Community & Ascension Models with Lou Glendon of Click Love Grow

You’re listening to the Kajabiverse podcast and today’s episode is a walk down memory lane (for me) as I catch up with my Aussie high-school buddy Lou Glendon, who created a 7-figure online business teaching photography enthusiasts at Click Love Grow.

We talk about the change in landscape since Covid, the impact of smartphone photography, where Lou's ad spend does best and how "community" has been used to keep their clients with them for a lifetime.

A little about Lou:
Louise Glendon is the creator of Click Love Grow, an online photography school designed to help women and mums fall in love with their cameras and take photos they love. 

Started in 2013, Click Love Grow has taught thousands of students all over the world, and has a thriving community of women who’ve gone on to start their own businesses, win international awards, publish books and have their images featured in Vogue! 

Highlights from this episode:

🎙️ How Lou's product suite evolved and why?

🎙️ What worked during Covid and what works now

🎙️ iOS 14 Changes & Return on Ad Spend in the Hobby Space

🎙️ Live Launching versus Evergreen Funnels & Hybrid Models

🎙️ Co-branding Workshops

🎙️ Tiny Offers (SLO) & Seeding Bigger Things

🎙️ Introducing Brand Ambassadors and Head Coaches / Instructors

Links mentioned in this episode:

Click Love Grow

Lou's Free Mini-Course

Lou's $16 Tiny Offer

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!

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Transcript

Well hello everyone and welcome to What is Bound to be one of my favorite Kajabi verse episodes as I take a walk down memory lane with one of my very best friends from high school in Tasmania, Lou Glendon. Now we've been friends since we were about 12 years old, so it's great to reconnect with Lou and hear what she's been up to in the online space with her courses for photography enthusiasts at Click Love Grow.

In this episode, Lou talks about the change in her business model post Covid, where they choose to put their ad spend each month for best return and how they use the element of community to keep clients with them for a lifetime. Let's dive in. Hello Louise. Hi Meg. How are you? Hello. Now obviously you and I go way, way back.

I think I met you when I was like 12 years old at high school in Tasmania. But for those who are listening in who don't have all of our history, can you tell us Lou, like what it is that you do in the online space and who it is that you're focused on helping? Yes, I certainly can. So I love that we went to high school together.

I've just gotta say it's so nice being friends with someone from the real world in the online space, right? Because that doesn't very often happen. There's not that overlap. But I run Actually before you go on, like I can't think of many people from our grade who went on to be entrepreneurs. I can you think of many people cuz I'm like,

okay, I think somebody became a florist. But I, I can't, I'm really struggling to think of people who went on to just, you know, create their own business. Yeah, I mean I can think of a couple that have local based businesses run their own practices in, you know, medical fields or other fields, but definitely not in the online space.

We're a rare breed. Yes, yes. You went first. I've followed in your footsteps. Yeah. You know, like you were that cool friend of mine that went and did something outside of corporate and I was like, well if she can do it, I can do it. So, you know, we're, we're in very different fields though.

What is it that you do? So I have Click Love Grow, which is an online photography school for women. So I was in the military, I joined straight after school and off I went. And then I was in for 13 years. Then I made a jump into photography, which is a little obscure, but definitely, I dunno, it made sense in the moment and I guess it was a service-based job that allowed me to have flexibility to work with my kids.

My husband was still in the military, he was traveling, but because very much like you Meg, we get itchy feet, we like to go exploring live overseas. And so I really wanted to be able to have a job or have a business that would allow me, you know, to take it with me when I left. And I'd created this fantastic boudoir photography business in Adelaide where I lived.

And the thought of starting over again just kind of did not excite me, especially knowing I might have to start over again multiple times. So when I was studying marketing in an online course to improve my photography business, that's where I discovered this online world and I thought, you know what? So many people come to me and say, Hey, I have this camera,

I just want cute photos of my kids. I really saw it as a opportunity and that was kind of the beginnings of it all. Mm. I ha I have to ask, like since you started, I mean it was so many years ago now, not that we're old, but so many years ago that smartphone photography has come like leaps and bounds since then.

And so I'm sorry Tory, but like how has smartphone photography impacted your business? Yeah, that's a really good question and I like to think about that as well because even personally, you know, I use my smartphone for day-to-day photos of my kids. However, in saying that our business is much bigger now than when we started when smartphones weren't as prevalent.

I always keep an eye on the big camera companies to see, you know, how much investment in advertising they're doing to see, you know, where they're, where they're kind of participating in things. But the trend that I'm seeing is that first of all, smartphones can be kind of a gateway into wanting to learn more about photos. The fact that the smartphones now can do that blurry background and you can kind of do a few little creative effects.

It can actually spark someone's interest in being able to take beautiful photos and play more creatively with that technique. But it's definitely limited. And so it's kind of great to introduce the concepts of what a camera can do and then when someone starts, you know, searching or trying to find a little bit more information about how to take these beautiful photos, that's when they discover this path of,

okay, there's these, you know, digital cameras that have these amazing capabilities that you can play with. Now the second thing that I'm seeing is that a lot of people really wanna get off their phones. You know, I definitely have those moments where I'm like, ugh, I just, you know, my work is on my phone, my kids are texting me on my phone,

I get sucked into that vortex of scrolling. Right? And so a lot of people even in our community are talking about how photography in itself is kind of this almost meditative practice. Like it's a mindfulness of disappearing behind the lens, maybe playing with macro photography and playing with abstract and colors. And so again, there's another opportunity there that we can take advantage of,

you know, in terms of marketing, of presenting photography in different ways. So yes, a lot of our historical marketing is, hey, take beautiful photos of your kids, save money on a professional photo session. But then there's this flip side where a lot of people are doing that coloring in or they're seeking out that kind of quietness in the busy stressful dayday.

And this is something that's off our phones, it's not scrolling and it's a hobby that people can disappear into and you know, really fill their creative bucket and and have a community to share it with as well. Oh good. Well I'm very glad to hear that it hasn't, you know, hasn't destroyed your business. Cause I was like, this is An Hour ago,

bit worried. Yeah. Now can you talk to me like about over the years how your business offerings have evolved? Because we caught up like years ago when you had like the starter course, which I think is your enthusiast course. But now when I have a look at your website, there's like a million other things. So how did they all come about?

Yeah, so some of it was very much my own limitations. So when I started, there were a lot of photography offerings in the marketplace for people who were already photographers, right? So you know, how to become a professional photographer, how to be able to do this at an amazing level. And so for me, I felt like, okay,

I can slip in here in the very much beginner space. I can appeal to other moms like me with little kids. I can help them take beautiful photos of you know, their babies or whatever. And so for me at that time I felt like that was my place. And so I created this enthusiast photography course, which is very much teaching people the foundations and fundamentals,

right? And so I felt like, well you know, I haven't been a professional photographer for very long. Who am I to be teaching these advanced level concepts? Because I didn't feel worthy, right? So I was running my enthusiast course, it was doing really well. And then people started asking, well, what's next? Right? What's next?

And so, you know, a lot of kind of being prompted and it doesn't feel like a long time now, but at the time I was very tortured by it. I put together an advance for photography course and it was that advice that people gave that you are simply that little bit further along than someone else is. And so that really helped me in being able to design that course.

So we have the eight week beginner course, then we have the advanced level course, which is much more in depth. We talk about creativity and bringing, you know, moon and feeling into images and, and kind of getting more in the weeds on topics that people really enjoy. So we ran that, I'm gonna say for a couple of years. And then people again started saying,

well, what's next? Like, they even came to me and said, you know what? There's a competitor over here who offers these different kind of courses and we would prefer to learn them through you, but you don't have anything else and we wanna keep learning. So eventually we started adding our short four week workshops to our offerings. And the thing that I really love about these,

especially from a creator point of view, is that we now have 10 years worth of amazing students who have come through our courses, right? They've gone on to be vogue featured, you know, photographers, they've won international awards, they've published cookbooks, they run businesses. So we have this breadth of talent. And so now I invite our past students to become guest mentors.

