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Courage & Clarity
194: Lowest Launch Ever to Best in 5 Years: 3 Surprising Changes that Helped Melinda Smash Her Enrollment
00:55:21
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- [00:00]
A
Okay, let me guess. You fall into one of these two camps. The first camp is you want to earn $100,000 in a single year for the first time. Or you're in the second camp where you've already made six figures in a year before and now you want to learn how to make a hundred K or more in a single launch. And you don't want to just do it once, you want to do it every single time. Whether you're in Camp 1 or Camp 2. I want to invite you to a brand new training that I have cooked up and it's called 100k group programs. We are going over the 12 month blueprint I have for you where you're going to learn how to start, sell out and scale your group program. Whether you are making your First a hundred K or you're scaling to 2,50, even 500K, you need to know where you are on this map and exactly what strategies you need right now to get to the next milestone. This training is brand new, totally free, and it's happening on July 8th at noon Eastern time. If you want to get signed up, go ahead over to stephcrowder.com workshop and I cannot wait to see you there. Let's go to the show. Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes, just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello, CNC listeners. Welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to be joined today by a very special guest. She is not new to the podcast, but it's been a little while since we've had Melinda Nelson Hurst in the house. Melinda, welcome to the show.
- [02:15]
B
Thanks so much for having me, Steph. I'm happy to be back.
- [02:18]
A
Yeah, so if you are a longtime Courage and Clarity listener, you've heard Melinda at least two other times, maybe more.
- [02:25]
B
Right?
- [02:26]
A
Two other times. Maybe. This is number three. Okay, cool. And we're super excited to have you back, Melinda. Before we get into today's episode which is going to be, let me just quickly say for our listeners, if you like, a brass tacks episode that really gets into what's working now with launches with strategy, this is going to be your type of episode. Melinda has had a really spoiler alert, successful and interesting launch of her foundational program, which she's going to tell us about in a moment. And there have been Melinda and I have worked together for a long time with her as my client. And I've seen Melinda go through a lot of different seasons with her offers and we did a lot of good work, deep work on her offer before this launch. So we are really going to hone in today on the exact things that we changed, why we changed them, and and why we think those changes led to the results that they did. So I'm super excited to unpack all of this. But before we do, Melinda, please remind people, or if it's their first time listening, who are you, what's your business and what do you offer?
- [03:33]
B
I'm Melinda Nelsonhurst. I am an Egyptologist by trade. I have a PhD in Egyptology. For those who don't know, Egyptology is the academic study of ancient Egypt. And I run two different programs that help people who love ancient Egypt fulfill their dream of reading hieroglyphs for themselves.
- [03:53]
A
It's so good. And you know, I love having all different clients with different niches and topics on the podcast. But it's always fun having a topic that sometimes I think it's tempting for people to have the thought like, oh, well, that's great stuff that will work for you or other business coaches because you can talk about ROI and financial, like getting money back if they invest. When we talk about subject so such as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and learning how to read hieroglyphs, you and I have had lots of conversations over the years about how this is not a necessarily, necessarily like a do or die for people. Right? This is not a topic that is going to give them money back, so to speak. Although we certainly that's maybe part of what we'll talk about today. We've come up with ways to create urgency and to make an offer like this feel really important for the right people. But I just always like to point out that the strategies that we talk about with selling and launching here on this podcast work across so many different kinds of niches. You don't have to be a business coach or somebody selling something with a result that like some people out there are like, yeah, but my topic is more of a hobby or more of an art. And I hope that this episode can be of special interest and inspiration for those of you who have that concern, because Melinda's results will definitely blow you away. So we are going to kind of just start out by talking about this recent launch of. Well, first of all, Melinda, tell us about the offer itself. So like you mentioned, you have two different offers, but what was this offer? Tell us a little bit about it and then we'll kind of get into what happened.
- [05:33]
B
This is my offer that I call Scribal School. It's a foundational program for people who are getting started with hieroglyphs. So it takes them from knowing nothing or maybe they might have done a little bit of self study, up to being able to read the most common things that they're really going to see when they go to a museum or when they go on a trip to Egypt. So it's really kind of like the dream stuff most people think of that isn't actually typically taught in other courses or in books either.
- [06:04]
A
And this is really your offer for, like I said, it's your foundational offer. It's your most beginner friendly offer. It's the place for people to start if they're like, I want to be kind of at like, I just want to start learning how to read hieroglyphs. This is kind of like ground zero for people as far as your offers. And then you have another offer that is more intensive and really helps people with like an accelerated study path. But Scribal School has been around for. How long has Scribble school been around?
- [06:31]
B
Five years now, almost. I launched it in July of 2021.
- [06:36]
A
Gotcha. And how many, how many clients have you had roughly go through Scribal School before this launch?
- [06:43]
B
Before this launch? I, I don't have an exact number, but I believe it was maybe just a little short of 200.
- [06:49]
A
Okay, cool. So I'm asking about that because I, you know, some sometimes here on the podcast we talk about new offers and launching new offers and coming up with new groups and that that's really great. Other times, though, there are other types of situations where we have an offer that has worked really well in the past. Right. Like I said, Melinda and I have been working together for a long time. She's had some really, really strong sales windows, AKA launches of Scribal School. However, recently things had sort of slowed down. We've had a little bit of a tougher time in the most recent launches before this one that we're going to talk about. Today, and we're having a really honest conversation about this, because I know there are people out there who are feeling this themselves. I hear it from people all the time who are like, I have a group program or I have a course. It used to do really well. I. Some people even say I didn't even have to try that hard, and it sold the way I wanted it to. And then maybe in recent years, recent months, it's been declining or I'm not seeing the results that I used to see. So tell us how that has played out for you in recent launches before this one. What has happened?
- [07:59]
B
I would say I probably did kind of have an experience similar to what you're saying about some people saying they didn't have to try that hard. I certainly felt like I was trying hard at the time. And now, in comparison, when I think about the stuff that I've done in the last two years and was getting fewer sales than compared to the things I was doing in prior years and getting more sales, it does feel like kind of like, you know, there wasn't that much involved. My very first launch was in 2021, so still, you know, we're still kind of riding the wave of the pandemic and people doing more online learning and so forth. And that launch was just bonkers. Like, didn't ever expect it to be as big as it was. And for a few years after that, for two, three years after that, I oftentimes, honestly was a bit disorganized. And so sometimes I would just do, like, a really quick launch with not a lot going on, and I'd get a small group of people, and it was like, you know, not huge like that first one, but it was small amount of effort for still a decent number of people. Right. And then I started sort of getting more serious about launch strategies, really, probably in 2023. And that was working pretty well. And then. But then it was like, stuff kind of started to go down, not dramatically, like, from one launch to another, like, huge change, but it was like each launch there were fewer people, a little bit fewer and a little bit fewer and a little bit fewer. And so, like, the last launch I had done before this one was in November of 2025. And that was like, the lowest enrollment I'd ever had in an official launch period where I actually had, like, a launch event and so forth, because some of these little ones, like I said before, it was like I basically just threw a few emails out there, right? You know, kind of thing. It wasn't really a Full thing. This was like, you know, pretty much full launch with the webinar and bunch of emails, and I wasn't as present on social, maybe for that one as I sometimes am, but still pretty. Pretty full launch. And so that was, you know, kind of, I guess you could say a low point in terms of that. And so, yeah, like you were saying earlier, we worked on a lot of things this time around to try to improve where things were going. And, you know, as a spoiler that Steph shared was, it really did turn around. I did more than double of the last launch this time. So it is actually the largest number of people I've brought in in a launch since that very first one five years ago.
- [10:41]
A
Best results in five years. And I, you know, just to kind of my recollection of the launch that you did in November, as you all can imagine, if you've ever been in a situation like this, as is natural, there was a lot of disappointment.
- [10:54]
B
Right.
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A
It was definitely, like, kind of a letdown. And that can feel very destabilizing. And, you know, it creates a lot of hesitation about the future, right. When you have a launch where you're like, what the heck? This used to go gangbusters. I'm kind of doing the same things, following the same roadmap, and it's not yielding the results that, you know, that I would like or that I've seen in the past. Once you got past that initial disappointment or kind of sat with that initial disappointment, how did you. Because I really think you did a great job of rolling up your sleeves to do the work that was required to kind of troubleshoot some of the things and optimize some of the things we're going to talk about today. But not everybody would be up for that, so. And you've also had a lot going on. There's been a, like a move, like moving house. You've had a lot of, you know, personal life stuff, of course, as tends to happen when we're launching. I don't know why that's a thing, but it just seems to be so. You've had a lot going on in the background around, but have also been, like, up for the challenge of figuring this out. How did you get there?
- [11:56]
B
That's a good question. I mean, a lot of that honestly has to do with having coaching. So working with you helps a lot because otherwise I probably spend a lot of the time just kind of stuck in my own head with, like, oh, what went wrong? And what can I do? But. But I've already done Everything, like, how could I change this? You know, because, yeah, it does feel like when you're like, but I did all the parts, right? Yeah, like, kind of thing. It's so it's like, it's a little easier if you. I did. To be fair, I did take a little bit of shortcuts with that last one because I was in the middle of the move that you were talking about. Right. Yeah, but. But it was still con. Like, consistent with the general trend of how things were going down too. And I had actually brought in more. More new people that launch too, and it still was a lower launch than, like, previous ones.
- [12:45]
A
So.
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B
Yeah, it can be easier sometimes to be like, well, you know, I just sent a few emails, so of course I didn't get as many people. And it's like, not be a big deal, but when you feel like you've done all the parts, you know, and then it still goes that way, you're like, well, what, What. What could I even do differently? You kind of feel like you've already done everything in a way. Yeah. So I definitely had some feelings around that. But at the same time, I. I guess, you know, because we have been working together for a long time, I've gotten pretty good at just sort of coming to you and being like, okay, what do we do? What do we. What do we do? Yeah, what do we do? Like, what should we be working on? Like, what do we change? And we often talk about, like, not wanting to change, like, too many things at once, but, like, let's pick one or two major things to change. I think in this case, we actually kind of broke our rule on that one. It was kind of. I feel like we did sort of more like a number of smaller changes instead of kind of one or two big ones this time, but it definitely paid off in this case.
