People aren't ready for the house. Who's usually until they pay And I send
that respectfully because a lot of people don't know how much resistance they actually have
before they get into the house. Who as they think they're ready, but
they're not welcome to imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I
read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and did all the courses,
but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect Action that my business had its
first million dollar year. Imperfect Action is about doing things before you're ready,
prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even when you're not sure
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step Taylor dot co, forward slash DBB, or at the link in the
show notes. Hey, welcome back to Imperfect Action. This is episode seven
hundred and four. Today. I'm very excited to bring to you a guest
who I have learned a lot from now, selling is something that gets a
bit of an ikey wrap in the online world. And Colin Boyd, who
is today's guest on the show, I've learned how to sell in a way
that doesn't feel icky from Colin. He is your go to guy when you
want your virtual and your live presentation to get clients not just claps. And
he's best known for his signature program called Sell from Stage Academy, which helps
coaches and course creators turn every presentation into a money making machine. I've learned
from Colin how to sell in webinars, how to use my stories to convert.
And I'm so excited because in today's epis so we are going to be
talking about all things selling from virtual stages, using his conversion story framework to
tell a story that converts, not just a story that makes people think,
oh, that's nice. So, without further ado, let's jump into today's
chat with Colin. Colin or welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm excited to finally
have you here. You're one of the guests that I've been talking about having
on the show for a long time, and finally we managed to tee up
a time that works. So I'm really excited to have you here today to
talk about selling conversion stories and you know, the mindset and all of the
things that come up when it actually when we come to asking people to buy
the magical things that we are selling. So very grateful for your time today,
Yeah, Stokes, Steph. I think it's going to be a great
conversation. Yeah, So Colin, tell us a little bit about your story.
How did you get to being the guy who now teaches people to sell
from stage I When I first started, I started as a life coach and
this was about fourteen years ago, and I was kind of newly married.
Had all these dreams of wanting to build a coaching business that made a difference,
that made an impact, and be able to make some money from it
as well, like to do something more more meaningful. And the only problem
was is that I didn't have any clients. So or I had half a
call it half a client, and so that that's a client who occasionally turns
up, occasionally pays you, right, So I had I'm earning about two
hundred dollars a month and and I'm just struggling to see how this thing could
work. And so what happened was I had a friend who called me up
on my landline at the time and he's like, Colin, I've got an
event coming up that I can't do. It's a free event, and you
know, I've had someone else refer it to me, but I can't do
it. Would you want to do it? So obviously it's like pretty,
it's a very high quality lead, like no one wants it, right,
And I said, all right, all right, I'll do it. I'll
speak. And it was a free speaking engagement. I'd only ever spoken,
you know, at college or at school and youth group. I hadn't really
done much speaking before. And so what happened was I got prepared for the
event. It was literally a dark and stormy night that night. I'm walking
up the stairs. My wife's on my arm and I'm really on her arm,
freaking out. And I get there and the event organizer comes to me.
He's like, Colin, you wouldn't believe this is the biggest event we've
ever had in our history. We've got over one hundred and thirty seven people
here live to hear your presentation. And in my mind, this is like
bad news. Because I'm just telling us, if great, I'm going to
look like an idiot in front of their biggest audience. So I'm freaking out.
I'm sitting down. They announced me, I get up, I do
my best presentation that I could do muster for the night. And at the
end, I made an offer and I didn't really but it was an irresistible
offer, and out of the one hundred and thirty seven people, I had
about one hundred and twenty five of them give me their details on their business
cards. And then I followed it up and I did did some free coaching
with the group, and I ended up signing about fifteen full time coaching my
clients. This is when I was doing one on one coaching, and so
I had a literally overnight had a full coaching deck of clients. And then
three days later HP called me and asked me to speak at their next global
training day, which ended up having five and a half thousand people. That
was my first paid speaking engagement, And what was crazy was that I literally
went from like zero clients to a full deck of coaching clients and a big
corporation who I ended up speaking with and flying around the world with for over
ten years in one presentation, and so for me this started a fire of
not just the content that I was sharing, but more the idea of,
like, how do we create a presentation, whether that be a virtual or
a life presentation, that really adds value but also converts and gets the result
that we want. And so that kind of started me on my journey,
and then that led me to create running hundreds of webinars, doing hundreds of
speaking engagements over the last fourteen years, and then now getting to coach people
all around the world on that topic. M And I mean, I've been
learning so much from you about selling on those virtual stages, selling from webinars.
