Lucrative Luminary

Connection Is Key!

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 09:02:00 GMT

Have you ever been on-stage, in front of an audience… and you forgot what you were saying?

Ugh… the dreaded nightmare of this profession!

You know what I’m talking about… you go blank, then stare at the floor or up at the ceiling, trying desperately to remember what to say next. Of course, in that moment, your memory has to compete against the part of your mind that’s saying, “Oh, *&%, this is going bad, everyone knows I have no idea what I’m suppose to say…”

And on it goes.

The truth is, this creates a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the panic in your body language will have your audience shut down to you. Its so subtle, yet oh, so powerful!

So, how do you avoid this?

Well, the answer is NOT to be better prepared. Its NOT about doing everything in your power to avoid making mistakes. Making a mistake is NOT an issue, its what you DO with the mistake that makes all the difference.

Let me explain.

When you’re on a stage or in front of a room of people, you’re in a Leadership position. Each member of the audience has a specific problem and they see you as a potential Leader to guide them out of it.

And, these people are smart… each one has their own life experience to tell them that things will go wrong along the way, they always do. So, consciously or sub-consciously, these people want to know what you’re going to do when things go wrong.

When you look at the floor or the ceiling, or when you rummage through your notes, you communicate, “If things go a bit sour, I’m outta here… you’re on your own.”

This is a HUGE trust-breaker with your audience. Again, its so subtle, yet so powerful. Everything is magnified when you’re the Leader.

However, if you can manage to stay in full connection with your audience, you communicate, “When things don’t go exactly as planned, I’ll be right here with you… we’re in this together!

So, how do you do this?

I’ll never forget the first time one of my mentors told me, “Callan, I promise you, the answer is NOT on the floor… try finding it in someone’s eyes.”

These may very well be the wisest words ever said to me about leading from the front of the room.

When you stay in Connection with your audience, your ‘flaws’ and ‘miscues’ will actually benefit your overall presentation! It makes you more ‘real’… more approachable…more Human.

So, no matter what happens in your workshop or seminar room, stay with your audience! You are their Leader, so act like one!

When you make a mistake, that chatter going on in your mind mistakenly thinks your presentation is about YOU.

Remember, its not about You… its NEVER about You.

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Do You Ever Feel ‘Weird’ When You’re Selling? … Try This…

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 09:27:00 GMT

Selling from the stage can be very tricky at times. A lot of people can be really great when it comes to content but when it comes to the “offer” or the “sales pitch” part of their workshops, they start to tighten up… the audience tightens up and things go very bad, very quickly.

So here’s my tip for you:

What you want to do is make sure there is congruency between your content and your offer… which means that you’ve got to include valuable information right in the body of your offer.

Educate people right through to the end. Even if they don’t buy something from you, they will get something of value. This will help you relax, it will help your audience relax and I GUARANTEE it will help your conversion!

Below you’ll see a place to leave a comment. I’d love to hear your comments about what works well for you when you sell from the stage.

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Handle The Heckler!

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 02:15:00 GMT

Today’s tip has to do with the inevitable experience of having a “Heckler” in your audience. I have a very counter-intuitive way to ‘Handle the Heckler’…

One of the things that I love to do if someone is calling out from the audience is actually get them a microphone. Generally speaking these people just want to voice something, they want to express something, they want some empathy, they want some attention. So… I give them the Mic, I empathize, I give them my full attention, I thank them and then I move on.

This week I would love to hear your stories about any time you’ve had a heckler in your audience and what you did about it.

How To Be Authentic on Stage

Sat, 28 Dec 2019 02:22:00 GMT

The truth of the day is I am GRUMPY. I am a little down, a little low energy and I’m feeling really grumpy… I am supposed to be shooting this marketing video and connecting with the camera and be positive and passionate…

But I don’t feel like it today!

This Workshop Wealth Tip is all about Authentic Emotional Expression.

There was a time in the workshop and trainer industry where it was appropriate to get up on stage and stuff down whatever you were feeling inside. You know, suck it up and stuff it down and just perform and be happy and passionate no matter what was happening.

That’s NOT the way it is anymore…

People in your audience are craving authentic communication, truthful communication and they are craving authentic emotional expression.

So my tip for you is that no matter what you are feeling show your audience that. If you are telling a story and feel really moved… tell your audience that.

Even if you cry, show your audience what is going on – stay in connection with them as you feel your feelings and express them.

Maybe you are angry? Again… show your audience that! Just stay in connection with them.

Maybe you are feeling grumpy like I am.

Live out loud, let them know whats really going on for you. This way you are going to build trust, you are going to build rapport and you are going to be congruent.

Because at some level, if you try to mask those things, they are going to feel it anyway.

So feel your feelings, express them, live out loud and when you do that in the company of your audience you are going to feel better, they are going to feel better and everything is going to go smoother…

And you might even end up being in a better mood. I’m feeling better already!

So that’s your Workshop Wealth Tip for this week.

You’ll notice right below the video there is a place to leave a comment or a question so go ahead and do that.

If you have any questions at all about what is appropriate on stage or what isn’t appropriate on stage go ahead and leave it there and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Until next time be brilliant!

Callan Rush xo.

Resistance Is A Good Thing

Sun, 22 Dec 2019 09:30:00 GMT

This weeks Workshop Wealth Tip is all about resistance. You’ll always have some people at your workshops who are resistant at some level to what you’re offering.

Maybe it’ll be as obvious as someone heckling you. That has happened to me, it’s kind of unnerving!

Maybe it’ll be as subtle as someone looking sideways and crossing their arms in the front row… they’re making you work for it.

Resistance comes in all sorts of styles and can manifest in all sorts of behaviors, but what you need to remember as the workshop facilitator is that resistance is not necessarily a bad thing.

And here’s why: often times resistance is just a sign that your information is starting to push up against some beliefs systems or some survival mechanisms that person has held on dearly to.

So you’re actually challenging a way of thinking, or feeling or believing that has been with them for many, many, many years…

So again it’s natural that they are going to go: wait a minute, this has worked for me for so long and now you’re asking me to let go of something that has kept me safe?

Be compassionate when people are resistant. Explore it, ask them more about it, give space for their resistance as opposed to being resistant to their resistance.

What I’ve also found in my over a decade of doing this and many many thousands of people is that often times if you are patient, if you are compassionate, if you are curious and you really open up the communication about what that resistance is about, your number one most resistant person in your audience will become your number one fan!

That’s my tip for this week. You’ll notice below this video there is a place for you to leave comments and questions so if you have any questions about how to handle a heckler or how to deal with resistance or what kinds of questions could be appropriate to ask to explore and open those channels. Go ahead and put them down there.

Until next time be brilliant!

Callan Rush xo

The #1 Tactic to Fill Your Next Workshop

Sat, 21 Dec 2019 09:25:00 GMT

The absolute easiest, fastest and cheapest way to fill your next workshop is to get up and speak at somebody else’s workshop! It’s kind of counter intuitive… fill your workshop by speaking at another one?

To counter confusion, let’s call this tactic, “Book SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS.”

Here are a few places you can go to speak:

There are 2 HUGE REASONS why speaking engagements are the BEST way to fill your room:

Keep in mind, some people will never go to seminars. No matter what. While others LOVE to go workshop and seminars just to be around other people. Of course – you want to focus on the second group of people. And guess where you’ll find them? At other seminars and workshops, of course! So get on those stages as fast as you can.

