Step by Step: How to Create Killer Webinars with Steven Essa

International speaker, software developer and webinar training expert – Steven Essa

 

Steven is a webinar guru – he helps people without products or list create a webinar and sell between $2200 and $22,000 in just a weekend! He goes step by step through his formula to create webinars – with exactly what to say and when!

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

Go to StevenEssa.com and WebBusinessBreakthrough.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast - with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you - the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today on the show I'm super excited to have Steven Essa. He's got a really cool business all about webinars. He also has a really cool seminar series that he's been traveling around the entire world with for the last 18 months. It's called Web Business Breakthrough and he has some cool case studies that I'm super excited to talk about. Plus, I'm in webinar creation mode right now so it's scratching my itch. I have tons of questions for him. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Steven.

Steven: My pleasure, Jaime. Thanks for having me on.

Jaime: It was silly because when I looked at you being on my schedule today I was so excited because I get to ask you as many questions as I possibly can. On my To Do list for later today is to finish writing my webinar.

Steven: Awesome. You're in luck - I love talking about it.

Jaime: You were just telling me a little bit about these seminars that you travel around with. You teach this stuff all the time - tell me about that.

Steven: Since I got started in 2008 I've always been looking for the fast and easy way to make money online. I just wanted to get out of my job and start generating cash flow to buy real estate and create financial freedom, which is what I read in the Robert Kiyosaki series many years before. As soon as I learned how to generate cash flow I started teaching other people. For me, I tried websites, I tried affiliate marketing, I tried lots of different stuff and nothing seemed to work but, as soon as I got a headset, a laptop and a GoToWebinar account and started talking to people, my first webinar had 15 people and I made $594 in sales so i thought that was much easier - I could just talk without having to worry about copyrighting and graphics and all the stuff that you know, or you think you have to know, when you start out in internet marketing. From there I started generating $4,000, $10,000, $25,000. $90,000 was my record about two years ago and we just broke that last August - we did $120,000 with 13 people on the webinar in sales.

Jaime: What? That's crazy. That's a big chunk of change for 13 people. So tell me how you even got into this - what were you doing in your day job before and how did you end up quitting?

Steven: Basically I was in the music business for 13 years. I was in a death metal band and we went all over Australia and parts of the world. We were always independent - no one would sign us. I didn't know you needed a special thing called "talent" and we didn't have that, we just had a lot of ambition. We went over to America for 2002 to 2005 and tried to get a record deal and they said "You've come at the worst time ever. The music business is finished, it's over," and I was like "Damn, 13 years of hard work and it's over," so basically I just went back to Australia and I ended up looking after my father who was pretty sick at the time. At that point there I just said to myself "Never again am I going to be at the mercy of a trend. I'm just going to create financial freedom and then I can play all the music I want. It doesn't matter if anyone doesn't like it because I just get to do it for fun," and that was my goal. So I got a job in real estate, but not traditional real estate where you're selling properties for people - I got a job with a mentor that had 80 properties and I always wanted to learn how to accumulate properties. So I started working in a day job for him and soon after realized that his internet marketing sucked, like most businesses in those days. So I said "Boss, you need to get your website up to date. You need to be doing newsletters, you need to be doing videos and all of this stuff," and he said "Oh, we don't have anyone to do that," so I went out and made it my job to help him to achieve that. I went to the seminars and started learning. I went to my first seminar and there was a teacher called Brett McFall who wrote a bestselling book in Australia. At that seminar I was like "Wow, this guy is amazing," and I was taking lots of notes and I went and applied that stuff straight away and I actually signed up as a student of his - I borrowed $25,000 and I signed up as his student - and six months later I quit my job and I started generating cash flow from webinars. So that's sort of where it began.

Jaime: What year was that?

Steven: 2008.

Jaime: Okay, so you've been doing webinars for a ridiculously long period of time.

Steven: It's quite a lot. I wasn't the first but I was among the first to grab it and run with it.

Jaime: That's crazy. Six years is not that long in the history of business but it's ridiculously long in the history of webinars so you've probably seen it come a long way. What do you think the difference is between 2008 and now with webinars? Because everyone is hot on them now and they think they're awesome.

Steven: I think the biggest thing is that they're much more competitive. It's much harder to get people's attention to come to your webinars and it's a bit harder to sell the higher priced stuff. I still sell my product for $3,000 and I'm still generating a 10% conversion from the right list - because it all depends on who's coming to your webinar. I think the challenges these days are a) getting people to come to your webinar and I think we'll chat about that and some strategies I would give to people and b) getting that conversion once they're there - I'd be happy to go through my process in a nutshell so that people have some framework that  I look for whenever I pick someone out of the crowd to work with over the weekend to build a webinar for, the process that I go with no matter whether someone's paying me $75,000 in my high level profile or whether I'm doing it for free as a demonstration just to show people how easy it is.