We co-write or they write and we brand a workshop that we now are put out. So I think we've had, I think I said 25, it might even be getting closer to 30, but we now run eight live workshops a year. You know, one every couple of months or so. And so very much that came about because our audience was asking us for,

you know, those extra opportunities to learn. So that helped develop the suite of what we offer. We do have a business course. So I would say like business excites me maybe more than photography now because that's what I've been doing for 10 years. I've been running a photography education business, but helping everyone else take photos. I'm in the business side.

So I do have a course now for photographers. They come up through our, all our trainings, they, you know, not everyone, but many people then wanna run a photography business. And I did also have a very successful photography business. I put that together in a course too. Awesome. So the workshops, they run for four weeks. So it's like a live mini course almost.

Yeah. How, how much does a workshop sell for outta curiosity? So they're 1 47, which is a bargain, but it's very much designed as very easily consumable. People can just come back and join all of them. They don't even have to think about it. But now we've added a membership. So we have a creativity club. So once people purchase a workshop,

they can then join a $39 a month membership. And that means they just get to stay for the whole year, join in all the workshops and yeah, most people then just keep on with that. I love it. Hmm. You've got me thinking now, I'm like right after this. Yeah. I'm off to go and craft a four week workshop.

And so what is the normal progression of somebody who enters your world? Do they start with one of those workshops? Do they start with your free minicourse that I saw on your website? Like how, how do people move Lee? Yeah, so we have a lot of entry points and you know, that's not necessarily by design, it's more just how long we've been doing it.

And so therefore adding different offerings. I think when people are first starting out and they hear businesses say, oh I've got like 20 lead magnets and I've got, you know, five mini priced offers, that can feel super overwhelming and I don't think it's necessary at all. We do have kind of a lot of entry points for people, but it's purely because we've been adding them slowly over time and then kind of just sticking with the winners that do the best.

So we have a mini course that people can take and I really love the mini course. Historically it's always converted really well because it gives people a real taste of what the course is all about. So that's on our website. We run a little bit of paid traffic to that, but not a great deal. We also have a set of manual settings,

cheat cards. So for most people learning photography, you know, if they're problem aware, they know that they need to put in a combination of settings to get a great photo. And so, you know, they kind of need a bit of help to figure out what those settings are. So we have a five pack and that's relevant in a minute.

There's only five in there, right? That's free. Again, we run a little bit of pay traffic to that. And we had some other guides, you know, like a guide to taking photos of your kids, a guide to doing some other things with your camera. Lots of free lead gen stuff that's on our website. So if there's a blog post that's relevant to a lead gen,

we hook that up so that people can download it and come into our universe. The click club growth space. Once all of the free traffic, once they're in, we have a small welcome sequence, you know, Hey, my name is Lou, this is what it's all about. Here's some free stuff I'd love to share with you. Then we have a a 14 day warmup sequence,

which kind of primes them about the enthusiast course that invites them to the webinar. And then after that they go into a free training, which is a evergreen followed by a sales sequence. So everyone who comes in for the very first time at about the three week mark, they go into a sales sequence, you know, email based for our main offering,

which is the enthusiast photography course. Now that was our main approach up until iOS 14 changes. So we were able to spend ad spend to all those free lead gens and they would convert into the enthusiast of course, no worries. So when iOS changed, it kind of really screwed up our evergreen approach. Everything went a little bit wobbly, which was super frustrating.

And so we have now been testing for a little while, different approaches. And the thing we're finding that works the best at the moment is kind of a tiny offer. The self liquidating offer, the, you know, low cost front end. So the moment the one that we're running most of our ad traffic to is a $16 offer, it's a pack of 25 of those cheat sheet cards downloadable and they're doing really well.

So it's $16 on the front end, we have a $37 bump to an editing like workshop, essentially mini course. And then the enthusiast course is the upsell offer on the backend. And again, once they purchase and come in, most people of course don't take the immediate offer, but I always see it as like seeding that it's there seeding this next step so they know it's available.

