out of your own head. I guess that could be actionable, but people loved it. And I got so many questions about it and so many fluffy questions about it. You know, like, how did you get over, you know, getting started? How did you get over the fact that you didn’t know what you were doing? I was like, well,

12:51
I had YouTube, I had Google and just figured my way out through it. I actually think that was pretty genius to hold these little mindset seminars before she taught the webinar. She did it every day? Yes. Okay. You’re basically getting people in the right head space for your training. She did the three or four day webinar.

13:18
Actually, today is the last day to watch the replays, which is also very interesting because there’s a lot of people in the Facebook group who are complaining that they paid the $37 and that the webinar training is not available lifetime. Wow. Yes. Which we could do a whole episode on. I actually got in the rabbit hole the other night of reading people’s comments about being really, really upset that the training’s coming down.

13:48
You know, team Porterfield came in and basically said the whole point of this is to work. So then she, you know, she sells this list builder society where, you know, it’s, it’s the course it’s 497. You learn how to build your email list, uh, you know, get a lead magnet, all that stuff. And team Porterfield’s point is, you know, the point of the training was to get you to a certain point and then into the list builder society. So, you know, we have to take it down because this was meant to everyone do together.

14:18
This isn’t a self-paced thing. This is a group activity, basically. You should see how much flack I got when I hated the replays based on not buying the book. There’s like 45 plus comments on each in the thread of a comment. There’s a comment about it and then there’s 45 comments responding, mostly in agreement of upset-edness that these aren’t available.

14:45
I think the problem is, and I bought the $37, I don’t remember seeing anywhere that they would be taken down on February 21st, which is when we’re recording. Now, I’m sure it was on there somewhere, but it was not clear, right? It was not bolded. It was probably buried at the bottom. And so I think that’s where they made the mistake because the general perception in this group of people who are disgruntled, let’s just say, is…

15:14
We had no idea there was a time.

15:17
Interesting. How did they respond? Basically, tough to do. This was a challenge for us to do together. You missed it. You missed it. This is the whole point of it was to do it together, work together, team-build, work as a team kind of thing, which I don’t know. I have mixed feelings about it. I think if you put it up at the top,

15:44
February 21st, you do not get access to these anymore. Obviously, that would dissuade people from signing up. Correct. It also keeps you from having a Facebook group that is now filled with people who are pretty irritated about the recordings coming down.

16:02
Is this how she always does it? I’ve taken one of her prior. I don’t know. And that’s what’s bothering me is I can’t remember it because I did another one of her paid things. Actually, I probably did this one. I probably did. 37 bucks. You don’t keep track. I don’t know. I feel like she’s always taken the recordings down, but I never would go back and look at them anyway because I did not take this because I don’t know how to build a list. I do know how to build a list. I more wanted to see, you know,

16:32
What do her sides look like? What’s she talking about? You know, just in general. So I feel like, so this is my overall synopsis of it. I feel like Amy Porterfield does an amazing job of putting very quality products out there, right? Everything is beautiful. There’s a lot of worksheets, free downloads, bonus things that you can get during the $37 challenge webinar, whatever you wanna call it. What I feel like is lacking,

17:00
is that there is very little technical implementation. I hate to say this, but I don’t think she knows how to, she has an implementer do everything for her. Sure, which is great. Which is great, but most people don’t have that. I don’t even have that. I’m the implementer. I don’t either, I’m the implementer. So I feel like that is her style. That’s always been her style.

17:29
So she was talking about creating a lead magnet. She recommends ConvertKit, which we recommend as well. And this is for content creators, not for e-commerce. And she was talking about creating a lead magnet. And she’s like, you can just create that landing page and your email service provider has landing page templates for you. That’s almost verbatim what she said. And I’m like, to someone who doesn’t know what a lead magnet is, and after they go through the webinar, they do understand that, that’s very overwhelming.

17:59
Like I’m just supposed to set up a page? How? Where do I go and convert kit? To me, there’s a lot of confusion. However, the positive it is, and we actually had a student and profitable audience come up with this, come to us with this the other day, is that we do a lot of technical inflammation. Like this is exactly how you do this. This is exactly how you do that. And then they change the interface. Bluehost changes the interface and they’re like, I can’t find the button. you’re like, cause it’s on the left now, not the right.

