You're listening to cubicle the CEO episode 199. I'm joined on the show today by a dynamic duo who I'm lucky to also call friends Annette Grant and Sarah Karakaian. These talented hosts are the voices behind the popular podcast and the short term rental space. Thanks for visiting, as well as the masterminds behind the hosting business mastery method. In their case study Annette and Sarah revealed to specific incentives they implemented to build urgency into their free workshop funnel, which led to a staggering 50% improvement in their conversion rate, and 90% of their students opting to pay in full for their $2,500 signature program. Beyond the element of added urgency, and then Sarah also candidly share the other strategies they've tested to optimize their free workshop. Both the flops and the phenomenal successes, you'll want to still tune in to hear what style of testimonials most resonated with viewers on both the live and evergreen version of their workshop, and the winning bonuses that proved to be powerful motivators for people to buy before the workshop even ended.
Welcome to cubicle to CEO the podcast. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. I quit my job without a backup plan and bootstrapped my first $300 freelance project into $2 million in revenue by age 28. On the show, you'll hear weekly case study interviews with leading entrepreneurs and CEOs who share one specific strategy that successfully grew their business revenue. Skip the expensive and time consuming learning curve of testing everything yourself by borrowing what actually works from the best and brightest mentors. You'll also get a front row seat to my founders journey through transparent income reports and behind the business solo episodes, subscribe now so we can grow together every Monday.
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Hello, hello friends I am thrilled to because I have two of my very favorite people with me today, Sarah and Annette from Thanks for visiting. And they are just incredible business women, they are the queens of short term rentals. So if you exist at all or aspire to exist in the STR space, especially if you're thinking about Airbnb, or VRBO, or anything like that, please make sure you check these women out. But Sarah and Annette, thank you for joining us on the show today.
It's our honor. Thank you for having us
We're gonna one up you and say we are doubly thrilled since there's two of us to be on the show today.
Oh my gosh, well, it's been really fun getting to know you too. Over the years. Obviously, our friendship started because you all joined our mutual friend Haley's program years ago. And from that created this incredible program hosting business mastery. And then today actually, the case study we're going to be uncovering is how Sarah and Annette implemented a tool called deadline funnel to actually increase the conversions off of that free workshop. That years ago, I got to see the behind the scenes of the building. So anyways, it feels like a very full circle moment. Before we get into the case study. I would love to hear each of your individual cubicle to CEO stories. That's how we always kick off the podcast. So I guess in two minutes or less, what was that ultimate catalyst that launched you into the world of entrepreneurship? Sarah, I'll start with you.
I admittedly have never been in a cubicle. I was in New York City, Broadway performer, but
Stage to CEO
Stage to CEO. There we go I like that! I did have stints in hotels and restaurants. And so it was when I was working at a hotel as a bar manager, I had a dry spell with my acting career. And I really just started to think about starting my own business and what that would mean. And I never looked back.
And for me, I can. I specifically remember I'm used to listen to a CD, yes, a compact disc in my car on my way to work, my commute. And it was a success CD. And it was from Jim Rohn. And he had a quote that profits are better than wages. And I understood it, but I didn't get it. I was like, How do I get from wages, to profits. And so I just kept listening to those and kept learning. And I might have gotten quit or fired from my last job from a company that I helped build, I'd helped build two companies alongside the CEO. And it was this next turn, I was like, Wait a second, it's my turn, it's my turn to sit in that CEO seat alongside with my founder, my co founder, but profits are better than wages. I just, I kept reciting that. And I needed to figure out how I could get there.
Ooo I've never heard that Jim Rohn quote before, but I know he's really famous for that one, like you are, essentially the accumulation of the five people that you spend the most time with, right? So really wise guy clearly. And it's funny, actually, Sarah, because you're definitely not the first guest on here who has trespassed that journey from stage to CEO for some reason. I think entrepreneurship attracts a lot of people from the arts, like from that industry, because I mean, in one form or another a lot of entrepreneurship is telling stories and being visible and camera facing. And so I'm sure a lot of those skills have translated and then to your point. And I think it's so smart if you want to work in a startup to actually be on the early team, like be one of the first employees at a startup because you really get that up close experience without having to take all the risk first. So that's really smart. I'm glad you two found each other though. I remember you told me the story. Of course, you know, our show focuses on the stuff you can't google but just so our listeners have a little bit of context. Can you share the 30 second version of your meet cute at city council?
Yes, I had just moved here from New York City at a spreadsheet of the entire United States. We had our first short term rental in the most expensive real estate, you know, capital of the US and we He wanted to cash in our profits there and find a place where we could exponentially grow our real estate portfolio. My husband is a big data person. So we put a bunch of data on a spreadsheet and we ultimately long story short ended up in Columbus, Ohio. Weeks later, city council was like, we are going to put some limits on how you can operate short term rentals. And I was like, Oh, heck no, I did not leave New York City. I still love it, you know, there to not be able to do what I wanted to do in my new hometown. And so I showed up the city council meeting with like, this long script, like I am like a front page. I was valedictorian over here, like I was ready to like, throw down. Yes. And that's when Annette came and sat next to me.
