#134: Mariah Coz – Selling high-ticket programs on evergreen (without sales calls)

Jay Clouse  00:00

A lot of creators dream of creating and selling an online course. But creating is the easy part. It's selling that's the hard part.

Mariah Coz  00:08

If you've ever talked to anyone about selling a $10,000, $20,000 offer, they'll tell you, you have to do sales calls. I was like, no, no, I'm definitely not gonna do that.

Jay Clouse  00:18

That's Mariah Coz, the founder of Fearless CEO, Mariah has spent the last seven years working closely with business owners on their courses, group programs, webinars, Evergreen funnels and more. But Mariah didn't love the launch model so she built a new method that she calls the High Ticket Hybrid.

Mariah Coz  00:34

I innovated a way to not do sales calls at scale and it worked like gangbusters. Everyone started asking, how are you doing that? Wait, what does that look like? What's the strategy? People were like blown away.

Jay Clouse  00:47

As a result of the High Ticket Hybrid and its popularity, Mariah has been able to step off the treadmill of constantly creating new free content.

Mariah Coz  00:55

I literally eliminated the need for like high volume list building and audience growth, which eliminated the need for a lot of these like common content marketing sort of strategies. I was like, I don't really want to do that.

Jay Clouse  01:08

So in this episode, you'll learn how Mariah thinks about pricing, how to design your own High Ticket Hybrid program, how to avoid sales calls, and why you may want to consider an evergreen offer. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. As you listen, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram @jayclouse. Tag me, say hello, let me know that you're listening, or leave a comment here on YouTube. And now let's talk with Mariah.

Mariah Coz  01:44

I really don't like following the rules. I don't like listening to other people telling me what to do. So I was definitely always like, I'm gonna have to start a business, there's no way I'm going to be able to like have a regular job. And one of the things I was really interested in, in going to school for, not traditional school, but going to very non traditional was, like sustainable building specifically at the time. This is back in like 2013 2014 I'm super super into like tiny houses and living in a camper. It was cool way before it was cool. Like I was like, it was like me and three other people were like the first people to be talking about this. That was really where I started like online. That was where I started a blog in that arena. And that was where I launched my first digital product. And I was super inspired by I'm sure you know, Nathan berry like back in the day. His his approach back in the day. And now I'm friends with Nathan. And it's great. I was like one of the first ConvertKit users like they're awesome. But back in the day reading his book, I was like, oh, okay, but my niche at the time was all around, you know, renovating campers living in vans, I lived in my car for a while renovate, you know, turn it into a camper van all through the lens of like, sustainable building. And so that was like my first website, blog content. And my first digital product was all about that. And it was the first one of its kind in that space, you know, people had been traveling to these in person building workshops, and in person, you know, workshops to get hands on experience. And I was like, you know, the input. And I had taught, I had taught the in person workshops, you know, dozens of times, I was a guest speaker and expert at, you know, all of those in person workshops. And eventually I was like, we can put this online, like, we could definitely translate this to an online thing. And people were like, you'll never be able to do that. Because people want to like learn how to build things in person. But there was definitely components of it that could be covered in an online format. I created my own courses, I collaborated with other people in that industry, with their courses about tiny houses and building sustainable systems and stuff like that. And that was really where I got started. And that became a successful, like business way beyond what I anticipated. I did not set out to be successful, I set out to like, you know, make enough money to live in my car, like I was not trying to I was not trying to be fancy. But it really became more successful. And then of course, what always happens is people start asking you, How are you doing that? Like, how did you you know, I was back in and this is back in like 2014 2015 I started my current business in 2015. It looked a lot different than but that was kind of the CUSP where people started asking like, how are you? How are you having this like a big affiliate program for your, you know, sustainable building course or like, how are you doing the marketing for it? Or how does that funnel work or like, people didn't even know what the word funnel meant, right? But like, people were just like, how are you promoting it? How are you selling this digital product? And everyone started asking me about it in that little tiny space. And then it sort of grew beyond that. And I realized that if I was going to talk about those topics, I had to put it on like a separate blog, a separate website, separate topic if I was gonna talk about business stuff. So in 2015, I created the, yeah, the website and the blog all around like business topics. And it totally just organically grew out of people asking me how I was doing the stuff that I had been doing in a very b2c niche had nothing to do with Make Money Online had nothing to do with like content creation, it had nothing to do with any of that. It was literally like, you know, helping people renovate and move into their old trailers that we had all gotten into.

Jay Clouse  05:40

At some point, I'm sure that you are sitting at this crossroads where you had the building blog, and then you had this online business blog. And they're probably roughly about the same size or success. And I'm not talking to Mariah cause the tiny home blogger right now, right, so talk to me about At what point did you decide, okay, I'm actually going to put all my focus over here, because I think a lot of people experience these moments of like, okay, I have a and b, which one do I choose?

