Ajay: Sure. I'm glad to have you. So, Pamela, just for our audience sake so that they can understand, what business you will have and what challenges you have. So, can you briefly tell me something about your business?

Pamela: Yes, sure. So, I'm a Holistic Nutritionist and Lifestyle Coach, and I have been working online ever since I started out, but it was more one-on-one at the beginning and I was helping people with thyroid conditions, Hashimoto, hormone imbalances, especially women. And I meandered into the whole energy metabolism area just also because it was a personal interest and also something that I was struggling with. And I've created an online course that I'm now marketing to groups.

I expanded offering this and it's basically called the Metabolic Energy Reboot Program. And it is helping people reset their own energy, creating machine, read the body by giving it the right things. So, we're focusing on nutrition, on stress, and sleep. So, that is really the core of what I'm focusing and I try and bring these elements together in my course.

Ajay: Okay. So, you said that this is an online course. So, is it like someone can go with it like self-coaching, or do you go on zoom and teach them and how does it work?

Pamela: Yes. So, the way it works is you sign up with me for either three, six, or nine months, and you will get video trainings that will basically tell you what we're doing. It gives you an action step, something that you need to implement, and then you also have one-on-one coaching with me to make sure you're on track, you know accountability, but also if you have any personal issues that I need to talk about. If you're taking any medications or supplements so, there is a personal coaching element as well, and there's a group support as well.

So, I will bring people together and I will have certain topics that we're discussing. I bring in other experts so that they get as much out of it that they need to move forward with their energy goals.

Ajay: Okay. So, one quick question. So, my understanding is, this is a hybrid program where the videos are recorded, right? So, they can go and see the recorded video. And then, it will still have the personal at personal level and in the group session, they can come in, just okay, perfect. I understand that. And how many people have gone through this program here?

Pamela: So, the program is brand new. I am ready to launch, but I'm missing a little bit of strategy to get the people in. What I'm doing is trying to improve, and I've had people go through this, but on a one-on-one basis, not in this. So, this is brand new. Yeah.

Ajay: Oh, so this is brand new. And how much would it cost eventually? How does it work? Is there a three months program, for example? So, they have unlimited access to the video I'm assuming. And then, certain sessions with you and the group, correct?

Pamela: Yes. Correct. So, depending on how fast you wanna do it and how important it is to you to get it fast. There are different layers so you can do it for example, in three months, that means you get a new video every single week. So, 12 weeks, and you work on it every single day for maybe half an hour or so to make sure that you're setting yourself up. So, I call it Dexti Accelerator, that's how I call it. You can stretch it out a little bit more if you feel like I wanna do those, but don't take the speed out of it. You can do six months. And you can even subscribe and do it with me for a year if you want continuous support.

So, depending on what people want and the price would be it's $3,000 for three months, $6,000 for six, and just under 12,000 for a year.

Ajay: Okay. So, that's the pricing that you're thinking about. Good. Have you gotten any feedback? I know that you said that you had one-on-one with people so that they can go through the program. What's the feedback that you're getting?

Pamela: You mean from my clients I previously worked with?

Ajay: Yes.

Pamela: Yeah so I usually tested everything that I wanted to do with previous clients and made sure that it worked. And I also backed everything up with research. So, I looked into, is their research, what are other influencers in my area? Are they doing something similar? So, I think it's really well-rounded because it's been long time coming so to speak and it's really laid out practical implementation steps for people so that they can actually do it in a day. And then, they don't feel too overwhelmed.

So, I break it down and build really little pieces. That's why we also need this timeframe. Because we can't tackle everything all at once, do step by step. And yeah so what I've tried, all of these things on myself and also my clients, and I've seen results and that's how this material ends up in my course.

Ajay: Perfect. And would you be able to get a video testimonial from your client or something I'm just curious?

Pamela: Yeah. So, I have some written testimonials on my website. I don't have a video testimonial yet. The people tend to be very shy to do this. I'm hoping that when people are really in the program, that I can convince them to do it, but so far I've written statements on my website.

Ajay: Okay. So, my suggestion is when you are starting a business and I will go into your questions obviously, but when it's a new product, right? So, you haven't been doing your business, but this is essentially a new product so, what you need to do is make sure that there's a validation. So, people don't feel like that they are the ones who are the Guinea pig. The first people it is always the hardest thing, always in any startup. And this is a new product, right. How do we get the first few customers? Who are paying customers? That is always a challenge.

