Free Webinars Are Dead. Here’s What’s Working Now. — Transcript

I used to run free webinars to sign high-paying coaching clients, but what actually happened, instead of the people I wanted, I got swarmed by broke tyre-kickers who just couldn't afford what I had to offer at the end.

It was a complete waste of time, incredibly frustrating, but in the last three months, we've had 1,400 people each pay $100 to attend one of our workshops, and then a bunch of them become clients.

It's added over a million dollars a year so far.

So in this video, I want to show you why free webinars are a magnet for broke tyre-kickers.

Why busy, high-value prospects will never attend a free webinar with you, but will happily pay to get some content from you and learn the next steps.

Let's get started.

If we haven't met yet, I'm Taki, I'm the growth guy behind a bunch of the seven- and eight-figure guys in our space that you've probably heard of, Dan Martell, Ryan Dice, Martha Kchi, Alex Sharfen, Todd Herman, a bunch of greats.

3,000 clients so far, over a billion dollars in coaching revenue.

We've been doing this for 15 years.

Mostly though, I'm just a guy who likes to help the good guys win.

I hope this is useful for you.

I've been running free webinars for 15 years.

15 years.

When we do it, we work really hard, we create a killer training, a killer presentation, we market the hell out of it, people come.

But when they do, only 5% of the people who register, 5% of the people who attend, are the people I actually want.

The people I can help, the people who can afford the thing that's coming next, the invitation.

So what we did was we switched to a paid workshop.

And when we did, the number went from 5% qualified, like nothing, to 55% overnight.

And that's just where it got started.

Because what happened is, more buyers, more conversions, more clients, without the need for a single sales call.

Just easy, streamlined sales.

All right, so here's how this works.

This matters because when you run a free workshop, it attracts what we call baby turtles, broke tyre-kickers.

There's nothing wrong with them, they're good people, they're just earlier stage in the in their business journey than than they probably need to be to be able to work with you in a premium coaching program.

On the flip side, the people we really want, the high-value prospects, don't attend free webinars because they know that a free webinar is just a pitch disguised as content.

So here's what we're going to do instead.

We're going to make two changes: free webinar, paid workshop.

We're going to go from free to paid, webinar to workshop.

Subtle, but important.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

We're going to put a price on this, a price that's just enough to make it too expensive to weed out the guys you don't want, and to be honest, the gap between zero and a dollar is fairly significant.

It's like, it's only a buck, but it's night and day.

For ours, we're charging about 100 bucks.

So it's too expensive for the people we don't want, but it's still an impulse buy for the people we do, it's just like a tap, it's like a, would you like fries with that decision?

And you get paid to do two things: to wow, blow people's minds, that's your job as a coach, right?

And to sell, you get paid for the opportunity to invite people to join you.

In fact, when we did this, we spent $5,000 on ads, made $70,000 in ticket sales, and that's before we'd signed any clients yet.

It's kind of boss.

So let me show you what happened to us.

For the last 15 years, we ran Plan A, free webinar, once a month.

For the last three months, we've run Plan B, paid workshop, once a month.

The difference has been night and day.

So if we think about the percentage of people who show up on these things who are qualified.

With the free webinar.

5%.

That tiny slice there.

Is the people that we want.

They're great people.

95%.

Also nice human beings.

Just not, the workshop's not right for them, and they're not in any kind of position to work with us in the offer that we talked about.

Those guys.

Was 95%.

Broke tyre-kickers.

Nothing wrong with them as people, they're just a bit early stage, and if they're early stage, what that means is they're not the right people for the offer.

So the workshop's a mismatch.

Then we switched to Plan B, three months ago.

And went from free webinar to paid workshop.

And the difference was like both instant and night and day.

Instantly, what happened?

From the very first time and every single one we've done since then.

Number of qualified attendees.

55%.

Or more.

I think the last one we had 60, maybe 61.

55%.

Who are they?

They are busy, high-value prospects.

It's really simple.

If you do free webinars, you get a bunch of people who've got time but no money.

