Transcription
July 2019, my first month with €10,000 in revenue. I sat in front of my laptop and somehow I couldn't quite grasp it. 3 years later, 2022, an average of €14,000 per month with upward outliers, and that was supposed to be just the beginning. I put in the same amount of work, the same amount of time, the same amount of platforms. So what was the difference? What changed? Spoiler, my reach even got worse during this time. I even posted less and stopped using some platforms. As a result, I actually had even less work and was no longer working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, but actually only 15. So, what was it? What was the one thing, that one lever, that changed? It's a lever that 99% of people ignore when building an online business and therefore may never be able to earn €10,000, €1,000, and more per month because they are optimizing for the wrong thing. They optimize what seems easiest to them, but not what is most effective in the long run. I know people with 100,000 followers who earn €2,000 a month, and I know people with 2,000 followers who earn €15,000 a month. The difference here is not reach, but what comes after reach. Today, I'll show you this one lever that took me from €10,000 a year to €14,000 a month in 2022, and how my company has since scaled automatically up to €30,000, €40,000, and €50,000 a month. So, specifically, how you too can earn €10,000 or more per month with 200,000 followers or even fewer. A quick disclaimer, this won't happen overnight. And if this is your first time here, I'm Sebastian, I've been building evergreen funnels for many, many years, and was an Instagram expert for a long time, but I've also grown out of it a bit, because I always wanted to build my business in such a way that it runs without me. So, that I can simply go on vacation, that I can be sick and rest, and that I don't stress myself out all the time. And my motto is always: Earn in 15 hours what others need 60 hours for. I've been doing online business since 2014, and I believe I've made every mistake once. And so that you don't make them too, I always take you along on my journey of the past few years in my formats. And you'll also notice what's currently happening with me, from my first €10,000 month, up to €30,000, €40,000, €50,000 consistently every month, and I'll also show you this one lever that changed everything. But let me first show you what everyone is doing wrong and what I also did wrong for 3, 4, 5 years. In 2019, I had exactly one month with €10,000. In 2020, I had exactly 2 months with over €10,000. In 2021, I even earned less than in 2022, even though my reach and the assets I built continued to grow. Why? Because I was also always turning the wrong lever back then. And when I changed that, my revenue increased by 340% in 2022. So let's dive right in, and I'll first tell you a little bit about what everyone is currently doing wrong and why it's so toxic. I repeatedly see people in online business who actually post every day and their main focus is on building reach. And in many ways, that's okay at first, if you have something behind it that you can already sell. So you can collect followers, especially if you enjoy it. You can also use more platforms, and the reason people see behind it is a little bit. The more people see me, the more I'll somehow sell. That also sounds logical at first, because more reach can and should lead to more potential customers. And more followers also means more trust, especially for the people who see you. And more content actually means more chances to sell. Most gurus say: 10,000 followers, 1% of people buy, so I have 100 buyers. So if I have more followers, I also have more sellers, right? Yes, but not the ideal way. My reality between 2019 and 2021 was actually that my first €10,000 came in July 2019. That was a short time after I tried to launch a little bit. And in 2020, the range was actually between €3,600 and €11,900 per month. This means I also had a month where I only received €3,600. So, if you use payment providers, you can set, for example, that you receive money every week or once a month that you have earned. And there was actually a month where I only had €3,600. I've had worse months in my self-employment, but we don't want to go too far back, and in fact, I was only over €10,000 twice in 2020. Once with €11,900 and then I was somewhere around €11,300 again, and in 2021, the total revenue was even less than in 2020, and that had to do with the fact that it was the transition phase from my old job, which I was still doing on the side, to full self-employment now as, well, I always say when someone asks me, I'm a business consultant for marketing, so that people understand it a little bit, but ultimately I sell digital online products, digital info products, or communities, or whatever, to help people build something online, right? The paradox was, during this entire time, I gained more and more followers. I had more finished content overall, I also had more work, but somehow I had less revenue, and that was actually because I was constantly turning the wrong lever. And this reach myth says: "Yeah, well, you need like 10,000, 1,000 followers, then it runs itself. You need reach, you have to blast out a few viral things there, and then the customers will come and flock to you. But the reality check from the past few years has always been that I've had people who, with 100,000 and 150,000 followers, eventually stopped using Instagram because it was no longer profitable and because they could earn more in their normal main job with less work. And on the other hand, I always get to know people. Just recently, I met someone about half a year ago. With 20,000 followers, she didn't have 20,000 yet at the time, but a bit less. She makes half a million a year. Or I know someone who earns €15,000 with 2,000 followers. I even know someone, and most of you theoretically know him at least, because he's the manager of the biggest influencers in Germany. I think he has 8,000 followers and earns millions. So, it's not always about how many followers you have, how much reach you have. The difference is not what you do with the reach or rather how many people you reach, but what comes after the reach. And that also has a lot to do with whom you