Jaime: Well tell people about the demonstrations that you do at your seminars so they can get a general idea of how cool this is.

Steven: Absolutely. I'm always putting myself to the test. When I put my program together and sell it I want everyone to succeed with it so I'm always updating it and trying to make it better - I'm always trying to find an easier way. When my brother-in-law released his bestselling book, "The Laptop Millionaire," I said to him "Let me come on the world tour with you and promote your book and let me pick someone from the crowd and make them money with a webinar to prove that webinars are the fastest and easiest way to build a real business on the internet. Let me do that," and he said "Can you do it?" and I said "Well, I've never done it before but I think I could," and it started from there, 18 months ago. He would run most of the seminar and speak and I would come on the first day and say "Who here has some knowledge, expertise, a business, a product, a service or something that you'd like to sell or create a business out of?" and people put their hands up. It started off as three or four people coming on stage and, the next thing you know, now there are 50 people coming on stage. Sometimes there are more people on stage that want me to do this for them than in the audience. To make it fair we get the audience to vote. So I give the microphone to the person and I say "Tell us your name and what you're going to teach us on the webinar." I give them a bit of a script - I just tell them "In this webinar you will discover bullet point one, bullet point two, bullet point three. Register now. So they're effectively just reading out the registration page that they would create. So everyone leaves with a registration page at least but basically what happens is they say what they're going to say and we cut it down to five or six people, the audience votes and then I work with that person on the Saturday and Sunday, put the webinar together and launch it on Sunday in front of the audience and the most we've generated was $22,000 in sales for a guy in the UK and the least we generated was about $2,200 but we're normally able to generate around $8,000 to $12,000, that's the average that we generate from these challenges. It's a lot of fun and it puts me under pressure and some of the people I've worked with have been absolutely amazing and some of them have been absolutely hopeless but it's been a lot of fun - they've learned, I've learned and they've made really good money. Best of all, the audience is blown away. They're like "Wow, that dude was sitting here with no product, no website, no list and now he's holding a check for $10,000," and that gives me a great feeling and it helps us to prove what we do, which is another thing that's great - if you can do a webinar you can prove what you're doing on your webinar and that can go a long way to helping you make more sales. That's a really good thing to have these days on a webinar. What I do, since I did that three day event, is I've taken that principle of doing a demo and I've put it into my 90 minute talks - so at step three of my 90 minute webinar I actually say "Who here has never done a webinar before but has got some information?" and they type in the question box and then I go "Okay, Mary," and I uncheck Mary's microphone and I say "Mary, have we ever met before?" and she says no, "So this wasn't pre-organized?", "No.", "Excellent," and then I put together a quick couple of slides for Mary and I have Mary present on my webinar, record it, automate it and I say "There you go guys," and that's all in 90 minutes to show people how easy it is to do this.

Jaime: You're like wham, bam, everything as we do it. What I want to ask is what some of products are? Before we get to the step-by-step, if you could just list some of the products that they've sold. Because you said these people don't even lists and everyone worries - "Maybe I have an idea but I don't know what type of products sell and I don't have a list."

Steven: Absolutely. The big thing is that most of these guys that I work with don't have a product - they've got the knowledge up here. I always say that everyone has a $10,000 a month business, minimum, using webinars - and if you think that you don't have enough knowledge that people would want to pay for, then you know somebody who does have knowledge and information and you could help them set up a webinar. It's the easiest business model ever once you've done it up a couple of times, you've set up webinars for people, because you don't have to talk, you don't have to sell, you don't have to deliver any products - and that's what I do now with my model where I make 50% off the life of the business just for running the webinar side of the business. That webinar where I told you we made $120,000 I wasn't even on the webinar, my business partner was running it.

Jaime: That's the best model - "I wasn't even on the webinar!"

Steven: Absolutely. That was the best one. So to answer your question - some of the products: one guy had knowledge in lead generation, another guy had knowledge in business and how to grow your business - he was a business consultant, a business coach. We had a chartered accountant in Sydney this past March - the audience voted, out of 70 people, for this accountant, can you believe it? This guy got on stage and he said "I can show you how to slash your tax bill by 80%," and the crowd went ballistic. He didn't have a product so what I always do is I just have people who don't have a product create a series of webinars that we're going to deliver later on. So we don't create the product until we sell a webinar. We do a series of 8, 10 or 12 webinars for $300, $500, $1,000, $2,000, whatever, with some extras, maybe some e-mail support, a couple of coaching calls, and we basically create the package out of thin air. So at the point where we're delivering the webinar on the Sunday I would say that 99% of people that we've run it with have not had a product or a service - they've actually created it after they've sold it.

Jaime: I think that's awesome because then you can see whether people like it or not. I've used that model - I did it with Eventual Millionaire at the very beginning and it was all about debt freedom and stuff and nobody wanted it so I was like "Well I'm glad I don't have to create anything now!"