If you run a paid workshop, you get people who are happy to spend money to save time.

And they save time by working with you.

There's five keys for doing this well, five keys for doing this like a boss.

Here's the first one.

We want to think about this paid workshop being a bridge.

In the past, I've talked a lot about leads and clients.

I love leads, I love clients, but what was missing was the bridge, this customer's piece.

If you're focused just on leads, you've got a bunch of people who who know you from the outside, and then a bunch of people, clients, paying you money on the inside.

This paid workshop creates customers, the middle bit, which is the bridge between people who've just discovered you and people are happy to pay you lots of money.

$100 is a nice bridge.

So if this workshop's doing its job right, it's going to do two things.

It's going to attract the people we want and repel the people we don't.

We're going to do this two ways.

Number one, we're going to repel them frankly by charging a little bit of money.

That'll keep out the people who are, when you're early stage, you don't have much money, what do you do, you spend time to save money.

When you're a bit more advanced, you value your time more, and you've got a little bit of cash, you're going to happily spend money to save time.

So this is that's the first way we're going to separate the market.

Secondly, we're going to appeal to a problem that your highest caliber prospects have.

The secret to a workshop is we don't need to be broad.

We're just going to solve one micro-specific problem.

Teach one piece of one of your mechanisms in your arsenal.

If we do this right, we're going to deliver people a super compelling promise.

It's a big return on a tiny investment.

We do this with killer workshop content and with the bonuses, which I'll tell you about in a little bit, that get people to go, wow, the bonuses themselves are worth more than the ticket price of admission.

Our job is to show, not tell.

On a free webinar, what happens is we do a lot of telling, oh, it's great, I've done this, look at this client I helped, all of the bragging.

Promises are significantly less successful than proof.

And the chance for somebody to come in and experience a workshop with you is a great example of showing that the stuff's good instead of telling people how great it is.

But here's the thing.

One of the questions we get asked a lot, particularly by our clients when they first start with paid workshops, is, well, my audience is a bit small.

Will it work for me?

And so the secret, if you're already running workshops with your clients, people who are paying you money every month to be part of your your community, part of your program.

You usually every month or every couple of weeks or every week, you're running a workshop with them.

You can invite guests to to pay for a ticket to come into the session you're already running with your clients.

And that way, they don't just get the experience of working with you.

They also get the experience of what it's like on the inside in your community.

It's a little bit special.

So we're going to show, not tell.

Last, the biggest mistake I made with paid workshops when I first got started with this was I treated them like a a client workshop.

Instead of remembering that little piece in the back of my head that I'm here to sign some clients and and collect some cash as well.

And so I delivered a great stuff and I created tension at the start, got people excited, and then I released all the tension when I taught them the solution.

I'm going to teach you today.

Where to put the calls to action, and it's earlier than you think, and there's four of them in specific locations.

But our job at the end of the workshop is to make sure that people don't go, wow, that was great, thank you so much, I'm just going to go off and implement.

We need to get them thirsty again to want more from you.

So we're going to create tension at the start and relieve it with the content.

And at the end, we need to create the tension again and invite them to do what's next.

What's next could be to book a call with you.

Or it could be, like it is in our case, we don't need a call, here, have a read of the offer doc.

You can read it, and if it makes sense, you'll buy.

And that's the way it works.

Stopped recording, came back, I thought this could be helpful to see an example of how you do the the stretch piece.

Particularly at the at the start and at the end.

So, the way I think about it is, zoom out, zoom in, zoom back out.

So at the start of the workshop, we teach people, here's all of the things you need to grow a, in our case, successful seven-figure coaching business.

And we go through the pieces.

And then today, what we're going to do is we're going to zoom into this piece here.

I'm going to give you one of the key tools we use to do that.

And so then we we zoom all the way in and we share how to do it.

And we blow their minds about this tiny micro piece of the puzzle.

And at the end, we go, hey, so we've nailed this, and we zoom all the way back out and go, that's one of the nine pieces that we need to grow a seven-figure coaching business.

And all of a sudden, they're like, oh, that was great, but there's eight more.