actually reach. And I want to briefly touch on my journey again and mention some numbers about how much I earned in individual months, because I'm always asked about it. So in 2019, as I said, was the first success, and in July 2019, my first €10,000 month came. Of course, you can say €10,000 when you launch a product that costs, for example, €500, and you sell it in installments, and you sell it so often in theory that you've made €10,000 in new business, but everything was bought in installments. Then you haven't received or earned €10,000 in that time, but it stabilizes the months in the long run. So theoretically, you already had €10,000 there. It's also possible that I had it before. But I didn't track these new business months back then. I track them now so that I can see how the business will develop in the coming weeks, months, and years. Back then, however, I only wrote down the income, so it's possible that I theoretically earned more than €10,000 then. It doesn't matter. So back then, it was digital info products. I used the launch model. I was totally happy. I was euphoric and I thought, now things are really going to take off. And the sobering reality came, well, from that point on in 2019, nothing more came, nothing big. And in 2020, it was exactly like this, I have to read this off a bit, so don't be surprised. January had €9,420 in income. February €4,127 in income. March €3,569 in income. April €3,630 in income, and in that whole year, I actually only had 2 months over €10,000. And that was actually a bit sobering. It was also stressful for me because I didn't know if this was still something that worked. Well, I was simply not satisfied. Yes, and then I thought, okay, I have to post more, I need more reach, I need to be on more platforms, and then I actually started all platforms more or less. Yes, I did TikTok, I did LinkedIn, I started YouTube, I used Snapchat, I did everything. Yes, and you can still see the repercussions today. That's the reason why I have followers on all platforms, not a few either. So, I think I have at least 10,000 followers on every platform, and on some platforms over 100,000 followers, so that I have almost half a million followers in total. But I don't use them all anymore. So, it always sounds impressive, but I don't use them all anymore. And then at some point I thought, this is too exhausting, and I always focused on Instagram. I'm the Instagram expert, so I wanted to post as much as possible on Instagram, meaning content every day, sometimes even twice or three times a day, a lot of recycled content, and also many test Reels on the side, when that became possible. That wasn't the case back then, but nowadays it was, or rather, when they came out back then. And that eventually led to me having a lot of different products. I had a LinkedIn course, I had a YouTube course, an Instagram or several Instagram courses, had 15 different funnels running in parallel, and couldn't optimize any of them properly. I also always talked to people who said, well, you have to track your numbers and this and that. I said, impossible, right? I don't even know where people are coming from. I can't track that. It's a mixed calculation for me, and at the end of the day, everything fits. I said that to people to whom I paid €10,000, €11,000, €12,000 in coaching fees, I said, I don't need to track my numbers because I have so much cross-reach anyway, it'll be fine. And 2021 actually got worse. So it got worse than 2020, even though my reach grew, even though I could do more and knew more, and I thought, well, maybe it just doesn't work after all. So, it was actually a real low point for me. The only thing that saved me a little bit was that I knew I loved working from home. I loved working without a boss. And I wanted to make it work at all costs. And at all costs meant actually working, working, working, working. Yes, so I just worked and I didn't really look at why other people were better. I always compared it and saw, well, but they have less reach than me. That was always my thing. Back then, I had one or two people I would call my main competitors. Yes, but I always had at least twice as many followers and sometimes 10, 20, 30 times as much reach as them. And yet, demonstrably, because you can also read that in company registers, they earned a million and more and more and more. Yes, sometimes 4, 5, 6 million a year, and of course that was also because they ran ads, but the money still came in. So, no, if you run ads now, it's not a magic pill where you say, I'll put in €1,000 and get a million back. That's bullshit. Yes, you first have to test extremely a lot, blast out extremely many ads, and when you have one that's working, and you started it with, say, €10 a day to test it, you can't just scale it. Because if you increase it by more than 20% per week in terms of budget, it can happen that it simply resets. That means if you're on a €10 campaign and it was running well, you can't just turn it up to €500 and expect it to still run as well. No, you can turn it up to €11.20 the next week and then the week after maybe to €13 and then the week after to €14, and then it will take months until you can scale that ad. So, for me, that wasn't the right lever from the start, because I also didn't have like €100,000, €1,000 in budget that I could just blast out, because as I said, I was more or less still at the beginning. And the moment I kind of understood what other people were doing differently was around the end, middle, mid-to-late autumn of '21, let's say. Yes, I started analyzing my numbers differently, because in everything that could be seen, I was better than my competitors. Better reach, more community engagement, more comments. I had more of everything than everyone else. And then I thought, okay, if they're still earning so much more, then these things that I've been focusing on all along can't be the right ones. They can't be the right metrics. So, how many followers do I have? That was my metric so far, and now I've taken the metric: How many people actually buy? So, how many customers can I actually convert from my reach? Out of 100 people who see my content? I don't know, just a sample calculation. Yes, five click on my link. Of these five, three ultimately come to my page, and of these