Jun 22, 2018
In Episode 5 Roy Barker talks with Beth Cody about Mastermind Groups.
Beth Cody started in Digital Marketing as a way to avoid the typical college trap of delivering pizzas or flipping burgers and found her passion for working with businesses focused on education. Today she works with exhausted business coaches looking to move from six-figures to seven or more with high-ticket online masterminds.
Listeners of the Business of Business Podcast can contact Beth directly at 386-965-2094 to schedule a FREE 30-minute consultation to see if a $5k-$25k per participant mastermind is right for them!
Please visit our website www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcat.com, www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com, and to find out more about Roy Barkers consulting and advisory services visit www.roybarker.com or email roy@roybarker.com
See the full transcript below
Roy Barker: 00:02 Good afternoon and welcome to episode five of The Business of Business Podcast. As a reminder, you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play. Please take a few minutes to download and rate the podcast. It will make it easier for others to find. You can also sign up for our newsletter at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. Today, we have a very interesting guest, Beth Cody. She is going to talk to use about mastermind groups and I don't have a lot of knowledge about this, so this is going to be very informative for me as well. Mastermind groups actually give professionals a chance to maximize their time and earning potential with clients and I don't want to make any missteps so instead of me talking around what I know, Beth, I just want to go ahead and introduce you. Please tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got here? Then, we can get into the part about mastermind groups.
Beth Cody: 01:13 Sure. Thank you, Roy. My name is Beth Cody and I've been in the digital marketing space for seven years, going on eight years. I actually started making websites for local businesses because when I was in college, I needed extra money, but I did not want to flip burgers.
Roy Barker: 01:34 Yeah. No, didn't we all?
Beth Cody: 01:37 Yeah. I finagled my way out of having to work at McDonald's part-time. I started off making websites with just basic templates for people and I already knew a little bit about basic coding. Over the years, I just kept doing ... I kept freelancing on the side for a long time. As my clients demands grew, so did what I had to learn in order to meet those demands. Then, it became less about just a website presence and more of the marketing like email marketing, Facebook ads, content marketing, copywriting. Eventually, I became a one stop shop for marketing for my clients but that became exhausting. Over the past little over a year, I was actually working with a client on a mastermind program and he had already a great following of people in his Facebook community. He had a list. He was already established and had people who know, like and trusted him. That's a really important thing when you're in business is to have people who already feel like they know you personally.
Beth Cody: 03:05 Then, he decided he wanted my help to create a mastermind program for students because they were really asking for one on one, but he didn't have the capabilities to take on 30 people on a one on one setting. It would have completely eaten up his week, and kept him from doing what his business was teaching his students to do which was real estate. Basically, he would have had to give up the whole purpose of his business just to coach other people how to do that. It would've taken far too much time. We had fantastic success with that program and I decided that that is the focus that I want to put on my own business now.
Beth Cody: 03:48 Now, I help other professionals who are overwhelmed by the response and the demands for one on one coaching sessions, and they're looking for a way to make that same kind of higher income, but without having to sacrifice so much of their time and energy into it. Instead of having to spend maybe 20 to 30 hours on private coaching sessions a week, they're able to just have one session maybe on the weekend for a couple of hours and reach even more people without exhausting themselves, without having to spend a lot more time and money. That is essentially what I do and that's how I've evolved my business from doing very basic websites years and years ago until now.
Roy Barker: 04:40 Okay. That sounds cool. Now these mastermind groups, I see a lot more of them now. Is this a pretty new phenomenon or has this been around for a while but it's just becoming more prevalent?
Beth Cody: 04:54 I believe it's been around for a while. Yeah. Definitely in the marketing space, people are really looking to ... Online courses are becoming really the bread and butter for most marketers because they're so easy. They're easy to create even if you don't have a system, like the system that I learned from my mentor. Even if you don't have a specific system of doing it, most people can figure out how to break something down into steps from point ... Get somebody from point A to point B. Online courses, really for the most part, it's a one and done depending on the level of online course. I have lower level courses that are maybe five video lessons. That's pretty easy. Depending on how long they are, you could knock that out in two hours.
Beth Cody: 05:43 When you're doing a mastermind, that is a little more, I wouldn't say a little, that's a lot more involved, but it is kind of the same concept. We're breaking down these complicated concepts where people really don't feel like they contain into easy steps, that they can then use and they can have instant wins. That's really the big thing about mastermind and inner circle programs as well, and just these higher ticket courses. Your students need to feel like they're succeeding all the time. That's really the big key to having any kind of success in that space.
Roy Barker: 06:21 Yeah. I guess the real value is that ongoing support that I'm not just reading a lesson on a piece of paper, but from what I understand, like you said, these groups may have a session once a week or once very other week where everybody can come together. I guess in the meantime, they're able to post questions. I may be getting a little ahead of myself, but they're able to post questions to the group and have group interaction. Let me step back just a minute and say, how do you set these up? I think I understand that they are like a closed Facebook type group, but could you explain the mechanics of how that works?
