Earlier this year I spent $3500 on a spiritual retreat, even though I had absolutely zero interest in spiritual retreats.
I had no idea exactly what my $3500 was buying me. The benefit seemed really vague to me. But I did it anyways.
Why?
In college I got some advice: “if you get a good professor, take every class you can with them. Even if you don’t think you’ll be interested in what they’re teaching.”
Well, my first copywriting coach had a pretty vague spiritual offer up on his website. He was saying that this “ceremony” had helped him tremendously.
If anybody else had said this stuff I would have thought it was a scam. But I knew he’s a super smart dude, and I know he’s honest. So I figured, if he believes in this so much, maybe I should give it a shot.
So I shelled out $3500 and I flew to San Diego for a weekend so I could talk to my inner child with him. (And it was worth it!)
The point is, if you’re somebody’s “favorite professor”, they’ll buy just about anything you offer. Even if it’s not exactly what they’re looking for. They’ll buy it just because it’s you.
(This is super helpful if you have a strange or hard-to-explain offer. If you can get people in the door and prove you know what you're talking about, they'll take a chance on you, even if they're not 100% sure what they're getting.)
2 lessons from this. First of all, when someone buys something from you, that’s not the end. It’s the beginning.
Now that they’re your student, it’s your job to be the most amazing teacher they’ve ever had, so they’ll want to buy more and more stuff from you.
So treat your course content like your marketing content. Make it as good and interesting and entertaining as you can. Cut out as much of the fluff and the boring parts as you can. Dazzle them.
And then second of all, have an upsell!
Your upsell doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect. You can sell a pretty vague 1-on-1 coaching offer, or a weekend retreat in your backyard where you sip margaritas and do yoga. If someone likes you enough, they’ll still buy it.
Just have something.
Best,
Theo
P.S. Of course, before you can be somebody’s “favorite professor”, you need to get them to buy one thing from you.
The best way to do that is to do more of whatever’s working for you right now. If you’re getting tons of clients by posting on LinkedIn or from referrals, do more of that.
The second best way to sell more of your stuff is to get better at email marketing. (Email is the easiest place on the internet to sell anything.)
That’s why I wrote a mini-book about email marketing, which contains all the secrets I’ve picked up from selling millions of dollars worth of courses and coaching through email.
It costs $7 and you can learn more about it right here: