We're selling the dream. We're selling the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We're not selling how many calls we have each week and blah blah blah. We're just selling the greatness that comes from living your dream as a professional speaker.

Welcome to another episode of the website 101 podcast. This is the podcast for people who want to learn more about building and maintaining websites. I am one of of your three hosts, Amanda Lutz. With me is Mike Mele.

Hey, Mike, what's up? I am Amanda, good to be here. Very nice. Hey, Sean, how are you? I'm doing great. Happy to be back to work on Monday morning. We have a guest today. Well, hooray. A guest is joining us today.

With us is Jane Atkinson. She is a business coach for professional speakers. You can learn more about her in our show notes below, but also you can go to wealthyspeaker.com. Jane, hi. Hi. How are you?

Being thoroughly entertained by the three of you. already. How's super generous of you to say thank you. So Jane can you kind of give us a quick elevator pitch of what it is you do through your business? What is

it? So I actually have been a business coach and an agent and like in this professional speaking industry. So out there in the world there are people who are getting paid. In some cases a lot of money to speak and so you go to a big

conference and there's somebody. they're delivering the keynote address or a workshop or whatever it might be, a lot of those people are getting paid. And so I found out about the industry about 30 years ago

and I have been, first I was an agent, worked for a speakers bureau down in Texas for about six years and I've been a coach for the last 20 plus years for speakers who really want to earn more money

and kind of build the business of their dreams. Wow, cool. So it's not, I mean, do teach people about speaking on any particular life insurance topic or is it just whatever they happen to be a professional in sort of thing?

We do encourage people to pick a lane and so that's kind of like try to become known for solving one problem. A lot of people will come to us and they can speak on like five or six different topics and the goal is to really be an

expert in one thing just like you know in your industry you don't want to maybe be a generalist and somebody who does everything if you can come in and really specialize at one thing that that's how you get paid more. Right so you don't

want to be the jack of all trades. or a master of non- Exactly. Exactly. So the big reason why I wanted to bring Jane in to talk to us today is because she has an online course that you can find at wealthyspeakerschool.com.

And I know that everyone is always trying to get like passive income, not to say that setting up an online school is passive by any means, but I mean, I would love to know more about it. And I'm sure some of our listeners, the sort of the business owners who listen

to our podcast might also be interested in. And how did it start? And if you're comfortable sharing some stats from before and after, how would you find new clients? So originally I was a coach. And I don't know if you guys have given this any thought, but when you trade your time

for money, you are at some point going to get maxed out in terms of how much your income and how much income you know, because that's a straight up trade, your calendar gets full, you know. you can no longer grow. So I knew early on that I wanted to expand my revenue streams. And so

we do still have coaching as one level of income. We also have our school, which is another form of income, and then we also have a mastermind. So we're just actually in the throes of reinventing yet again. So when we started with the mass with the school, oh my gosh, probably 10 or 15 years

ago, the very first school I ever launched was a bit of a train wreck, really. I didn't recognize that professional speakers all needed to be hard. And so I had too many people. you know, back then we were really just doing things on the phone and people weren't able

to be seen or heard and that was a bit of a problem. So that didn't work out very well. So we had to go iteration number two, three, four. We're probably on number like 15 right about now. And so I have to say we probably have it as close to being great as we're going

to right now. We've gone from zero students to 50 students and our membership is. $197 per month. And that's kind of our offering right now. We're getting ready to kind of offer the course only if somebody wants to come in and just do the course.

That'll be one price point if they want to do our full school and what that means is it'll be both the online course and our community. So you go out on a Facebook community and you gather support and you get to talk to other people and you get to come on. We have weekly calls for them that they can participate in on Zoom.

And people are able to participate as fully or as little as they want. And then we also have some upgraded masterminds from there. So... You know, we started and made all the mistakes. So ask me anything.

That's very cool. I like how you said you're on, like, you've been iterating through it. So it's like version one, version two, and maybe version 15 now. Yeah, we put a little V, you know, in front of the things.

So I would know, V100.4. And I do have a question for you. So you're moving more towards online courses rather than in person. courses. What did you use for your the online course component technology-wise?

