The first thing I always tell people is when it comes to creating a profitable evergreen funnel, it’s best to keep things simple to start.
1. Simple to start.
There is a common theme embedded throughout our Scale with Success® program, which is “Simple to start.”
We’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of course creators who have built their own profitable evergreen funnels using our system and the thing we’ve noticed time and time again is that those who follow the plan and keep it simple to start are able to build momentum quickly.
As course creators, we are inundated with advertisements about the latest tip or trick to make something fancy.
A new plug-in, a new tool, a new thing to integrate.
All those new things MIGHT be great…eventually.
The reality is that unless you have 5,000 new people registering for your evergreen webinar each month (which is totally possible to achieve over time), those fancy plug-ins and doo-dads won’t have a big impact.
What they WILL have is tech issues to fix and extra data to track… and if you are the one managing your funnel to start with, you don’t need extra complexity to maintain.
Keeping things simple SOUNDS easy, but it requires a lot of discipline. There will always be a new shiny object competing for your attention and it’s your responsibility to move your attention back to where it needs to be.
You’ll be able to scale much faster if you keep things simple.
Keeping things simple will get you to $50k/mo. After that, THEN you can start tinkering with extras – one at a time – to determine whether or not they add value.
Let me tell you, it took A LOT OF TIME, MONEY, AND EFFORT into creating the system we’ve laid out inside of Scale with Success®. This is the system I wish I had. Sometimes I think about all the extra time I would have saved and profits I would have kept if I had this super simple process to follow. Being an entrepreneur is hard enough as it is…anytime you have the opportunity to follow someone else’s proven plan – do it. You’ll save so much money.
2. The second thing to keep in mind when it comes to creating a profitable evergreen funnel is that you want to make sure that you track what matters.
You’ve probably heard that when it comes to creating a profitable evergreen funnel, DATA is Queen…
…and if you’ve ever run an evergreen funnel, you know that with all that data comes a heavy dose of overwhelm and “what-the-heck-am-i-doing-itis”.
I’ll never forget how overwhelmed I felt when I first looked at the data my funnel was collecting – it was nuts! I knew collecting data was important – but, WHICH data was I supposed to pay attention to? All those numbers and percentages began to blend together into one giant amorphous blob. I had no idea where to start.
One of the best things about running an evergreen funnel is that you are constantly gathering data…but, WHICH of that data should you actually pay attention to?
When people join Scale with Success®, some have tried running evergreen funnels in the past, but they were tracking WAYYYY too much data. They didn’t have a roadmap that showed them exactly what to track. Some of them were trying to track their data the same way they would during a live launch – which of course didn’t work at all.
Tracking the wrong data led to them spending precious time and energy on optimizing the wrong things.
They became so burnt out and overwhelmed at trying to do it themselves that they finally made the smart decision to join Scale with Success®, where we lay out exactly what to track.
Doing this allows you to see where the BIGGEST opportunities are for you to increase profit. You can see it clearly, because we’ve laid it all out for you.
We give you the specific benchmarks that you can use as a starting point to determine what to optimize first.
If your KPI chart is so complex that YOU are the only one who can understand it, then how in the world are you going to scale a team over time to run it for you?
Simple is profitable. Tracking what matters is profitable.
You know what else is profitable?
3. Making decisions based on data.
Let me first just say that if you ever find yourself making emotional decisions in your business – I totally hear you.
We humans are emotional creatures – which is great!! But, when it comes to scaling a profitable evergreen funnel, you need to make decisions based on data, NOT emotions.
On Instagram the other day I shared that “Data is the friend that won’t let you make emotional decisions,” and many of you said that statement REALLY hit home.
Kristina commented, “numbers don’t lie – they tell us what works and when to adapt.”
Lydia shared, “Yes! Let the science make the calls, not the negative emotions.”
So, you might be thinking to yourself, what does an “emotional” decision look like when it comes to evergreen funnels.
Well, emotional decisions will look differently for everyone, but here are some fairly common ones:
#1: “I didn’t get any sales this week, so I guess that means my audience HATES webinars and will never buy!! I better go back to running live challenges.”
#2: ”I didn’t get any sales this week, so I guess that means that my market is tapped out and there’s NO ONE left to sell to…I better create a NEW course!!”
#3: ”I didn’t get any sales this week, so I guess that means that my webinar doesn’t work and I need to create a brand new one completely from scratch!!”
Are you sensing a pattern here?
Something happened: no sales over a one week period
…and emotions took over to assign a completely random meaning.
Do you have any data to back up that meaning? “No, Caitlin. But, I can feel it in my gut.”
Uh, no.
What you feel is fear. Fear that this will never work and that success isn’t possible for you.
And just look at the big projects this person is letting their emotions dictate: creating a completely new course, creating a completely new webinar, ditching webinars altogether and going back to live launching!
All those things cost you a tremendous amount of time and money that you could be making if you looked at the DATA and just made a few simple tweaks.
Inside Scale with Success® we give you the tools to track your own data and we teach you exactly HOW to interpret it so that you can make decisions that will increase profits.
But, making decisions based on data doesn’t come naturally to most.
Again, we’re human – not robots – and we’re EMOTIONAL creatures. Trusting your gut IS a good thing in most cases, but when it comes to funnels, the answers are in the data – not your tummy.
Once you understand which data to track and you understand what each piece of data is telling you, it’s VERY simple to make a decision about what needs to be improved.
But, that simplicity can sometimes conflict with a pre-existing belief that success NEEDS to be complicated and PAINFUL and HARD.
Now, I’m not going to tell you that scaling a business doesn’t require hard work, but I will tell you that there is a good chance that you are making it a lot harder than it needs to be…not because you aren’t capable, but because you’re human.
I consider myself to be a VERY intuitive person who makes lots of decisions based on emotions and what feels right, but even I ONLY look at the data when it comes to my funnel. It’s simple and it works.
So, if you’re not in my free Facebook group already, I’d love to see you in there and hear what resonated THE MOST with you about all this data discussion. It’s called The Successful Course Creator and I’d love to see you in there.
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!
