You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 256. Today's case study embraces experimentation on several fronts. New audience, new content platform and new offer season to online business owner and mentor to digital freelancers.
Amy Posner wanted to expand her audience beyond copywriters. So she got on LinkedIn, a platform she wasn't active on previously, and tested a daily content strategy to build trust with a new audience of creative freelancers. Within six months, Amy had attracted 708 LinkedIn followers, and added 414 people to her email list all organically. She then launched a new program to them selling out the first round in just two weeks and generating over $45,000 in revenue. Most impressive, all but one were first time buyers in her ecosystem, who had found her through LinkedIn.
This is the step by step LinkedIn content strategy that Amy plans to continue and encourages you to borrow and test for yourself.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin, every Monday go behind the business in a case study style interview with the leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it, and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Hello, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm joined by a Pacific Northwest business owner, we were just chatting about how that's a little bit more rare. We don't often get to run into people in the online space that live in the same area as us. But Amy Posner is with us on the podcast today. Welcome, Amy.
Thank you so much excited to be here.
Super excited to have you. Amy has a great LinkedIn case study for us. So if you're thinking about using LinkedIn, or you're already on LinkedIn, but wanting to monetize better, I think today's case study is going to be super relevant for you. I'll give you a little sneak peek of the case study in just a moment.
But first, I want to ask Amy, her Cubicle to CEO story. So Amy, I know you've, you've had six successful businesses. But what was that first catalyst that led you into entrepreneurship.
So interestingly, I grew up in a family business, and I never wanted to be in business. I wanted to be the creative one. But I so, I got a job. I was living in New York City at the time, and I got a job just you know, a random job in my 20s working for a guy and I really enjoyed what he was doing. And we would you know, we'd sit around after work, and we talk about it. I had marketing ideas. And we talked about those. And he started implementing some of these things. And they started working.
And he came to me one night and said, what would you think about buying it? And would you want to be a partner in the business that we had not was not in my frame of reference. It was not in my consciousness I like, but I was really sort of surprised and sort of delighted. And I thought why not? I did I really I didn't know. It seemed to me like a very low buy in. So I borrowed the money I bought in and I loved it. I never looked back. I absolutely loved it. Because you know, what we did is we sat in this office at night, we built computers, we were computerizing businesses by day. And I had all this freedom. And it was the freedom of time.
And I also had the freedom, like, there was no longer a salary was like, What can we make happen? What revenue can we dry? What can we bring into the business? So I was like, This is business. This is a really interesting puzzle. I like solving this problem. So anyway, that that and that was it. Yeah, never looked back.
I totally love that you use that puzzle analogy, because I agree business very much mirrors a lot of games, right? It's like, how can you beat this level of progress to the next one, continue to refine your strategy. It's a lot of fun when you look at it that way. So I love that you got that shift in your perspective, you know, having grown up with the family business, and maybe not wanting to pursue that route, but then getting to see and make your own way by buying into a partnership. I wish I had also known about those options when I was growing up because I think it would have changed maybe how I approached my post grad life a little differently.
So anyways, love hearing that story. Your case study today speaking of pivots and trying new things, you are already a very successful mentor, originally with copywriter specifically and then you wanted to expand to the wider pool of creative freelancers. And so you decided to launch this new program but you wanted to utilize LinkedIn to do it. So Just for our listeners, the case study we're going to be going into today is how Amy sold out this totally new offer in the middle of this major pivot of widening her audience to creative freelancers. And this offer brought in $40,000 of new revenue into her business using organic reach on LinkedIn.
So the first question I actually wanted to ask you, Amy was prior to deciding to go all in on LinkedIn to test this new offer? Were you already active on LinkedIn? Or was this a totally new platform for you?
I was on LinkedIn, and that I joined it, you know, a million years ago-
As we all do.
Right, instead of a profile and promptly left and never did a thing. But it was interesting. Yes, it was a new effort for me. And I chose LinkedIn, because I've always liked it, because it's so business focused, right? It's like, there's no pretense that like, you don't have to, like try and do something else and segue to business. Right?
So it appealed to me for that reason. And you know, when x blew up, or Twitter blew up, it just seemed like it felt like a lot of activity moved to LinkedIn. And it just, it felt timely. Yeah. And then a lot of things change, because they they, you know, as they do, but yeah, that was the impetus.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
And also, there were things I want to go to paid advertising, but there were things I wanted to test. And I wanted to test them organically, I didn't want to, I didn't want to, I didn't want to invest the money and be I didn't want to get false results.