I had strategically sat next to Sarah, someone had mentioned her and I had been Instagram stalking her. So I accidentally sat down next to her and got her phone number, and I was producing a podcast at the time and asked her to be a guest on the show. But that show never hit the airwaves. Because magic happened when I interviewed her as one it was always batching, the beginning of episodes. And all those episodes never came to fruition because I asked Sarah if she wanted to do this with me. And so that's where this story starts at city council. It's the first one I went to. And the last but not the last, the last, not the last one I will go to so.
Well, you know, I mean, everybody who listens to my show knows I'm huge Swifty you literally played the mastermind, like you know that song mastermind. We're like, it's so intentional. You already knew where to play it yourself to meet Sarah. That's hilarious. I love that. Okay, give us a little context, as we're starting into this case study, like I mentioned, you have a program hosting business mastery, and you sell it with a free workshop training. And after you implement a deadline funnel, the conversions from that workshop increased by 50%. We're gonna get into the details of what that implementation actually looked like. But before we do help me understand prior to implementing that strategy, what was the average sales cycle from someone watching your workshop, your free workshop to actually becoming a student in your program?
Well, this is so great, we don't even know those numbers. Because we weren't even focused on a sense of urgency, we didn't even know that people would really buy immediately or within that three day or, you know, 70 to 96 hour, you know, container, because we had kind of been letting them run wild, I guess. And so, since we didn't have any urgency, they didn't have any issue. We weren't even collecting that data. So that kind of shows how novice we were thinking they would buy at any time. And they were, but not what happened. Once we, you know, created that sense of urgency, then we got excited about our numbers, not that we weren't excited before. But it really like injected this like excitement of like, oh, my gosh, went out, like X amount of people are buying before the workshops over and now they're like, you know, it's really skyrocketing. So it just, we weren't tracking them. And I actually want to offer that to the audience. Because sometimes, you know, you just get one step at a time. And so we were just excited to have the workshop out there and people buying and but that's when we started to look at the numbers. We couldn't competently know how much money that because we didn't know what that buyer cycle was Ellen. So wait a second, we need some more consistency here. And we knew that number was a problem. We weren't consistently making a certain amount of so we were like, how can we figure out how to get consistent. And that sense of urgency and using some tools to help buyers make a decision. That's where the deadline funnel helped us tremendously. And getting consistent numbers.
That makes a lot of sense. And I applaud you, by the way for being transparent, saying, you know, at the beginning, we didn't know because we didn't know we should be tracking those numbers. Right. And I actually appreciate that that was your journey, because I think so often people hesitate to hit publish on something because they feel they might be missing some micro step and they're not quite ready. And I say that in air quotes. Because when is anyone ready for anything, but you feel like, Oh, if I don't have every puzzle piece in place, I can't hit publish on this. So I'm so glad that you guys put your evergreen workshop out there, started getting eyeballs on it started getting sales and then realized, oh, wait a second, I think we're still missing a piece to the puzzle. So I know you don't have the data on the maybe the average cycle it took for someone from when they watched to when they purchase but do you remember the average conversion rate from total leads to total sales back then like prior to implementing the strategy or even a rough estimate?
It was definitely less than 1%?
Yeah. And we had a lot lower leads flows coming through to you now. So yeah, it was, it was under 1%. Because again, there wasn't any urgency. And I can say we would even say like, in our workshop, you can join us at any time, we'll always be here. We, we thought that was being kind Ellen, like telling them, we still tell them, we'll always be here. But that's after they kind of go through our whole sequence. But I want to offer this to all the listeners, you're serving your client, your customer, they need some encouragement, we are humans, we will waffle we need guidance and making that decision. So you know, we have resistance to putting timelines in and that sense of urgency and that extra email before maybe, because our price increases, I think we should say that to the listeners, our price increases when our deadline funnel comes to the end. So they can join at a discounted rate immediately for about 72 to 96 hours after they watch our workshop. So they can join us at any time. So we feel really good about that, like you are always welcome into our community. However, we reward them with a lower price and taking action. So we reward them for taking action. And so I just want the listeners to know that like, it's not sleazy or salesy, people need encouraged to to make a decision, we need that push over the ledge, or we'll just waffle around forever.
And there is a buyer out there I am one of them who I want to buy from someone who's confident, I want to buy from someone who loves the product that they have created. And they're like, if you are not in here, you are missing out, and you mean it to the bottom of your soul. So and I work really hard to make sure our product is truly next level. There's nothing like it, we are better than everyone else out there because we work night and day to make it that way. And so for me, I had to make sure that we were confident and like yes, join us, it's going to be worth it for you.