But you mentioned in your story just then about this concept of an irresistible
offer. Would you mind elaborating on that a little bit? Yeah, Well,
for me, I mean I was so new to the idea. I
didn't even know what an irresistible offer was. I didn't even think I had
heard that. But for me, when I think about it, the I
mean, the offer that I made that night was an offer that was free,
so right there was no they didn't have to pay for it. That
I just created something valuable, which was I credited a name for the coaching
package, and I gave it away for free. So I said, I'll
do some complimentary coaching I normally charge. I think at the time it was
like one hundred and fifty dollars an hour or something, and I was giving
away a couple a couple of sessions and it had a specific title was around
their career, because they're all career orientated people. And I limited it,
I said, you know it only I'll choose ten people out of the first
people that put in their details. And so I just created an offer that
at the night resonated with what they wanted, what they were there for,
and it aligned with obviously the offer that I could help them with if they
ended up continuing on and doing some coaching with me at the time. And
so for me, the irresistible offer is and this is definitely a big part
of having success in this industry, and part of it is testing. I
was very lucky that night that people wanted it, but it was a free
offer, so yeah, there was they didn't have to pay anything for it.
But eventually you get into obviously you paid off and so that that's going
to take some more refining and testing. But it's so true that that that
you get one offer dialed in and really irresistible, it can change the trajectory
of your entire life. Oh absolutely, I mean I've seen that firsthand with
the podcast launch plan that went from you know, it took my business from
I think it was ten thousand dollars a month in February twenty twenty through to
three hundred thousand in April twenty twenty like that that was all from one offer
as well. You mentioned well, I think you covered a few of those
in what you were just saying back about the irresistible offer. But where in
your experience have you noticed most online business owners go wrong when it comes to
selling. I think I think people go wrong in the context of presentations,
like if you're running a webinar or a speech or something like that. I
mean, and even just being an online business owner. I think one of
the big mistakes that people make is they think that the selling is just the
offer itself. So they think that I'm selling when I pitch my offer,
Like when I go through my offer, I make the offer and people say
yes or no. But for me, selling is the whole thing, like
it's it's literally the entire process from the messaging you have at the front end
with the beliefs you address, or any sort of marketing you're doing on Instagram
or Facebook, to the presentation. When I think about a presentation, like
the whole presentation is selling. And the problem is is that if you if
you feel really uncomfortable selling, you're going to think that, oh so I
have to be like really pushy and sales e and and all that sort of
stuff. And it's not that at all. It's not about pushing them to
buy anything. To be frank, it's actually about truly understanding your audience and
such a deep level that you understand what is going what are their real pain
points, what are the things that are really dry having them and bringing that
up, being clear on what that is like reading their mail essentially and then
teaching them some strategies that are desirable and helpful. And if you do it
right, when you make the offer, you don't have to push them to
do anything. In fact, if you do it right, they will be
asking what programs you have available before you even get to your offer. And
that's the goal is that is that the selling process is actually less about kind
of like just pushing someone into something and more about truly amplifying pain points,
creating desires, removing roadblocks when you get to the offer. The offer is
just a logical next step that makes so much sense. And one of the
I think one of the biggest techniques or I guess components of this that I've
learned from you is this concept of the conversion story. So, I mean,
everyone's familiar with the origin story. I've seen all of your ads talking
about, you know, why the conversion story is better than the origin story.
