Podcast

Hey, what’s going on it’s Joel Erway, and welcome to a very special episode of Sold With Webinars. Today, I want to talk about a topic that comes up relatively frequently when people are interested in joining high ticket courses or launching their own high ticket course. Today, I want to talk about the topic of can a service-based business build or launch a high ticket course?

And the answer is probably not something that you are going to expect because the answer is not really straight forward. Here’s what I mean, back in I’d say 2017, 2018, I was working with a couple of clients in the financial space. Okay. I say financial, not necessarily talking about investing, but they were in the bookkeeping and CPA space, CPA profession.

When I was talking to these people, they were interested in launching their own program. Now, first of all, they wanted to get more leads to their service-based business. And so what I teach inside of high ticket courses, which is primarily how to position yourself, and how to generate leads, how to generate high ticket leads, I could absolutely help them do that.

The next phase of which they were interested in and they were just exploring was, can I then package this up into a course to show this for my clients so we can scale that way? I want you to think about something okay. With this client, they were in the business of managing other people’s accounting.

Okay. So they were remote-based CFOs. They were fractional CFOs. The primary value adds that they gave to their client was freedom from managing the books, peace of mind knowing their taxes were taken care of. Peace of mind knowing that they didn’t have to worry about paying their contractors.

And so with this element, yes, they were managing their books and they were mapping out their roadmap for the clients and showing them how they can grow profitably. They were, let’s just say limited in their ability to take that next step. So the first thing that we did was we helped get them tons and tons of leads and qualified leads, and they were able to close, I think, 30 or $40,000 within the first I don’t know, 30 or 60 days that we were working together, which was awesome.

So we were able to eliminate their, I’m sorry, we were able to quickly help them grow in scale by implementing a lead generation system. The next phase was how can we, or let me rephrase that, is there a possibility for us to build this into a high ticket course?

So as you started exploring this, here’s what you need to kind of think about when you are trying to frame and build your own high ticket course. The first question that you have to ask yourself is, is what I’m offering something that people are going to want to implement on their own at a mass scale?

Okay. If we are looking at the accountant, what is the primary reason why people hire accountants? They hire them for done for you because business owners do not want to learn how to manage their books. And you have to understand that, that there are certain industries and there are certain elements of an offer that are non-negotiable.

Done for you providers in the accounting space, the vast majority of entrepreneurs and business owners are not going to want to learn how to do this themselves. So, am I saying that all entrepreneurs are not going to want to learn this? No, because they did end up selling a course. They ended up promoting it to their internal warm list, but it was not a cold traffic offer and that’s the other element that you have to understand.

How are we going to be able to get people to raise their hand and say, yes, I want this with cold paid traffic? And learning how to do your books, learning how to manage your own finances, learning how to manage your own accounting is not something that many people want to learn.

They don’t want to take on that responsibility, not through a coaching program, not through a do it yourself course. Maybe a DIY course, but they’re probably not going to pay a heck of a lot of money for it on the front end, because these people aren’t necessarily in a position of immediate pain, they may be in a position of pain, but you have to understand managing your finances and managing your books is not a relieving process.

It actually causes people more pain and entrepreneurs know that. So they are not going to be willing to at a mass scale, invest in a program that causes them more pain, constantly having to look at, look and categorize all of their finances because people want peace of mind knowing that they’re doing it correctly.

And this is something that I want you to understand when you’re packaging or positioning your offers, one of the most, like one of the strongest benefits that you can offer somebody is peace of mind knowing that something is being done correctly. And going back to this case of the CFO, the fractional CFO, this was not something that the mass market was going to invest in, at a scale we’ll offer and people don’t understand this.

And this is being preached by lots and lots of people out there that any offer can be turned into a high ticket course that’s simply not the case. Now, let’s look at an example where you can turn a service-based offering into a high ticket course. And I’m going to give you my own personal example.

So here we are, we run the webinar agency and we build webinars and mini webinars for our clients. Now we also run high ticket courses and high ticket programs and do it yourself programs. So we have the complete value ladder. Now, when thinking about this and building it out, I know that people are going to be willing to invest in a high ticket course, a high ticket program because what I’m teaching them, what I’m providing them is number one, a long term asset that is relative, once it gets set up can be relatively easy to maintain or easy to manage.
Number two, it provides a massive value boost in exchange for what we’re teaching them how to do.

Meaning I’m showing them how to develop marketing systems. I’m showing them how to create offers, high ticket offers. I’m showing them how to generate leads on demand for this program. And I’m showing them how to structure their high ticket courses and high ticket programs. All of which can be leveraged once they get this done.

