Pricing, Positioning, and the Art of the Upsell | Ep 895

Summary

The Game with Alex Hormozi

Episode: Pricing, Positioning, and the Art of the Upsell | Ep 895
Release Date: May 29, 2025
Host: Alex Hormozi
Guest: Sam [Last Name], Founder of [Sam's Art Community Name]

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Introduction

In Episode 895 of The Game with Alex Hormozi, entrepreneur Alex Hormozi sits down with Sam, the founder of a thriving online art community dedicated to teaching people how to paint. The conversation delves deep into Sam's business model, focusing on pricing strategies, positioning, and the art of the upsell. They explore the intricacies of managing multiple community tiers, optimizing sales funnels, and scaling revenue effectively.

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Overview of Sam's Art Community

Sam runs a multifaceted art community aimed at helping individuals improve their painting skills and monetize their art. The community is segmented into three main tiers:

1. Free Community: Offers painting tutorial videos that are more comprehensive than those found on YouTube.
2. Low-Ticket Art School ($29/month): Provides additional full-length tutorials, weekly live painting classes, and access to a supportive group environment.
3. High-Ticket Art Mentorship Program (~$5,000/year): Includes two painting classes per week, personalized one-on-one sessions with Sam, and tailored assistance for those aiming to build a career in art.

Sam explains:

"The aim of the group is to just help people to improve their painting so that they can start selling and making money from their art."
[00:58]

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Current Strategies and Sales Funnel

The sales funnel Sam employs is as follows:

1. Lead Generation: Primarily through YouTube, Sam offers a free "Blueprint for Paint" valued at $97 (planned to be free for now).
2. Landing Page: All traffic is directed to a unified landing page where visitors can opt in by providing their name and email.
3. Email Sequence: An extensive email sequence nurtures leads, repurposing Sam’s previous valuable content.
4. Community Engagement: Subscribers are funneled into the free community where ongoing engagement occurs.
5. Discovery Calls: Sam’s team engages prospects via direct messages (DMs) to schedule discovery calls, assessing their fit for the high-ticket program.
6. Upsell Path: Qualified leads are pitched the $5,000 mentorship, while others are offered the $29 monthly art school membership.

Notable Quote:

"You can start with the $5,000, and you can down-sell them to the $29 annual membership or maybe something else that's continuous."
[02:00]

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Challenges and Current Metrics

During the discussion, Sam reveals several challenges within his business:

• Conversion Rates: Out of approximately 150 new members in the free group weekly, only about 2-3 are booking discovery calls.
• Sales Pipeline: Last week, Sam closed one high-ticket sale and one annual membership from just two sales calls.
• Marketing Efficiency: The conversion rate from the landing page and the effectiveness of YouTube as a traffic source need optimization.

Key Metrics Discussed:

• Email Subscribers: Over 9,000
• High-Ticket Sales: Approximately 20 members at $5,000/year
• Low-Ticket Sales: Around 300 members at $29/month
• Landing Page Conversion: 2.69% last week
• Call Bookings: About four per week, with two sales closed

Sam notes:

"I'm trying to sort of tailor that side of it to what that particular client needs, if you see what I mean. And everyone's completely different as, especially as I'm finding."
[05:28]

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Recommendations and Strategies for Improvement

Alex Hormozi provides actionable insights to enhance Sam's business operations and sales performance:

1. Enhance Free Group Engagement:

   • Implement modules or locked content within the free community that can be unlocked through discovery calls.
   • Quote from Alex:

     "So literally in the classroom I'd have like a load of those modules like totally locked until they've gotten the call."
     [39:19]

2. Optimize YouTube Content:

   • Video Structure: Lead with a clear roadmap in the first 15 seconds, outlining what viewers will learn.
   • Thumbnail Enhancement: Test different thumbnail styles, including images of Sam with a brush and minimal text to reduce visual clutter.
   • Call-to-Action (CTA) Integration: Place CTAs earlier in the video, referencing specific content (e.g., "page 17 of the blueprint") to make the offer feel natural.
   • Pinned Comments: Utilize pinned comments for CTAs to ensure they remain visible regardless of description changes.

   Notable Advice:

   "Lead with that roadmap, I think will make a big difference in video retention."
   [26:36]

3. Improve Landing Page Conversion:

   • Split Testing: Experiment with multiple benefit-driven bullets and additional images to increase opt-in rates.
   • Personal Touch: Incorporate Sam’s photo and additional relevant images to build trust and bridge the gap between traffic source and landing page.
   • Tracking and Analytics: Implement UTM parameters to monitor where clicks and conversions originate, enabling data-driven decisions.

4. Boost Discovery Call Conversions:

   • Value Proposition: Offer an onboarding call immediately upon signing up for the $29 membership to maximize conversions.
   • Video Sales Letters (VSLs): Integrate a series of educational videos within the community that subtly pitch the high-ticket program by addressing common objections and showcasing success stories.
   • Qualification Process: Clearly outline qualifications for the high-ticket program within VSLs to streamline the selection process.

   Alex emphasizes:

   "Priority number one is those seven people per week that are signing on that you're not talking to for $29 a month. They should get an onboarding call for free immediately included with that, $29. So that's gonna book you seven more sales calls a week."
   [36:20]

5. Maximize Existing Assets:

   • Repurpose Content: Leverage Sam’s extensive email list by re-engaging past subscribers with updated offers and new content.
   • Team Expansion: Build a dedicated team to handle setters, freeing Sam to focus on high-value sales calls and content creation.

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Projected Outcomes

By implementing these strategies, Sam can expect significant growth:

• Increase in Sales Calls: Transitioning from 2 to 20 sales calls weekly by onboarding existing $29 members.
• Revenue Growth: Potential to scale monthly revenue from approximately $13,500 to over $100,000 by optimizing conversions and upselling effectively.
• Enhanced Marketing Efficiency: Improved YouTube content and landing page optimization leading to higher traffic and conversion rates.