And that's where you come in, because you're the dude or the do that with all of the secrets to do the whole puzzle.

So, we're going to solve a piece and then reveal, yeah, go zoom back out and show people that there's a whole lot more.

So what does a paid workshop look like?

What's the campaign look like?

There are five key steps.

It looks like this.

Let me walk you through it.

In our world, a paid workshop is a about a 10-day campaign.

A week of promotion, three days to follow up, and the workshop itself.

But we have breaks down into five key pieces.

Piece number one is setup.

This is the work that we're going to do together a little bit right now to make sure that the workshop is hot.

It's got a a great hook, a great title, it's got compelling bullets, it's got a great bonus, and the registration page is ready to take orders.

So that's setup.

Step two, sign up.

This is where we sell tickets and get people to register.

When people register, they enter part three.

The show-up campaign.

This is just designed to make sure that the highest percentage possible of people who signed up show up.

Setup.

Sign up.

Show up.

Pay up.

Follow up.

Let's dig into each one one by one.

Every great workshop starts with a topic.

So we pick a topic.

Remember, it's got to solve an immediate pressing need for the clients you really want.

And then for that topic, we do a quick four forces.

What are the fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations of that target market about this problem?

I'm going to assume that you know what to teach.

So let's skip ahead, pretend you've got a great topic and you know what you're going to share in it.

Then we need a hook, which is a title and a headline.

I like to think about this like we're at an airport bookstore, you're walking past, browsing, a little bit distracted.

The book title's got to jump off the, yeah, jump off the off the cover, grab your attention.

So each of these best-selling books from the last year, each of them has a pretty simple title headline formula.

It's got a a punchy, short, clear title.

It's a word or two words.

Maybe it's three or four.

100 million leads, zero to one, buy back your time.

Start with why.

Launch.

And then it's got a a benefit-driven headline.

Our best converting in the last little while.

It's one called bandwidth.

That's the big idea.

And then there's a a subtitle.

How to get people to buy twice as fast without creating any extra content.

Cool.

Clients by Christmas, the payday playbook, they all have clear message, sharp promise.

And then a headline that shows you how it's done.

Once you've got your title and the bullets, you know your four forces, fears, frustrations, wants, and aspirations, and what you're going to cover.

Then your job is to create a a list of bullets.

Compelling bullets to get people to want it.

The only last thing to add before we make a sales page is the bonuses.

It's the things that we're going to add to make the the purchase price a complete no-brainer.

So the menu we build from.

We're looking for three to five sexy bonuses that we can add to this thing.

Scripts, done-for-you stuff, swipe files is often one we use.

Always the recording.

If we're bundling in a sales call, we'll make sure that the call is part of the thing as well.

A planner, a tracker, a case study, a prompt, an SOP, a workbook, etc.

All these things just add to the value of the workshop.

And we're thinking about, we're not thinking about how do we add more stuff.

The question we ask is, if someone's going to pay for this workshop.

They better be damn good.

So the question is, what can I add that will make this faster, easier, or better for the people who attend to get the result that I've just promised?

All of those ingredients design out the sales page for you.

Okay.

There's a countdown timer at the top.

Days to go.

The book title.

The headline.

The case.

Why this matters.

The problem, the promise, the plan.

Obviously the logistics about when it is, your bullets and your bonuses.

That's the high-level wireframe, obviously the call to action underneath.

But if you want to see a live example of this, in the description below, you'll grab the swipe file.

We just got our promo emails and the registration page that you can model from for yourself.

So the sales page is live.

We're ready for step two, sign up.

How do we get people to want to buy tickets?

Okay, this is where it gets fun.

It's a one-week campaign, five to seven days.

Depending on what day of the week you schedule this thing.

And the way we design ours is we have four different angles that we attack the topic from.

So we brainstorm the core problems that this solves for people.

What proof you've got, examples of yourself or clients who've implemented the system and got a result.

What's your philosophy?

What do you believe about this strategy?

And then what's the plan, what are you actually going to do with people step by step live in the session?

