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AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, welcome back to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield. Today will be one of my favorite types of episodes, which is an episode about one of my students who has had amazing success and I want you to hear her story because I think it will inspire you and really encourage you to keep moving forward.
Before we get there I want to do a quick podcast listener spotlight. This one is from Cara Harvey. She’s in my Online Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. Cara says:
“Oh. Goodness! That episode on SEO with Neil Patel was AMAZING! I’m just diving into SEO this past month and this was so great, I listened a few times!”
Cara, you’re a girl after my own heart because I listen to podcast episodes that I love a few times as well. I want them to really sink in so I listen and then again and again and again until I really get it.
I’m so glad you enjoyed that episode. If you are looking for some SEO tips make sure to check out Episode #221, it’s on my blog, you’ll get all of the details there.
This episode is all about my student, Kim Constable. She’s going to talk about how she created a course and used webinars. Really, she’s going to dive into what things looked like before she started building her business the way it looks now. She’s going to talk about the messy beginnings and the mistakes she’s made along the way.
She’s going to talk about the challenges and also the big wins. It’s so fun to hear somebody else’s story because it really brings to life how you can create an online business even though it doesn’t go the way you thought it might go from the beginning.
I want to let you know that Kim took one of my courses, Webinars That Convert®️. However, I’m retiring Webinars That Convert®️ and Courses That Convert®️ at the end of 2018. I’m actually taking the programs off the market.
I’m doing this because I’m coming out with a brand new program called The Digital Course Academy®️ in January of 2019. I could not be more excited. It’s been a while since I’ve had a brand new program and although there might be some similarities between my webinars course and my courses course that I’m now retiring this program is going to be new and exciting and I’m introducing strategies I’ve never talked about before.
I’m introducing a brand new flow to how to create a course and how to launch it with live webinars again and again and again and then how to move those live webinars into an evergreen funnel so that you can make money over and over and over again without having to live launch all the time.
There is a really nice flow to this brand new program and I cannot wait to introduce you to all the new strategies and insights and the new trainings. I’m doing something new where all of my lessons will be direct to camera.
You’re going to see me a lot inside this program. It’s not only going to be my slides and my voice, which I’ve done for almost ten years now. I’m upping my game, providing a really exciting, fun, new experience for you, and this program is going to get you huge results.
If you are looking to move beyond service-based business or one-on-one business or if you’re struggling with your business model and you would love a course-based business model like I have in my own business then you definitely want to pay attention to when I launch The Digital Course Academy®️.
Again, I’m launching it in January of 2019 but if you want to be the first to know go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/DCA. You can sign up to be the first to know when I go live with the brand new program. I also have a course creation freebie waiting for you there so you’ll want to grab that when you go on over.
I can’t wait to introduce you to the brand new program. It could definitely change your life and your business. I feel confident about that one.
As I promised, I want to tell you all about Kim Constable. Kim is a mother of four. She’s a yoga instruction and she learned how to turn her passion for having a muscular booty and chiseled abs into a multi-million dollar business in just the last 18 months; specifically, she teaches vegans how to get fit and toned.
Her secret weapon to market her business is webinars. So do I have your attention? You’re going to love this story. Kim is a total firecracker. I wanted to have her on the show because she is an example of somebody who found the path that she wanted to follow and just went for it head down, no comparison, no flip flopping of strategies, she just went for it one path, one strategy, and she made it happen.
One thing I love about Kim is that she’s not afraid to take risks. She tried something new. She put her whole heart into it and let me tell you it is definitely working for her.
In addition to using live webinars (that’s how she started all of this great success) she now turned those live webinars into an automated system and she’s ended up making $330 thousand dollars in just nine months with automated webinars.
What I love is she followed my strategy that first you go live with your webinars and then you turn them into evergreen automated webinars. She’s such a good student.
But more so than that she just has a passion for what she’s doing and I want you to hear all about it.
I won’t make you wait any longer. Let’s bring on Kim.
AMY: Kim, thank you so much for being on the show. I am honored to have you here today.
KIM CONSTABLE: I am absolutely delighted. You have no idea.
AMY: Oh my gosh, this is going to be such a great conversation. I cannot wait to share your story with all of my listeners. Before we really get into the nuts and bolts, I am curious. How does a vegan-homeschooling-body-building mom of four get into the online world?
KIM: Do you know, it’s actually an interesting story and it definitely wasn’t a straight line. You know you see those diagrams of what we think success looks like and it’s a straight line to what success actually looks like? It’s not a straight line. Mine was definitely the wiggliest line you’ve ever seen.
What happened was back in 2009 I actually started a service-based business. I started a multi-lingual program for children and it was a service-based business. I was really excited about it and really passionate because I had three kids of my own.
The business grew really well but then I found out I was pregnant with my fourth child and that kind of threw a spanner in the works because he was a little surprise.
I just remember I was running this business and had just given birth and was trying to do the schedules on the wall and trying to figure out where everybody was supposed to go and all the staff.
I was so stressed trying to manage everything and I remember sinking to my knees one day in the hole and just crying. I was trying to get the kids out the door and everybody was crying and didn’t want to do this or that. I just sank to my knees and cried.
They were like, “Mommy, are you okay?” I thought to myself there has to be a better way. There has to be an easier way to make money. So I thought to myself maybe I could write an eBook.
I thought I would write an eBook. So I would start researching writing eBooks. As I began to research writing an eBook (because I head at the time in 2009 that these were popular) I began to research it and what actually happened was it opened a whole new world to me which was the world of blogging, the world of internet marketing.
