#271: Coaching: Helping a Lab member design their product suite | Hot Seat with John McBride

John McBride [00:00:00]:
If we're break even on the ads, they're just free leads forever. We were able to get like 300amonth. So if we could scale that to like 500amonth, everything else is profit.

Jay Clouse [00:00:22]:
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. This week I'm sharing with you a coaching conversation with John McBride. John is the co founder of Fatherhood Unlocked, which offers digital products and group coaching programs to help high performing dads level up as leaders, parents and husbands. This is exactly my jam right now. John is a member of the Lab and this call is what I refer to as a hot seat in the lab. Hot seats are one on one conversations between me and a member. But but we invite other members to join the call live and ask questions or share ideas in the chat.

Jay Clouse [00:00:58]:
With John's permission, I thought I'd share this as an example hot seat here on the podcast feed because it's a relatable topic and it gives you a small glimpse into the community if you've been on the fence. So what did John want to talk about? Well, Fatherhood Unlocked was already succeeding with one of their digital products and they were thinking about the future. New products, new offers, and potentially even.

John McBride [00:01:20]:
Expanding their target market.

Jay Clouse [00:01:23]:
So in this conversation you'll hear me talk John through how I'd think about his different options, his ideas, and ultimately prioritize his path moving forward. If you enjoy this episode, tag me at J. Klaus on social media and let me know that you're listening and even consider joining the lab. If this sounds like the type of conversation you would benefit from or you'd like to be around, then the Lab.

John McBride [00:01:41]:
Is probably the right place for you.

Jay Clouse [00:01:43]:
All right, that's enough of me. Let's dive in. Let's talk with John. Awesome. All right, John, excited to dig in.

John McBride [00:01:55]:
And help you here. If you could say what would success look like at the end of this call, how would you know this was time well spent?

John McBride [00:02:04]:
I probably had a different intention when I first booked this pre lab irl because I have now lots of different ideas percolating in different directions that I'm exploring. And I think probably the most helpful thing would actually be to do a little bit of exploration of these different directions and opportunities that I'm seeing. And then now is like distillation and focus feels like the most important thing to do to figure out like what is the right couple of steps to prioritize next. And I think it mostly is about the product suite and how much to focus on the expecting dad products, which is Our current set of products, digital products, like a fatherhood prep course versus products for new dads after they have their kids. And that was like the thing that I was gonna really dig into you with you is like the signature, like taking your model of like the signature product framework and then you are a new dad. So like we're thinking about what would be the ideal product to help new dads bounce back, get their bearings after having a kid. And so like that's one bucket is like what's the right product or set of products for new dads. But I'm also wrestling with how much to prioritize building the new product suite for new dads versus continuing to invest in the expecting dad products.

John McBride [00:03:23]:
Let's start there. So kind of just give me a lay of the land of like current state and what feels suboptimal and what we're trying to figure out here.

John McBride [00:03:32]:
Yep.

John McBride [00:03:33]:
So we've done like 60k in sales in the last 6 months or so and that's mostly been selling our low ticket baby prep planner to expecting dads. So this is for like early on in pregnancy. It's your master to do list of everything you need to do as a first time dad to get ready for the big day. It has a shopping guide to all of the gear you want to get, recommendations, links to those products. There's a baby budget calculator. So it's like your one stop shop for kind of tackling a lot of the logistics of being a first time dad and getting ready for pregnancy and birth and how to support your partner. So that's like a 20 to $30 low ticket product. We market that predominantly via meta ads right now and we're like break even on the ads but are not profitable.

John McBride [00:04:17]:
And then we upsell those people into our fatherhood prep course called Fatherhood Ready, which is like the full kind of comprehensive course for first time dads to get ready. And it teaches you how to support your partner, how to strengthen your relationship, how to get ready for birth, and then basic newborn care skills and sleep stuff for the postpartum phase. And we are currently that's priced at like 100 to $150. And we only are converting like 5 to 6% of people from the low ticket planner into the full course. So I think like that is one area that feels suboptimal and I think there's a couple of hypotheses for why that's happening and opportunities to improve there. I think one of the big ones is that there is a Lack of problem awareness with expecting dads. Because a lot of the problems that we're solving for them in the course are future problems, right? Like, you don't really know how hard it's going to be when baby has not arrived. And even if you're early in pregnancy, you're not really even necessarily stressing about birth or all that's going to come.

John McBride [00:05:27]:
So I think that's one thing is there isn't a ton of pain that we're solving with an immediate solution for the expecting dads. And then the second is that I think potentially the sequencing of the offers is just not right. So, like, selling you the planner, which gives you, like, a lot of value and helps you tackle all of the urgent stuff, might be all you need for the first couple of months. And then, like, you don't. You're not actually ready to then buy 150 or $100 course, because you're like, I'm going to just see if I need anything after this. I'm going to just use the product you just sold me rather than like, trying to buy another thing because I don't actually know you guys. And this is a cold audience, right? Like, we don't really have a ton of trust built with them because most of them are cold audiences coming off meta ads. So that's kind of what right now we're seeing is like, main challenges on the expecting dad side.

