AP 1170: My Online Business STALLED – How Do I Rebound and Get Growing Again?

AP 1170: My Online Business STALLED - How Do I Rebound and Get Growing Again?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1170 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. I think this one was recorded really late at night for me because this was midday for Neil Benson in Australia, in fact. He's got a couple of kids, wife. Business is going well, but the online part of his business has absolutely stalled. And so we're going to talk about how he helps people, but most of all, how we can help Neil take what he's got, optimize it, and go beyond. Go beyond the plateau that he's on.

If you've ever felt like your business has been on a plateau, this is the episode for you. So let's sit back, relax. Here is Neil Benson who you could find at Customery.com.

Neil, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thank you so much for coming in today.

Neil Benson:
Pat, I'm really excited to be on the show. Thanks very much for having me.

Pat:
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do.

Neil:
Well, hi, my name is Neil Benson. I run a business called Customery, and I'm on a mission to help Microsoft customers and partners build amazing business applications using an agile approach called Scrum. I live in Brisbane in Australia. So it's a little bit ahead of California. So good day from the future, Pat. And I got a wife and two kids at home. I love making pizza and building Lego. And my business is going really good, but I think the online part of my business has stalled over the last couple of years. And I'd really appreciate your help to find ways to unblock and get us going again.

Pat: Yeah, I'd love to help out. First of all, Brisbane is one of my favorite cities in the world. I visit there quite often. I have family actually in Brisbane, and my wife and I were talking about the Queen Street Mall just the other day, actually, because we have some fond memories there.

So Lego, that's great. Family at home, that's beautiful. More about your business. The Scrum model is really amazing. We actually use it in our business with our sprints and how we get stuff done here too. So that's really powerful. I'm glad that you're stepping up to help people. And I'm curious about the business model right now, and this is perhaps where we're start because I'd love to help you out. Tell me about the business model. How are you serving this audience and what are the different ways that money is being generated if you don't mind sharing?

Neil:
Sure. So back in 2017, when I wanted to start sharing my expertise on Scrum, I started blogging about it ahead of launching an online course. That course launched in December 2017. It's called Scrum for Microsoft Business Applications and it's four hours of video content, and it's designed to help business application builders learn about Scrum and prepare for the Scrum.org professional scrum master certification. So that's a third party external certification that I can help you get ready for. And I've been slowly building that up today. We've had about 400 students come through the course in the last couple of years, and there's a free mini course called Agile Foundations that you can take before the paid course just to prepare people and get them to understand the benefits and the basics. And a percentage of those convert onto the paid course. And I support all of that with a podcast while I've been building for the last couple of years too.

Pat:
Beautiful, very well laid out. Thank you. So podcast is something that's providing value for free and you're offering that out. And how well is the podcast doing? What are the numbers like there?

Neil:
It's going okay. We've been doing it about a year and a half. We've had about 70 episodes. We're getting 500, 600 downloads per episode after about 30 days. I have a mixture of Q&A episodes on there. So listeners can record their questions on SpeakPipe send them into me, or I do interviews as well with people who've already built amazing applications and I get them to share their story, the lessons behind their success. And so I mix up the two different styles of episodes.

That's been going pretty well. I'm really excited about that. I'm constantly trying to improve my podcast technique and I, occasionally I'll promote my courses on the show, but it's not... I don't want to go too heavy handed with that.

Pat:
Sure.

Neil:
There's a little bit of promotion occasionally and I do use the little segment in the podcast to celebrate some of my students' success. So if somebody has achieved their certification, I'll call out their name and give them a little shout out on the show.

Pat:
Very cool. Great, because I was going to recommend if you aren't already using this asset that you've built, your podcast, to showcase the hero stories that you are creating, then definitely do that. So I'm glad that you're doing that and you have a segment for it. It's something that's regular. Most people aren't doing that. So that's really good.

I just would love to know more about how you're getting people from the podcast to your mini course. You said you have a free mini course. I know you said you weren't promoting your course too much. And I'm wondering if you meant your paid course. Because if you have a free course, it's very valuable for people. That's definitely something that you definitely want to have in front of people's, just on top of their minds. How are you, if at all, mentioning that mini course on the podcast?

Neil:
I'd say probably one in three episodes I'm mentioning the mini course, especially when I'm doing a student's shout out. I'll ask anybody else who wants to get started with an Agile Approach to come and take my free mini course. It's about an hour long to learn the benefits and basics. So I do give a mention to that free course in a few of the shows, and I do a lot of outreach on LinkedIn. So I've got a lot of connections in my niche.