And that is a validation. So, the more you have people who can say good things about it, even in the trial basis, or even the free, the better off you are. So, that's just my 2 cents about the startups because I do work with a lot of startups. I'm an advisor of some of the startups. So, I knew the challenges that you will face. And I did my own startup, several of them. So, I know this space. So, good, let's go over your questions. I knew that you had some specific questions so let's discuss those. Yeah.

Pamela: Okay. Yeah. So, how I started marketing, this is with a webinar funnel. So, I'm basically educating the people on the steps I take, give them basically the blueprint of what this is all about. So, I have a webinar funnel for this program. And so, I guess my first question would be, what is your advice to which platform is best suited to promote it, or should I go with ads? Should I start making more connections with other people? So, what would be your advice on how to get this webinar funnel out in the world?

Ajay: Perfect. So, before I tell you the platform which could be the several, and I'll give you some ideas of which too. When you have created a funnel, then I'm assuming that there is what we call in marketing with our head, this word, The Bait. In other words, there is something very useful for the people that they will get when they join, in lieu of joining it. So, in other words, it's like, hi, come to our webinars and just for joining our webinar, I'm giving you this report about how food impacts your energy.

It's something that is useful and not very long, it's not a book kind of thing either it’s a book, but in that case, it needs to be published book or a good four or five-page, something that explains, because what that does is someone who has read that is, again, the chances of them coming to the well, not even goes up.

So, do you have, I'm assuming that you have something like that, have you created something like that since you have been working on this for a long time. I'm assuming that you have, right? Okay, good. I understand that you are targeting the business owner executives. Who is your target audience?

Pamela: Yeah. Exactly those people, entrepreneurs, CEOs, people that are stressed out and they have a lot of responsibility and they need to make sure they stay energetic enough to do everything they need to do.

Ajay: So, to those people, the best place to find them is the LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn is something where you can expect the professionals, the entrepreneurs, the business owners to be there because that is really designed for them. So, that would be the channel and in the LinkedIn, if you want to do an email campaign, of course now that you have this free report also. So, if you want to do that then I think that your membership, you just need to upgrade it. I don't think it's a lot, it’s a couple of hundred dollars.

I know that we do it, but I have someone else do it for me. So, I have no idea how much it costs. I know that it's not excessive. So, part of these never price there, once you have upgraded it, you are able to really fine-tune your target audience. So, you can literally even say that I'm looking for CEOs with this size of companies and entrepreneurs.

Generally speaking you can really fine-tune it and I would say that should be the first attempt to do it. Now while you're doing it, I would also suggest that you should start to create, since you are talking about the funnel so, it's not like the funnel which everyone comes to the webinar. So, if everyone who downloads your report may not come to the webinar or you may have some lists of people. So, I would say, start compiling your email list. All the real people, the opt-in email list. And then, you share with them some information on a regular basis, something that is useful so that you are top of the mind awareness. And that's how people will start to come.

The more familiar you become then you say, okay, I'm announcing this new webinar, someone from there come sit just like any other business. I always say that we hear the stories, but even the overnight successes happens in 10 years. So, someone looks like, wow, he’s a overnight success. And it's like, oh, but night was 10 years. It's always going to be slow. So, I just want you to understand that so, it will be slow, but once you are consistently start to use the LinkedIn to reach out to them and then whoever downloaded your report or some other information that you have, you can always start to add them into a database. Where you reach out to them, even a monthly or biweekly, bimonthly with something that is important.

And then, one more thing, since we are talking about the LinkedIn. Search for the right groups. So, you may find the groups where your target customer because you cannot say, I have every CEO in the world. I can use it. And then, you are becoming very broad. So, you still have to narrow target it. And then, for whatever is your profile that you have ideal customer, suppose you have to literally start writing. These are my ideal customers. These are the characteristic of my ideal customer. And then, you will see a lot of groups there with those kinds of people. Exactly my ideal customer may be in a group, if they are not, then you can create your own group on LinkedIn.

Start to invite those people to come and join. But idea is that you want to start spreading the word around, and again like I said, it will build gradually but surely will build. Okay. So, that is a platform I think would probably be most effective for you in the short term. Because again, since you are a startup, I'm assuming that you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising and marketing everywhere. Right?

Pamela: No, exactly. And that was my next question. What do you think I should spend, I was thinking that I have to do ads. But then I was thinking so how much should they actually spend if you start from zero, right? As you say, I don't have a hundred thousand dollars to throw at those companies.

Ajay: So, the starting point should clearly be something like LinkedIn where you're building your own account. I wouldn't even suggest that you advertise now. If the other place that you may want to test it, if you want to advertise with a small amount of money, then you can try again, the Facebook because Facebook is at least lets you target those people. You see, I don't have that visibility honestly, and I'm in the marketing business.

