We have Molly Mahoney the Prepared Performer on audience pivots, course piloting, Facebook Messenger bots, confidence, and more in this episode of LMScast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Molly and Chris discuss selling without coming across as a weirdo, and teaching online using Facebook.
Molly and Chris share their stories of what they did before they were into technology and teaching online. Molly worked as a singer on a cruise ship for six months. Then she and her husband moved back to California from New York to raise kids, and she launched a business built around her passions. Chris managed a helicopter-supported dog sled tour business on a glacier in Alaska for almost a decade, and the main driver of that business was the cruise ships that would visit there.
Having routines and developing boundaries are very important parts of maintaining a comfortable work/life balance. Molly originally had a course where she taught performers how to start and run their own businesses, but the performers who could use her content could not afford it. So she pivoted and changed her course a little bit and taught business owners how to perform, and that saw great results.
Molly has a really innovative and unique way of running her online course content. She does a lot of her business through Facebook and Messenger. Molly uses a Facebook group, and she does Facebook Live sessions for the majority of her content. She has changed the way people use photo albums, and she uses it to organize curriculum. Messenger can work as an autoresponder when people sign up for your content on Facebook as well.
Molly also teaches confidence tips on BeLive.tv. She loves using this platform, because it really gives you the ability to connect with your audience and customize your screen options so that the presentation style is very professional. It allows you to pre-schedule videos, too. They also talk about ManyChat and how you can use that for creating an autoresponder.
Chris and Molly go into depth on the steps it takes to become an uncommon salesperson and not be a ‘salesy weirdo.’ Developing the confidence in yourself is a key part of being a successful entrepreneur online. Highlighting your skills and establishing yourself as a down-to-earth person in your content makes you seem more relatable, and that makes it easier for clients to buy from you. When you infuse your brand with your characteristics, it will also strengthen lead and idea generation. Then you can execute on sales once you have established a relationship with your customers.
Having a deep impact on the world is also something that should be worked into your product, so that can serve as motivation in tough times. And it can help sell your message to clients, because people are attracted to others who have a similar approach to the world. If you can get outside of the ‘looking in the mirror’ focused approach, you can really connect with your students and customers.
To learn more about Molly Mahoney check out ThePreparedPerfomer.com/lms to get access to Molly’s live content planner and her next masterclass!
You can post comments and subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us.
Episode Transcript
Chris: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. For those of you listening to the podcast here, we actually ran this live on Molly Mahoney’s Facebook page for prepared performers.
For those of you listening in the live audience right now, thanks so much for coming. This is going to be an awesome conversation. We’re going to get into Facebook topics, Messenger bot topics, selling without being a weirdo topics, teaching online. Molly and I realized we had a little common thread in our history we’re going to get into with a little bit of story time.
First, Molly, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Molly: Thank you, I am so stoked that you were up for the crazy ride that I decided to throw at you with going live. This is going to be such fun.
Chris: Yeah, well, let’s get into your history a little bit. There’s something going on in your past from the cruise industry, and I have a history in the cruise industry before I got heavy into technology.
I actually used to, this may sound kind of wild to those of you who haven’t heard it before. For almost a decade, I managed a helicopter-supported dog sled tour business on a glacier in Alaska for almost a decade, and the main driver of that business was the cruise ships that would come into Juno, Alaska, and people would fly up in the helicopters to our camp on the ice field and we would take them on sled dog rides.
Before I got into online courses and technology and membership sites and all these things, I was a big outdoor guy. I still am, but for a long time I made my living basically in the ecotourism business fueled by the cruise industry.
Molly: Okay, wait, can you go back and just say that again? That actual title of what you did, “Helicopter,” the whole thing all the way through. What was that?
Chris: I managed a helicopter-supported sled dog tour business, so I was on a glacier with a couple hundred sled dogs, a bunch of people, and the owner of that business who became a good friend and mentor was an Iditarod sled dog racer. I used to run some sled dog races and help him train in the wintertime.
That’s what I did before I got into the online business in the software business. That’s my background.
Molly: Which is amazing.
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: I was actually a performer on cruise ships, and the one place that I didn’t go, I’ve been so many places all over this crazy world and one place that I’ve never been is Alaska.
We should, oh, my gosh, we’ve been talking about planning our prepared performer cruise recently for course creators and business owners who are using Facebook live. We should plan one. I was thinking Caribbean, but maybe we should do it in Alaska.
Chris: Yeah, Alaska’s pretty amazing.
Molly: Super-cool. I was actually a musical theater performer for most of my life, and then I had the job six months on a cruise ship as a singer and it was awesome.
We ended with a transatlantic cruise, I stayed on for the last two weeks to do the transatlantic and got to see so many amazing places and I have really good friends from all over the world now and learned how to live in a little tiny room underneath the ground for six months, which was kind of crazy, but it taught me a lot.
Chris: That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s fun times. Well, tell us, going from being a performer to being the prepared performer presence online, can you tell us that story, just the evolution to what you are today?