Sam reflects:

"I never imagined I'd be doing this. If I focused on these strategies, I could really scale my business."
[39:29]

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Conclusion

In this episode, Alex Hormozi and Sam dissect the operational and strategic elements of running a successful online art community. By addressing key areas such as marketing optimization, sales funnel enhancements, and effective upselling techniques, Sam is poised to scale his business significantly. Alex’s expertise provides Sam with a clear roadmap to overcome current challenges and achieve his ambitious revenue goals, ultimately helping more artists turn their passion into a profitable career.

Final Words from Sam:

"Thank you so much for this, Alex. I really appreciate it."
[45:19]

Alex concludes:

"You need to put tracking in place so that you know, click all the way through. So basically I'm going to say them quickly and you can watch this recording later."
[43:24]

---

End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Because if you start with the five, you can downsell the. The 500 or whatever, 29 times, whatever that at 460 or whatever it is that probably anchors really well. And just say like you're just not going to get the one to one component but you're going to get all these other things. And I think that's actually fairly compelling. So today is a deep dive. What's up, Sam?

[B]

Hey, how's it going? Great to meet you. Thanks for having me here. Really appreciate it.

[A]

Pleasure's mine. I'm coming in completely unknowledgeable and ignorant. So we're going to derive these solutions in real time together. I know Kirby is a admin on your community. So we actually get a little bit more stats that we can pull up on the screen which I think will be fun. With that being said, give everybody the 60 seconds. What's the community about? So let's just start that. What's the community about?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. So the whole community is about teaching people to paint. So a lot of them are artists. As in they paint like landscapes. That's the thing that I like to do.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

I've. I've been one. Yeah. You know, been doing that on and off my whole life. But anyway, it's to help people improve their painting. So you could be a complete beginner or we've got a lot of experienced painters, but they've just, they've just hit roadblocks with their paintings. And this is exactly what happened to me many years ago until I got a mentor. So the aim of the group is to just help people to improve their painting so that they can start selling and making money from their art.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I've got three communities in total. So we've got the free community. I've got a high ticket art mentorship program which is like a, an art accelerator. And then we've got the art school as well, which is the, the monthly low ticket group. I do a live painting class there every week and plus there's loads of painting tutorials. Got him.

[A]

What's the high ticket? What's the price?

[B]

Well, it all dep. There's not really so much of a set price. It depends on what you feel like. Well, no, no, not what I feel like.

[A]

It's.

[B]

It depends on how long you want to work with me for. I recommend people like work with me for a year and I charge around US$5,000 for that. So. So we not only. We not only help them with. We do a lot of painting. So it's like two painting classes a week and then making it one on one. Yep. They get one on one with me as well. And a lot of the people in there, they, they, some of them just want to improve their painting skills and nothing else. But some of them want to actually like make, want to be able to make a career out there painting. So we also help them with, you know, building an audience on social media.

[A]

Yeah. At your price point of $5,000, if someone were to tell me, hey, you want to learn how to paint and it was $5,000 and you work with a guy for a year, that seems like a reasonable price. That doesn't seem like, like, I know you have the element. Some people want to paint so they can also sell their paintings. I understand that, but big picture, I don't think. It doesn't sound like that's the primary hook. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, probably.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

$29 a month community. That's for people getting in, either learning to paint or, you know, trying to advance in their painting. And so for everyone listening, 29 bucks is the middle, $5,000 a year is the top, and free is the bottom. Okay, so what's the delivery look like at like small, medium, large? So what does it look like for free? Just keep it as tight as you can. Cause I want to dive in.

[B]

So the free community, you're getting some painting tutorial videos and videos. So they're longer than what you would get on YouTube. So I've got a YouTube channel as well.

[A]

Okay, I'm going to get into the advertising side in a second, but just tell me, so you have, you have free tutorials. What else are you doing there?

[B]

Well, I mean, yeah, it's mostly as in just in the group in general, as in like the runnings of the group or as in just in terms.

[A]

Of what deliverables does someone get for the free community?

[B]

They basically get a catalog of full painting tutorial videos.

[A]

That's fine, that's fine. Okay, 29 bucks. What do I get?

[B]

You get even more full painting tutorials.

[A]

But you also get even more.

[B]

You get a live weekly painting class. And, and the painting class, I've been running it as, as courses. So like 8 to 10 week courses. So you could be, you just upload.

[A]

Them as modules that continue to add to it. That correct?

[B]

Yeah. So it's like I'm making the courses like live on zoom and then adding them afterwards. But you could be a complete beginner having never painted in your life to just attending one of my courses and already having a load of knowledge by the end of it and being able to make a start like a really good start with a solid foundation in your painting journey.

[A]

Got it. And then, and then the five thousand dollar they get. How many one on ones do they get with you?

[B]

I haven't, I haven't set the number on one on ones. It's just been as and when people need help. So we do two painting classes a week. So it's a lot more intensive. But I, what I found over the last year of doing this is there'll be periods of time where people might need a lot of help and I might have to do like a few one on one calls with them and then there'll be times where you know, they, they won't need any help at that time. So I don't have a set number on the actual one on ones me. And at this stage where I'm at, I kind of don't want to say, you know, you can only have this amount of one on ones I want. I'm trying to sort of tailor that side of it to what that particular client needs, if you see what I mean. And everyone's completely different as, especially as I'm finding.

[A]

So you do it on demand or as an escalation. Right. They have an issue that you escalate them, that's fine.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, ex. Yeah, exactly. I mean back to you.