And now for some really great news…contrary to what you might think, Opportunities to speak are everywhere!

Many, many, many organizations and groups are begging for speakers right now. All you need to do is to get in contact with the people who are responsible for assembling groups of your specific audience – a.k.a ‘target’ or ‘niche’ market. For example, if you are selling a Women’s Business Coaching Program – get a speaking engagement at the local Women In Business Chapter.

Here is an easy 5 STEP PROCESS to find ideal Speaking Engagements:

Ideal speaking engagements (see Step 1, above) can be found online (do Google searches), and in magazines directed at your Specific Audience. You can also find associations that focus on your topic, you can check out free or paid publications, and you can even look in newspapers. Now the only thing left to do – is get on those stages!

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Lesson #9 : Easiest Way to Increase Sales Conversion

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 15:37:00 GMT

The Easiest Way to Significantly Increase Your Conversions

People tend to be aware of the word, and what it means, and how it applies to their campaigns. However, I’m going to take a position on it, or a stance, of the definition of the word, in its most general sense which you probably… It’s likely that you never thought of it in these terms. So in the end, what matters, or the conversion metric that actually matters in the biggest context, there’s only one, and it’s the amount of money that you keep from any campaign, taking into account refunds or payment plans where people make installments, or sometimes they don’t, or they cancel, or whatever, or stop.

With regards to any campaign that you do, it’s the money that you end up keeping on deposit, in your account, relative to the total exposure of your message. That’s the ratio that determines your conversion, the amount of money you keep relative to the overall exposure. I’ll give you an example, let’s say that you were going to run a simple campaign where you were going to send some emails out, or send an email let’s just say, keep it really simple, you’re sending one email out to all your contacts and inviting them to get on a webinar with you.

So, they click on a link, they go to a webinar registration page, they sign up, they attend the webinar, you’re going to teach them something amazing, and at the end, you make an offer for some product or program that you sell, a pretty very straightforward, very common type of campaign.

Micro Conversions

In this case, there’s a lot of micro conversions along the way that you could measure, right? So you’re sending out an email to your entire list, well there’s the number of those people that actually open the email, that’s your first micro conversion, then of the people that open it, some of those people are going to click on the link, that’s your next one. Of the people that click on the link to go to your registration page, well some of those people are going to actually register for your webinar, that’s another micro conversion.

Some of the people that register will show up. Of the people that show up some of them will stick through to your offer, of those people some of them will buy your offer, and of the people that buy your offering, some of those people will actually pay for it, or give you the money, not cancel, or not ask for a refund, those types of things, your retention. Okay, so those are all micro conversions.

In that case the first thing I’ll say, now this is not my main point, I’m building to the big takeaway here, but the first thing that I’ll say though that’s really important in increasing your conversions, is to be aware of what the ratio is at each of those steps, each of those micro conversions.

Where is the weak link here?

Where is your opportunity for the least amount of effort to have the biggest impact overall? If you’re getting great open rates to your emails but the click-through rate is crazy low, well then quite likely the biggest opportunity for you within the campaign is to get better at the actual email copy, to get more people to click through. Or maybe lots of people are clicking through, but the registration page is converting really low, well then that’s going to be your biggest opportunity, etc, etc, down the line. And knowing that, if you can, let’s say, just for sake of argument, if you can double the conversion at any single one of those micro steps, micro conversions, then you double the result, assuming the other ratios hold true.

When it comes to conversion, and all your campaigns, I invite you to look at it that way and to make sure that you’re tracking all these things, or even better yet, someone else in your organization if that’s not your forte, tracking the numbers and all that.

Well by all means, have someone else do it.

It doesn’t have to be you, for sure. Again, that’s not my big takeaway here, but that is an important point for sure. Okay so, my big takeaway, all right. So remember that you are… This idea of the conversion, so most people would see it as, “Well, my conversion is whatever the total number of buyers is from the campaign.” Relative to some pool that they’re measuring. So some people would say, “The conversion is I had 100 people on the webinar and 10 people bought, so my conversion is 10%” And that’s what they’re measuring, or they might say, “But I had 10 people buy, out of 200 people that registered for the webinar, so I had a 5% conversion.”

So these are all very short sighted, it’s not taking, it’s not looking at the entire picture. As I mentioned before, when you’re looking at the bigger picture, the conversion is not the number of buyers, it’s the dollars in, relative to the total exposure. So, if you’re looking just for people that register for your webinars then that’s not the total exposure. In the example we gave, the total exposure would be the size of your email list. Because you sent an email out to that many people, there’s that much potential. And, the result isn’t limited to the number of buyers.

An Example

Like if you have 10 people buy something from you for $200, well that’s double the conversion of 10 people buying at $100, obviously. You’ve made twice as much money, therefore the overall conversion is double. Okay, so hopefully, that’s all making sense, building up to the big takeaway here.

Because what the learning is, is that your biggest opportunity…

Okay this is true for almost everyone in the transformation space, there’d be very few exceptions, okay there will be some exceptions but very few. So, it’s very, very likely that your biggest opportunity to significantly increase your conversions, now remember it’s the dollars on deposit relative to the exposure, that’s what I’m talking about here, the biggest opportunity that you have right now is to in every campaign that you do moving forward, every campaign, is to offer something else to the people that just bought from you.

The Money Is In The Upsell

You want to create an upsell, have an upsell in every single campaign. Now I just mentioned about tracking all of these micro steps, all of these micro-commitments, right, and finding the weakest one. Now, that’s important to do over time.

However, what I’m suggesting is, is that what will trump all of that in the short term, in other words, something that you can do with the least amount of effort that’s going to give you the biggest result right away, offer and upsell.

Impact On Revenue

Here’s a couple of things I would like to say about that. Well typically, if you do a really poor job of offering an upsell, it’s going to add 20% to your conversion, and we’ve had many campaigns where it adds 40% even 50%, meaning for the same campaign, we do the same set of steps, but just by offering an upsell, we’ll do 40% to 50% more in revenue.

So, we do a big launch and we do a million dollars worth of sales of whatever the core offer is, because we have an upsell in place, we’ll do an extra half-a-million dollars sometimes in sales. So the potential is huge. Okay so, how does it work? Well when offering upsells in your campaigns there’s two ways to do it. I’ve tested many different variations, and what I’ve found gets the best results is to use both, to do both in every campaign that we do, so that’s what we tend to do now.

How It Works

The first is what I refer to as an inline upsell, and that’s when you make an offer to someone immediately after purchase, they purchase something. Or you could even do it if it’s a live event, if you’re doing this offline you could do it at the point of purchase, they’re at the back table at your event, registering for something that you just offered for $2000, well the person at the table could let them know of an additional offer like for 10,000, or something, where they get some other amazing thing. That would be an example of an upsell, as well.

Let’s keep it to online for simplicity’s sake.

So they make a purchase and then there’s what’s called a one click or a one touch upsell, which most shopping carts now, pretty well all of them have this technology built in where they fill out all their details, they hit the button to buy whatever it is, but the credit card transaction is actually held open.

The literal transaction hasn’t taken place yet, the transaction is still open and they land on a page where you can have a video or text, we tend to do ours in video, where, let’s say it’s Callan, my business partner, most often our campaigns are with her. She will describe some other opportunity that they have, that they may want to take advantage of, let them know that the logistics, the benefits, and the tuition, whatever. And then just say, “Well hey, if you simply click that button below, and you’ll get that offer instead, If not that’s, by all means you can click on the other link and that’ll take it directly to the members’ area for what you just purchased.”