John McBride [00:06:21]:
And then part of the reason we're interested in building new products for new dads is this, like, vitamin versus painkiller thing that I feel like I had like 30 conversations about with people at the lab and got lots of great perspectives on. And my feeling is that a lot of the stuff in the expecting dad world, the fatherhood prep stuff, are vitamins, right? They're good for you. It's good to be proactive. It's gonna actually, it's gonna benefit you a lot, but you're not like, feeling a ton of, like, discomfort or pain or feeling the problems intensely during that phase necessarily. Whereas when you are a new dad, like, it gets a lot harder. It's a lot more real. You're actually feeling pretty acute pain. And we've got some really interesting data from these quizzes that we ran for new dads showing kind of how bad things are for them.

John McBride [00:07:10]:
Mental health has gone downhill. Physical health, their relationship is struggling. They're stressed about work and finances. So that's something that feels like it's kind of pulling me in. The new dad's direction is like, it's a lot easier to sell somebody a painkiller than a vitamin and they just like, they might just need it and value it a lot more.

John McBride [00:07:26]:
So talk to me a little bit about targeting because as you're describing it, I hear you in the sense of by the time new dads are actually dealing with the problems of being a dad, it feels really painful. I'm wondering if you can make the expecting dads feel the pain a little bit more acutely before it becomes super painful. But that would assume that you are able to effectively target somebody when they are in this like nine month window. And really it's probably gonna be like a three month window or something much closer to the period of time because I told you in our last conversation, I feel like I felt the pain pretty acutely in the expecting phase because I was, I was problem aware in the sense of I knew this is going to be hard and I was trying to be proactive. But maybe that is uncommon. Maybe there was a switch that was flipped for me and maybe we realize we could flip that switch or we could try to flip that switch and we don't want to flip that switch for people and we just focus on new dads. But part of me just like still rejects this premise that the expecting folks aren't feeling pain. But I also recognize maybe I'm a bit of an outlier.

John McBride [00:08:40]:
So you've been doing these Facebook ads.

John McBride [00:08:42]:
Yep.

John McBride [00:08:43]:
It seems to suggest that you are able to target expecting dads pretty successfully.

John McBride [00:08:50]:
Yeah, we've gotten I think more than 2,000 people so far to buy the planner so like we can find them. We call out like hey, expecting to add XYZ kind of hook. And the algorithm is very good at serving that to the right audience that like actually stays and clicks on it. So I think we can get in front of them and I do think that there is opportunity to educate them more on the pain and make them more problem aware. And I think some people are like you and are proactive.

John McBride [00:09:14]:
What is the language currently in that ad creative that is hooking people to get into the planner?

John McBride [00:09:20]:
We've tested lots of different types of creative. I think I told you. One of the funny insights we have so far from the ad creative is that when we drop the F bomb in the first six seconds and say you have no fucking idea what you're in for and kind of scare you a little. But the idea is we want to wake you up to this shit is hard. Trust me, we know. We've been through this five times between Me and my co founder, and it's going to kick you in the ass, so you better start preparing. Those are usually the messages that at least get people in those, like, first five seconds to, like, stay around and view more of it. It's like the wake up call message.

John McBride [00:09:53]:
So you're saying most of the ad creative that is performing is video based?

John McBride [00:09:57]:
Yes.

John McBride [00:09:57]:
All video based.

John McBride [00:09:58]:
All video based. Okay. And the hook is kind of a fear addressing, strong language type of thing. Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. So maybe you're already doing it. And so maybe my idea is out the window, but I was kind of thinking, could we make the pain more acute to the individual who is seeing this ad creative? So it does feel a little bit more necessary. I'm not super surprised about the disconnect between the planner and the course, because if I have the planner and it feels like it's serving me pretty well, the pain would have to be new, different, deeper for me to upgrade to a second solution with a similar value proposition.

John McBride [00:10:41]:
Yes. The bundling and the sequencing of those feels off. And the next kind of path we're thinking about exploring is using a quiz as the main. Kind of like the ad drives people to the quiz that gives you a score on how ready you are for fatherhood, essentially, and does the heavy lifting around the education and kind of like the pain, agitation and the problem education that you currently don't have. So it's like, hey, do you think you're ready? Do you think you're prepared? Answer these 15 questions and we kind of show you one of the things that we've learned through marketing to moms. Actually, we've been doing quizzes for moms to better understand how they're feeling about how ready their partner is to support them and how well they're supporting them. And spoiler is, like, most moms aren't blown away by the level of support they're getting from their partners and really wish that they were doing more. And that's, I mean, a big part of the reason that I made the course is like, the reason I know that I wasn't doing a great job the first few times when I wasn't prepared and I didn't know what I was doing was, like, my partner told me, because I was letting her down left and right and she had to do so much of the heavy lifting.