three, 0.5% buy. So, I would have 0.5% conversion. So, not 0.5% buy, but 0.5 people buy. So, I have 0.5% conversion. And ultimately, it was around that mark. Yes, I had a conversion between 0.2 and 0.5%. So, then I thought, well, okay, if I could get this number, this one metric, this conversion from 0.5 to 1%, then I would already have twice as many customers as now. And theoretically, I should then actually earn almost twice as much, and I wouldn't have to work on my reach anymore, because my reach was good enough. And if I were to double it, I could earn four times as much. And I don't necessarily need 100,000, 1,000 followers, and I don't need even more followers and more platforms, but maybe I just need better conversion, and optimizing conversion means I need better marketing. The best marketing is when you get the most customers with the least time and/or money, right? So, if I invest €1 somewhere and get €100 back, then that marketing is better than if I invest €1 somewhere, get 20,000 reach, and no one buys. Ultimately, that's it, right? So, ultimately, the point is that we as online entrepreneurs or aspiring online entrepreneurs want to earn money, and there's a very simple math behind it that is incredibly powerful when you let it sink in. You can get 100 buyers with 1,000 followers and 10% conversion. But you can also get 100 buyers with 10,000 followers and 1% conversion. You get the same number of buyers, but ultimately you have to turn the reach lever ten times less. And we all see it. We see all the algorithm changes, we see the stress that always arises, and we simply see how difficult and complicated it is to constantly build and maintain reach. And, spoiler or fun fact, or whatever you want to call it, that's not your job anyway. So, you don't actually, at least most of you don't want to start an online business just for the sake of reach. So, there are people who want fame. Okay. Yes, there are people who are built that way, and that's okay too. They just want reach. Do that. That's fine. Yes, you can also earn a lot of money through collaborations, etc. For years, I've always recommended the Influencer Hook. I could also do that wonderfully with podcasts, for example, by simply inviting well-known interview guests. Yes, so I take the reach of others, interview them, and eventually I've spoken with 100 different people, I don't know. Of these 100 people, 95 people sent their own reach to my channel, and suddenly I'm the famous one, even though I never actually achieved anything other than interviewing someone. It's not disrespectful to interview channels at all, but it's the Influencer Hook, and it's been around for years. Yes, so people who, for example, on YouTube only talk about how to operate Apple or what new Apple products are coming, they use Apple as an influencer. People who have a podcast channel where they do interviews use influencers as influencers, so to speak. So, if you talk about a specific topic and it's very well-known, you use the Influencer Hook. And that's how I actually did it back then. I always talked a lot about Instagram, about algorithm changes, etc., and that was also an Influencer Hook. Now I do that less. Now I talk about myself. I am my own influencer. And it's a bit more difficult to build yourself up as a personal brand to be interesting enough that people believe you. This means you have to have proven something in the past years, have something to show, have proven, whatever, that you can build that. But that was just a very brief digression. We can definitely do a follow-up episode on that sometime. If you're interested, please comment. And while you're commenting anyway, feel free to like the video on YouTube and rate the podcast with five stars if you're listening to it. I'd be very happy about that. So, let's get to how we build this marketing. I've broken it down into different parts, right? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Part 4. Exactly. I've selected four parts, and Part Number 1, to improve marketing, to improve conversion, is price psychology. My mistake back then, I had 15 products between €27 and €1000. There was something for everyone, and that's a mistake because too many options often lead to decision paralysis, and at the same time, if you have many cheap products, you might attract the wrong customers, and of course, with so many products, you have far too much complexity. What I did differently in 2022. I cut everything down and gradually combined all products into one main product. And the product then, I think, cost €222 from the start. It was a self-paced course, clearly positioned, and this self-paced course was always updated. This means all courses up to that point, I think it was 2025, all updates were always included. This means every course I published afterwards was included. And the great thing was, I could do really cool launches with it. I'll get to that in the next part, in scarcity. So, I could build a product for my self-paced course and launch that product only once. I'll explain that to you in the next part. Let's first stick to price psychology. The result, of course, is that you have fewer units and fewer sales, which greatly increases your variance and volatility. This means you have more uncertainty. I still have months where I only sell one or two products. But I also have months where I sell 15 products, and my product now costs double what it cost back then. But these are licenses, these are subscription models, I might get to that today, but maybe you've heard of it. I don't have to sell as much anymore in terms of units as I did back then, because I've now worked my way to a more consistent cash flow. But these fewer sales led to more revenue, led to better customers, and actually led to less support. I have a lot of customers, and maybe you've heard this before, but otherwise, it might surprise you. I have many customers who paid €2220 and never watched the product, not at all. There were even people I asked, I didn't know that back then, and they said, I only bought it for tax reasons. I had a peak month, and therefore I bought a few further education programs to avoid paying so much tax, in case I need them at some point. Crazy, right? And that's also a thing, right? For many people, an investment of €3, 4, €4000 is a lot of money. I can totally understand that. But for some, it's nothing at all. Really nothing. I have a lot of, well, the best months for me are usually November, December, and January is usually still quite good. Why? Because people want to save on taxes. Yes, they quickly buy a further education course and save taxes with it. Super crazy. The good thing about higher prices for the product, apart from, well, if you exclude these people here, if you sell a €99 product, the chance that you'll work through it completely and take it very seriously is much lower than if you pay €2000 for it, even if it's the same product. Simple example, so you can understand it better. You're at a physical therapist and have mild back pain. Mild. Yes. And then something important comes up. Something. The physiotherapy has a co-payment of €10. You got an appointment immediately, you didn't have to wait long, everything's cool. But now something comes up where you think, well, I'll just postpone the physiotherapy again. You postpone the physiotherapy and that's it. Now imagine the same scenario. You've had back problems for years, and you've found the one expert in Germany who heals everyone. A bit exaggerated now, yes, but who heals everyone. And for this appointment, you paid €1000. If something comes up now, would you cancel it? Ah, a little trick. You waited 6 months for the appointment. Would you cancel this appointment? No, never. Unless you have a death in the family or something really, really serious, or you have a high fever or something. You would only let go of this appointment with pain. You want this appointment, and now you've heard all the marketing wisdom in this one sentence that you have. First, extreme expert positioning, so this one expert, yes. Second, extreme scarcity. You waited 6 months for the appointment. And the third is, it's a high and pleasant, unpleasant price, sorry, a high and unpleasant price that you are still willing to pay because you expect a lot from it. So, and we could even push this further and say, she's retiring in a year. This means you also have scarcity in there, and that's marketing. It's nothing more. And you can use these things for yourself. So, specifically for you, first of all, to conclude the first chapter or the first part. What are you currently selling? For how much? Can you double the price? Just like that, can you simply double the price now? So, can you please just try, if you have a small product, can you please just try selling it for 2 weeks at double the price tomorrow? Is that possible without having to change your entire funnel? If yes, try it. You'll see, it was funny with me. I sell more units today, even though I doubled my price, than I did back then, because of course I'm now branded differently and can sell on a completely different basis much more intensively than before. Difficult to explain, that would go beyond the scope. Let's first move on to Part Number 2, Form and Scarcity, because I've teased that a few times now. The problem with evergreen products is that your product is always available. You give your people no reason to buy today. And I notice it again and again, when I'm in my emails, and a test is currently running again, and I notice it again, the conversion drops again if I don't give a bonus for a quick decision, then people don't buy immediately, but they say, ah, I'll do it later or I'll launch in peace and then I'll look at it again. If you don't give people a brutal reason to buy now, meaning today, then they won't buy today. It always sounds so simple and so stupid, but you have to create pressure, and the ideal system, if you want to combine it with evergreen, for example, is to do a workshop funnel, for example, or a free funnel, or to do a launch, or whatever. Yes, you definitely say my product or this offer is only valid for 7 days. You can say, for example, the price will increase afterwards, because people get some kind of 5% discount or 10% or 30%. But you can also work without discounts and say, there's this and this and this bonus only for people who buy now, meaning within the next few days. After that, it's gone. And I actually took this to the extreme once, and I have to tell you this example, I wanted to add a course to the Business Booster called Content Bootcamp, and this Content Bootcamp could only be bought as long as it was not yet in the Business Booster, or rather, I have to say it a bit differently, I simply, and to make it easier now, I made it purchasable for 7 days. So, you could buy it for 7 days, not longer. After that, it was exclusively available in the expensive big program, meaning expensive, but in the big program. This means people could no longer buy this product at some point, and then I made a funnel, then I did a launch, and then I intensified it in the end. So, on the last day, there were also two emails with a reminder and so on, and then I said, it's really going offline soon. You can't imagine what happened in the last 5-6 hours. I had as many sales in the last 5 hours as in the previous 6 days, and I sold the product, which back then cost between €333 and €555, about 223 times. This means over 100 sales came in in the last few hours, and I could swear, if that were my way of speaking, that it was solely because it went offline afterwards. And indeed, I've done launches that were very time-limited from time to time. And my current program, the ZS, I also launched at the start and said, I'm closing it again for now. I did, it was a bit too much work for me later, but in the launch for my ZS, I had 54 sales, and that thing costs €299 net per month. This means I initially earned 54 x €299 net per month. That's an annual license, right? You can calculate that. 54 x €299 x 12 net + 19%. That was pretty crazy. And there too, many people wrote, yes, when are you opening again? And I said, I don't know. I don't know, I want to work with the community there first. I don't know when, yes, okay, then I'll buy it now. So, there were certainly 10, 15 people who only bought because there was a deadline. Only because there was a deadline. This means if you never have a deadline, you're giving away conversion. And if you look at the numbers, I believe that back then, at least with the Content Bootcamp, which