I had no idea what a blog even was at the time. That was kind of the very start of my foray into the online world. I thought I ran a successful business or run a successful business so maybe I could move into teaching other moms how to run successful businesses.
I started a business called The Work-at-Home Mom’s Network.
Amy, honestly, I sometimes go back just to cringe and watch the videos. They’re still on YouTube. I haven’t taken them down. But my first ever videos I did for the Work-at-Home Mom’s Network were absolutely terrible.
I started the Work-at-Home Mom’s Network. I tried and tried and tried to make it successful. I did have moderate success with it.
The problem is my heart wasn’t in it, if you know what I mean. It was what I did. It was what I knew but it wasn’t what I loved, if that makes sense. I knew how to start and run a business and make it successful but it wasn’t really, truly what I was passionate about.
It was just what I knew and I think that was probably the reason it wasn’t the success I wanted it to be at the time. But I gave it all up in the end. One day I asked why I was doing this. Why am I putting all of this pressure on myself to homeschool my kids and run this business?
I said, “I’m going to give it all up and become a yoga teacher,” because I had always practiced yoga and I had always loved practicing. People always said to me that I should be a yoga teacher.
So, I gave it all up. I closed down all of my AWeber account and I closed down my engine at my website. I closed down everything and became a yoga teacher.
AMY: Okay, wait. That’s a huge shift. First of all, that means you gave up a pretty big email list.
KIM: You know, I did. It was funny because I was chatting with a friend of mine just afterwards. I said, “You know, I had a 30,000-person email list.”
She was like, “You have 30,000 people on your email list?”
I said, “Yeah, I really did and I can’t find it.” She asked me what I meant when I said I couldn’t find it. I said I downloaded it, a CSV file from AWeber when I closed my account. It was in a computer and I changed computers and I don’t know where it is.
AMY: I’m dying right now. I know people are listing who have been struggling to get 1,000. You have 30,000 and not only do you give it up, now you can’t find it. They’re probably getting angry with you right now.
But, before we go on…
KIM: I am a big believer in, you know what, obviously it wasn’t meant to be. My friend, who is very successful at what she does, said to me, “You know what, Kim, they probably wouldn’t have been in your target market anyway for yoga.”
AMY: Exactly. It makes perfect sense that you moved on like that. However, I do have a quick question for you before we go on because we have so much to cover. You built a really big email list in what feels like a very short time.
Can you just give us one or two ways in terms of how you built that email list?
KIM: Yeah, it was funny because I was actually interviewed by a couple of people. I remember the guys from Learn To Blog. Do you remember Learn to Blog years ago?
AMY: Yes.
KIM: Matt and Bradley. They actually used me as one of their success stories in their ads for a long time because I did use a lot of their strategies, actually, to build my list.
One of my most successful strategies was I’m a real people person. I’m a big one for getting the most out of a situation.
I was actually quite smart about it. I thought that I wanted to build my email list. My subscribers at the time would have been moms, moms wanting to start their own businesses from home; hence, the Work-at-Home Moms Network.
At the time Facebook was just getting really big so I found really big names online that had a really big Facebook following. It wasn’t so much Twitter so it was Facebook at the time. They had big Facebook accounts when Facebook was still giving loads of engagement to people with big Facebook accounts.
I targeted them and asked them if I could interview them. I just wanted to interview them for my members to, obviously, find out why they were successful.
One particular one, a girl called Karen Alpert, had a really, really funny Facebook page and a blog called Baby Sideburns. I reached out to Karen and asked if I could interview her.
She was like, “Yes, I’d be delighted,” and I always stipulated that as part of the interview I asked them if they would be willing to share it with their audience once the interview went live and once it was on YouTube and my blog.
They always said, “yes,” because they weren’t trying to make it in the online world, they weren’t protecting their own email list, they were just happy to get more exposure. I was obviously building a big list so I had something to offer.
That was one of my biggest strategies. I think when Karen shared the interview we did I picked up around 8,000 subscribers from one interview.
AMY: That is crazy. Did you have a freebie? If you had an interview and she shared it what were they opting in to in order to get on your list?
KIM: I can’t remember exactly what the opt in was but I had one on my website. I think it was either a business plan or a checklist or something.
AMY: So when they came to your website they found it. Awesome.
KIM: Yes.
AMY: I know that was a little off track but I know my audience is very much focused on list building so I just kind of wanted to share. I love that idea. I loved the strategy.
KIM: It was really fun. At the time it was really just tapping into a resource of someone who went after the big names who have their own companies and their own lists.
Unless you have something to give back, something that’s going to be beneficial for them, then they are not likely to come on and agree to network with you or do some kind of joint venture or partnership.
It’s not so prevalent now because Facebook has changed their algorithm, as such, but people who had big, big Facebook followings back in the day were very valuable because once they put it on their Facebook page and would go watch my interview it drove a massive amount of traffic to your website.
AMY: You have to kind of translate the idea into what works now but still I really love the concept. I took us off track just a little bit but you had this business and you decided to change it up to become a yoga teacher.
Then you didn’t start building until 37, right? Tell me how you decided to get into training for competitions.
KIM: Do you know, it’s a funny story. I was actually telling it to someone the other day.
It’s fun the little poignant moments you remember. My grandmother is still alive. She’s 95. My sisters and I take turns to go down every week to bring her food.
My dad looks after her and we do that. I’m always very thoughtful after I come back from visiting her. She’s old and it’s back to my childhood home and all of that so I love going down there whenever it’s my turn on a Saturday.
