How can a Chief Marketing Officer help YOUR brand grow? Our hosts Molly Pittman and John Grimshaw welcome Pepijn Hufen to the show to discuss why brands need a good CMO. You’ll learn how this idea led the 3 of them to start a new joint business, the Your Next Move Group, where they act as “fractional CMOs,” providing their clients with guidance and strategy to help them grow. Listen to this episode to learn how to copy their launch strategy for your next product or business, and go to yournextmovegroup.com to hire your own fractional CMO!
You’ll Learn:
- The story of how Molly met Pepijn.
- Who could benefit from “Your Next Move”
- How to copy this simple launch strategy for your new product or business
- How Where to hire your own “Fractional CMO” (and save a ton on team costs)
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Timestamps:
0:31 Molly and John welcome Pepijn Hufen to the podcast to discuss their new business venture.
2:11 Here’s what you need to know about Pepijn.
6:27 Some of the best conversations start over wine. 🙂
10:41 Take what you already know and make it profitable.
13:58 What is Your Next Move, and who is it for?
17:44 Simple works.
23:32 Want to copy our launch strategy?
27:19 Being upfront and honest goes a long way.
31:35 Do you want to hire a “fractional” CMO?
33:09 John goes high-level and explains why this opportunity is so valuable.
37:27 Thanks for listening! To share your feedback or get a question answered on the podcast, follow and message Molly on Instagram at @mollypittmandigital.
Transcript Of Episode 53:
0:00 Pepijn: Many people, the fact that I don’t have such a program or something selling high ticket in general, is not because their audience does not want it, but that it actually takes some guts and courage to take the step to actually throw it out in the world and do it.
Ezra: #WeOutHere.
0:31 Molly: Hello, everyone and welcome to Episode 53 of “The Smart Marketer Podcast.” This is your host, Molly Pittman, here with my co-host, John Grimshaw, and a very special guest that we will introduce here in just a minute. So, today’s episode is going to be a case study, a bit story-based, and we’re going to chat about how we launched a new high ticket offer in hopes that this is helpful to you, if you’re looking to launch a new high ticket offer in your information business, if you are looking to launch a new product in general. This is something that just happened. We feel like it was a great success. We are super excited to bring these new students onboard. We are having a blast with the new program, and we just wanted to give you guys a little behind the scenes on how this went dow, and maybe how you can implement some of this in your business. So John, how’s it going, buddy?
John: It’s going great. I am super excited for today’s episode because I’ve really been enjoying these kind of case study ones, where we’re diving deep into exactly what we’re doing. And this is going to be a really fun one, because it was kind of a new experience for us. We’ve obviously sold higher ticket products before, but never this way, and I think it’s a really smart concept because it helped us kind of deal with a lot of dispersion and confusion in the business, right, or just our work in general. This strategy helped us kinda bundle together a lot of work we were already doing to create a better experience and a more cohesive kind of narrative around how we can help businesses with these problems.
Molly: Absolutely.
2:11 Molly: And so, for this business, we actually brought on a third business partner, and he is here on the podcast. This is one of our first guests on “The Smart Marketer Podcast,” one of my dear friends, someone that I met when I moved to Amsterdam that was so welcoming. Well, that’s a story for another time. But, we ended up working at the same coworking space and I saw a lot of potential in this person in terms of not only digital marketing and business-related, but someone that I knew would take care of and care about our students at the same level that John and I do, which is the most important part of this for us. So, this person is Pepijn Hufen…I tried. It’s Dutch. Pepijn, thank you for being here.
Pepijn: Hey, thanks so much for having me. That was a great pronunciation, by the way. It was better…
Molly: Hey.
Pepijn: …than others. I’ve heard a lot of variations.
Molly: Hey, I’ve had some practice.
Pepijn: Yeah, exactly.
Molly: So, let’s kind of give the back story here. Like, Pep, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your journey and kind of what got you to this point, and then really how we started this conversation, because you were the leader here.
Pepijn: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So, first, a bit about me. So, I really stumbled into digital marketing by accident. So, like, I don’t have a marketing degree or whatsoever, and, like, I was really aiming for more, like, a corporate, traditional job. And I was doing my master’s degree in London at the London School of Economics, but, like, I got very sick within, like, the first four weeks of kicking off. I had Lyme disease, so obviously, that was pretty bad. But, university was super relaxed and they just told me, “Hey, take a step back, take the year off and focus on your health, and you can come back next year,” which was great.