- [13:48]
A
Yes. Yeah. So that's one thing, too, that I think is worth pointing out is so for clients like Melinda, who are in my mastermind sold out group programs, I have a process for helping you all debrief your launches. I always recommend, and I'm kind of a stickler for this, to go through a debrief process and send us the debrief so we can really take a look at, like, what the heck happened. I'm always saying it's kind of a joke, but it's also true. Like, I never run out of ideas for clients. So there's always, like, to me, I've. I've really never in all the time that I've worked with clients Been like, I've never looked at a launch debrief and been like, well, there's nothing for us to do here, right? So we were able to look at that November launch and say, okay, I think this is what happened. I think here's what we need to change. And so then coming into this launch, we were able to do a lot of good work. And to your point, it was not, like, sweeping changes, but it was, like, targeted, really intentional changes across a variety of places, which we're going to kind of get into now, because I know that's probably a burning question for people listening is like, what did she change? So I promise we're going to talk about that. I have this kind of broken into three main categories as I've really been thinking about Melinda's launch. And again, like, doubling that enrollment. And we're going to talk about some of the specific things that happened that were so exciting during this launch. But just to start breaking it down, the first section I want to talk about is lead generation. So when we were unpacking some of your recent launches, I know you said in your last launch you did have some new people, but I think we agreed that it was really time to put even more effort and intention into lead generation. And when I say lead generation, what I really mean, just so we're all on the same page, is intentionally bringing in fresh eyeballs, right? Lead generation is definitely the place across pretty much all businesses, including my own. Lead generation is very easily neglected. It's kind of the thing that gets pushed to the back burner because we're selling and we're serving clients. And it can be a real challenge to make sure that we have enough fresh faces and enough new eyeballs and enough excitement in between our launches to create the results that we want the next time we go go to market, so to speak. And I think for someone like Melinda, who has such a specific niche, we have kind of joked in the past that you have been a little bit of a unicorn in terms of your results. You have been able to sort of, I don't want to say like, ride the wave of your niche, but there's been a little bit of that where you have some, like, for example, some early YouTube videos that you made years ago that have continued to get views. And this is why we love content, because it can continue to bring in new people. But I'd love for us to kind of touch on some of the things you did in this launch that were different between November and now from a lead generation perspective that you think made a difference?
- [16:44]
B
Absolutely. No, I think it is fair to say that I was kind of riding the wave of my previous YouTube videos, actually, which is great, because that used to be where I got the vast majority of people who came onto my email list. And I was regularly getting people every single day, even when I wasn't putting out new videos. So. And that's sort of. I think part of what changed over the last couple of years is for anybody who's on YouTube, you know, like, in general, views have gone down across the board, really, for people on YouTube over the last two, three years. And so I was still getting people from there, but it had slowed down a lot. And so. And. And I still, of course, get some people been on my list for four years or something like that who sign up sometimes, too. But like you said, I wasn't bringing in as many new people for a while. So we did talk about last year that being an issue. I started experimenting last year with ads. So I did some ads to my webinar last June that. That was the very first time. So they didn't. I kind of messed them up, and it wasn't, like, the best thing at the time, but I did get some new people come in, and then in November, I knew what I was doing a little better that time, so I did have a pretty big influx of people onto my email list, and a couple of those people did end up buying my program. But, you know, it was still. Like I said, the numbers were not quite what I would have probably expected for that. So a couple of things we did really differently this time. Well, one of the. I did run ads again, and I made sure to get out ahead of it, start them even a little bit earlier than before. And. But even before that, I started a new podcast at the beginning of February.
- [18:28]
A
Huge, my friends.
- [18:29]
B
So. And I know if you've been listening to Steph for any time, you know, she gets everybody to start a podcast.
- [18:34]
A
That's the joke of the mastermind. You get a podcast and you get a podcast. I'm like, have you. Have you thought about a podcast? But, Melinda, you've worked with me since, What, I don't know, 2018 or something.
- [18:42]
B
Yeah. And you have. You.
- [18:43]
A
You've not never had a podcast.
- [18:45]
B
Yeah, yeah. No. And that was largely because I'd had the YouTube channel.
- [18:49]
A
Right.
- [18:49]
B
But the reality was that it got. It got really difficult to try to keep up with video production. Yeah. Even when doing it, you know, fairly simply. And so really, that had fallen off. And that's you know, part of what had happened with lead generation, I just wasn't putting content out very much. You know, occasional social media. I was doing the thing you've talked about a lot of times where I was not purposefully, but, you know, accidentally just kind of like ghosting in between lunches, not posting on social, oftentimes, not even emailing in between. I had been better about that in the past. So those are things that, like, are kind of on me that, you know, changed. And so those are all things that I worked on and having the podcast. And I think even though it can feel really difficult to add something in having that regular schedule of it of like, I got to do this every week and of course, throughout the course of a year, you're going to have maybe a couple weeks you miss or something, but for the most part you're doing that weekly schedule. You know, it ensures that you're putting something out at least. Right. And that, and that's pretty easily then repurposed for email and social, if nothing else. I mean, ideally you're doing other things too, but at a bare minimum. Right, yep, that's going on. And so that was helpful to get that started. And I had that going for a launch of my higher level program at the beginning of the year. And so I think in a way that even though I was talking about a different program, that may have also helped in terms of for people who were listening already and who were on my list already getting to hear the podcast and hearing I had a bunch of my students on to talk about their experience, most of whom who had gone through my foundational program before going into the deeper one. Right. So that was already kind of laying some groundwork before I ever got to launch. And then through starting the podcast, I got an offer to be on another podcast in my niche. I'm pretty sure it's the biggest one out there actually, so I did not expect that. But it happened. And I did that interview back in February, but it didn't come out until actually right before I started this launch. And so I didn't even have a choice in that timing. It just happened that way. Um, but that worked out pretty well in terms of I didn't necessarily get a huge influx of people on my email list, but I did get definitely a lot more downloads on the podcast. And some people came over to my email list because I know that there's at least. It's hard to track, of course, who came from the podcast or whatever, but I'm pretty sure that at least A few of the new people in Scribble School came from that podcast directly, just judging from, like, dates of when they joined my list and, like, based on when that episode came out and, you know, all of that. So I think that really helped a lot also with lead generation and because it was somebody who's really well followed in my niche, of course, helps with authority and all of those things as well. Yeah, yeah.