Molly: Yeah, I started performing when I was eight years old.
Chris: On a vacuum cleaner, I saw, right?
Molly: Well, I did. That was even before. Good job, yes.
Chris: Okay.
Molly: My “about” page is so fun. My friend PM’d my new website and it does say that. When I was three years old, I started performing, singing into a vacuum cleaner, but I went to school for theater and dance and one of the main things when I graduated and I moved to New York, one of the main things that I was missing was actually training in how to actually have a job and how to have a career and actually make a living and not be a “starving artist.”
I was lucky to have several friends and met lots of people who were able to help guide me in that but I was like, man, what a bummer that other performers are thrown into this insanity where really you’re running a business. We’re taught that business is bad, getting a business degree is a bad thing, that you’re selling out, but I have a firm belief that if you can embrace those business strategies you’re actually going to have a bigger ability to affect the world in a deeper way, right?
Chris: Very cool.
Molly: Yeah, after, I was on tour with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the Broadway musical, kind of random, with a flying car similar to with dogs on a sled, I suppose. We actually had nine dogs on our tour, also.
Chris: Awesome.
Molly: Have you seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
Chris: I have not, but I just saw Amy at a local performance and there was a dog in it, yeah.
Molly: Yeah, you never know. There’s actually just one scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where they have these candies that whistle, they’re called Toot Sweets and when they whistle the candies, all these dogs run on stage, so nine dogs toured with us for that one scene, which was crazy.
Yeah, while I did that, my husband and I got engaged and we decided to move back to California from New York to raise kids and I launched a business. My goal was to have a knitting/dance studio/wine bar called …
Chris: That sounds like a definitely “follow your passion” kind of direction, right?
Molly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, what am I good at, what do I love, and how can I make a business out of it?
Chris: How’d that work out?
Molly: Well, I worked at two different studios and I realized, and I worked at a yarn store also, and realized I do not want a brick and mortar.
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: No, thank you. It was going to be called “Kick & Knit,” which would’ve been awesome and clever but I decided to take my business online so I built a really awesome full vocal coaching business here in Orange County but I was working at literally, at one point I had ten different jobs. I don’t know if you ever have been in that place, I call it “busy balls,” #BusyBalls.
Chris: Yeah, that’s intense when you’re just from one thing to the next and very little sleep and lots of trying to switch gears from one to the next. Yeah, it’s crazy.
Molly: When you said it’s a passion-based business, it’s easy to find yourself in that place because you love what you do and you just think I’m going to hustle and I’m going to get there, but then you just create more and more busy balls and then you get sick and you don’t have time with your kids and all that.
Chris: The body does revolt eventually. That’s what I find, even if you’re following your passion and you have your foot, the pedal to the metal, eventually the body’s like, hey, this isn’t sustainable, got to slow down.
Molly: Yeah, I’d like to say that I learned that but it happens again. It’s like, for me, I don’t know if it’s a struggle for you, I don’t know if you’ve figured that out. I’m working on it, I’m a lot better, but that self-care piece is so important, you know?
Chris: It’s a big deal. It’s easy for that to get run away. For me, personally, I just have to develop habits and boundaries. I have a morning routine and I definitely had work/life balance issues, but I’m constantly working on it.
I’m really, we talked about running sled dogs in Alaska. I’m about seven years into my entrepreneur journey or six years or whatever, and I would say it really took me five years to get remotely stable. You know what I mean?
Molly: That makes me feel so good, because this is the fifth year of having my business. Aaah, that means I’m right in the right spot.
Chris: Well, I always heard on podcasts and stuff, it’ll take you three years to figure it out but, you know what, it actually took me five. Maybe I’m below average but, I don’t know …
Molly: I love it.
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: I actually, I launched this course and, Michael, if you’re still watching, I watched this course that, launched this course, I used Zippy Courses and I wish I had known you guys existed at that point but I created all of this training material ahead of time. I launched a pilot program, it was called “Prepared Performer Profits,” and it was teaching starving artists how to build a business using their creative talents.
The pilot went really well, I had 15 people. They were seeing awesome results and I had amazing testimonials and feedback, and then I went hardcore selling this course that I had already created. Guess what happened?
Chris: Crickets?
Molly: Zero sales, like, actually zero.
Chris: Well, I was listening and when I heard “starving artist” is the target market, that was like, ah, I get it, I know they need help but can they pay for it? Will they pay for it?
Molly: No, they won’t, just like, you know?
Chris: Yeah, okay, yeah.
Molly: Which, how many coaches and how many courses was I in where they were like, “Molly, this is really valuable but I don’t think people are actually going to buy it,” and I was like, “Yes, they will.”
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: They didn’t, hashtag #fyi.
Chris: Yeah, that’s a good lesson, that’s a good lesson, or maybe it’s just the wrong product. Maybe a book that’s $20 or something, maybe, but I don’t know how much your course or your program was.
Molly: The pilot was $197 and I had reached out to people individually at that point to sell it, and then the full-blown course was $497, which was pretty, for what they were giving it was crazy. I was listening to a podcast that you had done with Joseph.