John McBride [00:11:48]:
And I think we see that in the. A lot of the people that buy the planner are doing it because they're like, I feel like my partner is doing so much. I have no idea how to help. I want to be helpful, but I don't know how. So I think a quiz is a good way to pull back the curtain on all of the different things that it takes to be well prepared and to support your partner the way that she needs. And then selling them into maybe the full course bundle altogether, rather than having this low ticket, 20, $30 thing, because people might really just want that and maybe I need to keep that part of the full course offering.

John McBride [00:12:23]:
Yeah, I'm kind of thinking the words that are coming to mind are necessary or like, helpful but insufficient. I think you need your planner to be helpful but insufficient because I think the implicit of people not upgrading most of the time is that there is at least a belief or perception that the planner is sufficient for their needs. So the next step is not obvious in your mind. What is missing from the planner that the course provides?

John McBride [00:12:54]:
There's a couple of big ones. One is just like knowing what you need to do to support your partner. So a lot of his education about what your partner is experiencing, a lot of it is around what are the main areas where guys make mistakes, don't give their partner the support they need, and it causes tension or conflict in the relationship. And then we have a lot of guided exercises, conversation prompts and stuff to actually get you and your partner on the same page. So, like getting aligned up front in pregnancy about how you want to. How do you want to do this together? How do you want to feel going through the process? How do you want to divide up all of the work for baby prep? How do you create systems so you can check in with each other if things feel off or you're feeling disconnected? So the relationship piece is a big one. How do you actually navigate the messiness of the emotions and your relationship changing during pregnancy and birth? We have a whole financial prep module that we created because we got a ton of feedback that the number one stressor for expecting dads, finances and work stuff, like, they're like, oh my God, I have to provide for a new human now. And I'm really stressed about how to do that.

John McBride [00:13:56]:
So we have like a whole dedicated mini module on that for like budgeting, financial planning, basic family financial management that is like totally distinct and not included in the planner. And then just like all the education around birth and postpartum. Right. Like, what is your job as a partner in the birth room? How do you actually support your partner? How do you make sure that she gets the best birth experience possible? And how do you get yourself mentally and emotionally prepared to be her rock through that process because, like, you need to be the calm, cool, collected person that can, like, keep her feeling grounded and safe and stable and same thing in postpartum. Right. Like, there's a huge role for dad to play. So, like, a lot of it is like, what is your job as the dad? Educating them on that and then giving them tools and prompts to, like, actually put that into practice with their partner and in their family.

John McBride [00:14:43]:
My pretty strong opinion here, unsubstantiated. But my opinion, my hunch, is that the financial stuff, if that was the core messaging, would perform a lot higher than the other two. Because the first one is, what is your role in the relationship? What does your wife need? That's super important. But it just strikes me that that requires a lot of empathy, some self awareness. The other piece about kind of preparing the relationship, all of the relationship stuff, I just feel like the trope is men aren't really thinking about or valuing those things. And of course it's a trope, it's a stereotype. But there's probably some truth to that that started this. And I feel like man as provider, gender role stereotype though it is, is probably what's going to have the most receptive audience.

John McBride [00:15:37]:
And also to me, that feels much more distinct from the planner. Like, if I get the planner and it's valuable, but it doesn't show me how to budget and plan for our family finances, that to me feels like an obvious next step, that this does not serve and very clearly does not serve. And so I'm interested in the next thing.

John McBride [00:15:55]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:15:56]:
What I also think is just so valuable about the planner and the budgeting, the financial piece as the next step is that these are high utility resources. Rather than like, here's your homework, work through this and recognize that you're failing emotionally. It's like, these things are very tangible.

John McBride [00:16:18]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:16:18]:
And I think easy to value. Like, very distinct in their value. So before I move on to the new dad's strategy, which I think you've kind of decided you want to do before, before we go there, I would really try to play with, can I increase this 5 to 6% conversion from planner to full course by emphasizing the budgeting and finance piece of it in the language, in all of the creative and all of the messaging, Because I do think that is a much more predictable pain that I could see myself feeling in a future state as well.

John McBride [00:16:56]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:16:57]:
Yeah. And something I chatted with, I think it was Brian at the Final dinner and Boise was on that topic and of like, essentially unbundling all the different modules in the fatherhood ready course because we cover a lot. And I think one of the challenges, because it's covering how to support your partner, how to prepare for birth, how to prepare for postpartum, and how to get financially ready for fatherhood, like, the message is muddied and it's just a lot of stuff. And like, maybe you only want one or two of those things and you don't feel like you need the whole soup to nuts course. And he was like, I would just unbundle a lot of those pieces and then test them individually as like mini courses. And he was like, I would lead with the financial prep mini course. And then maybe that is actually the first thing. It's like, sell the financial prep mini course through the ads.

John McBride [00:17:44]:
And then like, that feels like a narrow piece of the puzzle. And then you can be like, hey, do you want to get the full planner and the full course? That shows you everything else that you need to do. And all the other pieces of preparation might be a better, like a narrow solution. And then broadening versus the planner might be too broad and might actually solve too many problems out of the gate before selling you to the other one.

John McBride [00:18:06]:
I like that. I mean, I really love the term fatherhood ready.

John McBride [00:18:10]:
Yeah, me too.