Data though, because I know we want to get into the numbers. But I will tell you this number with confidence because this is where we leave. And listeners, we have multiple revenue streams. But I can tell you, we were about 10k months. And when we you know, switch that strategy to sense of urgency, we were going to 50k months. Wow, that wasn't really changing too much. You know, it was really just sense of urgency. So let me repeat that. We were around 10k months. And trust me, we were over the moon excited about that. And we were just trying to increase that. And then we put that sense of urgency in and we were like what? So we saw that bump? Pretty much I don't want to say overnight. But overnight, the firt when we launched the deadline funnel, and we were like, what? So we can also let you know that in that case study. Once we did that deadline funnel, we also did some fast action bonuses to really make it juicy to you know, hey, well, what's so different about joining now and joining later. And it was like, hey, when this deadline funnel like when this clock hit zero, not only does this price go away, there are these bonuses that were really juicy. And so it's like, Well, why would we ever join after that? You know, like, we don't want the price or the juiciness to go away. So we had two levers we were pulling there one was the price and one was the bonuses. So it just wasn't this like ticking time bomb, boom, the price is gone. It was like a ticking time bomb, like, hey, these bonuses are going away, do not miss out on these. So I think the pricing and the bonuses combined. Were the magic alongside deadline funnel.
I love that. And I have a question. I want to ask you there. But before I do, just to back it up a little bit, and provide even more details around the context of the program you're selling. It's a six month course to my understanding, right? Hosting business mastery. And the price, like you said, at the end of the deadline funnel, so 72 to 96 hour window goes up by $1,500. What is the actual price of the program itself?
It's $2497 is our pay in full price.
Awesome.
I will let you know two people will have opinions about this. About 90% of our buyers take us up on the pay in full because our payment plan goes up a little bit and our avatar our buyer, they're their investors. So you know this is this is actually a smaller investment compared to their house and all the furnishings that they're purchasing.
Yeah. And that makes sense in the context of like you said who your ideal client is in comparison, obviously anything in real estate is probably at minimum, multiple four figures. So that is more in their buying behavior. I would love to know before I go back to that previous question that I hinted at. I would love to know first though, why $1,500 More, where did you arrive at that price increase? Was it kind of just like out of the blue in it and it worked. So you stuck with it? Or was there a strategy behind that?
We had a coach that helped us with that. And there were two things there. One is we still wanted to make it to price that, like people would actually join, we've had a few people through the funnel that have joined. So we didn't want to make it so outrageous that they would never join, we really did want to have something that was out there. So that was part of the strategy. And then the second part was just a percentage increase. And I will let you know our prices increase. So before it was almost a 50%, and then went higher, but those aren't that was the strategy there as a percentage increase and then still obtainable. And not like going up to $20,000 or something like that, it really looked like a squeeze and not like, you know, genuine.
We do price anchor during the workshop and on the sales page. But when it comes to whether you buy before the cart closes, or after that we remain attainable.
Okay, that makes complete sense. Going back to this magic duo of bonuses, a fast action bonus paired with the price increase once the countdown expires. Just so I understand correctly, was the fast action bonus, or bonuses, plural only available to people if they purchased while they were watching the workshop, or was it the full 70 to 96 hour window that they had the opportunity for both the bonuses and the price discount?
Well, over here at Thanks for visiting, we have two actual but we have a bonus for if they buy during the workshop, actually, while they're watching it. Yeah. And then we have bonuses that they would receive during the cart open. Essentially, if they pay in full if they pay in full. So it's we have a pay in full bonus. And then we also have a pay in full before the workshop ends bonus. So we make it like super juicy are there. So there's there's bonuses that everyone can participate in during the whole deadline. And then some that are just workshop only bonuses. So...
If you too had to do a hot take or a pick on whether you feel the expiring price discount, or the expiring bonuses were more influential, and getting people to take action. Which side are you going to sit on?
Ellen...
Well what's crazy is when we were analyzing this for the show, it was a deadline funnel, but some people... Oh, now you want me to really dig into numbers because some people are actually buying before they even know that the price would increase because they're buying on the workshop when we just announced that there's workshop bonuses that will expire? Yeah, so I think there was a case for both of them.
I will and I don't have the data in front of me, but I am the I was until we recently hired someone to help us. But I was tracking the data. And I would say it's the price change that.
Okay. Interesting. Interesting. I wanted to ask because you know, it's this really interesting marketing slash philosophical debate, like, Are humans more driven by added value? Or decreased spending, right? Because it's kind of like this interesting proposition.
Well, Sarah and I were just having this very in depth conversations about chat GPT recently, and just human behavior. And I think the beautiful part of what you just said, Ellen, humans are motivated by both of those things. So I also think that's why we saw an increase in sales is because we were talking to different humans and humans that make decisions on different things, you know, so I think that our buyers, the ones that are buying before it is because the value and the other one is just the price increase. So I think, you know, we have people sitting in both of those seats. And so I think for listeners, like if you're wanting to know if it's one or the other, I think it's both you need to think that your buyer isn't just going to fit in this one silo and what's going to be valuable to them as if you know a different price point or more value. So it's interesting.
To that same point I would also offer up that obviously Ellen. This hasn't been set it and forget it. So since beginning of last year, so being a 2022 We have made a lot of tweaks to our funnel and to our offering and to our price and to our car open and cart close from when the market was that people couldn't buy it fast enough to now there's a little bit more scarcity in the marketplace right and the buyer confidence has dwindled, so we have to change the way we show up to offer them our product so there's also that too it's still the same format but we've had to tweak it ever so slightly we will always have to do that too.
