Learn about the journey from 3 years to 5 online courses and a successful membership site with Becky and Jeremy Launder in this LMScast hosted by Chris Badgett from LifterLMS. We dive into how Becky and Jeremy got started and how they ended up with the offers they currently have for their courses and membership site built around direct sellers.
Jeremy and Becky work with direct sellers, MLM, Network Marketing Professionals, and really anyone who sells a product they didn’t create themselves, but are rather repping for another company. It’s the same kind of idea as affiliate marketing or referral marketing.
Becky is a pro in the training side of things and making videos, and Jeremy has a background in systems development working as an electrical engineer in the aerospace and defense industries for 15 years. Now they’re working together on their online training site they founded in 2017.
They started out by creating a website with a lot of free resources for people, and their audience would say, “you should charge money for this.” And that developed into their membership site, which has been a great source of income for them. They just launched the membership in October 2019. So they went a while before turning their information product into a paid membership.
A great takeaway from this episode is how Becky forms content for her YouTube videos and blog posts. When she hears a question asked more than 3 times, she’ll make a YouTube video and blog post on that topic. After doing that for a few years, they now have a strong resource library. Expanding on that idea, they now have courses on ModernDirectSeller.com with about 7 lessons in each course going in-depth on a specific topic around setting up a direct selling business.
Creating free content is a great way to test demand around what learners in your space are looking for. When it comes to making paid content, it’s much easier to reuse and reteach the free content that works. Becky also wrote a book called 52 Tips on How to Build a Thriving Direct Sales Business that contributed a lot to the structure and content for their courses.
To learn more about Becky, Jeremy, and all the great courses they have, be sure to check out ModernDirectSeller.com. You can also find Becky on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
At LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett:
You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high-value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m Chris Badgett. I’m joined by two very special guests. We’ve got Becky and Jeremy Launder from Modern Direct Seller Academy. The website is, myconsultanttraining.com. Welcome to the show, you all.
Becky Launder:
Thank you. Happy to be here.
Jeremy Launder:
Good to be here.
Chris Badgett:
It’s an honor to talk to you both and have this conversation. I have questions for you that are going to go all over the place, but first, just for anybody who doesn’t know, what is direct sales or direct selling, what is the subject matter that you’re teaching on your Academy?
Becky Launder:
I work with direct sellers, MLM, Network Marketing Professionals. So anyone that is in the industry, directly selling a product that they didn’t create themselves, that they are repping for another company. So if you’re familiar with affiliate marketing or referral marketing, same kind of idea. And then a lot of companies give you the opportunity to also build a team as well. So that’s my background. That’s what I done for a while. And now I’m on the other side of it and working in the training side. So, tone of fun.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. The Academy site or the training site, what has that done for you two as a couple and as a family? Because you have two kids, is that right?
Becky Launder:
Yeah. Two kids playing Legos, that are hopefully not going to interrupt us for a short while, we’ll see.
Chris Badgett:
We’ve had dogs make an appearance, we’ve had all kinds of stuff, so it’s all good. Totally family friendly at that.
Becky Launder:
Real life. Real life.
Jeremy Launder:
No guarantees, they won’t pop in.
Becky Launder:
You can tell a little bit of your story, but Jeremy is behind the scenes on the technical side and has done all the systems and` the development, and I’m more the marketing girl on the front end doing a lot of the videos. But we just recently had a big, exciting change for our family.
Jeremy Launder:
So my background, I was an electrical engineer, I guess. So I worked in the aerospace and defense industry for 15 years and then had always helped. We.ve had the training business for three years now, since 2017. So I’ve always helped out at nights and on the weekends and whatnot. And it’s steadily grown over those three years. I got to the point where I was able to step away from that engineering career and now we work together full time.
Becky Launder:
Just as of a couple of weeks ago.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. That is super exciting. So how long did it take from building the online business to get to that point? How long has that been?
Jeremy Launder:
The current business we have that we started in 2017, it’s really been three years, but there was a whole bunch of stuff before.
Becky Launder:
I didn’t monetize it for over a year. We really created a website with just a ton of free resources for people. And everyone could say, you should charge money for this. And we waited for a while. But our membership site, which is a big source of our income and what we provide to our students, that just launched last October. So we’re less than a year into the membership site.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. That’s awesome. I admire that. Spending time, just, creating content and creating resources. I call that moving slow to move fast later, it takes a while. What free content and resources did you build out? Are we talking about social media stuff? YouTube stuff, blog stuff. What is it?
Becky Launder:
A little bit of everything. So a lot of video training. I mean the site really was created because I was in direct sales and I was leading a team. And people ask me the same question over and over and over again. So whenever somebody asks me a question more than three times, I pretty much wrote a blog post on it or created a YouTube video and put it up on the website. And so, we really created this content to make my life easier for a little while, right? To help out others. And then it just expanded upon that. So there was people outside of my team, but within the same company, that was using the training. And then it expanded even further where the training was reaching other direct sales companies. The website has a little bit of everything on it.