18:28
So I mean, that is the negative side of doing a lot of implementation, which we do, is that it becomes outdated. And then you’re in a whole bunch of weeds with people because they’re watching a video that’s not even that old, right? Six months to a year old, but because the service provider changes something, it doesn’t make as much sense to them.

18:49
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that Tony and I offer over at Profitable Audience that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in learning how to make money with content, whether it be through blogging, podcasting, or YouTube, we put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started blogging that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process, including a full tutorial on how to set up your first content website. This course is 100 % free.

19:16
and you can sign up over at profitableaudience.com slash free. Once again, that’s profitableaudience.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:27
That’s always been a conflict with my class. What I do now is I actually explain what the button does. I say something like, hey, this button might not be here when you watch this video, but you know what it does and you know what to search for. You’re right. It’s much better to tell people exactly where to click because people are just mindlessly clicking sometimes. They’re just literally following.

19:54
So, but I think that’s a good thing to think about. If you’re thinking about doing any kind of a challenge, you have to decide what your audience level is and what you’re capable of confidently teaching. So I feel like for me, like right now in my life, like I could do a pretty in-depth teaching with Klaviyo with some of the implementations because I’m in it all every day. It feels like, you know, first grade reading to me. However,

20:20
Five years ago, I would not have felt comfortable. I could tell you what you needed to do and I could tell you why you needed to do it, but the actual steps, I’m fumbling around, right? So if you aren’t super confident with some of those implementation things, it’s okay to tell people to do it, why they need to do it and the reasons behind it. And that’s a perfectly fine way to give people information because the people that you’re talking to don’t even understand that part. They don’t even understand that that is…

20:47
something that you can do. In fact, I was talking to someone the other day just about setting up an automated price drop in Klaviyo where it’s basically all automated. But when you change the price of a product because it’s either clearancing or whatever it is, they get a notification automatically if they visited the product page. things like that. People don’t even know you can do that sometimes. So just giving people, educating them on the opportunities that they have.

21:13
is really valuable. if you can’t do the technical implication, it’s clearly not a hurdle. Amy Porterfield’s made a ton of money never telling anybody how to implement anything. Here’s my philosophy on that, too. If you give someone instructions step by step and they mindlessly do them without understanding what’s going on, then they might be able to get it to work in the beginning. But then something will change. And unless they’re struggling a little bit through it and figuring it out as they go along, they’re going to be stuck.

21:42
at every interface change. Yep. So that instantly is kind of how I raise my kids. Yeah, I don’t tell them the answers. I just say, just figure it out. If you know, you should be able to figure this out. It’s not rocket science. I wish you could see my desk right now. It’s literally on my computer. I have our recording page up. Every other page on this computer is mass. I have stacks of graph paper on my like literally.

22:11
What’s that for? My daughter’s math that she’s very much struggling in. She must be desperate. If you are in Orlando and you are a math tutor, hit me up. We can work something out. She asked me yesterday, she’s like, do we have graph paper? I was like, we’re not to choose. We don’t have graph paper laying around the house. What are you, crazy? My response to her was, of course we don’t have graph paper, print some off the internet.

22:38
She looks at me, she goes, print some off the internet. I was like, yes, do a search for graph paper, free printable. Her mind was blown. I’m thinking, I need to add that to my free printable collection. That is hilarious. Anyway, yes, teach them why they need to do something. She did the couple days of training. It was a very basic introduction to email marketing.

23:07
But people were very satisfied. Aside from the whole $37 debacle, people were very satisfied with the training. It looks like she’s converting fairly well on the list builder side. always converts very well. Then she converted people to this $497 course. You are right. If someone’s willing to pay $37 plus another 99, you’re probably going to shell out 500. You’re inching your way up into that price point.

23:36
So you mentioned VIP, right, for the 99 bucks? Yeah. I did the VIP, I would say, for four to six straight months. I can’t remember what it was. Where if you paid $99, you got another mini course and you got a group Zoom call at the end. And I remember going to Amy’s group Zoom call. I don’t think she answered anyone’s question from the audience. It was just another prepared. Interesting. Right? OK. Yeah.

