Salome Schillack:

Hello and welcome to episode number 53 of the Shine Show, and today I'm delighted to bring you another one of my favorite humans on this planet's story about how she built her online course launches. What she's learned along the way, and how she's tweaking and changing her messaging in between launches to dial it in even more and even more every single time that she's launching. This friend that I'm talking about is Sue Monhait, the fabulous Sue Monhait.

Sue is a business owner. She's a podcast host, a speaker, a coach and a best-selling author for the community she lovingly named Gifters-Bakers-Crafters-Makers and they're basically people who create beautiful and or delicious products that they want to share with the world.

Sue owns two businesses serving this audience. She's got the Ribbon Print company that offers custom ribbon printing systems, creating the ability to produce on site personalization and branding of products. They make beautiful gift baskets from personalized ribbons on them, and Gift Biz Unwrapped provides a free and a paid business development and growth direction through a weekly podcast, and her signature online course program called Makers MBA. It's like B-School for people who make things with their hands.

Additional resources found on Amazon are her book, Maker to Master, Find and Fix What's Not Working in Your Small Business, and the Inspired Daily Planner, which is absolutely gorgeous, and they're all specifically focused on the handmade product business owners. If that's you, I would love for you to tune in, even if it's not you, I want you to tune in and listen to Sue's story and about how she has gone on a journey to sell her online course called Makers MBA today. Have a listen, enjoy.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack, and 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, and this is The Shine Show.

Sue, thank you so much for being here. I adore you and I'm so grateful that I get to share your story and your experiences with your launches of your online training program through the years that I've been working with you. Thank you very much.

Sue Monhait:

Well you know the feeling is mutual, Salome. It's my pleasure to be here, thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

Salome Schillack:

Well, you're welcome. I brought you on the podcast because I know you and I connect a lot, and we talk about all the ups and the downs, and the highs and the lows of launches. There [inaudible] are highs-

Sue Monhait:

You're going to get into it right away, right?

Salome Schillack:

Let's just get down and dirty. Just give us a little bit of a background of your online course. Who's it for? What's it about and when did you start developing it?

Sue Monhait:

My signature course, the one that I think we're going to focus on now is called Makers MBA, and it is for women who have a hobby or a craft that they've wanted to turn into a profitable business. Not just one of the businesses that's oh, this is fun on the side, I'm a business owner, but serious going into business where they can make money that could potentially replace a full-time position. Like a living salary.

I identified that this was an issue with an audience from the other business that I have established. I think that's important because I have experienced running a successful business, and I just felt like the success that I've seen in a product based business like that would lead over automatically to online courses. I know what I'm doing there, and didn't work out that way, totally.

Salome Schillack:

Well, I do have to say, I think a lot of the mindset things that new online course creators who are new to entrepreneurship, you didn't have to learn that stuff, because you already had the entrepreneurial mindset stuff dialed in pretty well, which I think is one of the reasons that you have been able to create what you have created, which I consider to be very successful with your online course launches. What are the differences that you've seen in terms of building an online course business versus a physical product business?

Sue Monhait:

Well, I'll tell you one thing that I did completely wrong in the beginning. Anyone who's going on this journey, don't do what I did. Thinking I was being very respectful of my other group, the people who were already my customers, well established, knew me well, I didn't feel like they ever bought into... They didn't get a chance because I didn't tell them, but I was being respectful in not telling them about this new course I was building.

Here, I wasn't even using an audience who knew me for a long time, because I felt like that was being disrespectful because what they knew me for was different from what I was starting to do, if that makes sense.

Salome Schillack:

That's fascinating to me. Where does that thought that it's disrespectful to share this new business with them comes from

Sue Monhait:

I think it's a lot of maybe going back to email list segmentation, and the value of making sure that you're delivering information that they've asked for.

Salome Schillack:

Okay, it's that old, I don't want to give them stuff they didn't ask for.

Sue Monhait:

Right. They're not going to appreciate that. I'm extending the offer they gave me of their email and taking advantage of it. It goes way back to that, versus saying, "Hey, you guys, this is something else that I'm doing if you're interested." Then inviting them over.

Salome Schillack:

Correct.

Sue Monhait:

I didn't even tell him about it till probably like a year in, which was silly. I don't know why I thought that... I think things would have started off better for me had I not done that. That's just, I guess a warning-

Salome Schillack:

That's a good lesson because we do that, we want to be respectful, we don't want to bombard them with emails they didn't sign up for, but then your online course is an extension of your physical product. It is the same crowd.