That gives you the four of your first five promo emails.

And then we just add an announcement email at the start.

The good news is the announcement's really easy.

We just take the the sales page that we just built and we send it to people in an email.

So now we've got announcement, problem, proof, philosophy, plan.

There's a couple of other ones that we love to add as well.

A nine-word, if you don't know what that is, just Google nine-word email Dean Jackson.

And you'll learn exactly how it's done.

And a few others.

Then at the at the last piece, there's a 24-hour reminder.

A 12 hours to go, and a two two hours to go, last chance to join us.

That's our sign-up campaign.

We do typically do the emails first.

Some of those emails get turned into reels or ads, and we're away.

Again, examples in the swipe files.

So next comes show up.

How do we get them to actually attend?

If this was a free webinar.

It feels like you've made progress, but you'd be worried right now because you're probably going to get like 20 or 30% of the people to show.

But this is a paid workshop.

It's a different game.

Just by virtue of them having like paid money to attend and added it to their calendar on the thank you page.

You're going to get 85 or 90% of people to show up.

It's a different game.

So the process is really simple.

Again, the examples are in the swipes.

A confirmation email when they first register.

A 24 hours to go, 12 hours to go, two hours, and a text message an hour before.

Okay.

People are going to show up and you get to do some magic.

Which brings us to pay up.

This is where the magic happens, this is where you make the money and you sign the clients.

So, here's the most interesting thing.

There are four places where we invite people to take the next step with you.

And the first one is the day before the workshop actually starts.

So, in that day before reminder I just mentioned, there's a little sneaky thing.

That goes out in the day before email.

And it's looks a little something like this.

Workshop tomorrow, plus early access.

I'm pumped for our workshop, we're going to cover XYZ.

It's going to be great.

Here's the link.

It's going to be full send, you and me building the thing.

It's going to be awesome.

Again, your words.

Tweak it.

PS, I'm also opening up six spots tomorrow for coaches who want to create a seven-figure lifestyle empire.

If you want to skip the line, come inside before the rush.

Click here to read all the details.

We don't do sales calls.

People just read an offer doc, it's a simple one or two-page thing which explains how the program works.

And if they want to buy it, they buy it.

There's zero pressure, they just get to make their own mind up.

That's how we do it.

If you're if you're selling with sales calls, one of the bonuses you probably want to add or consider adding is a 15-minute call with you or with your team.

Bundled in with every ticket, in which case, on the thank you page after they've registered.

That's their first chance to book a call.

We do it again the day before.

And then during the workshop live, this is the timeline.

Okay, so we're live on the workshop now.

There's a bunch of people joining us, whether it's a client workshop with some guests attending or something that's full of just guests.

Either way is fine.

If you think about the the workshop process.

Usually, there's an intro.

Where we are introduce the topic, we build up why people need it.

Then there's one, two, three, however many like content chunks.

And then there's an outro.

These are the spots where we insert our calls to action.

Firstly, we build up the why.

And then here, we invite people.

Remember this from before?

We talked about zooming out and zooming in.

So we go, hey, we're here to build this workshop, here's why it matters, this is how it fits into the grander scheme of growing your coaching business.

Which of these do you need the most help with?

People respond.

And then we say, listen, if you'd like some help with this, that's kind of what we do as a business.

Click, you know, click this link and you can read all about it.

Or if you're selling by calls, you use this script.

You're here because you're a business coach who wants to grow and scale their coaching business.

There's three main obstacles that get in the way.

Problem number one, problem number two, problem number three.

Here's what we want instead, you know, we want leads every day.

We want clients like sales every week.

And we want clients that stay for years.

So you explain the you build out the model from the inside.

Or if you're selling on calls, we use the the zoom out, zoom in.

A bit like this.

So we're going to pretend you've got one of these models, we call it the magic model.

You can Google it and find out a bit more.

But the script kind of goes like this.

Hey, you're here because you're a business coach.

Who wants to get to, you know, $30 or $40 or $50, $60, $70,000 a month as an example.

You tell your story a little bit.