24:07
Whereas the reason why I stopped doing those group Zoom calls was it got out of hand. Imagine like, don’t know, 150 to 200 people on Zoom. It is nuts. Even though I had people raise their hands, it was pretty uncontrollable. So I guess I could do it like Amy, just like another Q &A, but I already do Q &A at the end, but I guess this one would be more private. So I think that’s the other differentiator too, right? When we do our webinars,

24:36
We stay till the very end. We answer every single question as ridiculous as it might seem or as hard as it might seem. We try to give people an answer. Whereas I don’t think Amy does that at all. I don’t think she answers people’s questions or even like has those conversations after the teaching is over. I think the teaching is over, she signs off. And the fact that this is your chance to have access to her is the part that makes people think valuable and gets people to open up their wallet for the $99.

25:07
You know what a mastermind person just once told me, he was in my mastermind group. He was like, you have to be aloof and then you can add the dollar value. And I hated that statement. We’ve talked about this. I hate that statement too. Right? Like you’re personally, you’re purposely trying to like avoid being seen and avoid having people have access to you for the purposes of being able to charge more money. Yeah.

25:36
I don’t know. don’t like, get it. works. It is a hundred percent a tactic that works. It is not something that I feel comfortable doing.

25:48
Yeah. So you’re saying that not answering questions probably adds to the value. Right. someone to sign up for the VIP. Yeah. Because I know she does ask for questions in advance as well, which I also think there’s nothing wrong with that, right? If you are not great off the cuff or if that makes you nervous or that just gives you anxiety, some people do. Some people want that prepared list. Then have a prepared list.

26:13
There’s nothing wrong in doing that. And if it makes you feel more confident, especially on camera, then start with people submitting their questions in advance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. That’s not how you and I operate because one, both of us are okay being wrong. And two, we’re okay saying, hey, we’re not quite sure, but let us figure that out for you. But not everybody is.

26:35
Not everybody feels OK doing that. Some people really feel like I need to know everything and tell people everything if they come on. And you and I are just like, hey, of course we don’t know everything. Nobody does. I always preface everything by saying, hey, take everything with a grain of salt. I have no idea what I’m talking about here. And then I say it. But you do. OK, so let’s contrast that to Shalene’s challenge. I just have this feeling that Shalene’s challenge would be something that I’m more in line

27:05
Of course. I think it just shows you that two completely different styles, both are effective. So, Shaleen’s challenge was all about, so she’s very much into zone two cardio right now. This isn’t a fitness podcast, we’re not going to go into all of those things, but basically brisk walking can get you into zone two cardio, which has been shown for people who especially are in those 40 to 60-year-old bracket for females.

27:32
is the of the cardio that you should be focusing on to maintain weight, health, everything. So you know I love her. I’m a huge fan. No shame in that. But I also feel like she’s a bit scatterbrained, right? She’ll send out links that are broken. She makes mistakes, which is very much part of her charm, right? The fact that you feel like, we would be best friends if we were neighbors, right? Which I feel like if Amy was my neighbor, I would literally never see her. She would park in the garage, you know?

28:02
That’s 100 % correct. She would take her garbage out at 10 PM so no one can talk to her. That’s just my impression. She’s probably a very nice person. I don’t know her personally. But Shaleen just has that like, we would be besties sitting on the back porch drinking our champagne. So her challenge was a two-week challenge, which I also think is another strategy. So you can do these shorter. You can do a one-day webinar. You can do a week-long webinar. We’ve experimented with anything from a day to a week.

28:31
Shalene had a two week challenge to basically increase the steps that you walk every day. And so with her challenge, it was totally free. And I wanna talk, don’t let me forget to talk about her verbiage that she used at the end of the challenge. Cause I think this was so impactful. So it was walk every day and each day you got an email in the morning with, so she had a kickoff call. the challenge started on Monday. She had a Sunday afternoon kickoff call where she talked about.