Becky Launder:
And then we built out the courses. Gosh, that was last spring, probably, so about a year and a half ago that we actually did a full video production and put together a five course series. There’s 35 lessons, that’s pretty in depth. A little bit more fancy than my garage backdrops studio recording on my cellphone, which is how we started.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. And tell me more about the five core series. So a lot of people, I don’t mean to call it a mistake, but they build what I call a giant course. It’s just too big. So I love hearing that there’s a series here. How did the series thing come about and what’s in it?
Becky Launder:
We call it, our grow your direct sales biz bundle, is the course. There’s five courses from, starting your business successfully, to launching your business, to learning marketing skills, to leading a team and scaling. And so each course has seven lessons, and the lessons are 10 to 15 minutes each. They’re not super long. They’re meant to be done in bite size chunks. Most of my audience are moms that are either doing this as a side gig or part time. And so I always say, you should be able to listen on the way to carpooling or whatever you need to do, listen as you go. But the first lesson in each course is really an introduction to what they’re going to learn. And the last lesson of each course is common roadblocks and FAQs. So the bulk of the course is really in lesson two, three, four, five, six.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. That’s amazing. I just want to reiterate what I heard, because I think it’s so beautiful. First of all, you had a five step framework, which is using verbs, which is what I recommend, for example, LifterLMS, we help education entrepreneurs create, launch and scale. So you said, start, launch, market, lead and scale.
Becky Launder:
Yeah.
Chris Badgett:
So you got [crosstalk 00:06:45]. If somebody is listening out there, that is a framework and it’s a verb when you’re helping somebody get a result, and often you have to go through these steps and these steps are usually like, you can usually package them inside verbs. And then you said, seven lessons, per course, which is a framework. The first one is the intro, the last one is the roadblocks and common objections and stuff. And then the five. So really these are five lessons in each course that are 10 to 15 minutes each you said, which isn’t forever. I’m sure you’re super passionate about direct sales and leadership and all these things. So I’m sure you could go on a lot longer than 15 minutes, but your time boxing it, which is awesome. So how did you come up with such a strong organizational ability?
Becky Launder:
What would you say?
Jeremy Launder:
I’d say that, I don’t know, it’s been her personality type, I would say. Very organized lists. I don’t know, comes natural to her, I guess.
Becky Launder:
We could back up a little bit. So last spring I actually wrote a short book, so the book is, 52 tips on how to build a thriving direct sales business.
Chris Badgett:
Is this Ebook or is it on Amazon or what?
Becky Launder:
No, it’s on Amazon. It’s legit. It’s on Amazon. So we put together this book and that really required me to pair down all of the ideas I had and put it in a super organized fashion. So the book itself is structured in the same way. There’s five chapters, and there is a chapter that is practical tips, which are short paragraphs of a short version of the courses essentially. I worked with an editor and they helped me make sure that it makes sense. So that was a good starting point. And then we created the course content pretty much in parallel.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. So would you say that the book process made getting to the course a lot more manageable when you got them?
Becky Launder:
Definitely. Definitely.
Chris Badgett:
Very cool. Very good.
Becky Launder:
It’s like reading an outline. Right. It really focused what each section needed to be on.
Chris Badgett:
How long did it take to write the book? I don’t know. For most people, they say 10 years, but I mean, when you actually started. I know you were probably thinking about it for a long time, but-
Becky Launder:
It’s a tip buck. So there’s maybe two tips, and each tip is pretty much a paragraph. I want to, not to discredit, but it is a book and it is on Amazon, but it’s a short, very practical book. And so I think I started the process in September and I finished it in January. So it was three months and I did everything in short little chunks and was super laser focused on it, because I wanted to have the book and the courses come out at the exact same time.
Jeremy Launder:
And I think all the free content also helped. A lot of content was reused, all that free content we had made over the last year or two, a lot of that was used in the book too. So I think that helps shorten the process quite a bit.
Becky Launder:
It was stuff that I live and breathe and talk about all day, everyday.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. The free content, as a way to just start exercising your expert self and get it out there and start building these frameworks and stuff, is super helpful. So really you had free content, then you had book and then you had a course. Which is-
Becky Launder:
And then we have the membership.
Chris Badgett:
And then you have membership.
Becky Launder:
It all evolved, because we launched the courses and we were like, I don’t know, there’s something missing here. The courses were great, and we had people that purchased them, they were kind of, I say, my Sam girls, the loyal ones, the diehard, that had been following what we had done for a while, but it just wasn’t quite hitting the mark. So we ended up taking those courses and put it into our membership program. So now when you join our membership, you have access to all of the course content.
Chris Badgett:
That’s cool. Tell us more about the transition from courses to memberships. So were you doing one off courses or you could buy the five together or something or how did it start?
Becky Launder:
We did it both ways. Right?
Jeremy Launder:
So you could individually buy the courses or you could buy the bundle of the five. I think we were going through a launch process, every, I don’t know, was it quarter or something?
Becky Launder:
Quarterly, yeah.
Chris Badgett:
So it was an open and closed content?
Becky Launder:
Yeah.
Jeremy Launder:
Yeah.