Yeah, and I want to share with everybody like there have been some struggles recently on like this funnel that was flowing before is kind of got some we need to put it in the dishwasher for open up the holes like what is going on here. But you know, we didn't put this to you when we were You know, talking about the podcast, but we started doing book calls, things that we didn't realize just straight watch the workshop. Now we're like know, times are a little they're changing, right? Now they want to talk to somebody, they want to make sure like, are those two women that are on the screen? Are they real? And so we've implemented some stuff that was never a part of our plan. But we're willing to do the work. And when we see the stats change, what do we need to do to increase our conversion rate. And so that's been a new thing that we've had to like put into the mix. And so we do want to, to let the listeners know that, you know, a funnel isn't set it and forget it, and constantly needed to be looking at your conversion rate, and what's happening in, you know, fluctuating pricing, and just testing the market.
I really, really respect you two, for sharing that behind the scenes tidbit, because to your point, I think, especially in the online course, space, it's very easy for educators, especially in this space to present this image that courses are passive, that evergreen funnels and evergreen courses especially are passive. When we all know in reality, it's not like you just shared there are changing circumstances that require you to implement test new things. And so I really appreciate that, you know, many years into this funnel, that you still are paying close attention to what you can do to not only improve your conversion, but actually improve the experience on the buying side, which I really honor and respect. I know that the deadline funnel increase the conversions total by 50%. If we're looking at a workshop conversion rate, you said prior it was below 1%. Do you know where it stands today?
Yes, well, yes. So we have been doing some testing. It was incredible. In January, right now we're in June, or like what month away in January, were incredible. And it's that typical, let's go New Year New you right, like let's do things have always been going do so January was off the charts. And we went live again in February, March, April. And that's when I really started to see that change in the buyer behavior. So we made some tweaks we kept going live so that we could just get some more data from that interaction with a live audience, essentially.
Can I pause real quick to ask a clarifying question. When you said you were going live? Are you saying you were teaching? What was your evergreen workshop live once a month during those months? So March, April? And was the Evergreen workshop version still running simultaneously with the lives are?
No, it was not. It was not. We tried that. And we failed. Not that people can't do it. But it's a lot of orchestrating especially if you are using something like deadline funnel, you definitely don't want you know, you don't really want to be running ads to a live event running ads to Evergreen, we just had to pump the brakes. We tried it. We epically failed because people were getting different deadline notices and different emails. And I also want to say we really failed trying to run an evergreen and live at the same time. But we have tried to do that because we're like, Hey, let the Evergreen run we'll do some live so we can test because we wanted to change some stuff in our workshop that we epically failed at that. But I think also going back to your original, like the conversion question. We have the highest 5% down to .5%.
And I can one of our biggest frustrations in this industry is we hear people throw around conversion rate. And we're on calls and people like oh man, a 20% and a 50. If we're like if we were at a 20% management team, Wally and deck a million like what is what are they talking about, like Lee like the top of the funnel? Like where's the conversion? So I can let you know, like our conversion rate that we're talking about on the show is actual workshop signups. Not people that watch then who converted, you know, not people that booked a call and then converted, you know, from the very top where they give us their email to join the workshop to buying it has been between 5% and all the way down to .5%. And yes, .5%. And that is a painful percentage. But that's why we made some changes. And that 5% was, Oh, we don't know what we did on that one. We're trying to get back there. But I want to be very honest that it has been that big of a gap.
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I'm living for this transparency. This is why I love you two. I knew you would bring the honesty to this. Let's circle back real quick though to the bonuses because I think even though this case study is primarily focused around urgency, I think urgency only works if you position especially in the value giving side it only works if the value incentivizes urgency, right. So what are the two bonuses, the two painful bonuses, the one that they get if they buy during the workshop, and then the one that they buy? If they do it within that, you know, 72 to 96 hour window before that deadline timer expires? What are those two bonuses? And how did you choose those to pair with your course?
the fast action bonus so by before we're no longer live right on the first time you're watching the workshop is a customized listing audit, which means once you have your listing, whether it's on Airbnb, or VRBO, or just a direct booking, we will send to our coach. It's powered by data by a program called a rank breeze. And we will essentially dissect it into a loon video where we give you actionable tips on how to make improvements just like any other SEO like Google, you can make improvements to your listing so that you show up on Airbnb is first page, which obviously the more eyes you get on your property sooner the more bookings you're going to get. So it's just like direct money in your pocket, by data driven insights to your listing to where it stands and where it could be. So that's what we offer.
