Live Challenge Funnels with Zach Spuckler

You’re listening to the Kajabiverse podcast and today’s episode is all about my absolute favourite funnel strategy, LIVE CHALLENGES!

I particularly love this funnel strategy for high ticket offers where you need to be able to create a real relationship and deliver some real transformation during the launch before you make the ask for your paid offer.

I also find that for people who shy away from selling or "pitching", this strategy enables you to do more of gentle "invitation", which works very well with my personality!

Joining us in today’s episode is the man who taught me everything I know about running a challenge! The one and only Zach Spuckler from Not Your Average Membership!

Highlights from this episode:

🎙️ When and why to choose Challenges over Webinars

🎙️ The non-negotiable elements of a challenge

🎙️ Will challenges convert with pre-recorded content?

🎙️ Typical challenge conversions 

🎙️ Re-using challenge content for future launches

🎙️ Free versus Paid Challenges

Links mentioned in this episode:

The Not Your Average Membership

Zach's Challenge Launch Toolkit (a must if you're considering running a challenge!)

Not Your Average Marketer Podcast

About the Host:

Hello! I’m Meg Burrage, a Kajabi Coach and Launch Strategist who combines her love of all things Kajabi and Digital Marketing, with family and adventure.

Aussie mum to 3 young kids, married to a grumpy Dutchman, and living in the Netherlands, I leap out of bed every morning to help others achieve the online success, freedom and flexibility that I am so grateful to have in my own life.

In this podcast, we look deep beneath the surface at how some of the most successful Kajabi Heroes, the superheroes if you will, are generating 6 & 7 figures annually and how their strategies can be applied within your online business.

Oh….and if you’d like help in building out any of the funnels and strategies we discuss, be sure to check out Funnel Club!

Social Media Links:
Facebook | Instagram

Thanks for Listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! New episodes are released monthly and we'd love for you to share it with others who you think might benefit.

Transcript

Well hello everyone and welcome to one of my favorite episodes of the Kajabi verse where we're diving into challenge funnels. Now, hosting challenges in my own business was the model that I've used to achieve six figure launches and I absolutely love them because as the challenge host, it really does give you the ability to be able to deliver an outcome to your participants, which is something I've always found impossible to do in a 60 minute webinar.

Now, the person who taught me all about challenge funnels and how to use them effectively is the wonderful Zach Sparkler of Heart, soul Hustle. And he is also the creator of the Not Your Average Online marketing podcast, a bit of a mouthful. I think he's generated over 3 million in online courses, consulting agency, and coaching sales since starting his business seven years ago.

And there is nothing that Z does not know about challenges. So on that note, let's jump into it and I hope you enjoy it. All right guys, we are joined today by the lovely Zach Sparkler, one of my favorite biz peeps. Hello Zach. Hey Meg, thanks so much for having me. Ah, we go back a long way and the first thing that you know I ever did with you was joining your world to learn all about challenges and that is what I would love to pick your brains on today,

you know, putting together the perfect challenge funnel. But before we do that, would you mind just giving us like a little bit of a backstory of who you are and how you came to be doing what you do right now? A shameless plug is absolutely fine. Tell us all about, you know, your wonderful membership. Go for it. Yeah,

so hey everybody, my name is Zach Spuckler. My company is Heart, soul and Hustle, and we work with online business owners, specifically course creators, coaches, service providers to help them sell more products with advertising challenges and launches. And we really center that around a suite of low ticket products, which is kind of centrally driving people to our membership,

which we call not your average membership, which is essentially for people who want to do marketing that is not average. I've been doing this for about 10 years now. It'll be 10 years in February of next year when this comes out. So I've been doing this for quite a while under my current company. I just love it. I'm just a digital marketing lover.

I think that sometimes people think we get into this space cuz like it's easy or the money's here and I do it cuz I love it. I've been studying digital marketing for a little over 18 years and I'm, I'm gonna be 30 this year, so I've been doing it for a very, very, very long time. I made my first dollar online when I was 12 and ever since then I could not get enough of the idea of making money on the internet.

And so now I do it professionally. I'm so glad you added in how old you were. I was actually gonna squeeze that in as a question and I thought, I wonder if Zach's prepared to tell everyone how old he is? Oh yeah. Because you bring so much wisdom. I've done one-on-one coaching with you, I've done your group coaching programs, I've been in your membership,

you know so much about the digital marketing space and when I found out how young you were, almost fell off my chair. I was like, how is it possible that Zach is like still in his twenties, Not for much longer. Oh, great stuff. All right, well let's have a chat about live challenges. Now that's a, a strategy that I know you are super passionate about,

you've tried all sorts of things, but how did you land on challenge funnels and running challenges as the strategy that worked for you? Yeah, it's a really funny story. I had a, a mentor of mine, I was actually visiting them in New York City. That's where they lived at the time. And they were like, have you thought about like running like a bootcamp or a challenge?