Becky Launder:
I think we tried it both ways. That’s pretty much been our experience in business. You like, throw a spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Right. So I think that we did have an intro theories into our email, nurture sequence, where we offered a one time discount on the course. And people weren’t quite biting at that. And then we bundled it, and you get a $50 discount when you buy the bundle. It was going okay. Nothing was going great, it was going okay. And then, for a long time we talked about, okay, what other support can we provide? What are people really looking for? And I think what I realized, was that people were looking for community. And they were looking for the connection and they wanted to be able to reach out and ask me a question that they had a question and they were finding more value in that versus, sitting through a bunch of courses and watching from start to finish.
Becky Launder:
And people still do that in the membership. They do binge watch the course content that I think that we just realized, there’s something missing. And from a business perspective, the recurring income of a membership also was really attractive.
Jeremy Launder:
Mostly the income.
Chris Badgett:
So what’s in the membership stack. You got courses. Do you have some office hours and what’s the community like? What are the components?
Becky Launder:
So Modern Direct Seller Academy, you get full access to the course bundles. So there’s five courses. We do monthly masterminds, we do monthly office hours. We have a community group where you can connect with other peers or ask us questions. We do a tech talk posts every week, that Jeremy chimes in on, and answers all kinds of strange technical questions that all of us, we direct sales girls have. I joke that you get to borrow my husband and get tech support. People ask all kinds of things, from what computer to buy? To, why something isn’t working on social media? It’s pretty open-ended. There’s a lot included. So we have live events every month that people can join into. And then they have the courses and a couple of other downloads that they can pick and choose what they need based on where they’re at in their business.
Chris Badgett:
Very cool.
Jeremy Launder:
It’s a couple of virtual that leads to quarterly virtual…
Becky Launder:
Do virtual retreats right here.
Chris Badgett:
What’s the virtual retreat like?
Becky Launder:
Well, you join me on Zoom and you hang out with me for a half day. We just did our summer virtual retreat. I think it was a great way for people to just reset and reevaluate their business. So just taking dedicated time to set aside and really focus on what you’re working on. I do a little bit of training and brainstorming. We had a really fun, creative burst that we did that morning. And then we took a lunch break and came back and the whole afternoon was taking actions. So we did 20 minutes cycles of what are you working on? Focus on that for 20 minutes, take a five minute break, come back, that kind of thing.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. And what about the masterminds? What does that look like? Is that a small group or a big group mastermind?
Becky Launder:
It was open to everyone in the membership. I’d say we usually get, somewhere between 20 and 30 people that show up, and I feel half the people are just there to listen, which is totally fine. They just want to hear the conversation. The other half come with something that they want feedback on and they share what they have going on in their business. And then everyone just gives it to them. And at the end of the hour, we wrap up and post a replay in the group. A lot of people will just listen to the replay afterwards, just to hear the conversation and get ideas for their own business.
Chris Badgett:
That is awesome. Very cool. And tell me about the tech stack, for the Academy site and just-
Becky Launder:
Probably buy it now.
Chris Badgett:
So what makes the business operate from the web?
Jeremy Launder:
So the primary, obviously Lifter are running all the membership and the courses and all that stuff. Raising converted chips for the CRM. Right now, we have an affiliate program, but I’m running that all manually. I’ve already purchased at WP, I just haven’t implemented that yet. And then we’re using the native, LifterLMS, Stripe and PayPal plugins for that. We do make custom sales pages. So we use those in the access plan redirects. We those to redirect to sales pages. What else? We do some upsells too, which has been really helpful. So we do run some Facebook ads, a low cost.
Becky Launder:
So $9 download. [crosstalk 00:16:13]. Basically an opt in ad that we’re running, but we’re actually getting our money back on the conversion. Right. So then when they purchase it, we offer them to join for just $10. So it’s like, your first month you can get in for 10, then after that it’s 17 a month thereafter. So that works really beautifully. The last couple of months, most of our new members have come through that entry into the Academy.
Chris Badgett:
That’s super cool. It’s a paid ad, they have to pay $9. What’s in the $9? What do they get for that?
Becky Launder:
It’s a download that I called perfectly crafted PMs, DMS and tax. So one of the things that I found in direct sales, is that people just really struggle with finding the right words when they’re reaching out to make a sale, or if they’re having online parties, invite somebody to a party or inviting somebody to follow their business or introduce the business to them. So it’s really just a download that includes the formula that I’ve created about how to build relationships with people and giving monks and templates they can use to customize when reaching out to people. So it’s a pretty simple download.
Chris Badgett:
But valuable.
Becky Launder:
But valuable. Yeah. It’s just $9. We get orders all day for that. And our up, what did you call it?
Jeremy Launder:
The upsell.
Becky Launder:
Upsell or upgrade is averaging about 20%. 20% of purchasers and the upgrading to the membership. So that has just been a really great sales funnel for us.
Chris Badgett:
That is cool. So the upgrade goes to a reduced price for the first month, but they know it’s going to come in at the full price the second month. Wow. That’s pretty good. That’s not that crazy but definitely the really valuable lead magnet. That’s not for you to add a ton of value to, let’s earn your trust with a first month at a reduced price. And if you like it, stay. It just makes sense.