And we did a lot of work a lot of work around, how can we make this super sexy? Like it has to be a no brainer. And I want to let everybody know, we're like, what can be super sexy? What are people going to want to buy? But what isn't going to take more of our time, because our first thing was like, oh, a one on one call with us 20 minutes, like people will want that they want to buy that and we're like, Wait, we cannot scale that. We cannot we cannot scale one on one time. So then we were like, Okay, let's do these listing audits with one of our coaches, and that they're like, that's gonna be a calendar nightmare, like, how are we gonna make sure, so then we reduced it down to All right, there isn't any one on one, it can feel one on one. But our coaches now dissect the listing, they do this audit on their own time, they create a loom video and the way that we made that super juicy for the buyer, is that look you're gonna get so and this is true, they're gonna get so many tips in that video, they're gonna want to have it recorded, so they can go and may implement all of the improvements. So I that is something that this bonus was like, because we had a few bonuses, and they were aren't converting and we like the day that we put this one where like, it felt very one on one. And I mean, it is one on one, but it was like how can we give that one on one experience, but replicate it right now. This is what we have, we have landed on for that bonus.
I love it because it's personalized feedback. Like you said, it's individual to that particular listing. But it's asynchronous and communication, which I really have been loving, even in our own business this year, just finding ways to implement asynchronous communication because to your point, I think most of us are tired of having our calendars be riddled with meetings where we're face to face on camera and the energy it takes to even actively listen to be mean even podcasting as you to know with a very successful show of your own. It's difficult to batch record many interviews in a row because just the process of sitting and like nodding your head and smiling can really take it out of you
Even smiling hard right now because we understand that that has been something that Sarah and I if we wanted to talk about conversion rates is like what is the amount of energy that we have to expend To, you know, to have not just acquire our client, but then service them, you know. And so you really need to think about that when you're creating these bonuses and just creating your workshop and your programs. And so with that bonus, it was not like, oh, a bright light went off. Like we had a lot of conversations around it, we tested a few things. And this was the best way to serve our clients serve their their revenue, and also serve our team and make sure that they are they were taken care of also.
I love that. And then Sarah, do you want to speak to the other bonus, the one that they can get if they you know, buy before the deadline funnel expires?
Actually, there's there's a few.
Wonderful
Yeah, and they're great because they already existed in our arsenal. So we offer we have a live event every year and last year, it was in Las Vegas, we didn't promise recordings because we it was our first event and we didn't know how those would turn out. And we are obsessed with quality over here. Thanks for visiting, but they turned out great. So if you buy before the cart closes, you will see our live event from Las Vegas in your course portal.
You get all the replays. So that was that was you know that event was hundreds of dollars and they won't have to travel with the with all the recordings there. So that's a huge offered. And we're kind of like our live event for this year is already launched. So they can see there's a huge value like a general admission ticket 797 And they get last year's for free. That's yeah, no brainer.
Actually, we learned this from Haley Burkhead of, you know, they want the pizza, but they need the broccoli. And so our serving them, you know, broccoli secretly is we have a safety session. So we walk through a vacation rental home, we talk about International Building Code, because we also take what we do very seriously, and you're inviting strangers into a strange home and there are less safety considerations. So they get these bite size videos, educating them on international building codes. And then finally, this is very sexy, people always ask us for this is a property analysis spreadsheet. Ellen, you and I were oogling over it.
We'll show you our bonus baby. Yeah.
Right, that spreadsheet, if you rent a property is going to show you the ROI that you are needing for your you know for you. We offer that as well, if you buy before the cart closes.
I love that. So all of these bonuses are really enhancing the core curriculum they're getting in their course, which I think is a great takeaway for our listeners. I think sometimes, I've noticed this on the consumer side, when I'm purchasing courses, sometimes bonuses can feel like they are almost a distraction from the reason why people showed up to buy this program in the first place. And you feel like you're adding a hodgepodge of random things in your inventory and trying to repurpose it in a way that doesn't feel cohesive. So I really love the way you walked us through how each of those bonuses really enhances the experience and allows people to get even better results faster than if they didn't have access to those bonuses. So thank you for sharing that. If we're looking at this discussion of urgency in general, I know that you touched on this a little bit earlier that you feel people really need that encouragement and guidance sometimes to come to a decision. There is the flip side of that conversation.
And in fact, we had a guest on here a few months ago who actually decided to remove all urgency from her funnel. So it's really interesting. That's what I love about this show is that there's no one right way to do business. And there can be a success in you know, no matter where you fall in that spectrum. But for the naysayers who might be like we feel like urgency isn't as ethical. What would you say to that beyond what you've already shared? What new perspective might you lend to someone with a mindset like that?
I mean, I think the word ethics is like really heavy. Because I can walk into a grocery store today and see a bottle of water for $0.99 cents for $2.99 for $3.99 to $4.99. You know, like, is it ethical to sell bottled water at all of these different price points? So I don't think of it at on that level. But, you know, again, we've had a lot of discussion. We didn't have it before, because we're like no, and it wasn't converting. And we've actually, when it comes to ethics, let's talk about this, we can tell you, we've raised our prices, we've done a very stairstep because it's kind of goes in line with your question about deadline funnel and and in creating that, you know, our current price point is almost like four times our beta launch. And so ethically, should I go back and charge our beta clients more? Because they got a deal? Or should I charge our current clients last?