was my craziest launch where I really pushed the deadlines, I probably had about 3% conversion on my funnel, but because I did it that way, I had 8.9% conversion, and that's pretty impressive. It's really impressive because you don't have more work. It's just a decision to close the program afterwards. That's it. It's a decision. And if you consider that you can make 2, 4, 5 times as many sales, then just close it afterwards. Then just say, you can't buy it anymore after that. So, no, if I want to give you one tip, or whatever, in your conversion optimization, then build in a deadline, and a deadline, either your program is no longer available, meaning you can't buy it at all, or the price increases, or a bonus expires. So, but please make sure that you don't create a fake scarcity. Not like, there are only three spots left. Yes. Then ten people bought, and they talk to each other, and then, well, then nothing happened. You make yourself a bit ridiculous in the long run. Yes, so make a real deadline that works. So, and now we come to Part 3, and that actually doubled my revenue again, and that is positioning. And I know that a lot of people, no, almost everyone struggles with their positioning. And in my ZS, there's also a chapter called Masterful Positioning, where I explain how to create positioning correctly.
I will now give you an example from my background from the past few years. My biggest shift was, I don't want to be an Instagram expert anymore, but I want to become an Evergreen Funnel Specialist, or a Marketing Specialist for all I care, I don't mind. But I don't want to be an Instagram expert anymore. Because I'm now one of thousands. I was actually, at least as far as I can tell, one of the very first in Germany to do this. You have to consider, it's been almost 7 years now that I've been doing this. But I wanted a more specific positioning. In fact, I wanted to become more specific, and I thought to myself, yes, well, I can now go into the topic of making money online, or how to get rich, or something like that, right? Because I used to do a lot with finances. I always wanted to have a finance channel, which is why you still hear financial things from me now and then, because that's also super important for self-employed people, right? We all need a proper retirement plan, but I thought, no, what I'm actually doing all day is Evergreen Funnels. So I build funnels that work without you having to intervene much. This does involve a high degree of mindset, because I've also had customers again and again who said, Sebi, your funnel just doesn't work for me. I said, what's going on? What where? And then they said, yes, this month only two bought. I said, this month no one has bought from me yet and yet my funnel works. You're still sometimes looking at the wrong metrics, at the wrong conversions, the wrong variance, you're looking at the wrong math, you become impatient, panic, you think everything is collapsing. But I have months where I have 4% conversion and then there are months that have 0.7% conversion. A catastrophe. An absolute catastrophe. But that happens now and then. It annoys me too. But it has nothing to do with the funnel suddenly being worse, because it already converted at 4%. That means the wrong people came in at that time, people had no more money because it was the wrong month. Whatever. Yes, that's how it is. Anyone who looks at their business figures every day is already lost anyway. Look at quarterly figures, and if the quarterly figures are okay, then be satisfied, but don't drive yourself crazy all the time. So, in any case, I've built up a premium positioning for myself, because again, nobody in Germany is doing this. Some talk about Evergreen, but have no Evergreen system behind it at all. They still do their stories every day and create their content with AI crap and so on, and everyone sees it. That's not Evergreen. And I built that up at some point, and because I'm the only one doing it exactly like this, i.e., organic Evergreen funnels without ads, I could charge higher prices. I had less price pressure. My target group was clearer, people all wanted the same thing. I had a much better positioning, so at the end of the day, and because of that, I had a better conversion. And I explain this, and you can also, if you feel like it, listen to it after this podcast. Very extensively also in my workshop, which is free. You can find the link in the show notes or on YouTube under the video as a link, and there I explain how important it is to have a common thread in your funnel. And the common thread starts with your content. That means, if I talk today about wanting to work more relaxed, but in my funnel I say, you have to work 40 hours a week every day or somehow 12 hours a day, then that contradicts itself glaringly. You notice that immediately. But there are very often no direct contradictions, but there is still always the feeling that people or you have the feeling that in the funnel you lose the common thread a bit and don't know what it's about. And that's why you have to be extremely clear, what do you learn from me? Very, very, very extremely clear. And then you also have a common thread, and all programs that have such an extremely clear common thread sell better, and that's what you have to work towards. You really have to learn to work towards presenting your product so clearly that it almost sounds a bit boring. Look, I could have also built my product like this. I'll show you how to earn 1 million euros a year with a workshop funnel. Then you would know, okay, or for example, with digital info products. Yes, we'll add that too. I'll show you how to earn 1 million euros a year with a workshop funnel and your digital product. Absolutely crystal clear positioning. I've softened it a bit. But that's still due to my old positioning, because I'm known as an extremely social media savvy guru. People still associate me with building reach. That's why I've always made it a bit softer and said, earn in 15 hours what others need 60 for, because within that is primarily this promise of time, the promise of money in an indirect sense, right? So you can earn just as much with 15 hours as with 60 hours. That's very tempting. But it doesn't say that you'll become richer because of it or that