28:58
kind of the goals and why you should be doing this, but you were already signed up, so you didn’t really need to be sold on it. But it was a live Zoom. So interactive with her, feeling like you were, you know, basically a part of this community, which I think is very effective, right? But then you didn’t see her again for two weeks. You got an email every morning in your inbox with an audio recording. Oh, nice. Which I’m like, genius, you did all of this in December.

29:26
Right? Right. Although Shalene probably didn’t, but some people would do it in December. So every morning you got an auto recording on some topic that would be applicable to wanting to feel better in general. So one day it was about hormones. One day it was about improving your energy. One day it was about zone two cardio. One day it was just like a, let’s check in. Let’s do a mindset check. Here’s the other thing. Not every audio was from her.

29:55
So of the 14 days, the audio from her was probably six days and the other eight days or seven days were other people in the industry. Like there was someone that did a talk on like food, right? And how you eat and the types of food you eat. And that was someone who is a nutritionist. There was someone who talked about energy and she was a personal trainer, like, you know, the qualifications to talk about these things and also had a large social media presence. So all these people that talked,

30:24
and gave the recordings, not only were they certified experts, because we’re talking about health, so that’s important, but they also were, either had written a New York Times bestselling book, something like that. So they were people that if you hadn’t heard of, knew them personally, like if you didn’t know exactly who they were, you had heard of them. So not only that, she didn’t do all the work, right? She had people, you know, so each day you got this training in the morning of like basically a podcast to listen to, but it was about 15 minutes.

30:53
And then she also had things like, if you’re gonna take a 15 minute walk, here’s something that’s 15 minutes long to listen to, then here’s a 30 minute talk to listen to if you’re a 30 minute walk, 45 in an hour. But all of these came via email. So pretty smart because she got everyone’s email address to even get in the challenge, right? Okay, this is ingenious because it’s a walking challenge. So you’re literally supposed to listen to this stuff that she recorded as you’re walking? Yes. That’s smart. Yeah. Super smart, right? Yeah.

31:22
And each email was very personalized, right? It felt, you know, I don’t know if she wrote them or not, but it felt like it came from her. She included some menu plans. So if you wanted to also improve the food that you eat every day, she had two weeks of menu plans. And I think there was an option to pick from like a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian. So two different options for that. And they were decent meals. Like I printed out, I looked at the meal plans. They were good. You know, it wasn’t…

31:51
It wasn’t thrown together, all very well done, graphically, design-wise. Oh, OK. Yeah. So it wasn’t just like a Word document with a bunch of recipes on there, because it was a menu plan, a shopping list, things like that. All things you can create in Canva. So not out of reach of anybody. All right, so I’m curious how you can monetize a walking challenge. Oh, genius. Genius, right?

32:17
And the reality, so I did the challenge. was like, you know what? You know, I’ve been like fighting all these like energy and fatigue and stuff. And I was like, and I am, you know, a runner, but running has been so painful for me for like the last year that I’ve just kind of stopped. And I was like, you know what? I can walk. Like I walk anyway. So I was like, I’m going to do it. I’m just going to do the walking challenge. And so every single morning, I, the first thing I did, I have a TikTok about this actually that I’m going to post in April.

32:46
Yeah, I know you’re saving Cause I’m holding on to it. Every morning I got up and I literally kept my shoes and my workout clothes hanging on my treadmill. And I got up every morning and I got on the treadmill and I did 30 minutes on the treadmill every single morning. And I even did it when I was working. I did it at Kim’s house. Like I was very consistent about it. And so it was funny cause she had her like last, her zoom call last night was like the wrap up of the challenge.

33:15
And she’s like, I know not everybody was perfect. I was like, you know I was. I did, cause you what I I’m like, oh, don’t, don’t dare me. I’ll do it. So, but it’s crazy. Like, and just like, this is total side note, but like do it, getting up and walking at like a brisk pace for 30 minutes. And some mornings I did more, but 30 minutes was like my minimum. I have had more energy the past two weeks than I have had in two years. It’s nuts.

33:42
Like it’s completely shifted my metabolism. I don’t know how or why, but it’s ridiculous. And then I also like do the walking desk too. So then I would get the rest of my steps in front of my computer. But I made sure I started my morning and that they recommended that like they’re like, anytime is better than no time. But like, if you can do it first thing, that’s actually really effective. So she does her final, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, I was, I was going to say get to the monetization part.