It's like we've gotten, you know, better over time, but I just think when it comes to the pricing and like urgency, we are very rooted and then what we're doing is not slimy or sleazy and do you want to know what happens all the time? Let me tell you, it happens all the time. People miss our deadline funnel. I'm gonna give this Hot Tip out there. They miss it, and they email us And I have a last call link. That is that price. And I honor it. I've honored it. We've probably had a handful of people actually pay the full price. Every other person that is asked, so if we talk about that's where I sleep good at night is we have that ready? If anybody was like, Oh my gosh, I just missed it, or will this be available? Again? I'm like, Absolutely. Here's a link when you're ready. So I have this backup link that is like a, this is a hot tip. And I haven't it's last call. So it feels really like oh my gosh, this is the last call, we are staying open for you. And we will honor that price.
On top of that Ellen, is we can feel also incredibly good that our podcast episodes we show up twice a week to and we drop some knowledge, you could listen to our entire database of podcast episodes and really go to short term rental school. We have different content on top of that on YouTube, completely different. Are you going to be an Instagram we have Airbnb had tips every single day. So we also feel very good that if Hey, this sense of urgency didn't get you off the fence because you simply cannot fit this into your lifestyle right now whether it's financially or time you can meet us literally seven days a week wherever you like online for Free 99.
And I love that Sarah just said that because we you know, we send out a survey when our deadlines on actually this help conversion, we are spilling some tea right now. Okay, we've sent out a survey when the deadline funnel ends, basically saying we made you the best offer, what could we have done to make the make this juicy or for you to make this a no brainer? And the feedback that I get I actually answer those emails because I convert so many of those survey questions into sales. Oh, I missed the timer of a lot like, Oh, no problem, I got you. And I give them that link. Or they have a question. And I was doing book-a-calls before I really knew I was doing book-a-calls, because they're like, Oh, I just have a few questions. I'm like, let me answer them. So that deadline, also coupled with that survey, because it'd be weird to send that survey out. Like, we just made you our best offer what why wasn't a no brainer. So I think we follow up the deadline ending with how can we serve you better? How can what can we add? What can we subtract what? And that's, you know, if it's pricing, we get pricing and I that exactly what Sara said, I say no worries, we show up all these places for free. We have We will, we will support you there.
Oh my gosh, I love that Mic drop. doing double hands, because there's two of you. But I love that encouragement for people because I wanted to ask you that tough question because I know there's listeners who may feel hesitant to implement a strategy that creates urgency in their business, because they you know, see both sides of the coin. And, and I love the way that you really show up to help people make a decision. Because ultimately, this is what I always share in sales to ultimately no one is helped when they're stuck. Right. And that's not a good place for anybody to be. So if you give them the clarity to move forward, whether it's a yes or no, it's truly a win for both your business and there's. And so I really love the perspective you share there.
I realized we're like, you know, 40 minutes into this conversation. And I did not actually ask you all to explain the mechanics of deadline funnel? Because I, you know, in my head, I'm like, Yeah, I like we've used it before in our business before. And that is a wrong assumption on my part to assume that all of our listeners may be of the same understanding. So just real quick, high level, when we've been talking about utilizing a tool like deadline funnel, can you explain to our listeners, what happens if someone misses that countdown timer and they try to go back to that link and purchase? What is that experience on the user side. So we're all on the same page
Let me put my tech hat on here. And it's not a dunce cap. Okay, here's, with deadline funnel, it's essentially cookie-ing the attendee. And so it knows what time because you can you can do a deadline funnel, if it's a, you know, a set time to workshop or you know, if it's variable. So that will continue. And I want to let everyone know, there are a lot of different options, the way the deadline funnel will display, and also how the expiration will display. So it'll attach to your site and you get to design it. They have a few different designs that you can choose from deadline funnel, you can put it in your email campaign. So if people are about that's probably what people are most familiar with is a countdown timer in your email. You can place the code the HTML code into your email and it will display there. It will also display on your sales page. And when a buyer when it's expired, if they go Go back to those emails or go back to the page, it'll say offer expired.
However, when I talk about design, you can choose that design, like ours kind of has that stamp on it like sold out, like offer expired. There's different designs that you can choose. And I will let you know this. I know some people when the offer expires, they still have the same exact offer. It's just putting that sense of are so kind of circling back to that ethics of it deadline funnel also gives you an opportunity that if you want nothing to happen, the countdown timer just goes away. So I will let you know, there is some finessing and there is some testing that you need to do to bring deadline funnel into your funnel. So I also don't want to mislead people like, Oh, I just like put a little widget in and it was done. We've constantly we just had an issue with it because we switched something this weekend. And it wasn't an issue with the tool was the issue with the way that we were trying to utilize it. But they do give you a lot of different options to create it. So it works within you know what your aesthetic is what type of urgency, that type of thing.
I love that. I remember when we used it for our evergreen webinars before we retired our program last year, when people would go to the sales page and try to click on that checkout page, it would reroute them to a different checkout. So it's like you can never go back to the original checkout with the original price, the special action price or however you want to call it. So I appreciate the tool because like you said, you can either have this set timer. So like if you're doing a live launch, it's like everyone's countdown is going to expire on this day at this time. Or if you're doing the Evergreen version, it's like it cookies it to when someone first watches it, or lands on a page and then their 72 hour window starts individualized to them. So just to make that clear for our listeners, I did want to pull out one little tech piece. I don't know if you actually know the answer to this. But I'm assuming Yes. And if you if you jumped on the earlier tech question, the one about getting the fast action bonus, if they're watching the recorded evergreen workshop and they buy while the workshop is happening, how do you set that piece up so that I guess on the back end, you're able to track whether or not they bought during the workshop versus just you know, waiting for the video to finish before buying.