Becky Launder:
It’s so simple. But I feel it took us so long, just to figure out, because we have all these downloads, we have this course, we have this membership, how does it all fit together? So it’s taken us a couple of years to figure out what that process looks like. And of course we’re always tweaking it now. Like, do we need a new $9 product? Like, what’s the next thing we’re going to create. Are people are going to get tired of that? Are we going to run out of audience? But we’ve been running that for at least six months and it’s worked really well.
Chris Badgett:
Wow. Well, nice job figuring that out. So tell me, Jeremy, what else is in the tech stack? This site is really beautiful. You’re using a page builder of some kind?
Jeremy Launder:
Oh yeah. So we’re using the Divi theme.
Chris Badgett:
And you’re making landing pages with Divi, for custom sales pages?
Jeremy Launder:
Correct. It’s pretty minimal in the way of plugins and that kind of stuff. We just generate all the sales pages and everything within Divi. When I started taking over on the technical side, she had hired a web developer, way back, for some initial business stuff, and it was done in Divi. So I just picked it up from there and started learning from there. So we’ve just used it ever since, but it’s really, really easy to use their page builder with the drag and drop and all that kind of stuff.
Chris Badgett:
Super popular. How much time have you all had in WordPress?
Jeremy Launder:
So I would say, I’ve probably been using it for about seven years now. She had hired somebody to make a website and then, way back in the day, in high school we’ll use Dreamweaver to make websites. And I was like, it can’t be that hard. We probably don’t have to pay her to keep making updates. Let me just go in and look. And then I was like, Oh yeah, you just drag the things across the page. This is way easier than Dreamweaver. I think we can do this.
Becky Launder:
And if it was me, I’d be like, let’s hire somebody. I don’t want to deal with it.
Jeremy Launder:
We made more sites after that and then I’ve done the maintenance and all that stuff since then. It’s probably about seven years total that I have with WordPress now.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. What are you using for web hosting?
Jeremy Launder:
Using Kinsta.
Chris Badgett:
Kinsta. Cool. Super popular and the Lifter world anyway.
Jeremy Launder:
I think it was one of the places you recommended.
Chris Badgett:
It was on the short list.
Jeremy Launder:
We were using SiteGround but we ended up having some issues eventually, once we had too many users and kept getting 503 errors. And so I moved over to Kinsta. I haven’t had any issues since.
Chris Badgett:
Nice. Do you remember what was going on when you all were looking for a tech stack to build this on? I’d love to just hear the story of how you chose Lifter and what was happening then.
Jeremy Launder:
It was around the time she was doing the book, we were talking about doing the courses. So, basically it was on me to figure out how to do it. I looked at Teachable, I’d looked to LearnDash and I looked at Lifter. And really what drew me in was, I stumbled upon your Facebook group before I purchased and just seeing all the helpful content. You were jumping in there. There was a lot of help in there and then, I was also able to jump on a presales call with you and get all of my questions answered. So just, really was the support and the access, all that stuff is what drove me to Lifter.
Becky Launder:
And you like to make things your own. You like your way. That’s why I’m not allowed to have an iPhone. Like to be a little change all of sudden. You like the flexibility. And I think that something you are always looking for in solution.
Jeremy Launder:
I know if we kept it self posted and within WordPress, I wasn’t going to be limited later on. A membership wasn’t even in the plan before it started.
Becky Launder:
We weren’t even thinking about a membership in that way.
Chris Badgett:
So courses first, You were like, I just need a course, and then grew into the membership.
Jeremy Launder:
Right. Exactly. We’ve been able to do, anything we needed to do at this point and being that it’s self hosted, with WordPress, if I need to do anything else, generally there’s a plugin, there’s some sort of existing functionality. You can go grab an add on, we’ll be able to use later. I think it was a good decision going with Lifter and the sticking with WordPress.
Chris Badgett:
I appreciate that. Tell us about working together as a couple. I think it’s awesome. I work from home, my wife’s here. She doesn’t work in the business. And I know lots of people that both parents work from home or together, whatever, but how did you guys figure it out? Obviously you have very different skillsets and parts you do. Do you struggle with the same-
Becky Launder:
Probably why it works.
Chris Badgett:
That’s why it works?
Jeremy Launder:
Totally different lanes. She’s the extrovert, outgoing, business development, on video, all that stuff. I get to hang out, behind the scenes, doing the tech stuff, what I enjoy, figuring out the technical, solving those. We’re definitely not stomping on each other’s toes with anything in the business.
Becky Launder:
I think is complimentary. Right. Like I said, if it was me, I’d be like, I don’t know, this thing looks good, let’s just buy it or hire somebody and just do it. It’s not my department. I’m not going to even think twice about different options. We’re just going to pick something and do it. He’ll do his research and look at the full solution. And it’s the same way with our budget, he does all the finances. And even though sometimes I’m like, are you sure I didn’t make more money than that? He’s got the big picture and I’m kind of more in it, working with our students and some of our corporate clients too, that’s the other piece that we didn’t mention.
Becky Launder:
We have some corporate startup direct sales companies that are also using and licensing the courses and the content that we offer.
Chris Badgett:
Oh, cool.