34:09
Yes, anyway, side note, get up and walk for 30 minutes in the morning. So last night she has her Zoom call, the closing call, where basically it’s her telling everybody how proud she is of them. And she has, of course, all this social proof of people who have seen changes, whether it’s energy, weight loss, feeling better. Oh, sorry, is there a private Facebook group associated with this? No, she just tells people to message her on social media. Oh.

34:37
or reply to emails, but she’s got all the text, right? So just think about this. She did the kickoff Zoom call on day zero, and then she did the kickoff or the closing Zoom call on day 15. Everything else was pre-done. So like very little, like as the challenge is going work. And then during the call, she was basically like, if you’ve seen any change, right? If you felt better, if you enjoyed blah, blah, blah, join my Phase It Up community.

35:07
for $14.95 a month, you can get my exact workouts, all of the meal plans, all the mindset, podcast, everything, all done for you, or you can pay $99 for the year.

35:24
Genius, absolute genius, right? Because anybody who felt anything, right? Anybody who had any improvement over those two weeks is signing up. Because you’re like, well, if all I did was walk and I feel even a little bit better, what in the world would I get if I, because she provided so much free value with like the trainings and the certified people coming in and giving those mini podcasts in the morning. It was almost like people were running up to her to buy it.

35:55
So for $100 a year, that implies that she’s constantly adding new stuff or? See, don’t think she’s, I mean, I don’t think she’s really adding a whole lot of new stuff. Cause like once you have your workout set, like you don’t need to re-film that. Like once you create like 30 days of meal plans, you’re not coming up with 365 days of meal plans. Nobody makes that many meals. I guess what I’m asking is it’s recurring. It’s, so yeah, it’s $100 a year or $14.95 a month.

36:23
And so there’s, in that community, there’s new information’s obviously being added, new, it’s mostly audio trainings, right, or video, but there’s not, it’s not anything that, I don’t want, I’m not saying this in a negative way, it’s not anything that’s like, oh, this is gonna take me hours and hours and hours to create. It’s basically just, I think the biggest benefit to joining something like that would be the accountability. The accountability in the community? Yeah.

36:53
Essentially. It’s interesting. Yeah, and actually that’s, it sounds pretty cheap. $100 a year sounds like nothing. Oh, I signed up. I was like, a hundred bucks a year. want in and I want to see what you get for a hundred bucks a year. So I signed up, you get in, you immediately get a personalized, like it asks you like series of 10 questions. So there’s a quiz, right? And then you get personalized stuff based on the answers you gave to the quiz. But the amount of people,

37:21
that you saw on the comments, things like that, in her social media was insane of people who were just all in on this, right? Because it was something easy. so the two things that stood out to me was it’s not hard to walk. Most people can do it. You can walk around your block. if you, mean, like, Leon’s a perfect example. He lives in Iowa. He goes on walks every day. It could be five degrees. He goes on walks, right? You can walk anywhere you live, basically.

37:50
And so the success rate for that challenge was probably really high for people because it’s not that difficult to just get out and walk. If you have people motivating you, cheering you on, you have people to listen to in your headphones, things like that. The other thing that she said, which was I want to talk about from before, was I was thinking about Amy Porterfield and people just being irritated. Yep. So Shalene was like, I am so how did she word it?

38:18
She’s like, am so thankful that you could be our guest in this challenge, but we’d like you to become a member. You’re a guest in the free challenge, but you’re a member if you join the community.

38:33
Like I was like, oh, that was good. Like make a note of that, because I want to use that in something. But when you think about it, you’re like, yeah, I was a guest. Like my friend invited me to the country club. I was a guest. But then you can join the country club or whatever it is. Right. That verbiage just made so much sense. And it was like, I was a guest. I, know, as soon as she said that, I was like, oh, 100 percent. Great job.

38:58
Yeah, I like Shalene’s method so much better. She’s very personal. She’s very personal. And throughout the challenge, like if you followed her on social media, and most people probably found out about it from social media, so they do follow her. You know, she was posting questions every day, polls, quizzes, she was answering questions, you know, all in these like short little stories, right? So if you think about the time spent to do those, 10 minutes.

