#199: Katelyn Bourgoin – How to write great social content (and lessons learned from her recent launch)

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:00:00]:
Part of me would really like to change our model to something that's a lot less time intensive and effortful for us. But I also know that the thing that we've decided to help people with doesn't require 30 hours of video lessons. They need more than that, and they're not gonna get the outcomes with just that.

Jay Clouse [00:00:31]:
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. I hope you're having an excellent day from wherever you are tuning in from. Today, I am speaking with my friend, Caitlin Burgoyne. You may have come across Caitlin in your travels across the Internet. She's the founder of Customer Camp and the writer behind the buyer psychology newsletter, Why We Buy, which has nearly 75,000 subscribers. Caitlin is also the cocreator of a couple of great products. The first being Unignorable, a 36 day group challenge designed to help you build an audience of future buyers.

Jay Clouse [00:01:04]:
That's a collaboration with the Demand Curve team. And the second is Wallet Opening Words, 26 and a half science backed copywriting techniques. That's a collaboration with friend of the podcast, Phil Agnew. Caitlin recently ran a new cohort of Unignorable. And from the outside, it looked like it went gangbusters. And we talk about this quite a bit later in the episode because Caitlin says there were some aspects of that launch that she would do differently.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:01:29]:
We'd had kind of big aspirations for it, and it still was successful by any means. If you get people to trust you enough to wanna learn from you, I consider that to be a success. But we had we'd hoped for a bigger outcome.

Jay Clouse [00:01:42]:
That is some refreshing honesty about how Caitlin is feeling about her launch. But for what it's worth, looking on Twitter, they enrolled 306 students into this cohort. So a pretty big success by most measures. But I love this honesty honest, and a lot of fun to talk to. Not to mention, she's honest, and a lot of fun to talk to. Not to mention, she's incredible at writing online, much better at grabbing attention than I am. So in this episode, we talk about Caitlin's approach to short form writing, why she treats her content like a chocolate covered almond, the risk that comes with accounts getting too big, and what she would do differently the next time she launches her cohort program. I'd love to hear what you think about this episode.

Jay Clouse [00:02:28]:
You can find me on Twitter or Instagram at Jay Clouse. You can even find me on threads at Jay Clouse. Tag me. Let me know that you're listening. I love seeing it. I also love seeing your reviews. If you have not yet left a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please consider taking a moment to do so. It pushes us up the charts, and we are rising in the charts, my friends.

Jay Clouse [00:02:46]:
We are in the top 50 podcasts on Apple Podcasts in marketing, and your reviews will help us break the top 25. Alright. That's enough for me. Let's dive in. Let's chat with Caitlin Burgoyne. I wanna get into the mind of Caitlin when she sits down to create content, knowing all of the different psychological triggers and all the different things that you know and you teach, what does your mind run through when you sit down to write something for Twitter or LinkedIn?

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:03:21]:
At this stage, it feels fairly, like automatic when I'm writing content for social, when I'm writing content for a sales page or an email, I am so much more methodical, But I'd say when I'm writing content for social, like, I know how to formulate a hook that's gonna work well. I know how to kinda give, like, a tasty ending. I know how to think about the words that I use, like, if I'm gonna start the post with a negation or, like, a a negative word, if I'm gonna use curiosity, if I'm going to be really specific when I give a number as opposed to a general number, if I'm gonna stretch a number out to make it look really big, like, so that if I'm talking about, like, sales for something that we did, I'll always include a comma and, like, be very specific in the sales number as opposed to just saying, like, you know, 25 k. So I those things come fairly automatically. But when I sit down to write a particularly a sales page or kind of like a really important email that's gonna sell, I'm a lot more methodical about it. And I'm really thinking about every word because I know that people skim when it comes to those sorts of things. They skim social posts as well, but, I mean, a lot of the social posts are not particularly long. So I'm more thoughtful about how I can use use these different techniques when it comes to those types of assets.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:04:38]:
But social, it's fairly intuitive. I'm lucky that I have this amazing archive of I could find us you know, myself going back to the past issues of why we buy or the product that I cocreated with Phil Agnew, wallet opening words, and I use those all the time. Like, I'm they're my cheat sheets. I'm pretty lucky to have that.

Jay Clouse [00:04:57]:
You're saying that the social post seem intuitive to you, and you're you're laying out, like, these pieces of the format that probably are new to a lot of people listening. So you mentioned like we have a hook and then you you had like spicy ending I think you said. So let's let's zoom into this thing that is intuitive to you to say what do you think are the components of a great social post?

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:05:17]:
So I think about a great social post as a chocolate covered almond. And this is a metaphor that I first kind of came up with when thinking about why we buy. But, ultimately, like, I think that when the type of work that I do like, I'm not in the entertainment business. Like, I'll occasionally, like, post a meme or something, but, usually, there's a lesson, something related to marketing, something to get them thinking. So my focus is to educate folks and to, you know, share insights that make them go, And I wanna learn more about that. Maybe that means I should follow Caitlin or I should sign up for her newsletter. And so the way that I think about content is the it's this chocolate covered almond, and the body of the post is the nutritious, tasty, crunchy almond. Right? But the top and the bottom of the host, that's where the chocolate is.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:06:05]:
And so you've gotta tempt them to want to actually eat the almond. So that's the chocolate. Your hook is your first temptation. Right? It's gonna be the thing that makes them go, okay. There's something interesting here for me. It's, you know, firing off my happy norm like, neurons. Like, I want to know more, and then it needs to end in a satisfying way where you either feel like, okay. She closed the loop.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:06:29]:
I'm done with this. I feel satisfied. Or okay. I feel like I got something from this, but there's a next step that I know that I'm gonna take. And that's gonna be maybe signing up for the newsletter or maybe clicking on her bio to check out a free email course that we created. So the top and the bottom, it should be really tasty and yummy and, like, satisfying. And then the middle is where the meat is. It's still gotta be good, but if you don't have that chocolate layer around it, no one's gonna wanna eat the middle.

Jay Clouse [00:07:00]:
Yeah. This is something that we've learned the hard way on YouTube. People just don't click on things that are not enticing and if I would have learned this YouTube lesson earlier, I probably would have been better at social media earlier on as well because it's exactly as you're saying. Like, you have to get people interested for the body of the thing to even make contact and matter.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:07:20]:
And for us, it's so hard too because I find myself because we know exactly what the person's doing as I'm as your listeners do. Right? If you're not a content creator, like, you may not know all of the things that go into this. You might see a particular phrasing of a tweet or, you know, a title of a YouTube video. And, like, you don't think about, oh, I've seen this a hundred times. Like, why am I clicking on this? But I'm still clicking on it. Like, I know what they're doing, and I'm like, this again. But I'm still on it. Right.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:07:49]:
So like, I think that as a creator, your taste evolves where you think that you're more sophisticated, but then you still find yourself reaching for the candy. And it's just it's just the way it is.

