It wasn’t until I quit launching and started selling my course on auto-pilot that I was finally able to cross the million dollar mark. I tried launching for years, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get close to meeting my big revenue goals.
Once I made the switch to selling on auto-pilot everything changed. My audience grew, my sales increased, and most importantly I was building a business that was sustainable.
If your business is generating less than $1m/year then the #1 thing you need to be focused on is how to generate consistent revenue.
Once you have that dialed in then you can experiment with riskier things like live launching, but unless you have money to burn – stick with automation to create a consistent, predictable stream of revenue that you can count on.
I wish I could tell you that when I FIRST made the switch to selling on auto-pilot everything was sunshine and roses, but the truth is I had no clue what I was doing and made loads of expensive mistakes along the way.
Today, I’m sharing 3 mistakes I made (and learned from the hard way) so that YOU don’t have to.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, CEO of Scale With Success®, and I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. I’m sharing revealing insights about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join me here to discover the tough decisions I’ve had to make, the biggest failures I’ve had to bounce back from, and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. I’m so grateful that I have the chance to tell you everything right here on Scale With Success®: The Podcast. Let’s get started.
Alright, today I’m sharing 3 costly mistakes I made when I started selling my course on auto-pilot.
#1 My Offer
The reality is that most course creators (including myself) who make their first attempt to sell their course on auto-pilot don’t understand the subtle tweaks and shifts needed to make their offer “auto-pilot” friendly.
So, first let’s talk about what an offer actually is – because it’s not your course. When I tell you that you need to make changes to your offer if you want it to sell on auto-pilot, I don’t mean that you need to make any changes to your course.
An offer is the transformation that your course provides, it’s the way you articulate the value of your specific method of getting someone from Point A to Point B.
If you have a course that you’ve tried (and failed) to sell on auto-pilot in the past, then you might be thinking to yourself that something is wrong with your course, or your audience – but, chances are neither of those are the real problem.
This can be especially frustrating for course creators because they were told, “launch it live a bunch of times and when that works, just put it on auto-pilot”.
They can’t wrap their heads around why their course sold live, but not in an automated funnel. They start believing that maybe automation just doesn’t work for them, but “automation” isn’t the problem – it’s your offer.
When you are creating an offer (remember I’m not referring exclusively to your course here) you need to make it clear, simple, and if you’re really good – you’ll construct your offer in a way that overcomes sales objections within the offer itself – and that can’t happen if you just try to repurpose what worked live.
So, before you start thinking people don’t want your course, think about the way you’re communicating the value and transformation that it holds. Keep things as clear as possible to reduce buyer confusion and to ensure that your prospects can make a decision that’s right for them.
Which brings me to the second mistake…
#2 My Webinar
Just because you have an automated webinar doesn’t mean it’s going to convert – which took me a LONGGG time to figure out because when I made my first automated webinar I tried to use the same content format that worked in my live webinars and let’s just say, it was a major flop.
I wasn’t considering just how different the sales journey is for a prospect when they’re buying live vs. automation.
I thought, if a webinar converts live – why wouldn’t it convert inside an automated funnel?
Well, here’s why.
Inside automated webinar, your content needs to be so captivating that people will stick around all the way to the end. You need to build curiosity and satisfy that curiosity while building to the next section again and again. AND you need to do it in a way that doesn’t leave your audience confused because remember – you’re not there to answer questions live.
You have to present the information in a way that builds connection with your brand on a deep, identity level while tapping into their deepest desires – I mean you’re describing their desired outcome better than they could.
Whether your course solves problems related to parenting, dating, finance, health, wellness, or even mastering a skill like spreadsheets or watercolors – you need to understand what your audience wants, why they want it, and why your approach to solving their problem is completely different than anything they’ve tried before.
By the time your audience attends your webinar, it’s likely they’ve tried solving their problem before with methods and advice they’ve learned from other experts – people who wrote books, hosted podcasts, or posted content on tiktok. But, despite their previous failed attempts at solving their problem – they haven’t given up and they’re interested now in learning from you.
And if the content you’re sharing in your webinar is not reflective of a deep understanding of your audience, they’re gonna leave, never buy, and move onto the next webinar. Your audience deserves a better sales experience and YOU deserve a higher conversion rate.
The numbers don’t lie and if your webinar is not converting, then the content you’re sharing in it isn’t working.
Which takes me to my next mistake…
#3 My Emotions
I couldn’t figure out WHY people weren’t buying and instead of digging into the data, I let my emotions get the best of me and it felt like I was grasping at straws – trying to fix everything about my funnel EXCEPT the thing that actually needed to be fixed.
I vacillated between tracking every little piece of data in minute detail (to the point where I didn’t even know what I was looking at) and throwing caution to the wind without tracking anything at all.
The worst thing you can do as a course creator making less than $1m/year is waste time solving the wrong problems – and if you’re not tracking the right data – if you don’t understand how to read the data and interpret what the numbers mean, you’re going to waste a ton of time solving the wrong problems.
You don’t redo your webinar, or your emails, or your webinar registration page just because you “know/have a hunch/had a dream last night” that you should change it.
The cool thing about numbers is, if you know how to read them correctly, they’ll tell you exactly what needs to be fixed and then you can use all your creativity and intuition on solving the RIGHT problem.
Honestly, you’ve got really good ideas and you’re way better at this whole “growing a business” thing than you think, but you’re just directing your attention at the wrong spot which just leads to frustration and burnout.
Our clients track all their info in a tidy, data dashboard and we give them benchmarks for everything. So, if a number is too high or too low, then they just look at the decision tree we give them that helps them determine exactly what to fix.
My favorite thing about selling my course on auto-pilot is that there are ample opportunities to make things better. It’s not like launching, where you have to put so much pressure on yourself to get everything perfect for the big launch because you won’t have time to change anything.
Sustainable growth over time is much more conducive to my overall approach to life and I absolutely love growing and scaling my business in the same way.
My hope in sharing these mistakes that I’ve made on my journey is to offer you a different perspective and shed some light on potential problems that you might not be aware of yet.
I appreciate you being here and make sure to tune in next week for another episode of Scale With Success® The Podcast.
Are you sick and tired of launching and looking for a proven method to generate consistent revenue from your online course on auto-pilot?
Sign up for my free masterclass, “How To Generate Launch-Sized Revenue Without Launching” and I’ll show you how our clients are making MORE money in LESS time than they ever did while launching.
If making sales everyday in a way that is completely automated and doesn’t require paid advertising sounds good to you, then click the link around this episode and sign up for my free masterclass today.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale With Success® Accelerator — an online course designed to help you generate launch-sized revenue without lanching. If you want to learn MORE about our proven method for success, click here to watch my free masterclass. See you in there!