Steven: Exactly. How many business owners do you hear of, getting started online, trying to make it happen, they've spent all this time and money on this amazing product, they've got the DVDs or the books sitting in the garage and there are 5,000 copies of it and nobody is buying it because they haven't got it quite right, or even if they sell a couple then people e-mail them and say "Hey, do you cover any of this basic information?" and they realize they've created a complicated course and now they have to redo it. So this way you're taking feedback on the go and you don't have to create anything or record anything until you've sold it and people prefer it if you deliver it live. So when people buy it from you and go "Where's the product?" you can say "We run it live every week, once a week for an hour, and you can interact and ask questions," and you can change your program on-the-fly, as it's going along, if you need to as well. That's the best - and you can record it, automate it and send it to anyone who didn't get it, put it on a membership site when it's done and there's your product - it's done on-the-fly and it's absolutely awesome.

Jaime: I agree. So let's go through the structure - what would you say the first step is? Let's say I have the product already, because we can talk about that in another interview, so we have the product, we know what it is, now we need to create a webinar and get people on it so what are our first steps?

Steven: First, what I normally do, is I create a 60 or 90 minute PowerPoint presentation. If it's going to be a product that sells for under $1,000 it's going to be 60 minutes; if it's over $1,000 you're going to need more time to convince people. Now, don't write to Jaime or me and say "I've got a $497 product but I've got to go for 90 minutes." You can go for 90 minutes but you don't necessarily have to. If it feels right and you've tested it then it's always good. Normally, if there's a lot of people leaving a webinar after 70 minutes you can cut it down to 60 minutes. We ran a Feng Shui webinar recently and it was running a little bit too long so I told the expert to bring it back a little bit and make it 60 minutes and that fixed everything.

Jaime: So is that 60 minutes with or without Q&A?

Steven: 60 minutes without. So I?m putting together the PowerPoint presentation, I?ve got some blank templates that I use that I?ve created that I give to my students but I?ll explain what that process is - in a 60 minute webinar I?m looking for a ten minute introduction, 40 minutes of really good content and then ten minutes at the end to close. For a 90 minute webinar it?s a 15 minute introduction, 60 minutes of content and a 15 minute close. Now let?s go into what I?m looking for in the introduction, whether you?re doing 60 or 90 minutes - with the first slide I want to have on there the marketing hook, the main, big promise that I?m going to deliver. I?ve seen so many webinars, you?ve probably seen them as well, that start and the presenter comes on and says "Hi, welcome to the webinar. Can everyone hear me okay?" That's not how you do it. What you do is you say "Hi, everyone, welcome to the webinar. My name is Steven Essa and today on the webinar you're going to discover how to generate $120,000 using the power of webinars in five east steps. Let's get into the presentation right here. First of all, can you hear me okay? Okay, John can hear me, Peter can hear me, alright, let's get into it." Then I want to talk about who this webinar is for. I want to relate to the audience as quickly as possible and I want the audience sitting there, saying "That's me! That's me! Absolutely! I'm an author and I want to make more money from my books." So if you're an author and you want to turn your $30 eBook into a $300, $3,000 or even $10,000 I'm going to show you how to convert that $30 book into a $300 product or more using the power of webinars. If you're a speaker and you're sick and tired of traveling around the world and going from place to place and booking those speaking gigs I'm going to show you how you can do it all from the comfort of your own home and, even better, you never have to record your presentation ever again - we can automate it using webinars. I'll show you how to do that in this presentation. If you're a coach or a consultant and you want more leverage this is going to give it to you. If you're sick and tired of doing phone sales or one-to-one selling face to face you're going to be able to sell one-to-many using this strategy. I'm really trying to relate - I want the audience saying "That's me! That's me!" so try to hit all of those different vertical markets that could be on your webinar at that point. On the next slide I want to talk about my story. So I've told them the big promise, "This is what you're going to learn on the webinar," I've connected with all of the different vertical markets that are there - now I want to tell them my story so that they really connect with me and who I am because people only buy from people they know, like and trust. So if they don't know and they're coming from a Facebook ad you've got to build a lot of trust very, very quickly. It's good to build trust anyway, no matter what situation or traffic is there. What I do is I tell them my story. A lot of people confuse my story and think that it's about them - it's not about you; my story is actually about, again connecting to the audience, how we do that. Most people say "Well I graduated high school in 1992 and then I became this and then I became a pilot," and people are falling asleep, "Get to the point! I thought we were going to learn something here," so what you want to do with your story is think about the main things that led you to where you are. I don't even call it "My Story" anymore, I call it "What Lead Me to This Webinar." "Why am I here teaching you this stuff? Well, let me tell you - I started out in the music business and worked for 13 years, worked my butt off in the music business, and because I didn't make any money from the music business I had to get a day job as a body mechanic. Who on the webinar has a passion or a love but you can't do it, you have to work in a day job because you don't make enough money from what you love? Who relates to that?" So, again, I'm relating back to them but I've told them my story. Then I tell them "My dad told me to get a safe, secure job. Whose parents told them to get job security? Yeah, my dad told me I?m pretty dumb so I need to get a body mechanic job so I was a body mechanic before. So whose parents told them to get job security? Yeah, you relate to what I'm talking about. So I was looking for job security. Then I went to America in the band, tried to make it, but the internet ruined the business because of downloads of music and blah blah, blah. Then I came back to Australia and tried to build wealth through real estate. Who else has tried to build wealth through real estate? But then the financial collapse happened and all of a sudden I got wiped out - over $1 million worth of debt in real estate and I realized I didn't have enough cash flow so I started looking for a way to generate more cash flow and I came across the cheapest and best place to fail and that is the internet. So I started building a web business and now I generate so much cash flow, I can travel around the world, I have a lifestyle and I've bought all the property I want without finance, with cash, and I generate all the cash flow I want thanks to webinars and that's what I'm going to teach you here today."