Beth Cody: 07:13 Sure. Yeah. You're exactly right. There is a Facebook community aspect to the program that I helped set up and it's really important. That's a huge part of it because like you said, the students need to be able to interact with each other. Also, when you have students who are coming in, but then you have students who are established who have been doing the mastermind for a while, it does actually save you time and effort to have these maybe five or 10 people who already are experienced helping to answer the questions for you. Again, this the way that we're cutting down on our time, the time that we're having to spend. Now granted you're still going to need to interact, of course with your Facebook community, with your private Facebook mastermind group, but you have people who are already just incredibly jazzed about what you do. They've had success. They understand the concepts, and you have more than just you in there helping them out. That's huge. That's incredibly important.
Beth Cody: 08:19 Yes. We have the Facebook group, and then we have a separate course area that we set up and there's a lot of different programs we can use. It's really based on client preference. I've done it with ClickFunnels. It's very popular. I've done it with an Ontraport plug-ins through a WordPress website. Ontraport is a customer relations manager and ClickFunnels is a funnel builder that also has the capability for creating very simple online courses. It doesn't need to be fancy. If you do want something a little fancier with a little more interactive features, there is also things like Thinkific. Thinkific is very intuitive. It's a really lovely program. It's my preference because you can also make sure your students aren't just skimming over and moving on. You can have things like quizzes that force them to remember what they've learned, so they really truly understand those concepts.
Beth Cody: 09:22 Then, we also have a design team. Our design team does, not only the overall course design, but we also do worksheets. Worksheets and those supplemental course materials are something that I learned from my mentor, Dan Henry. If anybody wants to learn how to make an online course, I highly recommend Dan Henry for that. He's who I learned from. He really reiterated worksheets are also a fantastic way to cut down on your refund rate. One thing that we do is we make sure people understand that they have to do the work if they want their money back. They can't just not do anything and then be like, "Well, I want my money back. It didn't work for me." Well, you didn't do the work. That's a big thing, especially in these higher level courses, you really don't want people just skipping out because they got bored. You really them to be interactive. You need them to be engaged. The worksheets aren't just busy work.
Beth Cody: 10:33 The worksheets, they're such a huge part of the process. You really need them to keep people, like I said, interactive, engaged, but also it gives them something tangible to fill out. For a lot of people, based on what something that I've come across in the learning space called [The Count 00:10:53] Learning. So many people really learn better, not just by listening or watching a video, but really when they're interacting and doing. By having worksheets that are having them fill out with their hands, you can of course do online fillable PDFs, but I don't recommend it because it's very easy to just kind of blow through it. I really recommend encouraging people to write it with their hands.
Beth Cody: 11:20 You're getting people involved in the process, and the closer you can get them to really simulating the experience of what you're teaching them. Let's say for example you're teaching somebody Bitcoin. If you can teach them and have them really working through the process with these worksheets, with these supplemental materials, in a way that simulates the actual experience of doing a trade as much as possible. Of course, when you're teaching someone like that, you want to be careful not having actually investing their money yet until they're ready to go out and do that on their own. When you have them doing, really getting it close to simulation as possible, that is when they learn the best. That is definitely one of the biggest aspects of the course, a bunch of the videos that we record and send them to Facebook group, but really getting them as close to simulating the process they're going to be going throughout there in the real world, but in a comfortable safe space. That's what we like to create.
Roy Barker: 12:21 Okay. It sounds like there are a lot of components to make this work, and I guess there are a lot of different variations dependent upon the business and the results that you're looking for.
Beth Cody: 12:36 Yeah, absolutely.
Roy Barker: 12:37 One question I have too is maybe if you are taking a longer term approach or maybe more of a coaching situation where this was going to be perpetual. It's not just going to be a certain link or you don't have a certain criteria that you're teaching. Do you want to invite other guest speakers? Because I've heard both ways. I've heard that sometimes it's good to ... You keep your audience, and you keep them engaged with yourself. I've heard other people say ... Well, people get tired of hearing you and what you have to say that it's good to invite that guest speaker every now and then, and not to let them dominate the group or the time period in which you have together, but just to provide some either added value or extra insight.
Beth Cody: 13:36 Yeah, absolutely. I do recommend guest speakers, but it was completely up to the experts that I work with. That's completely up to them if they want to bring on guest speakers, but I do think that it adds a lot of texture, if that makes sense to the course. It really adds some different perspectives on what you're teaching. Like I said, going back to the Bitcoin example, let's say you got one big question I know that I've heard because I've had people messaging me asking me if I invest in Bitcoin. People asking, "Well, what's the difference between Bitcoin and stocks?" I certainly don't know. That's a question I've love to know, or how people jump the rails from the [sophomore 00:14:17] to the Bitcoin? What maybe a good idea is to maybe have somebody who did that. Maybe somebody who was experienced in a stock market, and then decided Bitcoin was a better opportunity or having somebody come on who understands security.
Beth Cody: 14:34 Securities are a big thing in the financial world, and you have to be very careful about being sure you don't have problems with any securities because the securities commission of the United States is not shy about putting people in jail for that. Having somebody come on who's experienced in securities, financial law, those kinds of things, those are very important and the thing is people feel when they're doing any kind of course or high level course, they have to know every answer to every aspect of what they're teaching. That's actually not true. If you're not an attorney, you don't need to answer questions like answering if that is better or not. You can bring an attorney on who can answer those questions to the best of their capabilities, and of course some restrictions will apply. Just the attorney only. [inaudible 00:15:21] of that one particular state, they may not be able to answer questions about other states, but they can certainly tell you [inaudible 00:15:29].