Adding A Webinar

So that in and of itself tends to add a good 10% to 15% to any campaign that we do. But then, where the big… Where the real magic is, what we do at the end of any campaign, we’ll wait a few days and then we always host a webinar. Typically we’ll do a series.

We’ll host a webinar where the function of the webinar is to make the upsell offer, because originally with the inline upsell process, only the people that went through your campaign and then bought actually see that offer. So then what we do is once the campaign’s over, we just expose that offer to the entire community. Like if it’s in a launch let’s say, we’ll expose that offer to the entire launch list, and that will add an extra 20%, 25%, 30% conversion, meaning dollars in per campaign.

Upsells Are Underutilized In Transformation Space

I find that in other communities this is kind of common knowledge I think, but for whatever reason in the transformation space, the idea of upsells, they’re underutilized, barely any one’s doing them and I think my take on it is, because it’s not like people have never been exposed to the idea before.

I suspect that it’s an inner game issue, that people have the opinion that if someone just bought something, their making them another offer is uninvited, or intrusive, or forceful, or sales-y, or manipulative, or any of these things. To whatever it is, that you’re utilizing in your core campaign and with your core offer, whatever tactics and ways of being that you’re using to really connect with people and make them an actual offer as opposed to a sales pitch, those same rules of communication apply in the upsell.

It really shouldn’t be any different, there shouldn’t be anything forceful about it. I think if you’ve ever seen Callan and I do it, you’ll notice that there’s nothing about the video that pressures people or has them think that they have to do it to be successful. It’s just another option, it’s just another thing that gives them some other benefit.

Question From Shelley

There’s a question that just came in from Shelley, “Question, is that upsell a higher price point than the original offer, especially with the non buyers?” Great question Shelley, I said that really quietly, so hopefully that came through the mic. So Shelley’s asking, is the upsell a higher price than the original offer?

Yes, I like to… What seems to be the sweet spot is if it’s about five times higher. So if we have a $2,000 core offer, the upsell will be in about the $10,000 range typically, and you can do the math for other price points. But yeah, and it’s always that same… When we make the offer to the non-buyers of the original campaign, it’s that same investment point but it includes the previous offer. So, let’s say we have a $2,000 offer and then a $10,000 upsell.

After The Campaign Is Over

After the campaign’s over we’ll do a webinar where we go direct to the $10,000 offer but it includes for free, the original $2,000 offer. So they’re getting the same overall deal that the upsell people got. If that wasn’t clear, when we do the inline upsell, the upsell is inclusive of the original offer. We tend to always do things that way because it makes…

The articulation of the offer becomes much more appealing, because they have a lot of value on what it is that they just purchased. It’s one thing to say, “Hey, you’re buying this thing.” And then say, “Oh, this is bonus. That’s worth $2,000.” Yeah, okay. But if they just filled out their payment details to buy something for $2,000, well it has exactly $2,000 worth of value for them, obviously, because they just agreed to that. So, when that now becomes a part of this bigger package, now they’re getting this $2,000 thing for free by investing in the $10,000 thing.

My Invitation To You

Take a look at the campaigns that you’re already doing, and just look to add an upsell in both, inline and post-campaign.

Making A Really Good Upsell

So, what is the most appealing thing that you can offer to someone based on what you know about them? You want it to be one of three things, so they just bought something to get a specific result. So the first thing that you can offer as an upsell is something that gives them more of that result. Now when I say more, sometimes people misinterpret that, and they add as the upsell more features to the original offer. So saying, “Hey, here’s your thing where you’re going to get these videos, and my group coaching, or whatever.” And then the upsell is, well instead of getting 6 of these calls, you are going to get 12 of them. Well, that’s not a great upsell, that’s more features.

Features Are Not Compelling

It has to be a promise that gives them more of the result. That’s a very important distinction. Another classic, a really great and compelling upsell is when you make an offer for whatever the result is, and then you give them an opportunity to get the result faster, sooner. Whatever their result is, how can they get it a lot quicker or more instantaneous would be ideal, like immediate? So, a done-for-you, as an example, would be compelling.

Key Upsell Components

You’re going to teach them to do something and then the upsell is, “Well hey, I’ll just do it for you and it’ll get done really quick.” That would be a really compelling upsell. So, what did I say? I said, more of the benefit, a faster result, and then lastly, would be an easier result. So how can they get that result that you’re promising, but with less effort?

So less of their own energy, less of their own time, whatever. That done-for-you would be an example of that as well. So yeah, that’s Lesson Number Nine. Thanks for watching, and if you’re not already a liker of my page, please go ahead and like it, the reason being, I’ve still got eight more of these to go over the next eight days. If you like my page then Facebook will notify you as soon as I go live with those.

Marketing Content: Introducing The Era Of Elegance

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:32:00 GMT

Welcome to Learning #7, where I’m going to speak to a trend that actually, I had a big part in starting in our industry. I’ll get to that. But also, I’m going to then transition into sharing some thoughts on where I see this trend going in the next couple of years.

I’m referring to this trend as “The Era of Elegance.”

What I mean by this is that you may have noticed that over the last two, three, four, some window of time, recent years, there’s been a transition in our space where leaders in our community, like myself and Callan Rush, my business partner, and many others, we’ve been investing a lot of our time, energy, and money into increasing the production value or the production quality of our marketing content.

You might notice that sales pages nowadays are becoming more and more elegant. They’re becoming more and more beautiful, the layout, and the colors, and the design, and the branding. I’m not meaning to suggest in any way, shape, or form that, on a sales page, that there’s not as much pressure as there ever was for the copy to be really great, or for the scripting of the video to be good. Of course, the message has to be solid. But what we’re noticing more and more is that elegance is out-converting “ugly,” or a lack of elegance. In our space anyway, we were one of the core players in initiating this trend a few years ago.

We’re noticing more and more is that elegance is out-converting “ugly,” or a lack of elegance
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We did a launch about a year and a half ago for a program called “The Leap,” and we really pushed the bounds of this idea of elegance. One of the ways that we did that was with our sales page. We created just a work of art. Now, before I go taking too much credit for that, the copy on that page was very elegant. I did not write it, Callan Rush did.

She happens to be watching this video, so kudos to you, Callan, for the copy on that page. Marisa Murgatroyd and her team designed the page. Talented group, and to their credit, Marisa and her team, they had been preaching this movement into the importance of design and elegance. Marisa has been saying that for many years, and working with some clients doing great work.

It just so happens that when we had them do that page, that was the very first time where one of her pages met with the degree of exposure that we tend to get in our launches. So this had really significant impact on our business for sure, but on the space in its entirety. With some of these ideas, again, I’m trying not give myself too much credit, because if you look at our space and go out a little bit wider, there’s a woman named Marie Forleo, who’s really been, in my opinion, the originator of this movement in the transformation space with regards to elegance and the importance of design, and the quality of marketing content, the production quality.

Even if you go a little bit bigger, my opinion is that the Apple brand itself has been really the key initiator and the key driver, and the ripple effect has been seen through many markets, not just ours. But it wasn’t all that long ago, like if you were learning internet marketing, as an example, at the same time I was, which wasn’t all that long ago, you would’ve learned at that time that in most cases, ugly converted better than pretty.