Mariah Coz  06:12

I become very obsessive about things. And then I am like, totally sick of them and just want to move on and do the next thing. And I've always been like that, like, my personality is like that, to go all in on a topic, get super obsessed, become like the number one expert in it. And then I'm just like, No, no, literally, I'm like, I never want to talk about that again. And it's like a two to three year cycle. And so really, by the time that the pivot point, or like, by the time the sort of two intersecting axes started to collide, where it's like, okay, like the business blog is, is meeting and starting to exceed the other thing, and I did, I did both for a good while I did both at a certain point I was, it was more that I was just like, I feel very complete with that, like, I did that whole thing, I became the number one, you know, expert on that little niche topic. You know, it's like I did everything that I could do there. And I became bored. And so what's cool about the business space that we operate in now, is that I actually still go through go through these Ultimate Big like overhauls these innovations, these big like, kind of burn it down and build it up again, cycles, I still have that. But what's cool is that we can really innovate and do completely new things within the context of building a business and still talking about that topic. But like I said, like the topics I was talking about business related in 2015, or 2016, is so different than what I talked about now. And you can look back and really see like the pivot points, where it's like, I've been able to continue having that pattern that works for my personality of like, every two years, getting completely bored and burnt out on something, I never want to talk about it again, I did it seen it don't need to do that anymore. And then being able to like, kind of innovate the next thing. And so what's cool and lucky for me is that I've been able to continue doing that within like a frame that can be somewhat stable, rather than literally just like moving on to a completely new business, which, honestly, if it was, you know, there is probably a part of me that would start a brand new business and a brand new industry, you know, every other month if I had no constraints whatsoever.

Jay Clouse  08:30

Relatable.

Mariah Coz  08:31

Yeah.

Jay Clouse  08:31

If your current business was a book, and we broke down some of these pivot points as like chapters, what are some of the main chapters that stand out to you over the last, you know, six years, we're talking about when you transition to more of the business building type of content and offers, what were some of the things that you really dialed in on for a while, but maybe those chapters have completed or at least paused?

Mariah Coz  08:55

Yeah, you can definitely kind of go through, I call it like, let's hop in the Time Machine, like, right ride the time machine through the last seven years or whatever, however long it's been, but I think at first, you know, like many of us who, you know, I don't know how many of your listeners were, you know, in this online space back in 2014 2015 2016 2015. And 2016, I was very focused on launching very focused on like live launching, and these big, you know, big, big promotions a couple times a year, I was super focused on webinars, and specifically joint ventures and affiliates. Like I said, I came from having run, like my camper business was completely affiliate driven, like very partner, traffic driven. And so I replicated that in this space. And I did, gosh, I don't know dozens, maybe hundreds of joint venture affiliate webinars with other people, which is how I grew the business and my audience very, very quickly. And like I was mentioning to you before we came on here. I really feel like I learned everything about that from being in a touring pa unbanned before I started any of my businesses, like, I've lived many lives before, before this one, and one of those lives was being the singer in a touring punk band. And it's literally the same thing as setting up affiliate partnerships or joint venture webinars or anything like that, where, you know, you kind of have to call around other bigger bands and be like, Hey, will you let my band open for your band, so I can get exposed to your audience and your fans. And you hope that some of their fans are there to see them that they'll, you know, like the opening band and that kind of thing. And then you have to reciprocate as well. So, you know, I was also having to book shows for those other bands when they came into my city, and vice versa. And it's, it's this, like, big network of like booking, you know, booking shows for each other, and all that kind of thing. So it really is the same principle of, okay, well, I know how to get in front of other people's audiences when I was the singer in a band, and I would have to book these collaborations and, you know, do joint songs together and all this kind of thing. Like, it's the same thing, but with a webinar or with a blog post or with a podcast. Right, right. It's really the same kind of principle. And I applied that into the business world as well. So those first two years really focused on, you know, tons of live webinars, live launches. I mean, I was going hard. And I also burnt out hard. I did end up in hospital. I had I ended up with like, my Yeah, I was like, I was giving a webinar when my appendix burst, and I just like kept going. I went to the hospital after. Yes, yeah. When When, when pretty, pretty hard those first, you know, that first 18 months, and then was like, Whoa, like, I didn't really know, I don't think you really know what your limits are until you know, you. And if you asked me like, Oh, were you like, tired? Or were you like, grind? Like, I literally would have been like, No, I was happy. I was I was good. I had, I do not have an empty gauge. Like, I don't have that. It's just all of a sudden, one day, you just can't get out of bed and you're like, Oh, I guess I burned out. But I don't remember that happening.

Jay Clouse  12:11

I call that touching the stove. I always have to touch the stove to like, understand, okay, that's what that limit was. Right? And it's not the best way to learn things. Because I could be like, No, I'm getting near a stove, something feels warm. But no, you go all the way in you touch the stove.