So then once they come into the email sequences and they learn more and we offer them more things, we can then pitch them with the course a little bit later. And it's already been established that, that there is the next step solution to really get them what they want. Ooh, I love it. And then do you also have like a way of fostering community,

I guess in a free way? Like do you do like a free Facebook group or something to nurture people into your universe? You can't be bothered with that. Oh yes, We've got the free Facebook group. Do you have just one four and I'm like, oh, how do I do merge some of these Facebook groups? A lot Gonna say it's a bit of a love hate with the Facebook groups,

but we do have a free Facebook group. So again, anytime someone comes in on a lead magnet or they, you know, purchase in any way, we always invite them to come over to the community. And I guess photography is one of those things where we can say, I'd love to see your photos, come share them with us. I think,

you know, there's a real benefit that we have in the photography hobby space where we can say, just come and share. Like show us your photos, show us what you've loved. We do a lot of weekly type posts, like, show us your favorite photos from the weekend or you know, let's have a thread everyone share, you know, whatever topic you can think of.

So we run different challenges in there. We always have blog posts cuz we obviously have 10 years worth of blogs now. So every photography question that's been asked, we pretty much have a resource for it. So we have community brand ambassadors, which people from our past students apply to be a part of. And they really help us in that community to start engagement,

to answer questions, to share resources so that people feel like it is a community and they, you know, have a place to come in and learn photography. My favorite though Meg, is when people post in the photo group did, can anyone recommend any online courses to learn photography? That's my favorite. Does that happen often? Well how did I,

Do you, do you find it difficult in your free group not to give too much away, you know, be like, well, well that's coming in depth inside our enthusiast course. Yeah, I mean I, I find it really hard to be like in there and engaged all the time personally because it's just really hard to energetically show up all the time.

And so I kind of leave it to our brand ambassadors and when we're running challenges and encouraging people to share, I do go in there a lot, but I think when it's, yeah, I mean there's people in there that I don't think will ever join and so, you know, it's never a matter of giving too much away, it's just they're not in this space where they're going to spend money to learn more.

And the people that are, I think, you know, once they see the support that's available and you know, see the results that other students have taken, they're like, okay, sweet. That next step is for me. Mm. Outta curiosity, how many people are in this free Facebook group? If it's the same one you've been running since I chatted to you last like several years ago,

I'm gonna say like 35,000, but maybe it's more Goodness I'll Have look for you. It is, oh, I don't even know where it tells you anymore. How many people there is somewhere between 30 and 40. Oh I'll Google it after this. 33. 33. 33 wowsers. So when I spoke to you last, you were running these ginormous challenges that had like 5,000 people registering for a challenge.

And I remember at the time I was like running my first challenge with like 20 people and I was like, what do you mean you get 5,000 people in a challenge? Like nowadays a big challenge to me is like 700 people because you gotta be in there every day. It's exhausting. You're trying to reply to the comments and mark homework and you know all the things.

So do you still run these monstrous five day challenges? I'm gonna say those were the days, those were the days. I mean because we could run ads to cold traffic, the conversions were really cheap. We literally could get people at that big scale into the challenges. So the first part of the question is we run them occasionally, but not all the time.

And a couple of reasons are that I just find having done this for so long, energetically it's a lot to run those big challenges. You know, the, once I'm doing it I'm fine. Like I love being on camera, I love talking, I get really excited to help people. But the lead up to it, the just it, it's just a lot.

And there were definitely years where I would run live challenges and launches every six to eight weeks through the year. They would convert really well. And I guess it's hard going from a place where we had those really cheap numbers to be able to get really big signups now, you know, to leads costing so much more money, cold traffic, not as,

not as converting as well. It's really hard to get excited about, you know, doing all that work and not seeing the same results as we used to see in the past. So we do run them now, but I'm more strategic about when I run them. And so we kind of focus on two major live launches a year for our enthusiast course and we always time them so that people join up to those enthusiast course.

And then it leads into the live launches of the advanced course, which is also twice a year. And with the workshops, they're a live launch in terms of it's o open and close only for that one week for each live workshop. It's an email campaign. I do do a live with the guest mentor. So we do that the week before it opens,

we run a giveaway, but energetically it's not me. My team puts all that, you know, predominantly together it's two existing audience, you know, mostly. And so I find that those are nothing compared to those big kind of live launches that we used to do. So yeah, I limit them now and we rely mostly on evergreen. I'm gonna say Mm,

the dream Lou the dream off the top of your head, do you know how much it does cost these days to get a registrant for a challenge? Cuz I always look at mine and I'm like, whew, it's costing me like sometimes over $10. Like am I doing really badly or is that just normal? So I think it very much depends. So we are not in the business space.