Beth Cody: 15:29 That's a really important thing is to make sure it's okay not to be the be-all end-all expert of what you're doing. It's completely fine. In fact, you're probably not because if you're in any kind of space that makes money in online courses or just the coaching space, you most likely will not be in what we call blue waters. The blue water, red water is what we use in marketing. Blue water, that basically means there's no sharks. It may just be pretty empty, and that's where people do some very unique niches like I have a friend who has made a very successful business teaching photographers how to do boudoir photography. Boudoir photography is mostly for women in their lingerie when they want something to be more self-empowering, were looking for that kind of thing. It's very popular around wedding time flow. It's a very specific niche, but then you have people like me in digital marketing. That's a very red water area.
Beth Cody: 16:32 There's a lot of us downstairs. There's a lot of sharks. Most likely, if you're going to space that it's already populated, that it's good because that means that there is a lot of need for it. There's a lot of demand. That means you're going to have a lot of opportunities to talk to people. It's okay if you're on a blue water situation, and you just need to make sure that you do your adequate research and make sure that it's successful. I prefer red water because then I know I've always got students. I've always got people who need my services like I work with businesses to help them create products. That's very red water, but I know I've always got people. There's always going to be business coaches who are tired and want my help. I'll never run out of prospect.
Roy Barker: 17:21 Right. Exactly.
Beth Cody: 17:22 [inaudible 00:17:22] them. Yeah. Definitely, guest speaker's incredibly important. I highly recommend them. If you can't find any, that's okay, but don't feel like you have to be like I said, the ultimate guru of your area because you're probably not. That's fine. People aren't ... Okay. Here's the secret I'll tell you. People are not buying courses because they think that you are the expert. They're buying the courses because they like you. They like the way you do it. They know you're not the only way of doing it. There's many, many ways of ... Let's say buying a car. People have different techniques for how to negotiate with the dealership, but the reason that they're going with you is because they like you.
Roy Barker: 18:07 Right. Right.
Beth Cody: 18:07 That's the important thing.
Roy Barker: 18:08 Yeah. That is a big ...
Beth Cody: 18:08 That is a huge thing.
Roy Barker: 18:10 That is a big key to remember is that you can buy a car anywhere, but people buy it from you because they like you and they trust you. I guess the same applies to other types of information that we're putting out there as well. This is a two-part question on time. The first part is how long does it take you to set this whole process up from start to end? Then, I assume because I'm the subject matter expert on what I'm trying to develop that there's going to be some time commitment and some input that's going to be necessary for me to help you complete the task.
Beth Cody: 19:01 Right. For any mastermind, we're looking at between bigger minimum. We're looking at three months to most likely closer to six months to create a product. The reason for that is because we do them in certain stages. We do market research. To start off with, we're talking to your audience making sure we understand what they really want. Then, we're testing it with the first run group. They get a discount, and we work with them and make sure that they're understanding everything. They tell us ... They give us lots of feedback. Then, we finalize the product and then we clean up. If we need to rerecord something, then we take the time to do that. Then, we go to the final launch in marketing.
Beth Cody: 19:44 All of that, it sounds very quick and fast. It's not. It takes close to six months to complete the entire thing, but the greatest thing about that is after it's done, the only time you have to invest in the program anymore is really the weekly calls you do with your students and let's say if you're an industry that can have regulations change, financial regulations, that kind of thing, then you may need to go and update some of that information as well. Overall, it should be pretty self-running at that point. It should just be able to run itself once we finish the process.
Roy Barker: 20:22 Okay. I think you actually answered the second part. The second part of the question would be if we started doing this today, how long would it be before I can start actually seeing results? It sounds like it's kind of ... You start out. You tweak it. You come back again with another version or add it. It sounds like that it's just building not only the program, but the audience and the results for the client as you walk through the six-month process.
Beth Cody: 20:56 Yeah. That's exactly it. Really over the six months, we're not just building code. We're not just setting up a pretty place for your videos to go. We are working with you on marketing strategies. We are really getting into the nuances of your industry because I certainly am not an expert in your industry, you are, and we are also working on content. Content is what can take the longest, and the thing is we really don't need anything. Yeah. If people think they have to have the biggest and best slideshows, lots of animations, incredibly beautiful artwork. Well, that [inaudible 00:21:39] takes time. I'll be honest, most students don't ... At the end of the course, they don't go, "Wow. You know what I love most about this course is the slides." What they mostly care about is, "Well, you know what I love the most about this course, I was able to close on my first house and I made $5,000," or, "Man, I just got [inaudible 00:21:59] Bitcoin and I just made $2,000 on my first one, and it's amazing."
Beth Cody: 22:03 Those are the things they cared about that they learned something, implemented it and they won. They could knock [inaudible 00:22:09] at a time. I really recommend in order to cut things down, we're not worrying too much about the technical side. If only you have a microphone that you can be understood, that's great. As long as you have a good decent camera, a webcam, that's great. The slides can be as simple as a white background, black text. That's the easiest way to read them. If we need to show imagery, that's completely fine. I don't recommend that we go incredibly fancy on anything because it just takes more time to design. Assuming that it can be done in the final stage, if you decide, "Okay. I really want to have this more brand specific." You can test it. We can do that, but that's the final stage.