Mariah Coz  12:25

No, you touch the stove, and then you get burned. And then you're like, oh, gosh, okay, so yeah, there was a, there's a lot of that and then switched and then made a pretty hard pivot to Evergreen. And that was where it literally became a thing where I was like, you know, a lot of people kind I think reached that point where they have been live launching for a long time. And I actually love live launching, and I love evergreen, I think they both like in my world, they both exist need to coexist in an ecosystem together. But that was when I made like a hard pivot to Evergreen. So I could take like an eight month sabbatical and just kind of take it easy and kind of restructure how we did things. So then for a couple years, really focused on putting our courses on evergreen. Now, up until this point, I had primarily been selling these business topic courses for anywhere between 500 to $1,500. That was kind of like 2016 to the end of 2017. Now, the next hard pivot happened January of 2018, was when I restructured my business again to charge high ticket for the first time. And so this is my next two years cycle was switching to you know, I'd had all these $1,000 courses, and switching to combining all of the courses and adding this very high touch coaching element which I've never done before. It just wasn't part of what we did, and you know, raised our prices to $10,000 at that time back in 2018. And that was kind of the next phase was really focusing on these higher touch higher ticket price point offers. And since then we have continued to to increase, increase, increase what high ticket means for us and our offers and the level of support that's included in that process figured out the thing that we become famous for and the thing that I invented in this industry is how to sell those high ticket offers without sales calls, which was kind of you know, in this industry if you're in if you've ever talked to anyone about selling a $10,000 or $20,000 offer, they'll tell you you have to do sales calls. I was like no, no, I'm definitely not gonna do that. I hate sales calls. I hate having anything on my calendar like this. The scheduled thing with uj is very, very rare but very exciting. vs. I like don't have anything on my calendar. I'm very picky about that. But I innovated a way to not do sales calls at scale and it worked like gangbusters. And then that of course became everyone started asking how are you doing that? Wait, what does that look like? What's the strategy people were like blown away? A. And so two years later that became the pivot. And it's like, Okay, the next innovation is again, it all grows very organically have i innovated something, I figured it out. And then people started asking you how you're doing it. And you can I mean, especially with what we now call the high ticket hybrid system, which is how we sell high ticket without sales calls. Especially with that I was extremely resistant to ever teaching it to other people. I was like, I don't really want to teach this. I don't really want this to be like, This is not our like our brand was all about creating kind of like lower ticket courses. In niches in b2c niches, like me with the camper stuff. I was very specific. I was like, I don't really work with other business coaches, like I don't really teach other business owners how to do business strategy. That's not my bad. Like I focus on the b2c niches that are not business related, because that's my experience. But eventually, it just became so like, again, people are just begging you to tell them. And so I created a little pilot program for that. And then a few months later, there was like, 300 people in that group. And it became, again, it kind of became the next pivot, organically grew into the next iteration. And yeah, so those are kind of the phases of like going through a lot of different innovations, even though it's within the same category. It feels like I had four different completely different business models in that time, you know?

Jay Clouse  16:29

Yeah, that's, that's a lot of great context. So let me go back and clarify a few things that you said, just to make sure that everybody listening watching this are on the same page. So you've used a couple of different phrases that are kind of like binaries. So let's, let's talk about low ticket versus high ticket, how would you separate those two things for people who aren't familiar with that terminology yet?

Mariah Coz  16:50

So true and I really want to say it, like everyone is welcome to define price points in whatever categories they want. For them. I do think that depending on your niche, like high ticket in some niches might be $2,000. But in other niches, $2,000 is like low, low ticket mid ticket, so it depends on your niche. But for me, low ticket is like $20 to $200. Mid ticket, like premium course is like 200 to $2,000. And then anything 2500 or $3,000 and up 3000 30,000 $60,000 And up, that's high ticket for me. Those are kind of the categories like low ticket premium signature, offer land and then like high ticket.

Jay Clouse  17:33

And can you also give that same type of primer for live launches versus evergreen sales?

Mariah Coz  17:39

Yes, I totally meant to do that while I was talking and then just kept going kept going on a rock keeping track. Yeah. So for those of you who aren't super familiar, basically an open closed enrollment window, where you open the enrollment for your course. And then the doors close and cart closes and you end enrollment until maybe three to six months later, you'll open it up to the public again. And during that time in between you're just serving your students and answering their questions and you know, running your course. But you're not always marketing it always enrolling people and then evergreen is open enrollment all throughout the year. But evergreen refers to both a marketing kind of strategy on the marketing and enrollment side, like how are you? How are you? What are the systems that you have in place to enroll students or clients into your courses all the time, but also the delivery side? Like what are your systems and onboarding processes and onboarding processes in place for introducing if you have a new student or a new client, joining your group or joining your course every single day? You also need the like delivery systems for having new people come in through automation? And how do they start the course and how do they know where to go and where's their orientation materials and all that kind of thing. So it has to do with the marketing and the delivery. But evergreen means that you have the systems in place to be able to enroll and onboard and serve those students in your courses every single day of the year, Whenever someone's ready to join.