Once they get this completed. Yes, it will still take them some time to manage, but it’s allowing them greater freedom, greater revenue potential, and greater impact. By contrast, when we look at these CFO offers, the value for which they are getting in exchange for learning how to do their books causes them more pain than the potential value that it was worth.

Can they now manage their own books? Can they now manage their own finances? Can they now have confidence in their ability to track their finances? Maybe. But how long is that going to take them on a regular basis? Probably quite a few hours every single week, every single month. Does this provide a bottom-line revenue impact to their business?

Maybe it probably will, but they’re still going to need to file their taxes at the end of the year. And I know from firsthand experience that when trying to file my own taxes, there are so many tax laws. There are so many loopholes that I might be following QuickBooks. I might be following some of these self-guided tax filing systems that I know I’m going to be questioning myself almost every single step of the way, because number one, I also know that tax professionals know lots of things that I don’t because that’s their job.

So this is nothing that is going to provide me an extraordinary amount of value that I’m willing to invest my time and energy to learn on the forefront because these people who go to school for, who become CPAs, who become CFOs, they go to school for four, six years and get all these certifications to make sure that they can do this.

So, what I’m saying is yes, you might be able to simplify it for business owners to do it themselves, but the value is not there in exchange for the amount of effort that they have to put in on a regular basis to get the achieved result and the competence level probably isn’t going to be very high because tax laws change all the time and you’re going to want somebody to consult with.
So in this case, it’s going to be worth it to figure out how to develop yourself a consistent high ticket lead generation system for your service. And it’s probably not going to be a scalable asset on the high ticket course aside. Now, going back to the agency example for myself, the value for what we are teaching people is extraordinary.

We’re teaching them how to generate leads and we’re teaching them how to build assets that will work. I don’t want to say on complete autopilot, but it’s going to generate them more revenue. It’s going to give them opportunities that they didn’t yet have before they entered my program. So when you are considering, how can I transition my service into a high ticket course?

The first thing that you have to understand is what is the value and what is it going to get, I mean, from a simplistic standpoint, is it going to cause my clients more pain for them to do it on their own? Or is there enough value that it’s going to provide them long term value that yes, it’s worth $3,000, $5,000, $10,000.

Now here’s where you can, you know, some of you who are, if you’re a service provider right now, and you think that I’m raining on your parade, let me give you the silver lining with this. Okay. There is a way to transition your service-based agency or your service-based company to a high ticket course program.

And that is by changing your who, so you can still teach what you like to teach. If you’re passionate about accounting, if you’re passionate about legal advice, I always refer to those two when I talk about this, because those are like the two easiest examples to explain how difficult it is to get business owners to learn how to do this on their own.

If you change your who and now try to sell to other accounting firms or other people in your space who are doing exactly what you do and you show them systems and processes for how you make it easier for yourself. Now you’ve got something that people are willing to pay for. You’ve got an audience of people who are willing to pay for a high ticket program.

So by changing your who away from an audience that you thought was your only audience and change it to a more parallel audience, you have the opportunity now to grow in a high ticket course way. Does that make sense? So if you are a CFO or an accounting professional, and you have a mechanism, a methodology that helps you service your customers faster, or service your clients faster, something that’s going to help other accountants, other CFOs.

Now you have something that people going to be willing to pay for it because it makes their life easier and they require less education to get that end result. This is a big shift for some people, and this is a big AHA moment. This can be applied to certification models. This can be applied for real certifications and teach people how to do what you do, but by changing your who, without changing your core deliverable, yes you’re not gonna be doing accounting for them, but you’re going to be showing them exactly what they do.

Now, you have the opportunity to really grow. I have a client who joined our program, who I’ve worked with on a couple of occasions and his company helps accounting professionals enroll more clients from specifically in the marijuana niche. In the weed niche.

And so, and he’s grown astronauts like he’s grown incredibly quickly. Number one, cause it’s a very hot market and it’s new, but, number two, he’s not showing these people how to do it on their own, right. He’s going after the accounting sector and showing them how to get set up in this niche, how to get developed in this niche and how to service these clients.

And these people are joining left and right. So, I want you to just kinda think about this and how to transition your service-based business to some form of high ticket course, high ticket program because it might not be as simple as just, Oh, let me teach my clients how to do it on their own.

Maybe you need to pivot your who as well. Make sense? All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please do me a favor. Either shoot me an email at joel@thewebinaragency.com and let me know what you thought or what would be even more valuable and more beneficial for me is we’re trying to grow this podcast.

We are trying to spread this message. So if you could, wherever you are listening to this podcast, drop a rating, drop an honest to goodness rating, whether you think it’s five stars or whether you think it’s four stars. And just leave me a comment on the podcast and it will give me some feedback for producing more content. Until next time, we’ll talk to you soon.