I was driving home and it was fall so it was getting dark quite early. I remember exactly where I was when I was driving and I thought I would really, really love…I just want to make more money. I want to be more successful. I want to give my family more freedom.
I want to be able to travel with my kids. I was homeschooling. So much of homeschooling is traveling and exposing them to the world. I wanted to have more of that for myself. How could I start a business?
I wanted to start a business. I wanted to be more than a yoga teacher. But how could I do something that I truly, truly loved? I thought, what is it that you love?
They always tell you to tap into your passion. Find your passion and you’ll never work a day in your life. That’s what everyone always tells you. I remember thinking that all I love is muscles because I had always loved muscles.
I saw Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 with her AK-47 when I was 11. I just always loved muscles. I remember thinking I just loved muscles. So I thought, how can I make a business out of muscles? I’m not a PT. I’m not a trainer. I do nothing with muscles.
It would just take too long. That’s what I told myself. It would take too long to even try to think about starting a business like that so I dismissed it out of hand. Then I continued on my yoga journey.
I started a yoga program online in the detox yogasphere. It’s actually not for sale at the minute but we’re going to relaunch next year. It’s called Deyogatox. Then, one day
I was walking past the mirror. I have a little studio at home where I used to teach from.
I was walking past the mirror and I had three big mirrors on the wall. I was wearing a thong at the time, a G-string, because I was coming in to get something. I was getting dressed in the morning and I came in wearing a thong and a t-shirt. I went over and pulled something out of the drawer.
As I walked back out again the sun was streaming in through the window. As you do when you’re 37 wearing a thong and there are big windows in front of you and the light is shining on your butt, I thought it was a good time to examine my butt because bikini season is coming up.
I wanted to see what I was going to look like in a bikini so I turned around and looked at my butt in the mirror. You know that epiphany moment? I looked at it and saw my granny’s butt in front of me. That’s the only way I can describe it. The skin had started to soften with age. It had started to sag a little bit.
I had this epiphany moment, Amy, it was an epiphany moment. I looked in the mirror and it was like everything I had ever worked toward or thought I knew to be true about being lean and having a great body was completely flipped on its head.
I had always eaten quite low calories. I had always been quite lean. I had a bit of a mum tum but I was always quite lean from teaching yoga. I looked in the mirror and I thought, “I can’t eat any less.”
I thought I was a professional dieter. I had dieted for most of my life. I have always been on low calories. I can’t go any lower in calories. I can’t do anymore exercise because I’m doing 14 hours of yoga a week.
I looked at my butt in the mirror and thought my go-to to change my body when I was unhappy with it, as it is for most women, was always to lose body fat. Lose weight, go on a diet.
Not happy with your body, lose weight. Not happy with your body, go on a diet. The juice diet. The masterplans. The eat-vegetables-only diet. We know all of the diets.
I looked in the mirror and thought I couldn’t go on another diet. My butt would just get smaller and the skin would get saggier. My husband always says there comes a point in a woman’s life when she must choose between her butt and her face.
I’m so sorry because if you have a bigger butt you usually have a bigger face and you don’t have as many wrinkles. So I looked at my butt and I thought the only way I was actually going to change that is to fill it up with muscle.
That’s the only way I’m going to stop it from getting saggier and older and looking like a really old woman, to fill it up with muscle.
I had this epiphany moment so I went downstairs and logged on to the computer. I looked up World’s Best Fitness Model and bought a program from the Australian fitness model, Emily Skye.
Interestingly, she and I are now really good friends.
AMY: I love that.
KIM: Of course, because I am one of her biggest success stories now as well. We love to connect. So I bought her program. I started training in the gym. I trained for three months and then one day on Facebook I saw a picture of a girl who was training for a bikini competition and she tagged her trainer who lived five minutes from my house.
I thought that was my next step. I am going to get a trainer and I’m going to do a bikini competition. I texted them immediately. It was 10 o’clock on a Saturday night. I said, “I’m really sorry for the late text,” but I’m a big one for acting on impulse.
He said, “No problem at all. I would love to meet with you next week.”
I said, “I think I am going to do a competition. I really want to train.”
He texted back, “No worries. Let’s get shredded.”
I was like, “You speak the language. You speak my language,” so that was it. Then whenever I started with him I arrived with a pen and paper in my hand and asked him if I minded him writing everything down.
He said, “You’re going to write everything down?”
I said, “Yeah, I just want to document my journey if that’s okay?” I am a big one for data and I wanted to see what worked and what didn’t.
He was like, okay, so I arrived everyday with my phone, my camera, my notebook.
AMY: That made a big difference for you. The fact that you documented the process from Day One, you turned that into something. Talk about that.
KIM: But you see, I kind of had that intention because I’m always thinking ahead. I had already started back into online marketing. I wondered if I really wanted to go down this road again into online marketing. But I had already done it with the yoga.
Do you know what happened, Amy? I’ll tell you what happened. I am going to reverse up a bit. I didn’t arrive the first day with a notepad and paper. I said to him, “I’m a vegan,” because I’m a vegan. I don’t eat any animal products.
I arrived and said, “I’m a vegan. Have you ever trained a vegan?” He said he hadn’t.
That was fine because I am really good with nutrition because I had been working with detox yoga for many years.
I am a health nut. I’ve been studying nutrition for 20 years because I am so into the human body. I said to him, “That’s fine. No worries. I just need you to train me and I’ll take care of the nutrition.”
So I went home and typed into the computer “vegan bodybuilding, vegan fitness model, vegan trainer.” A couple of different websites popped up. I looked at their business models to see what they were offering.