Molly: Feel like that’s a great European response.
Pepijn: I guess so. I even got my money back, so.
Molly: Wow, definitely.
Pepijn: Yeah. So, like, I came off the rollercoaster of undergrad just moving into postgrad right after, and then out of nowhere, my life just hit the pause button. And I moved back with my parents because obviously I couldn’t work because I really had to focus on my recover. But, I was not that sick that I was, like, only sleeping all the day. So, I basically started to find a way on how to make something of my time and how to move forward as a person, right, because moving forward is so important, but also for your mental health. So, I really felt there was a tipping point, where I made a very conscious decision to at least do something, to learn something that I would never have the time before to learn, and that’s exactly what I did.
So, that’s how I went looking into the world of digital marketing and just online entrepreneurship in general behind my computer in my parents’ study room basically. And that’s how I stumbled upon, like, DigitalMarketer and you, Molly, I did all the certification courses, I did paid traffic, I did content, I did email, I did even John’s analytics course, and that’s how I basically found my way on what interested me most and that was paid traffic. So really, the strategy and just running ads and media buying. And within a few months, after learning that and having some confidence, I got my first client. And I was…
Molly: Whoo.
Pepijn: Yeah. I was so excited about this, like, $20 per hour first client, but it was amazing because I had so been on track for a corporate job and just doing the traditional things, and now there was a business owner that had a problem and I could solve that problem and they would pay me for it with something that I didn’t have a degree for. So, a whole new world opened up and fast forward, I decided to stay in the Netherlands. I moved to Amsterdam and started working for clients. And at some point, like, two years later, we basically met by, yeah, bit of a coincidence, Molly, in Amsterdam in a coworking space and I never looked back.
6:27 Molly: I love it. And funny sidenote here, guys. Pepijn, you had reached out to me and we had chatted on Instagram, and then I just moved to Amsterdam and I was looking for a coworking space and one really caught my attention. And I noticed that it had a Facebook Messenger bot on the webpage. And so, that made me really excited because I’m thinking, “Oh, my people are here.” You know? Someone…and this is a few years ago, you know. Whoever is doing the marketing for this co-working space, they are into Facebook Messenger bots and they’re using Minichat.
And so, I started engaging with the bot and then you messaged me and you said, “Hey, I built that bot.”
Pepijn: Yeah.
Molly: And I knew that that was the place for me and then, you know, our friendship developed and, of course, we chat about media buying and marketing, but also life. And you were definitely one of my best friends in Amsterdam, I mean, still one of my best friends, but living there. I mean, it was fun to have someone that we could relate on the marketing and business side of things, but also on life. And you really helped me integrate and understand what it was like to live with Dutch people. So, thank you for that.
Pepijn: Yeah. And it’s exactly what you just said. Like, we, obviously, we became friends first and, like, we both enjoy, for example, wine, drinking wine. And I remember that there was, like, an evening that we were sitting at your place, and obviously with Larry, and we were drinking wine, and you, at some point, mentioned, like, “Hey, I have this idea.” So, you came up the idea of more like a group coaching program, with more of high level business owners, because I think if I remember this correctly, that a lot of people reaching out to you, if they could get more help. And the only thing that you were offering them was, I think, Train My Traffic Person, which is a bigger program, or private consulting, which is…well, you cannot take on many, obviously.
Molly: No.
Pepijn: So, I think that, on that evening, drinking wine that you came up with the idea and that it was, “Hey, maybe we could do this together and with John as well.”
Molly: Yeah, and that’s how the conversation started. And Oli Billson, who you are in his mastermind, Pepijn, and Oli’s been a friend for a long time, he had been explaining to me, like, how impactful his mastermind, which is really a group coaching program, how impactful that had been for his business and his students. And so, this idea was kind of starting to mold in my brain.
And while this is happening, John, you know, you and I are at huge build phase at Smart Marketer, and still are, and definitely in the place where we’re building new products, we’re spending as much money on traffic as possible, we’re hiring, you know, pretty rapidly. And so, we’re in a place where we’re trying to reinvest as much profit back into Smart Marketer as possible, so that we can grow as quickly as possible. And so, this idea is forming while, you know, John and I are chatting and thinking, “Okay. Are there some projects we could take on that would just be extra cashflow,” you know, that would kind of be easy money, that would allow us to generate a little bit more income ourselves while still growing Smart Marketer at the pace that we were wanting to grow.