Jay Clouse  19:11

After a quick break, Mariah and I talk about pricing trends in online courses. And later we dig into how you can construct your own high ticket program. So stick around, we'll be right back.

Jay Clouse  19:21

Welcome back to my conversation with Mariah Coz. Over the last few years, I've noticed that course prices seem to be decreasing across the board. Courses that used to be $300 or more seemed to be coming down in price. Since Mariah worked so closely with course creators I asked her if she's been seeing the same.

Mariah Coz  19:37

I think you might be looking at you what you might be noticing isn't necessarily that what used to be a what used to be considered a premium course has been like lowered in price but I think what you might be seeing is the rise in low ticket offers used as lead generation so they're actually like two different categories when I say like, low ticket to me And in our business, we call it low ticket lead gen offers $20 to $200. It's actually like a loss leader. And part of the reason for that is the increase in AD costs over the last few years. And so someone might still have like, oh, like you said, there's 300 to $500 used to be what you think of as a course price. There are still those 300 to $500 courses, but what you're seeing is that on the front end of these people's funnels, or of these people's marketing strategies, they've added a 20, or 30, or $100, front end offer that people come in to first, and then you don't see the $500 offer until you're, you know, in the funnel, you're getting, you're seeing an upsell, you're seeing, you know, a promotion for that on the back end. And part of that shift has been their husband and explosion in the popularity of these low ticket loss leader lead generation offers that their core purpose is to essentially like breakeven on ad spend, or to attract, you know, someone who pays even just $20 for your mini course, before they buy the regular course is going to be more qualified, more warmed up ready to go. And people seeing that change in buyer behavior. So I wonder if what you're seeing is definitely there. But I don't know that it's like, oh, what used to be a $300 course has now been like, priced down to a $50 course, I think that that person probably said, oh, I need to add a $50 front end to my offer suite and to my ecosystem of products, because there that's going to lead to my $300 course, and then my $3,000 coaching program, that's what I think you might be seeing, because there has been an explosion of those. And we use those very successfully, they do work to have someone come in and buy a $20 workshop. And then like for us seamlessly upgrade into a $20,000 offer. So it definitely works. And I wonder if you're seeing more and more of those.

Jay Clouse  21:56

Super possible. A lot of the circles that I kind of swim in. I don't I'm not very close to a lot of creators who have figured the ads thing out yet. They're not even thinking in terms of like the ROI on adspend. And the cost of this course are like, I'm launching my first course, where do I price it? They seem to just be landing, just looking around, like where are you pricing it, I guess it's like 150 to $200. Like, I'm just seeing a lot more of those as like a first product.

Mariah Coz  22:24

It could be I mean, that's where I started. I definitely started in that in that price range, I was like, Oh $100 is the most I can charge. So I think that's definitely true for like creators who are just getting started with like pricing and mindset, they're like, ah, charging money is so hard. So I totally understand starting at $100. And then, you know, a few years later, that same course that you launched for $100. Now $1,000. With with the upgrades and evolution of it, I think that could be totally true. I also kind of get the feeling that for creators, there's more of a volume that they have, like they have an audience write primarily. And they have volume in that audience of subscribers or listeners or something like that. Whereas I might be working with a course creator or an expert or a coach who has a smaller audience that they're starting with. And so pricing is very crucial. If you don't have a huge, you know, 10,000 followers on YouTube.

Jay Clouse  23:20

Yeah, so interesting, because I would agree with that. Also, that's like the model they see and they assume is what needs to work. But none of this stuff is as new as a lot of creators getting started, I think that it is, you know, like you're coming from a very mathematical standpoint where like you can you can just do the math and see, like, if we have this type of cost of acquisition, this is where the price needs to be met makes a lot of sense. A lot of people getting started, like, I have people paying attention to me, I should make some money from that, like still figuring out how to do that. But like a lot of the stuff has been figured out. It was just before we had this term creators, and we're talking about these things so.

Mariah Coz  23:59

Well, and also they probably like, again, I haven't been the person who did start with, you know, a $50 offer $100 offer and then very slowly rent raised my prices over years and years, there is this belief that it is easier it is going to like if you're just starting out with selling and marketing, you're like, I don't want to have to do that I don't like selling marketing, I want to be as like hands off as possible. And so there's a belief, which turns out is not true, but there's a belief that it will be easier to sell that their product at $100 than it would be to sell it at $500. And so they think it's going to be more work or more convincing or more difficult that they would get a lot less people at $500 than at $100. And it turns out, you know, from from, you know, however many years of personal experience, it's not harder to sell something for $10,000 than it is to sell something for $500 It's actually not harder. It's just different and there's Definitely been times and seasons in my business and life where it was, gosh, a million times easier to sell something at a higher price point that includes more support and more value and what people are really looking for, versus trying to convince someone to spend $100 on something that they may not need. You know, if they see something for $10,000 That's exactly what they want, then that's what it is.