And I was like, well, what does that look like? And they were telling me what they did and I went back to my hotel room and I actually pulled out, I, I lost it, but I had it for years. It's probably floating around in my office. But I, I mapped out on this little piece of paper, I was like,

Ooh, what if we did this and what if we kind of moved this around and what if we added Facebook ads to it and it became a signature system that we still sell to this day. And it was really just the culmination of someone planting an idea in my head. Which two things, one, super cool, I'm not the inventor of challenges,

I just love to run them. But two, so much speaking to the value of just having a mentor or somebody that you can just bounce ideas off of. It was so crazy that it was a five conversation that became, gosh, multiple six figures if not a half million in revenue for our business. Incredible in my head, you are the inventor of challenges,

Zach. Like no one does it better that you have a podcast as well. And I remember the the first podcast you launched was around, you know, it was really focused on challenges. Do those episodes still exist if people wanna go back and listen to them? Cause it was so much gold. Yeah, if you want to go back, so we used to be the Heart,

soul and Hustle podcast and that's still my company name, it's still our website, I still love it, but we've rebranded it to the Na, your average online marketing podcast to be more centralized to our membership. But we have 150 ish backlogged episodes of the Heart, soul and Hustle podcast. So if you go and look up the not your average online marketing podcast,

you'll notice it goes up. I think we, we just dropped episode 60 at the time, we're recording this. But if you go to episode zero and then keep going, it starts at like episode 1 44 of the Hearts and Hustle podcast and you're welcome to download and listen to any of them. We keep 'em all Up. There was some amazing content on there for anyone who is considering a challenge.

Now obviously webinars are something that is taught very widely in programs like dca, you know, like launch your program with a webinar. But hosting a webinar sends a lot of people pretty weak at the knees, you know, tech disasters and having to transition seamlessly to a pitch. In your mind, what are the big benefits of a challenge over hosting a webinar?

Yeah, I love this question because here's the reality. Everything works. It all works whether you do free webinars, paid webinars, paid workshops, three part video series challenges, they all work. You have to find what works for you and for your personality. And the reason that I like personally like challenges over webinars is, number one, they let you showcase your talent over a week,

right? So with webinars you basically get 90 minutes to play full out and hopefully persuade people to work with you with a challenge. You get a full week, you get time to showcase your expertise, time to get people results, time to get people taking action. And in the challenge process that we have, we call them micro wins or micro-commitments, you know,

every day people can do something between sessions to actually get results, right? So if I was gonna do a webinar on Facebook ads, I can talk about them, but you can't go run your ads, right? If I do a five day challenge on Facebook ads, people can actually go run ads during the challenge, get results and be like, wow,

I want more of this. And that is really how we position our challenges is like, man, don't you want more of this? Right? That's the first thing. The second thing, and I kind of touched on this already, but you're not banking on 90 minutes, right? If you have a tech issue or one day doesn't go so great or you know,

people get confused, like it's not all hindered by one bad experience or one bad moment, right? There's no linchpin moment in a five day challenge, right? So with a webinar you basically have 90 minutes and if you flub the pitch or you, you know, mess it up or your transitions are bad, like it is what it is with a challenge.

If you have like a bad day, there's always tomorrow, right? And even if your pitch is not great, you've created those micro wins and micro commitments along the way that people are gonna be more likely to buy the product anyway. The last reason I love them is there's a sense of community. So we teach in our challenge program to have a Facebook group and you can do that with a webinar.

I actually have a friend of mine that does a Facebook group with their webinars, which I think is genius cuz it adds a community element, but people get to see other people getting results. So like in a webinar, all you see is the chat in a challenge. You see the community and so people in the community can see other people getting wins.

And even if somebody like we, we hear this all the time in our challenges, somebody goes, oh, I didn't have time to do the content but I saw all the people getting wins in the group. And I was like, I've gotta join the membership because I know it's gonna be great, right? So all of those little things play together I think to make it a really strong launch mechanism.

But like I said at the beginning, it all works if you have the mindset, the skillset, and you can do great. So if you're like, I'm a fantastic presenter, my pitch is on point, I feel good about my content, I've studied webinars, I've studied persuasion, I'm ready to go do a webinar. But if you're like, I want more flexibility,

forgiveness, space to create, I'm a huge, huge advocate of a five day challenge. Such gold in there. And I agree with you, the ability for me to be able to deliver an actual transformation to people by the end of the week and see them getting the results like that is the bit that excites me about running a challenge. And, and you,

you're right. You can't do that in a 90 minute webinar for people who do get weak at the knees when it comes to running a webinar and that sort of live experience, what would you say to people who are thinking about pre-recording their content for the challenge? Yeah, I think it's totally fine to put pre-recorded content in a challenge. And I used to be like,

don't do it, it doesn't work. But in the last few years we've integrated prerecorded content into our challenges and it's worked pretty well for us. However, I always recommend some sort of live element, even if it's just you going on Facebook Live and doing a q and a inside your group, right? Because people want to connect with people and you know your flaws,

your imperfections, your your authenticity really shines through on a live video. So whether you wanna do a Zoom or a Facebook Live, like I do recommend some sort of live element, but if you're like, I don't wanna teach or I don't wanna have to have this perfect presentation, just prerecord your content, come on live and say Hey, did you have any questions about today's content?

And let your expertise shine through. You don't have to be perfect, you don't have to be polished, it just has to be authentic. And so I definitely think that there should be some sort of live element, but if you're really weak at the knees, do a Facebook live. And this sounds silly, but like with a Zoom, you see everyone's face looking at you with a Facebook live,

it's just you, right? And if you're really, really, really, really, really pressed, you're like, I absolutely will not do live content. Put a thread inside your Facebook group asking people questions for the day or pay attention to questions from the day and the day of, pull out your phone, set it on your tripod, hold it in front of you,

grab a computer webcam, whatever, and record a 10 minute video saying, Hey, I noticed all your questions in the group. Here's some answers to the most frequently asked questions. We're seeing it. It's not so much about physically being live because most people aren't going to watch live anyway, statistically speaking, it's about having that face to camera element where people can connect with you,

look into your eyes and kind of see who you are as a person. Ah, I like that. And I'm sure a lot of other people listening in are gonna like that too. Like music to my ear Zach. Yeah, and maybe if they do start with pre-recorded, you know, like the first time they might find that they become brave enough to run it live the second time.