She was offering coaching for $500 and you get to check in every day. You get a weekly Skype meeting. I was like, this girl ain’t making any money. It’s not a scalable business model.
As I delved deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper I realized there was nobody. There were no vegan bodybuilders, male or female, who had a scalable business model that I could see.
It kind of went ding, ding, ding, ding in my head. Alarm bells went off. I thought if I was searching for that information how many other people are searching for this information? In that moment I knew I was going to create a course.
I was going to document my journey and create a program for other people who, like me, want to buy this information and who are obviously searching for it online. If I am searching for it I know they will be too.
That is how the whole process started.
AMY: I love this. This is exactly what I tell my students. Create a course based on your own personal success and, of course, if you get success for other people that’s always a bonus as well.
Typically, people start with the success they’ve gotten for themselves. I love that you set the intention from Day One. You realized, wait a second, there’s something here.
You created a program and you sold it. How many copies do you think you sold?
KIM: It’s funny because I created it and decided I would just do it on AWeber. I thought it was too big to create a whole online course. I didn’t have a designer/developer so I signed up for AWeber again with my zero list.
I just created an autoresponder series that would send out the workouts once a week. As I did the workout I wrote it into a PDF. I didn’t even have clickable links or anything at that point.
I made it into a PDF. I wrote the recipes. I set it up as an autoresponder and started to tell people on Facebook. I was known as a very good yoga teacher at the time and I was running workshops and things.
I had a bit of a following in that respect. People respected what I had to teach so I think I sold 30 to 40 copies. I was charging $18 a month. You could cancel at any time. Or, I was charging $97 up front for the entire year.
Another thing I did, I remember Marie Forleo (I love Marie and I know you and Marie are friends. I’m a big fan). I remember watching one of her episodes. Just as a little side note, there is so much good free content out there. Obviously her content is amazing.
In one of her episodes she talked about a book called Blue Ocean Strategy. I remember thinking that if Marie was using that book and she is successful then this must be a good book to read.
I bought it and it teaches you in the book how to look at what everyone else is doing and then do the opposite in so many different areas: Price point, customer touch point, all different things to do with the program, and to do the opposite.
I thought, hang on, there’s nobody offering a 12-month program. Also, I know it’s going to take me longer than eight weeks or 12 weeks. Here’s the thing, Amy, the program that I bought was a three-month program and I worked my ass off for three months. My body didn’t change that much.
I remember thinking I didn’t want to sell someone a lie. I didn’t want to tell them they were going to have a completely new body after three months because I knew they wouldn’t.
Then they were going to come back to me and go, “I thought you said I was going to have a completely new body and I don’t.”
I wanted to give people something that is sustainable, something that is true, and something they can actually get results from. So, that is what I did when I created my program. I thought I would create a 12-month program.
They could pay $97 and get the 12 months up front and we actually have people in my program now who joined in the very beginning who are still members now and they got it for $97. They have the entire program. I offered them lifetime membership.
AMY: Wow! That’s really cool. I love that. When you kicked this off, when you kicked the new program off, you didn’t use webinars. So talk to me about how you got started with webinars.
KIM: It’s a really interesting story. With webinars I remember years ago when I was exploring online marketing, I’m a total information junkie. If I decide I’m going to do something I will consume every single type of content there is.
I signed up for every webinar. I downloaded books. I read books. I bought programs. I researched as much as my budget would allow me and I used a lot of free stuff too.
Whenever Melanie Duncan first came on the scene, I remember whenever Pinterest became big she was running a series of webinars on Pinterest. I listened to her webinar. I was standing in the kitchen doing my ironing, watching the slideshow, and listening to the webinar.
I remember she sold her program at the end of the webinar. It was the first ever webinar I had every watched. I remember at the end of the program I was like, I so want to buy her course! My finger was hovering over the “buy” button but I knew at the time what was I going to do with a Pinterest course that wasn’t an area I was focusing on.
I knew my husband would say, “You spent WHAT on a Pinterest course?”
But I was so sold by the information she was giving. I was blown away by what she was teaching. I wanted to buy the course.
I had an experience of webinars and I knew how I felt at the end of a webinar so I thought I needed a good sales funnel. I needed something that was going to sell the program because once I have exhausted my little list and my following on Facebook and once all of my friends and family and their friends and family and whoever else that’s going to purchase my program has purchased it…
This is always what has happened in the past. Once you have the initial flurry of sales then the sales dropped off and what most people do at this point is create a new program. They think they sold that one so now they will create a new one.
I always tell people, “No, no, no! No, don’t create a new one,” what you need to do is find out a way to sell the one you’ve got. I thought I needed to do that and thought I would love to do a webinar because I know they work.
I thought I had done a few in the past when I had the Work-at-Home Mom’s Network and I had made a bit of money from them but I hadn’t made that much money from them. I didn’t quite know what to do.
Anyway, one day I was on Facebook and your Webinars That Convert®️ popped up in my newsfeed. Amy, I have followed you for years. Years and years. Back when you were doing Facebook marketing I used to totally creep on your page.
I would see you had that and you had that and, oh, look, she’s got that copy and it looks really good. I had been totally following you for years but had never bought any of your stuff. I knew you were making it big and I knew you were making it happen.
I knew you were running webinars and I thought, Amy’s running webinars. She’s doing really, really well from webinars. She’s now teaching other people how to run webinars. I want to do webinars so it’s kind of a match made in heaven.
But, I waited until the very final sales email. I waited until the very final one where it was like the program was closing. Then I was like, “Okay, Kim,” it was a big investment for me. I thought I was going to make this work.