Is it something that you had a web developer custom build or are you using an online service geared at course creators? So we started, I think this might have been the first one, there could have been one before it, but we

started with LearnDash as our platform and I have to tell you we had a security breach and one weekend all- of our users got hundreds of emails from us and we couldn't stop it. So we found out that

LearnDash didn't have a great backend support in place and we had to switch. So we have actually switched over to Thinkific and Thinkific has a very strong support and they have kind of the course element. They also offer the community element but we don't use their community. We have have

out on Facebook just because it's got all the features that we really loved. You know, you kind of get used to something and you try something new and it's like, like, I don't like it. So we backed off.

So think if it is the way that we actually house the course itself. Now, one thing I wanna say to your listeners to make sure everybody thinks that having a course is a great idea, but you have to make sure

that you have the following to be able to go to that and say, hey, buy my course because let me tell you, putting bums in seats is a slog. It's a lot of work and you've got to have a really good reputation. So I probably have out on my social reach is probably 20,000 plus, 25,000,

maybe even 30. And so we're able to use that plus my marketing. I have an email list. We keep that pretty trim, maybe five to seven, 7,500 people, plus, plus, plus, like, this is 20 years of a build,

of a custom. base in order to put 50 people into the school. So what you're saying is if I want to launch a course tomorrow, I would probably have zero people. I don't know. Because I don't have the big social media.

I don't know what you're following in Sean and it's not necessarily social media. You just have to have people in your network waiting to see what you're going to do next. Right, right. Sean, if you include a t-shirt, especially a nice scooped neck ladies cut t-shirt, I

will sign up here. course. Oh, sweet. I do have another question for Jane. You said you're marketing and then you have your email newsletter and marketing. How much time do you spend on newsletters and marketing?

Specifically, like how often does your newsletter go out? So we have had a system in place for over a decade where for the longest time we did a blog of written blog post every Tuesday, and we did a podcast every Thursday.

So we have a podcast as well. We've released that to our mailing list also. But we just over the past, I've been starting to really look at, okay, how can I make my life simpler? You know, I'm not really winding down,

but I'm thinking about winding down. And so I've actually gone to a month of two Tuesdays a month. We do, and instead of doing a written blog, excuse me. We now do a video blog, a vlog, and we do reels kind of in between on social media,

and then we do the podcast twice a month as well now. So, get them back. Scale back somewhat. That's excellent. Please share the links to us and we'll include those in the show notes. Okay, well, yeah. Jane, how big is the team that you're working with right now? And which

do you think came first? Were you growing the team before you started the online course? Or did you start doing that and think, oh, I'm going to need some help to keep... keep all of this up and running.

I think it happened really organically. So I have Monica, who's kind of my right arm, my left arm. She's not a beach in Mexico right now, so I'm reading this Monica. Shout out to Monica. Yeah. I just started her, you know,

think about when you're growing your team to do it really organically. I started her with, actually she was doing like hotel and live events for me, and then I put her onto podcast duty. and then we added the school to that.

So her kind of things that she does for me really evolved and expanded over time. So that's Monica. Then we also have an entire tech team. And I count them as one, but there's probably five people that I work with

on that team. So they do all my website development, they do all the back end. So we, in order to get paid, people come into our website. Their Judas is all about making theones laugh. a purchase that that triggers Thinkific to give them a membership but we're actually

collecting the money through Thrivecart and Stripe because we do both US and Canadian funds. So Stripe is really good with US and Canadian. That's been a mainstay we've had. We used to be with WooCommerce and now we've switched over to Thrivecart. So I know I'm

talking all kinds of geek language here for you guys. It's way above my pay grade. I have to. Oh this is all good information. So we do have web developers who listen and they will find it helpful for their own clients.

Yeah, we've tried things and so we're off of WooCommerce now and we're on to Thrive Car which my backend people say, this is way better and it's going to be really good. We also use active campaign.

So when somebody comes into the school and this just happened this morning, I'm kind of like just double checking that did all the triggers take place. So they get tagged and we also have active campaign.

as our CRM. So they get tagged in the CRM and they get sent it to an automation and the automation makes sure that they, you know, do all the things that they need to do to get started. And then a separate thing comes out from Thinkific that allows them access to the course.