So, I was having this conversation with Oli and he’s telling me how great his mastermind is. I’m chatting with you and I’m realizing how much potential there is in what you know and how you service your customers and your clients. And I’m like, “I need to work with Pepijn some way.” But, I don’t want to build an agency. You know, my first thought was, “Whoa, maybe we could build an agency and I could be the lead flow and you could do a lot of the client management.” And I’m thinking, “Oh, that sounds like a lot of work.” And then, John and I were having the conversation of how could we generate a little bit more cash that isn’t one-on-one consulting like you just mentioned. Because John and I have always kept, you know, a few consulting clients, or brought on consulting clients or done particular projects together, but that can be a lot of work for, you know, a time that could be better spent inside of Smart Marketer. So, just al little behind the scenes of kind of what we were thinking and how this idea developed.
10:41 Pepijn: Yeah, and I think what’s also very interesting, and that’s also why you’re such a good marketer, is you’re always listening to the feedback that your customers are giving you. And then, obviously, looking for a way on how you can help them, and obviously benefit yourself as well. And I feel that this really came naturally together, of people mentioning needing more help, and then obviously, we positioning it, and we can talk, I think, a bit more about that later on how we positioned it. But then, it really came to listening to what your customers were already telling you, right?
Molly: Yeah, and I think that led us, Pep, to the next step of actually crafting what this would look like. You know, before I think we even chatted with John about it, I think that evening it was like, “Okay, we know from Train My Traffic Person that people love getting feedback. You know, they love those Thursday calls where they can have their ad copy critiqued, where they can get questions answered. It’s still a big hole in the market, but we can only service people to a certain extent within that model, like, what does the next level of product look like here?”
And you’re saying, ‘Hey, I”m in Oli’s mastermind and this certain weekly format works really great, and I think that this is something we could kind of develop together.” And like you said, we knew the need was there from Train My Traffic Person, we knew the need was there because of the number of requests we get from consulting. So, you’re right. It was kind of just meshing all of this information and these ideas together to form something that worked.
And we also knew that we didn’t want to launch a traditional mastermind for a few reasons. You know, we don’t wanna compete with Ezra’s Blue Ribbon Mastermind which is, you know, two live events every month. I think we knew we didn’t really want to get into the events business, and we knew that if someone wanted that style of mastermind, where you go to an event a few times a year, there are already amazing masterminds out there, you know? Like, I’m not really looking to compete with that style of mastermind. So, that really led us to this idea that we’re now calling Your Next Move Group, that is a mastermind, but it’s more of a group coaching program where people get a ton of access to us, to solve their problems every week. And we’re finding that, you know, that’s what our people were really needing.
Pepijn: Yeah, exactly. And I think the second step was for us, great, we have this need, we have the format that we know that works, and also not only what works, but also what we enjoy doing, because, like, I love teaching. I’ve been teaching since I was 15, obviously the, I started teaching sailing, and then later tutoring and mathematics, and this was just a very natural way for us to progress. And then, was the question, “Okay, all right, we have this foundation. How are we going to position it?” Because the end outcome is obviously in digital marketing, that you’re going to grow your business, right? But, that’s super, super general. And what you see with very good group coaching programs, but I think most products that sell well in general, that they have a very specific positioning on what you can expect and what the after state is of consuming or going through the product or program or whatever it is, right?
13:58 John: There’s a really interesting tension in digital marketing education in general, which is that, to make a course affordable, you have to go broad. And to make a course really super actionable for a business, you have to go specific. But, to go specific, it gets more expensive because it means you need somebody’s dedicated time, you need someone to go in and really understand the business. And at Smart Marketer, we tried to kind of work through that problem by creating our mentorship tier, which I really think helped, right? We went from, you know, just a few people implementing to quite a bit more, but still we knew we needed to go deeper. And this group coaching option gave us the ability to serve 20 to 30 businesses at a given time, while getting to know the business well enough that we could give practical advice tailored to them. And the beauty is, it means the implementation is so much easier.