But I'd love to know, like, why do you think that conversion
story or firstly, what is a conversion story and how is it different to
an origin story and why is it better or why is it more effective when
it comes to selling. Yeah, I think a conversion story is a clearer
definition of the type of story that sells your offer naturally. And so what
tends to happen is people like online creators make the mistake of thinking that their
story is about informing the audience about their whole story. So, in other
words, the start of their presentation or maybe their video or whatever, they're
telling the entire story from, you know, maybe where they were born,
where they grew up, what university they went to, what accreditations they've got
through. But like I say in my ads, like your mum probably wants
to know about that, but like no one else wants. Now, we
might want to know a little bit about that, but it's a lot less
than we think. And so we make the mistake of thinking that our story
is about telling our story, where a conversion story is about crafting the story
in a way that does a few things. The first thing, it tells
the story in a way that hits on pain points, desire points, etc.
So that the audience is listening to your story, but they're also going,
oh, Steph, Colin, that's that's exactly how I feel. Like
I feel the same. I feel so frustrated, and I know I'm not
you, but like I feel the same. And so a good conversion story
just connects with the audience first on where they're at, and then it also
shows and showcases your credit ability, But it doesn't in a way that's built
around a core idea or a core premise. And so where origin story is
like kind of like just your whole story, or it's you know, it's
building credibility is one of the main focuses of an origin story, where a
conversion story is really built around the transformation that you can help people achieve through
the vehicle that you that you use to get that transformation. That makes sense.
I've always been someone who's been very resistant to storytelling, you know.
I've always thought like, I'm not good at storytelling. My story is not
very interesting. So when I first came across you, it was like,
oh, okay, maybe I should follow this framework and learn how to tell
a story. But like, I'm curious to know why, why should somebody
be caring about telling these stories anyway? Why can't we just give people slides
with bullet points and lots of information. Why do we need to be telling
stories to sell m Well, I think that as human beings, we just
first of it. We're just built for stories, you know, stories.
I've got a young daughter, she's eight years old, and you know,
she asked me almost every night, dad, can you tell me a story?
And all my son I go. I go for walks with my son
most nights and we walk around the block and just have a chat about life.
And he always asked me, can you tell me another story about about
my childhood? And all the times that I got in trouble, and and
so philosophy, beliefs, traditions are all passed down by story. And if
you look at any sort of ancient spiritual practices and so forth, they're pretty
much always built around mythology and story and parables and so forth. And so
I don't think that's by accident, that is by design that the human condition
love story. And now, we as adults consider ourselves to be very sophistic
caated that we don't need stories. Sometimes that we're like, you know what,
I don't need a story. Just give me the meat to it,
Like, just give me the bullet points, give me the structure, the
how to, and I'll do it. But the problem is that without a
story, a lot of the time you don't have the fuel to drive those
bullet points. And so sometimes what will happen is you'll get feedback on your
presentation and people will say, oh, I really loved those steps you showed
us. But the reason why they loved the steps was because the story actually
set the steps up. And so without the story, the steps will be
literally like twenty percent is powerful as if you told a story. So,
for example, let's say you're selling a program or you're selling an idea,
should I say, because you're not really ever selling a program, it's always
selling an idea. And if you've got like three steps to achieve that outcome,
if you told a story about a transformational journey that you've been on and
how that relates to everyone in the in the in the audience they're listening to,
and then you showed these are the three steps I've followed, as opposed
to just going here are three steps to achieve the outcome you want? It
just the it's like a nitross that adds to the actual meat of the presentation
itself. And so I would say that a story, a story goes beyond
the conscious mind. And so what happens is that the resistance that people have
is usually conscious, some conscious resistance the year barts, you know, all
the things that they have. When you tell the right story, their conscious
mind actually shuts down or it turns off, should I say, And their
unconscious mind comes forward and becomes a lot more open to being influenced, essentially,
And that's what's selling, is it's influenced. And when you do that,
it's a very powerful way of doing it. That's why story is so
powerful, is because it influences the unconscious mind, and that essentially is the
thing that really drives people to buy m You mentioned just before this idea of
you're not really selling a program, You're always selling an idea. I know
my listeners right now are thinking, what are you talking about with that?