So I sign them and, you know, I poke around in there, but I wouldn't say I could go in tomorrow and start a campaign. I can add to the course and I can do kind of some of the basics. stuff myself. I can change my website myself using Elementor but I'm not like, I mean you guys

are way beyond where I am. So the course that you offer or courses that you offer, is it asynchronous so that anybody can sign up at any time and take the course at their own pace? Yeah, we in my world call that Evergreen. You can sign it up and so what we're changing and

evolving to is if you just want the course, no support, no community. you can do that for like maybe $500. I want it to be a price point that's really, really good. And then we're going to be upselling them into the second option,

which will be the course plus the community. And then from there, we'll be upselling them into the third option, which is the course plus the community plus the mastermind. And the mastermind gives them like private coaching and everything.

And so my goal is to move them through those channels. That's interesting. Yeah, I was going to ask if you could kind of give examples of features that you offer that. over time you've realized, oh, we have to add that.

We have to add xyz or some new feature you had is like, oh, well, no one's really interested in this. Maybe we'll drop that. Can you speak about that a little bit? 100% engagement, okay? So you get your course going. And so we actually have, when somebody gets registered, they get access to,

I think it's like seven or eight different modules. And we have one that's just called getting started and that kind of gives them the lay of the land. Then they move into this formula that we have called red.

ready aim launch. So ready aim launch is really our system. It's what we talk about. It's what my books are based on. Everything is really aim launch. And so every time they finish one of these sections, we have a little celebration. So they get an email that has

a fun, you know, it's like, buddy, the gift from the guys in the office with, you know, doing the little happy dance or whatever it might be. And I take a screenshot of that and we put it. down on Facebook and then we say, yeah, go, go, whoever. You're doing a great job. And so we're

cheering people on at every stage. And then they also get a certificate when they're finished. So I think the engagement part is the part that I would really focus on. Like, how are you going to grab

them when they get in there and kind of keep cheering them on along the way as they go through. An email is one thing, but I think like if there's something you can do to physically make them feel. good about taking your course, that's going to be a gang ginger.

I really like that idea because any online course I've done, there's nothing until you finish it. And they all offer the certificate. Yeah. I've only ever finished one course. So, yeah, I mean, maybe there was some confetti. And yeah, a certificate is so easy because that's

just a checkbox on your platform, on your learning platform. That's really easy to offer. And we just try to make it. The other thing we've noticed is that when people go it alone, they're going to have questions. So our goal is to get

them from the self-study over into the community because you're going to want to know some answers and when you get stuck, you're going to want to have some encouragement to kind of get you off of stuck. So I would say the course community combo is probably pretty important or it might be

important depending on what kind of course you're offering. Variable equals Amanda. If enjoy website 101 podcast equals true, then go give us a positive review on Apple Podcasts. I can't even do it with this straight face.

Or wherever you get your podcast. How does your community operate? Is it part of the website or are you doing something like a Facebook group that's private? We tried. There's one called Mighty Networks.

There's one built right into Think It. there's a community and I didn't like either of them compared to Facebook. Facebook was just so easy. Now there's the odd you know we just ran a five-day challenge and I would say one out of 25 people that registered wasn't on

Facebook and didn't want to be in. I'm like okay no problem little accommodate you we'll just figure it out. And so the community has a series of activities that are going on so we have a weekly calendar.

and we're running Ready, Aim and Launch calls throughout the month. We're running Open Q&A calls. They also get access to master classes that we do. And so we're trying to really keep them engaged

and keep them interested in what's going on this month. So at the beginning of the month, the calendar comes out and it says here are all the things they can subscribe to the calendar and get it all showing you like this downgraded straight into.

That's a call back to something before we record it. Yeah. So Jay, the.. The advantage you have with Facebook is there's more engagement than those other like the Thinkific and something else that you you looked at.

Mighty networks, you know, I know it's possible to get all the things you want somewhere. I just feel like, you know what, when you have something that I have so many changes all the time, let me just stick with one thing that's working.

No change just for the sake of change. It would have been great to use Thinkific's community. I just didn't feel any vibe from it at all. Well, it's not only you feeling the vibe, but it's also your students.