you'll earn so and so many euros. So my positioning is also still a bit unclear at this point. But it's still a transitional strategy. Yes, so it's currently still a transitional strategy, because it's still a transitional positioning, because I've branded myself as an Instagram expert for months, years, almost a decade, so I can't get out of it that quickly. But if you're just starting out now, then please do it ultra smart and ultra clear. People are looking for specific solutions, and if you have a very specific solution, they will buy your product. Very specific. So, and now we come to part number 4, and that is the funnel itself. My biggest mistakes from 2019 to 2021 were actually that I had too many individual funnels. What is a funnel? You create content, someone might come to your website, so to one of your many websites, and then a product is suggested. That's a three-step funnel now. Yes, so you have a carousel, tell people, click on my link, they click on the link, come to your website, so funnel step number 2, or rather, there are already several funnel steps, but simply so that it's easier now, and then they should buy from there. So, and then you have, for example, Linktree, where you have 20 different individual products. Each individual product has its own landing page. You have to create an individual teaser for each individual product, individual content for each, etc. So it all gets lost in the sand because you mention some products too rarely, etc. So you simply have very, very many different funnels. If you only have one funnel, there's a chance that people will get bored because they know what you're selling and might not be interested in it. That means the conversion could ultimately drop a bit because it's not varied enough, but you can prevent that to some extent. Be that as it may, in 2019 and before, I always heard about product ladders. I thought I needed a beginner product, intermediate product, high-priced product, then expert product, master product, and whatever else. That worked well. So well, right? It worked, not as well as today, but it worked. But what I had dreamed of, that people would buy the beginner product, then want more, and move on, and then on, and then on, and then on, nobody did that. Nobody came from beginning to end. Nobody. Then I thought, okay, what if I just cut out the whole beginning and there's only a beginning and an end product? So, there's no middle product anymore, but there's this is, I don't know, basic, and this is advanced, done. That worked a bit better. Then I thought, okay, what if I have all the products in one, if I just pull people up and say, whether beginner or pro, everyone can learn something, that worked better. And the funny thing was that I had all this complexity gone at once. All my emails could be automated at once, because the end product was always the same. My content could be automated completely at once, because the end product was always the same. Also, my funnels converted better, because people knew exactly, this is what he sells, and if I want that, I have to put the money on the table, and that's it. That means people no longer looked at which of these courses might be the best for me, but they said, he says, with his course I can achieve this and that goal, so I'll buy it, because that's the goal I want to reach. If I now say, or if you now say, your ultimate goal is 10,000 euros a month consistently, and I had a course for conversion and one for reach, then you can be 100% sure that 90% or more people will buy the course for reach, even though the conversion course is more important. And that's why I eventually decided for my clients that I dictate what is important, and not the customer gets to choose, because if the customer could choose excellently, then they would already be further along. And since I also often still work with people who are perhaps not quite so far along yet, I have to dictate to them what they need to know. And that was for me, that was just awesome. I just found it awesome, because look, your goal, or the goal of most people listening here, there are only two goals. Some want to work less and not let their income drop, and others don't want to work more than currently, but earn more. And that's ultimately the same path with a different goal, but everyone wants to earn money more stress-free somehow. And if I don't precisely dictate with what, with what mindset, with what tools, etc., you will achieve that, people will start to think about it themselves. And normally, your present self, your current success, is a result of what you have done in the past few years. All the decisions you have made. That means in the coming years, you will make the same decisions again. That's why you have to make a cut, get people out of there, and show them a different perspective, and of course also the tools and the technology, etc. And that is your task then, if you want to earn money. And the better and clearer you communicate that, the more you will sell, and the better you will eventually reach your 10,000 euros more per month with little work. And the consequence of all this is that 2022 was my breakthrough. Yes, I had an average of 14,000 euros per month in 2022. So I tripled my income compared to 2020-2021. I had the same working hours, and I had to post less and less because I work on an Evergreen basis. That means I recycle my content or post the same things again and again, and I do that in a very special way. And what changed? It wasn't my reach, but actually it was just the conversion. I have less reach today than back then. So I do a few sneaky moves now and then so that my reach is still great. Yes, I also reach millions of people every month on Instagram, where is my phone? Uh, if you're listening to the podcast, you won't see it, of course, but I also reach millions of people every month on Instagram. Yes, here you can see it very up-to-date, 1.6 million views, and if you go to it, I naturally also run ads. Nevertheless, the views are here, it says 3.5% from ads. Yes, so and I find that a bit too much right now. So it's not scaled through ads. That's what I wanted to say. I do a few sneaky moves now and then, and if you go to my profile, you won't see where I get this reach from. And the reach is even 1.2 million