Jay Clouse [00:08:01]:
Totally. I have heard a lot of people talk about the hook. I think the hook is probably intuitive to people as, like, an important thing. Like, if I if I don't hook somebody's attention, they're just gonna scroll right on past in this river of content and whatever for you feed I'm currently scrolling. I have a hundred people emphasize the ending as much as you seem to be emphasizing the ending. What happens if we have a great hook and great content, but the ending isn't satisfying? Why is that so important?

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:08:28]:
If your listeners are familiar with Nir Eyal's work, he talks about the habit loop. Right? So all of the stickiest, most addictive products or, like, you know, whether it be an app or whether it be, like, chocolate, all have this same thing that they fall through. Right? Where it's like there's just a trigger that makes you go, oh, and then there's, like, a craving where you're like, okay. I wanna do that. And then you do the action, and then there's a reward. And because of that loop and then the next time that trigger happens, you're gonna wanna go through that action again. And with a content creator, like, if you don't leave them with that satisfying reward at the end, then next time they see your name coming in the feed, they might not feel the trigger. Right? They may not actually want to pause because you didn't give them that satisfaction.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:09:12]:
And I think it's something a lot of folks maybe struggle with, and maybe it comes intuitively to me. It's I'm certainly not perfect at it. I you know, I'll reread things that I wrote 3 months ago and go, oh my god. That's so bad. But I do think it's an important factor that a lot of people don't give us they don't sweat the ending the way they should.

Jay Clouse [00:09:30]:
You're right. Okay. I like this. This is filling in a gap in my mind because, in YouTube language would call this like the payoff and they have metrics for you know viewer satisfaction but continuing to deliver a payoff in whatever format whatever medium you're in is actually an investment in future attention is what you're saying their reason to stick around and hopefully someday you've proven so satisfying that actually it reduces the dependency on a great hook. The great hook is actually you, your name, your face, whatever it is.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:10:05]:
Psychologically, that's absolutely true. So how many times are there there are people who have large audiences that can basically say anything, and they're gonna get this massive response. Right? And this comes down to a number of different things, like, from a psychology perspective. But a big piece of that is this familiarity bias that we have, where we prefer things that are familiar. So the first time you show up in somebody's feed and you deliver value, okay. That's cool. They were kinda cool. The second time you do it, it's like, oh, maybe they've got something to share.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:10:32]:
The 10th, the 100th time you do it, well, now they just expect that you're going to. So there's a set precedent and this expectation that even they're not, you know, critiquing and analyzing your content. They're consuming to see, is there something valuable and tasty here for me? And if you can kinda get away with shittier content as you get bigger, maybe less insight packed, maybe less valuable because you've built this trust with your audience over time that they just kind of assume it's gonna be dope. Right?

Jay Clouse [00:11:02]:
There's, like, a halo effect at some point where people

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:11:05]:
Yep.

Jay Clouse [00:11:06]:
Will take what you're saying more seriously just by the fact that you are you and you are known. And when you're just starting, it's really frustrating because you look at people who have giant followings, like, they're saying nothing. Well, but we take them so seriously that those words carry more weight than somebody who's saying the same thing that we don't have any affinity or familiarity with. It is really frustrating. But I also think there's this interesting phenomenon that I've noticed with some creators because you and I have been in the game long enough. We've seen people start from 0 and rise to huge heights because people love the chocolate on the outside of the almond. Some people tend to become chocolate factories and there's no almond anymore. And eventually, I feel like that actually rots the teeth of the person reading it if you want to go belabor the analogy.

Jay Clouse [00:11:55]:
But I think, like, there's actually a danger for somebody if you do become just like a pure candy factory that you might fall off the top of that mountain you built your way up to because it's no longer nutritious. It's no longer helpful. But you don't get percent. You're not getting the feedback from the audience that this isn't good because of the reputation you're currently coasting off of rather than reinforcing.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:12:20]:
And it totally also depends on who you're trying to attract. So both of us made the decision, the strategic decision, to attract people who are more experienced. Right? And, you know, of course, we're attracting really early stage beginners as well. Like, I attract people who are just kind of learning about marketing or, you know, toying with the idea of building a personal brand. But for the most part, they're people who have been in the game for a while. They've probably, you know, worked in house as marketers and done tons of brand building for their company. And now they're doing it for themselves for the first time and it feels hard. So it depends on who you're trying to attract.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:12:54]:
And I think that the candy factories, if their goal is to sustain on the, you know, the candy junkies, the people who are going to all they want is a bunch of inspirational content. They're probably not gonna take action on a lot of stuff. They're probably gonna buy a bunch of courses that they're never gonna open. Like, you can build a big business on those people. I personally would not find that very fulfilling. Like, I really care deeply about creating outcomes for the people who we work with. Somebody who's going through unignorable right now or in the process of running our cohort based program, he sent a LinkedIn request because we hadn't been connected there yet. And he's just like, you know, just so you know, he's like, we had done a live session that day.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:13:35]:
And he's like, I'm the course guy. I've bought, like, 10 of them. He's like, this is so exceeding my expectations. He's like, this is gonna be the one that actually works. And, like, I took that with, like, both, like, joy and then also frustration because part of me would really like to change our model to something that's a lot less time intensive and effortful for us. But I also know that the thing that we've decided to help people with doesn't require 30 hours of video lessons. They need more than that, and they're not gonna get the outcomes with just that. And so I think that when it comes to just giving out pure candy and, like, you know, you you you become a smartie instead of a chocolate covered almond, there's certainly a market for smarties, and smarties can you can make a lot of money.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:14:19]:
But who what are you gonna feel better selling?