That's very wise, I think it's always so smart to like you said make sure something converts organically before you add more fuel to the fire there. So with LinkedIn then So you started this experiment December 2023, through early May, so that's give or take what almost almost six months, five to six month window, and you committed to a daily long form strategy.
And through this for our listeners, Amy was able to attract 708 New LinkedIn followers, and 414 new email subscribers. And this is especially exciting because whether you're listening to this and thinking, wow, that's huge, or whether you're thinking, Oh, that seems marginal. Regardless, the revenue results are what really matter. And those really came through.
So with this, this long form strategy, I want you to break this down. For our listeners, I know you were posting five posts a week, and it was centered, like the topic of the posts were centered around the theme of your weekly newsletter that you send out on Sundays to your email list, but walk us through this strategy A to Z.
So it's actually super simple. So this whole thing was meant to circle around one anchor piece a week. And all of the anchor pieces are laid out already for 52 weeks, or bringing people through logical progression. What the strategy was, because I'm a really big believer in list building, right? Like social, social is great. I am a huge advocate of go from social to the list. I've got a whole soapbox about that, and I get on that people probably get tired of but so that was the goal, I wanted to you know, have people on my list.
So the idea was one anchor piece of content, that was the newsletter that ideally you would get on my list to get. But what I do is I tease two pieces of content before it. So I tease the newsletter in advance. And then after the newsletter, I t's back to the to the edition that just came out. So so if you think about it, there's sort of five pieces if you think of them sort of laid out. The middle piece is the newsletter, but we're teasing.
We're teasing it backwards and forwards. So we're teasing it four times to get people to the newsletter. And mostly what I mostly what I say the CTA the call to action is you can get a subscribe link. Or you can request the newsletter and more often than not, I'm looking for people to subscribe. But I will pop the link to the issue in LinkedIn. And that's that's only important because there's there's a whole strategy in terms of like, you know, where you're reaching out to people and where you're sort of getting them to reach back to you. You know, there's there's some schools of thought that you make it as easy as possible and you get everyone in my school of thought is like, let's have it be a little bit more gated, so that we're vetting people, and we're sure that people are really interested in the content. I don't know how much that actually serves, but I like that approach better than that not. So yeah.
Absolutely. The quick technical question there when you say okay, so you're teasing out the newsletter before it comes out. Then you're also talking about it once it's published. And then, you know, pulling pieces of content from that to turn into LinkedIn posts throughout that week.
When you say someone's requesting the link directly to that specific edition of the newsletter, are you saying you are sending them to an opt in page or no, you're not and you're just sending them directly to the readable copy of that week's newsletter.
Most weeks, I send the newsletter or I offer the newsletter like I'll say you don't know subscription needed now I'll give them the link. But I'll also give them the link to subscribe.
Got it? Okay, I love that I love that you kind of aren't gatekeeping it, but you're also saying, hey, like, if you liked this one, you're probably going to like the other one. So like, get your get your email on our list. That makes a lot of sense. I want to actually illustrate this for our listeners a little bit further.
So I have my notes in front of me. And Amy was so incredibly generous and actually broke down this entire content strategy in a Google Doc, where she shared her email, like an example of a newsletter that she would have sent out to her list. And then the five LinkedIn posts that corresponded with said newsletter, so you can actually see this content strategy in action. And we're not going to obviously spend our time reading out every single piece that's laid out in this content doc.
But if you're listening to this podcast right now, and you want to be able to reference this, it will be below in the show notes. So no, no opt in necessary. But please, if you do use this doc, as a reference point, my ask of you is that you send a me a message on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn and tell her thank you for offering this resource to you for free. So I do though, want to kind of just give a quick example, Amy, of what you were referencing, when you said the pre newsletter Teaser and the post newsletter teaser, so Okay, so like here is what we have.
So Amy's newsletter goes out on Sunday. So pre the newsletter, this was an example from June 20. So very recent. Amy wrote on LinkedIn, are you uncomfortable pitching to big name clients? Maybe you feel you're not ready? Not good enough? That might be true. But what does that even mean? How do you measure good enough? And how do you become good enough? Hint, the answer is way simpler than you realize. And the answer is not mindset. Ooh, I liked the way that you put something that they probably thought it was about because it sounds like a mindset post. Okay, anyways, continuing quote, that's, that's what I'm talking about this Saturday in the breakthrough beat newsletter to get this edition, leave a yes in the comments. And I'll drop you a link to subscribe.
Okay, amazing. So that's the teaser, you're kind of getting them. Actually, as I'm reading this, do you always try to frame the pre newsletter teaser? As a way where they're almost like guessing? Because like in this, you said, Okay, there's one thing that is making you feel not good enough, it's not mindset, but then you don't necessarily disclose what it is instead, is that typically the pattern that you follow with your teasers where you kind of give them a hint at what it might be about, but you're not explicitly stating this week's newsletter is about XYZ topic.
Yes, more often than not, you know, it's advice from copywriting called the open loop. And it's just one of my very favorites, you know, where you just literally leave an open loop, you leave people wondering, and they want to close the loop. And so ideally, they'll, you know, take the action to close that loop. I don't always mean, because sometimes I'm also looking for interaction. And so sometimes I'll get a little more controversial.
And when I do that, I'll often be asking, like, well, tell me what you think, or what do you do? Or how do you do this? And try and get feedback, especially if I know it's a hot topic? And also, so throughout this, I was also testing for reaction, right? What gets the most response? What are people most interested in? What should you know? What should I be talking about more? So I was using that sort of, you know, internally to gauge those things as well. So just just changing it up a little bit and seeing like, where do we get the response?
Right, right. The open loop mechanism, I love that you gave that technical piece of copywriting for our listeners to kind of put a name to what that strategy is, do you have off the top of your head? And it's okay, if you don't? Do you have another example of an open loop teaser that you did recently? And it doesn't have to be word for word, but if you could just kind of give like the gist of what that was. I know our listeners love multiple examples of possible.
Yeah, so I did, I did one recently on offers. And what I talked about was like sort of teasing. Like there's the part of the offer that's actually like your deliverable. But what it is, is like, like, what is it that your clients are buying? That's not the deliverable? Because that's really what they're buying? So that wasn't the exact language? Yeah, it was it. So because you are, you know, the as the craftsperson, you tend to think about your deliverable. You think about the website, you're going to deliver the piece of copy or the design or whatever it is, you're not thinking so much about about you, or how you show up or what, you know, what the other that part of value that you deliver to your client, which is the experience.
Right.
Right. And so I just want to tease that like, oh, there's something else so you know, this. So that kind of thing. I'm always looking to pique their curiosity. So they're like, I want to know.
I was going to say even in your very quick one sentence regurgitation of that my interest was already peaked. So clearly, you're a master of your craft. We're seeing this in real time, but that's what it does. It does. This is an excellent tip for everyone listening, kind of think through if you're wanting to utilize a strategy, test it this week, try an open loop teaser of any kind and I think the beautiful thing about it Amy's case study and the strategy that we're debriefing here today is that your anchor content can be any long form content that you already created.
So if you're not someone who creates a weekly newsletter, if you're a podcaster, like myself, or maybe a YouTuber, or maybe you just share a lot on, you know, a particular social media platform, then utilize whatever that anchor pieces to work off of. Okay, going back to the notes, okay, so that was the pre teaser than the newsletter came out. Then on June 24. You did this post newsletter, post again, very short, but very curiosity inducing.
So Amy wrote, have you ever bought something for yourself and expensive gift and just opening the packaging made you feel all tingly or treated yourself to a luxury service like inexpensive spa day? I remember the first time I booked a business class flight. That was nice, really, really nice. My cousin gave me the side eye. She thought it was a waste of money. I thought it was 10,000% Better than being in the back. That feeling is a cure to all your selling woes. I call it ooh factor. And I wrote about it in Saturday's edition of the breakthrough beat newsletter. If you'd like that article, no subscription needed, leave a yes in the comments.
Oh, so good. Your copy is just so good. I mean, I could probably have a whole separate conversation with you just about coffee, but Excellent. Okay. So I hope that this gives you guys kind of an idea of what this looks like to tease the actual content. If you want to see how Amy took the actual newsletter content and turn it into three additional content posts on LinkedIn. Again, the content doc will be in our show notes. So just click below to reference those. But I want to get back to asking any more high level around the strategy.