Jaime: You're so good at that! You've said it a thousand times, that's awesome. I really appreciate you going through it because we can actually hear the wording and how normal it sounds, although you know it so well but it sounds like you're chatting with everybody.

Steven: Exactly. Now we're still in the introduction here, in the first ten minutes. So then what we want to do is show some proof. Nothing sells like proof so I'm going to whack a testimonial in there - "Here is a vet that I worked with who has made $300,000 in sales, sold his business and now runs webinars. He's made over $1 million, he's TheWebinarVet.com." Tell the people on the webinar - "Check it out. He was my client, we built his first membership site. I'll show you how I made a pilot "450,000 from two automated webinars selling a "50,000 flight training program for pilots. I'll show you how a barrister made $100,000 in her first year using her legal information and putting it into webinars and I'll show you how I go around the world," and I show pictures of me going around the world, holding up big checks. People are going to say "What if I'm just starting out and I don't have proof? What do I do?" Well I put some statistics in there - so every time I work with someone that doesn't have proof, in terms of a real testimonial - and testimonials have to be results driven, you can't have a testimonial that says "Steven Essa is a really nice guy and a really good mentor". What does that mean to someone who is desperate to make money and needs to make this work? "Steven Essa is a really good mentor? doesn't stack up. It needs to be a measurable result within a certain timeframe if you can. That's why those weight loss products work so well - "I lost 50 kilos in 50 weeks using this product or taking this pill." Testimonials have to be that way; they have to be results driven. If you don't have them, use statistics. Quote statistics from different websites that you find, like "Forbes Magazine says that webinars have increased productivity and automation in the workplace by 75%", "Steven Essa says that webinars allow you the flexibility and time savings and all of this fantastic stuff," so use quotes and use statistics to help drive your case. Pretend you're a lawyer in the courtroom and you have to convince everyone on the webinar that they need to be doing webinars or they need to be doing whatever it is that you're teaching and then, after you've given two or three really good testimonials, maybe one or two stats, you want to get straight into the content. So that's your ten minutes up; that's your introduction. It's comprised of the big promise, who the webinar is for to connect to them, your story tied in with them connecting with you and the testimonials and some statistics and then we're into the content. This is a 40 minute section of content and this is where the sales are done and this is where people go wrong. People think that sales happen at the end - they don't. People are logging off, switching off, going onto Facebook and they're not even watching you at the end. It doesn't matter what numbers are there at the end; what matters is if you've delivered and they are now licking their lips, going "Give me more. Give me more. How do I work with this guy or girl more? I've got to buy this course." They've already made up their mind - they're in, they just want an irresistible offer, and we'll get to irresistible offers at the end. You want to break the 40 minutes of content into steps. I always teach my students three, five or seven steps. Make it simple - people can't remember more than seven steps. If you're doing a 60 minute webinar do three or five steps - you won't have time for seven steps, it's too long and you won't cover the points enough and they'll get confused and if they get confused they're not going to buy your course. They'll think "If he couldn't teach me in 60 minutes what could he teach me in eight ours?" A confused mind normally says no so you want to make sure it's nice and simple. So in a 60 minute webinar it's three or five steps. You want to go into great content. A lot of people say "Hold back - don't give you best material," but I say you can't possibly give all of your best material in 40 minutes - you couldn't do it if you tried. So try to give your best stuff away because then people go 'Wow, what else does he know and what's in the course?" A lot of people start doing NLP trucks to plant seeds here and there and all of that stuff is great but it's just a distraction for the new person who's trying to set a webinar up. I say get on there, be yourself, deliver great value, deliver great content, tell a story to illustrate each step, give them a demonstration, give lots of how-to but mainly focus on what they should be doing and a little bit of how to do it along the way. Sometimes you watch a webinar and they tell you what to do but not enough how to, so give a bit of how to. That being said, you don't want to turn it into a lecture. You don't want to turn it into a step-by-step breakdown of everything. For example - if you're teaching people how to build websites, you don't go "Go to Host Gator, get the DNS server number and then paste it into the WordPress thing and get the Fantastico from there and take that RSS feed?" You don't go into things like that, not that much detail but a little bit of detail. Then you go through the steps and on each step I want to add these features - I want to tell a story to illustrate the point, so I want to say "Let me tell you how I did this with the pilot. He was having trouble getting traffic so we found a forum of pilots and we put a banner ad there and we linked it to the registration page so pilots clicked, registered for the webinar and that's where we got the traffic from." So that's step one, getting traffic from banners, for example. Then I say 'Let me give you some statistics on banners that work. Let me show you some good banners that you can steal some ideas from. When you go to websites start paying attention to other people's banners, take screenshots, start a folder." So I'm telling them what to do and giving them a little bit of how to do it - does that make sense?