And I want to share some of the core lessons that we've learned along this journey that I think will help you.

There's three main obstacles that get in the way.

And then we teach them the problem.

Most coaches say that they don't have enough leads.

And then people don't buy, the sales process is clunky, and they lose lose deals that they should have got.

And then they've got no time because they're busy like marketing and selling and delivering.

Okay.

So we just do, here's the goal, here's the problems, here's what we want instead.

Instead, we want a system that gives us the to attract leads every day.

Second, convert sales every week.

And third, deliver clients who stay with us for years.

That's exactly what I help people do.

I'd love to help you too, so if you're a business coach and you do more than $10,000 a month.

You'd like some help with lead generation, with streamlining sales.

Or designing a killer group program.

Then we start with a post-workshop 15-minute one-on-one session to see if we can help.

We'll look at your marketing, your sales, and delivery to find out where the biggest holes and opportunities are.

We'll review your niche and offer and pricing to find out what's really possible for you in your coaching business.

And we'll uncover the number one bottleneck that's been holding you back.

By the way, I don't do this, this is the script that you could steal.

Okay, you can't book a call with me, even if you tried.

If you think we can help, we can talk about next steps.

And if not, we'll point you in the right direction.

So go to this website.com and book in a session.

So something like that at the start is going to take the people who are interested.

Now that we've set a little bit of context at the start of the at the start of the workshop.

And get people to book a call.

Or in the simplest version, read your offer doc.

So call to action number one actually happens the day before.

Call to action number two, or opportunity to take action number two, is after the why.

We teach our stuff.

At the end, we just need to make sure that we don't leave people in a place where they're like, this is amazing, thank you so much, I'm going to go off and do this all myself.

We need to get people back in the I need help position.

And we do that again by asking questions about the difficulties they've had and the difficulties they perceive they'll have implementing the systems we've just taught.

So if you're good, implement this exactly the way we've talked about, what kind of impact would it make?

It'd be amazing.

Let's make a list of all the things which will slow you down.

Get in the way or stop you from implementing this.

And then we zoom out and we show them all the other things.

And they're back in the, oh crap, I could this has been amazing, but I could use some help here.

And then we invite them.

So, hey, if you'd like some help with this, here's the offer doc.

Have a read.

Or if you like some help with this, we've got a 15-minute call.

Click here and book yourself in.

That's the pay-up section and it's magic.

All right, dude, let's talk follow up.

The game is really, really simple.

We've invited people on, 90% of them showed up, most of them have seen the offer doc, and they're in the position of like, I want it or I don't want it.

Or I'm not sure, those who want it will already take an action.

Those who aren't sure, this is our opportunity to talk to them.

And so we've got a really simple three-day deadline campaign.

We call it the countdown.

The day, yeah, the first email, straight after the workshop is just the invitation.

Hey, here's what we're doing with this group.

And the offer doc's there.

They can either click and read it.

They just read it in the email.

And there's a chance to to book a call or to buy the thing.

The next day.

Hey, I sent you this thing yesterday.

Do you have any questions about it?

I've posted it again below, hit me back if you've got any questions.

Really simple.

Third email is the deadline.

So, hey, I got to end this.

We're wrapping up today.

You've got X number of hours left to jump on board.

And the train is leaving the station.

This right here is the fastest way to fill your coaching program up with ready-to-buy people who've actually paid to learn from you.

And excited to get more.

No more freebie seekers, no more wasted time, just high-value prospects stepping up.

Listen, if you want to implement this stuff, the quickest way I know is to grab the swipe files.

It's in the description below.

And if you want to know the whole system for how we turn $100 workshop people into $10, $20, $30,000 clients on autopilot.

There's a link in the description below too.

Click the link, grab the swipe file, and run your first paid workshop.

And hey, I just showed you one of the three ways that we streamline sales.

If you want to see the others and the full system on how we help clients attract leads every day.

Make sales every week and keep clients who stay for years.

There's a walk-through of the whole system, it's called the Million Dollar Plan, and it's available on the link below too.

I'll see you there.