So the CTA, you mentioned were always either a mix of discussion triggers or getting people to just comment Yes. And you would send them the link to read the newsletter or subscribe to the newsletter? Can you give us some of your favorite discussion triggers that you use to actually generate engagement in the comment section of the post?
Why it has been so interesting, I have found that anything controversial, anytime I get out of my content calendar, and I try and do it kind of regularly, I actually look for sort of hot button things that are that are coming up. So I can get on my soapbox. And when I that gets the most response and gets the most interaction, although it's interesting, because lately, I've been doing a lot of testing. And so I'm testing messaging a lot. And I'm, I'm really getting my messaging dialed in, and I'm getting more and more comments. I'm getting more I think, like I'm striking a nerve, obviously.
And so I think that's but it's but again, striking a nerve is controversial, right? It's not this it's not the feel good stuff. And it's not the the sort of educational instructional stuff that people get excited about, which you know, is isn't that surprising. We're human, right? We you know, but that's what that's what I find anything and it doesn't have to be controversial, like radically controversial, but like, like calling out hustle culture gets a lot of attention, calling out just copying your colleagues without really understanding their process. That kind of thing gives a lot of attention, revealing things that I believe about coaching and mentoring. So any of those kinds of things?
Yeah.
Yeah. People seem to people seem to react to.
And I feel like everything, you made a great point about how, when you post something controversial, and again, like you said, controversial doesn't necessarily mean you have to talk about a negative topic, it could just be something that people have strong opinions on. But it's interesting, because when you're especially when you're using a social platform like LinkedIn, and I've experienced this on Instagram, you don't know which side of the favor you're going to fall into with algorithm like sometimes the opinion that you have, the algorithm is going to show your post to everyone who has the opposite opinion of you, right.
And that can create a really big comment storm in your content. And so it's, it's something I think, to be aware of, and to be prepared for that you may not get people who agree with you in the comments. And that might bring a lot of dissenting opinions there.
And so I'm curious, Amy, how do you navigate that in a way of, obviously, the people you want to attract us students into your programs are probably going to be more like minded to you. So let's say you had a post that maybe got a lot of engagement, but seemed to fall into the hands of people who maybe didn't agree with you. Have you had that experience before? And if so, how did you manage that in terms of filtering them out from you're bringing them into your own ecosystem?
It's a great question. And I haven't had so much that as I have had like, some mansplaining and some, like, serious, that kind of a thing. And I had to think about it, like how do I react like do I want to like do I want to call him out? I've had this happen a few times and I've like I've literally had to wait in one case I had to wait a week before I said anything because I just like it's real issue.
I mean, how controversial Do you want to be and how I sort of err on the side of standing up for my opinions without sort of insulting you for yours or sort of taking the defense defensive posture? Even when I've been mansplaining? Or someone's totally taken the post out of context, I found it's better to just let it lie. Right. It's just, I just I don't think that there's a whole lot of traction in, in arguing with people or Yeah, you know, it's fine. I like to argue I do. I almost went to law school.
And I could really like winning an argument. And I can really like winning an argument like that. But I don't think there's traction for my business. So I discipline myself, and I just, you know, sort of always take the high road or ignore, that's, there's a lot of maturity in that. Yeah, I know that that's the right approach. But yeah, that's where I've leaned.
Right? Well, I mean, I do agree with you, not every comment deserves a response or needs a response to be productive. And so sometimes people just want a platform to air out their opinions and let them have their opinions. And so I would tend to agree with you there, I'm pretty low key when it comes to stuff like that.
But I do want to know, especially as a copywriter, you know, your your craft is, you're able to use your words to really get people to respond in such a way. I find that sometimes where people struggle, when they're trying to create engagement in their posts is, you know, when they're asking a question, or some type of conversation starter in the CTA, there can still often be crickets where like, no one's responding. But you having had months now of practicing these different types of discussion triggers?
Have you noticed any particular questions work better in terms of getting people to actually respond or maybe make it feel less manufactured for people to respond? Interestingly,
I have found I get the most responses when I talk about people's struggles, but not necessarily when I asked them for input, okay, that can go that can cut both ways. Sometimes I'll ask for input, and I'll get a lot of it. And sometimes, like, that's clearly not what anyone wants to talk about, or they don't want to share their experience. But I've been talking a lot, a lot a lot lately, for example, about what I call the spin. And ever and this is language I'm testing every time I talk about it.
