Episode 43: How to Make $10k in 5 Days by Pre-selling Your Signature Program

Monica Froese  00:04

You’re listening to the Empowered business podcast. I’m your host, Monica Froese, a mom of two and your secret weapon to creating a six figure digital product business. I’m on a mission to help 1000 Women make $100,000 a year. That’s right $100 million towards financial independence for women. As an online business expert, I am teaching you everything I know, right here week after week. So you can join us on the journey to $100 million dollars. Sound good, then let’s jump in Welcome to Episode 43 of the Empowered Business Podcast. Today, I want to play a presentation I did for you for an online business summit with Lizzy Goddard. And it was all about how to pre Sell Your Signature Course in five days and make 10k and pre selling means you do it before you even create it. It’s a pretty powerful strategy. And I took a lot of time putting together the presentation. So I thought it would be really awesome to play it on today’s episode for you. But before I do that, I want to tell you about something pretty awesome. That’s happening tomorrow. If you’re listening to this live, it’s happening tomorrow. And that is I am going to be doing an info session on a new offer I’m launching called the Empowered Business Mastermind. Now if you’re interested in learning more about working in a high level program with me, you can head on over to empowered business that CO forward slash e bm and sign up to join me for this live session where I’m going to tell you all about how you can work with me. I’m also just going to give you just a little bit of context before we jump into today’s training, all about what the Empowered Business Mastermind is. So for a long time, I’ve been toying with the idea of a high ticket group coaching program, my students have asked for it. I know people want to join it. But if I’m being transparent, every time we sit down to figure out what it will be about, I can’t really aggravate it. I don’t want to create a program like everything else that’s out there are a lot of rinse and repeat strategies with just a slight variation. And I get it. The reality is we all learn differently and resonate with different teachers. My issue isn’t that lots of people teach about digital products. What my issue is really about is that most people only teach one perspective. And that’s sales and marketing. Now, while sales and marketing are clearly very important, it’s not a holistic approach to business. What I desperately been craving is to lead a room of strong business women who want to build six figure plus online businesses with digital products. And you know what, you can’t get there by only being good at sales and marketing. So what does it take to run a real business, real business foundations, something I’ve been exposed to for 16 years, I started my corporate tech career at the baby age of 20 is spent 11 years climbing the ladder of a fortune 100 company. Now during my tenure there, I also got my Masters of Business in finance and marketing. I sat in sea level boardrooms present it plans to multi billion dollar companies, and managed entire marketing campaigns that made multi millions, that doesn’t even touch on the last five years that I’ve been running my own company, building it from the ground up. I would argue running my own business has stretched me in ways that the boardroom never did. I’ve grown more in the last five years than any other period of my life. And I’ve learned a lot. And you know, one of the number one things I’ve learned, do you know what it is that most people who start an online business have zero business background. And it’s a real issue that no one talks about. I understand concepts that many of my peers in the online business space do not because they’ve never been exposed to it before. So when I sat back and thought about it, I identified what I thought was really missing from all the high ticket programs out there. And this is what I discovered. There’s really four main things that go into running a successful business past six figures. The first is of course sales and marketing that is your front facing moneymaker. So that is important. That is something you need to talk about. The second is operations. This is how you streamline your company. This is how you make processes, rinse and repeat. And I use my favorite term SOPs, which is standard operating procedures. The fact is you need them if you’re going to grow and hire people. Which leads me to the next piece of the pie team building, whether that be with contractors, employees, you need a back end structure you need to have a focus on human resources. You need employees handbooks, you probably need a lawyer. And you definitely need to set goals so that the people who work with you can be successful. And the fourth piece of this pie is business financials. I know that sounds scary. But if you don’t know your numbers, you’re never going to grow. So this includes forecasting your numbers, analyzing your numbers, setting goals, you need all four of these to succeed. And when you have no experience in one, two, or even three of these areas, it’s really hard to grow a profitable company. And I say profitable, because every single year, since taking this business full time, I have been profitable, not just a little profitable, either. I make real money that my family and I actually spend. And we keep a significant amount in the business bank account, because you’ll learn that cash flow is Queen when it comes to growing a company and hiring employees. So after two years of trying to decide what I could offer my students in terms of working more closely with me, it finally dawned on me what I would not only just love doing but what I know I can do that will make an impact for you. And that is when the Empowered Business Mastermind was born. And I want to tell you all about it and tomorrow’s Information Session live with me direct on Zoom, you can talk to me, head on over to empowered business.co forward slash EBM to sign up. And I hope to see you there tomorrow. Now in terms of today’s episode, what I’m going to be doing is