PODCAST - how giving something away for free will grow your business_not a lead magnet
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Now let's dive in
Today on the show, I'm gonna share with you how giving away something for free will grow your business, as long as you're doing it the right way. And no, I'm not talking about a lead magnet. I'm talking about something even more powerful, a way for you to let your customers experience the value that you provide before paying you, which means you gotta give something real good away for free.
Now, I'm gonna share with you exactly what I do in my business later on. I've done a lot of different things over the years. But what you really need to think about is pushing [00:02:00] your comfort level. You need to give something so powerful away for free that Your customers understand what it means to work with you, and then eventually they're gonna work with you.
But Johnny, what if someone never works with me and they just take advantage of the free thing? I got a story for you. Back in college, I got into yoga, and as you may know, I was studying accounting, I was studying film. I've always been a lifelong athlete. I own another business called Athlete With Asthma, where I've trained to be an elite endurance athlete, and now an elite HYROX athlete.
Well, in college, I discovered yoga. And I discovered it through a great company called CorePower Yoga. I love CorePower. Well, in college, I couldn't afford a CorePower membership, but I was grateful because CorePower had free classes. Almost every single studio offered at least one free class per week, and there were three studios that were close to the school that I went to.
So what did I do? I went to these free [00:03:00] classes. And guess what? I went to the free classes for years. This is, you're probably hearing this, you're like, "Oh my God, you're the guy. This is my nightmare, is having someone just go to my free thing." Well, here's what ended up happening. For about two or three years, all I did was go to free classes.
This equated to probably 300 or so classes for free. I wasn't the only person going to these free classes. There were a lot of people going to these free classes. But what ended up happening is after going to 300 classes for free, I ended up paying about $150 a month for a CorePower membership for more than a decade.
But let's just use the decade math. $150 a month times 12 equals $1,800 a year. And then we'll say 10 years. This is $18,000. It's crazy. Now, CorePower [00:04:00] invested 300 classes into me. But guess what? I also took teacher training, which cost another about three grand. This is 21,000. Guess what? I probably brought, on the low end, five, on the high end, 10 to 20 of my friends into CorePower, who all for at least a year or two or more spent this amount of money.
So let's say that on average I had friends spend another, let's call it 18,000. So now we're talking $39,000, 300 classes. And I think I'm overestimating this. I share this because CorePower didn't just give me a lead magnet for free. They gave me actual classes. Now I couldn't go to what my favorite classes are today, yoga sculpt.
There was a free yoga sculpt here and there, but they didn't have one always on the schedule. I mainly went to C1s, which is just beginner yoga, and I did [00:05:00] 300 classes of that. Well, what that did is that built my confidence with yoga. It made me a yogi. It meant that once I could afford paying, once I was ready to pay, I was only gonna pay CorePower That's what I did, and I ultimately became a teacher, taught for CorePower, which they got a lot of value out of me that way too.
So when you're looking at this, we can be very short-term in our thinking, but 300 classes equated to more than f- almost probably more than $40,000 of revenue, and really a lot more, 'cause you think of my friends brought friends, those friends brought friends, and it all started here. And hey, I understand that you may not own a yoga studio like my client, Carla.
And you may have to think about this a little differently when it comes to giving away something for free that is of extreme value and really shows your customers how it is working with you, experiencing you and your business. Well, these are really the two things that you need to do. The [00:06:00] first one, be a representative of what actually working with you looks like.
I've done lead magnets for a long time. You may have even used some of my lead magnets. Now, one of my best ones ever was my free masterclass, and the reason why is because it's an hour-long training that is extremely similar to my eLearning Simplified Academy program. So you take the hour-long training.
At the end of the training, I offer you access at a discounted price or at a special rate for eLearning Simplified Academy. It is perfect representation. And then I have other lead magnets, like, like my eLearning Platform Finder, that you go in, you answer a couple questions, and I pair you with the right eLearning platform for your business.