[A]

So free group gets. So your YouTube is short videos. Your free group has long tutorials. Your $29 has more long tutorials plus one live Class A week with lots of people on it. And then for five, the $5,000 they get two classes a week which significantly fewer people on it. And I'm guessing you're teaching cooler stuff. I don't know. Yeah. And then if they need help, you hop on with them one on one. Yeah, got it. And how are you selling? How are you selling people from 29 to 5k?

[B]

So what we do is, is I've got a few ways of gathering leads so I give away a Freebie on my YouTube channel on my website and Instagram.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then we get them into the free community of. Then we get conversations going in the dm. So I've actually now got someone doing setting for me. So I was doing it myself before. And then the aim is to get them on a discovery call and, and then we see if they're a good fit, if, if they're not a good fit or they. We find out they probably don't have the funds at that point in time. Then we, we try and sell them on the, the art School.

[A]

The 20.

[B]

Yeah, the $29. Yep. And then if, if they, if they are a good fit, then they'll get them on a sales call with me and then I see if they. Yeah, the art mentorship program, which is the painter's mastermind. So the painter's mastermind, it's their own private school group.

[A]

Heard.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So yeah, right now YouTube is your primary source of advertising.

[B]

Yep. Followed by my website.

[A]

So YouTube goes to website or YouTube goes to community.

[B]

YouTube goes to the sales landing page. So they all get, they all go to the same landing page which we built on system IO.

[A]

Got it. So you, you have a little opt in page. Copy my blueprint for paint. I suggest. Cool. Then you have an image. Get instant access to the blueprint for free. Got it. Valued at $97. I plan to start charging for it soon. Okay, next step, just let me know if you're curious from a compliance perspective, adding a value where it's not justified isn't compliant. Just as a side note, you could say like I just, I like it's free for now. I'm planning on charging for soon and it probably will, it will probably do the same on a conversion basis, but would probably be more compliant. Just as a side note. So then we put is it name and then email. Okay. Get instant access. All of this I like. If I were to run a split test on this, I would add in three benefit driven bullets and test it and I would put them below the button and I would, I would see how that does. Because oftentimes like I've just like you, you've got, you've got your 80%, 90% on that. Like it's a pretty clean page. It's pretty straightforward. I would just test that one as just like an easy lift. Do you know what your conversion on that page is?

[B]

Actually you know what, I haven't checked it lately. Let me just have a look while.

[A]

You look confirm with me the rest of the journey. So YouTube goes to. Or YouTube goes to the lander. Lander. They opt in. Then I'm guessing you thank you. You know, thank you page. Join the community and you email them to join the free. Free community. Is that correct?

[B]

Yep, that's right. And then also we get them into an email sequence. So I have a COO helping me. He's also called Sam and he's created like an email sequence. So I think we've got like about a hundred, like a Hundred emails. So we, we. We basically got a load of my old emails because I always tried to send out value a lot of the time as well as what. So we're able to like repurpose those.

[A]

How big's the list?

[B]

It's well over 9,000 email subscribers at the moment.

[A]

9K on the list. Great. Love that. All right, so YouTube Lander follow up and thank you page goes to Free group. Great. When they join the free group, they fill out some sort of mini app, that's what you're saying. And then your guys hop on the phone with them and see if they're qualified. Does that sound right so far?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Through the, through the message in the, in the DMs. Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so they go DM to phone. Got it. And then, and then basically they have an ab path. Right. So path A. If you're qualified, you can talk to Sam. And if you're unqualified, are you trying to sell them into the annual for the $29 a month one?

[B]

Yeah, I try and do that, yeah.

[A]

Okay, good. Because if you start with the five, you can downsell the, the, the 500 or whatever, 29 times. Whatever that at 460 or whatever it is that I think would probably, that probably anchors really well. And just say like, you're just not going to get the 101 component, but you're gonna get all these other things. And I think that's actually fairly compelling. Like, if I wanted to make the 460 my primary offer, I would probably present it the same way you are, because basically the $5,000 just becomes like, if you're a whale and you want to, you really want to ball out and you want to have the personalized attention, you know, you could pay the $5,000, but the, but basically, like the 460 is the core offer. Do you know what percentages go into each bucket of the people that you, that your team talks to? I don't actually worth knowing, but okay, that's fine. So, and you've got. Was it like 300ish in the, in the $29?

[B]

Yeah, there's. There's a load of people in there that have. That. They did a one time payment to start with. Yeah, when I started the school group, which was. Yeah, it was in 2023, actually. At the time, I was completely broke and I moved over from Patreon and I sold a lot of like one time, you know, lifetime access. It got me back on my feet and, and it's led me to where I AM today, so.

[A]

I love it. I love it. You're good. Okay, so now that I have a good lay of the land, what's the goal? What do you want to do?

[B]

Well, my goal is to. To carry on inspiring people to learn how to paint. What I'd like to be able to do with. With the, with the whole, what I'm doing now, the whole community, the school groups and everything is, is I'd like to be able to sort of build out a team, but I would like to also pivot in the long run to helping more artists to be able to make a living online from their art and obviously like, helping them to improve their painting is. Is part of it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I mean, one of, one of the things I feel like I am qualified to do is to, you know, like, help people, like, build an audience, make like, digital products from their art. Like, I've sold painting tutorial videos as downloads from my website and. Yeah, e books and stuff. And then. And also, like, be able to show people how they could create their own, like, community, their school. Own school community where they can have a, like a monthly membership.

[A]

That sounds like a totally different business.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you have three communities and you teach people how to paint. So rather than teaching people how to teach people how to paint, I think sticking with teaching people how to paint for now is probably the right strategic move. So.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. At the moment. Yeah, definitely.