Chris: The scrivener coach? Joseph Michael?
Molly: Yeah, yeah, I loved all the discussion about pricing in that one. Yeah, what I realized is that even if it was technically for starving artists, even if I had called it something differently like, I was like, “Cure the starving artist syndrome.” Talk about reinforcing the scarcity mindset.
Chris: Yeah, that’s how we learn, that’s how we learn.
Molly: Right, yeah. What I did, I literally felt like I was having a panic attack. I don’t know if I really cried a lot, but I have never felt that feeling of “I can’t breathe” because of what is actually happening right now. I got with a coach that I was working with at the time Amy Bradbury, do you know her by any chance?
Chris: I don’t. Is she related to Danny Inni at all, or any of his staff?
Molly: I don’t know, but I was in Danny’s course so actually this story is featured. I didn’t even realize it, but it’s featured in Danny’s recent or the newest edition of his book.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Molly: Yeah, Andy was my coach with Danny and he helped me with this, too. No matter how many of them told me not to do the starving artist thing, I was fully committed.
The feedback I had gotten from Danny’s group and from a lot of other people is that my live videos were doing really well and Facebook Live had just come out, so we shifted everything. I took all of the training that I had in that course and I wrote it into a spreadsheet and I decided to flip it and teach business owners how to perform instead of performers how to have a business.
Chris: Oh, that’s a really interesting way, a “pivot,” we would call that in the startup world. It’s a very, some people technically in the startup community you would call that an audience or offer pivot, but that’s a really fascinating way to look at that.
Molly: Yeah, I flipped it literally. It was the same material, basically. I just added a little more, there’s one module in my course about performing and then the rest of it is business strategy, because if you’re planning on using Facebook Live to have a business and you don’t have that stuff in place it’s not going to work.
Chris: Is that where you really got your wings when, after you made that pivot, it started the light at the end of the tunnel the hole got bigger, right?
Molly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it’s this giant grand canyon. It’s amazing.
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: Actually, what I did is I taught the whole course in a Facebook group. I went live every day for 30 days and I sold it before I did that.
Chris: Yeah, let’s hear about the particular offer of, were you considering that a pilot, a relaunch of the Facebook group, or this is just a new format for delivering a course?
Molly: Well, when I started it, my plan was to do it as a pilot and then the second month, the first month went really well. I think I did, I sold the course, and now the program is fully sussed out. There’s so many new things in it and the course sells for $997.
Chris: Do you still run it through Facebook?
Molly: Yes.
Chris: Okay, tell us about that. How does that work? How do you do a course in Facebook? Private group? Just walk us through the end to end from after the sales page. What happens?
Molly: Yeah, after the sales page they get a thank you page that says “welcome, we’re so glad you’re here,” blah-blah-blah, and “click this link to join the group.” I’ve actually moved it around a couple times, but everyone has told me in my community, because we’re doing Facebook Live anyway, that they really love having the content in that Facebook group. What I did, and this is something I made up and it can be a little weird at first but once people get it it’s awesome.
I did those 30 videos and I actually did that for three months, and halfway through the third month I was like, this is ridiculous. I’m not going to …
Chris: Oh, you mean you had run it live, the same curriculum probably slightly improved each time but go through it again and again, right?
Molly: Yeah, until I got all the feedback and then everyone was giving their, because they all had homework for every lesson that I taught and they were putting it in the comments below the video.
Chris: Amazing, yeah.
Molly: Like, “Awesome!”
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: Everybody sees that there’s not a competition but an accountability feel and this excitement about it.
Chris: Quick question because I’m a details guy, at least about some things, is this lifetime access to the Facebook group or are they removed after 30 days? It’s just a set journey or is it … ?
Molly: Yeah, for now it’s lifetime access. It was at first, it was going to be just one month and then I did it for six months but then trying to pull people out and keep track of that was, honestly, for me, just way too much of a headache.
Chris: Yeah, for sure.
Molly: I know you mention that a lot of people in this community launch courses and then have coaching. Having that relationship where I’m able to still continue the support with them in the Facebook group is so much better for being able to welcome people as private clients as well.
Chris: Okay.
Molly: Rather than taking them out, you know?
Chris: Got you.
Molly: Then I went through …
Chris: You were doing it live and you did it three times and then what?
Molly: This is crazy. At first, I put all of the live videos into a file within the group and I had my assistant at the time take …
Chris: Video files that people could download? Is that what you mean?
Molly: No, I shared the link, the URL, from the video, from the live video, and a document within the Facebook group so they can just click on it.
Chris: Oh, I got you, yeah.
Molly: It always, I have them all on YouTube in case anything happens and I had put them into a course thing, also, which I think that’s important because we don’t own Facebook, right?
Chris: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Molly: It’d be cool to have, if anyone in your audience does this, I think your plugin would still be an amazing way to have it standard and download it and have it there so that they can still access it that way.
Chris: There’s a Facebook version, too, maybe, or something? Yeah, it’s interesting, yeah.