So the way that this is done is you can create a separate sales page, we use WebinarJam. And so we our offer pops up during the webinar and your offer link that you put there. It whatever platform you use behind the scenes, it would just be that link goes specifically to that fast action bonus sales page.
Perfect, simple solution.
Right. So throughout the rest of the funnel, they would buy a different product, or a different offer, if you will, right. So you create a fast action offer. So it's there's some duplicating of some things that have to happen. But that's how it did go down.
And we've had colleagues this space who in their evergreen, everyone gets fast action.
Oh, yeah, let's be let's oh, let's be very transparent there too. We didn't know how to set things up. So it was like, we were like Oprah, we're like, you get a bonus, you get a bonus, you get a bonus. Like, we honestly, we just gave everybody bonuses because it wasn't set up. So it was like in a like, Okay, who cares? Like me, you know, like, I'd rather over deliver on bonuses. So also everyone don't get so stressed out about like, all the tech, like, literally, we were giving everyone the book because we didn't know how to set it up properly, or we thought we had and we're like, oh, we don't allow like it. So just go with it. And so that was the thing, too, is like everyone was getting bonuses. You know, that's that's just how it went in the beginning.
So Well, I mean, to your point, there's never I think a downside to providing more people value, right? So when you look at it from that positive perspective, I think that's a really great way to do business. And again, I'm just really impressed by how honest you guys are that it wasn't set up perfectly from day one and that there have been so many iterations and tweaks and learning lessons to get it to the point where it is functioning much more smoothly and and as intended with the correct bonuses and correct price is going to the people who take action versus who don't. But I hope that's real encouragement for any of you listening today who may be hearing this and getting all these new ideas for how you can implement bonuses or deadlines to increase your urgency for your offer. But feeling like wait a second, I don't know if I can implement all these pieces at once. Just choose one thing and if it isn't perfect from day one, like Annette said, Oh well, you know you're you're showing up big for your people and you can continue to improve from there.
I want to interject something there is that I want to say our mistakes have been some of our biggest like, revenue generating lessons. And I've been speaking about it this whole time, I'm pretty sure that last call sales page that we created for people that missed a deadline, I'm pretty sure we had to create that, because we messed up a deadline funnel early, like it ended early. And everybody's like, what, so we had to create this like special link, because things are messed up. And I was like, Oh, this is a really lovely sales page, it's great to make them feel like they're getting a last call. And we've just kept that around. But it's because of something. It was like a band aid for an error we made, but now it's part of our process. And so that's why I wouldn't be scared of some of these tech things happening, because they've really helped us maybe, you know, create even better things that we wouldn't have had we not, you know, fell down and knocked a few teeth out a timer to get some stitches.
Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like this is like the, like the rawest form of entrepreneurship, right? It's like it's constant. Problem Solving. Like that's really all business is is like you you are met with new challenges, and then you solve them, and then you progress. And then you evolve to the next challenge. So it really is this. There's like, yep, whether we love it or hate it at times, that really is the root of entrepreneurship. And it's what keeps this game interesting. So anyways, to wrap this case study today, I wanted to pull out one last tidbit of something you had included, in our form, preparing for this this interview today. And that was that you started to notice that students were buying, like the ones that were buying during the live workshop, or while they were watching the workshop, the timing of when they started to purchase was when you started sharing testimonials, and sharing actually like a behind the scenes tour of the product itself of the membership or of the course and what it would look like once they were inside as a student. So talk to us about that was that a data point? You noticed recently was that early on? Once you noticed it? Did you do anything to amplify it, for example, like move it up earlier in the workshop or add more testimonials or like, just walk us through kind of your thought process around that data point.
We actually have changed this and seen some great results since we even turn this form in. Let's talk to her about the live video testimonials. Okay, that we've implemented.
There's so many good stories to share Ellen. But this one is we had we had, like you said, we added testimonials once we saw that people were buying when they saw the success of our members. So then we're like, oh, let's take it up a notch. And let's do video testimonials where like we stop the slides and our faces and it goes to people who like give a case study or a live testimonial. Well, it was a live webinar. And I didn't understand the tech side of it. So we would play it and no sound would happen. They couldn't hear
Just miming.
Yeah. The best part is an attendee She helped us walk us through it live on the webinar, ln she was like, oh, go up to your little your sound on your Mac and change it from headphones to your Mac speaker booths are playing, we converted more people on that live webinar because of that authenticity to have that mix up. I would guess like that was the one variable. And it went well, you know, from the press of that webinar on and moving forward.