Becky Launder:
So we definitely have, a different department, different things that we’re focused on. And I feel with a global pandemic, we’ve had a little bit of a practice run of working at home together, because even in his corporate job has been working at home since March.
Jeremy Launder:
Yeah, it was March.
Becky Launder:
We get a taste of that. And that was a transition, I think for our whole family. I’m used to working from home. I worked at home for years, but having to work at home with my husband across the table and my kids doing school over here, it’s definitely had its challenges but I think we’ve all adopted and settle into things.
Chris Badgett:
And no judgment, everybody does it different. Do you have any rules in the house, to turn off work or something past a certain time or anything like that? Are you just all-
Becky Launder:
We probably work too much.
Chris Badgett:
Okay. No, it’s common.
Becky Launder:
The reality is, when he had his corporate job, if he was going to help with any tech, finance behind the scenes stuff, that was in the evenings, it was the [crosstalk 00:25:49], you come home and we put the kids to bed and you work on stuff for a few hours.
Jeremy Launder:
I was looking forward to it. I was like, [crosstalk 00:25:57].
Becky Launder:
And I’d be like, Oh my gosh, I’ve worked all day and I’m still working at night, but we don’t really have any hard set rules. And I’m hoping that now that Jeremy is full time in the business, we’ll have a little bit more balance. I don’t even to use the word balance, but maybe some more boundaries, because we do. We don’t watch TV at night. We sit at our computers and we work in the evenings and we’re nerdy like that. I think, when you love what you do, it’s not too bad.
Jeremy Launder:
We also take time during the day. We’ll have, for example, today is the majority of my work day. So I’m working from eight in the morning till two, she’s hanging out with the kids, not really working. So we’re taking that time during the day to hang out with the kids and do that kind of stuff.
Becky Launder:
That’s true. If you could see the other side of our wall, we have whiteboards pretty much floor to ceiling. And one of them is our work schedule. So currently summer vacation, kids are home and they won’t be going back to school in the fall. So who knows how long this will last, but we’ve pretty much split our schedule every day. So one of us is working, one of us is with the kids, and then hopefully we have a couple hours in there, that are a little bit of relax. The kids are busy doing other things, where we can actually work together and stuff. But for right now, we have an AM and a PM schedule.
Chris Badgett:
Awesome. Being the entrepreneur, being the coach, being the parent, being the tech person, there’s a lot going on. I totally get it. And you guys, sounds like you’re doing a great job juggling it all. A question for you, Becky. Not everyone is as lucky as you to have a tech person sitting right next to him. If someone decides, hey, I want the benefits of WordPress or maybe somebody listening to this, they want to use Lifter, but they’re not a techie. What are the qualities that Jeremy has that you just depend on and rely on and that just makes the magic happen between you all? I’m sure Jeremy has some ideas, but I wanted to ask you.
Becky Launder:
This is going to be a little bit of a lot of fun. I know how to work most of the back office and things. Jeremy is very patient inn figuring things out. So for me, if I couldn’t figure it out in five minutes. I’m like, Jeremy, why isn’t this working? I’m trying to find this report, what our daily sales? I’m trying to look at it this way or that way. How do I get this data? So, definitely very patient and very detail oriented, but also gets it done. I think, in the tech world, just in my experience, sometimes you work with companies that, it takes three weeks to get something done. And when you’re a small business entrepreneur and you’re just trying to knock stuff out and you changed course, from doing courses to memberships or whatever it might be, you just have to have somebody that can help, get it done and get it done quickly.
Becky Launder:
So that’s definitely something that I appreciate very much, that like, all right, priority has changed. We need this course updated today and we need to get this done by tomorrow. I knew I had this idea, but now we’re going to hold off for a couple of weeks on that. So Jeremy is very fluid and go with the flow and logical and evenqual and balances me out when I’m like, guess what, you know what we could do? We could do this and then we could do that. And he’s like, hold on. Let’s flow down and talk about what that actually looks like. So, I’m lucky that I have somebody that can do that, right across the desk from me.
Chris Badgett:
So Jeremy, as a tech professional, who’s working with somebody like Becky, an expert and more of the front of the office, what’s the magic like, working with her? Pretends she was your client, what does she do really well?
Becky Launder:
Would you fire me?
Chris Badgett:
I’ll say it that way.
Jeremy Launder:
No, it’s actually super helpful, because even before we had the website we have now. I was listening to podcasts, like Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income and those kinds of things. I’m like, totally makes sense. I have no idea, what I would do to even get into the business. So having somebody that’s more the visionary big picture idea type person. I definitely need that. I have ideas, but it’s usually after she comes up with something and then I’m trying to figure out, okay, well, how can we really make that happen? Then it’s like, okay, well we can do it this way, we can do it that way. And that’s where I start getting creative on how we can get it done, but just the visionary big picture. You need both, right? You need somebody to come up with those crazy ideas and what we’re going to do.
Becky Launder:
But then you make me take my crazy ideas and draw them on a piece of paper. So this is Jeremy’s secret sauce. I’m like, okay, we need a landing page that has this and that. And he’s like, “Well, that’s great. Can you draw me a picture of it?”