The challenge you run into is if you don’t have somebody who is an incredible implementor, someone who is able to take broad knowledge and connect it to their particular situation, they get stuck a little bit. And this lets us kind of bridge the gap, because we can get to know a small group of businesses very well, and serve them specifically, right? We can say, “Oh, not just to do better with traffic, you need to increase your average order value.” But, we can go through and give them specific suggestions on how to bump their average order value up. Or we can go through and look at their particular campaign and say, “Hey, in this campaign, I think you need to change your targeting. You need to change the objective that you’re optimizing for. You need to change your offer because this is where the break is.” So, we’re able to go really deep with a smaller group and give them hyperfocused feedback, and so, there’s no question about how do you implement, nor is there any question about what’s the next strategic move. It’s so clear and obvious because we really are plugged into all of these businesses.
Pepijn: Yeah, and that’s also what I noticed because I do all the sales calls on what people really liked, and also what they need, right? When you’re at a certain level of revenue, it’s not about the Facebook hack. It’s not about just improving your click-through rate on your ads. It’s really getting to the next level, you need to get help on an overall level. Because for example, in one of the calls that I did last week, one of the members thought that he had a problem with his Facebook Ads. So, I dove into his Facebook Ad account because that’s what we can do in this group, right? He shared his screen. I dive into his ad account. And I was looking at it, and it looked actually really good, right? The click-through rate was really good. The conversion on the page was also very good. But still, his numbers weren’t really working out.
So, the problem was actually not in his ads, but was in his average order value on the first purchase or the frontend offer. And then, obviously, the remonetization of these customers in the future. And, which is super cool because that’s where we really combine our strengths for our members, is that I can really help with the paid traffic site and the strategy, and then Molly and John, you guys can really help with the overall marketing strategy and increasing the average order value. And on these sales calls, people were really resonating with it because we eventually position it as being your fractional CMO, so your overall CMO, helping with your overall marketing strategy. And people love that because a lot of them are at that point that they cannot hire a CMO, but they do need it. And I feel with this, we basically filled up that gap of a need that was already there. I think some businesses didn’t really know that they needed that, but when they saw the message, saw the email and the page, it just resonated and they were like, “Yup, that’s exactly what I want and that’s exactly what I need.”
Molly: Yeah. Absolutely.
17:44 Molly: And you know what’s interesting? We came up with this idea. I think we all bought into it pretty quickly. We said, “Yes, let’s do it.” And then, the next step was how were we gonna sell it because we are marketers at heart. And I think, I know, 100% know that the reason that this did so well was because of the amount of time that the three of us put into, of course, thinking about what the program was going to look like. Like, okay, two calls every week, three hours. They’re gonna submit questions. They’re gonna get access to all the Smart Marketer products, like, etc., etc. We definitely crafted a good product in terms of the features and the deliverables. But, we really sat down together and discussed the hooks, and you know, the marketing strategy for how we were going to sell this.
And I also thought that we did a really good job of keeping this simple. So, that’s what I love about a high ticket offer, you know? The complexity of a launch when you’re selling something lower ticket can be pretty overwhelming, but if you already have a customer base that has purchased from you before, that’s interested in working with you further, I think that my best advice is to keep the launch of the program pretty simple and I think we did a good job of that.
So, we discussed the hooks and as you said, Pep, like, you know, we went with the fractional CMO hook, which I think you came up with, John. We really hit on a lot of the pain points that we know that the audience has. We built creditability for all three of us. We discussed, you know, other paths that they could take in the sales letter, you know, obviously positioning our path as the most desirable and the one that’s going to get them where they want to be the quickest. And then, we sent the recording of that call off to our awesome copywriter, Neil, to write a sales letter. He wrote a few promotional emails that we sent to the Smart Marketer list. We set up a Calendly link so that they could book a sales call with you, Pepijn, and it was probably the most simple marketing campaign we’ve ever put out the door. Would you agree, John? Not that it wasn’t a lot of work, but it’s like…
John: Absolutely.
Molly: …wow, we kept it really simple and I’m so glad that we did.
John: Simple doesn’t mean that you don’t put a lot of thought into it, right? Simple means that it’s a clear message, that the next step for someone to take is really obvious, and the value is presented, right? Nobody has to sift through 15,000 words and 100 emails and 12 videos to decide whether or not it’s a fit for them. Simple just means the distance between where somebody is and where they need to go. They can see it at first glance, right? It’s that sort of…maybe not love at first sight, but certainly interest at first sight in this offer. They’re like, “Wow, yes, this solves the exact problem I have.”