Molly: Yeah, now what I’ve done is totally different. Actually, because there’s no way to do video albums on Facebook, right?
Chris: Right.
Molly: I did a photo album with the title of each video training in order and then I took the link for my favorite out of the three months, I took the best of all of those and I put the link in the description of the video and, I mean, in the description of the photo so that they see the title, then they click on that link, and then they’re back into that conversation that people were having in June.
Chris: Wow, for those of you, if you got lost a little bit there, what Molly basically did is she hacked the structure of a photo album to organize and create a curriculum that makes sense using the way Facebook works. That’s really amazing. That’s cool.
Molly: I also have if people want to opt in they can get a 30-day email sequence. Every day for 30 days they’re sent a link to the video in the Facebook group with a little …
Chris: I think it’s really fascinating because lots of people have their platform preference. They may want to just stay on Facebook or maybe it’s their email inbox and like, “Hey, just hit me up.” It can bring you back to Facebook if you want but I need that email, or I have a habit and I want to be on your side. It’s not necessarily one way is better than the other and people have different preferences and workflows and notification systems, so it’s cool.
Molly: Actually, now I’ve built out a team. We’re working on, we’re writing up written tutorials to accompany each video. There are several written tutorials in there but not for every single one, so we’re working on that now. I’m also going to offer them the opportunity to have a messenger reminder. We’ll have a sequence listed out within Messenger, in Facebook Messenger, that will send them a reminder every day for 30 days if they want.
Chris: Let’s get into that piece a little bit. Facebook Messenger bots are a thing. A lot of people don’t really know what they are. What is … how do you describe it and how do you use it?
Molly: It’s basically setting up an auto-responder for your Facebook Messenger, so if you have MailChimp or ConvertKit or any of these other Infusionsoft, it’s doing that via Facebook Messenger. It works exactly the same. You could have a landing page and people can opt in. You can, the cool, they have these things called “growth tools” in the system that I use and it’s basically just having a myriad of ways that they can opt in and then they’re subscribed to your Facebook Messenger on your business page. It only works on your business page.
You can set up sequences, you can tag people the same way that you would in an email service provider. It’s a different platform, so you want to treat it in a different way. It’s more fun, it’s really short messages, you have to follow the Facebook terms of service so you’re not allowed to put an actual payment link in the message. It’s against the rules, but you can get creative with that. Yeah, it’s completely transformed my business, out of control.
Chris: How do you get, in terms of getting people into that, into a Facebook flow or whatever, are you getting that opt-in on Facebook or on your website or both?
Molly: Both. Actually, I’ve added, they have a little popup that you can do, it’s a WordPress plugin. They have a popup. Is it a WordPress? You know what? I think it’s just code that you enter into the header, so I think it works with any website, actually.
Chris: Okay.
Molly: That has converted better for me than any other popup I’ve added in the past, and it’s just a slider. It doesn’t cover up the whole screen, it’s not really obtrusive, it’s fun, and the cool thing is they don’t have to enter any information. They just click, because most people are already logged in with Facebook.
Chris: It’s already logged in, yeah, which is one of the beautiful parts about it. The other beautiful part is the open rates. People read Facebook messages a lot, most of them.
Molly: Yeah, my open rates are averaging, and I have about 3,000 people subscribed now and my open rates are anywhere from 60% on the low rate to 97%, 96%, which is crazy. The click-through rates are even more insane, so it’s super-cool.
My favorite way to get people, and I don’t know if you’ve played with this, my favorite way to get people subscribed and to offer them major value is I use it with Facebook Live. What I’ll do is I preschedule a live video.
Chris: Are you using BeLive or just using a Facebook event or what?
Molly: Yeah, I use BeLive. Have you played with BeLive at all?
Chris: Yeah, we just did a big launch party with BeLive on our Facebook page for new product private areas that we just released.
Molly: Awesome. For people who don’t know, it’s belive.tv, that’s where you can go to register. They have a free version and then you can also upgrade to do fancier things with a paid version. I don’t know if you know this, but I actually work with the company so I have my own show on their channel, which is super-cool.
Chris: Cool.
Molly: Every other Wednesday I’m there teaching confidence tips for them as well, which is really fun. I love that BeLive allows the comments to pop up on your screen so you’re really building more of a relationship with your audience. Have you played with that?
Chris: I haven’t. Well, yeah, you can press it. I’ve just done it twice so I’m not a power-user. Yeah, the comment and their face comes up. I was doing it with side by side with somebody else on my team. It was really cool, I had three formats, “broadcast,” “ask me anything,” and something else.
Molly: Yeah, “talk show.”
Chris: It was easy to use, super-easy to use.
Molly: You can add lower thirds really easily. You can add, you could even have half of your screen covered with an image. There’s so many possibilities, and you can preschedule an agenda, so if you’re worried about getting off-topic which so many people are when they’re doing videos you can have your agenda scheduled so that you can pull up everything that you want to share like bullet points and it’ll write it on the bottom of your screen.