Beth Cody: 22:48 Yeah. People get very caught up, and it's a very common thing, I say for businesses is you should really do something 80% of your time on the 20% that's going to make you the most money, but then people really get hung up on me the 80% that's not going to make the money, which is like slide design.
Roy Barker: 23:09 Yeah. Sometimes we get hung up more on the aesthetics than the message, and that was something I was going to say too is that I think it's very important, and I'm speaking from a user standpoint as I have been to some groups and some presentations that they have high hopes and they tell you about the dream, but they don't tell you the steps or they don't really help you through that process and through the journey, it's more about if you do this, you can be very successful and I did this, and I'm successful and Joe did it, he's successful and ... Excuse me. They talk about how successful everybody is, but they never really get to the meat and to the nuts and the bolts of, "Well, if I'm starting at zero today, how can I get to that same success?"
Roy Barker: 24:05 I guess that's important and probably a big part of your job to work with this subject matter expert to make sure they're given the audience what they need to be happy. Like you said, they need to give them something so at the end, they've got results, not just a bunch of pretty slides.
Beth Cody: 24:23 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's exactly it is. Definitely, in marketing, you definitely hear the pitch. The Pitch is quite a lot of, "Don't you want to be able to only work from home for an hour a week and make millions?" "Well, yeah. Duh? How do you do that?" Then, people don't reveal, which from a marketing standpoint, I understand you're trying to get people in to your program to understand, but also when you're confused as to how that's possible, that's a problem. That means your audience won't understand and they're probably not going to be willing to pay money for something they don't at least understand the concept of.
Roy Barker: 25:03 Yeah. Yeah. That's what I look at is the old saying if it's too good to be true, it probably is. I don't necessarily want to pay money to find that out. I need just a little bit of bait to get me down the road to say, "Okay. This guy's got a plan that he can share and help make me successful, or help me to learn more about whatever the subject is." I think that's important for listeners to remember to really get down into the nuts and the bolts so they can help. On these groups, is there a difference between LinkedIn and Facebook groups? It seems that most that I see are on Facebook. Is there a reason for that?
Beth Cody: 25:51 Well, I think really there's just not as much awareness on LinkedIn in what it can do as Facebook. It also depends on your particular audience. If you are somebody who, let's say, you showed companies how to get into the fortune 500 levels, you've been at the top for years and you're showing other companies how to maximize their profits, so that they can become a fortune 500, that would probably be a LinkedIn area because LinkedIn is really meant for professionals. It's a business to business area versus business consumer, which is more where Facebook works. Now, for example, if you're somebody who is teaching, let's say, you're teaching people who, let's say have a low thyroid, how to lose weight effectively? That would be at Facebook area, I would feel I would recommend because if that is a business to consumer, they're not really looking to make money off of learning how to lose weight from their thyroid?
Beth Cody: 26:57 Now granted, I usually put people on Facebook because Facebook is just more well. You have known almost everybody. Even older people have Facebook account, but that is something that you need to figure out with your old audience like if your audience does seem to be older, I think still most of them will have a Facebook account, but not all of them will, but they may have a LinkedIn profile because we understand it's good for their business. That maybe where you need to just decide kind of flat out ask your audience like, "Do you guys like Facebook or LinkedIn better? Where do you spend more of your time?" There's something wrong with asking people direct questions. People seem to be very afraid of it, so you can definitely ask your audience.
Beth Cody: 27:37 Yeah. There are differences between LinkedIn and Facebook. LinkedIn, like I said, would definitely be a much higher level business to business, but if you're doing business to consumer, I would stay on Facebook because that is where they tend to hangout or just granted, you can still do lots of business to business on Facebook. That's where all the live business groups that I visit the most are.
Roy Barker: 28:00 Right.
Beth Cody: 28:01 It really just depends. Everybody's different.
Roy Barker: 28:03 Okay. Let's talk about like I said, everybody's got a theory on how things work, but what I want to get to is what can I charge for this? I'm a solopreneur, and I have this great ... Employee retention is one of my big hot buttons, and so I want to put on a mastermind group for employee retention. I have seen, I don't want to call it a scheme in a bad way, but I want to call it a scheme as in there's multiple levels that you need to offer something free, and you need to offer something at a stepped up rate. Then, you need to offer something at more of a very high price rate. Then, you step your clients up through the different packages. Is that how you charge? Then, the other thing would be what is a typical ticket, I guess? What could I expect to charge to bring people in to my mastermind group?
Beth Cody: 29:20 That's a fantastic question. What you described is what Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels goal of sales ladder, so that's where you start somebody with a lead magnet at the very bottom, and that's with the gift for free. Then, you slowly get them to get comfortable with opening up their credit card, but offering them one product after another. Sometimes intermediately on a page, or if there's time. Then, they offer to their email. For what I do with the higher level professionals, I only do the high level products. For those lower products, it really depends on your industry if you're going to need them because again if you're at a high level business to business, you can offer a lead magnet. Everybody should offer a lead magnet, I believe, a cheat sheet, a PDF, a mini eBook, but you may not need to be offering $7, $97, 297 courses or mini courses, or just these little things to try, and get people to buy more.