[A]

That being said, what's the goal with this business? Numbers are helpful because you're already making an impact, so I can't change anything about that. So what? Yeah, Basically you've got 20 people in your $5,000 things. That's $100,000 a year. And you've got 300ish people at $29 a month. I know some of them are grandfathered from, from Patriot or whatever. From the one time payment. Let's say half of those are new. Would you say that's fair?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Okay, so you got 150 people paying 30 bucks a month. Right. So you're looking at 4, 500, $5,000 a month that comes in and recurring from the membership base. Yeah, got it. So you're basically 500. Yeah, yeah. So you've got like 8k that comes in from the, from the, the top. I, I know it's because you're charging $5,000 at a time that it's lumpy. I get that. But average is 8k a month on the top and you're averaging like 4, 500 per month on the bottom. All right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you're looking.

[B]

Yeah, I was going to say, do you mean in terms of financial figures, what are my goals? Yeah.

[A]

Or if you were like, I want to get to a thousand, I mean, any of those would be fine.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I have those goals. Like, you know, I want to get, I want to get my. I want to get that low ticket group. I want to get to like, you know, 10,000 subscribers or more. You know what, this is in some ways a bit. I've been having to work a lot of my mindset in the last couple of years and it's something that I think has really helped. You know, that's, that's really been what's holding me back. But thinking in bigger numbers for me as well is, Is still uncomfortable. But, you know, is it wrong to say, you know, I'd like to be pulling in 100k a month or more?

[A]

Nothing wrong with wanting to make more, but for now you're doing 13, 14,000amonth. Ish. Somewhere in there between the two groups.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, between the two.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Let's just say, you know, 30 is kind of like milestone. One to double, double from where you're at, and then there's a triple from there that gets you to a hundred. So I think in doubles and triples oftentimes, just in terms of like, what do we need to do in order to have that happen? All right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, because the thing is, it's rare that one thing will 10. I mean, if you find it, that's awesome. But a lot of times, like, you'll get them from multiple doubles and triples. That's where, like, you get the big numbers. Okay, so now that I have an idea of what's happening, one of the data points that's really important here that's missing is what percentage of people who go to the free group go to the paid group and what close rates are on on the phone for A.

[B]

Or B. I don't have solid metrics, but I spoke to my setter this morning. He reckons he's getting out of 15 people that he pitches a call to, only two are like actually jumping on a call. And one of the things he says he's noticed is that the artist kind of group is very different to say, like a demographic of like, you know, entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs. So they're probably a little bit harder to get on a call with. Just the nature of artists in a way.

[A]

I wouldn't subscribe too much to that. I'll bet you there's a messaging Thing just because, like, you want to talk about, you know, beliefs. Like, that's probably not.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[A]

Yeah. That goes for everybody who's listening to this. Like, explaining why this isn't at you, Sam. Explaining why your group doesn't make you money or doesn't want to buy your stuff. Like, yeah, not gonna serve you. Okay, So I agree. One out. So 15 people join the, the free group. He dms all of them. Now, is that when he gives you 15 turns into two calls, right?

[B]

No, no, so it's, it's as. No, so it would be way more. That is. Is when. When the conversations got to the point of would it be helpful to jump on a call?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Out of the 15 people that he gets to be able to like say that in the chat, only two around. Two people are actually like jumping on a call, basically.

[A]

Got it. How many people join to get to that? Like, I'm trying to get conversion metrics here. So like.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, join. I reckon we must be getting about at least 60 a week. Okay, let me just check my Metrics.

[A]

You're good. 60 per week and then how many. Well, we can reverse engineer this. So if you're getting 60 a week.

[B]

Oh, no, actually more than that. So in the last week we've had 151.

[A]

Okay. In the last week. Great.

[B]

In the last week. Yeah.

[A]

So let's just say 150 is the last seven days. Fine. That's 20ish a day. And then he tries to start conversations with all of them. Right. How many of them get to like, I would, I would want to know how many respond, because I don't know how many people respond, but I would, I would want to know how many respond. How many get to the. Basically the offer.

[B]

I reckon at the moment we're probably getting about two or three a week, but it's, it's really, it's gone in waves. Basically. We've had, we had one day where he had like five calls booked in a day. And we were like, right, let's see how we could do this so that we could do this every day. But then it's, it's really been.

[A]

Yeah. How much do you have into like what he's doing? This guy, the setter. Because right now he's kind of like the choke point of the business because you got 20, you know, 20 leads a day. Think about like this. You got 20 leads a day that are coming in and per day, how many appointments would you is like, how many appointments would you say happen per day? Phone call.

[B]

When you say employment, you mean messages that are sent?

[A]

No, people who. People who, like, schedule a call.

[B]

A really very, you know, probably. Probably about a couple. Maybe not. Maybe not even that at the moment. I mean, he. He is new, but he is, like, all over it if you say. I mean, he's, you know, actively messaging. So I. I believe totally in time, that's. That number's gonna go.

[A]

Do you have any idea how many. How many calls per week, if that's easier?

[B]

I reckon. I reckon he's probably getting about four a week at the moment.

[A]

Calls like that, he's taking. He's like, calls taken is four per week. Does that sound right?

[B]

Yeah, just. Yeah, as a natural discovery. Calls booked. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Real quick, guys, I have a special, special gift for you. For being loyal listeners of the podcast. Laila and I spent probably an entire quarter putting together our scaling roadmap. It's breaking, scaling into 10 stages and across all eight functions of the business. So you've got marketing, you've got sales, you've got product, you've got customer success, you've got it. You've got recruiting, hr, you've got finance. And we show the problems that emerge at every level of scale and how to graduate to the next level. It's all free and you can get it personalized to you. So it's about 30ish pages for each of the stages. Once you enter the questions, it will tell you exactly where you're at and what you need to do to grow. It's about 14 hours of stuff, but it's narrowed down so that you only have to watch the part that's relevant to you, which will probably be about 90 minutes. And so if that's at all interesting, you can go to acquisition.com roadmap R O A D map roadmap. Okay, so here's the cool part. Like, I. I'll always keep asking as I go through this, because then I'm looking for big, big lifts. That's a big one. Because that means that right now you're getting 3% of the people who are coming for free to get on a call. And I think that you might be like, if I'm looking at kind of standards, you could probably get to 10% buying. And so there's a huge amount of lift there. So that's. That's a. That's. And of the four that get on the call, do you know what percentage buy?