Jay Clouse [00:14:22]:
Yes. I love this analogy. To take it a step further, the majority of the population isn't thinking about their nutrition. They are following impulse. They're following pleasure. And so if you're modeling after creators who are going for scale, there's a pretty good chance that their customer is a little less discerning, a little less worried about nutrition and kind of stuck on the candy train. And I'm coming to realize lately, you can't actually model after that person if you don't want that customer.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:14:56]:
So I was just listening to a really great episode of Alex Hermozzi, head of a YouTube video. I don't actually watch much YouTube. I'm a weirdo. Like, I know that most people consume a ton of it. I consume almost none. I'm definitely a podcast person. Love your podcast, by the way. It's, like, one of my top fave.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:15:10]:
Thank you. But I watched this video, and he talked about their discoveries after spending, you know, 4 years and, like, you know, $5,000,000 on content creation. Because he got into this game very different than you and me. Like, he came into it with a massive team and a massive budget and a huge, like, you know, a huge, established, credible story to tell, which is a super smart way to to start. But he was talking about what they looked at at the data was they basically found that they were, like you said, they were kind of, like, trying to create for for view time. They were trying to create for number of views, and they were creating all this kind of, like, edutainment content, which was crushing in terms of reach. But it was like, oh, shit. We're not actually attracting the person I wanna attract, which is gonna be badass founders who are building big companies.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:15:54]:
Like, they want the in-depth educational stuff. And here I am throwing them all this stuff on, like, relationship advice and what to eat and these, like, all this random shit that was, like, doing well, but it wasn't it was doing well in terms of the numbers, but it wasn't doing well in terms of the numbers that actually mattered, which is a driving more pipeline of people who want to potentially have us come in as investors. So they are changing their whole strategy, they're going only into deep education going forward and focusing really on long form as opposed to short form because they're like, the people who we wanna attract was like, this is gonna result in slower growth, and it's gonna result in not as many views. And all those ego things that used to feel really good. We're gonna get less of that, but we're gonna get more of what the important thing is, which is founders signing up who wanna have us come on as investors who are gonna be running great companies that are taking a lot for the content. So I think his, I mean, he's he's an interesting person. I also think that the way he did it was smart because if he would have started the other way, like, it would be nearly as impressive. Right? Yeah.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:16:54]:
Like, he created all of this kinda click baity content that for a very, very broad audience, learn from that. But then also as an indicator, he's like, okay. If I could do this for myself, you can learn too. Right? Like, those numbers matter.

Jay Clouse [00:17:08]:
The hard thing is I I agree with that insight. But a lot of the reason he's gonna be able to do this new strategy is because he has the halo effect we're talking about. Exactly. Exactly. When people look at his numbers, he passes the eyeball test to say he's achieved the things that I want because most people think the thing they want is lots of followers, lots of subscribers, lots of views. And so they will take somebody who has achieved those things more seriously than someone who has not because they don't understand efficiency. Efficiency is a thing I'm thinking about a lot. Like, what is the most elegant, efficient business I can run to get the outcomes that I want.

Jay Clouse [00:17:44]:
There are a lot of people getting views and things highly inefficient. It's not resulting in the outcomes that they want. After a quick break, Caitlin and I talk about the challenges and the way to go about being on multiple platforms. We also talk about some of the bad behavior and lying that happens in the space. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Caitlin Burgoyne.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:18:06]:
I think a lot about awareness levels of content. This is something that I'm only now spending more time thinking about because there's you know, talking about, you know, the Alex from Moses of the world learning this lesson, you know, other folks who have these large audiences that are kinda chocolate factories. Like, I think that there's a way to do this that is the smartest way, which in my mind is, like, you think about the, ultimately, the outcome that you want at the end. Right? Like, what do you what are you selling? What's the action you want people to take? Like, how are you going to run a business? And then you think about okay. So I think of it through an awareness levels lens because, again, with the chocolate covered almond example, like, you could have a good portion of your content be chocolate. And what that's gonna allow you to do is it's gonna allow you to attract a whole lot of people who love chocolate. And some of those people are gonna be people that will like chocolate today and also love almonds. Right? And those are gonna be your buyers.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:19:07]:
And so, like, I think about if you can focus on creating chocolate content, it's more of that kind of, like, you know, usually problem, like that unaware audience. They don't necessarily know the solution that you sell. They're not necessarily ready to buy it, but they are somebody who would potentially fit that profile in the future. And then you can kind of use the body of your content or, like, what would normally be the Almond to educate them. And some people will just zoom out. Those are the people that won't cut like, they won't finish reading that thing. Right? Because there's more depth there. They liked the beginning.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:19:38]:
They They liked the funny meme, but they're not gonna read the whole thing. And then other people are gonna keep going, and they're gonna read more. And they're gonna go, oh, okay. And, like, those are your people. So I feel like there is this ability to I'd say, like, you know, probably if we're gonna give some numbers to people like tactical stuff, there's gonna be, like, 60% of your content can be that broad stuff that's going to attract candy seekers because inside of the we're all candy seekers. Some of us also like almonds. Right? And so I think that 60% of it can be that, but you've gotta have the other stuff leading into the more depth.

Jay Clouse [00:20:12]:
In a way, this is a this is analogy. Each piece of content is a chocolate covered almond. But you can think about your business as a whole as a chocolate covered almond. Like, the content operation that you run. Whereas some of these pieces might just be like, that's a nice little snack. But Mhmm. You still have the the deeper stuff that is more nutritious.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:20:33]:
And, like, you talk about too. You talk about discovery platforms versus relationship platforms. Right? Like, you might have you know, let's say, you know, my dominant channels are Twitter and LinkedIn. Like, I might use Twitter, and 60% of that stuff might be, like, short tweets that, like, you read them. You go, that that feels true to me. Like, move on with your day. Nothing really dense there or useful. But some of these people are gonna go, what's Caitlin all about? And they're gonna go in my bio, and they're gonna go, oh, she's got some interesting stuff.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:20:58]:
I'm gonna sign up for her newsletter. And now they're getting almonds every week. Right? Chocolate covered almonds every week. So I think that there's also some channel specific stuff here.

Jay Clouse [00:21:06]:
Yeah. Like I agree.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:21:08]:
TikTok is probably not a place where you can just serve up straight almonds. Like, people to go there for candy.

Jay Clouse [00:21:14]:
Yeah. There's a a give and take. I posted this in the lab a couple weeks ago. I was saying, I've noticed that when my content seems to be trending in the wrong direction on LinkedIn in terms of engagement, I do what I call a selfie reset. If I go and post a selfie, which is my equivalent of of chocolate on LinkedIn, it doesn't have like much going on. Maybe there's a nice satisfying story there. It probably didn't teach you anything, but I know it's gonna get high engagement. And that tends to reverse that negative trend because what we know about at least LinkedIn but I suspect is true of most of these discovery platforms.

Jay Clouse [00:21:50]:
If somebody engaged with your content, they're more likely to see your next post or your next couple of posts as well. So if things are trending in the wrong direction, there's actually like this increasing sense of urgency to reverse that trend so that it starts going in the virtuous direction rather than the vicious direction.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:22:06]:
I love that. I so, like, you know, you there's sometimes you just need to, like, throw them some candy. Like

Jay Clouse [00:22:11]:
Gotta do a candy reset.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:22:14]:
Ah, this is genius. Okay. I'm gonna start. I you know, one thing I'll admit, JD, it's the folks that are listening that probably don't hear this as often and should not do what I do. But, like, I don't pay nearly enough attention to any of the data. Like, I know that you're really good at that. Like, I only recently discovered where you can look at the analytics in LinkedIn.