John McBride [00:18:10]:
I'm soft on using the word course in your messaging. I think coarse has a connotation of thinky as opposed to tangibility. And for some people who are on a clear transformation path and they're looking to learn, coarse is attractive. But I think the strength of some of these things, like I was saying, is that there's just clear utility to these artifacts and I would market those more. So even if the delivery mechanism is a course, I don't know that I would frame it as a course. I would frame it as, this is going to get your finances in order. This is going to help you budget and prepare for a more stressful financial future.

John McBride [00:18:55]:
Yeah, yeah.

John McBride [00:18:56]:
I got onto a couple research calls with people that had bought the planner and didn't upgrade to the course. And the one that stood out to me most was the guy who is like, he was interested, but he was like, it's not on the budget right now, but maybe next month. And he's like, but the main thing I want to know is what are the tools that are in the course that I don't already have through the planner? And that stuck with me. I was like, oh, yeah, most of them, probably they don't want another thing to consume. They don't want more homework. They want these practical, easy to utilize tools that solve an immediate pain point and problem for them. Yeah, so that really stuck with me. I think you're right.

John McBride [00:19:30]:
Yeah. And the nice thing about the financial budgeting exercise is I think that actually kind of straddles the line. So I've got this kind of divided into two parts here. So right now we're in the expecting realm. We've been playing, but then we have this new dads. But this is a continuum. And I feel like the budgeting tool lives really naturally in this transition point. You could do it pretty baby.

John McBride [00:20:00]:
You can do it anywhere, post baby. And so it kind of feeds into the journey. Whether I'm an eager beaver and I understand the value and I do this before the baby is born or whether I do it afterwards, I think then we can worry about sequencing a little bit less, a little bit lower pressure. And I just think it's an obvious next step. I think it's something that's definitely going to come up. And having this be a higher investment thing, you can start to incept some of these questions or ideas around your role in the relationship, how you support your partner, and maybe then that starts to breed some new trust with these folks and gets them interested in more of your perspective along the way. But I just think about a lot of guys that I know and they don't always have the empathy to dive right into the relationship piece. They take a lot of pride in providing and they want to make sure that they feel good about their role in doing that.

John McBride [00:21:01]:
And so I feel like that's the Trojan horse, the way into other things.

John McBride [00:21:04]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:21:05]:
The other nice thing about kind of unbundling it more and actually be curious how you would do like the packaging, positioning. If it's like fatherhood, ready is the umbrella. But you have like a, you got a financial prep mini course or mini toolkit, you've got like a relationship one. But it's like that way the messaging is super pointed to. Like at some point, most likely most people will have relationship tension and struggles and conflict in this journey. And it might not happen in the first or second trimester, it might happen in the third, or it might happen six months in or a year in. But at some point, like having a kid for the vast majority of people puts additional stress and strain on the relationship. And probably having that as like a standalone thing that you could, you could buy into at any point along this continuum makes it a lot easier to say yes versus again, everything being kind of bundled and packaged together and said that like the time to do it is before baby arrives.

John McBride [00:21:59]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:22:00]:
And I mean, it's kind of like therapy, right? Like, probably most people would benefit from therapy, but there's something confronting about admitting that we need that kind of help that most people just won't do proactively, will be hesitant to do at all. It kind of forces you, especially therapy in front of another individual. So that's like embarrassing for some folks. So I do like the idea of trying to flip this switch for people and make them better partners. But in the product management world, we have like apparent value and discoverable value. Or come for the X and stay for the Y and it's a lot easier to sell the things that are in the X category and then hopefully that earns the trust or helps people discover the value of things in the Y category. So I do like the overall brand. I'm gonna erase some of the stuff here so we can kind of do the next stage.

Jay Clouse [00:22:54]:
While we wait for past me to get himself together, let's take a real quick break and when we return, we'll get into the nitty gritty of John's product suite and customer journey. And now back to my conversation with John McBride.

John McBride [00:23:13]:
I like the idea of we have fatherhood ready as the overall brand. Okay. And so we have, we've mentioned a few different products here. You know, this, we had the planner, which evolved into what we call that just the course or how would we want.

John McBride [00:23:31]:
There's either the full course or if we unbundled it, which I'm leaning towards kind of unbundling more is like the distinct modules that kind of tackle essentially distinct jobs to be done. So there's like a how to support your partner relationship job to be done. There's getting ready for birth, just like very practical birth preparation. And then there is the financial prep, and then there's the newborn care and postpartum stage. What do you do in the first three months?

John McBride [00:24:01]:
Okay, so I'm thinking about your product suite and your customer journey as part of the fatherhood journey, basically. So this is a lot of potential products and the challenge would be if we do unbundle these things, how do we effectively market and distribute all of those things? And ultimately what is the main money maker like? This is, you know, this is a single dollar amount deal that's basically self liquidating and serving as lead gen. Okay. So let's not even worry about this. This is actually kind of like effectively working And I would say that's a not broke, don't need to fix it situation. Moving on from here, we have the question of do we improve this, unbundle this, or even skip forward into newborn and postpartum care? I am still drawn towards saying like, let's try to focus on this for the immediate term. Right now, this conversion point you said is serving at 5 to 6%. So if we focus on this, can we increase this conversion point and what does that overall do for revenue? If we are able to raise revenue and increase conversion there, since this stuff already exists as part of an overall bundle right now, then I would see, can we upsell these things? And maybe it's post purchase, like literally on page, maybe that's an upsell after the fact.