Jay Clouse  25:24

For people listening to this who are hearing you walk through this and throw out some use numbers like $10,000 high ticket offer and they're thinking themselves gosh, I want that. Are there anybody for whom a high ticket offer is a bad option? Like when should I be thinking to myself I don't think high ticket offers work for me in my business.

Mariah Coz  25:44

Yeah, I think that if you hate talking to people you won't so like the high ticket offers that I'm there's different ways you could design yours right? High Ticket offers usually include like course content and curriculum combined with coaching feedback, personalized support, maybe your offer includes like a one on one call, maybe it doesn't definitely doesn't have to and I even have clients whose high ticket offers include like a done for you element like a done for you tech setup or a done for you video, you know copywriting or done for you website or something like that. Like there's all these different elements that you can mix and match to build out your ideal high ticket offer. But high ticket does mean higher support. And that can either mean calls group voice messaging done for you, it can mean a lot of different things. But if you're like I want the most hands off, I cannot talk to people, I will not be able to support anyone individually, if that's where you're at which again, there was like a time in my life, especially when I was doing all the camper stuff, where I was literally like traveling full time, there was no way for me to like zoom calls weren't a thing, there wouldn't have been possible to do that from the road, and like campgrounds and stuff. So that was not possible. So if if you're in a situation where you really can't or aren't interested in, I think personality wise, there are some people who really shouldn't do a high ticket offer because they don't want to support people in that way they want to create and then they want to put it out there and then they like don't want to hear people's feedback about it. Which is cool. That's fine. I totally get that I have definitely had seasons in my business like that as well. But in terms of like niche and stuff I have yet I mean, we have people teaching high ticket, you know, with $10,000 high ticket offers teaching belly dancing and BDSM and relationships and language and how to draw hieroglyphics, like all sorts of really cool, yeah, like really cool niche items that are not just how to make more money.

Jay Clouse  27:46

As I'm listening to this, I'm putting myself in the shoes of a lot of my audience, people that are in my membership, and even myself if I'm honest. And part of the hang up, I feel when I think about okay, what does a $10,000 per year offer look like in my world in part of the head trash that I have been thinking about that is that I sell other products and services that are far less than that and give a lot of myself. So it's hard to think of? How do I 10x this other experience in terms of price? If I'm giving so much of myself over here? Do you see that with your clients where people are maybe it's underpricing, maybe, I don't know. But that's that's a hang up. I feel so can you can you help me throw that head trash into the actual trash?

Mariah Coz  28:33

Yeah, and you know, it's not even head trash. It's literally just logistics that you have that we have to like figure out I've helped hundreds and hundreds of people make this transition where essentially 90% of people who come to me, they're like already delivering high ticket value, and they're delivering at a high ticket level, but they are so grossly under charging, like they are they're severely under charging, and they are charging low ticket prices for high ticket delivery. And they just don't know, you know, just like how we all have done that, right. Like we've all launched courses and charge $200 and included like one on one calls and group coaching and all this stuff. We just didn't know any better. I've done that, right. So as we grow, we just have to adjust. And you have to make like we do this all the time with our clients, we have to make these logistical plans of like, it's not like you've did anything wrong. However, going forward, your you know, $500 course is not going to include personal feedback and coaching with you anymore. That's not something like the $500 course, it should include content and curriculum and it should include a group, but it's not going to include access to Jay it's not going to include coaching calls. It's not gonna include personalized feedback, blah, blah, blah, right? And so you actually have to adjust those inclusions so that you say okay, that's now a separate offer. Here's what's included in that going forward. You make a plan, we call it sunsetting. You make a sunset plan for like, Okay, how are we going to phase out that part of things like this happens all the time because a lot of times people come to us As. And they had made the mistake of offering lifetime access to their digital products, which is not something we recommend. And it's something we do, mostly because I care about people getting results. And we know for a fact that if you give them lifetime access, they'll procrastinate as long as possible, and they'll never do it. So we find that giving people a set access, like 12 months or something really just keeps them motivated. It's enough time to, you know, take your time, but not enough time to completely forget about it and not get any value, which is tempting when you have lifetime access. So really, it's more of a logistical thing of like, we need to shift what you're charging for that amount of energy. And we're probably going to like separate some of the elements that you've been offering and all of your things. So that now it's like, oh, the only way to get this type of support is here now. And this looks different.