Sue Monhait:

It is, and I should have asked them, I should have let them... Now, I know also let people in on what you're working on. Don't all of a sudden just bring it up out of the blue, surprise. But we're talking a while ago too. I had this idea of a course back when I started my podcast. That's like five years ago. But the course really wasn't created until about two years ago. Went through a little bit of rebranding, and then got relaunched.

It's been in a state of transition up until maybe the last year has it really been solid and the same, which means then we have information that we can take and analyze and move forward with. I don't know if I've answered the full question, but that's where we're at right now. I have a course. I'm so thrilled to say that the people who are going through are seeing so much value out of it, which just reinforces that it was worth putting it together. I just want to see more people going through.

Salome Schillack:

Of course you do.

Sue Monhait:

Honestly, it's not even as much about the money as the satisfaction that I get when people are like, "Oh my gosh, Sue, I never even thought about this?" Or, "Now, I know what to do. I can take action." That gratifies me. The money comes second.

Salome Schillack:

I totally agree. There's nothing as good as when they say, "Finally, I understand this." I know.

Sue Monhait:

Except then when you analyze your course, that's when the numbers come in, and that's when it gets kind of gritty, and that not so good feeling, because then we're looking at the numbers.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah, and we're going to talk about that not so good feeling today as well. But first, just... When you and I started working on the course together, you were selling it as an evergreen, weren't you?

Sue Monhait:

I flipped it around. I started it as a full course, and it's a massive course. It's a course for the lifetime of someone's business. I really wasn't very clear. I think I was trying to approach too broad an audience. Yes, they were makers, and my audience I called Gifters-Bakers-Crafters-Makers. That was dialed down. But I was feeling like it was for starter businesses and people who were already established.

I think my message was a little bit mixed when I was starting out. I don't think they could really say that it was for me. The results that I got back from people who took it the first time we're, "This is so massive, we need some Q&A to get questions answered, and it's almost too overwhelming to go through." Then I turned it into a... Remember, this is all part of testing, I turned it into more of a membership program, but what I found with a membership program is people were coming in for Q&A business questions, but not going through the modules.

That didn't work. Then I was part of a high level mastermind group, and one of my mastermind sisters says to me, "Sue, first of all, the name of the course, it used to be called Gift Biz Builder." She's like, "First off, that doesn't sound anything like the value that you're delivering in the course. You need to change the name." She was so hysterical. She's like, "I already looked, the domain is available, would you like me to buy it for you?"

Salome Schillack:

That's great.

Sue Monhait:

I did a whole rebranding, flipped it back again to being a drift program, for starters, and that's what it is today. Over the last... We'll extend this to two years, it has been a program that's continued to change too. So, my messaging has been also changing.

Salome Schillack:

You've been dialing it in, and dialing it in and dialing it in every single time.

Sue Monhait:

Now, I'll tell you, there's another change that you don't even know about but I'll tell you. But it's an enhancement, it's not a total change, and I feel now it's really right, is exactly what we've been talking about, the one that we launch only yearly, it's only available once a year is for starters who have that dream. They make scarves or jewelry or whatever and they want to monetize it.

Salome Schillack:

They're the people who sell at the flea market.

Sue Monhait:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, they're selling at flea markets, craft shows, farmers markets, or maybe they've put up a website and no one's coming, because we all know that you have to do more than just put up a website. There's all the things. There's so much more to it than just having your product, setting a price and going to sell at the market. There's some strategy that needs to be done beforehand, there's how do you define yourself so you stand out in a big way? A lot of things to put in place based on what I've learned in starting now two profitable businesses. You see Ribbon behind me here.

Salome Schillack:

I do.

Sue Monhait:

This is the company that's up and running right now. But I also had a really successful gift basket business, production studio employees, who were sending out hundreds of baskets a week. This was before boxes were more the thing, because I totally would have gravitated into that. Along those lines, I had developed a system, but not to get off track here. Now, what I'm doing is I'm doing that launch. That's what we do together once a year.