So this is a I feel like this is a higher level of consciousness of
thinking about selling programs because essentially, when you make an offer or sell a
program, what you're really selling is the idea that drives the program. So,
for example, so we have a program that teaches selling on stage,
like on a virtual or alive stage. Now, the program itself is just
the skin of the idea, and the idea is that you design a presentation.
It can change your business in your life, right, And so I
have to if I'm selling my stuff, I have to design a presentation that
sells that idea. It's almost like, what's that what's that DiCaprio show about
the inception? It is inception, right, It's you have to implant the
idea in the audience's mind so that when you share the program, the ideas
are already in there. The ideas are already sprouted. It's become a real
thing in them, and they feel a sense of attachment to the idea of
wanting to do that. So when you reveal the program, it's not like
this has come out of nowhere. The program is just the skin by which
the idea that you've already sold to them effectively fits in. And when I
say sold to them, it's not like you're not It's not like hardcore manipulation
is it is deeply understanding what is important to them and communicating to them in
a way that would they go, oh my gosh, like this person really
understands who I am, They understand my challenges, my difficulties, and they
can they've actually seen some great results, and I would love to I would
love to use that particular idea to get some results as well. And so
when you do that, there's this deep respect that we all we have for
each other. And then your offer or your program is essentially just the thing
that that they enter to experience the idea that you've already you know, imparted
into them. So you're using the conversion story to sell them on the idea
correct and then the program is the vehicle for them to implement that idea and
get the result exactly. I love that, And so a conversion story.
One of the secrets with the conversion story is having a really clear idea.
And it's not just any idea, it's in fact, it's the one idea
that if your audience is to believe that idea, your program will be the
logical next step. And so the reason why a conversion story is so powerful
is once again, it's not about credibility. It's not about just you getting
to know them. It's actually about embedding an idea in the audience's hearts and
minds that enables them to see consciously and even unconsciously that when your program is
revealed at the end or whatever you reveal your program, that that vehicle,
that methodology that you use to achieve some results can be experienced through your program,
through your vehicle. And so yeah, it really it sells the idea
before you've said, by my program or join you know, this is the
program, this is the next step. You're actually sell the program because you're
selling the idea before you offer the program. Makes sense. That makes so
much sense. So then coming to that conversion story, what are some of
the key elements in a good conversion story because you've mentioned it's not the entire
origin story, but I know that there's a bit of an art and as
science to it. So what are some of the key elements that somebody needs
to have for their conversion story to actually convert. Yes, So at a
high level, there are three big ingredients. The first ingredients is a core
premise. So you have to have a very specific core premise or core idea
that you're trying to share with the audience so that they understand how you help
them with. So for me, my core premise is that you are one
irresistible presentation away from the breakthrough you want in your business. Now, you're
going to have a different core premise usually for each program you sell, and
so depending on the program you're selling, you'll you know, a different a
different core premise. For example, you know with your I know you've had
a product it helps people with podcasting, right, So it could it could
be that it could be something like creating a highly engaged podcast is the fastest
way to build authority and get high ticket clients on on demand. That's not
very far off what the actual core premise is for that offer you didn't.