- [21:55]
A
So good. And you had posted, we have, like, a Wins and Celebrations channel inside the Mastermind, and you. You had just been posting these kind of screenshots of the downloads that you'd been getting and seemed pleasantly surprised. I think sometimes when we start podcasts, I see this with a lot of clients. They're like, who's going to listen to this thing? And it can just be so exciting to start to see those downloads really racking up and people really are listening and paying attention. It can be such a helpful and important key to not just a launch, certainly a launch, but also to ongoing sales strategies. We have clients in the Mastermind who've started a podcast with us, and they'll be like, they'll come into our Wins and Celebrations channel and be like, oh, my gosh, I got my first client who, like, referenced verbally the podcast as, like, where they found me. And so, you know, there is the joke, like I said, if I'm always telling everybody to start a podcast. But it's just to your point of video production, I think YouTube is great, especially for something so visual, like hieroglyphs, but there is this whole other dimension of having to be on video and having to do the editing. So as far as, like, a quick start and having something that you can produce for under a hundred dollars upfront cost and around an hour a week, once you're following the right process, it's just such a great way to, like, we're talking about lead generation right now. And I think it's so cool that you didn't know that by starting this podcast, it would land you this opportunity on another big show that helped drive even more traffic. Super cool.
- [23:21]
B
Yeah, it's been amazing. I've had, you know, as of recording this, we're recording in late May, and I started the podcast in early February, and I have over 6,000 downloads.
- [23:31]
A
Yeah. And really think about that. Right? Like, six, six thousand individual folks listening to episodes. Right. Like, that's just. It's staggering. It's such an amazing way to, like you said, build that authority. Like, I've been podcasting for a decade or more, and I just never ceases to amaze me that I can just like turn this thing on and start yapping about things I think are interesting and people will come. So I'm super glad you did that. So that was kind of our lead generation section. Three big things we did. There were ads, which by the way, quick plug for my good friend Claire Pels, Absolute Facebook ads is the program I recommend. And the program that Melinda took to get those ads going doesn't have to be complicated. She teaches it in a very approachable way. And just to make sure we're really specific about what she did with ads. It was ads what you did, Melinda. It was ads that you drove to the webinar specifically, correct?
- [24:20]
B
Yeah, for the most part. One thing I did this time that's a little different and may not be the most efficient use of ad spend, but I wanted to do something that would get eyeballs on my content, my organic content as well. That was quick and. Cause I just was trying to be as visible as possible with the time I had, you know. And so I did actually use like the boost post thing on Instagram a few times for certain posts. And so that's something I did. In addition, it's smaller spend there than I had on like the webinar ads that were, you know, created within the ad manager and all that type of stuff in the back end. So. And I, because of the nature of that type of ad, it's like I can't really tell who converted from that, but I do think probably just having that stuff pop up in front of people again who've seen this stuff before and things like that helped in terms of reminding people, like, here's the fast action bonus and you know, this program's open, it's closing soon, and you know, those types of things. There were certain ones that I strategically had boosted, and I actually boosted a little bit of stuff about the podcast before the launch as well, just to kind of like get that in front of eyeballs. And got some people downloading the podcast from that too. Just, you know, small budget stuff. Nothing, nothing huge on those ones. But that was sort of like my. My what I want to say, like my bare bones version of sort of retargeting, I guess you could say.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure, like, you know, the boost button kind of gets a bad rap. But I'm pretty sure Claire, our good friend Claire Pels would say that strategic boosting can be great. So I think that you can see it exactly that way as a. As a Bit of retargeting. So I think that's. That's super smart. Okay, so that was our lead generation piece. I really want to go to. This next one was a pretty big one. Again, I want to emphasize we didn't make sweeping changes, but I think the changes that we made in this section were like, really moved the needle. And that is, I would put these ones in the category of messaging. Okay, so we have lead generation. You know, if we're thinking about increasing sales in a launch or otherwise, there's. The levers that we can pull are increasing traffic, which is what we just talked about with lead generation, or. And. Or increasing conversions. And conversions, of course, are, you know, the number of people who. It doesn't even matter how many people come. That's the traffic side. But of the people who come and are paying attention, how many of them actually say yes and buy? And the way that we influence conversion, there's quite a few ways, but one of the main ways is with messaging and positioning and how we're talking about things. Right. So let's talk about the messaging side of things. I have some notes here, and we can go through each of these, but we did some just to kind of like keep us on track. We did work specifically around your webinar. We made some strategic tweaks on your sales page that we can talk about and also your emails. So we did some new email topics. We also made sure the podcast episodes made sense with, you know, in the overall ecosystem of the launch itself and played nicely with the emails. So we had the, you know, podcast strategy happening as well. So from your perspective, Melinda, what do you think you did on, like, specifically that you'd like to share on the messaging side? That feels like it moved the needle for you in this launch?
- [27:40]
B
I think it was all three of those that you mentioned. So for the webinar itself, we only changed one section, really. Or I mean, maybe you could count it as two, but a small portion. Yeah. And honestly, it was a part that I had been feeling for a while. I. Because I had done this, the rest of this had. I had used maybe twice now.
- [28:03]
A
And the other thing is, you didn't even do like a brand new webinar for this. Right.
- [28:07]
B
It wasn't brand new. Yeah. But we made a specific change about one part of it that I had felt for a while. Like, I'm not sure this part that we had before really fit well. And I was. And because we kind of went into this launch saying, okay, we're not going to change the webinar. Let's change this other stuff instead. And then I came to you and I said, you know what? I was thinking about this section. And you looked at it and you said basically almost the same thing. That like kind of what I was thinking. Yeah. And the direction to go with with it. So we were really on the same page with what to focus on for that section that was different. And I just, for me, I felt like it was going to be a much better fit for my people in terms of them understanding that the reason that they haven't been able to learn hieroglyphs before was not because there's a problem with them. Yeah. But that there's a problem with how it's taught. And I talk about this all over. I feel like I'm super repetitive, of course, but, but people need to hear it because I think in. And this probably happens in plenty of other areas too, I'm sure. You know, I imagine anybody who deals with like health related stuff or you know, weight or any of those, I'm sure that that's like even more ripe with the, like, something's wrong with me kind of, you know, feeling right. But I, I know in my field, like even people who go to get PhDs and professional think there's something wrong with themselves too because it's so hard when you're learning the language. And like, yeah, if you get a PhD, eventually you make it work somehow. But it's like it does not come easily other than, I mean, maybe there's like a point 0.1% of people who try it who are just like, it just clicks for some reason. But vast, vast majority of humans out there does not work that way with
- [29:54]
A
the way it's usually taught.