John McBride [00:25:36]:
But I would probably just kind of hang out there and focus on that for now. Because eventually, you know, every point of ascension between these products, all of these arrows become their own conversion point that can be optimized. But the more you create this chain of products, just the more points of failure and points of sub optimization, you know, complexity too.

John McBride [00:26:04]:
It's just like manage.

John McBride [00:26:06]:
And every time this is where I screwed up. I went too broad with the product suite too quickly. And so it creates all of these downstream dependencies that if you went straight across for now and then you said, actually I'm gonna unbundle this and focus on finance here. Now this point needs to change because the point before it changed. This point needs to change because the points before it changed. So I like to focus on simplicity and the small microcosms first. And so I'd probably really hang out here. Now, of course we mentioned this is pre baby, this is post baby.

John McBride [00:26:43]:
And you know, maybe you can run a concurrent experiment where you say, let's just continue to do this Facebook ad strategy that we've done pretty well, but instead of doing a planner, we can do like an equivalent for a postpartum world. Do you feel like you have a sense for what is the most painful problem post birth that you would focus on first?

John McBride [00:27:10]:
Probably something around sleep.

John McBride [00:27:14]:
Sleep. Okay. Okay.

John McBride [00:27:16]:
Sleep. Or like how to support.

John McBride [00:27:19]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:27:19]:
How to support your partner in the first few months. And sleep is a huge part of that.

John McBride [00:27:23]:
I think that's a good instinct though, that even if this is technically a like support your partner outcome, you're going for. I think the hook is going to be sleep.

John McBride [00:27:35]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:27:36]:
Cause like, yeah. Early on your biggest sources of stress and pain are lack of sleep, infant feeding, breastfeeding journey being difficult, which is also very closely Tied with the sleep issue. Like a lot of these things are hard to pull apart and then those usually have big impacts on like relationship dynamics and stress. So yeah, I mean, if baby's not sleeping and you guys aren't sleeping, no other problem is worth solving until you can figure out the sleep thing.

John McBride [00:28:02]:
What we haven't talked about explicitly is time management, which is the most acute pain that I feel generally is. My experience of time is certainly different, but I also feel like there is just a general contraction of the available time to me. And what gets cut first is social life, personal time, workout time. Do you guys have anything to directly support that or is that on your radar?

John McBride [00:28:30]:
I think it definitely could be. That was one of. I was just looking at the, the data we got from the new dad quiz and one of the top. That was the second biggest challenge that they cited 30% to. The biggest challenge was work and financial pressures. Balancing that with family time. Number two was 22% said lack of time for myself. And then the third was feeling disconnected from my partner at 20%.

John McBride [00:28:53]:
And then like everything else, sleep deprivation was lower. Yeah, all the other stuff was lower than that.

John McBride [00:28:59]:
I feel like a lot of these problems manifest as relationship problems, but as you dig deeper, it's different. You know, like sometimes what feels like a relationship problem is a sleep problem is a finance problem. And so I feel like these would be at least easier, more comfortable scapegoats. Even if you are underlying trying to say we help men repair their relationships to their significant other, we help new dads maintain and improve their relationships with their, their spouse. I think that's all interesting, but I feel like some of these tangible things is where you're going to have a sympathetic ear to your ads, to your messaging, whatever. And I think that could clear some things up.

John McBride [00:29:53]:
Yeah, I mean, I think focusing on the things that feel most acute and painful and also just like solvable, like sometimes the relationship stuff feels complex and like can you solve that through a self based course, Even like a group coaching program? Like do I actually need couples therapy for something like that? So I think there's both like the specificity of the problem and how acute it is, but also how solvable does it feel through the delivery mechanisms that we're realistically going to build products around.

John McBride [00:30:21]:
Let's talk about that a little bit because we've mentioned basically templates or artifacts with the planner, the budgeting thing as a whole. You've kind of built this in the delivery mechanism of a course. I agree with you that group coaching A cohort based course, that delivery mechanism could also work. But when you get into something that has a live experience that may be competing for time, which we've said is our second biggest problem, then again it might have better outcomes. Because if I buy a course but I don't feel like I have time and I don't go through it at all, that's also not really super helpful. So I want to think through this delivery mechanism a little bit, maybe starting from the standpoint of are there any delivery mechanisms that for whatever reason you really want to employ or you really don't want to employ.