Alright, so I'm prepared to try this challenge thing. How much time do I need to set aside, you know, to actually put this challenge together? Because you know, I've worked with lots of people in the past who are like, oh, I'm just gonna run it in like two weeks and I'm starting from scratch right now. Give yourself at least 30 days before the promotion starts.

Hmm. So it's not run a challenge 30 days from now. It's 30 days from now. Start promoting your challenge. You want a 10 to 14 day promotional period, one to two weeks and then have your five days. So really if you decided today you wanna run a challenge optimistically, give yourself four to six weeks before you get started. That's just my opinion.

And I tell people I don't like to do challenges more than every other month partially because of that four to six week period, but also because they are a labor of love. I'm not gonna sit here and go, it's so easy, throw it together, show up for three days, send a few emails, get paid like it's a process. You've gotta write promotional emails,

reminder emails, sales emails, Facebook ads, content strategy, Facebook group management, like and I, I don't say that to overwhelm you or be like, oh my gosh it's not, it's not doable. Like there's so much to do. I tell you that because we run our challenges at scale now. So like we recently did a challenge with about 750 people in our Facebook group and we did a Facebook ads challenge and I don't know if we'll be,

we'll do this again, but it's really good for our community. We do copy editing for anyone who leaves a comment. So we charge $10 for our challenge and anyone who leaves a comment with their Facebook ads copy gets copy editing from me or my team. Oh my Goodness. 750 people Zach, That's a lot of work and we would not be able to do that without a team.

But I tell you that because I want you to understand like I literally worked 12 hour days, three days of that challenge and it's stressful and it's not easy but it's worth it. The initial question was, you know, how long do you need to take? Like give yourself space to breathe between them. We now don't do more than one challenge a quarter and anything else has to be easy,

simple light. If we're gonna do some other promotion in a quarter and then I give myself a full six eight, sometimes 10 to 12 weeks, like we're now looking at a challenge in July, it's April, end of April, early May at the time we're recording this and our next challenge is slated for July. That's two and a half months away and we're now starting to talk about the process and the content that we want to manage for it.

So three months, it's three months away. Yeah. And, and once you do get those sizable challenges, it is a lot of work, you know, throughout the week moderating all the comments, even letting people into your Facebook group. I, you know, I'm at the point now where I always have someone on hand to help me that week,

like just as the yes the group moderator because it's otherwise for a one person a lot of work. But if you're just starting and you've got no audience, it's like well I'm not gonna have 750 people in my challenge. What would you say is like a minimum number people should aim for for their first challenge? Yeah, the reality is there is no minimum,

right? To give you a sense of what's gonna happen, we typically see 50 to 80% of people join our Facebook group. I like to have a Facebook group of 50 to a hundred minimum. That's just my personal thing. I find if you go much less than 50 to a hundred, it's hard to kind of like, it's like pulling teeth to get engagement because only 10 to 20% of people who join your challenge are gonna watch engage and that's over the culmination of the full week.

So if you get a hundred to 150 people in the challenge only expect 15 to 30 people to actually engage with the content. It doesn't mean that more people aren't watching or listening or reading your emails. It's just that not everybody wants to post in the Facebook group and not everybody does. And you know, I have people who literally on the fifth day of the challenge will go,

oh my gosh, this was so great And I'm like, who are you? I have no idea who you are. Or people will post their results cause they're excited on day five and I'll be like, I haven't heard from you all week, what's your business? What do you do? Tell me more about yourself, you know? But I like at least a hundred people in there.

So from a analytics perspective, if you get 200 people registered, you'll get about a hundred in the Facebook group plus. And I think that's a really good place to be is 150 to 200 signed up for the challenge. If it's free, if it's paid 50 and you're golden, Okay, good to know. All right. And for those people, I mean obviously you are really good at running Facebook ads,

but for someone else who's like, I don't wanna have to run ads to get people into my challenge, any thoughts on some beginner marketing strategies they might be able to use? Totally leverage your email list and don't be afraid to email people. I used to have this block that was like very much the OG internet marketer, you send 1, 2, 3 invitation emails here,

challenge you resend an non-op opens twice and you start, I now email about my challenges 5, 6, 7, 10 times before they start. And I used to have this real fear that was like, oh people are gonna unsubscribe and newsflash they do. We lose a lot of people during our promotion. My thing is like sometimes we hold onto the things that aren't serving us and holding on to people on your email list because you don't wanna lose them doesn't make sense if they're not signing up for your stuff,

right? So I'm not saying like bombard your list like we segment and we're strategic and we're not just like blowing up our list every single day over and over again that says sign up for the challenge, sign up for the challenge, sign up for the challenge. We tell stories, we share case studies, we take different angles, we test, but email your list a whole bunch.

And I have a friend who likes to say, when in doubt send an email, right? If it's like when in doubt, send an email. Second thing is don't underestimate the power of your organic social. I think so many people are like, I don't have a big following, I only have you know, a hundred people on Instagram and 300 friends on Facebook.