euros, 1.2 million euros, 1.2 million reach too low, because I also went viral on Facebook in between with 1.2 million views, and funnily enough, that's not counted on Instagram. So I actually reached 2.8 million people in 30 days, and actually, that didn't bring me anything at all. Nothing at all. So, Instagram brought nothing at all this month. Uh, leads came through Instagram, as always, many hundreds of leads. But leads also came from YouTube, from email, and from the podcast. And through these three combinations, I made almost 90% of my revenue. Instagram was actually the worst channel this month, even though I reached almost 3 million people. My podcast is listened to by a few hundred or maybe around 1000 or maybe even a few more people per episode in the long run, and millions of people listen to or watch Instagram. Conversion is completely useless. I've also changed my Instagram strategy in my head. I haven't implemented it yet, but I'll focus much more on low-hanging fruit content and nothing more deep-dive. I notice it very strongly, when I really put effort into carousel posts and feel like I'm sitting there for hours, they don't perform. Yes, and when I say "we in Germany we don't say blablabla" and then the thing immediately goes out again with 15, 16, 50,000 views and leads come through that, I think to myself, yes, well, then I don't need to put in any more effort, right? That's the feeling I'm slowly getting with Instagram. Well, in any case, the math behind it, in 2020, let's say, out of 1000 people, I converted 1% that I ultimately reached, and then had 10 buyers, and in 2022, I had optimized everything so much that out of 1000 people, I had 8%, so 80 buyers. Uh, and that simply boosted my revenue significantly. Yes, and the thing is, if you are below 10,000 euros a month, then it is highly likely that your reach is not your main problem. Unless you have no reach at all, that's something else. But if you already have reach, you post regularly, a few hundred people come regularly, and still nobody buys, then it's not your reach, because you can be sure that every single view you get on any platform is, in theory, a customer, a potential customer. Everything you say, everything you do, everything you make, can lead to this person either never buying from you or buying very quickly. I once said in a podcast that I became a dad, yes, a few episodes ago. And then I said that because I can work so little, I sometimes take an hour off and am completely alone with the baby. And then someone made it out to be that I only spend an hour a day with my wife and baby. But the reality is, if I work until 1 AM, I'm there from 1 AM until night for my wife and baby. But additionally, I also try to give my wife the opportunity to go somewhere for an hour, meet a friend, get a massage, or go to the swimming pool or somewhere else, or to the sauna, because it's a baby. You can't separate a baby from its mother for 8 hours. Well, our baby can't, and we don't want to. And that's what I meant. And yet I have this woman, who obviously wants to, it was probably a woman who obviously wanted to listen to my podcast, very likely lost her as a customer forever, just because of one sentence. And that's the thing why you can never have 100% conversion, because there's always a statement in every format. Look, I've been talking for almost an hour now, and there will have been statements that you didn't like. But there are also many people who liked this statement, and they will come to me at some point and become customers. So, what I want to tell you at its core is, stop building more followers and work on your better marketing. Specifically, with 2000 followers, regardless of the platform, you can earn 10,000 euros more per month if your conversion is right, if your price is right, if your funnel is right. And the uncomfortable truth is also that building reach is much easier, and besides, it always gives us a certain dopamine boost. I also think it's great that I reached 3 million people on Instagram alone this month. Yes, in total, I don't know, three and a half million, 4 million. That's great for me. And yet, February might be the worst month for my new business, as it is every year, by the way, even though my reach is brutal. But it's also possible that this high reach will only pay into my funnel in a month or in 6 months, and then all the money will come out when people have understood what I want and when they say, this is for me. Therefore, and yet, therefore, one must actually say, building reach is easier and feels better. The bigger lever, however, is optimizing conversion. So. Reach is measurable, much easier to measure than conversion, because measuring conversion itself is not possible. You do have a number at the end, for example, I don't know, you have participants in your workshop, if you have a workshop, you have participants in your workshop and you have buyers who buy afterwards. That's a conversion. Or you have website visitors and have a conversion. So, you link something on your website afterwards, you have 1000 people there, and one has bought, so you have a 0.1% conversion. Yes, but behind that is psychology, marketing, your funnel, the common thread, etc. So you don't directly know why people aren't buying. That's why I recommend, and I explain this in my program, that you check the individual conversion stages once a month or once a quarter, and you do that in a very simple Google spreadsheet. You go to your website and see, okay, there were 5000 people. Of those 5000 people, let's say 25,000 people registered for the workshop. Then you have a 50% conversion. That's your first number. 