John McBride [00:31:19]:
I think we actually want to bring more one on one coaching into the new dad's delivery to start. I think the reason being like a, I think with one on one coaching we can deliver a ton more value and better transformation because I think with whatever the new dads program is like it's going to end up winning long term because we've delivered incredible results for our clients and our students and we've got great testimonials and word of mouth and I think we'll just learn a ton more about like the day to day problems and challenges and roadblocks that new dads are facing. Way more than like any digital product. You're just not getting the same level of feedback and like closeness with your, with your community and your customers as if you're interacting with them face to face. So I think that's one and then the other one. We think that the group mechanisms can be really effective. I think there's a ton of value in connecting with other dads, other new dads who are going through the journey. I think that that's something like you said, people won't buy it for that, but they'll buy it for like I want you to solve this problem.

John McBride [00:32:21]:
And if I also get to connect with other dads and they've like, they, they will feel the benefits of that if they go through with that part of the process and they, they connect with other dads. But I don't think that they buy for community or connection necessarily so much as that is like a benefit. I think we talked about this a little bit how you're like, I would love to meet in person with a group of new dads. Do I want like another, another zoom call? I think, I'm not sure. I think maybe some people would, but some people wouldn't.

John McBride [00:32:47]:
Yeah. Okay, so you're mentioning these group aspects. What we haven't said specifically is like membership or online community. Everything is kind of implicitly said live call as a group or one on one. Is that a purposeful omission where you're saying we don't want to do community, we don't want to do membership, or is it just not been said yet?

John McBride [00:33:11]:
I think we're open to it. I think the maybe some of the hesitation and I'm also looking again at the date we actually asked of the 90 plus dads, new dads that took the quiz what their ideal support Mechanism would be. 44% said some sort of self paced course, 24% said online community with other new dads. And then 20% said one on one support. Only 12% said a structured group program. Now, like maybe the exact wording of their survey question skewed it. I think the thing with the community that it is a little harder to figure out, is there a time bound nature to the program? Like is there a clear transformation where you go from point A to point B and then you're done versus it's just an ongoing membership that you're a part of that feels also like an ongoing commitment? I think is part of the skepticism around that being kind of core to the offering. I would love to be wrong because I think that probably is a really, I think it would probably work, but I don't know how much people want that right now.

John McBride [00:34:13]:
Yeah, okay. So if you look back at this, I see my wife a part of like a ton of Facebook groups and she like super values that even though a lot of the conversation there seems nuts. And it's like I can't believe these are real people saying these real things. But I do, I think I told you in our last call as well. I often feel as a new dad that I don't have a sympathetic ear for a lot of my challenges. And most of the time it's like I just want to complain. But in, in the post birth experience, I think dad's complaining can easily be heard as my pain is worse than your pain, which is not at all what I'm saying. I just want to say that sometimes things are hard for me as well.

John McBride [00:34:58]:
So I think that men might value that. It might be one of the discoverable value points that we're talking about. So if we go back to this diagram, I've, I've kind of softened, added a one to one idea here because this might be coaching and this might be the end of the rainbow. Here we have our template essentially. So all of these items, to me, I'm going to add time management here. All of These items are courses probably or resources or a combination of the two.

John McBride [00:35:36]:
Yep.

John McBride [00:35:37]:
And the challenge is that we have a bunch of stuff here. Right. So we mentioned how do we, if we unbundle these things, how do we effectively move people between them?

John McBride [00:35:46]:
Yep.

John McBride [00:35:46]:
And I think maybe a solution here is a membership of sorts. So if we just kind of put this straddling the middle and this is probably, you know, $2 signs because I think what we'll, what we could effectively do is let's say each of these courses is somewhere around $49. Just throwing a number out there. Maybe it's $99. When you add these things together we have seven things. So that's anywhere between 350 and $700. If these are priced $49 to $99 and if I buy one of these and I'm like that was good, I'm going to buy another one and now I'm $200 in, I'm probably going to be uniquely susceptible to an offer that says hey, for 299 a year you can have all of these things.

John McBride [00:36:38]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:36:39]:
That have a regular retail value of $700 as well as access to our forum of new dads. And so I think this is how you kind of increase your average order quantity. And these numbers can of course change to whatever. I'm just trying to make a point and I would think about this membership as time bound. A high ticket hybrid is kind of the name that Mariah Coz puts on these things where it's like you get it's sold at this price and only as a year, a year at a time. And so the first year should be like a no brainer, super obvious. The question is once I have extracted the value of $700 worth of materials, will I renew in the second year? And the answer is only yes, if I have found value in this community aspect which I think could be there. But I think it has to be discovered rather than sold very obviously.

John McBride [00:37:38]:
And I think this would also then feed into our coaching offer here. And you might make that sparingly based on activity you see within the forum, people showing that they would be open to this or interested in this or maybe they even post about it. But I think this solves your how do we market all of these things problem to say you don't you self liquidate this guy. Then you find out what is your best converting unbundled product on the back of this. Then you upsell into the membership as opposed to trying to go course to course to course to course, like maybe you say, okay, finance converts well and actually we've had success getting them into sleep from there. And after the sleep portion, that's when we go to the membership. I don't know, we can play around with that, but I think you end up with this like funnel of self liquidating new leads into your best performing unbundled product. And then we figure out do we upsell the next unbundled product or do we sell the rebundling of these products plus the community forum? And some of those might become coaching clients.