Jaime: Totally.

Steven: So that's what I do in the steps - each step, one, two, three. Then I get to the close. With the close, some people like to transition through the close and let people know that they're selling now. Some people have this polite approach, which is fine. They say things like "Okay, guys, that's the end of the content section now. What we're going to be doing is talking about our product now so anyone who's not interested in the product can leave the webinar now. We're going to talk about the product, okay? So let's get into the product." Some people feel all nice and warm and fuzzy about that and they enjoy doing that and that's fine - I think that's definitely a good thing to test. I say test everything - don't listen to me; test everything out to see what works best for you. But I don't like that approach because it disconnects the person from the emotional thinking that they're in right now. If you've done your job in the content they're now thinking "Wow, I've got to start doing webinars. I've just got to do that and I've written down all of these notes and I've got to start doing this as soon as I get off." They're in this emotional state and then you disconnect them by going "Now I want to sell to you." It can just disconnect people. So what happens now? What I like to do in a transition is I'll recap the steps - "So let's recap everything I've taught you today. Step one was this, step two was this, step three was that." I just recap everything really quickly and then I go "Is it okay if I show you the fast and easy way to make all of this happen for you even faster than what you can do here today?" Just a transition like that is nice and easy. People usually go "Well, yeah, you just blew our socks off so we want to know a faster way." Introducing the Webinar Magic Program - and you show them the image of the box if you've got it. In the seminars we don't even have time to show them the box, we just have black text with white slides. By the way - black text with white slides converts the same as when you've got branding and sometimes even better because it doesn't give the impression that it's a business trying to sell you something. So I just go "Introducing the blah, blah, blah Master Course." Whatever it is, I just put -Mastery Program? after it.

Jaime: It sounds better!

Steven: The Whatever Mastery Program. Accounting Mastery Program, whatever. Then I go "Here's what you're going to get," and I go into each webinar. I haven't created the program at this point so I just list Webinar 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. The biggest thing to remember in the close of your presentation is that you want to focus on the benefits. I always have a percentage - 30% features, 70% benefits. What do I mean by that? I'll give you an example. You say "Okay, in Webinar One we're going to teach you how to create a killer marketing hook for your webinar and the benefit of this is that when people read your headline, whether it's on your registration page, an ad or you're saying it to someone at a seminar or whenever you're networking or prospecting with someone, whenever you say this marketing hook that we will show you how to create it will instantly make them want to give you their e-mail address, sign up for your webinar, their ears will prick up and they'll go "You can show me how to do that? Wow!" It will instantly get their attention and they'll be ready to listen to you and ready to click on your ad to go to your registration page and sign up for your webinar. That's how good having the marketing hook is. This is going to help you build your list, this is going to help you get your message out there and it's going to help you solidify all you do in 60 minutes of talking into one sentence and that's what's going to be good about that." So I focus more on the benefits of what they're going to get than the actual thing itself. A lot of people get caught up with "I'm going to give you six Skype sessions with me and 52 modules." People don't want modules, they don't want Skype sessions - they want the result of what the Skype sessions are going to give them and a lot of people don't tell them the benefits that they're going to get as a result of those six Skype sessions. I see this all the time when I'm critiquing webinars - people go "You get six webinars, e-mail support, you get these DVDs that we recorded in Sydney and it's amazing, the hotel was beautiful and the people paid all this money to be there and it was great." People don't care about that - they want the results. "So when you watch these DVDs you're going to be able to create the web business step-by-step and the result of that will be that your business is going to be automated faster, you're going to start making money sooner, you're going to start living your dream life, you're going to be able to travel and login once a day and just see the sales pouring in, quit your job and do all of that as a result of following our system, just like what I've done. Here I am in Greece - last week I was in Santorini, the weekend before I was on another Greek island, we're going to France next week. Four months of the year we travel overseas thanks to the power of webinars and this is what you can do whenever you want to as well, because you don't have to be anywhere, it's easy and I show you how to do it using a headset and a laptop. This is an easy program." That's what you really want to focus on in the close section and really focus on the benefits there. I talk about three or four products then I recap everything because people will have forgotten by then because people aren't listening to you at that point, they're in their head going "I've got my brother, he's got so much knowledge, I'll get him to do the webinar because I don't want to talk on the webinar but he's got knowledge. We could put him on a webinar because he's doing seminars right now," and they're telling stories to themselves. Have you ever read the book "All Marketers Are Liars" by Seth Godin?