Jay Clouse [00:22:33]:
Well, listen. LinkedIn analytics are, like, objectively terrible. The analytics on LinkedIn are worse than any other platform.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:22:38]:
So I don't have Shield. I was thinking about getting it. But, like, yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:22:41]:
No. It's I have not found a lot of actionable analytics on LinkedIn. But what I do look at is, like, post by post, which is essentially day by day for me. How did this do relative to my typical baseline in terms of impressions and engagements and that's telling me how things are going. I use analytics in a way as like a crutch. I guess it's I went crutch is probably the wrong word, like a necessity. If you're really good and intuitive at leveraging these platforms, you're getting good outcomes. Great.

Jay Clouse [00:23:06]:
You probably don't need to care about analytics all that much. But most of the time for me, it feels extraordinarily difficult. And the only way I like find the insight I need to continue an upward trajectory is, like, small little insights that I can incrementally compound. It's all felt difficult to me.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:23:25]:
That's fascinating to me because I would think that content comes so easily to you because you've like, what like, out of all of the creators that I follow who I like, you know, aren't the who have this massive team that can help them in the back end, like, it just amazes me that you've been able to grow on as many platforms as you have. Right? Like, most people, like, really focus on the one, and they get big there, and then maybe they grow a team and expand. But, like, I've been amazed because, like, and and then your quality is good across them all. Like, at least as an outsider who's just kinda scrolling.

Jay Clouse [00:23:53]:
Yeah. I mean, you'd I I feel very strongly that any platform is is like a sport. If you're going to compete on that playing field, you're competing against people who are only playing that sport. There aren't a ton of great multi sport athletes because the rules the game change, the way people are getting ahead change, and people who are putting all of their time into that one field of play are going to outcompete you. So, like, it's it's not wise to try to do multiple platforms that are, like, vastly different sports. And the only way that we can do it is we started to build a little bit of a team and they help understand the nuances of platforms. But also to be honest, I work a lot. I work a lot, and I think about this all the time.

Jay Clouse [00:24:33]:
Like, there's a real life cost to trying to do multiple platforms.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:24:38]:
Yep. But I think that you I think you were very wise to do it at the time that you could because I think there's also this, like, especially in the creator world or the, actually, entrepreneur world in general. This, like, there's extremes. There's, like, the, like, you know, you should work weekends. You should work holidays. And then there's the, I work 3 hours today and make a 100 k a month. Like, those there's such extremes, and I think that people need to hear my belief is that there's seasons in life for both. And before becoming a parent, I was definitely like, I did a tech startup that almost, like, killed me.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:25:08]:
Like, it was I worked so much. Like, then I turned out, started a new consultancy, kinda scaled up my business, and then I was still was working a lot. Like and then I became a parent, and I didn't have the time. And I'm so grateful that I built the foundation that I had prior to that happening. And you're you've done the same. Right? Like, I know you're able to become a parent, and it's gonna be such an amazing gift that you gave yourself, because you're you're gonna not have the same capacity that you did before, at least for a

Jay Clouse [00:25:36]:
little while. Seasons of life, I agree with you that, like, the earlier you can put more time into this before life gets more complex and you have more obligations, the better off you're gonna be. I was just listening to a conversation with James Clear and he was like, I did my career really well. The book was published before I even had kids. But also there are a lot of liars out there who are not owning up to like the truth about how big their team is, how much they are actually working, how much they're putting into the business as a resource. They're, like, willfully withholding information to make things seem more possible.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:26:07]:
Yes. It's very frustrating to me. It's very, very frustrating to me because I think that, you know, there are too many people out there who are either quitting because they're thinking I'm obviously doing something so wrong because it's taking me so much more effort and I'm getting not the same results, who aren't having the, you know, the time to kind of explore and have the conversations that we're obviously having internally looking at models and being like, okay. Well, that works for them, but it's not gonna work for me because I'm not selling to this incredibly large broad candy eating audience. Like, I'm selling to these people, and so my approach is gonna have to be different. But it's very frustrating to me, and I think it's something that has always happened. But I think that the Internet, when you are optimizing based on this crushed, I'm gonna do more of that, which is I think what a lot of us are doing, then you end up creating this candy factor where it's like people just want the hopium. Give me that hopium.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:26:58]:
Yeah. Show me that I can quit my job and make a $1,000,000 and work, you know, a few hours a day. And it's incredibly, as somebody who just can't bring myself to sell that. Like, it it's frustrating because I'm like, I know if I could just sell out.

Jay Clouse [00:27:17]:
I know.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:27:17]:
What would that be like?

Jay Clouse [00:27:19]:
I'm inherently distrustful of anyone who's trying to convince me of really anything, but especially, like, people who are trying to convince you to do entrepreneurship, do the creator thing. Just look at their incentives. Are they incentivized to convince you to do that thing? Because their business is predicated on getting people to jump into it. Similar to you, I've made the explicit decision that like I'm not gonna try to convince anybody to do this. I just wanna be there for the people who are already doing it and are trying to get a little bit of a leg up, you know. And that's like inherently a smaller audience. They have their own candy that they like. Everyone has a sweet tooth, but it's different than, you know, following my pure incentives, which would probably be to, like, do whatever generates the most revenue possible.

Jay Clouse [00:28:05]:
You have to listen to yourself because audience capture is a real thing. There's a world where, like, my entire business is just predicated on teaching people how to do community well, but that isn't exciting to me. Like that's just not enough for me. So I encourage people to listen to what you want to do and not just purely what's crushing right now because you could wake up with a business that just doesn't look like what you had hoped for.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:28:28]:
That's a great segue into one of the things I know we're gonna talk about because I'm kind of at the stage with my business. Maybe we can do, like, a little bit of, like, you know, like, live coaching here for the audience. But, like, I cocreated Unignorable, which is a audience building challenge for entrepreneurs with a amazing team, DemandCurve, and Neil O'Grady is kind of my key partner in that. And it's done really well, but I think a a piece of that is also timing. Right? There's a lot of noise in the personal branding audience building space right now. But when I started the other side of the business, why we buy, the reason I got into that was because I asked myself. I was like, I do not wanna be know, I'm a marketer. I wanted to I wanted to do something around marketing.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:29:09]:
I wanted to help people like me, marketers who are entrepreneurial. I wanted to help them be more successful. But what I knew I didn't wanna do was focus on education in a space that's always changing. So, you know, like Facebook ads. Like, if you were to create a Facebook ads course, you're gonna be updating that baby, like, every 6 months. Right?