playing a presentation that I did for an online business summit. And it’s all about how to pre sell your signature program in five days and make $10,000 Yes, that’s a thing. And no, you do not need a big audience to do this. So I’m going to play that episode for you. And at the very end, I offer a freebie that goes along with the training. And if you sign up for that freebie, it’s a Google Doc, I’ll give you the link. Later on in the in the episode, if you go to the show notes and sign up, you will actually get an offer a really cool offer to buy the entire five days to 10k workshop that I did in August. It’s a two hour workshop that goes very in depth into the topic. So this is like the high level explanation of how you would do this. And then if you want to take it a step further, you can go ahead and sign up for a Google Doc and get a special offer to actually do the entire workshop with me. Alright, let’s dive in and learn how to make 10k in five days. Hi, welcome. My name is Monica Froese, and I am so excited to be part of the online business playground Summit. Today, you’re going to learn all about how to pre sell your signature program using nothing but a Google Doc. The goal of today’s training is to show you how to make 10k In five days, with one to three hours of work. Creating a signature program is a lot of work. But before spending 100 plus hours creating something that you don’t know if people want pre selling is an amazing way to get paid for doing the work and validating your program at the same time. So let’s jump right on in. Now, before we dig in, I just want to tell you how I got here and learn all the stuff that I’m about to share with you. And so you can get to know me just a little bit more. My name is Monica Froese, and I run two websites. The first is redefining mom, which is a site dedicated to helping moms thrive in both motherhood and business. And the second is empowered business where I empower women to achieve financial freedom through creating six figure digital product businesses. And the reason I do what I do is because my two beautiful girls, I believe that my purpose is to give them a better life and teach them that they can do anything they set their minds to. So my business started as a working mom blog back in July of 2013. It was called redefining mom, I did not start blogging with the intention of this turning into a business. I was just venting about the maternity leave policies which are pretty much non existent in the US. And at the time I was suffering from very bad postpartum PTSD. Through a series of very fortunate events. I got invited to go meet President Obama in the White House in 2015. And I left the White House just on fire to make a difference in the lives of other working moms. So I went home, took everything I had learned over my 11 years in corporate running multimillion dollar marketing campaigns and earning my master’s in business. And I decided to turn my business full time. So in 2016, I started launching digital products. By 2017. I’d created my first online course, by 2018 I got invited to travel to Pinterest, I’d become known as the Pinterest advertising expert. And by 2020 I had launched 75 Plus digital products and then I decided to pivot my business into the Empowered business brand. Now as you can see from this timeline, I really have done all the things when it comes to digital products. And these right here, these are just the highlights What matters today is that I have pre sold several online courses, group coaching programs in launched a successful membership program. Hands down launching programs that were at the top of my product ladder are what move the needle for this to my business. So that’s exactly what I want to help you with today. So that opens up the question of what exactly is a signature program. So a signature program is usually at the top of your product letter. And it is a program that you will be the most known for, or the majority of your time is spent serving your clients and students. Now I define a signature program is something you will ultimately sell for 397 or more. Now, there are three main signature programs that fit into the five days to 10k model that I’m going to be telling you about today. Those are digital courses, group coaching, and memberships. So what’s all of this hype around pre selling your signature program? Why should you really consider doing this? Well, the first reason is to validate your idea, because here’s the thing, the only real way to know if your idea is validated is to get real people to pay you real cash. The second way is to get paid above or the second reason is to get paid before you do the work. I mean, this is just smart business to protect your time and get paid for the work that you do. The third reason is to design a program people actually want with active feedback. The best programs I’ve ever created, were done in tandem with a live group of participants. Sometimes ideas and concepts are super clear in your head. But when put on paper, other people can’t follow them. Pre selling allows you to get real time feedback from your first round of participants. The fourth reason is to refine your marketing message before going to market. As you’re building your program alongside your students, it will become more and more clear what your students need. And you can use that in your marketing messaging when you launch to the world. Now the fifth reason is to gather testimonials and case studies. This is huge and cannot be overlooked. future students want to know that you can get people results. So pre selling essentially is not only a smart money decision, it’s also smart marketing. So now you might be wondering, but why a Google Doc and not an actual sales page, I have answers. The first is a low time investment. Here’s the deal, you can absolutely pre sell with a sales page we have and we’ve been successful with it. We’ve been equally as successful with pre selling using a Google Doc. And it takes a lot less time. And you’ll fuss a whole lot less over the design. The idea here is to get up and running and get the offer out to your audience ASAP. Now, the second reason to use a