I was going to purchase this and I was going to make this money back 100 fold in a very short space of time. I made that commitment to myself as I pressed the purchase button and that is how I got into webinars.
AMY: That’s so good. Here’s something I know about you. I know you didn’t buy a bunch of other webinar courses to learn how to do it. So, what’s your philosophy around the fact that you bought Webinars That Convert®️, you’re all about learning it, but you’re not going to buy a bunch of other courses to teach you how to do it as well?
KIM: Do you know, Amy, it actually drives me insane. I think as a bodybuilder what you learn whenever you train in yoga or bodybuilding one of the things that working with the body teaches you is that you can’t borrow bits and pieces from different people’s programs because then you just end up creating a mutant program and then you can’t guarantee the results.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but your promise was to create your first five-figure webinar in three months or less.
AMY: Yeah.
KIM: I remember thinking that Amy wouldn’t make that promise if she didn’t think she could deliver on it. She’s not one to make empty promises. So, if I buy her program and I follow the steps and do exactly as she tells me I will be able to make five figures in three months.
I think that was the biggest thing. It was trust. I know if someone comes to me and asks me if I can sculpt them the body of a physique athlete I will say, “Yes I can but you need to do every single thing I tell you and do not deviate.”
I know if they do that they will get the body they want. But it’s when they start falling off the wagon and lying to you and cheating and borrowing bits from other people that they don’t get the results. When someone doesn’t get the results it’s because they’re not following the plan.
I am a good soldier. I just follow the plans. I did not buy anyone else’s course. I bought yours and I literally did exactly as you told me and scheduled time. I was so serious about it, Amy. I think I said this to you earlier, but it was funny. Whenever I watched your webinar I remember you telling the story of the guy who made $30,000 in his first webinar.
I remember I loved your webinar and was so into it. I was taking notes and I thought I would make more than him in my first webinar. I actually said to myself, “Not only am I going to make more than him, I’m going to be Amy’s most successful student to date.”
I said that to myself as I was watching it. I don’t know why it was important to me to do that but it was. I also said, “One day Amy’s going to invite me on her podcast.”
AMY: Stop it!
KIM: I swear to God. I swear.
AMY: Okay, that is so cool.
KIM: I just sat there on the couch and said that to myself.
AMY: I love this. I mean, I know some people look back and they are like, I don’t need a silly goal like that. But it just drives you in the back of your mind. When you’re sitting there watching videos after videos after videos and you’re thinking, “I’m going to get this done. I’m going to do it,” and now look. You have huge success.
I love that we called you up and ask you to come on the podcast because we want to talk about it. Wow.
KIM: I couldn’t believe it. I said to my friend, I was talking to Tarzan afterwards and I said, “Amy invited me on her podcast. It was one of my goals and I haven’t even told anyone it was one of my goals.”
I was so excited. You have no idea.
AMY: You should see me. I have a huge permanent smile on my face. That is the coolest thing ever.
KIM: It really did drive me on. I scheduled the time. I treated it seriously. I had bought so many programs in the past and I have bought them and done them until they were nearly finished. I am a terrible one for getting . of the way through something and then getting impatient and either launching it or moving sideways or finishing it or digressing into something else.
I said to myself, “No! No, no no.” It was an investment. I appreciate it was an investment, which is why I made my program an investment because when someone is financially invested they are more likely to show up and do the work.
I scheduled time every week, every Friday. I arranged for my niece to come and look after the children and I scheduled two hours of my time to work through the material and at the end of the module if you said, “Do not move on to the next module.
Download your worksheet. Complete the worksheet. Write out your ten ideas for your titles, your ten ideas for this, and do this work,” I stopped and did the work.
I did not let myself move on to the next module until I had finished the work. Then I did the next module. It took me longer. It took me six months from start to finish because it took me a long time to create my course and I was absolutely determined to do it really well.
Amy, I was going to be your most successful student yet so I had to give it my all.
AMY: I think you have reached that mark. I think you are our most successful student unless somebody comes out of the woodwork and says, “Nope, it’s me,” so let’s put the challenge out there. But, you hold the title, girl, and that is so fantastic.
It took you six months. Let’s talk about this. I want to break it down. If you’re listening to this podcast now, really hear me. She could have done it in three months and she could have been super stressed. The woman has four kids. She is running a business and has tons of stuff going on.
She allowed herself to take six months to create the course and launch the webinar. If she said after three months it was taking too long and she wasn’t going to do it we would not be talking about her huge success that she has today.
You get to make your timeline. As long as you’re committed to it you will get to the finish line. So I love the lesson you just gave us here. You put your own timeline to it and you committed to it. That is huge.
KIM: I said to myself that I would not launch it until I was proud of it, “If that takes me until next year,” I knew I was on a deadline because I couldn’t launch anything in November or December, nothing fitness related because everybody’s thinking about purchasing presents and the holiday season. They aren’t thinking about joining businesses.
I knew I had a window between September, October, or November where it had to be launched or else I would have to wait until the next year. So it was good to have a deadline. But I also promised myself. There were days when I was impatient. There were days when I felt I was done with creating a slide show. I was fed up with it.
I was frustrated. I was waiting on my designer to finish stuff and I’m a very resourceful person but I had to wait and be patient. I just promised myself I wouldn’t launch it until I was proud of it and until it was done.
By the way, not perfect. I really want to make that distinction. Here’s the thing, when I launched it I only had Phase I created and there are six phases. I actually created the phases throughout the year. I didn’t even have time to create all of the workouts.
Also, I wanted to see how the students responded. I wanted them to go through and see what they need in Phase II. I saw it in my mind how I wanted it to be but I didn’t know where they would need to go.