But I still got people now who are asking, "I want to get in." This is another thing, I don't tell people things I have. I've just started talking about it in my podcasts, or in my Facebook Lives. It felt uncomfortable to me when people... You could feel like people are slipping in, "Oh, well, I talked to one of my coaching clients the other day. I never did that before, and now I'm like, "Well-

Salome Schillack:

That's fascinating-

Sue Monhait:

... why do I do this? Why do I do that?" People didn't really know. Well, now I've started doing that and people are coming to me, like, "I understand this Makers MBA, how do I get into it? I'm like, "Well, you're an established business, so I am seeing a place for the established businesses to come in." But now I'm going to be letting them in by kind of application only-

Salome Schillack:

I like that.

Sue Monhait:

... any time during the year, but it's not going to be-

Salome Schillack:

You're going to sell the lower dollar ticket item for the beginners once a year in a big live launch, and then have application only for the Makers MBA?

Sue Monhait:

Yes, but it's the same price. It's going to be the same price, but they get different things. The starters get the drift campaign, we walk everything through, get questions answered without them being overwhelmed. That is only available one time a year. Then people who have established businesses do have a lot of their infrastructure set up and they're probably coming because they need help in one specific thing.

Salome Schillack:

Right. They need more personalized help.

Sue Monhait:

Well, they need directly targeted answers to the questions they have in hand. They don't want to start with, "What's your vision? And should I be an LLC?" They don't need that. Now, what they'll be able to do is if they qualify, they come in, I can lead them directly to the module that solves their immediate problem. But they also get six months into my VIP group, which are weekly Q&As.

Salome Schillack:

I love it.

Sue Monhait:

Their needs are different, but the base program is the same.

Salome Schillack:

I see.

Sue Monhait:

Then I tell them, "When you have time, you ought to go back and listen to all of it, because you don't know what you don't have that you should fill in."

Salome Schillack:

Yes.

Sue Monhait:

They can still get their immediate need.

Salome Schillack:

Wherever the problem pops up, the problem actually occurred two steps back. The problem pops up here, but it actually occurred two steps back, and because you skipped that module, you don't know about this thing, and that's why you're having a problem here.

Sue Monhait:

Right.

Salome Schillack:

Okay, tell me about your live launches for this program. I want to know your experience in live launching. How have you found it, and what results did you get, and how did it make you feel, and what are your thoughts, and how are you moving forward? All of the stuff, tell me all the stuff-

Sue Monhait:

Okay, I don't even know where to start. Let's just start maybe with the last September launch, because that's when everything stabilized, and I really felt my message was more clear in terms of going forward.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah, that's when we went, wow, this is really good.

Sue Monhait:

Okay, because we did a launch before then, but it was still a little bit... I wasn't even-

Salome Schillack:

We were still figuring out the messaging and the audience and all of those things-

Sue Monhait:

And what the webinar topic would be, because that was a big change with that one too, is don't give them everything they need, then they don't even need to buy your course, right? You're the one who told me that. You're like, "Wait a minute, why does anyone even need to go get it now."

Salome Schillack:

It's the number one webinar mistake is giving them a web form-

Sue Monhait:

Well, if I'm going to do it, I want to be the number one mistake. That's good, I like that. We switched the messaging. I think the webinar now is really good. I like it. People give me very positive feedback on it. Yes, of course it has to be updated and tweaked over time, since I'm now only doing it once a year. So, how do I feel about launches? I'm not afraid of the tech work at all. I don't mind all the intricacies of linking everything, and I don't do all of it myself, but I still do a lot of it, my assistant and I do.

I now am on a platform where it's fun, I don't feel like I'm falling off. I'm using Zoom webinars. I was using another platform that is a great platform, but it's more for evergreen webinars versus live webinars. I was always... We never knew if people could get on, it was scary. I think that's a big important thing though, because if you're not feeling confident, even that your connection is good, how can you possibly concentrate on your content?

Salome Schillack:

Totally agree. You have to feel confident in your take.

Sue Monhait:

I use EasyWebinars for evergreen, but I use Zoom webinars for the live webinars. Works great, love it, et cetera. I guess overall just how I feel about launches, they're scary, they're intimidating, until I decided to not let myself think that way. Then I let them be exciting because I try to focus on who will be my new customers that I get to work with? Not how many they are, but the right people.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah, you got to be willing to show up, even if just one person shows up.

Sue Monhait:

Yes, if one person converts, I worry about it, because if there's only one or two people, how is their experience going to be, and what are they going to feel about the program? Luckily, that's never happened. We've always had a big enough small group for it to be good. Thank God, that has not happened. But I think it's a lot in your mind.