Of course, I’m speaking in very general terms. But more often than not, it was actually lack of elegance that out-converted things looking pretty. What I learned, when I first started teaching some of the things we teach now, we would have taught people, “Hey, you’re better off making it ugly,” but times have changed. Definitely, as I see it, we’re right smack in the middle of this idea of the era of elegance.

In 2015, not only did we create the sales page, but the videos. This is where you may have noticed the trend really picking up over the last year and a half, in our space. I set about with that Leap Launch back in, I think it was May of last year, of really changing the way video is used in our space. If you happened to see that launch, you’d remember. If not, I’ll explain it to you.

We were the first ones to start using a lot of what they call “B-roll,” and a lot of stock footage to communicate the emotionality of the story, and of the lessons, and of the elements that I was teaching. It’s interesting, at that time, it was really my first time being on video in any big way, so my delivery in the videos was actually kind of clumsy, relatively speaking. My delivery on the videos wasn’t all that great. I was a bit, even, awkward, you might say.

However, all of the B-roll footage that we got…so an example. If I was telling a story about having a meeting with my team, as opposed to it just being my face to camera, like you see right now, you would’ve saw footage of me sitting at a table with my team in a meeting, maybe with a flipchart or something. When I was talking about being out to dinner with Callan and our team, you would’ve seen footage of us in a restaurant sitting around a table, having a good time. If I was talking about being in the gym, you would’ve seen footage of me at the gym.

I remember a couple times, I used as a metaphor, I told some stories about my training in martial arts, then you would’ve seen footage of me actually in the dojo, sparring or training or whatever. That’s what’s called B-roll, and then, stock footage is just random. I’m talking about a business meeting, you just see two random people in that context. So a lot of this, we’re really starting to push the bounds of what was happening in our space at the time.

Justin in the Dojo from The Leap PLC1 Video…

So we did this massive…it was a big success. It was like a $4 million launch. And at the time, it was the biggest thing that our little community had seen, anyway. Then there’s a gentleman named Jeff Walker, who approached me and said, “Wow, those videos, that was really inspiring. I’m going to really up my game.” Then it was only a few months later that Jeff Walker, he upped the game again with his talented son, Daniel, producing his videos.

His videos, if you remember or were paying attention at that time, were much, much better than the Leap videos. So he did this amazing thing. Keep in mind, that Leap Launch was only a year and a half ago. Now it’s commonplace, right? You see Christian Mickelsen, Lisa Sasevich, Eben Pagan, Bill Baren, Ryan Levesque, Stu McLaren, Ryan Eliason, all of the leaders in our space are now investing a lot of time, a lot of their energy, a lot of their money. Producing videos like that is more expensive than not.

They’re investing a lot of their time, energy and money into increasing the quality, the production value, the production quality of their marketing content.

So where does this go next?

I’ll tell you a funny story, actually, because again, even with those Leap videos, I don’t want to be taking all the credit here. How I came about the commitment to do that was out of a conversation with a gentleman named Stu McLaren, who you may know. He was doing some advising for a couple of clients that he had at the time, and they were in completely different markets. One was in dog training, and another one, I can’t remember what it was. So it came out of a conversation I had.

He had already started playing around with this idea in some other markets, and they’re having huge success. I just decided to commit to it. Then he introduced me to a video producer, Dean Rainey, who we still use for all of our videos. We went out for dinner the night before we started the video shoot for the launch videos. That night I said to him, “You know what? This has never been done in our space.” And I said, “You know what my favorite thing about this is? I’m going to look like an absolute genius here, and you’re going to do all the work.”

How to look like an absolute genius…

Because I don’t know the first thing about video production or quality. I just made the commitment to do it, but I went out and found someone who does know. Of course, Dean Rainey was the brains behind the actual videos themselves. I didn’t have anything to do with that. I don’t know anything about video, nor do I aspire to.

My point is, yeah, we were initiators in all this, but really, we didn’t have anything to do with it. Marisa Murgatroyd and her team did all our visuals. Dean Rainey and his team did all the videos. Now our community and our space, looks entirely different than it did a year and a half ago.

It’s amazing. That’s the trend. So where is this going?

Because that’s where the big learning here is. Or I won’t even say “learning,” because it’s just my opinion.

The next phase of this era of elegance, as I’m calling it, is, there’s about to be a new movement, of which I intend our business to be at the forefront of, and it’s in increasing the production value or the production quality of the paid content that people consume.

The next phase of the era of elegance is increasing the production value of the paid content people consume.
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Why this is so important moving forward

That’d be your programs that you’re selling or the products that you’re selling. These need to match the production value of the marketing content. When there’s this big value on the production in the marketing content, or stuff that we’re giving away for free, that sets an expectation for what’s coming next, what people are actually investing in.

Here’s what is happening

Well, what’s happening, for the most part, in our space, is there’s a lag now. We have these people, including us, who have completely changed the way that we put ourselves out there with regards to our marketing, but then the programs we’re leading into, especially the digital stuff, like members areas and videos, trainings, that tends to still have a real lack of production quality to it or production value. Usually just voiceovers to PowerPoint slides or whatever. What’s happening is, because of that, there’s an incongruence there.

How this is impacting business

What’s happening is that cancellation rates actually start to rise, because there’s an expectation that the quality on the back end is going to be as good as the front end, which is natural, of course. In some cases, that expectation wouldn’t be there had the production quality not been so good on the front end. So it can kind of bite you in the butt a little bit if you don’t have that follow-through.

I think that’s where this trend is going, and what you’re going to see now is an arms race, so to speak. I don’t know if that’s quite the right way to phrase it, but you’re going to see the leaders in our community putting a lot of time and attention, and even investing money into the production quality, the production value, of the content that they’re giving away in their paid programs.

Don’t let this stop you

One of the things that I want to stress about this, though, is my fear in communicating this. I think it’s long overdue. However, I suspect that some people will use it as a reason to not get started.

I don’t see it that way, because none of this is meant to replace a message. Meaning that just because better production quality converts better, it’s not in lieu of the message itself. You can’t take a crappy message and put it out there expecting it to do well. But a really great message, given to someone at the right time, will still convert just fine.

Hopefully that makes sense.

This is something, if you’re just starting out, to aspire to. You don’t got to do all this stuff right out of the gate. Just know this is the trend that’s been occurring, and then this is where I see it heading next.

Just take a look. This is the fourth video I’ve done in this series. Of course, at the time of shooting, didn’t have much in the way of likes and comments and shares. But if you look back at all the videos did they do now.

Take the video above as an example

There’s no production quality here, right? The lighting isn’t particularly good, I clearly haven’t shaven forever. I’ve been showering at the very least, I just had a shower, so we’re good there. Haven’t been prettying myself up, per se. The camera’s at the wrong angle here, I’m kind of looking down at you. I’m looking at myself on the screen, so my eyes are off-center.

This is not a well-produced video, yet, I believe. Obviously, I’m a bit biased, but the content is good, and it’s been getting, if you go back and look at the previous videos, which you should if you haven’t seen them, thousands and thousands of views, tons of comments, and shares, and likes, and loves, and wows, and all those crazy things, just because the message is good.

So there’s still room for that.