I paced them and engaged them the whole way through and then I created Phase II and released it. Then I created Phase III and I released it.
AMY: I love it.
KIM: It wasn’t perfect, by any means. It wasn’t even finished but it was finished enough to launch it and to launch it well.
AMY: So good. Such a good lesson. Okay, so what happened when you decided to do your first webinar for your sculpted vegan program?
KIM: Well, a lot because now that I know…Whenever I signed up for your webinar, I said this to you another time earlier, I really am like your cyber stalker. I was just like, anything Amy does I’m going to do because if she’s doing it and this is the way she’s doing it, she’s doing it this way for a reason so I’m going to do it that way too.
Whenever I signed up for your webinar I realized there were eight different options of times. I could choose I think two times on a Tuesday, two times on a Thursday, and then you told us in this course, obviously, the best times to schedule your webinars.
There were four dates one week and four dates the next week. I still don’t know to this day if your webinar was live or whether it was an evergreen. I assumed it was live because it was done so well.
Now looking back and thinking it was probably an evergreen if there were eight different options. We ended up doing eight live webinars. But I decided that since you were doing eight live webinars that I was going to do eight live webinars.
I scheduled not one webinar but I scheduled eight. I scheduled two on a Tuesday, two on a Thursday, then the following week two on a Tuesday and two on a Thursday.
I didn’t do one webinar. I did eight webinars.
AMY: Okay, we’ve got to stop here. This is so fantastic. I will say during a live launch I might do as many as six live webinars. I am sure what you saw, you are right, it was probably evergreen. However, when I first came out with my webinars program I would tell my students, “I want you to do two live webinars.”
Now that I’ve revamped the program and we’ve got Digital Course Academy®️ coming out I’m telling them I want them to do at least four live webinars so the fact that you went out with eight was actually brilliant.
As you know, that first one tends to be awful. Would you agree with that?
KIM: It was absolutely horrendous. I rushed all the way through the sales pitch because I was so nervous about doing it. It was absolutely terrible. Terrible.
AMY: Yes. But what did you think when you realized it was terrible and you hardly made any sales and thought it wasn’t going to work. What did you think then?
KIM: I did not have any time to think because I had another one in three hours.
AMY: Exactly.
KIM: I just had to keep going. The second one wasn’t actually much better either, to be honest. It wasn’t really until the last one or two that I was a total and utter pro. I learned so much all the way through it.
I learned that I didn’t even know I could keep my camera on. I thought they could only see my slide show. Then one day I realized in the second week of webinars I realized I could turn my camera on.
I was like, “Oh, oh, should I keep my camera on?” I didn’t know. Then I just made the decision. I was just going to turn the camera on because I wanted to turn the camera on so they could see me and see the slide show.
People loved that. They thought it was amazing they could see me. They loved being able to see me and see the slide show. You can tell I talk a lot so I have to really try and move through the slides. I do move through them pretty quickly but I like to elaborate on my points.
People loved being able to see me so I learned so much from doing them. By the end of it my sales pitch was so polished.
AMY: I’ll bet. I’m the same way. I need a few. Every time I do a new launch, when I launch brand new in January, I’m going to need a few webinars until I feel like I’ve hit my stride and really nail the sales portion and I am turning on my camera.
That’s another thing. When I first launched the webinars program I didn’t do a lot of direct to camera so I didn’t teach that. But things have changed. I think you need to turn the camera on. Maybe not the whole time, but at least in the beginning and in the Q&A if you’re new to that.
I love that you experimented. You didn’t just stick with one thing as you got more comfortable. You started to try new things and that’s such a perfect way to ease into webinars.
You also made some money. Break it down for us.
KIM: Honestly, I just thought. It’s funny. I remember sitting and doing my slideshow. I went to Starbucks to make my slide deck. Amy, do you know what I did to make my slide deck?
AMY: What?
KIM: Honestly, this is the extent of my stalker tendencies. I printed yours out. You gave them to us in the webinar so I printed yours out and I was like, “Okay, Amy’s first page,” then I looked at your copy and I looked at how I could convert this into my message.
I took your message and I made it into my message. It was completely different text and words. If you looked at our webinar slide decks you would never think they were similar in any way because it’s completely different content and branding and everything.
But, I was literally like, “If she’s done it and this is the way she’s doing it and she’s giving me this as an inspiration then I’m going to use it.”
I literally went through it slide by slide by slide by slide. In the end I actually created my slide deck in three hours. The entire slide deck. There are 124 slides.
AMY: That’s impressive. You might get the award for the fastest.
KIM: I just did it because I didn’t reinvent the wheel. You told me how to do it so I did it the way you taught. I don’t have a lot of time in my life. I have to move fast. So that’s how I did my slide deck.
My point was, I remember sitting and agonizing over the price. I was like $997. I wanted to charge $997 because I thought it was worth $997. But is anyone going to actually pay $997 for a fitness program?
My husband thought it was too expensive and thought I needed to charge maybe $47 a month. I said, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Then I was like, no, I’m just going to grow a big sack of coconuts and I’m just going to charge $997 because I know it’s worth it and I know it’s going to change lives and I know I’m going to create an amazing webinar and I’m going to sell it and I’m going to stick with that price point.
So I did. I stuck to my guns. I stuck to the price point and I thought to myself that I needed to invest some money in Facebook ads because I knew I needed to sell.
I am a big one about numbers, Amy. I’m a numbers girl. I needed to get the numbers in order to convert. I knew if I could get 150 to 250 registrants (that’s all I could afford in the webinar package at the time) in each webinar that would be 2,000 registrants.
