Salome Schillack:

Hello and welcome to episode number 113 of The Shine Show. Today's episode is for you if you've ever grappled with the question, why are people loving my content but not buying from me? Today's episode is called What To Do When They Love Your Free Content But Don't Buy Your Course. I can almost hear you groan through my speakers right now if this is you. Now, I have an exciting announcement. We are ramping up and getting ready and dotting the T's and crossing the I's, or is it the other way around, for our upcoming masterclass. In this masterclass, I'm going to teach you how to generate predictable, consistent, and mind-blowing results every time you launch your online course. The masterclass is called Learn the three secrets to profitable online course launches that only the best Facebook ads managers know, and it's probably not what you think.

You can sign up for the class right now by going to shineandsucceed.com/readytolaunch. That's shineandsucceed.com/readytolaunch. There are only two classes. We're only going to host two live classes. You get to pick from one of the two that you want to attend, and then I'll see you there live. Then you're also going to find out more about joining The Launch Lounge. Now let's jump into the episode. Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi. I'm your host, Salome Schillack. I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine. This is The Shine Show.

Did you ever hear the expression, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Yikes. It's an expression my mom used to use when I was a teenager. If you don't know what it means, you would say this to a teenage girl or a young woman if you want to encourage her to be modest. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free means the boys are not going to marry you if you put out too soon. There's all sorts of things wrong with that saying on all sorts of levels. But there's one level at which why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free really works well. That is when you are selling to your students or to your ideal customer in your content. Today on the show, we are going to talk about what to do when they love your free content but they don't want to buy your course.

If that has happened to you, raise your hand right now because today's episode is for you. You are going to walk away from this episode knowing exactly what you should do to keep your audience coming back for your free content, but it also makes them hungry and ready for when you say the court is now open, or here is the link to buy. They go there and they actually buy from you. The reason I'm sharing this with you today is so that you can take what you learn in today's podcast episode and you can start launching profitably and start to scale your launches and your business so that you can get to fat wallet freedom. That's what we're calling it now. Fat wallet freedom sooner. How do you know if you have a problem with your audience loving your free content but then not buying your course?

Well, usually one of the things that would be an indication of this happening is when you keep getting messages from people saying, "I love your podcast," or "I love your Instagram," or "This blog post that you wrote resonated with me so much." You get all these messages all the time. Then as soon as you announced to people that they can buy something, you're hosting a workshop or you're hosting a paid challenge or you're selling the recordings of that masterclass that you did, nobody actually buys. Even if it's not this obvious, there are other more subtle ways that you can also see if maybe you are in this boat where people love your free content but they're just not buying. One of the ways you can see this is if you are working your behind off and you're not making money.

If you're working your tail off and you feel on all the time, you feel like you need to respond to every DM that comes your way. You feel like it is your responsibility to reply to every comment on your social feed. When someone asks you a question that you typically would answer inside your paid program, or that might require a longer explanation, you go ahead and answer it. Even though it's Sunday morning and you are lounging on the couch watching your favorite TV show, you would still answer it. That is a good sign that people are loving your content but they're not buying your course. Maybe you're feeling resentful towards your audience. This is something that popped up inside The Launch Lounge the other day. We had a discussion about what to do when people love your free content but they don't buy your course.

We were talking about feeling resentful towards your audience. That usually is a pretty clear red flag that you are not feeling taken care of by the people that you serve. How do they take care of you? There's only one way they take care of you, they give you their money. That is how they take care of you, because that allows you to hire help so that you don't have to do everything in your business. That allows you to pay for ads so that you don't have to hustle on social media to build your list. Another way that you know that your audience might be loving your content but not buying it is you are just plain exhausted. I remember so well after two years of really, really going at it super hard, how absolutely exhausted I was when I still didn't have any money to show for my online courses business that I started. That was just not really going the way I'd hoped it would go. It wasn't replacing my income as fast as I had hoped it would.