It’s not like everything that you produce, you have to put all of this effort and invest money into. Just know that, especially when it comes to your primary marketing campaigns, launches, optimized webinar sequence, or whatever other campaigns that you’re doing, the key ones, the ones that are the lifeblood of your business, it’s going to behoove you moving forward to be putting more and more and more onus, attention, and yes, even a financial investment into the production quality of those elements.

Then, like I said, the next phase, making sure you’re doing the same thing on the back end as well, that you’re meeting that expectation. If you’ve got great production quality on the front end, make sure you’ve got it on the back end.

One last thing

The last thing I’ll say about where I see this going, the kind of thing I’ve been thinking of lately is, where do I see this going beyond the next couple of years? Again, this is no more than a slightly educated guess, I’m anticipating seeing things like launch videos, as an example, not maybe have any face-to-camera actual teaching.

They’ll be more like documentary or even movie-trailer style. One of the elements to consider when it comes to this production quality or production value, is entertainment. It’s not all about just your message and what you can teach people. People will take it in, and absorb it, watching more of your videos if they’re being entertained. That’s the downside of a video like this.

It’s not because the message is any weaker

I bet, even if I go back to the very first video, it’s had, I don’t know, 5,000 views, something like that. If I were able to go back and track how much of the video every person watched, it would probably be relatively low compared to a launch video or something. The reason would be, not that this message is any weaker, just simply it’s not as entertaining. It’s just my head on a screen.

Sure, I’ve got this pretty thing in the background, but that’s about it, right? So that lack of entertainment value, I suspect, would be having people pay attention less.

We are in the the Edutainment Business

Someone years ago coined the term “edutainment,” which is the idea of combining entertainment and education. As we move forward in the transformation space that entertainment piece is going to become more important and more significant.

Lesson #8: When Boring Is Better…

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 14:28:00 GMT

When Boring Is Better

First of all, let me suggest, or to say that the learning here, I don’t consider it to be a truism. This isn’t a black or white issue. This is something…as I see it, it’s a continuum. And depending on where you’re at, in the development of your business, you’re going to be… this will be more or less relevant, more or less true in your business.

So, the thing that I feel that I’ve learned this year is that as we grow, the ability to be able to see in advance, or to know with some type of certainty, what’s coming up in our business, with things like cash flow, as an example, become more and more important.

Consistency and Predictability

That things being consistent and predictable are becoming a much better scenario than taking risks and swinging for the fences, so to speak, which has been more my style thus far in growing our business. So, I’ll give an example. In the very first year of our business, my primary business with Callan Rush, we did just under $200,000, about $180,000 in sales in our very first year, that was back in 2008. At the end of that first year, we were free to take on a lot of risks, in that we could significantly modify the model of our business in an attempt to grow. Which we did. and that was our pattern, for many years we would grow anywhere from 50% to 100% some growing by either half or doubling year over year which was awesome.

But now, things are different. Now that we’ve grown in that scale, now that we have significant commitments and obligations and responsibilities with regards to expenses and team and all of these things, our attempts to grow in that way become less and less effective.

An Example

I will give you an example. So let’s say we’re doing a big launch, right? And I want to come up with some new point of innovation, in other words, I want to try something out, I want to test an idea. And let’s say, we’re projecting that we’re going to do $2 million in sales, let’s say, in the launch. Okay. Great, now if the points of innovation or if the things that we’re attempting to different, let’s say that they don’t go according to our projection.

They don’t go according to plan, turns out there’s some degree of failure to it if you want to call that. And the launch only does a million dollars. On the one hand, it’s like, “Oh wow, we did this thing, in two weeks, whatever, made a million dollars.” However, being down a million dollars in our projected cash flow, that’s a really hard thing to navigate or to rebound from. It causes stress and tension and that has to be handled somehow.

Previous Scenarios

Whereas previously, if we were taking some risks, like years ago in a campaign, where it’s like, “Hey, you know, we really want to swing for the fences on this, we’re going to take a few risks. We’re looking to do a $100,000 in sales.” And we made the same types of mistakes… or whatever, in the same way the innovations didn’t pull through, and instead of $100,000 we only did $50,000, so in other words, you know, half, like the the other scenario.

That was no big deal, I mean, a lot of times we could bounce back from that in a single week, just reaching out and maybe offering someone a one-on-one coaching package for $50,000 or something. Well, now we’ve made up that difference in our projected cash flow, and we could do that sometimes in a single week. So, as we grow, the learning, or what I’ve been… what I feel I’ve been learning through making mistakes, frankly, is that that becomes less and less favorable, because the mistakes or the shortcomings or the points of innovation that don’t work become more and more costly.

Measured Risk

It’s kind of like a boo-hoo, or an argument against growing and taking on bigger things like team and stuff like that. And I assure you, that’s not the point that I’m making here. Okay. So, with that in mind, what is? What’s the learning here? Well, the learning is simply that as we grow, that I personally, I need to be a lot more choosy about the points of innovation that I choose to pursue or the risks that I choose to take on.

So, the idea of, as I was mentioning before, consistency and predictability, those things are becoming much more favorable than taking risks or taking the types of risks that I used to enjoy taking, and frankly, still enjoy taking, in a business. But when the risks don’t pay off, now the impact that it has on our entire organization and our team is just tremendous, relative to, you know, days of yesteryear, or whatever the saying is.

What I Mean By “When Boring Is Better”

So, I called this learning “When Boring Is Better.” What I mean by this is simply that as our business grows this idea of consistency and predictability become much more favorable. It’s like investors say, that “When you’re going into investing, you don’t want to invest money unless you can afford to lose it.” I think that the same things, at scale and in business, as you grow more and more, that becomes true in business as well. What I’m learning now is that we’re at the point where I can’t…really, I shouldn’t be taking risks in my business, unless I know 100% I can afford to lose on that risk.

So anyway, that’s the learning that I’m coming away with from this year, one of the learnings, obviously, one of the main 10. But I want to get to a specific plan of action or course of actions. What can you actually do with this information? Well, here’s a… I’ll bring up a point, where Callan and I did a campaign. I don’t remember when it was, May or June of this year. And one of main pieces of information that we talked about in that campaign was that we boil down all types of marketing campaigns or client-acquisition structures into three types.

Leading, Lagging & Linked Strategies

We called them leading, lagging, and linked. And so a leading strategy is when you do…you put in some effort that gives you a result, potentially a modest result. Yet that effort is leveraged over time, it continues to bring in results over time. We call that a leading strategy. So, what are known as evergreen campaigns. Of course, we’re big fans of a structure that I created called an optimized webinar sequence, which is a type of evergreen campaign. So, that’s a leading strategy.

A Lagging Strategy

A lagging strategy is when you put in effort into a campaign, but you have to keep applying that effort over time before you see some windfall of results potentially. So, that would be things like blogging and podcasting and things of this nature, you know, creating YouTube videos.

These types of things don’t tend to get results unless you consistently keep at the effort and applying the effort over time. That’s called the lagging.

A Linked Strategy

A linked strategy is when you put in some effort into something, into a campaign, and you get the result in real time, you get the result at the same time that you’re applying the effort, but when the effort stops the results also stop. So an example of that would be a live event, which of course we’re huge on live events, we do a lot of live events and teach people how to do live events.

A Linked Strategy

Online launches, which of course I’m a huge fan of as well and follow one of my primary mentors, a gentleman named Jeff Walker. That’s a linked strategy.