You can preschedule the videos, and it’s super-easy to preschedule with BeLive, so I preschedule the video and then I go into this tool called, “ManyChat.” Is that what you use?
Chris: I’ve been playing around with it. I’m not using it live, but I’m teaching myself how to use it, yeah.
Molly: Okay, some people think that I say M-I-N-I, but my husband says I should say “manny chat” so then people will understand.
Chris: Yup, there you go.
Molly: Yeah, MannyChat, then you can actually attach one of these growth tools to your video with a trigger keyword. You say, while you’re doing your video you say, “Comment below with the word,” sometimes I’ll do “comment below with the words ‘kick my booty’ if you want to have some accountability in your life and I’ll send you my favorite accountability tool.
They comment below with that phrase and then it automatically messages them right away in Facebook Messenger. Once they respond to that message, they are subscribed to your messenger.
Chris: Very cool. That’s basically like your email list but on Facebook, so it’s your messenger list. Just for the people that are kind of nervous, if somebody decides they want to opt-out or unsubscribe from your Messenger, how do they stop?
Molly: Yeah, I am so big about this. Two things, one is you don’t want to be a salesy weirdo, so you want to give people options. Even when I say, “We’re live doing this video right now if you want to join us,” I say, “Would you like to join us?” I don’t say, “Come join us live,” because not everybody might want to, so I let them join live, I let them join the replay, or I let them say no thank you every time.
When people first subscribe, I always tell them it’s super-easy if you don’t want to get these messages anymore. We’ll miss you, but just reply with the word “stop” and you’ll be unsubscribed. It’s so easy.
Chris: Beautiful, beautiful. If somebody wants to take Facebook Live and Messenger bots and stuff to the next level, what do you recommend? How do they get going for a course creator out there that it’s like, this sounds interesting, what should I do first if I want to head down this path?
Molly: First, you come hang out with me. I’m just kidding. Yeah, really, it’s like I’m sure any of their strategies that are so common in business but so many people miss these things. The first thing is, you recognize what makes you a uniquely awesome human being, because that confident piece is huge. No matter how fancy you are in business, those gremlins pop in and will stop you, right?
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: Yeah.
Chris: Let me just go down a side path here. You’ve mentioned confidence and that’s one of the things that you’ve coached people on stuff like that. What is at the root of people not having confidence and what are some tips? You’ve mentioned “really step into who you are and be yourself,” but what other tips do you have around confidence?
Molly: This, first of all, this is the best thing that I was able to take from the world of performing into the world of business, because I coached people who had Broadway credits, people who were featured in such high level places where you would think that they’re just going to walk in and know they can nail it, but their confidence is even less than the beginners sometimes because there’s higher stakes involved, right?
Chris: Right.
Molly: I developed these strategies on how to psych ourselves out, basically, in order to feel more confident. One of them, my favorite, and it’s actually an exercise that you can’t just think about, you have to really do it. This exercise is called the “Quesadilla of Awesome.”
Chris: Okay.
Molly: Okay?
Chris: Tell me more.
Molly: Someone that recently told me they don’t eat cheese but they can have a Quesadilla of Awesome, too. It can be like a hummus quesadilla, which is the point of this. The point is that everyone has something that makes them uniquely awesome as a human, even if it’s just that you make an amazing quesadilla.
Chris: Okay.
Molly: I have them list out five different things. The five different things, I created an acronym which is the word “save.” However, I am dyslexic and don’t spell very well, so I celebrate that fact so that my audience doesn’t judge me for my typos, so the word “save” has two A’s.
Chris: Okay.
Molly: It’s S-A-A-V-E.
Chris: All right.
Molly: Reinforcing my Quesadilla of Awesome in my brand.
It’s your skills, so if you’re good at dividing up the check when you go out to dinner with your friends, that would go in your Quesadilla of Awesome. Your skill sets, the things that you’re naturally gifted at, your appearance, because no matter who you are and sometimes I think this is more of a female issue but it’s not because I have male clients who totally struggle with this. When you come to the camera, I mean, like right now we’re on Zoom but our faces are right there and it’s staring us back.
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: You have to find things in your appearance that you can celebrate and that you love. Your appearance, activities that you love, so dog sledding is clearly a part of your Quesadilla of Awesome, right?
Chris: Okay, yeah.
Molly: Knowing that and hearing that I had done cruise ships gave us that instant weird connection.
Chris: Right.
Molly: Right?
Chris: We share something in our Quesadilla of Awesome.
Molly: Yeah, even though it’s one step removed, it’s still totally something that we can talk about and pull our gremlins away and we start to have our own natural energy come out.
Chris: Got you.
Molly: That’s what people want, activities, so mine’s knitting, crocheting, dancing, swing dancing, having kids, playing with my kids, living a life of an adventure. Then your values, which, as much as you can celebrate that and really know what that is, that changes everything, also. The last thing is things that you like to eat.
Chris: Okay.