[B]

At least one. At least one Well, I mean, it depends because. Because so I might. I'm doing the actual sales call. I mean, I. I closed someone last week for my high ticket, but then at the same time, I also closed. Well, I mean, I sold someone on an annual membership as well, so they didn't buy the high ticket, but they bought an annual membership.

[A]

You had two sales last week, One high ticket, one annual. On the. On the.

[B]

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I only had two sales calls as well.

[A]

Okay, so that was a little. Even. Even a little bit less. Right, so when he's setting, though, he's setting for you. So he's setting via dms. He's not taking a call. You're taking the call and then you downsell. You basically sort them.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Yeah, so, yeah, got it. So you closed 100 last week. What would you say your normal close rate is?

[B]

I reckon A good 25.

[A]

And last week was just a good week, though, because you closed 100 last week.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Like, I. Like, definitely if I. Or when I get more calls. Yeah, yeah, when I get more. Cool. So I'll be able to get a lot more.

[A]

Yeah. So. Okay. I'm gonna bet that, like, I mean, there's a lot of things, like I. I could go. I could go into the advertising side, but the thing is, is that, like, if I find a massive win, then I will probably just focused almost all my attention on that. So there's one huge one here and we'll get to it. But. Okay, let me just. Let me just quickly look at YouTube because that's where all your traffic's coming from and then. And then we'll go from there. So the vast majority of people are not buying the $29 thing on the page. 366 members. Can you look at conversions on that one for me?

[B]

Yeah, sure, yeah. I've only been advertising the paid group in. In my free community and in my emails.

[A]

Got it. So you have. So you have eight signups in the paid community that happened this last week and that just happened straight from people clicking from one to the other. Yeah, minus maybe one. You sold one annual last week, so there's that. But besides that one, the other seven came just kind of organically ascending themselves.

[B]

Yeah, from the. Yeah, from either email or the free community. I. I haven't been advertising this group publicly on YouTube. I've just been advertising a freebie. So, yeah, my conversion rate for last week was 2.69%.

[A]

Yeah, I'm less concerned about that right now because the. The Traffic source is your free group. What are you doing to ascend people from the 29 group into the 5 5K?

[B]

So when I'm on the call, I pitch the 5K one first and so I'll ask you personally.

[A]

So you currently have people come to the free thing because that's what you push them to. Then your guy sorts them and if he sets them, he sets a call for you. You anchor at five, then you, if they say no, then you downsell annual. If they say no, then you downsell monthly. That's how it is right now. Got it. But last week into your $29 thing, just because you have this large community, the 3600 or whatever, and the free community, you got seven people who just went to the page and just chose to buy for $29.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What are you doing to talk to those seven people?

[B]

Yeah, you're right. I haven't been doing a lot. I do at the end of my painting class, ask if anyone wants help. Art mentoring or, you know, that's where I pitched the art mentorship program at the end of my, my lives every week.

[A]

Life class.

[B]

Yeah, I, I, I mean, now that you said that, I could be doing a lot more in my community.

[A]

We'll get there.

[B]

Yeah, we'll get there. There's actually a load of those people that paid for the lifetime access that I could go and. Yeah, message.

[A]

Yeah, we got some stuff. We got some stuff.

[B]

I'm still learning here, man. This is like, up until.

[A]

You're doing great, man. Dude, you're, you're an artist. This wasn't the, this wasn't the job. It's fine. That's.

[B]

No, it wasn't. I just, I never imagined, like, if you'd have asked me 10 years ago when I, when I first quit my job and I had no idea I was going to make it work. I, I had no idea I'd be doing this.

[A]

If it makes you feel better, I do this for a living, so don't worry about it. Okay. So, okay, now let's go to the advertising and I'll bet you we can pick out some stuff there and then, and then we'll go into the kind of the solutioning side. All right?

[B]

Yeah. Cool, man.

[A]

All right, Sweet. Okay. Can you go videos re? Yeah, you know how I'm going to do it? Okay. Recent. Okay, cool. You get some good views, man. You get really good views relative to your subscribers, so that's good. So you're 56K subscribers. You're getting, it looks like, call it 10K video. It's really strong. Okay. Yeah, yeah, really good.

[B]

I've been working on my titles and thumbnails. I, I, yeah, you know, been getting help from like Harut and Kai who've been helping me in my YouTube videos. So.

[A]

No, it's great. Let's, let's just click it. Okay. How to paint loose but realistic coastal scenes. All right, let's do it.

[B]

Struggling with stiff photographic landscapes that are just killing the life out of your paintings and also making them look flat. Well, in this video I'm going to show you how you can loosen up your brushwork by using the paint medium gouache. And I'm going to be painting a coastal scene. Now, what is gouache paint? Well, basically it's opaque watercolor, but you can get some really great results with it and some nice, vibrant, natural looking colors. And I'd like to preface that I'm mainly an oil painter, but I do sometimes paint with gouache and I've actually found that it's helped with my oil painting process and to loosen up my brushwork. Now I've only been painting with gouache for a few years and as I say, I mainly paint with oil here.