But what we did, we started with just text, text testimonials with people's faces. Yeah. And we saw a positive uptick there. So we took it up another notch. And we've sprinkled in more testimonials. And those testimonials were more evidence like evidential is that hard screenshots, so really often things. So we would do like Facebook group posts, maybe it's their Airbnb, behind the scenes, their booking like their revenue. So we went from the cliche quotes to really like the authentic testimonials, we will have more of those in. And then the next notch is what Sarah's referring to an actual video testimonial of so during our workshop, it's not just us, they could kind of see who the other people that have gone through the program, hear it in their voice. And so we keep iterating on the authenticity of the testimonial, and we've seen some really positive feedback each time that we've done that.
One other tip that we learned from attending someone else's workshop was we used to have this let me still do have a timer at the end again, sense of urgency. And we would stick to it and we would end it if it was like 15 minutes of q&a What have you and we would stick to it and the call right? And then we attended one or I think an attended one where she hung on for like two hours. Like if there were still hundreds of people in the room. She's like, I'm not gonna let go of these warm leads, they're obviously interested. And so we tried it and with great success, and we just if they were asking great questions about the course, if they were engaged, why are we going to let them go when we have the opportunity to continue to convert them at that point? And we learned a lot from the questions they asked there, verbiage in the chat, getting testimonials from them about about the webinar in the chat with this more casual feel, right. And it was it that's been great, too.
And so like you said, there's different humans or different buyers. So someone that needs all the questions answered, we stay on. So if they want to watch for an hour, they can, you know, so I think that's important, too, is just notice who's watching, you know, and reply back to them. And I think that's been such a huge shift of like, even if there's one person in your funnel, you need to pay attention to them, you know?
Absolutely. And I think, to your point, thank you, by the way for sharing that story of, you know, the sound debacle that has happened to me there was actually recently one of our most recent paid to create lives. It's always worked perfectly, so I have no idea why all of a sudden, it didn't. But we always play music while people are coming in, you know, set the set the mood groovin and over here I am literally like dancin, you know, to music. It's silent, like, No, I'm hearing music, like blasted. I'm having a great time. It was just silent hearings, violets, and I, I You just have to laugh at yourself. Sometimes, like they happen, those moments happen. But people, you know, they appreciate realizing, okay, you are a real human. And I do think it actually forms a deeper sense of trust. So anyways to human is to error.
And those were some great additional points that you shared about how you leveled up your testimonials. I want to direct our listeners. By the way, you know, Annette and Sarah today have talked about catering bonuses and urgency based incentives to different buyer personality types. So if you want to dig a little deeper into that concept, I'll link Linda Sidhu's episode on our podcast, which actually Sarah and have worked with her to build an amazing quiz. So check out that episode. Also in that mentioned, you know the difference between typing out a lovely quote or testimonial from someone and placing their picture next to it versus taking real receipts of screen grabs of people saying in their own words, this happened or I'm celebrating this win. And Amanda Walker a couple episodes ago was talking about the difference between formal and informal versions of client testimonials and how they impact customers differently. So we'll also link that episode for you in the show notes if you want to refer to those for additional context. But I'm so so grateful you two for showing up as your true authentic selves, I wouldn't expect any different. What is something that you are working on at Thanks for visiting that you want to share with our listeners? And where can people best connect with you.
So we're very excited to share that we are bringing back our live event, which is geared towards owner operator independent hosts. So you're not going to see big property management companies there. This is for the individual investor who is leveraging short term rentals, Airbnb VRBO. It's going to be in our hometown of Columbus, Ohio this year, September 24-26. So even if you've been on the fence, you know what our industry is like, hint, it's super fun. Such a fun people will be doing that in compasses. Yeah.
And that's annual. So you can go to that TFVcon.com is for that. Another thing that we're looking forward to again, this is because we're paying attention to numbers, is we're bringing out a very beginner hosting handbook. And it is going to be a much lower price point. Because we want to start someone out at a lower price point at the very beginning. So we were listening to our customers there. And that was a lot of the surveys. They quite weren't ready for our Mastery program. So we want to get them at the hosting handbook. So it's at the beginning, but you can find us anywhere at Thanks for visiting and just Google that look it up in your podcast player, Instagram, YouTube, but thanks for visiting is where you can find us.
And I mean these to really create quality quality content. I don't know if you necessarily identify primarily as a media company the way that we do but they are a full blown media company like their YouTube content, their podcast content, their courses, their education is top tier there is no one else I would recommend for anything in the short term rental space. So we'll include all of their links in the show notes below. You don't even have to go Google it. Just scroll below and click away. Follow connect say Hi, Sarah and Annette. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I love this conversation.
Thank you Ellen.
Hey, Ellen here. Thank you again for tuning in to cubicle to CEO. If you enjoyed today's episode, follow our show on Instagram at Cubicle to CEO for more info On his content and hop on the last Tuesday of each month to watch our live after show with recent guests. If you want to support our podcast, text this episode link to a friend, leave a positive review on Apple podcasts or rate our show wherever you're listening right now. Please make sure you also hit the Follow button on Apple it looks like a plus sign. Or click Subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss out on our new episodes every Monday and friends until next time, keep dreaming big