Jaime: I haven't yet but I've heard so much about it.

Steven: It's a great book and that's what he says - people tell themselves stories. It's really all about people who are going to buy. All marketers are liars? I should watch that because I've become a marketer since I started on the internet. It turns out that it's the customers who lie to themselves and tell themselves stories while they're listening to the sales pitch and get swept up so they're not even listening - so I want to recap. "Here's what you're going to get - the eight webinars, which take you from beginning to end, blah, blah, blah, the coaching sessions - remember, we're going to work on your problems so you can get solutions faster so you can start living your dream life, automate your business, etc." and then I go into some bonuses at that point, have two or three bonuses there, then I recap everything again and then I go into some comparatives. So after I've recapped everything - "At this point the total value is $5,000 or $10,000 with all of that," some people call it the stack, where you stack everything up, then I go into some comparables. "If you were going to do this yourself you can go and buy a course and do this yourself and it would probably take you around five years to set this up and probably cost you more in time. You could go to this company here, they've got a course like that, but they charge $50,000. There's another company here that charges $40,000 or you could do it yourself and spend years and not get the results. The fact is there's no comparison. Here's why I'm going to give you an amazing offer," and I always tell them why I'm going to give them an amazing offer. There's a book called "Influence" that most people have read that says when you say the word "because" before you say the answer it becomes more believable so I always say "Because I'm going to give you a discount because I want your success story," which happens to be true - make sure your -because's are true. "Because after today I'm going to double the price," if you're testing it out at the beginning you say 'Because after today I'm going to double the price, I just want to get a couple of people in.", "Because this is the last time I'm going to do this webinar." Whatever the reason is, make sure it's true and make sure you say "because" before it and say a couple of "because's. Then I say the total value again and I say the total value big like this, then I say "Today only!" Bang, nice and small, $497.

Jaime: Really? Why?

Steven: Psychologically, marketing shows, this is not me, they've done tests - when you show a big number, like $10,000, and then the smaller number, $497, the $497 looks smaller. It actually looks smaller physically but in their mind it's smaller as well. Psychologically it's smaller, so that's why we show the big figure and then we do the big drop. That's why people do that; businesses do that. I didn't make this up, I'm just following what works. It's not my invention, I've just applied it to webinars and it works. Then, after I've told them the final price, I go "Here's where to go to buy it." This is where a lot of people fall down - they get really weak because they get scared that they're selling and, for me, it doesn't feel like I'm selling because I've just delivered great value before and now I'm just offering you the next solution that's going to take you there faster and I know my product is awesome. If you believe in your product then you're doing a disservice to yourself and to your prospective customer if you're not pushing hard for them to get it because you know that is the ultimate solution I know my templates and my program, my software, is going to help someone get a better conversion than if they go and do it themselves so that's why I can sell it with conviction. Then I say "Here it is - only $3,000 or three easy payments of $997, whatever. Go to www.blahblahblah.com to buy it now." Make a clear call to action - "There it is, go there now." Repeat it, give them a command - command them to go. Command them to go there and get it now, with conviction. Then, after you've done that clearly, you go "Here's the guarantee," and normally I give a 30 day money back guarantee. Guarantees can be conditional or unconditional, it's up to you. A conditional guarantee would be a 30 day money back guarantee for anyone who fills in the modules, sets up the webinar and doesn't make any sales within 30 days and they get to keep what they've got. That's the condition "you have to show me that you've done the webinars, you have to e-mail us the webinar, show me you've done it, and if you haven't made money we'll send you a refund in full. The unconditional guarantee is no matter what happens - even if you don't like it, you open up the modules and you don't like it for whatever reason at all or you don't like my voice or whatever, keep what you've done and we refund you in full, unconditional, no questions asked money back guarantee. The second one is going to get you a better conversion rate because they don't have to jump through hoops but the first one is going to protect you because you're going to say "Here's the checklist," say, for example, you've got a checklist that you give them. If they ask for a refund you give them the checklist and say "Fill in the checklist," and the checklist should be "Opened up my webinar account, setup a webinar on GoToWebinar, filled in the PowerPoint presentations using the templates, then I e-mailed the list that I had, I had one person there and I didn't make any sales, there it is," and the amount of people who will fill that in and send it back to you is very minimal because they'll realize that there's nothing wrong with the course, the course works - this guy made the course work, that guy made the course work, a body mechanic made the course work, it's not a rocket science thing. They know that it's them and they can come back to it later on.