Molly: Because we can all talk about food all day long and I have a very strong relationship with Brussels sprouts and I firmly believe that if you post a picture of Brussels sprouts on Facebook and just write “Brussels sprouts” with a question mark you are going to get all sorts of engagement because people either love them or hate them.
Chris: Okay.
Molly: You make a list of those things, and then you find ways to infuse those things into your brand, into your videos, and you basically create a brand that is filled with the things that you love and then infuse your business into that so that you’re able, okay, that’s like the first step. We kind of got off, but that’s the first thing to the confidence piece and then finding ways to search out the Quesadilla of Awesome in others so that we’re not so self-focused on our own stuff.
Chris: Yeah, that’s really cool. That’s some very good tips there and I appreciate the acronym. I noticed that when I was looking at your website before this. I was like, “Oh, this is somebody who really has a strong brand here.” I’m getting the colors. The pictures are not, they’re very much unique. Okay, this is somebody who has some opinions who clearly has a Quesadilla of Awesome.
Molly: Yeah, some people see it and they’re like, oh, my gosh, this lady’s crazy, which is totally fine. They can go somewhere else. I want to work with the people that I love and the people that love that about me. Right? Same thing for you, you want to work with the people who have the same sort of work ethic or the same sort of approach to the world.
Chris: Absolutely, yeah. I can see, looking at your site, too, there was the fun side but then there was all this seriously, skills. I was somewhere and I saw the Facebook Messenger bot come up and I saw some really well written copy. I’m like, oh, this is polished. This is really good stuff here.
Molly: Thank you.
Chris: That’s what I tell people is, yeah, you may also be doing a vegan cooking class or a Brussels sprouts seven ways class, but there’s only one you.
Molly: Yeah.
Chris: There’s always an opportunity for differentiation.
Molly: Totally.
Chris: If you can get outside yourself like you’re saying and really don’t get so “looking in the mirror” focused, you can really connect with your students and your customers.
Molly: Back to the beginning question which was about how to use Facebook Live, from there if you can, after you work on your own Quesadilla of Awesome and bring it into your brand and all that, if you can really identify … I’m not sure how you guys teach about this, but I would love to know your thoughts.
There’s this idea of having a target market or a niche or whatever, but the easiest way for me to help people to do this and the easiest way for me to be really specific in my videos is to pick one singular person that I’m speaking to who is a client that I have worked with that I love or who is a person that I know would be eager to pay for my services or has the potential to pay for my services and also has something that is awesome that I would love to support them in and dive into the problems that they’re experiencing.
Make sure when you do videos on your business page you’re really solving that specific problem for that one singular person.
Chris: Yeah, that’s really cool. We’re mostly on the software side at LifterLMS in terms of we don’t necessarily teach as much on how to, the business side of courses. We’re more trying to solve the technology problems, but that makes total sense in terms of really getting into the customer avatar. I do that.
As a software entrepreneur, if I’m writing an email, one of the last things I do before I hit “send” and actually it usually happens many, many times, is I read it. I read it out loud just to hear how it lands, and I insert the name, the first name, of a customer that pops into my head.
Molly: Yeah.
Chris: I’m really trying to internalize if I was on the receiving end of this and I was this great person that I love doing business with and serving, how would this email land? That’s how I do it.
Molly: I’m going to start doing that. I love it so much. That’s so good, yeah. That’s, sometimes people see things even an email service provider or when people see the bots they’re like, aah, that’s going to pull me away from being human. No, what you just described is exactly how you ensure that you can take that human one-on-one connection and multiply it so that you can.
For me, I can spread more joy. I can help people to really unlock the things that are unique about them. Even when they walk into the grocery store, they’re going to be more confident and more on top of things and feel more empowered and just make the world a better place because I’m having that one-on-one relationship with literally thousands or hundreds or millions of people.
Chris: Yeah, we always, we’ve said over the years, one of the things we try to do with technology, teaching technology, is scale the human touch with robotics. It doesn’t mean that you’re not being human if you use an autoresponder or if you use something like our private areas add-on to set up some sequence of private pages that are going to be created for each of your coaching clients.
You’re leveraging technology but you still, a lot of human intention goes into it and perhaps some of that content is actually live and customized and everything like that. It’s okay to leverage tools, technology tools.
Molly: Yeah, it’s a huge disservice to your audience if you’re not, because when I speak from stages or in my master class that I do a couple times a month, I always say there is something that’s better than Facebook Live.
My favorite is the reaction that I got from my friend Anne Bennett who’s a branding specialist and she was at Live event and she went … and got all crazy to write this thing down. She knows that I love Facebook Live and I said speaking to an actual human being in person, having a real conversation. It is impossible to be able to have that one-on-one conversation with as many people who need you.
Chris: Right.
Molly: These are the clients that I [inaudible 00:33:24], creating a course of them so that they can engage and feel that intention whether it comes through an email or a template that you’ve written. If you can make it you and you can do like you did, pull yourself out and read it or deliver it as if you’re really speaking to that person, it changes things.