Well, so, but it's something like that, right, I was just
giving it a stab. But it's like something like that. It's like it's
a core idea that if they understand that idea and essentially accept that idea,
then then the program is going to be the logical next step to get help
to actually implement it. And so first of all, you start with the
core premise. The second thing is you need connection, and connection is built
around both challenges and desires. And so a conversion story is really about digging
deep into not just where you were at literally in your life before the breakthrough,
but what were you internally experiencing, What were you internally experiencing both challenges
and desires. And so, for example, for me, I was starting
my coaching business, and I had these big desires of running, of building
a profitable coaching business, of serving more people, having more meaning in my
life. But the problem is I had no clients. I didn't know where
to go. I felt really frustrated because I had like half a client that
just wasn't which it wasn't working. And so for me, that's like my
circumstances, but it's my internal dialogue that had with myself, and so when
I share that, what happens is the audience starts to go. You know,
I kind of feel like that as well. And it may not be
a coaching business. It might be a course business, or it might be
some other business, but they start to make these like unconscious connections with their
own experience. And so you really have to start in a place of vulnerability
with a conversion story. You don't start a place of you know, I'm
running the seven figure coaching business absolutely crushing at and I just knew I needed
to go to the next level and people because because most people are probably not
doing that yet, and so you have to You have to start with where
the audience is at with your conversion story rather than starting, like you know,
at a high level. And then the third element is you have to
have credibility, and so you have to share that journey of the breakthrough that
you went on to see the credibility that you've built, because it has to
answer three questions and your listeners might want to write these down because these is
super powerful. The first question is are you like me? And so that
is the connection piece, and so your story has to show your audience that
you are like them on some level. Right, No, it doesn't have
to be culturally like them or even age demographics like them. It's more like
you as a person have gone through similar sort of struggles, challenges, desires.
The second question is is can you lead me? So it's like,
are you like me? But now can you lead me? And so you
have to show that you've seen a breakthrough, some progress in the area,
some credibility. And then finally the question you have to answer is is there
a path that I can follow? Right? Is there a path I can
follow to achieve that type of results? Which is your core premise? So
you answer those three questions and that starts to build a framework for a conversion
story. So they're like the three full high level ingredients. I know one
of the hesitations that comes up with a lot of my listeners who are experts
and what they do, and they've maybe not necessarily gone through that journey that
their clients are going through themselves. So, for example, I have a
lot of nutritionists who listen to the show. Weirdly, I don't know where
all the nutritionists and dieticians came from, but they all listen to the show,
and a lot of them are really good at what they do, they've
got results for their clients, but they haven't had that same problem in their
lives. How do they then that question of how are you like me?
I think there's a there's a few different ways you can do this. One
way is you can you can talk about something else in your life that you
may be struggled with previously. It could be relationally, it could be fitness,
it could be it could be different a different type of experience of where
you kind of went through a transformation, and so it doesn't have to be
literal whether it even got clients of where they talk about experiences. There's a
guy who actually he's in French podcasting, so that's all he teaches the French
podcasts, right, and he tells a story about a time that he went
on a ride at a theme park with his son, and it was about
the experience of his son changing his perspective of going on scary riots and what
that experience was like went from scary to like exhilarating and that whole experience and
that's how we view podcasting sometimes is like it feels scary of the start,
but it can be absolutely exhilarating once you get into it. And so that's
like one of his stories. It's like a personal experience he had with his
son, and that story, he said, like really resonated with people well
when he was sharing it. So you don't have to share exactly literally something.
It could be some other experienced where you had a big shift. The
other way to you is you can actually tell the story of what what really
triggered your desire and passion for the topic. And so a lot of the
time people either have maybe they went through a traumatic experience with their parents or
as a child, or something happened where where the topic maybe it's nutrition,
but they knew someone, they're close to someone where they experienced some challenge and
difficulty and then they turned that person turned that around and they and they watched
that and it just impacted them on a deep level. And then from that
it's update obsession around the topic which led them to getting into that area.