Jeremy Launder:
I’m not the designer, that’s for sure.
Becky Launder:
So then I draw it out and I’m like, okay, it’s going to be this, that’s going to be here. And then he’ll question me on it and be like, but why? Shouldn’t this be like that? Where does this connect or is that going to not make sense with our other offering over here? How is that fitting into everything we’re doing? So you definitely make me spell it out in detail my requirements. And then sometimes in the end I’m like, all right, maybe we shouldn’t do that right now.
Chris Badgett:
I’m smiling, because I have a technical co-founder, his name’s Thomas, and we have the same dynamic. He’s like, really? You want that? And then, he’s like, can you draw that out? Or let’s get a little more detail here. And then sometimes he makes me realize, maybe I have a bad idea, which happens too.
Becky Launder:
It happens to the best of us.
Chris Badgett:
You mentioned it. I wanted to hit on it before we moved on. You talked about licensing. You found a bigger client that maybe it was putting a bunch of people in the program or whatever. What happened there? Because that’s pretty cool to not just close one person, but to get a big account or whatever, how’d you do it or what’s the deal?
Becky Launder:
You want to talk about that, or you want me too?
Jeremy Launder:
Yeah, you go ahead.
Becky Launder:
Okay.
Jeremy Launder:
I’m going turn, this thing keeps-
Becky Launder:
I know.
Jeremy Launder:
Turn this off.
Becky Launder:
Jeremy’s computer is beeping at us.
Chris Badgett:
I can’t hear it actually.
Becky Launder:
That’s good. I’m glad. [inaudible 00:32:44] on the front side. Now I have three corporate clients that I’m working with and we’re looking to grow that side of the business on the licensing side. So in the direct sales world, there’s new companies popping up all the time and as they’re getting started, they usually have a really great product, but oftentimes they don’t know how to train their sales force or they’re not sure exactly the best practices in the industry. So we’ve had a couple of clients come to us and talk to us about, okay, if you have these free courses, how do we get them out to everyone within our company? So we’ve set up a couple of licensing agreements and we’re even expanding upon that morally. You’ll talk about that side of the project here in a minute.
Becky Launder:
But that’s been really exciting as well. So we’ve set up, using Lifter and basically creating a micro, well, this is probably not the right word, but a replicated version of our current site for our members, but for other companies. And we’ve used capture codes and we’ve done a couple of manual enrollments with different customers that are looking for that. And then they essentially have me in their back pocket within their company. I do some other stuff for them too, some live training and I’ll do more support for them and strategy work with them. But it’s been a really exciting piece of the business. And I think as we look into the next year, that’s the part of the business that we’re most excited to grow. We may me see a lot of opportunity in. So it’s just been this evolution from, we have one course, to five courses, to the memberships, to the licensing, it’s really grown from there. And you can talk about what we have coming up, which is exciting too.
Jeremy Launder:
Just before we leave on that. So I think most of the corporate clients have come in through either a Facebook ad. They found the $9 thing, because they were looking for training.
Chris Badgett:
I got to get one of these.
Becky Launder:
Everyone needs a $9 thing.
Jeremy Launder:
So then they join the membership and they love the courses and they’re like, we got to get this to all of our consultants that we have and that’s really.
Becky Launder:
Or they found my blog and they’ve watched videos. They’ve seen some of the training that I’ve offered and my style and the content and it’s evolved from there.
Jeremy Launder:
To make that happen, we essentially take our existing courses platform. I’ve made a template site now, essentially, that has those five courses that we licensed to the corporate clients. Essentially make a copy of that and put it in our hosting sites and-
Chris Badgett:
So that’s all on your Kinsta account?
Jeremy Launder:
Yeah. So I just add, essentially clone it in the Kinsta account to make a new copy of it. It’s pretty easy and straightforward to set up. They’re all getting the same content. Sometimes we’ll do, I guess minor updates, logos and colors and stuff to match the branding. But it’s usually pretty minimal to get it set up and working.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome.
Becky Launder:
It’s a great consolation for them, because otherwise they’re hiring an in house training person, that person’s learning the company, they’re learning the brand, they’re developing all their own courses and providing that to their sales force. [crosstalk 00:36:09] for them.
Chris Badgett:
I’m proud of you all. That is awesome. It adds a ton of value to them and it’s super efficient. So you’re not doing all this manual training. It’s awesome. I wanted to ask you about a question that hangs up a lot of people, you two have come a long way in a short amount of time and done a lot of different things. So you’re clearly learning a lot, taking action, experimenting. One of the areas I see people get hung up on is pricing. It may change based on whoever’s watching this, what your pricing is. Can you tell us about your approach to picking a price for the membership or the courses or whatever? What’s the pricing story here? Was it hard to decide? Did you go up or down or what happened?
Becky Launder:
We’re in the middle of all of that right now. We launched at $17 a month, and we had a mental block around it being 20 or higher. We wanted to keep it 20 or less. I can write all of the copy in the emails about how that’s three coffees a month at Starbucks, whatever. Right. So less than 20 bucks a month. We know our audience. Our audience is, direct sellers, many of which don’t have a big established business and aren’t bringing in a ton of money right now.