Jay Clouse [00:29:27]:
Totally.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:29:28]:
And so I didn't wanna do that because the tactical stuff, as valuable as it is, I didn't find it to be as rewarding. And I oftentimes, the tactical stuff didn't matter if the foundational stuff was off. And so the reason I started at the time my consultancy that then has kind of become why we buy was I was like, what never changes? I asked this, like, what never changes? And I'm like, what never changes is market in marketing is if you don't understand your customers, you're gonna be fucked. Doesn't matter if you have the best channels, if you have the biggest budget, if you have the most incredible product. If you don't understand your customers, you're gonna be fucked. And so I wanna create content around that. And so with unignorable, it's not a channel specific program. So we don't talk about, you know, this is the Twitter growth program or this is the LinkedIn growth program.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:30:14]:
It's really around understanding the psychology of attention and persuasion so you can create compelling content that helps you build an audience. And we do have tactical stuff as well. But to me, it's there's kind of this internal battle happening, which is still around. Like, I still get really excited about the timeless stuff. Like, that's still the stuff that I love teaching, that I love learning, that I get the most value from applying in my own work, and I don't get as excited about the tactical stuff. When I think about the positioning for Unignorable, like, there's a bunch of folks that are coming with x only cohorts or, like, LinkedIn only cohorts. And so, like, we're not competing in a category of 1 right now because we haven't done a very good job, I think, in my mind of really positioning it as well as we need to.

Jay Clouse [00:30:59]:
I would bet that the people that are doing the x only cohorts, the LinkedIn only cohorts, they're appealing to a different customer fundamentally also. Because though they're appealing to people who think like, I just wanna do x really well. So there is probably like something that could be done in terms of changing the perception of unignorable understanding why being platform agnostic is more valuable than being very specific to a platform.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:31:24]:
I love how you just said that because you know what? Like, this was internally, this is, like, part of our strategy, but it's not really something that we talk about. We talk about we're like, you know, we we do talk about this is about understanding, like, you know, it's based on the timeless psychology stuff. Like, yeah, we'll share what's working today, but we go deep on this stuff. But the idea of actually making platform agnostic are, like, a selling point as opposed to, you know, turn your what is it? Turn a bug into a feature?

Jay Clouse [00:31:54]:
Yeah.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:31:54]:
Right? That's interesting. Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:31:56]:
Yeah. Because I think that's a provocative idea that people even if, like, their first reaction is to disagree, they're, like, but go on. You know what I mean? Like, it's not an obvious truism. So I think it invites people to do the work of learning more about the program itself because it is, you you know, as our friend West would say, a spiky point of view.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:32:18]:
I like that.

Jay Clouse [00:32:19]:
I totally agree with you, by the way, about, like, timelessness. We are so over indexing on real time information and like near term information and undervaluing the timeless stuff, the stuff that doesn't change, the stuff that we've already figured out. We're constantly like coming to conclusions that have already been come to and saying I have found this amazing new secret and then packaging it as some shiny new thing. It's like actually this is as old as human history and, not that new at all. So I'm I'm on the same wavelength with you. But it does like, when urgency is such a driver of behavior

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:32:59]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:33:00]:
Trying to say the value of what I do is timeless is a difficult proposition.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:33:06]:
Absolutely. So the way that, like, I think I can frame it as, like, it's the hidden reasons why people do things. Right? So in the we have inside of Unigrobble, there's a framework which is, like, the 7 f's of attention, and I break down these different things, like fun, fear, familiar. But then within each of those chapters, there's a bunch of cognitive biases that apply to those. And so it makes it easier for people to remember because one of the interesting things about behavioral science is that we're always discovering new biases. And a lot of them have overlap with ones that have already been discovered because some academic wants to get a paper out and have their own name on it, which is so human. Right? So this canon of of work just keeps growing. But each one's kind of nuanced and interesting, and there's different ways to apply them in in different times.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:33:48]:
So it's important that we have as many as we do. But I wanted to be able to make them more memorable and to kind of shape them into these concepts that people could, retain easier. And they say that if you want somebody to remember something, it's like pick the 7 plus or minus 2. Right? Like, so it can either be a list of 5, a list of 9, any word that they're forgetting it. So I go with 7. And then within those, there's kind of these other techniques that we teach. But I do think you need to have a mechanism to wrap around your thing. Right? Like, we talked about, you know, timeless is not that sexy, but if you call it, like, your, you know, 10 minute abs.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:34:24]:
Right? 10 minute abs is great. 9 minute abs, less exciting. But if you come up with something called, like, the 9 minute, like, like, crunch, like I don't know. I'm not athletic to come up with this. Like, you come up with your own mechanism. Right? It could be essentially the same workout. Right? There's just, like, this one little thing that you do in the middle that makes it yours. And people who don't know about the, you know, the 7 minute abs and 9 minute abs are like, wow.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:34:46]:
This is, like, game changing. And that's most of creation. Right? Like, it's all we evolve. I started saying a couple years back, I it wasn't I thought was really brilliant, which was this idea of context is king. So, like, you know, the content is king was such a popular thing in marketing for years. And I was like, content's not king. It's all about context. Like, the right thing in front of the right person at the right time.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:35:07]:
That's what matters. Like and so I thought this was really smart. And I've posted a bunch. And then I saw somebody the other day say something about context, and I was like, I wonder if I'm the first person that actually said this. And I was, like, kinda, like, puffing up my shoulders, like, interesting. And then I went and I Googled it, and, like, it's been like, HubSpot said it, like, 10 years ago in an article. Totally. There's, like, the whole front page.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:35:28]:
Like, none of them are Caitlin's tweets.

Jay Clouse [00:35:30]:
This is why comedians get blamed for stealing jokes

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:35:33]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:35:33]:
When they sometimes, like, I've never seen this. It's like sometimes the conditions present themselves to create the idea. And it can be created individually in a vacuum in multiple places across different points you have.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:35:46]:
The other day. Totally. Yeah. 100%. I posted something that I, like, I thought I had come like, I I've been kind of, like, angling because I'm always thinking, like, what's the enemy? Right? Like because it's so great as a brand if you can choose a villain to pit your audience against. There are some people who've done this so well, and it's so effective for them. Right? Like Justin Welsh, like, it's very clear who the villain is, and it's your shitty boss that doesn't care about you. And who doesn't wanna hate a shitty boss that doesn't care about you? Like, we all wanna hate that villain.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:36:14]:
And so I often think about, like, who's the villain. Right? Like, not that you need to make them, like, center in your brand, but it's just nice to have somebody for the audience and you to kind of fight against. And so what I've been, like, toying with is this idea of, like, you know, being unknown. Right? Being ignored. Like, that's the that's the villain, which is part of the name, Unadognorbible. Then I was like, obscurity. Right? People not knowing about your company. So your company fails because you can't get any customers.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:36:37]:
That's the villain. And then I was like, and then I said, no. Indifference. Like, they don't they they see you, but they don't even care. That's the villain. Then you'd posted something. Like, I probably pulled this from you.