Had I had that launch that equals the ones that you hear on podcasts and the ones where you blew it out of the water, and you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of this launch, I would love to say that that's me, and it's not.

You know what else I will say, when it is, I don't think I'm going to broadcast it, because I know how that feels to me. I'm not going to say on achievable expectations, but I feel like everybody's doing that. When you don't, you're less than.

Salome Schillack:

I think the important thing for me is to bring balance to that idea. I think it is important that we share the million dollar launches because when we show other people what is possible, then you go, "Oh, well if they can do it, then I can do it." You motivate people that way. But a lot of the time because generally marketers tend to only share the good news, and they don't also share what went wrong in the launch or what didn't work or how many times they failed before they get there, I know for me, it used to be this... It just made me feel really bad about myself that I can't do it because I consider myself quite successful person. Now, I am failing and failing and failing.

That's why I'm doing this, that's why I shared my everything, the good, the bad and the ugly about the A Lister launch and that's when I'm bringing-

Sue Monhait:

That was so valuable. That was really great. I'm just so glad we did that.

Salome Schillack:

I just feel like we need a balanced conversation about what a launch really looks like. It was massive thing for me when I started running ads for big launchers and I got at the back end of their business and I went, well hang on, I think I have my stuff together more than they do. But because they have one or two or three things that are working really well, they get these great results.

We want to aim for that. We want to work towards that. I think we do need to share that, but we also... Please, can everybody share more of what didn't work or what we're learning? Because it's nice to put up an Instagram post that says, "If you're failing, you're learning." But share with us the actual failure too, please.

Sue Monhait:

Yeah. Well, I buy into that, when you're failing, you are learning.

Salome Schillack:

Absolutely.

Sue Monhait:

But I think maybe... Listen, I believe in abundance. Those people who are doing million dollar launches, great for them. That doesn't take away from anything with my potential, but I know the feeling that comes with it. If I knew well, she's had her program up for five years now. Not everybody, some people their very first launch do great too, it's not just that, but I just know and have experienced that sinking feeling, that pit in your stomach, that I just don't even want to go up and go into the second webinar, because what if I don't get any sales? What if it's only two, like it was the first one?

It's because of that comparisonitis-

Salome Schillack:

Comparisonitis, right. That's why we need to share the pretty and the ugly so that we can normalize the journey for people. Okay, so what did you learn from the launch in September?

Sue Monhait:

Well, what I learned from the launch in September was the topic of your initial webinar's super important. I still need some work, and I'm not yet sure what the answer is to this. I kind of think I know from registrants, to actually people showing up. I had so many people register and we started the ads, I think about two weeks out. That I felt mate might have been for mine a little bit too far out.

Salome Schillack:

I agree.

Sue Monhait:

But I don't have those numbers at the top of my head because I've been looking at these last numbers of what we just did, but I had close to 2,000 registrants.

Salome Schillack:

Your registrants, you always get loads of registrants.

Sue Monhait:

It's crazy, but they didn't always... You know what then happens, then I'm like, "Oh, no, there's going to be more than 100 people showing up, I need to pay Zoom more so that no one gets blocked out." Well, never was there more than 100 people at a time, unfortunately. I got to stop doing that, because I did that again for this launch too.

Salome Schillack:

But I do want to say it's good that you are paying attention to your data. You know that you have a leak in your funnel between when they register and when they show up. Then we can start looking at, okay, what's the story that the data is telling us? It's telling us that we lose people here? Why are we losing people here? Maybe it's because we started the ads too long in advance. Maybe we need to look at email open rates, maybe we need to look at things to go, what is happening between where people register and where they show up, and how can we speak to them with the conversation they're having in their mind at that point to motivate and inspire them to show up?

Sue Monhait:

The other thing I did different this time, I don't know if you want to stay with the first one?

Salome Schillack:

Yeah, with the first one, what did you learn? What did you do different after that?

Sue Monhait:

Okay, we also were very much targeting a cold audience. For list building, that was great. I don't know what the percentages look like for people who sign up for a webinar, go through the webinar, and then automatically unsubscribe, but I feel like my unsubscribe rate is relatively low afterwards. There are people who unsubscribe and they'll unsubscribe a little bit later over time, but-

Salome Schillack:

I've never known about that.