And it's like great if you convert 2% of those, that's 10 people in your challenge and that's 10 more than zero. So don't neglect the value of your organic social media. And the last thing that I'll say is I'm a huge sucker for Facebook ads. So if you're getting started with Facebook ads, the goal is not how do I spend $10,000 in five days to get a million people?

My challenge, I want you to change the way you think about Facebook ads, especially in 2023 and onwards is you should be running ads 24 7, 5 to $10 a day to grow your email list consistently. Yes, I like to run ads for my challenge itself, but the goal is when I'm doing what we just talked about, which is emailing on a regular basis,

emailing consistently, testing different angles, have an audience to speak to. I think if you were to ask me even four years ago, like I would've been like push your challenge hard, just drive leads your launch builds your list. Like that was a big thing that we used to say in the industry. Your launch builds your list, your launch builds your list,

your launch builds your list and it still does. Your launch will grow your list if you drive cold traffic to it. The problem is people don't convert cold to an offer the way they used to. So the way we look at it is the time to grow your audience is not the 10 days before your challenge. The time to grow your audience is the hundred days before the challenge.

And then that 10 days is where you make the offer to all those people you've been nurturing and growing inherently. We know this because we have all these little metaphors and saying, which is like, you know what? You sow today, you reap tomorrow. Or we say these things but we don't take them to heart. And I think especially as marketing is getting more relationship oriented and more personalized and customized and especially in an age where things are so automated that building true connection and relationship is really gonna shine through.

Yes, it's a little bit of a scary topic for a lot of us Facebook ads, but I'm gonna make sure, actually I'll link up below here to some of your Facebook ads training cuz you make it so easy Zack. So if you're listening in, We've got a lot and they're very affordable, it's Very affordable. So if you've, you know,

you're listening into this and you're thinking, oh I just, I dunno anything about as go and have a look at the, the links that I'm sharing because there's no one better than Zach to get you started with that stuff. Okay, so we've got a, we've got our challenge in planning. How are we going to come up with a challenge topic?

So we use the PSP model problem, solution problem. So when you create your challenge, you wanna solve a problem, don't teach what you know solve a problem. So for example, we do grow your email list with Facebook ads challenge. It's not a learn Facebook ads challenge, it's grow your list. Cause people say I need to grow my list.

So the problem is I need to grow my list. The solution is I have a five day challenge that's gonna teach you how to grow your list. The second P is another problem. What problem does that uncover? So for our audience, if you grow your list, the solution is run Facebook ads. The new problem is how do I sell to my audience?

That's what our membership is about. How to nurture, grow, and engage the audience that you're growing with Facebook ads. So you wanna be asking yourself, if I sell something, you can work that process backwards. So let's do something totally different. Let's say like I teach Instagram DM for sales, right? That's your solution at the back end. What problem does that solve?

I'm trying to get more sales. Well, if someone's trying to get more sales, what do they need to realize before that? Well they might need to create the perfect offer, right? So the problem is I don't know what to sell. So your challenge for an Instagram DM might be create the perfect program to sell on Instagram, right? And again,

I'm just riffing, but what you wanna be thinking about is what problem do I solve? What solution do I need to put in front of people to do that? What problem does that ultimately uncover? And then what solution do I sell on the back end to the new problem? Another way to think about this is the first problem is the problem that your cog customer perceives they have.

The second problem is the problem, you know, they have, right? So other big mistake that we see when people come up with their outcome is like I'll do like sugar, sugar's a a big topic that a lot of people do challenges on. They'll be like the five day sugar cleanse and it's like nobody wants to get rid of sugar, right?

They wanna lose five pounds. So if you called it the, you know, the five day slim down challenge and then in the challenge talk about the importance of getting rid of sugar and then they say, oh well this is great but I'm, I'm addicted to sugar. Then you say, great, I'm gonna share with you my sugar detox program. So it needs to serve the problem they perceive themselves having.

Not a problem. You know, they have great example is I tell people with Facebook ads, like what I just told you, you need to start growing your list a hundred days ago. But if I did a challenge called grow your list for a hundred days, no one would care because that's just not sexy or appealing or what people want. But if I say add a hundred people to your list in the next five days people are like,

oh my gosh, I'd love to do that. And then the real problem is great, you've got the leads, what are you gonna do now? And so you just wanna be thinking what is that flow that you need to take people through to solve what they perceive as their problem To uncover the problem, you know, they have to ultimately serve them with your paid problem.

Hmm, I've got my own challenge coming up in a couple of weeks. Zach, you've got me freethinking my topic now I might have to go back and change. Change all my messaging. Alright, so if somebody's putting a a challenge together and they're a bit, you know, I guess feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the moving pieces, what would you consider to be the like the non-negotiable elements of a challenge and then once they got that down,

like what kind of things could they introduce that are gonna make it next level? Sure. So the non-negotiables are a daily email, a daily video, whether that's live or pre-recorded and a Facebook group. Everything else is secondary. So secondary things that you could layer in would be like Facebook retargeting ads, zoom calls, upgrades. One thing that we have some clients do is what we call v i P challenge upgrade.