Okay. We’ve got these leading, lagging, and linked. The action here is…well, first of all, one of the main points here, with this idea of predictability and consistency, is that, as you grow, what I’m learning more and more and more and more, is that leading strategies become more and more important.

Optimized Webinar Sequence

Things like optimized webinar sequence, which is an evergreen campaign style that focuses on automated webinars, huge fan of that, obviously. A gentleman named Stu McLaren did… a good friend of mine, he had an amazing launch this year where he was talking about the importance of what he calls a recurring revenue model, and he was teaching people how to create membership sites and whatnot, and he just taught us how to do that.

That’s another version of the same, this idea of creating predictability and consistency with regards to cash flows and other…anyway, the recurring revenue model’s another wonderful model, but these things, they’re achieving the same objective, right?

Your Homework Assignment

So, what I would do, or the plan of action that I’m inviting you or challenging you to take on would be to ask yourself, “What’s one thing, just one thing, what’s one thing that you can do in 2017 that’s going to make your cash flow more predictable?” One thing you can do in your business in 2017 to increase the predictability of your cash flow. And once you’ve answered that question, I would love, love, love to hear what you came up with so please leave it in a comment below, declare it to the world or to the universe or whatever your feeling is around that, and hopefully that your ideas will inspire others as well.

Maybe even me. Please, by all means,when you answer that question, please leave it in a comment below.

The question is, “What’s one thing, one thing that you can do in 2017 to increase the predictability of your cash flow?” I’m not saying to increase your cash flow necessarily, though that would be amazing too. I’m just asking you to come up with something that increases the predictability of it. For me, I’ll tell you what it is for us in 2017.

Some Of Our Initiatives

We’ve got a few initiatives, including we’re revitalizing our optimize webinar sequence, which is one, and we’re also… really, we’ve been designing what Ryan Levesque calls a survey funnel, which we’re looking to create an evergreen process out of an assessment-based front end as well. Towards the end of the year, we’ve got scheduled out our first membership or recurring revenue model, which… anyway, right now it’s planned for the fall of next year.

There might be a delay there, but we’ve got those two big front-end initiatives, which is awesome. And then, in the bigger context, the thing that I want to do, I don’t know if we can achieve this in 2017 or if it might take a bit longer, I don’t know, but take a closer look. But my objective, my goal is to have our business such that our linked strategies are purely windfalls of excess cash.

Our Linked Strategies

Meaning that our launches, and our events, those are our two primary linked strategies that we use, I want our business to be such…if our business can absorb zero dollar results, meaning that every dollar that comes in from our big JV launches, which we do two a year, and our live events, that that is all windfall access capital that we can use, you know, as profit, or we can reinvest in the growth of our business or whatever, but it’s all money we don’t need. That’s my goal.

So that our business runs on its own, based on our leading strategies. And I’m confident…I don’t know how long it’ll take. I’m confident we’ll get there. We’ve been there before in our business. It’s nothing new for us, which is good, I mean, we’ve done that before with our evergreen sequences or optimized webinar sequence. I’m looking forward to that.

Why Every New EntrepreneurShould Start Speaking

Fri, 24 Feb 2017 01:17:00 GMT

Today we’re debuting our first Luminary Guest Expert on the Lucrative Luminary Training blog. To kick this off we are sharing wisdom from none other than the amazing Lisa Sasevich!

Lisa Sasevich has been a tremendous influence and motivation for Callan and me, as well as a good friend. I first met her when both our businesses were new. We were invited to speak at the same event, and hit it off right away. In the following months, Callan and I watched her explode out of the starting gate using speaking events.

Lisa teaches heart-centered entrepreneurs how to sell … without being pushy or “salesy.” Since the focus of her business is so complementary to ours, we’ve invited her to write a guest post for our blog on why every new entrepreneur should start speaking. She’s a master at creating simple structures that can bring you huge profits fast! I think you’ll love and benefit from her message…

Why Every New Entrepreneur Should Start Speaking

As a heart-centered entrepreneur, whether you are launching a new business, or trying to make the quantum leap you know you are capable of, you have an incredibly powerful tool at your disposal that costs you nothing and is uniquely yours: your voice.

By using your experience, your expertise, and your voice to speak to groups, either large or small, you can build a solid foundation and kick-start your growth.

What Is Speaking?

Let’s get rid of a few misconceptions first.

First, we aren’t talking about The State of the Union or a Commencement Address here. Speaking does not have to be done in a formal or lavish setting for it to be effective. In fact, as an entrepreneur, expert, or business owner, you use your speaking skills in multiple contexts every day.

The same speaking skills you use to convey your message to a small group gathered in your living room are the same ones you use in a conference room, creating a webinar, participating in a conference call, or up on stage in front of hundreds of attendees who have paid to hear your message.

Second, contrary to what your fears are telling you, you don’t have to be an extrovert or love getting up in front of a crowd to speak. There are a lot of tools you can use to make you feel more comfortable. You can effectively deliver your message in a video, a webinar, or over the phone. (Ladies, you don’t even have to do your hair for these ones!)

Remember, whenever you are talking about your business or your passion to a group that wants to hear what you have to say, you are SPEAKING.

Why speak?

You have something to say that no one else can

The combination of your experience, knowledge, and perspective is unique to you and the world is clamoring for people who can speak authentically to those experiences.

Boost your visibility
By speaking you make yourself more visible to the world in a way that is more personal, accessible, and impactful than any writing or social media following you can create.

Boost your credibility
When you are just starting out, you have the expertise to help your clients, but you lack the track record of successes and overjoyed customer testimonials that help convince people that you are the solution to their problems. When they see you speak they see you for who you are, an expert.

Boost your profitability
Speaking is one of the cost effective ways you can add new business. You already have your ideas, experience, and voice. And for those of us who sometimes struggle with the technology side of thing (guilty!), speaking is perfect. You just need you, them, and a room.

Propel growth
One of the quickest and best ways to grow your business quickly is to speak to as many potential customers as possible. By speaking you can turn audience members into customers and into referrals for other speaking engagements where you can turn more audience members into more customers and more referrals. Oh, Imagine the growth!

Leverage time
The one thing you never have enough of as an entrepreneur is time. Speaking allows you to tell your story once and have it heard by as many people as can fit in the room. And if you’ve recorded your message, that same message can be seen and heard by the whole world.

But the best part of speaking is that you don’t have to go out looking for prospective customers, because they are already there.

In that 30 minutes or 1 hour, you have spoken directly to a group of people who wanted to hear what you have to say and are now ready to act. What’s a better use of your time than that?

Make Your Irresistible Offer
What separates a conversation about your passion into an opportunity to sell your services to your engaged and interested audience is your offer. Your presentation should be a gateway to your offer. When people hear your message and the passion you have for what you are offering right from your mouth, you can make your offer irresistible.

Make a Great Speech

How can you ensure that you’ve put together a great speech that is going to not only get people in the door, but have them leaving excited by your message?

If you enjoyed this content, Lisa Sasevich is releasing a complimentary online training series chocked full of resources like this designed to support you on your business building journey. Check it out here.

Let Them SHOP! How To Improve Your Coaching Offers

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 05:11:00 GMT

Let Them Shop… How to improve your coaching offers.

To “Let them shop.” What am I getting at here? Well, there are a couple of caveats to this. First, this is less about what I learned in 2016 and more about projecting out to 2017 and beyond. It’s my speculation about what will come in the transformation space and coaching offers.