39:27
Right, 15 minutes of just like, I’m gonna pull up my phone and I’m gonna answer a bunch of questions and post. Not hard at all, right? But kept keeping that engagement going. But I think the thing that I took away from hers so much was that she made it really easy for people to succeed and feel like they won. And so then getting them to convert was so much easier. And so as a content creator or as an e-commerce seller, like how do you create that for your potential customer?

39:55
how do you create something where they can win? Because I think that’s the biggest hurdle, right? It’s the same mindset thing, just presented in a different way. She got people to feel like a winner, and so they were very willing. mean, 15 bucks a month, like that’s coffee for people. And so how do you do that as a content creator or as an e-commerce seller, where you give people that feeling of winning to take them from a subscriber to a customer? Yeah, if you watch…

40:22
or listen to Alicia’s episode on this podcast, Alicia Rinozo is her name. She did the exact same thing. She did a fitness challenge and people just wanted to buy her water bottle because that’s what she was using the entire time. Then I think she probably made some affiliate revenue too off of certain things that she used for fitness. Oh, yeah. I’m sure she’ll lean. Well, Amy does write with ConvertKit. Yeah.

40:48
Then Shaleen does because she recommends supplements and other sorts of things that all have an affiliate relationship. I think the difference between Amy and Shaleen in this case is I think Amy’s teaching something much more difficult to get a quick win on. Yes. Right? Yes. The quick win is to get your first subscriber, let’s say. Yes. There’s work involved in the setup, whereas with Shaleen, you just go outside. Yes.

41:16
I mean, it’s true. Actually, I Amy’s quick one was to set up your lead magnet. That was the impression I got that she felt like the quick one was, which I also think can be problematic if you set up your lead magnet and then you don’t have a subscriber. Because I did see some people asking that question in the Facebook group of, okay, I did this, but how do I get people to come to my website? That was a common question that was asked in that group. It makes me think about, we’re going to do this challenge with our course in April.

41:46
30 videos in 30 days. That’s a tough challenge, but it’s only for members, right? It’s only for people in the group. But how do we do a challenge for people to get them in the group that is something where they can have a win? Because I think when you get the win, the sale becomes so much easier. It’s why the car salesman wants you get you in the car to drive it.

42:09
As soon as you get in and you smell that new car leather and you push the gas pedal in the car, it accelerates like crazy. Meanwhile, your clunkers over there are barely getting anything. It’s just more effective for people. I think this short form video challenge is pretty easy to do for the masses too. I think it’s tough. Because you just pick up your phone and you just say something that’s on your mind. Yes. It’s tough because it’s video. If it was audio.

42:37
Or if it was Twitter, for example, where 30 days you put out one tweet, that’d be the easiest, I guess. But I don’t think you’d get the same level of results. No, I don’t think you would.

42:48
Yeah, you know, the lead magnet, like my lead magnet, for example, probably took me like a month or more to put together. So I guess it just depends on, you know, because I had all those videos. have a six part video series, right? Yeah. As part of my lead magnet. So I guess it depends. Even if you’re just giving out a PDF or something like that, it’s still like probably a week’s worth of work. Yeah. weekends. I don’t know, depending on the level.

43:15
I like both of these challenges. I’m not a huge fan of the gating part of Amy. But on the flip side, it works and she’s much more successful. I mean, yes, she had at least 2,000 people in the $37. Yes, so I don’t know what the math is on that, but it’s not bad for your free webinar. I know that is crazy how she’s able to do that.

43:42
I mean, she has a huge list. She mentioned what it was before. Was it like 300,000? I don’t know if she mentioned it, not on what I’ve watched. And of course, replays go down today, so I won’t be able to tell you. I do know that when I did this with her before and I paid for the VIP because I was so intrigued by this concept that on the VIP chat, there were 1,800 people.