So they'll do bonus zooms only for VIPs and they charge, you know, 25, 50, a hundred dollars for that. You can always enhance it. And this is my go-to. I tell people keep things simple, keep it simple to start. Start with a daily email at Facebook group and a live video, right? Then if you are loving it and it's working great,

add stuff in, add in Facebook ads, add in giveaways, add in bonuses, add in. You know, I have one client that does a scavenger hunt, right? So during her videos and in her training she has like secret words, you write down the secret word every day and then you submit a form at the end that is like all the secret words from all five days and then you get entered to a giveaway,

right? So it encourages people to consume the content. It's always tempting to do the really cool stuff, but it's the basic stuff that works. The cool stuff enhances. And what I tell my clients is, like I said, keep it simple to start, but every time you do your challenge, enhance it, don't change it, right? So a change would be like a completely new topic.

An enhancement would be like Facebook retargeting ads. An enhancement is almost guaranteed to create the same results or better results. A change will actually change the outcome, right? So we like to tell people once you find your groove, once you find your system, don't change, enhance. So to give you a really specific example, we're doing our Facebook ads challenge again in July and we won't change the topic,

we're gonna do the same topic again, but we're gonna hopefully, fingers crossed, we're gonna add text message marketing, we're gonna add Facebook Messenger bots and we're gonna add some really strategic retargeting ads that we didn't get to do the last run. So again, it's just, we're enhancing it. So keep it simple to start and enhance over time. Hmm,

That's excellent advice and not something I usually take. I am just like the queen of recreating and making myself so much extra work. So it's really good to hear from you that you can run the same topic multiple times. Oh Years I've been teaching Facebook ads. You can teach similar topics for years. Do you run it inside the same Facebook group or do you start a new like popup group every time you host one?

Ooh, good question. No popup group every time, unless you have a community, you've been growing with less than three to 500 people. If you wanna like leverage a challenge to boost engagement and kind of kickstart the group, great. After there's 500 to a thousand people in a group, if you have a primary free group, I do not use it for my challenge,

start a new pop-up group. It has to do with the algorithm, it has to do with the fact that if people don't sign up for the challenge, they won't engage with the content. It'll hurt your primary group reach. Just do a popup group. When in doubt do a popup group. All right? Because that's one of the reasons I think I always recreate my challenge content is because I'm like,

oh, but these guys have already heard about it so I need to come up with like a new topic for them. Yeah, but new group solves that problem. Yes, sure does. All right, now for the people who you know are a bit, I guess deflated at the idea that not everyone who signs up for their challenge are even gonna get into their group,

you know, like 50 to 80% I think you mentioned of people will actually take the initiative to join the group. How do we encourage them to get over there and what do we do with those people who are like, I'm not a Facebook user. Yeah, I say this with love, it's a numbers game, right? Yes. It's people. Yes,

I care about people. Like I hear for my clients all the time, and this is maybe a little ego, but like, like you have such a big heart, you really love to give, you always show up for people. But I think that there's this duality of like, I also acknowledge that it's a numbers game, right? And I'm not gonna beat myself up.

Like you have to think about where this exists in real life too. Like do you think that the Costco sample person is like, oh, that person didn't want sample. What was the point of coming today? Or they like, oh well this person does want a sample so I'm gonna give that person my attention. You know, you think about like,

especially we are in a sales position, think about the guy at your mall or the local hangout who's like, Hey, do you wanna upgrade your cable to our company? And you're like, no thank you. He doesn't go, well I should quit my job because that person said no thank you. Right? Like you've gotta keep it in perspective. We are in a sales job.

It is a number oriented thing that we do. And so if you're like, why aren't they joining? It has nothing to do with you, right? That's the biggest mistake. I just saw this quote on Facebook that really stuck with me. They said, you know, the the biggest problem we have when it comes to success is caring what other people think and thinking that other people care.

It's not about you. We get so in our heads that we're like, oh, they don't think it's good enough. They don't think it's worth it. They don't want a Facebook group and it could just simply be they signed up on a whim and they're out of town. They didn't look at the dates, they're not available, they don't have Facebook,

they don't want Facebook, they don't use Facebook. And so what, you're still gonna send an email, you're still gonna do live video, you're still gonna communicate with them. So the reality is, so what? And I tell people, if you're on Facebook and Facebook is central to your business and someone goes, I'm not on Facebook, they're just not your target customer.

Okay cool, great, no big deal. So I think it's all about keeping it in perspective and it is a numbers game. Yes, we want to treat people like people, but keep in mind nobody cares. We're the one who cares, they don't care. It's a good reality check. Thank you for that. Good, good pep talk. Yeah.

Alright, so if our challenge goes well, Zach, historically what kind of conversion numbers might people expect on their overall funnel from challenge registrant through to signing up for their paid high ticket offer? We typically see two to 4% conversion on anything over $500, three to 6% conversion on anything under $500 for a free challenge paid challenge, we typically see a 10% plus conversion.

So if you charge a small fee to join your challenge, even as low as 10 to $25, we typically see a 10% plus conversion. Now one thing I will caution you cuz everyone goes great, I'll do a paid challenge. You have to have an audience to do a paid challenge because it is hard to convert cold traffic to buy a thing. You are gonna focus on your warm audience.

So you're already boosting your conversions by focusing on a warm audience and then you'll get less people in the challenge, right? We typically see a much lower percentage of people in our challenge from our email list when we charge, but we see a higher backend conversion and sometimes that's worth it and sometimes it's not. So just something to consider but two to 4% on $500 plus three to 6%,

$500 or less and 10% plus for a paid challenge regardless of the price. Alright? And if someone is running ads, you know, so it's costing them quite a bit to get somebody into the challenge in the first place. Like in your mind, is there a minimum amount that you would charge for the paid offer at the end? You know, in order to to like break even?