I'm gonna say our lead costs are always cheaper because we're in a hobby space. We're not in a space that is super highly competitive for this kind of event when it comes to photography, right? Versus, you know, I have lots of friends in the funnel space or the business development or life coaching. There are a lot of live launches or a lot of those kind of strategies being used in that space.

So I'm gonna say ours probably are much cheaper. So I ran a live launch a couple of months ago and for quite a while I haven't been investing money on cold lead signups, right? But the, the prior launch we did in December did pretty well and I thought, you know what, we're using the same strategies I'm gonna, you know, invest some money onto cold leads.

So we were probably getting leads down to about $7 50, which I thought was pretty good. But when it came to it, we ran the live launch, the engagement from those cold leads was not great and the conversions were really, really bad. I'm gonna say most of our conversions came from existing audience who we had retargeted to then take part in the live challenge.

That was not fun. But of course their leads now, you know, they've been through a live challenge, they're taking part in, you know, all the other, the content and all of our evergreen content. So hopefully we'll see that come back at some point. But that same money invested into the evergreen that we have is more of a known entity and is adjustable.

And I think maybe that's it with Evergreen, you can make adjustments on a day-to-day basis. The live launch model where you like throw in a whole bunch of money, cross your fingers and wait, I don't, like for me that's not as desirable anymore because I think, yeah, in my case it just didn't, it caused me more stress I think.

I understand. Yeah, you're given me lots to think about. So I mean, I guess what you're saying is that what you find now is running ads to some kind of paid mini offer where you're growing your list with qualified people, you know, rather than a whole lot of cold audience who perhaps are never gonna put their hand in their pocket. You are finding that that,

you know, strategy of running to that self liquidating offer is working much better outside of your live launch. How much money outta curiosity, I'm sure I'm gonna fall off my chair here, but how much money do you put into these ads each month? So it does vary a little bit. I'm gonna say baseline is about 20 grand. I get upset if we go below 20 grand ad spend on front end at the moment I'm actively in a testing phase where I really wanna scale that up.

So we'll scale it up to, you know, 30, we'll scale it up to 40. I've reverse engineered what I want my numbers to look like and sometimes that's hard to do because you know, like I say, the ads landscape can change, conversions change, you know, with scaling, I find that that's one of my biggest troubles. I can get my ads to a certain level and then when I try to scale them,

let's say beyond the $20,000 a month mark, I start to see all the numbers, you know, fall out the window. So that's why I'm in an active testing phase at the moment to be able to testing different audience groups, testing different creatives on the front end, but also optimizing that backend. So I feel like even though Evergreen feels easier, like I feel like I have a little bit more control,

it's definitely not a passive activity especially cause I have a very long list of things that I know would probably do better. Like if I tested a different bump or I rerecorded the video on the upsell or if I had a slight, you know, tested a different upsell combinations to see what would work better, that is a lot of work too. And so it's been slower for me to do that than I would like because when you're running a business,

I feel like there's the running the business and then there's all this great testing stuff that I'd love to do to be able to scale. And I do find it a little bit of a struggle sometimes to flip between the two of them. Mm. It's, it is hard isn't it? I mean we have to absolutely love this stuff to keep going cuz that to-do list of things that you can experiment with is endless.

You know, I was just recording videos for upsells on Friday and I was like, oh, one day I'm gonna come back and redo that, but right now I've gotta move on. You know, because there's, there's too many things on the list that Is better than perfect. That's what they say to it, right? So you're spending Lou 20,000 ish bucks,

I'm getting people to that $16 offer. So I'm guessing that's not making you loads of return on ad spend every month. How does the conversion typically work from there into that enthusiast course and how do you then get 'em into the community? How do you get people to stick around so that that ad spend actually pays off? Yeah, I think that's a really good question and I think,

again for people that are starting out in this space to think, oh my gosh, $20,000 a $16 offer, I would not be able to run that kind of campaign if I didn't then have a backend for people to be able to ascend through basically. So I can very much break even on my front end knowing that we have these great programs in the backend.