- [29:55]
B
And so that was kind of the shift we made that. And it, it felt much more comfortable for me as well. And not that comfort's always a good thing. Of course we want to stretch ourselves. But I mean, it felt, it just felt right. You know what I mean? In terms of like, I felt like this is really, this really is the problem. And this is really what they're gonna realize is the problem. They're gonna resonate with us and understand that this is, it's not them, that they can't do it.
- [30:22]
A
You know, it's at this.
- [30:23]
B
So that was like the thing that we changed because we'd had a little bit of a different approach previously. And I, you know, I think that that really resonated with people to understand that, you know, it's possible. Right. Because that's one of the big things we're doing. We'd want people to understand that there's really this dream they have really is possible. Right.
- [30:44]
A
That's. If I can just jump in there for a second. That's really the main work that we do on launch events, sales events such as webinars that I would say I spend, like, the majority of my time with my clients working on. On their webinars is. It's a bit of a misnomer or a miss, you know, a myth that. Or a mistake, really, that we should be doing webinars that are really aimed heavily at transferring knowledge in the selling relationship. Right. Really, it's what Melinda just said where it's about creating possibility for people where they've all but given up. Right. There's not really much possibility because they've tried, in her case, they've tried the textbooks, they've tried the archaic classes, and nothing has helped them. So they conclude, I can't do this. So it doesn't matter how much you want to teach them about hieroglyphs, for example. It's not going to do anything to move them towards saying yes in a selling environment if they don't believe that they are actually going to be able to get the transformation that this matters to them. So it's the work of something like a webinar to actually crack what I call the window of possibility open. And so the part that Melinda and I changed in her webinar was really, really critical. I call it the heart of the webinar. It is the pivotal moment where a mindset shift is made that makes somebody realize, oh, I kind of falsely concluded I couldn't do this based on X, Y, Z evidence, when what she's telling me is, I just haven't tried this thing over here. And we name what that is. Right. And then that does get people thinking, maybe it would be different if I tried it that way. And if you get people into that headspace of, oh, I thought I tried everything, but this sounds like something new. Now they're listening. Now they're open to taking another step. So nailing that part of your webinar. And when you were just talking just now and you said you felt more comfortable with it, I think another way of saying that is I think it really rang true for you. I think it felt like sometimes they call it a mic drop moment. You want to make it feel like, oh, that's a zinger.
- [32:51]
B
Right.
- [32:51]
A
And I think we got to that point place. And so I cannot overemphasize how important this heart of a webinar is sometimes. Often I'll have clients come into the mastermind with a pre existing webinar. We change just this one part and I swear it's responsible for doubling their results. So I know it sounds like a small thing. It's no small thing. It's the crux of sales psychology. So I do think this was a big part of the puzzle for you.
- [33:15]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Because I got, like I said, it's just, it's such a major problem. And I hit on this in the podcast in multiple places and in emails too. I mean, I couldn't even tell you how many emails I have where I mentioned things about it not being them. But it's the method, right? So it's kind of like. And like I said to me, I of course think I'm like, this is boring because I'm saying it over and over again and stuff, but I think people really do need to hear it because we convince ourselves that we're the problem.
- [33:45]
A
Totally.
- [33:45]
B
You know, and so that's one of the things I did really try to really instill in them and push this time. Because I mean, and even if they don't work with me, if they walk away understanding that it's not that they're broken or something, or like they're not good at this or, you know, there's something wrong with their brain or whatever it is they might be thinking, I mean, that's a win in of itself, right? For them to understand that they actually are capable. And it's not because there's like something wrong with them that, you know, they gave up on that book before or something like that. So, you know, and that's part of why I think that I use the word comfort, right? Because I feel like it just, it's like regardless of where they go, of course I want. I would absolutely love to have them in scrapbook school. Right. But regardless of where they go from there, I feel like that's. That's done them a service.
- [34:37]
A
Right, Absolutely.
- [34:38]
B
You know, in there in terms of them understanding that, like I said, I mean, now I feel like I'm saying it 10 million times, but it's, you know, the problem isn't that, oh, it's so good.
- [34:48]
A
This is such a good point. And I'm so, I. I think you've articulated it really well. This can be. This is one of the biggest, like, mental shifts that my clients have to make where when we're talking about webinars, they're so used to over teaching and teaching a lot. And they'll come to me and be like. And it's. It can be hard for me to describe because it's like, I never wanted to come across, like, don't, don't teach.
- [35:12]
B
Don't.