Google doc is it’s easy to edit on the fly as you get questions. So during a pre sale, your program concept is really still a work in progress. You’ll likely get emails from people with clarifying questions. And that is a great opportunity to update your google doc on the fly. It’s dynamic because as you edit people get the information immediately. Now the third reason is that it’s easy to restructure if it doesn’t sell the first time. Okay, so yes, it’s possible your first iteration won’t sell but don’t panic. Business is one gigantic learning opportunity. So rework it and try again. So in pre selling your program, I recommend referring to it as a founder’s round a founders round is a unique opportunity for both you and your students to collaborate in the creation of a transformational program that will make an impact on people’s lives. Now, we’ve already talked about the benefits of pre selling for you. But what’s in it for them, there are many benefits to the founder’s round for your students, the first being, they’re going to get the lowest price, they’ll get the lowest price that you’ll ever offer for this program. The second reason, they’ll get the most access to you. So in exchange for that lower price, they will have the most access to with that level of touch not being included in the future of the program, for the most part, because you’re going to be the most engaged with the students as you’re building up the program. Now, they’re also going to be able to shape the program with you. So students will have a unique opportunity to have a say in how the program is structured, which is a win win for both of you, you get a better program, and they get a program that actually helps them see results. Okay, pricing your program. Let’s do some fun math here. The goal for your presale is to make 10k in five days. So how should you price your program? Well, it’s this thing called value based pricing. value based pricing is when you price based on the transformation that your program provides. So these example numbers on this slide are assuming that your goal is $10,000 with your Founding Member launch, hence the title five days to 10k you will be giving so you’re going to give the best pricing to your founding members. This should not be the end person price that you intend to sell your program for. So remember, I defined a signature program as a final price point of 397 or above. So be realistic based on the audience size you will be targeting for your launch. If we were to assume that your audience size is 1000 people, then this is how many people you wouldn’t need to convert at each price level. The reality is, it’s likely the higher your price, the less people that will buy. But that’s not the only thing to consider. A 10% conversion rate is high for the online industry. So unless your audience is super warm, you shouldn’t expect to see a 10% conversion rate. So these are the things you need to consider when pricing out your presale. To find your conversion rate, all you need to do is take the number of target buyers that you want to get and divide by the total number of people that you will be making the offer to. So for example, if I am targeting a $97 price point for my family member round and need 100 people because that’s what would equal $10,000. And I’m going to send this offer out to 2691 people, then what I would do is take the 100 target people divide that by 2691, the total number of people I’m going to send the offer to and I would arrive at a 3.7% conversion rate. So here’s the thing, every audience is different. So I can’t tell you a perfect formula for what to expect as a conversion rate. What I can tell you is that if this is your first time, I would stick to pricing your core so that your conversion rate is between three to 5%. Now, there are three powerful pricing levers that you can use for your founder’s round to get the most out of the offer and close as many sales as possible. The first is urgency, give a deadline for when the doors to the founders round will close. Hence, the five days to 10k name of the workshop to scarcity, limit the quantity that you sell for your founders around. And three is exclusivity. Offer the founders round only to current students to make it more exclusive. So we will often use all of these three options at the same time. So for example, we will open up the founders round to current students of a certain program. Plus, we will have a deadline for five days. And we will limit the quantity to 100. Now this will depend on how your your pricing structure works for you to hit your goals. Sometimes we even run multiple promos before the founder’s round starts. So for example, we might offer 100 seats at 197 to current students for five days, then we might open it up to my greater audience for five days at 297. Using all of these pricing levers gives you a lot of options to make the most out of your founder’s round. So now I just want to quickly break down three real examples of how this method has worked in my own business. So in this example, I had a target audience that I was going after of 684 people, we got 87 orders. So 87 divided by 684 means we had a 12.7% conversion rate. We offered it at 297, the regular price after the founders round went up to 497. And the total revenue for that founders member launch was $27,015. Now in this example, we had a greater number of people, we were targeting 2514. And we got 100 orders, but we were capping how many people we want it in the founder’s round to 100. So we were creating that scarcity around that cap. That meant that our conversion rate was 3.9%. But we kept it there. Now the founders members price was 97. And the regular price for this program ended up being 397. Total Revenue for this launch was $11,415. Now the last example, a few less people in the last one 856 people that we targeted, we got 43 orders, which was a 5% conversion rate. But here’s the thing, the pricing was higher. So the founding members price was 497. And we ended up selling the program after for 1997. So this means we made on this launch $21,861. So as you can see, it is very, very possible to not have a large audience and hit $10,000 In this five day container using this method. So probably the most obvious question of the mall. What should I sell? So you are in the business of selling a transformation? Your signature program should solve your customers number one problem. Start with the end in mind. I know a lot of people are going to want to get hung up on this. But listen to me, the brilliance of pre selling is that if no one buys, you don’t have to create any content. You can go back to the drawing board and start over. Dig deep on this but don’t procrastinate. You’re going to validate your idea with the Google Doc. So don’t spend forever asking questions to your current audience. You should have a decent idea what people need from you. They send emails and you’re engaged on social media. Now, if you don’t know, you should consider increasing, increasing your existing level of engagement with your audience. Because engagement is super important for earning their trust. So they want to buy what’s next on your product letter. Now, the whole point of pre selling is for you to dig deep and one to three hours and get the offer out to the world. It’s low risk, high reward, think about this, no one buys, you’ve got work to do. People do buy, you’ve got work to do. Honestly, it’s a win win situation, you will walk away with either great results or learning opportunity. So here are some questions to consider when determining what your signature program should be. What is the next logical step in your product letter? What are your current customers asking you to create? What do people email you about the most are asking your direct messages? What will serve your audience the best? Okay, now your program framework is the backbone of your entire offer. This all sounds great, but nobody’s gonna buy air. Right? Right. Okay, so all successful online programs have one thing in common, it all starts with a good framework. All successful programs are structured around a solid foundation. And that foundation is a proven to work framework. A framework brings your real or conceptual process to life in a useful and practical way. So how do you get proven results, and what makes your framework different and unique. So this is an example of a framework that makes up our signature program, the Empowered Business Lab, we need this framework, the hike design, I wanted to give it a name because I knew it would be important to have a common theme to refer to throughout the program. And then I could use it to explain what the program was about to potential new students. Naming the framework makes it memorable, which in turn makes your program memorable. Now when you have a robust program, with many actionable steps that build upon each other, sometimes more context is necessary for people to understand the path in front of them. So this roadmap is actually the hype design roadmap, we use the hype design and the hype design roadmap together, the height design alone gives a high level overview of the how our program will flow. And the roadmap gives more details on what is inside each section of the framework, and can be very helpful when it comes to selling the program. And helping students understand where they are on the path. If your framework is robust, this is something you may want to consider. So let’s go through the Google doc template that is the backbone of what we use to presell. I want to walk you through each section and explain why we structure the doc the way we did, so that you can make the most out of it for your program. Now, I will be sharing a link for you to claim a copy of the Google Doc for free at the end of this training. So here’s the Google Doc that we use to structure all of our pre sales. And this Google Doc, again, we will be providing you the option to claim for free at the end of this presentation. Okay, so it’s really very simple. Up top, we have a logo placeholder, if you don’t have a logo, you don’t need to put it there. We start with what is the name of your program. So basically, in this container, you’re going to give them a brief explanation of your program, you’re going to include the value proposition, how much it’s worth, first how much they’re saving by pre enrolling. If you have limited seats available, you’re going to mention that and you’re going to give them away to contact you. We also recommend that you use a video if possible. So you can either do a video to formal slides, we’ve done that, or an off the cuff video where you’re telling them in your own words, why they should join the program. On the first page, you always want to have your call to action, which is to go by the program. Now the second page, we have our program framework. So the meat and potatoes of your program is the framework. So you need to decide on that framework before you create this Google Doc. This is what are you going to teach them? How are we taught lessons, mini courses, video modules, you have to lay out the program framework itself in a visual format. But also you need to tell them what they’re going to be getting in this founder’s round. What will they accomplish in each section that you’ll be teaching them up the course for example, that’s where you’re going to put under the program framework overview, then it’s very important to tell them the deliverables and important dates. So it is so important for founders round for you to be specific and precise about what you’re offering them, especially when it comes to the time requirement for you. This round, this founders round needs to be time bound, there needs to be a start and an end date. So you’ll summarize basically what you discussed in the program framework overview, but you’re going to put dates to everything and you’re going to tell them exactly what to expect. You’re going to tell them if there’s a free Facebook group if there is one is it closing one on one calls? What are the parameters of booking it be very clear. After this section, we recommend you give another call to action. Now, here’s the thing, tell them why should they join the founders around what will make this special? Why should they take action Now, because they’re essentially paying for something