Beth Cody: 30:28 If you're looking for higher ticket, you should really just focus on that. Russ Ruffino, he is the head of Clients on Demand. His model is based on just focusing on this higher level instead of trying to create what you described this whole sales funnel. That's the model that I prefer only because I like working with higher level clients. You can absolutely build a huge profitable business doing smaller level products leading people up to higher level. Again, ClickFunnels is very successful. I believe that they're grossing $10 million a year at least.
Roy Barker: 31:06 Wow.
Beth Cody: 31:09 Everybody has a different style. It doesn't mean one is better than the other. I just prefer, and the people that I worked with are usually looking to focus on those higher levels because the thing is you may think, "Oh well, cool. It would only take a few minutes for me to [inaudible 00:31:26]." Again, something that I've experienced with clients and products alike is that for some reason, the less you charge, the more work and kind of sometimes the more negative feedback you'd get on something and the more demanding people can get, which is again why I'd like the higher price because at that point, you're going to get certain client levels, people who are ready and willing to work because they are putting their money on the line for this.
Roy Barker: 31:56 Right. I think it gets back to results if you create a free cheat sheet, you might piqued somebody's interest, but for the most part, you're probably going to disappoint people because you're not going to have the time to create a well thought out program or document for free or for 795. I think you're right. I think you can be shooting yourself in the foot.
Beth Cody: 32:24 Yeah, absolutely. As far as the other part of your question, which was about price, really when you're working with people, even if you have pre-recorded lessons, some people will get ... They get intimidated by the thought of charging high. They get impostor syndrome is a big one. They think, "Oh, but I'm not ..." It doesn't seem fair to charge people a couple of thousand dollars for this, because they're not working with one on one. Well, that's the point. Excuse me. The point is you need to be okay with charging more. Really, my clients can be expecting to charge between $25,000 for a person to enroll at the end. Now, with our first group that we work with, our test group, they get a discount because they know that we're building and we're getting this out at the same time they are. It's not refined. It's not pretty, but the final product should be able to net you quite a bit. It should be five to $25,000.
Beth Cody: 33:33 Just remember you're still investing a couple of hours every week into a group coach setting. You're interacting with them on Facebook. You're making sure your materials are up to date. It's not going to take you clearly as long as if you were taking all these people on one on one, but you're still investing your time and you have to value your time, so that you can give people the best of you. Something that I actually learned recently from one of my marketing friends is you need to charge, so that you can eat. A lot of people seem to forget that. That's one of the reasons I'm not a huge fan of the lower price sales funnels, it's because that's a question of quantity for making your money. You really need a lot of people, $97 to make enough money for you to drive.
Beth Cody: 34:24 Now, can you do your marketing well? Absolutely. The sky is the limit, but this is why I prefer higher priced product is because they're still not getting the stress of, "Okay. How many clients do I take on every month to meet my bills, pay my team?" It's okay, "We signed on three $25,000 clients. Fantastic. Bonus is all around." That's really what we're looking for is to create a less stressful environment not only in what we're using our time for, but also in the finances. Yeah, absolutely. You should be able to charge thousands of dollars per client between five and $25,000. Once you get over $25,000, you're really looking at something more like an inner circle.
Beth Cody: 35:13 Inner circles are also becoming a big buzzword in marketing nowadays. Those tend to be extended periods of time of mastermind coaching. [inaudible 00:35:22] get your own individual business coach within the particular program, but it's a little bit more involved, absolutely doable for anybody, but I recommend people start with a mastermind or a high ticket course before they decide to jump into the inner circle, but you should get people subscribing to that for 25 to $100,000, so you need to make sure that you're okay with teaching people for a couple of months before you decide you're okay with teaching people on extended basis for what could be years on end.
Roy Barker: 35:58 Okay. Yeah. That was my next question is I know again everything is different, but for this, let's just say you have a $5,000 ticket course, what would be the expected run range for that? Is that going to be over a couple of months? Is it going to be expected to be over a year or what is that average that something like that would go on for?
Beth Cody: 36:31 Well, I recommend not having ... Because this is how I was taught, and I actually agree because I've done courses that were longer and it just took longer for people to understand and get the gist of what they're being taught. I really, really generally feel like the module course is the best way to go, but between four and eight modules. Within those modules, you really want to keep it between four and eight less as well. This is really, really important really keeping that timeframe at a reasonable level, so people understand and also remember if you're doing something between $25,000 level, the one thing the marketing always need to remember based on a sales ladder is that you can always go up another step and teach people more.
Beth Cody: 37:24 You really need to figure out what is reasonable for you to teach, and reveal about how you do things at a certain price point because certainly going back to lower price examples, you don't want to be giving away your entire business to someone buying a $97 mini course, but you also don't want to not give them enough if they're buying a five to $25,000 course. You just want to make sure that you really help them out.
Roy Barker: 37:52 When you say a module, would that equate to a week basically?