John McBride [00:38:52]:
The best model I've seen on the mom side that does something very similar that we get inspiration from is called Built to Birth. And she takes a very similar strategy. She's got like a bunch of pre baby birth prep courses and conception courses and all that stuff. Then she's got postnatal faintness breastfeeding and she sells them unbundled, but then also bundled together as like Premium for like $300 if you bundle them or like $70 a pop. Yeah, I think that could, that could be a good, a good way to thread the needle because it does start, it just starts feeling overwhelming needing to manage that many products and like the pathways of like, if you go down this path, like what comes next and you can, there could be so many different combinations of routes that you take that it starts feeling, yeah, just messy.

John McBride [00:39:36]:
The good thing about having a bunch of these products or artifacts is then you can start to also use them as incentives where you can say like, okay, this quarter we are going to run a promotion and try to sell. Typically we just sell the finance module to people who had done the planner. But this quarter for the same price you get finance and time management, you know, and you don't have to worry about specifically marketing and selling time management. You just know that when you get a couple of these high performing products into people's hands, they now want more. I know your partner Dan does like men's retreats sometimes as well. And I think the opportunity for that gets unlocked to the membership because people start seeing each other and they say, man, I really like these guys. I would love to hang out with these guys in person. So that becomes like another product on the, on the end here where you have retreats.

John McBride [00:40:33]:
Yep.

John McBride [00:40:33]:
Yeah, maybe do these retreats. And that's another thing that drives retention in your membership is you do these retreats once a year, twice a year. And people who want to join from the community are able to do so. But I do think it becomes super overwhelming if you Unbundle everything and then worry about how do I specifically make, market and sell all the things that have been unbundled. I would try to use the most effective aspects of what has been unbundled to resell the bundle.

John McBride [00:41:02]:
Yeah, yeah. Or just like maybe we keep it bundled, but we really focus on marketing the financial module and we price it in a way to where it's like, if you really, really just value the financial bundle, it's not so expensive to get the whole course that you're like, it's not worth it for me to buy the bundle for $79 if, like, really all I want is the financial prep module.

Jay Clouse [00:41:28]:
After one more quick break, I share a pricing trick that not only gets.

John McBride [00:41:32]:
Customers to purchase your product, but keeps.

Jay Clouse [00:41:34]:
Them coming back for more. So don't go anywhere.

John McBride [00:41:36]:
We'll be right back.

Jay Clouse [00:41:42]:
And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with John McBride.

John McBride [00:41:46]:
Well, the other thing is, if you do have a specific value in all these things and the bundle is call it $200, but you would sell the finance piece for 99, then you always have the ability, especially in a product that has basically no incremental cost. You go to people who bought the finance and say, hey, you purchased our financial module. Did you know that this is a part of our fatherhood Ready bundle? Here's a $99 coupon towards the bundle since you already have the financial module. So essentially it's like a deferred purchase of the full bundle by getting people to buy just a piece of it first. But that's been a huge part of getting folks into the lab on the basic tier to say you already bought Creator hq. Here's the full retail price of that in the form of a coupon towards your first year of basics, since it's included or you already bought buildable of a membership, here's the full retail price of that in the form of a coupon towards your first year of basic membership. It makes it a much easier. Yes, because now instead of, in the case of buildable of membership, instead of paying 699 to join the basic tier, I only need to pay $200 to join the basic tier because I've already paid 399 for something that is in the basic tier.

John McBride [00:42:59]:
So it kind of just keeps momentum going in through these different stages of the journey. What we didn't really talk about here a ton that I would typically talk about in a discussion like this is what is your signature product within this? But to me, a signature product. The point of that is kind of this heuristic of what do I want to be known for that brings people into my ecosystem. Because a good signature product starts to build word of mouth on its own and kind of drive its own top of funnel. But I feel like the brand Fatherhood Ready is so clear and specific that it's going to do a pretty good job for you anyway. Whether the Fatherhood Ready membership becomes a signature product or a Fatherhood Ready retreat becomes a signature product, any of these things could be true. I think it might take a little bit more playing around to see which of these delivery mechanisms do we want to commit to. It might naturally evolve, whether it's a bundle or a membership or a coaching program.

John McBride [00:43:58]:
But it's probably something here in the middle. It's not going to be the planner necessarily. I do think it's going to be probably something in the middle which might be the bundle, might be a membership. Kind of depends on what you're most interested in.

John McBride [00:44:10]:
Yeah.

John McBride [00:44:10]:
I mean, I think the nice thing is that if we can keep the planner piece working and maybe even we might have similar success if we actually lead with the financial prep mini course as the low ticket entry point and then we're like, cool, do you want to get the planner and the rest of the Fatherhood prep toolkit? Like, here's all the other things. If we're break even on the ads, they're just free leads forever and we can get hundreds. We were able to get like 300amonth. So if we could scale that to like 500amonth, everything else is profit. Right. Like we don't have to be investing a ton more in marketing and acquisition. So it's just finding like the right, I think offer ladder after that first touch point. And then we got to get much better at email marketing because like we got these people coming into our system.