Jay Clouse  30:51

This is so fun. I feel like I get to play like the faux objector. And you just get to overcome my objections as an interviewer. Just like what you do all day, right, here's, here's another thought that I have. So if I'm listening to this, I'm like, okay, high ticket offer. That sounds fun. That sounds like me, I could see myself doing a group coaching program. When I started thinking about a high ticket group coaching program, the fear creeps in of, can I get enough people for there to be a group, like how many people need to be in a group to feel like this product launch was a success? Because group coaching makes you think like multiple people? Do I have multiple people in my audience now that are warmed up to the point where they would pay $10,000 per year? And would they all do it at the same point in time? How would you address somebody who's feeling that fear right now?

Mariah Coz  31:39

Yeah, I mean, we all start with a small group at first, my first first ever so like, I told you, my pricing shifted, like, from one week to the next, like December 2017, my highest price was like 1200 $1,500, January 1, we didn't sell those things anymore. And it was now $10,000 To work with us that first first group, five people, and that wasn't now this is coming from a person who had had $400,000 launches before of their, you know, self study courses. So was getting five people into my $10,000 offer was that the biggest launch I'd ever had? No, definitely not. But it was enough validation, and enough of that little seed for me to be like, you know, I could have said, Oh, I only made $50,000, from the high ticket launch, I only got five people, you know, I should go back to launching low ticket courses, because I made hundreds and hundreds of $1,000 Every time I launched those. But I was like, that's the starting point, that's the little seat those first five people gonna give those five people the best experience of their life. And those five people are just the beginning, because then I'm gonna have the program on evergreen, where who's to say that next month, I don't get another five people. And then the month after that, I get another five. And then a month after that I got 10, the month after that I got 12. So you begin to have rolling enrollment, and it all sort of starts to stack up. So you know, financially speaking, I don't know where the line is for you. And I tell every one of my clients to be like pick a threshold that makes it worthwhile for you to say this is enough validation that I can keep going with this, I can keep tweaking this, I can keep I can put it on evergreen enrollment, so I can keep inviting people to join, maybe it wasn't the best time for everyone to join. But if you can get those three to five people a month later, you could get another three to five, and then another three to five. And then all of a sudden you got 3040 50 people in your group. And it takes off from there. So I wonder like, I think for me, it was really scary to go from $1,200 course to $10,000 offer with no like validation of that. But those those first five people I was like, this is this is the seed This is the beginning.

Jay Clouse  33:55

What were the bounds you put on that $10,000 offer? Was that a time bound program? Was that a year? Did it recur? How big was the delivery?

Mariah Coz  34:04

So actually, that very first time, it was just a nine, it was like a nine or 10 week program. It was like the first round of it. And I thought I thought in my head, this is going to be a nine or 10 week program. And then by the end of the 10 weeks, I was like we have so much more to do so then I extended it to 12 weeks. And then at the end of the 12 weeks, I was like we could just keep going because I had helped everyone launch their course in those 10 weeks. And then I was like, Oh my gosh, there's so much else I want to show them. There's so many like optimizations I want to do with them. There's so many things. So that was when I realized this could be a 12 month program. Now I don't think there's anything I think I think that anything between eight weeks to 12 months is great and there's no set rule about that. We ended up having a 12 month offer but I've also done it with six month containers done it with three month containers done it with eight week containers. It's you know Hi ticket doesn't have to deal with a timeframe it has to do with the outcome and the result that people get and the support that you're offering them. So even though I ended up turning that into a 12 month offer, the initial version of it was like 10 weeks.

Jay Clouse  35:13

When we come back, Mariah and I talk about how to construct your own High Ticket Hybrid course. So stick around.

Jay Clouse  35:20

Hey, welcome back. For creators who are creating a cohort based course or a group coaching program, it can be hard to know how long to make the experience last four weeks, 12 weeks, somewhere in the middle, I didn't know. So I asked Mariah to walk us through the decision.