And every time I like sort of extrapolate more and more nuance and talk about that, that's where I'm getting the action. That's where I'm getting people. And I think it's because people are identifying something that they're experiencing, but they haven't quite identified and they don't know how to solve and so but but like, it touches something, and so it's there, they very much want to talk about it, because it's like, oh, there's like a maybe a spark of solution inside the spark of talking about the problem.
And so I'm finding, and that's exciting for me, because this is what I want to be talking about. And I'm trying to refine and refine. Yeah, but it's but people are really and interestingly, and they're sharing. So yeah, it's so it's really resonating. And that I think that's that's a really good sign of the messages working.
Right. Can you give an example of that? So like when you say, the more nuanced you get, and maybe even you putting, like you said, putting language to something that they feel but don't don't know how to verbalize themselves? Can you give a recent example of that, that comes to mind?
Yeah. And this, this spin that I'm talking about is an example of that. Because the way that that I unpack it and talk about it is, so what happened business is really a series of decisions, right? You're you're constantly making decisions. But what happens is every decision begets another decision. Right? So I decided I'm going to do a LinkedIn strategy. And I listened to this and I'm like, Okay, I'll follow this. And then I get a certain to a certain point, and I'm like, But wait, like the newsletter? Should it be like this? Or should it be like that?
You stop the process, you spin. And we have all these departments, if you will, that we work on in our business, we have admin, we have our craft delivery, like the thing we actually do, we have our client experience we have. So and you can have and you have decisions and all of these departments. And so especially for small business owners, once you get like one or two or three things, or excuse me, once you have more than one thing spinning if you have two or three things spinning, and I described this more succinctly, but once that happens, now you're in a kind of business paralysis.
And I've seen people in this for a week. I've seen people in this literally for years when they come to me. And so as I've talked about that specifically and this decision making process, I feel like I'm getting people like like why not? They're like, Oh, you're right, that's what it is. The decisions are stopping me I don't know how to solve for decision making. Right and that's just getting is really rich. And we're just unpacking that down to like all the because people see all the different places that that stops them and As I've been describing, like this sort of this, you're stuck.
There's two places they're stuck in their spin. And I'm just getting a lot of like, Oh, yes, me. You're describing me exactly like this is like, like, are you you know, are you over my shoulder? Are you in my living room like what's going on here? That kind of thing.
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Wow, that was a really powerful example. And I see hearing you explain it, I see why it worked so well. Because to your point, you're not you're not being very general and saying oh, do you just feel very overwhelmed or you know, like you said stuck in indecision, you're painting a picture of a very specific type of indecision, or overwhelm where yeah, like you said, you have too many too many ideas or too many things spinning at once. And so that was really, really helpful. Thank you. I'm glad I asked you that.
And I'm impressed with your ability to recall these examples off the top of your head because I feel like when I'm in the interviewee seat, and people are like, Tell me about a time when you know, yada yada, I instantly you know, my mind just dumps all of the information. I forget everything I've ever done. I'm glad that's not the case for you, Amy. All right. So to give you a little bit more context now about the actual offer that Amy was selling. So Freelancer Business Lab, this was sold for $3,000 a seat.
And for this initial round, Amy offered 12 seats total, although you'll see in a bit, actually oversold that a little bit, which is amazing. So once it was time to start enrolling for this program for Freelancer Business Lab, at this point, you've been on LinkedIn for five to six months, you had gotten 400 some emails onto your list 700 Some new followers? What was your actual launch process? Did you only send emails to this new segment of your list that came directly from this LinkedIn content? Were you also selling simultaneously on LinkedIn? Were you hard selling cars? Previously, you said most of your CTAs did not include a direct sales call to action.
So walk us through this process? Like how did you approach this launch?
Yeah, and let me let me also add, because I'm not sure that we included in this, there was also an upsell where people could get some one on one coaching in months, 113 and five or something like that, right? That doubled the price. And we had we had about I think four or five people bought that is awesome. So I don't think so I think that these revenue numbers are actually higher than what we then what we submitted to you.
But that said, so it we really didn't launch, it wasn't a launch, it was very, very low key. So I didn't email I did I think I want to say three emails. And then we did another series of either two or three. But so we email to the whole list. Okay, knowing that we had a lot of new people on the list. But we email to everyone. And we I think we posted like it's either two or three times we made a mention on LinkedIn.