So I always try and get my ROI much higher than base level one. But once people take our enthusiast photography course, then at the end of that eight weeks they get an invitation to take part in our next advanced photography course. So we really do see great conversions from people who have just figured out their settings. They've just kind of had their eyes opened to the possibilities of what,

what they can do photography wise. And then we have this next level course which is priced about three times higher. So that's the first jump that they do. And so you know, that's an opportunity. Then of course because the advanced course is that next step, financial commitment. If that's not an option, we then have these 1 4, 7 workshops that run eight times a year that people can then take part in.

Now we have seen students stay with us for many, many years and I think we've made a really big effort in investing in our community. And I don't mean investing financially, but investing timewise so that people really feel like click Love grow is where they belong. We're really big on making it an inclusive and supportive environment. There's a lot of photography spaces online that are kind of mean,

right? Like they have this attitude of like put your big girl panties on and if you can't accept critique about how much your photo sucks, you're never gonna learn. So it's almost good that people have had that taste or that experience because then we can flip it, right? We are very much about, you can learn in a positive supportive environment. All of our courses,

sorry, our enthusiasts now advance, all involve instructor support. So people get to know the instructors throughout the course, they're always getting one-on-one feedback on their images. And I think that's really important as part of the experience. It's not an online course where they sign up, it's emailed them to them, they check in a few times, then they forget about it cuz they're overwhelmed.

They actually get to build relationships through the course and they get that feedback, which I think definitely helps people to feel like they belong on top of that once they finish any of the courses, whether it's a workshop or it's course, they're invited into our grads community. So we have regular photo themes or challenges that take part, people get to be chosen as winners in that we share different resources.

It's again, a very safe space. It's smaller than the big free group and everyone's come through the same kind of learning experience. On top of that, we have a magazine that we publish yearly. So we run basically like, almost like an awards. So we have themes that people can enter photos in and we get thousands and thousands of entries of the most incredible work and then we get to publish them so people feel like they're part of this community because they've been featured and published in a magazine.

I know we're on podcasts, but I'm showing Meg the photos and they're, And they're amazing guys. So I'll see if I can put a screenshot up with the podcast episode. Yeah. So I think all of those things, you know, we celebrate when people do amazing things. You know, we've got beautiful camera straps that we've had published. Oh wow.

Or sorry, made that people can get, we ran a conference last year, which again wasn't a huge financial thing, but people really enjoyed us being able to show off the speakers, which were all past students, you know, people got to join in for a couple of days. So I think, you know, by us simply giving a lot of weight to this community space,

ensuring that people are celebrated, they're featured, we, I do lives with past students quite regularly. It's not an afterthought. Mm. It's very much part of our big picture strategies so that people then continue to take part in all the things that we offer. And that means that we can invest on the front end, bring people into the universe of Click Club grow,

knowing that we'll see that return on investment. Mm. I love it. And I heard you talking about the instructor support instructor, team instructor support team, I think that's what you call it. Yeah, yeah. So when I was listening to the Evergreen webinar yesterday, I was hearing about that and I, I wondered like how many of these like,

I guess almost like head coaches does Louise have inside her program? So at the moment I have four. So a couple of those people are also team members that are content creators. And I do a lot of other thing, sorry, a lot of other things in the business, you know, produce the magazine. They also do instructing and then I have an additional two team members who are purely instructors as well.

Got it. And then with so many people signing up on Evergreen and you live launch twice a year, like if I sign up on Evergreen today, do I have to wait for the next live cohort? Yes, you do. So the Evergreen courses we run once a month. So usually the most anyone would have to wait is about three weeks because if we start today,

anyone who joins for the next week joins in this round and then it's another three weeks until the next one starts. Okay. So yeah, we start those monthly and then the advanced courses run twice a year. So they're September and March again, they run live. Got it. All right. Now obviously like you are on the Kajabi verse podcast, Lou,

so you are a Kajabi user, but when I was on your website yesterday, I was like holy smokestacks, like the tech stack here is quite involved. You know, you've, you've still got your show at website, I know that you migrated to Kajabi from somewhere else, Entreport somewhere a few years back and then you've got Deadline Funnel for your trip wires.