I was able to reverse engineer the numbers and think if I had 2,000 registrants and x amount of people showed up and x amount of people purchased and x amount of people…I just reverse engineered it back and thought I could afford to invest about $13,000 in ads.
I know so much of sales is a numbers game. So I thought if I invested this amount I could get these numbers and I could sell this amount and I could afford that. I also looked up how much I could afford to lose.
Say it all goes tits up, can I afford to lose $13,000? I spoke to my husband and he was like, “Yes, it wouldn’t be a good thing but it wouldn’t bankrupt us.” He saw how much work I put into it.
I invested $13,000 in ads. I followed your module religiously on how to set up and run the Facebook ads. I also previously had done quite a cheap Facebook ads course. It was like $297 so I had a little bit of experience in Facebook ads.
I invested $13,000 and I had about 1,500 registrants over eight webinars. I think I had about 400-500 show up live across the eight webinars. Then I ended up making $52,000.
AMY: Wow! That is so fantastic. Across your eight webinars, as you gave yourself some space to ease into it, $52,000 was made. This was your first time out with webinars for this specific program and for this business you had created?
KIM: Yes. Just as an FYI, I didn’t sell after the webinars. I think I had about, in total, five sales directly after the webinars. I remember finishing my first webinar. I ran to my computer and looked and kept hitting refresh and refresh and refresh.
Is anyone purchasing? No one purchased. You know when you go through that despair of, “Oh my god! No one has purchased.” I said to them, my customer service team is waiting to take your orders and no one was coming.
I was like, okay, just don’t panic. Don’t panic. Just don’t panic. Don’t panic. It’s fine. Just do your next webinar and keep going. Where most people purchased, which is why your system is so beautiful, was in the post-webinar follow-up series in the email follow-up series.
AMY: Interesting. See, everyone’s kind of different.
KIM: There were so many sales on the last day. It was 21 sales or something on the last day.
AMY: Okay, so cool. So for those of you who have never gone through a webinar training with me, I teach how to sell on the webinar but then there is a whole postemail sequence to everybody who registered for the webinar afterwards. There is a cart close email and all of this good stuff.
KIM: My biggest days were on the days you said they would be, on the days when I offered the bonuses. I did everything exactly like you said.
AMY: You are such a good student. I absolutely love this. I’m curious from you, why do you think you were so successful. Wait, one thing you didn’t actually say is that you did your live webinars but then you put it into automation. I think you’ve made $330,000 in nine months on the automated webinars?
KIM: I have, indeed. Last month we had our first six-figure month. We turned over $124,000 last month.
AMY: Holy cow! Just so you all know, what I teach is to go out and do live webinars first. You work out all of the kinks, you get out all of the nerves, you understand what your audience wants, and you do a series of live webinars.
Once you find that you have your success and have locked it in then you move it over to automation. Kim did exactly what I teach and now she just had her six-figure month and now she’s going to continue. It only gets better.
Kim, you’ve got to tell me why you think you were so successful?
KIM: First of all, I think the crux of everything was that I sat an intention. I sat an intention, first of all, and I said, “This is what I’m going to do.”
Amy, it was such a silly intention. It wasn’t like I wanted to create world peace or provide my children with a better world. It was that I was going to be Amy’s most successful student yet and she is going to invite me on her broadcast.
It was tangible. It was tangible for me and it was measurable. It wasn’t something pie in the sky. It was very, very, very tangible. So, I sat an intention and I created a good product that I knew people wanted because I had been searching for it.
I don’t do things half-heartedly. I wasn’t afraid to take a risk. I took a risk. I took a calculated risk. I knew I had created a good program and I also invested. I wasn’t afraid of investing money. So I have always known that in order to grow I needed to invest.
Can I tell you a really, really, really quick story?
AMY: Please.
KIM: It’s about Robert Kiyosaki. I remember listening to an interview with him years ago and he said that a girl came up to him once (it has stuck in my mind) she said, “I have written this really, really good book. It’s an amazing book but the problem is no one’s purchased it. I don’t know what to do so I was just wondering if you could give me any advice?”
He said, “What I would do is go down to the local college and enroll in a sales and marketing course and,” blah, blah, blah.
She said he didn’t understand. She was a writer. He said, “Yeah, but do you see the front of my book? Do you see what it says?”
She asked him what and he said it didn’t say, “Robert Kiyosaki, best writing author it says, Robert Kawasaki, best-selling author.”
He told her if she wanted to get her products out there she had to learn to sell them. It’s not enough to just create them. That always stuck with me and I thought I need to learn to sell what I’ve got.
I think that was probably the biggest thing for me. Then, I also recognized where I was limited because I can’t do everything. I’m a mom of four. I am homeschooling kids. I was running a yoga business at the time. As soon as I started making money, as soon as I started, I invested it in areas I knew would free up my time, areas I wasn’t strong, areas where I wasn’t good, areas that were my weaknesses. I always invested to grow.
Amy, I have always planned to grow. I actually hired Gravy.
AMY: Gravy. We love Gravy.
KIM: They are amazing. When we had our first call Casey said, “I have never had anyone hire me proactively.”
I said, “Really?” He told me I was the first person that had hired him proactively. I said, “Well, there you are. I intend to grow.”
He said he could tell I intended to grow. I had that intention that I was going to grow and I began to look at systems to prepare to grow and I just kept investing and it just kept growing.