But it was really low key Oh, man, it was it was a, you know, email me for more information. The email that went out, had a calendar link in it. And what I told people was they could email me back for more information. And then they if they liked what they saw, they could book a I think I had them set up for 20 minutes. I had more time available. I didn't tell people that because if I get an a call and I you know if I think someone's a good fit, I'll spend up to an hour with them.
But if I don't I think they're a good fit, I want them to think the calls over in 20 minutes, it's, um, it's not necessarily clear that they have more than 20 minutes. I'm not presuming that, but that's kind of how I set it up. And so every one of them, every person that we close was from a call. And it was just simply that it was like, here's what this is no sales page, everything about the lab was in a Google Doc. And so it was a Google Doc and a meet with me. And that was how we how we launched and close. So it wasn't a hard sell. And there weren't a lot of emails, I would have gone hard sell if I didn't get enough response.
But the idea was like, okay, we've brought in a lot of new people, or are they waiting for an offer? Are they waiting to work with me? You know, do we have people here that are interested or not? And so that that was sort of our first sorting criteria. And had that not worked? I may have sold a little harder.
Okay.
But it worked. We didn't we didn't have to. And it was interesting, too, because I, you know, colleagues who were launching and doing things around the same time, they're like things we're not selling, you know, be very careful. And people weren't filling programs and had clients who aren't filling programs. And so it was, it was kind of a crapshoot, but it worked really well, in the end.
Yeah. You know, I, I love that you brought up that additional piece of, you know, always well, meaning obviously, when people share advice like that, like, hey, people seem to be weary of buying. But I'm always weary of hearing things like that, because I always think in any economy, the right offer to the right buyer will always sell. So it's like, you know, anecdotally you can hear about things trending one way or the other.
And I agree that the selling process has changed, obviously, in our space, in the last number of years. But I don't think it is ever fair to objectively say that people are either buying or not buying at a certain point in time, because there's always going to be buyers, and there's always going to be non buyers, and any sort of economic situation. So I love that you brought up that point.
Yeah, I agree. And I think you know, I think it's also an issue of price point, right? Like, you have to have the right price and the right offer for the right market at the right time, which I really thought about a lot, because I had been running masterminds really successfully, and it did not feel like the right offer for me or for the market at the moment. Which would have been more like an eight or $9,000 offer and it just didn't, didn't didn't feel right. Yeah, like gut gut feeling, which I pay a lot of attention to, because I have learned from not.
Yes, I'm glad. I'm glad you trusted that. I had a quick clarifying question. You mentioned that there was no sales page, but you had the information about this program inside of Google Doc, to make sure I understood you correctly. When you sent out that word, those few emails inviting people to book a call, you said you included the calendar link for them to schedule a call with you. But you also asked them to first reply to you.
So you could send them information. If they liked what they saw, then they would you know, proceed to book with the call. So am I understanding you correctly, the only people who manually requested more information received access to that Google Doc that laid out all the details of the program? Or did you at any point, actually just blink it send that link to your full list to access?
No, never sent the link? And the thing about sending the calendar link? And asking people to request right, like I'm asking you to do something that I like telling you, you're sort of not ready to do it. My feeling was if someone goes ahead and books like more power to ya, right like that. That was that was okay with me. Because on the booking there was a whole forum like, you know, what do you do for why you booking what's going on? How do you think I can help you specifically? I mean, there were there was enough there. So that was fine with me. And some people did just go ahead and book and write, I knew that was a possibility. And I was I was good with that.
Yeah, I mean, to your earlier point about trusting your intuition. Maybe for them, they just had this this gut feeling that they needed to speak with you or work with you in some capacity. And, and they weren't necessarily too tied up and what the offer was, but rather than just being in your proximity and having your mentorship, so I love that you left that option available.
And you said, during this time, when you were sending these emails, you may be posted one or two things on LinkedIn asking people to request more information if they wanted to, but no hard selling. So simultaneously, while this I know launch, like you said, maybe not maybe isn't the right word to describe it. But while this enrollment window, let's say was happening on LinkedIn, were you continuing to upkeep your regular weekly content cycle, or did you hit pause on that while this was happening?