Beth Cody: 37:58 I would say it would be about a week. Now, of course it always depends on the students themselves. Really, we're looking at about eight weeks to have them finish the mastermind. Now, what I recommend is that you keep them in some of the Facebook community. They get to keep the materials forever, and maybe it takes them longer to get through. Once you get to the point of the masterminds where you've done the final launch, people are pacing themselves. You don't need to walk them through it. When you're doing your coaching calls, you are just answering other questions about the material that they've already watched. All the pacing should be done for you simply by virtue of video lessons. Then, you're just doing ... If you feel like you really need to go over a concept again on a weekend call, that's fantastic. If you just want to do a big Q&A like for three or four hours on the weekend, that's great too.
Beth Cody: 38:52 Basically, it's just meant to be once the course is done, the students are pacing themselves doing what they need to do. They're coming to you for refinements or for real life examples of how to use these strategies you're showing them. Normally, the students just go through a course the way that it's setup. It should be about a week of module, I would say. Yeah. It's reasonable, but also it depends on what the content is because it could take two weeks or a month [inaudible 00:39:22] a lot of videos.
Roy Barker: 39:23 Yeah. I think you answered that question too, that the weekly call is not necessarily to go over a module or a material for that week. Maybe you want to reiterate a concept, but really your weekly meetings are going to be more just a field questions and maybe put some additional information out there. It's not going to be like a traditional college class where they read and do stuff during the week and then you have a class time on Saturday. It's like that, but not where they're going to actually be covering that same material on that call.
Beth Cody: 40:03 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I really feel just having a review call is the better way to go. You can do some fun things like on that call and be like, "Hey, I got a guest speaker. We didn't have them in the course, but they finally have the time to come chat with us." That's an awesome thing to do, and so [inaudible 00:40:22] time to answer question. There's a lot of little things you can to add bonus value to your course without having to stress yourself out, without having to come up with huge amount of material and what's going to happen is your students are going to tell you, and you're like, "You know what? I guess I don't understand why I need a special financial attorney as opposed to a regular attorney. Why can't I go to a regular attorney?" Great. That's something you should talk about.
Beth Cody: 40:49 The big thing of the conversation is between you and your students because your students are going to tell you exactly what they want, and exactly where you got more value. As time goes on, you can raise prices based on the value. What you charge today doesn't have to be what you charge tomorrow.
Roy Barker: 41:03 Right. Right.
Beth Cody: 41:03 It's absolutely more value. It means more money. That's just how our democracy works.
Roy Barker: 41:11 Let's talk about ... I'll just have a couple of more questions. I know we're running long, but this has been very interesting and very informative for me as well. What about the administrative part of this? Because I know if we have a [inaudible 00:41:29] ticket item, we're not going to have to have 100 or 1,000 people sign up to be involved, but when you start doing learning classes or programs like this, there seems to always be some administrative headache like people sign enough, then they want their money back or they get halfway through it, and they got to drop out for family emergency. There's just all kinds of stuff like that, and I don't want to cover each and every incident that could happen. What kind of time do you feel that you have to devote and can that become a nightmare or is there a way to smooth that administration out where you just don't have a lot of headaches?
Beth Cody: 42:17 Yeah. I really don't think you should be spending a ton of time once later. Once we finished with the product that we create, sign up should just happen. Once you send people to the link whether you decide to promote it with a webinar or some other way of Facebook live, people should just be able to go sign up and they get access, the system set up automatically. As far as if something were to happen, somebody had a death from a family or family emergency of some sort and they just really can't finish the course and they need a refund, well one thing you need to do is make sure that you have a clear refund policy and I would highly recommend if you don't already have a team built up, that you get some virtual assistance or VAs. VAs, they don't need to have a lot of technical experience. All they need to be able to do is answer emails and if they feel that it's something that they can't handle or they need your input on something, they can very quickly email you and it's not a huge expense either.
Beth Cody: 43:23 There are amazing virtual assistant agencies. They can get you a little team of them, or you could go somewhere as easy as Upwork, which is a big freelancing website and you can hire either an expensive or very experienced, if you're looking for something more like a full time secretary, there's plenty of places you can go. The administrative part, I would take up your shoulders as soon as possible because you need to be focusing on your students and the content.
Beth Cody: 43:52 Of course, if there's something that really needs to be coming to your attention, you make sure that you'd be good confident people, and they'll let you know as soon as there's something they can't handle themselves, but you really want to make sure you have your systems set up where you have people taking over the things that again, this is the 80-20 rule. You need to spend your 80% of your time on the 20% that makes you money, and going in and trying to fix technical glitches or emailing your host company for issues or going back and forth with the student who just really, really wants a refund, that's when something that's really making me money at that point in time.
Beth Cody: 44:28 You need to hand it off to somebody else. Make sure that you have a team built up, make sure that you trust them, they completely understand what they're doing, and again they don't need technical skills. You can absolutely find some if you really want to get some VAs who can very quickly and easily go into whatever program you use for things like your customers relation manager, your CRM or your email manager or where you're holding your course, your Facebook. [inaudible 00:44:58] socialize skills. You can find them anywhere as well. Again, it doesn't need to break the bank and that policy really should be incorporated into the price of your course.
Beth Cody: 45:09 Really, you need to make sure that you're pricing your course in a way that's covering your expenses, allowing for growth and profits. These expenses should very easily be taken care of. You shouldn't be having to pull through that of your own mouth to take care of it, and you can keep yourself at stress as well.