How many of your target audience are on the Facebook? How and they will pay attention. So, that is always the challenge for me. What you're offering is I like to say, it is vitamins, right? It is not an aspirin. So, in other words, people don't really, it's not like they have immediate need. If you have a big headache, then you go and go to the store, you know exactly what you want. And whoever finds the first one that they can find with the right kind of aspirin at the okay price, they will buy it, but when you are sending vitamin, then you have to convince them why it is good for you.

And so, that is where I see a big challenge with advertising. I've always said that selling vitamins is much, much more harder than selling aspirin, but having said that once you have a buyer of aspirin, now they're consuming it every day. Very few people have headaches every day. So, yes, quick sell it is good. The pain, but here it's a long-term manifest. So, if you want to try some advertising, I would say use few a hundred dollars on social media. And see what kind of response you get.

When it comes to dollar amount, how much you should be spending. I come from the school where I say, I don't really look at the amount, I look at the return. So, I'm sure that if you can figure out after testing that now $50,000 will give me $500,000 in return. I'm sure you will steal; beg, borrow, but you will manage that money, to add for the advertising.

So, that's my thing, I would say start very small, with $200 you can do the testing, fine-tune, figure out a process, a program that seemed to work because when you’re advertising you shouldn't be advertising your free report. So, you get the free report, they will sign up for the webinar, but I'm just giving you a heads up. A lot of people will not show up. Even though they have signed up because they want the free book or whatever, but that is okay because now you have a funnel. You have added them into your email list and they will convert. Some of them will convert, you never convert everyone.

So, I would say, do that, spend, keep a budget of $500 then by the time you exhausted that 500, you should have a very clear understanding of what's the amount for one lead. One download. So, suppose it is $5, and then you can take a step back and say, does it make sense for me, which means that if I spend a thousand dollars I have 200 and then, you can make some assumptions.

What percent of them will attend the webinar and what percent of the webinar attendee will buy and you can have some assumptions and then you can start to see what will work, but initially you should not be spending a lot of money on advertising because right now you are just experimenting to see what will work and what will not work. Okay. I mean, what you don't want to do is to spend thousands of dollars and say, oh, this does not work.

Pamela: Yes, that's great advice. Thank you. That’s good to know because you're always wondering, should you go in with a lot of money and class plastered full, or should you not do that? Take a different approach.

Ajay: Yeah. The only people only startups I see spend a lot of money are the ones who have a lot of money to waste, the ones who raise millions of dollars from the VCs and they will just go and blow it on advertising. But you know, when you are bootstrapping a business, your every dollar is important. So, you just want to go slow, identify, figure out the return and only then start to ramp up.

Pamela: Okay. That sounds good. Yeah. And I guess my last question really just was, what's the best way to engage the email list subscribers and convert them because I do have a list which is small, but it's also not growing. And I just feel like people are not really engaging. It's very passive. So, do you have any nuggets on, how can I get them excited? Because I do offer them free stuff, I offer them mini-courses, I do that and I also give them free content, but I haven't found what will excite them to engage with me and convert.

Ajay: Some of the most successful email campaigns I have seen don't on a regular basis, they don't sell anything. It's almost like I say that you have a permission every ninth email or 10th email to go and offer something. Hey, this is a free program that we are offering. So, the best way to engage them is to make it number one, very short, but very useful for them.

So, if you said something about seafood that you should have whatever that is the best for generating energy or detox, dos, and don'ts. Stuff like that that is literally I can glance. So, number one, the most important thing is the title. It has to be useful so that they know that you are not selling anything, there’s some information and you just give that information. Now the call to action is perfectly alike, say join my free webinar in there perfectly, all right. To do that, but what you are sending to them is the most important thing, because if they feel that you are selling, then that's what they get disengaged.

But if there is something, maybe if you show to them, then they will be getting it, they will be reading. And of course, whether someone opens your email or not, I'm sure that you already know it totally depends on the subject line, right? If the subject line is intriguing, people are going to open it. If it is not, you will have very few and the percentage of open rate drops dramatically. So, figure it out subject line that you may even want to test some subject lines before it's like, hey, is this available?

You have at least in your inner circle that will give you honest feedback, but the thing is that you should make it short. So, if it is long, no. Again, people don't read, but if it’s going to take me two minutes. And then, I will tell you that I have several products and one of the product is a SAS product. I don't know how they got me, but I kept on getting emails from this faster, which is, I guess, some organization that sells different services to companies like me. And I must have gotten emails for literally, I would say two years. I never flagged it as spam because the subject line was always intriguing. So, it was like, okay, they're not selling, but I was not opening it because, for me, it's like, I don't know what it is.