Nope. Didn't hit pause. I am committed to 52 weeks of not hitting pause. So and mostly I have stuff in the can I'm usually about three weeks ahead. Yep. I try and stay three weeks. I mentor only one or two but nope. Nope. We kept on going. And it was funny because I decided to do this and my right hand person was away for the month. Oh, wow. It was the worst. It was the worst time but it was like you know what? It's like the timing is right. I'm just gonna do this and she got to where she was and she's like, oh, you did want.
Hey more power to you felt ready and you didn't want to wait, so I like it. I didn't it was one of those moments. Sometimes you got to strike when the iron is hot when the motivation is high. So I get it. I really do.
Yeah, seriously, it was one of those moments.
I love that. Well, obviously it worked, Amy, because your results were excellent. So to break that down for our listeners, the launch results, Amy booked 23 discovery calls, 14 of those 23 actually purchased. And we'll add an additional note here that some of those 23 Booked calls did not show up for their call. So if you exclude those calls, the close rate was even higher. But if you include all 23 calls the close rate 14 out of 23 61%, which is impressive already on its own.
And this resulted in a sold out launch within a two week promo window. So any I know this case study isn't specific to obviously sales calls, we're really talking more about the LinkedIn content strategy that led the right people here. But is there anything you'd want to divulge to our listeners that you feel worked really well, in these discovery calls that you would like to see replicated in future? rounds?
Yeah, so I'm a big believer in fit, and taking the time that it takes to figure out fit, right, like, I'd rather I'd rather say no to somebody who's not going to benefit from the work then like, then just have them in the group. So I really like curating groups. But I think the thing with the sales call is, it's funny, because I started don't think of it even as a sales call, because I'm not looking to close them, I'm looking for them to close themselves kind of if they think it's if they think it's fit.
And so my thing, and this is true, you know, with client discovery calls with my own discovery calls, I think the thing to do is like, ask a lot of questions and be generous with your time. You know, I feel like I feel like people are very often like, you know, they're quick to close, or they feel like their time is being, you know, imposed on if they if they spend too long in these calls. And I feel like this is where the relationship starts.
So I think it's worth investing the time in these calls, because it is the beginning of relationships. Like when I when I was a copywriter, you know, sometimes I work with clients, or even even as coach, I sometimes I'll work with people for years. Right. And so this and the funny thing is, and is people will often tell you things in these initial calls that you will never hear again, I don't care if you work with this person, the rest of your life, there's often like, it's either the origin story or the source of the problem, or the challenge that they're having. That will cause them to tell you a lot of backstory.
And it's really, really rich. I mean, if you so if you invest that time, you know, you can really connect with that person, you can really get a chance to see like, do they have a problem that you want to solve? Can you solve that problem? So for me, that's a really worthwhile investment. Because I, I like working with ambitious people. And I want to make sure that people have the right fit, and they're going to do the work. There's nothing worse for me than people that show up and don't do the work just breaks my heart. Yeah, like, no, I'd rather avoid it on the front end.
Totally. And what a waste really of both your times and have your have access to you that could be employed somewhere else for someone to see, you know, results. So I love that you spend that time really intentionally on the front end getting to know people. And what was interesting to me when I was looking through your data for this case study is that all 14 people and feel free to correct me if I misread this anywhere, but I believe I read that all 14 people who purchase were actually first time buyers, and actually not only first time buyers, but new to your ecosystem, like they had joined your list from this LinkedIn content. Is that true?
And if so, did you expect that going into here were any of the calls books that maybe didn't buy from people who were already part of your list, but it just so happened that all the people who bought were completely new?
Interesting. So one person was somebody that I knew before? That I'd worked with years, but the other 13 totally brand new. And it's interesting, it's so funny, because you don't know how long people have been following you. Right? It's like, cuz some people told me oh, I've been following you for a long time. But this recent thing that you've been doing on LinkedIn, just really got my attention.
And you've really been speaking to me. So people did reference the content.
Okay.
So. So there was there was a definite direct link between the content and some of them. Were getting it on the email list now, but they had come from LinkedIn specifically. And so I didn't know that that would happen. I really hoped it would. Because that's, I mean, that's the whole point of this LinkedIn effort was to get me out of the I mean, I'm fairly well known in the copywriting world. And I just I wanted to break out into a bigger world. And so this was my entree. This was my plan.