Second, my prediction is specific to a small community of us within the transformation space, those of us who serve other transformation leaders. A couple of years back, I coined a phrase. I refer to our little industry here as, “Coaches who coach coaches how to coach more coaches.” I’ll speak directly to that small community, yet what I say will likely be relevant to other spaces, such as health and wellness or love and relationships.

I’ll speak to the trend as I see it from 2016, then talk about where I see this going. So what have I noticed? There was a time not too long ago when transformation leaders had different pain points in their business. They wanted to adjust their mindset to allow abundance or ask for money. They didn’t have clarity about their message, audience, or niche (what we call a Specific Audience). And they had pain points around not knowing how to package their offers to make it obvious they were solving a very specific need or desire. And they had a pain point about not getting their message out to enough people. They needed help building their list or getting a bigger audience for live events and speaking engagements. These are only a few examples.

The Wild West

Transformation-based or service-based businesses were built to solve these different issues or problems. A lot of us jumped in and started to provide solutions, including my business partner Callan Rush and me. We founded a company to serve that market, and so did many others. There are many people providing solutions, and for the last while it’s been like the Wild West.

It’s like anyone can come in, put up a website and say, “Hey, good news, I help coaches who coach coaches to coach coaches. I help them to be more successful, make more money, or get more clients or holistic practitioners.” Anyone who claims to help transformation leaders can make a go of it.

And you know, it’s been relatively easy. You don’t even need to be an expert or achieve any level of mastery in your topic. You can still make a six figure income with ease because you say you serve these people. I’m not trying to doom and gloom the space, or say there’s anything wrong with this, or even point fingers. My point is this: I see this trend discontinuing.

It appears to me we’ve reached, or are about to reach, a saturation point where the market will correct. I don’t profess to have a crystal ball or some magical strategic mind. I look at how other industries grew and evolved over time and see this industry doing the same things. Then I speculate what’s likely coming next.” This period is probably discontinuing, and a correction of sorts will happen. This change could happen as early as 2017, but I could be wrong. It might take a bit longer. We’ll see … or it may have already started.

The New Problem

Because of this Wild West phase, transformation leaders have a new problem. The new issue is Overwhelm, overwhelm of choice. So many claims and so many offers are out there. There are so many options to serve such a small marketplace. It’s a problem, especially for people exposed to different potential mentors who support each other and seem to be friends. One teaches something one way, and another shows it slightly differently. Well, which is it? It’s causing a different layer of problem.

And I’ve observed an extra frustration in the marketplace. Transformation leaders feel frustrated. Most haven’t quite caught on to why they feel anxiety or frustration, though. They may want to take us up on our offers, yet we present them on our timeline, not on theirs.

Let me give an example. Earlier this year, Callan and I did a big launch for our program called “Maximize Your Impact: The Optimized Webinar Sequence.” In it, we teach people how to build evergreen campaigns. That launch was the window we exposed them to this opportunity. It was on our schedule, not theirs. It had nothing to do with whether they needed it at that moment. Maybe they needed it a 5, 6 or 7 months ago? They may speculate and say, “Here’s a fantastic offer! These videos are so well done, and the price point is fantastic!” And there’s all the urgency and bonuses. But then they think, “Well, I don’t need it right now, but I might need it a few months down the road.”

The Dilemma

So now we have an interesting dilemma. It’d be fine if this happened every so often, but the constant inundation of it causes frustration and anxiety. So what do we do? This question isn’t about being right or wrong. It’s about the maturity of the space. We’re still in that Wild West phase. That’s how the Wild West works. I see this hitting a saturation point, which will cause the context to change. So what do we do about this? Where are we going from here? Well, I see this happening or changing in a couple of different ways.

As a side note, sometimes I hate saying things like this . I worry about how people will misconstrue my narrative to support a belief or fear they have. I’m NOT trying to be doom and gloom, nor shame the idea of launches and promotional calendars. It’s powerful to offer something into a marketplace when there’s a pent-up demand for it. I’ll continue to create them and leverage it in my business. I’m not trying to say there’s anything wrong with how we’re doing it, or that those things won’t work in the future. Most of it will still work.

But, we’ve got a couple of very real problems. People have overwhelming choices, and they can’t always get what they need in the order (or on the timeline) they need them. Most markets, if not all markets, are in the end consumer driven. I’m predicting these changes because it better serves the customer. It just makes sense.

So here’s how I see it going. You’ve probably been taught from us, or someone else, to make sure your offers are very, very specific. Have one problem to one audience. Well, that’s been misconstrued. People interpreted, and even taught, that it means your Business has to do that. It does not. Rather, your Offer needs to.

Where I See This Going

There’s a concept that will become more and more appealing in this marketplace of serving transformation leaders (and likely in other markets you’re serving too). It’s this: let people find a home or community where they can get all their needs met within an area of their life or their business. Meaning, it’ll still work to bring them in with a very specific offer, yet once they’re in introduce them to more. Give them a breadth of offerings they can get a la carte on their terms. I see this practice becoming more appealing.

Once they come into your fold, have a relationship with you, are an active client, and know your culture … then give them a wider breadth of offerings. You could have a catalog of different solutions. They can pick and choose what’s going to be ideal for them on a timeline that works for them. “One-Stop Shop” will become more appealing in the future. In our space, this type of offer hasn’t appealed to people, yet I see it becoming more and more attractive.

There’s another thing to consider. Tony Pennells (www.mindshift.money) shared this observation with me. Different markets (such as the medical and investing industries) reach a point in their maturity where people must pass through a point of entry before getting access to all the solutions. You have a personal session or an assessment of some kind, and someone gets to know your specific needs. Then you get a prescription or a diagnosis and get sent off to specialists. I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to look in our space, but I see something like this potentially being a part of it.

In Summary

So, if you want to move forward and go wider with your offerings, consider how to find out the specific, unique needs of each buyer (or potential buyer). Find out on their way into your program so you can give them direction. Don’t overwhelm them with your whole catalog of offerings over time. Give them guidance and recommendations based on your diagnosis. What is it you prescribe for them? This concept ties in with the #1 learning from 2016!

So that’s my prediction for where our little industry is going in the next little bit. Provide a breadth of offerings to let them shop. Serve them exactly how they want you to serve them. Customize to meet their unique and specific goals. Start to widen out in any area of their life or business where you’re serving them.

Some people in our space of transformation leaders “coaching coaches to coach more coaches,” are well set up to take advantage of this. Yet, a lot aren’t. For those who either don’t believe me or believe it isn’t a big deal, the coming years will show evidence of ignoring this trend in their businesses. In other words, I think they’ll have to work a lot harder and do a lot more just to maintain what they have … never mind growing their business.

So, that’s my take. I don’t have a crystal ball here. It’s not so just because I said it. However, it’s how I see the next little bit going, and it’s how we’ll be modifying and building our business as we move forward.

Conclusion

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Did this provoke you in any way, shape or form, either positively or negatively? Please leave a comment below with any ideas you think can add to your business and start to widen out the scope. I’d love to hear from you.

Watch for tomorrow’s video. It’ll be number five. I’m going to have a guest: a lovely, talented, beautiful, young woman you’ve likely never met before. It’s unlikely you’ll know who she is until I introduce her to you. She’s doing a fantastic job at adding value to a big learning I’m excited to share with you. So watch for it tomorrow.