- [35:13]
A
Don't teach people valuable things. Like, keep that to yourself. It's not coming from a place of, like, scarcity. Like, I'm gonna withhold. It's not a withholding. But sometimes clients will be like, well, if I'm not focusing my webinar on teaching, like, you didn't teach hieroglyphs in this webinar, which might be surprising for people, right? You didn't teach hieroglyphs. So sometimes clients will be like, if I'm not doing that, then like, I'm not actually providing value. Or the word you used was service. I'm not doing them a service. But it is actually an incredible. It's incredibly valuable to walk away with possibility, to walk away with hope, with a renewed sense of, like, gosh, like, for something like hieroglyphs. Like, some of these people, as you've educated me, Melinda, have been interested in Egypt since they were children, right? For decades. And they've let themselves just be like, I'm, you know, I need to grow up and I'm not going to get to go to Egypt. I'm not gonna get to learn this language. Like, it's. I need to move on with my life, right? If they can walk away from this training with the renewed sense of, like, maybe I shouldn't give up on this thing that I'm interested in. There is so much value. So I just want everybody out there to really think about that, that there is incredible value in learning how to empower people to believe in a new result, to believe in a new possibility, and to believe in themselves. I know I'm taking a minute to go on about this, but it's really important. I was coaching some clients yesterday about what I'm considering or calling, like, the belief recession, right? We are in a moment where a lot of people aren't believing in themselves and in their ability to as much as they once were. And I think some of that may. My theories are. Some of that may have to do with you mentioned, like, the post pandemic kind of crush where people bought a lot of courses and people, you know, were at home, like, over maybe over investing or over buying. And I think we all have a graveyard of crap. We've bought that sitting on our hard drive. And that makes us feel badly and we're like, I'm never doing that again. I bought that thing. I bought that ukulele class, and I said I was going to do it,
- [37:17]
B
and I didn't do it.
- [37:18]
A
So I'm never doing that again because that felt bad. So we have this moment in time where people are like, hey, I'm sure your stuff is great. You're a professor. I'm sure you're awesome. Meanwhile, like, a lot of experts are trying to prove how smart they are. That's never gonna work. When the real problem is that somebody doesn't believe in their own ability, they're like, you can be as smart as you want, professor, but if I am somebody who can't do it, it doesn't matter. So just a moment on the importance of really opening up that window of possibility. And I think that that's, again, something that can really make all difference.
- [37:53]
B
Absolutely. And I think we kind of hit a similar thing in a way with some of the podcast episodes and emails too, because like I said, I not only mentioned that in multiple ones, but of course, I had a couple of my scribal school students on the podcast who talked about their experiences, you know, and from different backgrounds. One was retired and had been in an accident and stuff and worked on. Another one is, you know, more in the middle of his intense career and family and only has a very small amount of time to put in. So, you know, again, those stories help people see that not just that they're mentally capable, but that they can do this with, like, a real life kind of situation, too. Because a lot of times, of course, people think like, yeah, I could do it if I had more time.
- [38:42]
A
Right.
- [38:42]
B
Or I could do it if I was younger, or I could do it if, you know, whatever insert situation.
- [38:50]
A
Right.
- [38:50]
B
Yeah, right. And so the. Just like you're doing with me here now, you know, the interviews are always helpful because people can see themselves in these kinds of situations. And we also picked some strategic topics for the. For the podcast leading up to the webinar, and then once the cart was open in terms of that as well as for the emails. And we didn't, again, with the emails, we didn't completely overhaul, like.
- [39:19]
A
Right.
- [39:19]
B
Just like with the webinar, but strategically replace stuff. So some of my emails, a good portion of my emails were ones I had sent before, but I just tweaked, updated a little bit. And then. And I'm trying to think what the proportion might have been. I'm not sure exactly, like maybe 20 to 30%, maybe 30% or something like that were new. And we worked a lot going back and forth with like, well, what should I, you know, put here? And like what sort of the angle we're going for on this one? And like the where does it fit? Well, timing wise and all of that. And so we did that with. And one of the aims we had that you suggested from the start was Boulder messaging. So we went for Boulder, which I, you know, is not, I would say how I'm naturally inclined necessarily to be and also probably have been conditioned, particularly in academia. We like, we both do hedge everything, at least in my field. I know in some fields it might be different, but in my field because you know, everything we work with is incomplete evidence, right that we tend to be very cautious about what we say, you know, about things. And so that's sort of my default mode when I do things. So we worked on that. And then for the sales page like you mentioned, again, we only changed part of it. I've been using basically a version of this sales page since I first launched this program five years ago.
- [40:48]
A
Five years ago, folks still using the same sales page.
- [40:51]
B
But I mean I've made improvements of course over time and I almost every launch asked you, you know, what could I fix here, you know, what would be better kind of thing. And sometimes I make all those changes, sometimes I don't get up to all of them, you know, depends on the launch. But this time I spent some time with that and I did make all the updates that we talked about and had you review those. And so, you know, in terms of what we changed, one was being just much clearer in the description of what we call like a guided study plan. So yes, Bible school tends to be more, it's really more of a self paced program. There is support in a private Facebook group and so forth, but most of the time it's like a self paced kind of thing. But once a year I offer a guided study plan which is like a, you could think of it as like a guided track where we kind of work together following a schedule of like we're doing this module this week, this one, and I have some calls that are sort of like a bonus thing that comes in at that time. So I've been offering this forever but. And people used to jump in and seem to understand what it was, but it seemed like lately it wasn't making any real difference in terms of when I had a launch with a guided study plan versus when I didn't. And so you know, we had talked about that maybe the messaging is just not clear enough about like, what is this? Like, why should they jump in now because of this. So we got like, like very literal, like descriptive of like here's what you're gonna do. The steps of like, you're gonna watch a lesson, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, you're gonna get your questions, you're gonna submit your questions, you're gonna, you know, so part of it was just simply like making bullet points and saying this is exactly what's gonna happen. And here. And then having a visual of the, the. Which I've had this visual map of how we go through this since like the beginning of the program. But I had never put it publicly like on the sales page. I'd only ever shared this like within the program.
- [42:47]
A
Right.
