Jay Clouse [00:00:00]:
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 [00:00:08]:
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.

Jay Clouse [00:00:18]:
That's Mariah Cause, the founder of Fearless CEO. Mariah has spent the last 7 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 [00:00:34]:
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 [00:00:47]:
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 [00:00:55]:
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 wanna do that.

Jay Clouse [00:01:08]:
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 at jklaus. 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 [00:01:44]:
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 gonna be able to, like, have a regular job. And one of the things I was really interested in and going to school for, not traditional school, but going to very nontraditional, was, like, sustainable building, specifically living in a camper.

Jay Clouse [00:02:15]:
Wow. Before it was cool.

Mariah Coz [00:02:16]:
Way before it was cool. Like, I was like it was like me and 3 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 Barry, like back in the day. So 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.

Mariah Coz [00:02:44]:
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, turned 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 in per and I had taught I had taught the in person workshops, you know, dozens of times. I was a guest speaker, an expert at, you know, all of those in person workshops.

Mariah Coz [00:03:32]:
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 wanna, 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.

Mariah Coz [00:04:09]:
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 then, 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 gonna 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 the website and the blog all around, like, business topics.

Mariah Coz [00:05:18]:
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 b to c 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 [00:05:40]:
At some point, I'm sure that you were sitting at this cross roads where you had the the building blog and then you had this 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.

Mariah Coz [00:05:59]:
Right.

Jay Clouse [00:06:00]:
So talk to me about at what point did you decide, okay, I'm actually gonna 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 [00:06:12]:
I become very obsessive about things and then I am like totally sick of them and just wanna move on and do the next thing. And I've always been like that. Like, my personality is like that. I 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. No. I'm like, I never wanna talk about that again. And it's like a 2 to 3 year cycle.

Mariah Coz [00:06:34]:
And so really by the time that the, pivot point or like by the time the sort of 2 intersecting axes started to collide where it's like, okay, like, the business blog 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 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 these ultimate big, like, overhauls, these innovations, these big, like, kind of burn it down and build it up again cycles.

Mariah Coz [00:07:27]:
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 talk 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 2 years getting completely bored and burnt out on something. I never wanna 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 in a brand new industry, you know, every other month if I had no constraints whatsoever.

Jay Clouse [00:08:30]:
Relatable. Yeah. 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, 6 years we're talking about when you transitioned to more of the 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 [00:08:56]:
Yeah. You can definitely kinda go through I call it, like, let's hop in the time machine. Like, ride ride the time machine through the last 7 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 of 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 the 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 100 of joint venture affiliate webinars with other people, which is how I grew the business and my audience very, very quickly.

Mariah Coz [00:09:51]:
And like I was mentioning to you be before we came on here, I really feel like I learned everything about that from being in a touring punk band 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 kinda 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 who 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 a 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.

Mariah Coz [00:11:09]:
Right?

Jay Clouse [00:11:09]:
Right.

Mariah Coz [00:11:09]:
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 the hospital. I had I ended up with, like, my yeah. It was, like, I, was giving a webinar when my appendix burst and I just, like, kept going.

Jay Clouse [00:11:34]:
No. And then, like,

Mariah Coz [00:11:35]:
went to the hospital after. Yes. No. Yes. Yeah. When when when pretty, pretty hard those first, you know, that first 18 months and then was like, woah. Like, I didn't really know I don't think you really know what your limits are until Yes. You know, you and it and if you asked me, like, oh, were you, like, tired or were you, like, grind like, I literally would have been, like, no.

Mariah Coz [00:11:56]:
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 [00:12:11]:
I call that touching the stove. I always have to touch the stove to, like, understand, okay, that's what that limit was.

Mariah Coz [00:12:17]:
Right.

Jay Clouse [00:12:17]:
And it's not the best way to learn things because I could be, like, I'm getting near a stove. Something feels warm, but no. You you go all the way and you touch the stove.

Mariah Coz [00:12:25]:
No. You touch the stove and then you get burned, and then you're like, oh, gosh. Okay. So, yeah, there was a there was 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 kinda, I think, reached that point where they've 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 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 8 month sabbatical and just kinda take it easy and kind of restructure how we did things. So then for a couple of years, really focused on putting our courses on evergreen.