So I think you can find some of those experiences potentially. And then the
third one is you can literally just share like kind of like a case study
experience, but really go deep into the emotions of what that was like to
that person, to serve that client and get that breakthrough. So it can
also be that as well, So sharing a client case study, but not
sharing the client's emotion and the client's struggles, but their struggles as the expert,
or would you be sharing it more from the client's perspective. I think
you can share it from the client's perspective, but I think you can link
it to what it triggered in you and that obsession of wanting to help and
to serve them, and the breakthrough they were having and the difficulties that they
were having it. And just a lot of the time with a case that
we do a case study, especially in a presentation, will like skip through
it pretty quickly. But I think that if you design it as your core
like conversion story, you want to take time with it. You want to
go deeper into the emotions, the feelings that what was going on with the
client, how you were feeling like you want to just spend that more time
to have some depth in the conversation as opposed to like skipping through it as
a case study. That's what I would say, like spending that bit more
time. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Now. One of the things
I know it comes off a lot with online business owners is and particularly when
they're selling in for example, a webinar, where they'll teach all of their
content for the first bit of the webinar and then they go into sales mode.
Right, It's like, here's the value. The value is done.
Now we're into the sales pitch. And one of the concepts that you teach
that I really like is this concept of infusion selling, where you're you're selling
throughout the entire thing. Can you give us a little bit more insight into
what infusion selling is and how somebody can start to do that with any of
their free content. So the shift is that the mistake people make is they
go to their course or their coaching curriculum to design all the content for their
webinars. Yeah, and so there's this belief out there that if I can
blow people away with all of my amazing how to content, then they're going
to be so blown away by the free stuff that they're going to ask,
oh, my gosh, imagine if I paid the amount of value I will
get. And the problem is that that is like, it's true to a
certain extent, but it also backfires a lot. And the reason why backfires
is that you end up opening It's like drinking from the fire hose. For
people, it's like sit on this chair and let me open up the fire
hose, open up your mouth. That it's just you absolutely annihilate people.
Yeah, and they're left and you get comments like, oh my gosh,
like that was so valuable. Let me just get everything you've given me done
over the next three to six months and then I'll come I can check your
course. And they never do, and they never do. They never do.
And so essentially, when you're teaching like that, you're almost hamstringing your
audience because you're giving someone lots of to does without the level of commitment needed
to do the to doos right. And so it's actually slowing their process their
progress down because they're not really committed. The problem is they think they are,
but they're not really committed. And so that's why making an offer and
having someone pay some money it just increases the commitment. So in other words,
people aren't ready for the how too's usually until they pay. And I
sayd that respectfully because a lot of people don't know how much resistance they actually
have before they get into the house too. Is they think they're ready,
but they're not. And so this idea of infusion selling is going, don't
just teach the stuff in your course. You can teach some of it,
but you need to move from like a teacher mode into or speaking mode,
into both speaking and selling at the same time. The metaphor I use is
imagine, imagine your audience's minds and hearts are a cup of water, and
you drop, like die into that water and its slowly infuses. Imagine like
a pink diet slowly infuses into the water, and over a period of time,
maybe twenty minutes thirty minutes, the water goes from clear to pink.
It completely changes color. But it doesn't happen right away. It's not like
a sharp this is my teaching boom, this is my offer like it's not
like a sharp change. It slowly changes color. And that's how that's how
infusion selling works. And so what you do is you take your content and
rather than teaching just how to content, you ask questions like what are the
beliefs that are getting in the way of the audience going to the next level
in the topic that I teach. So give an example for me, one
of the beliefs is that selling is like a look is ikey is uncomfortable is
sales e. And I have to shift people's thinking to realize that set selling
is actually the door through which you serve your audience on the next level.