You know, everyone's on Facebook all the time anyway. Why would you make them go and log into some other social media platform, like just for your one specific thing? It's easier to do something if you're already at the place.

I also think that if your community is on Facebook, even if they're not active in your community, they'll still get posts showing up in your feet. sometimes. Yeah, which is a way to kind of massively draw them back. Lower them

back in. Yeah, passive, let's lure them. Yeah, yeah. Jane, I think it's really interesting that you seem to be focusing on long-term membership and you know keeping people engaged because I think a lot of people

who start an online course would think of it as you've paid for it, you've succeeded, you've graduated, whatever, you're done, goodbye. And now I have to agree. place you with a new person. And it sounds like you're really trying to keep people engaged.

Do you have any, first of all, is that true? And do you have any, you know, tips to try to get people to think of their courses as a way to keep people as a member rather than just thinking of recruiting new members all the time?

Yeah. And it's hard to recruit new members. And it can become very costly. We've done Facebook advertising and we're going to actually do some LinkedIn advertising, which is even more costly. So, we have, we know that, you know, it cost us $8 to get that new

member. So our goal is to keep people, we have some members of our community that have been coming back and active with us for probably three years. That would be the average. But I would say if we could get people for a year that we're

really happy. And if we can move them into our master of mind, we also have some mastermind people that have been with us for three years. And so the fact that and I put a lot of the, the, kudos for that on Jen who actually runs, she runs the school and runs the mastermind for all for me.

And so she does the coaching on that. So I've taken myself out of the equation with the idea that I may sell the school at some point and who I'll sell it to is Jen. So she's already got the relationships and everything and so I'll just poke my head in the door once a month and

hopefully collect the rewards. Yeah. So another quick question. You've brought up mastermind a couple of times. I don't know what a mastermind does. I've heard it somewhere else. Can we like a really quick summary?

Okay, let me tell you. So a mastermind can be, you know, us four get together twice a month and talk about our businesses. It could be like that. It could be very informal and some are really well run and some are,

you know, just saying out. And so that's us. Our mastermind is very kind of a formulaic. Of course, we have. a plan, we get everybody's goals and we spend a year with people, we typically will take

no more than 30 people into our mastermind. But and so each call we might have 10 people on a Zoom call and we're really making sure that we're holding those are called accountability calls. We're making sure that they are you know being accountable to their dreams and making sure

that they're taking action. So you might be dragging your butt one week and you show up at your masterminds like okay I got that kick in the about I needed and now I am moving forward again. We also offer with our mastermind, this is uncommon.

We also offer them quarterly one-on-one coaching so that they can really get to know. So Jen is the one that leads the coaching and she leads the accountability calls. And then I just pop in with them once a month

and really make sure they're getting over any hurdles that are needed. All right, so yeah, that's really cool. It sounds kind of like a 12-step program or a support group or mentor and or mentoring

because you got the regular meetings with some structure. It's a support group for making money, Sean. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I will want a support group for making money. I want to make more. That's what it is.

We actually called it Acceleration Academy. And the goal is for the people in our world who want to go from 0 to 100,000 in their speaking income, that's they're on the fast track to doing that. Cool.

How specific do your students, I guess we'll call them, do they come to you and say, look, I'm speaking at such and such a conference next month. I want specific tips for that engagement, or does it get that granular at all?

You can. And so mostly. we're focused on, okay, how are you gonna make more money from that engagement? How are you gonna leverage that? So most people talk about the business building end of things,

but oftentimes someone will come up and say, I'm really trying to workshop a new story and I'm struggling and here's the situation and we'll give them ideas on how to make their stories stronger. And so a really big part of marketing,

we deal mostly with kind of sales and marketing, but a really big part of marketing is a great and epic speech. And so we have a lot of lessons inside the school on how to speak also because it would be a miss if we didn't.