[A]

So here's the, here's the good thing. You've got three things that are going well with the intro. We just need to add a couple. So you've got a promise, right? And you actually hooked with pain. So if you're struggling with this thing, I'm going to show you this thing. So that was like you had those first two. A little bit later you got into like semi proof, I think. And I think we can tighten the proof part up, which I'll explain. There isn't a road map. And so I think that's, that's, to me, that felt like the biggest thing that was missing because I'm looking at this video and it's however many minutes it was, but you know, decent length. And as me trying to put my viewer hat on, I'm like, where am I going from here? Okay, so I want to know kind of like what the road, like what the roadstops are. And so I think it might be useful for you to, you know, maybe if you have like a fountain pen or something because it's a little artistic or, you know, you'd know this better than me. But like, yeah, you have, you have your pain and your promise. Great proof. I would pull way forward, which is like I help thousands of people paint every day and you know, I've been painting for 20 years. Like, you want to get it really tight. Like, I would practice it. So it's like. My name's Sam. I have helped over 2,000 people paint their first painting. And I've helped people go from beginner to advanced. And in this video, I'm going to cover six things about gouache. And I wouldn't even mention that, like, I normally paint in oil because, like, you don't want to discredit yourself, right? Like, like, it's like. And so we're going to cover, number one, how to. How to frame the scene better. Number two, how to. How to hold the brush in a way for two different styles. Number three, you know what I'm. What I'm going at, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

I think lead with that roadmap, I think will make a big difference in video retention. And you want that to all be covered within the first, like 15 seconds. We paused at 48 and we want all of that to be covered in 10. I'm okay with the fact that you're showing that you're painting. I would love it if it flipped to you for a second, though. I think that might be helpful just because also, long term, it's like, we want to build your brand. Right. And so I think that might be kind of worthwhile on the thumbnails. You've been working with Kai and, you know, Kai's good, but something I would consider is I would consider having to like, learn to paint these. So, like, think about it like this. The benefits that you have inside of a thumbnail are going to be something around risk. So, like, stop messing up. Right? Something around risk, something around speed. Right. Like, do it faster, do it in less time. Maybe these are taking forever. Do it in less time or do it easier. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so I would, I would experiment. I would experiment. Just run one, see. See how, how it does comparatively. And you should be able to turn on. I think it's turned on on all YouTube, but there's an A B. Testing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I've just found out about that.

[A]

Yeah. So I would, I would split. I would split test. No, no copy. Because they are paintings is what your, your current thumbnails are. So I would. The three kind of concepts I would be looking at are pure plain painting. Number one, plain painting with three words or less in terms of the, the words on the screen because you don't want to take too much away from the painting, but you want it to be clear when you're actually reviewing your thumbnail, text it to yourself. On your phone, because that's going to be how small it is. And so what happens is a lot of people design thumbnails, design them on these big screens, but that's not how people consume them. So you want to, like, it's the easiest hack in the world. Just. Just send yourself a text of the. Of the icon, and then you'll actually see how few words you can really put there where people can read them. And then the third concept that I would test is actually just a picture of your face kind of maybe with a brush, and then the paintings in the background. Because then again, that's going to get you, like, you more exposure long term rather than. Because this looks like a faceless YouTube channel. Yeah. Unless that was.

[B]

Yeah, no, no, it's not at all. In fact, actually, my older videos had my face. I do like an intro and an outro. And then, you know, I realized I was spending like two, three minutes doing an intro, by which time everyone's clicked off. So, yeah, if you go to my earliest videos.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Back when my hair was long.

[A]

No, your hair is long. No, that's. It's all good. Okay, so. So big picture, we need to double down on roadmap. You need to tighten up the, The. The time up front. You need to know what your introduction is like, you personally that you can frame for your proof. Ideally, ideally, you want the proof to be relevant to the thing you're talking about. So one is, I've helped thousands of painters. That's kind of one level of proof. But if you're like, I've helped thousands of paers paint gouache, and it's one of the things that I enjoy doing in my free time or something like that, then now I have more relevance to the proof. Right. You want it to be as relevant as possible. For example, just an idea is you could also think about, like, have you sold. I'm sure you've sold paintings before, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

So I think even just saying, like. And I've sold many paintings that are gouache. Right. Because then it's like, not just. I'm not just like saying I'm good. Like, people have bought my paintings, and I think that that kind of helps kind of bridge that gap. Okay, so that's. That's YouTube stuff. Can you. Kirby, can you click in real quick to the video just so I can look at the description? Free landscape painting, blueprint. Okay.

[B]

So, yeah, so that's my call to action in the video.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. And do you do the. Do you integrate a CTA within the video.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. What I do is usually about like halfway or three quarters through. Then. Then. Yeah, there it is.

[A]

Got it. Okay. Okay. So I'll say this. We found first. Third is because you'll probably get twice as many people to see it.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because you're. Because you've seen YouTube. You know, retention curves kind of drop slowly. Like, I want to do it up front because it's weird. You haven't done anything yet, but, like, at about a third, it's like you provided, you know, sufficient value that you can get. You can do. Take 20 seconds and just be like, by the way, if you like this. And the key part is that you went with the cta, you want. Again, you want to integrate it to something relevant that you just talked about. Right.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So it's not just like a commercial. Like you want to. You want to make it as. Basically, you don't want even to feel like a commercial. You want it to just be really natural and inside the blueprint. What I would do. Because you're showing the digital. Yeah, I would do is I would print the blueprint out and I would flip to the page that, you know, corresponds to some technique or something that you're showing and be like. So what I'm doing right here is actually on page 17 and show you opening and be like, page 17 of this blueprint. And you guys can have it. It's free. You can just click below the link. You'll get way more people who will choose to opt in if you start doing your integrating your CTAs like that. Kirby, let's go back to the.

[B]

Yeah, that's a brilliant idea.

[A]

All right, let's see here. Scroll down. In this tutorial I show you. So you do custom descriptions for each of them?

[B]

Yeah, I've been using AI. I've been using AI. Yeah, I've been using that AI to come up with titles and hooks for my videos and descriptions as well.