And I think that speaks, a few things I wanted to touch on that, Molly. One is, I wouldn’t recommend anybody start with this offer, right? You know, this was a great logical step for us because Pepijn had gotten his chops under him doing the consulting. You know, you and I had done quite a bit of private consulting and we had Smart Marketer and our own private audiences already kind of built up to reach out to. So, this is a really great step when you’ve kind of hit the wall with consulting or with working with smaller groups of people, or even in a one-on-one basis. This is a really great way to further stretch your time and stop trading necessarily dollars for hours, because you can take the interest and the attention and the enthusiasm that you’ve already captured with the great work you’ve done, and kind of take it to the next level.
So, I think it’s really, really good choice for somebody who is ready to do more with their audience that they have, without committing, you know, every single hour of their day to working and no more sleep, and when you can really craft a clear, simple message like this, I think that’s when you can find a winning opportunity. You know, if you are feeling like, “Okay, I need to throw in 80,000 bonuses and I need to, you know, have this 25-stage sales process,” I’m not sure you’re ready for this kind of thing, right? It should feel simple. It should feel easy. It should feel like the next logical step for the people you reach out to.
And that’s what I really love about the sales letter that we put together for this. We modeled it very loosely off of old school sales letters, right? I definitely recommend anybody that sells, check out thegaryhalbertletter.com. You don’t even need to opt-in. I just think this is such a powerful concept and definitely was the inspiration we used when we created our own sales letter. This idea of just a simple message from someone that knows where you are and knows where you want to go, and talks about how to close that gap. And you guys can see our sales letter too at yournextmovegroup.com. Definitely worth checking out. Whether or not this program’s a fit for your business, you’re going to really enjoy seeing the way that we really distill this down to the core parts.
And I know that someone in our group actually, mentioned to me that, “Oh, we have a fractional CFO,” right, a fractional finance officer. And so, this felt like a logical next step. And that was such a validating moment because it’s like, “Yes, we perfectly nailed this” because, you know, people don’t necessarily think about marketing in the same way they think about moving numbers around on the spreadsheet or handling widgets, right? There’s so many parts of your business that you can think of splitting off and siloing and getting feedback in, which makes perfect sense. Marketing is not as obvious to some people because a lot of people think marketing is really simple, a lot of people think marketing is really hard. So, there’s a huge range there and it feels like something you can’t really break apart. But, I think that’s something we did really well, was frame this and now deliver on splitting this into something that people can really plug into their business that fits into the larger picture of it.
Molly: Totally.
23:32 Molly: John, can you explain to people kinda how this went down? You know, obviously, we had a sales page, we had a few emails, Pep was there and ready for the sales calls, which he absolutely crushed. Like, this wouldn’t have been a nearly as successful, Pepijn, if you didn’t know your stuff, if you weren’t amazing with people, if you didn’t know us as well. Like, if we had just hired a random salesperson, which is not necessarily your core competency, but you’re obviously good at it, this wouldn’t have worked as well. Like, it did work well because these initial calls, Pepijn actually took, you know, himself as a business partner and someone who’s a part of the product. But John, can you kinda tell people, like, if they wanted to implement exactly the way that we did, how did we go about this? Because I know we emailed some segments of our list, and it was a bit different from how we normally promote a product.
John: Yeah. So, the first thing I would tell you is, while simple is exactly what you need to deliver to your prospects, simple does not necessarily mean we spent five minutes writing something down and then we were done. There was quite a bit of coordination on the backend, which is totally fine, right? That is part of the game. Any good idea you can sum up in a sentence, but there’s probably 50 to 100 steps between that sentence and the end result you want. So, we had Neil write the sales letter, like Molly said, and he wrote some emails for us. And then, what we did was we really thought about who is this offer for. And we went through and created three segments on our list, which were the best candidates, right, people who had been through a course with Molly, that we thought would likely need kind of this next step in support. Then, we thought about people who were generally very engaged on the Smart Marketer side and would be good candidates for any offer that we made because they were interested in growing their business with marketing and they liked our particular messaging.
And then, we had kind of a final audience, which was people that were, you know, on the list, they’d never made a purchase before, they never really engaged. They could be good candidates, but frankly, we didn’t want them to overwhelm Pepijn’s calendar, nor did we want to show them something that wasn’t a good fit for where they were.