Right. Yeah, I've been to a few, well, we've all been to conferences, web conferences and that, where they have sort of a Toastmasters guy at the end giving the keynote and to varying degrees of success, I guess. But I've seen some really, really good ones that have really

impressed me and I guess they're the type of people who would go and take a course from you, right? Here's our our... the people who come to us in order to learn how to take what they already know,

which is how to speak and make money at it. So Toastmasters can help give people the foundations of a really good, strong speech. We have like inside the school, we have lessons from people who have won the world champion of championship

of speaking and Toastmasters. And so, um, then we, we help them learn to make money from that. Wow. That's really great. Yeah. This, of course, Jane is going to depend on your comfort level, but I'm wondering if you have

any measurable metrics that you would be willing to share with us from before your online program was set up to after, or even early days to after. I don't know if it's maybe because of the online course

your personal billing rate went up, or you started with this many classes, and now you've got this many classes, just anything just before and after. We love to talk money over here. So I am happy. My coaching fee has tripled or quadrupled because as I get, you know, because working with me being at the top of the pyramid here in my school has become more and more exclusive.

And so I actually raised it my feed last time during COVID, like smack dab in the middle of COVID. it. And so we kind of tend to do things as fearlessly as possible. And it was just that I was due. And Jen actually who runs our school, she raised short fees during COVID too, just because we were

due. And so the metrics, well we started out, we've had a lot of evolution in terms of what our price points were and how we charged the school. And it was very convoluted at one point in time. We had the course separate, you had to buy that separate.

and then pay a monthly fee. And we've tried so many things that didn't work. So we're down to a very simple, it's $197 a month if you wanna join us in the school. It's $397 a month if you wanna join us in the mastermind.

What we identified along the way was that the mastermind was very, very profitable for us. The school is really like the... Driving force? Yeah, the driving force, the rainmaker for... everything else. And actually let me step back one more step for you. And I guess I don't have a

copy of it right now. I have a new book coming out and this will be the last. It's my sixth book that I've written for the industry. And so it's going to be the last book and all roads in the book lead to the school. And so this book will become the Rainmaker for the school. I'm hoping for the

next 10 years. That's my goal is that we just push the book, push the book. So we'll do Amazon ads. ads in order to pump up the book sales and keep them going really really strong and and that will become the Rainmaker for the school. Wow that's really interesting.

Do you have any if you don't mind sharing them any really sort of oh why did we do that that was a total disaster kind of experience like specific to the the program itself not necessarily details about what you do but you know what I

mean like that listeners can take away. Yeah we definitely the very first iteration you know we I don't know had a hundred people. or something, join. And back then there was no Zoom, there was no online, there was nothing.

We were just on the phone talking to about the business and it was a night, it was a train wreck because there were way too many people. Okay, so we recognize that perhaps we go a little bit smaller good. Now we can accommodate 100 people. It's not a problem at all. So that was one mistake.

Not making sure that our platform had good security. that again we were sending out emails to all the people, that was a nightmare that we just couldn't we couldn't stop. It was like a train and like we couldn't get it to stop. So making sure that

you've got you know some back-end support and that they've got good security for hackers is really important. Why don't stuff we've done really poorly? I would say we were we when we had it so convoluted that you had to buy the school and then you had to join a monthly pro

program to complex, make the path to purchase as easy as humanly possible. So frictionless approach frictionless. So when we get our new pricing table in place, it'll be one of those ones where all the options are running down

and then you check, you have the check marks next to the things that you get. It will be if you want to do DIY, it's $497. If you want to do the course plus the community, it's $197. If you want that plus that plus mastermind, it'll be three.

like I'm hoping that is really, really seamless. And so we'll continue to get less words on our website and here's something for everybody to remember. The whole top of the website, we're selling the dream.

We're selling the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We're not selling how many calls we have each week and blah, blah, blah. We're not selling the features. We're just selling the greatness that comes

from living your dream as a professional speaker. And so that's what we're doing. The whole top of the website. then we'll do the features and benefits on that pricing table so that people can really see that.

Yeah, it's the emotional argument at the top and then it's the rational stuff at the bottom. Exactly. You don't want to overwhelm people with like, you know, here's all of the steps that we're going to make you do over the next three months.

Like, that's just going to petrify everybody. Yeah, or make it sound like work, right? So we want to be really clear on the idea that, you know, they're gonna get everything that they need to kind of follow this recipe for success.