I was going live every single day. I was serving like nobody else I knew, but I was still broke. I know how that absolute exhaustion and tiredness can feel. What do you do about this? How do you turn this around? How do you change this when you are feeling tired or when you don't know how to create different content that your audience will still love, but that actually helps them also buy your course? Here's what I want to offer to you. When you are talking to your audience, there is a fine balance between solving all of their problems for them for free and solving micro problems, which indicates your expertise or points to your expertise and your ability to solve bigger problems for them. When you then go into a launch or some kind of a promotion where you have a clear call to action for people to buy something, once you go into that phase where you are now getting ready, you are switching up your conversation.

From just delivering free content for the sake of building relationship and delivering free content for the sake of adding value, to delivering free content with the pure purpose of taking people on a buying journey. When you get to that phase, this is usually a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month from your launch or inside your launch on your webinar, inside your email sequence. When you go live, your job is not to drown them in content. In fact, if you are drowning them in content, you're probably just leaving them either confused because they need more help to implement what they've learned, or you're giving them so much content that you've totally empowered them to go away and get results without you. Your job when you're facilitating these conversations is to facilitate a transformation.

Now, a transformation is a change. It's a change where you're taking them on a sales journey that helps them see that you understand their stuck state. You understand their pain state. You understand the challenge they have right now, and you show them that you also see and understand the desired end state. So you're demonstrating to them the beginning of a pathway where they're feeling pain, they're feeling stuck. They're feeling frustration and anger, maybe resentment. They're feeling tired. They're feeling all the negative feelings we have when we want to move away from a certain feeling or a state that we find ourselves in. That pathway that you're going to lead them on leads to a desired end state, a pleasurable state, a state that they dream of. A state that they can't wait to get to. A state that when we're all honest, we often wonder if we'll ever get there.

Your job as the person who's facilitating this transformational journey for them is to demonstrate that you understand the pain that they're in, that you have been there, that you have experienced it, that you can empathize with them. Also, that you yourself have found a way out of it, that you have made it all the way to the other end where you got into the desired end state that they want. You take that same hero's journey that you went on from the pain state to the desired end state, and you show them how you've taken other students on that journey or other clients or other people you've worked with for free. Anybody, any testimonial you have, where you can show people who haven't yet bought from you that you have been able to facilitate that transformation for somebody else helps them see, A, that the end journey, that end state really does exist.

There is evidence for it because there are normal people like them who in working with you have gotten to that end state, but also shows them evidence that it can be done. It shows them evidence that you understand where they want to be and how they're going to get there. Now, this is very different from dumping a bunch of content on them in an hour class, right? This is very different from teaching them skills in a free masterclass that when they get stuck trying to implement their skills will actually cause them to stop and believe that you can't help them get the transformation they want. This is very different from creating any kind of situation where they can't move forward without your help. Be careful of that when you are doing your webinar, when you're writing your emails, when you're hosting your challenge, be careful to not dump so much content on them. That unless they have you right there at that moment holding their hand, they're unable to move forward. Because this will just create in their minds doubt about whether or not they can do this.

When I say a transformation starts with a stuck state or a pain state, I want to give you some examples of that. One example of that could be somebody who says, I don't know what to talk about when I go live on Facebook or on Instagram. The desired end state could be, I will give you 365 days of live video prompts so that you never have to wonder what to talk about again and you can start building an audience who loves your content. Another example might be, I want to get rid of the clutter in my office and stop feeling so overwhelmed because the end state I want is a beautifully decorated office that matches my ambition that looks like who I want to be. Or another example could be, I want to stop feeling like I'm gambling with my money when I'm running ads. Instead, the end state that I want is I want to start creating consistent results in my launches so that I can finally quit my job.

You see how that's three different examples of how you can state someone's pain state, someone's stuck state and turn it around into their desired end state, and then help them see that you can create that transformation. Your job is to help them see you understand their pain and it's not their fault and that there is a way out. Help them see that others have done it and that you're not alone. That they will with a few small steps that you can teach them inside your course, they can do it too. Now I want you to take action. I want you to gather a piece of paper, get a piece of paper or open a note on your iPad or your computer. Draw a line in the middle of the paper. On the one side, on the left side, write pain state. On the right side, write desired end state.