[A]

That's fine. All right, main website, Blah, blah, blah. The rest of this stuff is. Is whatever you could do. You could have a pinned comment, which you can do on every video. And ideally, you want to do it right after you post it, because then you're. Because if you're the creator, they're going to like yours the most and you can pin it. So the reason I like pinned comments for YouTube CTAs is because if you change your descriptions in the future, which I'm a bit. I mass change all my descriptions at once. That's Kind of how I do my stuff. So I feel like whatever I'm promoting, that's what's going to be in my description. But then the pin comment won't change. So it's like if you have stuff that's relevant to your video, I would just make it the pinned first comment and then that way you can basically take the big wave of YouTube traffic and point it wherever you want, you know, when it's, when it's appropriate. Does that make sense?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Okay. Next thing is there's a feature on YouTube now that two things. One is that there's in video pop ups that you can now put in. And so I would put your lead magnet as a product that after you show it, it just stays in the bottom left corner so people can click it directly on the screen and then secondarily you can incorporate products underneath. Underneath. Right. And so I would at the very least do. The first one is just have this, have the blueprint sitting right and just.

[B]

Leave it there for the rest of the video. Yeah, okay.

[A]

Yeah, I mean it does it YouTube's. I mean YouTube takes care of their audience. Like it's kind of, it's tucked away to the bottom left.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Okay, so I would. Yeah, so we'll do that as well. All right, great. So let's go back to your landing page because the thing is, do you have any metrics around this? You were pulling those up. So what are the metrics for this page?

[B]

So my COO manages the manages and I'm still, I'm still finding my way around system but unfortunately I can't. So for the free. Yeah, the free landscape painting blueprint, in total we've got 4,822 people from that.

[A]

Okay, yeah, but what's the conversion rate?

[B]

Oh, as in conversion into the, into the free community?

[A]

No, no. How. Well, I mean that would be great too, but like how many clicks go to the page? How many of them opt in? How many of them go to the free community? Like that's the funnel basically leading to your free community.

[B]

Yeah, okay. That I'm honestly not sure of. I'm not quite sure how to find that out.

[A]

Okay, well, whatever the landing page software is, I promise you they have a conversion rate metric that you can find.

[B]

I can see how many emails were opened and total clicks. So it's like 65% and total clicks was 44%.

[A]

Okay, that's good. That's. That's fairly normal for like a welcome sequence. So you're not, you're not missing anything big there. I would want to know what the, what the conversion rate of the page is, though, because that's where you're literally sending all your traffic there.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

One of the other considerations I'd have for that landing page, I told you, the three bullets underneath. One of the other things I would consider is split test that because you have one image.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

One thing I would do is show, like, show one image, but show like two. Two behind it and above, two behind it and below. So there's five images. So just show some of the, some of the techniques and like open it up a little bit, you know what I mean? Rather than just the one image. And so I would test that out and my second alternate would be you. Like, if people recognize you from the videos. Did your first. Like, you will for sure, if you add your face to the page, you will increase conversions if they. They're coming from you.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Okay, cool. All right, so that's, that's conversion stuff. And I think all of those things could. Could measurably improve the amount of traffic that you're. That you're getting. So let's, let's talk about. All right, good. So we have 15. So let's talk about the three big ones. Big whole. So we did all the YouTube stuff. We did some, some tiny tweak stuff, but these are. These are kind of going to be the, the three. The three biggies. All right.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So big thing number one is we have to improve your conversion on your free offer to call. And I'm actually, I'm going to say these in order of priority. Priority number one is those seven people per week that are, that are signing on that you're not talking to for $29 a month. They should get an onboarding call for free immediately included with that, $29. So that's gonna book you seven more sales calls a week. Right now you're taking like two. So, like, that can triple your business. Like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. What we want to do is I'm sure you have some benefit for them subscribing to Annual. Do they have some sort of bonus or thing that gets unlocked when they subscribe to Annual?

[B]

Yeah, usually I've been giving them a free coaching call with me. Like free hour long coaching call.

[A]

Sure. So I would, I would take. So take that. Right. And every one of those $29 people, I would offer one, two calls, whatever, in order for them to subscribe for the year. And I think. And if you wanted to. If you wanted to be crazy. Here you give them a one month trial of your, of your high end. If you want to make. Like if we want to get these people, they already paid 29, they already took their wallet out and said, I want to learn more. And so you say, how much more do you want to learn? Do you want more, you know, more time with me? Because here, think about like this, you're going to give them one or two calls, right? One on one. Each of those are basically sales opportunities. Like you're not closing, but you're building trust, right? If they also have the two live classes per week that are happening at the 5000 level, like they also have, like you're basically using up the high level one on ones figuratively as using the two onboarding calls or sorry, the two follow up calls as they just get a free month of that. Now some of them might be like, well, I want to keep doing this. In which case then you can convert them in the back down sell. You just get the annual. Cool. So that's still not, not a loss. Okay, so that's like immediate money, number one, that can triple. So that could take you maybe from like if none of the tweaks, if you didn't do any change in tweaks to do the YouTube and all the stuff we just went over, if you just did that, that could take you to like 30 or 40. Okay, that's just number one. All right. Number two, you're getting four out of 150 people who are joining the free thing to get on a call or less. Right? So we have to fix that. So yeah, so what we need is I'm assuming that he doesn't have like we need to sell the call. All right. And so because right now it just sounds like, how serious are you? Do you want to talk to Sam? That's what it sounds like. I could be wrong, but that's what it sounds like the script looks like. So. And given these kind of response rates, that's what I assume it is. So we need to give something like you gave them a lead magnet, which was the blueprint to get them here. We got to give them something else to get on the call. So I think within the free community what you can do is you can say, hey, when you hop on the call, we're going to unlock half of the stuff in the free community. So half of it's locked, half of it's unlocked. And the reason we do that is because we want you like, we want to show you the best place to start and make this a better experience. Whatever. Now you can bring that up to people after they say they have, you know, they have a pulse and a credit card or whatever. Right. Like. Like they answer the first couple qualifying questions. Then we say cool. If you want to find out how to. How to unlock that, we can do that for you. Right. And you can hop on a call. So that could take you from like four calls a week to like 20. Like that. That could have a very big.