So there's probably 250,000 Microsoft business applications, professionals out there, at least on LinkedIn. I'm connected to a large number of them and I'll reach out, send them a message. Here's my podcast. And if they respond and they enjoy that, then I'll invite them to come and join my course, usually the free course. And that's how I get quite a few enrollments, I'm probably getting a couple of enrollments into the free course each day and then one or two enrollments each week into the paid course.

Pat:
Cool. Okay. So not bad. It seems like everything's sort of working and it's kind of going along, but we just kind of want to scale up and speed things up. Is that correct?

Neil:
Yeah. So the numbers have been about the same for the last 12 months. My email list is topped out just under 3,000. I am doing broadcasts on there mostly to let people know about a new podcast episode or a conference or something that I'm doing. And like every list, you get a few unsubscribes every time you send out a broadcast. And there's a little sequence of emails that goes as you take the free course. It's a sequence that helps you then convert to the paid course. And some people don't want to take the paid course and they'll drop off the email list at that point as well. I'm using Brennan-

Pat:
Cool. Oh, Brennan, his RightMessage.

Neil:
Yeah. Well, not his RightMessage, but his technique. I think it's called lessons bridge pitch survey. It's a technique I picked up on his Mastering ConvertKit Course that I implemented that with the help of an email marketer. So that's the kind of funnel that we've been using to help people convert from the free course over onto the paid course.

Pat:
Great. And Brennan is brilliant. I think that's smart. Again, I feel like you're doing all the right things, but we need to do them better. We need to optimize. And this is why I wanted to start with a podcast. I wanted to optimize the first conversion point because there's a lot of conversion points here. From the podcast to the free mini course, from the free mini course to the paid course, from all those things that happen. And you don't necessarily need to double the amount of traffic to double your income. You can just double one of those conversion points and have twice as many things happen. So this is why I'm focusing really quickly here at the start on podcasts to mini course.

I want to tell you a quick story, Neil, and this relates to my very first lead magnet that I had back in Smart Passive Income's start with the podcast. This is back in 2010. First time I ever collected emails. I had a book created, which was sort of like a course. It was just all the things you need to know to write an ebook. And this was called Ebooks The Smart Way. And like you, it kind of shared all the things that you need to know, fundamentals, basics to get an ebook done. That did okay. It went.

But I remember doing a very specific episode about specifically creating an outline for a book, just that small little moment within the whole lifespan of a book. And pitching Ebooks the Smart Way as yes, it shared everything, but there's a specific thing in that book that shows you how to create an outline that'll save you hours of time and headache when it comes to writing a book. And that particular episode converted... Gosh, it was like three times more than when I just normally mentioned the show in this or my lead magnet in the standard way that I did. And it was because of the specific content of that episode. That's what people wanted. And they saw that, within this lead magnet that it had, there was a solution for what they wanted.

So this story that I'm telling you, what does that make you think of in terms of potentially how you are pitching your mini course? Because when you pitched it to me, it sounded like it was just a very general thing. And I don't know if that's how you pitch it on the show versus, "Hey, in this episode, we talked about this. In my free course, module two is exactly about that. It's free and they'll give you that solution." Is this sparking anything for you?

Neil:
Certainly one of the things I get asked about a lot is why should we adopt Scrum? We're building business applications anyway, Scrum is just an optional way of doing it. What are the benefits from Microsoft customers or Microsoft partners in using that approach? And that's something I do go into in the free course. I'd never really talked about that on the podcast. I guess I could do an episode on that or maybe invite a guest on to talk about that or talk about their experience taking the course.

I do also get asked a lot about estimating. How big is the project going to be? How long is it going to take? How much is it going to cost? And that's a topic I've done on several podcast episodes. I had a lot of downloads for those episodes. And I'm wondering, should that be the topic for my next course because it's not really part of Scrum, but people want to know how to estimate in an agile way without doing months and months of upfront analysis and design.

And so I'm thinking, well, I've got my Scrum course. It's ticking along okay. Do I need to find better ways of optimizing and converting for it, or should I just go ahead and develop the next course?