Mariah Coz [00:13:07]:
Now, up until this point, I had primarily been selling these business topic courses for anywhere between 500 to $1500. 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 2 year 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 had 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've 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.

Mariah Coz [00:14:28]:
I'm definitely not gonna do that. I hate sales calls. I hate having anything on my calendar. Like, this this scheduled thing with you, Jay, is very rare, but very exciting. Yes. 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.

Mariah Coz [00:15:00]:
And so 2 years later, that became the pivot. And it's like, okay, the next innovation is again, it all grows very organically of, I I innovated something, I figured it out, and then people started asking 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 b to c 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 bag.

Mariah Coz [00:15:50]:
Like, I focus on the b to c 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 4 different completely different business models in that time, you know?

Jay Clouse [00:16:29]:
Yeah. That's a 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 you've used a couple of different phrases that are kind of like binaries. Oh, yes. 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 [00:16:50]:
So true. And I really wanna 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 25100 or $3,000 and up, 3,000, 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 [00:17:33]:
And can you also give that same type of primer for live launches versus evergreen sales?

Mariah Coz [00:17:39]:
Yes. I totally meant to do that while I was talking and then just kept going kept going on a roll.

Jay Clouse [00:17:43]:
I'm keeping track.

Mariah Coz [00:17:44]:
Yeah. So for those of you who aren't super familiar, basically, an open close enrollment window where you open the enrollment for your course and then the doors close and cart closes and you end enrollment until maybe 3 to 6 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 and 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 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 offboarding 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 the 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 [00:19:11]:
After a quick break, Mariah and I talk about pricing trends and online courses. And later, we dig into how you can construct your own high ticket program. So stick around. We'll be right back. 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 seem to be coming down in price. Since Mariah works so closely with course creators, I asked her if she's been seeing the same.

Mariah Coz [00:19:37]:
I think you might be looking at 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 2 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 a $100 front end offer that people come into 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 there has been an explosion in the popularity of these low ticket loss leader, lead generation offers that their core $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.

Mariah Coz [00:21:12]:
So I wonder if what you're seeing, it's 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, you know, products because there that's gonna 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 [00:21:56]:
Super possible. A lot of the circles that I kinda 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 ad spend and the cost of this course. They're 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? And, like, I guess, it's like a 150 to $200. Like, I'm just seeing a lot more of those as like a first product.

Mariah Coz [00:22:24]:
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, charging money is so hard. So I totally understand starting at a $100 and then, you know, a few years later, that same course that you launched for a $100 now, a1000 dollars, with with the upgrades and evolution of it. I think that could be totally true.

Mariah Coz [00:22:52]:
I also kinda get the feeling that for creators, there's more of a volume that they like, they have an audience, right, 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 your YouTube.

Jay Clouse [00:23:20]:
Yeah. It's so interesting because I I would agree with that also. That's, like, the model they see and they assume is what needs to work, but none of the 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, the 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. That makes a lot of sense. A lot of people getting started are like, I have people paying attention to me. I should make some money from that. Like, still figuring out how to how to do that.

Jay Clouse [00:23:52]:
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 [00:23:59]:
Well, and also, they probably, like again, I having been the person who did start with, you know, a $50 offer, a $100 offer, and then very slowly raised my prices over years years, There is this belief that it is easier. It is gonna like, if you're just starting out with selling and marketing, you're like, I don't wanna have to do that. I don't like selling and 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 a $100 than it would be to sell it at $500. And so they think it's gonna 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.

Mariah Coz [00:24:57]:
It's just different. And there's definitely been times and seasons in my business in life where it was, gosh, a 1000000 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 a $100 on something that they may not need. You know, if they see something for $10,000 is exactly what they want, then that's what it is.

Jay Clouse [00:25:24]:
For people listening to this who are hearing you walk through this and throw out these numbers, like Mhmm. $10,000 high ticket offer, and they're thinking themselves, gosh, I 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 [00:25:44]:
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 1 on 1 call. Maybe it doesn't. It 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 web site 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.

Mariah Coz [00:26:23]:
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 wanna support people in that way.