Well, that's what's gonna happen if we work together, so that is representative. And then I have free programs teaching you how to get up and running with various platforms that I match you with. Those are my best freebies over the years, or lead magnets. I'd say that they're a little more valuable than lead [00:07:00] magnets.
They're a little more valuable than lead magnets. They were pretty representative of what working with me is like. Well, the second thing you need to do, and this is extremely important, is you can give away the free thing, and it can be the most valuable free thing, but if you don't give your customers an on-ramp to working with you in a paid sense, then what are we doing here?
So what you need to do is offer a clear next step. And part of this, by the way, is whenever you give the free thing away, you need to get their email or phone number. This is extremely important. CorePower got multiple emails from me and was emailing me like crazy over the years, and this is the same thing you need to do, is whenever you give the thing away for free, you need to get something in return, and you need a way to be able to offer more, which email and phone number are the best way to be able to offer more to your potential customer.
And then you have to offer a clear next step. The clear next step for me was, "Hey, I know you're doing all these free classes. Well, we actually have a student..." Discount program. And, uh, you can [00:08:00] actually take us up on this. And that was the first program I paid for. I did it during my master's when I was getting my MBA.
I paid for a discounted Corepower Yoga membership. And then it turned into a normal Corepower Yoga membership. But that was the clear next step for me. What is the clear next step for you in your business? Now, I get it, you may not wanna have a free offer. And while I still have these free high-value offerings that I give away, I also have my Plug the Profit Leak Challenge, and I'll tell you more about it in a bit.
But really, what I've realized is the consulting I do nowadays, I charge multiple six figures. Really, the lowest one-on-one consulting package I offer as of recording this video is 115K. That's what it is, for a year. We work together for a year, pay me 115K. You get multiple six figures of profit unlocked in your business, and we leverage education to really grow your business and your impact worldwide.
This is how much. [00:09:00] I also have offerings that cost more than that. 250K plus a 10% rev share. These are the main two things that I sell. I also sell a group consulting program. That is 30K per year. But this is it. This is the business. I still have eLearning Simplified Academy. I sell that for 5K. And I give away my free Made Simple courses.
When you start paying for the LMS, for the eLearning technology, I give you a free course or a free program to help you get that up and running so that you can get the value you need to serve your customers, serve your employees. This is what I sell. So giving away something Free and then selling these doesn't really add up.
It doesn't make sense. It's, it's weird. People who get things for free aren't necessarily gonna be ready to pay for one of these things. That's why what I've done is I've done this a little bit different. I [00:10:00] offer what I call my Plug Profitly Challenge, and it's not free. I sell GA tickets and VIP tickets.
And as of recording this video, a GA ticket is $97, a VIP ticket is $297. What this allows me to do is you pay me $97, I help you unlock 100K-plus of profit in your business. I do this so that you can create impact in the world. And I'm really trying to help you be able to afford these things, 'cause I know that once you start investing in one of these programs, 30K a year, 115K a year, 250K a year, you're gonna have even more success and create even more impact and unlock even more profit in your business.
This is a clear next step. You start with my Plug the Profitly Challenge. Go to plugtheprofitly.com to grab your ticket, or click on the link in the show notes or the YouTube description. Then in the challenge, we're gonna help you uncover 100K-plus per year of profit in your [00:11:00] business. This is what many clients of mine have found in the Plug the Profitly Challenge just in a couple of hours.
One of my clients, Darren, unlocked 100K in his business. Amazing. That's what it's gonna help you do. And then when you're ready, you can invest in one of my other programs and we're gonna take it to the next level, unlocking millions of dollars of profitability over time. So I invite you to go grab your ticket to my Plug the Profitly Challenge, and I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to Learning Transformed. Now, if you're designing a transformational learning experience and wanna skip the overwhelm of trial and error, check out our e-learning platform finder. Just answer a few simple questions, and we'll match you with the right platform, plus an extended free trial.
And as a bonus, you'll get free access to a course that walks you through building your learning experience on your matched platform. Click on the link in the show [00:12:00] notes or go to www.e-learningpartners.com/elearning-platform-finder.
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AI is rising and so are we