Another idea I've had is selling the course through Microsoft distributors. So distributors are these big organizations. Lots of Microsoft partners use them for licensing software with customers. And they also provide lots of training for their Microsoft partners. A couple of them have approached me and said, "Hey, can we roll out your training to all of our Microsoft partners? We need 20 students or 50 students." I'm like, "Yes, that sounds great."

Pat:
That's cool.

Neil:
So I could go and invest my time approaching more of those Microsoft distributors and helping their partners learn Scrum as another channel to market rather than just the organic growth I've had so far with the podcast and LinkedIn outreach.

Pat:
Thank you for that. This question that you presented, which was like, how much time were these projects going to take and having a way to do that and that being a really big question people are asking. That, to me, screams bonus. To me, it screams, as a part of joining this course, you also will get access to this information that'll show you how to project manage, time-wise, all these things. Which yes, it comes with the package. But even if it were in the course, I would even recommend because that's such a big question people have that's not necessarily 100 percent related. Pull it out and make it something that is accessible for free if and only if people take action by a certain point. Because now that you are injecting scarcity such that if a person doesn't take action by a certain amount of time or isn't going to take advantage of this offer, then that particular bonus, which answers a very big question, is going to go away.

So I think that instead of even making it a full-fledged course, that could be a bonus that can be used to A, get more people in your current course and support those people even more with this answer to this question and something that would probably be in a lot of people's minds, or it is on a lot of people's minds if what you're saying is true.

And then to your other point about why use Scrum? Your course is about using Scrum, right? It's business applications and such and Scrum certification. So if I don't know why I need Scrum, I would never even need your course or even the free course. We have to answer that question upfront and answering it in the thing that would require me to then first overcome those objections is a little backwards. You're answering the question that I need to know the answer to before I take action.

So that screams to me, yes, it needs to be an episode. And in fact, it should be the very first episode that everybody listens to. Even though it's episode 80 or whatever the number is right now, it should be like the prerequisite for anybody. I mean, my prerequisite episodes are 192, 193, and 194. So it's okay that they're not in the beginning. And I think that that will answer a lot of people's questions so that they would then be open to, "Ah, okay. Now this makes sense. Tell me how to do it now." And then they're going to be more open to taking advantage of the offer free or paid with you.

Neil:
Right. That's a great idea. Pull out that benefits module out of the free training course, make it a signature podcast episode that I can then promote and get people into my world and hopefully joining me on this little crusade to help them become more agile, it's a good idea.

Pat:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that would work a lot better. And then if there were any other objections people have, those can be their own individual podcast episodes as well. People default to doubt. And if they have any reason to either doubt or not believe or just not understand something, then they're not going to take further action. So that's good.

Okay. So we talked about the podcast. We talked about the free course and taking the benefits out as well as potentially using the time situation thing as a bonus maybe. I would love to know a little bit more about the mini course and how within the course itself, do you, if at all, set up the paid course? I'd love to know if I reached the end of the free course, how are you leading me into the paid course, if at all?

Neil:
So the structure of the free course is a little bit like the way that you structured your webinars where you're teaching people about podcasting. So it's about 45 minutes of valuable teaching content. The history of agile approaches, the benefits, the basics of Scrum. And then, "Hey, do you want to learn Scrum with me? Well, here's how you can do that. Here's my paid training course. Here's the benefits it offers. Here's the price it's at. Here's the bonuses you get with it. Here's how to click and buy and subscribe and come and join our community of students."

And about five days after you finished the free course, there's an offer, which is $100 off the paid course. So there's a time limited, using deadline funnel, money off offer. I love your idea of making it a bonus content. If you sign up today, you get the bonus rather than if you don't sign up today, you lose the discount. Devalues my course for one thing.

Pat:
It does.

Neil:
Jumps up the price. So having something attractive to join today to get access to, maybe an estimation course bonus, maybe that's a better way to go.

Pat:
Yeah. That can be very true. Plus, a lot of people like to include for just, if it is like a live launch of kinds, you also get access to an onboarding webinar with me where you can ask questions as we get started together in this process. A little bit of access to you can help, but it's not required and depends on your time and such.

I'm wanting to ask you, with relation to the mini course, what is something that like... Do you teach anything that would... Let's say I'm an attendee and I'm watching you give this presentation. You're teaching. What would be one example of something that you could teach me that actually I can kind of use or benefit from that would then have me go, "Wow, that was awesome. I need more."