Yeah, $300. Yeah. If you're charging less than 2 97 and you're running ads, it's gonna be harder to make money. As of right now we run a challenge where we sell a $50 product but our average order value is 265, right? So we sell our membership but we have enough people go annual and people upgrade from monthly to semi-annual. We have an upsell process that it actually makes the sale closer to $300.

So I like to be around $300 minimum if you're just getting started, we've sometimes gone a little lower to like 200. We've gone as high as 600, we've gone as high as 1300. But the key is, you know, the higher your price point. I know that this is counterintuitive advice because everybody says it's not true, but my opinion is that there's little thresholds that are invisible.

So like up to $300, easy sell, 300 to 700, little more challenging. As you get close to that thousand dollars mark, people really need good sales copy persuasion pitch. And once you get over 2000, if you're getting started, you probably need a sales call. Now that being said, if you've got great copy, great design, great images,

great creation, great pitch, great persuasion, great content, maybe you don't need a sales call, maybe you can get away with more, right? But when we're getting started we see the big names or the A players being like, oh it's $2,000 and you know, but they've been doing this for years, they have a massive budget, they've got a full design team,

an on-staff copywriter, all these things. If you're just getting started, make it easy for people to say yes, charge two to $300, refine your offer, make some money, get your designer, get your copywriter and enhance and improve over time. That is one thing I will say about challenges and content is that we get so caught up in wanting to sell a $2,000 product that we don't put in the work to create a $2,000 experience.

And this is a hill that I will die on is like sell at the price point where you can deliver and then improve with time. My first course was $97, now I run an agency where it's $2,000 a month. Now I have coaching that is high end now I have you know, a $2,500 a quarter group coaching program, but I didn't start there.

I scaled up with time as I refined my offers, my design, my copy, my knowledge base and that kind of thing. So not necessarily your question, but No that was great And when I think back to my first ever challenge, you know, after I went through your challenge training, it was a $30 membership that I sold at the end and thankfully pretty much everyone signed up cuz it was like a crazy no-brainer deal.

You know what I gave them for $30 a month. But you know, for those people who are like, well I've got a membership though at the end and it's not $300, it's only 70 bucks a month. You know, you absolutely can still sell a a low ticket membership at the end, but you just have to bear in mind if you are running ads that it's probably gonna take a few months to break even.

Absolutely. We say with membership launches we wanna break even on the front end and profit on the back end. I like it. So our goal if we're launching anything under $50 a month is to basically not lose money on the challenge if if maybe a little bit, but to ultimately make money once people are inside. Okay? Now the industry standard on a challenge is five days.

You know, you hear the term all the time, oh join my five day challenge. But is there a number of days where you actually think, oh that's like the perfect length of time because I've got students who are like, I wanna run a 14 day challenge and I think, how are you gonna hold their engagement that long? Yeah, three to five days I used to fight tooth and nail.

It might even still be in my original course. I'm like five days is the perfect length, you've gotta do five for some industries, three is better, I never go past five. And the reason is because if you go past five, most people start on a Monday, play into the Monday mentality I call it, where everyone's like, I'm gonna start on Monday diet,

running, exercise, drinking, water, meditating, doing their skincare, which everybody's gonna start on Monday, right? So I like to start my challenges on Monday, let's cater to that mentality. But then two, if you go past five days, you have to hold their attention on a Saturday and a Sunday. And let's just be honest, that's where we derail most of our good habits for the start Monday mentality is like,

oh but it's Saturday so I can have the pizza. Oh but it's Saturday so I'm gonna sleep in and not go to the gym. Oh but it's Saturday so like I'm not gonna worry about washing my face today. You know, like it sounds silly but we know that's what happens. We know human behavior. So I like three days. If you have something that's like really complex because you can simplify it and then if you have something that is,

I guess I shouldn't say complex, if you have something that requires a lot of thought, I like to keep it shorter, right? There's always exceptions to the rule. If you have something that requires a lot of actions, then I like to go closer to five days. So for example, if you're talking about like money management, I'd probably go closer to three days because people get really overwhelmed when you talk about money and you don't wanna like scare them away for a week.

Facebook ads, even though it's complex, I do for five days because I need to train them on Facebook ads. I need to have them run Facebook ads, I need to have them get results with the ads and then I need to show them what to do with the results. And that right there is four days of content and I want to have a day to actually sell,

right? So five days is gonna make more sense for something that requires a lot of activity or actions. So three days is minimum, five days is maximum and I never go longer than that. Sometimes I will do like bonus days that I don't announce. So like if you're like, oh man, but it'd be so beneficial to add this in. Ask yourself,

is this content I need to convert? And if not, add it in as a bonus. No one's ever gonna go, I can't believe you gave me extra content, but everyone's gonna go, I can't commit to seven days I can't commit through the weekend, right? So just keep that in mind. Oh, And for the amount of content that you're delivering over those days,

I always, I'm an over giver Zach, so I find that I can't do daily content like under 30 minutes and then I think, oh geez, I've got them on for like four days and I'm asking them to give up like an hour and a half every day for four days. Who has that in their calendar? Nobody. So what would you suggest is like a great amount of time to be asking of people each day for the challenge.