AMY: That is so fantastic. For those of you who don’t know, Gravy is the company that we both use to collect failed payments. They are a recovery payment team but they are so much more. I’ve talked about them on the podcast a lot but I am so excited you are working with them.
KIM: It’s so good. Chasing failed payments took up so much of my time so it was really good.
AMY: I love that you broke it down for us and talked about why you feel you have had so much success in your business. One other area that I know you’ve had great success is in your team and hiring the right people.
What I would love for you to talk about is your team now. I think you started very lean and now you have a pretty decent sized team. Is that right?
KIM: Yeah, that’s true. Whenever I first launched the Sculpted Vegan or started putting myself out there as a vegan bodybuilder I had a VA write to me…Actually, I think I put an ad on People Per Hour or Upwork or something, one of those online platforms.
I put an ad on for a VA and she wrote to me and said, “I see that you’re a vegan. I’m also a vegan. I am also really into the gym. I’m a very, very good VA. If you ever need anyone let me know.”
I didn’t think I could really afford to hire anyone but it would be so nice to have someone answer all of my emails because I was getting loads of inquiries. So I hired her for an hour a week or something. I think my bill at the time was maybe $100 a month or something. It was tiny.
I hired her and she is now my full-time project manager on a full-time weight. She does not work for anyone else.
AMY: I love it.
KIM: She was as amazing as she said she was. I think when you find someone good you have to hold onto them with both hands and I’ve always said when you find good people give them the freedom to do the job. Don’t micromanage them.
Find good people and let them get on with it. So Flora was my first VA ever. She’s now my project manager. Alan is my developer and designer. I found him at People Per
Hour when I hired him to make a website for my dad and I knew instantly from working with so many bad web designers in the past that he was amazing and he was so proactive.
I literally grabbed him with two hands and now he works with us. He doesn’t work with me full time. He’s on retainer but I am his biggest client and he works with us.
He is part of the team. I have him on speed dial. I told him I thought I talked to him more than I talk to my husband.
There is Flora and Alan. I have recently hired a community manager to manage all of my Facebook groups. She was one of my students and she was one of the best students I’ve ever had. I said, to her, “Do you want to be a community manager?”
Amy, I listened to your episode about how to build a team and I followed your directions.
AMY: So good.
KIM: I hired a community manager. Then I listened to your episode with Chloe, your project manager or your integrator and that’s when Flora got promoted to integrator or project manager. I have told you I’m a really good student.
I now have a customer service manager. How many do we have? We have Alan and Flora, Julia is customer services manager, Stace is the community manager, Jamie is email marketing manager (she looks after all of our Infusionsoft because that scares me), then I’ve just recently hired Tarzan who does copywriting (mostly email sequences) and I’ve just now hired a new copywriter to come and work on the team.
Allison is going to work with us a lot of hours every month to come and do a lot of my writing for me because it’s the last area. I always tell my team they are amazing but they cannot string a sentence together. I have to do all of the writing and so now that’s going to take a huge amount off of my plate having Allison on the team.
I have a couple of other people who work for me in the groups helping to moderate and stuff. I think we’re up to six or seven now in only a year, Amy, it’s gone so fast.
AMY: So great. And you’re just hiring really smart so it will take so much pressure off.
KIM: I did make one hire that was a mistake and I listened to your episode about hiring a team. You said that you hired someone and it wasn’t a “hell yes.” At the time I just hired this person and I knew I had made a mistake because it wasn’t a “hell yes” so I had to let that person go.
AMY: We’ve all done it. That’s a normal thing. I think the best part of the learning process in that is getting the courage to say, “I’ve made a mistake and I need to let this person go.”
That’s so hard with being an entrepreneur, for sure.
This has been so fantastic. I could not be more excited for you. I’m so honored to be a part of your journey although you’ve done all of the hard work. You’ve made it happen, of course. So first of all thank you so much for being on the show. I think people are going to love your story and just take a lot of learning gems from it. I appreciate you being here.
KIM: Thank you so much for having me. It has honestly been a dream of mine for the last year so I can take that off the bucket list.
AMY: Oh my gosh, so fantastic. Also, where can people learn more about you?
KIM: I have a website, TheSculptedVegan.com and they can learn more there. It has everything. We have so many free resources. I give away so much of my best information for free so everything on there is free.
You actually can’t even purchase anything through my website. Everything on there is for free. The only way you can purchase something is through a webinar.
AMY: Okay, sounds very similar to my business. I absolutely love that. It’s so cool. I have to say you’re really fun to follow on Instagram as well. Your pictures are out of this world amazing. Instagram is a really fun place to follow Kim so check out her website, TheSculptedVegan.com and definitely find her on Instagram.
Kim, thanks for being here. I cannot wait to talk to you again. I hope we get to meet in person someday as well.
KIM: Thank you so much. I hope that too, Amy.
AMY: Take care.
KIM: Thank you, bye bye.
AMY: There you have it. I hope you loved hearing Kim’s story as much as I have. She is just such a great student, a go-getter, a risk taker, and someone that just keeps her eye on the prize. I really admire that.
If you want to create a course business model, if you want to sell courses in your business and you don’t want to have to rely on one-on-one consulting or coaching or a service-based business and you love the idea that you can sell a course over and over and over again in your business then stick with me.
That’s exactly what I teach inside of Digital Course Academy®️ which I will be launching in January 2019. I would love to share with you all about this brand new program and all you need to do is go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/DCA.
You could sign up to be the first to know when my brand new program goes live and I also have a freebie waiting there for your all about building courses in your business and launching them with webinars so go check that out.
Okay guys, I can’t wait to connect with you again same time, same place next week. Bye for now.