For the podcasting thing, for example, I talk about a lot - I provide as much value as I can here, but I show people in my webinar course how to market their podcast using a special sequence of things you do. If you get into Facebook groups and having conversations with the forum owner and all that stuff. It's kind of a tip that blows people's minds when they see it because it's easily accessible and people can do it.

And just because I'm sort of beating around the bush here, I'll just tell everybody what it is just in case. And maybe this will be helpful for you too in terms of growth. But if I were you, you could potentially go to different agile groups on Facebook or LinkedIn, probably LinkedIn is even better, and you can invite those group owners on your show. They're going to be more likely to say yes, but secondly, they're going to be very likely, because you've provided them a platform to look good on, they're going to likely share it into that group. And so now you're not just going in and posting spam about your podcast, you're actually getting endorsed from the person who created the group and who everybody already trusts.

So I mentioned that tip near the end of my webinar and it blows people's minds. So they go, "Oh my gosh, if only I had a podcast now to actually do this strategy with... I need this course. It makes sense because now I see how easy this is to actually help me. Okay. Pat, let's see the offer." Do you have something of that nature with relation to what it is you're teaching with Scrum in the mini course that has me go, "Yes, I can do that. And I got something, but I need the rest of this to be able to actually do it."

Neil:
Maybe that's a blocker I've got in my mind is that Scrum's a very simple framework. There's just a few roles. There's some events each sprint and there's a couple of artifacts. And I always think of it as you have to adopt the whole thing at once. You have to get your whole team to adopt it and you have to get your client to want to use Scrum as well. So adopting Scrum can be quite a big event in an IT professional's life. And you can't just take a part of it and start using it.

I think you're right. I think I need to find something like that. Whether it's how to write requirements differently or how to estimate things and just find a little nugget that's really golden that tempts people to want to know more about the bigger picture and learn more from me.

Pat:
It's interesting you mentioned the fact that you have to convince your team to do this. A lot of times, I would imagine some people would be very reluctant or scared of trying to convince other people to get on board with something that they have hardly any idea at that moment at least of how to do it or what it is. So there could be a moment in the middle of the webinar where you go, "Okay, at some point when you adopt..." Language is important in these webinars or trainings as well. So instead of saying like, "Hey, if you adopt Scrum," I would say, "When you adopt Scrum, this happens," kind of like future-pace that. It's just sort of a neural linguistics kind of thing.

So saying something like, "When you adopt Scrum, one challenge that you're going to face is convincing your team members to do this with you. And so I wanted to break down my approach to help you approach your team. This is what - I've done this with my team. This is kind of what I'm doing with you right now. It's a three-step process and here's a worksheet to help you out. You actually get this worksheet at the end. I'm going to give it to you for free, but this is something that will help you learn how to pitch it to your higher-ups and your colleagues." So step one, step two, step three.

So an actual value that people can imagine themselves doing with this information once they have it, but they need the information to be able to do that. And that would also help tackle a specific, perhaps an objection they have. "Oh, I have to convince other people?" Yeah, you do. But let me show you how easy it is.

Again, I'm pulling that out, but it could be something that could work very well to have people go, "Okay, you just crushed another one of my objections, Neil. So I need to do this. Show me how finally because I think I have all the pieces now." And that could help with the paid course. That combined with potentially the bonus or something could be really cool. I had mentioned a worksheet that you can give away if that indeed is something that could be offered too. That's always a fun excuse if you will. I like using the idea of like a giveaway in a webinar to hold people until the end, but also a way to email without being aggressive.

I can email somebody or I can email everybody and go, "Hey, by the way, great webinar yesterday. In case you didn't get the free worksheet about helping your team learn Scrum, here it is attached, or here's the link where you can download it. And by the way, while I have you here, remember I offered a special deal for Scrum Success with Neil." I don't know what the name of the course is, but...

Neil:
That'll do.

Pat:
But that's kind of like another strategy that you can do to - again, you're not changing anything you're doing. You're just optimizing what you're doing and you're finding better ways to do it. And so you've laid this great foundation. It is working. It is working. We just want it to work better. And this is the approach. This pinpointing each conversion point approach is the approach that I would take even more deeply after this call for you to look into. So I hope this is helpful and giving you at least some direction.

Neil:
Yeah, it's been really helpful. I think there's still a lot I can do to optimize. One of the things - I've just hired a new virtual assistant, and I've asked her to take the course with a student's perspective and just let me know what's the content of the video feel like? What experience do you have as you go through each of the modules? What's the copy sound like in the email messages? Is it consistent with my tone of voice? And what ways she can find to optimize some of the conversion points.