The easiest way to get notification of my future videos is by liking my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/JustinLivingstonLLT . Click on the link and make sure you like the page, and you’ll get a notification of our new videos.

Thanks so much for watching again. Please leave any questions, comments, or ideas that provoked you in any way in a comment below. I’ll be going through them and responding throughout the day. And if this was of any value to you, please give me a like, a heart, or a wow on Facebook. That’d be awesome.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll be on here again tomorrow.

Until Next Time … Be Brilliant.

Lesson #10 : The Rule of Complexity

Sun, 02 Oct 2016 15:29:00 GMT

The Rule Of Complexity

The idea here is, I’m assuming you would be intuitive, or it’s common knowledge, or we can all agree that adding complexity to something doesn’t necessarily make it better. I’m saying that more for my own benefit than yours, because I think that’s intuitive for most. Sometimes I definitely forget that, and I definitely forgot that many times this year. Oh, I’m getting a little bit of light. That was weird. A little bit brighter, anyway.

So it doesn’t inherently make things better, adding complexity. In fact, the same can be true for just simply having more of something. Even something that’s a good thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that doing more of that thing makes it better, more or less. Okay, so I think we would all agree to that. So one of the things that I’ve learned is a continuous mistake that I’ve made in our business, with regards to a lot of our marketing campaigns, specifically, launches and whatnot, is that I tend to take something that’s working, and in an effort to innovate, or to improve, or to make things better, I’ll usually default to adding a layer of complexity to it.

Some Examples From Our Launches

So some examples, with regards to our big launch sequences, I’ve been really trying to solve this riddle of, what’s the optimal way to use webinars? You know, how many, and where should I put them, and whatnot? Where should I sprinkle them in amongst the giveaways and the other video content, and that type of thing? In doing so, I’m adding complexity to the sequence. And of course, the starting point here of what I’m building on here, is that doesn’t necessarily make it better. And I’m assuming that that’s fairly obvious. Another situation of where this came to light for me was I’ve been watching a lot of our contemporaries do live streams during their launches.

Modelling Others

A primary motivator has been a friend of mine, a woman named Lisa Sasevich. She has these really great live streams, about four hours long or so. So I talked to her a bit about it. She gave me some pointers and whatnot. Callan and I are going to do our first live stream, and we’re all excited. Well, I thought, “Well, heck. Lisa does them four hours long, and she’s got XYZ components in her live stream. Well, heck. We’re going to do one. It’s going to be nine hours long, and I’m going to add in these extra pieces.”

The Impact

Well, of course, it didn’t make our live stream any better. We didn’t see any extra conversion or anything like that due to these extra pieces that we put in. The reason was because more often than not, the adding of complexity, or as things become more complicated, they become more confusing. Well, of course, whether it’s a client or someone on your own team, if they’re dealing with a process that’s more confusing than it used to be, or if something is more confusing, obviously, it’s going to lead to a lesser result. I have one more example, quickly before I get to the meat of this rule of complexity, and what I feel my ultimate learning here is.

An Example Of Where It Backfired

I did another piece where, again, trying to add innovation. We did a launch earlier this year where it was a higher ticket offer, and we wanted to get everyone on the phone to actually make the sale on the phone, okay? Now, for an online launch, instead of just sending people to a page where they can register for whatever the thing is, understand if I’m getting them on the call first, well, that’s an extra layer of complexities, it’s an extra step, right?

So my thinking was, or what I intended to do, was I didn’t give people what the entire offer was. I didn’t inform them of the offer. I tried to build desire and to build a high level of curiosity to get them to want to get on the phone to hear the offer. Anyway, just the simplest form of the story here, it didn’t work very well. And in hindsight, based on what I feel I’ve learned from all this is that it should have been obvious. I was adding a layer of complexity to it, that didn’t have a payoff.

When Complexity Pays Off

Well now, let’s get into this idea of payoff. Because the idea of complexity in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, right? So some people might say that, “Oh, keep things as simple as possible.” Well, simple as possible, obviously, that’s not a truism. Obviously, the simpler something is it doesn’t necessarily get the best result. Like new technologies come into our life all the time adding layers of complexity, complexity, complexity, but that make our life easier.

So an example would be computers. As an example, I think we all use computers, because that’s a lot easier to use than an old school paper filing system. Yet the computer is many, many magnitudes more complex. So how do we know, right? Where do we know when adding complexity can make something better versus make something worse? Well, here’s what I’ve determined, and what I’m calling this rule of complexity, is that complexity can be effective only if there’s a payoff of simplicity somewhere, if the complexity is actually creating simplicity somewhere within a given system.

Impacting Entities In Your Business

So when we look at it from the perspective of our business, really when I think of my business, I think of three entities, really. There’s three different parties, or communities, that are experiencing what it is that we’re doing. There is me, right? I’m an important part of this puzzle. There’s my company, or I think of it primarily as my team, but there’s an entire organization. And then, there’s our clients.

If I’m adding complexity, or if we’re adding complexity to any given system, it’s only going to be intelligent if it is actually creating simplicity for at least one of those three groups. The idea here is moving forward, I’m going to do as good a job as I can before I go ahead with something I’m excited about, some clever process, or whatever. Before I add complexity to a system, I’m going to ask the question, “Where’s the simplicity payoff?

Making Things Simpler

Where is this making things simpler with one of those three audiences?” So I’ll give you an example. I told you about the example where I was getting people on the phone with the desire and curiosity. Now, had I actually communicated the full offer to those people, and then invited them on the phone to have a conversation about whether or not the the program might be a fit for them, or to have their concerns voiced, or whatever, theoretically, that would have been fine.

Because I would’ve been making the process simpler for them in the moment. Because I would have been asking them to make a decision whether or not they’re going to buy the process. It’s a version of a micro commitment. Yes, I’ve added an extra step, but I’m asking them a much smaller decision, which is easier. It’s easier to say, “Hey, yes, I have an interest here,” than it is to say, “Yes. Here’s my money. I want to purchase it.”

So in that case, that’s something that I wouldn’t hesitate moving forward with, because yes, I’m adding complexity into a system, yet from the client’s perspective, it’s making it simpler for them. And any form of micro commitment is the same type of a thing. So if you take one big decision, and you make it a series of smaller decisions, a lot of times, the series of smaller decisions will actually convert better. Why? Not inherently because it’s more complex. It’s because the complexity of the system is actually making it simpler for the consumer, similar to if I can create complexity something, but it makes the experience of people on my team, if that makes their jobs simpler, well then, yeah, now I’ve got a potentially intelligent scenario.

The Rule Of Complexity

The rule of complexity is that complexity is an investment in simplicity. So I’ll repeat that. Complexity is an investment in simplicity. So what I’m going to do, or do my absolute best to do moving forward, before I barge ahead and start adding some level of complexity to something, I’m going to ask myself, “Is this a wise investment?”

So I want to be clear on where’s the simplicity payoff and what’s the magnitude. Is the magnitude of that payoff worth my investment in the complexity itself? Just like if I was going to invest in some business or something like that, if I’m giving $1000 as an investment, what’s the payoff here? Is this leveraged? Is it $1000, or more that’s likely coming back? Same thing here. If I’m investing in complexity, I want to be well aware of what’s my simplicity payoff. Is this a wise investment? So that’s the rule of complexity. Complexity is an investment in simplicity.