Mariah Coz [00:27:12]:
They wanna create and then they wanna put it out there and then they, like, don't wanna 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 [00:27:46]:
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? And 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 10 x 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 under pricing, maybe I don't know. But that's that's the hang up I feel. So Yes. Can you can you help me throw that head trash into the actual

Mariah Coz [00:28:33]:
trash? Yeah. And, you know, it's not even head trash. It's literally just logistics that you that we have to, like, figure out. I've helped 100 and 100 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 undercharging. Like, they are they're severely undercharging, 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 charged $200 and included like 1 on 1 calls and group coaching and all this stuff. We just didn't know any better.

Mariah Coz [00:29:10]:
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 where we have to make these logistical plans of, like, it's not like you 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 in 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 going to include personalized feedback, blah, blah, blah. Right? And so you actually have to adjust those inclusions so that you say, okay.

Mariah Coz [00:29:47]:
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 gonna phase out that part of things? Like, this happens all the time because a lot of times people come to us and they had made the mistake of offering lifetime access to their digital products, which is not something we recommend and not 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.

Mariah Coz [00:30:24]:
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 in 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 [00:30:51]:
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 interview. That's what I do.

Mariah Coz [00:31:00]:
Just just

Jay Clouse [00:31:00]:
like what you do all day.

Mariah Coz [00:31:02]:
Right.

Jay Clouse [00:31:02]:
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 start 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.

Mariah Coz [00:31:26]:
Mhmm.

Jay Clouse [00:31:27]:
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

Mariah Coz [00:31:39]:
now? 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 1 week to the next. Like, December 2017, my highest price was, like, 1200, $1500. January 1st, we didn't sell those things anymore, and it was now $10,000 to work with us. That first first group, 5 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 5 people into my $10,000 offer, was that the biggest launch I'd ever had? No.

Mariah Coz [00:32:18]:
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 5 people. You know, I should go back to launching low ticket courses because I made 100 and 100 of $1,000 every time I launch those. But I was, like, that's the starting point. That's the little seat, those first five people. I'm gonna give those 5 people the best experience of their life. And those 5 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 5 people.

Mariah Coz [00:32:56]:
And then the month after that, I get another 5. And then the 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 3 to 5 people a month later, you could get another 3 to 5 and then another 3 to 5.

Mariah Coz [00:33:34]:
And then all of a sudden you've got 30, 40, 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 $1200 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 [00:33:55]:
What 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 how how big was the delivery?

Mariah Coz [00:34:05]:
So, actually, that very first time, it was just a 9 it was like a 9 or 10 week program. It was like the first round of it, and I thought I thought in my head, this is gonna be a 9 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 wanna show them. There's so many, like, optimizations I wanna do with them. There's so many things.

Mariah Coz [00:34:37]:
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 8 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 6 month containers, done it with 3 month containers, done it with 8 week containers. It's you know, high ticket doesn't have to do with a time frame. 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 [00:35:13]:
When we come back, Mariah and I talk about how to construct your own high ticket hybrid course. So stick around. 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. 4 weeks? 12 weeks? Somewhere in the middle? I didn't know. So I asked Mariah to walk us through the decision.

Mariah Coz [00:35:33]:
Number 1 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 3 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 time frame that's realistic instead of just, like, giving them this extended time to, like, wallow and, like, languish, essentially. Number 2 is that's why Evergreen is so great actually is because on Evergreen, new people are 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 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 1 together.

Mariah Coz [00:36:30]:
I'm not behind. I'm now the expert because this person just joined and they know nothing. And I got stuck at week 2. So I am gonna 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 I really like the delivery of Evergreen. It's, 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.

Mariah Coz [00:37:02]:
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, I just hate that word. I don't understand it.

Mariah Coz [00:37:49]:
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 kinda have a personal chip on my shoulder about that. I think there's just a 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 force people to get stuff done versus just being, like, look, you either want it or you don't. I'm not your mom. Like, I don't know.

Jay Clouse [00:38:28]:
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. Mhmm. So if I have some, call it, 2 month experience and part of that experience has guided curriculum that I go through. I'm thinking, okay, I wanna make this evergreen. Am I literally starting from, you know, week 1, quote unquote, every time somebody joins, like, do I need to schedule the the week 1 curriculum session every time somebody joins? Are you

Mariah Coz [00:39:00]:
Oh, no.