25,000 people, of whom 1250 watched. Yes, so actually participated and watched. That's your second conversion, again 50%. Now you would actually have to check how many people watched the workshop until your pitch, and those are your actual participants. You can also set that in most programs and say, a participant only counts from 80%, for example, then you could separate it cleanly like that. I've never done it that way. A participant is a participant to me. But even if you have 1000 participants now, not all 1000 participants will have watched until the end, until your pitch. That means probably only half of them are people who actually saw your pitch. And then you have your emails afterwards, for example, or SMS marketing, or whatever. Yes, there you will have a conversion again, and then you have these numbers, and if you check them every month, you will see fluctuations or not. Yes, so maybe they remain very constant. Normally, you should see fluctuations, and there are metrics that I explain in my program, which ones you should achieve. For me, for example, the rate of signing up for the workshop and watching it is 71%. The industry average is 40%. That means I'm above average at motivating people to register and also to watch. That's very, very good. And all these things, you have to build them up for yourself step by step. That's what I meant at the very beginning with, this doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen quickly, but you can build it up well over weeks, months, and then gradually you will notice that you have to work less and less. So, the four levers summarized very briefly again, which you can tackle today. At least you can write them down. Uh, or rather, no, I'll just tell you four levers that you could check today if you feel like it. Double your price and see what happens. Yes, build in scarcity at the same time. So say the product at this price is only available for the next 5 days. Then think again about whether you can sharpen your positioning. Yes, so for whom exactly, what exactly. Is it clear in 5 seconds? And I always say, can a small child understand it too? Well, my child can't yet, but my positioning a small child will understand, earn in 15 hours what others need 60 for. Absolutely crystal clear. Not a single foreign word in it, or any gibberish, or brand-specific terms, or industry-specific words, nothing. And then try to think about whether you can simplify your funnel. Of course, you can't do that today, but maybe you can set it as a challenge. And if you don't want to do all four, then just pick one. But do one, try one. Think of a deadline now. For example, you have a product that you haven't sold for a long time, some small product, or you have a product that you haven't sold at all yet, then bring it out with a deadline, not 24 hours, that's a bit tight. Say, this thing can only be sold for three days, and mention it every day, and mention it twice a day. Do a very short email series or a very short Instagram story series, only for three days. You can't sell it afterwards, and I bet you'll suddenly notice that you're getting buyers and that people are coming in and yes, becoming customers. Yes, and now at the very end, one more reminder about my free workshop. So, if you want to learn my system, how I do it, then you can view my funnel for free, the link to my free workshop, you can find it in the show notes. You can simply choose an appointment there. There I will show you my complete funnel, how I can maintain this conversion nowadays, despite having a bad month here and there. As I said, that's quite normal. And the next thing, that's important to me, I want to say that again at the end, 10 million euros a month, I'm talking about net profit, of course, are excellent to live on. And I used to say this repeatedly in coaching, but please also set a limit, from which you are really satisfied, and it shouldn't be brutally high. So, if you say your goal is 10,000 euros net per month, then don't start at 10,000 euros net per month and suddenly say, well, 20 would be nice, because then you'll start at 20 and say, 30 would be nice, and at 30 you'll start saying, 40 would be nice. You'll eventually get back into this spiral where you drive yourself crazy. What you need to do is look at how much money you really need privately, how much money you want to save for retirement, and how much additional buffer you want to have in these other areas. And I always recommend, build up a buffer in your business accounts to be able to pay your salary for several months, even if things aren't going well. That's a fact, it's the first thing you do. In parallel, of course, you also do retirement planning. I can gladly tell you something about it in a podcast. Feel free to write in the comments if you want to know how I built my retirement plan as a self-employed person without pension insurance. And if you have these two components, then see if you can pay yourself a decent salary. Yes, so I don't know, maybe you want to earn 4000 euros net per month, maybe you want to earn 6000 euros, but don't come to me with any numbers like, but I want 50,000 euros net per month. Where should that come from? Well, if you're not earning that now, it won't come from forcing it, but it will come from building systems in the long term that continuously increase conversion. And that's what you've learned here today anyway. Your system will scale on its own in the end if you do everything right. But this scaling work should not cost you more time and more nerves at some point, because I know more people who drove themselves crazy, even though they were already earning a lot, than people who earn little and are satisfied. I know a lot of people who earn half a million or a million a year and always say, well, but 2 million would be nice. Yes, it's a game that has no upper limit. That means you can always and always and always and always earn more money, and this limit will eventually drive you crazy. At least it drives many people crazy and unhappy, because they can't reach this limit, which doesn't exist. Therefore, besides what you want to earn at least, please also always consider what you want to earn at most. Eventually, you will earn more anyway. Yes, my limit back then was 15,000 euros net per month. Now I'm at two to three times that per month. But I don't need it. It all goes either into my retirement savings account or into reserves or into whatever. Eventually, you will realize that lifestyle inflation tries to take possession of you, and you have to say, stop, I'm not participating in that, or I'll only participate a little, but still set these two limits. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I also hope it helped you. I hope I haven't drifted too far. Sometimes I talk a bit too much. And I hope you subscribe to this podcast on YouTube and Spotify, and we'll see you next time. Take care, bye. Your Sebifst.