Mariah Coz  35:33

Number one is you have to design your container to be make sense for your like, please don't create a 12 month offer. If realistically, everyone could achieve the result in three months, that's just not necessary, it doesn't help anyone. So make sure that depending on what you actually are designing your offer to deliver and what the outcome will be. Choose a timeframe that's realistic, instead of just like giving them this extended time to like wallow, and, like languish, essentially, number two is that's why evergreen is so great actually is because on evergreen new people, or let's say you get a new client joining this group every week, every single week, there's a new chance for someone who fell behind and felt like they lost track. And they, they they they lost, you know, they're off the calendar and they lost track and they don't know where they are. And there's now a chance for them to be like, That's my new buddy, we're starting from square one together. I'm not behind, I'm now the expert because this person just joined and they know nothing and I got stuck at week two, so I am going to get started with them again. So every single week or every day or every month, there's a chance for anyone who fell behind or got stuck for them to restart with these new people who are coming in, which is one of the reasons of really like the delivery of evergreen, it's like so motivating because they see new fresh people come in who are excited. They're like, okay, I can jump on to their energy and like get started again, they're never really the last one, you know, they're never really that far behind. And then I do think that this is one of the most challenging parts of coaching and having these more connected deeper relationships with clients is finding out for you personally, where that line is between like proactively trying to pull people back into the program, or reengage people versus focusing on the people who are swimming towards you focusing on the people who are showing up focusing your energy on those who are, you know, self motivated. And it's especially challenging for me personally, because I am so self motivated. I would never ever expect someone to like, reach out to me and ask me where I've been, I would never expect someone to like hold me I hate the word accountability. I think it's so Oh, I just hate that word. I don't understand it. I am just a personally very self motivated person, I would never need that. So it's very challenging for me to understand that there are other people with different patterns than me. And I don't understand that. I don't understand why if you wanted the result, you wouldn't just show up for yourself. So I kind of have a personal chip on my shoulder about that. I think there's just a line there where you have to decide as the coach, how much are you going to pursue, like keeping people on track and engaging them and trying to like force people to get stuff done? versus just being like, Look, you either want it or you don't? I'm not your mom. I don't know.

Jay Clouse  38:28

Now I'm gonna put on the hat of somebody listening to this who has an existing offer that they're doing periodically as like a live launch. So if I have some call it two months experience and part of that experience has guided curriculum that I go through and I'm thinking okay, I want to make this evergreen Am I literally starting from you know, week one, quote unquote, every time somebody joins like, do I need to schedule the week one curriculum session every time somebody joins, are you?

Mariah Coz  39:00

Oh, no.

Jay Clouse  39:01

Recommending, like, phased, like, okay, when and now this group is starting over, like how does that actually work in an evergreen situation with curriculum?

Mariah Coz  39:09

Everyone is just going at their own pace, and everything should be pre recorded. So like when people let's say, because we have this to the first eight weeks of our pro, like, even though it's a 12 month program, people can join, we have like two different timeframes. But people can join for 12 months, but the first eight weeks are like a very structured like, here's exactly what to do in your first eight weeks. And then after that, it's a little more choose your own adventure. Once you have the foundation's down, but those first eight weeks people join, and it's all like pre recorded content. So they start going through their pre recorded content, they start getting the automated check in emails. So there's a sequence of emails designed around those first eight weeks and they start getting those when they enroll. And then they're, you know, they are told exactly where to show up for their first call. But like I said, we're not doing anything manually. It's not like oh, we're not delivering any content live. Week to week, we're not I mean, you might do that during your pilot session, your first ever round. But after that everything is pre recorded, everything is in the portal, everything is automated, all your emails are automated and people can get them on a one to one basis, then they can hop into whatever like there's, you know, weekly call or bi weekly call, they can hop on to the next call from wherever they're starting from. And for us, we like it to be self paced, like I don't like to drip content I like to have some people will work through the eight weeks in two weeks, some people can work through the eight weeks, in two months, you know, or is it it's two months, but whatever. You know, people can work through it however they want, I'm not going to be a stickler about that people are adults, they can do whatever they want. But they can then start coming to the calls and asking questions and getting support and all that kind of stuff. So I think there's a lot this is why the delivery of evergreen is the whole side of the conversation that everyone talks about evergreen marketing and sales, but they don't really talk about the back end. And it's so important that like you've automated that piece of it so people can seamlessly like join into a group that already exists. And once you have that going, there's nothing weird about you know, people are joining all the time. So it's just like, oh, cool, welcome. You're on week one, like, have fun. That's where I used to be blah, blah, blah.

Jay Clouse  41:16

I've heard you talk about early decision options as something to think about when people are joining on Evergreen. And the challenge that a lot of people think of when they think about going to Evergreen is how do we get people to make a decision now at all without creating some sort of like, real urgency. So whether it's early decision options, or whether it's some other method, I would love to hear your favorite ways to get people to make a decision to opt in when there's no actual like deadline urgency.