And it was working right this was proof that it it actually, it actually worked, you know, from a revenue driving monetary standpoint, because we knew it. We knew we were getting attention. Yeah. You know, what could we convert the attention to revenue? That was the unknown. And so, so super exciting. And there was one person I spoke to who was a previous client, and she had ended up not being the right timing. But everyone else was someone I did not know before, or, you know, maybe knew their name, but certainly had not interacted with before.
That's super inspiring to me too, because you've kind of got my my wheels turning about, okay, like, if I wanted to do this, just as an experiment for me, the group that I'm thinking of in my head would probably more likely actually be on Facebook than LinkedIn. But I had thought before about what if I did this experiment and try to sell an offer to this completely new audience that I have no previous sales relationship with, or even, they're not really part of my online business ecosystem at all.
So it's really fun to kind of hear, hear your process and then see how well it worked out for you. And minimal risk, right, like you said, at the very beginning, your other option was to try paid traffic to get in front of these new audiences, but you weren't quite ready to invest in that vehicle at that moment. And you wanted to do this instead. And obviously, it worked out very well in your favor. So this is super inspiring. And just so our listeners know, the total revenue collected from this experiment that Amy did, a little higher than what we originally had, I think it's closer to 45 46,000.
Amy, like you said, because of those one on one calls, or maybe even higher with the coaching upsells. But at minimum, minimum 45,000, a new revenue collected from from first time buyers, which is very exciting. To close out this case study, I would love to kind of get your thoughts on how you're going to take this and replicate it moving forward. Because I know you are very big on process. And even in the example newsletter that you included in the content doc that's going to be linked in the show notes. Your newsletter was about how process can often set apart, okay, freelancers, right from excellent freelancers that are able to charge much higher prices.
And so for you, when you're thinking about launching the second round of Freelancer Business Lab, are you planning to duplicate this exact process and just try to bring in, again, a new cohort of people over from LinkedIn onto your list? Or are you going to change anything the second time through?
I'm not, I mean, that the thing I will change is I will start very soon having a waitlist for the next iteration. And so and I don't know what that'll look like, I don't know, you know, we may fill up the program before the program, before we do a launch. I don't know. Yeah. But I'm also thinking about, like, I think I could accommodate more people now that I've, you know, had been running it for a little bit.
So we I don't know, I'm not sure how we'll structure that. But we will not use a different method. We won't, and we're and we're still refining everything that we're putting together here for a paid traffic plan, because I have big growth plans, and I'm trying to be very strategic. Because, you know, I've gone from the, you know, the one on one and the one, you know, one to a group, and now I'm going you know, I have a one to many plan.
And it's very different. I mean, it's very, it's a very, very different model than what I've done before. And so, you know, I spent a long time thinking about what I was going to do, and then trying, you know, just sort of experimenting, not literally out in the world, but like, you know, testing as you do like reading different things and thinking them through and, and it's funny because you know, I'm not risk adverse. I'm I don't mind taking risk. I've reinvented myself a lot of times, and this time, I really am being much more deliberate than I'd been in the past. So so it's yeah, you know, we've got these trackable processes, as you can see, and we're being we're just being really careful about the growth and doing it correctly. I've just witnessed too many current train wrecks.
Yeah.
I would, of course, creation and products and launches. And it's like, they'll just go a little more slowly.
Yeah, this time. I mean, there is so much beauty and the marginal progression. Now, it doesn't always have to be zero to 100 ad immediately. So I think that's going to be very encouraging, honestly, to a lot of people listening to this, whether they are naturally risk averse or not.
So anyways, Amy, thank you so much for your transparency in all of the numbers and data you shared with us today, as well as being so generous with giving our listeners an actual step by step of the content example that we talked about in today's episode, where can our listeners go and continue to connect with you or learn more about these offers that we've talked about?
My site is amyposner.com. amyposner.com and also on LinkedIn. Connect with me on LinkedIn, I'm, you know, I'm there and I'm happy to answer questions. And as long as I am able to support people and help them there, so I'm all about it.
And the best way to learn you guys is to follow and observe. So if you like this content strategy, and you want to see it played out in real time, there's nothing better, smarter that you could do today than to go connect and follow me on LinkedIn and watch it happen in front of your eyes in real time. So I anyways, thank you all for tuning in. Thank you Amy again for your time and we will catch you all in next week's episode.
Thank you so much for having me.
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