So, we started off mailing this hyper-engaged audience, sent a few emails and had, I don’t know, 40 or 50 calls get booked through that, it seemed like. And then, we needed a few more, so we went out to that next audience and we broke it into a few groups. The huge mistake you can make, that we did not make, so pat on the back for us, is sending too many emails at once when you need people to sign up for a call. Because you immediately fill up every spot on your calendar and the quality of the people that sign up is a little bit lower, right? Not that they’re bad people or anything, but they may not really be a good fit for your program. So, you wanna go out to your warmest, best, highest quality group first, and give them as many opportunities to sign up as possible.
And then, you wanna try to break your next group up into subgroups so that you don’t have 50 people sign up for calendar calls all at once. That way, you have a chance to let people get the slots that they want, you have a chance for Pepijn, the salesperson in this case, to open new slots if they need to, and you don’t have this massive loss of opportunity, where you send out an email to 50,000 people and there’s only 50 slots to sign up for. So, there could have been a ton of people really interested who just weren’t able to get on the calendar. So, it’s really key to think about your audience, break this up and be careful not to overwhelm your systems, especially when you are using the human lever of a sales call. It is so, so easy to do this wrong and you just throw lots of good will, good interest and good opportunity down the drain because you tried to go too hard with your first push of the boulder, I guess.
27:19 Pepijn: Yeah. And another benefit of basically mailing to these segments and not in bulk, is that we were able to test the water, right, or I’m not sure how you say that. But, we could basically test in a small group rather, the offer, if people understood the offer, saw the value, and whether then the call booked was indeed actually qualified. And if it was not, because we did ask some questions before people could book a call, so like, “What are your revenue numbers right now? What are your biggest challenges right now? And are you able to make a five-figure investment in the program?” And if people say, “No,” or they’re not at the revenue level, like, let’s say, $10,000 a month, then I would also go in and cancel the call. And that’s because we already knew that they would not be a good fit for the program. So, doing that, that’s such a big benefit in seeing whether indeed the hook resonated, and then just see if we were indeed getting qualified calls booked, and obviously not overwhelming me with, like, 16 sales calls a day.
Molly: Pepijn, what were some of the sales calls like?
Pepijn: Well, they were actually super, super fun to do because, like, some people, if they hear, like, a sales call, they are getting a bit itchy, right? They don’t like it. Like, people like to buy, but don’t like to be sold to. But, the thing is with these sales calls, they’re not really hardcore sales calls. What I’m trying to do here is to first make the assessment to see whether we are indeed able to help someone. Because if we’re not, I’m also very up front to them and I actually, well, during the call, like, 10 minutes in, I said, “Hey, I’m pretty sure this is not going to be a good fit, so I just want to be up front with that. And I think we should cancel the call now or stop the call.” And people love that as well, just being transparent.
So, at the end, it was just a conversation to see where they’re at right now and indeed if we can make a big impact on their business. And fortunately, I felt that we could make a big impact on a lot of businesses and that’s definitely where it comes in handy, that I run a paid traffic agency on a day-to-day basis. So, I see a lot of clients and accountants, obviously, coming through, so I kinda know pretty fast where the bottleneck is, and obviously, because I know you guys very well, if we can help them with that. So, therefore, it became just a very natural conversation of see, “All right, so you’re right there. I think yes, I think we can help you. Let me explain that how we can help you.” And if people indeed saw the value and obviously you need to explain that well and stuff, but then a lot of people are like, “Yeah, this is great. I would love to do it.” So, it’s not hardcore sales, it’s just a conversation and showing people the value, and also being up front if you cannot help someone. Because if you cannot help someone and you do sell someone into your product, that’s not going to be good for you for the long term.
Molly: No. And definitely not for even the vibe of the group or the overall experience. You know, we also want to create an experience where everyone enjoys working with one another, and I think you did a great job with that, Pep. Really bringing people into the program that, not only we can help, but can also help one another and that are in similar places when it comes to their business and their struggles, so that’s great.
Pepijn: Yeah, and like, this is an add-on, right, something that happens organically. Because we were able to bring in qualified people, people with great businesses, if they bring in knowledge as well, that’s really kind of like a synergy is created. For example, like, a client of mine that I actually run the ads for on day-to-day basis, tells me that one of the members had prevented him from making a very big mistake that could have a big financial impact, right? Yeah. It’s just, like, a group of great people with a lot of value that also, yeah, is shared among one another.