Sue Monhait:

I don't know. I know I'm guilty of it too, I'll sign up for webinars knowing full well also that I'm not going to be able to be there but I'll get a replay probably, because I want to see it.

Salome Schillack:

I didn't even subscribe them, I just don't open it and then it ends up in my spam folder.

Sue Monhait:

Yeah. Well, that's a problem I have too. That's something that I was feeling at that point last September I needed to tighten up.

Salome Schillack:

Okay.

Sue Monhait:

Then the other thing that we really needed to tighten up was people actually seeing these emails, because I saw a good open rate for the emails that came that said, "Congratulations, you're in. You're registered." That confirmation of the registration for the webinar. But then, as the emails were coming in, keeping them warm and excited about the webinar, and then the lead up, an hour before, 15 minutes before, out of those, weren't either... I don't know if they were going into promotion folders, spam folders, but my open rate feels really low to me, is somewhere between 12% and 20%.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah, that is super low, especially for a webinar, if they've just signed up for a webinar, I would say that's super low. That's something you can look at. You can look at your email headlines to see if they're enticing enough. Sometimes we'd like sending a second email to people who didn't open the first email with a different headline in the email. Those are things you can look at.

Sue Monhait:

The other thing that I heard is a good idea is in that very first email, have them respond back in some way, because that triggers the system that they're interested.

Salome Schillack:

That's a great idea.

Sue Monhait:

That's something I'm thinking of doing later. The other thing we've known for a long time is we need to clean up our email list. I'm just feeling like overall, our whole email list needs to be cleaned. In fact, last week, we just pulled 1,000 people.

Salome Schillack:

Feels like you cut off your arm.

Sue Monhait:

But you know what, I did, to make it palatable is we downloaded it as a CVS file. They're out of the system, but I still have them because I thought that could be good for Facebook ad targeting.

Salome Schillack:

It could be, yes. If you upload your list of unsubscribes and you run an ad to them to reengage them, they resubscribe sometimes.

Sue Monhait:

These are people who never ever opened an email-

Salome Schillack:

They just forgot about you because somehow you ended up in their spam folder. That doesn't mean they don't want to hear from you. It just means that the computer systems made then forget about you.

Sue Monhait:

Yeah, I don't know, but that's the one thing I did that made me feel better about letting them go. Now, when I'm doing my weekly newsletter, my number looks a little bit lower, which isn't as great, but I think my open rates will be higher and you're like, "What open rates?" You play with the system a little bit. If you delete people who aren't opening, your number's going to be higher.

Salome Schillack:

Of course.

Sue Monhait:

But I think that also helps with deliverability as well.

Salome Schillack:

It does. Also, remember the email CRMs, the Infusionsofts and ActiveCampaigns and those things, they look at your open rate. It's important for us to have high open rates because it determines the quality of our list in our account. Okay, so you've learned all those things in the September launch, and then we did another launch in March. Going into that launch, how did you feel going into it?

Sue Monhait:

I felt actually really good going into it.

Salome Schillack:

Why?

Sue Monhait:

Because we have been doing ads building my community for a year and a half now, potentially, and we have been attracting the best people. They come into my Facebook group, they engage in my Facebook group. Whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, I just go in there. It's called Gift Biz Breeze, and they're all supporting each other. It's a business base, it's all makers and it's business based.

I asked them when they're entering to give me their email, tell me whether they're starting or established and what their biggest challenge is? I get tons of information from them, and then they come in the group. The group is a rocking group, but that's content that I can use for sales pages through pain points, and they get onto the email list.

All of that works beautifully. I love that we're doing that, it's growing, and it's the right people. It makes me so happy to see them in there. We decided now for March that I've been growing that community. Now, we were going to focus more on the warm audience, not so much the cold. I was really excited about that because I felt like okay, a lot of people who are in the Breeze, that's what we call the group nickname, our starters, half of that group is the starters. It's so interesting. It's about 50-50 in there.

I was really excited to see what would happen there. We had some people on the wait list who just didn't feel like they could financially swing it back in September. For all those reasons, I was really excited about March. Then came COVID.

Salome Schillack:

Yes, then came COVID.

Sue Monhait:

Then came COVID. Then I had to decide. When it really started getting in the news and people started... They knew it was something, they knew it might be bad, but they didn't know yet for sure what it was. It was in that point of uncertainty, I had to make a decision. We had already gotten registrants. We were still in the registration phase at that point. I'm like, "Do I just call this off, or do we just roll with it?"