Chris: Yeah, and there’s tools that you can scale. We’re using something called Zoom to record this private conversation, but we could be doing a webinar with a bunch of people here and taking live questions. You can still get the best of both worlds out there.
Let’s talk a little bit more about sales without being a weirdo.
Molly: Okay.
Chris: That’s one of your things, course creators, especially if they don’t have a background in business or sales or Internet marketing, they’re more starting from the point of I’m an expert in “X” and I want to teach online, potentially access the worldwide market in a better way. How do you coach people on sales?
Molly: This is one of my favorite things to talk about, and it’s one of my favorite things to talk about because, I will admit, I have been a salesy weirdo in the past. I’m just going to …
Chris: What would an example of you being a salesy weirdo in the past be?
Molly: Okay, this is the perfect one and my sister called me out on it.
I used to be, now I only have my coaching business, that’s all I focus on, but I used to be part of a direct sales company. I had a team of about 200 people, and direct sales companies get such a bad rap because they are taught to be salesy weirdos, basically, is what I have realized.
Chris: Are you talking about MLM “Multi-Level Marketing” type stuff?
Molly: Yeah. Actually, Nicole who connected us and is watching right now, she called me out on this recently and she was like, “Molly, sometimes you hide the fact that you have lots of people in your audience that are indirect sales and that you have a connection to them.”
“Nicole, I am not hiding this anymore, I am just calling it like it is, which is people get put off, they’re turned off to those types of companies because so much of the strategies that are written in books or taught from the companies are salesy weirdo tactics. It’s like, reach out to all your friends and offer them to join your team.” That’s, we don’t even …
Chris: Yeah, have a Tupperware party.
Molly: Right, yeah. Okay, we searched out Tupperware when it came to getting those cups for our kids. We tried every other fancy cup, but those cups from Tupperware were amazing for us. However, what I did when I sold makeup, and it came from a place of passion and it came from a place of really loving this product, but I got so excited about it that I would literally just all day long post pictures of myself with only one eye done and show the difference.
My sister messaged me and she was like … and I had a coaching business at that time, too, so it was great for performers and all that. I did really well with that, but my sister messaged me and she was like, “Molly, more children, less mascara,” in my Facebook posts.
I had to take a step back and be like, you can’t just add a bunch of people into a Facebook group and then send them a link to buy your stuff, because that would be a salesy weirdo.
Chris: Yeah, another one that I see a bit is just trying to execute sales tactics without having a relationship.
A classic example, there’s a great book by Robert Cialdini called Influence and there’s these seven things that can make somebody influential. If you were just to read that book and implement tactics to create scarcity or urgency, it’s cool to learn how that works and learn the human psychology and the behavior and how we’re wired to respond to these things, but you shouldn’t just try to be like, “All right, I got that. Now I need to write some sales copy that exploits those human traits.”
Molly: Totally. Actually, one way that I often will explain it when it comes to a webinar or when it comes to doing a video where your objective is to make a sale, this, actually, I heard from Amy Porterfield about her webinar. This is something she said about her webinars, and I think it is so brilliant. It’s that there’s a difference between your objective and your intention.
Chris: Tell me more.
Molly: When you do a video, and I always love to out myself, so [inaudible 00:37:39] …
Chris: Okay.
Molly: Let’s talk about this, the podcast interviews, right?
Chris: Okay.
Molly: I am crazy busy right now. I have so much happening. However, I’ve decided that I’m going to make an intention to connect with more people who are sharing information with the world via podcasts.
My intention is, I know that by sharing the information that I’m sharing with you today, with your audience today, that more people are going to feel confident. We could end right now and I’d be stoked, because I know at least one person from your audience is going to go into even a PTA meeting and have a better relationship with the people that they’re connecting with because they’re going to feel more confident.
Chris: Yeah, what a gift, giving out the Quesadilla of awesome or whatever, somebody’s listening and it’s going to make a real impact. I know it is.
Molly: Yeah, underneath it I have these different versions of why’s. I have a three-part why. One of the parts of the why in my business is a global why, and so my global why is to help more people have more joy, just straight up.
I know the strategies that I teach about Facebook Live actually help people to have more joy in their life in general, which is super-cool. That’s my intention. I show up here, I think you do cool things, I’ve seen what you’re doing, I’m excited to talk to you as a human being and connect with you and then also have that joy-spreading effect go through the world.
However, business-wise, you also want to have some sort of strategy or objective. When you ask, let’s fully out myself, when you say what’s the first step to learning how to do Facebook Live I’m going to mention, oh, I have this free Facebook group. If people want to join me in the Facebook group I’m offering value all the time, or if you want a video content planner it makes it super-easy to be able to download and get all of these strategies.
Now, with that video content planner you’re going to get killer value for free, and so that’s my intention is for you to feel confident and put good non-salesy weirdo content out there. My objective is that eventually down the line you will connect with me and if it’s something that you enjoy or you realize it would help you in your business, then, yeah, you’ll jump into my programs. That would be awesome, and that would be my business objective down the line.