What else did I see there? Mm. Join, join now for the Evergreen webinar, I was like, do you send your emails outta Kajabi or is that something else as well? No Active campaign. Right. Okay. So have you, have you considered like simplifying your tech stack at all or you love all these technical platforms and, and this is the way it's gotta be.

I have and use Thrive Cart. That was the one. Oh yeah. Thrive Cart. So I have definitely thought about it. But the problem is, let's take active campaign for example. I probably have hundreds of automations with individual flow plans emails. We have a, an automation, a six month content automation. So when someone comes in after they've been through all the first pieces,

we have so much content, I put it into a six month content automation so that they then get an email. There's probably like 90 to a hundred emails in there with calls to actions and links. So the mere thought of replicating that some somewhere else absolutely overwhelms me. I'll tell you what, every time the bill comes in fact active campaign, I definitely think about it because it's very expensive and I don't love it.

However, I feel like I'm too deep in to be able to undo what we've created. Thrivecart I use, because I charge in two currencies and so I use a geotech, that's another tool, another piece of kit that I use. So I use a Geo whatever it's called. So people in Australia land on the website, they're take into an A U D order form.

People overseas are taken to a U S D order form because Australians hate paying in U S D, right? That was a decision I made pretty early on to do that. And so Thrive Cut allows me to do that, show it as my web page builder is actually my favorite because I love it. And it might be the photographer in me because it was designed for photographers.

And so the way that it's laid out is very similar to layers in Photoshop. So it makes my brain happy, but I use that for landing pages and blog and all those bits and pieces. Kajabi, I also absolutely love, we used to have our courses built on optimized press, which feels so old fashioned now with like a wishlist member overlay maybe.

I was very happy to jump from that into Kajabi. And Kajabi is beautiful in terms of how the courses are laid out, the library's for everyone. So we really enjoy using that. And I do love the idea of having everything in one space, but I think I'm too far gone. I understand. I I, and I definitely get it on the email side,

you know, because how would you take people out of the email sequence they're in and drop them into that exact email in Kajabi? Like that would be quite an ordeal. It Would've to be a phased operation like everyone knew Yeah. Would come into the new one. But even that feels very, Yeah, agreed. Tell me about this Evergreen webinar software you're using.

Because I looked at it and I was like, this is pretty cool. I'm gonna go and research this. And then the, I went to have a look and it was like, we are closed for signups, we're currently in beta. So I was like, how did Lou become a beta tester for this fancy Evergreen software? Well, I don't think I was,

I think it's been around a long time. So it's called Stealth webinar or sorry, stealth seminar. Yeah. So I've been using it a long time. And so I started using it because at the time when I set it up I was very much like, what's the E, what's the easiest? I think I use Webinar Jam for a little bit.

Again that feels very old-fashioned, but was giving me too many tech headaches. But this one I've set up, so it's integrated with Active Campaign. Like I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing, but again, I recorded that webinar many years ago and I get sales from it, right? Because the landing pages is linked into the emails. It's on the blog.

I wouldn't say in my space, in my space, not the websites we had in high school in this, in my genre, I wouldn't necessarily say that people are urgent buyers, right? It's not that same scarcity that you can have around perhaps a health claim or like a moneymaking opportunity. There probably is some things that people have encouraged me in the past to use that feels slimy.

Like if you don't take beautiful photos of your kids, they're gonna hate you because you know, like I don't do marketing like that cause it's not the space that feels right for it. And so, you know, people that come and watch our webinar or join one of our lead magnets, they're gonna take a little while to absorb our content, to pick up some tricks to start to see the results.

And so what I find with the webinar is I definitely make sales from it in an evergreen capacity. I don't run any paid traffic to it because when I've tested it, it wasn't a quick enough return. But when I look through the analytics of who has purchased, I would say like 80% at some point have watched the webinar. So it's doing the job of providing education,

seeding those ideas of what is capable, reinforcing the, some of the time elements around it without it being, you know, you must buy now or you know, whatever terrible things will happen. So I'm sure I'm not, I'm not, I haven't logged in. I mean this is really bad. I haven't logged into that for years. Maybe it literally was a set and forget.