I decided, you know what, even if I get zero results, I'm getting people into Gift Biz Breeze, I'm giving them really valuable information in my webinar about the industry, and that will help them no matter what. If this is a bust, we get nobody. I still feel like I will be exposing what I'm all about to other people. I was set to not get any students whatsoever. That was my part-

Salome Schillack:

That's an important mindset going into a launch. I just spoke to my friend Donna, and we were talking about when you decide what your Facebook Ad budget is, to go, "Okay, if I lose all of this money, and I make nothing, will I be okay?" If you approach a launch that way, whatever happens is always easier.

Sue Monhait:

It's true, as long as you don't let your mind start going the other way.

Salome Schillack:

That's right.

Sue Monhait:

Because if people don't buy then you say, "Well, I'm no good, nobody cares, I don't have any value. I thought I did." What I'm thinking is that... Even so that happens, no matter what.

Salome Schillack:

That's why I love your mindset going into this, even with all the COVID uncertainty was, I'm going ahead, I'm spending this money. It's a lot of money because you're paying us, you're paying the Facebook ads, you're paying Zoom webinars, you're paying all those things, and your attitude was, well, even if it just shows people what I'm about and what I can do for them, and it serves people and it helps people, then I'm okay with that. I love that. That's amazing.

Sue Monhait:

Yeah, I really felt that way. Luckily, I'm surprised how well it did given the situation. I can tell people all day long that this is the time. If there was ever a time, it's now to realize that you can't just rely on a single source of income for your family. If you are talented enough to have a craft, make something that people like and love, then use that, use that opportunity. It's in your face, now's the time. Then if people are home also that, but that wasn't the message I could deliver. I wasn't going to do that.

Then we went into this next launch, there were a few things that we did differently. We didn't start the registrations two weeks out, I think we started them nine or 10 days. We went back and forth about it a little bit, how much. It was nine or 10 days. We shaved off, let's call it four days at the front. We also focused heavily on warm audiences, which means because of the budget, they would get the message more often. We did a little bit of cold audience, not too much, a little bit.

That was different, and then other than that the webinars were the same. The one other thing I did do different is I offered, I'm very interested in this topic, but I can't attend.

Salome Schillack:

Right.

Sue Monhait:

Those folks only got a replay afterwards.

Salome Schillack:

Okay. I like that you upfront addressed the, I want to register but I won't be attending.

Sue Monhait:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), because honestly, a lot of the people that I'm attracting, webinars are still a new thing to them, so was Zoom, which now won't be. Pretty much everybody knows Zoom now, so that's going to be interesting for the future, people are comfortable with it now.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah.

Sue Monhait:

But a lot of people didn't understand that there would probably be a replay, and I certainly don't want to say it beforehand, because we want them on Live, because we know the potential of people buying, and all my people bought on the webinar, no one bought later.

Salome Schillack:

You got all the sales from the webinar. Okay, that's another good piece of data to look at and go, "Okay, we have a huge opportunity here. We know that when they show up for the webinar they buy which is great." Now, you know your webinar works. Now, then we need to look at okay, what happens after the webinar and how are we using those bonuses and the scarcity and the urgency and the bonuses and bonuses and going away bonuses and adding bonuses and things to get-

Sue Monhait:

I looked at all of that... I think I'm going to probably need a copywriter to look at it next time. But I really followed a lot of what Amy Porterfield said in terms of the content. Feedback I got from the September one is way too many emails, way too many. I felt very pushed. I did pull a little bit of that, but honestly, I just don't think they're getting a chance to even see it, to have the option, a lot of people.

Salome Schillack:

Okay, you think that emails aren't getting opened?

Sue Monhait:

They're just not being seen because they're in the promotion or the spam. That's my big focus moving forward also. Yes, I want to spice up the emails a little bit. I want to... I've got to still go back and look at each individual email from each individual webinar. The other thing I did find his I had three different webinars this time. One was Thursday night. One was Friday around lunchtime, and one was Saturday around lunchtime. By far Thursday night was the best.

Salome Schillack:

Okay.

Sue Monhait:

By almost double.

Salome Schillack:

Do you think that's because it is Thursday night, or do you think that's because it was the first webinar? Because I tend to see that the first... If you're running multiple webinars, the first one usually gets the most registrants for some bizarre reason.