Then I want you to go and find all of the emails that students or listeners or readers or audience members or Facebook group members or DMers or Instagram stalkers or any of your followers, anywhere where a follower have sent you a message describing their pain state, telling you what they're struggling with, telling you how things really are for them right now. Then on the other side, I want you to write down any words they used to describe how they wanted to be or what they dream of or what their goals are or what their desires are. You can look through saved email or any copy, anywhere. Especially if you have a Facebook group, it's really useful for this. The other way to go with this is interview them, get them on a call. Make sure you transcribe the call because you are going to be listening for other things when you're just listening to them, answer your questions.

You'll be amazed at what you discover when you transcribe those calls and you go back and read it. You just discover things you never even knew was there. When you're just listening, because you're not filtering in these things that you never knew was there, you miss it. But when you transcribe it and you come back to it over and over and over, and you look at it with fresh eyes, you start to discover patterns in what people are saying and in how they're describing the words they're using to describe their painful states and their desired end states. Or you can post a questionnaire. Create a simple type form or a Google Form or something, and just ask people. What are you struggling most with right now as it relates to whatever your niche is? You can ask them, how do you want this to be in state? What do you see as the base solution? What do you see the based way for this to be for you in the future when you have the answer to this problem?

Once you have that document and you can list those pain states and the desired states, then I want you to start thinking about how are you going to get them to come to a paid event. Host some kind of a paid event where you're going to solve this problem for them. I want you to post in your group or post on your social media or create an invitation on your podcast or on your blog or anywhere where you have eyeballs, anywhere where you have an audience. Post something along the lines of, Hey, a lot of you have been telling me you struggle with X, insert pain point. If I hosted a workshop where I showed you how to Y, insert desired end state, would you be interested? Drop a comment below if you want to attend this class.

Now, if you nail the pain points and you nail the desired end state, then you know that people are going to comment like mad. They're going to tag their friends, their mastermind buddies, their accountability partners. They're going to tag anyone and everyone and they're going to say, yes, please. Now once you have people saying, yes, I'm interested, you create your low dollar clause. It could be a $27 workshop or a $27 challenge or something fairly low dollar if this is the first time you're doing it and you're not quite sure what your audience will resonate with in terms of what you offer yet. You invite all of those people who said, I want to come. Invite them personally to come to your class or your workshop or your challenge, whatever it is that you're going to host. Remember to give them lots and lots of benefits of what they're going to learn. You might say, you'll discover 365 ways to go live so that you can start attracting more people to your email list, right?

If that is what they want, if they want to build their email list. Or something like, you'll learn how to create a beautifully decorated office that you'll be proud to show off to your prospects or students. Or you could say, I'll show you how to finally create a profitable launch so that you can quit your day job and start enjoying fat wallet freedom. Once you know how to do this, you'll be selling out your challenges, your workshops, your masterclass, your whatever. You'll be selling them out so quickly because you're showing your audience that you can create a journey from where you understand the pain that they're in right now to where they can see that you know what they want and what this desired end state is that they want to be in. And you have the way to get them to that desired end state.

Back to the cow, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? You're going to give them amazing free content and you are also going to learn how to not just speak to content but also speak to why the content matters, and why every piece of content you create is taking them in micro journeys from a stuck state to a desired end state. You're going to do that in small ways when you deliver your free content, and you're going to do it in bigger ways when you're hosting a webinar or when you are inviting people to join your paid challenge or workshop. Now you have the tools to go out and serve your audience to your highest ability. Give them your best stuff. Give it to them for free, but give it to them in a way that helps them see that you are not just someone who can give them content. You are someone who can facilitate transformation for them.

If you start speaking to that, very soon you will start seeing those paying students coming to your courses and your membership very quickly. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Remember that if you want to find out how to generate predictable, consistent, and mind-blowing results every time you launch your online course, then you're going to want to sign up for my next free masterclass. It's happening next week. We only have two sessions that you can join live. In the sessions, you're going to learn the three secrets to profitable online course launches that only the best Facebook ads managers know, it's probably not what you think. If you want to sign up for those, you can go to shineandsucceed.com/readytolaunch. I'll see you on the class. Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a thing.