So again, it probably could be optimized, but it's on my list. Mm. Oh well it looks to me like you're doing a fantastic job Blue and you've given me lots to think about during this time with you. Thank you for all the additional homework ideas you've given me. We'll have to catch up in person Yes. So that I can pick your brain more.

Yeah. Now my last question for you, what, what is next for Click Love Grow, where you just gonna continue to scale what you've got in the existing offers? Or have you got plans for something new? I don't have any plans for anything new. And look, I'm gonna say that for me, I'm really proud of what I've created at Click Love Grow.

And one of the things that I think has worked well in my favor over time is just continuity of message, continuity of brand. Because when I started, I created the enthusiast course. It has been rerecorded, it has been made prettier, but it is exactly the same course as I created 10 years ago. And I created my course at the same time that so many other people did.

And they along the way have gone onto the next shiny thing or wanted to go onto the next thing. And I found that even when I got bored with it, which I think is natural, I was just like, I'm gonna stick it out, I'm gonna stick it out. Some of that was by design, some of it was I had a baby,

we moved countries, I was so busy anyway, like I couldn't even think of doing something else. So I just kept plugging away. But I think over time I, if you've got something fundamental that works really well, build around it as opposed to abandoning and going on to the next thing. And you know, that's not gonna be true for everyone.

But I do think it's a message that I'm glad that someone said to me that I paid attention to. So for me it's very much continuing to build around what we have and just continuing to kind of crack this nut of scaling. Because I think one of the things I've learned is there's so many tactics that we can use. There's so many tech tools,

there's so many ideas and you always think, oh, this is gonna be the one, this is gonna be the one. But I think with experience you learn there's never one thing that is like the silver bullet that changes everything, but it's continually having a mindset where like, this didn't work, what can I learn from it? How can I continue to test?

I always say test and adjust, test and adjust. And that takes a lot of effort. So you kind of have to love that process, I think. And so, yeah, for me it's kind of diving into that test phase that we're in at the moment, hoping to scale up a little bit more and just enjoying the things I love. You know,

publishing the magazine, enjoying our community, getting some new merch out there, which I think is another thing, merch in my ex case, you know, maybe it's not the thing that makes me the money, but it brings an immense amount of joy seeing how excited people are to get something that's on brand, be part of the community. And I think we have to weave those things in so that we still stay excited as well.

Oh that is such good advice to end on. And it's also, you know, similar advice that I've been given in the past. Like, choose one thing and get really good at it and rinse and repeat and don't make extra work for yourself. And it's that one piece of advice that I always fail to take. You know, I am, I'm a shiny object person.

I was saying to someone last week, like, what's wrong with me as soon as there's a few hours spare in my calendar, rather than enjoy that relaxing time, I'm like, what new project can I just like shove into these few hours that I've managed to free up? You know, if only I was one of those people who could just pick one thing and stick with it.

I think it's very human and I think we All Do it as well. I'm, I'm definitely not saying that I don't do that as well, but I think it's very human to do that. And you're Kajabi like you have built all of these amazing things around your expertise and knowledge on that one program. So I would say that's staying on brand. Oh,

alright. Well thank you. I feel better. I had Lou's vote of confidence. It's all good. All right, well Lou, thank you so much for coming in and spending this almost an hour with us. So one of, one of my favorite podcast episodes, just cuz it's given me such a great opportunity to catch up with you and I,

I look forward to doing it again soon. I will link up below to all your things, whether it's free or paid or you know, guys, if you're listening to this and you would like to be introduced to the Click Love Grow universe, please have a look at the links below. Lou, thank you so much. I hope you will come back and spend some more time with us at some point in the future.

Let's not leave it so long. Let me, I'll think of a whole lot of other questions that I can ask you for our next episode. Definitely. I look forward to it and thank you so much for having me. Well, there you have it guys. I hope you enjoyed catching up with my old school buddy Lou as much as I did.

What an amazing journey she's been on with her business over the last few years and so many great strategies to share with us. If you'd like to learn more about Lou and her photography courses at Click Love Grow, I will link up to all the important things below. And I suggest going and opting in for her free mini course, which you'll find on the homepage to take a closer look at one of her funnels.

I'll see you next time for our next episode of the Kajabi verse.