[B]

So literally in the classroom I'd have like a load of those modules like totally locked.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Until they've gotten the call. And then you can manually unlock each person. Wow. I never even thought. That's brilliant. Sorry, man. This, as I say, I'm still, I'm still new to all this.

[A]

This is great. You're doing great. Okay, so number one is the really easy one to do that'll take you almost no time, which is you just. We start hitting the 29 people try to send them. Those are going to be the highest likelihood warmest people because they were in your brief thing for a while, elected on their own to sign up. That's great. If we want to increase the likelihood that that happens though, I would put a little. The first. The first module that you have in there after you have your introduction, do. Do a 5 video VSL so video sales letter. So that basically part of their onboarding is to kind of go through. And the five video VSL I've talked about in other stuff, but it's origin story. You had that mentor who taught you. Like that's a perfect story of like you walk through the journey as though you were them. And then you say, now that I've been on the other side, I can show you what I found. Right.

[B]

Yeah. So this is for the $29 group. This one.

[A]

This is actually for free.

[B]

Oh, on the free group. Okay.

[A]

You can also do the same thing for the. For the $29 thing. So because both of these are just going to be sales conversion things that we're. They're just forever salespeople sitting there that some percentage people are going to go there and then that. That's video one, Video two, three and four are going to be the just basically the biggest obstacles that people struggle with for why they don't buy. But you're gonna frame it as an educational thing. And then the fifth video is going to be basically an invitation to the next thing. And you'll mention again whatever free stuff they get for the next thing in that fifth. That fifth Thing and put the link below for them to schedule a call. Where they schedule. You can have them fill out, like on the actual scheduler, have them fill out their stuff and you can just choose to disqualify people if you want to. All right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. And you can put that qualification in the video so it doesn't feel like you're just, you know, canceling people. You just say, like, hey, you have to meet these qualifications to get here. Whatever. Okay. Those are just like easy things that we can do to the existing communities to just push more people through. So back to the. So that. So we're starting with the 29. The 29 ascensions. Great. We're going to add the VSL in. Cool. We're going to add that also into the free. The free group. You're going to add the lead magnet to the call, which is that half of these things are going to get unlocked if they get on the call. So you can get way more at bats to book calls. All right, so the, the last thing that I want to hit on is you have these 9,000 people, right. If you want to. If you want to have like a big cash pop. You know what, I could get into that, but, like, I kind of want you to just do this stuff. I think this is enough because we talked about a ton of stuff on YouTube that you. That you'll have to switch up. We have the free to paid and then we have the paid to more paid. We have the stuff that you're going to be making inside of the community. We have the landing plate test that you're going to do. We have the new intros. Yeah. I think you've got. I think you've got work. So that should take you. But let's, let's sum it up, though, because right now I think you could very well go from five out of the, sorry, four out of the 150 to like 20. Like, that's a 5X, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

You've got, you've got a triple sitting on the $29 to 5K that you're not talking to the other seven people every week who've already paid you. So you got a triple there. So putting those together, it's a 15x from where you're at. So that's your. A hundred K per month. Like, we can do that. You can do that right now. And then in terms of increasing the top of funnel, the two big levers that we have are improving the intros and thumbnails for YouTube, adding the pin comments in. Right. So that you have the CTA that's always sitting there when you're doing the integrated CTAs, actually print it out and show it to them. And then when they get to the landing page, they should also see your face and see some of the other images inside of it. And I would bet that that would increase the close rates and so sorry, the opt in rates. And so the last piece that I'll give you is this. You need to put tracking in place so that you know, click all the way through. So basically I'm going to say them quickly and you can watch this recording later.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

You need to know how many clicks are coming from YouTube number one. So whatever clicks you're going to that link, we need to see that you can put a UTM parameter on it. If you've got some tech guy, he can do it for you. All right, so that's going to go to your landing page. We need to know the opt in rate or the conversion rate of the people who are taking in the PDF. So we'll get that piece of data. Then we have percentage of people that are coming straight from the thank you page. Okay. So right here put a picture, so this thank you page, put a picture of your community, like your, your community landing page so that they know where they're going. Because what it'll do is it's going to increase the opt in rate of your community because they'll see where they're going. So it'll be more congruent of a customer journey for them. Yeah, that makes sense. So we're not going to see it here, you're just going to see a higher percentage opt in on your community. Now the next piece of data we need is two because it's going to split which is what percentage of people are clicking from emails and what percentage of people are clicking from here. Because that'll give you a good idea of like, okay, wow, most people are coming from the thank you page, not my emails. Okay. So I should focus on my thank you page more or you know, everybody's coming from email over the long term. Maybe I need to make my emails better. Whatever. Okay, the next metric that you're going to want is the conversion rate of the, of the free page, the free, you know, the free about page, your community. And then we want percentage of people who go basically through the funnel there, which is people who respond, people who book calls, people who show and then people who close. Yeah, that's what we want now because you also have people who just choose to opt in straight for the $29 because they can just buy it on the page. I would just have a separate set of metrics. That's just like, what percentage of people who opt for the 29, book a call, show, and buy. That make sense?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Okay, cool. I feel like we can make a lot of money.

[B]

Absolutely. Thank you so much for this, Alex. I really appreciate it.

[A]

That man. You bet. I appreciate you being on school.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

Yeah. This brought to you by school dot com.