I think that Jane's examples of things that she did wrong are incredibly helpful and beneficial to people who are looking to do the same thing or starting any sort of endeavor. Realize that you're gonna make mistakes and you just have to improve on it going forward. Mistakes are

beneficial so long as you learn something from them. Yeah, okay, exactly. I got an even a good recent one so I'm at the final stage. for people who might be interested in writing a book someday. I'm at the final, final pages of

my book and it's been like the hardest book to write because we keep updating. So it was the wealthy speaker, then the wealthy speaker 2.0 and this will be the wealthy speaker 3.0s. And this is it. We're not doing anymore. We're done. The third in the trilogy is done. So I get the book

from Amazon. You can order a proof. So I decided, oh, well, that was another mistake. I got out of the book shipping business. So we had a warehouse that had books in Michigan for me, probably for five years.

We paid them every month to just hold our books and ship them out as needed. It was ridiculous and way more cost than what we needed. So now we've gotten rid of all the books and we put a big fire sale on,

got rid of all the books and now we're only running everything through Amazon. So I get my proof, Amazon will send you a proof to make sure that you like what you see. And I get the proof and I'm like,

I can't read this book. The spots are too small. You know, and this is my same team that has done six books with me. So I say team, I don't like the font. What are we gonna do? So we make a decision, okay?

We're gonna change the font 11th hour. This is the mistake I made. When you write a book, make sure you print out the pages and compare it to a book that you like so that you can see. you know exactly how it's going to look. The last book to this book, it was so

miniscule. I don't even know if I would have noticed but I think I would have been able to see that I kind of quite read this font and so we went back through and we changed the whole book and now we're ready to roll again. But

anyway, that was a big good juicy recent mistake. As a final question, you mentioned earlier Jane that you, that the goal that is to like step back and have it maybe a little more, a little more of the balance, right?

But from before the online courses, when you were doing your coaching, to after the online courses with your coaching, is there a big difference? Like, are you trying to get your clients in a different way

or do more clients come to you personally because they know you through the school? Is it the same? I think a lot of the people who come to me for private coaching, it's been and has been for the past decade.

word of mouth. Oh, I was talking to so and so who was a fast line of mine and they said, you need to talk to Jane. And I do have a really good reputation in the industry. And so people will hear my name two or three times and then they'll they'll

finally come. I think that the course has freed me up personally to do only the things like we talk about really create. you're doing your three core competencies. And so for me, that is writing, selling,

and delivering content. And if I'm only doing those things, then I'm putting everything else out to the team. And everything else goes to the school. And I love that that's been the, it's, it feels to me like I have just created the lifestyle

of my, you know, making the perfect lifestyle for me by taking more and more things off. my plate. So my team at the school keeps taking more and more and I keep backing up a step. And so that's the goal. That's a goal for me. I, yeah, you've got the goal of only doing

the things that you want to do and, you know, delegating the rest and it sounds like you're making it work. Yeah. And I think as an, as entrepreneurs, really deciding and defining what does the perfect life look like to you and how am I going to get there? And for some

people it means, you know, pulling some people in on your team. That doesn't mean you're hiring a full-time employee. It means that you might use somebody for five hours a month who takes something that you hate doing off your plate. Yeah, we often, the three of

us being freelance web developers often work with each other for that very purpose. Not necessarily things that we hate to do. Maybe sometimes it's something I hate to do. I'll hire Amanda to do it for me. But most often it's things I can't

do. And then they go yell at this client and be mean to them. Yeah, if only I can get someone to do that for me. Forcer. That's perfect. OK, Jane, well, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

Where should people go to learn more about you? Well, actually, the best website is probably speakerlauncher.com. And because that's kind of a clearing house for everything that we do over here, speakerlauncher.com

is perfect starting point. Excellent. Awesome. And we'll put it all in the show notes. Sean, we'll put it in the show notes. That's his role. Yep. I'm the show note guy. There we go. Alright, thank you very much, Gene.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Jane. Thanks, everybody. The website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Lutz. You can also find me online at amandalutz.com. Recording from a secret lair while plotting world domination, I'm Sean Smith, your co-host.

One of your hosts today was me, Mike Mela. Find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at likemela.