Jay Clouse [00:36:47]:
So No. I don't think so. But I think we probably had a similar line of thought. I mean, like, the obscurity point, Seth Godin has said, like, obscurity is the enemy for, I think, decades at

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:36:55]:
this point.

Jay Clouse [00:36:56]:
I don't

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:36:57]:
know that he said that either.

Jay Clouse [00:36:58]:
In difference, there was a point in time where I was, like, I wanna write a Steven Pressfield style book, but I don't have the resistance. Who is my enemy? And I came to the same conclusion. Like, I think I think indifference is the enemy, but I'm not gonna write that book. So feel free to write that book. I think it'd be a great book.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:37:12]:
I think the other thing that I toy with, and this is probably not as wise, but I think it's makes sense from my perspective, is, like, you want the enemy to be outside of the person because there's this concept that people like when when we do something wrong, it's because of the circumstance. But we like when something happens to us, we're looking for somebody to blame. We don't wanna blame ourselves, essentially. Right? And so for me, I've been thinking about, like, making your, like, your super old shitty brain that makes you, like, insecure and feel like an imposter, like, that could be the villain. But then that is still something that's kind of, like, inside of their control to change more than taking an outside figure and making that the villain. I think that that's probably the better path.

Jay Clouse [00:37:53]:
After one more quick break, Caitlin and I break down the differences between fandom and cults, and we break down her most recent launch of Unignorable and what she would do differently the next time around. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Caitlin Burgoyne. I've been playing around with this thought also because I do see the power in pointing out a villain. But I've been going down the rabbit hole and a conclusion I've come to is that fandom and cults are actually different things. And the difference is fandom is an affinity for something and a cult is in opposition to something they see as popular or mainstream and I feel like the villain direction is more in like the cult direction where you're defining yourself based on the antithesis of something rather than the affinity for something. I think either is valid, but I think they they attract different psychographics.

Jay Clouse [00:38:52]:
And I think you have to be really about what type of a psychographic do I want to attract because some people pick villains that people really really hate and their audience is like miserable awful people because of it.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:39:05]:
Yes. But I

Jay Clouse [00:39:06]:
don't think that's necessarily a rule. I think you can create a villain and not attract purely like Venom, but I think it'd be very easy to do so if you're not careful.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:39:15]:
I think you're right. You get the cynics. You get the, you know, the, like, easy for them people. Yeah. I think you're right. So I think that it is that you have to tread a careful line.

Jay Clouse [00:39:25]:
Yes. And I think optimists are more likely to purchase. But you would you know buyers at Kaiser okay. So you agree with that. So I think I think optimists are more likely to purchase, and that's why I

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:39:34]:
buy sell. I think it depends what you sell. Because when you sell something, like, you sell an ongoing experience. I think what what do people have to sign up for? Is it for 3 months at minimum, or is it a year at minimum?

Jay Clouse [00:39:44]:
It's a year. It's a year.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:39:45]:
Okay. So, I mean, people Optus are definitely more willing to buy from you, like, more likely to buy. I would say if you sell something that's, like, under a couple $100, you're gonna get a lot of people people hate the feeling of not being able to take action against their problems, which is why I think courses sell so well. Right? Because it's a couple of clicks that makes you get this huge emotional reward that you're about to take action against your problem. It was interesting. Laura Router, I may be mispronouncing her name, but she's she previously had a content based business. She was actually partners with Reforleo originally when we performed Reforleo, broke out, and did her own thing. And now she has a software company.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:40:25]:
She just sold one and started another one. She said it's so, so much easier to sell courses than to sell SaaS even though she there'd be free trials and everything. Because it's like people love feeling control that they just clicked a button, and now they're solving their problem, which is why I think so many passive kind of, like, on demand style education products never actually get used because the person got that kind of immediate burst of, like, okay. I'm doing something to solve the problem. Yay, me. But then their motivation went away, and they kinda went on with their life. So I'd tell you if you're if you're in the kinda low cost place, you probably get a whole bunch of pessimists who are angry and wanna solve a problem, but they don't actually take action. Think about all the keyboard warriors who've never stood in a picket line in their life, but will spend all day.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:41:14]:
Like

Jay Clouse [00:41:15]:
This is so interesting because the implication of that is if you are really good at setting up your course as the solution to something, I might purchase thinking I just purchased the solution, but undervalue the work required to actually realize it.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:41:30]:
That's a 100% it. Like, I think that any course that's designed with a specific outcome in mind is, like, you know, here's your problem. Here's the outcome. Like, people are going to buy it and go, step 1, check, and then they feel good. And they plan to come back. Right? They plan to actually consume the content that they course world is so interesting because there's so many folks like this guy who would reach out to me on LinkedIn who's now going through unignorable, who consider themselves to be kind of perpetual course junkies. And they have done it a number of times. They get to a point where they're annoyed with themselves.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:42:04]:
Like, I'm not gonna buy any more fucking courses because I never actually finished them. Like, I'd not even finished them because, like, the courses that need to be finished to get value. I never get the value. I never do the thing. I might even watch all the videos, but I never actually do the thing. And so I think then it's upon us as educators to create a education experience that is going to give people the highest probability of doing the thing. Yes. Like and that's not drowning them in lessons in my mind.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:42:32]:
That's

Jay Clouse [00:42:32]:
100% agree. One small thing I've done in my courses that has had a positive impact is literally the first video is, like, here's a hyperlink to email me. Tell me that you commit to finishing this course.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:42:44]:
I love that.

Jay Clouse [00:42:45]:
Love it because people just click the button.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:42:47]:
Commitment devices are so important.

Jay Clouse [00:42:49]:
Subject line is filled in. Email's filled in. They hit reply. I immediately respond back with a personal email to encourage them, like, you're going to do this. And I do think that has helped. But, like, most people is like

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:43:00]:
feel that?