Roy Barker: 45:27 Right. I'll put in a plug for Upwork and of VA because I guess about six months ago, I hired one through there and she has just been a blessing, not only she's smart but it's scalable. If I only need her for a few hours this week, I don't have to pay a full time secretary rate or if I have to use her more hours, then I'm build accordingly and you can really find some talented people and there's a lot of other services that isn't commercial for Upwork, but I think you're right. You can find a lot of talented people out there if I help you get things off the ground.
Roy Barker: 46:09 I think my concern about this is here again, looking through my personal eyes is that if I gave you $50 for something and it didn't work out, or maybe you're doing what you're doing, and I'm just not feeling the value, it's a lot easier to walk away and be done for $5,000 or above what I just ... It made me cringe a little bit just thinking, "Oh my gosh. Are you going to be under a bigger microscope or a lot more scrutiny just because of the amount of money that's involved?" I guess it could probably weren't just the opposite if you're charging a high enough ticket, you're probably attracting educated, dedicated professionals that really, really want to learn what you're teaching versus somebody like me that maybe I saw an underwater basket weave and then there was 25 bucks, so I threw it out there and then it's like, "Well, that's really not what I wanted to do." Maybe it might actually work in reverse of what I'm thinking.
Beth Cody: 47:24 Yeah. I've heard a lot of people say that. They're like, "Oh, that seems like there's so much stress in that." Honestly, the stress to me gets put on the students because as long as what you're teaching, you've done it, you love it, you clearly know about it, and now I've seen people trying to teach stuff, but they had no idea what they're doing. They're the epitome of, "If you can't do, teach." Those are not the people you want to be following. You want to follow the people who are like, "If you can do it, then you do it a lot and then you teach it." It's not as catchy, but you know it works. Really for me, it's being the burden of pressure really comes down to the student because the instructor, once we're done, we've got students who have succeeded. We don't stop until they're happy and they're satisfied, and the thing is of course, people don't realize is you're going to ... Any course. It doesn't matter how talented and amazing you are.
Beth Cody: 48:24 Courses are ... You're going to lose 70% of your students just not wanting to do anything because everything in life takes effort and we need to tap in a little bit of time and place where doing things with effort seems to be a novelty now instead of the norm. You're going to lose 70% of your students. Some other is going to just all demand refund. They're just not going to bother. They're not going to bother doing the work and they're not going to bother doing anything, but that's okay because you didn't force them to pay for the course and just because they can't see the value of doing anything, that's not on you. That's not the fault of your course. That is the student. Student's just not going to bother. Well, that's on them. Again, if they want a refund, that's where I recommend having a very clear refund policy because you will get some people who will ... They will be like, "Oh, yeah," and tell you they're going to do this, and the next day, they're like, "No. I'm not going to do this."
Beth Cody: 49:19 "I just want my money back because all of the sudden, all four of my Mercedes Benz just broke at the same time. It's weird. I need that money for that." You're like, "Cool. Did you look at our refund policy because it clearly states what you have to do if you want a refund." That's definitely one of the big things, but yeah. Once you got a higher price point, you are going to give people ... Because they are willing to put this money down, they're also saying, "I'm willing to work." If they don't, that's on them. They're the only ones who wasted their money. You absolutely did. Again, this impostor syndrome is such a prevalent thing in any marketing space.
Beth Cody: 49:58 As long as you know that you are fantastic at what you do, that's all that matters and you know that you are teaching it and people are loving it, great. If some people don't, that's okay. That's why we have these systems set up for those people who aren't happy, and we make sure that the people who are willing to work and succeed, that they do.
Roy Barker: 50:20 Right.
Beth Cody: 50:21 Yeah. The pressure for me, it's more on the students. Students need to make sure they're doing their work, and the instructors do seem to make sure ... The only pressure I would see is just making sure your information is up to date. For example, I heard Dodd-Frank, which is a real estate regulation just got struck down. I know there's some people out there who might have been talking about that in their stuff, and now they're going to have to go back and revise itself. Just making sure the information is up to date, and that your strategies are still working in the marketplace. As long as all of that is working in together ... No. It's on the students to make sure that they succeed. It's not the instructor's ... We're teachers. We're not babysitters.
Roy Barker: 51:00 Right. Right. Yeah. That's fair enough. You did mention webinar earlier, and I think I just want to cover this not only for my point of view, but for the audience as well. There are a lot of different ways to reach out to people, the traditional email and we have webinars. We have just traditional static groups either on Facebook and LinkedIn where I think that this mastermind groups adds value. I don't think it ... I'm going to let you tell me if I'm wrong in this thing. I don't think it replaces any of these other components. I think these other components actually supported through like regular marketing channels. You're going to want to do email blast to advertise it. You'll do email blast to keep people informed on what's going on, but then maybe you want to do a webinar to generate some interest. Then, the value over the mastermind versus just a static Facebook group is going to be where not only do we have this course material that we are going to introduce, but we are also going to be more interactive with our audience in this group. Is that kind of on target?