Chris Badgett:
That’s so important. The willingness to pay it’s called, it’s like, what are their financial resources for this market.
Becky Launder:
Right. And I’ve struggled with it, because I’m like, I know I’m providing more value than $17 a month. I’m giving them all these courses. If I was going to sell the courses as a standalone, it would be, upwards of $300. But they’re getting everything and I’m doing live training and masterminds. And so we landed at 17, that felt like our sweet spot. And then we did the discount, where if they joined for the first month or the Facebook ad, it’s just 10 for the first month. And we have a pretty good attrition rate on that. Some people stay, some people go, that’s I think just how it goes with memberships. But right now we’re in the process of we’re officially closed. So we don’t have our sales page up in live right now, we have a wait list and we’re increasing it to 25 a month.
Becky Launder:
And so right now we have about, we’re right around 500 members and the membership. And so we felt we have a pretty steady group and there’ll be grandfathered in at the 17 a month. And then any new members that are coming in, starting when we reopen, probably late September, will be at 25 a month. So price was tough. In my corporate background, I used to price programs, leadership programs that were thousands of dollars and it was tough then. And I feel when it’s your own product, it doesn’t get any easier. I think the biggest thing is just knowing, we do a big push around getting people to upgrade to annual. So that’s something that we’ve been really focusing on, is how many of our monthly members can we get to upgrade to annual.
Becky Launder:
Then we know we have them for the next 12 months, we do a little bit of a discount. So it’s 170, they’re getting two months free, if they upgrade to annual. Pricing is not very easy, and even going up to 25, we’re like, in this economy, right now, should we make that move? But I think the time is right. We just have to go for it. And then if we want to do any bonuses or discounts, we can do that. So it’s a challenge, pricing is challenging.
Chris Badgett:
Well, for what it’s worth, you’re three coffees a month. I really like the 30 or the 25. It’s basically a dollar a day. That’s a pretty good sales.
Becky Launder:
[crosstalk 00:39:48]. Exactly.
Chris Badgett:
As a software person and just a little bit of a nerd, I’m into things like churn and recurring revenue and stuff like that. And one of the things is there’s this concept called activation, where somebody gets activated into your software, into your membership or your product. What is it inside your membership site, inside the Academy, where, maybe you already know, if not, if you were to guess after somebody crosses this one gate, they’re pretty much going to stick around for the foreseeable future. What kind of behaviors do they do? Do you have some thoughts there?
Becky Launder:
I have a lot of thoughts on that. That’s like the not everyone’s trying to crack, right? What is it that gets people to stay? For us, the very first barrier is joining our Facebook group, which is so silly, somebody buys it and I see 20% of the people don’t even join the Facebook group. And I’m like, if they don’t join the Facebook group, they’re not sticking around, because part of the value is that community, and being able to connect with others and see the updates and the trainings and the replays. If they don’t get themselves into the group, we can pretty much kiss them goodbye. They’re not going to stick around. So we do a lot now in the very beginning when somebody joins to get them into the group, which is so basic, but they get an email inviting them to the group.
Becky Launder:
Then they get a text message, reminding them to join the group of Facebook, if they haven’t. Then they get a personal video from me. So I send a banjoro video to them, reminding them to join the group with a call to action, to join the group. And if they still haven’t joined, then we send one more email. And then after that, I can pretty much guarantee they won’t continue with that, if they don’t join the group. So that’s a huge barrier for us, is just getting people from the purchase to actually access the material. And I think, when people upgrade to annual or they want to stay longer, I think it’s usually because they’ve come to a live something, they’ve come to one of our lines masterminds. They’ve asked a question in the group and they’ve gotten a really great response and found a lot of value from it.
Becky Launder:
Or, we do a push around our virtual retreats and getting them to operate to annual, but they really have to be an active member of the community. Otherwise they probably won’t stick around and we already struggle in direct sales, because direct sales is a lot of turnover. You don’t have a boss, you’re signing up and buying a kit and getting connected with the company. And there’s already a ton of turnover in the industry. So we really been focusing on people that are at least established or more in a leadership role, to be that they’re going to stay within the industry for a little while longer and then hopefully stay within our membership for longer when they’re finding that value.
Chris Badgett:
That is awesome. I’m totally shifting gears here to a different area. What was the signal in the business that, however you want to talk about it, that you were like, I think Jeremy could come home and this can just be our thing. What had to happen for that realization, not necessarily in terms of specific numbers or anything, but what happened, where that became, hey, I think we can do this moment?
Jeremy Launder:
Yes. So it looks like-
Becky Launder:
Many late nights with drinks and counseling, over stability and corporate job.
Chris Badgett:
Personal risk.
Becky Launder:
Many, many long conversations. For a while, the number was a thousand, right. For a while, we kept saying when we hit a thousand membership, you would walk out of your job that day. That was the number that we had in our… We’re not there yet.
Jeremy Launder:
But we also added the other pieces with the licensing and additional, like consulting and that kind of stuff. It was hard for me to wrap my head around it honestly, because, that stability and that was my push to go to a membership and get that recurring income and all that kind of stuff. But I mean, for me, what turned it, other than the therapy sessions at night.
Becky Launder:
Like, just drink another glass of whiskey babe, [crosstalk 00:44:11] night.
Jeremy Launder:
Just the trajectory the membership kept taking. It’s been a steady rise and the pandemic hit and I was like, there’s no way I’m quitting now. I’m staying right here in my secure, cozy job, in my office. But then when it actually ticked up a little higher and more people looking for how to do things online and do things from home. So then it just reaffirmed that, we got something here, we’re doing enough now. We can survive on the income that’s coming from it. If I go full time with it, we’ll be able to grow it faster.
Becky Launder:
I think that’s a big part of it.
Jeremy Launder:
I think that few months of Academy growth and it continuing to grow was what took it for me.
Becky Launder:
And I was like, come on, we can work during the day, daylight. We can work during daylight hours and not just every night after the kids go to bed, from eight til midnight, this could be big. So it was a leap, for sure. I’m sure it’ll still be a transition. I’m sure a lot of people are like, are you crazy? You quit your corporate job for 15 years, in the midst of a global pandemic, when everyone is looking for employment, what are you thinking? The timing just, couldn’t have been better for us. And I’m grateful to have a little bit of extra help at home, now that our children are going to be officially just learning in the fall too. So it’ll be nice to have, two hands on [crosstalk 00:45:39]. Me and the kids. I won’t completely lose my mind, just maybe a little bit.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. Well, I’m so happy for you guys, that you ended up where you are and it’s working out so well. What’s a parting message you would have for other people who are trying to teach online, build these kinds of courses, maybe get into a bigger membership and coaching program and do these big license deals. If somebody is not as far along as you are, and just in the earlier stages, what’s a piece of advice you have for them? And maybe if you both could just answer separately, what that would be.
Jeremy Launder:
I would say, for me, the big thing that I’ve learned, and it’s tough for me and I see her do it all the time is, you got to just do it, just go start doing, don’t get hung up on all the, trying to make it fancy and perfect and all that stuff. Just go out and get it done. Because as soon as you put it out there, you’re going to start getting feedback and you’re going to want to make tweaks and it’s never going to be perfect. And it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the engineer in me, perfectionist in me always wants it to be, Oh no, there’s something else to do here. And she’s more of the, no, let’s just put it out there. Let’s just do it. Let’s see what happens. And I’m coming to more of that side.
Becky Launder:
I know. I was going to say that’s like… This is being recorded. So I’m going to save it.
Chris Badgett:
It’s forever.
Jeremy Launder:
Just get started and do it, because it’s never going to be perfect and you’re always going to have these little tweaks and nothing’s ever set in stone. You’ll be able to change it and tweak it and make it better and just get started and go.
Becky Launder:
That’s good. That’s like something I would say. I think along the same lines, you just have to try a lot of different things. I wrote a book and my full through copies on the Amazon and that was great. And I launched some courses and some people bought them, but not as many people as I wanted to buy them in the end. Then we have this membership and we have a goal of a thousand people in the membership by the end of the year, which I think we’re still mostly on track for, it’s aggressive, but doable. Even the licensing opportunities that came up, I would have never even realized those existed a year ago. So there’s so many iterations and we’ve evolved so much and learned so much in the process, that you do. You just have to go and put it out there. I just put a Facebook ad out that I recorded on vacation in an Airbnb, in the kitchen.
Becky Launder:
I thought it was the worst thing ever. And I was horribly embarrassed and our ads manager was like, no, it’s great. We’re going to use it. I was like, do we have to? I don’t know, there was something holding me back. And now people are buying things based on this awkward ad that I did in an Airbnb in a kitchen. So you just have to, even for me, sometimes, doing stuff before, maybe I’m ready, it’s out of my comfort zone. You just have to do and see how it goes and then change it, because it always changes.
Chris Badgett:
That’s awesome. Well, Becky and Jeremy Launder, thank you for being a shining example of what’s possible with your adventures as education entrepreneurs and people using LifterLMS. And really not just making a product that makes your life better, but you’re also helping other people build out a career, which in this day and age, that can be done remotely, is cool. My hats off to you on that. Congratulations on all your progress. I can’t wait to see where you are three years from now, on what you’re doing. If somebody wants to connect with you, maybe they might be interested in direct selling or they want to go check out your site or this famous $9 lead magnet. Where can people go to find out about you?
Becky Launder:
I love to say is, myconsultanttraining.com. There’s everything on there, about the courses, the membership, perfectly crafted the $9 lead magnet. All of that is on the web website. And then I have a free Facebook group for direct sellers, called, the my Consultant training tribe. That’s just a free group over on Facebook. And I’m on Instagram at Becky Lander and YouTube, all the other places. You’ll probably see more of me than him.
Jeremy Launder:
I’m not very active on social media. But you can find me there.
Chris Badgett:
Awesome. Well, thanks you all for coming on the show and I wish you all the best in your future projects.
Becky Launder:
Thanks, Chris.
Jeremy Launder:
Thanks. Appreciate it, Chris.
Chris Badgett:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe, so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at lifterlms.com/gift. Go to lifterlms.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