Because I get lots of great feedback from students. "It's a great course. Thanks very much." But that doesn't really help me make it any better. I appreciate the kind words, but I want something much more constructive. So my VA is going to go through and give me that.

And at what point-

Pat:
I love that.

Neil:
- does a course creator say, "That course is good. Let's move on and create another course." Some course creators seem to be serial course creators, and you do an amazing job. You've got lots of courses. You've also got a great production staff supporting you doing that. For very small teams like mine, what's the point in which you're ready to create your second paid course?

Pat:
For me, it's two things. Number one, when the first course is optimized as much as considerably possible. I mean, there is almost kind of like a graph that starts off really steep in terms of the amount of things you can improve. And then that graph starts to get smaller and smaller, and then every improvement eventually just isn't worth it anymore because it's so incremental. You want to hit those big levers upfront, like we're talking about today. But eventually you got to put the brush down and work on the next painting because you could always keep brushing the same painting. Like how does an artist know when to stop? You kind of have to go, "Okay, it's doing what it needs to do. It's optimized. The systems are in place." And that is when you would know that you can then have the room to do another one.

That combined with what's the next big problem that I can solve for people that can actually stem from the initial customer base that you have, which is where I would recommend because they know your style, they know your work. They probably are now ready for the next step. And that way maybe people can go from course number one to course number two. But at the same time, maybe people will come in just in course number two, but you have people who you're building it for already in mind. And you can have conversations with them. You can talk with them. It all stems from the problems or the struggles and the challenges that you're solving for your current audience. And you have a paying audience already. That's who I would go to to determine where to start.

Neil:
Yeah. So I interviewed a bunch of my students maybe a year ago, and estimating projects was one area where they told me they were still struggling. And so that's where I was thinking about building the next course, but I think I still have... You've given me lots of good ideas for optimizing what I've got today before I really take that leap.

Pat:
Good.

Neil:
There's been a new version of the Scrum guide was published, so I have to update my current course to make sure it stays current. Once that's done, then I'll probably just do another couple of weeks of optimization and move on.

Pat:
That's awesome. It sounds like a good plan to me.

Neil:
Ah, great. Thanks very much for helping me get my head in the right place, Pat. I really appreciate it.

Pat:
Yeah, no worries. That's why I'm here. Before you go, where might people go to find out more from you?

Neil:
You can visit my website. It's Customery.academy. So it's the word customer with a Y on the end. My wife used to say she felt all Christmas-y in December. Well, I feel all customery all year round. So the businesses called Customery.academy for my school. And my podcast is AmazingApps.show.

Pat:
Neil, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for your time today and good luck on everything.

Neil:
Pat, it's been wonderful speaking to you. Thanks very much for having me on the AskPat show.

Pat:
Yeah, my pleasure. We'll catch up soon.

Neil, thank you so much for that conversation. I hope you all enjoyed that. And getting off those plateaus can be really difficult, but oftentimes they don't necessarily happen from doing something new. They happen from making decisions about things that already exist or things that you need to stop doing. That's another thing that I've seen help people get out of that messy middle or that gap before the inflection point, is to let go of something that maybe was taking up too much brain space or too much time or too much time for the team to then dedicate to stuff that can then be optimizing what it is you already have that maybe was working.

So Neil, I'm really excited to see where you go from here. If you go to Customery.com, that's Customery.com, you'll find Neil and his business there.

And Neil, thanks again for the conversation and for coming on, being vulnerable, and helping all of us out who are listening. I appreciate that so much.

And if you'd like to get coached here, just like Neil did today, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com and you can fill out the form there to apply. And we might reach out to you and have you come on the show to get coached just like Neil did today. And it's done for free because your form of "payment" is you allowing us to share it publicly so that it can help many other people too. And that's why we're here. We're here to serve first.

So thank you so much. I appreciate you, and Neil, you rock. Everybody who's listening, you rock. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. And I look forward to serving you the next episode of AskPat. The next one is actually a Where Are They Now? episode. And some of my favorite actually because we get to go back in time and actually travel through time by talking with somebody who's been on the show once before, what they've done, maybe what they didn't do, and where they're at now. So look forward to that. It's coming up. Make sure you hit subscribe. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Sound design and editing by Paul Grigoras. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you on the next session.