John McBride [00:44:51]:
We have data on when their due date is and we know what their top priority is. So dropping that ideal offer and ideal message for every stage in the journey because most dads want to be getting ready for birth. They're going to be stressed about birth when they're in the final two months and being able to have a great offer for them right then and there and we know that they're coming up on that date. I think we really need to invest in the email skill set and toolkit too.

John McBride [00:45:17]:
Yeah, I mean, depending on your ESP and how good you are at manipulating it, you could essentially when somebody signs up, find out how many months out they are from birth and tailor your Automations based on that.

John McBride [00:45:29]:
That's what we're doing. We hired Jason from the lab to help us like set up the logic for we have a month by month pregnancy guide. So essentially like based on where you come in, it's like every single month what's happening with baby, what's happening with your partner, what's happening with you, what should you be doing this month to get ready and then we can always just plug what's the perfect product or next solution for you based on where you're at in the journey and then just like a lot more content because I think the education thing is huge problem education solution education. There's just not. I don't think we've invested enough in ongoing trust building and education and helping them realize what problems there are to be solved.

John McBride [00:46:08]:
That's super good. I think the last thing I'll leave you with is I think there's a world where you do a book here. Even if that book is like intended to be self published like Amazon SEO optimized, I think it becomes a really great gift for somebody who reads it and has a great experience with it. And if you have these utility based products like the Planner, like the finance guide, those things may have some aspects in the book itself. Or you could be like go download this over here and it's a great way to use a book to drive top of funnel into your email machine.

John McBride [00:46:47]:
Totally. We thought about doing something similar like a first time dad journal as like another way of doing that because like there's nothing for dads on like baby registries or like gifts for expecting parents. Right. Like everything is for for mom and their babies. So like having some physical thing that is like valuable to dad and like helps him get prepared like journal about like his hopes and fears as a new dad or like capture keepsakes or moments like the first time holding his baby or key milestones in the first year. I think having something physical like that is a nice brand building exercise. But then yeah also something you can then use to kind of plug people into the digital ecosystem. Throw a little QR code there in the first couple pages and even if.

John McBride [00:47:30]:
It'S not directly a gift for dad saying like add this to our registry. Moms will want that for their partners.

John McBride [00:47:36]:
Totally.

John McBride [00:47:37]:
Like the last sport. Anyway. Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity here. I would like I said I would focus on these very clear, tangible bits and try to improve this conversion and then I like the rebundling opportunity. Whether it's a mega course or whether you want to take on the work of stewarding a community in a membership, which is of course lots of work and a decision to be made intentionally. But I think the journey is shaping up and making some sense here. Do you have any last questions? Does this feel like you have a next step?

John McBride [00:48:09]:
I'm curious if you. The other thing that we had thought about was doing was actually just leading with the quiz. Rather than sending the Facebook ads, traffic to the low ticket product is sending them directly to the quiz and then upselling them, essentially picking the best first product to sell them into based on their quiz results. So like, if you scored really low in financial preparation, we would sell you into the financial prep module. And if you scored poorly on like your relationship or like knowing what you're supposed to do to prepare, we would sell you into like the baby prep planner plus like the relationship course. But yeah, like I'm thinking about if it makes more sense to lean into the education up front before doing the selling versus just selling the planner. Because we're then kind of like solving their narrow problem without actually letting them know, like, hey, like, there's more for you to solve. There are more pain points that we can help you with.

John McBride [00:49:03]:
I'm curious what the behavior of men with quizzes is like. Cause I don't know that I've ever been served a quiz organically or paid that I've been like, I'm gonna take this quiz. It's just not. It's not behavior that I do. So it had to be packaged probably still in a very outcome oriented way where you basically trick me into taking the quiz rather than advertise, hey, take this quiz. But it seems like a rather inexpensive thing to test you and you have to stop running the other ad campaign. You can just run this alongside it and see if it works differently, better, and go with whichever one makes the most sense.

John McBride [00:49:38]:
Yeah, I think that's what we're gonna do. Tiny experiments.

John McBride [00:49:41]:
Tiny experiments. All right, John, let me know how it goes.

John McBride [00:49:45]:
Thanks dude. Good seeing you. Talk to you soon.

Jay Clouse [00:49:54]:
If you enjoyed this episode with Jon.

John McBride [00:49:55]:
You might be a great fit for for the lab.

Jay Clouse [00:49:57]:
You can learn more by visiting creatorscience.com.

John McBride [00:50:00]:
Lab or the link in the show notes.

Jay Clouse [00:50:03]:
Otherwise, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review on.

John McBride [00:50:06]:
Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Jay Clouse [00:50:07]:
We've had a couple more in the last couple weeks, so thank you. I'm seeing them. Those reviews go a long way to help us grow the show and I'm really trying to get to 500 ratings on Apple podcasts. If you want to learn more about John, visit his website@fatherhoodunlocked.com there's a link to that in the show notes as well. Thank you for listening and I'll talk to you next week.