So if you do a paid challenge, you can go longer cause people paid to be there, they have the expectation of content. So you can go 30 to 60 minutes a day with your content if you're doing a paid challenge and I'm just talking content piece, but we have what we call the golden hour rule, which essentially says if it takes more than an hour to get through absolutely everything,

like let's say they read the email, they do what you tell them, they show up live, they post in the group, they engage in the community. If that's more than an hour a day to get through everything, it's too much. If it's a free challenge, that's too much. If it's under an hour, you're golden. And I'm talking literally everything.

Like they read the email, they do the activity, they post in the group, they connect with three other people, like ask yourself would this really be a big commitment? And an hour is like maximum. If they can get through that in 45 minutes, even better if they pay, I may go up to an hour a day and I think that's totally fine because there's an expectation of content,

there's an expectation of delivery and they've paid to be there. So they view it as a higher quality event. Whether it is or isn't, doesn't matter. Perception is what matters, right? But that's kind of my my thing. The golden hour rule is where I like to be. Okay, I'll revisit my challenge content for next week. All right,

so let's just say we get to the end of the challenge and we know, all right, we've gotta transition at some point to presenting the paid offer. Now do you take up like a lot of the last day of training talking about the paid offer or do you just sort of drop it into conversation throughout the week or do you talk about it the day after the official challenge closes?

Like when do we present our thing? If it's a paid challenge, I'll start presenting it on Wednesday. If it's a free challenge, I'll present it on Thursday, Friday and I will really present it. I was just sharing with one of my programs the other day is like, don't rush through the pitch. Biggest mistake I see people make is they get anxious and they talk really fast and they rush through the pitch and they're like,

so if you want it, you know you, you grab it. It's really, it's really great and I've got all and it's like that, that's not gonna work, right? People really can pick up on that like anxiety, I need this to work type energy. So I just tell people, give yourself five to 10 minutes minimum to pitch your product.

Go slow, take your time. And if you feel weird about pitching, which a lot of people do, it's not an uncommon fear or concern or uncertainty, I tell people ask for permission to pitch. So come on your live video for the day and say hey, I've got this really great thing. For those of you that love the challenge, do you mind if I share it with you?

And if you're doing it prerecorded, that's okay. Just say like, I'd really appreciate it if I can, if you're doing it live, wait for people to say of course and then share it. Just ask for permission, right? Not that you need it, but it just lowers that expectation of like, oh, I don't want people to feel like I'm just like selling at them.

It adds this layer of like you're getting the permission, you're making an offer, you ask them. And that's the other thing, the way that I think about it is it's not a pitch, it's an invitation. So this is just an invitation for those of you who want more, here's an opportunity to do that. For those of you who don't,

that's okay too. I'm a very soft seller. I do not have a hard pitch and we typically convert it 15 to 20% in our paid challenges. So you don't have to have this perfect NLP laden, persuasive, perfectly scripted pitch to get the sale. I think we think you gotta do such a pet peeve of mine and I know some people do it and I don't have a problem if you do it,

it's a pet peeve for me, you know? So take it with a grain of salt, but I hate when people go, you have two choices, you can stay stuck or you can hire me. And it's like life has an unlimited amount of choices. So when you say that to people, the skeptics in your audience are gonna go, well that's not true.

Right? It's like this old school NLP sales trick where people are like, well do you wanna work with me or do you want to die alone in the arctic tundra, right? And it's like I don't dig that. You can keep it super casual and still come. I Mean is it like the elephant in the room, the your paid offer throughout the week or do you make mention of it so that you know when you do present I mention it,

I'll seat it. Yeah, so on the first day I'll say something like, you know, at the end of the week I'm gonna share with you an opportunity to learn more about our membership. You don't really have to worry about that now, but just know that if you know you love the challenge and you want to do more, there will be an opportunity to keep working together.

Very casual, very passive, very confident. And I'm just mentioning it. And then what's cool is as you do these over and over and over again, you will have people from your membership, your program, your content, join your free stuff cuz they love you and they'll be like, oh my gosh, you guys, when he releases the membership on Friday,

you're gonna want to be here. It's so good. I love the membership, the membership's amazing and people will be your hype people and just hype you up over time as you repeat the process and the challenges. Ah, I love it. All right, well how long would you say is like the perfect time to keep the cart open? You know,

once the challenge is over Five days or less. Okay. Yeah. I get a bit sick of my email after five days and I think, geez, everyone else must be sick of reading them if I'm sick of riding them. Yeah, This is what I tell people, you've gotta have a purpose and an intention for every day. Just because your card's open for 10 days doesn't feel mean.

You'll make twice as many sales as it's open for five days. It just means there's more time that you have to fill with content. So five days is my absolute maximum. I usually go Friday to Tuesday, which I think is four days plus half a day. So four and a half days. And to me that's like the perfect amount of time.

Hmm, Good to know. All right. Now you've mentioned a little bit about paid challenges and you know, versus free challenges. If you're starting with no list, go free to begin with, but how about like a hybrid where there's like a free challenge and then like a, a paid upsell, almost like a summit where you get like an all access pass?

Is that a good strategy to use? Yeah, it can work really well. It just depends on the audience. So I say test it, but we've had some really great results. We had a client do a challenge and they had a 10% conversion to their all access or v i P version. So it can work really great. It's worth the test.

It's absolutely worth the test. All right. And do you sell the recordings afterwards, sell the recordings? I used to and you can, I shut down the recordings for free. But now I do paid challenges so frequently that I want people to have lifetime access cause they paid to be there. But when I do a free challenge, I usually put the recordings into the product or,

and this is one of my favorite strategies is I'll say buy the recordings for $97 or get them free when you join the program. So I put them side by side and I give people the opportunity to buy the replay, but I'm like, well why would you buy it when you can get it for free? And your course might only be, you know,

a few hundred bucks. So that's an amazing bonus to include. I love that strategy. All right, so Zach, for those people who wanna learn more about challenges, I know when I learned from you, you had this amazing program, the five figure challenge, and then you took all of the incredible resources out of it. I was gutted, you took all the incredible resources out of it and you put it into this $37 challenge launch toolkit.

I was like, Zach, I just paid you hundreds of dollars for that. But okay, but all the resources are in this toolkit for somebody who would like to get started. Yes. So funny story, I will tell you with our five figure challenge, we had a year of Facebook group support, we had coaching, we had all this extra stuff that came with it.

We did pull some stuff out, we refined it down to a really simple process. I will tell you there are stuff that is exclusive to the five figure challenge that didn't make it into the toolkit. However I'm pleased You knew that. Yeah, so don't feel too bad there's no Facebook group for support. Like you don't get the coaching and the calls,

which is ultimately what we charge a premium for. And we left our challenge only group open for a year. So I promise I don't pull the rug out from under people. I try not to. But yeah, so what we did was we took this program we had, we used to sell it for $1,300 and I said, you know what, this can be way simplified.

And we turned it into what we call the challenge launch toolkit and we sell it for $37. There are upsells and additional things that you can add onto it, just full transparency. So that's the other thing I'll tell you Meg, is you have access to all the upsells, bonuses and resources too from five figure five figure challenge. But it is, it is essentially a toolkit that teaches you our entire challenge system.

So it's four phases, learn it, build it, fill it, sell it. So learn the process of our five day challenge, which is a short video with a complete visual map, build it, learn how to actually write the emails, the copy, the creative, the Facebook ads, fill it, how to actually get people into your challenge and then sell it.

How to set up your high converting mechanisms to convert. We include everything you need from workbooks on finding your topics to visual maps of the challenge process to Facebook ads crash courses. And it's all for 37 bucks. So if you're like, I'd love to run a five day challenge and I wanna learn more, it's over at toolkit dot heart soul hustle.com. So check it out and I'm sure Meg,

you're gonna link it up in the the show, I will link it up below. And I love giving you a hard time about it, Zack, but I actually like go and buy this toolkit for all my students because it's just gold. The feedback that I get on it every time I include it as a bonus in my program is amazing. So everybody who you know,

if you're thinking about challenges do not go past that toolkit. If they do want the coaching with you though, you know, like can you just tell us where we would go to learn more about not your average membership, not your average marketing membership. You got it? Yeah, if you wanna learn more about the membership, you can head over to join dot,

not your average membership.com. And it's a full sales page. We just have the copy and design redone, so I'm like really proud of it right now. So you should check it out anyway and tell me how great it is. But you can head over to join dot non membership.com. It is $49 a month, four 90 for the year. We give you two months free if you go annual.

And really that is kind of the process that I recommend. If you're like, I've got an audience, I'm good to go, I'm gonna, you know, even if it's small but mighty and you're like, I'm gonna run a challenge, go with the toolkit. If you're like, this all sounds so cool, but I've got 50 people on my email list and like I don't know what to do about that.

Check out the membership because the way we structured is we have a 90 day onboarding plan where the first month we teach you how to set up a 24 7 automated list building ad that grows your audience. The second month we teach you how to set up an automated sequence to nurture them so that when your challenge comes around, they're warm and excited. And then the third month we teach you how to create a low ticket product,

just like the challenge launch toolkit that you can put into your automated sequences and start generating revenue as you grow your list so that when you launch, there's higher profitability on the ad spend you've been doing up to that time. And then every month we release trainings on everything from copywriting, Facebook ads, we even did like a cash flow and how we manage our money month.

Like we listen to our members, we hear what they wanna work on, and we bring in experts and myself to train you on various topics to enhance the machine that you built in your first, Ah, it's brilliant. Zach and I could keep you all day here just asking lots of questions. They always say that like, hosting a podcast is just like private coaching,

and it's so true. You just invite on all your favorite people and, and get private coaching one-on-one for an hour. But thank you so much for coming in today and sharing all this information on challenges. I'm sure everyone who's listened in will agree that, you know, just some serious gold nuggets in there that they can all go and apply. So I will put those links in below,

and with any luck, you'll come back and join us for another episode at some point in the future. I would be honored. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Zach. I hope you've enjoyed our podcast episode on Challenge Funnels and are as excited as I am to go and put some of these action items into practice. Now, if you'd like to learn more about Zach,

I would go and have a listen to the Not your average online marketing podcast, where he gives a crazy amount of tips in every episode, or have a look at his amazing, not your average membership, where he coaches entrepreneurs to grow their leads, sales, and bottom line. And I will put a link to both of those things below. And if you'd like to join us for a live Funnel building masterclass where I show you how to build out your live challenge funnel on Kajabi and give you all the resources you need to make it happen,

why not join us inside of Funnel Club?