Mariah Coz  41:49

Yeah, so we actually do have an evergreen decision, like time frame. So people once they come into the funnel, they'll have like seven days to make a decision to join or not if they don't decide to join during that time, there's a few things that can happen and choosing and this is this is one of the main things of understanding evergreen doesn't just mean that you slap your sales page up on your website, and you're just like, it's open 24/7 For everyone, no matter what like, for us there's a process, especially for our for high ticket programs. There's an application where we genuinely review every person's application, so people apply. And then if they're accepted, it's like here, you have seven days to make a decision to enroll. Here's how to get all your questions answered before you enroll. Here's all the information about the program, let us know how we can help you and blah, blah, blah. So the whole thing here is that like choosing the Evergreen incentive, like the Evergreen enrollment incentive that you're going to use needs to be aligned with your brand. And it's different for everyone. So I'll give you a couple of examples. One could be like an expiring bonus, but could be bonus content that hey, if you join in the next seven days to get access to this extra bonus content after that you can still join later, but you're not going to get that bonus content. Sometimes as a bonus one on one call that, you know, if you join during that enrollment window, then you get a bonus one on one call, if not cool, you can still join in the future. But you're not going to get that one on one call. One of the things we've we've tried as a bonus that works well is like extending a timeframe. Especially let's say you have a three month program. Sometimes people are like, Oh, I really want to join but right now isn't the best time for me. I'm going on vacation next week, can I join next month, blah, blah, blah. So in that case, giving someone the bonus of one additional month of access as a gift is a really nice bonus. And that's very effective because it overcomes the timing issue that someone might have as well. A lot of people ask, Oh, Mariah, do you do like pricing? In? You know, do you ever do a discount if you join in the first seven days? And then after that for high ticket? No. For low ticket courses? Yes, we definitely have done that type of thing where it's like, oh, you have seven days to get the course for $500. And then it's $600. After that we don't do that for high ticket. Because for high ticket pricing is already like a big component of the decision. I don't really want to introduce more variables around the price being an objective, or an objection. So I just kind of want to be like, this is the price. But maybe there's a bonus that expires or some special access or something like that, then it's really about finding the incentive that's going to work best for your audience is really going to be unique to each business and brand.

Jay Clouse  44:29

You mentioned that you don't make a ton of content and that in fact, you don't love making like a bunch of free content, I should say like where you're like, Hey, I'm just gonna be a public loudmouth on Twitter the way I am. How do you get people into your world so consistently to make this such a profitable, successful program?

Mariah Coz  44:48

When we switched to high ticket, I kind of stopped doing content and I did I it was kind of like a whole shift of like, look, I don't know if all these likes freebies and free blog posts are going to attract the same client who was buying like our $500 courses. Before that, we now want to we're attracting 10 or $20,000 clients, how does our content marketing and our marketing need to shift in order to shift with that, and so it no longer became volume, like volume is not our was not our thing anymore, I literally eliminated the need for like high volume list building and audience growth. I was like, I don't really want to do that. And so by going high ticket, it's like, okay, now you only need a small small amount of clients for it to be very successful, and to meet your goals, and you're serving on a much higher level. So I kind of eliminated the need for volume, which eliminated the need for a lot of these like common content marketing sort of strategies. And so what, what we shifted to while we started running ads, we finally, like figured out ads, and this was in like, 2019, we started running ads successfully. After years and years of failing miserably at running ads, you kind of hit a moment, too, not everyone. But for me, I hit a moment where I was like, I have arc, I have hundreds of articles and videos and podcasts like an archive a body of work that like I don't need to create any more, there's no need for me to say more, I just need more eyeballs to find this. And that's where ads came in. For us. That was one of the ways and then we started doing in 2020. Literally just because of COVID we had to pit we used to do in person events. And they're really small. It was like 20 people, you know, small in person events. And in 2020, we were forced to cancel all the events, and we had to bring them online. And in that process, we like accidentally discovered this huge thing for our business, which became like this huge lead generator for us of selling, you know, 20 to $40 tickets to these virtual events, we would get 1000s of people to show up and sign up and buy tickets. And that became a huge, like lead generator for us. And then we took the recordings of those events, and we put them on Evergreen. And then it became so what we talked about the beginning with like, oh, maybe you're seeing people with their like low ticket lead generator offers. That's what we did. We did these big virtual events with like $40 for a ticket, hundreds or 1000s of people would sign up, huge for lead gen for us and then turn around and put those recordings out on evergreen. We could keep buying them for 30 or $40 for the recordings. And that would bring in people all the time as well. So it's I don't do like free we a little bit this year we dabbled for like two months, we like dabbled in free content again. And then immediately I was like nope, nope, nope, nope. Not doing this. So yeah, we basically do these like low, very low ticket but very excessively priced, virtual events, or evergreen offers that are like I said even 10 or $20 to me is better than free. So yeah, I just can't I can't keep up with doing anything like consistently or weekly.

Jay Clouse  48:09

I love a good sales conversation and in this episode, Mariah really delivered. If you wanna learn more about Mariah and the High Ticket Hybrid, you can visit her website at fearlessceo.com. The link to that is in the show notes. Thanks to Mariah for being on the show. Thank you to Connor Conaboy for editing this episode and Brian Skeel for creating our music. Thank you to Emily Clouse for our artwork and Nathan Todhunter for mixing the audio. If you love this episode, you can tweet @jayclouse and let me know. If you really want to say thank you, please leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week.