And in fact, you're not really serving your audience at the greatest level until
you make an offer to that because you when you create that that level of
commitment to each other in a sales process, it takes your commitment and their
commitment to the next level. They're going to see better results, you're going
to be more engaged, and every high wins. And so selling is actually
a doorway through which you serve rather than selling is something where you take money
from people. Right. And so that's one for me, one belief shift
that I have to help my audience make if they want to learn how to
sell from setie right, learn how to sell from the webinar or any any
stage. And so infusion selling is going on one of the strategies. In
fact, there's nine nine specific types of strategies, but one of them is
belief shifts. And so that's an example. And so you can start with
asking yourself, what are the beliefs that I must shift in order to allow
the audience to be ready to say yes to my offer. Yeah. And
the problem is is that people think that that is not valuable, but it
actually is. In fact, we you know, we run webinars launches like
quite often and we get a lot of feedback from people and they will say
that one shift, that mindset shift, like completely changed my life. That
was so valuable. Now I didn't teach them anyhow too, there was like
zero how to, but the shift in perspective is incredibly valuable. And so
that's like one strategy of infusion selling. Another strategy is storytelling. So telling
the right stories throughout your presentation and a conversion story is an infusion selling strategy.
It's one of the nine strategies right. Another strategy is what are called
tantalizing your tools, which is throughout the presentation you're actually having moments where you're
talking about some of the strategies at a high level or some of the tools
templates, scripts that you use in your program, and you're teaching on those
things in the presentation, but not too detailed, like you're just kind of
teaching on it at a higher level. And then what happens is when you
make the offer, you show, you show how those scripts are in the
offer, or those templates are in the offer. That's part of it.
And so all of a sudden, what's happening is you're teaching and you're selling
at the same time. Yeah, so that's infusion selling. Yeah. I
love that. And you know, coming back to the how to content versus
the belief shifting, this comes up so much with my audience. I hear
this over and over again when because I teach something similar in your launch content
in launch magic right where I'm saying, you know you, actually this is
super valuable because in your example, if you try to teach somebody how to
sell and they still believe that selling's ikey, they can have all the how
too is, but they're not going to actually get out there and do any
of the selling. So they're still not going to be able to get that
outcome. And that first step in giving them the value is shifting that belief.
But because because you, as the expert, knows so much about selling
and you assume you already know that selling's not ikey, it doesn't feel valuable
to you, but it's so valuable to the people who are learning from you,
So I absolutely love that. I'm curious as well, like what other
big I guess mindset blocks come up with selling. We know Selling's IKEY is
a huge one. What else have you noticed comes up a lot with online
business owners. I think another block is that my offer isn't valuable or my
offer isn't good enough. And part of that I think should be worked out
through doing the work. And what I mean by that is I think that
there is a scale of certainty that you create in your offers. And if
someone was to watch someone who is incredibly established in this industry and they make
an offer and there's a huge amount of certainty in their offer in fact,
like they truly believe in the offer. First of all, that is incredibly
attractive. Right. We know that certainty in an offer you as the creator
of the offer. Certainty is one of the most powerful selling mechanisms there is,
because selling essentially is really a transfer of emotion as well and motivation.
But if you don't feel comfortable or confident in your offer yet, first of
all, that's okay, Like that's where most people start where I started,
And part of it is you actually need to there's actually three levels that I
teach with certainty and an offer. The first level is personal transformation or personal
certainty. So in other words, you personally have seen a transformation from the
stuff you teach. And even if it's you know, we talked about nutritionists
before, it could be just that you are convinced personally that this stuff works
right, So you need to make sure that you're convinced. The second level
is that you're clear on how to take people through that process to see a
transformation. And usually that's solved through a pilot program or some sort of beta
program or something like that. And so when I know, for us,
when we first launched our core offer self from Stage Academy, I sold it
for like couple hundred dollars and I knew it was worth thousands, and I
was like, I'm going to sell this for like a couple hundred dollars and
all I want is just really a testimonial from you guys and some results.