Jaime: I have a question - this is amazing and I know we have to start wrapping up soon but I have a question for myself. I was thinking about going to an application page. I'm going to be selling a group coaching program that I'm super excited about but we need to make sure that everybody is a good fit beforehand so I'm going to be talking to a lot of people beforehand so we're selling to an application page which seems like it would be a little bit different to this. How would you do something like that?

Steven: I've done that. I've sold a $15,000 on four automated webinars and we did an application. Any time you're selling something over $4,000 or something where you really want to make sure that it's the right person then you want to do the application close. The application close is exactly the same process I just took you through - you've got to sell it that hard but you're putting a condition in there. You say "Alright, guys, here's the deal. The total value is $15,000. Today's price is, say, $5,000, but you can't buy your way into this course. You cannot buy your way in. there's an interview process that has to happen because we're screening everyone that comes in so if you think you want to join just put down $500 or $50." Get a commitment - even if they're doing an interview, get a commitment. $50, $100 or $500. I ask for $1,000. So I say "Put down a fully refundable $1,000 today and you will join me for an interview. Someone will call you from our office this week. If you're accepted you pay the balance and the program begins. If you're not accepted we refund you in full so there's no risk to you, we just want people who are serious, we just want people who are committed and people who aren't going to waste time, they're action takers. So there it is - click on blahblahblah.com to register now and go through the application process. You'll get a call from my office in the next 24 hours to arrange an appointment and I'll be speaking to you there."

Jaime: Nice. So they actually fill out the application and pay the deposit, whatever that is.

Steven: Get them to pay first. Get them to pay the deposit first and on the "Thank You" page you can put something like this - "The total value of this course is $15,000. Before I tell you the final price, we're only taking applications for this - you can't buy your way into the program. Today's price is only $5,000. If you want to apply then go to www.blahblahblah.com to apply now. You pay a $500 fee and you're accepted you pay the balance. If you're not accepted then you get a refund. After you've paid you're going to be taken to a page where you can fill out a questionnaire for us - it's very important you fill that in because that's what I'm going to be asking you questions on. We're doing this because we only want to work with people who must succeed, those for whom failure is not an option, those of you who are serous, who are ready, because we're going to kick your butt in this program, we're going to make you work, we're going to get you results, but that's what you want, isn't it? That's the results you want so that's what we're going to do for you."

Jaime: You're so good at this. You're like turned on, "Yeah!" That's awesome. I really, really appreciate that and thank you so much because that totally helps me. I was trying to figure out the logistics - do we tell them the price in advance or do we not? It's crazy that logistical stuff.

Steven: Yeah, let them know the price because then you're kicking out the ones who don't have the money and who aren't serious. I always say it's one payment, there are no installments, and the program doesn't begin until you've paid in full. So even if I get someone on the interview and I say "Okay, you're great, you're in, I'll get my staff member to send you an invoice and a contract you have to sign," and then at that point I say "The program begins when you've paid your payment. You're not a student of mine until you've paid and I don't take installments," and I don't recommend anyone taking installments, especially when you're selling $10,000 and $15,000.

Jaime: This is for a group so it's a little less expensive but yes. So you don't take installments at all?

Steven: I don't take installments, no. If you just want to get people through the door, if you just want to get people in and it's just a numbers game for you and you don't care if people drop off. I've got programs like that, where I just get them in on the lowest installment first, so I've got that lead and they've bought something and it's still a good lead even if I get a higher refund rate from those people. But for a higher level thing - I charge $75,000 now - it's got to be paid in full in advance.

Jaime: I'm not a fan of debt so I hate having the credit card option so I thought installments might be a little bit better but you're saying they might not work out so well.

Steven: You're not going to get as committed people if you have installments.

Jaime: Okay.

Steven: They're not going to be as committed. I'll give you a quick example - I was watching Ed Dale, he's a famous Australian internet marketer, he taught me about Twitter on a video before I even did internet marketing, I was watching his videos in 2007. I was watching one of his sales videos on YouTube and he's talking about how he's basically creating a new coaching program where he's doing one-on-one coaching just for a short time because he's realized that it's all about who you know in the business and whatever. I was in London at the time, I had an event, and I was watching the video, going "Wow, is he going to do one-on-one coaching? Because if this guy is doing one-on-one coaching I'm going to join!" Anyway, he starts talking about what he's going to cover and I'm like "Oh, my God!", I'm salivating, I'm like "Oh, my God, I get to talk to Ed Dale! I can call him!" I get his phone number and harass the hell out of him - and at this point he hasn't even got to the sales pitch and I'm in. I am in. I'm going "How much is it? Hurry up, get to the price!" $10,000? I'm in. I'm in at $10,000 - that's a no brainer. $15,000? Yeah, I'm in. $25,000? What's the maximum I would spend? If it's $30,000, yeah, I'll still get in. Anyway, he calls me for the interview and he said the final price - $5,000.

Jaime: You were all set for $30,000!