that doesn’t exist yet, so give them the reason why they should trust you now, also weed out people who are not a good fit for the program. And we do this by doing, who is the program for? And who is the program not for. Now, likely, if you’re going to be creating a signature program and pre selling, you have worked with either one on one clients, you’ve worked with customers and other programs, if possible, putting testimonials here is very powerful. So people know that you know what you’re talking about. Now, it might not always be possible, it’s okay to delete this out of the presale doc. But if you can use it, I strongly recommend it. Then we move into frequently asked questions. So here’s the deal about frequently asked questions. Two things, one, frequently asked questions are literally questions that people will just ask that are practical. Like, what time will you be hosting the calls? That that’s a practical question. And if you have a lot of life support, that’s probably a question you’re going to get. But frequently asked questions, more importantly, overcome objections. Okay, so you want to frame an objection that you’re anticipating? And answer it in the frequently asked questions. Okay, so what makes you qualified, this is your bio, but your bio is not about you. It’s about that, okay. So you want to tell them why you’re experienced why they should trust you, but most importantly, what they’re going to get out of working with you. Like I showed you, in this presentation, three presale launches that we did real results. If you have real results from your method, which you probably do, you’ll want to put them here, I would be very specific about your refund policy, especially because in a founders round, everyone needs to be a little bit flexible in terms of delivery dates and stuff you might get behind. But the thing is, if you get behind, you’ll be very clear communicating that. So a refund policy is basically what you want it to be. It’s what you’re comfortable with. And then you end it with your your last pitch, summarize what is going on why they should join, give them another call to action, and give them a way to ask you questions. Alright, now that we’ve walked through the Google Doc, there’s only one more thing I want to talk about in relation to your pre sale, pre sale hype. So one of the most effective things that we’ve done is we have sent out basically a pre framing email explaining what was coming and why it was such a big deal, and that they should get ready for it. So we did a couple things in this pre frame email. So we’re not telling them exactly what it is that’s coming. So what we’re pre selling, we haven’t told them yet. But we’ve really lead up to why it’s happening, we offer something for free, because get those clicks, when we offer something for free in these emails, our click rate goes way up, which means your deliverability will be helped when you start sending your five days of sales emails. And we are very specific on when they should expect the email that we’re hyping. So basically, it’s like Monday at 8am. And then give the time zone. And what that does is it gets people very excited, going into your five day selling period. So this was an example of that day that we opened the cart, I had pre framed it with the email I was just showing you. And basically they our students, our community knew to expect that we were going to be emailing them at 8am. Eastern on this, I think it was a Thursday morning. And when we email them, it was the first email is just basically what it is why you’re doing it. And we tell them any urgency, it’s important. So for example, we limit it, we had 50 founding member seats to our membership. And if there’s any cutoff date, like hey, the cart will only be open for X amount of dates. Basically, your first email is like hey, it’s here, I’m gonna celebrate your other emails throughout the presale Can you can really draw a lot of the information you use in your Google Doc to make emails, you can have an FAQ email you can have, what’s your framework about email, on the last day, on the fifth day of the five days to 10k, I recommend sending three emails, your first one’s going to be Hey, the carts closing in the AM, then you’re going to send a what’s holding you back email or what’s stopping you from taking action. Those get a lot of responses. We send that in the afternoon. And then we send like a three hour warning. Now if you have limited seats, you have to you have to be willing to pivot and close and not send more emails or maybe up the price for the remaining remaining seats. You’d have to keep that in mind as well. Alright, so like I told you, we are offering you the Google doc template that we use that we use for all of our pre sales for free, you can head on over to empowered business.co forward slash Google doc and claim your Google template for free. Thank you so much for joining me for this presentation. I hope you enjoyed it. And I can’t wait to see if you are going to launch your own signature program in five days and make 10k off of it. I hope you do. And I can’t wait to hear more about it. Thanks for joining me. All right. So if you found that presentation helpful, and you’re interested in getting the Google doc template I talked about for free, you can head on over to empowered business.co forward slash Google doc to claim it. And at the end of that, you’ll also get offered a very special price to sign up for the entire five days to 10k workshop that I host it live back in August. It’s a very in depth, it comes with a lot of templates to make this super easy for you go on over to empowered business.co forward slash Google doc to sign up. Also, if you are listening to this in real time, and you are interested in joining me for our empowered Business Mastermind starting in January 2022. And you want to hear more about it. I am hosting an information session live tomorrow on Zoom, which is Friday, November 12. And you can sign up for that over at empowered business.co forward slash e b m and again, we’ll link to both of these in the show notes to make it easy for you to access. And I will see you back here next week, same time.