Chris: That’s beautiful, that’s beautiful. I’m just trying to out myself here, too. It does me a huge service to provide all kinds of free value to the course-building audience that is listening to this, and you’re helping me do that. I did not know about the Quesadilla of Awesome before today. Not only are you helping all my people, you’re helping me.
Molly: Yes.
Chris: It all works out. I have a software product around creating and selling courses, and some of the things we’re talking about is it doesn’t necessarily directly to me, we’re not just talking about the best software tools or whatever, we’re talking about ideas and strategies for people that can help them. I know in the long run that’s going to work out and we’re going to be seen as a trusted resource and we care about more than just selling software widgets.
Molly: Yes.
Chris: I really care about these things. I’m also a course creator myself, so I’m learning from you in what you’re teaching here, too, so thank you.
Molly: Yeah, also, that actually ties into one of the strategies that I teach that for so many people I think this is fear, but for many people they’re like, “Ugh, Molly, that makes no sense. That won’t work for my business. I see that it works for yours but it won’t work for mine.”
I will tell you right now, this strategy that I’m going to share works with literally every single business, every single nonprofit, every single influencer that has an objective, which is to know your ideal client and then deliver non-product-based solutions.
Chris: And what does that mean?
Molly: Excuse me. It is exactly what you talked about. We are delivering …
Chris: Like results in advance before asking for money? Is that what you mean?
Molly: No, it’s like, one example, okay, here’s the example that I always give. I know who my ideal client is and I know that they are busy, that they, like we talked about self-care in the very beginning of this interview.
Chris: Yup.
Molly: Even just teaching about self-care has nothing to do really tangibly with Facebook Live, but if I teach people to drink more water, I always mention this, but I had a client who did, she actually was part of a direct sales company.
She did a five-day water challenge on how to drink more water because it’s something that all humans need, but she was really specific to the type of person that she was speaking to and she brought him 300 leads.
Chris: Oh, wow.
Molly: On how to drink more water. It’s stupid, but it’s awesome because what you’re doing is you’re removing yourself from your final objective of making sales and you’re focusing on the person that you’re serving and how you can help them.
Chris: Yeah, that’s key, that’s key. I know my customer base really well and there’s all kinds, I probably spend more time just helping connect them with other people and other ideas. I spend a lot of time on the product and the technology tools, but I like helping them in any way I can.
Molly: Yeah, they love it, too. They appreciate you and they trust you. If something goes wrong, I bet this has never happened, but technology is crazy.
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: I launched this whole program on how to do a bot. It was a three-hour bot training and we crashed three times during the bot training. They got some play, but it literally shut down. Because I’ve built this relationship with my audience and I am good at handling disasters, I didn’t get anyone saying, “That was horrible and I want my money back.” Everybody was like, “Oh, my gosh, Molly, we love you. Thank you so much for working through that.”
Chris: Yeah, that’s awesome, and I think that’s part of that confidence piece, too, when you’re teaching or especially if you’re on a topic that’s a little bit bleeding edge and tools start breaking or Facebook changes their terms of service and now you got to change your content. People will adapt with you, because they know, because you’re being you and you’re not talking in absolutes and you’re being vulnerable and making mistakes as you go, too. People really love that.
Molly: Yes.
Chris: It’s authenticity. It’s almost cliché to be yourself or be authentic, but it really matters. It’s like a whole currency of its own.
Molly: I wish there was a different word for “authenticity,” because I feel like “authentic” has become such a buzzword.
Chris: Yeah.
Molly: I guess that’s where my Quesadilla of Awesome comes in.
Chris: Yeah, that is a new word, no two ways, so that’s cool. Well, Molly Mahoney, ladies and gentlemen, where can people find out more about what you’ve got going on and what can they expect if they head on over there and check it out?
Molly: Yeah, actually, I put together this whole little fun package just for your peeps. I would love it if they wanted to go to that link and when they go there it will show them the video content planner. There’ll be a little video saying how much fun this was, because this was so much fun. You can get the video content planner.
There’s also access to my next upcoming live video master class where I really dive into all the strategies to use when you’re live on Facebook and you want to really get those conversions and build that tribe of people who love you.
Also, a link to my free private Facebook group where we have all kinds of things are being discussed in there. We bring in guests to do … We could actually, if you wanted to come in, we could bring you in as a guest, not to put you on the spot but I’d love to have you if you want to come.
Chris: Yeah, I’d love to.
Molly: Yay, cool. We’ve had different software, all kinds of people in there who are offering advice and really juicy content within that private Facebook group. I do free Q&As and stuff like that in there, too. It’s a great place to get your questions answered, so all you have to do is go to thepreparedperformer.com/ …
Chris: LMS.
Molly: I thought we’d do it together.
Chris: Yeah, there we go. That’s the link, everybody, thepreparedperformer/LMS, or .com/LMS, and head on over to the LMScast website. You’ll see a link to that in the show notes as well. Molly, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your energy and the Quesadilla of Awesome with us and so much more. I really appreciate it.
Molly: Yeah, this was such a blast.