Jay Clouse [00:39:01]:
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 [00:39:09]:
Everyone is just going at their own pace, and everything should be prerecorded. So, like, when people let's say because we have this too. The first 8 weeks of our pro like, even though it's a 12 month program, people can join. We have, like, 2 different time frames. But people can join for 12 months, but the 1st 8 weeks are, like, a very structured, like, here's exactly what to do in your 1st 8 weeks. And then after that, it's a little more choose your own adventure, once you have the foundations down. But those first 8 weeks, people join and it's all, like, prerecorded content. So they start going through the prerecorded content.

Mariah Coz [00:39:40]:
They start getting the automated check-in emails. So there's a sequence of emails designed around those 1st 8 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, 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 prerecorded. Everything is in the portal.

Mariah Coz [00:40:09]:
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, a weekly call or biweekly 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 8 weeks in 2 weeks. Some people can work through the 8 weeks in 2 months, you know, or I guess it is 2 months, but whatever.

Mariah Coz [00:40:36]:
You know, people can work through it however they want. I'm not gonna 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 it. You know, people are joining all the time.

Mariah Coz [00:41:11]:
So it's just like, oh, cool. Welcome. You're on week 1. Like, have fun. That's where I used to be. Blah blah blah.

Jay Clouse [00:41:16]:
I've heard you talk about early decision options as something to think about when people are joining on Evergreen. And the the challenge that a lot of people think of when they think about going to Evergreen is how do I 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 [00:41:49]:
Yeah. So we actually do have an evergreen decision, like, time frame. So people, once they come into the funnel, they'll have, like, 7 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 247 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.

Mariah Coz [00:42:27]:
And then if they're accepted, it's like, here, you have 7 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. It could be bonus content that, hey, if you join in the next 7 days, you get access to the extra bonus content.

Mariah Coz [00:43:00]:
After that, you can still join later, but you're not gonna get that bonus content. Sometimes, it's a bonus one on one call that, you know, if you join during that enrollment window, then you get a bonus 1 on 1 call. If not, cool. You can still join in the future, but you're not gonna get that 1 on 1 call. One of the things we've we've tried as a bonus that works well is, like, extending a time frame, especially, let's say, you have a 3 month program. Sometimes people are like, oh, I really wanna 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.

Mariah Coz [00:43:29]:
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 7 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 7 days to get the course for $500 then it's $600 after that. We don't do that for high ticket because for high ticket, the pricing is already like a big component of the decision. I don't really wanna introduce more variables around the price being an objective or an objection. So I just kinda wanna 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 gonna work best for your audience is really gonna be unique to each business and brand.

Jay Clouse [00:44:29]:
You've you've mentioned that you don't make a ton of content in 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 [00:44:48]:
When we switched to high ticket, I kinda stopped doing content. And I did I it was kinda like a whole shift of like, look, I don't know if all these, like, freebies and free blog posts are going to attract the same client who is buying, like, our $500 courses before that. We now wanna 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 small, small amount of clients for it to be very successful and to meet your goals, and you're serving them at a much higher level.

Mariah Coz [00:45:42]:
So I kind of eliminated the need for volume, which eliminated the need for a lot of these common content marketing sort of strategies. And so, what what we shifted to well, we started running ads. We finally, like, figured out ads, and this was in, like, 2019. We started running ads successfully after years years of failing miserably at running ads. You kind of hit a moment to I 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 anymore. 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.

Mariah Coz [00:46:26]:
That was one of the ways. And then we started doing in 2020, literally just because of COVID, we had to 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 thousands 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 at the beginning with, like, oh, maybe you're seeing people with their, like, low ticket lead generator offers.

Mariah Coz [00:47:20]:
That's what we did. We did these big virtual events with, like, $40 for a ticket, 100 or 1,000 of people would sign up, huge for lead gen for us, and then turn around to 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 2 months. We like dabbled in free content again and then immediately I was like, Nope, nope, nope, nope. I'm not doing this. So, yeah.

Mariah Coz [00:47:52]:
We basically do these 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 [00:48:16]:
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 fearlessceodotcom. A link to that is in the show notes. Thanks to Mariah for being on the show. Thank you to Connor Conboy for editing this episode and and Brian Skille for creating our music. Thank you to Emily Clouse for our artwork and Nathan Todd Hunter for mixing the audio. If you love this episode, you can tweet at jklaus and let me know.

Jay Clouse [00:48:40]:
If you really wanna say thank you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.