Steven: I was in for $25,000 at the most and when he rang me he goes "Thank you so much," and I said "I was ready to pay $25,000, man, this is unbelievable." He took on 50 students at $5,000, he made a ton of money and it's paid in full. Someone who's serious is going to find the money. I was broke. I had some property and I had about $5-10,000 when I went to that first marketing seminar. I signed up to a $25,000 program and I borrowed the money against one of the houses to sign up for it. But here I am - over $6 million generated in sales.

Jaime: Yeah, it's kind of paid off.

Steven: When people spend big money up front, they're in. whereas if they pay a part payment, they go 'Oh, you know, it's not working." You've got to force people to go all in. But it's up to you.

Jaime: Awesome. I know we're going over too much but I really, really appreciate all of your help. I love all of this stuff. I so appreciate you being here, Steven. I was so interested in what you had to say I almost forgot my last question. That's the first time that's ever happened to me so good job! What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Steven: I've got two, is that okay?

Jaime: Totally.

Steven: Okay. One is put that PowerPoint together and get it in front of people. Run it for your family and friends first - invite them to a webinar, sign up to GoToWebinar which has a free 30 day trial, just get on there and run a couple of webinars to friends, family, whoever will listen. Get that webinar together because until we've got that webinar we don't have a business. Once we've got a webinar that's converting at 10% and we can make a sale from the end of this webinar we know we have a business - because business only happens when we make money. Until then you don't need to do anything else, just focus on that PowerPoint presentation, get it done and get it out there - get it in front of friends and family. Don't listen to the feedback they give you because they don't know what they're talking about - do it as an exercise so you don't feel how stupid you feel when you're talking to a screen the first few times and how silent it is and it feels really, really weird. You can talk to your family and go "How did that sound?" and whatever and they'll say "It was quite good. This was funny." Just listen to the feedback of the technology; don't listen to their feedback in terms of your presentation and pricing and stuff unless they know about your market. I'm lucky - my wife does social media management, she's in the business so I can take her feedback, but you want to just do it for the experience a few times. The second thing I want to share, if I can - I'm being greedy giving you this as well - is every day, when you wake up, create a spreadsheet where you make a list of potential joint venture partners who have a big database that you can promote your webinar to and give them a percentage of sales or pay them a one-off fee and focus on that every day for 15 minutes, sending invitations to people, "Hey, I've got a webinar on this, converting at 10%," or "I've never done it before but I think it would be good for your list. Here's a copy of a replay. Tell me what you think. What else are you looking for? What price point/what percentage would you want?" and send invitations every day for 15 minutes a day because three or four joint venture partners can make you rich when you've got a webinar that's a $300 or a $1,000 product. A $1,000 selling 1,000 times is your $1 million business and, believe me, it's not hard. You only need 10,000 people to watch your webinar to get 1,000 sales if you're converting at 10% so it's really, really easy. Plus you've got upsells - after they buy that one they can buy the $10,000 program, the $20,000 program, etc. So you don't have to sell 1,000 of those because you're going to have upsells. People will tell you "Hey, Steve, I love your course but can I work with you more closely?" Yeah - $25,000, $50,000, $75,000, $100,000 - you keep putting your price up until you get the right number of customers. For me, with a $297 product I've got a $3,000, I've got a $10,000 product and it's $25,000, $50,000, now $75,000. I only take 12 customers a year at $75,000 and it's full, I can't take anyone else this year and I probably won't offer it next year because it's a lot of work, sitting down, critiquing someone's webinar, going through, saying "Say this," going "Hang on, why have you still got this? I told you last week." It's a painful process. It's a process that you have to go to. So that would be the two things that I would do.

Jaime: Beautiful. Now tell us where we can find out more about this, more of your content, more of your awesome stuff online?

Steven: If you can, come to Australia or New Zealand. We are coming to America - Coming to America, what a great movie - and the UK as well. The tour dates are on our website - WebBusinessBreakthrough.com. Come along, because we could build a web business for you if you come on stage and tell us what you're good at, you never know. Take a holiday to Australia and New Zealand and join us at WebBusinessBreakthrough.com - register now. Or, if you're in a hurry to get this information, check out SteveEssa.com and that's my webinar and there you're going to learn about how to automate a webinar with My medical center model where I show you how to take 50% for life off someone else's webinar business and work two hours a week and make a ton of money. This has now allowed me to retire. I don't need to be the webinar guru anymore, I can basically make money from business partners and I've got five businesses making $5-50,000 per month. That's my medical center model. I also talk about some other strategies in that webinar so register for that if you're in a hurry to get information.

Jaime: I love how many things you have going on and how much information you've got. It's so nice to actually meet you. Hopefully we can meet in person soon. Thank you so much for coming on the show today - everybody take a look and check him out. Thanks.

Steven: You're welcome. Thanks guys.

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Tags: millionaire interview, Steven Essa, web business, Webinar, webinar marketing, webinar strategy

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

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