Beth Cody: 52:29 Yeah, absolutely. The mastermind course ... Yeah. Like you said, it doesn't replace things at our marketing channels. In fact, these marketing channels are critical to getting enrollment into your course. Like you said, the Facebook groups. I [inaudible 00:52:44] everybody in the business have a Facebook group or at least a LinkedIn group. If you have good engagement in your Facebook or LinkedIn group, it's just as easy as posing in saying, "Hey, we're opening up this new course and the people who love you and love everything you have to say, they're going to sign up immediately." That's free advertising. Then, emails are very important especially if you have new people. Let's say you've already got some marketing setup and you've got people taking [inaudible 00:53:14] cheat sheet, those emails like you said, are incredibly important to make sure that people understand who you are and what you do that you get them to like you.
Beth Cody: 53:23 People don't really underestimate how important it is for your audience to like you, not just the things you're teaching but you as a person because you represent this company with your face. That's really important to the kind of focus on is make sure that you're really building that rapport between you and the audience.
Roy Barker: 53:46 Right.
Beth Cody: 53:47 Yeah. The email blast are ... Again, that's a very low cost way of getting enrollment as well when you have the established list and you've got good open rates, and you're getting new people in on a good regular basis. An email list is gold as far as the webinar. For some reason psychologically, people are happy to sit for an hour and a half if it's called a webinar. If you were to say, "Hey, come check out this hour and a half of me talking to you or talking at you," people wouldn't be interested, but if you call it a webinar, magically they're like, "Oh, I'm going to get some free info that's going to make me super rich." People really love webinars, and they're willing to sit there. You really need to spend more time talking to people when you are wanting to do a higher price point. You could probably sell a $97 course with like one email and just be like, "Hey, here's a $97 course who does this and maybe here's a couple of bonuses that get involved with it." When you're doing something higher level, you really want to make sure ... Some people may be coming into your high level course, you know, your cold traffic. A hot traffic is always best, people who already know and love you but there's no reason you can't make money off cold traffic as well. You need to spend that time off to making sure that people start to like you, but the hour and a half, that's long enough for people to decide if they like you or not.
Roy Barker: 55:16 Right.
Beth Cody: 55:16 Honestly, seven minutes is probably long enough to decide if people like you or not.
Roy Barker: 55:20 Right.
Beth Cody: 55:21 Yeah. The webinar is definitely a huge part of it. Just the webinar. What we do for enrollment depending on your business that you like to do, one way that we can ... Kind of going back to your earlier question. One way they can keep the [inaudible 00:55:36] away, people who will sign up, but then maybe not do anything is an application process. The people have to fill up an application, and they have to get on the phone with you. Then, you have to be okay with taking them on as a client as a student.
Roy Barker: 55:48 Yeah. That's a great idea.
Beth Cody: 55:50 Yeah. That's a huge one. It's done by a lot of companies, so you have to make sure ... Somebody may have the money to do that and that's great, but it's different between somebody who's ready and willing to work and has the money and somebody who has the money who was just looking for a get rich quick scheme, or if it's their last $5,000 to their name and their [inaudible 00:56:15], you don't want to take their money if they need that money, and they may be trying to make a terrible choice right now, but that doesn't mean you need to help them.
Roy Barker: 56:21 Right. Right.
Beth Cody: 56:25 Yeah. Exactly.
Roy Barker: 56:26 Okay. Well Beth, I certainly do appreciate your time. I know we talked a lot longer than we had originally wanted to, but it's such great information, so I appreciate you giving of your time generously. Is there anything else that you'd like to share before we go? Then, also please be sure and let everybody know how that they can get in touch with you to talk to you about setting up a mastermind group for themselves?
Beth Cody: 56:54 Yeah, absolutely. I can always be reached. I will just go ahead and give you guys my direct phone number. It is 386-965-2094, and you give me a call there. If I don't answer, leave me a message and I will give you a call back. I prefer to talk on the phone one on one with people as opposed to going from email because then I can really hear what you're all about and your passion for what you're wanting to teach. That's the way that I prefer to be contacted.
Roy Barker: 57:28 Wow. That's ...
Beth Cody: 57:28 Then after that, we'll see where to go from there.
Roy Barker: 57:29 That's pretty amazing. Old school talking on the phone. People have a [crosstalk 00:57:33].
Beth Cody: 57:33 I know, right? That was interesting.
Roy Barker: 57:37 I thought that was [crosstalk 00:57:37].
Beth Cody: 57:38 If you can't talk for some reason, you can absolutely text me, but I definitely prefer the phone call.
Roy Barker: 57:44 No. I'm just teasing you because I'm that way. I would rather pick up the phone and call and not have any uncertainties, but nowadays it's hard to find people that don't want to do everything over emails. I think it's good because you get a better feel for them and a better feel for their business and exactly what they're looking for, so that's great. I will be sure to input all of that in the show notes. Beth, again, thank you so much. Listeners, thanks for listening again to The Business of Business Podcast. Don't forget to download this and rate the program. Remember, you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Plat. Also, at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast. You can also check out our sister podcast, which is the Senior Living Sales and Marketing at www.seniorlivingsalesandmarketing.com. It is focused on the sales and marketing process for senior living operators. Then, you can also check me out, Roy Barker at roybarker.com for my advisory and consulting services. It's been great. Again, until next time. Thank you very much and have a great weekend.