31:35 Molly: So, where are we sitting right now, Pepijn? I know the initial offer that we made was for a year of this group coaching. There’s twice a week coaching. You get access to all the Smart Marketer products and we priced this at $20,000 for the year, which we feel is low. We feel like that’s great, amazing value for what we’re offering. But, we also wanted to offer, you know, a lower beta price since we’re also figuring things out, you know, and we want the flexibility to be able to really transform this program into what it needs to be over the next year and help these people. So, our goal was to bring on 20 students in this initial round, and right now, where are we, 17, I believe?
Pepijn: No, we have 15 right now.
Molly: Okay. So, right now, we are at 15, which we are still very pleased with, and Pep, I think that this is also a reflection of you really allowing the most qualified people into the group. You know, there are definitely other folks that wanted to give us money, which we’re grateful for, but we’re really protective of the group in terms of everybody being in a similar place and needing to solve similar problems. But, we do have a few spots left, so not to be too salesy, as we talk about selling things, but if this sounds like something that’s interesting to you all, we just kicked this group off in the last few weeks and we do have a few more spots. So, apply at yournextmovegroup.com if this sounds interesting to you.
33:09 John: Appreciate everyone listening to this episode, super fun to talk, and this is a little bit more like a high level overview of how this works. But, I just wanted to recap a few of the big ideas if you think this sounds interesting, either to join us or to set one of these up yourself. It’s really perfect for your business if you already have some interest and audience built up and you feel like you need to be able to stretch the time you spend with one-on-one clients further. It’s really great if you already have an audience built up that is interested in connecting with you, right? So, that’s really the key thing to launch this. You can’t start here. This is a logical next step for good will you build.
It’s also really key to simplify your message, right? The biggest trap that I have seen with these high dollars offers, is people make them so complicated, whether 80,000 steps, 80,000 parts, so many different things you have to do as the business owner, or the person who’s buying in, to make the most of it. You have to get away from that mentality.
And you really, really want to focus on the problems and the solutions, right? When you understand exactly what challenges your ideal person is facing, that is the moment when you can figure out how to help them best. So, you need to spend a lot of time thinking about where is the point of difficulty, right? What is it exactly that I can provide to these people? So, that when they see your offer, they don’t think, “Hmm, is this a good fit for me?” They say, “Man, finally, exactly the solution that I’ve been looking for to Problem XYZ.” And if you kinda focus on that, right, you’ve got the audience, you got the simplicity message and you know exactly what problem you fix, this could be a really good fit for you adding one of these to your services, whether you’re an agency, whether you do private consulting or whether you’re a business selling information or other things where you can logically be in a position of authority to educate and bring up people who need your skillset.
Pepijn: And the last thing that I just want to mention, which I think is super interesting because I’m also surrounded by people that are selling similar-ish programs, is that many people, the fact that I don’t have such a program or something selling high ticket in general, is not because their audience does not want it, but that it actually takes some guts and courage to take this step to actually throw it out in the world and do it. Which I think, it’s super interesting here as well, that for many, the shift is also a mindset shift and being comfortable in throwing this out there, then hopping on a call and then obviously pitching something at this price point.
Molly: Yes. Absolutely. And also, to reiterate what John said earlier, this is not where you want to start with this type of business. You know, this is something that we are adding to our arsenal years into doing this. This is truly a profit maximizer. You know, for us, this is here for cash flow and it’s something that is fulfilling. You know, when I look at what the three of us have most in common, of course, it is the love for digital marketing and business. But, we truly like to help people. And I don’t know about you guys, but for me, I get the most fulfillment, the closer that I can get, the more that I can learn about our students.
And that can be a really tough part about selling information courses, about podcasting, you know, about producing a lot of information online, is that sometimes you lack that two-way street. You lack that relationship building with the students. And so, for me, not only is this profitable, it’s also very fun and it’s incredibly fulfilling to get to spend a year with 20 different businesses and get to know the ins and outs of what they’re doing, and to continue the story and to really see their progress and help guide them along the way.
So, again, if you guys are interested, we do have a few spots left. Yournextmovegroup.com would love to have you. No matter what, I hope this episode was inspiring for you. I hope that you’ve learned and I hope that if you are thinking about launching a new high ticket offer or just a new product or offer in general, hopefully this gave you some encouragement and some guidance. Thanks, y’all and we’ll talk to you next time.
37:27 Molly: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Smart Marketer Podcast.” For any resources mentioned on the show today, please visit our show notes at smart marketer.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us an honest review on whichever platform you are listening. Thanks again and we’ll see you next time.