Jay Clouse [00:43:01]:
Oh, please do. Most people

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:43:02]:
people to do something different, but, like, that's I'm gonna add that. I get people to write a Post it note that they stick where they're gonna see it, which is, like, with my Clarity called cheat sheets, like, because it's so easy for people to buy that and go, like, be like, I'm gonna interview a customer, but then there's a whole lot of work involved. Like, you gotta contact the customer. You gotta get them to say yes. Like, there's a like, there's this fear factor. Like, what if they don't even remember that they're using our SaaS product and they unsubscribe?

Jay Clouse [00:43:25]:
Like Yeah.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:43:27]:
But I like that because that's so low friction for them, and it helps them form an identity. And people really wanna be consistent with their identity of themselves.

Jay Clouse [00:43:35]:
And it's low lift to you. I mean, it's easy enough for me to just type back and say, hell, yeah. You are. But, like, a team member could do that. Most people just optimize for the point of purchase, and they just leave them go. Like, even just setting out an email that goes out 2 weeks after they purchase to say, how are things going? You know, these small touches stand out so much in the sea of failed expectations. This is a good segue to the last thing I wanted to talk about. Earlier, you mentioned that you would have done things differently in your recent course launch.

Jay Clouse [00:44:05]:
I would love to hear some of the things that are on your mind that you would have done differently.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:44:09]:
So coming out of it, there's a few things that I would do differently. And, of course, like, hindsight's 2020. I think what I would have done differently so there's a few big changes that we made this time. So I'd say there's 3 kind of, like, major ones. We made it longer. So the first time we ran on ignorable, our first cohort was 21 days. This one, then it was 28 days. Now it's 36 days.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:44:29]:
Because there's just we wanted to space out the actual lessons and exercises. People had more time to do them, so it made it space over longer days. We raised the price, which I think was a mistake. I think that psychologically, we made the price $1,000. But from a psychology perspective, the kind of, like, our thought there was that we could use the number sign plus 1 plus k, which kind of actually makes it look small as opposed to having the 3 zeros. And I think that the assumption like, this was, Neil was kind of, like, pushing to to increase the price. I think the assumption was because we deliver so much in that in the cohort experience, if you compare this to maybe, like, Ali Abdaal's, like, on demand program, his is, like, 1500. So it's like if he's doing a 1500 for, like, a on demand thing, a 1,000 for this seems like it should be a no brainer.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:45:18]:
In my mind, I think and this is not something that I have data to support this particular point, but I think that in people's minds, there's a price point where it's a no brainer. There's a price point where it's considered. There's a price pant where it's really considered. And I think anything under 699, because 699 feels like 5. 5 feels like I'm gonna think about this, but I don't have to think forever. Right? 500 boxes. I'm gonna think about this, but I don't have to think forever. 699 feels more like 5.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:45:45]:
Anything under 5 feels cheap, feels, like, affordable to the type of people that we're selling to. Right? Because the people that we're selling to

Jay Clouse [00:45:51]:
for a cohort based program.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:45:52]:
Yeah. For a cohort based program. But anything, I think, over 699, now it's a 1000, right, in your head. It's like even if it's, like, 750, it's actually a1000. The other thing we did was we ran an affiliate program, which I would definitely do again. It was definitely well worth it. We didn't give our affiliates enough time or help to do a great job as affiliates. It was only, like, a week and a half before.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:46:15]:
I think it was, like, 7 business days when they were given the opportunity to become affiliates. And then, of course, within that time frame, they're all busy entrepreneurs. They would have had to, like, think about emails or social posts they're gonna write to promote this thing. Totally. We needed to give them way more time. So that's the thing I would do differently. What I would do that worked really well is we I we always do a presale, like, you know, 4 to 6 weeks before the actual, like, enrollment period, and we limit the number of seats in that. And the goal is really just to get people who are super excited, give them the absolute best price, and get them in early.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:46:47]:
And it also is a confidence booster when that goes well. So this one, I think, sold out in 10 minutes, and we had we had some real big glitches. Technically, we were using, like, Thrive card. I don't know if you've used it, but we had major problems with it for both of our launches this time. But we had glitches, but it still sold out fast. It gives you that kind of great talking point. Right? It's like it shows that this thing is popular, that people wanna take it, that there's demand

Jay Clouse [00:47:14]:
presale priced differently?

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:47:16]:
ProSight is cheaper and with more it it's gonna be the best value someone's gonna get. So it's gonna be the best price, and we throw in bonuses. And we limit the number of seats. So then during the enrollment period, we had built a wait list, and then we had our regular audiences. And the wait list, we opened up to them. We we used something that we framed as fast action pricing, which is basically that after the first twenty sell, the price goes up. The next twenty sell, the price goes up. So it rewards people who act quickly and buy with a better price.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:47:48]:
So we had a wait list only price where, basically, for that day, I think it started at 600. And once we reached 800, we were done for the day. That anybody else that bought that day got it at 800, which is still less than when it opened up the next day, which would be a1000. We had a great sales day that day. We were, like, super pumped. Like, we got to 800, I think, in like, we sold the first 200 seats in 15 minutes, I think. Like and then there's more sales came in throughout that day, which is great. So we were feeling, like, pumped because it's like, okay.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:48:18]:
So we've got the wait list. Now we're gonna have affiliates open, like and we're gonna promote the rest of our lists. Like, we're gonna see, hopefully, what we saw on day 1 double that with the rest of the stuff, and we didn't. Like, we saw, once we announced it to the whole like, we said, like, the price was available. It was a 1,000. It was a 1,000, but you still got a bonus that you wouldn't get the next day. So, like, there was a reason to buy the 2nd day. We didn't, like, we didn't see any flurry.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:48:45]:
We were doing fast asking pricing again on the 2nd day. So it was gonna be it started actually it started at 800, and it went up to a1000 that day. So, basically, like, if you bought that day, you were going to get if you bought within the first 200 people, you were gonna get the best price. And we, like, sent those emails thinking, okay. We're gonna start to see the the sales kind of flowing in again. It was super quiet. Like, in the next 3 days, like, we had sales coming in, but it wasn't like the first day, basically, was, like, everything. And so there's a bunch of things we learned.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:49:20]:
And, of course, now we emailed everybody who was on the wait list asking them why they chose not to sign up. Got great feedback. Price was the number one reason. I know that price is not a real like, it's worth what it's worth. And if they say price, it means they didn't think it was worth it. And we can do more to make it the perception that it's worth more. But I do think that in my mind, if we had done a better job at positioning why this program compared to a number of other audience building cohorts that exist and had launched within a similar time frame, the price wouldn't have been an issue. I think we didn't do a good enough job with that, and we still need to get better at that.

Jay Clouse [00:49:59]:
So that assumption sounds to me like you think the people on the wait list have awareness of these other programs and are considering those and or choosing those?