I want to see some results. Because I was getting on the process,
it was still needing some clarity for me. And so a great way to
do that is to do a better experience, or a low priced experience of
what you teach. Maybe get twenty or thirty people are overn ten people into
it, so you get some great testimonies, which leads to the third level,
which is social proof certainty. And so that is where you have seen,
beyond a shadow of a doubt that this stuff works not just for you,
but for other people. And when you get that certainty, all of
a sudden, those three things add up. You get the personal certainty from
you've been through it, You get the clarity of the process, you know
how to see a transformation. And then third of all, you get the
social certainty, which is other people can go through it. And those three
combined makes you feel like your offer is actually really good. And so part
of it, yes, is belief shifting, but part of it is actually
just doing the work. And sometimes that'll take three months, six months,
but that's worth it. Like I know, for me, I'm in this
for the long game, and so I'll put in six months just to get
that certainty so for the next six years I can sell my offer with absolute
confidence. Yeah. I like how you've broken it down into those three levels,
because I think something that holds a lot of people back is they're thinking,
well, I've got this offer but I don't have any testimonials yet,
so I can't sell it. But then I can't get the testimonials until I
sell it, and they end up just spinning their wheels, not actually moving
forward. Whereas if you just get it out there and you can start to
get that proof and you can start to build that conviction in your offer,
then it becomes so much easier to sell it going forward. So I absolutely
love that now, Colin. I have one question that I ask every single
podcast guest at the end of an episode, and that is, what was
the time that you took imperfect action and what happened as a result. I
should have perfect action. It's like every time, yes, but if perfect
action. I mean my example of when I launched sell from Stage Academy as
a beta offer, I offered it for a few hundred dollars. I literally
had it was like six zoom calls that I had booked in and I had
like six ideas I wanted to talk about. I had no templates, no
structures, nothing, I didn't have anything kind of mapped out other than like
some core ideas, and we got like I think it was like forty or
fifty people kind of joined and I just walked and each week I kind of
designed the process, and then that thing has turned into a multi multimillion dollars
a year business. And so that imperfect action completely changed my life. But
when I think about it, it's fascinating because if I look back on my
course creation journey, my first course I built without audience interaction, and then
I learned over the period over the time, is that if I can get
better feedback and kind of do it more imperfect at the start and get some
really good feedback, then ends up being a better experience. And so the
imperfect action, where it wasn't trying to get it as perfect at the start
was ended up more profitable than trying to get it right from the start.
Yeah, oh love that story. Love that story. I'm a big fan
of, yeah, selling something and then creating it. And you know,
having gone through self from stage Academy now it's like that is I would never
have known that that was something you first taught. Just live on Zoom calls
because it's now super professional, the modules all beautifully recorded. So Colin,
you've also got your conversion story formula, which I think some of our listeners
might have. It might be a little bit interested in after now hearing the
three elements of that conversion story, can you tell us a little bit about
that framework, and I'll pop a link in the show notes and let them
know where they can get it. Yeah. So I think if people have
resonated with this content, you would love to create your conversion story, which
I think is like the easiest place to start because you can use that on
a webinar, you can use it on a podcast, you can use it
on Facebook Live. Like it's so like applicable everywhere. The conversion story formula
is essentially it's a it's like a short mini process that takes people through in
under forty eight hours. My guarantees that you will have your conversion story.
So some people look for it for years, they're like ten years they're still
looking for their conversion story. My goal is that you'll have it in forty
eight hours, right, And so that's a really cool place to start.
It's really quick, it's cheap, it's like simple, and you can just
get started and just see amazing results run away. So get your story.
Don't let your don't let that stop you from from bringing your course. You're
offered to the world. Your conversion story can be discovered so quickly, and
so that would be a great place, I think for people to start.
And I know that you've got a link in the show notes and some different
ways to that. Yeah. Yeah, So if you want to grab that,
you can shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'm there at Steph Taylor
dot co. Send me the word conversion and I'll send you the link to
that automatically. You can also find that at Steph Taylor dot co slash conversion.
Thank you so much, Colin. This has been such a I feel
like we've condensed so much value into this short episode. So I want to
say big thank you to you for being here and for sharing all of that
with my listeners today. Yes, Steph, look, you're amazing and for
everyone who is a listening here, you're in great hands under Steph, and
so it's been a pleasure being on the podcast. All right, That is
it for today's episode. If you haven't already hit subscribe, make sure you
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