44:11
Wow. That’s nuts. Wow. Yeah. All right, guys. No more live chat. No more questions getting answered. Only the VIP. We’re going to be aloof and non-personal for $99. You can sit with us at lunch. But I think the one thing that I really took from both of these because I don’t…

44:37
What I, well, actually I took a couple things. One is I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do something. I think both of these challenges were completely different, right? mean, Shalene literally sent an email with the audio recording, which is genius for what she was giving for walking, right? Because that’s easiest thing to do. But Amy was live every day, right? So two totally different things. Shalene’s was two weeks, Amy’s was a week. Very different. The mindset factor. So important.

45:06
Because I do think that’s why people don’t buy. It has nothing to do with the fact that the product isn’t good quality. It’s that people aren’t ready to make that buying decision because of whatever presupposed ideas they have in their head about themselves. 100 % agree. You have to believe that you can do this. Yeah. I’m just, maybe I should watch these videos. Because why not just do the mindset right before you go into the presentation?

45:35
for the first 15 minutes. She purposely did the mindset part first, made people wait 45 minutes or however long it was for the real presentation. And people, thank you for reminding me of this, because I’ve got a lot of mindset stuff, material, actually. I just never really thought it was… Because it’s stuff that I don’t need maybe, you know what I mean? As much. Well, well.

46:04
I mean, maybe I do, but I, you know, like if I want something, I just go do it. Right. And sometimes I, okay, here, here’s the example. Like I just discovered in these past two or three weeks that I don’t like doing any, I’m much less productive when it’s raining outside. Interesting. You live in the wrong place. Well, no, I live in the right place. You should live in Hawaii. Oh, well, Hawaii, rains every day actually. Yeah. But in the afternoon doesn’t count. So I’m sitting here like these past couple of weeks.

46:33
I’ve literally had to force my, well, plus I’ve been sick too. But during that period, I actually got some stuff done because I had to force myself to do it. And I can do that probably for maybe six months or so. So as long as it’s not raining for six months. So, you know, my point is, I think I’ve just was brought up to always like, I don’t want to the word suffer. It’s suffer. I don’t want to use the word suffer, but

47:02
I’ve gotten used to the grind and just sludging through everything. Maybe that’s why. I talk about that in the mindset stuff, but people aren’t interested in Asian parenting. They don’t want to take it on themselves. Here’s where I think the difference is though, because yes, you are used to the grind. I think most people are actually used to the grind. I think that the benefit that you had, especially when you got started, is you actually had a job you really liked.

47:32
So you weren’t, think about most people that we interact with. They grind for eight hours a day and then they’re gonna come home and grind for three hours or two hours, where it’s just like, I’m losing at work. I feel like people don’t appreciate me, don’t value me. I’m underpaid. I have no vacation, whatever it is, right? I hate my boss. And then they come home and they’re trying to figure out something that is completely foreign to them.

48:00
Most of the people that we encounter have zero experience in e-commerce or creating content. They’ve never been on a WordPress site. Like when we meet someone’s like, I’ve had a WordPress site for seven years, we’re like, yes, you know, but most people don’t. They don’t know that you can get products from Asia. They don’t have any idea that what display advertising is. It’s like absolutely like learning a new language. And so there’s a grind all day and then there’s a grind all night. And I think

48:28
humans can only take so much grind, right? Which is where the mindset comes in and those quick wins. And like, I think we as like course providers probably need to do a better job of the quick wins for people because you and I are both grinders, right? We can do this all day long, all the time. But most people don’t have our personality types. And then when we don’t wanna do that, you and I both are the same. We’re like, I don’t wanna do anything.

48:57
We’re completely extreme. We either are like, will grind it out as hard as long as we have to. Then it’s like, I’m not doing anything today. There’s no middle. I think for most people, they don’t want to grind all day at work and then come home and grind on these things that they don’t have any knowledge of. All right. I’m reviving the family first challenge. That’s right. Mindset training is coming back. I got to remember what I said in those because I did those all off the cuff. Oh, did you?

49:26
I did. Okay. People are going to be excited. It was live and interactive. I think they’re on StreamYard still. I got to find them.

49:37
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, if you want to know more about challenges, make sure you watch Alicia Rinozo’s presentation at Seller Summit 2023. More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 521. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go over to sellersummit.com.

50:06
If you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuarterJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.