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:50:07]:
Based on some of the feedback, some folks like, one one post that, like, is going to haunt my dreams, I'm gonna do a post about this, is one person said, I didn't know how this was any different than the 10 other programs I get promoted to on a daily basis. And I was like, oh my god. Like, as a marketer, that's like this. Like but then there was also a ton of folks who said, like, I'm doing the next one. I just didn't have the capacity to do a live program this time. I wish it was on demand. Like, we got a lot of that too. People being, like, I'm definitely doing it.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:50:33]:
I just, like, can't afford it right now. I lost my job. I'm like, don't buy it if you just lost your job. Like, I'd that is you know, focus on getting some income in first. But I do think that if it was differentiated as it should be in the audience's mind, not just in ours, then I think that the price wouldn't be a factor.

Jay Clouse [00:50:51]:
Do you think this is me just being curious because I've never done one of these rising price what do you call it? Like, fast

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:50:57]:
action Yeah. Fast action pricing.

Jay Clouse [00:50:59]:
Fast action pricing. I've never done that because I've worried about my own ability to explain that and have that be understood and have that detract from the ability to just talk about the value of the program. Do you think that you guys were able to do that? Like, did the feedback you get like people understood the escalating price?

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:51:17]:
Think that there were people who didn't like it, and there are people who got it and loved it. One of the things that I think we benefit from is that a lot of our audience are marketers. Right? Like, you know, demand curve services marketers, I service marketers. So when they see a technique that they go, oh, that's smart. I should try to do something like that. Right? So I don't think that I think that they can be maybe in some cases, they might be more critical than a nonmarketer, but I think that the because their marketers are often more curious than critical when it comes to unique techniques. We had done fast action pricing with our launch of wallowed up new words, Phil Agnew and I, and, like, the feedback on that was all really, really good, but we did it differently. There wasn't a big wait list.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:51:58]:
Like, the feedback that we got from people that were on the wait list were like it's, like, it's really frustrating to be on the wait list. And, like, if you don't open it up at exactly that time, you're gonna like, what's the point of being on the wait list? So there I think that there's a lot we could have done. The wait list people still had the best price on day 1. Like, then it wasn't open to anybody else. You couldn't find the page. You had to go through that link. So we were trying to be true to if you're on the list, it is gonna be the best, like, offer. But I still think people were frustrated that it was not just one price for everyone on the wait list.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:52:30]:
That you had to be on the wait list and act that quickly. So maybe what I would do next time is wait list all get the same great deal that ends the day, like, you know, after a day, and then it's open to everyone and then maybe try it. And maybe I would I might try a different, you know, technique next time because I think next time we're, you know, we're considering how the program's going to evolve and shift, but I think I would probably rather have limited seats than have an endless amount of seats and

Jay Clouse [00:53:01]:
Right.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:53:01]:
Do an increasing price.

Jay Clouse [00:53:03]:
The scarcity is the availability, not, like, kind of a a pricing gimmick.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:53:10]:
And it's also better for the experience of the participants because, you know, this time after our 1st day when the wait list with it, the sales were just so crazy. I was like, we need to bring in another host because there's no way we're gonna be able to deliver the like, if we have, like, you know, 600 people going through this, like, we're not gonna be like, Neil and I, plus, like, there's a couple folks in the demand curve team that are kind of, like, marketing support. Like, we're not gonna be able to do enough to give them all the value, the one on one time that they deserve. So we brought in somebody else and which is a great decision. Just happy with it, but we didn't end up having at all close to the the the sales that we anticipated after that first day. But I'd rather see it be fewer people, I think. And I think we're gonna try something quite a bit different next year.

Jay Clouse [00:53:53]:
How early did you socialize the price? That was the biggest mistake and, like, takeaway I had from my own launch was I withheld the price too long.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:54:01]:
I think because we were gonna be doing the the fast action pricing, we shared that with people. We were specific about what the price was gonna be. So but I think that we probably could've done it even sooner. But within, like they didn't get to the page and see it for the first time. They knew if they were on that list and they'd actually been opening some of the emails of what the price was gonna be. So I think we could have done it sooner, though. But let me share a couple things we did that were right. Not with that list, about that launch.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:54:27]:
But one thing we did this time that I think worked out really well inside of the community is I know that you're a Circle user too, is we've created a gamified experience where we have something called hookers, which is a special space where when if you want help writing your hook, you can go and you post it in there, and people respond and, like, we'll help you kind of massage it and make it better because we know that the hook is important. And there's a top hooker's prize. And so it's that's been really fun because people love calling themselves a hooker. They're like, oh, I didn't have to explain to my wife why I'm a why I'm the top hooker in this new program. So it's been amazing because we always had that space. It wasn't called hookers. It wasn't gamified, and it barely got any use in previous cohorts. And this time, it's exploded.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:55:12]:
Like, there's just, like everybody who posts in there gets so much feedback, and it makes their post so much better. And so adding that gamified element and making it fun was something we did this time that I wanna do that again for sure. So something good that came into this collage.

Jay Clouse [00:55:25]:
I love that. Okay. And last question I just love to ask people generally is do you have a hunch that you don't have data support, but it's impacting the way you're approaching either your content or your work right now?

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:55:39]:
Well, I think that there is a the platforms that I'm building on, the b to b platforms, I think that b to b creators are kind of rising up, and there's gonna be a huge opportunity for the companies that identify that and work with those creators and get value from that. I think that that's a thing. But I think that the audience of folks who are thinking about building an audience, thinking about creating more content, I think that there's definitely some burnout happening from all of the audience building that is happening on Twitter and on at LinkedIn specifically. And I think that there's a lot more people selling how to build an audience than there is appetite to for people that actually wanna build 1. And there's a lot of people that are kinda over it. So I don't have data to support that, but I just do feel like there's a general sense of from from a lot of people on those channels. And so your people your if if that's the world we're or, I mean, that's the world we're in, I think you have to be really, like, thoughtful about that

Jay Clouse [00:56:42]:
and Yeah.

Katelyn Bourgoin [00:56:43]:
Probably change tact a bit.

Jay Clouse [00:56:53]:
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Caitlin Burgoyne. If you wanna learn more about Caitlin or follow her online or read her newsletter, go to the links in the show notes. There, you'll also find our recommended next episode to listen to. If you enjoyed this, you'll most likely enjoy the conversation I had with Phil Agnew, where he shares the psychology mister Beast uses to hook you. Phil and Caitlin are collaborators. They work together. I think you'll enjoy that episode. So if you wanna give that a shot, the link is in the show notes.

Jay Clouse [00:57:22]:
Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week.