And one Saturday I opened it. It's like, wow, it took me two minutes. There were three interesting things that I got out of it. And now, they send me every day and every day opened because I know it's going to take me two, three minutes and I may pick something interesting. I'm not saying that every time I opened it, I find some nuggets in there, but I find it often enough that it's worthwhile for me to spend that two, three minutes. That's what you want to do. The emails do not display. You can send a long-form email every ninth time or 10th time. And you can have something, but your regular email. And I don't know, how often do you send your email by the way?

Pamela: Yeah. So, I've changed that over the course of the day because I get different advice. So, I started out with emailing once a month, then someone said, you need to email every week. Then I started doing that. Then people said twice a week. So, I did that. So, then people said, “Oh my God, that's way too much, go back.” So, I said I did once a week, now it's every other week. Everyone's telling me something else. So, I don't know, what's the best time?

Ajay: Again, It's consistency. So, if you do week, you can just have your weekly waelth advice, everyone will advise and then next week, what it is all about. So, what you want to do is build that expectation. Like I said, average people are like me for a while, they may not even open. But one of those times when your subject line, your weekly advice and then, something that is intriguing that appeals to them, they'll click and open and say, what is this all about?

And if they are delighted, if they feel like this was useful, trust me. And even though open rate will start to increase. Okay. And so, if you do weekly, yeah, that is fine. If you do biweekly, that's fine too. But the consistency, I don't think that there is a right or wrong answer. I think one month is too long. Okay. Because it will be like I said, you want to build an expectation. So, even if you are doing weekly, send it on Friday, if you suppose you're sending it on Friday or so just have it, whatever.

Have interesting name that says Friday so that they know that, okay, you are sending every Friday. And you want to build this expectation so that they will know what to expect, and then again, your open rate will increase, but all these things take time. All I'm saying is you don't listen too much. If you asked 10 people for advice, you will get 10 advices. And then, you don't know. So, the best thing I always say is pick up the advice that makes sense to you. Go ahead and try it.

And I'm not saying that every advice is going to be right or even what I am saying is right. Because as you know, marketing is more of a art than a science. I wish there was a formula that we could just use. But I would say, just be consistent, test it with any program that you're thinking, test it. What kind of results you're getting. And if you're not getting the results that you would like first tweak it and see, maybe there's something that you can do to tweak it.

But if you have tried everything and it seems that particular process is not working fine, then you set it aside, try something else. But I will not change something a month too quickly to week to bi-weekly because that throws everyone off, like I said, month is too long. Okay. Weekly, you have to, and please don't make it long that's my only advice. Have even one solid idea, but make it something, someone can read it in two page, bullet or whatever, very easy to read. If there's a long thing, suppose there's a long article that you have written, find out a nugget from there, and put a link of the article. If you want to see the details here, but the gist of this, is this, one, two, three, four, five.

Again, you have to build the credibility. People when they don't know you, they don’t know your email. So, that is fine, that is life. Everyone starts from zero anyway. So, now you are starting and going there. So, I would say everything that you are doing makes sense. You are already thinking on advertising; you're already thinking about building the funnel, the email, to me those are all really solid ones, continue on doing it.

And then, of course, the one thing that I've seen consistent over the last 18 years that I've been working with small businesses in my practice. The ones who has succeeded, I cannot think of one that I know who had such a brilliant idea that they started and it was like a no-brainer, but the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful ones that I have seen is literally the persistence. So, long you believe in what you're doing, and you are excited and you don't give up, it will work out. That I can almost guarantee you. How long it will, I don't know, but I've never seen anyone fail if not only that the persistence is there, but again, you also have to keep on learning what is working, what's not working and keep on improving so that over period of time you see everything's working.

Good. All right, thank you. Good luck. It looks like exciting business I will check out. I mean I think I have too much energy maybe you will have something for that because sometimes I have a hard time sleeping when I'm thinking so much about all these exciting opportunities and everything. So, I'll check out your website.

Pamela: Thank you so much. And thank you so much for helping me today wrap my head around it.

Ajay: Okay, thank you. Very good meeting you.

Pamela: Yes, thank you so much. Have a great day.

Ajay: Thanks, okay. Bye.

Pamela: Bye.

Speaker: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Founders Corner Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud. If you are interested in being a guest, be sure to visit our main page at www.gmrwebteam.com/thefounderscorner.