Sue Monhait:

I don't know, it couldn't be. I was thinking that it was because a lot of my people work during the day.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah, it could be.

Sue Monhait:

But then you'd also think Saturday would be-

Salome Schillack:

Better day, yeah-

Sue Monhait:

That I don't know that, but I thought that was kind of interesting.

Salome Schillack:

That's Interesting.

Sue Monhait:

Those were some things that I did differently. Interestingly enough, my result equaled my September result, even with COVID. That, with all the uncertainty, spanned-

Salome Schillack:

Did you spend the same amount of money on ads in both-

Sue Monhait:

Same amount of money. I don't know really what that tells us, but same amount of money, but I still made money along the way. If you just look at the ad spend, I did four times my ad spend.

Salome Schillack:

That's fantastic. I want us to talk a little bit about these numbers, because you did get four times out what you put in, which from an ads manager perspective, that's the kind of stuff we brag about. But you didn't feel quite amazing about it. Let's just talk about that for a second.

Sue Monhait:

Well, I think it's just the percentages sound great. If you were to say to me, you put in X, you're going to get out four times that, I would take that any day, any day. But then when I look at the raw numbers, I put in several thousand dollars, but I didn't put in $10,000 or $20,000, yet.

Salome Schillack:

I like that, yet.

Sue Monhait:

I don't know if we're getting to future ideas, but yet, I haven't. Plus, I'm paying for professional services. You can look at just the ad money, but then you can look at the full cost. If you're doing copywriting or what you're doing for me and all of that. That ads on, it's just not the ad spend.

Salome Schillack:

The profit ends up being lower than you expected it, even though the return is high.

Sue Monhait:

Yes.

Salome Schillack:

I hear that happens so often. What are you going to do moving forward? Now that you know you have a recipe that results in making four times what you put in-

Sue Monhait:

Here's the thing, if I increase my ad spend, what I pay you isn't higher, what I would pay a copywriter isn't higher. Those are fixed set prices. If I increase my ad spend and get a bigger return, then my overall margin should be better.

Salome Schillack:

Correct.

Sue Monhait:

Right?

Salome Schillack:

Yeah.

Sue Monhait:

Do I get an A on that answer?

Salome Schillack:

You get an A, yeah. When you start scaling, it might not be a 1:4 ratio anymore, it could drop to a 1:3.5 ratio. But when you're talking about putting in $10,000, and getting in three and a half times that much, now it starts becoming a significant return, especially given that your fixed costs stay the same.

Sue Monhait:

Great. What I'm thinking as I go into next year, people are getting on the waiting list. I had a lot of people who... COVID, not COVID, who knows, it is what it is, it was what it was, who knows?

Salome Schillack:

We can't control it.

Sue Monhait:

That's passed, that's over. But the fact is, there are a lot of people who said now's not the time.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah. That's great, because they're still going to opt in for your email list, and you're still going to build that relationship with them. You know that when they're in your warm audience, they convert. You also know that when they're in your cold audience, they convert.

Sue Monhait:

I did that analysis today. Interestingly enough, there were several who were in the September webinar, who came back to the march one and bought then. There were quite a few people who had never had contact with me, which is shocking because that's cold audience. They aren't on my email list, they weren't in the Facebook group yet.

Salome Schillack:

We didn't run cold ads, or we only ran a few.

Sue Monhait:

We ran less cold, more to the warm audience, but we got a lot of people who it was their first contact with me.

Salome Schillack:

That's fantastic.

Sue Monhait:

I don't know what to say about that. Then we got one person-

Salome Schillack:

That means it works-

Sue Monhait:

... who's already a customer on the Ribbon Print side. It was all over the gamut. It doesn't tell us anything.

Salome Schillack:

No, but what it does, we need to break it down a little bit more and look at it a bit more. But what it does tell us is that a percentage of cold people convert and a percentage of warm people convert, which is wonderful because, we always say we launch to a warm audience first because they're more likely to purchase, and we test our messaging in the warm audience. Once we have the warm audience on board, then we do a full scale traditional launch where you launch to both warm and cold, and you have both that work. You can now check the warm box, you can take the warm and cold box, and then when you start thinking about evergreening things, then you need to think, okay, how does this thing convert when it's only cold audiences? That's the three steps in terms of scaling things is does it convert to my warm audience? Yes. Does it convert to warm and cold? Yes. Does it convert to cold only? You're on the trajectory too.