- [42:48]
B
So this was a very different thing to do, I guess you could say, because my in general, like you mentioned ancient Egypt and hieroglyphs is very visual and my people tend to be very visual, as am I. So you know, my sales page is very visual in terms of showing a lot of the text they're going to be able to read and that sort of thing. But this, I think having the roadmap just like here, week one we're doing this, week two, we're doing this. I mean and like, you know, and all of that and just in very simple like one little brief line and a little picture, you know, for each one on like a little roadmap that you know, came from Canva. And I put in the images and all that. I, I think stuff like that can really help with them picturing like, oh, this is what I'm going to do. Even though they can see the text in other places on the page, like really seeing it laid out of like, you know, in 10 weeks this is, we're going to do all of this. You know, they get a year of access and sometimes some people love that. They're like, great, because I don't have a lot of time, I'm going to, you know, spread it out. And other people are like a year, I don't want to spend a year on this. Right. So it kind of like they get satisfies both in terms of they have that year if they want to take longer. Right. And but for people who want to go faster and they want to do it in sync with others, they've got this 10 week track, right. That they can follow. So we did that and then we added a little bit about why, you know, why sign up for this program. And work with me versus others. So kind of like the this is for you if kind of section, but a little bit of a different take on it, you know, because you see those on a lot of sales pages, and a lot of it, a lot of times they're super generic. Like, this is for you if you're ready to finally learn this and.
- [44:26]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [44:26]
B
You know, and it's not for you if, you know, you're not really fully ready to do this, or you. You don't want to put in any time or. You know what I mean? Like, they can be kind of generic. And so when we first started talking about it, I was like, how do I do this? So it's not just like, sound like everybody else's sales page.
- [44:41]
A
Right, right.
- [44:43]
B
So we got in. So it's basically instead of that type of thing, it's more of a short narrative of, like, why sign up for this one? And with me. And it's because it's the only program, you know, that does this in this way. And so if you're in this situation of, you know, you've wanted to learn this, but this doesn't work for you. This isn't. You're ready to do this, then this, you know, that's sort of the basics of it. Not to get into too much detail, bog you all down. But. So that's.
- [45:09]
A
I think, yeah, I think that what I'm really hearing that I want to reflect for everyone. Notice the way that, like, all of the examples Melinda has given of, like, where we change the messaging, I want to really drive home that. And this is a huge mistake I see people make, is at no point, even though Melinda had hit her lowest, kind of worst launch. Right. Like, lowest launch, there is always going to be that temptation of, like, throw it all away, gotta start all over. She didn't do that at all. Right. We're talking 20 to 30% new on the emails. The rest is tweaking. Okay. Same sales page, just really auditing it again with my. Which is what I do for all my clients is helping them review and really find these areas for opportunity, but, like, optimizing the parts that are unclear on the sales page. And then same thing with the webinar. We didn't need to, like, trash the webinar. She's done a lot of great work on that. There were just maybe one spot where we could really make it clear. So this is something that I've been thinking about a lot with the people that I help is like, a lot of y' all are out here doing the most. Especially when you get scared, you're like, I have to start from scratch.
- [46:18]
B
I.
- [46:18]
A
One of the things I often say is like, never start from scratch. Like, you should never be starting from scratch. If you have material that has worked for you at all in the past, there's always going to be like, it will amaze you how some of these small, like, what they feel like, small tweaks actually make an incredible difference. So I wanted to underscore that there is so much more that we could talk about. So I just want to hit on a couple more little things before we wind our episode down. There's just so many amazing parts of this debrief that we could keep talking about. I mentioned that there were kind of three main categories. So so far it's been lead generation, slash traffic and increasing that, getting more eyeballs, messaging, slash converting, getting the people that you have to say yes more often and with more confidence. The third piece, just a quick moment on this is mindset. Okay, so I'll give my example of how I saw Melinda working on her mindset through this launch. And then I'm curious what, what your take is. Melinda, how. How do you, how did you stay mentally strong to the. I mean, we all have our wobbles during a launch. That's very normal. But especially, especially coming off of not our favorite launch period. Not the best we've ever done, dusting ourselves off and getting out there and. And doing such a great job. One of the things that Melinda did that stood out to me was, well, first of all, getting a lot of coaching and a lot of reviews of her materials, as we've been talking about throughout. But on the day of her webinar, which you had, was it your highest registration ever?
- [47:46]
B
I think so, yeah.
- [47:47]
A
How many people did you have signed up? I know it was a lot.
- [47:49]
B
Shoot. I'm trying to remember.
- [47:52]
A
Ballpark if you have to.
- [47:53]
B
It was over 2,000, let me put it that way, over 2,000 people signed up. But it was over 2,000. Yeah.
- [47:58]
A
Which, by the way, like, you all do. I. I do never get 2000 people signed up for my webinar. So you do not have to have that many. But it is amazing when it happens. Melinda came to a coaching call, one of our group calls in sold out group programs, and basically said, can you give me a pep talk? Can you help me remember why the work, like, why the work that I do makes an impact? You know, that was her way of being like, I know I need to go into this webinar I always call it high on my own supply, like, feeling kind of puffed up and, like, having a little bit of swagger. So that's what I saw you doing from. And then I want you to also tell us what happened on the webinar as far as your sales, because we hit a record for live sales on the webinar. Um, so tell us about that. But then, anything you want to share, just kind of briefly on what you think from a mindset perspective made a difference for you in this launch.
- [48:50]
B
Yeah. So I do think it made. The changes we made that we talked about, as well as the coaching made a difference. I did get off the webinar and had 13 sales already, which I.
- [48:59]
A
13 sales never had before.