Sue Monhait:

Okay. The other thing I feel like is, all these people who showed up on the webinar are an investment into the future, too.

Salome Schillack:

Correct, because you know now that they might not have bought the last time but they might buy in the future, which is great.

Sue Monhait:

Right. Those are the things I have to keep remembering. When I compare raw numbers, and then I hear about other people's successes or I see on Instagram people talking about what they've done or in groups or wherever it is, those are the things I go back to in my mind.

Salome Schillack:

Yes.

Sue Monhait:

So that I don't go out and get an ice cream sundae or something and drown my sorrows.

Salome Schillack:

Yes. I am familiar with consuming a whole tub of Ben & Jerry's. I just want to say congratulations, and I want to say you do incredibly well. You're doing really, really, really well. You're doing well because you're continuing, you're tracking things, you're measuring things, you're seeing success. You haven't had your million dollar launch yet, but that doesn't mean squat. Just keep going. Thank you so much for sharing your whole journey and your thought process and your results with us.

I might just wrap it up by asking you to share if someone is listening to this now and they've just been through a launch where they felt disappointed in their results, what's your message to them?

Sue Monhait:

My message is, it has nothing to do with you. If I can just say one thing I really want to say, last night, I'm really bad about podcasts because I am a junkie for sure. I haven't listened to Gary V lately. I was like, "I wonder what he's talking about?" He's not out like he normally would be. He's pretty brass and all that. So, I need to take him in little [inaudible] But so interesting that he said this last night, knowing that we were talking today. He was talking about... He shares everything for free. He very rarely sells anything to the people who he is on a podcast talking to except when a book comes out.

But also, he talked about how hard it is to convert someone to buy a book from him. He's like, "You guys are all... I give you it, I'm showing up every day, I do this, I do this." It's incredibly hard to get people to convert. I'm like, all right, if that's how Gary's feeling, then so be it. I go back to if you in your heart feel like and have heard from anybody that they've gotten value from something that you provide doing your job, and you just need to get out to more people, and don't think... I'm saying this to myself as well, because this is what I would say to somebody else has nothing to do with your value, the content of what you're delivering. You have to tweak a few things potentially along the way to get that magical mixture so that it's going to work. But don't let that little imposter syndrome get into your brain and be talking to you. Just make it go away, however you need to.

Think of the value that you're providing, and then look at your numbers and do something different. You know how they say, when you're anxious, take action? When you're sad about your results, be brave enough to look at the numbers, open your eyes, look at the numbers, and then once you say, "Okay, here and here and here, that's what I'm going to do different next time." Then you can start getting excited for that next time and see what happens, and then you do it over again and over again.

Salome Schillack:

Yeah. Thank you so much, Sue, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Do you want to share-

Sue Monhait:

It's my pleasure.

Salome Schillack:

... where can people go to learn more about you?

Sue Monhait:

Well, if people are handmade product owners, they can jump over to my podcast Gift Biz Unwrapped, and you can also go to the website of the same name giftbizunwrapped.com.

Salome Schillack:

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it.

Sue Monhait:

Thank you, Salome. It was so much fun. I adore you, very much.

Salome Schillack:

I adore you right back. I adore you back.

Sue Monhait:

Bye, bye.

Salome Schillack:

Well, there you have it. I really hope that you enjoyed listening to Sue tell her story as much as I enjoyed being part of this story and hearing her share her ups and her downs and all of the lessons that she has learned along the way. Sue really is someone I admire a lot. I'm so thrilled that I could share her with you guys on the podcast today.

If you enjoyed the episode, and if you were listening, please do me a favor and take a screenshot of where you are. If you're walking the dog, I want to see your dog. If you are lying on the couch, I want to see the couch. If you're on the treadmill, show me the treadmill or if you're cooking, show me what you're cooking. I want to see what you're doing and who you are and where you're listening, because it's kind of lonely recording a podcast, just me and [Odie] here in my office. So, show me on Instagram, please share it in your Instagram stories, tag me, I'm Salome.Schillack on Instagram and let me know what your biggest takeaway from this episode is.

I hope you have a lovely, lovely week. I'm going to talk to you again next week when I'm going to share with you the ultimate guide to launching your online course with Facebook and Instagram ads. It is a big one coming your way next week. Hang tight, it is on its way. See you next week. Bye.

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.