- [49:01]
B
I had many, many times in the past with webinars. I didn't have a single sale during the webinar, even if the launch was decent, you know, and the last one was actually the most I'd ever had, even though that launch was lower and I'd had four that time. So, I mean, that was like. My previous record went to 13, and I had more people sign up still the same day. That was just during the actual webinar itself. Like, when I signed off. Zoom. That's how many there were by the end of the night, I think it was like 18 or 19. So it was. Yeah, that was. That was a record, definitely, for a webinar and. Yeah, and that was part of it. And I. You know, we had talked about the mindset thing the previous week as well in coaching, and I said, you know what? I'm coming back next week before the webinar because I want you to remind me again, because it's so easy to forget the value of what we do because we get caught up in, like, wanting things to, quote, unquote, work.
- [49:55]
A
Yes.
- [49:56]
B
So we get. You know, because when you're in a lunch, you get caught up in a, like, the. Okay, the point of this is to, like, sell a bunch of spots in the program. Right. Is kind of like. We get stuck in that thought. But of course, it's not just that. It's that you're doing this not just to sell things, but you're doing this because, you know, what you have to offer is actually going to help people with what they want. Right. So in. In this case, you know, like you mentioned, my people, most of them have been in love with ancient Egypt since childhood. Some discovered it a little later, but, you know, it's been most of them, it's been a really long Term passion. And some have just kind of, like, watched some documentaries and dabbled here and there. Others have been, like, really intense in terms of taking courses and buying every possible book and stuff. But usually the part that really eludes all of them is learning the language. Because it is not easy, right? And the sources that are out there make it, like, even harder than it needs to be, right? So it's like, it's that reminding myself that what I'm doing is helping these people. I mean, first the webinar is opening that. That window of possibility we talked about, right? And letting them know that, like, if they had problems before with this, they didn't stick with it or it felt too hard or whatever. It's not because they're broken, or there's something wrong with them, or they're not smart enough or, you know, their memory is not good enough or whatever it might be that they're thinking, but it's really just that they didn't have the right approach and they didn't have somebody helping them. They didn't have all of these tools and support that was helping them. And because I. It's not just, you know, having my support stuff, that my method is. Is entirely different from how it's taught in other places, too. So. And I lay out what that method is for them. I mean, if they want to go and try and replicate the method themselves, of course they can do that. But if they want to take the easy path, then. Then they can work with me. And so remembering that, you know, it's really about that, that I'm giving them the opportunity to learn something that they've wanted to learn, usually for ages, and just haven't been able to do before. And that I've done that before. Not just that I'm, you know, planning to help them in this way, but this is something I have done repeatedly in the past. And this is, you know, not just like an experiment or something and trying it, because sometimes it's easy to forget that sometimes, like, you know, even if you get those emails and social posts and stuff of people thanking you and saying, I did this and I had this wonderful time in the museum and whatever, we are so quick to forget that kind of stuff a lot of times. And so to remind myself of it, looking at that stuff myself and having Steph remind me, you know, of what I've done in the past made. Made a really big difference in terms of that. And one other thing I did differently this time that really helped with sort of a mindset kind of and maybe nervous system regulation, I guess you could say, is. Yeah, that's how you put it usually I think of as kind of like reducing the anxiety. Right. Was just working ahead a little bit. It didn't have to be a lot.
- [52:53]
A
Yeah.
- [52:54]
B
But if I had stuff that needed to go out the ne, like, in the morning, it was done at least the day before, if not longer. I mean, there was maybe, like, one time I did a morning email that morning, but, like, the vast majority, whether it was a podcast or an email or stuff for my current clients that needed to go out sometimes that meant I worked on Saturday. And I don't routinely do that throughout the year, but during the long. I do sometimes. And sometimes that's what I did. And you know what? That allowed me to go into Monday so much better than if I had been Monday morning trying to take care of it. So that was one thing that also really moved the needle for me.
- [53:27]
A
Yeah.
- [53:28]
B
Being able to feel more. Maybe relax isn't quite the word, but, like, I don't know, just solid and centered and not like a lot of times in the past, I felt like I'm running into my home office with my pants on fire every morning.
- [53:41]
A
Yes. It's not a good feeling.
- [53:42]
B
Yeah, exactly. And so that was really helpful, too, with just basically kind of eliminating that.
- [53:48]
A
So good. So good. And I know that as we. We wind down here, I'm gonna ask you to tell people where they can keep up with you online, where they can find you and follow you if they're interested, but tell us just to kind of close us out. We always do a good, better best goal in terms of, you know, what we're striving for. You surpassed your best goal for this launch. Correct. So tell us if you want to tell us what those numbers were and where you landed.
- [54:14]
B
Sure. My good was 13. My better was 20, and my best was 25, and I closed cart with 31.
- [54:23]
A
So good. So much fun.
- [54:25]
B
I was already almost to my best by that first night. I was like, what is.
- [54:30]
A
Yes. Especially coming off a tough one. It makes it that much sweeter.
- [54:33]
B
Yeah. I can't say that I've done. I don't think I had done my best goal in a very long time. I don't even know how long. Yeah.
- [54:39]
A
So good. What a comeback story.
- [54:40]
B
We love it.
- [54:41]
A
Melinda, please tell everybody where they can come keep up with you.
- [54:44]
B
You can find me as Voices of Ancient Egypt on all the places we were talking about. So you can find me on YouTube, but you can find my podcast Voices of ancient Egypt, Instagram, Facebook, you know, those common places there. And if you're looking to get started with hieroglyphs, you can download my free guide called Half Hour Hieroglyphs, which you can get at voicesofancientegypt.com/guide. So good.
- [55:08]
A
Thank you so much, Melinda. Always so fun to have you.
- [55:11]
B
Thank you.